Tag Archives: time to learn

If You Believe All Kids Can Learn, Open your Hearts and Minds to Change!

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The Hawkins Model© is constructed on several variables that are essential to a quality education. The most essential is the quality of teacher and student relationships.  My education model is constructed to facilitate the forging of such relationships and sustaining them for longer than a single school year.

Another essential variable is giving kids time to learn. Our education model changes time from a constant to a variable resource available to teachers and students in whatever quantity their success requires.

The third variable is that learning is the only thing that counts. To ensure a child learns we must get them off to a good start, which means taking the time to assess what children know when they arrive for their first day of kindergarten and what they have not yet learned. From what we learn from such assessments we will tailor an academic plan to each child’s unique needs. This determines the starting point for each student’s academic journey.

We choose to accept nothing less than a student’s best. This necessitates ending the practice of stopping a lesson; administering a test; recording whatever grade we assign based upon the number of mistakes each child makes; and then sending our students on to a next lesson, ready or not. For many kids, as a pattern of not being ready develops, it sentences them to a future in which they must deal with the challenges of life in a world they cannot fully understand.

My education model does not utilize tests to determine a grade but rather to confirm whether or not the student has mastered a given lesson or needs more help. We will modify the instruction process so that if the outcome of a test is unacceptable, we go back and reteach the lesson, giving the student the time, practice, help, and affirmation they need to learn from their mistakes. When we deem them ready, we administer a “do-over” exam and when a student achieves success we record that achievement and send the child onto the next lesson, not with a C, D, or F, but rather with an A or B and armed with the prerequisite knowledge and skills future lessons and life will require.

If the child still struggles their teachers’ job is unfinished. Consider that we do not stop teaching kids to ride a bicycle until they ride off down the street.

We interpret success as demonstrating proficiency. We celebrate each student’s academic success because it will help instill the powerful motivation that success can provide and with the development of healthy self-esteems.  

We need to disregard the expectations in the academic standards that all students have two semesters to demonstrate readiness for first grade and, instead, establish the expectation that we have twelve semesters to prepare them for middle school. All students do not begin at the same starting line. What matters is that they get to the finish line. Once a student learns, how long it took them is no longer relevant.

As students gain confidence in their ability to learn, we anticipate an acceleration of their pace in learning. We need not worry they will fall hopelessly behind, which is the case with the existing process. Students fall behind only when the education process does not permit them to finish.

Once we document a student’s success it becomes part of their record until we make a point to verify their mastery on that lesson, which we will make part of the instruction process. Once verified, state testing becomes irrelevant and an unjustifiable use of time.

We accomplish all this by changing the classroom structure from one in which there is one teachers for 25 to 35 students, to  a structure in which we have a team of three teachers for no more than 45 students.

Having a team of three teachers allows them to support one another, collaborate, and to manage a classroom with students progressing at different speeds. This also enhances the ability of teachers to forge relationships of the quality we seek.

The model keeps that classroom of teachers and 45 or fewer students together through the full primary phase of their education, which we define as what we formerly viewed as kindergarten through fifth grade. This eliminates the need to sever teacher/student relationships at the end of every school year and then require them to start over with a new teacher in the fall.

Nothing less than success is acceptable because a child’s success in learning is more important than any arbitrary schedule. We believe this process can substantially improve the probability that every child will experience success in pursuit of whatever goals they set for themselves.  Helping a student develop a pattern of success changes everything and sets them on a path to agency.

With respect to implementation, if a school has three kindergarten classrooms, each with one teacher and 30 students, which requires a total of three teachers, we will need to add three additional teachers to staff two classrooms with teams of three teachers and forty-five or fewer students.

If we assume that the average teacher salary is $65,000, three teachers will require an investment of $195,000 to serve the needs of 90 students at a single grade level. This gives us a per student cost of $2,166. Consider Indiana, as an example. In 2025 they expect to spend over $6,300 per student on vouchers to enable 95,000 students to attend  charter schools or faith-based schools. We believe the probability of student’s success, having learned in the innovative learning environment we are proposing to be significantly greater than sending students to charter schools that, currently, are not performing as well as the community public schools they were created to replace.

