Congratulations to the MBMS 8^th Grade Class of 2018.

Your class has chosen the theme, “Reach for the Stars” for this ceremony. And why not?

It’s way better than themes that Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh might have chosen:

• What’s the use?
• I shouldn’t even try.
• Nothing’s going to change.

Reach for the Stars is way better.

Everyone knows that if you want to become a better athlete or a better artist or musician, you need to practice, work, and learn from a good teacher or coach.

But for some reason, most people don’t believe that we can become smarter. People think that we were born with a certain amount of smarts, and that’s just not going to change.

Brain research has proven that is just not true. Just as you can reach for the stars and become a better athlete or a better artist, you can become smarter. Scientists and researchers call this a “Growth Mindset.”

Many brain researchers have shown proof of Growth Mindset, but some students and teachers still don’t believe it. We have to convince students, parents, AND teachers that the growth mindset is real and needs to be utilized.

So how do you get smarter? How does this growth mindset thing work?

1. Challenge yourself. Try hard stuff. Find interesting problems and try to solve them. Push yourself. Don’t take the easy way.
2. Fail. Learn from your failures. When you challenge yourself, you will fail. Brain researchers are saying that nothing promotes growth as much as learning from failure. We have teachers and students who define F-A-I-L as First Attempt in Learning.  I love it.
3. Explore new ideas through reading, Care about something! Learn about it! Do you know how you become a better reader? By reading more. Fall in love with reading and you’ll have something to enjoy your whole life and your brain will grow.
4. Be careful with social media: There are two big evils in social media: The first is FOMO – The Fear of Missing Out – because you focus on the cool things others are posting. Believe me, no one’s life is super-duper awesome every minute. The real-life stuff we deal with is not what you see on social media. The second evil is the unfortunate propensity of some people to be mean and try to bring people down. Be careful.
5. Take care of your brain. Again, let’s look at brain research and science. If you want your brain to grow, there are two most important habits you can develop: (1) get enough sleep. You need more than you think. Do everything you can to get that sleep. (2) Don’t use drugs and alcohol. Your brain is growing and developing, and nothing can slow down that growth more than drugs and alcohol.

Most of all, believe that your best and smartest days are ahead of you. Brain research is on your side. Don’t let others define your story. Set big fat hairy goals for yourself. Be OK when you fail, and try again. Never stop growing. Never stop reaching for the stars.

Congratulations again to the MBMS 8^th Grade Class of 2018, to your parents, and to all of your great teachers who have made a difference in your lives.

I had the honor of attending an amazing event in our community today. Beach Cities Health District sponsored a Summit on Youth Stress and Substance Abuse. This is a huge issue for our community, for the communities of the Consortium 2030 group, and for the nation as a whole. We heard from 12 students in our local middle and high schools. They spoke about stress, the value of teachers knowing them well, the amount of vaping that is permeating teen culture and our schools, and so much more. They were great. One of my favorite comments was from a student who said, “I am expected to do the best I can, actually, to do more than the best I can.” We heard from former US Representative Mary Bono Mack, who shared stories addiction in her family, and gave ideas for how we can work together to support individuals and families in crisis. It was a powerful summit, and I am grateful for being able to participate.

Along with our other local superintendents, I was asked to make remarks at the summit. Here is what I shared.

—–

I had a beautiful start to my day today. Fifty-one graduating seniors, their parents, and their Meadows Elementary School teachers reunited on the Meadows Elementary School cafeteria. There were tears, smiles, laughter, and comments about how the teachers used to be taller. It reminded me of the joy of friendships, of powerful teacher-student connections, and of a community celebrating together.

It was a great lead in to this amazing summit, as we work together to make life for our youth healthier, safer, and happier.

This is a powerful room of people actively seeking to improve social emotional wellness, diminish stress, and end substance abuse with our youth. Some people in the room are interested in learning more, a few may be skeptical, most are concerned, some have devoted their professional and personal lives to this cause, and some are here full of pain from the suffering or even the loss of loved ones. That’s the range of people we have in this room and in our schools.

I want to thank Beach Cities Health District for sponsoring this summit and for helping to start this conversation. The original Blue Zones report made it clear that our communities are stressed places. It does not look that way on the surface. I heard someone say that we are like ducks. We look all nice and peaceful, but underneath the water, we are paddling like hell, going somewhere in a hurry or just trying to stay afloat. We are a stressed community, and our kids feel it. I’m a parent of two young men, ages 27 and 15. I’m an educator for the near 7,000 students in the Manhattan Beach School District. I join all of you in trying to find that right line between encouraging, pushing, caring, and unconditionally loving our own children and the children of our community.

