My Monthly Column – March 2019

Belonging, engagement, joy are key to successful learning

By Xavier Botana, with Melea Nalli

This is the final column in the series I’ve been writing with Melea Nalli, Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning, about the Portland Public Schools’ seven Core Beliefs about Learning.

To recap, our Learning Beliefs are:

·       All learners can rise to high expectations.

·       Learners have different strengths, needs and starting points, based on who they are and what they’ve experienced. They learn in different ways and timeframes.

·       Academics, work habits, and social-emotional skills are equally important in school and in life.

·       Students can learn better when they are empowered and feel capable.

·       Learning in diverse groups prepares students to thrive in an increasingly diverse, complex, and connected world.

·       Practicing and learning from mistakes are natural and necessary parts of the learning process.

·       Belonging, engagement, and joy help a learner achieve.

We now turn our focus to our seventh belief, that belonging, engagement, and joy help a learner achieve.

This belief underpins the other six. In order for students to succeed, they need learning environments in which they feel they belong and can experience ownership in their learning.

We have developed Core Teaching Practices that correspond to each Learning Belief. In this case, to help students experience belonging and engagement, we strive in our teaching to ensure each student has a meaningful relationship with an adult at school and to create learning experiences in which students solve relevant and real real-world problems together.

Students form meaningful relationships with not just teachers, but other adults in our schools. For example, Truc Huynh, a 2001 Portland High School graduate who today is a senior account executive at Unum and a restaurant owner, attributes much of his success to the relationships he developed at Portland’s public schools.

Truc called his “unsung heroes” the volunteer mentors who helped him learn English and also American customs when he was a little boy from Vietnam new to Reiche Community School. And to this day, Truc recalls the words of a high school coach who taught him to commit 100 percent whenever he tackles a challenge.

“I give a lot of credit to the teachers and the mentors and the coaches,” he said. (Read Truc Huynh’s story on our Portland Promise website at: https://www.portlandschoolspromise.org/story/truc-huynh/ )

Another example is Mulki Hagi, a 2018 Deering High School graduate. Her connection with Danielle Wong, her mentor in the Make It Happen! program, a college readiness program for our multilingual students, led to Mulki and Danielle in 2017 becoming a student-teacher pair in the Bezos Scholars Program. They participated in a yearlong leadership development program, including attending the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado.

Mulki then used a $1,000 Bezos Scholar seed grant to design and lead a Multicultural Youth Summit in April 2018 for Deering students and faculty. At the summit, students led TED-style talks about real-world issues of systemic racism, LGBT rights, mental health, and immigration and also facilitated small group dialogues.

Another great example of students actively engaged in learning and working to solve real-world problems together is the recent public policy roundtable discussion event that Lyman Moore Middle School seventh-graders held with state and local leaders. After weeks of research, the students presented their proposed solutions to challenges such as opioid addiction, homelessness, and air pollution to 30 leaders who attended the forum, including the state’s DEP commissioner and Portland’s mayor, city manager, police chief and me. We came away impressed.

These are the types of learning experiences we strive to provide for our students at the Portland Public Schools, guided by our Learning Beliefs.

My Monthly Column – February 2019

Mistakes necessary, natural components of learning

By Xavier Botana, with Melea Nalli

Remember learning to ride a bicycle? An adult probably ran alongside you, holding onto the bike to keep you moving. When they let go, you may at first have wobbled or fallen. But you learned from your early mishaps — and now you can ride a bike.

In an important way, learning in the classroom is like learning to ride a bicycle: Mistakes can serve as a proving ground for improvement.

The Portland Public Schools believe that practicing and learning from mistakes are natural and necessary parts of the learning process.

In fact, that belief is the sixth of our district’s seven Core Beliefs about Learning. 

Together with Melea Nalli, our Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning, I’m writing a series of columns about our Learning Beliefs. This month we’re focusing on how our teaching practices help students learn from their mistakes.

At the Portland Public Schools, we don’t want our students’ early mistakes in learning to stop them from realizing their potential. That’s why we use a cycle of instruction that includes different ways to show what they know and frequent feedback and revision.

