or,
The difference between when I ask you a question and when you ask me a question.
It's a common enough scenario in our class: I ask you a huge question, give you no guidance or background information, and demand that you analyze, choose and defend a position on it in three minutes. I imagine that this is frustrating for you sometimes, especially since my skills at communicating my goals are not great.
This happened on Friday, and instead of just answering the question, one of your classmates responded, and then said, "What do you think about this topic, Mr. Cosby?"
I didn't exactly deflect the question, but I didn't exactly answer it right away, either. I think I said something about not wanting to presume to know everything, to which somebody said, "Well, you expected us to know the answer."
It reminded me of a few days earlier, when I asked you about a camera angle in To Kill a Mockingbird. "Why put the camera there for this scene, and why not somewhere else?" One of your classmates asked, "Does this have a correct answer? I like things that have correct answers." My response to that was similar: There may well be a correct answer, the director made that decision for a reason. I can only guess at what it was. The better I am at the language of film, the more likely my guess is to be close to correct.
The common theme to these two scenarios, dear readers, and the theme that connects a thousand others just like them, is this: When I ask you a question like that, it's because I want you thinking about the answers. I want you to come up with what you think the best answer is, and I want you to defend it. When presented with new evidence, I want you either to explain how the new evidence fits into your position, or I want you to change your position to accommodate it. I do this because I think that this is the most reliable way for people to learn. There's something pretty Socratic about it, and I'm not sure how I feel about that, but there you go. That's pedagogy for you. I don't expect you to have the right answer every time, the first time. You often get the right answer, or at least a right answer, because you're smart. And even when you're off-base, you quickly come to a right answer. But for our purposes, that's sort of the cherry on the sundae. I want you to think in as many different ways as possible, and I want you--and this is the kicker--to be aware of your thinking as you do it.
When you ask me my own questions back, there's a different dynamic. Based on past experiences, you imagine that I have answers to all the questions I ask. Maybe you visualize a Teacher's Annotated Edition of To Kill a Mockingbird, which gives me questions to ask and themes to present. Such things exist, and I use them when my own thinking is unclear or incomplete, or honestly, when I'm in a hurry. So I feel like when you ask me a question, it's because you want to know the answer, and you want me to give it to you. Your motivations are your own--I like to think you're checking your own thinking process against that of a respected local authority. You may simply be tired of thinking. But the point is this: When you ask me a question, it's because you want the answer.
The problem with that is the nature of the questions I ask: "What are the qualities of leadership? What does a society owe its people, and what do leaders owe to unwilling members of a society? How do stories and leadership relate?" These questions have no one answer. My objective is not for you to know how to answer them, it's for you to know how to ask them.
So, just keep thinking. A lot of good will come of that, far beyond the limits of school.
Showing posts with label students. Show all posts
Showing posts with label students. Show all posts
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
To my students: On being and becoming teachers.
Students,
A few weeks ago I told some of you that I was inspired to teach Spanish by my high school Spanish teacher, and that I hoped to be able to do the same for some of you. I said that the mark of an excellent teacher is not how many students he has, but how many teachers he creates. This is as close to a religious belief as you will ever hear from me. However, something didn't feel right about the way that conversation ended.
I said that I wanted for you to become Spanish teachers. That wasn't quite right. I want you to live happy, good, full, productive lives; I'm teaching you because I think that what you learn from me will help you do that. Communicating in Spanish will open doors for you that have previously been closed. These doors are not just in the Spanish-speaking world. These skills that I hope you're learning in my class will open doors inside your own head. In some cases, they'll build whole new wings on the mansions of your mind. (Or the airplane of your mind. Pick your metaphor. You build wings on both.)
I want you to love Spanish. I want you to love speaking Spanish, and I want you to be fascinated by the myriad cultures that use Spanish as their primary language. I want to have a part in bringing that to you. People who feel this way sometimes become Spanish teachers, because it lets us work with the future of our world AND speak Spanish. But many other people who love Spanish just as much as I do, decide not to become teachers. They become business people. They become doctors or lawyers. They become farmers. They become stage magicians. They re-mix YouTube videos for fun and profit.