Our students are stressed. Read Denise Pope’s book, Overloaded and Underprepared. Read Frank Bruni’s book, Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be. Students are stressed about college. Parents are even more stressed about college. They burden themselves with loads of classes that are often just too much. Go to Families Connected meetings, sponsored by amazing parents like Laura McIntyre. Our students don’t sleep enough. They worry that their lives may not be as interesting as what they see on their social media feeds. They witness people being mean to each other and to them. Our students are certainly stressed.

On the other hand, our students have joyful experiences as well. I saw it this morning. Last week, I got to see our choir singing joyfully in Disney Hall. I see it with students in marching band performing on the field, or in an amazing musical, or on a sports team achieving a new personal record, or on the robotics team, or in a class they love smiling because of what they learn and how they are learning it. One senior last night admitted to an auditorium of parents and students, “I’ll say it, I love math and I thank Mr. Chou for making me love it in 5^th grade!” I see that joy when I shadowed students and witnessed the power of friends reconnecting at lunch, at nutrition breaks, or just saying hello in the hallway.

It’s not all darkness out there. There is a lot of light, as evidenced by their joy and smiling.

How do we help that power of light to prevail over the dark powers of stress, sadness, and anxiety? Because when that power of light and joy does not prevail, that’s when substance abuse sees an opening. And it will jump at that opening.

What can we do to help our students succeed with the right amount of stress? How can we help the light to prevail?

I’m a big believer in the concept of Flow. I even read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book and understood at least half of it. Here’s what I do understand about flow. There is no better time to be alive than when you are so immersed in something that time ceases to exist. For me, that can be moments with family and friends, bicycling, cooking, learning something new, reading, swimming, golfing, in a fascinating conversation, in a high-quality meeting, solving a complex problem, and many other times. In those times, there is no worry about anything. The next thing is nowhere in your mind.

I want us to create more opportunities for flow in our children’s and our students’ lives. I want us to have it in our lives!

One way we are trying to make that happen in MBUSD is by having students experience more Personalized Learning. When I was in school, memorization was the key to success. And I was pretty good. I still know the quadratic formula. I can still integrate calculus problems. I still know that there are 6.02 x 10²³ molecules in a mole. I have no idea how to apply any of those things. With that type of memorization-centric teaching, who needs personalized learning?

But with the advent of the smart phone and technology all that knowledge is one button away. Some still argue with that. But many of us in this room used to know 40 phone numbers, now we are lucky to know 3. Does that keep us from talking on the phone? OK, does it keep any of us from texting?

Schools are no longer the repository of knowledge to be imparted unto students. We must be coaches, mentors, and we have to know our students. We need to teach them skills that can help them learn and succeed. We can help our students to grow and find their flow. Teaching has a whole new meaning these days, and it is more challenging than ever.

That’s what our social emotional wellness movement is all about in our schools. We are looking for ANYTHING we can do to chip away at student stress. We are looking for anything we can do to connect and help our students lead healthy productive lives. Here is what we are working on:

• How do we make homework meaningful and never busywork, and not assign so much that our students have extreme burdens outside of school?
• How do we create school schedules, block schedules, that make it easier on students to thrive each day?
• How do we use counselors, classroom teachers, advisories, and more to help students connect with adults who care?
• How do we create academic experiences that are appropriately challenging for each child and as meaningful as possible?
• How do we convince parents and students that life will be OK, in fact our students will thrive, even if they choose to go to a college not ranked at the very top?
• How do we convince our students and parents that taking too many classes can suck the joy and health right out of students’ lives?
• How do we help our students to care for themselves and their brain health by getting enough sleep each night?
• How do we encourage inclusiveness in our community, where everyone feels welcome, and no one feels isolated or attacked?
• How can students include classes into their high school schedules that create a space where they can be joyful, pursue what they love, and experience flow each and every day?

That’s what we are trying to do in our schools. These are the questions our board is trying to figure out. We are working with students, parents, BCHD, our partner districts, our local therapists and health community, and anyone who cares. Some of you who are in the room with me know that not everyone believes the way we do. But I believe it, and I know you do too.

Everything we can do, every positive change we make, big and small, they all diminish the need for coping mechanisms like substance abuse and bullying, and they all increase our students’ potential for joy and flow.

That’s what we are all trying to do. We are not there yet. But our summit should remind us all that we are not alone and we are not giving up.

I thank each of you for every effort you make to help us in this quest.

