Capitalizing on Desire

Summer time for me is a subtle switch in gears.  I take a few weeks away from thinking about school and put a great deal of focus on my dogs.   This is the time of year to polish up a dog for hunting season, or in the case of two of our dogs, finish up some important training in preparation for hunting tests.

This blog is primarily for talking about teaching, and I promise to bring it around by the end of the post.  This evening, I was training a young dog named Colt.  He is well named, as at 80 pounds he is very horse-like.  We were preparing for a section of his HZP hunting test that is referred to as the search-behind-the-duck.  In this section of the test, the dog and handler stand on a shore line.  Prior to their arrival, a duck, who is unable to fly but can readily swim, was released about 25 meters into the marsh.  The dog’s job is to enter the water, swim around until if finds scent of the duck, track the duck hopefully to the point that the duck is recovered.   When you think about it, this is a pretty complex task.   How do you train a dog to do this?

There are 3 main methods that I have seen to teach this.  One method is very scripted.  It starts out on land.  A white 5 gallon bucket is placed a distance away.  The trainer sets the dog on a stay, walks out to the bucket, and drops a retrieving bumper.  He then returns and commands the dog to retrieve the bumper.  This is done over and over again, eventually the dog doesn’t have to see the handler drop the bumper, he simply knows that the bucket means there is a bumper nearby and can be sent to retrieve “blindly.”  This idea is transferred over to water, the whole sequence is repeated.  Eventually, the bucket is even removed, and the dog is supposed to cross the water and search.

Another method is more streamlined.  Here, a duck is released without the dog’s knowledge.  Then, the trainer crosses the water with the dog in a kayak or canoe.  Eventually, the dog works out in front of the kayak and finds the scent.  Hopefully, the dog follows the scent on its own, and learns that the key is to cross the water without the help of the trainer’s canoe or kayak.

Our method of training is a little different.  If anything, it is a little like the first method.  What we do is rely upon the dog’s innate desire.  Our dogs have been bred for over a century to want to go out, search for, find, and retrieve game.   I don’t have to train them to go to a bucket.  All I really need to do is find a way to light the fire inside them.  What typically works is to work with 2 people.  The handler/trainer is next to the dog at the shoreline.  The helper appears on the other side of a small marsh.  This person usually stands out, and the dog easily sees this person.  An alive, but flightless duck is thrown from that opposite shore.  The dog gets to see the splash, see the duck flap its wings a few times, and is more than ready to go across.  From here, the dog isn’t really sent to go search, instead he is simply released.  The dog typically crosses the shore, and since it has actually seen the released duck, rarely gives up until the duck is found.  Dogs in this situation make all kinds of mistakes.  They have to teach themselves to focus.  They over run the track sometimes, they focus on too small of an area sometimes.  Because they know that duck is out there somewhere, the persevere.

This idea is repeated, with the helper taking a smaller and smaller role.  Before long, the dog can actually be hard to control when you approach any water.  They simply think there is always something to find if they go searching long enough.  As a trainer, I do two things.  First, I don’t try to hold back the excitement, if anything, I try to encourage it.  When we approach the water, I whisper, “Do you want to get the duck.”  They get amped!  Also, I have to be sure to not let them down.  There has to be game out there to find every time they are sent.   I certainly can make it challenging, but success has to be within their reach.

When I look back at these three methods, I think of dogs that I know that have been trained in each of them.  I will say that our dogs love searching for ducks.  They usually do really well, and I attribute at least some of it to our approach.  One of our good friends does the “bucket method.”  Their dogs tend to struggle.  They look at the duck search as work.  They are commanded, or sometimes almost forced, across the water.  In the end, their scores are similar, but there is something lost.  Their dogs are more robotic, and less fluid.

As I came home today, it was hard to not think about how this relates to kids.  Our kids come in with a ton of curiosity.  They want to learn.  They want to figure things out.  I think of the times when I have held kids back until just the right moment, and released them to go do a task.  They make all kinds of mistakes, but they learn so much.  I think of other times, when I teach step-by-step….the bucket method.  Both approaches have their time and place, but I try to think of how I can build on their desire first.

