An earlier post today described No Nonsense Nurturing as training teachers to be robots.
Here is a video by its developers. It is indeed interesting, especially the product endorsement by Dave Levin, co-founder of KIPP. Probably the product reflects the KIPP style.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There are other videos at
Also, I just entered some background information on the evolution of this methodology. Find it in comments on Diane’s earlier post about NNN today. There is no peer reviewed research for the method. There is a long list of “Clients.” I also found some demographic information on the Lawrence MA school district .
No peer review. No evidence for its success. No matter, as Daniel Willingham points out, the magic elixirs labeled as reform require no evidence. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
One thing I always notice in these “exemplar” videos from these deformers is that the kids are NEVER smiling. Since when is it depressing or punishing to learn?
Ms. Chapman is 100% correct that there is no evidence for this hype, which I know as a child and developmental psychologist specializing in doing experimental prevention research in schools (www.paxis.org). Notice that the teacher uses loud clapping followed by having the children put their hands on top of their heads.
I got asked at large training in the “blank” School District (which sadly is using NNN) why it’s not OK to use loud clapping like this. So I did the clapping, among all the teachers, counselors, and social workers, then asked “what does that sound like?” A 5-year old who was in the back playing with his toys because preschool was out, answered the question before any of the 60 adults in the room. He said, “a slap.”
The room gasped. The boy was smarter than all the adults. Notice that this is a classroom of poor children of color. What do you think they sense, and what have they seen in such neighborhoods about people putting their hands on top of their heads? And these same schools are probably having in-service sessions about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), as if that was something happening on another planet from their school.
Also notice how much time was wasted with all this. We teach the use of a harmonica (never associated with trauma as far as we know) and a peace sign. Transitions take 10 seconds, and classrooms are filled with joy, learning, compassion, with tons of research following kids for 10 to 20 years in platinum standard, world class research. The kids do well in school, don’t need special ed, do better academically for their lifetimes, don’t do drugs or have risk sex, etc. It’s amazing when you treat children well and with love, make them the heroes of their own world and vision, they grow up pretty well. And their teachers are happier and more creative. Teaching and learning ought not to be a power trip.
NNN is the classroom managemenst system taught to incoming TFA corp members. It is a jazzed up repackaging of Canter’s Assertive Discipline. Promotional literature I read on NNN asserts that children in middle and upper class families come from a more democratic experience while lower class children are more familiar with autocratic traditions. NNN was “designed” to work well with these latter children. There’s a strong push to use the idea of choice in NNN. “Bill, you have chosen to misbehave…”
I’ve always argued how will they learn to live and operate in a democracy if they have no experience with it and are contiunued to denied that experience.
I should qualify that I’ve been through the training program for NNN through the CTTT and have a certificate somewhere. I was made to do it and remained totally unimpressed.
Totally agree. I was told many times, “that’s all they understand.” Which only makes me want to show them another, more democratic way.
No one should live under the rule of others their entire lives. Very sad.
My other comment is why does someone have to show these “teachers” how to show compassion, relate to parents, etc.?? It’s called humanity.
“Want to Learn More
about NoNonsense about No Nurturing?”That was really bothering me and i just had to fix it.
tee hee hee, thank you poet!
There recently was poster session of education research by education students at the university where I work as a librarian.
In early childhood education, most of the projects where about how to get kids to sit still.
That experience made me want to curl up in a corner of the room – and sit still.
I looked at one of Laura’s videos and my first impression was how segregated the class is. My second impression was how emotionally cold it seems. I would not want that teacher teaching my kids. If you don’t know how to nurture, you shouldn’t be in the classroom. It’s like learning how to love and care. I don’t need an expensive program to teach me that!
You saw one lesson, and it seems cold to you? You should become a principal so you could judge a teacher with little info…and BTW, she was pointing out the ones who DID achieve the objective (to sit on the carpet, not the ones who did not.
I bet the kids who learned because the room was quiet and orderly were not unhappy, and had other ways to know the teacher cared for them… enough o be able to enable them to learn!
