Northwest Education

Fall 2006 / Volume 12, Number 1.

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Lessons
for a
Lifetime

A widely used instructional model turns teachers into metacognitive coaches.

Story by Bracken Reed
Photos by Pam Voth

KALISPELL, Montana—In the glacier country of northwestern Montana, what began as one school’s attempt to improve reading comprehension across the curriculum has become a powerful instructional model that is spreading around the globe.

Almost three decades ago, a small group of innovators founded Project CRISS (Creating Independence Through Student-Owned Strategies) to address dismal student reading proficiency at Kalispell High School. They started with a question: How can we improve student reading comprehension, deliver content, and provide direct instruction in proven learning strategies, all at the same time?

Today, their answers and the model developed to implement them are used by more than 60,000 teachers in 33 states, Europe, and the Middle East.

A visit to the idyllic setting of the Montana Academy and to the crowded classrooms of Kalispell Junior High reveals how this approach to learning and instruction works on different levels and how it’s making a difference in students’ lives.

More Than a Toolkit

For the beginner, Project CRISS can be hard to pin down. Is it a broad philosophy of learning or a practical, classroom-based “toolkit” for teachers? A set of hands-on learning strategies for students or a guide to lifelong learning? Teachers often ask, “Aren’t these ideas available elsewhere?”

Lynn Havens, the current director of Project CRISS and one of the original developers, acknowledges that the model does not reinvent the wheel. “The philosophy and principles behind the project are not new and they’re not unique to us,” she says. “They’re drawn from many different places and many different fields. It’s information that’s out there and that a really good teacher might find on her own. What we’ve done is put it all together in one place and given it a well-defined philosophical base and a framework for practical application.

As the name implies, empowering students is at the heart of that philosophy. “Our approach to learning is about teaching students how to take charge of their own learning and their own lives,” says Carol Santa, the primary developer and founder of Project CRISS. “We teach students how to ask questions; how to think about what they’re learning and how they’re learning; and how they can transfer those skills to another subject or problem, be it academic or personal. A lot of programs give lip service to lifelong learning; Project CRISS is about giving students the actual skills and strategies to make it a reality.”

Central to the Project CRISS approach is the concept of metacognition, or put simply: thinking about how we think. “Students who are metacognitive have learned to examine their own learning,” explains Havens. “They can check their own comprehension. They know whether they have understood something, and they know how to use several different strategies in order to gain that understanding.”

Direct teacher-to-student instruction of both metacognitive and reading comprehension strategies—in the classroom, while delivering content—is the instructional foundation of Project CRISS. This follows a clear framework. First, the teacher explains a given strategy—why it’s important and how it can be used. Second, teachers model that strategy both by using it in front of students and by generally thinking out loud as they do so. Third, there is guided practice, in which students begin to use the strategy with direct teacher oversight. And fourth, students independently apply the strategy. By the time students have finished this process, the new strategy has been absorbed on several levels. The likelihood of students remembering and using it to learn subsequent content, on their own, is dramatically improved.

While this framework is the foundation of the model, it isn’t prescriptive. “Our approach is really about respecting the intelligence and individuality of the student and of the teacher,” says Santa. “And part of that is letting each individual find out what works best within the overall context. The framework is a guide, not a set of rules.”

That flexibility is also built into Project CRISS training, says Havens. “We provide a strong professional development model, but we also expect that teachers will adapt the process to fit their own needs. We say to teachers: learn, practice, combine, adapt.”

How teachers combine and adapt the framework, processes, and strategies of Project CRISS depends on the style and experience of the teacher, and also on the school and district environment in which they teach.

Close to Home

As the birthplace of Project CRISS, the Kalispell School District has a multitude of classroom teachers—at all grade levels—that incorporate the model into daily practice. “CRISS is really districtwide in Kalispell,” says Havens. “You see its effect in a lot of classrooms, even though it’s not always mentioned by name. In some ways it’s become part of the general climate.”

Jeannie Sherlock, a veteran social studies teacher at Kalispell Junior High, has used CRISS principles and strategies nearly her entire career. On a visit to her eighth-grade social studies classroom in early May, less than a month before her retirement, both the student-centered, metacognitive approach and the practical strategies of CRISS were on display. As a soft spring rain brushed her classroom’s windows, Sherlock led her students through a unit on AIDS in South Africa that combined content and learning strategies in unmistakable CRISS fashion.