Our students, teachers and their communities are winners. The funds invested to add teachers goes right back into the local economy to improve our intellectual infrastructure. As they go about their lives, teachers contribute to the local, state and federal tax bases. Who knows where the money invested in vouchers will end up?

The Hawkins Model©, quality education, education, education model, time to learn, teachers and students, learning, kindergarten, academic plan, prerequisite knowledge, teaching kids academic success, academic standards, classroom structure, charter schools, innovative learning environment, community public schools, public schools, intellectual infrastructure, vouchers.

A Note to my Friends, Colleagues, and acquaintances on Twitter

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Recently, a couple of you have asked if I am okay, as I have not been active on Twitter in recent months. Thank you for that. As I announced at the beginning of what proved to be several months of silence, I have been writing a book with a working title The Hawkins Model©: Education Reimagined, One Success at a Time. I am excited to announce I am nearing completion.

I would also like to report that, in just a few weeks, I will be contacting many of you via Twitter’s personal messaging, seeking readers to give me a pre-submission review of the work. Let me clarify, I am not asking any of you to edit the work, although I understand, for many educators, grammatical errors tend to jump out at you.  I have someone to do the editing for me. I will be grateful for any feedback you might choose to provide with respect to content.

My objective is to seek an agent and/or traditional publisher, rather than go the self-publishing route.

I am also hoping to be able to provide prospective agents and publishers with a list of educators who judge the book to be deserving of an audience. Endorsements are, of course, wonderful, but only if you are motivated to provide one. 

So, please, until you hear from me, give my request some thought, as time will be of the essence.

The following is a brief excerpt:

Assertions, Assumptions, and the Questions they Raise

All logical constructs, whether a point of view, an organization, process, or software application are constructed on a logical foundation comprised of assumptions and assertions of which we must be aware. We believe our assertions, assumptions, and the questions they raise are bridges to understanding. There are many on which this book and education model are founded, the most important of which are:

  • Every child can learn. The brain of a child is programmed to soak up the world and to learn as much as it can, at its own best pace within the context of its unique genetic potential and the environment in which it finds itself.
  • It is not that some kids cannot learn rather they have not yet learned.
  • Street smart is the same as any other “smart.”
  • The rules of the American education process, effectively if not formally, limit students to a specific amount of time to learn. For many, it is not enough.
  • Once we learn something, how long it took becomes inconsequential.
  • It is not the job of educators to decide what our students will become; rather it is to help children build a solid foundation from which they will have choices.
  • We do not expect all students to grow up to become doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, teachers, journalists, accountants, etc. because society has many roles to cast.
  • Tradespersons who fix our plumbing; the electrical wiring of our buildings; who pour concrete for our roads and highways; who lay bricks and beams for the structures we build; who grow, prepare, and serve the food we eat; and who help groom us add value to our lives as do those employed in many other jobs.
  • Every job well done adds beauty and value to the world.
  • All students can get the equivalent of “As” and “Bs.”
  • Some will say not all can be “A” students. We choose to believe they can achieve mastery over whatever they need to learn to get where they need to go,
  • We must answer the question “is it better to learn many things badly, or fewer things well?”
  • Whatever and however much our students are learning—and when and wherever—we want their outcomes to be successful, encouraging, and esteem-building.
  • What we are doing as we teach our students, over thirteen years of school, is help them lay a foundation for whatever futures they choose for themselves.
  • That foundation must be academic, emotional, moral, and even spiritual in an ecumenical way. Everything we learn helps reveal the magnificence of the universe that has been created for us and over which we have the responsibility of stewardship.
  • Every citizen must possess a sufficient understanding of the world in which they live to make thoughtful decisions about important issues and understand that everything and everyone of us is interdependent.
  • Success is neither an achievement nor a destination, it is a process. We must each learn how to create success for ourselves and learning how to master the process of success requires students to experience it for themselves.
  • All success is compounding, and student must have the opportunity to celebrate each success.
  • Success is one of the most powerful motivational forces in life. When people experience success, they always want more.
  • Human beings, including children, are blessed with an extraordinary ability to overcome hardship, suffering, and disappointment, provided they have a little help from at least one other human being who cares about and believes in them.
  • Everything of value in life, including life itself, is a function of the quality of our relationships with other human beings. Similarly, a quality education is a function of a student’s relationship with his or her teachers.
  • Blaming teachers for the problems in education is like blaming soldiers for the wars they are asked to fight.
  • For all of us, the quality of work we do is a function of the quality of the tools and resources at our disposal. We all know how difficult it is to do a job without the proper tools. We must understand the education process in our schools is nothing more than a sophisticated tool for teaching and learning.
  • All organizations and processes are structured to produce the outcomes they get.
  • When a process routinely produces unacceptable outcomes no matter how hard people work or how qualified they are, that process is flawed and must be replaced or reimagined. Asking people to work harder is rarely enough.
  • It is only when we accept responsibility for our problems that we begin to acquire the power to solve them.
  • The blame game is a lose/lose scenario. Our time must be devoted to viewing every disappointing or unacceptable outcome as a learning opportunity.
  • The value of all material things in life is a function of their utility to people.
  • Mission and purpose must never be sacrificed for operational efficiency or convenience.
  • Many believe our education system is the cause of poverty when, in fact, the phenomena are interdependent, creating a chicken versus the egg conundrum.
  • All human beings need affirmation. Children and their teachers need it often.
  • There is no such thing as a perfect organization, system, or process. Excellence requires the ability to adapt to the peculiar and the unexpected.
  • It is on education that the future of our children depends, and it is on our children the future of our society will depend.

