Rigor: You'll know it when you see It

RIGOR: You’ll know it when you see it

If you’ve had your fair share of Baltimore City Schools professional development this year, you’ve likely heard about the three big “do’s” from the office of Teaching and Learning this year: Rigor, Engagement, and Intervention.  These are the things that central office will be looking for on classroom visits.  And while professional development coordinators seem all too willing to address engagement through multiple intelligences and technology, or intervention, through data analysis, I seem to get nearly the same response from professional development coordinators when I ask what rigor is.  The answer is usually the same: “It looks different in every classroom” or – my personal favorite – “you’ll know when you see it.”

I do not disagree with either of these statements.  Rigor can look different depending on the content, the background knowledge of the students, and the repertoire of teaching strategies the teacher has at their disposal.  I also have seen the elusive rigor a handful of times, when my students begin answering – and asking – questions that are ten steps removed from where we started instruction.  But how can it be that the very thing that needs to be readily apparent in classrooms is so tough to even define?   And how can new teachers possibly develop the capabilities necessary to incorporate rigor into their classrooms with no measurable definition or goal?

In my attempt to define what rigor is and how to incorporate it into the classroom, I did a bit of research:

In Strong, Silver and Perini’s book Teaching What Matters Most: Standards and Strategies for Raising Student Achievement, the authors argue that rigor is getting students to “understand content that is complex, ambiguous, provocative, and personally or emotionally challenging.”  This means that what is important is what you teach rather than how you teach.

Others, including author of Teach Like a Champion, Doug Lemov, seems to believe the opposite – that rigor is in how you teach new material and the strategies that you use to engage students.  This includes getting students to answer questions using complete sentences or requiring the correct (“right is right”) answer one hundred percent of the time.

My own definition spans both of these: rigor is both in what you teach and how you get there.  Rigor can be enhancing the understanding the importance of concepts that you teach and how they manifest themselves in the real world.  Rigor is also in the approach to understanding – how you question students or lead them to the discovery. 

In their introduction of the 2010 Master Plan for “Rigor, Engagement, and Intervention”, Baltimore City included a power point slide for rigor, which included the following action plan:

“Develop a common set of expectation for what rigorous teaching and learning in all classrooms across the district through development of a deep understanding of the Common Core Standards”, and called for a realignment of curricular materials to the common core standards. It also called for:

1. Principal Development –training and support around leadership actions that transform principals from transactional leaders to strategic leaders

2. Teacher Development –training and support in the content areas and research-based teaching strategies

3. Re-Alignment of curriculum materials and assessments

(Source: BCPS Master Plan 2010)

I think that this is a sufficient start – but simply that: a start.  An even more aligned curriculum and some new teaching strategies.  A principal that is a pedagogical leader as well as a “transactional” one.  Good ideas, I think.  But not concrete enough to implement on the classroom level. 

So until I have a more refined definition of rigor, I’ll keep using my own, hoping that when central office steps into my classroom “they’ll know it when they see it.”

lower drop out rates and increased graduation rates for Baltimore City

The recent statistics for the increased graduation rate and lowered drop out rates in Baltimore city caught my attention. I was very impressed with the shear numbers. A 59% decrease in drop out for African American males is quite impressive. I was very excited and definitely shared in the pride of the city. However part of the article discusses that these higher rates are going to translate into more college going males and thus better job opportunities for African American males. While I believe that this is definitely a great first step, I am somewhat skeptical of reaching these goals immediately. While I do believe in the important steps being made I think there is often confusion with being in school and learning. I used to have a poster on my wall as a kid that jokingly had Garfield saying learning through osmosis. Unfortunately that is not actually how kids learn. Most of the students I teach are far behind grade level and it seems to me that even those that manage to graduate are not ready for college. I think we focus a lot on how kids learn (which is obviously important) but not as much on what kids learn. At a recent PD I went to we had a discussion about technology. One teacher pointed out that in the 4 years it takes to graduate high school most of the technology they will have learned will be outdated. That teacher continued to point out that our goal should be to make sure that students are equipped to learn on their own rather than just learning content. That has been an idea that stuck with me and something that I would really like to explore. Is it really important if a student knows the difference between a dictatorship and an oligarchy or is it more important if they can write a coherent letter to their congressman describing a problem they face. I guess I am asking us to think about what we teach our students and if it is the actual knowledge that will help them succeed in life or just a series of content that we are told we mus teach?