Teaching during a global pandemic has been the most challenging experience of our professional lives. As we pass the first anniversary of schools shifting to hybrid or remote instruction, it’s worth appreciating what we have accomplished through many rounds of trials and tribulations. The silver lining of this tumultuous year—yes, even a tragic global pandemic can have bright spots—are the shifts we made to help our students continue learning at high levels.
The pandemic pushed us to be more aware of students’ needs, re-examine long-held beliefs on grading and assessment, and provide more time for interventions and teacher collaboration.
Here are five shifts we made the past year that we should consider making a regular part of our teaching toolbox to create more equitable and truly student-centered schools.
Emphasize social-emotional learning.
The summer of racial reckoning, a global pandemic, and a tumultuous presidential election brought our students’ social & emotional needs to the forefront. Although the crises will fade our attentiveness to students’ lived experiences should not. We can continue to use consistent check-ins, informal surveys, and transformative SEL practices. My favorite question to ask on every unit feedback Google Form: What’s one significant life event from the past 1-2 months that has affected you or your family?
The pandemic made us keenly aware of our students’ wide-ranging academic and family backgrounds. While some students attended classes from quiet lofts, other students struggled to participate in class discussions while also caring for younger siblings. These inequities highlighted the importance of prioritizing feedback over high-stakes grades, categorizing learning goals students must, should, and aspire to master, and providing multiple opportunities to demonstrate proficiency.
3. Create more authentic assessments
Teachers quickly recognized that traditional multiple-choice assessments wouldn’t fairly or accurately measure learning with many students at home. We can continue to use more creative alternate assessments to give students multi-faceted opportunities to demonstrate mastery: Flipgrid explanations of math problems, RAFT writing assignments, students recording cooking & sewing demos, etc.
4. Schedule collaboration & intervention
Collaboration soared as teachers sought to modify years of carefully cultivated curriculum on the fly. Whether teachers turned to their colleagues or virtual PLNs, asking for help was normalized. Many schools used asynchronous Wednesdays or Fridays to bolster teacher collaboration and student intervention. Educators can replicate the strategies they used this year during a traditional schedule by using group rotations for in-class intervention time, creating micro-PD leveraging abundant expertise within your school , and seeking & sharing resources with virtual PLNs.
With some students at home and some in school with schedules changing at a moment’s notice, flexibility was every educators’ “word of the year.” We can continue to employ the pedagogical approaches we utilized this past year to make learning more student-centered: organize our digital classroom so students can initiate their own learning, make greater use of video to free us up for providing one-on-one and small group support, and creating asynchronous activities that are genuinely engaging.
By taking a moment to reflect on how much our pedagogy has evolved in the past year due to the pandemic, we can celebrate our collective resilience and apply the lessons we learned to better serve our students for years to come.
During the 4th annual Illinois Council of Instructional Coaching Conference I was able to attend Jane Kise’s keynote: Coaching Teachers Who Just Don’t Think Like You. Although her talk was chock-full of instructional coaching strategies, one insight really stood out:
“There are no resistant teachers, but rather, only teachers whose needs during change have not been met. Not YET.”
Identifying and fulfilling teachers’ needs is the golden key to creating meaningful change. How can we use this insight to create more effective coaching opportunities?
First, instructional coaches should identify their own personality type so they can understand how their tendencies affect their interactions with teachers. For example, an extrovert coaching an introvert might need to remember to give the introvert more time to process questions when de-briefing a lesson instead of filling the silence with chatter. Or, if according to the Myers-Briggs test, you’re more of the “feeling” type coaching a “thinking” type, you might want to use specific praise, assume ideas will be debated without taking it personally, collect objective data, and don’t be offended if the conversation is focused just on “business.”
Second, after we identify our own personality types, we can begin to identify and meet teachers’ needs in a coaching relationship. Below are the 4 most common types of instructional coaches teachers want based on their needs.
(NOTE: Jane Kise deliberately exaggerated each type of coach so the differences are more clear. In reality, teachers will likely need a mix of multiple coaching types.)
Teachers’ Needs
Type of Coach
“If you really want to help me improve instruction, give me hands-on relevant lessons that I can use right away in my classroom–with tangible results.”
Useful Resource: On-the-spot tips, structures, modeling relevant lesson plans with strategies that can be used in other ways, immediate assessment data from students, answers to questions.
