This is the first post in a series on the successful implementation of any classroom innovation. It is based on the list of elements needed for successful flipping (tweeted by Jon Bergman) that I referenced in my last post. While the list was posted about the flipped classroom experience, it occurred to me that it reflects the elements needed for any innovation, from flipping to tech integration to project based learning. Whatever innovation you are trying to implement, apply these needs to it. I'm combining the first two - Leadership and Acknowledgement - because they fit well together.
If you going to innovate, you must have the support of your school's leadership. When you try something new, it scares people. When people get scared, they want you to stop the new thing and go back to what they are comfortable with. In education, that means nice and safe lectures from a nice and safe textbook. You will likely end up getting a lot of e-mails and having a lot of parent-teacher conferences. You are going to need the support of your principal during these times.
The other reason you need a super-supportive administration is that you are going to need cheerleaders to make change happen. Administrators, avoid the temptation to make this a measured accountability thing. When GRACE was deciding to have a one-to-one program, there was a brief (thankfully) discussion of how to hold teachers accountable. It was suggested that we require a certain percentage of time each week be devoted to the use of technology. I get the desire to hold people accountable and make things measurable, but doing that would have been detrimental to teacher enthusiasm. When it becomes "part of your job," you meet your minimum requirement only; and you do it without enthusiasm. Instead, our IT department and administrators decided to be cheerleaders. They told us what was possible with the innovation, gave us time to share with each other, sent us links and tools that they saw. Because of this, we jumped in, each at our own starting level and grew. We were encouraged to think of one big thing each semester, and my goal was to add as many little everyday things (google image diagrams, animations from youtube, collaborating using Google Docs, etc.) as possible every day. In our faculty meetings, our administration set aside time for us to share our successes and ask questions.
We have been in this for six years now. While things look different than they did at the beginning, we still take the time to cheer each other on. This year, each teacher presented a new tool during a faculty meeting and shared how they had used it (or planned to use it) in their own classes. Every year, we have an EdCamp, where teachers teach each other. Innovation is exhausting. It's that good kind of tired that comes from doing something meaningful, but it is exhausting. A good administrator will recognize that and give you the support you need. Sharing and acknowledging each other's achievements (and also laughing at your own failures) gives you energy in a great way. If you want to innovate, but you don't have supportive leadership, make a little team of your own. It will be harder, but it should not stop you from innovating.
Next time - Time and Focus
Showing posts with label one to one. Show all posts
Showing posts with label one to one. Show all posts
Monday, June 12, 2017
Sunday, April 23, 2017
Judge For Yourself
There are two professions in which fads are most prevalent, fashion and education. It is obvious in fashion as there are visible and recognizable from season to season. It is even necessary to the survival of the industry.
In education, the fads are a bit more subtle as they take longer to implement and stick around for several years. They are not, however, necessary to the survival of education and may even be harmful to the students on which they are tried. Not all fads are bad, of course, but it is important to recognize one when you see it and then (and this is important, people) use your professional judgment.
When I began teaching eighteen years ago, I wondered why my freshmen couldn't spell the simplest words. For two years, I taught fourteen and fifteen-year-olds who could not spell words like definite or intelligent. When I asked them what the problem was, they informed me that they had been instructed using the inventive spelling method. For those blessedly unfamiliar with this "pedagogy," inventive spelling is "the practice of spelling unfamiliar words by making an educated guess as to the correct spelling based on the writer's existing phonetic knowledge." (grammar.yourdictionary.com) The hope is that the student will eventually learn to spell the words correctly by absorption. It doesn't work, and I can't imagine why anyone thought it would, but my students were subjected to it for three years of elementary school. These students are now in their early thirties and, based on their facebook pages, they still struggle to spell words correctly.
My first two semesters of college, I took Calculus I and II - sort of. I was part of an experimental curriculum, called Discovering Calculus. The book, which was an anorexic 90 pages long, did not have formulas in it. We, as college students, were supposed to figure out the formulas by intuition. The logic behind this approach came from years of students knowing how to perform calculus equations without really understanding them. While I understand that issue, I do know that students who passed those class could do the calculus they learned while I still cannot. There's a reason it took from the beginning of time until Isaac Newton for mankind to have calculus. Every student in my class went to a used bookstore and bought a real calculus book so that we could survive this class.
Now that I have taught for nearly two decades, I am left to ask myself where the professional judgment was in these teachers. Was there really an elementary school teacher who truly thought second graders would eventually figure out the spelling of words when the English language is fraught with exceptions to phonics? My calculus professors were not first-year teachers. They knew how to teach calculus to physics and engineering majors because they had done it for many years (one of them for decades). What made them think this would work? My guess is that in both cases, the people in the classroom didn't have a choice. They probably had it handed down to them by their administration because someone convinced those people to adopt the latest educational fad.
Those schools no longer teach inventive spelling or discovering calculus because it proved to be ineffective. If this were the fashion industry, that might not be a big deal. We all get to look back at our bow blouses and banana clips with nothing more than a blushing head shake. This is not true, however, in education. These fads are experiments, and the guinea pigs are our students. It is dangerous to try every fad in education without serious thought.
Lest you think that I want our classrooms to stay stuck in the model of two hundred years ago, let me quickly dispel that notion. I teach enthusiastically in a one-to-one school, and my students learn through the use of internet research, show their learning through video construction, and reflect on their learning through blogging. They collaborate on projects and review using every online tool I can find. I have digital textbooks, have flipped lessons, and use youtube so much that I don't know how I taught without it. There is nothing about me that resists the use of technology. HOWEVER, (and it is a big however), if a teacher is using technology for the sake of using technology, they are using technology wrong.
You owe it to your students to analyze your own pedagogy. The educational value of teachers lies in our judgment as trained professionals. Anyone can deliver information, but it takes an educator to decide on what to teach (and what not to teach) as well as the best way to teach, reinforce, and assess learning. When a new fad comes along in education, it may actually be a great new way to teach something, but keep in mind that it may not be. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Does the new way offer brain engagement in a way that the old way does not?
- Does the new way take away from brain development that the old way offers?
- Is there value to the new tool for more than one curriculum point?
- If the new way doesn't work, what long-term effect will it have on students?
- Does the new way teach a skill or thinking process that students will need in the future?
Sometimes, the new way is the best way, and sometimes it is not. My students blog because I decided that they would benefit from weekly reflection, that I could expose them to content there wasn't time for in class, and that I could ask them to empathize by using appropriate prompts. My professional judgment was that these were important enough goals to make grading seventy blogs a week worth it. My students make videos because script-writing forces them to put learning in their own words, but they do not make stop-action videos (unless they choose it) because I find little educational value to justify the time it takes. My students have collaborative projects because it is my professional judgment that much non-academic learning happens when people work together. My students also have solo projects because I believe that there must be times when students create on their own. The common element in each of these situations is that I do not just passively adopt the newest fad method or technological tool. I don't just ride the educational pendulum. Rather, I employ all my training and experience to make the right decision for my classroom.
Just as importantly, I am fortunate enough to have an administration that allows me to do so.
In education, the fads are a bit more subtle as they take longer to implement and stick around for several years. They are not, however, necessary to the survival of education and may even be harmful to the students on which they are tried. Not all fads are bad, of course, but it is important to recognize one when you see it and then (and this is important, people) use your professional judgment.
When I began teaching eighteen years ago, I wondered why my freshmen couldn't spell the simplest words. For two years, I taught fourteen and fifteen-year-olds who could not spell words like definite or intelligent. When I asked them what the problem was, they informed me that they had been instructed using the inventive spelling method. For those blessedly unfamiliar with this "pedagogy," inventive spelling is "the practice of spelling unfamiliar words by making an educated guess as to the correct spelling based on the writer's existing phonetic knowledge." (grammar.yourdictionary.com) The hope is that the student will eventually learn to spell the words correctly by absorption. It doesn't work, and I can't imagine why anyone thought it would, but my students were subjected to it for three years of elementary school. These students are now in their early thirties and, based on their facebook pages, they still struggle to spell words correctly.
My first two semesters of college, I took Calculus I and II - sort of. I was part of an experimental curriculum, called Discovering Calculus. The book, which was an anorexic 90 pages long, did not have formulas in it. We, as college students, were supposed to figure out the formulas by intuition. The logic behind this approach came from years of students knowing how to perform calculus equations without really understanding them. While I understand that issue, I do know that students who passed those class could do the calculus they learned while I still cannot. There's a reason it took from the beginning of time until Isaac Newton for mankind to have calculus. Every student in my class went to a used bookstore and bought a real calculus book so that we could survive this class.
Now that I have taught for nearly two decades, I am left to ask myself where the professional judgment was in these teachers. Was there really an elementary school teacher who truly thought second graders would eventually figure out the spelling of words when the English language is fraught with exceptions to phonics? My calculus professors were not first-year teachers. They knew how to teach calculus to physics and engineering majors because they had done it for many years (one of them for decades). What made them think this would work? My guess is that in both cases, the people in the classroom didn't have a choice. They probably had it handed down to them by their administration because someone convinced those people to adopt the latest educational fad.
Those schools no longer teach inventive spelling or discovering calculus because it proved to be ineffective. If this were the fashion industry, that might not be a big deal. We all get to look back at our bow blouses and banana clips with nothing more than a blushing head shake. This is not true, however, in education. These fads are experiments, and the guinea pigs are our students. It is dangerous to try every fad in education without serious thought.
Lest you think that I want our classrooms to stay stuck in the model of two hundred years ago, let me quickly dispel that notion. I teach enthusiastically in a one-to-one school, and my students learn through the use of internet research, show their learning through video construction, and reflect on their learning through blogging. They collaborate on projects and review using every online tool I can find. I have digital textbooks, have flipped lessons, and use youtube so much that I don't know how I taught without it. There is nothing about me that resists the use of technology. HOWEVER, (and it is a big however), if a teacher is using technology for the sake of using technology, they are using technology wrong.
