I was thinking that this summer I might read some management books, based on the idea that big chunks of classroom management probably have considerable overlap with the most effective HR departments of major corporations. If management companies can find a way to convince employees that working for (for example) BP is actually a good move, then surely I can convince my students that reading is fun; at least my statement is true.
Before I got the chance, though, I read this article (h/t Making Light) that argues that business management theory is basically a stupid, corrupt sub-set of philosophy. Now in my college years, I had a philosophy instructor suggest that all knowledge was a sub-set of philosophy, and for all I know, he was right. But this philosopher-turned-business-consultant-turned-philosopher argues (I think) that the bond between management theory and philosophy are much more tight than a simple "philosophy trumps all" philosophy.
This intersects with the focus of this blog in several ways. First, the whole premise of the article is a critique of the education of managers. Shorter Stewart: We charge too much for MBA's and then we don't teach them anything. Many graduates of Harvard's MBA program are successful, but this is not because Harvard cranks out great MBA's. It's because you have to be very intelligent, ambitious, hard-working, and probably financially stable to get into the program. You have to be all of those things, only a lot more so, to graduate from those programs. Coincidentally, those skills are also requisites for success in any area, but specifically business management. So Harvard's MBA program isn't necessarily good at creating good managers, but it may be good at finding good managers.
In education, this question is asked of most advanced coursework: does my Honors English class create good thinker/communicators, or does it just find people who are good at those things and make them work at it? Is there really a difference? If there is, is it one that matters after graduation? If that's all we're good for, then why do we insist on educating everyone? Why not just find the best? (NB: Regular readers know that I am firmly dedicated to the principle of high-quality education for ALL students. I have no interest in being a cherry picker.)
Second, throughout Stewart's criticism, the parallel between business management theory and classroom management holds. In fact, in many ways it grows stronger and expands to include the whole field of education theory. Ed theory focuses on how people learn, what they should learn, how other people can get them to learn it, how we know when they have learned it, and what to do with them if they haven't (and if they have). It's a field of study which, like philosophy and management theory, has at its core a search for tools for quantifying and analyzing human experience. This leaves me with the resounding question: Should I be studying more philosophy than ed theory? Stop reading Marzano and start reading Kant?
Naaaaah.
Showing posts with label classroom management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label classroom management. Show all posts
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Sunday, May 9, 2010
What a language teacher's job is
On Thursday, I had a long, intense conversation with my colleague Kris. She's our instructional coach this year, and I strongly hope that she will continue that role in the years to come, even as she returns to full-time teaching duties. She expressed the concern that I jump the gun in my classes--I move too quickly from building buy-in, directly to speaking Spanish. She worries that the students don't get why they're doing what they're doing, and thus never engage, and thus never really learn. I take her observation to heart, because I'm pretty sure my kung fu is strong, but my students are not learning Spanish at the rate they should be. Good practice done badly is bad practice, and if my students aren't learning, I'm not quite doing something right.
According to Krashen, as cited in Lee and Van Patten (1995), "...as long as there is motivation and the right affective environment (e.g., low anxiety), a person cannot avoid learning a second language if there is sustained comprehensible input" (29). They cite other researchers that say this is overstating the case somewhat, and they themselves stake out the position that using the language in communicative settings is necessary for learning languages. However, to the extent that this statement is true, it has powerful implications for language learning and, by extension, language instruction. The whole rest of their book is dedicated to outlining what those implications are.
But for now, I just want to worry at that one sentence for a little while, pick it apart and apply it. I'm writing lesson plans right now, so the action items are immediately applicable--I can go from this blog screen to my unit plan, to my weekly plan, and apply what I figure out.
It looks like this:
motivation + affective environment + sustained COMPREHENSIBLE input = language learning.
According to a source I don't remember right now (it was in an audiobook I borrowed from a friend, which I've since returned), as cited by Sprick (2007), motivation is a function of value times expectancy of success. So, if students value what they're learning, their motivation increases. If the students expect to succeed at a given event, their motivation to do it increases.
The updated equation looks thus:
(value of learning X expectation) + affective environment + sustained comprehensible input = Language Learning
I don't know enough about what Lee and VanPatten mean by "affective environment" to perform any cute faux mathematical operation on it. I believe, though, that this largely refers to classroom management issues, about which I've typed extensively.
Lee and VanPatten dedicate most of their book to outlining the concept of sustained comprehensible input. They later add "meaning-bearing" to the list of qualities of valuable communication.
(value of learning X expectation) + affective environment + sustained, meaning-bearing comprehensible input = Language Learning
This means that a student has to catch that there is a meaning she is supposed to understand in the utterance. The student also needs to be able to understand some portion of the communication.
This is a pretty clear description of a language teacher's job. These work out to these action steps:
1.) Sell the value of the learning. This means explaining reasons that a student should learn languages, but also why a student would want to. (I always think of the Rosetta Stone ad: "He was a farm boy from Iowa. She was an Italian supermodel. He had one chance to impress her.") This corresponds to increasing the value of learning.