I don't want you to become teachers for my sake, which is what I said if you were listening carefully. I hope you like Spanish class. I hope that you look forward to coming. I hope that you like the way I teach. But what I want for you, what I really want for you, is for you to find what you love and spend the rest of your life doing it.
That's what I'm doing.
Atentemente,
Señor Cosby
A few weeks ago I told some of you that I was inspired to teach Spanish by my high school Spanish teacher, and that I hoped to be able to do the same for some of you. I said that the mark of an excellent teacher is not how many students he has, but how many teachers he creates. This is as close to a religious belief as you will ever hear from me. However, something didn't feel right about the way that conversation ended.
I said that I wanted for you to become Spanish teachers. That wasn't quite right. I want you to live happy, good, full, productive lives; I'm teaching you because I think that what you learn from me will help you do that. Communicating in Spanish will open doors for you that have previously been closed. These doors are not just in the Spanish-speaking world. These skills that I hope you're learning in my class will open doors inside your own head. In some cases, they'll build whole new wings on the mansions of your mind. (Or the airplane of your mind. Pick your metaphor. You build wings on both.)
I want you to love Spanish. I want you to love speaking Spanish, and I want you to be fascinated by the myriad cultures that use Spanish as their primary language. I want to have a part in bringing that to you. People who feel this way sometimes become Spanish teachers, because it lets us work with the future of our world AND speak Spanish. But many other people who love Spanish just as much as I do, decide not to become teachers. They become business people. They become doctors or lawyers. They become farmers. They become stage magicians. They re-mix YouTube videos for fun and profit.
I don't want you to become teachers for my sake, which is what I said if you were listening carefully. I hope you like Spanish class. I hope that you look forward to coming. I hope that you like the way I teach. But what I want for you, what I really want for you, is for you to find what you love and spend the rest of your life doing it.
That's what I'm doing.
Atentemente,
Señor Cosby
Friday, January 22, 2010
To my students
Thanks for stopping by! If you plan on making it a habit, I'll write more student-friendly stuff.
You are, of course, welcome to read the diatribes on educational theory.
You are, of course, welcome to read the diatribes on educational theory.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Hard realities, harsh truths
I strongly considered keeping this journal entry away from public consumption. It's not going to be nice, it's not going to be pretty. It's going to be more questions than answers, and it's going to end in an admission that not only do I not know what the answers are, I'm not sure where to find them. It will probably meander through a forest of clichés, get lost in a swamp of self-pity, and just maybe begin to climb the mountain of self-awareness. If anyone ever read this, it might actually hurt my career. I've changed my mind, though, for three reasons. It's possible that somebody might read this and have an answer. It might be used as a model of reflection, self-awareness, and problem-solving. Besides, nobody's reading, anyway.
But we're going to start here: My students don't like my class. They're also not learning any Spanish.
I've taken a lot of courses this year, and they basically have two primary goals related to school: build a positive community of learners (school-wide positive behavior support and MiBLSi), and increase my capacity to improve my students' learning (everything else). It's become painfully clear to me that teaching is more about what you do than what you know, something I think that every good professional sort of knows already. To that end, every week or two, I try to add another element I've learned into my practice, work in a new or improved learning activity, or in some other way do something new to improve my students' learning. One every week or two is a small percentage of what I've learned, but it's a lot more sustainable than trying to pull something new in every day. But, sustainable or no, good practice or no, my students aren't learning Spanish.
They may be learning lots of things. I've started working in higher-order thinking skills. There's an element of social justice and a focus on cultures and comparisons I've never had before. All of these things are important components of a world languages class. I try to model civility, flexibility, stay-on-taskness, all important life skills. I try to have a sense of humor about the world in my place in it. But they're not learning to speak or understand Spanish.
