Having a real problem over the past month or so keeping my head in this year. This is a pretty common failing at this point of the year, especially when doing year long classes. You are at the 3/4 mark and probably through 7/8 of the curriculum because of leaving time to review before EOCs. So I guess it is natural to do so, and I definitely have started to think a lot about next year.
Part of it is that I teach at an amazing school with ridiculously supportive administration. We were shortly after Christmas break to list a few wishes for next year, and everyone was encouraged to come up with a "dream" course or as the internet might have it now, a stretch goal.
I listed two, figuring there was no way that they would really get considered.
I was wrong though and so next year I will likely be teaching a high school level Intro to Organic and Biochemistry course. First off, I think this fits in well with our school, we have a lot of kids who have the desire to go into medicine, biology and chemical engineering. That being the case, since Organic is a classic weedout course, this will only help our students.
Plus, it will be a heck of a lot of fun to teach, I'm looking forward to a lot of labs and some cool discussions about molecules that affect their daily lives. But then I started looking around for some others teaching such a class and there aren't a ton. I saw Adrian Dingle's page for his Organic class and it was pretty intimidating (in a good way, as most of his stuff is) and it really hit me how much work I have to do to pull this off.
Oh, and I'm teaching AP Chemistry next year after a year without it and brand new standards next year....
I honestly just want to start prepping videos and planning for next year right now, but I only have 12 or so more class sessions with my APES class before their AP test, about the same for Biology before their EOC....
Good thing I don't have hair to begin with.
Don't get me wrong, it is a good anxiousness, the feeling of wanting to do your best, to be the best, for some of the best kids ever. But it is still daunting.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Monday, March 4, 2013
Facts matter too...
This is going to go against the normal grain of my flipped class, multiple retake, critical thinking teacher persona, but I make no real apology for it.
Facts do matter....
As with anything else in education, politics, religion, whatever, we set ourselves up for failure when we make false dichotomies. The one that irks me every time I see it in education circles is the idea that facts don't matter because people can just look them up. That all that matters is critical thinking skills.
Critical thinking skills don't happen in a vacuum, your ability to think critically is often predicated on knowledge that you have already, facts one might say.
My ability to critically consider complex issues and do things like analyze the social norms of 19th Century America and relate those to modern political trends depends a lot on what I already know. Yes, I could look things up and do research about them, but my ability to do research and even to "just use Google" as a lot of educators tout now depends a lot on what I already know about those things.
I'm not talking about memorization of trivia, or a bunch of random facts, but we dilute critical thinking skills when we minimize knowing things. I think that each of us knows this intuitively, but it doesn't seem to fit our paradigm of higher order thinking skills and quadrant 4 and the upper part of Bloom's taxonomy above all.
I have a 2nd grader at home who is interested in science and as with a lot of 2nd graders has a lot of very intriguing and interesting questions. These questions don't come out of the blue, they come as he learns things, and sometimes that comes from repetition and remembering things. He knows a ridiculous amount of things about say, the human body, from watching a ton of BrainPop videos over and over and over. Some would argue that he just knows facts and trivia, but it is the knowledge of those facts that leads him into the more complex thought that we are shooting for.
Knowing facts isn't the enemy of critical thinking, it has the ability to make critical thinking that much deeper, to make the connections faster and to have more ways to make those connections.
Daniel Willingham talks about this very coherently in his book Why Kids Don't Like School, which is a great read by the way.
Thinking critically is about making connections. If there are few points of reference, only a few connections can be made. If there are a lot of points of reference, there are a lot more nodes to connect together.
I will grant you that I am biased as a science teacher. I get that we want data analysis to be a big part of things, but if we think that is it, we are foolish. I suffered a lot in my research group in college because as an undergraduate, I didn't know as much about organics as my graduate peers. That meant that my contributions in meetings and to the overall team effort was lacking.
Please don't misconstrue what I'm saying, I agree, critical thinking is tops. I never count a student wrong for not doing things my way and I encourage them to analyze every situation. But there are facts that need to be known as well, models that need to be there in order to understand the deeper stage of models. If we continue to belittle content, then reading a chart for a multiple choice answer becomes the extent of what we can do. A researcher doesn't just critically analyze her data, she analyzes it and holds it up to paradigms and models that she already knows to see if it fits or breaks those.