2.) Increase the expectation of success. Celebrate baby steps. Define milestones, and move heaven and earth to drag your students towards them. Once they get there, make a big deal over it.
3.) Run your classroom well. I've had a lot to say about this. Marzano has a lot to say about this. Jackson has a lot to say about this, Wong and Wong have a lot to say about this, and Sprick has a whole lot to say about this. It sort of boils down to these.
4.) Give your students language they can chew. Lee & VanPatten say that if your students are at level N of comprehension, then you should communicate with them at N + 1. That's a hard number to hit consistently, especially with a class of 20, 30, 40 language learners. (Not that I have a class of 40 people, but it's probably not far off for many of my colleagues.) Lee & VanPatten have things to say about that, too.
So, there. I've defined what a WL teacher's job is. Not exactly my original goal, but that's okay. My next trick: Matching this up with Marzano's 10 reflection questions from The Art and Science of Teaching, Jackson's 7 principles of master teachers, Kryza's "Chunk / Chew / Check" lesson-planning and differentiation model, the National Board's teacher assessment tool, and Kris's "Hook your students" principle. Also, what this means to what my class looks like.
Resources:
Jackson, R. (2009). Never work harder than your students. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Lee, J., & VanPatten, B. (1997). Making communicative language teaching happen. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Marzano, R. (2008). The art and science of teaching. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Sprick, R. (2008). Interventions audio. Eugene, OR: Northwest Publishing.
According to Krashen, as cited in Lee and Van Patten (1995), "...as long as there is motivation and the right affective environment (e.g., low anxiety), a person cannot avoid learning a second language if there is sustained comprehensible input" (29). They cite other researchers that say this is overstating the case somewhat, and they themselves stake out the position that using the language in communicative settings is necessary for learning languages. However, to the extent that this statement is true, it has powerful implications for language learning and, by extension, language instruction. The whole rest of their book is dedicated to outlining what those implications are.
But for now, I just want to worry at that one sentence for a little while, pick it apart and apply it. I'm writing lesson plans right now, so the action items are immediately applicable--I can go from this blog screen to my unit plan, to my weekly plan, and apply what I figure out.
It looks like this:
motivation + affective environment + sustained COMPREHENSIBLE input = language learning.
According to a source I don't remember right now (it was in an audiobook I borrowed from a friend, which I've since returned), as cited by Sprick (2007), motivation is a function of value times expectancy of success. So, if students value what they're learning, their motivation increases. If the students expect to succeed at a given event, their motivation to do it increases.
The updated equation looks thus:
(value of learning X expectation) + affective environment + sustained comprehensible input = Language Learning
I don't know enough about what Lee and VanPatten mean by "affective environment" to perform any cute faux mathematical operation on it. I believe, though, that this largely refers to classroom management issues, about which I've typed extensively.
Lee and VanPatten dedicate most of their book to outlining the concept of sustained comprehensible input. They later add "meaning-bearing" to the list of qualities of valuable communication.
(value of learning X expectation) + affective environment + sustained, meaning-bearing comprehensible input = Language Learning
This means that a student has to catch that there is a meaning she is supposed to understand in the utterance. The student also needs to be able to understand some portion of the communication.
This is a pretty clear description of a language teacher's job. These work out to these action steps:
1.) Sell the value of the learning. This means explaining reasons that a student should learn languages, but also why a student would want to. (I always think of the Rosetta Stone ad: "He was a farm boy from Iowa. She was an Italian supermodel. He had one chance to impress her.") This corresponds to increasing the value of learning.
2.) Increase the expectation of success. Celebrate baby steps. Define milestones, and move heaven and earth to drag your students towards them. Once they get there, make a big deal over it.
3.) Run your classroom well. I've had a lot to say about this. Marzano has a lot to say about this. Jackson has a lot to say about this, Wong and Wong have a lot to say about this, and Sprick has a whole lot to say about this. It sort of boils down to these.
- Have a very few rules which apply all the time. Be consistent about reinforcing them positively and correcting them when necessary.
- Have procedures for everything. Teach them explicitly and rehearse them. (Behaviorism at its finest, but it will help if the students create their own procedures.)
- Make your classroom a place where it's okay to make mistakes, and teach students how to make GOOD mistakes. As Kryza likes to say, "This is a risk-taking, mistake-making classroom." In fact, Corder (as cited in Lee and VanPatten (1997)) says that mistakes are "indispensable to the learner himself" (in Lee and VanPatten, p. 22.)
4.) Give your students language they can chew. Lee & VanPatten say that if your students are at level N of comprehension, then you should communicate with them at N + 1. That's a hard number to hit consistently, especially with a class of 20, 30, 40 language learners. (Not that I have a class of 40 people, but it's probably not far off for many of my colleagues.) Lee & VanPatten have things to say about that, too.
