Innovations at Dalat #15 - Teacher comments

Here are some of the problems with the process of writing "comments" from teachers on a report card. In no particular order.

1. Writing meaningful comments for 100 students is a nearly impossible task for even the most diligent teacher. Doing this twice every year over and over is exhausting.
2. Comments are written at the end of the quarter or semester when the teacher is already the most busy with grading.
3. There is little incentive for parents or students to read comments, further adding insult to the teacher's injury of having to write them.
4. If there is a suggestion for how a student could improve in the class, it is too late since the semester is already over.
5. The space is short, and the energy to write anything meaningful is low, knowing most of the comments will be ignored.
6. The student is not engaged in the process of evaluating their strengths and weaknesses. It is all top-down with little metacognition. 
7. Comments are often generic and meaningless. Teachers are actually reticent to say what needs to be said because...
8. Any negative comment can be seen as "out of the blue," leaving a student hurt. So positive "fluff" comments are the norm.
9. Anything written has the potential to be misconstrued since it is lacks context and nonverbal cues that typically give insight.
10. Traditional comments are written for two very different audiences.  The first is the next school the student will attend (as part of the permanent record), and the other is for the student/parents. It is nearly impossible to write to both audiences well. 

You can probably add to this list. For now, I think I have made the point that the current system is broken. 

Once we decided it was more important to write comments to the student to improve their learning and achievement (rather than writing an official record for applying to the next school), it freed us to do things differently to overcome most of these issues. We are now in the 4th year of our new system, and feedback from parents and teachers has been consistently positive. Here is a summary of what we are doing and why it works.

At the midpoint of our semester grading cycle (rather than at the very end), students are given time in each class to answer self-reflection questions about their learning. Typically, we ask three standard questions, and teachers have the opportunity to add their own question that is specific to their own class. Here is a look at the form students use. 

There is a lot to look out here so let me summarize. The first two tabs allow students to reflect on our school-wide goals (our Flagships). We have four, so to keep them from being overwhelmed, they do two each semester. Scrolling down there is a place for students to self-reflect in each class.  The final tab shows exemplars so the students have a model to follow.

Our tech guys have worked some magic in the background. The student reflections are compiled for teachers in an easy-to-access format (one document has a whole class of students). The teachers see what the student's reflections are and can affirm, correct, and add to the student's comments. This has helped make the comments far more meaningful and easier for teachers to have something valuable to say since they have a starting point. Often, the students are far more critical of themself than a teacher would be, so it gives a chance to encourage without being fake and to let parents and students know if there are real issues that need to be addressed.

Once all of the information is entered by teachers, the results from all the teachers are pulled back together in a single document for each student that is shared with the family. Parents are asked to read the student and teacher reflections and discuss them as a family. The final step is to have the parents fill out a form telling us they have read through the comments with their students. The parents can even write an encouraging note to their kid that is added to the document. The form lets the school know that parents have taken the time to reflect on both the students learning as well as the teacher's input. Yes, we incentivize this last step...after a grace period, students may not participate in any school activity until their parents complete the task and submit the form.

Once we decided that the point of our process was to improve learning, it freed us to make some big changes that have alleviated most of the problems listed above. It is never going to be fun writing for 100 students, but knowing the comments are hitting home and challenging students to do better takes much of the sting out. 

Pushing Past Barriers #2

The pain is a FEATURE, not a BUG. 

In my early 30's I did a triathlon that started in a torrential rain storm. Five minutes into the bike portion, the road was covered in puddles, which shortly sent me skittering into a ditch with road rash all over my back and a banged-up wheel. By the time I pulled myself together, I was far back from contention and looking at a year of hard work and training getting washed away by the storm. In a panic, I pushed hard on the bike and, in the run, was redlined the whole way. My heart rate monitor data showed I was near 190 bpm for 75 minutes straight. I staggered across the finish line and collapsed from exhaustion. Laying on my back at the line, I could not find the strength to turn my head, and I seriously thought I would drown in my own vomit. Race officials got me rolled over and to the hospital. For the next 24 hours, I was in the emergency room trying to regulate my stomach, body temp, electrolytes, and dehydration. I found my limit, a place I have never been since, and I never want to go again.  