“Instead of looking at theories or general ideas, let’s set goals for trying one new, concrete task or strategy at a time. If you provide too many choices, I’ll assume you want me to perfect all of them at once!”
Encouraging Sage: Concrete experiences, specific and clear instructions, modeling, on-the-spot encouragement and help, strategies that can be implemented piece by piece, relevant feedback, clear goals.
“I get all kinds of creative ideas from books and workshops. Let’s add my ideas to your and together decide what’s best for my students. I’d love your thoughts, then, on how to make it work well the first time.”
Collegial Mentor: Freedom to be creative, options, assistance clarifying directions for students, flexible tools, evidence that students are engaged & motivated.
“I do a fair amount of investigating by reading or talking with colleagues, to stay on top of my field, so please bring only cutting-edge strategies. Have the theoretical background or research handy—I may want to look it over.”
Expert: Theories & frameworks, expert knowledge, assistance in making rigorous assignments accessible for all students, rich conversations, challenges to their thinking.
Finally, we should remember that teachers’ needs will shift throughout the school year. During the summer teachers may be looking for expert ideas but in December teachers might just be trying to keep their head above water and seek concrete, useful resources.
By understanding teachers’ needs we can provide the type of coaching that is useful for them and build a long-lasting relationship which can pay dividends for students for years to come.
The end of every school year leaves a gnawing feeling of self-doubt: What more could I have taught my students? How could I have developed their skills further? Did I truly inspire anyone? Did I change how they view themselves or the world?
As I sit in front of empty chairs and desks I’m trying to channel this self-doubt into self-reflection and identify what I did well and what I need to improve for next year. Although these reflections are primarily for my own growth, I find that sharing it with others pushes me to think and write more clearly.
Here are 3 of my takeaways from the year:
#1: Be Present
Like many teachers, I often find myself replaying how I handled a tough incident earlier in the day or mentally crafting an email I plan on sending to teachers on my team after school. It’s difficult to be totally present.
To help alleviate this, I have tried to make mindfulness a more regular practice in my classroom. What started with a daily quote, led to Mindful Mondays, and this year, mindful minutes at the start of nearly every class. These daily activities included short breathing exercises, stretches, or reflection questions.
Although I didn’t collect empirical evidence, noticing my own mental state before & after mindful minutes along with anecdotes from students, I am convinced that taking just a couple minutes to breathe, reflect, or move can truly help us be more fully present with the people and work in front of us.
Next year, I plan on researching more effective mindfulness activities and practicing them more regularly so it becomes a consistent habit for myself and my students.
#2: Really Know Your Students
When I’m interacting with nearly a 100 students over the course of a school year, it’s often easier to get excited about trying new tech tool or lesson than trying to get to know each and every student. However, I have never regretted the time I invested building relationships with students while I can’t say the same about the former.
For example, this year, I had a refugee student in my U.S. History class who has lived in 3 different countries in the last few years, and for whom English is her 3rd or 4th language. To make matters worse, she had an ongoing medical condition which made her really tired and miss a fair amount school. Despite all of these challenges, she worked harder than nearly all of her peers and earned a scholarship to a solid 4-year university.
Hearing her story and observing her determination daily helped me get perspective on my own life. It also reminded me that students are the best source of inspiration. While I do spend time getting to know all my students, too often my knowledge of each student stays at the surface level—interests & hobbies—instead of life stories.
Next year, I plan on making more time to regularly chat with individual students whether it’s during passing periods, conferences during class, and by using online tools.
#3 Break Free from Technology Addiction
This year I became more keenly aware of the harm technology can do to our minds. As an enthusiastic user of technology who helps other teachers innovate while utilizing technology this was hard to come to terms with. However, I believe, integrating technology effectively requires me to be clear eyed about its potential & pitfalls.
Watching videos like these helped me realize how social media is designed to leverage weaknesses in human psychology. Specifically, variable reward schedules via dopamine hits get people hooked which fuels social media companies’ ad-driven business model.
Also, reading books like Deep Work made me realize how the immediate bite sized rewards from technology has rewired our brains and made it much more difficult for me to work on challenging, thinking-intensive activities for long, sustained periods of time.
Finally, a couple months ago I read this blog post by Pernille Ripp, a middle school teacher from Wisconsin who I really respect, on how she is trying to get her students off cellphones during class. I have started to make similar changes with my students.
