Back to Normal and Moving Forward

About three weeks into the lockdowns of 2020, I saw it for the first time.  It was a tweet that said, "Before we reopen schools, we have to reimagine them."  I remember reading that tweet and thinking, "Oh, crud, here it comes.  A lot of agendas are about to get pushed."  A couple of weeks later, a video was made for teachers to watch, purporting itself to be about best practices for assessment in remote learning.  The first two minutes of this video mentioned remote learning, but after that, it was clear that this man had a decades-long beef with grades and had given this lecture a hundred times.  He took advantage of the fear of educators when it came to uncertainty about assessment during the pandemic to make money pushing an agenda he had clearly always had.  This is reprehensible.

A year later, most of what I saw online was a desire just to "go back to normal."  A spring of remote learning and a year of either remote or masked hybrid learning had exhausted people, and we were feeling nostalgic for "precedented times" again.  The next year was supposed to be better, but the Delta and Omicron variants ensured otherwise, resulting in tired educators being even more exhausted than before.  Few people have had the energy to reimagine anything.  We just wanted this to be over and to return to something familiar.

As with most things, the views on the extremes are not ideal.  They might even be damaging.  To turn education upside down, throwing out everything from the past in the name of change is a terrible idea.  It would be bad for both teachers and students, experimenting with kids on a large scale, not knowing what the results would be for a decade or more is reckless and wrong.  In the same way, pulling out our 2018 lesson plans and moving on as though we have not learned anything in the past three years is equally irresponsible.  Teachers have learned to use tools in ways we had not before, and we should continue to use them (even if we use them in different ways).

Prior to the pandemic, I had taught for 20 years.  I know which things were working.  I will continue to do those things.  One of the things remote and hybrid teaching confirmed for me is that paper tests are superior to digital tests.  I used digital platforms from March 2020 to May 2021 because it was necessary.  While it made grading easier, it was not good for kids.  Since they couldn't write on the tests, they couldn't do the things we have always advised them to do, like underlining keywords, crossing out answers they know to be wrong, and skipping questions to return to them later.  I was using GoFormative for tests.  It is a great tool, and I will use it in other ways, but I hope it is never my testing platform again.  Digital labs have some value, in that it is programmed to work correctly, but it is hardly the same as doing a lab.  Since it does work correctly every time, there is no troubleshooting involved, which is one of the soft skills taught by lab experiments.  Direct instruction by me as the expert in the room works.  I'm sorry for those of you that believe it isn't learning if the kids aren't discovering it for themselves, but the research doesn't support that.  I believe in labs and projects and group work and all of those things, but only after I have taught them a concept and before I follow up with reflective practices about what they have observed.  I knew that was true prior to the pandemic, and it is still true.  

As important as knowing what was working pre-pandemic, I also know what wasn't working.  I wasn't doing nearly enough formative assessment and had just begun engaging in regular retrieval practice.  Finding a tool like GoFormative during hybrid learning will now help me to solve that problem.  This year, my students will use it daily to retrieve something from the last lesson, the last week, and the last chapter (interleaved and spaced retrieval).  I used FlipGrid for open-ended questions during remote and hybrid learning.  My students used it creatively and well, and they showed me things in ways they could not have on paper because they could demonstrate things live.  I will use that for more homework assignments than I did before so students could make their learning visible.  These tools were used one way during the pandemic, but as I evaluate the ongoing practice of teaching, I will use them in a different way this year.

Are we going "back to normal"?  In most ways, thank God, yes we are.  We will be seeing each other's faces this year rather than masks or screen icons, and I am grateful for that.  I can return to well-established tried and true practices this year, and I am grateful for that.  But should I just return to those things and make no changes?  Of course not.  Any good teacher should be self-reflective all the time.  We should always be examining what worked and what didn't in the lesson we just taught, separating the wheat from the chaff, and finding new ways to improve on what we did.  This year provides the opportunity to evaluate it with more potential tools than we have had before.  So, as we get back to normal, we can keep moving forward.  

Educating in the Pandemic - A Terrible Trilogy

Those who follow this blog or know me in any way know that I am in favor of reflection.  I'm a big believer in John Dewey's statement, "We don't learn from experience; we learn from reflecting on experience."  He said this in a time before experiences came at you as quickly as they do now, so taking intentional time to think about what you have learned from an experience and put it in perspective is not only wise, but critical.  Your brain simply needs the time to process it all.  That's why this blog exists.  You are along for the ride while I engage in reflection.  

If there's anything that has been moving fast and needs reflection, it is the pandemic.  It has come at us in the form of a pretty terrible trilogy - the spring and summer lockdowns of 2020, the hybrid year, and the one that was supposed to be better.  Each of them had its own challenges and lessons, so I wanted to spend some time thinking about them, hopefully in hindsight.

Spring and Summer 2020 - The first person who suggested lockdown to me was a student.  While our administration had a lot of foresight and had begun discussing the what-ifs, I had not yet heard about it.  When this student said, "Do you think they'll close schools?" my response was, "Schools don't close."  Well, little did I know that school buildings would, in fact, close and remain closed for quite some time.  We got the email on Saturday, March 14, and had two days of planning on the 16th and 17th.  I then proceeded to teach every class I had from March 18 through the end of May in a virtual environment from my house.  I wrote extensively about this back then, so if you care about the details, you can go back in the archives and read about that.  What I want to reflect on here is the big lesson of that time.  

It's this.  We can do things we didn't imagine.  When I began my career, if you had told me that 22 years later, I would teach students who were at their house from my house, I would have suggested you get some professional help.  If you had told me that on March 1, 2020, I would have done the same.  We learned so much so quickly.  We made mistakes, but we adapted.  I learned that, while many say that grades don't motivate students, not having grades certainly de-motivated them.  I learned that non-verbal communication is even more important than I realized, especially from students to teachers.  I learned that the neurotransmitters we get from physical contact are important to a healthy brain.  I learned that my administrators are the best people to be led by in a crisis (actually, I was reminded of that because I already knew it).  I am grateful that we had the ability to keep school going, but I hope we never have to do it again.

I included the summer here because it wasn't really summer.  We spent most of it reckoning with the aftermath of George Floyd's death and preparing for the return to school.  It is hard to separate it from the spring because we were still mostly in lockdown.

Hybrid Year - "So, how was it?" It seems like a casual question.  The answer is anything but casual.  It's too much to talk about with someone who didn't do it.  The answer I finally came up with was, "It's the hardest thing I've ever done for that long."  That answer is honest, but it doesn't require me to go into detail about how difficult it was to attempt to teach students in my classroom and online simultaneously, to know kids stayed home to cheat on tests and be able to do little about it, to spend weekends recreating everything I had used for two decades of teaching in digital form, to know that no one was getting my best and that working harder (even if that were possible) wouldn't solve that because split focus is inherently not a good model.  Don't get me wrong.  It was the right thing to do.  We had students who needed to stay home because they were immunocompromised or because they lived with an elderly family member or because they had been exposed and were required to quarantine.  For all the focus people have put on masks, that what actually the least difficult part of the 2020-2021 school year.  