So, there. I've defined what a WL teacher's job is. Not exactly my original goal, but that's okay. My next trick: Matching this up with Marzano's 10 reflection questions from The Art and Science of Teaching, Jackson's 7 principles of master teachers, Kryza's "Chunk / Chew / Check" lesson-planning and differentiation model, the National Board's teacher assessment tool, and Kris's "Hook your students" principle. Also, what this means to what my class looks like.
Resources:
Jackson, R. (2009). Never work harder than your students. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Lee, J., & VanPatten, B. (1997). Making communicative language teaching happen. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Marzano, R. (2008). The art and science of teaching. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Sprick, R. (2008). Interventions audio. Eugene, OR: Northwest Publishing.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Workflow management
1.) Establish a learning goal. Have a mechanism for communicating the learning goal.
2.) Develop learning activities. Write rationales, which include whether the students will be learning procedural or declarative knowledge, and whether or not the activity is intended as a formative assessment. Communicate the activity's objective, necessary materials, procedure, parameters for expected final product, and, if necessary, grading rubric.
3.) Have a system for communicating the results of the activity. Provide feedback on both the results and the process of the activity. If it's an assessment, have a method for recording the results.
4.) Hand back student work. It does nobody any good sitting in the bottom of your briefcase.
You have 23 hours. Go.
2.) Develop learning activities. Write rationales, which include whether the students will be learning procedural or declarative knowledge, and whether or not the activity is intended as a formative assessment. Communicate the activity's objective, necessary materials, procedure, parameters for expected final product, and, if necessary, grading rubric.
3.) Have a system for communicating the results of the activity. Provide feedback on both the results and the process of the activity. If it's an assessment, have a method for recording the results.
4.) Hand back student work. It does nobody any good sitting in the bottom of your briefcase.
You have 23 hours. Go.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Progress report, January 2010
My Spanish classes still don't look like I think they should, and I feel like I've really lost focus on what matters to me as a teacher. I'm getting bogged down in defining activities, reinforcing behavior, etc., and have let go the act of teaching Spanish. Much more of my outside-of-class time should be spent planning units, designing learning activities, aligning assessments to learning goals, etc., and rather less spent designing school-wide and classroom behavior support systems. The question I need to answer is: When my students are behaving the way I expect them to, and when I have everything planned out, what is it my students are actually doing? And the corollary question--How do I get from where I am to that place?
The short version, of course, is that when the plans go as planned, the students are speaking Spanish. All of my "more structure to class" activities are intended to make this easier to achieve. When the students know what they're supposed to be doing all the time, the supposition goes, it won't matter what language I'm speaking to them in. And more Spanish is more good. Better. You know. Once classroom structures are in place, I continue to think, and once students know how to refer to them in Spanish, then it becomes easier to conduct everything else in Spanish.
What I think I'm missing, though, is two key pieces. First, my students still see no reason to learn Spanish, so I have to give them a "why." Second, of all the structures I've built and designed and stolen and taught, I'm not sure my students understand the process of learning a new language, so I have to give them a "how." I know I do this all the time, but my students are almost universally frustrated by the process of learning new vocabulary, and forget it almost immediately. They are not yet taking responsibility for their own learning, and I haven't yet figured out how to inspire them.
It feels like I keep tripping over this same dot on the floor. Any thoughts?
The short version, of course, is that when the plans go as planned, the students are speaking Spanish. All of my "more structure to class" activities are intended to make this easier to achieve. When the students know what they're supposed to be doing all the time, the supposition goes, it won't matter what language I'm speaking to them in. And more Spanish is more good. Better. You know. Once classroom structures are in place, I continue to think, and once students know how to refer to them in Spanish, then it becomes easier to conduct everything else in Spanish.
What I think I'm missing, though, is two key pieces. First, my students still see no reason to learn Spanish, so I have to give them a "why." Second, of all the structures I've built and designed and stolen and taught, I'm not sure my students understand the process of learning a new language, so I have to give them a "how." I know I do this all the time, but my students are almost universally frustrated by the process of learning new vocabulary, and forget it almost immediately. They are not yet taking responsibility for their own learning, and I haven't yet figured out how to inspire them.
It feels like I keep tripping over this same dot on the floor. Any thoughts?
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
"So, what do you do in Spanish class?" (1 of 2)
Categories of classroom activities
At the last MiBLSi conference I went to--actually a coaches' meeting, which I wouldn't normally attend--some of the local experts shared a lot of techniques on how to work with our peers on classroom management techniques. The title of the meeting was probably something like "Coaching teachers," in fact. At the meeting, one of the tools they shared was a "classroom behavior" matrix. It looks just like the school-wide behavior matrix, but instead of different locations, the up-and-down categories are different kinds of classroom activities. (If I can find the example they showed online, and I figure out how to cite it properly, I'll try to post it here.)
