Work Hard & Be Nice to People

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It was a great opportunity to revisit the original book and remake it with a fresh perspective,” Burrill tells It’s Nice That. “I began by examining the content and choosing the parts that I felt had the most to say. As I worked through the text it became clear that I needed to add new insights and nuggets of information. It started to feel like a new book, so we changed the title to reflect this. Now it feels like a mini-manifesto that invites you to dip in and use it as an aid to solving problems creatively. I talk a lot about self-development and lessons I’ve learnt through trial and error. The new book feels like a good distillation of my ideas about creativity, self belief and how to make meaningful work.” Aside from a great history of an excellent program (Knowledge Is Power Program -- KIPP), it also has nice life lessons with -- as would especially be true of an educational bureaucracy -- power of persistence to push for results. Co-founders Mike Feinberg and David Levin really are the dynamic duo. KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) - ცოდნა ძალაა - ასე უწოდეს პროგრამას. ახალგაზრდა მასწავლებლებს სურდათ სკოლა ექციათ ისეთ ადგილად, სადაც მოსწავლეები დაცული იქნენოდნენ ხულიგნებისგან, "ბრძენი" მოსწავლეებისა და ბავშვური ძალადობისგან. ცდილობდნენ "კიპი" გამხდარიყო მშვიდობის კუნძული, სადაც ბავშვები მიხედავდნენ საკუთარ საქმეს თავის დაცვის საჭიროების გარეშე. For children who are economically disadvantaged with parents who need help navigating through the middle class- centered public school system, this is the way to go:

The school's motto: "Work hard, be nice" seems to be working for these students. I especially enjoyed the chant that Ball would make her students recite, which Levin and Feinberg appropriated for the name of their school: And in it he tells his audience about KIPP schools and then gives everyone in the audience a copy of this book. In fact, he says, “I thought it was so fantastic and gave you a sense of what a good teacher does…” That is at about 18 minutes in – but he also praises KIPP at about 14 minutes in, as well. One of my goals is to spend less time in airports. I intend to journey around Europe by train and explore places closer to home, too. It’s a conscious decision to reduce my carbon footprint and something I urge everybody else to do. Lord M. Group learning capacity: The roles of open-mindedness and shared vision. Front Psychol. 2015;6:150. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00150 I've been interested in the KIPP (Knowledge is Power) schools as an alternative model, since they appear occasionally in the educational media. This book gives a great history of how two former Teach for America teachers developed a national organization of schools -- lots and lots of time invested, lots of challenges from bureaucracy, lots of unexpected bumps. It took a lot of energy and a lot of commitment, and it looks like it works really well for some kids. The critics jump on that "some kids" part, pointing at the high attrition rate and so on, but given the low-income, crummily schooled population they're usually dealing with, some is certainly better than none, which is the default.

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I was inspired by Levin's and Feinberg's enthusiasm. It's obvious they were passionate about their kids. The book reads like a novel (I would even venture to predict a movie option), and Mathews does a wonderful job of mixing up the chapters with descriptions of Levin and Feinberg, anecdotes about particular students, and the major battles the duo encountered in establishing their charter schools. Since the establishment of the first Houston and Brooklyn schools, KIPP now has 66 schools nationwide, most of them performing as well as the first ones. About 80% of KIPP students have family incomes low enough to qualify for federal lunch subsidies. The success of the schools is evidenced by improvement in test-scores. Within three years the student's test scores improved on average from the 34th percentile to the 58th percentile in reading and from the 44th percentile to the 83rd percentile in math. I’ve always been a frustrated musician – I wish I could play at least one musical instrument. I feel musical inside so maybe I do have some ability! The new record is a project with Erik Kessels, my long term collaborator and friend. We’ve worked with sound designer Malcolm Goldie to create an audio mix of found recordings of birds and aeroplanes. It sounds unlikely, but it really works. As much as the plotline annoyed me – what annoyed me more was the pedagogy. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to explain some stuff here before my main criticisms of this book can be clear, but stay with me. Just about the only teaching that happens in this book involves teaching to the test. And this isn’t just me saying that – here is a quote justifying it as a key method of KIPP schools: That these people were learning by rote and then the author had the gall to say, “The excursions — both large and small — connected school learning to the real world in ways educational theorists like John Dewey had been recommending for a century.” How dare he use Dewey’s name as if this stuff bore any resemblance at all to his progressive education for democratic participation…

Though this expansion did have its sets of issues. For example, KIPP State exam scores, that were once way higher than the test scores of Public School, started to stagnate. Not all the teachers they hired were as inspirational as Mike and Dave and their students also started to drop out of school, just like the students in struggling Public Schools.Being nice should be the default, but we can't allow niceness to prevent us from standing up for ourselves or having difficult conversions. Part of working hard is consistency. Sporadically working hard is common in our society. We bust our butts the day before a deadline or try to hit our numbers for whatever task in a small amount of the allotted time to do it. Working intensely with consistency is the true definition of "working hard." It's easy to put in effort occasionally. WHY I CHOSE THIS BOOK: I know several educators and thought this book might help me understand some of the challenges they face If you have an interest in education, listen to this book, if you have children entering the public school system, listen to this book, if you are a new teacher looking for a successful curriculum to embrace, listen to this book, or if you just love a real world story of success, listen to this book. Zhao K, Ferguson E, Smillie LD. Politeness and compassion differentially predict adherence to fairness norms and interventions to norm violations in economic games. Sci Rep. 2017;7(1):3415. doi:10.1038/s41598-017-02952-1