“She’s picked a current event topic that is relevant to real life,” observes Havens, sitting unobtrusively in the back of the room. That’s just good teaching, and it’s an important part of CRISS. We always want to make it clear why we’re asking students to learn something and how it relates to their lives.”

Sherlock’s introduction to the lesson is another CRISS principle in action: Before they even start the reading, students know what they will be learning about, how it relates to prior lessons, and the process and tools they’ll use to discuss it. “As we go through this, I want you to think about how this process helps you learn,” Sherlock says. “How do the handouts help you organize the information? How does the group discussion help focus your thoughts?”

“She’s really setting it out for them,” says Havens. “She’s setting them up for success, because they know what the purpose is, what they’re trying to learn, and what they’re going to use to learn it. She’s also making it explicit that they’re going to talk about the learning process as they go along.”

For this unit, that process looks like this: Sherlock presents the subject using multiple tools—a wall map, a world atlas, a PowerPoint presentation on AIDS data—and then gives students a four-page article called “South Africa’s Struggle With AIDS,” by the popular young adult author Laura McClure. Sherlock draws their attention to each part of the publication—the title, photos, captions, length—and then has individual students read sections aloud. Throughout the reading, she interrupts to draw attention to specific vocabulary words (“What is stigma?” she asks, and students look to their dictionaries), and to point out significant details (“Six hundred people die a day,” she says. “Can you imagine that?”)

After the group reading, Sherlock gives students a “Problem-Solution Frame” handout. “The purpose of this is to focus your discussion,” she tells them. “This is one way to organize your thoughts when you read something—to the think about it in terms of problems, effects, causes, and possible solutions.”

Students split into groups of three or four and repeat the reading, each student taking turns quietly reading a paragraph. As the students read, discuss, and complete the worksheet, Sherlock walks around the classroom, observing and directing students to details in the reading, but refusing to offer answers. “With CRISS, the teacher really serves as a coach,” says Havens, “guiding his or her students in ways to effectively learn. The idea of literacy coaches has become very popular in recent years and many districts have chosen to train their coaches as CRISS-certified trainers. The end result is that CRISS literacy coaches help their teachers incorporate the CRISS principles and strategies into their instructional plans and then, the CRISS teachers help their students incorporate CRISS into their daily learning—two levels of literacy coaching.”

After each team has filled out the frame, Sherlock leads the class in a group discussion. Each team has the opportunity to report out findings, and together they complete the worksheet questions with remarkably sophisticated answers.

Sherlock ends the lesson with another fundamental CRISS practice. “I have some questions for you,” she says. “Did this help you learn about AIDS? What helped you? Did the frame help? Did you learn from each other’s responses?”

“This is called a ‘process conference,’” Havens points out. “She’s asking them to really think about their own learning and check their own comprehension. Do they understand what they read? Why? What helped them understand it? The more they’re aware of that, the more they can transfer those skills to the next subject.”

The power of CRISS is apparent in the students’ enthusiastic responses. Not only have they learned about something relevant to their lives, they’ve learned something even more important—that they have skills and the ability to drive their own learning. They’re in charge.

Off the Beaten Path

Although the majority of schools that use Project CRISS are public schools, the model is easily adapted to many different settings. Not so far away from Kalispell Junior High, another group of students is gaining the same skills and learning the same powerful lesson of self-empowerment.

At the Montana Academy—a private, coeducational, boarding school for troubled teens, ages 14 to 18—learning that lesson can be a matter of life and death.

Carol Santa started the academy in 1998 with her husband John, a clinical psychologist and former university professor. Another couple, John and Rosemary McKinnon, also were founders. Carol Santa serves as the director of education, which in this case is a combination of principal and resident visionary. For Santa, the academy is the fulfillment of a career-long dream, and in many ways, the ultimate expression of her educational philosophy.

The academy’s main campus houses 70 students from all over the United States. An inescapable fact—for a private boarding school with nine therapists on staff—is that the students are, as one teacher puts it, “from the top 10 percent of wealth in the country.” On the surface, the academy can feel like an extended summer camp for the extremely privileged, complete with horseback riding, fly fishing, and winter skiing. But these students are not only atypically wealthy, they are also highly intelligent, and—when they arrive—highly dysfunctional.