At Deering High School, for instance, students are encouraged to explore their strengths and weaknesses while taking rigorous courses. To support that, says Deering AP biology teacher Ian McLean, “in several AP classes we allow students a chance to make up half the difference between their original score and a 100. For example, for a multiple choice question typically seen on an AP exam, a student must articulate in essay format both why their answer was conceptually wrong and how the right answer is the best choice. … This promotes the idea that learning is a work in progress and mistakes are inevitable if you are truly challenging yourself.”

In math classes, students often feel a sense of failure when they make mistakes, despite the fact that brain research shows that deeper learning results from making mistakes on difficult tasks, notes Riverton Elementary School Principal Ann Hanna.

So, in classes such as math, she says, “we encourage students to look at their mistakes as opportunities for growth. When a student makes a mistake, but is demonstrating a misconception that is probably common across the room, a teacher might comment: ‘Oh, that’s my favorite mistake!  Can anyone figure out how he or she might have gotten that answer?’  The idea is that there is a lot of learning that comes from looking at our mistakes.”

In an elementary reading or writing workshop, students and teachers have a “growth mindset” — an understanding “that mistakes are where the learning begins,”  says Lorraine Bobinsky, a teacher leader at Reiche Community School.

The workshop teacher provides in-the-moment feedback, naming what each student is doing well and then teaching into next steps. “The teacher is always analyzing where the students are by looking at the students' misunderstandings or mistakes and then providing explicit feedback to support the students as they get closer and closer to the learning target,” Bobinsky said.

At East End Community School, staff use restorative approaches to help students learn from “mistakes” in social emotional situations. Instead of focusing on what students in conflict have done “wrong,” students are given the opportunity to hear each other’s perspectives and the impact their actions had. They then work together to repair harm and reach agreement on how to move forward, learning long-term problem-solving strategies and empathy in the process.

In all these examples, constructive feedback, revision and different ways to demonstrate proficiency help turn mistakes into learning opportunities.

My Monthly Column – January 2019

Diversity an asset in education, business world

By Xavier Botana, with Melea Nalli

Our nation’s top colleges and universities are working very hard to achieve something the Portland Public Schools already has: diversity. These institutions of higher learning aren’t trying to look more like us to be  “politically correct.” Instead, they know that diverse campuses are educationally beneficial for students.

BestColleges.com, a college-ranking site, sums up the benefits: “Studies have shown that interactions among racially and ethnically diverse groups result in positive learning outcomes. Effects include enhanced cognitive skills and self-motivation, a greater sense of purpose, and a higher measure of personal growth.”

Colleges and universities also know that experience with diversity helps prepare students for careers. Diversity is an asset in the business world, research shows. A Harvard Business Review article titled “WhyDiverse Teams Are Smarter,” says that “striving to increase workplace diversity is not an empty slogan – it is a good business decision.” The article states: “Working with people who are different from you may challenge your brain to overcome its stale ways of thinking and sharpen its performance.”

At the Portland Public Schools, Maine’s largest and most diverse school district, we believe that learning in diverse groups prepares students to thrive in an increasingly diverse, complex, and connected world. In fact, that belief is the fifth of our district’s seven Core Beliefs about Learning. 

I’m writing a series of columns about our Learning Beliefs, in collaboration with Melea Nalli, our Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning. This month we’re focusing on how our schools’ diverse learning environments benefit students.

One-third of our approximately 6,800 students come from homes where languages other than English are spoken – a total of 67 languages. Nearly 44 percent of our students are students of color and about 56 percent are white. We’re also socio-economically diverse. Half our students qualify for free or reduced school lunch, while half do not.

Our students benefit from learning side by side with people who are different from them – who by their very presence challenge their assumptions and beliefs and help them see the world in a different way.

But diversity also can be an empty promise, if students don’t interact with classmates who are different from them. That is why we strive to ensure that our students interact with each other in meaningful ways throughout their academic lives.

At Riverton Elementary School, for example, first-graders learn to embrace their differences. Students are encouraged to share personal experiences, and greet one another in their native languages during Morning Meeting. The students also were visited by representatives from The Cromwell Center for Disabilities Awareness, who taught them about "abilities" and helped them begin to see each other from different perspectives.