It's harder to find what I learned from that year because my brain wants to block so much of it out.  I'll start with this.  The kids were incredibly kind and patient with teachers who were figuring out how to deal with technology in another new way (it was different than the lockdown because you had to also show it to the kids in the room with you).  They helped out when the internet suddenly went down or I got feedback from having too many microphones on at once or when I forgot to take the iPad outside for a demonstration.  I may always feel more connected to the kids I had that year because we did it together.  I also learned (again, was reminded of what I already knew) how amazing my co-workers are.  People stepped in to cover duties when someone had to leave early even though we all had more duties than ever.  If they figured out a better way to do something, they shared it with others.  They sent encouraging messages.  They held virtual meetings with students and their parents since parents couldn't come in.  My hope is that any student we had that year knows that they are valued and loved by their teachers because it was the only reason we would have put ourselves through that experience.

By the way, the pandemic wasn't the only difficulty of that year.  How do you help kids process a contested election, role models who scream at others, and an insurrection at the Capitol (while we were virtual for the week)?  The pandemic was not the only hard part of the year.

The Year That Should Have Been Easier - After the vaccine rollout in the spring, we were living well in the summer.  We went places again.  We were mostly unmasked.  We got some actual rest.  We thought we would return to a pretty normal school year.  Then, the Delta variant happened.  We rightly returned masked, but while the year before it had been a non-issue, it was now a daily battle.  If a word cloud were to be made of my speaking for the first three quarters of the year, the biggest words by far would be "Mask Up."  Students have experienced social-emotional developmental effects, and that was a lot to deal with because I know how to teach the grades I have experience with, which wasn't how they were presenting.  When the Omiron wave happened, it was like being back in hybrid.  Thankfully, it was pretty short, but it was crazy.  We also had grief to deal with because so many of us knew someone who died or struggled greatly with Covid.  People have changed their worldview, and they have become more dramatic and less tolerant of anyone whose view is even a little different from theirs.  (Again, the pandemic isn't the only thing to deal with.  The Russian aggression in Ukraine and mass shootings are difficult to navigate with students as well.)  In early February, someone said that the past two months had been the most difficult of the entire pandemic, and I think they were right.  We had as much to deal with but with less fuel in the tank.

I want a name for what teachers are experiencing.  I don't think it is PTSD.  For one thing, it is a response to chronic stress, but also, it isn't the same as what police officers and military veterans experience.  Last year was hard, but I didn't see someone die.  So, I don't think it is PTSD, but it ain't nothing.  It is definitely something.  If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to put a name on it.  

It may be too early for me to know what I've learned from this year.  Perhaps, it was that, with intentional effort, students can progress faster than we think.  I didn't want to send my 8th graders up to 9th grade as far behind as they were when I got them (socially - academically, they seemed okay), so I and my fellow 8th-grade teachers did a lot more behavior training and character discussions and mediating arguments than we have ever done in other years.  While they didn't end up where I hoped, they made remarkable progress.  I'll have to mull a bit longer through the summer on what else this year that should have been better taught me.

Here's hoping for something resembling normal for next year.

Examining Yourself

This week, my school finished our accreditation process.  While the visit from the team lasted only 3 and half days, the process was almost three years long.  And that's what I want to focus on because, while the visit from outside observers is what most people see, it's the lead-up that makes it an important process because it makes us examine ourselves.

The process starts with dividing up into committees and rating ourselves on a number of standards.  From how the school mission and vision statements guide decision-making to instructional practice to assessment to social-emotional development to spiritual formation, all areas of the school are analyzed and rated on a scale of 1 to 4.  Often the difference between a 3 and a 4 is the word "always" or "formal."  We spend a lot of time saying, "Yes, we do this, but do we have a 'formal' process for it?" while deciding on our rating.  

Then, the fun starts.  We can't just rate ourselves without providing evidence for that rating, so we brainstorm ways we might show what we do.  The committees each have a few teachers from various levels, at least one student and at least one parent.  The benefit of that variety is that we get an examination from all sides.  As teachers who love our school, it would be easy for us to romanticize things.  Having a parent in the room to say, "I'm not sure" is helpful in giving ourselves an honest evaluation.  Having a student may give us ideas for evidence we wouldn't have thought of.  Having teachers from a variety of levels gives us a complete view of the child's experience.  Evidence includes everything from pictures of labs and projects to copies of forms to meeting minutes.  The self-examination process is always revealing, and it is mostly encouraging.  I leave those meetings thinking, "Yes, we really are pretty great."  Of course, there are areas we could work on.  As Isaac Asimov said, "Education isn't something you can finish," but going through this process helps us to look at ourselves at a level above the day-to-day and see who we are and what we do.

After all of that is put together, each committee writes their portion of the report, summarizing the ratings and evidence in narrative form and pointing to the evidence folders.  The steering committee pulls them together and polishes them into a cohesive piece, and the report is submitted to the accreditation team.  They read it thoroughly and examine the evidence.  We also provide them access to our curriculum tracking software, our LMS (so they can check lesson plans and get a sense of the student experience), and any other resources they might wish to see.  By the time of the visit, they have a very good idea of what our school is all about.

The self-examination isn't over when the report is written.  When the visiting team arrives, they tour our building, where we have attempted to show our best.  They observe our classes.  They come to a faculty meeting and ask probing questions.  They meet with small groups of students, parents, and administrative staff.  They meet with our board and our administration.  At night, they return to the hotel to write their own report based on everything they have seen in ours and from their observations.  

They don't just accredit or not.  They make recommendations and commendations so that we can continue doing what we do well and work on those things we and they have identified as opportunities for growth.  We were excited to see this time that there were only two major recommendations (one about our facility and one about staff development on addressing social/cultural issues from a Biblical worldview).  There are smaller recommendations as well, but the fact that there were only two majors made us feel pretty confident about what we do and who we are as a school.  

Self-examination like this is at a very high level, but it should be happening at all levels all year.  At GRACE, that looks like an annual professional growth plan meeting with the principal, frequent conversations with department chairs, peer observations to get new ideas, and encouragement to engage in frequent self-reflection.  We want to look at what we do well and where we can improve, not just once every five years when there is a team coming, but always.

Pandemic Years - a Reflection

All week, I have been seeing and posting "on this day, two years ago" memories.  Considering it was the biggest transition in any of our lifetimes, it seems appropriate to use my blog to reflect on the past two years.  I'm not going in with any particular point in mind, so this will likely be long and rambling and will likely not reach a conclusion.  I'm just pondering.
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"What's the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic?" was the first Covid related question I got from a student.  Over the next several weeks, I got a lot more questions, most of which I had no answer for.  When one of them asked if I thought schools would be closed, I laughed out loud.  "Schools don't close," I said. "They're schools."  A few days later, I was sitting in a meeting in which our principal said that we were going to start making plans in case school needed to move into a virtual environment.  We made plans that we couldn't believe would be needed, but Italy was being absolutely ravaged by Covid19, and no one wanted to be caught off guard.