As Santa says, “Many of these kids have been out of school for quite a while—a year, sometimes more. And many of them had completely shut down. They wouldn’t get out of bed, or maybe they got into drugs, or they were suicidal. A lot of them have already been through several other programs, and a lot of therapy.”

Many of the students also arrive heavily medicated, with multiple diagnoses—depression, bipolar, ADHD, OCD, addiction—and case folders a foot thick. But from the beginning, Santa’s approach is unorthodox. “To be honest, I usually don’t pay too much attention to the case files. In a setting like ours, most students, such as those classified with ADHD or learning disabilities, begin to succeed in school. And we also try to get most students off medications as soon as possible.”

For most students, Santa says, a structured, supportive environment, and the calm, quiet pace of life on the ranch can do wonders. “We try to slow them down, slow everything down: no TV, no cell phones, no iPods, no Internet except for supervised use in the library. Kids who are troubled need a lot of structure and a minimum of distractions. Once you get them into a structured, supportive environment and away from all those distractions, kids begin to grow up and realize they can become successful young adults. We provide a safe place for students to mature.”

For teachers, the conditions are a public school teacher’s dream: small class sizes (typically a dozen or less), adequate materials and equipment, weekly staff meetings, a collaborative atmosphere, frequent opportunities for professional development, and full administrative support and involvement.

While Santa doesn’t push the formal Project CRISS framework or terminology at the academy, its philosophy, principles, and practices permeate the school. Walk into any classroom and you’ll see teachers merging content with the direct instruction of comprehension and learning strategies. Metacognition is part of the common vocabulary of all staff and students.

Learning How To Learn

In Jack Cesarone’s science classroom, his grasp of Project CRISS principles and techniques is unmistakable. “We need to get you out of the habit of rote memorization,” Cesarone tells his afternoon class as he starts the day’s lesson. Far from the “memorize it long enough to regurgitate it on a test” approach to teaching and learning, Cesarone challenges his students to dig deeper. And he gives them the skills to do it.

“The last time we were here we went through eight slides and I saw people with four pages of notes,” he says. “How is that going to work? How much of that do you think you’re going to remember?”

During the next 70 minutes, Cesarone peppers his students with similar questions that repeatedly draw their attention to the dual purpose of the lesson: to learn about cell biology, but also to explore effective ways to take notes and organize information.

As Cesarone moves through a series of overhead transparencies, he stops frequently to ask students how the new information relates to what they’ve already covered and how they might organize it in their notes. “Have you tried putting things into an equation?” he asks at one point, and then models the technique.

In an echo of Sherlock’s public school class, Cesarone also ends his class period with a process conference. “What have we learned?” he asks, as he turns off the projector. When a student tentatively says “note taking”, Cesarone asks the class to look at their notes again. “See the difference?” he says. “Can you see how much easier it’s going to be to remember that, instead of copying down a slide word for word?”

Outside of the classroom, Cesarone reflects on the metacognitive approach. “I can follow the students’ progress by the kinds of questions they ask,” he says. “When they first get here they say really general, passive things, like ‘How do I do this?’ But by the end they’re asking very specific questions. You start to see them building their confidence and taking responsibility for their own learning.”

For Carol Santa, the process of creating independent, active learners and healthy, confident human beings is inseparable, whether it’s at the academy or in a public school setting.

“Learning content and acquiring personal interaction skills go together,” says Santa. “They’re not isolated. The fact that we try to isolate them in most school settings is at the root of the problem. When you’re empowering a student as a learner—when you’re giving them the knowledge and skills to take charge of their own learning—then you’re also empowering them as human beings.”

For Lizzie, an 18-year old student about to graduate from the academy and make the transition back into the larger world, the effect of such an approach couldn’t be clearer, or more important. “I was sent here because I didn’t really want to live anymore,” she says matter-of-factly. “And now I not only want to live—I’m happy. I have goals. I have a future. I can get up in the morning and look forward with confidence. Everybody could benefit from this place.”

While only a small group of students will ever experience the full benefits of the Montana Academy, the Project CRISS model is taking the same philosophy and approach into mainstream classrooms around the country and the world.