Doing this had only begun to start to commence to consider crossing my mind at the end of August. At that time, I resisted the idea--"we do SO MANY different types of activities in Spanish class," I told myself, "that putting them into few enough categories to be meaningful would be impossible." Then, I ran out of prep time (read: summer vacation) and started teaching again. The idea was quickly forgotten--"besides," I thought, "I have a whole summer planning and practicing an improved version of my classroom management system; surely this year will be better than last year."
Well, fair enough, but when the idea of a classroom activity behavior matrix came up again, I was supremely intrigued. But what sort of categories would classroom activities fit into? How do you take all of the multiple intelligences, and varied interests, and differentiated levels of activities, and put them into categories? And not just any categories--the categories, I'm thinking, should have the following characteristics:
1.) They should be specific enough to be meaningful. I don't think "Vocabulary practice" will be specific enough, although I reserve the right to change my mind.
2.) They should be general enough that 5 or 6 of them should describe the vast majority of on-task classroom time. "Flyswatter game" carries its own special rule set, but doesn't necessarily belong here.
3.) They should (obviously) increase transparency of the workings of the classroom--that's the whole point in defining things, to take the mystery and guesswork out of it. This will help the students know what is expected of them, and help the teacher know which set of rules everybody's playing by at any given time.
The sample they gave us (man, I wish I could find it online! Well, maybe I'll end up reproducing the hard copy they gave us) had such things as "Beginning class," "Individual practice," "Small-group practice," "Whole class practice," "Instruction," and "Leaving class." Maybe these are good enough, but I have my doubts--there are different kinds of practice, the variety of activities really IS tremendous, etc. But following the "Ready! Fire! Aim!" philosophy I'm trying with good practice, I'm going to make a sample matrix, using these as activities.
Before doing all of this, a teacher has his or her classroom rules. (Or you could tie them into school-wide expectations.) And the matrix shows how students behave during each kind of activity for each rule or behavior expectation. So, using the categories above, mine might look something like this:
Expectations (top row): Use your languages respectfully / Use classroom materials appropriately / Stay on task.
Categories (first column): Beginning of class / Whole class instruction / Paired- and small-group / Individual Practice / Ending of Class
And then the intersections of the rows and the columns would contain more specific descriptions of behaviors for each of these categories.
In part 2 of this post, I'll take some of the commoner activities we do in Spanish class, and figure out (1) how they fit into this schema, and (2) where on the chunk-chew-check / I do-we do-you do forms that Kathleen Kryza has been talking to us about.
NB. As I type this, I'm left with the vague impression that this specific technique is out of Randy Sprick's Safe and Civil Schools series. I'll look through such materials as I have access to, and if I can find it, I'll give credit where credit is due, and let the expert show you what I'm trying to tell you. Also, in my mind there were specific categories that went along with it.
Update, 2 Jan: I found the classroom behavior expectation matrix in the handouts. It comes without citation, and 2 minutes' Googling didn't come up with it. (I did find another example, from Best Behavior from Sprague and Golly.) The categories I was trying to remember earlier: Outcomes, what you have to have done at the end of the activity; Voice, how loud you can talk and what about; Help, how to get help from the teacher and your classmates; Movement, how, when and why to move around and out of the room; Engagement, how and how much to interact with the materials; and Materials, which materials to use, and how to get and use your pencils and whatnot.
Also updated to fix some formatting.
Update 2: I found the source of the matrix, and it was Sprick. CHAMPS is an acronym for Conversation (can the students talk or not? when? how? with whom? what about?), Help (how do students get their questions answered?), Activity (what is the task, and what is the end product?) Movement (Can students move? When? How? Where?), and Participation (what are students doing during this time?). This is paraphrased from p. 92 of Discipline in the secondary classroom by Sprick, 2006. The ones in the matrix I gave earlier are probably originals from one of the presenters I saw, based on Sprick's ideas.
At the last MiBLSi conference I went to--actually a coaches' meeting, which I wouldn't normally attend--some of the local experts shared a lot of techniques on how to work with our peers on classroom management techniques. The title of the meeting was probably something like "Coaching teachers," in fact. At the meeting, one of the tools they shared was a "classroom behavior" matrix. It looks just like the school-wide behavior matrix, but instead of different locations, the up-and-down categories are different kinds of classroom activities. (If I can find the example they showed online, and I figure out how to cite it properly, I'll try to post it here.)
Doing this had only begun to start to commence to consider crossing my mind at the end of August. At that time, I resisted the idea--"we do SO MANY different types of activities in Spanish class," I told myself, "that putting them into few enough categories to be meaningful would be impossible." Then, I ran out of prep time (read: summer vacation) and started teaching again. The idea was quickly forgotten--"besides," I thought, "I have a whole summer planning and practicing an improved version of my classroom management system; surely this year will be better than last year."
Well, fair enough, but when the idea of a classroom activity behavior matrix came up again, I was supremely intrigued. But what sort of categories would classroom activities fit into? How do you take all of the multiple intelligences, and varied interests, and differentiated levels of activities, and put them into categories? And not just any categories--the categories, I'm thinking, should have the following characteristics:
1.) They should be specific enough to be meaningful. I don't think "Vocabulary practice" will be specific enough, although I reserve the right to change my mind.