I’m joined by Manhattan Beach Mayor Amy Howorth, MBUSD Board Members Jen Cochran and Ellen Rosenberg, Mira Costa Principal Ben Dale, and BCHD Chief Executive Officer Tom Bakaly.

When the last transmission for the International Space Station ended, the crowd in the middle school auditorium cheered wildly. The applause went on for over three minutes – more than 500 people swept up in the tremendous emotion of the moment. There were students, parents, and educators in the room, and every one of them was moved. The adults, understanding the magnitude, were using words like “spine-tingling” and “chills,” and looking around I could see that almost all of them (including me!) had tears of joy in their eyes. It was one of the most powerful educational events I have ever experienced in my 30+ years of public education. It was perfect, and it was symbolic of so many things we do right here in MBUSD.

It all started when one of our five Elementary Science Specialists, Ms. Joanne Michael, applied to the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station program to win a slot for ten minutes of ham radio time with an astronaut on the International Space Station (ISS) as it passed in range of Manhattan Beach. MBEF, Northrup Grumman, and her local radio club all supported her in the application process. She got the word in December of 2016 that she had been selected, then started doing the work to make it happen. She found fellow ham radio operators who would volunteer their time. She selected students of all grade levels to ask the questions, and prepared them to ask their questions in a strong voice using radio communication techniques. In order to communicate with someone in outer space, she figured out how to get an antenna mounted to the top of the MBMS auditorium. She took care of all of that, and the zillions of other logistics that all needed to happen just right to make the event work.

Early in the morning of the planned conversation, Ms. Michael went over to our middle school auditorium, which was large enough to accommodate all of the Meadows Elementary School students, many of their parents, and other guests anxious for this experience. She worked with her fellow ham radio operators, making sure the equipment and back up equipment had the best chance of working. There was so much that could go wrong, and there was just a single ten-minute window while the space station, travelling at 17,500 miles per hour, would be in range of her radio signal. Two of the last four schools had not been successful in reaching the ISS. Astronauts have interruptions sometimes! Technology has glitches sometimes. So much could go wrong. But not on this day.

Four hundred Meadows Elementary students walked to MBMS (no small feat in itself!) and gathered in the auditorium with their parents and other educators. Ms. Michael wore her astronaut suit that day. Of course she did! She made sure the 500 people in the audience knew to be perfectly still and quiet during the 10-minute talk. She made sure everyone knew this whole experiment just might not work, but that failure is how people learn. She reminded them that instead of clapping or cheering, they should give the sign language sign for applause or hooray, by raising their hands in the air and shaking them. (We have several deaf and hard of hearing students in MBUSD). She showed them the big screen with a red dot that moved over China, then Japan, then the Pacific. The dot was the ISS, and the circle around the dot showed when we would be in range for a conversation.

As the right edge of that circle hit southern California, she asked everyone to be quiet, and the ham operator started talking over the intercom, “NAISS, NAISS this is Kilo Mike Six Bravo Whiskey Bravo Come in.” Silence. He said it again, “NAISS, NAISS this Kilo Mike Six Bravo Whiskey Bravo Come in.” Silence. Four more times he called, “NAISS, NAISS this Kilo Mike Six Bravo Whiskey Bravo Come in.” Then, after the seventh call, a voice responded.

“Kilo Mike Six Bravo Whiskey Bravo this is Paolo Nespoli on the International Space Station.”

There were muffled noises of excitement in the audience, and as I turned to the audience, all hands were in the air waving vigorously. The silent applause was deafening and joyful. We were communicating with an astronaut in outer space! That’s when my eyes first starting misting up. It was such a moment, and every person in the room was completely engaged and would not have wanted to be anywhere else in the world.

The ham operator turned it over to Ms. Michael, who greeted the astronaut, then immediately let the students take the stage and start asking their questions. Here were some of the questions:

• How do you get picked to be an astronaut? Over.
• How do you eat without your food flying away? Over.
• How long did it take you to get to the ISS? Over.
• How do you take a shower in space? Over.
• Does anyone ever get sick in space? Over.
• What inspired you to be an astronaut? Over.
• Can you see the hurricanes and the wildfires from space? Over.

Astronaut Paolo Nespoli called students by name. He answered their questions efficiently, but he filled his answers with interesting examples and stories. He made it personal, and you could tell that he loved this part of his job. The audience was perfect during the entire time. The sound quality was very, very good, but we were all watching the screen showing the ISS moving over Los Angeles, and then going in a southeast direction. It would not be long until it went out of range.

