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Implementing Skills-Based Instruction - Reflections and Challenges

As I transitioned into Wooster and my new role as a Bridge Instructor, one of my initial goals was to better understand how Wooster’s educators plan and then deliver skills-based instruction to students. In light of a shift to mastery-based instruction and planning, and in talking with educators in the community and at Wooster, it seems there is a cognitive struggle with how to align free form, inquiry-based project learning with targeted skills-based instruction and assessment.

This struggle is a familiar place for me. Having experienced a similar shift in instructional practice as a general classroom 9th and 10th grade History teacher at my previous school several years ago, I thought it might be beneficial to share a short list of my biggest strides and continual struggles with this shift.

1) I did not have to tear up my curriculum

For the first few months of teacher training into skills-based instruction, it seemed like I was being asked to throw away all of my curriculum and content resources I had gathered and treasured. I thought I was being told that the selection of what content of History was no longer important, and that the only thing I should be assessing was the growth and progression of reading and writing skills within the History discipline.

What I eventually discovered was that the content was not disappearing from my lessons. The selected content simply acted as a vehicle for students to grow in the skill. They were still learning content, and in fact, they were learning it in a more meaningful way. Instead of me presenting content and having student’s perform a skill on it, I began teaching a skill my students could work with the content. The process became more organic. And best of all, students were arming themselves with the skills and dispositions that would allow them to become self-learners of whatever History content they may be asked to learn in the future. They were no longer learning History, they were learning how to be historians.

The day to day change of instruction became easier, but the overall curricular design became too jagged to plan. If content was just the vehicle for driving the historical car, I couldn’t let one student pick a truck to drive and another one a go-kart. So I had to begin thinking about how exactly these two ideas can co-exist.

2) Grading skills-based instruction through a growth mindset

I’ve personally felt and become frustrated by my struggles with the following thoughts: “shift to skills-based instruction will make grades meaningless!”, “There will be no more benchmarks for success” and “how do I uniformly assess personalized learning?”

For me, the answer came in tracking student progress through a Skillbook rather than a Gradebook. This is similar to the AltSchool work that the Science department have undertaken. Then, after a long struggle with how to transfer this into grades, I decided to solely rely on a student’s growth when determining their report card grade. I figured that I wanted to be assessing one’s ability to learn and how much they learned based on how they came to me. Most of my rationale behind this decision was that it would motivate the learners who had never experienced any academic success before, and “flip the script” for them. I had no idea if I was right or wrong.

At a recent Open House, Matt Byrnes noted to parents that one indicator companies look for in prospective employees is not if they know how to do the job, but if they can learn how to do the job. This resonated deeply with me. From a backwards design standpoint, if the ability to learn is what employers look for in job candidates, then all schools, universities to Pre-K, should be teaching people how to learn. When it comes time to present grades to colleges to indicate who the best students are, we should, at least in part, present those who have proven the ability to learn the most, and solely who knows the most.

3) Teaching students habits and dispositions of independent learning - using skills-based pedagogy

Every human has pet peeves. Put any group of teachers in a room and they could all list the moments that tests the last nerve of patience. Sadly, being humans ourselves, there must be a certain straw in our future that breaks our back (if it has not already happened to you before in front of a classroom, just come find me and I’ll tell you some stories!). My biggest pet peeve was (and still often is) when students ask me the date. Everytime this happens, some small piece of me thinks, “You mean to tell me that the time I spend the afternoon before preparing the board for today’s lesson means nothing to you!”

The shift to teaching students how to learn made me realize what I can do to make it so this silly little trigger does not result my final straw around this pet peeve. Now, I simply say outloud what the student’s internal voice should be saying. I simply say, “How can I find out the date if I don’t know it?” If the issue is too elementary or I fear sounding too condescending, I make it a private conversation. How many of us feel the same way when a student says “I don’t know what to do” after not reading the assignment? One can patch a bandaid on it by answering (and I’m sure sometimes answering in order to keep the momentum going is worth it as well), but one should also be aware of consequently developing learned helplessness.

I don’t believe I would have ever developed this style without my shift from teaching to teaching how to learn. And now, at Wooster, it makes sense! I hear from folks all the time, “What do I do when I don’t know what to do?” If students can prompt themselves into that metacognitive thought, they can begin developing habits and dispositions of independent learners.

4) Scaffolded Challenges for All

I couldn’t figure out which skills to target, which texts to choose, and which format for assignments and projects would provide the same level of challenge for all learners. If I wanted to grade growth, every student would need to have the same opportunity for growth.

I decided to choose texts that were anywhere from 1.5-2.5 Grade Levels ahead of where each student was. That meant finding a way to have passages that delivered the same content and material while ranging the accessibility to the text. Readworks.org and Rewordify.com became staples on my bookmark page to help solve this, although I was unable to solve the riddle regarding higher level discipline specific courses. There is a limit to how much lower you can make a Biology text about a complex topic without losing meaning.

For scaffolding skills, I tracked the frequency of students ability to perform the skill with different levels of adult supervision and self-help resources. Also, I found ways to see if the student could transfer the skill to other applications, or sometimes even if they could theorize how one might transfer the skill or how the skill might help in other situations. This allowed those who struggled with performing the skill itself to shine as metacognitive thinkers.

5) Skills-based instruction doesn’t have to be absolute

When I first underwent the transition, I thought my teaching career would be flipped on its head. It seemed like I was being told that the way I had been taught to teach was wrong and moving forward I would be asked to do the opposite of what I knew and was comfortable with. It felt like skills-based instruction was a collapsing box that would crush my passion for the craft of teaching.

A recent chapel session featured a video of a Steve Jobs giving a commencement speech where he talked about reflection. We can only make sense of our experience once we can move forward and connect the dots.

Looking back, I see both sides. Sure, the change was uncomfortable at times. But it was not the absolute change I thought it would be. My biggest learning from the transition was that I was able to identify what exactly needed to be taught to students and then deliver that instruction so they could be successful with the content. Yet, I still worried about my own role in shaping that role for students.

What I came to realize was that somebody at one point trusted me to do the job I was assigned to do. That meant they trusted my skills, my ability to adapt and grow, and my integrity as an educator. They trusted that I would do what I felt best in my professional judgement. I could still hone my style and craft around what I thought the student’s needed most. Personally, I could still find intellectual curiosity in the subject I was teaching which was often spurred on by the students interaction with the content.. Professionally, I found an area of growth in my own practice as an instructor.

Most importantly, having undertaken a difficult transition which seemed impossible at the beginning and now tackling new challenges that are being presented, I can truly model what it means to be a lifelong learner.

~ Cameron Swallen
Wooster School Bridge Program Teacher