You owe it to your students to analyze your own pedagogy. The educational value of teachers lies in our judgment as trained professionals. Anyone can deliver information, but it takes an educator to decide on what to teach (and what not to teach) as well as the best way to teach, reinforce, and assess learning. When a new fad comes along in education, it may actually be a great new way to teach something, but keep in mind that it may not be. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Does the new way offer brain engagement in a way that the old way does not?
- Does the new way take away from brain development that the old way offers?
- Is there value to the new tool for more than one curriculum point?
- If the new way doesn't work, what long-term effect will it have on students?
- Does the new way teach a skill or thinking process that students will need in the future?
Sometimes, the new way is the best way, and sometimes it is not. My students blog because I decided that they would benefit from weekly reflection, that I could expose them to content there wasn't time for in class, and that I could ask them to empathize by using appropriate prompts. My professional judgment was that these were important enough goals to make grading seventy blogs a week worth it. My students make videos because script-writing forces them to put learning in their own words, but they do not make stop-action videos (unless they choose it) because I find little educational value to justify the time it takes. My students have collaborative projects because it is my professional judgment that much non-academic learning happens when people work together. My students also have solo projects because I believe that there must be times when students create on their own. The common element in each of these situations is that I do not just passively adopt the newest fad method or technological tool. I don't just ride the educational pendulum. Rather, I employ all my training and experience to make the right decision for my classroom.
Just as importantly, I am fortunate enough to have an administration that allows me to do so.
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Accreditation Celebration
For the past two years, we have been preparing for the renewal of our school's accreditation. For the past two days, we have been visited by the accreditation review team. This is a great, scary, tiring, exhiliarating, interesting, and unsettling process. Anyone who gets inspected on their job understands how weird it is to have someone you don't know come in and watch you do your job.
Here's a ridiculously brief summary of how it works. We start by dividing into committees involving teachers across multiple levels of the school, parents, a student representative, and often an administrator. Each committee is assigned some aspect of the school to examine. My committee examined the teaching and learning aspects of the school. Others involved resource allocation, leadership, etc. We rated ourselves on various criteria related to that aspect of the school. We examined everything from whether we think we do it well to whether we think we do it from a distinctly Christian perspective. We gathered evidence to support our opinons (in my case, student work), and we write a report. Those reports are then compiled into one large report and sent to the external review team.
The team read our report and examined our evidence for about a month before they showed up on our campus. They wrote questions of things they might like more detail on or would like to see verified. They toured our campuses, met our leadership, and began their discussions with each other. Then, they spent most of a day and a half observing our classrooms. Between them, these six people sat in on 50 lessons. That's an impressive cross section of our school. They rated on us the learning environment we provide for our students.
Yesterday afternoon, they delivered their findings (our report card if you want it in school terms) to the administration in detail and then the summary to our entire faculty and staff. As he began his presentation, I was interested in one thing, the slide with the ratings. All the other information is helpful and useful, but I wanted to see the brass tacks numbers. For seven different fields, we were given a rating between one and four during every observation. Those ratings were then averaged together, and our LOWEST average rating was 3.54! I believe in what we are doing, but that was an incredible validation of what we knew. Yes, there were things to improve on, but those were things we had already identified ourselves as needs and are in progress.
I spoke to one of our administrators, who said that our technology program was praised in particular. He told them that they see a lot of computers and many one-to-one programs, but they didn't see people using it as well as we did. I would like to point out that this is due to the tireless effforts of several people. Sean and Diane, you may not be with us any more, but you got us started on the right foot, noticed our plateau / regression year, and took action to move us forward. Laura, Tomeka, Daniel, and Carol, you have continued to coach us and encourage us to use the technology, not just in new ways but in more meaningful ways. Dana and Anthony, you tirelessly put out fires and prevent them. None of this would happen without your continued efforts to make it all work. Thank you to all of you because we know you work hard to make our work easier.
The other statement made yesterday that stuck with me was that they felt our Biblical worldview integration was natural and unforced. They even said students had commented on that. It stuck with me because I came from public school and really had to learn to do it. For years, I felt that I was perhaps forcing it, and I appreciate that people have taken the time to really help us INTEGRATE, not add, biblical teaching into our curriculum.
We will see the details of this report in days to come and begin work on the areas of suggested improvement; but for right now, we all get to take a deep breath and thank God for the incredible community in which he has placed us.
Here's a ridiculously brief summary of how it works. We start by dividing into committees involving teachers across multiple levels of the school, parents, a student representative, and often an administrator. Each committee is assigned some aspect of the school to examine. My committee examined the teaching and learning aspects of the school. Others involved resource allocation, leadership, etc. We rated ourselves on various criteria related to that aspect of the school. We examined everything from whether we think we do it well to whether we think we do it from a distinctly Christian perspective. We gathered evidence to support our opinons (in my case, student work), and we write a report. Those reports are then compiled into one large report and sent to the external review team.
The team read our report and examined our evidence for about a month before they showed up on our campus. They wrote questions of things they might like more detail on or would like to see verified. They toured our campuses, met our leadership, and began their discussions with each other. Then, they spent most of a day and a half observing our classrooms. Between them, these six people sat in on 50 lessons. That's an impressive cross section of our school. They rated on us the learning environment we provide for our students.
Yesterday afternoon, they delivered their findings (our report card if you want it in school terms) to the administration in detail and then the summary to our entire faculty and staff. As he began his presentation, I was interested in one thing, the slide with the ratings. All the other information is helpful and useful, but I wanted to see the brass tacks numbers. For seven different fields, we were given a rating between one and four during every observation. Those ratings were then averaged together, and our LOWEST average rating was 3.54! I believe in what we are doing, but that was an incredible validation of what we knew. Yes, there were things to improve on, but those were things we had already identified ourselves as needs and are in progress.
I spoke to one of our administrators, who said that our technology program was praised in particular. He told them that they see a lot of computers and many one-to-one programs, but they didn't see people using it as well as we did. I would like to point out that this is due to the tireless effforts of several people. Sean and Diane, you may not be with us any more, but you got us started on the right foot, noticed our plateau / regression year, and took action to move us forward. Laura, Tomeka, Daniel, and Carol, you have continued to coach us and encourage us to use the technology, not just in new ways but in more meaningful ways. Dana and Anthony, you tirelessly put out fires and prevent them. None of this would happen without your continued efforts to make it all work. Thank you to all of you because we know you work hard to make our work easier.
The other statement made yesterday that stuck with me was that they felt our Biblical worldview integration was natural and unforced. They even said students had commented on that. It stuck with me because I came from public school and really had to learn to do it. For years, I felt that I was perhaps forcing it, and I appreciate that people have taken the time to really help us INTEGRATE, not add, biblical teaching into our curriculum.
We will see the details of this report in days to come and begin work on the areas of suggested improvement; but for right now, we all get to take a deep breath and thank God for the incredible community in which he has placed us.
Saturday, August 27, 2016
More Than Devices
In last week's post, I ended with a shout out to Laura Warmke for helping me work through some new ideas to replace an old project. This week, I thought I would share about Laura and her role in our school because it might be unique. At the very least, it is rare; and it should not be. Laura has made us better teachers, and I'm not sure I can give a higher compliment than that.
Let me start with a bit of history. When I started at GRACE fourteen years ago, teachers were calculating grades with a calculator and a pencil. I created a spreadsheet, and I think my colleagues viewed it as sorcery. During the years that followed, our school slowly grew in technology by allowing students to bring their own devices and encouraging teachers to learn new things. As new teachers were hired, they brought new skills and ideas. The whole time, we were encouraged by our IT Director, Diane Scro. She supported, taught, trained, and cheered us on in our efforts to come forward. She even convinced our head of school to start implementing Smart Boards in our classrooms. Big SHOUT OUT to Diane for pulling us forward. Diane was joined seven years ago by Sean Blesh, and that team was the force behind our one to one program. Together, they held teachers hands as we learned Mac and began to implement technology based lessons into our plans. They both understood that they were dealing with teachers across the spectrum of skills and fear when it came to technology and were able to move everyone forward. Big SHOUT OUT to both Sean and Diane for the way they led us during this time. They couldn't have been better resources.
Five years ago, our librarian moved to Tennessee. That's when we hired Laura. If you are over thirty, you probably think of librarians as older women who tell you to be quiet, lest you disturb the books. That is wrong. They are now media specialists. That's not just a PC term like "administrative assistant." Media specialists will still lead you to the book you need, but they will also help you find information from credible internet sources, connect you to visual media, make sure you are staying within fair use guidelines, put it in a perspective of research, teach your class to do more than google, and possibly connect you with an expert. It's not just about books anymore. Laura is all these things, but she is also someone who cares deeply about teachers and helping them make the best lesson possible.
Two years ago, Laura's husband finished his PhD and got a job in the Midwest. For some reason, Laura wanted to live with her husband, so she had to move to Indiana or Illinois or whatever too. I was not okay with this; but as He often does, God made it work even better than we knew. We now have a wonderful new media specialist, Daniel O'Brien (Big SHOUT OUT to Daniel for implementing Maker Spaces and our 3-D printer), but we also didn't lose Laura. She became a telecommuting technology coach.
Let me say that in different words. We have a faculty member who lives over a thousand miles away! She provides all the support and love she always did, but she does it using Google Hangout (while staying home with her babies). Every quarter, I have at least one meeting with her just for the purpose of talking through new ways to integrate technology and create more depth in our lessons, especially challenge based learning projects. She is also available by e-mail, and we share some google docs for things that require more extended collaboration. She physically comes in for teacher week at the beginning and end of the year and for the North Carolina Technology in Education Conference; but most of the time, we just see her head. This happened because GRACE understands the need for teacher training in technology. No matter what devices a school has, without teacher training they might as well be a chisel and stone. All schools should have someone like Laura (NOT Laura, she is ours), someone who is looking out for the deeper application of technology rather than just the use of it. It's the way to make your one to one program more than devices.