As I was witnessing the last few minutes, I was overcome thinking about the power of great teaching. This entire experience was happening because of one teacher’s efforts. Ms. Michael’s passion for science and for teaching science was behind everything we were all experiencing. She had invested hundreds of hours in making this happen, and she had gathered countless volunteers to invest similar amounts of time. And all of those hours were invested with no guarantee of how it would come out. Great teachers are risk takers and optimists. They try new things hoping that it will work out wonderfully and figuring out how to make lemonade when it doesn’t. Great teachers make connections with students and help the students to play an active role in the learning experience. Great teachers are models for how to be lifelong learners. Great teachers show their passion for a subject and inspire students to catch that passion.

On September 8, Joanne Michael gave us all of that and more in one of the greatest teaching and learning experiences I have ever witnessed.

After all the students had asked all of their questions, Ms. Michael got to ask a couple more. Finally, as the back edge of the circle had gone east of Los Angeles, she proudly signed off from Manhattan Beach. We heard the astronaut do the same, and it was over. There were a few seconds of radio and auditorium silence, then the crowd erupted in loud, joyous cheering that went on for what seemed like forever. They were cheering for Ms. Michael. They were cheering for science. They were cheering for space exploration. They were cheering for our ham radio operators and everyone who made this happen. Most of all, they were cheering because they were all part of something incredibly unique and special.

As the cheering died down, and we all returned to our lives here on Earth, I was and I still am overwhelmed with gratitude. I am grateful for Ms. Michael and for all of our teachers who pursue teaching excellence every day. I am grateful to MBEF for providing the funding necessary for elementary science specialists and so much more. I am grateful for astronauts who realize their power to teach and inspire. Finally, I grateful to work in MBUSD, where we are so fully committed to pursuing teaching excellence to inspire and support all of our students.

To see the entire experience, click here. The actual conversation experience begins at the 28-minute mark.

March 31, 2017

I have written to you several times this year about our progress towards our Board goal of creating a culture of inclusion in our school district.  I have witnessed powerful events in our schools, led by students, parents, and employees, that celebrated inclusion and discussed its importance in our community.  Some of those events include:

• MBEF sponsored Inclusion Grants for the first time ever.  This effort was one of the positive results of the horrific fire-bombing of the Clinton house last fall.   They generously donated the unused reward fund to MBEF for this effort.  Students, parents, and employees applied and have done extremely positive things for our community.
• Facing History, a group devoted to addressing bias and helping teachers teach about issues of race, has spoken to all of our employees,  and had an in-depth workshop our middle school and high school history teachers.
• The Anti-Defamation League is working with some of our elementary teachers on addressing issues of inclusion and bias. 
• EMPact, a new community organization committed to helping Manhattan Beach become a more inclusive community, has developed a leadership group across all sectors of Manhattan Beach that will be a strong force for years to come.  MBUSD is proud to be part of the EMPact leadership team.
• We have had wonderful elementary school celebrations, where students are recognized for their acts of inclusion.
• MBMS is working with Dr. Brandon Gamble to discuss implicit and explicit bias and how to break the cycle with adults and students.
• The MBMS Student Multicultural Union has held several student – led events to celebrate diversity on campus. 
• There are many student clubs at Costa who have taken actions to promote inclusion, including the Black Scholars Union, the Gay Straight Alliance Club, the Jewish Cultural Club, the Latino Students Union, Friendship Circle, TEAM COSTA, and many more.  The Mira Costa H.E.A.R.T. program also promotes inclusion in a variety of ways.

But our work is not done.  In fact, I am sad to report that over the last few months, there has actually been an increase in reporting of name-calling, taunts, and slurs.  This is particularly true at the middle school level.   I am hearing this from school administrators, parents, and religious leaders.  While we take disciplinary action, educate students on the impact and meaning of their words, and contact parents when this occurs, I want us to be more than just reactive.  This is not who we are in the MBUSD community, and I want all of us to stand up and help make MBUSD a true place of inclusion.

We need to make it clear that our schools are safe places where all are welcome, and where hateful, derogatory, divisive, and discriminatory words and actions are not tolerated.  We need to say this out loud in our conversations at schools, in the classrooms, and at home.  Students listen.  If respect for and appreciation of differences are what they hear and what they see modeled at home and at school, they will learn.

One of the national safety mantras we hear a lot is “See something.  Say something.”  We have to make it clear to all students that being inclusive requires us all to say something when we see incidents of exclusion and discrimination. We cannot be bystanders; it is critical to report hateful words and actions.  It can be to a parent, teacher, counselor, or administrator.  It can be to our anonymous WE-TIP hotline (via phone at 1.800.782.7643 or via the web), or it can be to one of our two MBPD School Resource Officers or other peace officers. This is a great conversation to have with our children.  

