Revisiting “Making Good”

by Wendy Fischman

After reading David Brook’s recent column in the New York Times, we would be remiss if we did not point out that his conclusion that adolescents are “bad” at talking and thinking about moral issues is exactly what we report in Making Good: How People Cope with Moral Dilemmas at Work ((Harvard University Press,2004), nearly seven years ago. In this book, we highlight the findings of our research with young people—those in high school, college, graduate school, and just beginning their careers. Specifically, we interviewed nearly a hundred individuals, including young scientists, actors, and journalists, to understand what it took for them to carry out “good work,” work that is at once excellent, ethical, and engaging. Though these individuals often espoused positive values that we would all want to work and live by—honesty and integrity, meaningful relationships, and hard work and commitment, many of them also told us about incidents in which they easily compromised on these values. Interestingly, however, they didn’t frame their behaviors as compromise. Just as Brooks proports about young people today, the young people we interviewed (some of them now nearly 10 years older) felt justified to make decisions that “felt right” to them at the time. We found that by and large, young people did not have a “moral compass,” they often justified their own ethical missteps in order to get ahead in their respective fields, gain attention, win awards, and gain acceptance to college.

Based on these findings, we created the GoodWork Toolkit to encourage those who work with young people to talk with them about what good work is and its importance in their work and to society. We developed the narratives (based on actual participants in our study) and activities so that young people could grapple with the issues that threaten the incidence of good work with the hopes that the next time they confront similar situations, they will be able to recognize the problem, have the language to talk about it, and some strategies to navigate it. As Brooks comments (in summary of a different research study), young people do not have the “categories” or “vocabulary” to talk about ethical issues. Interestingly and poignantly, we recently talked with students in a course on GoodWork (the teacher is using the GoodWork Toolkit as the basis of her curriculum). In interviewing some students at the beginning of the course (to understand where they are starting in their understandings of excellence, ethics, and engagement), we asked students to talk about what ethics means to them and if they have faced any ethical issues in their own life. One student remarked, “I don’t know how ethics relates to my life…we haven’t gotten to that chapter yet.” Needless to say, we encourage those of you who work with young people to think about how to incorporate conversations about ethics and good work into your own settings, so that we can help these young people as Brooks writes, “to cultivate their moral intuitions, to think more broadly about moral obligations, to check behaviors that may be degrading…”

Read Brooks’ article.

Riding for Change: Mitigating Sexism Within Sport Through GoodWork

by Julie Maier

A few months ago, at the age of 26, I purchased my first longboard (skateboard).   I’ve always been somewhat adventurous and inclined to try new, exciting sports, though for one reason or another, I never gave skateboarding a try.  Now was the time.  I did a bit of research and learned about longboards, which are longer and wider than skateboards and typically used for cruising around town or carving down hills.  Upon stepping on what would become my new pintail longboard, I was hooked.  In the months that followed my purchase, my love for the sport grew tremendously (impulse buy it was not!).  In my free time, if I was not riding my longboard or doing another outdoor activity, I was reading up on longboard maintenance, gear, functioning, etc.—I couldn’t learn or ride enough!

It didn’t take me long, however, to realize that longboarding, like skateboarding and other ‘extreme’ sports, is very much male-dominated, with a high degree of both covert and overt sexism pervading the community.  I couldn’t visit a popular longboarding forum or read articles about longboarding without being exposed to a variety of misogynistic imagery and text.  While this was not surprising as sexism within sport communities is well established in the academic literature, it was extremely disheartening and enraging to witness.  Indeed, sexist discourse that objectifies, disparages, or ignores female athletes creates an environment in which women and girls are less likely to feel safe and empowered to participate.  It is unacceptable that women’s options—in this case, sports participation—are limited due, in part, to such unjust discourse.

Fortunately, not all of my sports-related Internet searches yielded such sexist results; in fact, I came across numerous sports camps and clinics in the New England area that are women/girl-specific, helping to introduce women and girls to male-dominated sports.  I’ve had the opportunity to participate in one such program: Ride Like a Girl*, a free mountain bike clinic series hosted by the New England Mountain Bike Association (NEMBA) and Highland Mountain Bike Park.  Once a month, from April thru October, women from across New England gather to hone their technique and learn new skills from expert mountain bikers.  The all-female nature of the clinics helps to provide a safe, supportive environment in which the athletes are free from the subtle (and not so subtle) sexism that is present in sport communities, helping them to focus more fully on their sport.  Additionally, the Ride Like a Girl series extends its mission to empower women by helping to raise money for the Elizabeth Stone House—an organization that provides support to women and families who have experienced trauma.