I've over-focused both on the differences between a language class and other classes, and on the similarities. It's a neat trick, I know. Bear with me. The big differences between Spanish and, say, social studies go like this: When you leave social studies, you're supposed to know certain things about history and anthropology and such. Ideally, you've been taught how to think about social studies, and not simply that the Magna Carta was signed in 1776 by Grant and Lee at Woodstock. (Or whatever.) But you probably have to pick up those facts along the way in order to compare civil wars. (Studies show that in the breadth-of-content vs. depth-of-content debate, depth of content actually increases the breadth of content covered.) In Spanish class, you have to learn how to compare and make connections to languages and cultures, and use these in your communities. But if you can't perform some basic functions in the language, then you've missed half the content, and the part that most people think of as Spanish class. So, I've over-focused on the differences by ignoring useful planning techninques--big-picture questions, learning goals, and things like that, in order to build in language-practice time. I've also ignored the similarities in the need for vocabulary development techniques, but I have a reason for that--middle- and high-school students should deeply learn about 90 content-related words per class per year. If I wait that long for students to learn vocabulary, they'll never get anywhere.
In the past couple of years, my PD has focused on classroom management issues, and higher-order-thinking-skills issues. I've not had a whole lot of world language-specific training since becoming a full-time teacher. I'm not sure how important it would be to have such training--shouldn't I have a pretty good idea of what a Spanish class ought to look like? Well, in a few words, probably, but I don't. I loved learning Spanish, would happily sit and do work sheets based on pedagogical theory from the 17th century, thought that watching movies and slide shows and playing learning games were all pleasant distractions from the serious business of learning. To find that in fact they're an integral part of the learning process, and that failing to include them is one of the more-commonly cited reasons for dropping out of school, means I have little no personal paradigm for a good world language classroom. Below, a list of some of the assumptions I'm working off of, and where I feel I rank on those assumptions.
1.) I am a teacher. This means I teach students. My subject is Spanish, but that's almost incidental. What my students learn from me may well be something other than Spanish, but they should be learning from me. Since I am teaching Spanish, they should learn things like communication strategies, how to learn vocabulary, how to study a culture and live in it (in certain instances), things like that. As I alluded to above, I think I'm pretty good at teaching my students other things--it was once suggested to me that I'm more of a philosophy teacher than a Spanish teacher. This was simultaneously a great compliment (to me--a great insult to actual philosophy teachers), and a heartbreaking strike against my actual job.
2.) 1st-year Spanish classes should be conducted in Spanish, 80% or more of the time. After that, they should always be in Spanish. (I don't remember where I got the 80% number. If I find it, I'll cite my source later.) I'm not good at this. I speak maybe 10 minutes of Spanish in a 60-minute class. That's like 16%.
3.) In order to run a class entirely in Spanish, the students need to have a very strong sense of community, and an ability to self-direct their learning. These things do not happen by accident. I'm not great at this, either. I've focused really hard on making this happen on purpose, and it hasn't stuck as well as I'd hoped
4.) Early-level Spanish classes should focus on speaking communication, with reading and writing as support structures. I do this fairly well, in that we don't do that many writing activities without a fair amount of speaking to go along with it.
5.) Higher-order thinking skills and social justice are important elements of a world language class. I'm getting better at this, but I'm pretty sure I'm sacrificing the communication aspect of class to these goals.
The thing is that I'm not sure what I'm not doing right.
Why this post? Why now?
On Friday, Kris, our teacher coach, observed my 10th grade Spanish II class. It wasn't an unmitigated disaster, but I think it's fair to say that it was a disaster with few mitigations. I talked most of the hour, I did it in English, the board work was a review activity that took 15 minutes, we spent a lot of time going over classroom management issues. I didn't get on to new learning activities until the last 20 minutes of class or so, and even then it was a listening activity. The students didn't make it any secret of how bored they were.