This summer, I want to make sure I’m using technology more deliberately by not tweeting and mindlessly reading articles while surfing the web. Instead, I want to spend more time reading books and re-reading all the ideas I ‘liked’ on Twitter and planning how to apply them to my classroom.
The national ICE Conference (February 26-28, 2018) was an incredible opportunity learn from incredible teachers, instructional coaches, and administrators from around the U.S. Although the focus was on educational technology I was especially interested in sessions that addressed practical considerations for pedagogy.
Here are my Top 10 Takeaways from ICE 2018:
1. Teach Digital Literacy by Modeling how to See, Think, Wonder and Create
Kristin Ziemeke (@kristin_ziemeke) made a compelling case for the evolution of literacy (just think of all the different media you consumed during the past week!) Then, she offered a few ideas on how to improve digital literacy instruction.
First, we must continue to improve students’ underlying literacy skills and love for reading by offering:
Choice: Students can often read a text that is to 2 grade levels higher than their current reading level when they get to choose the text they read.
Volume: Provide many opportunities to read; libraries are more important than ever in this digital age.
Authentic Response: Encourage students to respond to reading in authentic ways– informal discussions, journals, etc.
Second, while teaching digital literacy can seem daunting, we can model what we already do as expert readers for our students:see, think, and wonder. For example, we could project an image like the one below and model for students how we observe various details, then show what those details make us think about, and finally share the questions that arise in our minds.
SOURCE: Filip Warwick
Here are some resources to help teachers create tech (text) sets for your curriculum:
Finally, Kristin argued that students need to spend more time creating media, not just consuming it. Currently, approximately 65% of the time teens are using digital technology they consume content but spend only 3% of their time creating it.
We should strive to design more assignments that allow students to create infographics, videos, blog posts, etc. The process of changing ideas from text to visual (or vice versa) leads to increased activity in both halves of the brain and deeper learning.
2. You Build or Break a Culture During Every Interaction
Joe Sanfelippo (@Joe_Sanfelippo ) reminded us that every interaction, whether it’s with a student, colleague or parent can build or break a school’s culture. It doesn’t take long! In 30 seconds we can promote great work of a colleague, thank someone, get to know a student, and more. Make every interaction count!
3. Reassess your Gradebook
Joy Kirr (@joykirr) pushed us to re-examine what, how, and why we grade in our classroom. A large body of evidence shows that feedback without a grade leads to the largest student growth.
There’s no one right way to do grades; but, we shouldn’t continue grading the way we’ve always done it because…that’s how it’s always been done. We have to stop being the monkey trying to grade everything and push students across the finish line (end of the quarter, semester, etc.):
Sort the terms on the right into the categories on the left:
What needs to be included in the gradebook?
Extra Credit
Formative Assessment
Homework
Late Work Penalty
Points
Redos/Revisions
Reflection
Rubrics
Standards
Summative Assessment
0s for Missing Work
4. The 3 Keys to Successful PD: Learning, Experimenting and Reflecting
Kristi Sutter (@kristi_sutter) and her team at The Feast showed why all professional development must include time for teachers to experiment in a supported environment and, most importantly, reflect on what they learned so new tools & practices are integrated thoughtfully.
If you’re bold enough, practice radical transparency during extended professional development by asking participants to complete a feedback form multiple times. Then, read the feedback out loud and share what changes you will make as a result of their feedback.
5a. Affluent Students Need Grit
Dr. Kenneth Hoover argued that we’re mistaken if we believe the main purpose of teaching “grit” is to motivate students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Students from less fortunate families often have had to learn how to overcome struggles their entire life while affluent students have experienced few major obstacles in life. Therefore, when affluent students face truly challenging academic curriculum they often don’t know what to do. Affluent students probably need to learn how to be gritty more than their less privileged peers.
For their entire lives many affluent students have had parents trying to brush away any obstacles along their path like curlers during the Olympics. It’s difficult for parents to let their son or daughter struggle because we always want to give our children more than what we had growing up. However, if we want to raise a resilient generation we must let them face hardships and persist.
5b) Practice should be Interwoven, Varied and Distributed
Using the above chart, Dr. Hoover also argued that we need to quiz/assess students more often; not for a grade but to improve long-term retention. True mastery is when students can apply a concept or skill to unfamiliar contexts. To prepare for this they must have varied and interwoven practice.
