The following article was originally posted as part of my blog series on the Huffington Post where I am sharing experiences and insights I gained from my recent travel. 

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a twenty-year anniversary celebration for the National Society of Collegiate Scholars in Washington, D.C. It was a special honor to be there because I knew the founder, Steve Loflin, some twenty-five years ago before this concept had completely gelled in his mind. What started as a “crazy idea” to convene a college honor society on scholarship, leadership, and service was hatched with two of Steve’s friends over a lasagna dinner at his apartment. Twenty years later, this organization is a million strong with chapters at some 400 colleges. In Steve’s speech he spoke to the messiness of start-up ideas and the organic, sometimes random nature in which crazy ideas take root; an excellent perspective as the college culture can protect students from the uncertainties and ambiguities they will meet in the reality outside of school. With all of the news stories and data on how students struggle academically, emotionally, and socially, it is nice to see so many examples of students who are thriving and doing their best to make the world a better place.

Continue reading on the Huffington Post.

 I recently returned from a trip where I spoke in Bangkok at the Near East South Asia Council of Overseas Schools (NESA) Conference and in Singapore at the International Association for Scholastic Excellence (INTASE) Conference. The following article was originally posted as part of my blog series on the Huffington Post where I am sharing experiences and insights I gained from my trip. 

When I was in Bangkok a few weeks ago at the NESA (Near East South Asia Council of Overseas Schools) conference, I met an extraordinary young award recipient from the American International School — Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Karen Grace received the Stanley Haas/Luke Hansen Student Award as a student who displays “consistency, persistence, willingness to take risks, acceptance of other cultures and points of view and a genuine interest in and commitment to the welfare of others.” The Stanley Haas/Luke Hansen student award shares the names of Stanley Haas, the late executive director of NESA and Luke Hansen, a remarkable middle school student who died in an accident.

At a time when students are commonly awarded for taking AP classes, getting a 4.0, and getting high scores on standardized tests, eighth-grader Karen Grace was awarded for her strength of character. Karen Grace opened her acceptance speech, stating:

My family and I were so amazed to find out that there is an award out there, given on character and not on grades. Competing towards the good of mankind is the most positive and sensible idea anyone could come across.

 

Continue reading on the Huffington Post.

I recently returned from a trip where I spoke in Bangkok at the Near East South Asia Council of Overseas Schools (NESA) Conference and in Singapore at the International Association for Scholastic Excellence (INTASE) Conference. The following article was originally posted as part of my blog series on the Huffington Post where I am sharing experiences and insights I gained from my trip. 

Two weeks ago I spoke in Bangkok at the Near East South Asia Council of Overseas Schools (NESA) Conference. Educators and school leaders from around the world attended, ranging from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Nepal, Greece, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and Bangladesh to name a few.Some of the teachers were originally from countries in Asia like the Philippines, but have relocated to places like Dubai for better job opportunities in order to support themselves and their families back home.

This single conference housed a tremendous amount of economic, educational, and situational diversity. Some schools struggle with limited resources to bring their students a world-class education in places like Bangladesh and Pakistan and the provinces of the Philippines, where even a private school education is in competition for resources. Conversely, educators in oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia are challenged to inspire their privileged students to see their unique gifts and talents, not just those bestowed on them from their parents, royalty, or any other outside force.

Continue reading on The Huffington Post. 

What are the top skills employers demand? Communication skills, judgement and decision making, active listening to name a few. These skills are referred to as soft skills, or non-cognitive skills that are not measured by a cognitive or academic test, like IQ, for example.

In an age when our economy demands more college grads in order to fill the jobs of the future and to be globally competitive, the answer has been to make our classes harder and rank students, schools, and teachers by the scores students earn on their standardized test. Put more effort behind increasing IQ and get a better prepared workforce, right?

Wrong. Little to no research gives evidence that more rigorous classes or standardized tests will lead to more college graduates, according to the review, “Teaching Adolescents to Become Learners.” In fact, studies show the best indicator of success in college is not the difficulty level of classes a student took in high school or their standardized test scores, but rather their course grades, GPA, and class rank.

