Switch - Chip Heath [29]
We all hear a lot of “common sense” wisdom about change: People don’t like to change; people resist change; people are set in their ways; people are stubborn. But here we’ve seen something else entirely: railroads made profitable, towns reborn, diets changed, and child abusers reformed.
Clarity dissolves resistance.
4
Point to the Destination
1.
Crystal Jones joined Teach For America in 2003. She was assigned to teach the first-grade class at an elementary school in Atlanta, Georgia. The school had no kindergarten, so for many of the kids, Jones would be their first teacher.
At the beginning of the year, the skill gaps among her students were daunting. She said, “I had two or three students who could recognize kindergarten sight words, and I also had some that couldn’t even hold their pencils. The ones who had never been to school—their basic behavior wasn’t where it needed to be for them to be in the classroom. I had students that, of course, didn’t know their alphabet or their numbers…. They were all on different levels, and no one was really where they needed to be for first grade.”
Jones felt confident that she could elevate the kids’ abilities. She could create great lesson plans and activities (she could script the critical moves). But to what end? How do you show a roomful of first graders where they’re headed and why going there is worth the effort—in terms they can understand?
Well, here’s a way not to do that, from another Teach For America teacher, who reported her goals for the year as follows:
With respect to reading for the school year, I administered three diagnostics: CWT, Assessment of Comprehension, and Monster Test. Using the CWT, I identified my classes’ average as grade level 1.5 in September. My goal is to increase my students’ word identification so as to ensure a class average of 3.0. Upon analyzing the results of the Assessment of Comprehension, I identified my classes’ average as a 41% in September. My goal is to increase my students’ comprehension so as to ensure a class average of 80%. Using the Monster Test, I identified my classes’ average score as Semiphonetic/Phonetic. My goal is to increase my students’ phonics and spelling skills to Transitional.
That ambitious and specific set of goals was probably quite useful to the teacher in her planning. But it obviously won’t be useful in lighting a fire in the hearts of first graders.
Crystal Jones, in contrast, knew that if she wanted to motivate the kids, she had to speak their language. At the beginning of the school year, she announced a goal for her class that she knew would captivate every student: By the end of this school year, you’re going to be third graders. (Not literally, of course, but in the sense that they would be at third-grade skill levels.)
That goal was tailor-made for the first-grade psyche. First graders know very well what third graders look like—they are bigger, smarter, and cooler. You know the feeling you get when you’re admiring the grace and power of an Olympic athlete? That’s the feeling first graders get about third graders.
Jones chose the goal carefully. She knew exactly what the third-grade standards in Georgia required, and she knew where her kids were starting. She genuinely thought she could close the gap.
One of her first efforts was to cultivate a culture of learning in her classroom, calling her students “scholars” and asking them to address one another that way. When people visited her classroom, she introduced her class as a group of scholars and asked them to define the term for the guest. They would shout, “A scholar is someone who lives to learn and is good at it.” The scholars were encouraged to go home and share what they learned with their families.
One day, a scholar was called out of the classroom for administrative reasons, and some of the others in the room started