But if you don't know any paradigms or models in the first place, chart reading will only get you so far...
Facts do matter....
As with anything else in education, politics, religion, whatever, we set ourselves up for failure when we make false dichotomies. The one that irks me every time I see it in education circles is the idea that facts don't matter because people can just look them up. That all that matters is critical thinking skills.
Critical thinking skills don't happen in a vacuum, your ability to think critically is often predicated on knowledge that you have already, facts one might say.
My ability to critically consider complex issues and do things like analyze the social norms of 19th Century America and relate those to modern political trends depends a lot on what I already know. Yes, I could look things up and do research about them, but my ability to do research and even to "just use Google" as a lot of educators tout now depends a lot on what I already know about those things.
I'm not talking about memorization of trivia, or a bunch of random facts, but we dilute critical thinking skills when we minimize knowing things. I think that each of us knows this intuitively, but it doesn't seem to fit our paradigm of higher order thinking skills and quadrant 4 and the upper part of Bloom's taxonomy above all.
I have a 2nd grader at home who is interested in science and as with a lot of 2nd graders has a lot of very intriguing and interesting questions. These questions don't come out of the blue, they come as he learns things, and sometimes that comes from repetition and remembering things. He knows a ridiculous amount of things about say, the human body, from watching a ton of BrainPop videos over and over and over. Some would argue that he just knows facts and trivia, but it is the knowledge of those facts that leads him into the more complex thought that we are shooting for.
Knowing facts isn't the enemy of critical thinking, it has the ability to make critical thinking that much deeper, to make the connections faster and to have more ways to make those connections.
Daniel Willingham talks about this very coherently in his book Why Kids Don't Like School, which is a great read by the way.
Thinking critically is about making connections. If there are few points of reference, only a few connections can be made. If there are a lot of points of reference, there are a lot more nodes to connect together.
I will grant you that I am biased as a science teacher. I get that we want data analysis to be a big part of things, but if we think that is it, we are foolish. I suffered a lot in my research group in college because as an undergraduate, I didn't know as much about organics as my graduate peers. That meant that my contributions in meetings and to the overall team effort was lacking.
Please don't misconstrue what I'm saying, I agree, critical thinking is tops. I never count a student wrong for not doing things my way and I encourage them to analyze every situation. But there are facts that need to be known as well, models that need to be there in order to understand the deeper stage of models. If we continue to belittle content, then reading a chart for a multiple choice answer becomes the extent of what we can do. A researcher doesn't just critically analyze her data, she analyzes it and holds it up to paradigms and models that she already knows to see if it fits or breaks those.
But if you don't know any paradigms or models in the first place, chart reading will only get you so far...
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Feedback Failure
I am in one of those funks where I feel like I'm not a very good teacher this year, particularly in one of my 4 preps.
Before I get to the reason why and reveal my dirty secret, let me say that I know I'm doing a lot right this year, and I know that my school supports me and wants me to bring innovation to the school. I really try to do that every day.
I plan a lot, even if it isn't all formal. I can't stand to walk in class and not have a plan, in fact, I generally have stuff posted 3-4 days in advance in the classes I'm teaching well. That allows for the students who finish early to keep pushing and maybe earn themselves some flex time that they might need later.
My day is also planned out to help the students. If that means I have to miss an occasional lunch while a student finishes a retake of an assessment, I'm down with that. I'm not there late for personal reasons, but I try to always be there very early. I make it a point to answer student emails as rapidly as I possibly can.
I'm tooting my own horn in all of that because I feel awful about the area that I have been terrible about this year, which is one that is near and dear to my heart.
That area is feedback. Two years ago when I had a position of influence, I remember teaching a PLC group about Feedback and how vital it was in the educational process, how things like "good job" etc are not really good feedback. I've always prided myself on being that teacher who had grades turned around no more than 2 days after any assignment was in, and if I could use something like google forms for immediate feedback, I'd always shoot for that.
I really want that to be the focus of my class every day. In some ways it is, as I probably spend 80% of my class periods in my chemistry class going around and helping students and giving quick feedback on their work.
But the depth of my feedback is lacking sorely. I feel like I know a thousand technological ways to offer amazing personalized feedback. I've given out those ideas to others. But personally, the time issue gets in the way.
