How About An Educational Documentary Worth Watching?

On Friday night, like many educators, I found myself watching CBS’s Teach. Within minutes though, I found my mind wandering and my frustration growing. I began to channel surf. Then a friend and co-worker texted me, “Good documentary on CBS called Teach.”

I flipped back, thinking, “Maybe I’m just too cynical about anything created by Davis Guggenheim.”

Admittedly, I wasn’t a huge fan of Guggenheim's Waiting for Superman, so maybe my bias was clouding my judgment. Knowing teachers would be talking about Teach on Monday, I tried to stick it out. I began multi-tasking—if I’m going to watch this I mind as well be productive and learn something. Anything.

For me Teach was too cheeky and almost propagandist. While I have no problem with the Khan Academy, we cannot seriously believe that it’s the solution to our educational issues. The teachers profiled in Teach clearly have made a difference in the lives of their students—as have hundreds of thousands of other teachers.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, Guggenheim paradoxically states, “The strange thing I found is that very few people can tell you what makes great teaching….That’s why we start Teach with the simple premise of ‘What is a teacher, and what do they do.’”

I struggle to agree with the premise that we don’t know what makes great teachers. We do. Research abounds with what makes a teacher great. Additionally, instead of focusing on being great, why not focus on simply allowing teachers to teach well.

Today, too many teachers are handcuffed by overwhelmingly detailed and complex standards with rigid pacing guides. Instead of focusing on real teaching and meaningful learning, time is spent preparing students for the next standardized test.

Teach, in conjunction with Teach.org, kicks off an 18-month campaign to urge students and recent graduates to enter the teaching profession. If that is Teach’s goal, shouldn’t the focus be on schools that have downplayed increasing standardization? On schools that give teachers the freedom to do what’s best? On schools where teachers are respected, purpose-driven and strive to become masters of their crafts?

That would be an inspiring documentary and one worth watching.

So Mr. Guggenheim, how about it? 

Guide by the Side

We can’t expect students to be autonomous and creative when we tell them exactly what to do. Instead let’s aim to point students in the right direction and get out of their way.

I love it when I enter classrooms and I can’t immediately find the teacher. Sometimes the teacher is huddling with students. Other times the teacher is sitting with a group or working one-on-one with a student.

Embodied in this guide by the side philosophy is that students will learn more, discover new concepts and apply their learning on their own. Students are no longer passive learners.  The assignment becomes a quest for knowledge as students strive to discover answers on their own. We’ve moved beyond the transmittal of information from teacher to student. The teacher becomes a facilitator.

Cognitively, this approach makes sense. When students—for that matter anyone—are able to generate relationships between the new material and what they already know, they are far more likely to remember it and apply it. In this constructivist classroom, students are given the opportunity to truly interact with the material.

This is not to suggest that the teacher no longer lectures or instructs. A guide by the side teacher provides a framework, some information, and resources. The guide by the side constantly poses questions to stimulate students.  

Students need to think for themselves, pose and solve problems. In a guide by the side classroom, students produce knowledge instead of reproduce information. As we become guides on the sides—it won’t happen overnight—students will become more independent and real learning will improve. 

Learn Twitter

Every two and a half days a billion tweets are sent!

It’s important that we as teachers understand Twitter as our students are using it as one of their main means of communication. But, more importantly we should be using Twitter to learn, collaborate and improve as educators. By expanding our Personal Learning Networks (PLNs), we will be better able to address the challenges of educating our students.

In Learning by Heart, Roland Barth pontificated, “I wonder how many children’s lives might be saved if we educators disclosed what we know to each other?”

Twitter enables use to tear down those walls and to openly communicate.

I hope you’ll join millions of other committed educators and me on Twitter. Looking forward to learning from you.

Your Back to School Letter

At the end of the first day of school, students will be caring home 4, 5, 6, 7 back to school letters to their parents. Multiply that by the number of children and you can easily approach two-dozen letters! A cynic might say, “That’s why I don’t write a back to school letter. Parents don't read 'em anyway."

Maybe that explains why, as a teacher and parent, I've seen my fair share of bad back to school letters. These would be the letters that are: 

• riddled with misspellings and grammatical errors.
• too long; Listing every intricate detail, procedure and rule
• threatening in tone. Overuse of statements like “I will not,” “…will result in…” I still remember a student sharing a letter from a teacher that read something like, “My job is to teach the students. It is their responsibility to adapt to my style and to learn.”  Needless to say, the student wasn’t looking forward to this class; who can blame her?

On the other hand, a great back to school letter sets the tone for parent-teacher-student engagement.

What's included in a great back to school letter?

• Your passion for your subject and your students. Why do you teach? What do you hope students will bet out of your class? What will students learn about themselves? 
• Something personal--break down the walls. Learning should be a shared endeavor; so let your parents and students get to know who you really are.
• How are you going to ensure that all students are successful?
• Contact information. I've always included my personal phone number and only once in 20 years has it been any sort of problem (1 prank phone call from a student). 
• What parents can do to help their children be successful in your class.
• What makes your class different--and better--than the rest.

Powerful words and phrases:

Shared                        Journey                      Exciting                    Together       

We                             Incredible                   Success                     Effort

Connect                     Communication          Develop                    Engaging

Expect                       Learn                          Progress                    Us

Contact me                Background                Looking forward to   Believe

Different                    Care                            Challenge                  Help

What do you think should or shouldn't be included in a back to school letter? 