On Saturday, March 13, the email went out from our head of school.  We were going virtual.  We had two teacher workdays for planning because not one of us had ever taught a virtual lesson.  Our IT department worked round the clock to create events for each and every class with lists of students in Google Hangout because they wanted everyone to just click on the calendar time without the worry of being in the wrong class.  Teachers collaborated on ideas and spent our last time together, much of it crying.  

One of the things I remember was how we observed each other's coping mechanisms.  Planners made list after list.  Feelers checked on each other.  One of our teachers sent a million memes.  We were all exerting whatever control we felt we could because the situation was completely outside of our control.  While we were focused on school, other closings began happening as well.  Governors were closing bars and restaurants (and eventually nearly everything); politicians on the other side of those governors publically criticized those decisions.  For them, there were two sides, safety or the economy, but we know it is much more complicated than that.  

On March 18 and 19, I taught my first virtual lessons.  I did it from my classroom because they allowed us to do that for the first few days in case we needed help with tech issues.  That's not why I did it, though.  I did it because I live alone, and I wanted to keep seeing people for as long as I could.  I know enough about the brain to know that four weeks (which was the plan at the time) of being completely isolated isn't good for my brain.  Even when I did start teaching from home, I made my bed, continued dressing as if I were at school, and kept a pretty tight schedule.  If I hadn't done those things, I'm not sure where my brain would be today.  I am still recovering from the effects of oxytocin deprivation even with those things, so I can't imagine where I would be if I hadn't done those brain-healthy activities.

Those first few days went quite well) so much so that short-sighted people decided this should be the future of teaching as though it represented normal virtual classes).  The parents at GRACE were incredibly supportive.  I got emails and notes on a near-daily basis from them, telling them how much they loved us and were praying for us.  Culturally, teachers were being worshipped at almost the same level as nurses. Social media was filled with love for educators from parents who were trying to help their kids with remote schooling.  That lasted about a month before the inevitable whiplash of parents going online to criticize everything their child's teacher did (I am NOT talking about GRACE parents, who continued to be as supportive as they had ever been and still are).  As Easter approached, it became clear that this was going to last longer than we anticipated, and we planned for the month after spring break.  I just kept hoping to have May with my students, not for the academics, but for the closure.

That was not to be, however.  When it was finally announced that school buildings would remain closed for the rest of the spring, I went for an hour-long walk and cried.  I asked my students to make sure at least some of them had their cameras on because I couldn't bear the rest of the year teaching avatars instead of students.  Every school in America made plans for graduation.  Some were on Zoom, some drive-through diploma pick-ups, and some found it too complicated to do anything.  At GRACE, we held 57 individual graduations.  It was the most beautiful experience that I hope never to have again, and I believe our students felt valued and loved.

The summer of 2020 should have been a time to recover from what we had just experienced, but just as it was starting, Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, and there was an innate need to respond, whether through attending a protest or making donations to racial justice organizations or just simple internal examination of our own hearts.  It was good and necessary to do these things, but it meant that summer was anything but a time of mental rest.

In August of 2020, many schools remained virtual, but I returned to teach in my school building.  It was overwhelming finding out how much we would have to do to make this work.  The masks and distancing of plexiglass-divided desks were the most obvious and talked about, but they are such a small part of the changes that happened.  Distancing affected EVERY practice a school has from arrival to exit.  We had walk-through temperature scanners, but the kids who got dropped off early had to come in through a different door and were manually scanned.  They had to go directly to their classrooms because our prior practice of keeping them in the cafeteria until 15 minutes before school started wasn't appropriate for distancing.  Lunch was socially distanced, which meant twice as many people had to be on duty to cover all of the areas we were putting them in.  We were operating on a hybrid model, so the first thing I did each day was to log into an iPad as well as my laptop and make sure the correct combinations of muting and microphones were operating.  I attended virtual faculty and prayer meetings as I had been doing from home in the spring.  Yearbook planning was done in pencil because, at that time, we didn't know if there would be athletics, and many of the events we have always covered were not to be.  We couldn't have chapel in any normal way because there wasn't room to distance them.  If I took my students into the lab or outside for a demonstration, I had to make a plan for the at-home students.  Even having a conference with a parent meant a virtual meeting (or one in which we sat outside to talk in person).  Every minute of the day required 100% of my brain to make decisions in which I had no experience from which to draw wisdom, and it is impossible to explain to anyone who didn't do it.  The best I can do is ask you to imagine what it would be like to do your job twice simultaneously, and it's not possible to imagine that, so it doesn't work.  

Again, we got a lot of support from our administration and parents, but a model of split-focus is never going to be the best way to educate kids, and it was emotionally difficult to know that we couldn't make it better by working harder.  When we held a socially distanced, masked, but in-person graduation, we felt so good about what we had done, and the parents applauded us on the way out the door.

We were living the high life in the summer.  As a vaccinated person, I could ditch the mask in most places.  I read a lot to try to recover my brain.  I made a lot of videos to aid my teaching this year.  We came back to a school without plexiglass and thought this year would be easy compared to last year.  And then, Delta happened.  I began the first day of the school year grieving the loss of a former student but shoving that grief down in order to get through the day.  (You can't introduce yourself to your new students as a weepy person.)  While we weren't distancing like we had been last year, we were still masked.  Unlike last year, though, when the students wore them well and without much objection, this year, masking became a constant battle.  During the Omicron wave, it felt very much like last year as we had so many quarantining that we were basically back in hybrid.  There are ways in which this winter was harder than last year.

The only good part of how transmissive Omicron was was that the wave passed quickly.  As numbers fell rapidly, we became mask optional.  That has helped us feel more normal.  I checked the numbers one day last week, and it is encouraging.  It does feel a bit like we are on the other side of this thing.  I know there will be ups and downs and new variants, but I don't live with the thought that we could shut down tomorrow anymore like I did a few times in the last two years.  This isn't over for educators.  We will spend a number of years dealing with the effects of kids being at home during their social development and re-establishing what benchmarks should be expected at each grade level.  All of that will be hard, but none of it will be as hard as the last two years have been.

Well, I told you I would not likely land at a conclusion, and I haven't.  I'm not sure there is one to draw.  Maybe, someday, when I am looking back on this as history, I'll be able to do that. 

  

Recognizing our Needs

I recently engaged in the futile exercise of trying to have a rational debate with someone on Twitter.  (I know, folly, right?)  The topic, if you can believe it, was the need for faculty meetings.  Perhaps, it is because my colleagues are fabulous people who I enjoy spending time with.  It could be because I'm single and want to be with people.  Maybe, I'm just weird.  Whatever the cause, I think faculty meetings are important and valuable uses of time.  While I don't believe in meetings just for the sake of meetings or the time-suck that is announcing things that could have been handled in email form, I totally believe in the value of a group discussion among people who teach different things.  There is wisdom that comes from differing perspectives.  The person I was arguing with online could only see that they could be "doing something else with that time."