This aggravates me even more because I know that we find time for the things that matter, and I don't feel like I'm doing that right now and that makes me really mad at myself as a teacher. I spend so much time making videos, prepping activities, and tutoring, that my feedback just gets shorted.
I have a plethora of goals for the remainder of the year and for next year, but I really think I need to bump up feedback to be #1. I don't think anything else is going to affect my students as much in a positive way, and so I really have to devote myself to that, even if my planning and other things have to suffer somewhat.
Before I get to the reason why and reveal my dirty secret, let me say that I know I'm doing a lot right this year, and I know that my school supports me and wants me to bring innovation to the school. I really try to do that every day.
I plan a lot, even if it isn't all formal. I can't stand to walk in class and not have a plan, in fact, I generally have stuff posted 3-4 days in advance in the classes I'm teaching well. That allows for the students who finish early to keep pushing and maybe earn themselves some flex time that they might need later.
My day is also planned out to help the students. If that means I have to miss an occasional lunch while a student finishes a retake of an assessment, I'm down with that. I'm not there late for personal reasons, but I try to always be there very early. I make it a point to answer student emails as rapidly as I possibly can.
I'm tooting my own horn in all of that because I feel awful about the area that I have been terrible about this year, which is one that is near and dear to my heart.
That area is feedback. Two years ago when I had a position of influence, I remember teaching a PLC group about Feedback and how vital it was in the educational process, how things like "good job" etc are not really good feedback. I've always prided myself on being that teacher who had grades turned around no more than 2 days after any assignment was in, and if I could use something like google forms for immediate feedback, I'd always shoot for that.
I really want that to be the focus of my class every day. In some ways it is, as I probably spend 80% of my class periods in my chemistry class going around and helping students and giving quick feedback on their work.
But the depth of my feedback is lacking sorely. I feel like I know a thousand technological ways to offer amazing personalized feedback. I've given out those ideas to others. But personally, the time issue gets in the way.
This aggravates me even more because I know that we find time for the things that matter, and I don't feel like I'm doing that right now and that makes me really mad at myself as a teacher. I spend so much time making videos, prepping activities, and tutoring, that my feedback just gets shorted.
I have a plethora of goals for the remainder of the year and for next year, but I really think I need to bump up feedback to be #1. I don't think anything else is going to affect my students as much in a positive way, and so I really have to devote myself to that, even if my planning and other things have to suffer somewhat.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Artisanal Teaching
Was joking a few weeks ago with @guster4lovers about maybe we should call the variety of methods of which the "flip" just seems to be the glomming on word artisanal teaching. Since that day, the thought has really stuck in my mind very strongly.
There is hardly a person in education, whether a pro-charter reformer, or a staunch public school supporter who doesn't feel that something is broken. There are disagreements at the fundamental level as to what that is, money, teachers, etc. But one thing that a lot of folks would agree on is that the way schools currently run is based on an old model. (Yes, there are folks that advocate a return to 19th century methods as well, I will ignore that!)
Particularly in public schools, but having taught in private, it isn't a whole lot different there, the de facto set up is the factory model. I.e., we can dispense the most learning to the most students by working in the same efficient ways in every school, in every place, for all students. Everyone starts at the same time, goes for the same amount of hours, takes mostly the same classes, entirely dependent on age level (which, wow, is a post for another day).
This model considers students to be replaceable parts in a well oiled machine. This is another reason that we have this weird obsession with using business models in education, as though there were a product to produce.
Students are not commodities, they are not products. When you commoditize them, you dehumanize them.
This sent me back to the word that I almost hate to use because the word artisan has a "hipster" sort of flair that I pretty assiduously avoid. Plus, my use of it makes it sound like there is still a product to be created, which is probably a fair argument.
I think the difference though is that in the artisan mindset, each product is theoretically created, not produced. There is art and craft involved. If you've ever worked in a factory, which I have, there is no art and craft, there is deadline, there is amount produced, there is workflow. At one point I could cap 12 gallon bottles, box them, tape the boxes and stack them in 28 seconds. And then do it again, and again, and again.
I have days like that teaching too, where I feel like I'm doing the same lessons, that each class is another class, but those are bad days.