As a  CrossFit coach, I smile when the new guy tells me he cannot wait to get in shape so that his workouts don't hurt so bad. Perhaps, yes, when you first start out, they do indeed hurt differently; blisters happen fast on soft hands and you are more likely to be sore on the day following. The lack of fitness means that the end comes sooner. But in the last ten years doing functional fitness workouts of every variety, I can say for certain the discomfort does not ever go away. 

We have all hit that wall in the middle of a slog of a workout. Sometimes it is the heat, your upset stomach, the heavyweight, or simply having no gas in the tank. You question why you are doing the workout and look around, wondering why everyone else seems to have it together.
This weekend I hit that wall in my workout. Everyone else was two rounds ahead of me. The oppressive heat had me pouring ice water over my head; the exhaustion had me hanging on my sorts doubled over, trying to catch my breath. Pukie kept threatening to show up, and my wobbly legs simply did not want to cooperate as I looked at the bar for the next set of deadlifts. I was in a dark place, wondering how that simple program on the board could wreck me so completely.

If it ever did stop hurting, I would miss out on a significant reason for doing the workout. Similar to the ice bath, there is something significant that happens when pushing through barriers.  I often find that I am not as close to the edge as I thought and there is growth that happens by simply pressing on.

So what is different about the discomfort for a guy after hundreds of workouts? A confidence that comes with knowing your ability to handle the discomfort. Understanding that if you can just climb over that next barrier, you are likely going to find the reserves needed to finish the workout. Self-doubt is less likely to show up as you stop naval gazing and instead focus on the finish line. There is trust in your own ability to handle the next hard thing and simply start on the next set. 

To all my athletes looking around wondering if anyone else feels this way,  my answer is, Yes, if they are working with enough intensity to be beneficial, others feel like you do. We are not all reveling in schadenfreude, feeling marvelous while you suffer.  Not every workout needs to push you to the edge to be beneficial, but part of the reason to work out in a community is that you will get more out of yourself if others are around to push you. There are exceptions to this, but they are few.

Will it ever stop feeling so terrible? Perhaps a little, but not because it hurts less. The ability to package that discomfort and set it aside is a skill that is learned. And it takes consistent effort. Like fitness, your ability to manage the discomfort and keep pushing down barriers is a skill that is quickly lost. A fellow coach tells his athletes regularly to "get comfortable being uncomfortable." That sounds like a tagline that will attract the masses to CrossFit.  

  

Pushing Past Barriers #1

How long should you be in an ice bath to get optimum results? I get this question a lot from people interested in this crazy habit that I have of sitting in freezing cold water. It seems a simple question, but there is a lot of different research about what time of day works best, how often, what temperature, etc. You could probably mess it up and sit in it too little/often or for too short/long or not cold enough/too cold, but the reality is simply doing it regularly (you define) for a set time (you define) in uncomfortably cold water will likely get most of the benefits. Could this be fine-tuned for peak performance if you were a professional athlete looking for a tiny edge over your competitors? Sure. But generally speaking, it is not as much about the ice water itself (yes, that does have some benefits); instead, it is largely about the number of barriers that you can push past. 

Some days, I feel comfortable getting in, and without too much discomfort, I have no problem sloshing around for five or six minutes in water just above freezing. On other days...just getting in takes all of my effort. I shiver uncontrollably almost from the start, and getting to three minutes takes a heroic effort. Many factors play into the experience. Probably the most powerful is my overall mood but there is more too it than this.

Regardless, every time an ice bath challenges one to push past barriers that tell you "I don't want to do this." Andrew Huberman is a research scientist looking at human performance who has done a lot of research on athletes, and he talks about a structure of the brain called the Anterior Mid Cingulate Cortex that grows when you do something you "don't want to do." It might be exercise, dieting, or getting and staying in an ice bath just a little bit longer. In an ice bath, the first barrier is your brain telling you not to get in. Then there is a barrier saying to stop at your waist or chest. Thirty seconds in, I might relax for a while, and then a few seconds later, there is another barrier that again tells me to get out. Waves come at different intervals, and some are more difficult than others to push through.

The benefits of ice baths are many, but one of them is simply giving your willpower the opportunity to knock down one barrier after the next. In many ways, this may simply be a concentrated version of something that happens in the middle of a workout and want to quit. Or you are fasting, and here is a wave of hunger to push through. The benefit is more than simply what the ice/exercise/ diet can do for you. The benefit comes from the strength of your willpower as you push beyond a barrier and find that you can go further than you thought. 