Throughout The Hawkins Model©: Education Reimagined, One Success at a Time, these and other assertions and assumptions will influence everything you read and every solution I offer.

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The Hawkins Model©: Serving the Primary Purpose of Education, Part 1

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Everything we do in our schools and classrooms: the way the education process is structured; the way we organize our resources; the expectations placed on principals, teachers, and students; what we do from day-to-day from subject to subject; and how we keep score must serve and support our primary purpose or objective.  Initial and intermediate objectives are just that. They are building blocks, laying a foundation of pre-requisite knowledge on which future learning is constructed. They are essential  and cannot be sacrificed without diminishing  quality.  With respect to the quality of education, it is the future accomplishments of our citizens that are placed at risk.

Consider the tragedy flowing from the collapse of buildings and bridges—not due to age and deterioration, to which even human beings are at risk—rather from architectural and engineering flaws that could have been avoided had protocols been properly observed. There can be no shortcuts without sacrificing quality.

It is like a home run in a baseball or softball game. A run does not count unless all bases are touched. If a batter misses one of the bases, coaches will send he or she racing back to touch the base that was missed before the defense can respond. Fail to touch the base and the baserunner will be called “out” and a run will not be scored. In cases such as this not taking time to correct a mistake has consequences.

One of the five most fundamental and consequential flaws in the existing education process is not providing students with adequate time to correct the mistakes they make, to practice skills, gain mastery and comprehension of the subject matter—not giving them time to learn. The consequence of not having time to learn results in students being pushed ahead before they are ready. Each incidence places a student a little further behind and has a compounding effect, setting children up for failure. Repeated failure causes children and adults to give up and stop trying.

Time must be an asset available to students in whatever quantity their success demands and not a parameter. Arbitrary schedules and calendars were instituted to serve organizational convenience and efficiency and do not serve the purpose for which our schools exist. The purpose of education is to accord students, at graduation, with the highest level of preparation they can attain—of which they are capable. The number of stumbles, struggles, and mistakes made along the way matter not at all; just as it is inconsequential how long it takes a child to learn how to ride a bicycle. Such events are learning opportunities. The only thing that matters is a young man or woman’s ability to apply what they have learned to their best advantage in life, which also creates the best advantage for one’s community.

This is one of the purposes for which The Hawkins Model© is designed!

In upcoming posts we will address each of the fundamental flaws of the existing education process, flaws that diminish the value of the hard work all teachers and students do.

The Biggest Flaw in our Education Process is not Giving Kids Time to Learn!

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My challenge to teachers, whom I consider to be unsung American heroes, is to look deep inside your hearts and think about how many times the education process requires you to move your students on to a new lesson before they are ready.