Researchers argue these standings are much more indicative of a student’s academic and economic potential because they measure, in part, the transferable and non-cognitive skills a student possesses:

“The prevailing interpretation is that, in addition to measuring students’ content knowledge and core academic skills, grades also reflect the degree to which students have demonstrated a range of academic behaviors, attitudes, and strategies that are critical for success in school and in later life, including study skills, attendance, work habits, time management, help-seeking behaviors, metacognitive strategies, and social and academic problem-solving skills that allow students to successfully manage new environments and meet new academic and social demands. To this list of critical success factors, others have added students’ attitudes about learning, their beliefs about their own intelligence, their self-control and persistence, and the quality of their relationships with peers and adults.”

This is one reason why parents put their kids on a soccer team, students are told to get involved in activities so they can highlight them on their college application,  and job seekers have a place to showcase their extracurricular achievements on their resumes. While there is no direct economic value to a child playing soccer, it is thought of as a social activity where people acquire the non-cognitive, or social and behavioral, skills that are necessary to get along with people at school and in the workplace, learn responsibility to a team, balance school and life, work under pressure, etc.

While classroom time is traditionally thought of as  a time to develop cognitive skills and after-school time is used for non-cognitive, the two skill sets are inextricably linked and don’t need to be exclusive. At LifeBound we train K-12 teachers, professors, advisors, tutors, and staff to use coaching skills to capitalize on the time they have with students and develop these non-cognitive skills for success in school, career, and life.

Through the coaching process, students answer questions and engage in self-reflective activities to mindfully create:

• Vision for what is possible
• Balance in their academic, social, and emotional lives
• Perspectives on the challenges they face and the choices they make
• Accountability to themselves and others
• Fulfillment from making choices that align with core values
• Habits of success to help address their personal strengths and weaknesses

What would your brightest students be capable of if they developed their non-cognitive skills alongside their cognitive? How would your struggling students benefit if they were asked powerful questions and learned to ask themselves powerful questions when they need help?

If you’re in the Denver area, join us on November 1 for a one-day Introduction to Academic Coaching. This training will give you a thorough introduction to the coaching process as well as leave you with coaching skills you can use Monday morning.  If you are interested in LifeBound coming to your area, email me at caroljcarter@lifebound.com for more information.

Is the culture around learning in the Eastern world better than Western, and if so, is it possible to change how a culture learns to one that’s more effective?

Those are the questions proposed in a recent encore NPR story. Jin Li, professor at Brown University has spent the last decade studying conversations that American mothers and their children have about learning versus the conversations between Taiwanese mothers and their children. Two sound bites give great insight into how the two cultures have distinct views.

In the first clip, an American child tells his mother that he and his friends like to talk about books at recess. She responds, “Do you know that that’s what smart people do – smart grown-ups?…that’s a pretty smart thing to do, to talk about a book.” Professor Li explains the mother is reinforcing the idea that because her son is smart he is successful in school.

Compare that to the conversation recorded between a Taiwanese mother and her child who just won first place at a piano competition. She tells her son, “You practiced and practiced with lots of energy. It really got hard, but you made great effort. You insisted on practicing yourself.” In  Eastern cultures, success is thought to come from persistence when faced with a challenge, not necessarily inner intelligence.

Reporter Alix Spiegel makes the disclaimer that these comparisons don’t prove that one culture’s take on learning is superior to the other. In fact, professor Li makes the point that though Eastern students are scoring higher than their Western counterparts in STEM areas, Westerners are typically more creative because of how their culture nurtures individuality.

As a teacher or parent, how do you talk to your kids about the reasons behind their successes or failures? How did your parents or teachers talk to you about your success in school?

MOOCs are on the minds of many educators and students today as the new open source trend opens many discussions on what learning will look like in the 21st century. Technology can bring a free college course taught by the best of the best professors from universities like Stanford and Harvard right to your living room. The popularity of MOOCs has people asking, why pay for a college education when you can get one for free online?

If the demand for more online learning persists, so must the demand for affordable devices and services  In addition, students taking primarily online classes will have to have the initiative, determination, and follow through to get the experiences and networking they need to augment classroom learning with professional skills.   In the new world of learning, the power is in the student’s hands but that alone will not be enough.   Ingenuity, ambition, and the ability to have a strong track record will allow online students, or any student for that matter, to show how they have single-handedly crafted meaningful professional experiences to complement college learning.