Every summer, I volunteer at a weeklong camp, during which I have no contact with anyone except the camp folk and the photo desk lady at WalMart.  When we return home, we have a dinner with our families.  Stories are shared, the camp video is screened, and acknowledgments for years of service are given.  In recent years, some of the staff have balked at staying for the dinner after having been gone from home all week.  Again, I may be strange; but for me, camp wouldn't end properly without the dinner.  If I just drove straight home from the campground, I wouldn't have any emotional boundary between camp and not-camp.  Our directors are open to condensing the format, but last year, one of them said, "We will have something because you have a psychological need for it."

Analyzing these two events and other events in church and school life, it occurs to me that we are really bad at recognizing our own needs.  We tend to be short-sighted and want-focused.  The guy on Twitter who doesn't like faculty meetings can only see that hour and how many papers he could grade how he could go home an hour earlier if he weren't in a meeting.  He doesn't recognize that these conversations bring him perspectives he wouldn't otherwise have and, therefore lead him to better understand his students and improve his craft.  (To be fair, I know nothing about his school and whether or not their meetings are helpful or not.)

If we, as adults who have lived long enough to have had the experience of not getting what we want and being glad for it later, are bad at recognizing our needs, how much more might our students need help in analyzing their own needs vs. wants and short-term vs. long-term benefits and costs.  As with most things, doing this requires active reflection, a skill that requires training.

We have many opportunities with students to guide their thinking.  Some of it comes up in the material we teach.  Some may be done by modeling our own reflection process.  Some can be done in reflection at the end of a project or through a blog assignment.  Most of our opportunities, however, are unplanned moments.  When a student is frustrated by not getting something they want (the role they wanted in a play, becoming a starter on the basketball team, not getting the grade they were hoping for, etc.), we have the responsibility to help them process beyond the current moment while sympathizing with them in the moment.  If you remember being a teenager, every emotion feels like the whole world hinges on it.  As adults, we know that isn't true.  We can show them that it is okay to feel sad about something and then ask them questions that will help them put it in a larger perspective.  Be aware enough of your surroundings to take advantage of those moments, and your teaching will go beyond curriculum.

Take Your Kids Outside

The biology teacher next door to me has a fantastic project in which students are assigned to groups and are asked to grow food plants that will provide 1500 calories.  The learning that happens in this project goes so far beyond the biology that it's hard to describe how great it is.  To see plants go from seeds in the bare dirt to bean poles over five feet tall gives a feeling of accomplishment, and those whose plants are less vigorous learn an appreciation for how difficult farming is.

What happens on the first day of this project each year is interesting.  Students come down the hall and say, "Aggh, what is that smell?"  They come to me and say, "How are you standing next to this room?  It smells terrible."  The first time it happened, I didn't understand what they were talking about.  Nothing smelled bad to me.  After I finally figured out that the smell was dirt, I realized the problem.

Our kids don't know what outside smells like.

They didn't grow up rolling down a grassy hill.  They didn't make mudpies on the playground.  They didn't get buried in the sand.  Their brother didn't shove a handful of grass in their mouths.  They didn't sit on a rock in the middle of a stream and poke at the dirt with a stick.  They didn't rake leaves and then dive in them, throwing them over their heads.  Someone told them these things were too dangerous or dirty for them to do.  They are rarely truly outside.

Before you tell me how your child is outside a lot because they play soccer, ask yourself if that is truly outside.  I mean, I know it is under the sun, but it is still a very human-planned place that is usually well graded, perfectly mowed, and surrounded by a fence in order to protect them from nature.  I know a lot of kids are at the pool all summer.  Again, I say, this isn't really outside.  Perfectly constructed concrete surfaces with deck chairs surrounding chlorinated or salt water pools are hardly nature.  Every time a kid goes outside, we slather them in sunscreen and/or bug spray to protect them from outside.

It's no wonder our students think that dirt smells horrible while the adults in the building don't understand the problem.  To us (I'm speaking as a 41-year-old), outside smelled like dirt and grass and water from the hose.  To them, outside smells like bug spray, sunscreen, and chlorine (and of course, hand sanitizer if, God forbid, they actually do touch some nature).  They have no idea what outside actually smells like.

Human beings were designed to live outside.  There wasn't a house in the Garden of Eden (or for a pretty long time afterward).  Even when people lived in caves, they spent most of their days outdoors.  Now, according to the National Human Activity Pattern Survey (NHAPS), conducted by the EPA, humans spend 90% of their time inside. 

In honor of National Parks Week, I implore you to take your kids outside for real this spring or summer.  If you can make it to an actual national park, here are my best recommendations.  If you don't want to go to the places on my list, the Parks Service website is quite helpful for a government site.

If you can't get to one of these wonderfully preserved places, you can probably find a state park in your area or a local greenway.  If none of that is available, just go outside your house, choose a direction, and walk in it.  Look at trees and plants and squirrels along the way.  Watch some birds.  Dig a hole in the dirt (and don't wash your hands until you get back home).  Don't go back inside as soon as you get thirsty; drink from the garden hose (It actually tastes different).  Examine a caterpillar; blow bubbles; watch a bug; run in the sprinkler; see if you can find a lizard; catch a firefly; literally stop and smell the roses.

Just spend some time outside.

The Value of Yearbook Dedication

I am sitting here with a brain so full that I'm not sure I can make coherent sentences.  This is one of the reasons why I blog.  It helps me sort out my own thoughts.  That said, if this seems a little rambling, there might be a good reason for that.

When I became the yearbook advisor for my school twelve years ago, a different teacher had been doing it every year.  That gave me a lot of freedom because there were no long held traditions that I couldn't break from.  I decided that if I was going to do this for multiple years, I wanted to establish some because traditions unite people.  One of the traditions I decided to start was to dedicate the yearbook to someone who had made a difference in our school and the lives of our students.  It had only been done once before, and I believed it was a great way for our students to see us honor each other for dedication and hard work.

That year, we dedicated it to our head of maintenance, Mr. Dale.  The book was presented to him and dedication read at a faculty meeting.  After that, I asked if we could dedicate them in front of the whole school so that our students could not only see us honoring hard work, but they could celebrate it as well.  Since then, our students have cheered for office staff, an art teacher, janitors, a high school science teacher, a fourth-grade teacher, an administrator, members of our IT department, a PE teacher, and a special needs teacher.

Why is this important?  There are probably many reasons, but I'll speak to the ones that matter most to me.

1.  We Honor Work
Our culture spends a lot of time honoring people for beauty, musical talent, and athletic talent.  We have people who are famous for being famous without actually doing anything and people who are famous because their parents are famous.  We have an unhealthy obsession with people who "speak their minds" whether or not they have anything to say.  This yearbook dedication shows that we honor people who work hard at the thing God has called them to do.

