be more important than involvement and coming to school by parents is whether parents provide insistence, expectations, and support at home. Perhaps we need to rethink the focus of parent training.
In conclusion, as we adapt and flex our instruction to meet the needs of these students, cognitive strategies and support need to be integrated with insistence and expectations.
INSISTENCE EXPECTATIONS SUPPORT
WHAT DOES THIS INFORMATION MEAN IN THE SCHOOL OR WORK SETTING?
? The focus in schools should be on learning.
? Instruction in the cognitive strategies should be a part of the curriculum.
a Staff development should focus on a diagnostic approach rather than a programmatic approach.
• Efforts to promote learning should pay greater heed to what is in the student's head.
• Insistence, expectations, and support need to be guiding lights in our decisions about instruction.
CHAPTER 9
Creating Relationships
Locate a resilient kid and you will also find a caring adultor several-who has guided him.
- Invincible Kids, U.S. News & World Report
he key to achievement for students from poverty is in creating relationships with them. Because poverty is about relationships as well as entertainment, the most significant motivator for these students is relationships.
The question becomes, How does a formal institution create relationships? Two sources provide some answers to this question. These sources are (i) the recent research in the field of science and (2) the work Stephen Covey has done with personal effectiveness.
Margaret Wheatley, in her book Leadership and the New Science (1992), states quite clearly:
Scientists in many different disciplines are questioning whether we can adequately explain how the world works by using the machine imagery created in the 17th century, most notably by Sir Isaac Newton. In the machine model, one must understand parts. Things can be taken apart, dissected literally or representationally ... and then put back together without any significant loss ... The Newtonian model of the world is characterized by materialism and reductionism-a focus on things rather than relationships ... The quantum view of reality strikes against most of our notions of reality. Even to scientists, it is admittedly bizarre. But it is a world where relationship is the key determiner of what is observed and of how particles manifest themselves ... Many scientists now work with the concept offields-invisible forces that structure space or behavior (pp. 8-13).
Wheatley goes on to say that, in the new science of quantum physics, physical reality is not just tangible, it is also intangible. Fields are invisible, yet:
[They are the] substance of the universe ... In organizations, which is the more important influence on behavior-the system or the individual? The quantum world answered that question: It depends ... What is critical is the relationship created between the person and the setting. That relationship will always be different, will always evoke different potentialities. It all depends on the players and the moment (pp. 34-35).
Teachers and administrators have always known that relationships, often referred to as "politics," make a great deal of difference-sometimes all of the difference-in what could or could not happen in a building. But since 198o we have concentrated our energies in schools on "achievement" and "effective teaching strategies." We used the Newtonian approach to teaching, dissecting it into parts. Yet the most important part of learning seems to be related to relationship, if we listen to the data and the potent realities in the research emerging from the disciplines of biology and physics.
When students who have been in poverty (and have successfully made it into middle class) are asked how they made the journey, the answer nine times out of to has to do with a relationship-a teacher, counselor, or coach who made a suggestion or took an interest in them as individuals.
Covey (1989) uses
In conclusion, as we adapt and flex our instruction to meet the needs of these students, cognitive strategies and support need to be integrated with insistence and expectations.
INSISTENCE EXPECTATIONS SUPPORT
WHAT DOES THIS INFORMATION MEAN IN THE SCHOOL OR WORK SETTING?
? The focus in schools should be on learning.
? Instruction in the cognitive strategies should be a part of the curriculum.
a Staff development should focus on a diagnostic approach rather than a programmatic approach.
• Efforts to promote learning should pay greater heed to what is in the student's head.
• Insistence, expectations, and support need to be guiding lights in our decisions about instruction.
CHAPTER 9
Creating Relationships
Locate a resilient kid and you will also find a caring adultor several-who has guided him.
- Invincible Kids, U.S. News & World Report
he key to achievement for students from poverty is in creating relationships with them. Because poverty is about relationships as well as entertainment, the most significant motivator for these students is relationships.
The question becomes, How does a formal institution create relationships? Two sources provide some answers to this question. These sources are (i) the recent research in the field of science and (2) the work Stephen Covey has done with personal effectiveness.
Margaret Wheatley, in her book Leadership and the New Science (1992), states quite clearly:
Scientists in many different disciplines are questioning whether we can adequately explain how the world works by using the machine imagery created in the 17th century, most notably by Sir Isaac Newton. In the machine model, one must understand parts. Things can be taken apart, dissected literally or representationally ... and then put back together without any significant loss ... The Newtonian model of the world is characterized by materialism and reductionism-a focus on things rather than relationships ... The quantum view of reality strikes against most of our notions of reality. Even to scientists, it is admittedly bizarre. But it is a world where relationship is the key determiner of what is observed and of how particles manifest themselves ... Many scientists now work with the concept offields-invisible forces that structure space or behavior (pp. 8-13).
Wheatley goes on to say that, in the new science of quantum physics, physical reality is not just tangible, it is also intangible. Fields are invisible, yet:
[They are the] substance of the universe ... In organizations, which is the more important influence on behavior-the system or the individual? The quantum world answered that question: It depends ... What is critical is the relationship created between the person and the setting. That relationship will always be different, will always evoke different potentialities. It all depends on the players and the moment (pp. 34-35).
Teachers and administrators have always known that relationships, often referred to as "politics," make a great deal of difference-sometimes all of the difference-in what could or could not happen in a building. But since 198o we have concentrated our energies in schools on "achievement" and "effective teaching strategies." We used the Newtonian approach to teaching, dissecting it into parts. Yet the most important part of learning seems to be related to relationship, if we listen to the data and the potent realities in the research emerging from the disciplines of biology and physics.
When students who have been in poverty (and have successfully made it into middle class) are asked how they made the journey, the answer nine times out of to has to do with a relationship-a teacher, counselor, or coach who made a suggestion or took an interest in them as individuals.
Covey (1989) uses
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