Let me start with a bit of history. When I started at GRACE fourteen years ago, teachers were calculating grades with a calculator and a pencil. I created a spreadsheet, and I think my colleagues viewed it as sorcery. During the years that followed, our school slowly grew in technology by allowing students to bring their own devices and encouraging teachers to learn new things. As new teachers were hired, they brought new skills and ideas. The whole time, we were encouraged by our IT Director, Diane Scro. She supported, taught, trained, and cheered us on in our efforts to come forward. She even convinced our head of school to start implementing Smart Boards in our classrooms. Big SHOUT OUT to Diane for pulling us forward. Diane was joined seven years ago by Sean Blesh, and that team was the force behind our one to one program. Together, they held teachers hands as we learned Mac and began to implement technology based lessons into our plans. They both understood that they were dealing with teachers across the spectrum of skills and fear when it came to technology and were able to move everyone forward. Big SHOUT OUT to both Sean and Diane for the way they led us during this time. They couldn't have been better resources.
Five years ago, our librarian moved to Tennessee. That's when we hired Laura. If you are over thirty, you probably think of librarians as older women who tell you to be quiet, lest you disturb the books. That is wrong. They are now media specialists. That's not just a PC term like "administrative assistant." Media specialists will still lead you to the book you need, but they will also help you find information from credible internet sources, connect you to visual media, make sure you are staying within fair use guidelines, put it in a perspective of research, teach your class to do more than google, and possibly connect you with an expert. It's not just about books anymore. Laura is all these things, but she is also someone who cares deeply about teachers and helping them make the best lesson possible.
Two years ago, Laura's husband finished his PhD and got a job in the Midwest. For some reason, Laura wanted to live with her husband, so she had to move to Indiana or Illinois or whatever too. I was not okay with this; but as He often does, God made it work even better than we knew. We now have a wonderful new media specialist, Daniel O'Brien (Big SHOUT OUT to Daniel for implementing Maker Spaces and our 3-D printer), but we also didn't lose Laura. She became a telecommuting technology coach.
Let me say that in different words. We have a faculty member who lives over a thousand miles away! She provides all the support and love she always did, but she does it using Google Hangout (while staying home with her babies). Every quarter, I have at least one meeting with her just for the purpose of talking through new ways to integrate technology and create more depth in our lessons, especially challenge based learning projects. She is also available by e-mail, and we share some google docs for things that require more extended collaboration. She physically comes in for teacher week at the beginning and end of the year and for the North Carolina Technology in Education Conference; but most of the time, we just see her head. This happened because GRACE understands the need for teacher training in technology. No matter what devices a school has, without teacher training they might as well be a chisel and stone. All schools should have someone like Laura (NOT Laura, she is ours), someone who is looking out for the deeper application of technology rather than just the use of it. It's the way to make your one to one program more than devices.
Monday, February 1, 2016
Student Blogging Update
At the beginning of the school year, I posted about my plan for 8th-grade blogging. Since we are now over halfway through the school year, I thought I'd post an update on how this experiment in public is going.
In short, it's going great.
You probably want a little more detail, huh? Okay, I suppose that's legitimate.
First, let me say as a science teacher that good writing matters, no matter what class you are in. Good writing matters no matter what career your plan to explore. Good writing matters because clear communication matters in our world like it never has before. Blogging has been a great opportunity for my 8th graders to practice writing. In the beginning, they treated the blog a little more casually than I would have liked. I got blog posts that started with "What up? This is yo boy KW here." That gave me an opportunity to have the discussion about the difference between informal personal writing (like personal tweets) and more formal writing for the purpose of education. This improved their posts dramatically.
Second, we live in a world where we rarely take the time to reflect. We get a constant stream of input all day every day. I read recently that the 2016 American brain processes more data in one week than the 1776 American processed in their entire life. We form instant opinions that we actively refuse to change, even in the face of new input. We are so busy taking in new information that we don't take the time to reflect and get perspective on the information we already have. Blogging has been a wonderful opportunity for me to get perspective as an adult, and I am starting to see it in my students as well. Their posts are a lot shorter than mine; they are only required to have five sentences. Some of them are now showing deeper thought than they were before, and I think it is because they are "forced" to reflect at least enough to produce five good sentences.
Third, while this has not yet caught on with my fellow 8th-grade teachers as much as I would have liked, I have found that I can make the science blog as cross-curricular as I would like. At the end of the first semester, I asked them to tell me their favorite thing they had learned so far. By specifically not including the words "in science," I gave them the opportunity to tell me about any of their learning. I got some lovely posts about math and history and books they were reading in English. It was wonderful. This week, their assigned topic is specifically about how their subject disciplines interact. How are math and science and history and writing all related to each other? They will have to consider this for more time than they would have if they weren't writing a blog post.
Lastly, I have discovered that student blogging can incorporate almost anything. If I want them to realize that proper citations matter outside of English, I can require it on this week's blog post. If I want them to reflect on how their study of science affects or reflects their faith, I can make that the topic of the week. If I see a cool 60-minutes spot about the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, I can post a link and ask them to respond in their blog. If I have a guest speaker, they can blog their response to him. The blog can be used for project checkpoints and making sure they know how to make a working link. Think of a skill you want your students to have, and you can incorporate it into their blog post requirements. The best part is that I don't have to make a new assignment, overwhelming them with the amount of work they have to do. The blog posts are due on Friday, no matter what; so it isn't an additional burden when I think of a new skill I want them to practice.
What I am most looking forward to is how this year's students progress with their blog. The ultimate vision is that they will continue to update this blog throughout high school, place their best writing there, curate their own work, and have a digital portfolio that can use for college applications, job applications, and personal enrichment. Since we are only half way through year one, it is probably to early to tell if this will have that kind of long-term impact. So far, it is going quite well.
In short, it's going great.
You probably want a little more detail, huh? Okay, I suppose that's legitimate.
First, let me say as a science teacher that good writing matters, no matter what class you are in. Good writing matters no matter what career your plan to explore. Good writing matters because clear communication matters in our world like it never has before. Blogging has been a great opportunity for my 8th graders to practice writing. In the beginning, they treated the blog a little more casually than I would have liked. I got blog posts that started with "What up? This is yo boy KW here." That gave me an opportunity to have the discussion about the difference between informal personal writing (like personal tweets) and more formal writing for the purpose of education. This improved their posts dramatically.
Second, we live in a world where we rarely take the time to reflect. We get a constant stream of input all day every day. I read recently that the 2016 American brain processes more data in one week than the 1776 American processed in their entire life. We form instant opinions that we actively refuse to change, even in the face of new input. We are so busy taking in new information that we don't take the time to reflect and get perspective on the information we already have. Blogging has been a wonderful opportunity for me to get perspective as an adult, and I am starting to see it in my students as well. Their posts are a lot shorter than mine; they are only required to have five sentences. Some of them are now showing deeper thought than they were before, and I think it is because they are "forced" to reflect at least enough to produce five good sentences.
Third, while this has not yet caught on with my fellow 8th-grade teachers as much as I would have liked, I have found that I can make the science blog as cross-curricular as I would like. At the end of the first semester, I asked them to tell me their favorite thing they had learned so far. By specifically not including the words "in science," I gave them the opportunity to tell me about any of their learning. I got some lovely posts about math and history and books they were reading in English. It was wonderful. This week, their assigned topic is specifically about how their subject disciplines interact. How are math and science and history and writing all related to each other? They will have to consider this for more time than they would have if they weren't writing a blog post.
Lastly, I have discovered that student blogging can incorporate almost anything. If I want them to realize that proper citations matter outside of English, I can require it on this week's blog post. If I want them to reflect on how their study of science affects or reflects their faith, I can make that the topic of the week. If I see a cool 60-minutes spot about the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, I can post a link and ask them to respond in their blog. If I have a guest speaker, they can blog their response to him. The blog can be used for project checkpoints and making sure they know how to make a working link. Think of a skill you want your students to have, and you can incorporate it into their blog post requirements. The best part is that I don't have to make a new assignment, overwhelming them with the amount of work they have to do. The blog posts are due on Friday, no matter what; so it isn't an additional burden when I think of a new skill I want them to practice.
What I am most looking forward to is how this year's students progress with their blog. The ultimate vision is that they will continue to update this blog throughout high school, place their best writing there, curate their own work, and have a digital portfolio that can use for college applications, job applications, and personal enrichment. Since we are only half way through year one, it is probably to early to tell if this will have that kind of long-term impact. So far, it is going quite well.
Monday, October 5, 2015
What's So Hard About Being a Good Teacher?
Recently, one of my more outspoken 8th graders said, "I don't get what's so hard about being a good teacher. I mean, you just do it." We were in the middle of a lesson on the periodic table, so I didn't have time to go into a soliloquy about the training and experience that brought me to the point where I am today. I replied, "That's because you only see what happens in these 45 minutes." and of course followed up with, "Read my blog."
His question, however improperly timed, does reflect the thinking of many students (and probably parents and society at large). It got me thinking about other comments I have heard. A teacher friend of mine said her husband told her she wouldn't be so tired all the time if she had better boundaries between work and life. Legislators in most states play political bingo with test scores and teacher pay and school assignment for students because they don't understand what goes into good teaching either. At the risk of sounding defensive, I'm going to take it upon myself to explain what the big deal is. What's so hard about being a good teacher? My dear 8th grader, I'll give you four answers; but they won't even scratch the surface.
Answer one - Let's start with a teacher's education. I hold a bachelor's degree in secondary science education with an emphasis in physics. When I was in college I took all the teaching classes an education major has to take as well as two calculus courses, four biology classes and their labs, three chemistry class with two labs, earth science and its lab, and every physics course I could fit into the schedule. I even pushed some of my general ed into the summer so that I could take Applied Thermodynamics and Modern Physics. Since graduating from college, I have attended hundreds of hours of workshops, training seminars, and conventions. I read articles on new educational research and books on neuroscience. I follow Talks with Teachers on Twitter and participated in their Idea Lab. I'm not complaining about ANY of this. I love learning, and it's part of being good. I wouldn't want a doctor who got his degree in 1998 to have learned none of the medical science that happened since then, and I wouldn't want my teaching to reflect only the information that was available then either. Professional development is a good and enjoyable thing, but it is part one of the answer to your 8th grader question. Good teaching is hard because you never stop developing it.
