What is the role of a teacher?

Quietly as it is kept, the role of a teacher is the most misunderstood concept that future teachers have. I thought, like others do, that I was hired to teach : share knowledge so that students would learn that same knowledge. Boy was I ever wrong.

My initial attempts at understanding my role as a teacher failed miserably because I was under the mistaken impression that being a teacher is mainly about teaching. How wrong was I! If that was really my responsibility, than I was performing it day in and day out exceptionally well. Unfortunately, the students weren’t learning. The I attended a workshop where the presenter said that we as teachers our hired not to teach but to get our students to learn.

It shocked me and was definitely a game changer in how I perceived my responsibility as a teacher. The title of teacher no longer demonstrated what I did, but really and truly exemplified what I was doing wrong. So every year when I get more and more frustrated at the lack of effort of my students I remind myself, that I must be doing something wrong and I need to stop trying to teach them and instead focus on facilitating their learning.

So I’m reading/listening to Dan Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. I hope that after finishing this book I’ll have more of an insight about what I need to do to better facilitate my students’ learning.

Back at it again…

Of course a pervading new (school) years’ resolution is to do more blogging. But as I revisit my blog at the beginning of this new year, I can’t help but notice that the last post was August 2010.

But like I tell my students, whats worse than not reaching your goal is not learning from the mistakes you made that prevented you from reaching your goal. So I commit (again) to doing better with this blog. Not that I think that there are tons of readers out there anxiously awaiting to hear from me via my blog. Probably 2 people will stop by and read this. But I’m doing this for myself, not for others.

Interactive Math Notebook Files

It occurred to me that I haven’t posted the files I use for my interactive notebook startup packet. (I posted a link in a reply, but that is all). So I created a google docs folder for everyone to see.

Google Docs Interactive Math Notebook Link: http://bit.ly/c4jGxj
As well as an alternate link with just the startup pages in msword form.

http://tinyurl.com/mmtqjn

“I don’t get it!?”

I absolutely hate that statement when it comes from my students. As hard as I try to not show my disapproval with that statement, I fear that my facial expressions are a dead giveaway of my feeling. Unfortunately, students think my hatred is because they don’t get it. So I often have to follow up with, “Please be more specific about what you don’t get, because I haven’t quite mastered the ability to read your mind yet. ” (Yes, I’m that sarcastic with them, and surprisingly they don’t have a problem with it.)

During the 2009 PCMI Professional Development session, we focused on questioning. By far it was the best aha moment I’ve ever had as a teacher because they encouraged us not to just question for assessment purposes, but to question for probing purposes. Getting our students to think deeper about a topic by simply (well actually its not that simple) asking them a question designed to get them to do just that. I was so excited to incorporate that into my classes the next school year. Unfortunately, my attempt to integrate that fell flat on its face.

I forgot the cardinal rule of teaching, “Know Your Audience”. I was teaching 14-17 year olds who for the past 9-12 years had been trained in a different way on how to question and answer questions. I realized that instead of diving head first into the ocean, I had to test the waters first and come up with a plan to make the transition easier. Here is what I realized.

1. Students use statements of feelings to ask their questions.
The “I don’t get it!?” or “This is too hard!” phenomena is what they consider asking a question, even though their purpose for making the statement is to express their confusion or frustration in hopes that you can either relieve them from any responsibility or help alleviate their confusion/frustration.

2. Students answer every question you ask of them.
We as teachers are trained to identify verbal or hand responses to questions and often think that our students aren’t answering the questions if we don’t see either one of those responses. I’ve realized that if I look at the non-verbal cues, that I can determine the students response. Raising their hand or voicing a reply to respond a question says “I’ve thought about the question and am confident enough to share with you my response”. For the students who didn’t raise their hand or make eye contact or verbally respond, it doesn’t mean they didn’t answer the question, it just meant that they weren’t comfortable with their response to say it in front of the class. (Understandably enough, their response may have been a “I don’t get it” or a “I have no idea” or even a “I know the answer I just choose not to waste my energy answering it”, but the point is they still answer it.

3. Students don’t know how to effectively ask questions.
I find myself having to ask them questions after they have asked their question because they haven’t given me enough information to effectively respond. Often times the question they ask is not what they mean.