Actual physical changes to the brain happen as you practice this over and over. This brain growth helps you push through the next time things get tough and you don't want to do an assignment for school, grade papers, file taxes, or do something else uncomfortable. Your brain will have physically changed from your experience on the ice to grow and allow you to tackle the difficult challenge more effectively. 

  

Innovations at Dalat #15 - Do Hard Things

 

All one has to do is look at the change in playground equipment design in the last hundred years to see that risk tolerance in schools has changed. In general, society is more risk-averse, but schools specifically have taken huge steps to make certain that students never get hurt. I should know since in the last couple of years my role has included leading our school in all things crisis-related. My eye is constantly tuned into spotting potential dangers and averting disaster before it happens. 

But play a thought experiment with me. Imagine if we did not already have sports in schools. How would a person proposing basketball to a school administration who had never heard of  "sports" be received in this century? My guess is they would be met with ridicule and scorn for introducing something that so regularly results in twisted ankles and elbow-induced bruises. How long sports will be "tolerated" in today's safety culture is anyone's guess. In the USA parents regularly balk at allowing their kids to play American football and this trend toward protectiveness from parents trickling into other sports. This comes at a price. When play equipment is safe enough that no one will ever get hurt, and students don't have the opportunity to fall or hang, shoulders weaken, bone density drops, and students don't learn how far they can safely fall. A self-reinforcing cycle means more and more steps need to be taken to protect from injury as students become weaker and more injury-prone. Covid lockdowns further accelerated this trend as students sat at screens and forgot (or never learned) how to play organized sports.  

In general, the opportunity to find limits and to test oneself seems less available than ever. Enter the Spartan Race. Why take 25 high school kids on a weekend trip to participate in something so "dangerous"? There are lots of reasons, but the fact that it is a little dangerous happens to be a positive in my mind, not a negative. It is not life-threatening, but the heat, the uneven terrain, the high obstacles, and the unknown all make this worth doing. 

The race will be hard; for some kids as hard a physical challenge as they have ever faced. And there is a real possibility that some kids will fail to complete the course due to physical exhaustion or even injury. Even without an injury, race day may come with heat exhaustion, muscle cramps, blisters, and discomfort. We have been practicing for most of a quarter for this race and I have done what I can on our campus to give students similar challenges so they are physically ready on race day. Ideally, our practices would be so hard that on race day the students might even find the race easy. 

Besides the physical strength and endurance that our participants are gaining through this training, those who push through the pain (in training and on race day) and seize this opportunity to find limits may open a window into their own psyche, learning that they are capable of more than they thought.  This translates to other obstacles that they will face in life...losing a job, losing a loved one, working on a degree, or starting a business. Once a student learns that they will not crumble when things get rough, they learn that they can push through in all sorts of other areas of life. 

Just to be clear, I am not advocating for some of the crazy playground equipment seen in old photographs. But I am not worried that someone might "suffer" on race day. That may be where the greatest learning takes place. It seems that God has created us to learn best when the heat is on and things are tough. 

Innovation at Dalat #14 CrossFit Gym Outfitting

Did something good come of the COVID madness? You would be hard-pressed to find things. At Dalat, the restrictions on travel and limitations on all sports activities meant that our Athletic budget was largely untouched in the 2020-2021 year. This was a significant sum that was mostly absorbed to help offset costs in other areas. 

However, it did give an opportunity to invest in some equipment. We inked a partnership with our school's health insurance provider and a parent organization that saw a way to invest in our community, and next thing, we had a reasonable chunk of change. After a rig was purchased and most of the basics, including three air bikes and rowers, there was even money left over to train 5 staff members to receive their CrossFit L1 training. This was done online (okay, the online option was also a benefit of COVID) and we had a pretty solid team of coaches ready to get to work.

We had just completed work on a new cafeteria building. This left our old Seaside Café sitting empty with a patio that was within 5 feet of the waves at high tide. The space was sweaty and salty and ultimately proved very corrosive on our equipment, but for training, it was ideal. 