In my mind, this series is a perfect exemplification of GoodWork within sport.  The staff, which consists of female mountain bike instructors, mechanics, and patrollers, volunteers their time to provide quality instruction that is very engaging and rewarding.  The ethical considerations that guide this series—a concern for women, families, and the environment—are also very pronounced.  Lastly, not only does the program help to empower individual women, but it is contributing to a culture change in which women’s representation in traditionally male-dominated sports is increasing, helping to minimize the gender disparities present in such sports.

Eradicating deeply seated sexism within sport, however, will take more than female-specific sports programs; furthermore, the responsibility to create such social change should not lie solely on the shoulders of women.  Multiple scholars have identified social responsibility as a tenet of GoodWork—something for which athletes are not exempt (for more on this, see Reid Warner’s 2005 article about GoodWork in professional basketball).  While the women running the Ride Like a Girl clinics are clearly acting in socially responsible ways by helping to create empowering environments for female athletes, I believe all sports administrators, coaches, and athletes need to take on such responsibility.  Indeed, the onus to carry out GoodWork within sport, which includes challenging and mitigating social injustices, such as sexism, must be shared by all participants.

It is my hope that, in the future, other young women visiting websites dedicated to longboarding, or a sport of their choice, find themselves surrounded by positive, affirming messages—content that does nothing but motivate them to participate and fully develop their athleticism.  This, unfortunately, will remain a pipe dream unless everybody within the sports community takes it upon themselves to strive for nothing less than GoodWork.

*Ride Like a Girl also has a sister program, Wrench Like a Girl.  With the help of Hub Bicycle—a woman owned bike shop in Cambridge—Wrench Like a Girl teaches women basic bike repair and maintenance skills.

Mentioned sources:

Warner, 2005

http://www.goodworkproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/38-GW-in-Professional-Basketball.pdf

Tucker Institute for Research on Girls and Women in Sport

http://www.cehd.umn.edu/tuckercenter/

To Improve U.S. Education, it’s Time to Treat Teachers as Professionals

by Howard Gardner

This piece is part of a leadership roundtable on the right way to approach teacher incentives — with opinion pieces by Duke University behavioral economics professor Dan Ariely, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Harvard Graduate School of Education professor Howard Gardner, and Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein.

“What are the right incentives to have in place for teachers?” The very question itself is jarring. It implies that teachers don’t want to perform well and that they need incentives, which in today’s parlance translates into rewards (money) and reprimands (fear of loss of benefits or position).

Let me present a very different picture: Teachers should be regarded as and behave like professionals. A professional is a certified expert who is afforded prestige and autonomy in return for performing at a high level, which includes making complex and disinterested judgments under conditions of uncertainty. Professionals deserve to live comfortably, but they do not enter the ranks of a profession in order obtain wealth or power; they do it out of a calling to serve. Be it law, medicine, auditing, education or science, the expectation is the same: professionals should work hard to gain the requisite credentials, behave ethically as well as legally, and when they err, should take responsibility for their error and try to learn from it.

Does this sound hopelessly romantic? I have had the good fortune of working with many professionals with the attributes I’ve just described. And yet, I would be naïve if I did not admit that this picture of professionals is not as vivid today as it was in 1950 or even 1980. The reasons for the decline of the professional are complex, but certainly the hegemony of market thinking is the dominant factor. If one thinks of professionals simply as individuals thrust into a market place, subject to supply and demand, and seeking to accumulate as many financial and other resources as possible, then they are indistinguishable from individuals who are not by definition professionals—such as business people or artists or athletes…

This piece was originally published in The Washington Post.

Part 3 of 3: Collaboration in Elementary Schools: The Role of Collaboration in Excellent Teaching

by Jan Duffy

In teacher Jan Duffy’s last two entries, she has detailed the story of her students’ choreography of many dances this year, and how impressive the end result was.  She wrote about the process of creating the dances and the significance of engagement in order to produce such an excellent result. Here, in the final installment, Jan reflects on how collaboration plays a part in her teaching.

I can’t continue to talk about what made this year so special without mentioning the professional collaboration that went on all year between the teacher of the “Beatles Fans” and myself. This collaboration began before the school year, when Roberta Carrasco-Taylor and I attended Project Zero Classroom in July 2010 at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

A firm believer in “Writer’s Workshop”, with some appreciation for the idea of Multiple Intelligences, whose classroom hummed with activity in different learning stations scattered about the room, Roberta didn’t know anything about Project Zero when I asked her to come with me for professional development, but by the end of our first mini-course she claimed she “totally drank the PZ Kool-Aid.” We resolved to try to Teach for Understanding and use Visible Thinking techniques, and most importantly, get together to talk over and reflect on what we were seeing in our classrooms-which was particularly helpful since ¾ of her students were mine as well!