I don’t see anything revolutionary about addressing kids by their first name when the enter the room. I’ve been doing that for 18 years. It helped me learn their names, do a quick “check” as kids entered the room (anyone having a bad day?), and monitor the halls. As for naming who is working (vs who is not), I do that when my teens need a quick reminder to start working, usually when they are chatting away about something that just happened. I found it works better than the blanket “Everyone needs to get started!” . I find things like “silent hand” or “eyes tracking the speaker” or “1 finger means you have a question, 2 fingers mean you need to use the bathroom” awkward and distracting. My teens would laugh me out of the room if I tried any of those.
What is infuriating is the video states that this is something that ALL new teachers should use in America! I am blind with rage! Notice that the examples of students in the videos are students of color!! These videos are NOT a so subtle RACIST message. Levin – you disingenuous manipulator! Wink, wink, nod, nod – while the video states ALL teachers and especially new teachers can use this – why does the video just have students of color in the classroom. Why aren’t there WHITE SUBURBAN kids in the videos??? I know why – because the message is – kids of color from minority groups are the real trouble making kids! KIPP and charters such as this one feel free to use an authoritarian – and I am now going to say it and if someone has a problem with my comparison, well tough cookies (I could have sad something way worse) – and FASCIST approach to dealing with historically marginalized populations! There is a NOT SO SUBTLE undertone to this video that states that this is a GREAT WAY to deal with students of color! Once again, these individuals and groups like those on the videos are CUNNINGLY DEHUMANIZED – and there are plenty of people out there including Levin and his teaching corps who CUNNINGLY present a façade – that of the CARING EDUCATOR! What cunning PROPAGANDA! I have to stop my rant!!!!!
yep…. teacher training kids to be robotically obedient, no joy in the day I am sure. I am a teacher and I would rather die than do this to kids all the time. Sometimes I direct them exactly when it situation warrants exactness for safety, etc. Let them just get to the carpet however they choose. it it is a bad choice and they hurt someone, then we have something to talk about and fix….
Wow, you got all that from this video….no other evidence required to back up you ‘assumptions, and labeling.
“
NoNonsense Nurturing”“No Nonsense” is our name
Though nonsense is our game
And nonsense is our nature
And nonsense what we nurture
This one is so clever. you are so gifted. I am so jealous!
As a PTA President at a school where the biggest parent complaint is that students’ behavior disrupts learning, this approach, if it really does work, doesn’t seem bad. We know that the kids in our school are unruly because their home life is chaotic, they have no financial stability, or they are way behind grade level. Understanding that makes teachers compassionate, but it doesn’t always make the classroom less unruly. Teachers do need practical skills to keep things in order so kids can learn what they need to learn. It also helps if there is a full cadre of social workers behind the teachers to deal with the other stuff. The kids in the video posted by Laura Chapman don’t seem like zombies to me.
Are you comfortable with the children clasping their hands on top of their heads, as if they’re being arrested? Are you comfortable with the fact that NONE of the kids in that video are smiling? Are you comfortable with the fact that in these “exemplar” videos, all of the kids are minorities, primarily African American? Because I am NOT comfortable with any of those things.
Can you imagine Bill Gates submitting to having orders shouted to him in his earpiece???
The earpiece is not necessary
He already has the orders programmed — nay hardwired — on the chip inside his head.
If you google No Nonsense Nurturing and click on ‘our funders’ the largest donor is (drumroll) The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with $10,000,000.
They’re quiet willing to have other peoples’ children abused and badgered.
This method is taught to all TFA recruits as the best way to manage a classroom. I attended a traditional teaching program as well as TFA’s institute and was baffled by this style when I first saw it. It’s so different from what I’m comfortable doing with my classes.
Of course… to enable and facilitate any learning, order is required. Rules and respect for the speaker are the first order, because no learning takes place in chaos. See my larger comment to the post.
I am confused by the comments at the you’ve site on the first video. Is there a video that I am missing?