As a parent, I try very hard to have regular conversations with my younger son about drug and alcohol abuse, safety, and kindness and respect for all others.  When I hear about a discriminatory event on the news, I bring it up to him.  I take full advantage of talking about these issues in our trips in the car together because there is no escaping the conversation!  I am now infusing the “See something. Say something,” mantra into our conversations.  And I’m not just talking about things that happen to him.  If he witnesses injustice or intolerance to others, I want him to say something to someone.  Doing nothing cannot be an option.  One of the simple non-confrontational actions our children can take is to reach out to someone who is targeted and just say hello or that they care about them.  There are so many ways to not be a bystander.

I hope you join me in talking with your children regularly about these issues.  We will continue to have conversations with our staff about how we can be of service to our students.  Together, we can work together and every day, make MBUSD a true place of inclusion.

Mike Matthews

Students in Manhattan Beach are some of the highest achieving students in the nation.  They graduate at an extraordinarily high rate and go to fantastic colleges and/or careers around the nation.  But we have seen warning signs that indicate stress levels are higher than ever before.  MBUSD is a proud member of the 21^st Century Superintendents’ Consortium, comprised of similar high performing districts throughout the United States: Palo Alto, Austin, Dallas, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Omaha.  These districts share the same concern about student stress. And we are all trying to do something about it.

Several Consortium districts, including MBUSD, have joined Challenge Success, a Stanford-based research group looking to partner with schools to help students develop skills to help them lead balanced, successful lives.  We have a committed team of high school teachers, students, parents, administrators, and board members who have been working with Challenge Success to help our high school students.  Rather than look for quick solutions, we are taking time to try to make sure everyone knows what it’s like to be a student these days.  Teachers and counselors are listening closely to our students, and we are more aware than ever.  One of the ways that we are trying to better understand our students is by shadowing them for an entire day.  We picked 30 students to shadow.  Parents, teachers, counselors, and administrators are paired with these students.  Each adult meets a student before she or he enters his first class, and stays by the side of that student throughout the day.

This week, I shadowed a junior student at Mira Costa High School, and I had a spectacular day.  Here are some of my observations from the day.

• The student I shadowed began his day at 7 AM in Advanced Placement statistics. I arrived 4 minutes early, and he was waiting for me at the door. I shadowed my student from 7 AM until 2:15 PM, when he went to a 3-hour soccer practice. In that 10-hour-plus period, there was not a single moment of downtime. He reported that after school, he had dinner with his family, did his homework, and did not get to bed until 1:30 AM.  Then it was back to a 7 AM class the next day.  5 hours of sleep is not enough.
• The student I shadowed genuinely likes school. He has good friends, and he smiled throughout the day. He is comfortable with adults and speaks extraordinarily well and with ease.
• For the most part, the time spent in the classes was split with a healthy balance of listening/learning/note-taking and active speaking and collaborating in the classroom. Most classes had moderate to very high levels of student engagement and talk during the lesson.
• My student takes three AP classes. Taking three college level courses in one semester is a heavy load. Mira Costa currently limits AP classes at four. I think we should continue to examine whether three or four is the right number as a max AP load for our students.
• He received three tests back on the day I shadowed. He took all of those tests on Tuesday (two days prior to my shadow day).  In his words, “Tuesday was a brutal day.”  Three tests in one day is not what we are looking for if we want to reduce student stress. Students really appreciate it when there are no more than two departments testing or having projects due on one day.  We are in our first year of that effort, and I encourage us to do a better job of making that happen for our students.
• I thought the overall quality of teaching was very high. My student’s teachers know him well, and seemed to know all of the students in the class well.  Expectations are high in his classes, and there was a lot of time for wondering, questioning, creativity, collaboration, and interaction.
• With the exception of one class, technology was not used much as a tool by students. I don’t really understand that, but it is real.
• The student I shadowed is a choir student and a soccer athlete. Both of those activities are a great part of his day.  He is clearly passionate about both.  He spent his lunch at a choir club, then practicing with a men’s a cappella group.  The three hours of soccer practice speaks for itself.  I’ve always believed that if a student has just one part of her or his day that she/he looks forward to every day, the high school experience will be a positive one.

The next step is to work with Challenge Success to compile data from all 30 of these shadow days and report back to Mira Costa’s Social Emotional Wellness Committee.  The Committee can then discuss what we learned, and then look at actions we can take to help our students be increasingly healthy in their high school years and beyond.