On most days, I think about the personality of each class, (yes, whole classes have personalities!), and especially of the students within it. Some students barely need me to stop, check in with them, check their work, pat them on the back and move on. Some want to ask me a hundred questions. Some want to talk to me about a video game or a movie before I can refocus them. When I am an artist, I don't try to force them to all act the same, to all learn the same. Last semester I had 3 classes, all of the exact same subject, at wildly different points, and within the classes, individual students are groups were at different points.
I love it...
This is an odd secret to reveal on a blog, especially since I teach science, and not just any science, but one governed by rules, Chemistry. But I still consider myself as someone who teaches more by art than by science. Oh, I have data out the wazoo, spreadsheets, item analysis, average # of students that missed whatever question. Generating numbers isn't difficult. Even using the numbers isn't that hard.
But to get a student to visualize a VSEPR model, not to memorize it, but actually visualize it, that takes art, not science. It takes continued attention to the ingredients that go into the art, solid content, enthusiasm, some high tech methods, and a sprinkle of benevolent sarcasm. I have literally read books on how you should teach science and other subjects, and they generally want me to buy into their method, as though dough in San Francisco is the same as dough in New York. That's not true for bread and it is exponentially more not true for people!
A naysayer (say, myself 10 years ago) would say, that's nice hippie, but we have thousands of kids to educate, or a teacher might say, yeah, but I have 30 kids in each class.
I do too. The fact that I have 3 children doesn't mean that I can't love them as much as if I had only one. Yes, it is tough to give the same one on one attention, but it is doable. Don't get me wrong, I love class sizes of 20, but that's not the world we live in in public ed. Leverage your resources to make it work, investigate, try new things out. See what works for others and adapt, or try it out and feel free to discard it.
Try a new palette, use some new ingredients, be an artisanal teacher this semester, not another worker on the line.
There is hardly a person in education, whether a pro-charter reformer, or a staunch public school supporter who doesn't feel that something is broken. There are disagreements at the fundamental level as to what that is, money, teachers, etc. But one thing that a lot of folks would agree on is that the way schools currently run is based on an old model. (Yes, there are folks that advocate a return to 19th century methods as well, I will ignore that!)
Particularly in public schools, but having taught in private, it isn't a whole lot different there, the de facto set up is the factory model. I.e., we can dispense the most learning to the most students by working in the same efficient ways in every school, in every place, for all students. Everyone starts at the same time, goes for the same amount of hours, takes mostly the same classes, entirely dependent on age level (which, wow, is a post for another day).
This model considers students to be replaceable parts in a well oiled machine. This is another reason that we have this weird obsession with using business models in education, as though there were a product to produce.
Students are not commodities, they are not products. When you commoditize them, you dehumanize them.
This sent me back to the word that I almost hate to use because the word artisan has a "hipster" sort of flair that I pretty assiduously avoid. Plus, my use of it makes it sound like there is still a product to be created, which is probably a fair argument.
I think the difference though is that in the artisan mindset, each product is theoretically created, not produced. There is art and craft involved. If you've ever worked in a factory, which I have, there is no art and craft, there is deadline, there is amount produced, there is workflow. At one point I could cap 12 gallon bottles, box them, tape the boxes and stack them in 28 seconds. And then do it again, and again, and again.
I have days like that teaching too, where I feel like I'm doing the same lessons, that each class is another class, but those are bad days.
On most days, I think about the personality of each class, (yes, whole classes have personalities!), and especially of the students within it. Some students barely need me to stop, check in with them, check their work, pat them on the back and move on. Some want to ask me a hundred questions. Some want to talk to me about a video game or a movie before I can refocus them. When I am an artist, I don't try to force them to all act the same, to all learn the same. Last semester I had 3 classes, all of the exact same subject, at wildly different points, and within the classes, individual students are groups were at different points.
I love it...
This is an odd secret to reveal on a blog, especially since I teach science, and not just any science, but one governed by rules, Chemistry. But I still consider myself as someone who teaches more by art than by science. Oh, I have data out the wazoo, spreadsheets, item analysis, average # of students that missed whatever question. Generating numbers isn't difficult. Even using the numbers isn't that hard.
But to get a student to visualize a VSEPR model, not to memorize it, but actually visualize it, that takes art, not science. It takes continued attention to the ingredients that go into the art, solid content, enthusiasm, some high tech methods, and a sprinkle of benevolent sarcasm. I have literally read books on how you should teach science and other subjects, and they generally want me to buy into their method, as though dough in San Francisco is the same as dough in New York. That's not true for bread and it is exponentially more not true for people!