Answer two - All the research says something different. I was reading an article recently on the importance of homework. It discussed the part of the brain that is activated when doing work independently after having left the environment in which you learned it. Then I clicked on the related article, which was about how homework is the worst thing ever invented and why no one should ever be required to do it. As I have mentioned in the past, I work in a school with a one to one program. We've read a lot of research about millennial students and technology and the importance of collaboration and are all on board with our program. Then, in the course of two days, we have read two articles about how technology is messing with our memories and why introverts are being harmed by the focus on collaboration. What's a good teacher to do? The research isn't wrong; it is just that we aren't working with widgets. Every student responds differently to what we do, and only the lazy teacher responds with "teach to the middle." We have to take in all this conflicting research and figure out a way to turn it into a lesson plan. This would be like you, my 8th grade friend, trying to write one paper for five different teachers who all believe that good writing is something different.
Answer three - Your school community has specific expectations. I won't re-hash my post on my school's mission statement. You can find that by scrolling down to last week. When I was in public school, spiritual inspiration was not an expectation. It is here. Some schools focus heavily on citizenship or service, and others are all about test scores. Some care about getting grades posted within 24 hours while others want you to take the time to give deep and meaningful feedback. Learning the expectations of your specific school community isn't easy; most don't post a list or anything. You learn them at faculty meetings (meetings could be its own answer because there are so many of them). The expectations of parents are also quite different than they were even a decade ago. We live in an instant results, consumer driven, Yelp review kind of world. So, my inquisitive 8th grade student, ask yourself if it would be hard to do well in my class if I had four conflicting expectations of you and graded you on all of them and posted your grades on twitter.
Answer four - All students are different. I mentioned in answer two that every student responds differently to what we do. Introverts need quiet time to think while extroverts need verbal processing. Auditory learners find your diagrams distracting while visual learners can't learn without them. The student with auditory processing disorder needs you to have lots of bright informational posters in the room while the ADHD student finds the same posters make it difficult to listen to you. One student needs you to make constant eye contact while another would be riddled with anxiety if you looked in their direction. All these students are in the same period and are expected to accomplish the same objectives. Again, I hope you will not read this as a complaint. I do not want Stepford Students. It is a wonderful thing to have such a diverse group of people. We all learn from each other's differences, and it is one of the things that makes my job so wonderful. It is also one of the things that makes it hard to be good at.
Well, my 8th grade student, have you figured it out yet? You see me standing in front of you talking as though I am coming up with things on the spot. I've worked long and hard to make it look that way. You see me answer your questions as though it didn't take years of training to have those answers and years of experience to learn how to put those answer on an 8th grade level for you. You see me put a score on a test without any understanding of the years it has taken to build professional judgement about which error is worth 1 point off and which is worth only half a point off. You see a test as though there is a printed book of tests I am copying. (By the way, that book does exist, but you wouldn't be happy if I used it). You don't know this, but you complimented me and all your teachers with your question because you implied that we make it look easy. I hope this post helps answer your question. Being a good teacher isn't easy, but as Tom Hanks says in the movie A League of Their Own, "It's the hard that makes it great."
His question, however improperly timed, does reflect the thinking of many students (and probably parents and society at large). It got me thinking about other comments I have heard. A teacher friend of mine said her husband told her she wouldn't be so tired all the time if she had better boundaries between work and life. Legislators in most states play political bingo with test scores and teacher pay and school assignment for students because they don't understand what goes into good teaching either. At the risk of sounding defensive, I'm going to take it upon myself to explain what the big deal is. What's so hard about being a good teacher? My dear 8th grader, I'll give you four answers; but they won't even scratch the surface.
Answer one - Let's start with a teacher's education. I hold a bachelor's degree in secondary science education with an emphasis in physics. When I was in college I took all the teaching classes an education major has to take as well as two calculus courses, four biology classes and their labs, three chemistry class with two labs, earth science and its lab, and every physics course I could fit into the schedule. I even pushed some of my general ed into the summer so that I could take Applied Thermodynamics and Modern Physics. Since graduating from college, I have attended hundreds of hours of workshops, training seminars, and conventions. I read articles on new educational research and books on neuroscience. I follow Talks with Teachers on Twitter and participated in their Idea Lab. I'm not complaining about ANY of this. I love learning, and it's part of being good. I wouldn't want a doctor who got his degree in 1998 to have learned none of the medical science that happened since then, and I wouldn't want my teaching to reflect only the information that was available then either. Professional development is a good and enjoyable thing, but it is part one of the answer to your 8th grader question. Good teaching is hard because you never stop developing it.
Answer two - All the research says something different. I was reading an article recently on the importance of homework. It discussed the part of the brain that is activated when doing work independently after having left the environment in which you learned it. Then I clicked on the related article, which was about how homework is the worst thing ever invented and why no one should ever be required to do it. As I have mentioned in the past, I work in a school with a one to one program. We've read a lot of research about millennial students and technology and the importance of collaboration and are all on board with our program. Then, in the course of two days, we have read two articles about how technology is messing with our memories and why introverts are being harmed by the focus on collaboration. What's a good teacher to do? The research isn't wrong; it is just that we aren't working with widgets. Every student responds differently to what we do, and only the lazy teacher responds with "teach to the middle." We have to take in all this conflicting research and figure out a way to turn it into a lesson plan. This would be like you, my 8th grade friend, trying to write one paper for five different teachers who all believe that good writing is something different.
Answer three - Your school community has specific expectations. I won't re-hash my post on my school's mission statement. You can find that by scrolling down to last week. When I was in public school, spiritual inspiration was not an expectation. It is here. Some schools focus heavily on citizenship or service, and others are all about test scores. Some care about getting grades posted within 24 hours while others want you to take the time to give deep and meaningful feedback. Learning the expectations of your specific school community isn't easy; most don't post a list or anything. You learn them at faculty meetings (meetings could be its own answer because there are so many of them). The expectations of parents are also quite different than they were even a decade ago. We live in an instant results, consumer driven, Yelp review kind of world. So, my inquisitive 8th grade student, ask yourself if it would be hard to do well in my class if I had four conflicting expectations of you and graded you on all of them and posted your grades on twitter.
Answer four - All students are different. I mentioned in answer two that every student responds differently to what we do. Introverts need quiet time to think while extroverts need verbal processing. Auditory learners find your diagrams distracting while visual learners can't learn without them. The student with auditory processing disorder needs you to have lots of bright informational posters in the room while the ADHD student finds the same posters make it difficult to listen to you. One student needs you to make constant eye contact while another would be riddled with anxiety if you looked in their direction. All these students are in the same period and are expected to accomplish the same objectives. Again, I hope you will not read this as a complaint. I do not want Stepford Students. It is a wonderful thing to have such a diverse group of people. We all learn from each other's differences, and it is one of the things that makes my job so wonderful. It is also one of the things that makes it hard to be good at.
Well, my 8th grade student, have you figured it out yet? You see me standing in front of you talking as though I am coming up with things on the spot. I've worked long and hard to make it look that way. You see me answer your questions as though it didn't take years of training to have those answers and years of experience to learn how to put those answer on an 8th grade level for you. You see me put a score on a test without any understanding of the years it has taken to build professional judgement about which error is worth 1 point off and which is worth only half a point off. You see a test as though there is a printed book of tests I am copying. (By the way, that book does exist, but you wouldn't be happy if I used it). You don't know this, but you complimented me and all your teachers with your question because you implied that we make it look easy. I hope this post helps answer your question. Being a good teacher isn't easy, but as Tom Hanks says in the movie A League of Their Own, "It's the hard that makes it great."
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Study is a Verb - Do Something
My kids are taking chapter tests today, so I thought I would take this opportunity to share some study habits that I have gleaned from 17 years of being a pretty good student and 17 years of teaching all kinds of students. I just read that sentence and realized that I have been teaching for the same number of years I was a students. That makes me feel really old. Yikes.
1. Study is a verb - I have watched students "study" and wondered what benefit they could possibly be getting from it. Here's how it works. They take out their notes. They stare at the page. Their eyes get blurry, and they can't see any more. This changes nothing. To study effectively means you have to DO something. Highlighting, flashcards, asking yourself questions - These are ways of interacting with the material. Staring at it is not. All my other advice comes from this.
2. Organize Your Time and Space - Some people are natural organizers. They love folders and tabs and calendars. Office Depot is their happy place and color coded is their favorite phrase in the English language. Others are a hot mess when it comes to organization. They have to turn their backpack upside down and shake it to find a pencil. Then, there are the ADHD kids, who tell me that they shouldn't have to be organized. "Oh, no," I tell them. "It's far more important that you be organized than anyone else." The natural organizers are already there in their minds. If your mind isn't naturally organized, you really need to organize your environment to compensate for that. If your homework is always in the same spot, you won't have to remember where you put it.
It is also important to organize your time. This is harder for students than organizing their space. You can see the space, and it is always in the same place. Time is so fluid and so easily filled with whatever comes along that organizing it can be difficult. I suggest having an ideal plan at the beginning of each week but to leave in a little flex time. Things are going to come up that mess with the ideal. This is only a problem if there is nowhere to put the new activity. It may also require reorganizing as time goes on.
3. Study in Blocks - Remember when your teachers told you not to wait to study until the night before the test. You ignored them; everyone does. It turns out that they knew what they were talking about. Research shows that you remember best the things you study at the beginning and the end of a study session. Studying in one long block means there is only one beginning and end. Breaking that up over several nights makes multiple beginnings and endings. If it is too late for that and you only have one night. Take a 2 minute break every 30 minutes. It is enough time for your brain to think you have begun a new session. The strange result of one study showed that studying in different places might help as well (although no one is sure why), so studying one night in the kitchen and another in the living room may actually help.
