Reflections

This Fall has been a judgmental time for the American public educational system, especially with the release of "Waiting for Superman." It appears that the public perception vs. reality in some areas can be very skewed. As an educator I'm not sure how to correct this perception. My theme for this school year has been "Taking Small Steps." I can't control what the American public as a whole thinks, but I can work on effectively communicating with the most important public - the parents of my students. I have found that at the Mid Level, it has been hard to keep the lines of communication open and continuous with parents. To remedy this, my team has been using a community page on Facebook to post not only classroom assignments but updates on what is happening at the school. We have 86 fans of our page, so by using this one tool we are consistently trying to actively involve the parents (which is one of the 16 characteristics of Successful Schools for Young Adolescents).

With that being said, something that I kept coming back to this semester was: There is ALWAYS room for improvement. I think being willing and open to try new things in my classroom to improve student learning is one of those small steps in the right direction. Last month at the staff meeting, I presented the literacy strategy RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, Topic) to my colleagues. The funny thing was - I had never tried a RAFT in my class. So at the end of our Edgar A. Poe Unit, I had the students pick a character from one of the Poe stories/poems we had read (role), had them present to the class (audience) a Facebook page (format), including information from the story/poem (topic). The students had a lot of fun with this and were able to make connections and inferences that they might not have made if I had just asked them to write a plot summary! It was a riot to see who they chose to be "friends" with the character and ads that targeted the character. Through status updates they were able to share pertinent parts of the story/poem in a way that made sense to them and in an engaging way.

One small step at a time in the right direction...

Just for Fun

I watched a couple of podcasts - Ken Robinson on RS Animate - "Changing Educational Paradigms" and Sugata Mitra's "The Child-Driven Education" TED Talk. Though these had different topics, they both were strong proponents for students working in collaborative groups. In the work world, we are hardly ever asked to do tasks by ourselves, so why are we still asking kids to discover, brainstorms, and learn solitarily?
My Math class is entirely basked on group work. I have 4 groups of 4 and have recently tried separating the groups by gender. (The jury is still out on whether that is helpful or not - the girls are working well together and my rambunctious boy is still eagerly leading his group off task...) This afternoon when 1 group was not focused, I went over to them, sat down, and told them the story of Sugata Mitra's experiments in India and abroad that showed that students can figure out complex concepts by themselves. (Of course, I left out the part that said, "children will learn to do what they want to do" - because my guys truly were not interested in solving 2-step equations using pictures!) Anyway, I built them up - that I knew they were fully capable, that working together was so much better than trying to work on their own, and that they could figure out anything without a teacher spoon-feeding them everything. I was pleasantly surprised that for the last 25 minutes of class they were able to do just that - work together and discover the steps to solving equations.

It's All About the Kids!

As trite as it might sound, I became a middle school teacher to make a difference in kids' lives. You know - prepare them to be successful citizens. I did not sign up to make them efficient test takers, though there are days when it feels like that has become the focus.
Yesterday I participated in curriculum work for the RSU. We started by reading an excerpt from The Data Coach's Guide to Improving Learning for All Students. It seems like we are using the pyramid as a visual for a lot of things (I'm picturing the RTI pyramid...) This one was a recommended Data Pyramid with the largest part being daily-weekly assessment (formative classroom assessments) the next layer was 1-4 times a month (formative common assessments), followed by quarterly or end of unit (benchmark common assessments). The last two, which are the smallest part of the pyramid are 2-4 times a year (data about people, practices, perceptions) followed by the smallest--annually (summative district and state assessments). We should be focusing on the lower 3/5 of the pyramid, but in reality the top 2/5--which really include NWEA and NECAP testing-- are driving our instruction. It was refreshing to hear the curriculum coordinator say that we need to shift our focus back down toward the bottom of the pyramid.

I was thinking about all of this as I was reading the article, Centering on Students in the Middle Grades Curriculum by Gayle Andrews. There seems to be a disconnect between what research supports, what we know to be best practice, and what the reality is.