A recent learning expedition at King Middle School, where about 25 percent of students were born in other countries, focused on immigration as a social and geographic phenomenon. Students explored the history and impact of immigration in this country and the voluntary and involuntary reasons people migrate. Students learned to take a deeper look at how people are different, but also how they’re alike.

Portland High School student leaders conduct school-wide courageous conversations on a variety of topics, including classroom experiences and social interactions with peers. These discussions create opportunities for students to share their perspectives in their diverse school community. That contributes to greater understanding and a broader awareness of the diversity of students’ experiences.

At the Portland Public Schools, we consider diversity one of our greatest assets as we strive to prepare and empower our students for success in college and career.

My Monthly Column – December 2018

Student empowerment leads to better learning

By Xavier Botana, with Melea Nalli

We’ve all been in a situation where we’re trying to learn something new – maybe a new sport, a new skill or even a new language. And we all know that if the first thing we tell ourselves is, “I can’t possibly succeed at this,” then we probably won’t.

At the Portland Public Schools we take the opposite approach with students, using positive motivation versus a concept of failure. We teach not by focusing on what students don’t know, but by encouraging them to focus on the skills and abilities they already have as they strive to master something new and then build up from there.

We do this because we believe students can learn better when they are empowered and feel capable. In fact, that belief is the fourth of our district’s seven Core Beliefs about Learning. https://www.portlandschools.org/UserFiles/Servers/Server_1094153/File/Academics/Beliefs%20and%20Core%20Teaching%20Practices.pdf

 Joined by Melea Nalli, Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning, I’m writing a series of columns about our Learning Beliefs. This month, we’re writing about how the Portland Public Schools helps our students feel empowered and capable so that they can learn better.

We’ve found that when we affirm what students are good at doing rather than focus on what they’re doing wrong, students are more likely to feel empowered and capable and do their best work.

One way to help students feel capable when they encounter new material that is challenging or potentially overwhelming is to provide what we call "scaffolds.”

Scaffolds are strategies to help students access a learning task in different ways depending on the skills they already have. An example is when we teach students to understand where the formula for finding the area of a rectangle comes from. Some students may need more than an explanation to grasp the concept. A scaffold to help those students could be to provide grid paper so that students can count squares to get to the area of a shape. Like the scaffolding of a building, those scaffolds eventually come down and students learn to develop the formula on their own.

Another example of empowering students is through clear expectations and choice. This can be seen in the TEDMoore (TED Talks) that our Lyman Moore Middle School seventh-graders have been involved with for the past two years. TED stands for technology, entertainment and design and TED Talks cover a broad range of topics.

Through the seventh-grade project, each student studies what makes TED Talks powerful, works to understand how to articulate their own voice through writing and presenting, and then chooses a topic that they are passionate about to research and present to classmates.  Topics have ranged from “Why Dog Ownership Brings Positivity to a Family” to “What it's like to be Muslim in Portland” to “Why Accepting Transgender Students is Important” to “Women's Rights.” Teachers have found that by empowering students to study their own passion on a topic they identify with, they were able to create “buy in” from students across the academic spectrum.

Another example can be seen at Presumpscot Elementary School, which seeks to empower students by making them leaders of their own learning – and potential future community leaders, said Principal Cynthia Loring. Presumpscot is a Credentialed School within the EL Education network (formerly Expeditionary Learning).

For instance, the school’s third graders study the impact of global warming on the lobstering industry in Portland. They research, analyze data and collaborate with experts to build their understanding of this complex issue. At the Atlantic Cup Kids Day this past June, Presumpscot students were empowered to present their learning and field questions regarding the importance of global warming and steps everyone can take to protect the environment and working waterfront.

Through such project-based learning, Presumpscot students realize that they are capable of impacting their community by using their own voices, which empowers them and deepens their learning.

At the Portland Public Schools, our goal is to provide our students with not only the knowledge and skills they need but also the supports necessary to empower them to succeed in college and career.