4. Take a Moment to Acknowledge Anxiety - Being nervous about tests is normal, but does it affect your performance on the test. It does if you just try to pretend it isn't there. An experiment was done in which two similar classes took tests. In one classroom, students were given three minutes before the test started to write about how they felt going into the tests. The other just began taking it as normal. The group that was given a chance to share their frustrations and fears scored an average of 5% higher on the test than the others did. The thinking is that putting it on paper frees your mind from focusing on it during the test, allowing you to shut off the internal dialogue.
5. Allow Minimal Distraction - The world is filled with distractions. We cannot eliminate them entirely - and we shouldn't. The mind actually needs some stimulation, or it will create its own. However, distractions that interfere with your ability to focus should be reduced as much as possible. That might mean muting the computer, so it doesn't beep every time a message is sent. My students believe it is rude not to respond immediately to a chat message. I tell them to make their google chat status "I'm studying for the next hour." Then, it is rude for someone to chat them but not rude for them to wait to reply. The phone can be put in another room.
A note about music. Some people do benefit from playing music while they are studying. It helps block out the little sounds, like buzzing lights and ticking clocks. Before you says, "See, mom! I told you music helps," be aware that not all types of music helps. It is unlikely that your favorite song is helping you focus. Be aware of when it is helping and when it is hurting. If you are singing along, you are not studying. If you are dancing around, you are probably not studying (Some people do need to move in order to think, so you will be aware if that is you). I keep a TV on with the volume low, but I make sure it is a rerun of something I've seen before. That keeps my brain from attending to it.
6. Teach to Learn - If you are explaining something to someone else, you will know whether or not you understand it. If you are an auditory learner, hearing yourself say it out loud will be like sitting in class again. If you are verbal processor, saying it out loud will make it more real to you. You can teach another person, but if one is not available, you can teach a stuffed animal, a doll, or a chair. The key is to do it out loud. It forces focus in a way silent studying doesn't.
7. MAKE Flashcards - We are a one to one school. We do a lot of things with technology, and I know there are online flashcard sites. Those are great and should be used, but I want to make a plea for the good old fashioned flashcard. Your senses are the pathways by which information enters your brain. Using an online card site uses only one - sight. When you hand make a flash card and then use it properly, you use sight (to get the information), muscle memory (from writing), sight again (from look at the card), speech (by saying it out loud), and hearing (by saying it out loud). You also get a little bit of tactile because holding the card is different from not holding one. I've got my doubts that scented markers would help, but they certainly could not hurt. The more pathways the information has to get into your brain, the better you will remember it.
8. Pray - I asked my students a few weeks ago if they prayed before a test. Many of them said yes (or at least that they prayed during the test if it was getting hard). When I asked if they prayed before they studied, no one said yes. God cares about your learning and talks much of wisdom and knowledge in scripture. He even says in James, "If anyone lacks wisdom, he should ask." Why wouldn't we ask for help in making our study time efficient and effective?
1. Study is a verb - I have watched students "study" and wondered what benefit they could possibly be getting from it. Here's how it works. They take out their notes. They stare at the page. Their eyes get blurry, and they can't see any more. This changes nothing. To study effectively means you have to DO something. Highlighting, flashcards, asking yourself questions - These are ways of interacting with the material. Staring at it is not. All my other advice comes from this.
2. Organize Your Time and Space - Some people are natural organizers. They love folders and tabs and calendars. Office Depot is their happy place and color coded is their favorite phrase in the English language. Others are a hot mess when it comes to organization. They have to turn their backpack upside down and shake it to find a pencil. Then, there are the ADHD kids, who tell me that they shouldn't have to be organized. "Oh, no," I tell them. "It's far more important that you be organized than anyone else." The natural organizers are already there in their minds. If your mind isn't naturally organized, you really need to organize your environment to compensate for that. If your homework is always in the same spot, you won't have to remember where you put it.
It is also important to organize your time. This is harder for students than organizing their space. You can see the space, and it is always in the same place. Time is so fluid and so easily filled with whatever comes along that organizing it can be difficult. I suggest having an ideal plan at the beginning of each week but to leave in a little flex time. Things are going to come up that mess with the ideal. This is only a problem if there is nowhere to put the new activity. It may also require reorganizing as time goes on.
3. Study in Blocks - Remember when your teachers told you not to wait to study until the night before the test. You ignored them; everyone does. It turns out that they knew what they were talking about. Research shows that you remember best the things you study at the beginning and the end of a study session. Studying in one long block means there is only one beginning and end. Breaking that up over several nights makes multiple beginnings and endings. If it is too late for that and you only have one night. Take a 2 minute break every 30 minutes. It is enough time for your brain to think you have begun a new session. The strange result of one study showed that studying in different places might help as well (although no one is sure why), so studying one night in the kitchen and another in the living room may actually help.
4. Take a Moment to Acknowledge Anxiety - Being nervous about tests is normal, but does it affect your performance on the test. It does if you just try to pretend it isn't there. An experiment was done in which two similar classes took tests. In one classroom, students were given three minutes before the test started to write about how they felt going into the tests. The other just began taking it as normal. The group that was given a chance to share their frustrations and fears scored an average of 5% higher on the test than the others did. The thinking is that putting it on paper frees your mind from focusing on it during the test, allowing you to shut off the internal dialogue.
5. Allow Minimal Distraction - The world is filled with distractions. We cannot eliminate them entirely - and we shouldn't. The mind actually needs some stimulation, or it will create its own. However, distractions that interfere with your ability to focus should be reduced as much as possible. That might mean muting the computer, so it doesn't beep every time a message is sent. My students believe it is rude not to respond immediately to a chat message. I tell them to make their google chat status "I'm studying for the next hour." Then, it is rude for someone to chat them but not rude for them to wait to reply. The phone can be put in another room.
A note about music. Some people do benefit from playing music while they are studying. It helps block out the little sounds, like buzzing lights and ticking clocks. Before you says, "See, mom! I told you music helps," be aware that not all types of music helps. It is unlikely that your favorite song is helping you focus. Be aware of when it is helping and when it is hurting. If you are singing along, you are not studying. If you are dancing around, you are probably not studying (Some people do need to move in order to think, so you will be aware if that is you). I keep a TV on with the volume low, but I make sure it is a rerun of something I've seen before. That keeps my brain from attending to it.
6. Teach to Learn - If you are explaining something to someone else, you will know whether or not you understand it. If you are an auditory learner, hearing yourself say it out loud will be like sitting in class again. If you are verbal processor, saying it out loud will make it more real to you. You can teach another person, but if one is not available, you can teach a stuffed animal, a doll, or a chair. The key is to do it out loud. It forces focus in a way silent studying doesn't.
7. MAKE Flashcards - We are a one to one school. We do a lot of things with technology, and I know there are online flashcard sites. Those are great and should be used, but I want to make a plea for the good old fashioned flashcard. Your senses are the pathways by which information enters your brain. Using an online card site uses only one - sight. When you hand make a flash card and then use it properly, you use sight (to get the information), muscle memory (from writing), sight again (from look at the card), speech (by saying it out loud), and hearing (by saying it out loud). You also get a little bit of tactile because holding the card is different from not holding one. I've got my doubts that scented markers would help, but they certainly could not hurt. The more pathways the information has to get into your brain, the better you will remember it.
8. Pray - I asked my students a few weeks ago if they prayed before a test. Many of them said yes (or at least that they prayed during the test if it was getting hard). When I asked if they prayed before they studied, no one said yes. God cares about your learning and talks much of wisdom and knowledge in scripture. He even says in James, "If anyone lacks wisdom, he should ask." Why wouldn't we ask for help in making our study time efficient and effective?
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Student Blogging - Experiment in Public
After I started blogging for real last year, I came to realize what a valuable tool this kind of reflection is. Each week, I choose some piece of teaching life and really think about what it means to me. I did this before, but it was hit or miss random thoughts and usually while I was driving. Now, I try to figure out what I really want to explore through writing.
The fact that other people read my reflections pleases me almost as much as it confuses me. For example, one day two weeks ago, my number of page views in Portugal jumped from 4 to 54 in one hour. What happened? (If you are one of the 50 Portuguese readers, please comment below.) I love checking the stats, not just for the number but for which posts people are reading and where people are reading. I like thinking about the fact that my experience as a teacher might lend any kind of insight to other teachers (or even students and parents).
Last year, I decided I wanted my students to have this experience as well. I want them to reflect on the things they are learning in all of their classes. I also think it fits well into some of the changes that are happening in education. If you remember my post called The Poster By My Desk, you know that one of the ways we are rethinking teaching is Talk to Strangers and another is Real Work for Real Audiences. Student blogging seems like the perfect way to do this. I believe they will write better if they know it is being read by people out in the cyber universe. I believe they will reflect well if they are trying to convey it to someone else.
Once per week, my 8th graders will be assigned a blog by one of their teachers. It won't always be me, but they will be writing about something they are learning, and this makes me happy. I may be a science teacher, but I know the value of writing and am so happy they will be doing this.
In order to keep all their blogs collated, I have compiled a list of links to their blogs. If you would like to read the blogs of 8th grade students and encourage them with comments, you may find a list of all their blogs at this blog. This has all gotten a little too meta for me because I am using this blog to link you to another blog, which is a list of 61 more blogs. I've never used the word blog this many times in one day - even when I ran a work shop on blogs.
The fact that other people read my reflections pleases me almost as much as it confuses me. For example, one day two weeks ago, my number of page views in Portugal jumped from 4 to 54 in one hour. What happened? (If you are one of the 50 Portuguese readers, please comment below.) I love checking the stats, not just for the number but for which posts people are reading and where people are reading. I like thinking about the fact that my experience as a teacher might lend any kind of insight to other teachers (or even students and parents).
