The Puzzle: Blog

In these unsettling times in education — and in the rest of human culture — I’ve found myself returning to favorite books on education as a way to think about quality education in a crisis and beyond. These books are all full of thoughtfulness, experience, and human wisdom  — and, thus, feel like needed life preservers in our turbulent cultural seas. Their insights into the art and practice of education are, in other words, valuable in helping us navigate the ongoing challenges in schools forced on us by the COVID-19 pandemic. To varying degrees, they can also help us deal with the aftershocks of current political and social unrest as manifested in our schools.

The most recent book I’ve read is Ron Berger’s 2003 book “An Ethic of Excellence.” While it doesn’t directly address the key challenges of our times — climate change, racial injustice, political unrest, police brutality, wealth divide, and the spreading pandemic among them — it does speak to the question of how we can educate children well for the heart and mind amid such disarray. In this regard, it feels like a hopeful book, offering us a way to see future that is more in line with our founding principles.

There’s also something about Berger’s clear-minded, child-centered, society-focused view of education that is comforting, as if we’ve been invited into a parallel universe where schools are welcoming places, students are enthusiastic, and adults are respectful, kind, and supportive. The best news, however, is that this parallel universe is actually part of ours. Berger describes education not just as it could be but as it has been for a long time in the school where he taught, as well as in others that embrace the essential concept of project- and student-based learning. Reading “An Ethic of Excellence,” one can imagine, in place of this pandemic, the spread of sensible, engaging education for all children.

Today, Berger works as the Chief Academic Officer for EL Education, a nonprofit focusing on experiential learning. At the time the book was written, he was a long-time teacher at a public elementary school in rural Shutesbury, Massachusetts, and gained a national reputation for his remarkable project-based teaching. In 2003, the general trend in public education, one that continues today in only a slightly different form, was to focus on school accountability through the creation of national standards and intense student testing. Ed-tech companies were finding a foothold in the system and pushing for efficiency through tech-driven drilling and testing. Following this script, most national reform efforts focused on developing related models and scaling them up. “An Ethic of Excellence” is essentially Berger’s counter message. Instead of having students climb onto the educational treadmill to memorize facts and prepare for tests through preset curricula and hours of worksheets, and doing this over and over for 12 years, he encourages us to imagine judging “students and schools… on the quality of student work, thinking, and character.” Instead of building clever test takers, Berger writes, “schools should feel compelled to build thoughtful students and good citizens.”

Toolboxes for Educators

While Berger’s work primarily has been public-school based, many of the readers of “An Ethic of Excellence” are independent school educators who embrace the essential notion of student-centered learning but are also curious about how Berger and his colleagues have managed to do this so well over the years. The answer? Essentially, it’s by helping students to consistently create excellent work that engages them full and that they can be proud of. To this end, Berger outlines in his book what he considers the three core  “toolboxes” for educators.

The Culture of Excellence

Excellent work, created through a series of thoughtful projects, must take place in a school that prioritizes caring, engagement, and mutual support. He asks us, “What if being normal in a school, fitting in, means caring about your work and treating others with respect?” He is not asking children to fall in line; he’s asking educators to treat each and every child with deep respect, kindness, and support, and asking every child to treat all schoolmates the same. In such a culture, learning flourishes.

Work of Excellence

Berger became well known nationally in part because he has been a lifelong collector and curator of excellent student work. At just about every conference at which he has presented, he has astounded rooms full of educators with the quality of student work — from his school and others. In too many schools, educators tolerate work that spans the spectrum from poor to excellent — and pass out grades accordingly. Berger argues for bringing the level up to excellent for every student in every grade. When students develop their own sense of pride and craftsmanship, they can all produce remarkable work — and they can support each other in the process. A key to the process is engaging in an activity that most schools rarely do: ongoing, supportive, formative critique and revision.

The work at Berger’s school is nearly all project-based. Teachers use multidisciplinary themes (architecture, amphibians, ancient Greece, etc.) for weeks or months at a time, with students engaging in related projects. The projects are the framework for learning skills and developing knowledge, including math and literacy. The projects also all involve genuine research, with many of them tackling local community issues. They also incorporate the arts at every turn.