Twice a year, the superintendents and curriculum leaders from seven high-performing districts across the western United States meet to learn from each other and local experts.  One of our themes has been how schools can help students develop into healthy, happy, thinking, and self-reliant adults ready to contribute to our society.   We have worked with brain researchers, corporate leaders, and education researchers to help us develop policies and practices consistent with best practices and research.

On our most recent trip to Palo Alto, we heard from Stanford researchers coming at us from different angles on how to help students.  Denise Pope as well as teachers in the Stanford Design School spoke about best instructional practices, while Julie Lythcott-Haims helped us to understand best parenting practices.   I’m going to focus on parenting for this blog post.

Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of How to Raise an Adult; Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kids for Success (2015), has seen the deterioration of self-efficacy among students in one our nation’s most selective universities.  While first-generation college students and students from less affluent homes continue to have high skills in the area of self-efficacy, those from more affluent homes do not.  One of the primary reasons, says Lythcott-Haims, is that parents just do too much for their children, and they do not let their children do enough for themselves.

Julie Lythcott-Haims

All of us in the Consortium believe this is a message worth spreading. We are talking in depth right now about the concept of self-efficacy – described by Lythcott-Haims as believing in your ability (not your parents) to complete tasks, attain goals, and manage challenging situations.

• Should avoid refereeing our child’s conflicts
• Should avoid chauffeuring our children.  (Walking and biking are fantastic!) (I think this is a tough one)
• Should not bring a forgotten item to our child.
• Should never do our child’s homework.
• Should give our child chores that make the household better.
• Should not chart our child’s life.  There is no such thing as “my child has to . . .”
• Have a wide mindset about colleges.  The counseling department at New Trier HS urges, “College is a match to be made, not a prize to be won.”
• Listen to our kids.  Really listen.
• Encourage our kids to have free time/play time/unstructured time
• Lets our children see us enjoying free time/play time/unstructured time
• Don’t stress self esteem for our child; emphasize self-efficacy.
• See if our children can experience “flow.”
• Encourage thinking at home
• Encourage deep and persistent thinking at home
• Let kids speak up for themselves
• Let our children experience mistakes, failures, and curve balls.

One of my favorite moments came while Lythcott-Haims was speaking to all of us in a very public room at Palo Alto High School.  Students passing by stopped to listen, and they stayed because her message resonated with them.  Several students asked if there was any way that Lythcott-Haims could speak with their parents, because they would love their parents to hear her advice.  It was perfect.

Since I have returned from hearing her speak and subsequently reading her book, I have already changed a few things about how I communicate and interact with my 13-year old son.   If he doesn’t like it now, he certainly will later on!  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  I’m happy to be continuously learning about how to be the best parent possible.

This is a speech I gave to our honors students and their parents in the fall of 2015.

The 21^st Century Superintendents’ Consortium is a group of seven high performing school districts across the United States seeking to learn from each other, from current research, and from schools around the nation. 

 We are thinking a lot about students like you these days. 

 Who do I mean when I say “students like you?”

• Amazing Young Women and Men
• Intelligent
• Hard Working
• Passionate
• Achieving
• Extracurricular Excellence
• Destined for Greatness
• In short, it could be any student at our school.

 And if you are like most students like you, you are . . .  Stressed

 We’ve done surveys – you have told us that you are stressed.  The biggest reason – College admissions.  Second biggest – Parents.  Third – Teachers

 We’re trying to figure out what we can do to make it easier on you.  Not easy, but easier on you.  Your principal, counselors, teachers, and the Board of Education are all talking about what we can do.

 But college admissions is still the biggest stress you have.

 Let me promise you this: If you do this well throughout high school, you will get into a very good university that will give you all that a college can give you to be highly successful in life.  

 Our goal here at MBUSD is not just to get you into a great college.  It is, along with your parents, to give you all we can to be successful in life.  We want you to be able to provide for yourself or a family doing something you love to do.  We want you to have great friends and an amazing family, all of whom you can support and who can support you throughout your life.    

 And where you go to college determines very little of that.

 I know so many students who were excellent students in high school, and have become highly successful as adults.  They graduated from all kinds of colleges, and many started in community college. The CEOs of our biggest companies come from Harvard and Stanford, but they also come from San Diego State, Minnesota, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, North Carolina and many more.  The name of college will not define your future.

 But remember what I said first.  These successful men and women had great habits in high school.  They maximized their intelligence.  They were hard working. They had great friends.  They had the tools they needed to be successful at the next level.  