This isn't the first time that happened, and every time they tell me this, I try to ramp up the next week's lesson plan. I'm guessing I just don't understand what my class is supposed to look like, or at least how to make it happen. This is disappointing. The last few years, I've started the school year very excited to get started on the work. The last few years, by the time winter break comes along, I'm demoralized, having performed tremendous amounts of work, seen no real benefit in either learning or classroom management, and with huge amounts of work (which should prove useful, but may well not) to do ahead of me.
So Kris has given me a few pointers, and I'm going to try them out this week. She started out by suggesting I re-think my board work activity. So we'll go from there. Hopefully, we can get me doing what I should have done all along. I suppose it's better that this happened now than after winter break; now I'll have time to implement a few changes and analyze them. (This blog post took over 3 hours, over the course of 2 days, to write. It takes some time. This one was obviously important, but I can't afford to do it all the time.)
But we're going to start here: My students don't like my class. They're also not learning any Spanish.
I've taken a lot of courses this year, and they basically have two primary goals related to school: build a positive community of learners (school-wide positive behavior support and MiBLSi), and increase my capacity to improve my students' learning (everything else). It's become painfully clear to me that teaching is more about what you do than what you know, something I think that every good professional sort of knows already. To that end, every week or two, I try to add another element I've learned into my practice, work in a new or improved learning activity, or in some other way do something new to improve my students' learning. One every week or two is a small percentage of what I've learned, but it's a lot more sustainable than trying to pull something new in every day. But, sustainable or no, good practice or no, my students aren't learning Spanish.
They may be learning lots of things. I've started working in higher-order thinking skills. There's an element of social justice and a focus on cultures and comparisons I've never had before. All of these things are important components of a world languages class. I try to model civility, flexibility, stay-on-taskness, all important life skills. I try to have a sense of humor about the world in my place in it. But they're not learning to speak or understand Spanish.
I've over-focused both on the differences between a language class and other classes, and on the similarities. It's a neat trick, I know. Bear with me. The big differences between Spanish and, say, social studies go like this: When you leave social studies, you're supposed to know certain things about history and anthropology and such. Ideally, you've been taught how to think about social studies, and not simply that the Magna Carta was signed in 1776 by Grant and Lee at Woodstock. (Or whatever.) But you probably have to pick up those facts along the way in order to compare civil wars. (Studies show that in the breadth-of-content vs. depth-of-content debate, depth of content actually increases the breadth of content covered.) In Spanish class, you have to learn how to compare and make connections to languages and cultures, and use these in your communities. But if you can't perform some basic functions in the language, then you've missed half the content, and the part that most people think of as Spanish class. So, I've over-focused on the differences by ignoring useful planning techninques--big-picture questions, learning goals, and things like that, in order to build in language-practice time. I've also ignored the similarities in the need for vocabulary development techniques, but I have a reason for that--middle- and high-school students should deeply learn about 90 content-related words per class per year. If I wait that long for students to learn vocabulary, they'll never get anywhere.
In the past couple of years, my PD has focused on classroom management issues, and higher-order-thinking-skills issues. I've not had a whole lot of world language-specific training since becoming a full-time teacher. I'm not sure how important it would be to have such training--shouldn't I have a pretty good idea of what a Spanish class ought to look like? Well, in a few words, probably, but I don't. I loved learning Spanish, would happily sit and do work sheets based on pedagogical theory from the 17th century, thought that watching movies and slide shows and playing learning games were all pleasant distractions from the serious business of learning. To find that in fact they're an integral part of the learning process, and that failing to include them is one of the more-commonly cited reasons for dropping out of school, means I have little no personal paradigm for a good world language classroom. Below, a list of some of the assumptions I'm working off of, and where I feel I rank on those assumptions.
1.) I am a teacher. This means I teach students. My subject is Spanish, but that's almost incidental. What my students learn from me may well be something other than Spanish, but they should be learning from me. Since I am teaching Spanish, they should learn things like communication strategies, how to learn vocabulary, how to study a culture and live in it (in certain instances), things like that. As I alluded to above, I think I'm pretty good at teaching my students other things--it was once suggested to me that I'm more of a philosophy teacher than a Spanish teacher. This was simultaneously a great compliment (to me--a great insult to actual philosophy teachers), and a heartbreaking strike against my actual job.