2.  We Unite in Honor
One of my favorite parts of the day is the reading of the first paragraph of the dedication.  Students try to figure out who we are reading about before the last sentence when we say the name.  Then, there is a roar into the room when that person makes their way to the front, we let their family into the room, and the entire school cheers and stomps the bleachers and celebrates.  It is a moment when our school is unified.  This year, our school has outgrown the space we have traditionally used to have our dedication.  We would violate fire code if we tried to put our student body all in that place, so we are having to split into two events.  I'm a little bummed about it, but I can't insist that we break the law.  I'll just miss hearing everyone all together in this moment.

3.  We Shower A Person With Love
Every year, the staff chooses the person we do because we love them.  That love is obviously already there, but it is not often expressed on a daily basis.  As James Taylor advised us, you should "Shower the people you love with love.  Show them the way that you feel.  Things are gonna be much better if you only will."  We do.  We usually make them cry.  We invite their families.  We explain why we love them in detail.

4.  We Show A Real Person
I don't know if you ever thought about the life of your teachers outside of the classroom, but I know I didn't when I was a kid.  They were a teacher, not a person.  In the process of our dedication research, we find out who this person was before they came to our school.  Some of our people have had really interesting jobs.  We tell the story of how they met their spouse if we can find it.  We share funny or touching stories.  I want our students to know that their teachers are human beings with childhoods and adolescent embarassments, and love stories, and hobbies, and all those things other humans have.

As long as I am the yearbook advisor, this will be an important part of our yearbook.  That's why it's right up front, just after the title page.

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.  

A Defense of Southern Snow Days

This message is to all the Yankees who look down on Southerners because you don't have snow days no matter what.  I have been listening to this for forty years, and now that social media exists, I have to be mocked while sitting alone in my living room.  Let's set aside for the moment the fact that these people are anywhere but the snowy north when they tell me their stories of traveling to work or school through feet of snow and that I presume they left these places and came to the south for a reason.

I'm tired of being treated like southerners are too stupid to go to work and school during snow and ice.  I would like to speak up in defense of the southern shut down during the snow, even when the amount is small.

Let's use a money analogy.  A wealthy person can buy expensive non-essentials because they have more money than they can spend.  I have students who don't think twice about paying $800 for a pair of shoes while I have to do a cost-benefit analysis when considering $80 shoes.  Because they have a lot of money, they don't think about what to do with it.  A person who doesn't have much money will put a lot of time into their decisions.  After they have met their basic needs, they must truly relish what non-essential items they spend their money on because it may be their last fun purchase for a while.   People who get a lot of snow don't have to value it.  There will always be more.  You can waste your snow day like the wealthy waste money.  You can make it part of your everyday lives because you have it every day.  Your kids build snowmen for recess, and you have outdoor activities because you have to if you are going to live your life.  And, no one in the south looks down on your for it because we know that you can't stop living your lives for three months.  In the south, however, we don't get three months worth of snow.  We sometimes only get three days of snow.  I have experienced years where not one inch fell.  For this reason, we must not waste one single flake.  It may be our only chance to make a snowball until next year.

Now, let's address driving because I'm really tired of being mocked about this.  What you think is us being stupid is actually us being responsible.  It's not just that we don't want to drive on ice; we truly can't.  Here's the deal.  When you get to practice something 60 or 70 days a year, you should be good at it.  It would be weird if you weren't.  Since we only get to practice it 2 or 3 days a year, there is no chance that we will be good at it.  At that point, it is prudent for us to recognize that we do not possess this skill.  It is responsible for us to not put you and each other in danger by trying to employ a skill we do not have.  No matter how good YOU are a driving in the snow, it won't do you any good if I crash into you.  You're welcome.

Yankees, if you want to go out and drive around on ice covered roads, more power to you as you drive around in low traffic.  Since you live in the south now, it would be super helpful if you would just let us enjoy ourselves without your condescension.  If you want to go somewhere, go ahead.  We'll be home enjoying what could be our only snow day all year.

PS - I have no explanation for the milk and bread thing, so you can keep that.

My Weirdness - Part 4 - Happily Single

In my late twenties and early thirties, this scenario played out countless times.

Friend or parent of student:  "Beth, how old are you?"
Me:  "Thirty.  Why, who do you do want to set me up with?"
Friend or parent of student:  "How did you know?  He's a great guy; you'll love him.  If only he didn't have (insert deal-breaking flaw here)."

People mean well.  I know they do.

I'm sure they do.

I think they do.

Maybe they don't.

Maybe they are just living under the illusion that a person must be married to be happy.  Forget about whether two people are in the same place in life or share the same values or want to date someone or would even be compatible.   "We know single people of different genders," they say, "and we cannot stand for that."  This ranged from public school students wanting to set me up with their currently imprisoned older brother to a teacher friend who wanted me to date her alcoholic neighbor.  "He's great," she said.  "I just wish he were a Christian."  Really?  You thought the person's lack of faith was an afterthought, hardly worth mentioning until the end of this conversation?  Shut up, please.

Okay, this rant is over.  Here's the deal. Back then, I actually was looking.  I really did think God's plan for my life was to be a wife and mother.  As often happens, however, God led in another direction (at one time in my life I thought God's plan was for me to be an astronaut, but I was wrong about that as well).  I was about 31 when I finally felt that God was impressing upon me that I was to remain single.  This was more freeing than you might think, and the peace that came from it let me believe that it really was God and not me just giving up.  I have been happily single ever since.

I'm not going to say I am never lonely, although I will tell you that it is seldom when I am alone.  I'm not going to tell you I don't have normal human desires.  I certainly do, and just like any other person attempting to live a Godly life, I must lay those desires before the Lord.  I'm not going to say that there is never a time when I think it might be nice to come home to someone at the end of the day.  Certainly, when I am particularly tired or sad or angry or even happy, it would be lovely to have someone to share that with.  (And, yeah, Valentine's Day is just a day when you want to go to bed on the 13th and wake up on the 15th because you can't even go to the grocery store without an assault of cultural stupidity.) None of that, however, is the hard part of being single.

The hard part of being single is that no one* thinks you can be happy being single.  No one believes that the only thing I regularly have a hard time doing for myself is fastening a bracelet.  No one believes that virginity isn't really that difficult.  No one believes a person can live alone without being crippled by fear.

People, God equips you for the plan he has for your life.  I have been in training to be single since the day I was born.  When I was growing up, my dad's job took him out of town frequently.  That meant that we were home without an adult male most of the time.  My mom never acted like she thought that was dangerous.  I was never taught to equate being alone with being in danger.  My dad also always involved the entire family in repair projects, so I never learned that I needed someone else to solve problems.  I was a dork in middle and high school (and some would say ever since then as well), so I never dated.  I never learned to depend on a relationship for emotional fulfillment.    I watched girls date guys they hated because they thought it was better than not dating.  I never learned to believe that I was incomplete without a man.