Right from the very beginning of the year, Roberta and I were not only on a shared quest to uncover the personal strengths of her students-we were bound and determined to help them develop their thinking skills and group dynamics too.  I shared with Roberta what I was seeing among her 13 dancers, and heard how those dynamics shifted within her larger class of 17 boys and girls, and across the different subjects she teaches in her classroom, how they interacted during their “free time”, and what their numerous transitions were like as they all navigated those together between activities, and as well as between the eight 40 minute periods of each and every school day.

Roberta can’t teach dance or choreograph at all, and she thinks she can’t act, or write children’s plays as easily as I do, just like I’m sure I can’t teach writing or math or social studies, or do much of anything she does so easily and well in her classroom.  But we’re somehow able to more or less accurately reflect back to each other what the other one says, and allow each other to reflect on that without judging each other, even when we disagree.   We help each other find the good in our students and in what we’re trying to do with them, and celebrate and commiserate during our ups and downs, and you can’t ask for much more than that.

I helped Roberta’s class by writing an outline for their class play, which the kids wrote themselves, and helped with staging, making a prop, and brainstormed with her some ways that her kids could make very easily moveable sets.  And in return, Roberta voluntarily loaned me her para-professional, Judy Gorman, who has an excellent eye for theater and dance, to help me with the various recital tasks that I enjoy, but that tend to pile up on my desk, like hair accessories that need gluing, etc.

While Judy helped me out with those tasks, she never failed to watch the rehearsal, and was always willing to give us constructive feedback.  She backed me up whenever I insisted that some part of a dance needed extra cleaning-a difficult concept for most Primary age students, who tend to think dancing is like riding a bike-once they get the hang of it, they’ll never forget any of it-(but of course, most of them usually do, and what a shock that is for bright children)!

Half the challenge of teaching dance to kids who learn most things quickly is getting them to realize the necessity of going over some parts of the choreography “one more time” just for the sake of one or more of their classmates, or for the look of the Team’s effort onstage as a whole.  The last month of rehearsals I sound like a broken record: “It doesn’t matter if you know your own part well, if the dancers next to you are still making mistakes, it’s time to fix things–otherwise the result is not going to be anything that Any of Us will be able to take real pride in onstage.  As a Team, what do you want us all to create together- a Disaster, or a Dance?”

Roberta, I think, helped her class all year the same way she often helps me – just by taking a deep breath and modeling restraint to all of us on countless occasions-and not jumping in to impose her will or her perspective on any of us unasked, even when she very well could.  She gives her kids room to find their way, the same way she does me-asking probing questions to make us think. I love it when she leans back and lifts an eyebrow, and laughs a little bit whenever we need some extra prodding!

In return, I hope I’ve helped her to better understand the kids in her class who share my louder, more dramatic, and occasionally impulsive ways-even if I just provided extra practice on a adult she can immediately and freely ask, “What makes you say that”? , “Where’s your proof”? , Or “What in the world made you do that?” and even, “Come on, is that the best you can do-can’t you think of something better than that?”  She may really listen to the answers, but I like to think I helped her figure out what questions to ask too, just because I’m still such a goofy kid myself sometimes.

I like to think her class advanced by leaps and bounds in their understanding of what it means to be there for each other, collaborate together and really perform too, because between the two of us, and Judy, we reinforced all those same important lessons just about as many ways as it was possible to reinforce them.

As I write these words it suddenly strikes me how funny it is that I never noticed before now that the way Roberta and I’ve interacted in our periodic “reflective conversations” this year is surprisingly very much like how her students and I ended up interacting too.  That also has to be the major difference between her class and all the others I spent 12-14 weeks in creative collaboration with this year.

Even though we’re very different people, teaching very different subjects, the particular way that Roberta and I learned to communicate with each other this year as we made the extra effort to help each other Teach for Understanding, use Visible Thinking techniques, and Make Learning Visible in our classes, is what Really made this year with her students seem more like a collaboration between all of us, and something greater than I could have ever created all by myself. I’ve come to believe that’s what catapulted the “Beatles Fans’ into being able to connect with each other despite their differences, and with every member of their audience too, and not just with their very own families and friends.