2.) 1st-year Spanish classes should be conducted in Spanish, 80% or more of the time. After that, they should always be in Spanish. (I don't remember where I got the 80% number. If I find it, I'll cite my source later.) I'm not good at this. I speak maybe 10 minutes of Spanish in a 60-minute class. That's like 16%.
3.) In order to run a class entirely in Spanish, the students need to have a very strong sense of community, and an ability to self-direct their learning. These things do not happen by accident. I'm not great at this, either. I've focused really hard on making this happen on purpose, and it hasn't stuck as well as I'd hoped
4.) Early-level Spanish classes should focus on speaking communication, with reading and writing as support structures. I do this fairly well, in that we don't do that many writing activities without a fair amount of speaking to go along with it.
5.) Higher-order thinking skills and social justice are important elements of a world language class. I'm getting better at this, but I'm pretty sure I'm sacrificing the communication aspect of class to these goals.
The thing is that I'm not sure what I'm not doing right.
Why this post? Why now?
On Friday, Kris, our teacher coach, observed my 10th grade Spanish II class. It wasn't an unmitigated disaster, but I think it's fair to say that it was a disaster with few mitigations. I talked most of the hour, I did it in English, the board work was a review activity that took 15 minutes, we spent a lot of time going over classroom management issues. I didn't get on to new learning activities until the last 20 minutes of class or so, and even then it was a listening activity. The students didn't make it any secret of how bored they were.
This isn't the first time that happened, and every time they tell me this, I try to ramp up the next week's lesson plan. I'm guessing I just don't understand what my class is supposed to look like, or at least how to make it happen. This is disappointing. The last few years, I've started the school year very excited to get started on the work. The last few years, by the time winter break comes along, I'm demoralized, having performed tremendous amounts of work, seen no real benefit in either learning or classroom management, and with huge amounts of work (which should prove useful, but may well not) to do ahead of me.
So Kris has given me a few pointers, and I'm going to try them out this week. She started out by suggesting I re-think my board work activity. So we'll go from there. Hopefully, we can get me doing what I should have done all along. I suppose it's better that this happened now than after winter break; now I'll have time to implement a few changes and analyze them. (This blog post took over 3 hours, over the course of 2 days, to write. It takes some time. This one was obviously important, but I can't afford to do it all the time.)
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Why teach
Last week I was sick. I was gone two days and had two terribly sub-par lesson plans that day. This was week 2 of school, and we hadn't established norms or talked about substitute behavior.
On the first day, I asked my interim itinerant educator (hey, I was a sub for years, and I'm here to tell you that they deserve a better title.) to ask my Spanish 2 students to review last year's vocabulary. I asked them to do this by drawing a picture of 10 vocabulary words from a single vocabulary group, and provided page numbers where they could find the vocabulary. (If there are any communicative theory practitioners out there, you'll see why this was a sub-par plan.) They did such a TREMENDOUS job of it that I took their assignments, photocopied it onto goldenrod paper, gave each of them a copy, and used it as the core of their review.
Another class had to make themselves ID cards, but the e-mailed form lost its formatting in transition. There was supposed to be a little box in the corner for picture or drawing of themselves, but that box was entirely missing from the 5-line. 1x2 inch assignment. On the assignment the students actually got, there was no space for anything. AJ drew a little smiley face next to the "foto" line anyway. Made me smile after a loooooooong, tiring day.
On the first day, I asked my interim itinerant educator (hey, I was a sub for years, and I'm here to tell you that they deserve a better title.) to ask my Spanish 2 students to review last year's vocabulary. I asked them to do this by drawing a picture of 10 vocabulary words from a single vocabulary group, and provided page numbers where they could find the vocabulary. (If there are any communicative theory practitioners out there, you'll see why this was a sub-par plan.) They did such a TREMENDOUS job of it that I took their assignments, photocopied it onto goldenrod paper, gave each of them a copy, and used it as the core of their review.