For example, hitters who just practice hitting curveballs do worse then those that focus on curve balls but mix in a variety of pitches during practice—that’s what they’ll see in a game!
Kristine Ziemke (@KristinZiemke) challenged us to stop assigning “fake work” and strive to create opportunities for real work that is authentic, important, and relevant. When was the last time you made a diorama? Elementary school?
Have your students do work they will actually do outside of school. We no longer have to wait for the annual science fair to give students a broader audience; use technology to create authentic audiences and address real challenges that are relevant to students.
7. Address Teachers’ Mindsets before you deliver Professional Development
Cindy Crannell (@ccrannell) and Annmarie Clasky (@AClasky) shared why it’s important to introduce the concept of a growth mindset before presenting a new tool or strategy during PD. Too often teachers believe that learning how to use new technology is too hard; they’ll never get it, etc.
Teaching the growth mindset can help teachers self-monitor when they slip into the fixed mindset and try to move back into a growth mindset. This video can help introduce the concept of a growth mindset:
8. 11 Protocols for Creating a Culture of Questioning in your School
Kim Darche (@kimdarche) gave powerful yet practical suggestions for creating a questioning culture among students and adults in your building. While project based learning, genius hour, design thinking, etc are important trends in education, a critical prerequisite to any of them being successful is students’ ability to ask powerful questions. Unfortunately, this isn’t happening in most classrooms.
Research shows that on average teachers ask 200-300 questions/day while students ask only 2 questions/day. In an age where Alexa, Siri & Google are available at our fingertips there’s a greater need for problem finders than problem solvers.
11 tips for creating a culture of questioning:
Only Questions Allowed: Get brains primed for questioning by asking pairs of students to have a conversation but only using questions. Once someone makes a statement instead of a question, they “lose” and rotate to a new partner.
Dice Game: Post a topic for students (e.g. theme in a book, imperialism, climate change, right triangle, etc.). Then, in pairs or small groups students take turns rolling a dice. Based on the number they roll they have to:
1-Define it
2-Support it
3-Flip it
4-What is your stake in the ground about it?
5-Innovate it
6-Question it
Rule of 5 (Inspired by Toyota): Ask Why 5 Times in a Row
Start with any problem (e.g. There isn’t enough social & emotional support for students)
Why isn’t there support? Lack of Resources
Why aren’t there resources? They misallocate resources.
Why aren’t priorities aligned with resources? The School Board doesn’t understand the problem.
Why doesn’t the school board understand the problem? They don’t spend enough time in classrooms.
These series of questions helps us get to the root cause of a problem.
Notecard: Write a problem on a notecard and ask someone else to solve it, this will give you valuable new perspectives. Too often we’re biased and don’t even realize it.
Universal Questions: Commit to memory and make a poster with these questions:
How might we….
What if….
What else…
Yes and…
Ask What, Not Why
Asking someone ‘Why’ makes them defensive, ask ‘What’ instead
E.g. Why didn’t you pay the bill? Makes us defensive. Instead ask “What happened to the bills this month?”
Point of View:
Present an issue then ask students to list 5-20 characters who might be involved in the situation and discuss what each of them would do. For example, for bullying students might list parents, teachers, counselors, school bus drivers, etc.
Shrug More Often: Create a habit where students and teachers seek answers to questions on their own. Don’t answer everything for them!
Follow every statement with a question: Help colleagues & students find the root cause of an issue by insisting that all statements be followed by a question (Source: Action Learning in Action). Without such a protocol it would be easy for discussions to devolve into a pity party. Here’s an example of the protocol:
Statement: We have a large issue with physical aggression at our school.
Q: How large of an issue is it?
A: It happens every week.
Q: Is it the same group of students?
A: Yes …
Q: Why is it those group of students?
Use Deborah Meier’s Habits of Mind: Create a poster with these statements for your classroom —they can be used in nearly every subject area. Deborah Meir created an entire school centered on these 5 questions!
Evidence: How do you know what’s true or false?
Viewpoint: How might this look if we stepped into other shoes?
Connections: Have we seen this before?
Conjecture: What if it were different?
Relevance: Why does this matter?
9. Portfolios Facilitate Student Ownership, Continuous Feedback and Learning Without Grades
Although I wasn’t able to attend their session, the materials Ana Thompson (@AnaAnamta15 ) & Lisa Berghoff (@LisaBerghoff ) shared demonstrated how portfolios create opportunities for frequent feedback and student ownership of learning—especially for ELs!