4. Initially, students are cognitively lazy.
In other words, you have to build up to deep questioning. Don’t just start off the class with a probing question, first, warm up their brains by asking Level 1 & 2 Blooms Level questions. Let them become comfortable with those questions and then gradually ask them the deeper thought provoking questions.

After I came to these realizations, I know have formulated a plan to ease the process for entering the ocean of effective, high quality questioning.

• Incorporate asking and answering quality questions into their grade. As tedious as it may be to record that, I understand that for most students if I tell them its a grade, they are more apt to take it seriously. If questions weren’t part of the grade, then asking good questions or answering probing questions was of no benefit to them.
• Model how to ask questions effectively. The 5 Ws (Who, What, When, Where & Why) are very important in journalism as well as in questioning. Who is this question for, What exactly are they asking, When was this question initiated, Where as in what situation prompted the question, and Why is this question of importance to me. It may be lengthy but it doesn’t have to be. Here is an example: Bad question: “Miss, why are they right angles?” Good question: “While I was doing the homework, I didn’t understand why in example 2 on pg 134, the book said that angles A and B were right angles if they didn’t list the information as given.”
• Plan out my questions and their questions in advance. As tedious as this may sound, it helps me think of ways which I can lead the students toward the more probing questions while maintaining the flow of the lesson.

My apologies …. again

I had the best intentions of keeping up this blog last school year, but a year later and no more posts lets me and everyone else know that I failed miserably.  I could just recopy the post from a year ago but to be truthful I don’t know how I will maintain this.  Maybe I should add a tether to my laptop or download a wordpress app for my phone. I’ll have to think on this.

Write the vision

Write the vision, make it plain. My plans for the upcoming school year.

I apologize for not keeping this blog up, nor responding to the comments in a timely fashion.  That will change this school year. I need to be more reflective on the teaching strategies I employ. I will be using this blog to do just that. My goals for the upcoming school year (kids return on August 24th) are simply to employ a more student centered learning environment. I plan to implement that by having the students do more graphical organizers (foldable and frayer models), use their interactive notebooks more, and have more discovery based lessons that involve and engage all students. I will be using the Exeter problem sets to introduce and explore concepts. I also will be questioning not only for assessment but to also probe and push students thinking. I will be teaching Pre-AP Geometry and Math Models, so I anticipate a wide array of learning styles and challenges. What are you planning to do for the upcoming school year?

Two different perspectives

The first four years of teaching I earned a reputation for being a difficult teacher. Not because the students couldn’t understand me. Not because I didn’t give them chance after chance to improve their grade. Not because I wouldn’t bend over backwards to work with them one on one when they didn’t understand a concept. And definitely not because I was making the assignments to difficult or lengthy. But the reason why I was/am a difficult teacher is that their grade in my class is not based on effort but on mastery of the skill concepts.

Time and time I have heard from students and their parents the age old question of “Why did I fail them?”.  I explained that the grade they received was based on how well they learned the material we covered in class. The usual response was “But I tried, its just too difficult, …. at least I should get a (fill in the blank with any grade higher than D)”.

What is frustrating is the idea that a student’s “effort” in the class (totally subjective on the student’s part),  should be a major component of the student’s grade.  My response is always “If I go to a mechanic and they charge me $600 to fix my car, I don’t want to hear that they tried to fix it, I want to know that they did for the money I paid them.”

So I am reading this article and I am basically nodding my head in agreement throughout. My favorite statement is the last sentence which says  “ that being successful means worrying less about what you expect, and simply doing what is expected of you.”   Unfortunately, that is not the mindset of the youth today. They have it all figured out and anybody who comes along and requires them to do more than what they figured to do, all of a sudden that teacher is “too hard” and thus thereby absolves them from anything wrong (cheating, copying, stealing) to achieve a passing grade.

How do I counteract this effect?  Have the student calculate their own grade. I use to give the students a weekly progress report with their grades already calculated for them. This time I won’t give them the final grade, but they will have to calculate it on their own.  If they see why they receive the grade, then they will stop thinking that I am giving them a grade and start seeing how their grade is calculated and more importantly how their “effort” to turn in subpar work hurts their grade, not helps them.

