After my post yesterday on the way that I've made a lot of changes in the past few years after being a pretty good teacher for a decade or so, I had some really awesome comments.
The ones that hit me the most were by Jasper Fox (@jsprfox) and Rick Wormeli (@RickWormeli). (Side note, really geeked out a little to see that Rick Wormeli even noticed something I did, is book Fair Isn't Always Equal was one of the shoves that changed my thinking)
Their comments were that they were most excited to see a high school teacher doing retakes. At first I thought that was a little odd, because both myself and the teacher in the attached room to me both give retakes. But then I thought about how that is just not the case at all. Most high school teachers I think are of the opinion that you have to be hard on the students to "prepare them for college". I know I was that way for a long time, hard deadlines, no makeups, you just get a zero for whatever you missed. What I realized though is that I ended up giving a lot of extra credit for kids to "patch up" their grades.
What eventually made more sense to me, and certainly SBG helps with this, is to just say, no, you get graded on how well you know things, regardless of when you know them. The only real deadline, the only actual summative time is at the end of the year. That's when final grades go in. That sounds crazy, and it sort of is...I do have deadlines and due dates. But they are never the end of the story.
My goal as a Chemistry teacher is to help them learn Chemistry....
Do I try to teach other life skills and study habits? Sure, but that is a side business, and I'm not qualified to teach them really as I have always been a notoriously bad studier and really never studied for anything in high school. I think sometimes we forget that these are still kids we are talking about, even if they are in high school, driving cars and working part time jobs. They are kids, still figuring it out. Heck, I'm 40 and don't have it all figured out and I've had plenty of second chances (and third, and fourth). How many teachers have had an admin in for a drop in evaluation and begged for a different day for whatever reason.
Ironically, those same teachers are hardcases about deadlines for their students. Goose, gander....etc.
Anyway, back to the title, why don't more high school teachers do this:
1. Time
Seriously, allowing retakes takes a lot of time and effort, as most things in teaching do. You have to make multiple versions to really do it right, make different keys. I have some ways to deal with that to minimize some of it, but I'd be lying to say it was easy, its not.
2. Aggravation
Holy crap, is it aggravating to allow retakes, even if you have system in place. You have to have sign ups, you have to have separate folders (digital or otherwise), you have to have special policies, do you grade different, how late is too late, can they take the stuff all year or in a certain timeframe, do they have to do special work before hand or just come in, when do they come in, before school, after, during lunch....????!!!!
Seriously, that is just a few of the crazy things that makes it just too much trouble for most folks. It is not easy...if I had hair, I'd probably pull it out some days.
3. Grades matter in high school
I'm probably going to get some flack for this, so don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that elementary and middle school don't matter, I'm saying that grades aren't as big of a deal there.
This is not true in high school. Systems and teachers get sued over who is valedictorian, arguments are had over the weighting of regular vs honors vs AP. GPA is calculated over and over again. And no matter what colleges say publicly, GPA matters a lot when applying for admissions and scholarships. Someone might not graduate because of one assignment in one class.
What this means for the teachers that want to do something out of the box is that you better have your ducks in a row and make sure you have administrative support, because if student A ends up as valedictorian over student B because you allowed 15 retakes, it is going to come up. You might get some sweet letters from a lawyer or calls downtown calling for your head.
All of which is somewhat hilarious when you see how subjective and sometimes arbitrary grades are anyway. And yes, I know that is why folks want to standardize, but that just means that some committee or company makes the questions instead. That may be less arbitrary (may) but doesn't deal with the needs of my students, so I don't like that idea.
4. Philosophy
This is probably where I would have fell a few years ago really. Deadlines matter, and if I allow retakes, then they won't take the first test seriously, right.
Happens occasionally, I will grant you, but not often. I'd say my overall retake percentage is around 10%. The kids who do retakes are a. learning material they didn't know or b. shoring up their grade.
Obviously I prefer a, but b is ok too, and I'd rather they did that than just took a zero or a low grade (I don't enter zeros for anything that was completed honestly, but that is a different post).
Don't get me wrong, I get it, I don't want kids to think they can just put my work off. It annoys me to no end when they work their butt off every night for notes for someone else's much easier class than mine because they are graded on it, and then bomb my assessment and have to retake it. I'm aggravated when a student has to retake something because they were more worried about restoring a guitar they were working on (true story from this year).
But ultimately what matters is that the students learned Chemistry. If it takes them all year to learn how to do mole conversions (I have one just doing it now, we taught it in September) I can be disgusted with what a slacker they are or I can celebrate with them and keep encouraging. At the end of the day (year), that student learned something, whereas that kid with a perma zero or perma F did not. That's he lessons I want to teach.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Thursday, April 11, 2013
The Changes
So I sent out a tweet to my #flipclass folks last night asking if doing flipclass has caused some major changes in the way they teach. I sort of meant it especially for folks who have been teaching longer than 5 or so years, not because I think the opinions of those with less experience is not valid, but I was sort of thinking of the contrast in my own teaching.
I've mentioned a bit about my teaching career in other posts, so I won't belabor that, but as I consider some big changes for next year, I was comparing to my old style of teaching. Much like John Tague noted in a response to my tweet , I considered myself a successful teacher, loved by students, inspiring some to go into teaching, some to attempt to major in Chemistry or other subjects I taught, so I like to think I played a role. I was a lecture teacher, but I don't think traditional entirely....I'm a storyteller at heart, so there was a lot of that, and I was very actively involved for most of that time (before I had my own kids).
Then I flipped...
