Santos Sets New Mark for Single-Class CPM

Seventh grade Ethics teacher Fernando Santos shattered his own single-session record this morning, setting the new mark at an astounding 7.3 connections per minute (CPM).

Since the connections per minute statistic came into general use among educators during the early 1970s, no teacher has ever been able break the 7.0 barrier until today. Santos came close in 2008, posting an inspiring 6.8 CPM during a seventh grade History class about Egypt, a BPCPS record at the time and a mark which has stood until this morning.

Connections per minute refers to the number of connections the teacher makes to the personal experiences of students, to events in the life of the school, to current events outside the school, to the teacher's own life experience--in short, connections to anything compelling and familiar to students--during a typical minute of instruction.

Today, I observed Mr. Santos make the following connections while leading his advisory through the dialogue that introduced the seventh grade maxim for courage: get involved!

• A connection to one advisee's proudly displayed mohawk (getting involved often means doing what others are afraid to do and what might make you stick out)
• Tattoos (similar to the mohawk)
• A connection to superheroes (we like to imagine people who will intervene and protect the rest of us from crimes and other dangers)
• A stabbing over the weekend in Jamaica Plain (witnesses were reluctant to come forward with information)

Mr. Santos made these connections in fairly quick succession while students were reading today's text out loud. He allowed a very brief window for students to respond. Every hand was up, every student had a story to share. Mr. Santos gave everyone a few seconds of air time and then continued with the reading. The whole exchange lasted no more than two minutes (okay, so the 7.3 CPM is an exaggeration).

The point is that Mr. Santos, using only a few minutes of instruction, was able to connect the maxim for courage to something that he knew would be of interest specifically to the students who were in front of him. He knows his students, he knows what's happening in their lives--not necessarily in the lives of seventh graders generally but in the lives of those six particular seventh graders sitting at the Cafetorium table with him. He used this knowledge, and some impressive improv skills, to make the connection between something that might not yet seem relevant to his students, like the maxim for courage, to something that definitely is, like the mohawk. You can't put this stuff in a lesson plan.

In August, we talked about making Ethics instruction more immediately relevant to the lives of our students. Cranking up the CPM can certainly help in this effort.