This post is supposed to be about teaching, so here's how it applies.  One of the great things about being an adult dork is that students like it.  They tend to think I am cool for precisely the reason that I am authentically a dork.  Because of that, I have the opportunity to influence students on a daily basis.   Some of that influence is intentional and overt, but some of it comes from just living my life in front of them.  When they see that I am not sitting in a corner pining away for a man to "complete me" (stupidest line in romantic movie history, by the way), I have influence.  I hope that I teach girls that they don't need to date trash just to be dating.  I hope that I teach boys that they are not the saviors of their girlfriends.  I hope that I teach kids that marriage means too much to treat it lightly.  I hope, most of all, that I teach students that following God's plan (rather than following cultural expectations) is the only way to live.

*When I say no one, I really mean very few people, but it doesn't sound as good in the sentence.

The Heisenberg Principle of Education

One of my biggest pet peeves is when scientific principles are co-opted for other purposes.  "Social Darwinism," for example, bears little resemblance to Darwin's observations.  Einstein's theory of relativity is not meant for you to have whatever opinion you want and then say, "It's all relative."  However, I am about to use Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle as a means of explaining a teaching phenomenon.

First, the science.  Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that the more precisely the position of some particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known, and vice versa.  In other words, if I know the location of an electron with certainty, I cannot know it's velocity.  If I know its precise velocity, I cannot know its location.  The reason this is true is that in order to measure a precise location, one must use some kind of measuring device that will affect the velocity of the particle.  The same is true for measuring the velocity.  In the time it takes to measure velocity, the location of the particle will have changed.  Electrons even have the weird habit of behaving differently when we measure them than they do when we aren't.  The act of measuring (or even observing) a thing changes it.  

What, you may ask, does this have to do with education?  I'm glad you asked.  Teachers spend most of our year just doing our thing in our classes with our students.  Every once in a while, however, we are observed.  It could be a prospective student; it could be our administrator.  This week, GRACE is being visited by a team for the purposes of accreditation.  We will have people in and out of our classrooms for a couple of days.  

I have told my kids that I have no intent of showing off or faking anything for anyone, and I don't.  The lesson plan I have set for tomorrow is the same as it would have been whether the team was coming to visit or not.  I printed it out in a bit more detail because I tend to leave out the parts that only I need.  No matter how much I intend to be myself, however, I know that there will be some differences.  I have been observed enough times to know that I will probably talk a little faster than usual and second guess everything I say.  Students, if your other teachers are doing that too, please don't hold it against us.  It isn't our intent to lie; it's just that the act of observing something changes it.  If you believe I have actually put on a false show, tell me.  Be respectful and private about it, but please tell me.  I want to know if I am giving you that impression.

Is This Test Hard?

Teachers live for questions.  We love them.  They are the number one sign of student engagement.  Our love for questions has even led to the patently ridiculous aphorism, "There are no stupid questions."  That's not true.  There are A LOT of stupid questions.  This post is about one of them.

"Is this test hard?"

I haven't kept a record of every question I have ever been asked; but if I had to guess, this is probably the question I have been asked more times than any other.  If not, it is certainly in the top three (along with, "May I go to the bathroom?" and "Can we get extra credit points for . . .?")  Here's the answer to that question.

I don't know.

I really don't know.  I have a science degree, and I have taught this material for 17 years, and I wrote the questions.  The test isn't hard FOR ME.  I have no way of knowing if it will be hard for you.  The follow up question is the usually, "Has it been hard for past students?"  The answer to that isn't any more satisfying; the answer is "For some of them."  Some of them paid attention while others did not.  Some have taken good notes while others have note.  Some have studied well while others have not.  Some have come to me for extra help while others have not.  Some are good at analysis while others have not yet built that skill.  This means that the test was hard for some people, but it was not for others.

Every test is hard for some people, but it is rarely because the test questions are written to be difficult.  In fact, I am often surprised at which questions are frequently missed.  The question I thought was easy and told students would be on the test is often the one answered incorrectly by the most students.      Apparently, telling students a question will definitely be on the test is a sure we to prevent them from studying that question.  I can't pretend to understand that, but students have been leaving, "List the two parts of the kinetic theory of matter" blank for a lot of years in spite of all my efforts.  Some students read only the first part of questions and jump straight to a memorized answer, which means questions with nuances will be wrong.  For math problems in science, I require a certain format; but it sometimes takes two or three tests before students believe that I will take points off if they don't follow it.  Sometimes I get very short answers to questions that require complex reasoning.  For example, when I ask students to describe why people float better in the dead sea than in a pool, I sometimes get answers like, "Cuz of the salt."  When I asked students to describe in detail the process of breathing using Boyle's Law, some of them answer, "First you inhale; then you exhale."  These answers are clearly worth five points each.  The most frequent incorrect answer to an all of the above question is "a," reflecting that these students didn't read the other choices.  All of these result in points lost, but none of them reflect that the test is hard.

Teachers write questions using something called Bloom's Taxonomy of thinking levels (see the above diagram).  Everyone knows how to prepare for the remembering level by using flashcards or repetition, and by middle school, most of my students have become pretty good at preparing for the understanding level if the teacher has told them it will be a question on the test.  Application and Analysis level questions require a different kind of preparation, and it can't be found in the book.  When I ask these types of questions, no matter how simple, that test is considered "a hard test."  If you are wondering about the top two levels, they require more processing time than a timed test would usually allow.  Evaluation tends to be done in debates or essays, and creation is usually achieved with projects.

Lack of preparation makes tests hard.  Students, next time you study for a test, try to identify what level of thinking is required.  If something requires an explanation, recognize that flashcards alone won't get you there.  If several pieces of material can connect, be prepared for analytical questions that relate those.  Proper preparation will make you walk into a test prepared and walk out believing it wasn't a hard test.

You Can't Save Them (at) All

I entered teaching at the age of 23 as an idealist, believing that if I did it right, every student would love learning, have enthusiasm about my class, and behave perfectly.  The education system eats people like that alive.  Go into a classroom with that expectation, and you will be shot down.  Get shot down too many times, and you will become jaded and cynical.  If that happens, leave the teaching profession immediately.  Go work in a bank, a factory, or a radio station.  Become a postal worker if you have to, but don't keep teaching.  Much damage is done by the cynical.

Fortunately, I had a great group of people around me, from fellow teachers to administrators.  They didn't dash my hopes and dreams, but they did teach me to have realistic expectations.  I'll never forget the time my principal, Mr. Matthews, sat down in my room on a teacher work day just to check in (this is the sign of a great administrator, by the way).  We chatted a little, and at some point in the conversation, he said, "You know you can't save them all.  I can see that in you."  Between those two sentences, I had already burst into tears.  I didn't know I had strong feelings about my ability to save every student from their drug use, abusive home, learning disability, or their own apathy.  He had seen this in me when I was too busy to see it in myself.  He reminded me that while it is great to have compassion for students, I could not take on all of their problems.  Other teachers set my perspective as well because even the best ones have some difficulties with classroom management or lack of student performance at some point.

Going into the classroom with a realistic expectation rather than an idealistic one is the reason I can still enjoy my job 17 years later.  If I had insisted on keeping my Mary Poppins view that my classes would be "practically perfect in every way," I would have quickly become disillusioned.  Having a realistic expectation means you can enjoy the positives and deal with the negatives without going on an emotional roller coaster.