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Sources:

“The Professor’s Big Stage,” by Thomas Friedman. The New York Times. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/opinion/friedman-the-professors-big-stage.html?ref=opinion&_r=0>

“Data Caps Could Dim Online Learning’s Bright Future,” by By Benjamin Lennett and Danielle Kehl. The Chronicle.<http://chronicle.com/article/Caps-on-Data-Use-Dim-Online/137653/>

As a result of lost manufacturing and outsource jobs, the U.S. needs to look to the future—to new opportunities and growing markets to be able to compete globally, and all indicators point to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.

According to research compiled by the Joint Economic Committee Chairman’s Staff in their report, “STEM Education: Preparing for the Jobs of the Future,” technology innovations have fueled the American economy, with some studies crediting over half of our economic growth in the past fifty years coming from improved productivity resulting from innovation. And the trend seems to be continuing. The demand for workers with degrees in the STEM fields is rising and expected to increase according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

However, the U.S. is not producing enough graduates in the fields of math, engineering, computer science, and therefore creating a skill gap. Forbes Magazine published a list “10 Skills that will Get You Hired in 2013” and mathematics was sixth on the list. The need for understanding arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics and the corresponding applications was found in 6 out of the 10 most in-demand jobs now.

So why are we as a nation struggling to impact math achievement when we know what today’s and tomorrow’s economy will demand of future workers, and what an increase in math achievement will provide for all?

As a nation, we must first acknowledge and embrace the changing economy and the demands that will be placed on the next generation of workers. We must educate students and parents about the opportunities that await those who achieve in the fields of math and science, and get more children, especially girls and students of color, into these fields. We must honestly invest in K12 education, attracting teachers to the field who can not only teach math but help bridge the classroom to the real world applications. We must introduce legislation that emphasizes the need for math achievement, rewards the schools getting it right, and provides the financial means to make schools successful in these areas.  And finally, we must continue the fight to make higher education accessible to students.

In America, it doesn’t matter what socioeconomic standing you were born into, we believe everyone deserves an equal chance at an equally fulfilling life. In the land of opportunity, a general sense of optimism for our futures sets us apart from other countries. A 2009 Pew Poll found even after the beginning of the Great Recession, Americans remained optimistic that they would still get ahead.[i]

That being said, the numbers speak a different truth. However optimistic we are about opportunity in America, the U.S. ranks 27th out of 31 developed countries when measuring equal opportunities.[ii] Research shows American students start falling behind other developed nations by kindergarten.[iii]

A study by Center on Children & Families at Brookings found the chance of being successful, in this study defined as reaching the middle class, is very much influenced by race and gender, but even more so by the earnings of the subject’s parents.[iv] The following graph shows a student’s preparedness for each phase of life based on whether they were born to parents in the bottom fifth of family income or the top fifth.

Note only 48 percent of children born to the bottom fifth are ready for school, compared to 78 percent in the top fifth. As these students move through the different phases of their life and into adulthood, 75 percent of those born in the top fifth will hit middle class status, compared to only 40% of those born into the bottom fifth.[v]

As this report points out, even in an unabashedly meritocratic country, “success begets later success.”[vi] Early intervention is key to a student’s future success, financially, academically, socially, and emotionally. This is true for all countries, and the ones that are succeeding know it.
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[i]  http://www.pewstates.org/research/analysis/opinion-poll-on-economic-mobility-and-the-american-dream-85899378651
[ii] http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/9/20%20pathways%20middle%20class%20sawhill%20winship/0920%20pathways%20middle%20class%20sawhill%20winship.pdf, page 2
[iii] http://www.michronicleonline.com/index.php/achieve/9277-greatness-starts-before-grade-school

[iv] Ibid, page 6
[v] Ibid, page 6
[vi] Ibid, page 8

High unemployment rates have led more people in the U.S. down an entrepreneurial career path, and some believe this is just the pathway all Americans should be taking. Yong Zhao, presidential chair and associate dean for global education in the college of education at the University of Oregon, recently gave a keynote at the International Society for Technology in Education conference where he compared high-achieving students around the world with American students, known for their declining test scores, according to a recent Education Week article.

He called out some of the top ranking countries, like China, South Korea, and Singapore, and drew attention to their low rankings in entrepreneurial skills. This is where he believes American students can have an advantage over the rest of the world. Zhao calls today’s U.S. students “confident” — a quality that can fuel entrepreneurship and give entrepreneurs the grit they need to be a business owner.