Teaching of Excellence

Feeling a lack of support, a high percentage of teachers leave the profession within the first five years. To counter this and to better serve students, Berger calls on schools and school systems to make the job highly desirable by offering good salaries and good working conditions and viewing the profession with greater respect than it is currently accorded. When it comes to respect, Berger wants schools to give teachers far greater input into their curriculum and more time for professional engagement and development. Young teachers should also start their careers in an apprenticeship system so they can truly learn the craft of teaching before being assigned a class of their own. The goal is to have teachers who are knowledgeable, skillful, and teach from the heart.

What Does This Say About our Current Education System?

It’s nearly impossible to read “An Ethic of Excellence” and not see that Berger is essentially right — or at least to acknowledge that his approach to educating children is far superior to a system that focuses on testing and drilling and the rigor of homework. Even independent schools that are generally considered excellent can learn from “An Ethic of Excellence.” Berger’s students are all engaged in school. They are all treated kindly and with respect, but are also pushed (and push each other) to produce excellent work — or as Berger prefers, “beautiful work.” If I were somehow forced back in time to repeat grade school, I’d choose Berger’s school over the one I attended. If I were somehow forced back in time to repeat my early years of teaching, I would definitely choose Berger’s school over the ones in which I taught.

Berger’s approach to teaching seems so sensible, but one has to stop to realize that in “An Ethic of Excellence” he’s essentially dissing (politely) what the vast majority of educators do each day. He’s critical of how educators critique and assess student work. He’s critical of the way in which educators don’t focus on producing work for public viewing. He’s critical of the tendency of teachers to accept mediocre work from students (or letting them fail). He’s critical of schools sidelining the visual and performing arts as extracurricular. He’s critical of the idea that students aren’t encouraged to borrow ideas from each other and from professional writers, artist, and scientists. He’s critical of the lack of “real” student work connected to the local community. He’s even critical of the typical use of grading. “Not only do grades not ensure quality work or effort,” he writes, “but in many cases grades works against student motivation.”

I spoke with Ron Berger recently and asked him about all this. If what he’s suggesting goes against the dominant current in education, how can we get more educators to move to the project-based side of the teaching ledger? I also wanted to know if he had thoughts about our current problem of teaching remotely during a pandemic.

“Education in this country was at a low point back in 2003, when I published the book,” Berger says. “The focus was primarily on creating charter schools and focusing on test prep. Educators were constantly under pressure to be accountable for these outcomes.  The efforts to get the expectations right was OK, but mandating testing and penalizing those schools that don’t do well. They did not focus on the needs of teachers or the conditions for learning.”

But more recently, he says, there’s been a reckoning – with a deeper examination of the conditions for learning and the student experience in schools. For one, the brain science on learning has confirmed the essential truth that all learning is social-emotional. As a result, schools are thinking more deeply and creatively now about building supportive school cultures and aiming to make sure students’ hearts are in their learning. Part of this includes the long overdue work of better understanding student experiences based on race, culture, and class.

In other words, the world of education has been leaning back in Berger’s direction lately, with increasing emphasis on student-centered, project-based, and place-based learning that consciously blends social-emotional health with intellectual engagement.

Independent schools care deeply about their students. They understand that a key value of a small school is the ability to know and care for each and every student. But many independent schools have struggled with the balance of social-emotional support and intellectual engagement, with a tendency to push students too hard based on the assumption that amassing academic knowledge is essential. That’s starting to change with the understanding that too many students are overworked and overstressed. More recently, it’s also coming clear that many students of color in independent schools feel that their schools haven’t supported them well — despite the diversity mission and accompanying rhetoric. What “An Ethic of Excellence” offers is a way for educators to keep the engagement high and the negative stress low. The key is to help students internally embrace the notion of excellence and strive toward it rather than feel as if they are constantly jumping through academic hoops to win the approval of adults.

Lessons for 2020

Now that many schools have temporarily shifted to distance learning or a hybrid program as we ride out this pandemic, Berger encourages schools to think in terms of using this time to shift the curriculum to engage students in the concerns of the day and to help them develop related student-driven projects.

“In a crisis like this,” he says, “we need to pivot — stop sending home work that is not related to the world in which the students are living and start engaging students in addressing the issues around them.”