Here is a brief run-down of the dramatic changes:
1. Grades
As I briefly twitter ranted today, and probably to the despair of my #flipclass cohorts, I don't believe that grades should be banned, that they hurt the soul, etc. What I do believe though now is that a final grade should be a representation of the whole year of learning. If a student bombed stuff early in the year, but figured it out, that should be taken into account.
I've switched to SBG, which I still have some issues with, but I like the idea of being responsible for knowing the material, not for doing work. More on that in a minute... But what has really changed is that I do accept latework and I allow retakes. In fact, I'm a little shocked now when I'm in a meeting and a teacher doesn't. Not that I think they are wrong or bad for doing that, it just seems odd to me in my present frame of mind. Here is how my grades work now:
I've mentioned a bit about my teaching career in other posts, so I won't belabor that, but as I consider some big changes for next year, I was comparing to my old style of teaching. Much like John Tague noted in a response to my tweet , I considered myself a successful teacher, loved by students, inspiring some to go into teaching, some to attempt to major in Chemistry or other subjects I taught, so I like to think I played a role. I was a lecture teacher, but I don't think traditional entirely....I'm a storyteller at heart, so there was a lot of that, and I was very actively involved for most of that time (before I had my own kids).
Then I flipped...
Here is a brief run-down of the dramatic changes:
1. Grades
As I briefly twitter ranted today, and probably to the despair of my #flipclass cohorts, I don't believe that grades should be banned, that they hurt the soul, etc. What I do believe though now is that a final grade should be a representation of the whole year of learning. If a student bombed stuff early in the year, but figured it out, that should be taken into account.
I've switched to SBG, which I still have some issues with, but I like the idea of being responsible for knowing the material, not for doing work. More on that in a minute... But what has really changed is that I do accept latework and I allow retakes. In fact, I'm a little shocked now when I'm in a meeting and a teacher doesn't. Not that I think they are wrong or bad for doing that, it just seems odd to me in my present frame of mind. Here is how my grades work now:
- Assessment on a specific standard (or two), usually 2-8 problems/questions long, sometimes MC, but typically problems or free response. If a student isn't ready when I give these out to the class, they can take it the next day or two. No point in them taking something they don't know yet. That's just painful for me and not helpful for them,=.
- They can retake any assessment twice. It isn't the same assessment of course, but over the same standards. If my goal is for them to learn the material, what is wrong with retakes?
2. Tutoring
I hate tutoring. Not because of one on one time with students, that's the best. But I hate it because it tends to be a student throwing up their hands and saying "I don't get any of this!" I still do a lot of tutoring, but it tends to be a lot more focused now and students have notes or at least screenshots of my videos saying "this is what I don't understand". That leads to a much more productive conversation. Plus, I'm not talking terminology now with them, we're solving problems, talking concepts.
3. Teaching (class time)
This the the most dramatic change of course because I do very little full class lecture of any kind. In fact, I don't do a massive amount of full class discussion, usually it is in a group of 2-4 students at a time, or 1:1. Where I might have helped 5-6 students before, and those were usually the ones with their hands up, now I help them all, or at least get to speak to them all, everyday.
I'll additionally say that the flavor of the discussions tends to be much better, not always about how we solve a problem, but a lot more in depth talk about the implications of the things we are doing.
4. Questioning
I've always been a little bit of a hardcase when it comes to questioning, just because I'm a contrary, argue the other side sort of guy. But what has opened up in the past couple of years is that as my students say "you never answer any question straight", meaning of course that I never just give an answer, I guide them to it through their own brain. It is painful for both of us sometimes, it takes a looooot longer this way, but it pays off in a couple of ways:
- They have to think about what they already know and tie it into the new topic.
- It sticks in their brain better when they think it through than when I just give the answer.
5. Creativity (by the students)
By far the biggest change is in the type of assignments I give. Yes, I still give some practice problem worksheets, so to the pure constructivists I am still the enemy of the students. But my students this year have created hot air balloons, rockets, spinny can contraptions, skits enacting kinetic theory and that was all just in our gases unit. They've made stop motion videos, biome travelogues, infographic posters, videos working problems, minecraft explanations for topics, etc. We've thrown flour darts at targets, done cat's cradle type activities and basically had a lot of fun. And to be honest, very little of it has been me doing demos as a traditional chem teacher would do. It has been them, which of course takes the burden off of me to be the master of creativity all of the time.
6. Students first
Hopefully I've always been a teacher with students at the forefront, but I'm not afraid to admit that I have an ego and a chip on my shoulder. I want to be the best teacher and to get accolades for it. That was especially true for me 5 or 10 years ago. Now, I want my students to learn, to enjoy my class and not dread it, either for me or the material. I teach Chemistry for the most part and had a parent earlier this year tell me that their daughter loved my class and was amazed at her friends at another school that hated Chemistry. And this isn't a typically science loving kid. A big part of that is the ability to be flexible, allowing students to learn at their own pace.
My classes stay mostly on the same topic, but I have kids who are a couple of weeks behind and some that are a week or two ahead. They don't all have to be working on the same thing at the same time. What matters is that they learn the material. I don't make every kid work every single problem I assign, and I don't think I've handed out problems with more than 10 on a sheet at any point this year. It is very clear in our classroom that what matters isn't getting enough work in to impress me with their dedication, but simply understanding the things they should understand, and often being able to use that knowledge to do something creative.
My classroom is not the best, it isn't the most creative and free flowing place ever. But we are headed there, week by week, year by year, and the #flipclass has been the underlying impetus behind these changes. I suspect in a year or two I won't even be calling my classroom flipped, but I'll always have a debt of gratitude to it for the shove it gave me to being a more student centered teacher.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Thinking too far ahead
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.
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.
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...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)