Lessons from Losing Oneself

When my student teacher went to her second placement school, she was enthusiastic. Early in her teaching block I observed a creative math lesson with manipulatives and interactive technology. Over  the course of subsequent weeks she shared with me that her associate teacher taught by giving out handouts and requiring the students to do seat work without much of any formal, let alone engaging, lesson times.  I encouraged my student teacher to negotiate with her AT so that she could keep introducing new teaching strategies and trying new things with the students for the purpose of engagement. However, by the third visit I observed a lackluster, fairly disorganized lesson. Then, two weeks later during my fourth visit, the student teacher led the students in an educational game she had personally designed. There was laughter and full engagement from the students. I debriefed with her afterwards. What could account for this recovery from the third visit? She explained that she had complied for a while with the AT's style and expectations of herself and her students. She had begun to yell at the students ( like the AT), give minimal direction to them, keep them in their seats, and not smile. On one occasion a student jokingly held on to the sheet she was collecting, thus provoking a minor tug of war for the paper. This upset her to the point of tears. She felt she had no respect from the students. By conforming to her AT's style and manner she had lost herself. She came to that realization, decided to pull herself back together, and began to prepare and execute lessons she knew she could be proud of. I commended her for her insight and personal recovery. Sadly, many teachers let their ideals and personal best slide over time due to the pressures of the job. In the end, my student teacher demonstrated that giving our personal best in teaching is a choice and that often it flies in the face of the ambient culture. Let's make the decision to persist in giving our best! 

Uglifying Aspects of Collective Agreements

School atmospheres get ugly when

1. the us-them mentality becomes more pronounced. Teachers suspect administrations and boards of "taking away" from their contractual rights and freedoms. This can give rise to bean counting menial things like minutes per week of supervision duties.

2. no matter which government is in power, the money is no longer available to increase pay and bank sick days or maintain small class sizes. Suddenly the government teachers may have voted for is the enemy and strike action becomes the go to strategy to provoke a return to bettering working conditions. Teacher unions make the case that if concessions are made to the government, no matter how small, the "claw backs" will be unending after that. 

3. teachers don't want to go on strike, but typically vote overwhelmingly in support of strike action in order to apply pressure on the  board / government and thus, according to union strategy, avoid a strike! When the strike is eventually launched, teachers feel compromised and feel confused about who to blame: the board / government or the union? 

4. the public, especially the private sector, has no patience for the claims teachers are making. This creates in teachers a defensive attitude, and a need to huddle, to resort to group think, and think less for themselves. 

5. although ethically, teachers who disagree with the union have a choice to stand against the majority vote, politically, are afraid to stand alone and speak out on behalf of the needs of the students. 

6. teachers work to rule or because they are demoralized, do the minimum legally required, complain about any requests for additional duties. The school as a work place becomes an "in and out" place, where teachers arrive at the last minute and leave as soon as their teaching day is done. 

7. students are not served. They are tolerated, taught formally, but no extra efforts are made to help them grow beyond the basic expectations of the curriculum.

Teacher in Training Trauma

Lydia was enjoying her practice teaching weeks until her associate teacher was absent due to illness. Her first supply teacher "cancelled" some lessons due to what she deemed to be unacceptable noise levels in the classroom. Lydia was shocked, as the noise level in her opinion was no louder than when the associate teacher was present. She deferred to the supply and asked her what they should do if the lesson was to be cancelled. The supply said she didn't know and eventually let Lydia teach the lesson anyway. 

Then a friend and colleague of the associates began dropping in to check in on things. She began to comment that the lesson Lydia was teaching was not what she should be doing, although Lydia had already received the approval of the associate by email for the lesson in question. 

When the associate returned after a number of days off sick, she filled out Lydia's evaluation report with a number of low performance levels, stating she had a lot to do to improve. Lydia was crushed. What are her options? 

Countering the Almighty Mark

Heard the story of the teacher who said as the student waited for her test results: "You're a 70 percent so it doesn't matter what you got on this test"? How many of our students know they're labeled, stuck based on their average marks? A few are resilient, with enough home support emotionally and sense of self to be able to keep trying without being crippled by poor grades. Many consistently feel they are "stupid" and allow that thought to condition their self-perception. 

Because quantifying student performance is here to stay, what can be done to dull the pain and minimize the negative impact of the almighty mark? Here are some methods and I am interested in your thoughts as well: 

1. mastery learning, where the task isn't complete until it is the very best the student can do 

2. formative assessment overrides summative evaluations: our marks recording should have a few results for each category and a lot of practice tasks that lead up to those few results.

3. stating the big idea for each cycle in terms that the learning goal has relevance to the students' experience. The big idea should answer the question "why should  this be important to me?"

4. selecting content that has intrinsic beauty, appeal. For example, spend the time finding a text to read that illustrates the content of the language we have to teach as well as style, images, topics, point of view that is just fun to read! 

5. designing tasks tare geared to the student's personal interests as well as displaying competency of the required skills  

6. using rubrics that describe the criteria in language the students understands  so that they have a clue as to how to improve without our "professional" interpretation

7. taking the time to write anecdotal, personalized comments on the report card 

8. offering alternative testing procedures besides pen and paper, such as oral questions, multiple intelligence tasks, one on one student presentations instead of in front of the whole class, extra time, etc. 