2.) They should be general enough that 5 or 6 of them should describe the vast majority of on-task classroom time. "Flyswatter game" carries its own special rule set, but doesn't necessarily belong here.
3.) They should (obviously) increase transparency of the workings of the classroom--that's the whole point in defining things, to take the mystery and guesswork out of it. This will help the students know what is expected of them, and help the teacher know which set of rules everybody's playing by at any given time.
The sample they gave us (man, I wish I could find it online! Well, maybe I'll end up reproducing the hard copy they gave us) had such things as "Beginning class," "Individual practice," "Small-group practice," "Whole class practice," "Instruction," and "Leaving class." Maybe these are good enough, but I have my doubts--there are different kinds of practice, the variety of activities really IS tremendous, etc. But following the "Ready! Fire! Aim!" philosophy I'm trying with good practice, I'm going to make a sample matrix, using these as activities.
Before doing all of this, a teacher has his or her classroom rules. (Or you could tie them into school-wide expectations.) And the matrix shows how students behave during each kind of activity for each rule or behavior expectation. So, using the categories above, mine might look something like this:
Expectations (top row): Use your languages respectfully / Use classroom materials appropriately / Stay on task.
Categories (first column): Beginning of class / Whole class instruction / Paired- and small-group / Individual Practice / Ending of Class
And then the intersections of the rows and the columns would contain more specific descriptions of behaviors for each of these categories.
In part 2 of this post, I'll take some of the commoner activities we do in Spanish class, and figure out (1) how they fit into this schema, and (2) where on the chunk-chew-check / I do-we do-you do forms that Kathleen Kryza has been talking to us about.
NB. As I type this, I'm left with the vague impression that this specific technique is out of Randy Sprick's Safe and Civil Schools series. I'll look through such materials as I have access to, and if I can find it, I'll give credit where credit is due, and let the expert show you what I'm trying to tell you. Also, in my mind there were specific categories that went along with it.
Update, 2 Jan: I found the classroom behavior expectation matrix in the handouts. It comes without citation, and 2 minutes' Googling didn't come up with it. (I did find another example, from Best Behavior from Sprague and Golly.) The categories I was trying to remember earlier: Outcomes, what you have to have done at the end of the activity; Voice, how loud you can talk and what about; Help, how to get help from the teacher and your classmates; Movement, how, when and why to move around and out of the room; Engagement, how and how much to interact with the materials; and Materials, which materials to use, and how to get and use your pencils and whatnot.
Also updated to fix some formatting.
Update 2: I found the source of the matrix, and it was Sprick. CHAMPS is an acronym for Conversation (can the students talk or not? when? how? with whom? what about?), Help (how do students get their questions answered?), Activity (what is the task, and what is the end product?) Movement (Can students move? When? How? Where?), and Participation (what are students doing during this time?). This is paraphrased from p. 92 of Discipline in the secondary classroom by Sprick, 2006. The ones in the matrix I gave earlier are probably originals from one of the presenters I saw, based on Sprick's ideas.
Monday, May 25, 2009
It's all about the students
This blog post is directed at my students, but it's part of a broader conversation that all of us should spend a lot of time on. It's a continuation of some conversations we've had about school rules, why we have specific school rules, and how, when, and why to work to change them. Students, this post turned out a lot longer than I meant. If you want to skip the essay and just leave your thoughts about our school's rules, policies, and expectations, just go straight to the comments. Please remember to be respectful; I don't want to have to delete comments for inappropriate language. (Imagine you're, maybe not in school, but at least in the parking lot outside with our principal standing nearby.)
Our school board sets the school rules; these are the things that are included in your planners that we go over at the beginning of each school year, and that the school-based adults should be reinforcing all year long. This includes the school cell-phone policy (you don't have one on school; if a teacher needs you to have one for a project, give it to that teacher before school starts and pick it up after school ends), the dress code (nothing distracting; no sleeveless shirts for men, no shoulder straps thinner than 3 inches for women, no shorts or skirts that come up higher than the fingers), the tardy policy, the graduation requirements, etc. The school board consists of people who have a stake in the performance of the school. In our case, it's mostly your parents, but it can also include local business officials, education professionals (usually ones who don't work for the school), and others. Their motivation in setting the rules is to keep you safe in school, and to provide you with the best education possible. They usually work with the schools' administration to make the rules.
We also have a set of school behavior expectations--Be Safe, Be Respectful, Be Responsible. (If you poke around in the archives, you'll find out more about how these came to be than you ever wanted to.) The Bobcat Code is another way of repeating the same basic ideals. Every community has rules about appropriate behavior, and these expectations are intended to tell us all what those are for our community. It's not just to tell students how to behave. It's also to tell teachers and staff how to behave, what to celebrate, who our good citizens are, things like that.