Another class had to make themselves ID cards, but the e-mailed form lost its formatting in transition. There was supposed to be a little box in the corner for picture or drawing of themselves, but that box was entirely missing from the 5-line. 1x2 inch assignment. On the assignment the students actually got, there was no space for anything. AJ drew a little smiley face next to the "foto" line anyway. Made me smile after a loooooooong, tiring day.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child:
Social networking and teacher/student relationships
The Century of Web 2.0 has made children of us all. Like children, we all want to play with the shiny new toys that an inexpensive worldwide network of communication (and music videos! And clips from Bollywood-style films starring Natalie Portman! And the latest gossip about the latest subject of gossip! [Not to mention metagossip!] And recipes--my god, the recipes! etc.) provide for us.
And, like children, some have no mechanism for deciding what's appropriate behavior in this completely unprecedented situation. The stories of otherwise intelligent, professional, well-educated and well-intentioned adults getting themselves into trouble by posting pictures on Facebook or MySpace are rampant. This behavior isn't just limited to teachers, either--I seem to remember something about a meteorologist or something getting fired from the TV station she worked for after posting semi-nude pics of herself somewhere.
There seems to be an added element of terrifying when teachers get involved, though. After all, we're supposed to be professional role models. What does it do to classroom management if a student finds out that his teacher likes a good fart joke? For that matter, what does it do to fart jokes?
And so, some school districts are left in the bizarre position of deciding for their teachers what is okay for them to put on the Internet on their own behalf. The last thing a superintendent needs to discover is that the award-winning second-grade teacher had a great time at last week's Hash Bash, or whatever the polemic issue of the community is. So, the superintendent may quietly draw up a draft that says something like, "Technology can be a powerful tool for education, and social networking can be a great way of building relationships. We encourage the use of technology, both amongst our students and our staff. But so help me, if I find your cleavage online, it's ring-a-ding-ding for you, bozo." Then she runs it past the school board, which harrumphs for a while until Mrs. Flanders cries, "The children! Won't someone think of the children?!" and the motion passes unanimously.
That isn't what anybody signed up for--superintendents never intended to be censors of teachers' personal lives; teachers didn't agree to surrender out-of-school rights that everybody apparently has. (Behaving like a jackass in front of the whole world evidently isn't illegal, even for teachers.) Monitoring teachers' behavior is a particularly thorny issue because technology CAN be powerful juju.
So where does this leave us? Are we stuck with the choice between not acting like idiots and the threats of termination from High Command? Or to put it another way, the choice between self-censorship and external censorship? I don't know. I just try to remember not to write anything down that I wouldn't want someone else reading, and to compartmentalize my personal, professional, and political lives. And while we I wait for Web 3.0 and the inevitable rise of the machines, I'll let Louie Armstrong speak for me.
The Century of Web 2.0 has made children of us all. Like children, we all want to play with the shiny new toys that an inexpensive worldwide network of communication (and music videos! And clips from Bollywood-style films starring Natalie Portman! And the latest gossip about the latest subject of gossip! [Not to mention metagossip!] And recipes--my god, the recipes! etc.) provide for us.
And, like children, some have no mechanism for deciding what's appropriate behavior in this completely unprecedented situation. The stories of otherwise intelligent, professional, well-educated and well-intentioned adults getting themselves into trouble by posting pictures on Facebook or MySpace are rampant. This behavior isn't just limited to teachers, either--I seem to remember something about a meteorologist or something getting fired from the TV station she worked for after posting semi-nude pics of herself somewhere.
There seems to be an added element of terrifying when teachers get involved, though. After all, we're supposed to be professional role models. What does it do to classroom management if a student finds out that his teacher likes a good fart joke? For that matter, what does it do to fart jokes?