How many times in a given semester, year, or in your career have you had to record a lesser grade beside a struggling student’s name, not because it was the best that they could do, rather because an arbitrary schedule said it was time to move on to a new lesson module? For many of you, this happens, routinely, with one or more students on every lesson module. In some public schools—in all schools, actually—it happens for the majority of a teacher’s students. In our lowest performing schools, it happens to teachers with almost every student on almost every lesson; semester after semester and year after year.

Is it any wonder that so many of these students are unable to pass state competency examinations by the time they reach the third grade? Why should we be surprised that a significant percentage of these boys and girls have given up by the time they reach middle school? We all know what happens when a child has given up and lost hope. They stop trying and begin acting out in class. After all, they cannot appear to care! Peer pressure is far too powerful.

In my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America (2013), I used an example of children learning how to ride a bicycle and I will use the same example in my new book, which will be finished by the end of the year.

We know that some kids learn quickly and are riding within an hour or two, and that other children will endure bruised egos and scraped appendages for several days before their brains finally gain a sense of balance. We also know that once they learn to ride their bikes they derive the same enjoyment from riding as the early learners. The fact that it took them longer to learn is inconsequential. The only thing that matters is that they did learn and can use what they learned.

There are many things that determine a child’s success in learning. Children learn differently. They have different potential. Some have special needs. Some kids arrive better prepared to learn. Some children are shy and timid and are fearful of being embarrassed in front of their teachers and classmates. Some boys and girls need more personal attention before they are ready to test their knowledge. So many others just need more time to learn.

Imagine that when half the children have mastered the art of riding a bicycle, we immediately push all ahead to learn advanced riding skills. Can you imagine popping wheelies, doing jumps, or racing around turns before you’ve mastered keeping your balance, braking, and steering? Can you imagine even having the courage to attempt using more demanding skills when you are still afraid of falling?

With poignant clarity, this example illustrates the trauma that children face when the learning process is more focused on keeping up with an arbitrary schedule than helping children learn. The more scrapes and bruises, whether egos or appendages, the greater the trauma. Imagine the added indignity when we attach grades to the names of these children: A’s for the fast learners and C’s, D’s, and F’s for their slower classmates.

Learning is not a competition. It is not like a race to see how fast they can run and where the winners get ribbons and medals and the losers get nothing.

Learning should be thought of as more like healing from an illness or injury. It does not matter that some individuals heal more quickly than others and we certainly do not award ribbons, medals, or A’s to patients who recover the fastest and easiest. The only thing that matters is that our patients heal.

Learning, also, is not a trip where all students travel to the same destination. It is not grooming children for the life we envision for them rather it is preparing them to discover their own future. With our help, they acquire the basic academic skills they will need to interact and communicate with the world around them. From that foundation they can begin to discover their own talents, interests and, ultimately, the destinations they choose for themselves. This adventure of discovery requires that they are exposed to a broad range of learning experiences that challenge their own imaginations and the imaginations of their teachers. Teachers, in a positive leadership environment, must keep in mind that we can barely imagine the world in which our students must be prepared to prosper.

If you think about these examples you can see that what we ask teachers and their students to do in our schools, today, makes little sense. It’s the way we’ve always done it, however. The entire education process is structured, tasked, and resourced to reward the speed or ease with which one learns rather than assure that every child learns. Tragically, we have become inured to the reality that so many of these precious young lives fall behind and out, along the way.

We talk a great deal about the importance of relationships between teachers and their students but the process, itself, and the way we organize teachers and their students, makes it difficult to develop nurturing relationships with every boy or girl, especially the most timid and reticent. Where does it say that the best way to organize teachers and students is in grades Kindergarten through 12? Where did we get the idea that it is in a child’s best interest to assign them to a different teacher, every year?

Who decided it was okay to allow children to fall so far behind that they are never able to catch up? Who got the bright idea that it is okay to expect kids who start from behind to keep up with classmates who arrive at school, readier to learn? What were they thinking when they decided that it was in a child’s best interest to learn at the same pace as their classmates and reach the same milestones together?

Who in the world got the idea that it is acceptable to tell students we cannot give them the extra time they need to learn? When did we decide to accept, unquestioningly, that our education  process is working when the same kids and the same schools are unable to pass state competency exams, year after year? It is bad enough that administering such exams has become our focal point. Is it not worse that we seem not to learn and then utilize what the exams are telling us?