Parents, do you read them? Do they matter? 

Going Beyond Standards

Several months ago I wrote about embracing risk-taking in our schools (here, here, and here). Wanting to show my confidence in our teachers and to encourage risk-taking, I talked to teachers about stepping beyond their comfort zones. I attempted to ensure teachers that risks were not just acceptable; they are desirable.

After a couple of initial conversations, I realized one of the largest impediments to risk-taking was—and is—our state standardized tests, the SOLs. Teacher after teacher commented, “I’d like to try something different, but the SOLs.” With so much emphasis placed on SOLs from the federal, state and local governments, school administrators (including me), parents and students, who could blame them for not wanting to diverge from the state’s curriculum?

The teachers’ motives made perfect sense? I don’t want to be the one responsible for a student not passing the SOL/earning their advanced diploma/graduating. Hard to argue with logic like that.

Only a couple of years removed from teaching, I too fell victim to over-emphasis on standardized tests. Now I had to plead to the teachers to do what I said, not what I did. To best move teachers—anyone for that matter—I’ve always found it best to ask questions instead of preach to them. Below are some of the questions I asked:  

1.     Why did you enter teaching? Not so amazingly, none of the teachers said, “So I could teach a prescribed curriculum and my students will ace the SOLs.”

2.     What is it that you want students to get out of your class?

3.     Where’s your passion?

4.     How can you pass that passion on to your students?

5.     What would your students say if you tried something different?

6.     Tell me about some of your most successful lessons and what made them successful.

Most of the teachers seemed to enthusiastically embrace risk-taking and the idea of going beyond the SOLs. I promised to support them. Undoubtedly, failures will occur. I ended each conference with a simple message, “I’m going to support you and I look forward to working with you and seeing the changes.”

Now about those standardized tests...

Comment Only "Grading"

You burn the midnight oil, staying up late to grade and make thoughtful comments on students’ papers.

After entering the grades into your grade book, you breathe a sigh of relief and feel good about your accomplishment.

When you return the papers to the students, they immediately look at their grades. Some complain. Others act nonchalant. Others immediately begin to compare with their classmates. Most frustratingly, a couple crumple up their papers and throw them away. Few, if any, take the time to read your comments—the comments that you spent hours working on.

So why did you spend hours writing the comments? Because you know feedback ranks as one of the most effective and influential teaching practices (Dweck, Hattie, Marzano, et al).

But did you know ineffective feedback can actually reduce student motivation? Psychologist Edward Deci found that when students feel they are being too closely monitored, they can become disengaged from learning. Furthermore, Deci discovered that learners often interpret feedback as an attempt to control them (grading as a method of control or statements like, “You cannot do that.”) Finally, Deci discovered a third condition of ineffective feedback occurs when it can be used for competition (I did better than you did).  

Comments only grading maximizes the positive effects of feedback by spurring student learning and instilling a growth mindset.  In comments only grading, the teacher provides only comments on student work. By writing comments only, students learn how to improve their work.

For assignments that required a grade, I employed a simple, yet remarkably effective strategy. I returned the assignment with comments, but no grade. I required the students to read my comments and respond to them (either orally or written depending on the situation). Only then would I provide them with the grade. While it took students a while to get used to this system, they soon grew to appreciate the true meaning of my comments/feedback.

 

Some feedback tips:

1.     comments must be specific

2.     supply information about what the learner is doing

3.     allow students time to read and respond to the comments

4.     allow time for improvement

5.     praise effort NOT intelligence

6.     supply information

10 Lesson Ideas for the Post State Test Doldrums

With our state and AP tests upon us, we’re faced with a new challenge: how do we keep students engaged in learning?

We often complain about the constraints associated with prescribed curricula; the end of the year liberates us—and our students—from these shackles. We’re finally free to teach as we want to teach! We can develop lessons that require collaboration, higher-order thinking, creativity and more (notice: I did leave 21^st century skills off the list because I know many of us don’t have access to computers because they're used for testing).

Here’s a list of some great year-end activities I’ve seen in the last two years. What’s your favorite year-end activity? I’d love to add to the list, so please comment! 

1. Create a book or video review. Each student/pair of students creates a chapter reviewing material from the year. These books could easily be used for next year’s review sessions. 
2.  Make use of flip cameras and have students create skits, chapter/unit reviews, etc. Again these can be shared with next year’s students.
3. Make use of Skype—host an expert, collaborate with another class from around the world, compete versus a class from a nearby high school.
4. Teach a fun unit that you didn’t have time to teach.
5. Debates and discussions.
6. Have students write a letter to next year’s students.
7. Cumulative assignments. As a history teacher, I tried to take a thematic approach to my teaching (some themes: role of geography, power, economic haves-have nots, etc.), so at the end of each year, students were assigned a theme and created a project highlighting examples of the theme from throughout the year.
8. Give the students a FedEx Day. Essentially, a FedEx Day is where you allow the students to take an idea of their own and run with it. For more http://goo.gl/zWUCq  
9. Try a new teaching strategy or style. This is a great time to take risks and become innovative. For example, I always wanted to use Project-Based Learning part of my classroom instead of simply assigning projects. The end of the year was a great time for me to try it out.
10. Begin preparing students for next year by pre-teaching a lesson from next year's curriculum. If possible swap classes with another teacher. For example, if you teach fifth grade science, have the sixth grade teacher teach your students.

What are your best end-of-year lessons?