A naysayer (say, myself 10 years ago) would say, that's nice hippie, but we have thousands of kids to educate, or a teacher might say, yeah, but I have 30 kids in each class.
I do too. The fact that I have 3 children doesn't mean that I can't love them as much as if I had only one. Yes, it is tough to give the same one on one attention, but it is doable. Don't get me wrong, I love class sizes of 20, but that's not the world we live in in public ed. Leverage your resources to make it work, investigate, try new things out. See what works for others and adapt, or try it out and feel free to discard it.
Try a new palette, use some new ingredients, be an artisanal teacher this semester, not another worker on the line.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Pursuit
I am going to merge some of my religious views into this, as they are part of what informs this. If that offends, I suppose that is the nature of our society, I won't apologize, but will give the heads up ahead of time.
We were talking today and in #flipclass today about what do you do for those students that just won't try, that no matter how charming and winsome you are, no matter how stinking interesting the material is, or how amazingly open sandbox the project they are to be working on is....that no matter what, they just don't work, they just sit there.
On my commute home with my lovely bride, I had one of my on the way home rants about a couple of my students who refuse to take responsibility. I'll sit down next to them, help them out for 10 minutes in the middle of class and then they take 20 minutes to work one problem, because they need to hit the snack machine or check their messages...whatever. There is very little in life that drives me more nuts than not taking responsibility... Or, to the other point, they "take responsibility", admitting that they aren't working/haven't worked, and taking pride in it.
I think every teacher everywhere has those students....some of it is the nature of just people, some of it is teenagers in my case, etc.
As teachers, what happens of course is that you only have so much time in a class period, and additionally, only so much emotional reserves. Naturally, we want to help those that want help, those that seem more deserving, that have done their end and yet need some help. It's natural to help the kid with their hand up. Part of it is probably the subconscious desire to see that someone got the stuff we were teaching...that's always a boost. As opposed to the student who never gets it, who never even tries to get it.... Spending an inordinate amount of time on the 2% while the other 98% might need help and actually cares just seems illogical.
But here's my issue, I'm a follower of Jesus, a pretty good teacher regardless of your views of Christianity. And He pursued....leave the 99 to go after the one...
As with much of actual Christian theology, it turns the logical, the practical upside down, refutes the logic of the world.
We try to pull in CEOs and efficiency experts into schools (and other arenas) with the idea that we can focus on the big things, straighten out the whole system. There are vast arrays of massive national and state initiatives, from Common Core, PARCC, NGSS, Race to the Top, etc, that are the next iteration of NCLB.
But programs won't help anymore than religious law helps. What works is relationships, what works is a teacher, doggedly pursuing that student that gets left by the wayside.
That takes love, which no matter how good Common Core is, it doesn't have. It takes doing the illogical...not the rational, "research-based" method and sitting down with that student over and over and over. Pursue them as though you love them...because if we don't, why are we teaching? To help the best and the brightest? They need help too, and there are thoughts in here about that too. But think for the next day or week or month or school year about who needs you, not about who wants you, who needs the education, not just who wants it.
Students that want it often get it....but often those who need it, don't.
There are tons of reasons for this...social, economic, etc etc...but when it comes down to it, I hope to pursue those who need it. I don't want to just help those who want to excel to excel, but to inspire those who don't even know they need to excel to do so. I'm not very good at it yet, but I'm thinking about it all the time, trying harder and harder every day, reminding myself when I don't, to pursue, to run after...to go after the one...
We were talking today and in #flipclass today about what do you do for those students that just won't try, that no matter how charming and winsome you are, no matter how stinking interesting the material is, or how amazingly open sandbox the project they are to be working on is....that no matter what, they just don't work, they just sit there.
On my commute home with my lovely bride, I had one of my on the way home rants about a couple of my students who refuse to take responsibility. I'll sit down next to them, help them out for 10 minutes in the middle of class and then they take 20 minutes to work one problem, because they need to hit the snack machine or check their messages...whatever. There is very little in life that drives me more nuts than not taking responsibility... Or, to the other point, they "take responsibility", admitting that they aren't working/haven't worked, and taking pride in it.