10. Students can apply Design Thinking in 12 (Fairly Easy) Steps
Sarah Thomas (@sarahdateechur) used her final project from the Google Innovator Academy to show how students can use design thinking to pursue their passions. She also shared the site Rock Your World (@rockyourworld70) which helps students address true global problems like human rights, discrimination, education, homelessness, human trafficking, food insecurity, women’s rights, and access to water.
Sarah has created a Google Form that guides students through the design process which creates a slick Google Doc to help students prototype & set intermediate deadlines.
Design Thinking Steps
Step One: Define the Problem
What is your big idea?
Step Two: Brainstorm Possible Solutions
What can you create or make to address the need identified in Step One?
Step Three: Research Ideas/Explore Possibilities
Do a search, or draw upon your background knowledge to answer the following questions: What similar projects may be out there? How have they addressed this need? Where is there room for improvement?
Step Four: Specify Constraints
What obstacles may be in your way to achieving your goal?
Step Five: Consider Alternatives
How can you overcome these obstacles? Figure out as many possibilities as you can.
Step Six: Select an Approach
Given the information from the first steps, which approach would be the best, and why?
Step Seven: Develop Written Proposal
Come up with a brief plan, highlighting action steps that you plan to use.
(Due: ___________________)
Step Eight: Make Model/Prototype
Try your idea on a small scale.
(Due: ___________________)
Step Nine: Test & Evaluate
Run your prototype! What worked well/what didn’t?
(Due: ___________________)
Step Ten: Refine/Improve
Figure out how you can tweak your model or idea to make it work.
(Due: ___________________)
Step Eleven: Create and Implement Model/Project
Go for the gold!
(Due: ___________________)
Step Twelve: Communicate Results
Use social media to speak about your experiences, and generate more buzz. This guide from The Sullivan Foundation gives some good advice, especially if you are involving students.
Teachers at predominantly white schools, especially those in conservative communities, may be reluctant to discuss race in the classroom. However, it is precisely in these communities that conversations about how race, ethnicity, and other social identities are critical for broadening students worldview.
Here are some ideas on how to have these conversations based on a town hall that a group of teachers and I helped organize at my school in an affluent, predominantly white public school in the suburbs of Chicago.
During the town hall we first asked a panel of diverse students share an experience that exemplified their experience with race or ethnicity in our school community. Then, we asked these students to join teachers who had signed up to attend the town hall to help facilitate discussions with their students.
A special thanks to Robin Vannoy, Robyn Corelitz, Billson Rasavongxay, Noah Lawrence, Cassandra Richardson and Deborah Powell for their ideas and support!
“Our racial history is part of our present, it is in our structures…in the ways schools are organized, in how neighborhoods are laid out, in the composition of our family trees, in the unconscious stereotypes that get primed when we mentally sort people along racial lines. We walk around with it, and while it is never the only dynamic in the room, it matters.”
4. Establish Ground Rules
Assume good intentions. Everyone is in the room because they desire to learn from one another.
Speak from your own experience instead of generalizing (“I” instead of “they,” “we,” and “you”).
Respectfully challenge one another by asking questions, but avoid personal attacks — focus on ideas.
Actively speak & listen — community growth depends on expressing & listening to every voice. The goal is not to agree but to gain a deeper understanding.
Be conscious of body language and nonverbal responses — they can be as disrespectful as words.
With the start of the new year I’ve committed to becoming a more reflective teacher by blogging at least once a month. Here’s my first post of the year which coincided with the start of a new semester at my high school.
NOTE: I’m well aware that this activity might not work for teachers of all grade levels or settings but I wanted to share my experience in case it is useful to you.
***
Whether you’ve long admired John Dewey or you’re trying to live up to Danielson’s definition of a highly effective teacher, many teachers, myself included, are working to build a more student-centered class. Here is one way you can start the journey from the moment your students walk into your class on the first day of school.
Be prepared to push yourself and your students out of their comfort zones by avoiding all the things we normally do at the beginning of the semester: Don’t stand in front of the class, Don’t review rules, Don’t lead the class through a series of activities.
In fact, do nothing.
Instead, let students lead the class, make a plan and guide their classmates. Set the tone from the very first day that students will be at the center of the classroom experience.
Before students walk into class have the following instructions projected on the screen:
Welcome to Mr. Chokshi’s class!
