Flexibility and the Myth of Average

The End of Average

>> Welcome to 5 Moore Minutes. Helpful videos in five minutes or less that support the teaching and learning of all students. I'm your host, Shelley Moore and this episode is, The End of Average. Music.

Today, I have to give a really big shout out to Todd Rose because our episode is based around a story that he tells in his book, The End of Average. Go buy this book. Go read this book. This book totally helped me understand not only my own tumultuous experience in school but also my understanding of how to approach curriculum as a teacher. Because what I realized after reading this book is that the idea of should is a direct connection to the concept of average in our ongoing fight against the green. Todd Rose talks about average in the book and actually mentions it as being a very useful concept when comparing large groups of one dimension. Like, for example, if you're comparing the height of a Canadian and comparing that to the average height of an American. That's a great use of average. Big sample size comparing one dimension. Education, however, isn't that simple. First of all, we're not comparing groups to each other; we're comparing individuals to a group. Second, those individuals that we’re comparing are not one dimensional. People are not just height. Not even paper is one dimensional.

To prove this point further, Todd Rose tells a story about airplanes. In the 1950s, fighter jet pilots, they weren’t performing well and some were even getting injured in their cockpits because they were getting jostled around a little bit. They weren’t able to reach for the controls effectively to help them make those split second decisions needed to operate a plane that’s flying like at a billion miles an hour. Something just had to be done. So a very smart Air Force researcher went and found 4000 pilots and took their measurements; the length of their arms and their legs, the width of their hips and their shoulders. Ten dimensions in total to try and use that data to design a better cockpit for the pilots. Now in the age of standardization, we could simply just average these measurements and design a perfectly standardized plane. Most people are average, right? Well, you tell me. How many of those 4000 pilots do you think would fit into an average plane? Just give me a ballpark. Zero. None. Nada. Not one of those pilots could fit because not one of those 4000 pilots had the exact combination of all the measurements in every dimension. The average plane was being designed for a mythical green pilot.

Now another solution might be to use those measurements and design custom made individualized planes for every pilot. That would totally work. It just might not be the most cost-effective option though. Okay. So what we do? One individualized plane for every pilot won't work and one standardized plane for all pilots also isn't working. Is there another option? Well, that very smart researcher realized the solution. It wasn't the average measurements of the dimensions that was needed to design the plane, it was the range of dimensions. Because, using a range, the planes could become adjustable. How many pilots can fit into a plane that's adjustable? Every single one. It's the reason why we have adjustable seats in our cars. Because you can't just chop off someone's legs if they're too tall. It's so messy.

Okay. Now let's think about this in terms of curriculum. For years and years and years, we have been struggling with exactly the same problem. We've been trying to fit students into a standardized curricular plane. The error though is in the assumption in both of these scenarios is that the plane or the curriculum is static and that it's the pilots and the students that are malleable. The reality is, is that no one actually fits. We have designed curriculum for mythical green students based on averages of multidimensional people. Now, just like a plane, it's not cost-effective or efficient to design individualized, custom made curriculum for every individual student. But we're also realizing that it's also impossible to have one standardized curriculum for every individual student. It is quite the dilemma. But what if we approached it in the same way? What if we stopped looking at the average and instead started to look at the range of our learners? What are their dimensions? But not in terms of what's missing but instead, what do they bring? What are their stories? What are their histories? Or as my good friend Layton calls it, their funds of knowledge. How do we find out and use what our students bring in all of their dimensions? And design a curriculum that's adjustable just for them. This type of curriculum would allow all students to be successful. Every single one.

But here's the kicker. In this part, this part really got me. I was thinking about this one day and I was imagining a pilot like, crawling into an adjustable plane. And I asked myself, who's making these adjustments? And then it hit me. The pilot. The pilot is making the adjustments. And then when I started thinking about my own students and I realized, wait a second. Who’s making the adjustments for them? It wasn’t—it wasn’t them. It was me. I was making the adjustments. The teacher. You know, we talk all the time about growth mindset and student agency, self regulation of learning and I realize that this is it. This is what we're talking about. How do we teach students to make the adjustments that they need so that they can fly the plane? We have been so focused on trying to get students to fit into the plane that we've totally forgotten that fitting into the plane isn’t even the goal. The goal is to fly it. To fly the plane. It's our job to teach them how to make the adjustments that they need. Once they figure that out, they can take that plane wherever they want.

So this my friends is our job. How do we design an adjustable plane? How do we make curriculum responsive to our specific group of learners? There could be a billion answers to those questions. I'll leave you with this. What are you already doing? How are you already getting to know your learners, making adjustable curriculum, finding success for every single learner? This is the question I'll leave you with today. But then I'll say, are you ready to see the end of average?

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