I think every teacher everywhere has those students....some of it is the nature of just people, some of it is teenagers in my case, etc.
As teachers, what happens of course is that you only have so much time in a class period, and additionally, only so much emotional reserves. Naturally, we want to help those that want help, those that seem more deserving, that have done their end and yet need some help. It's natural to help the kid with their hand up. Part of it is probably the subconscious desire to see that someone got the stuff we were teaching...that's always a boost. As opposed to the student who never gets it, who never even tries to get it.... Spending an inordinate amount of time on the 2% while the other 98% might need help and actually cares just seems illogical.
But here's my issue, I'm a follower of Jesus, a pretty good teacher regardless of your views of Christianity. And He pursued....leave the 99 to go after the one...
As with much of actual Christian theology, it turns the logical, the practical upside down, refutes the logic of the world.
We try to pull in CEOs and efficiency experts into schools (and other arenas) with the idea that we can focus on the big things, straighten out the whole system. There are vast arrays of massive national and state initiatives, from Common Core, PARCC, NGSS, Race to the Top, etc, that are the next iteration of NCLB.
But programs won't help anymore than religious law helps. What works is relationships, what works is a teacher, doggedly pursuing that student that gets left by the wayside.
That takes love, which no matter how good Common Core is, it doesn't have. It takes doing the illogical...not the rational, "research-based" method and sitting down with that student over and over and over. Pursue them as though you love them...because if we don't, why are we teaching? To help the best and the brightest? They need help too, and there are thoughts in here about that too. But think for the next day or week or month or school year about who needs you, not about who wants you, who needs the education, not just who wants it.
Students that want it often get it....but often those who need it, don't.
There are tons of reasons for this...social, economic, etc etc...but when it comes down to it, I hope to pursue those who need it. I don't want to just help those who want to excel to excel, but to inspire those who don't even know they need to excel to do so. I'm not very good at it yet, but I'm thinking about it all the time, trying harder and harder every day, reminding myself when I don't, to pursue, to run after...to go after the one...
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Know Thy Students
I had my first formal observation of the new year on Friday and I think it went pretty well. My principal and I sat down and had a discussion about the lesson, the principal prompting, but me doing the bulk of the talking (as I do a lot).
As we talked about the area that I felt went really well, I went to grouping. This is an astonishing change for me as I was the guy in high school and even as I started teaching that hated groups. They are terrible for the "smart" kids since they feel like they have to do all the work. Forcing students into groups almost invariable sets up some conflicts with teenagers, the kid they don't want to work with and won't, etc.
Or so I thought. As I moved a little bit up in the teaching realm at my last school, I had to think more about the grouping thing as I was expected to evaluate teachers on it (on of the things on the evaluation rubric).
Now I am full on in favor of grouping, not just the standard heterogeneous A student, C student, F student, but all kinds of groups. We work in group basically every single day in my room now and the groups change probably once a week or so. Sometimes they are homogeneous, which contrary to what a lot of folks thinks, works amazingly well, even for the kids who are struggling. Sometimes they are gender balanced and sometimes not. I don't pick them at random, but at this point, I know my kids well, have experimented and put them in scenarios where I think they will flourish.
That is sort of the point that I think gets missed in all of our talk about methods and student centered. Student centered is a goal worth aspiring to, but I don't think it can work well if you don't know your students very well. You have to know who learns in what way, who will get it with direct support and who wants to be left alone to puzzle something out. If you rely on a "system", no matter how valid it is, without the relationship aspect, it all falls apart.
My principal told me she was amazed that the groups all worked together and actually worked to make sure they learned. That when there was cross group activity, it wasn't to chat, but rather to figure out something another group learned and they didn't. Again, that comes with having trust in your students, and knowing the ways and scenarios that they will do best in.
The other side of course is that without some structure, having good relationships has to support learning and growth. Seems like that is a post for another day.
As we talked about the area that I felt went really well, I went to grouping. This is an astonishing change for me as I was the guy in high school and even as I started teaching that hated groups. They are terrible for the "smart" kids since they feel like they have to do all the work. Forcing students into groups almost invariable sets up some conflicts with teenagers, the kid they don't want to work with and won't, etc.
Or so I thought. As I moved a little bit up in the teaching realm at my last school, I had to think more about the grouping thing as I was expected to evaluate teachers on it (on of the things on the evaluation rubric).