I suspect that the commentators at the YOU-tube site had bad experiences and did not ever teach… moreover, nit-picking like the hands on the head, is reading into simple things,a complexity that does not exist… seeing hands is one way for a teacher to know they are ready, and not busy with ‘nonsense’ like pinching the kid next to them.
The words NO NONSENSE seems to inflame some people, but any experienced teacher knows that no child meets the objectives for any lesson if they are busy playing or inattentive.
I taught for 40 years, and my kids were always happy and successful and their parents thrilled, and I maintained order. To this day, former students contact me, to remark how I was the one they remember, and in fact, I was 4 times included in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers, by grduating HS seniors who had achieved top honors, and who said I was the one whooped the difference.
I was also the cohort FOR THE HUGE, Pew -funded NationaL Standards (the 8 Principles of Learning, Harvard) ;the first principle was “CLEAR EXPECTATIONS,” and the second being REWARDS for achievement. This is sound science for the way the brain learns.
Thus, I was clear from day one about how learning would occur in MY practice, and I offered numerous overt and subtle rewards ( like a coupon for skipping homework, or having lunch in our wonderful classroom withers art center and library)
One thing the kids understood, was the respect that they had for me and each other while someone was talking, and that ‘wideawakeness’ (paying attention and not talking or playing while lessons were ongoing) was the way to earn my respect and the only way to learn. No learning occurs in chaos, and one or two kids can cause mayhem. The teacher must read all kids, and ensure they PAY ATTENTION. CLEAR EXPECTATIONS is the way from the start, especially today, when too many youngsters ignore parents and do their own thing.
I watched novice teachers with the same students, struggle to teach and to maintain order, and often, I had to appear in the doorway, smiling and watching– kids would point to me and the room would quiet ‘Mrs S, they would whisper. They were not afraid of me…they just knew what was EXPECTED OF THEM, and they grasped the rules!
I seldom raised my voice, or punished a child, and always conferenced with parents and children, a crucial part of the learning experience, so that it was clear that everyone profited from an orderly QUIET environment.
I saw all THE THINGS THAT I DID FOR A LIFETIME OF SUCCESSFUL PRACTICE, in play here, although I never heard of ‘silent hands;’ (my kids were very verbose when trying to get my attention, excited( and I loved their enthusiasm) and chatter would erupt from time to time, easily ended when I began to speak, as the kids would monitor themselves, and help me when it was my turn to talk, by not returning any ‘talk’ from a student who was competing with me. They also did this when a classmate had the floor, even in our ‘fishbowl’ circles where they were in charge of conversations.
IN addition, the 5th Principle of Learning, was for the school’s administration. it was the principals job to maintain a safe, healthy, & QUIET environment so LEARNING could be ENABLED –>> SUPPORTING the teacher-practitioner with policies that ensured that all students understood the rules. These ARE kids, not dogs, but they are not adults, yet.
Television teaches many anti-learning behaviors… like ‘just do it!.” It celebrates ‘outlaws’
School teaches social skills like cooperation and respect.
Thus, the acerbic comments and assumptions, make me wonder if the commentator ever was responsible for the ACHIEVEMENT In a room full of 21st century kids.
I was always a NO-nonsense while lessons were on-going, and learning was going on, saving silly stuff, social interactions and fun for appropriate moments.
No learning goes on in chaos, and today, THE TEACHER is responsible when Johnny does not learn, and the teacher is kicked out, never t teach again! VAM-Voom, VANISH!
That’s right!
I can only imagine what a disruptive presence I would have been in such a class. I am (or was, anyway) extremely bright, easily testing in the top 1% in every subject, smarter than the vast majority of my teachers (and, boy, did I know it!), and often bored out of my mind. I would alleviate my boredom by indulging a small gift for sarcasm — which would either baffle or amuse my fellow students and baffle and aggravate my teachers.
The only purpose such a “teaching” “method” could possibly have is to crush any sense of intellectual curiosity and prevent any development of actual intelligence in the victims … er, students.