Mistakes to Avoid

I was cruising the dog training forums the other day and ran across a thread titled: Mistakes to avoid in gun dog training.  I was curious of what people had to say, but almost immediately I was surprised.  Almost all of the hints listed in the thread could be directly translated to teaching human students as well.  To make it fun, I took the text from the thread and created a wordle.  

Some big things jump out.  First, the words “training” and “dog.”  I think we could easily exchange those for teaching/learning and students.  The next level of words that jump out to me are things like humor, patience, fun, time, and short.

From the thread, I made a list of comments that were posted.  First is a list of things not to do, in no particular order:

• Loss of temper
• Impatience
• Failure to look at things from a dog’s point of view.
• Don’t train angry
• Loss of temper and YELLING.
• Over training
• Brutality
• Don’t talk too much
• Commands dogs don’t understand
• Commands you cannot enforce
• Correcting a dog when it doesn’t know what it did.
• Overuse of e-collar
• Not having fun
• Not having a game plan
• Dogs are made gunshy, they do not come that way.

Next is a list of things to do, or general recommendations:

• ½ an hour daily is better than three hours on Saturday.
• Forgetting to socialize
• Allow other people walk it, feed it, let it see different people, explore and gain confidence
• Be a fair leader, not a dictator
• Make sessions short and end on good notes.
• Better a short quality session than a long pushed the dog to boredom session.
• Patience
• Enjoyable
• Sense of humor
• Fun
• Friends
• Keep smiling
• A puppy can do no wrong.
• Guidance, not punishment
• Persistence
• Patience
• Patience
• Persistence
• You are gonna screw up
• Trust
• Let pup learn
• Keep training sessions short and focused.
• Be patient and keep your mouth closed.
• Did I mention patience.
• Learn to listen
• know when to quit
• Cut you expectations in half for the first two years so that failure doesn't tweak your patience and temper and immediate success doesn't blind you
• Do not train unless your mind is on it and you are motivated.

As always, I have to bring this back to education.  From reading the thread, and re-reading my lists, some things stood out to me in terms of how educating people is similar to training dogs.

Patience and persistence is huge in both.

I liked the one that said, “Learn to listen.”  How do you listen to a dog?  Ah, they speak. So do our students.

I also liked the comment, “Dogs are made gunshy, they don’t come that way.”  How does this relate to students?  I think there is a connection.

Anyone have additional thoughts?

Standards-based Grading of Dogs

Don't worry, this post actually is about learning...

As a hobby, my wife and I train hunting dogs.  One of the things that has amazed me while working with dogs is the parallels between dog training and teaching, learning, and assessment.

The assessment piece is the most interesting.  Each of our dogs are run through a variety of hunting tests.  These tests are sort of tiered by age and expected ability.  For young dogs, who are anywhere from 6 months to 18 months in age, a "puppy test" is administered.  During this test, the dog has to search a field, locate and "point" a few birds, and track a rabbit.  While these things are going on, judges are also assessing how well the dog is using its nose, its cooperation, and its desire to do the job at hand.

These things are assessed by a group of 3 judges that walk with the dog's owner while these tasks are being carried out.  At the end of the day, the dog is given a score card that rates the dog in these categories:

• Search
• Pointing
• Tracking
• Nose
• Cooperation
• Desire

The scores are tallied up for an overall total score, but the scores of the individual components are listed as well.  What is the point of all of this?

This test is used by a breeder to assess their litter.  A litter will have on average 6-8 puppies.  The breeder encourages the new puppy owners to take this test at the appropriate age, and then looks at the scores that the litter receives.  Now, we all hope for "perfect 10's" across the board, and that would be great.  Sometimes, there is a trend within the scores.  For example, some litters may have a lower score in the "pointing" category.  As a breeder, you know that their may be a genetic issue with the pointing abilities of these dogs.  So, when you think about breeding again, you take that into consideration.  You will likely not pair the same two dogs up again, or perhaps not breed those two dogs again at all.

This is a description of a German hunting test that was developed in the late 1800's.  All dogs that want to be bred and receive pedigrees must do this test (and some others) to get to OK to breed.  The important thing to note though is that the dogs are not simply rubber stamped with a YES or NO.  Instead, a relatively detailed description of their abilities are noted and kept on record.