Now I am full on in favor of grouping, not just the standard heterogeneous A student, C student, F student, but all kinds of groups. We work in group basically every single day in my room now and the groups change probably once a week or so. Sometimes they are homogeneous, which contrary to what a lot of folks thinks, works amazingly well, even for the kids who are struggling. Sometimes they are gender balanced and sometimes not. I don't pick them at random, but at this point, I know my kids well, have experimented and put them in scenarios where I think they will flourish.
That is sort of the point that I think gets missed in all of our talk about methods and student centered. Student centered is a goal worth aspiring to, but I don't think it can work well if you don't know your students very well. You have to know who learns in what way, who will get it with direct support and who wants to be left alone to puzzle something out. If you rely on a "system", no matter how valid it is, without the relationship aspect, it all falls apart.
My principal told me she was amazed that the groups all worked together and actually worked to make sure they learned. That when there was cross group activity, it wasn't to chat, but rather to figure out something another group learned and they didn't. Again, that comes with having trust in your students, and knowing the ways and scenarios that they will do best in.
The other side of course is that without some structure, having good relationships has to support learning and growth. Seems like that is a post for another day.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Revitalized
Feels weird to title the post that way, since I am super tired physically right now, up way to late to even think of writing a blog post.
But...
We had our Magnet Open House tonight at my school, where we recruit 8th graders and tell them why they should apply at the STEM Academy instead of going to their home school or one of the other Magnets. So I spent most of the night talking to a couple dozen parents and prospective students, selling our school, and myself as a teacher in the school.
Sounds awful right? It's the sort of thing that teachers, most of the time including myself , hate to do, especially on a Monday night the week before exams from 6-8pm.
I was great though for 3 pretty solid reasons:
But...
Sounds awful right? It's the sort of thing that teachers, most of the time including myself , hate to do, especially on a Monday night the week before exams from 6-8pm.
I was great though for 3 pretty solid reasons:
- Explaining what I do in the classroom and what makes our school unique as well isn't me spinning a yarn, it was just the truth, and I realized again tonight as I talked about it, how lucky I am to be at the school I am, teaching the kids that I teach. When you see the excitement reflected in their faces, or when you say that you believe in having the kids create more than sit and listen and the parents and the kids get visibly enthused, it excites you as a teacher again.
- For some reason I 'm not very clear on, I had 5-6 parents of my current students there. I'm not sure why as I thought it was all about the new ones, but I am very glad they came. I'll elaborate a bit more below.
- My teaching buddy from my last school showed up tonight (his son goes to our school). That alone was enough to make my night. I love my new colleagues, but teaching with a friend that you know would help you hide a corpse is a much different thing. (that's a joke..., the corpse part, not the friend part....ah well, nm).
To elaborate on #2, I, like some of my #flipclass colleagues have felt a bit hammered down by the negativity about it of late. Like my good twitter friend @bennettscience , I took a few days off of twitter. Coupling that with getting sick last week about the same time as the negativity hit and missing two days of school was devastating. At the end of last week I was just beat down, physically, emotionally, and other allys. I was having these feelings that all of the talk about my classroom, the newspaper article and such was all just smoke and mirrors, that I really wasn't lighting the world on fire, or even striking a match.
Well, I'm probably not lighting the world on fire in any case, but the parents I talked to tonight really lifted me back up. Let me just briefly note that I teach Chemistry, often a reviled class, and while I teach it at a STEM centered school, we are thought to have some parents with really, really high expectations.
But I had 5 or so parents just tell me how much their kids loved my class. That in and of itself is an accomplishment when you are used to telling people you teach Chem and watching them recoil like you are contagious or something.
What was really awesome though was two parents who spent 10 full minutes telling me how they appreciated the one on one nature of the #flipclass, how it has really been amazing for their daughter. The mom went on to tell me how she raves about #flipclass to all of her friends who have kids in other schools. She said she directs them to my videos, but knows that it is about what goes on in class. There was a bit about how kids in a lot of other chem classes that don't work like mine are literally crying in frustration, but that her daughter never does, because she knows if she doesn't get it that I will be there for her and not only able to help but wanting to help.
Not much to say after that, other than to make sure I send that parent an email and thank them for the much needed boost at this time of the year!
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