 Need more convincing? Just look at Google’s Lazslo Bock: “It’s one of the flaws in how we assess people,” Bock said. “We assume that if you went to Harvard, Stanford or MIT that you are smart. We assume that if you got good grades you will do well at work… There is no relationship between where you went to school and how you did five, 10, 15 years into your career. So, we stopped looking at it.”

 You have shown us that you are high achieving.  That’s why you are here.  Congratulations.  We are so proud of you.  But I hope you find the time in high school to figure out who you are and what your interests really are.   I hope that you are finding the time to pursue the things that you know you love, to pursue the activities that define who you are, and to pursue the friendships that make life so wonderful.  And I hope you know that if you do that, you have a great deal of control over your own destiny.  No college admissions officer can take that away from you.  You are smart, you are doing what you love to do, and you will go to a place that wants you to be there.

 From Frank Bruni – Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be

Dear Matt, On the night before you receive your first college response, we wanted to let you know that we could not be any prouder of you than we are today. Whether or not you get accepted does not determine how proud we are of everything you have accomplished and the wonderful person you have become. That will not change based on what admissions officers decide about your future. We will celebrate with joy wherever you get accepted—and the happier you are with those responses, the happier we will be. But your worth as a person, a student and our son is not diminished or influenced in the least by what these colleges have decided. If it does not go your way, you’ll take a different route to get where you want. There is not a single college in this country that would not be lucky to have you, and you are capable of succeeding at any of them. We love you as deep as the ocean, as high as the sky, all the way around the world and back again—and to wherever you are headed. Mom and Dad

Keep doing great things.  Find and pursue what you love to do.   The rest of it will work itself out.

Congratulations to all of you.

Last week in MBUSD, over 500 people from around Los Angeles came to MBMS to participate in an all-day workshop featuring Dr. Jo Boaler, a world renowned professor of mathematics at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. We cohosted the conference with UCLA. All MBUSD secondary math teachers attended, and many of our elementary teachers participated as well. The thoughts of the day provide an excellent framework for the work we are doing in mathematics curriculum and instruction in MBUSD.

A major focus of teaching and learning in MBUSD has been around moving away from lecture as a primary teaching tool, and moving towards students being active in their learning. Teachers are transitioning their role from the “sage on the stage” to that of the “guide on the side,” working to coach, inspire, and support our students. This has been true in our implementation of Writers’ Workshop and Readers’ Workshop. This is also the essence of the Common Core Standards and the new Next Generation Science Standards that are coming out.  We are committed to aligning research in best practice to all of our classrooms. We want less memorization from our students, and more skills such as analysis, problem-solving, writing, presenting, and creating.

Every one of Dr. Boaler’s ideas has been researched and observed. Here are some of the messages that she stresses:

• Everyone can be successful at math, from elementary to high school.
• We urgently need to shift teachers’, parents’, and students’ ideas about who can achieve in mathematics.
• Parents who tell their children, “When I was in school, I wasn’t good in math either,” are doing way more harm than good!
• The lowest achieving students are memorizers. The highest achieving students think of big ideas and connections. America has more memorizers than most countries in the world.
• Formulas are great, but if you can’t explain or visualize them, you may not really understand the math behind them.
• Brains grow when they are worked. People can become more (or less) intelligent based on increased (or decreased) use of the brain.
• Rapidity does NOT have a precise relationship to intelligence.

In MBUSD, we are transforming our mathematics program through two major changes:

1. Implementing shifts in mathematics curriculum and instruction, and
2. Math courses and pathways. Let’s focus first on how we are teaching math.

CHANGES IN HOW WE WILL BE TEACHING MATHEMATICS

Here is how I learned math in high school.

• Memorize your basic math facts.
• Memorize key formulas.
• Practice them on the homework.
• Use them to do well on the test.

Using those skills today, I am still able to approximate square roots to the nearest hundredth, recite the quadratic formula, integrate simple equations, and compute areas of many traditional and obscure figures.  But I would never say that I truly understood math. In fact, after learning so much about math teaching and learning in the last three years, I understand math better now than I did as an almost math major in college (that’s another story).

I’m not going to go over all of the 8 Standards for Mathematical Practice (SMP), but let me discuss a few, which will show how different math teaching and learning are from just a few years ago.

SMP #1: Make Sense of Problems and Persevere in Solving Them

In my day, we did problems 1-39 odd. Today, we are moving towards classrooms where an entire class period may focus on one highly complex, multi-step problem. Students have to understand so much to do this, and at first, it is intimidating. In my day, collaboration was called cheating. Today, collaboration is a great way to solve problems together. Students will make mistakes.  Instead of just being wrong, students now learn from their mistakes, and go back to work on solving the problem. Oh by the way, in a good problem, there are multiple ways of getting to the correct answer. We celebrate different ways of getting it right.