Whether you are a teacher, principal, superintendent, school board member, or policy maker, do you deem it acceptable that some kids excel in school while others fail? Do you not see that while it might be wonderful that some teachers are able to accomplish extraordinary things for their students, it does not mean the education process is working for children, everywhere?

The truth we must accept is that the teachers and schools that are able to accomplish extraordinary things for their students are succeeding despite the system, not because of it.

Examples of these success stories are wonderful in that they show what educators can do when allowed to use their imaginations in an environment supported by positive leadership. The challenge, however, must not be helping more teachers and principals carve out exceptions to the norm. The challenge must be creating a process that allows all teachers to use their skill, training, and imaginations to help children learn as much as they can from their own unique starting point; all kids, not just a few. The challenge must be preparing them to take command of their own destinies.

We must not preserve the existence of a system that constrains the ingenuity of our teachers and the performance of their students. What we must do is go back to the drawing board and create a system that exists to help all children learn, grow, dream, and create.

Through the application of my nearly fifty years of working with children and leading organizations, I have developed an education model crafted around the work of teachers and students. I urge you to take an hour or less of your time to examine my education model. Read it, not looking to find fault. Read it like an explorer to see if there might be a better way to do what you do. You can find the model simply by scrolling down to the previous blog post.

“Something Incredible is Waiting to be Known!”

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Recently, Chuck Canady (@chuckcanady) tweeted a quote from Carl Sagan, who said, “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”

I believe something incredible is waiting to be known and it will happen within the next 10 to 13 years. The incredible event we will witness, will be that every single student who walks across a stage to collect their high school diploma, will have received: a quality education; will have a portfolio of skills that will enable them to have choices about how to find joy and meaning in their lives and to provide for their families; will have sufficient knowledge and understanding to participate in their own governance as citizens of a democratic society; and, will have gained a sufficient understanding of the important issues facing our planet and its people to make informed choices. They will also be able to add value to our society rather than be dependent on it.

If we began this fall, implementing an education model focused on success, relationships, giving kids time to learn, and eliminating even the idea of failure, in thirteen years every one of that first group of five and six-year-olds would be ready to graduate. I believe these young people will alter the job market by injecting millions of people, who formerly were destined to be poor, into the market to become taxpayers and strengthen the economic health of society. This will create revenues that will help society address the issues of replacing our nation’s crumbling infrastructure, end our dependence on fossil fuels, and address the consequences of climate change. We can only hope that this new group of young Americans will help us narrow the differences between us so that we can work together.

If we start, this fall with all K-5 kids, we will immediately begin to see magic happen in the classroom as relationships blossom and little brains begin to work. The older students in this group will present a challenge, but we will begin to see a real difference when they graduate in the next 7 to 12 years. From that point on, every single child will have never known anything other than a school environment in which they can be as successful as any of their classmates. And, no, we are not saying everyone will learn as much and advance as far because all of us have different potentials. What it will mean is that more people will fulfill their potential which almost always results in the discovery that they have far more potential than they ever imagined.

These young Americans will be the most diverse group of American citizens in the history of our nation and will begin to erode the deeply-entrenched racism that has plagued our nation for generations? We see it all the time. The attitudes of people who have never known a person from another race, religion, or nationality will gradually begin to change when they find themselves working side-by-side with them. The more diverse our neighborhoods, the more children of diverse backgrounds will play together in their neighborhoods and sit next to one another in a classroom.

I believe these new generations who will spill out of our systems of private and public schools, year after year, will have grown more tolerant of the differences between human beings. They will have learned that, like the color of our hair and eyes, the color of our skin is nothing more than a different shade of beauty. They will have seen more mixed-racial and multi-cultural relationships and families, more multi-racial children, more alternate lifestyles. This will help us move closer to a reality in which everyone can be accepted for who they are.

Because citizens will be growing more tolerant of the differences in people they will be learning that what we see on the surface of the people in our lives, like the color of our skin, is not the measure of a man or woman. Our hope is that they will become less afraid of people who look, talk, and worship differently than themselves. Because they will feel less threatened, they will be less prone to resort to violence to settle disputes between people, nations, and religions.