Last year, I decided I wanted my students to have this experience as well. I want them to reflect on the things they are learning in all of their classes. I also think it fits well into some of the changes that are happening in education. If you remember my post called The Poster By My Desk, you know that one of the ways we are rethinking teaching is Talk to Strangers and another is Real Work for Real Audiences. Student blogging seems like the perfect way to do this. I believe they will write better if they know it is being read by people out in the cyber universe. I believe they will reflect well if they are trying to convey it to someone else.Once per week, my 8th graders will be assigned a blog by one of their teachers. It won't always be me, but they will be writing about something they are learning, and this makes me happy. I may be a science teacher, but I know the value of writing and am so happy they will be doing this.
In order to keep all their blogs collated, I have compiled a list of links to their blogs. If you would like to read the blogs of 8th grade students and encourage them with comments, you may find a list of all their blogs at this blog. This has all gotten a little too meta for me because I am using this blog to link you to another blog, which is a list of 61 more blogs. I've never used the word blog this many times in one day - even when I ran a work shop on blogs.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Reflections on Four Years of Teaching With Technology - Lessons
This is the last post of a four part series on the one to one MacBook program my school has. This post can stand alone, but if you are interested in more detail, read my other posts.
After four years of doing this, I do feel that there are some pieces of advice I could offer and lessons I've learned. This is purely from a classroom teacher's point of view. I'm sure administrators and tech people could offer different perspective, and I hope they will comment.
Don't Try to Learn Everything at Once - If you try to make every lesson filled with nothing but technology, you will lose your mind. Sit down with your objectives and pick the ones that are either the easiest or the most important to incorporate your technology. We committed to have one "golden nugget" per quarter. That could be a project the kids could do or a lesson that we would have them collaborate with or a lesson we could flip. If you do that each year (and it gets easier to think of them, so you increase your pace), you build your tech repertoire.
Don't Try to Reinvent the Wheel - Google is your friend. If you search for lesson plans using technology on any topic, you will find many tools or kernels of ideas to use. YouTube is your best friend. Pick a topic - any topic - and you will find animations, dramatizations, examples. There is a ton in science, but there are plenty for every other topic as well - even Latin. I have been amazed by the clarity a video provides. It takes me 15 minutes to explain the Doppler Effect, but when I show a 20 second video of stick figures and waves, I hear half the class go "Ohhhh."
Get an LMS - If there was one thing we were missing in our first year, it was a learning management system. Not having a consistent way for students to turn in digital assignments leads to chaos. Some students want to e-mail it to you (That'll fill your inbox) while others want to put it on a jump drive. Some want to share it with you in a google doc. This is a sure way to lose your mind. We found drop box, hoping that would be a good method, but it is a mess when students forget to include their name (It's not like you can tell from their handwriting), or you have 45 assignments titled "science homework." The first couple of months with an LMS are difficult because it adds to the learning curve, but it is worth it. After the first year, every student knows exactly what to do when we say "Go to the Talon discussion board."
Cheer Each Other On - This was the best part of our endeavor. Every teacher was in the same boat, all trying to row in the same direction. We shared ideas, successes, failures, suggestions, encouragements, and prayers. If you have some cynical people, share your successes with them. Show them one super easy tool that you found. Most people will come around with just a little encouragement. If you are trying to do this on your own and it isn't a school wide thing, find another teacher that you can try it with. If you can't even find that, go online. There are twitter groups and teacher websites completely devoted to cheering you on in this adventure. This is worth it.
Be Flexible and Have Backup Plans - The first time you use a new tool, something will happen. You will have at least one kid who can't log on no matter what they do. The video might not play on someone's computer even though it does on everyone else's. There may be a student who tried to submit their assignment and it didn't go through for whatever reason. You CANNOT anticipate all these problems, so be flexible. For those issues you can anticipate, have a backup plan. I have ended my instructions many times with "If that doesn't work, do this." You will teach a little less content your first year because you will spend a fair amount of time troubleshooting. That's okay; it gets better. Trust me that you will never stop needing backup plans.
Keep the Reasons in Mind - You have decided to do this for a reason. When things get a little nutty, remind yourself that this is important. You are investing in your students' future. You are teaching them life skills and modeling life long learning. You are going to have some tough days, and the kids will see how you respond to them.
After four years of doing this, I do feel that there are some pieces of advice I could offer and lessons I've learned. This is purely from a classroom teacher's point of view. I'm sure administrators and tech people could offer different perspective, and I hope they will comment.
Don't Try to Learn Everything at Once - If you try to make every lesson filled with nothing but technology, you will lose your mind. Sit down with your objectives and pick the ones that are either the easiest or the most important to incorporate your technology. We committed to have one "golden nugget" per quarter. That could be a project the kids could do or a lesson that we would have them collaborate with or a lesson we could flip. If you do that each year (and it gets easier to think of them, so you increase your pace), you build your tech repertoire.
Don't Try to Reinvent the Wheel - Google is your friend. If you search for lesson plans using technology on any topic, you will find many tools or kernels of ideas to use. YouTube is your best friend. Pick a topic - any topic - and you will find animations, dramatizations, examples. There is a ton in science, but there are plenty for every other topic as well - even Latin. I have been amazed by the clarity a video provides. It takes me 15 minutes to explain the Doppler Effect, but when I show a 20 second video of stick figures and waves, I hear half the class go "Ohhhh."
Get an LMS - If there was one thing we were missing in our first year, it was a learning management system. Not having a consistent way for students to turn in digital assignments leads to chaos. Some students want to e-mail it to you (That'll fill your inbox) while others want to put it on a jump drive. Some want to share it with you in a google doc. This is a sure way to lose your mind. We found drop box, hoping that would be a good method, but it is a mess when students forget to include their name (It's not like you can tell from their handwriting), or you have 45 assignments titled "science homework." The first couple of months with an LMS are difficult because it adds to the learning curve, but it is worth it. After the first year, every student knows exactly what to do when we say "Go to the Talon discussion board."
Cheer Each Other On - This was the best part of our endeavor. Every teacher was in the same boat, all trying to row in the same direction. We shared ideas, successes, failures, suggestions, encouragements, and prayers. If you have some cynical people, share your successes with them. Show them one super easy tool that you found. Most people will come around with just a little encouragement. If you are trying to do this on your own and it isn't a school wide thing, find another teacher that you can try it with. If you can't even find that, go online. There are twitter groups and teacher websites completely devoted to cheering you on in this adventure. This is worth it.
Be Flexible and Have Backup Plans - The first time you use a new tool, something will happen. You will have at least one kid who can't log on no matter what they do. The video might not play on someone's computer even though it does on everyone else's. There may be a student who tried to submit their assignment and it didn't go through for whatever reason. You CANNOT anticipate all these problems, so be flexible. For those issues you can anticipate, have a backup plan. I have ended my instructions many times with "If that doesn't work, do this." You will teach a little less content your first year because you will spend a fair amount of time troubleshooting. That's okay; it gets better. Trust me that you will never stop needing backup plans.
Keep the Reasons in Mind - You have decided to do this for a reason. When things get a little nutty, remind yourself that this is important. You are investing in your students' future. You are teaching them life skills and modeling life long learning. You are going to have some tough days, and the kids will see how you respond to them.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Reflections on Four Years of Teaching With Technology - Plateau and Progress
This is part three of a series on my school's one to one MacBook program. It can be read on its own, but if you want to know the history, read the other two.
As always happens, the first year of a program is when people are the most excited and, therefore, the most invested in doing new things. The increase you see from year zero to year one cannot be the level of increase you expect every year. In order to keep increasing at all, there must be continued cheerleading, support, and training to keep the ideas new. Most of us were really happy with how the first year went, but we didn't bring that same level of enthusiasm to the second year (maybe because we were just tired). We also implemented a much needed Learning Management System that year, which was frustrating at first because there were some glitches in it. Because of these issues, the second year was a plateau for us as far as using the technology as more than a replacement for what we had done previously.
Our wonderful tech team had read articles about schools that gave up on one to one programs after one or two years due to lack of real growth and were determined not to let that happen here. Around the same time, we also hired a new media specialist, Laura (the wonderful) Warmke. She is not only highly versed in what seems like every book ever written; she is also super with technology tools and driven to help you find out how to use them in your class.
Laura and Diane developed a great program for teacher to use as professional development. It is called Level Up, and it is awesome. Diane and Laura write "missions" for us to accomplish. Some of them are as simple as watch a TED talk about education and comment on it in our discussion board. Others are as complex as classroom flipping, instituting a badge system in your class, or having a skype session. All the missions are counted as done when you have responded on a discussion board.
Let me tell you some of the reasons this program is awesome:
1. You can choose your own professional development. We aren't all sitting in the same room learning the same tool. We look at the available missions and choose the ones that will work best for our style and our classroom. It enables people to be developed at their point of comfort with where they currently are.
2. You are being cheered on rather than put upon. The tech team gives you a badge in the teacher's lounge for every mission you complete. They love talking to you about your missions. You get great ideas from reading other people's uses on the discussion board, which allows you to incorporate the same tools in your class in more than one way.
3. It is modeling. They aren't just telling us to use something. They are using it to deliver the message. It makes me want to have missions in my own classes (next year perhaps).
4. There are prizes. Prizes are always motivating, no matter how old you get. At the end of the quarter, we have drawing for gift cards. The more missions you have done, the more times you name is in the hat.
5. It introduces you to tools you had never heard of before. One mission we had this year was to use a tool called Canva - a very cool graphic design tool. I've had kids use it for projects, and I will never make another bulletin board without it. I would never have heard of it without this program.
6. It encourages teacher input. Many times during the year, a teacher will stumble upon a new tool and say, "Hey, you should have a mission for that.
This program has gotten us off our year two flatline graph and put us back on the upward slope. Another thing Laura does is meet with every teacher every quarter to discuss how she can help you take your tech integration to the next level. Because of these discussions, my 8th graders have begun creating a website (which future 8th graders will finish), and next year, my 8th graders will be blogging for the world to see.