Each teacher has their own set of guidelines, too: rules, behavior expectations, and classroom procedures. The purpose of these guidelines is to codify how teachers and students interact. You can tell a lot about a teacher by their classroom guidelines.
All of these different levels of "rules" and "expectations" have one objective: to make school the best learning environment for you possible. In order for that to be true, the following things have to happen:
In any case, with any rules change, be prepared to justify how the change will help your education. Once, I asked students what they thought about school policies. One student responded, "There should be a boxing ring where students who aren't getting along can beat each other up." We asked how it would help their education to get into fights. The response: "It wouldn't. But it would be fun." Whether it would be fun or not, it would be at the expense of the safety of the students, it would take away from learning, and it wouldn't work as well as more productive, non-violent means of problem-solving. So that's an example of a bad policy change.
SO....after all that, what do you think about our school policy? What works, what doesn't? What could work better?
Our school board sets the school rules; these are the things that are included in your planners that we go over at the beginning of each school year, and that the school-based adults should be reinforcing all year long. This includes the school cell-phone policy (you don't have one on school; if a teacher needs you to have one for a project, give it to that teacher before school starts and pick it up after school ends), the dress code (nothing distracting; no sleeveless shirts for men, no shoulder straps thinner than 3 inches for women, no shorts or skirts that come up higher than the fingers), the tardy policy, the graduation requirements, etc. The school board consists of people who have a stake in the performance of the school. In our case, it's mostly your parents, but it can also include local business officials, education professionals (usually ones who don't work for the school), and others. Their motivation in setting the rules is to keep you safe in school, and to provide you with the best education possible. They usually work with the schools' administration to make the rules.
We also have a set of school behavior expectations--Be Safe, Be Respectful, Be Responsible. (If you poke around in the archives, you'll find out more about how these came to be than you ever wanted to.) The Bobcat Code is another way of repeating the same basic ideals. Every community has rules about appropriate behavior, and these expectations are intended to tell us all what those are for our community. It's not just to tell students how to behave. It's also to tell teachers and staff how to behave, what to celebrate, who our good citizens are, things like that.
Each teacher has their own set of guidelines, too: rules, behavior expectations, and classroom procedures. The purpose of these guidelines is to codify how teachers and students interact. You can tell a lot about a teacher by their classroom guidelines.
All of these different levels of "rules" and "expectations" have one objective: to make school the best learning environment for you possible. In order for that to be true, the following things have to happen:
- The rules have to be directed towards improving your learning experience. (That's why we don't have a "Buy American" clause in the policies--it's got nothing to do with your learning.)
- You, the student, as well as we, the teachers, have to know what the rules are, what they're for, and what the consequences of following and not following them will be.
- The staff has to apply those rules consistently, re-teach them regularly, and be prepared to explain (in an appropriate time and place) what the educational value of a rule is.
In any case, with any rules change, be prepared to justify how the change will help your education. Once, I asked students what they thought about school policies. One student responded, "There should be a boxing ring where students who aren't getting along can beat each other up." We asked how it would help their education to get into fights. The response: "It wouldn't. But it would be fun." Whether it would be fun or not, it would be at the expense of the safety of the students, it would take away from learning, and it wouldn't work as well as more productive, non-violent means of problem-solving. So that's an example of a bad policy change.
SO....after all that, what do you think about our school policy? What works, what doesn't? What could work better?
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Baby steps in the correct direction
I think learning has occurred. I'm not great at dealing professionally with elementary students, both by training and by disposition. So, after three years of making a significant portion of my living by teaching elementary students, I had a good day. For the first time in a long time, my elementary school class today went well by design, instead of by the good graces and personalities of the students, and the tremendous amount of work done by other teachers. I feel like I practiced techniques I should have known a loooooonnnnnng time ago--don't escalate confrontations with students; raised voices do not necessarily mean increased communication (as a World Languages teacher, you'd think I'd know that already); ambiguous communications are easy to misunderstand (see last parenthetical statement).
So I'm learning. Slowly. Hopefully, my students are learning more quickly.
So I'm learning. Slowly. Hopefully, my students are learning more quickly.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Never work harder than your students, Cha. 1
Start where your students are
This chapter takes a look at some of the disconnect between a teacher's values and students' values. Let's face it--sometimes it feels like you're speaking an entire different language from your teacher. (Well, in my case, I am. But that's not the point.) Jackson uses the metaphor of "currency" to describe this difference. "Suppose," she says, "youadvertise that your house is for sale and I come take a look. [...] I dig into my pocket, pull out a few shiny beads, some seachells, and a couple of wood carvings, place them on the table, and ask for the keys" (31-2). She suggests that this is like the frustrated teacher and the unmotivated student. The teacher doesn't know why the student doesn't value the "currency" of the classroom. The student feels like she's trying her best, but the teacher just doesn't appreciate her effort. Jackon's metaphor for this is that the two parties aren't trading in the same currency.