We cannot legislate an end to the prejudices in the hearts of mankind, but we can begin to transform a society to one in which minorities are no longer defenseless against discrimination and in which it is more difficult for others to justify those prejudices. It will be more difficult to justify their prejudices because they know these people. We will no longer be separate and apart.

They will be the generation, who because of their education and employability, will witness the shrinking and eventual elimination of poverty and illiteracy in this country.

They will have sufficient knowledge, understanding and wisdom to see that the policies of the past—whether conservative or liberal, democrat or republican—are not able to provide solutions to the new and yet unimagined challenges of the future. They will know that, as we progress into the mid to late decades of this 21st Century, that we will be challenged to seek new solutions that work for every man, woman, or child in every conceivable corner of the planet Earth.

All these incredible things will have happened because we will have replaced an obsolete education process with a new model for teaching children. It will be a model that focuses on building and sustaining positive relationships between teachers and students, teachers and parents, and between students and their peers.

It will be model that recognizes the extraordinary diversity of people and thus will be prepared to deal with what will, initially, be great disparity with respect to academic preparedness, motivation to learn, and parental support. It will be a model that gives every student that special relationship with a teacher that many of us recall with such fondness when we think back on our favorite teacher. Unlike the rest of us, this new generation will have enjoyed the security and benefit of such relationships for more than a single school year.

Through this recognition, the model will enable us to treat every student as a unique individual with a different starting point on the academic preparedness continuum, with a different pace of learning, with unique skills and talents, and with different dreams to fulfill. Each child will be on a tailored academic path that will give them more time to learn if they need it and more freedom to burst ahead to ever higher levels of academic exploration when they feel inspired; even if it means teachers must rush to keep up. No child will be judged against the performance of his or her classmates.

It will be an education model that recognizes that the power of the peer group, in this world of almost unlimited access to social media, will be stronger than ever. The structure of the model will create small communities of children who will remain together for a sufficient length of time that they will bond with one another and look out for one another. We will be working to create an environment in which, if they must disappoint someone, our children will choose to disappoint their peers rather than their teachers and parents with whom they feel closer than ever. They will be developing the strength of character to be the best version of themselves, regardless of what others think.

Because the relationships between students, teachers and parents will be stronger and long-lasting, we will be able to focus on the whole child; helping them develop their unique talents and interests, learn the self-discipline that is necessary to enjoy success; and develop a healthy self-esteem strong enough to endure the challenges of an increasingly more complex world where the rate of change will out pace anything adults of present day have experienced.

Finally, our children will learn that success is a process where learning from mistakes and building on one success after another, and will eliminate even the idea of failure. Our children will be internalizing the idea that success is a process in which there are only different velocities of learning. Gaining this understanding also helps human beings develop an abundance mentality and learn that win-win solutions and outcomes are by far the best solutions and outcomes.

Children will be learning that losing a competition in which they have given their best effort is only a loss within the context of such competitions and does nothing to diminish their self-esteem, their worth as a child of creation, or the meaning in their lives. None of us will win every time no matter how talented or brilliant we may be. We will be learning, instead, that because we strive to do our best we are winners in life, no matter the outcomes in small episodes of life. We will view those disappointing outcomes as wonderful opportunities to learn and grow.

This vision is every bit as achievable as exploration of space or phenomenal advances in science and technology. All it requires is a willingness on the part of educators and policy makers to open their hearts and minds to a new way of thinking about how we teach our children, and to challenge their assumptions about how we organize, structure and support teachers and students within our schools and classrooms. If a process does not allow an optimal level of learning, growth and development, then it is time for change.

I ask you to examine my education model and white paper because they offer a first step toward the future I have described https://melhawkinsandassociates.com/education-model-white-paper/ I hope it is a vision that we can all share.

The elegance of the model is that it is just a point of embarkation; that it empowers teachers and administrators to be continually reinventing the education process to meet the ever-changing needs of their students, communities and society. Who knows where the future may take us but if we remain focused on putting teachers in a position to teach and students in a position to learn it will be a great adventure of discovery.