Zhao believes we are approaching education reform the wrong way. “It’s not about fixing someone’s deficit; it’s about enhancing their strength.” Instead of focusing on academic skills, should we gear more classes toward American’s strengths? Probably not to the extent that Zhao suggests, suggests Kate Ash in her article “Yong Zhao: Focus on Entrepreneurial Skills, not Test Scores.” However, entrepreneurship, leadership, problem solving, and critical thinking are 21st century skills that many of today’s students lack. There doesn’t need to be a separation between teaching soft skills and rigorous academic courses. We can enhance yesterday’s lessons with the skills and technology students need to succeed today in school and out.

Bringing professionals to speak in a class, giving students more chances to take leadership roles in the classroom, using a budget for a small business as the basis for math project, or offering an enrichment class can teach students the value of and skills for fulfilling an entrepreneurial role without lessening the importance of literacy and STEM education for today’s students.

Today, the U.S. is in 21st place for high school completion rates and 15th place for college completion. Only 40 years ago, American students were at the top of the list.^1 Students need to be engaged, motivated, challenged, and supported. Above all, they need to be challenged in ways that will allow them to take responsibility for their strengths and interests. They also need role models, mentors, community, and their own space. In addition, they need learning programs such as tutoring, extracurricular activities, and summer enrichment, which enhance learning basics.

A high school diploma is essential for all students and more important than ever. Today, a high school diploma is not the end, it’s a stepping stone to the future. The global world of work is increasingly more competitive and employers want employees with a college degree and real-world work experience who add value. Alive, not just for the job for which they were hired, but for the potential they bring over the arc of their time at a company, ascending to more complex jobs as their pay increases.

Educators can’t be held responsible for addressing every student need, but they can adapt their classrooms to the changing world and develop a strategy to engage the 21st century student that works to keep them engaged, purposeful, and moving forward. The following are just a few innovative ways educators are successfully changing the traditional classroom to put students in charge of their own learning.

Incorporate Student Mentorship

At Sevastopol High School, a group of high schoolers just finished another year mentoring younger kids in kindergarten through sixth grade. The mentorship program has been growing over the last 10 years and has proven to be a benefit for both younger and older students. Younger students get to interact with older students who help them with their homework, play learning games with them, and have someone to look up to. Older students practice responsibility, being a role model, and organizing activities.^2.Working this closely in a leadership capacity, students learn to see themselves in others while realizing the impact of their own authority on those who are younger and more impressionable.
Make Excellence the Standard

Pushing standards above average challenges students and prepares them for the demands of college and the world of work. Pritzker College Prep is a charter high school in northwest Chicago with 95% of the African-American and Latino students living in poverty. These students are at a high risk of not finishing high school or pursuing higher education. Pritzker is working to close the achievement gap by letting their students know dropping out of high school and not pursuing college is not an option. Students spend more time in the classroom than their peers in traditional school, are largely involved in summer learning programs, and regularly talk about earning good grades and entering college.³

Bring Global Learning to the Classroom

Students will be entering a global workforce and with the help of technology can get experience learning from different cultures without even leaving the classroom. At Charlotte Jewish Day School students in K-5 go to their global classroom once a week to meet with their global friends through an online ePal program. They talk about world issues and brainstorm how to solve them, they learn about natural disasters in their ePal’s homeland, and they email them questions when they think of something else they want to learn more about.⁴

Don’t underestimate the power of small change. All of these schools, and many more not listed here, are putting students in the driver’s seat of their own learning. Try adopting an activity in the classroom that gives students responsibility for their own success and gets them excited about learning, whether you use the power of technology to bring the world into the classroom or peer programs that develop perspective. When students are in charge of their own learning, the stakes are higher, they’re more invested in their own success, and they tap into an intrinsic motivation that can guide them through the rest of their schooling into the rest of their lives.
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³“A Look Inside a Successful Charter School Culture,” by Beth Hawkins. 31 January 2011. Hechinger Report. Accessed on 7 June 2012. http://hechingerreport.org/content/why-does-it-work-a-look-inside-a-successful-charter-school-culture_5117/

⁴“Students Go ‘Global’Thanks to Technology,” by Caroline McMillan. 8 February 2012. The Charlotte Observer. Accessed on 7 June 2012. http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/02/08/2982882/students-go-global-thanks-to-technology.html