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Lessons from Eighth Graders

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I’m in this really awesome national organization called Students for Education Reform. I started a chapter at my university. Our mission is to educate the next generation of leaders about the achievement gap so that we can close it. Because it needs to be closed.

This is our first quarter at OU, and it’s not been terribly easy. A lot of our plans have fallen through, but throughout the quarter, there have been some really great things that have kept me excited. Today, I had an experience that will keep me excited about ed reform for the rest of the year. I got the chance, with a couple of other students, to visit KIPP Journey in Columbus. The school was, simply put, kick ass.

KIPP Journey is a charter school for fifth through eighth graders. Most students enter KIPP well below grade level in both reading and math. By the time they leave, though, they are not only testing better than most of their peers in Columbus but also than most KIPP schools around the nation. That’s incredible!

One of the most notable things about the school was that in most of the classrooms we observed, the teachers had visible and public graphs, tracking each student’s test scores. I have heard stories about teachers doing this, and I’ve always been skeptical. I know in my own public schools, public information like that would have been toxic. Those at the top would have been ridiculed for being nerds and those at the bottom would have been ridiculed for being stupid. At least I thought so until today.

We got a chance to talk to a couple of outstanding eighth graders. I asked them about the charts. They smiled at me, knowingly. The following is a paraphrase of their answer:

Of course we like knowing where we are. It’s important to know where we have come and where we are going. And plus, we can see where other kids are. So we can help the ones who are beneath us. And we can ask for help from the ones who are above us. It’s not really about being smart or dumb. Sometimes certain subjects are just easier for some people. I may be better at math. But she might be better at science. It doesn’t really matter. In fact, it’s better that way. It makes it easier to help each other. We have a goal here of everyone scoring Proficient on the OAA. That’s a tough goal, but we are helping each other get there.

I still don’t know if the chart thing would be successful in my junior high, but I do know that the culture at my school was completely different than that. At my school, being an A student was important in and of itself. I didn’t really care about learning as long as I was getting A’s. A lot of this was my fault, but a lot of it was also that I didn’t know what else to base my academic goals on. If someone had told me, “Hey, you are reading at a tenth grade reading level. That’s great, but here’s what you could do to be reading at a college level,” I would have loved it.

And that’s exactly what’s happening in KIPP Journey. The culture isn’t about valuing the grade. It’s about valuing knowledge and learning. If a student masters a skill, s/he doesn’t say, “This is good enough.” Instead, s/he asks, “What else can I master?” And they realize there is always someone who is above them. That’s so so healthy. KIPP Journey isn’t about being the best. It’s about being the best you can be. And somehow, as the test results show, when kids/people concentrate on that, they become the best.

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50 First Blog Posts Compliments of Your Support

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Last year, for a couple of weeks,  my friend and I had a contest. The goal of the contest was to compliment as many women as possible. We met up every evening and compared stories. We developed a very intense set of rules: The compliment must be genuine (self-policing); eye contact must be made; friends count but only if complimenting something not normally complimented; and most importantly, the compliment must not be conditional.

When you are making it a point to compliment people, you quickly learn that there are two types of compliments. There are conditional compliments and there are unconditional ones. Conditional compliments are much easier. They are also really tricky.

Almost everyone would agree that “You are beautiful when you wear your hair down” is a conditional compliment. But very few realize that “You look beautiful today” is conditional as well. It’s tricky.

The worst part about conditional compliments is that they are easy. They are really easy. They take off all the pressure. When you tell someone they are beautiful today, it just means that you like the way they dressed themselves that morning. You aren’t saying that you find them beautiful all the time. You aren’t saying you are attracted to them. You are saying that you like their taste in clothes or something. It’s a wimpy compliment.

It takes far more of a man or a woman to tell someone that they are always beautiful, always intelligent, always caring, always thoughtful. And it’s those compliments that change lives.

Has someone ever conditionally complimented you?

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An Invitation

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I wish I talked to people more. I chatter with people all day, but it’s useless noise. I don’t ask hard questions. I don’t want to offend. Instead, I spend my time complaining and gossiping. Which is great if your friends are one-dimensional stock television characters. (Hint: They aren’t!)

Most of the people I know want to change the world. But we think it’s going to come from raging against the machine. It won’t. We think if we yell loud enough, cry often enough, complain ferociously enough that we will one day change everything. But that’s never going to happen.

I have mentor crushes on two Christian bloggers, Jon Acuff and Donald Miller. Some people know that if a specific person popped the question, they would say yes. I know that if either of these two offered to be my mentor and teacher, I would move wherever they told me to and do whatever they told me to. By no means are either of them perfect. I have followed them through several missteps and foot-in-mouths. But there is something really important about both of them. They love people’s stories.

In one of Donald Miller’s books, he talks about a group of five or six guys who didn’t know each other. He thought they should, though. So he invited them all to breakfast and said something like, “Listen, you are all really creative and passionate people. You can be important to each other. We should be friends.” And just like that, friendships were born. They met biweekly for breakfast and a couple of years later, they were serving as groomsmen in each other’s weddings.

I live in my own apartment now. And one of my favorite parts about it is that when I invite people over or plan a lunch or dinner with someone, it means something. I can talk to them. I don’t have to chatter. It’s not enough, though. I want all of my interactions with others to be important, to be meaningful, to be real.

Let’s get coffee. Let’s talk. Even if I don’t know you. Even if you don’t like coffee. Shoot me an e-mail if that sounds like a plan.