And so, some school districts are left in the bizarre position of deciding for their teachers what is okay for them to put on the Internet on their own behalf. The last thing a superintendent needs to discover is that the award-winning second-grade teacher had a great time at last week's Hash Bash, or whatever the polemic issue of the community is. So, the superintendent may quietly draw up a draft that says something like, "Technology can be a powerful tool for education, and social networking can be a great way of building relationships. We encourage the use of technology, both amongst our students and our staff. But so help me, if I find your cleavage online, it's ring-a-ding-ding for you, bozo." Then she runs it past the school board, which harrumphs for a while until Mrs. Flanders cries, "The children! Won't someone think of the children?!" and the motion passes unanimously.
That isn't what anybody signed up for--superintendents never intended to be censors of teachers' personal lives; teachers didn't agree to surrender out-of-school rights that everybody apparently has. (Behaving like a jackass in front of the whole world evidently isn't illegal, even for teachers.) Monitoring teachers' behavior is a particularly thorny issue because technology CAN be powerful juju.
So where does this leave us? Are we stuck with the choice between not acting like idiots and the threats of termination from High Command? Or to put it another way, the choice between self-censorship and external censorship? I don't know. I just try to remember not to write anything down that I wouldn't want someone else reading, and to compartmentalize my personal, professional, and political lives. And while we I wait for Web 3.0 and the inevitable rise of the machines, I'll let Louie Armstrong speak for me.
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?
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Successes
This week has been full of the small successes that show progress and make the huge fights worth fighting. My Spanish II students are finally realizing how much Spanish they know, and are starting to use it spontaneously. It was a LOOOONG road to get to this point, but they're there now. My challenge for this week is to encourage this process, not by assigning more of the same, but by providing opportunities for them to use what they know. Of course, that's the challenge EVERY week. But this week--let me put it this way. I've never started a fire, except by means of lighters or matches. But I've seen people who have started fires with flint and steel, and there's a moment when they strike the flint, and the superheated flake of stone hits the dry tinder. In that moment, the person lighting the fire has to move very quickly and very carefully to get the spark to ignite the tinder. It takes a lot of strikes to get it right, and usually more than one spark has to hit the tinder before combustion has occurred. But, if everything goes right--the winds are favorable, the tinder is dry enough, the person has the makings of a fire. I think my Spanish II class is at one of those moments right now.
The other super-big one is World Languages Day. One of the underpinnings of my philosophy is that I would like my students to be citizens of the world after leaving my class. I want them to recognize times when it's okay to transcend tribal loyalties, to know that improving the human condition isn't a zero-sum game--that making one person's life better doesn't mean you have to make someone else's life worse--and to have the sense that their life has (or at least can have) a global significance. To that end, I took 9 students and two parents to Michigan State University on Saturday for World Languages Day. In a day full of sessions, my students learned "survival phrases" from all over the world, and explored some of the cultural artifacts from all over the world. (Did you know that Tajikistan is famous for white-water rafting and cotton exports, and is over 93% mountain? I didn't.) They came out with a sense of the interconnectedness of the world, and had a great time doing it.
The other super-big one is World Languages Day. One of the underpinnings of my philosophy is that I would like my students to be citizens of the world after leaving my class. I want them to recognize times when it's okay to transcend tribal loyalties, to know that improving the human condition isn't a zero-sum game--that making one person's life better doesn't mean you have to make someone else's life worse--and to have the sense that their life has (or at least can have) a global significance. To that end, I took 9 students and two parents to Michigan State University on Saturday for World Languages Day. In a day full of sessions, my students learned "survival phrases" from all over the world, and explored some of the cultural artifacts from all over the world. (Did you know that Tajikistan is famous for white-water rafting and cotton exports, and is over 93% mountain? I didn't.) They came out with a sense of the interconnectedness of the world, and had a great time doing it.
