Quality From The Ground Up
Teaching Quality Concepts to the Next
Generation
Summary
Seated at his
little desk in his third-grade classroom, Johnny looks
out at the empty playground that minutes ago was full of
kids laughing at recess and thinks to himself,
“I’m so glad we are back in here
learning.” Does that sound strange to you,
too?
Most elementary school students are there
because they have to be. School is not seen as a fun
place—especially the learning part. Why is that? Is
it because they aren’t capable of understanding the
importance of knowledge and intelligence or is it our
fault for not giving them the chance?
The folks at Prarie View Elementary School
wanted to know, so they contacted the Quality Network. At
that moment, Total Quality Education was born. The rest
is a seven-year history of success. The children have
gained insight and knowledge through partial control of
their learning, without losing a second of fun.
Johnny still loves the swingset, but has
discovered a new hobby—education.
“Give a man a fish”, the old adage goes,
“and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish, and
you feed him for life.” In a way, Total Quality
Education is a way of teaching kids to
fish—providing them tools with which to learn for
life—rather than feeding them facts which
don’t always last. With quality tools in their
toolboxes, children can always learn more. And
they’re usually happier to do it.
The Quality Network, Cedar Rapids, Iowa,
began working with a local school, Prairie View
Elementary, seven years ago. The goal was to support a
new way of teaching and of learning. A child’s
education was to center on the student under the
guidance—not control—of teachers. The
students would be taught to assess their own performance,
to work in teams and to take responsibility for their own
educational experiences. They were to use quality tools
in the process—a means to enhance education.
Quality, in other words, is not an educational program,
it’s a way of thinking.
“It’s not a
‘thing,’” says Dr. Mick McNiel,
director of the Quality Network. “It’s a
philosophy. That’s the real key to it all.
It’s a change of attitude, not a cookbook procedure
on how to run a school.”
A New Beginning
Coming out of the 1980’s drive toward Total Quality
Management, schools began to apply quality principles to
education in the 1990s. “The difference between the
quality movement and many ephemeral educational
fads,” says McNiel, “is exactly this
distinction between a rigid ‘cookbook’
approach and a more adaptable philosophical
approach.” As long as the children were able in the
end to see the value of their education, as long as they
felt that their educational careers were under their
direction and fueled by their own ambition and as long as
they were aware of where they stood in relation to where
they ultimately wanted to end up, the approach was
working. The use of quality tools was secondary.
“Teachers are not saying to a child,
‘You have to use these problem-solving
skills,’” McNiel says. “They’re
telling them, ‘Here are some additional resources
for you to use in learning.’”
Work with the College Community school
district in general and Prairie View Elementary in
particular started when key staff, interested in quality
methods, came to the Quality Network (then-named the
Woods Quality Center).
“They came to us with the notion: How
do we get more knowledgeable about total quality?”
McNiel says. Teachers, administrators, foodservice
workers and janitorial staff were on hand learning ways
to bring total quality and continuous improvement into
their schools. From there, enthusiasm generated at
monthly meetings prompted some of the teachers to try out
what they were learning—with their
students.
Quality Tools in the Classroom
The methods they tried out were some of the same that
businesses use. For brainstorming projects, children used
affinity diagrams. They wrote ideas on notes and stuck
them on charts. Then, as a group, they worked to cluster
similar points together to help outline the major facets
of an issue. Students learning a story might map it on a
fishbone diagram to envision the way it fit together.
Kindergarteners, arranging snapshots into a flow chart,
organized their daily activities. Force field analysis
was used to determine the major driving and restraining
forces of a classroom problem.
Feedback was positive from the very
start.
“They would come back and report the
results, with kids sharing some responsibility for their
learning and trying out quality tools that would assist
them to solve problems in a team-like atmosphere,”
McNiel reports. After the initial positive reactions,
more quality methods were employed.
“What it does,” McNiel says,
“is move kids away from the notion that working
with other children is called ‘cheating.’
It’s called ‘teamwork.’”