I’m conducting a social experiment to see what students can do on their own.
Please take your Chromebook according to the list on top of the cart and your seat according to the chart at the front of the room.
By the end of period you should:
Know the names and a unique fact of everyone in your group
Create ONE class Google Slides presentation introducing your partner:
One thing your partner is proud of (e.g. skill, character trait, etc.)
A major challenge they have overcome (e.g. family, socially, academically, etc.)
Greatest academic strength
Greatest academic challenge
Present your partner to the class
Return your chromebook to the correct location
If time remains, learn the names & unique fact about another group. You will be expected to know everyone’s name and something about them by the end of the week!
Then, as students file in, greet them but give no instructions. When the bell rings to mark the start of class, say nothing. I find it helpful to take a seat on the side of room so they know you won’t be guiding them.
While students struggle with finding their seat & Chromebooks, creating a shared presentation, and figuring out how to connect their computer to the projector it’s absolutely critical that you remain silent. Not a word. If your students know you’ll swoop in and save them whenever they face a challenge they won’t become accustomed to seeing their peers as their first resource.
Other than creating the norm for student centered learning, such an approach helps you learn within the first moments of the school year which students enjoy leading the class and which students prefer to play a more supportive role.
Doing this activity on the first day of school does require a little more prep work such as having a roster and seating chart prepared in advance; however, most teachers have these ready before the first day of school anyways. The most difficult preparation is mental: realizing that we’re not the most important person in room and that the class can function without us leading them.
Investing time to create a student centered class pays dividends throughout the year as students follow instructions with minimal guidance from you, ask their classmates for help first and, above all, direct their own learning.
I was fortunate to have the opportunity to attend and present at the Global Teachers Institute Axis Summit. The summit was focused on education in South Africa but teachers from all over Africa and America attended. Here ere are some of my key takeaways from the summit:
Dawn Oler: Personal Connection & Reflection are vital. Use a personal Venn diagram to create relationships with students by finding what you and your students have in common. At the beginning of the school year share your life story and have students complete the diagram to see what they have in common and explain what’s unique to them. Also, have students monitor their own progress towards mastering unit objectives. This process is key to empowering students to own their learning.
2. Amanda Burton & Linda Korbus: Expect, inspect & respectmistakes. Create a class culture where mistakes are celebrated and become a regular part of the learning process. The metacognitive process of evaluating your own learning & mistakes is vital to deeper insights.
3. Baba Bantu: Decolonize our minds. Critically examine how Eurocentric narratives & institutions have formed over time. Actively seek counter-narratives and passionately immerse ourselves in cultural practices (languages, traditions, etc.) even if they are not considered “mainstream” or “normal.” Encourage our students to explore and celebrate their own cultures and develop pride for their identities.
4. John Gilmore: Set personal & professional goals every year. Our personal & professional lives are intertwined . Share your goals with others to keep us accountable.
5. Pam Bylsma: Make your values transparent. Nearly every activity and critical decision made in school should include a conversation about values. For example, hallway monitors can recognize students’ citizenship when they pick up trash that’s not their own. Teachers can encourage citizenship by debating social issues in classes & clubs.
Administrators can keep values (such as those highlighted in the Character Counts program) front and center by referring to them when resolving conflicts between staff or making controversial decisions transparent to parents. The following ethical frameworks can help students, teachers and administrators make tough decisions:
Harm/Beneficence: Does it do less harm and more good than the alternatives?
Publicity: Would I want this choice published in the newspaper?
Reversibility: Would I think this a good choice if I were among those affected by it?
Code of Ethics: How does this choice relate to the ethical standards of my profession?
6. Tania Ham: Understand Special Needs. Can you imagine trying to draw with your eyes closed? Describe a painting you had never seen before? These types of exercise can help educators experience the types of struggles some students with special needs experience. By better understanding the challenges students face, teachers can better differentiate & scaffold learning activities.
7. Sunarku Clifford Sykes: Connect & Network. Be a teacher warrior for your students—-the challenges many of them face motivate us to give it our all everyday. Nearly every problem we face has already been solved by someone, somewhere—connect & just ask!
8. Kurt Minnar: ring your passions into your classroom. Connect your passions outside of school to the subjects you teach in school. Even subtraction & dancing can go hand-in-hand. Keep students engaged and moving, then they won’t have time to get distracted.