I have been fortunate in my career that I have only had one year in which I couldn't have that kind of honesty with my superiors.  Mr. Matthews couldn't have been a better first principal for me to have.  No matter what happened in my classroom, he had a story about how the same things (or worse) had happened in his career.  I also had a great principal whose office I felt comfortable walking into and saying, "I have a question, but it may sound kind of rude."  to which she said, "Well, sometimes, you have to ask a rude question."  Last week, I cried through the end-of-year meetings with both of my administrators, was encouraged by both of them, and then went to lunch with them and a few other teachers.  Administrators who can make you better teachers while recognizing your growth are worth their weight in diamonds.  If you are lucky enough to work for one, don't give that job up for any amount of salary.

I have digressed from my original point.  Teachers face 25-125 students each day, depending on the grade level they teach.  Each of those students has something from which they would like to be saved.  For some it is trivial; they would like to be saved from the kid sitting next to them or their lunch that they don't like.  Others have truly serious problems which they have absolutely no power to solve.  If you take on your own shoulders the problems of even half of your students, trying to save them from everything they bring to school with them, it will cripple you.  You should pray for them (and with them, if you are able).  You should give them a safe place in your classroom.  You should get help for those in serious need, of course.  But do not fall into the trap of trying to "save them all."

Now that I work in a Christian school, I have yet another perspective on the conversation I had with Mr. Matthews.  Not only can I not save them all, I can not save any of them at all.  I am tasked by my calling to do my personal and professional best.  I am tasked by my school's mission statement to spiritually and academically equip, challenge, and inspire.  I am tasked by God to obey His Word and present the gospel to my students.  I am not tasked with saving them.  Only the blood of Christ can do that.  It is my honor to walk with some of my students on their redemption journey, but I cannot save them at all.

This Answer Made it Worth It

My last post referenced trying new things and analyzing their results.  Since then, I have spent the week grading a physics project.  It is my second attempt in physics at a Challenge Based Learning project (CBL).  The challenge is this.  You live in an area that gets electricity inconsistently.  I gave them some examples of places in the world with power shedding, namely Haiti, Zambia, and South Africa.  You want to keep a few things at your home powered - your refrigerator, perhaps some fans for blowing off malaria-carrying insects.  What can you do, at your house, to keep these things running?

The idea behind Challenge Based Learning is that students must address the challenge, developing their skills in creativity, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking.  They are not given a pre-determined solution and told to build it according to a teacher thought out rubric.  They must come up with an answer by thinking through the associated issues.  This provides the opportunity for students to step up to the plate and do something real, but it also provides them with the opportunity to fail.  If the challenge is worthwhile, it is certainly not something that can be accomplished with one day's work, even a good all nighter.  This type of project forces them to rise to the occasion or fail; there is no in between.  It also requires a serious lack of intervention from the teacher.  If I step in and bail them out, they do not meet the challenge.  This is incredibly difficult for teachers as we are trained to help.

Watching the kids progress through this project had its highs and lows.  Their initial brainstorming sessions produced more viable ideas than we had the entire year before, so I felt like we were off to a good start.  I gave them some work days in class.  While they worked, I listened to them.   Listening to student conversations when they don't know you are listening is better entertainment than most movies.  I listened as students talked about solar power and wind.  I pointed out the limitations of those options, suggesting that perhaps a fuel powered solution might be easier, and they insisted on alternative energy.  They've been a bit brainwashed about fossil fuels, but it was their challenge to meet, not mine.  I heard one group talk about a hand crank generator that they already had.  Later, I asked them if they thought that was realistic at someone's home.  After all, you aren't going to have someone stay up all night cranking the generator.  I heard another group talking about soccer and basketball and fantasy football.  These are juniors and seniors, so it is the time for them to learn the consequences of wasting class time.  I let them keep talking, knowing they would likely not meet the challenge.  This is a difficult thing as a teacher, but I believe it is important as a life skill.  See my post from last year on not helping.  Constantly rescuing kids from their irresponsibility will never teach them to be responsible.

One group used its time well; so even though their solution to the problem wasn't what I would do, they gained more knowledge than any other group.  They built a small wind turbine and did a little math about how that would scale up in the real world.  I wish they had done something more universal and that they could have answered more feasibility questions, but they had done a lot of thinking and got a good understanding of the difficulties of electricity production.  They did understand that when the wind wasn't blowing, they would need a back up for the back up and spent a little bit of time talking about battery usage.  They didn't really develop that idea, but at least they had it.  The hand-crank generator group had the problems I knew they would have.  Some of them learned less than others, and I wish they had explored other solutions.  Both of these groups had models that did produce a little electricity, not truly addressing the challenge but at least getting something out of it.

The group that spent all their time in class talking about sports brought in a presentation about hydroelectric dams.  I stopped them and said, "How could you use this at your house?"    I invited adults in the school to come ask questions as well.  One of them said, "You do know these cost billions of dollars to build, right?  That's why there aren't many of them out there."  Another adult pointed out that you would have to live near a river that you were allowed to block.  Then, they showed me their model.  It is made of a cork on a barbecue skewer, sitting in a plastic bottle.  When water runs over it, it spins.  Notice that I didn't say it produces electricity; it doesn't.  

One of the methods I use to grade this type of project is through reflective questions.  I ask them about how they communicated, collaborated, problem solved, and dealt with timeline interruptions.  I have them explain what their role is the group and what they learned, not only about electricity production but also about doing projects.  I ask them what grade they would give themselves.  This is actually a very long reflection form.  I thought the water group would understand that they had not risen to the occasion from the feedback they were getting on the day of the presentation, but they didn't.  All of them said they were proud of their product and would give themselves either a high B or a low A.  Only one owned up to wasting the work days I gave them.  Their answers were so inconsistent with reality that this project became difficult to grade.

Then, near the end of the alphabet, I read the following answer.

This answer made the rest of the grading difficulty (and the inevitable pushback I will get from grading them correctly) worth it.  This student didn't just learn about electricity.  She learned gratitude for living in a first world country, where she doesn't have to think about this outside of a school project.  When she plugs things in, she will take a moment to thank God for allowing us to use the laws of physics.  A few years from now, when she hears political candidates debate about alternative energy sources, she will have information by which to judge their spin.  Every teacher needs an answer like this one every now and then.  It is the reason I will do this project again.   This answer made it worth it.

What Your Education Degree Didn't Teach You

My degree is in secondary science education with an emphasis in physics.  To earn that degree, I took many courses in educational psychology, theory, and methods.  I had standard general education classes, which I loved.  I took every science class I could fit into every minute of the day.  I even had a zero credit seminar in physics and engineering, which I also loved.  (I think I just really just loved classes, so it is probably good that I made that my life.)