Without much else happening for the kids, all of a sudden, each afternoon work

out was packed with kids and our coaching skills of scaling workouts to a huge range of abilities were really tested. But man it was fun while it lasted. Little did we know that a move would be in the works shortly, but that is a story for another day.
 

Innovation at Dalat #13 Awards Program

The pins and plaques that students receive in our awards program are to recognize achievement, inspire students to try something different, and to serve as a memento of a student’s activities during their time at Dalat. This is a one-of-a-kind program that we designed from the ground up ten years ago, modeled after a “letter-jacket” concept that is traditional in North America. We have worked to improve every year since by recognizing more activities with pins. Dalat custom designs each pin (thank you, Mrs. Roberts) and crafts them for only our students.

When a student graduates, in addition to a diploma, they are handed their plaque and pins as a keepsake to remind them of their activities at Dalat. I have shared the unique program that Dalat is using at several conferences and have consistently received positive feedback from other schools or have heard from them that they intend to emulate what we are doing.

Most of the pins are awarded during our year-end High School Awards Ceremony at 9:30 am on Friday, June 7. This ceremony is for all of our HS students in grades 9-12. Parents are encouraged to attend and help us celebrate. This will be our first year in the Harbor Hall for Baccalaureate, Commencement, Senior Tea, and the Awards Ceremony; and I am excited to have a beautiful space for these celebration events. I hope you will make plans to join us for this special event.

If you would like more details on the program guidelines, please refer to this link. Student Award Program Description

Innovation at Dalat #12 Student Absences

Sometimes too much of a good thing is actually not a good thing…like when you have just a little too much frosting on your piece of cake!  Perhaps that is not the best example since I have never had too much frosting! How about too much exercise? How about too much innovation at school?

As Dalat has grown, so have the number of great opportunities for students to learn outside of the classroom.  Between sports trips, Impact trips, band/choir trips, class trips, Forensics & History Bowl trips, and academic field trips, there are a lot of great reasons for kids to travel the world and miss classes. In spite of our best efforts to schedule things carefully and do what we can to minimize the negative impacts of these outings they do add up to have an impact on the other primary thing that we do at Dalat…teaching classes.

Dalat has reached a sort of “tipping point” where the drawbacks of all the time out of the classrooms have begun to outweigh some of the positives of all of these great opportunities. Teachers have rightly expressed concern that you cannot teach students who are not present, and it is difficult to move forward with the curriculum when many students are away for extended times. Add to this the fatigue factor for students who are constantly trying to catch up from their last outing, and the cost to parents who are trying to pay for all of the enrichment activities and you arrive at the need to make some adjustments.

This is where we found ourselves this semester. Long discussions ensued. These are not easy decisions because sometimes it means “saying no” to great opportunities. But in the end, several policies to try and help will be implemented for next year:

Adjustments

• The biggest change that students must be aware of and plan for is that they will be allowed a maximum of three major trips (two or more nights) in a school year. Students who are involved in multiple sports or other activities may need to make some decisions about what their priorities are and if they are adding an Impact trip, what will they be giving up. The only exception that will not be tallied toward the three trips is the senior sneak in which all students are strongly encouraged to attend.
• Each varsity sports team will be allowed a maximum of two trips per year. One can be the longer ACSC trips, but the other will be limited to a single overnight.
• The administration will work to schedule events so that multiple trips happen at the same time so that everyone is gone at once. This means that everyone is back in the classroom together.
• There are several other scheduling and organizing internal adjustments from multiple departments that will also be implemented.  We will evaluate next year if further changes will be needed.

Here are other notes to continue to be aware.

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Our final exam time in high school is important enough that we do not allow a students to be absent from exams or reschedule. We end sports and most activities early to give students study time. Students are not given permission to leave early or reschedule exams in any way except in extraordinary extenuating circumstances.
      
 Our absence policy does allow parents to decide to miss up to eight days of class in a semester without penalty. While we don’t encourage this, we also know that life happens outside of school and there are good reasons why a family may need to miss a few days throughout the semester. However, unless there are serious medical or personal emergencies that fall outside of the control of the family, we have held to the standard that grades are dropped by 10% if a student misses more than eight of a particular class in a semester. School-sponsored absences for trips do not count towards this policy. There is more information about this in our parent and student handbook.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Let me know if you have any questions.