The Total Quality Education approach is all
about teamwork. Children learn to cooperate and
collaborate—skills that are increasingly important
in today’s businesses. Regular class meetings give
students a voice as a member of the team. Students
suggest changes to their environment and their course of
study, and come to realize that they’re all in it
together—both students as partners, and teachers as
mentors.
“You’re going from the
traditional ‘sit in straight rows and stare
forward’ to an environment where everyone is an
active learner, including the teachers,” says
McNiel.
Teachers are Learners, Too
In the College Community school district, teachers are
learners, too. One of the pillars of total quality is
customer focus. This means that rather than fitting
students into a pre-conceived curriculum, the curriculum
and the school attempt to fit the students and their
parents. Everyone becomes a partner, with the student at
the forefront. Teachers become guides, not
lecturers.
The children, to the surprise of many,
proved quite capable of handling this responsibility.
“They were very anxious to have opportunities to
work on their own and show what they were capable
of,” says Scott Nicol, instructor for the Quality
Network. “This gives them a chance to do
that.”
Under Total Quality Education, students are
accountable for their own educational goals. “This
is the key to true motivation and the successes that
follow,” says McNiel. “Kids are actively
taking responsibility for their learning, instead of just
leaving it up to the teachers.” Nicol agrees,
“Each success acts as a reminder that kids are
capable and can usually go way beyond what we expect of
them.”
They also learn self-assessment, which is
generally considered vital in reaching goals. They
regularly review their skills and adjust their
educational approach, all with teachers acting as
partners. Then, at conference time, they present their
work to their parents—in sessions that they
direct.
These student-led conferences are very
different from the traditional format, wherein the
teacher reports to parents on the student’s
progress. At Prairie View, the students—with the
assistance of a teacher—guide their parents through
their last quarter’s education. This allows not
only a measure of personal responsibility, but also
pride. Suddenly, education in the minds of the students
becomes less something they are subjected to, and more
something they are participating in.
School, in other words, becomes fun.
The students enjoy the approach. Their
parents value it. Some teachers were initially resistant,
not wanting to turn control of conferences over to
students. School administration did not force them to do
so, but, according to McNiel, everyone was voluntarily
hosting the student-led conferences within a year.
Student-led conferences seem to work.
Classroom meetings, introducing students simultaneously
to democracy and accountability and taking
students’ concerns and comments seriously, is
proving to be successful. Total quality, permeating every
aspect of life at the school, has created an environment
where there is less dictating and more cooperation.
“Both the school system and the kids benefit from
this,” says Nicol. “The ‘system’
has a tendency to isolate people. This program has the
tendency to bring people together by drawing them into
positive interactions.”
Growing Up Quality
It has been seven years now, and the original Prairie
View Elementary students have grown up. Total Quality
Education has grown with them.
“The entire district moved towards
trying out the quality movement,” says McNiel.
“Some of the kids who had been in that elementary
school are now seniors graduating from high
school.” For these seniors, the approach that began
at the elementary level has followed them through the
years. Opon graduation, they are now required to present
a sort of personal portfolio of what they learned
throughout high school, following the format of their
original student-led conferences.
And the results? Students who enjoy their
work perform better. Student evaluation is not rigid,
assuring that students get what they actually need,
rather than what a standard says they need. Students are
not graded according to what the average student is
supposed to know, but on the progress they have made from
the beginning of the year until the end. It’s
customized. It is, simply put, customer-focused.
“The obvious thing is that it has
helped them find solutions for problems they have really
wanted to solve,” states Nicol. “They get
that benefit, and more than that, it gives them
confidence to continue with the processes in the
future.”
“Total quality is here to stay,”
says McNiel. The Quality Network, which works with
businesses and organizations in addition to school
systems nationwide, is founded on this idea.
“‘Quality,’ in the sense
we believe, is a way of doing things,” says McNiel.
“This way of doing things includes working in
teams, self-assessing and using data—not
guesswork—to make decisions. It’s really
about improving your processes instead of blaming people
for things not getting done.”
And of course, it’s also about
learning to fish.
August 2001 News for a
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