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.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Disappointing feedback
One of my students came back from an absence today. He said to me, "What did we do yesterday?" I replied, "We did a series of listening activities to teach you the new vocabulary." His reply: "Oh, so nothing important."
I have failed to make it clear to my students the ABSOLUTELY VITAL role of listening comprehension in the role of linguistic development.
Back to the drawing board.
I have failed to make it clear to my students the ABSOLUTELY VITAL role of listening comprehension in the role of linguistic development.
Back to the drawing board.
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 4, 2008
Celebrations
As Euler walked through Konigsburg, tracking in his head the number of times he stood on each island and each shore of the river Pregel, trying to make sure he only crossed the bridges once on any given trip, and in the process inventing graph theory, it's fair to wonder if he noticed the flowers blooming, or the play of water on rocks in the river flowing beneath the bridge.
This is the third year I've been working in my current position. After three years, I thought, I should notice significant start-of-year prior knowledge in Spanish from my high school freshmen--after all, I've had them as middle schoolers for two years before this, and most of them have had other Spanish teachers before me. I was a little disappointed this year--I know my middle school curriculum and instructional strategy are not as strong as they should be, but the pre-tests were pretty disappointing. It seemed like I was only teaching the students who were good at or interested in learning languages.
But on Thursday, we had a video watching / listening activity, not always my students' favorite thing. But they did an excellent job of listening actively, trying to understand using context clues and prior knowledge and all the listening strategies I'd taught them up to that point. After we were done, one of the students, a very intelligent student whose favorite class is not Spanish, said to me, "I've never understood before what people meant when they said, 'I can UNDERSTAND a language, but not speak it.' It just didn't make any sense to me. But after this activity, I do. I understood almost everything in the video, but couldn't repeat anything more than a couple of phrases of it."
I don't know if I properly expressed to this how overjoyed I was to hear this. I know that I tried, but there was a lot I didn't tell her. I wanted to tell her about the silent period of language acquisition, comprehensible input, and all sorts of great theory that comes into play when someone learns a second language. I wanted to tell her that she's doing something right, and that maybe that means that I'm doing something right.
I think all I managed, though, was, "YES! ¡Excelente!" And, really, in the face of the level of metacognition this student demonstrated, in the face of that much learning, in the face of so much happening exactly right, this was a sadly inadequate response. But I hope she knows that it was a huge step forward for her, and a great breath of fresh air for me as her teacher.
This is the third year I've been working in my current position. After three years, I thought, I should notice significant start-of-year prior knowledge in Spanish from my high school freshmen--after all, I've had them as middle schoolers for two years before this, and most of them have had other Spanish teachers before me. I was a little disappointed this year--I know my middle school curriculum and instructional strategy are not as strong as they should be, but the pre-tests were pretty disappointing. It seemed like I was only teaching the students who were good at or interested in learning languages.
But on Thursday, we had a video watching / listening activity, not always my students' favorite thing. But they did an excellent job of listening actively, trying to understand using context clues and prior knowledge and all the listening strategies I'd taught them up to that point. After we were done, one of the students, a very intelligent student whose favorite class is not Spanish, said to me, "I've never understood before what people meant when they said, 'I can UNDERSTAND a language, but not speak it.' It just didn't make any sense to me. But after this activity, I do. I understood almost everything in the video, but couldn't repeat anything more than a couple of phrases of it."
I don't know if I properly expressed to this how overjoyed I was to hear this. I know that I tried, but there was a lot I didn't tell her. I wanted to tell her about the silent period of language acquisition, comprehensible input, and all sorts of great theory that comes into play when someone learns a second language. I wanted to tell her that she's doing something right, and that maybe that means that I'm doing something right.
I think all I managed, though, was, "YES! ¡Excelente!" And, really, in the face of the level of metacognition this student demonstrated, in the face of that much learning, in the face of so much happening exactly right, this was a sadly inadequate response. But I hope she knows that it was a huge step forward for her, and a great breath of fresh air for me as her teacher.
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