Remain in The Zone!!!

Our independent zone of performance refers to that range of being and doing where outside assistance is not needed whatsoever in order to accomplish set goals.  What can the learner do satisfactorily on her own? Operating in this zone grants our sense of competence.  We easily grow from here.

But what if the learner doesn't want to grow ... yet?  What if s/he is satisfied with the status quo? To push learners to move from this independent zone of performance too quickly can reduce their tendency to generate enthusiasm, operate with self-confidence, and make positive self-assessments.  Also pulling and dragging the learner out of his comfort zone exhausts the one exerting the effort! What's a teacher (and parent, or grandparent) to do? 


Knowing our students allows us to  activate learner motivation to know!   Knowing areas of natural interest makes it possible for adults to foster learner connection to new learning.  Tap into each child's expressed, natural interests.  Comparatively speaking, our elder educators (1960's, 1970's, 1980's) began all new learning with a thorough review of these motivating factors ...as well as the range of content children knew and skills they were able to demonstrate.


Missing concepts/skills were re-introduced, methodically -usually through sequentially arranged examples. Misconceptions were corrected, methodically -usually through sequentially arranged examples.  Through homework practice assignments, copious homework, students in most cases made up what they might have been missing. Parents, for the most part, understood their role as essential in remedial territory.

The new (aka unfamiliar) learning was then introduced -when the majority of the class was ready to benefit experientially and academically.  Educators selected sequences and methods of instruction in the new concepts/skills (the instructional zone ) largely published in well-designed, state of the art publisher textbooks.  This new layer of instruction was designed to engage firmly with the class' bank of prior learning (independent zone). As with the physicians' Hippocratic Oath -Do No Harm- teachers took care to avoid too-much too-soon exposure to information/methodology beyond the learners' range of distress (frustration zone).


The downside of past practices during these earlier decades includes the following:

1. we operated w/o the benefit of the Great Bank of Future Awareness (e.g. special education principles and pedagogy, differentiated instructional developments,  Response to Intervention or RTI, flexible grouping, etc.)
2. we delivered instruction for the most part to an entire class, except in primary grades when rapid, average, and slower rates of learning-to-read led to grouping class members.  Without hindsight yet into the mechanics and wisdom of flexible grouping,  a bluebird tended to remain in the bluebird nest!
3. The fields of Learning Styles and Multiple Intelligences were being conceived and newborn.
4.  Instructional methodologies for correcting misinformation and setting the tone for new learning were generally experiential (field trips), sequential (we not only carved pumkins, but grew them from seed and made pumpkin pie for our school's Thanksgiving Day dinner), and methodical (we followed step-by-step together). 

Rushing through foundational phases of learning and practice was unheard of, yet.  However, during the sixties, social unrest due to social justice issues led to social action demonstrations among students in higher education.  


Rocks rippled the rivers of social institutions across the nation.  From 1963 into the early '80s, reading and math SAT scores declined 40-50 points. President Regan commissioned eighteen individuals to assess/guess factors of decine.  


The commission made recommendations in hopes of ultimately matching  math and science scores "competitor" countries reported - higher than we could report from some areas of our nation. 


If you were to commission a nationwide study of America's Schoolhouse across fifty very different states

• how would you ensure appropriate representation?  
• which roles in education deserve representation?
• what levels of education earn representaiton?
• what questions would you ask before deciding representation?
• list indicators of high performing students vs low-performing students?

Compare your investigative responses with the actual data archived at:
(http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html)


 The commission finally recommended four areas to consider when making educational improvements.

1. content (more than half of our states then required only one math and one science course to graduate from high school) 
2. expectations (since no one textbook can address needs of "disadvantaged students, the learning disabled, and the gifted and talented," funds should be made available.
3. time (programs for continually disruptive students need development to relieve the burden placed on teachers to maintain discipline). How's this one? Instead of rigid age adhearence... graduation, placement, promotion, and grouping should be based on academic achievement. 
4. And how about this one: since greater instructional diversity is needed by underachieving students, they need to spend more time in instruction beyond what can be accomplished in a normal day.
5. teaching (career ladders shuld distinguish among beginning teachers, experienced teachers, and master teachers).  How's this one? Master teachers should be involved in preparing and training new teachers.

 Honestly, when we examine the four areas of recommendations, we can begin to seriously question how and why subsequent "improvement" initiatives overlooked many points that would generate enormous good, and overshot the mark in others so that already high performing kids in high performing disticts now have performance anxiety! 


The archive makes for easy reading.  Unfortunate interpretations of the report directly led to follow-up commissions.  These escalated emphasis on test scores (numbers are easy to collect) - finally being challenged by those who know test scores do not equal authentic learning.  The whole can of worms is wide open now and within lie the remnants of these Deadly Assessments for Money and Prestige (DAMP).


During DAMP times, we were pressed to teach to the test.  The test that did not match our curriculum.  We revised our curriculum to "wag the dog," so to speak... and our districts got the money needed to run some recommended programs.  We gave up our power as professionally prepared educators, in favor of our district's expressed need for money.  What's a teacher to do under deadly circumstances?  We left our own Zone of Proximal Development behind, coerced to engage a mandate cleverly called No Child Left Behind.  Good educational practice was left behind.  Common sense was left behind.


We are coming back to our senses; conversations now indicate far more agreement among parents, teachers, administrators, school boards, university systems about the DAMP days.  Time to dust off Vygotsky's text on The Zone ... and let it do its magic in your classroom. (Educators, take time to share with parents how practicing The Zone at home can make home life more pleasant and productive!)
See www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/.../lr1zpda.html