How does this relate to education?  To me, it saddens me at the state of education for the last century, particularly in terms of grading and assessment.  When I started training and testing dogs, I was given more detailed information about my dogs abilities than what I was supplying to my students!  I was simply sending students to their next classes with a grade of "A" or "C."  No one knows what that means.  It is utterly useless, yet it ends up being a large part that defines the future of a student.

Now, by using standards-based grading, I am starting to send more detailed information to students, parents, myself, and other teachers.  Instead of a student getting a "B+" in science, we can say that the student is showing advanced understanding in one area, while only proficient in another area.  For the dogs, these tests scores are very high stakes.  It may very well determine breeding potential.  For students, these scores can be information on where to practice and where to celebrate.

I am hoping that the standards-based grading movement at least gets us as educators to a point that is equivalent to where dog breeding has been for a century.  I am hopeful!

Purpose of Grading

Let’s get right to it!  Why do we grade?

First off, grading is not necessary for learning.   Learning can and does happen without grades.  The easiest way to think about this is to reflect on your own learning.   Think of the many things you have learned where no one graded you.   Perhaps we go after these things because we are interested.  We all know that our classes have some parts that are not as interesting as others.  Can we then use grades as some sort of reward or punishment which may lead to motivation?  Can we use grades to augment interest?

In my opinion, grades have one main purpose.  Many of the ideas I plan on discussing on this blog require some degree of agreement on this.  The main purpose of having grades is to communicate achievement.   This seems like a very simple idea and on the surface, most people agree in principle.  Do they agree in practice?

Traditionally, grades were often used to sort students.  I think that is why we needed so many levels.  If you look at a “normal” letter grade scale, there are 13 different levels (A+, A, A-, B+, B, etc).   From a communication of who is smarter than who standpoint, it is nice to have several levels.  The best in the class gets the A+, the average is the C.  Some are a little above the average, but not quite where we want to say they belong with the B crowd.  Good thing we have a C+ for those students.

When you look at the history of grades, the above distinction was not followed exactly.  Instead, we used the percentage scale to back up the categories.  These are still used today and depending on their use they could communicate achievement or they could simply sort students.  Now, we may have the different grade ranges correspond with a given percentage range.  If this was followed precisely, it could say that the grade was communicating achievement.  Most teachers know how easily it is to manipulate percentages either by careful assessment writing or by simply fudging a point here and there.

Isn’t ranking students still a way to communicate achievement?  The student who achieves the most gets the highest grade.  That is a clear communication.  I wonder about the utility of such communication.  How helpful is it to know that a student is the smartest/highest achiever in the class or even the school?

As promised by my title, I will answer this by using my experiences from the dog world.   My wife and I train and test Deutsch Langhaars.  They are a German versatile hunting dog, which means that they are used to hunt a variety of animals.  This experience has gotten us into the hunting dog world.  For me, the experience has shown so many parallels to education.   Our dogs are tested through an organization that uses a standardized testing procedure.  More on that later.  Many other dogs are not “tested,” instead they are “trialed.”   This is a competitive event where a whole bunch of dogs go out and do whatever tasks are required of them.  At the end of the day, the dog what was the best wins a prize.  There are multiple venues for this with each venue requiring different things.  Some trials are for pointing dogs (dogs who indicate where game is by stopping and pointing with their nose), while others are for retrievers.  Most of the dogs are judged by a combination of speed to complete the task as well as style while doing the task.  

Now, back to grades.  In the dog field trial, isn’t the most achieving dog the one who gets first place?  Isn’t achievement being directly communicated?  This certainly is true, but like the classroom example, what is the utility?  Since there are so many different venues, how can we use the information?  If a dog is a national champion in an AKC field trial, is it the same, better, or worse than a dog who is an American Field national champion?  What about NSTRA or UFTA?  If you wanted to purchase a puppy, how do you know you are getting the best and what does the best include?  If a dog is a national champion, what does that mean?

Back to education.  If students are ranked by ability using grades, then we are certainly communicating something.  Is an A+ in my class the same as the class down the hall?  Is a B in my school the same as in the school across town…across the state?

Grades need to be used to communicate achievement.  What achievement do we want to communicate and how do we do that?  More on that later, with some more dog examples.