The Right Number of Snow Days

I have taught in both Tulsa, Oklahoma and Raleigh, NC.  Neither of these areas gets a lot of snow.  That means things pretty much shut down whenever it does snow.

I'm going to tell you a secret.  Teachers love the first snow day more than the students do.  We do a little dance when the call comes in.  We also really like the second snow day.

After that - not so much.  Then, we start worrying about getting behind and make up days.  Don't fall for the line "built into the calendar" as that is a phrase without meaning.  We start thinking about when we will move tests to and what can be reasonably skipped.  When we come back, we move really quickly through the material.

Students probably like as many snow days as possible, but there does reach a point where it is going to be more difficult for them than it would have been.  My school assigns things to AP students digitally on snow days, and they tell me it is more work than what they get at school.  Last year, we had a total of 7 snow days.  That was bonkers.  There were entire chapters we didn't get to in all of my classes.  This year, we are coming off of three in a row (on a Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday).  I'm good now.  I don't need any more.  I know I don't have any control over it; but if I did, I'd say let's go ahead and have spring now.

The perfect number of snow days is 2 - in a row if possible.  If there must be a third, it should be a couple of weeks later.

Let Them See You Sweat

I know I am showing my age here, but remember the old Arid deodorant ad, whose tag line was "Never let 'em see you sweat"?  This is certainly good advertising for antiperspirant, but it is terrible advice for effective teaching.

When we first go into the classroom, we all want the kids to think we know everything.  We want them to believe we are never wrong, never make a mistake, and never don't know the answer to a question.  This is nothing but an ego trip, and the sooner you drop it, the more enjoyable your classroom experience will be.  Of course you get answers wrong and make typos on tests.  You are a person, not a programmable teaching robot.

This is about more, however, than just admitting you are human.  There are pedagogical reasons for letting the kids see you make mistakes.  They also get to see you fix them.  If all we ever present to them is perfect pre-solved problems, they never see the thought process behind solving the problems.  My weakest area in physics has always been electricity.  I have such a tenuous grasp on voltage that it can be completely undone by a question.  I have to review Kirchoff's Rules for circuits every year before I teach it.  Last year, because of our seven stinkin' snow days, I forgot to review it.  In the middle of the first example of a combination circuit, I realized I was doing it wrong.  I had to stop and ask the kids to let me think for a minute.  I talked through the problem out loud, reminded myself of the rules, undid what I did wrong, and confessed to the kids that this had always been difficult for me.  This threw them for a minute, but I said, "Let's do another one, so you can actually see one worked correctly from beginning to end."  I think it was important for them to see this thought process happening in front of them.  When they went home to work similar problems, they probably got stuck along the way too.  They won't feel dumb if they know that the teacher also gets stuck in the same spot.

This is not to say you should intentionally mess things up just so kids can see it.  They know an act when they see one.  This just means that when the inevitable happens, the way you react to it will have an impact on them.  If you try to fake it, they will not respect that.  If you get upset that you were wrong, you teach them to fear being wrong (which, in turn, teaches them not to learn anything new).  If you take the time to solve the problem, you teach them to solve problems.

SAMR 2 - Website Boogaloo

Last week, I explained the SAMR model.  It is a method of approaching use of technology in the classroom.  If you are just substituting tech for something you already do and it doesn't significantly change what the student is doing, you aren't getting the most of your technology.

My tech goal for the year is to get to the R at least one time per class this year.  One time in a year doesn't seem like a big goal, but R means Redefinition.  It means fundamentally changing the instruction to something that could not have been done before the technology existed.

In physics, we will be doing this in the form of a challenged based learning activity on electricity.  They will have to figure out how to provide consistent electricity if they lived in Haiti or somewhere else where municipal electricity is not reliably consistent.  Sean, our technology specialist lived in Haiti, so he will come and speak to them to present "the problem."  Students will then have to research available resources and figure out on their own how to solve the problem.  They can contact experts to answer questions using social media or skype.  Some elements of this could not have been done by students in a classroom before technology existed.

In 8th grade, we already started this year's project.  My students are making their own website about the periodic table elements.  Some of them are designers.  Others are proof readers.  Some are seeking media to show chemical reactions for the elements.  One group of students is even managing the work flow of the others by setting goals.  While this project is not even close to being finished, I have already been happily surprised by some of the results.

1.  Using Weebly, the students were able to do some great designing really easily.  Recently, a student opened it and said, "It doesn't look like a bunch of 8th graders did it."
2.  When students tell you what job they would be interested in doing, they take more ownership of it and do a much better job.
3.  You might be surprised at the job they want.  I have a student who speaks very little in class.  She isn't exactly shy, just not overly extroverted.  I was surprised when she told me she would want to be on the team that manages work flow.  It turns out that she is great at it.  She has set goals for when things would be due, sent e-mails to other members of the team, and then communicated those goals to the teams to which they apply.
4.  Knowing something will be public makes them do a much better job.  We've been talking about this since the beginning of our program - that real work for real audiences will make them care more than assigned work for only their teacher.  Knowing it and experiencing it are two very different things.  They are much more likely to fix an error because they know this will be public.
5.  When the teacher doesn't know the answer to something, kids do better problem solving.  Kids always want me to lead them to the "right answer" on a lot of things.  Some of that is laziness, and some of it is the belief that the teacher knows everything.  I've never made a website before, so it was easy to say "I don't know" to a lot of their questions.  When is the design due?  I don't know how long it takes to design.  When will we finish the site?  I don't know how long it takes to make a site.  The design kids, in particular, worked quite diligently because they knew that no one else could add to the site until they were finished.  If I had given them a month, they would have taken it.  My not knowing how long it should take made them do it as quickly as they could.

This website will not be finished at the end of this school year.  I had only 44 8th grade students at the time we started, so there will only be 44 elements on the site.  Next year's 8th grade will have different elements assigned to them.  Since there are currently 114 known elements, we may not actually finish with this website for three years.  The 8th graders who started this will be sophomores in chemistry at that time.  They will be able to use their own site to help them in their high school class.  There will be some connection between three years of my students.  This is all pretty cool to me whether or not it ends up meaning anything to them.