I've said it before. I couldn't go back to teaching the old way. Now that I see what kids are capable of doing with the world of knowledge at their fingertips, I would never again feel like I was doing my job as a teacher if I didn't give them that opportunity. Every new tool we teach them i just another way they can be academically and spiritually equipped, challenged, and inspired to impact their world for Christ (which is our school's mission statement).
There will be one more post in this series - what I wish I had known when this all started.
As always happens, the first year of a program is when people are the most excited and, therefore, the most invested in doing new things. The increase you see from year zero to year one cannot be the level of increase you expect every year. In order to keep increasing at all, there must be continued cheerleading, support, and training to keep the ideas new. Most of us were really happy with how the first year went, but we didn't bring that same level of enthusiasm to the second year (maybe because we were just tired). We also implemented a much needed Learning Management System that year, which was frustrating at first because there were some glitches in it. Because of these issues, the second year was a plateau for us as far as using the technology as more than a replacement for what we had done previously.
Our wonderful tech team had read articles about schools that gave up on one to one programs after one or two years due to lack of real growth and were determined not to let that happen here. Around the same time, we also hired a new media specialist, Laura (the wonderful) Warmke. She is not only highly versed in what seems like every book ever written; she is also super with technology tools and driven to help you find out how to use them in your class.
Laura and Diane developed a great program for teacher to use as professional development. It is called Level Up, and it is awesome. Diane and Laura write "missions" for us to accomplish. Some of them are as simple as watch a TED talk about education and comment on it in our discussion board. Others are as complex as classroom flipping, instituting a badge system in your class, or having a skype session. All the missions are counted as done when you have responded on a discussion board. Let me tell you some of the reasons this program is awesome:
1. You can choose your own professional development. We aren't all sitting in the same room learning the same tool. We look at the available missions and choose the ones that will work best for our style and our classroom. It enables people to be developed at their point of comfort with where they currently are.
2. You are being cheered on rather than put upon. The tech team gives you a badge in the teacher's lounge for every mission you complete. They love talking to you about your missions. You get great ideas from reading other people's uses on the discussion board, which allows you to incorporate the same tools in your class in more than one way.
3. It is modeling. They aren't just telling us to use something. They are using it to deliver the message. It makes me want to have missions in my own classes (next year perhaps).
4. There are prizes. Prizes are always motivating, no matter how old you get. At the end of the quarter, we have drawing for gift cards. The more missions you have done, the more times you name is in the hat.
5. It introduces you to tools you had never heard of before. One mission we had this year was to use a tool called Canva - a very cool graphic design tool. I've had kids use it for projects, and I will never make another bulletin board without it. I would never have heard of it without this program.
6. It encourages teacher input. Many times during the year, a teacher will stumble upon a new tool and say, "Hey, you should have a mission for that.
This program has gotten us off our year two flatline graph and put us back on the upward slope. Another thing Laura does is meet with every teacher every quarter to discuss how she can help you take your tech integration to the next level. Because of these discussions, my 8th graders have begun creating a website (which future 8th graders will finish), and next year, my 8th graders will be blogging for the world to see.
I've said it before. I couldn't go back to teaching the old way. Now that I see what kids are capable of doing with the world of knowledge at their fingertips, I would never again feel like I was doing my job as a teacher if I didn't give them that opportunity. Every new tool we teach them i just another way they can be academically and spiritually equipped, challenged, and inspired to impact their world for Christ (which is our school's mission statement).
There will be one more post in this series - what I wish I had known when this all started.
Monday, April 27, 2015
Reflections on Four Years of Teaching With Technology - The First Year
My last post was about the lead up to GRACE Christian School's implementation of E4 - our one to on MacBook program. Now, I want to tell you about our first year with it because that is obviously where our learning curve was the steepest.
Our tech team and administrators were the most amazing cheerleaders through this process. When we originally talked about accountability in the committee, it had been suggested that we require a certain percentage of the lesson be tech related. I am SOOOOO glad we did not go that route. Instead of presenting this as a required duty, it was presented as an exciting opportunity. Sean, Diane, Mandy, and Kathie (our principals) were so ready to help in any way you needed that it was unbelievable. If you had an idea, you could go to one of them, and they would help you figure it out. We were trained in big groups about some things, but if there were things that only applied to one department or teacher or lesson, one of them stopped by our room to chat about the tool or e-mailed us a link.
In some ways it was like being a first year teacher all over again. We weren't exactly relearning how to teach, but in some ways we were. When writing lesson plans, we were constantly thinking of ways we could do the same differently with technology. (Keep in mind, this was our first year; so we were on level one of the SAMR model. We are reaching for higher levels now). One of the best things we did was have story time at faculty meetings. We shared projects the kids had done and tools we had found. We shared frustrations as well and tried to problem solve together. I'll post more about that later.
Our students immediately took on a new paradigm. They began e-mailing teachers all the time. They could have sent us e-mail from home before, but they hadn't very much. Suddenly, we were getting e-mail from them at all times of day. I got e-mail questions from shy kids who would never ask them in class. I got kids sharing links with me if there was something they thought would be cool class. I had kids sending science memes. Our volleyball team went to the state finals that year. A small group of kids, our basketball game announcer, and Sean traveled down with them and streamed the game with commentary. We got to watch it during lunch and had a watch party for the final game in the evening. Our students began making videos for chapel. All of this was in addition to the "on purpose" things we were giving them to do for class. On Grandparents' Day, we had a family skype their Grandparents into class from England. We stream the Grandparents' Day performance as well.
I think my favorite story from that year was the streaming of the conference basketball tournament. Whenever we stream a game, we send the link to the athletic director of the opposing team, so their families can watch too. For one game of this tournament, we were playing a team out of Fayetteville, a school with a large number of military families. Because of the stream, some of their dads were able to watch them play even though those dads were in Iraq and Afghanistan. I didn't even mind that we lost that game because those dads got to watch their boys win.
We all learned a lot that year. We learned from each other. We learned from every resource we could find. It was difficult and crazy and amazing all at the same time.
In my next post, I will talk about the three years since. We hit a plateau, which our awesome tech team helped us overcome. More on that in a few days.
Our tech team and administrators were the most amazing cheerleaders through this process. When we originally talked about accountability in the committee, it had been suggested that we require a certain percentage of the lesson be tech related. I am SOOOOO glad we did not go that route. Instead of presenting this as a required duty, it was presented as an exciting opportunity. Sean, Diane, Mandy, and Kathie (our principals) were so ready to help in any way you needed that it was unbelievable. If you had an idea, you could go to one of them, and they would help you figure it out. We were trained in big groups about some things, but if there were things that only applied to one department or teacher or lesson, one of them stopped by our room to chat about the tool or e-mailed us a link.
In some ways it was like being a first year teacher all over again. We weren't exactly relearning how to teach, but in some ways we were. When writing lesson plans, we were constantly thinking of ways we could do the same differently with technology. (Keep in mind, this was our first year; so we were on level one of the SAMR model. We are reaching for higher levels now). One of the best things we did was have story time at faculty meetings. We shared projects the kids had done and tools we had found. We shared frustrations as well and tried to problem solve together. I'll post more about that later.
Our students immediately took on a new paradigm. They began e-mailing teachers all the time. They could have sent us e-mail from home before, but they hadn't very much. Suddenly, we were getting e-mail from them at all times of day. I got e-mail questions from shy kids who would never ask them in class. I got kids sharing links with me if there was something they thought would be cool class. I had kids sending science memes. Our volleyball team went to the state finals that year. A small group of kids, our basketball game announcer, and Sean traveled down with them and streamed the game with commentary. We got to watch it during lunch and had a watch party for the final game in the evening. Our students began making videos for chapel. All of this was in addition to the "on purpose" things we were giving them to do for class. On Grandparents' Day, we had a family skype their Grandparents into class from England. We stream the Grandparents' Day performance as well.
I think my favorite story from that year was the streaming of the conference basketball tournament. Whenever we stream a game, we send the link to the athletic director of the opposing team, so their families can watch too. For one game of this tournament, we were playing a team out of Fayetteville, a school with a large number of military families. Because of the stream, some of their dads were able to watch them play even though those dads were in Iraq and Afghanistan. I didn't even mind that we lost that game because those dads got to watch their boys win.
We all learned a lot that year. We learned from each other. We learned from every resource we could find. It was difficult and crazy and amazing all at the same time.
In my next post, I will talk about the three years since. We hit a plateau, which our awesome tech team helped us overcome. More on that in a few days.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Reflections on Four Years of Teaching With Technology - The History
GRACE Christian School is wrapping up its fourth year in a one to one laptop program, so I thought it was time for a bit of reflection.
It all about this time started five years ago. At that point, we had a lot of teachers who were incorporating technology with their own devices and buying projectors as we could. We had about twelve SMART boards in our school, which we were using to the best of our ability (although we didn’t really know the best way to use them).
I was asked to serve on a technology planning committee, where I found out that we were seriously considering changing everything. We discussed device options, budgeting, vision statements for the program, and what kind of accountability should be involved. My role was mostly to insist on training. The board members on our committee rightly felt that the SMART boards had not been used as well as they could have been in the classroom and didn’t want to make this investment to have it fail. I reminded them that the teachers who had SMART boards had been given one day of training on the function of the boards and none on how to incorporate them into our lesson plans. When we talked about devices, I said, “Without training, it might as well be a stone and chisel.” When we discussed the budget, I said, “There has to be budget set aside for training.” When we talked about the vision statement, I reminded them that none of that vision could be accomplished if teachers were told HOW to carry it out. When we discussed accountability, I reminded them that they couldn’t be expected to use it well without training. I’m sure they got tired of hearing the word training from me, but I felt it was my role as the representative of the teachers.
