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GRANT WIGGINS: UBD is not
a philosophy of teaching,
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it's not an approach
to teaching,
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it's a planning framework.
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And it's really important
to keep this in mind
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that what you're trying to do
is make it more likely by design
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that when you teach, you
are more goal-focused, more effective.
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You could be a bad
teacher with a good plan.
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In other words, we're not saying
that a good plan makes you
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a better teacher necessarily.
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You have to learn
pedagogical moves,
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you have to learn to be as
facile and skilled with how
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to pay attention
to group dynamics.
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UBD doesn't help you
with that, but it
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does prepare you to think
short term, long term, what
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are we trying to accomplish.
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And it's like the famous
line from Pasteur,
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"chance favors the
prepared mind."
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You're totally prepared
for teachable moments
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not in the sense of, oh, well
that's a cool student comment.
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Let's just run with
that for five days.
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That's not serendipity.
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That's letting the students
write the curriculum,
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and that's not what
I'm talking about.
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I'm talking about being
so prepared about where
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you want to end up that you
hear a potential student
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comment as a
fantastic entry point
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to go where you want to end up.
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In other words, it's your job
to know where we want to end up.
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I don't think we make
any apologies about that.
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But part of where
we want to end up
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is building autonomous,
proactive, thoughtful people,
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not just march
through some stuff
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causing some typical learning.
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So we're trying to keep
long-term goals in view.
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We're trying to get the blend
of content and performance.
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Notice I didn't say process,
content and performance,
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because that's
the ultimate goal.
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The student performs as
in the soccer situation--
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on their own,
effectively, fluidly,
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drawing from their repertoire.
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And this also tends to
better engage people
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as I think you already know.
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What we see over
and over again is
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that there is a misalignment
between short-term plans
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and actions and long-term goals.
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Here's a simple example.
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We value something called
critical and creative thinking.
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It's in every program's
goal statement.
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It's in many school's
mission statement.
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It's clearly something
we care about.
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But it is possible
to get straight A's
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at every school in America
without critical and creative thinking.
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As long as you're smart,
compliant, do your work,
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are thorough, you're
going to get straight
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In almost every
school in America.
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So a very basic
backward design premise then
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if critical and
creative thinking
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is the goal long term,
using content critically
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and creatively, to say it
a different way, then when
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we go to a plan, we have to
make sure week in and week out
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that we're focusing on critical
and creative use of content.
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Otherwise, we're
not going to get it.
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And this is, I think, the
fatal mistake of prep schools.
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They think because we're
smart, because we're
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motivated, because
we hire really
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intelligent,
well-educated people,
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that this is just
going to happen.
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Sobering story, but
this is a true story.
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Well-known prep school
in the top 10 or 20
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of prep schools in
the country, they say,
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we're really interested in
this pedagogical effectiveness stuff.
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And the guy in question is
a really fantastic educator
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who's done a lot of
work in the wider world.
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And so he's really
interested in the question
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of value added at this school.
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So they contract with
ETS, pre-assess 9th grade,
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assess 12th grade, critical
thinking test, no gain.
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No gain.
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We admit them smart,
we graduate them smart,
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we pat ourselves
on the back, and we
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start teaching all over again.
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The value added thing is huge.
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You can't just pat
yourself on the back
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because you admit smart people
when they do good things.
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You guys have a higher
calling than that.
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So we want to focus on
these long-term goals
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and we want to embed them
in our short-term plans.
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And the more you start
to think this way,
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the more you'll realize
you're not doing it.
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Again, I saw this
on the soccer field.
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I saw that we were
not developing
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any strategic thinking.
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One day I was in a
scrimmage, and I'm
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looking at the scrimmage.
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I'm there in the middle
of the field reffing it.
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I'm watching people
and I'm saying,
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there's a lot of aimless
running around here.
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So the ball's over
here, what are you doing
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and why are you doing it?
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I don't know, I don't know.
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So I said, all right, new rule.
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We are going to do freeze tag.
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If I don't like your answer, the
ball goes over the other side.
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I'm always going to have
somebody on offense.