I don’t know what next year will bring, but I’m firmly convinced that collaboratively choreographing with our young dancers is one of the best educational opportunities I can offer them. I’m looking forward to collaborating again with Roberta and Judy, and I hope other teachers will want to collaborate with me, and with our dancers too, for the benefit of all of us, as well as all of our students.

Part 2 of 3 Collaboration in Elementary Schools: The Role of Engagement

by Jan Duffy

In the previous installment of this series, teacher Jan Duffy introduced us to her incredible 2nd and 3rd graders. Together, Jan and her students choreographed dances for the school’s spring recital. Jan was amazed not only at the intelligence, focus, and creativity of her 7 and 8 year old students, but also with the power of collaboration in inspiring and enhancing their excellence of their work. In this blog, Jan continues her story, focusing on she keeps her students engaged as dancers and as “thinkers.”

As I typed away, and cut and pasted and deleted countless versions of this blog, I kept coming back to what I wanted most to know myself-“Why was the “Beatles Fans” class different?”  What was so special about them that gave them “an edge” over all the others?  I’m not the kind of person who sits back and congratulates herself on a job well done; this wasn’t Me-this was US-together- but there’s no denying that this class overall developed a more advanced form of understanding almost right from the very beginning-Why???

Was it because several influential leaders in the class entered 3rd Grade with a full year of collaborating with constructivist 2nd Grade teachers Chris Andres and Tami Hurst, whose Whole Child philosophy of education is so much like mine and Roberta Taylor’s?  Very possibly, since 3rd Grade is the year most children begin to focus more on being like their “cool” peers, but I’m also convinced that what makes dance “cool” is the fact that I try to teach for personal, interdisciplinary understanding in almost every single thing I do.

That’s the main thing I do that’s different from a lot of dance teachers-I teach to make “Thinkers” out of my students, and possibly a few choreographers-not just dancers.  Because of that, I don’t teach any part of class exactly the very same way, twice in a row, ever.   Not even in their warm-up sequence!  This helps to engage the students immediately-they know they have to pay attention to follow the movements.

The barre exercises in ballet may go in pretty much the same order, but we do usually do them center floor, and still, the patterns, and sequences, and number of repetitions are always a little different. I like to do the exercises in a different order each class, to avoid “boring” repetition.  I also “get tricky” if I see that someone isn’t watching me closely enough!  I lighten up all the brainwork and visual training by adding surprising improvisational moments too, right in the middle of technique, if I feel there’s just no energy coming back to me from the class, or their attention might be wandering.

Even if my students are just following along closely because they’re hoping I’ll do something funny right in the middle of a “serious” exercise, they’re still learning the importance of paying attention to pick up visual cues quickly -without me having to say a word!   From the children’s perspective, that makes paying attention a personal choice-one that has a positive pay-off.   If the dancers aren’t engaged and never see the point-if their learning isn’t personal enough-we’ll never get anywhere!

I also use ‘real” music-and a wide variety of it- so the kids get exposed to more than what they hear on the radio on the way to school, or what they hearing in music class. In the same class period I may run through 5 to 6 types of music: classical, world music from various cultures, pop the kids like-though I have to check the lyrics and the intent of the lyrics too, or look for a Kids Bop or a super clean version from Wal-Mart.  But I also use a lot of pop and rock they haven’t heard before too: oldies from the ‘50’s through the ‘90’s, musical theater show tunes, jazz, swing, electronic music-even sound effects sometimes-you name it.  Keeping the dancers musically “on their toes” to where they seldom know exactly what’s coming next helps maintain their interest and focus.

I try to lay down the choreographer’s way of thinking in my students’  brains right at the beginning of the year, and keep that going throughout the year.  Every time I teach a step, the students get 1-20 minutes to “experiment” with it-they have to add their own moves to whatever step or combination I’ve taught or reviewed that day.   That’s how I get them to drill the step into their own heads- imaginatively.  Most of the kids have so much fun they never even notice they’re practicing-much less working up a sweat doing it!

I always say my teaching style is more related to what I think Vaudeville must have been like: I’m the Performer and the students are the Audience-if I don’t keep them engaged by being ready to change my act at a moment’s notice, before my “audience” gets bored or restless, then the equivalent of rotten tomatoes is going to be thrown at me, and if that happens often enough-I might as well consider myself out of a job!  And that’s why, as it unusual as it may sound, Improvisation, whether structured or free, with props or without, is an important part of every single one of my classes, whether I’m teaching ballet or modern or any other type of dance-from age 3 to age 18-it’s not just the way I work with Primary School students.