Homework … Why I give it (almost) every class

I teach Geometry and Algebra 2. I give homework (almost every night).  Do all my students do it? … The ones who pass do. Here is my homework formula  as it is now.

1. Assign no more than 10 problems a night. Mostly all of my homework assignments come from the textbook that I direct them to leave at home. (Mostly all of my classwork is not done from the book.)

2. Let the problems be practice problems not “solve it and earn a math phd” problem.

3. Assign the odd numbers because the answers are in the back of book. 

4. Grade the homework on the day its due and go over it in class.  Grade a random 1/3 of the problems to grade quicker, but take note of the unaswered questions and direct students to do the problems on the board.

5. For the people who did not do the homework, assign an alternate assignment (usually the even numbers) and let them turn it in up to a week later without penalty.

6. Repeat steps 1-5 every class period (except after skill test days).

Re-Inventing the Wheel Isn’t So Bad

I know a teacher who has taught the same course for the last 7 years. He has his lesson plans for the entire year prepared on the first day of class.  In fact, the only modification he has to do is change the dates from last year’s to this years.  He has no need to stay up late lesson planning or even attend trainings during the school year.  

 

That has and never will be me.  I think by nature I have to reinvent the wheel each year.  That is what makes it exciting for me. Lets try something different that I believe will be better for the students and see how it works.

I am a big proponent of lesson planning flexibility. Why, you may ask?  Its because I deal with a different group of students each year. What may have worked for my students last year is not always a guarentee to work with my students this year.  Heck, what worked for them last week may not work for them this week. The point is, you shouldn’t be so stuck on your lesson plan that you can’t add an extra day to expound on a concept differently. Secondly, I’ve been to a lot of trainings this year and regardless of how effective the training session is, I still learn a lot from the teachers I sit next to at the trainings.  I even learn a lot from the teachers whose blog I frequent on a daily basis (literally).  I still manage to stick to my pacing calendar (pretty much), but what I do in the course of the lesson varies from year to year.  With my discovery of google docs, I’ve realized that I can leave myself notes from last year on how a particualar lesson went and the next year I can improve upon the lesson.

Teachers are just like their worst students.

As a teacher, we have the “opportunity” to attend countless professional development sessions. And one thing that has been exhibited in every single one of them is that there are some teachers who act just as bad as the students they complain about.  I will admit, that I am often a part of that number, and here is what I learned about it. 

 

1.  My mind will wander even during the most engaging session.  Sometimes I miss something important because of my wandering.  

2. When you don’t understand something the teacher said (for whatever reason), sometimes I don’t want to interrupt the teacher to ask my question (which I believe is valid, but whose answer I think is probably obvious).

3. The side conversations I have with my group members are often on task or related to the teacher led discussion.  It is during those times, I absolutely hate it when the teacher interrupts the conversations.

4. When I am off task it is because I have rationalized that what the teacher or presenter is doing is not as high on my educational priority list as what I plan to do off task.  Or I believe I can get a 3 minute synopsis from a group member or a future activity/assignment.

5.  Process/Wait time.  A lot of times, so much “profound” information is said that I miss out on some of it because the presenter hasn’t given me enough “process time” before going on to the next important thing.

So I thought about what I’ve learned and I realized that I can incorporate methods and strategies to work around it, while not prohibiting the learning process for my students.

 

1. Set something in place so that when kids minds wander or they are confused or off task (and they will do all three during the class) that they can quickly get back on task.  (I’m initiating Group Captains which is someone in the group who other group members can ask if something is missed or needs to be repeated.)

2. Allow the students to have off taks conversations in groups.  I know that most teachers will cringe at the thought, but as long as the students have someone close by to ask what they missed, it is a win-win. The group members get to finish their on task discussion and the person they ask gets to summarize what the others missed.

3. I have to do a better job of continuously reading my students faces throughout the introduction,  discussion and analysis.  I tell my students all the time that I don’t read minds and that they need to voice their confusion, questions, and comments.  But sometimes that can be overwhelming because a lot of times they whine their questions and don’t give me specific things I can target about their misunderstanding. Basically, I need to train my students how and in what tone of voice to ask questions.  I also plan to institute a gesture that a student can make when they need a little bit more wait time.