In seventeen years of teaching, every one of those classes has been valuable.  I have never taught an Anatomy class, but I have shared much of what I learned in anatomy with my students, and the understanding it gave me of how light and sound and electricity interact with the human body certainly make me teach the physics differently than I would have otherwise done.  I have never taught English, but writing skills have been important in my life nonetheless.  I enjoy talking about the novels my students are reading and believe it is important for them to see a well rounded life.  I am grateful for everything I did learn in college; but after seventeen years in the classroom, I've come to realize how much I didn't learn while earning my degree.  I'd like to make a few proposals.

Drama - Teachers spend much of their day pretending.  That doesn't mean we aren't genuine with our students, but it is sometimes important to pretend that something is less funny than it is just to maintain classroom management.  Some days, you might not be enthusiastic about the necessary but not thrilling topic of the day (e.g. required steps for showing your work); but it would be detrimental to your students' motivation if you show that.  You might be a single person who has just had your heart broken; it would be unprofessional to bring that into your classroom.  Some days you have to pretend to be in a better mood than you are really in because, while being real is good, being completely transparent is not.  You have to pretend at least a little.  A theater class in improv might prove useful in the development of those skills.

Lab Storage Safety
This one is, of course, meant for science teachers.  My first teaching job was in a brand new building.  We were putting all of our equipment and chemicals on the shelves for the very first time.  While all six science teachers had an understanding of chemistry on a level they could teach, none of us knew the safest arrangement of chemicals on shelves.  We knew that alphabetical was a recipe for disaster, but no one had been trained in proper storage.  I'm guessing that most colleges believe that we will glean this information from our understanding of chemistry, but that is like hoping that we could write a novel in Arabic just be learning their alphabet and a few passages.  There are simply too many combinations chemicals and their compounds.   A semester of lab safety would make us all safer.

Group Crisis Management
In the years I have been teaching, I have taught through a variety of difficult circumstances.  My second year in the classroom, my school received a shooting threat.  I was teaching on 9/11.  Ten years ago, a student in our school died.  During a homecoming pep rally, one of our teachers experienced a serious injury, which we believed at the time to be life threatening.  Recently, one of our teachers has battled cancer.  When we were told on Friday that the cancer had returned, you can imagine what it was like to step into a  classroom of hurting kids while dealing with our own shock and sadness.  When I tell you that I taught through those circumstances, I mean it.  It was not healthy on 9/11 for students to travel from room to room, watching television footage of terror; so I taught science.  When our school was threatened with a shooting even, I couldn't just decide to make the day a wash.  I taught differently, with my eyes alternating from window to door and back again all day, but I did continue to teach.

When we gathered in chapel to be together and ask questions after the death of a student, my friend came by my room with boxes of tissues for us to take with us and said, "Here's something they didn't teach us in teacher school."  She was right, and that should not be.  I know they couldn't have addressed every potential problem, but any teacher who teaches more than a couple of years will experience a class in crisis.  Some training in how to deal with groups of frightened, sad, or angry students just makes sense.

To the people who write degree plans, all the things we learn about content and methods are important, and I am grateful I had them.  The real work of teaching, however, involves much more than I ever learned in college.  Consider adding a few of those "rubber meets the road" type of courses - even a seminar with veteran teachers as guest speakers could be useful.  Please consider.

Teachers Should Blog - Seriously, I Mean You

According to google, this is my 100th blog post.  I decided that it should be about how great blogging is for teachers and really recommend that you have one too.

1.  Yes, you do have something to say.  
When social media first started, there was a definite generational divide.  I would hear older people say, "Why should anyone care what I am doing right now?"  I would hear students talk about how great it was that they could say anything they wanted to anyone.  I was in between these two age groups (at the time - I'm middle aged now, but I was only 30 when I first joined facebook).  I really saw social media as a great way to keep up with old friends that I didn't see anymore, but I certainly didn't want to post every time I ate a cookie.  As the social media thing has exploded over the past decade, we have come to discover that it CAN be a platform for those who have something to say.  As a teacher, you have something to say.  Forget about posting pictures of every cup of coffee you drink, and think about what you wish you could tell your students, your parents, your fellow teachers.  You have important thoughts about this misunderstood profession.  You might be a new teacher.  Sharing your struggles appropriately can be a comfort to those who know they aren't alone.  It can give parents and students perspective on how difficult that first year is, and maybe they will cut you some slack.  Maybe you have been teaching for many years.  You have acquired the wisdom that comes from experience.  Sharing that can be helpful for younger teachers or provide an idea for someone who needs one.  You really do have something to say; I promise.

2.  Education is misunderstood.  You can help.
I know I am biased, but I don't think there is a profession that is more misunderstood than teaching.  We all think that because we were in school and had teachers, we know how to teach.  I have heard students say, "How hard could it be to get papers back the next day?" about a first-year teacher they had.  My response to them was, "You guys have no idea what you are talking about."  People think of teaching as the 8-3 job with summers off.  You and I know that you do not work from 8-3.  I get to work at 6am and leave at an average of 5pm.  That's if there isn't a game or a play or a performance.  Then, it could be as late as 9pm.  This isn't a complaint because I love it.  It is perspective for those who think a teacher's day is done at 3.  Yes, we do have summers off, and we are grateful for it.  It takes that time to recover from the previous year, develop professionally in ways the school year doesn't allow, and get ready for the following year.  Most people don't understand that because we don't' talk about it much.  We don't want to be viewed as whining or complaining.  For most of us, it isn't.  We just want people to understand it.  Blogging weekly gives some insight to others into this profession.  Seeing that you were grading papers at 9pm so that you could get them back to students might make the students recognize that you indeed have homework too.

3.  It's reflective
This is the reason I have my students blog.  The world is moving so fast that we rarely take the time to think and reflect on what things mean.  We are so busy taking in new information that we rarely take the time to process the impact of that information.  My student's blogs are 5-10 sentence, but that requires enough reflection each week that they might make it a practice in their lives.  As a teacher, my blog posts are a lot longer, but the chance to reflect on new practices, technology, traditions, or student activities is just as valuable for me.  Even if no one read this blog, I would still want to write it.  It is good for me to process things.

4.  It's not just something else to do.  It's cathartic.
When I first thought of blogging, I wasn't sure I wanted to.  It seemed like it might just be another assignment for the week.  Fortunately, it hasn't turned out that way.  While I do have to take some time to think and write, I find that it frees my mind when I am done.  I have gotten the thoughts that were swirling around unformed in my head into the computer.  That frees me from thinking about them further and lets my brain focus on the rest of the to-do list.  Forming the thoughts into coherent sentences gets my brain ready for work.  While you can't just rant about whatever is bothering you and keep a job, you can process issues constructively by blogging.  It gives you perspective while you think through the issues.  As I already said, I would keep writing this even if you didn't keep reading it.

Thank you
All that said, thanks for reading these last 100 posts.  I hope it has done something for you.  If you are a fellow teacher, I hope it has given you some ideas or let you know you aren't alone.  If you are a parent of students, I hope it helps you to understand that your child's teachers really are doing the best they can.  If you are a student, I hope it helps you realize that you are taught by thoughtful professionals who care deeply about you and your success, who have a plan and a reason for that plan, who put every waking moment of 10 months into being the best they can be.

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.