It is our job as educators to take the “skip” out of kids. You know, skip, skipping, that part gallop, part dance, that step-hop step-hop thing all kids do when they are really happy. Happy kids skip. They skip across the grass. They skip down the sidewalk or anywhere else they happen to be when they are happy. However, in schools we can’t have happy kids skipping in hallways, classrooms, or cafeterias. It is dangerous, you know. Someone could get hurt. Skipping is only allowed at recess and gym – and only there in approved places at times approved by adults. Let’s also agree that we can’t have happy, skipping children all over the place in gym class or at recess – that, too, is dangerous, you know.
It is interesting that most kids’ favorite times of the day are recess and gym. I wonder if it’s because we haven’t completely taken the skip out of them there like we have taken it out of them the rest of the day. But, I digress. This essay is about happy, skipping kids and the best tools we have in education to take the skip out of them. It’s dangerous to allow happy, skipping kids, you know. We just agreed on that a minute ago.
There are a couple of modern, ultra-effective tools, programs actually, that are unbelievably effective at taking the skip out of kids. However, I want to stop and recognize the efforts and success of past generations of educators in taking the skip out of kids. Happy, skipping kids have been dangerous for decades, you know, and past educators were successful in taking the skip out of them. What research do I have to prove past successes? Here it is. Kids start school happy and skipping in kindergarten, and by 3rd grade we have successfully taken the skip out of half of them, the more stubborn ones make take until 5th, 6th, or even the real tough ones 7th grade. But by then, all kids have the skip taken out of them. The ones who refuse to have the skip taken out of them quit or become like Albert Einstein – either one unacceptable. Again, we want to thank these earlier educators for their efforts and congratulate them for their success; however, we also have to be honest and say that they didn’t do a good enough job. Third, through seventh grade is just too long to wait to get the skip out of kids. Why would we choose to allow happy skipping children contribute to dangerous schools if we could get the skip out of them much, much earlier and more effectively. Armed with the tools I am about to discuss, we can take the skip out of most kids by 1st grade, 2nd grade tops.
Those two tools are DIBELS and MIBLISI. “DIBELS” stands for Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills and MIBLiSI stands for Michigan's Integrated Behavior and Learning Support Initiative. Wonderful programs, which if implemented together are about as sure of a guarantee as one can get to eliminate happy, skipping kids. Remember, they are dangerous, you know.
DIBELS has two ingenious approaches. The first is to take perfectly normal kids, use “data” to classify them as abnormal, convince the parents and the children of their abnormalness, and reinforce this abnormalness by providing “resources” that only abnormal kids would need. It is obvious to see that this will go a long way all by itself to take the skip out of kids. More later about the powerful 1-2 punch of DIBELS combined with MIBLiSI.
The second way DIBELS takes the skip out of kids is how they treat all kids who can’t be stuffed into the “abnormal” category mentioned just previously. As educators we take these kids and convince them that their DIBELS success is based on what we educators did for them. Through praise, rewards, and the fear of being transferred to the “abnormal” group, we teach kids to be dependent on us, to see us as the reason for their success, not the children themselves and their God-given differences being the reasons for success. What we have successfully done is to take the intrinsic reward out of the picture and replace it with extrinsic rewards. If you are familiar with such terminology and research, it is a well know fact that people are happier when they do something they want to do versus doing something others want them to do. What we have successfully done with these children is to take something they wanted to do and make it something others want them to do. This makes them less happy, which allows us to take the skip out of them.
If happy, skipping kids were a good thing, then I would call what the DIBELS program does to kids “sinister.” Instead, since we can all agree that happy, skipping are dangerous – and that we must remove their skip – then the DIBELS program is simply “genius.” The basic tenant behind DIBLES is to completely ignore what every parent, or anyone who has spent a minimal amount of time around children, have know for hundreds of years. Each child is different. Each child has different gifts and each child develops at different rates. If you went into a room of twenty-five infants ranging in age from 9-14 months, you’d find an occasional 9 month old child who was walking and an occasional 14-month-old child who was yet to walk. We wouldn’t think about taking the earliest walkers and only allow them access to athletics in high school and take the later walkers, classify them, and never allow them to play athletics. It simply wouldn’t be tolerated.
Yet, this is what DIBELS does with “literacy” – meaning reading. If you are feeling uneasy about this, remember that happy, skipping kids are dangerous. Taking the skip out of them has to be done. For decades and decades, it was understood that kids would learn to read a different ages. Parents knew this and educators knew this. For the most part parents and educators were patient and kids learned to read when it was right for them, without being labeled “abnormal” and without lots of special help that reinforces their abnormalness. The benefit to this approach was that literacy rates were higher with this approach. However, an absolutely unacceptable outcome was that we had happy, skipping kids. They are dangerous, you know.
MIBLiSI is another highly effective tool that we could place in either the ‘sinister” or “genius” category, but have chosen to place it in the “genius” one because it also is bone-chillingly effective at eliminating happy, skipping, AND DANGEROUS kids. The basic precept behind MIBLiSI is that there is just one right way to do things – all things. There is one right way to walk down the hall, walk out to recess, get on the bus, go to the cafeteria, etc. If a happy child is caught skipping down the center of an empty hallway on the way back from a bathroom break, when the only correct way is walk, hands stiffly at the sides, eyes straight ahead, no smile, then that child is “green slipped.” Data from green slips are entered into a computer program called SWIS. SWIS allows educators to identify students who skip too much and to intervene into those children’s lives. It may be said directly or it may be just insinuated, but the message is sent that if you are happy and skip, then you are abnormal. Kids are fairly malleable and being able to identify the happy skippers with more intense intervention allows us to eliminate the skipping. Happy, skipping children are dangerous, you know.
SWIS also allow us to look at areas or times of the day when unruly behavior is exhibited by many students. For example, let’s say that kids are happy and somewhat loud when they return from gym or recess. The whole lot of them might be “green slipped.” SWIS would let the educators know that there is a problem with children being happy and a little loud after recess or gym. Educators would let the students know that being happy and loud was not normal. They would probably use words like “unacceptable behavior” or “behavior different than what we taught you” and the like. However, the kids would know they were abnormal. The educators would re-teach the only/best way to quietly and emotionlessly return from something like recess or gym.
I hope you are beginning to see how effective these programs can be in taking the skip out of children. They use different settings: academics/literacy/reading for DIBELS and behavior for MIBLiSI. However, the basic methodology is the same: (1) ignore, actually trample, on the long history of recognizing and appreciating differences in kids; (2) label normal things as abnormal; (3) convince both the child and his/her parents of the child’s abnormalness; and (4) replace naturally abundant intrinsic motivation with meted out extrinsic motivation by rewards, punishments, and fear of being labeled abnormal.
Voila! We have successfully eliminated the skip out of 100% of our kids. How can I be so certain that we will achieve 100% success? No Child Left Behind (NCLB) tells us we must, and the federal government has invested tens of billions in NCLB. Remember the SWIS computer program? Compared to NCLB tracking and collecting data on kids, SWIS is like a 5-year-old keeping a tally on a scrap piece of paper with a broken pencil. While SWIS is effective, NCLB is powerful. In fact, it is so powerful that if it fell into the wrong hands it could be used for purely sinister ends. Thank goodness we can all agree that NCLB came along just in time to fix one of society’s biggest ills – happy, skipping children in schools.
If any educator dare disagree with this essay, let him/her first deny that kids do not systematically – in every traditional school in every state – have the skip taken out of them.