In this article she did a really nice job supporting the need for "Student-Centered, Integrated Curriculum." (Humor me for a moment while I

Teach Like a Champion - Strategy 2 - Right is Right

The key idea for this strategy is to "set and defend a high standard of correctness in your classroom." They gave an example of a student giving an answer and the teacher telling the student he/she is correct, but adding information to make the answer correct. I do this by repeating the answer and adding something to the answer. This is called "rounding up" and the book states this is how we set a low standard for correctness. Ouch! Once I tell the student he/she is correct, he/she doesn't  differentiate that it's only completely correct with the added information. This is a habit I'm going to break! Instead of rounding up, I can tell the student he/she is on the right track and see if they can finish answering it with some prompting or have somebody else in the class help them.

No Opt Out

This year my entire district is going to be reading Teach Like a Champion, 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College. I was a little hesitant when I read the title - and let's face it - books that have been picked out for us before haven't always been stellar. My first glimpse of this book was refreshingly useful! Strategy 1 in this book is called No Opt Out and I think will be helpful in my class. We've all had kids that when they're asked to answer a question or share in class have 1 standard answer, "I don't know." What an easy cop out. This strategy's goal is to teach/reinforce to kids that it's not okay not to try. If a student doesn't know the answer, it's okay to say that, but once another student answers correctly or gives them a cue to help them answer, the teacher is supposed to circle back and have them answer. I'm not being very verbose, but I think you get the idea. Hopefully, it will help establish student accountability and validate students that participate and know the answers.

WHO NEEDS SUPERMAN WHEN WONDER WOMAN AND MR INCREDIBLE ARE ALREADY HERE????

From the title you can probably feel my frustration about all of the negative teacher bashing that has recently been going. On the national level, the focus is on inner-city schools and there is no focus on the rest of the schools around the country that are functioning properly.  All of the schools in America are not failing! In the article, "The Evolution of the Schools Suck Bloc,"  Gerald Bracey points out that schools have been the scapegoat for our societal woes for decades (way back to Sputnik in 1957). He also points out some amazing statistics, such as, "Even kids in schools with up to 50% of students in poverty attained an average score that, had they constituted a nation, would have ranked 4th." Really?  This isn't the picture that is being painted acrossed the nation.  There are many myths floating around about the educational system in America that most people just believe because we have heard them repeated over and over. How do we combat this?

I've read quite a bit about the film Waiting for Superman. I think Rick Ayers summed it up quite well. He points out that when schools focus on standardized testing they
* reduce teachers to test-prep clerks
* ignore important subject areas and critical thinking skills
* dumb down the curriculum
* leave children less prepared for the future
How true! The United States is a leader because of our creativity and ingenuity.
Clearly, there is always room for improvement in our educational system. As a nation, we want what is best for our children, the future leaders of our country,  but breaking what is working to make all schools conform to one cookie-cutter mold is not the answer.

As educators we have the answers. We know what is good practice and what our students need. Until we can figure out how to share this with the nation at large, we need to continue to be the Wonder Women and Mr. Incredibles of the classroom. (After all, capes are SO out of vogue!)

Facebook as a Communication Tool

As an 8th grade team, we are always trying to increase our communication with the parents of our students. Face it - when we hand a middle schooler something to take home to their parents, I doubt most of those papers ever surface from the bottom of the backpack (if it was lucky enough to make it that far!).
When we had ClassRoll, there was a great place to enter our assignments and include notes for the parents. We switched to Infinite Campus last year and really missed that feature. After speaking with our IT Dept. we were encouraged to start a Parent Page on Facebook. We wanted to make it clear to the parents that we aren't saying the students have to have a FB account, but if they do they can also "like" the page and get updates. In our newsletter, we let the parents know that the page is intended for use by parents of 8th grade students at Ellsworth Elementary Middle School and that it is an attempt to increase parental involvement and awareness of what is happening in the classroom. Our goal to keep parents updated on 8th grade activities throughout the year.
I'm really excited about this added communication tool.

Back to School

Wow! Even as a teacher, going back to school means so many things. Just like the kids I'm sad to see the end of hot summer days at the lake, but I look forward to seeing my friends.
This year it feels like I haven't stopped running since school started. I'm not sure why it seems so chaotic and hope things settle into a routine soon! My professional aspirations for the year is to be the best teacher I can be - starting with building relationships with my new students. I have found that mutual respect between the teacher and students is foundational to having a great year. - So wish me luck and hopefully the feeling of chaos will disappear soon!