The members of the committee were sworn to silence until the plan was unveiled. In the mean time, projectors and MacBook Pros were purchased for every teacher. They were made ready by our wonderful tech team (which at that time only consisted of Sean and Diane) in an empty classroom that had new locks and paper over the windows. You practically needed a secret password to enter that room. As the day of the unveiling approached, we all got a little excited and nervous. Diane was going to be chaperoning our 8th grade DC field trip, so Sean would be on his own that day for training. He was nervous about whether or not people would like the idea. Including myself, there were about three faculty meetings that were long term Mac users; so we were asked to help people during the training. All the teachers knew when they came in that morning was that the day would be about technology and that Sean would be leading it. Sean talked about the importance of increasing our technology usage in 21st century education, showed a prezi about the importance of changing education from the industrial model, and talked about how critical it was that we lead in this area. Then, I was scripted to ask, “So, how do we do this if we don’t all have the tools?” Sean announced that everyone would be getting a projector, which was met with minor enthusiasm. Then, he said, “You may be asking what good a projector will do if you don’t have your own laptop. Well . . .” The laptops were hidden in a closet, and I got to help roll them out. It was super exciting.
We spent that entire day of training, learning how the Mac works, looking at each type of application, and brainstorming ideas. We got a video message from Diane since she couldn’t get to us from DC. We obviously had teachers with a wide range of experience and comfort with the tool (one person asked me what it meant to click), but everyone was super on board and willing to learn. At the end of the day, I hugged Sean and told him how well he did and how excited everyone was. We knew we were at the beginning of something awesome.
Since that day, we have learned so much. Our kids have done so much. Our tech team has supported us so much. It is too much to put in this post, which is already long. Read all about our first year with tech in my next post.
It all about this time started five years ago. At that point, we had a lot of teachers who were incorporating technology with their own devices and buying projectors as we could. We had about twelve SMART boards in our school, which we were using to the best of our ability (although we didn’t really know the best way to use them).
I was asked to serve on a technology planning committee, where I found out that we were seriously considering changing everything. We discussed device options, budgeting, vision statements for the program, and what kind of accountability should be involved. My role was mostly to insist on training. The board members on our committee rightly felt that the SMART boards had not been used as well as they could have been in the classroom and didn’t want to make this investment to have it fail. I reminded them that the teachers who had SMART boards had been given one day of training on the function of the boards and none on how to incorporate them into our lesson plans. When we talked about devices, I said, “Without training, it might as well be a stone and chisel.” When we discussed the budget, I said, “There has to be budget set aside for training.” When we talked about the vision statement, I reminded them that none of that vision could be accomplished if teachers were told HOW to carry it out. When we discussed accountability, I reminded them that they couldn’t be expected to use it well without training. I’m sure they got tired of hearing the word training from me, but I felt it was my role as the representative of the teachers.
The members of the committee were sworn to silence until the plan was unveiled. In the mean time, projectors and MacBook Pros were purchased for every teacher. They were made ready by our wonderful tech team (which at that time only consisted of Sean and Diane) in an empty classroom that had new locks and paper over the windows. You practically needed a secret password to enter that room. As the day of the unveiling approached, we all got a little excited and nervous. Diane was going to be chaperoning our 8th grade DC field trip, so Sean would be on his own that day for training. He was nervous about whether or not people would like the idea. Including myself, there were about three faculty meetings that were long term Mac users; so we were asked to help people during the training. All the teachers knew when they came in that morning was that the day would be about technology and that Sean would be leading it. Sean talked about the importance of increasing our technology usage in 21st century education, showed a prezi about the importance of changing education from the industrial model, and talked about how critical it was that we lead in this area. Then, I was scripted to ask, “So, how do we do this if we don’t all have the tools?” Sean announced that everyone would be getting a projector, which was met with minor enthusiasm. Then, he said, “You may be asking what good a projector will do if you don’t have your own laptop. Well . . .” The laptops were hidden in a closet, and I got to help roll them out. It was super exciting.
We spent that entire day of training, learning how the Mac works, looking at each type of application, and brainstorming ideas. We got a video message from Diane since she couldn’t get to us from DC. We obviously had teachers with a wide range of experience and comfort with the tool (one person asked me what it meant to click), but everyone was super on board and willing to learn. At the end of the day, I hugged Sean and told him how well he did and how excited everyone was. We knew we were at the beginning of something awesome.
Since that day, we have learned so much. Our kids have done so much. Our tech team has supported us so much. It is too much to put in this post, which is already long. Read all about our first year with tech in my next post.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Pretend Last Year's Blogging Didn't Happen - Because It Didn't
I'm just going to pretend that last year's blogging fiasco didn't happen. Feel free to ignore all previous posts because they didn't happen.
We have settled in from the first week of school and are now officially in the swing of things.
It's my 16th year teaching, so you would think that by now, I would have all lesson plans, tests, and homework in a folder just ready to pull out. You would think that I could operate on some kind of academic auto-pilot since I've been to the same destination so many times. Somehow, however, lesson planning takes me almost as long as it did a decade ago. I still find errors in the same slide I've been using for five years, and the physics problem I have assigned before turns out to be so much harder than I thought it was when I assigned it. Writing a test takes less time because I can recycle some of my questions, but I still find that I have to stop kids in the middle of a test to say, "Wait, the correct answer to number 20 isn't there. Everybody just put A, and I'll put that on my key."
It occurs to me that my students wouldn't want me to have everything exactly under control, and their parents wouldn't either. They want me to be a competent professional, and of course I want that too. That's not what I am talking about. I mean that they would't want me on academic autopilot.
If I could put on an autopilot, I wouldn't be engaging because I wouldn't be engaged. It would also mean that I hadn't looked for a better physics problem since the beginning. It would mean that I hadn't changed that slide in ten years attempted a new way of approaching something in a lesson plan.
One of the best parts of teaching is that you get to try again every year. You get to say, "That didn't work, so I won't do it again." You get to adapt to new technology, new resources, and new kids. You get to start again with people who don't know the mistake you made with it last year (unless their brother told them). There is no other profession that gets to do that.
We have settled in from the first week of school and are now officially in the swing of things.
It's my 16th year teaching, so you would think that by now, I would have all lesson plans, tests, and homework in a folder just ready to pull out. You would think that I could operate on some kind of academic auto-pilot since I've been to the same destination so many times. Somehow, however, lesson planning takes me almost as long as it did a decade ago. I still find errors in the same slide I've been using for five years, and the physics problem I have assigned before turns out to be so much harder than I thought it was when I assigned it. Writing a test takes less time because I can recycle some of my questions, but I still find that I have to stop kids in the middle of a test to say, "Wait, the correct answer to number 20 isn't there. Everybody just put A, and I'll put that on my key."
It occurs to me that my students wouldn't want me to have everything exactly under control, and their parents wouldn't either. They want me to be a competent professional, and of course I want that too. That's not what I am talking about. I mean that they would't want me on academic autopilot.
If I could put on an autopilot, I wouldn't be engaging because I wouldn't be engaged. It would also mean that I hadn't looked for a better physics problem since the beginning. It would mean that I hadn't changed that slide in ten years attempted a new way of approaching something in a lesson plan.
One of the best parts of teaching is that you get to try again every year. You get to say, "That didn't work, so I won't do it again." You get to adapt to new technology, new resources, and new kids. You get to start again with people who don't know the mistake you made with it last year (unless their brother told them). There is no other profession that gets to do that.
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Using a Discussion Board
Our school is encouraging the use of discussion boards, so I modified one of the things I usually do.
Every year, we have an in class debate in chemistry over the use of nuclear power. I assign them to the pro or con side without regard to the opinion they actually hold because it is so early in the year. This year, I made a discussion board for them to participate in for a week after the debate. It enabled the "more advanced" class to keep the arguments they had been making in class going. It enabled everyone to argue from their real opinion rather than the one I had assigned them.
I read the forum this morning, and for the most part, it was great. Just like always, you have a few who do as little as possible; but the ones who got into it really made some good points. Two kids who had to be cajoled to speak during the in class debate contributed to the discussion board rather intellegently twice. I'm considering if there are other current events or controversial scientific topics that I can use this with.
The one other time I have used this feature is to respond to videos we watch in class.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Beginning the Blog
This whole blog thing is new for me. I'm never sure if what I have to say will be valuable to anyone else, hence the name Random Ramblings. I'm in a school with a one to one MacBook program, and we have been encouraged to share new ideas, so I'm giving it a try.
Let's start with a little about me. This is my 15th year teaching. I started in public school, teaching the same subject 7 times a day to freshmen. Now, I am in a Christian school, where I teach 8th Grade Physical Science, Chemistry, Physics, and Yearbook. Over the eleven years I have been here, I have also taught Algebra I, 9th Grade Health, 7th Grade Health, and Photography. I like to think of myself as well rounded, so this has been fun.
Two years ago, we took on the challenge of the one to one MacBook program. I will refer to this as E4 from now on because it is easier. E4 stands for "Embrace technology to Engage and Empower students to Excel as lifelong learners." I was on the committee that wrote that sentence. It took an hour, so enjoy it. Because other school are now taking on similar programs, I want to use this blog to share resources, ideas, lesson plans, or games. Some of them will be more tech based than others because I do believe something still work better old school (yes, the pun was intended).
I do not intend to post daily. I was never good at keeping a diary. I will post when I feel I have something valuable to contribute to the blogosphere.
Let's start with a little about me. This is my 15th year teaching. I started in public school, teaching the same subject 7 times a day to freshmen. Now, I am in a Christian school, where I teach 8th Grade Physical Science, Chemistry, Physics, and Yearbook. Over the eleven years I have been here, I have also taught Algebra I, 9th Grade Health, 7th Grade Health, and Photography. I like to think of myself as well rounded, so this has been fun.
Two years ago, we took on the challenge of the one to one MacBook program. I will refer to this as E4 from now on because it is easier. E4 stands for "Embrace technology to Engage and Empower students to Excel as lifelong learners." I was on the committee that wrote that sentence. It took an hour, so enjoy it. Because other school are now taking on similar programs, I want to use this blog to share resources, ideas, lesson plans, or games. Some of them will be more tech based than others because I do believe something still work better old school (yes, the pun was intended).
I do not intend to post daily. I was never good at keeping a diary. I will post when I feel I have something valuable to contribute to the blogosphere.
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