He also says that he’s seeing the value in a certain amount of asynchronous learning — giving students more free rein to explore their own approaches to meeting education outcome goals. “Kids can be doing great things at home now, documenting it, sharing it online, and talking or writing about what they’ve learned,” Berger says. A key goal to learning, he adds, is to focus “not on what kids are doing but on what kids are learning.” By sharing their learning, students both create community and develop their metacognitive skills. Indeed, one of the interesting developments during the pandemic is the creation of collective space for students to both post their work and describe their thinking about the work. He also encourages us to think of education as a team sport in which “students are creating something of value together. The goal is to get everyone to the top of the mountain.”

I’m glad to see that Eric Hudson, director of learning and design at the Global Online Academy, with its focus on distance and virtual learning, has also recommended that educators revisit “An Ethic of Excellence.” In a recent article (before the pandemic), Hudson writes, “At a time when modern education is considering whether and how to embrace new forms of transcripts, new approaches to school architecture and schedules, new ways to integrate technology, and new place-based experiences for students, Berger’s book cuts through the noise of innovation and insists that the singular representation of a school’s purpose is — and should be — the work its students produce.”

Under normal times, there wouldn’t be much more to say than this: make the learning and the schoolwork authentic. But these aren’t normal times. So, what’s the value of “An Ethic of Excellence” in a time of distance learning and a pandemic? For one, it encourages us not to use distance learning as a way to drill children in academic skills or pile on reading. Being stuck at home is rough for all of us. For kids, the isolation, the loneliness, the disconnection from other children can be deeply damaging to their social-emotional health, which means it can be deeply damaging to their intellectual and psychological health. A worthy goal, Berger tells us, is to engage students in authentic, project-based learning in which they collaborate and support each other remotely. It’s not as good as being in a classroom or out in the field. But it’s better than having to sit alone and read alone and write alone and think alone every day in the hopes of getting decent grades so your parents won’t get upset or so you remain on some kind of track for college acceptance.

The brilliance of children, Berger reminds us, is their ability to engage creatively and enthusiastically in learning. Projects that matter to them will enable this engagement. And don’t worry, within it all they will gain those precious academic skills. The difference is that the skills will be connected directly to their actual lives — in service to their personal interests and the common good.

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Models of Excellence

Looking for models of excellent and beautiful student work? The EL Education website includes the largest collection of student-generated work. The collection, Models of Excellence, receives more than 10,000 visitors a month. The organization also offers ideas for student Projects at Home during the pandemic. One stand-out example of remarkable student work created during the pandemic includes an original song, Make the World Better, written by a high school student in Portland, Maine, and performed by 34 students in 11 schools across seven states — all from their homes.

 

Quotes from “An Ethic of Excellence”

On School Culture

“The gains my students made may not show up on standardized tests but they were very real. These students will never again view history or science without ethical questions and discerning eyes; they will hunger for deep intellectual discussion and debate; they will be open to understanding different customs and cultures; they will have the memory of friendship that transcended race and background; they will have the proud memory of being a part of one of the greatest of human endeavors: showing kindness in hosting and caring for others.”

On the Arts in Education

“The appeal of the aesthetics… has been a powerful driving force behind the accomplishments of cultures through history. Why are we using this force so rarely in our schools to light a fire in the hearts of children? The question for me is not whether we can afford to keep arts in our schools but how we can ensure that students put artistic care into everything they do…. When students learn to love art, to do art well — whether it’s drama, music, calligraphy, photography — they learn to present themselves and their work well.”

On Project-Based Learning

“[T]he word project suggests to most people an extra activity after the real curriculum and instruction is done. I need to make explicit that we use these projects to teach children to be strong readers and writers and mathematicians. All of our thematic studies are rich in literature and informational texts; almost every project includes substantial reading, writing, and research; many projects are centered on great authors or books. It’s not simply that this work entails lots of reading and writing, but that we explicitly teach reading and writing skills formally during the work. Rather than limit the time available for addressing literacy skills, this approach builds in literacy instruction all day long.”

On Grading

“If we have a grading system at my school it would have to be described as this: A piece of work deserves either an A or a Not Done. Work goes through many drafts and isn’t considered complete until it represents high-quality work for that child. Any piece of work that would receive a C or D in a graded system is work not worthy of being accepted. Tests are the same way: If you do poorly on a test, you need to study and retake it until you do well.”

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Michael Brosnan is an independent writer and editor with a particular interest in education and social change. He can be reached www.michaelabrosnan.com.

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