Bloom and Maslow

I woke up this morning and checked Facebook. One of my favorite people (I love you, Julie Frame!) posted this picture/quote. And I love it. It is such a good reminder that I want to shout it from the rooftops. While kids all over the country are taking hours and hours and hours of assessments, while balancing lots of homework, projects, extracurriculars and all of the other things kids are busy with in these last weeks of school...there are some basic realities that we have to remember. For teachers it may have been a while since you talked or read about Bloom and Maslow...but it is well worth being reminded. We get so caught up in getting as much curriculum in by the end of the year, because we are told we must get those scores UP. BUT...jamming in months worth of curriculum just to say you finished it is not worth the stress it causes the teacher and certainly isn't worth the stress it causes kids. 

The Bloom's Stuff is all the learning. The more we learn, the higher  level thoughts we have. At the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy is the basic understanding and ability to recall facts. As teachers, we are trained to understand these theories (in college mostly...unfortunately I haven't heard anyone refer to Bloom or Maslow in a while). As you move up the taxonomy the skills get harder. The thinking becomes more intense and learners start to make decisions about information they have attained at the lower levels of the taxonomy. We should be striving for students to reach that top level. I contend that we have lost that ability with the inundation of educational reforms and the lack of skills related to those making decisions about teaching and learning. If you are in a race to teach your standards...your students are likely to remain at the bottom of the hierarchy....just jamming facts into their brains...temporarily...so they can perform on an assessment.

We probably all want to be able to say our kids are able to analyze, evaluate and create. But they sometimes can't make it past the first level of basic fact recalling. I think this is our fault. Well...I know it is. We haven't done much to address the thing we REALLY have to address in order to make the learning stuff work. And educational reformers and those writing laws about public education have no idea what they're talking about and never require us to figure out how to help a kid in crisis. Enter Maslow and his hierarchy of needs.

Maslow said that human needs are levels of a pyramid. He believed that people are motivated to achieve certain needs, and that we are innately motivated to achieve the next level of human need once a level is fulfilled. The very bottom and most basic of needs are food, water, warmth and rest. These ARE our basic needs. You can't move to the next level until you are not fighting to have your basic needs met. A hungry kid is never going to reach self-actualization when their focus is the basic need of food. And all of Maslow's stuff has to be in place in order to deal at all with Bloom's stuff.

What does this all mean? Before you can teach kids about geometry, to write literary essays or physics...they need to be fed, feel safe, have a sense of belonging, feel confident and know themselves as learners and people. We can continue to deliver instruction and then test kids all day every day...if we don't take care of them and their needs, we can forget about achieving top levels of Bloom's taxonomy.