Before I close the chapter on this school year, I want to reflect on my successes and failures to learn how I can improve next year.
Here are 3 of my takeaways from this school year:
#1 Breaking out of our Bubbles: Creating safe but challenging spaces
As a Social Studies teacher I often experience how upbringing shapes worldviews. Parents generally play the biggest role in shaping students’ beliefs, but social media, friends and traditional media (news, magazines, movies, etc) are significant factors as well. This year’s election made this abundantly clear.
Political pundits and those who lean to the left did not anticipate or understand the groundswell of support the President gained during his campaign. Also, many ardent supporters of the President often failed to appreciate the legitimate concerns raised by his critics.
I saw this play out in my classroom. Whether we were debating taxes & government spending in Economics or the Syrian refugee crisis in Global Issues, too often I saw students simply become more hardened in the views they had prior to entering the classroom.
While it may be idealistic, I want to be sure I create a classroom which encourages truly open minds and conclusions being drawn based on facts. I want to create a space where students feel comfortable sharing their views but also are open to being challenged to pierce the bubbles we too often inhabit.
Next year, one way I hope to achieve this is by trying to train students in a more collaborative model of discussions where students must work together to construct new ways of thinking about controversial issues.
#2 Technology: Fragmenting Knowledge & Student Data
With every passing year, the amount of information that is easily accessible to students has grown exponentially. Similarly, tools that easily allow teachers to gather data about student learning has also increased. These shifts create significant opportunities and risks.
In order for computers to gather information, learning tasks must be fairly objective and discrete (e.g. multiple choice tests and rubrics). We tend to do what we can measure. This year using tools like Pear Deck, Actively Learn and Canvas helped generate data that gave me deeper insights about individual students’ performance which then helped me differentiate instruction. However, these tools also increased the likelihood of learning to be fragmented into bite sized measureable pieces. Deep learning does not occur in such a discrete process.
Next year, while continuing to adopt new, powerful education technology tools, I want to be sure I create learning opportunities that allow students to be fully immersed in complex ideas for long stretches of time even if they cannot easily be assessed.
#3 Instructional Coaching: Learning from Others
This was the first year I taught part-time and served as an instructional innovation coach for the remainder of the day. I loved it.
The cliche of teachers saying they learn more from their students than students learn from them, was true in the work I did with other teachers. The most gratifying aspect of being an instructional coach was the opportunities it created for me to peek at the types of lessons and projects other teachers were designing.
While it’s possible that teachers spend time with more than 125 students a day, teaching can be oddly isolating. Rarely do we have time to see what other teachers are doing in their classrooms. Working as an instructional coach helped break down some of these walls.
Next year, I want to learn how to truly coach teachers and not simply serve as a technology resource. Also, I hope to learn more about the incredible teaching my peers are already doing and share their successes with a broader audience.
Another season of SAT, ACT and AP testing is upon us.
Teachers and administrators are beginning to stress whether their students are prepared for the tests and how students’ scores will reflect on their performance.
Students are worried the tests will reveal how smart they really are and whether they will be a success of failure in life based on their scores.
Differences in “innate” intelligence might only matter at the very highest levels of cognitive ability, such as those in the top 1%
Verbal reasoning, in which students have to analyze complex texts, can help gauge how prepared students are to tackle challenging readings in college. For example, the following question assess not just students’ ability to literally comprehend a passage but to analyze it for broader messages.
However, what this type of test does not assess is students ability to persevere, get help and seek creative solutions.
The SAT does not assess if a student, who may be a slower reader that initially found a reading confusing, could re-read a passage and use strategies to discern greater meaning. (The time constraints on the SAT & ACT, as any junior in high school will attest, are notorious for leading students to skim passages and guess on questions instead of thoughtfully engaging with the text.)
The SAT does not assess if a student has the initiative to ask a teacher or peer for help or use online resources to better grasp new concepts that his peers might have learned more quickly and independently.
The SAT does what it is supposed to do: provide an objective snapshot of a student’s reading, math and writing skills in the given time and testing constraints.
However, the SAT does not assess for traits far more important for success in life: self-efficacy and grit.
Digital Learning Tools Integration Made Easy by Lisa Mattson, Beatriz Arnillas, Kelli Pardo
When evaluating LMSs, publishing companies, digital supplemental materials be sure you check how well they play with others! Can they work with your current LMS? Single login? Include metadata and categories? Passback data?