She recommends that teachers understand what they value (what currencies they're accepting), what their students value (what currencies they're spending), and the disconnect between the two. Find ways to show students how to use their values in school (use their currencies to acquire school currency) and to code switch based on situation (acquire and spend multiple currencies). As a final point, she suggests creating community as a valuable way to help students see the value in school.
It seems like a good metaphor for the eternal disconnect between teachers and students. I value learning inerently; it's a huge part of why I became a teacher. I think that people should know as much as possible, and that they should be able to think as well as possible. So it always comes as something of a shock to me when students say, "Why should I know this?" My response is usually, "Why wouldn't you want to?" Of course, that argument doesn't work with students. It's not enough, nor should it be. In Jackson's language, we're not spending the same currency. I've spent a great deal of time in the last year striving to create community in the school, at the expense of creating it in my classroom. My frustration level has grown in the last couple of weeks, as I can only assume the frustration of my students has. Now might be an excellent time to re-examine my currencies and those of my students, and to work on creating meaningful community in my classroom to help ease these frustrations.
In a meta-analysis of the book, I like the way Jackson has her chapters structured. She outlines the scenario and describes what less-expert teachers might do. She then presents her principle, breaks it down into do-able steps and how to implement them. She occasionally adds in a "Yes, but..." box, to address probable concerns from experienced-but-not-yet-expert teachers. It's a good way of getting a huge amount of information out in an organized fashion. Also, she illustrates this with a lot of personal stories from her extensive experience. So, good on her! I'm enjoying it so far; wish I had more time to study it than once a week.
This chapter takes a look at some of the disconnect between a teacher's values and students' values. Let's face it--sometimes it feels like you're speaking an entire different language from your teacher. (Well, in my case, I am. But that's not the point.) Jackson uses the metaphor of "currency" to describe this difference. "Suppose," she says, "youadvertise that your house is for sale and I come take a look. [...] I dig into my pocket, pull out a few shiny beads, some seachells, and a couple of wood carvings, place them on the table, and ask for the keys" (31-2). She suggests that this is like the frustrated teacher and the unmotivated student. The teacher doesn't know why the student doesn't value the "currency" of the classroom. The student feels like she's trying her best, but the teacher just doesn't appreciate her effort. Jackon's metaphor for this is that the two parties aren't trading in the same currency.
She recommends that teachers understand what they value (what currencies they're accepting), what their students value (what currencies they're spending), and the disconnect between the two. Find ways to show students how to use their values in school (use their currencies to acquire school currency) and to code switch based on situation (acquire and spend multiple currencies). As a final point, she suggests creating community as a valuable way to help students see the value in school.
It seems like a good metaphor for the eternal disconnect between teachers and students. I value learning inerently; it's a huge part of why I became a teacher. I think that people should know as much as possible, and that they should be able to think as well as possible. So it always comes as something of a shock to me when students say, "Why should I know this?" My response is usually, "Why wouldn't you want to?" Of course, that argument doesn't work with students. It's not enough, nor should it be. In Jackson's language, we're not spending the same currency. I've spent a great deal of time in the last year striving to create community in the school, at the expense of creating it in my classroom. My frustration level has grown in the last couple of weeks, as I can only assume the frustration of my students has. Now might be an excellent time to re-examine my currencies and those of my students, and to work on creating meaningful community in my classroom to help ease these frustrations.
In a meta-analysis of the book, I like the way Jackson has her chapters structured. She outlines the scenario and describes what less-expert teachers might do. She then presents her principle, breaks it down into do-able steps and how to implement them. She occasionally adds in a "Yes, but..." box, to address probable concerns from experienced-but-not-yet-expert teachers. It's a good way of getting a huge amount of information out in an organized fashion. Also, she illustrates this with a lot of personal stories from her extensive experience. So, good on her! I'm enjoying it so far; wish I had more time to study it than once a week.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Day-to-day consistency and lesson planning
I'm never really been sure as how to structure a class so that it looks the same every day, what with the wide variety of events that might happen in a school day. I know that part of that is designing and teaching a procedure to get back on task after interruptions, but the interruptions range in intrusiveness such that one procedure, even two or three or procedures, to get them back on task continues to escape me.
So my lesson plan has been an ad-hoc document, an objective followed by a list of activities designed to achieve the objective. That's probably fine as far as it goes, but it means that Wednesday doesn't look much like Monday. (Also, Wednesday doesn't often look like Wednesday's plan.) This makes it hard to model the same 3 or 4 classroom-management phrases in Spanish every day, which makes it nigh impossible for me to conduct class entirely in Spanish, which is the goal.
So, I've spent some amount of time looking for a way of making plans that would help establish a more consistent daily class structure. And I finally found a document that was handed to me during the New Teacher Academy meetings, and probably during my teacher education courses in college, based on Hunter (1984):
READINESS
Here's where my issue lies: In the Communication column of my standards, each lesson has to take two things into consideration: context and communicative mode. (Ideally, a lesson should also include some Cultural context; get a student to make Connections between this lesson, other classes, and their own lives; help a student make communicative and cultural Comparisons, and then help move their learning into their Communities. But one step at a time.) If a unit has 3 communicative contexts, it means that there are 18 different lessons that happen in an ideal world: a spoken / listening conversation; an written / read conversation; a listening comprehension; a reading comprehension; a spoken presentation; and a written presentation. Even if you tie together a few (or even all) contexts together for the presentational communication mode, there's still a heap of lessons that should occur.