SMP #3: Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others

In my day, math was a pretty isolated and independent activity. You listened to the teacher, then you did you work. You learned later if your work was right or wrong. Today, we want our students to be looking at each other’s ideas and work, and actually talk about it. We want our students to use math vocabulary, review different solutions, and converse about what seems right, what is a good solution, and what does not work. Just as students discuss a short story or a historical event, they should be talking about math problems.

SMP #6: Attend to precision.

I have had a few people tell me they don’t like the new math standards because there is no right answer. Ummm, no, that’s not true. There is a right answer. There may be no wrong way of arriving at that answer, and we encourage multiple ways. But precision in math is still important: precision in the answer, in the terms you use, and in how you check your work.

CHANGES IN MATHEMATICS PATHWAYS

There are several goals in the new state math standards:

• Fewer standards that are taught in more depth
• All math pathways are geared to make students college ready

With that in mind, we have created two math pathways for our students, both designed to help our students to be prepared for college application and admission. Beginning next year, students in grades K – 6 will all take the same grade level math courses. This is nothing new for grades K-5, but it is new for grade 6. There will be GATE clusters in some of our Math 1 courses (6^th Grade Math), but all students will be taught using the same standards. These new math pathways will be phased in over the next three years, beginning with next year’s 6^th grade class at MBMS.

Then, in the 2017-18 year, beginning in grade 7, there will be two pathways. Both pathways can lead to students taking AP Calculus, AP Statistics, or other math classes well above the Algebra 2 requirement for college admission.

• Students in the regular pathway will take Math 2 in 7^thgrade, Math 3 in 8^th grade, Algebra 1 in 9^th grade, Geometry in 10^th grade, and Algebra 2 or a higher option in 11^th and 12^th grades. Students can reach AP Calculus AB (1^st semester college calculus) in this pathway.
• Students in the accelerated pathway can take Math 2 and 3 in 7^th grade (1 course, with two years of content), Algebra 1 in 8^th grade, and can end up taking Calculus BC (2^nd semester college calculus) as a senior.

The biggest change here is that, beginning with next year’s 6^th grade class, Algebra 1 is the highest course our students will take in middle school. Our math teachers and math researchers such as Jo Boaler believe that we have rushed this in the past. Algebra 1 is designated as a 9^th grade course by the California Department of Education (CDE). The CDE also cautions against accelerating students in math prior to 10^th grade. However, our analysis of MBUSD student performance data indicates that we have had many students take Algebra 1 in 8^th grade and go onto further math success, but less than two percent have similar success when taking Geometry in 8^th grade. This recent research and analysis of student learning make us believe that both Math 3 and Algebra 1 are excellent destinations for our 8^th graders. Nearly all of the comparable high performing districts have made this same change.

Our biggest challenge remaining is to further reduce the breadth of material in our middle school and high school math classes. In my mind, these classes still have way too many standards to teach, therefore we rush through them, and when we rush, it is impossible to use high quality teaching techniques. I am pushing to have our math teachers teach just 8 to 10 big ideas during a math year, and go into significant depth on those topics.

So we have made many changes, all designed to help our students deeply understand mathematics through a balanced approach to math learning that stresses procedural fluency, application, and conceptual learning. We have course changes happening next year which should further help that goal. And we are working on changing our courses in high school, so our teachers are more able to truly teach math concepts, and not have to rush through them.

I am grateful for our teachers who have worked so hard to improve their teaching every day. It’s what our students deserve, and I am appreciative of their efforts. I thank Dr. Brett Geithman and Dr. Chad Mabery for leading so many parent workshops in math. I thank all of the parents who have given us so much input in this process. And I thank the Board for adopting courses and pathways that I believe are best for students.

Onward!

• I remember coming into a country store around lunch time looking for a sandwich.  The store didn’t sell sandwiches, just groceries.  But the owner opened up a loaf of bread and a package of bologna and a bottle of mustard, and charged us for the portion that she used.  Pretty cool.
• Our family of six (four kids – ages 16 to 11) went biking for three weeks in Ireland, camping half the time and staying in B&Bs half the time.  It was a lifetime experience that warrants its own set of stories.
• The last time I took a big trip with my Dad was about 20 years ago, when the two of us went biking in the San Juan Islands.  It was a fantastic trip where we camped the entire time.  Once again, my Dad was in better shape than I, but he dragged me along.  That’s us below.