Key tips
Make sure vendor is IMS Global certified and if they build a common cartridge run it through the certification engine
Be sure resources and/or assessments are tagged with state/district learning standards
Make sure sources are tagged with keywords (so it’s easy for teachers to search for resources)
Make sure key & secret code is correct for LTIs
Single sign on is as important as common cartridge
Examples of integrations with 1 LTI link: Wiley, Cengage, Social Studies School Service, Brainpop, Pearson
What’s the difference between thin & thick/full common cartridge? Essentially in a thick/full common cartridge the publisher is giving you all the content while in a thin cartridge they’re giving you access but the content remains with the publisher (to protect intellectual property)
Carefully check what versions of LTI they’re using: version 1 versus 1.1, etc. because , not all passback data
IMS Global has a product directory for all tools that have gone through certification testing which tells you which version of LTI they have and how interoperable they are!
Some LMS platform allow you to export a thin cartridge, ck12
Visit IMS Global Learning Consortium, they have tested and certified many major publishers, cartridges and LTIs and review their features
Softchalk is a great content authoring tool to create your own common cartridges. CK12 has a lot of content that is open source
The template they have, One Roster, can be shared with LTIs & other tools, Janet Bennett can help sync active directory with one roster
Many states are using QTIs for standardized assessments (e.g. PARCC)
What is IMS Global’s relationship with schools/districts?
Affiliate and alliance membership are generally publishing companies
Affiliate members are usually school districts.
Benefits of membership: provide tools/templates to make ensuring interoperability easier, helps check which vendors are interoperable, know pricing & agreements with member districts which can be helpful during negotiations with publishers, provide expertise to setup LMS, Common Cartridges, QTI & LTIs to save cost in the long run.
Discussing PD implementation with Nikki Smith (@MauldinAPStats) & Kristie Burk (@KristieLBurk)
The book Power Up can be useful for bridging technology & pedagogy
Incentive ideas? create points, prizes or badges for PD
Have focused themes or topics for every month (the chapters in the book Power Up can give some great ideas)
Blended courses can:
give students in AP courses or lower level courses more options
help alleviate space issues but it should be voluntary for teachers to join in order to get buy in
Give teachers more time to meet with students individually
I’m saving the best for last. While I learned a lot throughout this conference, the conversations I had with Nancy and others @IDEcorp gave me ideas that I can implement in my class almost immediately and will truly transform how my students learn.
Here’s a brief synopsis of the ideas in her book and what we discussed: Students are presented with an intriguing authentic problem, then, over the course of several weeks, students select activities from a list a teacher has compiled to help students develop key skills and try to solve the problem. A key component is an extensive rubric which guides the activities teachers create. The students are firmly in charge of their learning and are encouraged to work with their home team to find possible solutions and own their learning which frees up the teacher to be a facilitator and meet with groups of students.
3 key (and overlapping) ingredients for maximizing student achievement: academic rigor, student engagement, and student responsibility for learning.
Some of Nancy’s tips:
Implement a design process (it’s not just for STEM subjects!)
Formulating a problem requires you to empathize with the challenges others face. What is the gap between the ideal situation and people’s current lived reality?
Explore/Brainstorm ideas that could help solve the problem
Ideate to create more concrete solutions
Sift through the ideas to determine if they’re feasible and what unintended consequences might be
If nothing is feasible, return to one of the 3 earlier steps
If there is a feasible idea, create a prototype
If the prototype is valid, advocate for it to an authentic audience (present your solution) and select a new problem
When creating a “help board” where students request assistance from the teacher or others, remember that not all students, especially the “honors” students, will want to publicly share that they need help. Consider a private sign-up (maybe via a Google Form)
The rubric should drive the activity list and it should be in language students understand so they can self-assess. The rubric should not be designed to make grading easier for the teacher but to communicate to students what they need to learn to solve an authentic problem
Teachers should act as a facilitator and assess true depth of understanding by asking probing questions. (e.g. What are you working on? Why? Why did you include those requirements in your proposal to amend the Constitution for people born outside the U.S. to be allowed to be President?)
Use the facilitation grid (a spreadsheet with key skills/objectives & a class roster) to track student progress and intervene as necessary. Use abbreviations to help you take notes while meeting with students throughout the period (e.g. M=mastery ; R=Review needed ; ML= mini lesson needed ; PT= Peer tutor–highest level of understanding)
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