9. never using the fall back phrase "you have to know this for test". Instead, use phrases like "this is something you can use when....."

10. only testing what you have worked on AND PRACTICED with the students. Resist pulling an old test from the drawer for expediency, regardless of its current validity. 

What Kind of Student Work Should Go on Display?

What's your philosophy of showcasing student work? Do you only put up the best work of the top student performances? Or do you have no problem putting up less than perfect, level 4 work on other merits such as originality or authentic expression of ideas? 

Putting up only the best work gives a good impression to administrators and other teachers. But what does it say to less successful students? Is their expression of ideas and feelings discreditable because it lacks polish? 

Putting up all work that has some merit as a piece of personal expression surely validates the work of students who may have a lot to say but still struggle with form and accuracy of language structures. But is this not to be viewed as glorifying shoddy work? 

How do you strike the balance on this issue? 

Low Turnout Parents' Night

I'm really trying to figure out why so few parents have been coming to "meet the teacher" night at my school. It's not just that they're too busy because I assume they really care about their child's performance at school. But they may be turned off by a triple subliminal message we convey: 

1. Parents' night will be on our terms: before the end of the school day around 3 pm and no later than 8 pm. If parents can't make these hours that's too bad because we are unionized and don't want to go too far in catering to parents' schedules for fear of making too many "concessions" to our employer. 

2. We are guarded and somewhat defensive, armed with marks and percentages to let you know how your child is doing academically.  

3. We don't want to get to know you, so you only have 5 minutes to talk to us before we will move on to the next person. 

Maybe more parents would be motivated to show up if the message was: 

1. We will call you and set up a time to meet with you at your earliest convenience. 

2. We want to hear your perspective on your child's performance in order to gauge whether or not our assessments of your child's performance are indeed accurate. 

3. We would appreciate understanding your cultural and family situation so we are willing to meet you at your home to talk about your child's life outside of school. 

Too radical? Unprofessional risks? Or the pathway to greater student and teacher success? 

Parents versus Professionalism

Recently I read an article in a Toronto newspaper that described parents' reactions to school report card comments as "meaningless". The professional language often becomes a form of edu-babble that has no specific meaning. It is tantamount to using generalities and technical terms to say no more than what anyone could say about any student. Certainly this approach to reporting protects educators from saying something too direct and thus provoking parents' ire. The safe professional way of communicating works against the goal boards of education say they have today to rebuild public trust in the education system. It contributes to further alienating parents from teachers. What is wrong with personal comments written by individual teachers on report cards? Would this more personal, perhaps less "professional" (i.e. downloads from "comment banks") not be more vulnerable AND and more trust-building? 

Oops! Great Recovery in the Middle of a Lesson

The teacher had the manipulatives to teach math and it was a well-organized lesson on fractions for grade 8s: computer with visuals and moveable shapes on the screen, handouts, blocks for students to manipulate and a clear learning goal. The lesson was unfolding seamlessly until she realized that the demonstration of adding fractions using the blocks did not yield the right answer! She carried on by saying "I've done something wrong here" and then refocused the lesson by asking the students to solve the problem: "why didn't my operation using the manipulatives work?" A couple of thoughtful boys came up with the solution: the base, or denominator has to be the same even using blocks, which means that you can't just separate the blocks and add them up separately and get the same result as when they are joined together. 

Example:  a six inch plus a one inch over two five inch blocks joined together is 7/10, but a six inch over a five inch block plus a one inch over a five inch block understood as 6/5 + 1/5 does not equal 7/10, but 7/5 or 14/10! The problem to solve in math became the teacher's problem for the students to solve, and it worked! Nice recovery for the purpose of learning! Instead of a wounded ego trying to cover up, deflect or deceive, this teacher used her mistake to help students learn! 

Parent Teacher Interview On the Defensive

Mr. Robb was in his second year of teaching. He felt confident about parent-teacher night. He had ample data on his students to support the grades they were earning. He was assigned his own portable as the location for parents of his students to meet him. Mr. Drumble, Mike’s father,walked in and smiled. Mr. Robb shook his hand and invited him to sit down, then proceeded to explain his son’s current grade and the highs and lows of his performance thus far. After a minute or so Mr. Drumble interrupted Mr. Robb’s explanations with “Mike hasn’t had a mark this low before. Your way of evaluating doesn’t seem fair”. Mr. Robb was taken aback. He had the results right in front of him. He had explained the results and now he is accused of being unfair! He retorted “I don’t know how you think my grading is unfair. Ask anyone who works here and they’ll tell you I take my job very seriously.” Mr. Drumble went on: “ Are you sure you can’t adjust your weightings so that the marks are more in line with past performances?” Mr. Robb replied “I can’t change what’s been submitted for reporting, but if Mike is not happy with his grade, he can talk to me about doing some extra work to pull his average up.” Mr. Drumble left unsatisfied and Mr. Robb felt like all the hard work he’d been doing was not appreciated.