Given all that, is it even theoretically possible to make tomorrow like today? Probably not, but it's worth the try. But up until now, I've had a different understanding of the structure of a unit. This is a day-to-day model, which seems to sacrifice a big-picture understanding for an illusory class-structure uniformity. I've always understood a unit to be a different kind of thing: a presentation, modeling, and practice of vocabulary in a wide context, followed by a closer examination of the vocabulary and grammar necessary for specific communicative tasks. Communicative practice activities, a few activities that tie in all the different contexts, a day of review, then a test.
Anyway, I'll try this "new" lesson plan format and see if I can make it work for me. It will probably be rough going for a while, but once I get the hang of it, I think it will tie objectives, instruction, practice, and assessment a lot closer together. (That's the point of the format, after all.) Also, I think it will increase my students' capacity for taking Spanish as the primary classroom language in the future.
Update: Two minutes of further reading revealed Marzano's claim that this lesson plan structure "is best suited for kessons that address procedural knowledge" (180). Good for some situations, but not all. I'm still going to try it for a little while; there's a lot of procedural-type stuff in communication: how to say you're going to do something, how to listen for key vocabulary, how to identify the main idea of a passage. I think vocabulary learning may more neatly fit in with "declarative knowledge," which is a different ball of wax.
WORKS CITED:
Hunter, M. (1984.) Knowing, teaching, and supervising. Using what we know about teaching. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Modified by Wilson-O'Leary for teacher conference.
Marzano, R. (2007.) The art and science of teaching: a comprehensive framework for effective instruction. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. 181.
So my lesson plan has been an ad-hoc document, an objective followed by a list of activities designed to achieve the objective. That's probably fine as far as it goes, but it means that Wednesday doesn't look much like Monday. (Also, Wednesday doesn't often look like Wednesday's plan.) This makes it hard to model the same 3 or 4 classroom-management phrases in Spanish every day, which makes it nigh impossible for me to conduct class entirely in Spanish, which is the goal.
So, I've spent some amount of time looking for a way of making plans that would help establish a more consistent daily class structure. And I finally found a document that was handed to me during the New Teacher Academy meetings, and probably during my teacher education courses in college, based on Hunter (1984):
READINESS
- Warm-up:
- Objective:
- Instructional input:
- Modeling:
- Activities/Questions Strategies
- Guided practice
- Independent practice
- Closure
Here's where my issue lies: In the Communication column of my standards, each lesson has to take two things into consideration: context and communicative mode. (Ideally, a lesson should also include some Cultural context; get a student to make Connections between this lesson, other classes, and their own lives; help a student make communicative and cultural Comparisons, and then help move their learning into their Communities. But one step at a time.) If a unit has 3 communicative contexts, it means that there are 18 different lessons that happen in an ideal world: a spoken / listening conversation; an written / read conversation; a listening comprehension; a reading comprehension; a spoken presentation; and a written presentation. Even if you tie together a few (or even all) contexts together for the presentational communication mode, there's still a heap of lessons that should occur.
Given all that, is it even theoretically possible to make tomorrow like today? Probably not, but it's worth the try. But up until now, I've had a different understanding of the structure of a unit. This is a day-to-day model, which seems to sacrifice a big-picture understanding for an illusory class-structure uniformity. I've always understood a unit to be a different kind of thing: a presentation, modeling, and practice of vocabulary in a wide context, followed by a closer examination of the vocabulary and grammar necessary for specific communicative tasks. Communicative practice activities, a few activities that tie in all the different contexts, a day of review, then a test.
Anyway, I'll try this "new" lesson plan format and see if I can make it work for me. It will probably be rough going for a while, but once I get the hang of it, I think it will tie objectives, instruction, practice, and assessment a lot closer together. (That's the point of the format, after all.) Also, I think it will increase my students' capacity for taking Spanish as the primary classroom language in the future.
Update: Two minutes of further reading revealed Marzano's claim that this lesson plan structure "is best suited for kessons that address procedural knowledge" (180). Good for some situations, but not all. I'm still going to try it for a little while; there's a lot of procedural-type stuff in communication: how to say you're going to do something, how to listen for key vocabulary, how to identify the main idea of a passage. I think vocabulary learning may more neatly fit in with "declarative knowledge," which is a different ball of wax.
WORKS CITED:
Hunter, M. (1984.) Knowing, teaching, and supervising. Using what we know about teaching. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Modified by Wilson-O'Leary for teacher conference.
Marzano, R. (2007.) The art and science of teaching: a comprehensive framework for effective instruction. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. 181.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