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And for like two weeks
there was no good answer.
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And of course, I
realize that's my fault.
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There's no strategic thinking.
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My daughter is an
elite soccer player.
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She's a senior at
the George School.
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She's in North Carolina
tournament right now.
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She doesn't have a good
strategic thinking,
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because she's had all these
elite coaches that tell
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you what to do all the time.
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She had a coach though who
doesn't coach at George School
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anymore.
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He's a retired Princeton coach
who did it for $1 a year--
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one of those great gigs.
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He did the coolest
thing at halftime.
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So you know, they
get in the circle
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that you always do at halftime.
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So, he said, what's working?
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What's working for us?
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Again, same thing-- for a couple
of weeks, they couldn't answer.
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We're winning.
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Yeah, I know that.
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What's working on the field?
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What's not working for us?
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What do we need to work
on in the second half?
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In other words,
Socratic questions
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was all he did at halftime.
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But the coolest question
is, what's working for them?
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What do we have to stop?
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She was a different player.
So were her teammates.
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So there is this tendency
in even really good programs
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in schools to not help
kids gain proactive control
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of the situation and
have a long term view.
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Simple test-- all of
you are teaching now.
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Ask kids to self-assess right
now-- now's a good time,
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January--
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against your goals for the year.
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What is her goal for the year?
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I mean, that's what's
going to happen.
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And they're going to cherry
pick some random little things,
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and you're going
to be depressed.
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But that's a good experience.
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That's a really good experience.
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It's the kid who has
the meet the goals.
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It's the kid that
has to understand
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via transparency
and reinforcement
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the long-term goals.
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So critical and
creative thinking,
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to go back to our
example, is a goal,
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then that should be so obvious
that the kids will self-assess
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against critical and
creative thinking.
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Let's try it as a quick
and dirty exercise.
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Think. Pair. Share.
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If you had to write a
one-sentence mission statement
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for your course, what would it be?
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Jot some thoughts, try it out
on the person next to you.
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One-sentence mission statement.
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What is the point of my course?
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And I'm using the word
course to cover everything
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from pre-K to graduate school,
from soccer to physics.
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If you are an elementary
person,
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you could think of course
in either one of two ways.
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You could say what's
the point of what
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I do with first
graders, or what's
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the point of the language arts
strand? Or the social studies strand.
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So you can go either way
since you have so many duties.
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Let me ask you to
pause for a minute
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and let's do a little bit
of backward design thinking,
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Then this is the basic
logic of backward design.
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We'll say more about it later,
and many of you know this.
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If that's the
goal, what follows?
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If that's the long-term
goal, what follows?
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What follows for assessment?
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What follows for instruction?
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Go back to your conversations
and just together
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play out casually
and informally,
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at this point, the
answers to those questions
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as they occur to you.
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If that's the goal, what
should we be assessing?
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And by assessing, I
do not mean grading,
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I mean assessing just like you
would do as a soccer coach.
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You don't give a
grade as a varsity--
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well, maybe in some
schools you do.
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I never did.
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But you're assessing,
you're judging
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how we're doing against
the goal, you're coaching,
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you're giving information about
how we're doing against the goal.
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So what should we assess?
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And what should we be
doing instructionally?
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Or, what should occur
in the classroom?
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And let me tell you one
quick story before we do it.
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When I asked this question, and
a fourth-grade teacher pulled
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me over and she said, well,
there's two parts to my answer.
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I want students to
be good readers,
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but more importantly, I
want them to love to read.
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I said, let's just focus
on the love to read.
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We know something about
how to make good readers,
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but focus for me
on love to read.
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What would be evidence
that they love to read?
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And what do you have
to do instructionally
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to make it more likely
that they love to read?
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And I said, be careful.
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Requiring them to do everything
isn't likely to cause it,
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in fact, it may undercut it.
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We know this about boys.
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So, that's the caution.
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If that's your goal,
what's the assessment?
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What needs to happen
instructionally
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to support and head
toward your goal?
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Somebody go first,
do it together,
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and somebody go
second, do it together.
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5, 10 minutes.
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