The Elephant in the Room is sitting on my chest…

This morning, we had our monthly faculty meeting.  We discussed important dates and events that will happen in the final push of the year – 37 instructional days left!  I can’t believe it.

Then the tone got heavy.  We talked about all the state mandated changes to happen before September.  Let me preface this by saying any one of these changes is a major undertaking in itself, and each seems (in its ideology) like a great thing to be doing, but we have 6.  Yup, six.  And about 2 months to learn how to do each one correctly and start implementing them.  And, oh yeah, teach your content as well.  And, each of these changes comes with their own set of terminology and acronyms that we must now understand upon hearing.  As each one of these six new state mandates went on the board, my head spun a bit more, and I sunk lower in my chair, and I started thinking just how good North Carolina was looking right about now…

1. Benchmark Testing – These tests will take place every 6 weeks.  They are not the typical tests that you already give to your students (we wouldn’t want to make this easy on you).  These tests, ideally, will help teachers to know what needs to be retaught and what students really aren’t getting the content.  Again, this is somehow different from what teachers already do…don’t ask me how.

2. Student Learning Objectives (SLO’s) – Many mixed messages about what these actually are and their purpose.  I thought I understood it, and then they changed the wording again.  It seemed to me that they were a way for non-regents teachers to be evaluated on student performance as part of the APPR.  However, now Regents teachers are also included in this in some way, which is the part that doesn’t make sense to me.  Regents teachers will now be evaluated on how their students perform on the Regents, and meeting these objectives (that they also have to create, by the way).

3. Data Driven Instruction (DDI) – Theoretically, this makes perfect sense.  You change what you are teaching based on the percentage of students not understanding material.  Where it starts not making sense is how this is different from Benchmark Testing (which I still can’t figure out how that’s different from what we do already…more paperwork maybe?)

4. Common Core State Standards (CCSS) – This basically states that all content areas need to include literacy.  Each teacher must create 2 units (1 each semester) in which literacy is embedded and an integral part of their unit, no matter the content area.  Again, don’t ask me how this is different from what we already do…probably paperwork again.

5. Dignity for All Students Act (DASA) – An important thing to happen; unfortunately it may be eclipsed by the 4 preceding changes.  This act makes punishment more severe for bullies and hopes to cut down on the bullying problems that seem to be plaguing our society.  However, this too has it’s own separate training and procedures, that take more time and energy away from planning and implementing lessons.  I believe that this is a valued change, and will eventually be as routine as training for sexual harassment, blood borne pathogens, and CPS reporting.  But starting it now, the timing just seems to stink.

6. Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) – This has been a huge hot-topic for our state over the past year.  It encompasses the first 3 changes on this list, and then some.  I won’t even get too much into this one because it’s so up-in-the-air and no one (anywhere) can seem to figure out what is expected of us at the state level, nor agree on how this should be set-up.

Like I said, all of these are theoretically important and necessary changes to the education process.  Theoretically, they will make us greater teachers, and therefore our students will benefit more from that.  However, because all these changes are happening at the same time, they’ll be lucky if there are any teachers left in New York State crazy enough to pull it off.

Do you remember when you were a kid and you thought it was strange to see your teacher outside of school because you just didn’t picture them having a life outside of school?  Now it will be even more rare an occasion.

Active Learners for the Future

I am a firm believer that students need to be actively engaged to learn.  The best teachers, and by far the most memorable lessons, incorporate active involvement in the classroom.  My favorite math teacher in high school taught us about locus points by taking us outside and rearranging us as locus points, situating us around stationary objects such as trees and sidewalks.  My second favorite math teacher taught us pre-calculus by encouraging us to explore various graphs to come up with rules for graphing them, and provided limited guidance in this process.  It was maddening, but I better learned how various types of graphs match up with their equations.

Nay-sayers to this method of teaching claim that teachers are being lazy, making the students do all the work.  I believe it’s quite the contrary.  Teachers have to take a lot of time and effort to plan a lesson that students will run themselves.  Teachers have to anticipate every direction that the lesson may go in.  Teachers have to remain astute to the conversations and actions around the classroom as an active lesson is being implemented, to make sure the students are staying focused to the task at hand.  People that oppose this method may also claim that with time constraints, material needs to be covered before state tests, and that active learning takes more time to implement.  While that may be true, wouldn’t it be better to have students learn the content better than try to race through content only touching on brief aspects?  Wouldn’t you get more out of your students with active learning because students would want to come to class and to stay attentive while there?

The alternative to active learning creates passive learners.  These are the types of learners that sit in class soaking up knowledge, just to squeeze it back onto an assessment and maybe, if they are lucky, to retain it.  These are the learners that never truly learn how to learn, or to do anything independently.  When they leave high school, they are lost in a sea of other passive learners, and do not know how to actively solve problems, or even how to find problems to solve.  When we create passive learners, we are setting them up for failure.

I believe that it is active learning that inspires students to continue learning.  I believe that it is active learning that causes students to continue to ask questions, and creates a spark for their passion of wanting to know more.  Active learners possess intrinsic motivation, the highest and most effective means of motivation, and the hardest for a teacher to cultivate.  However, once an active learner has been created, they are unstoppable, always looking for the answers to life’s questions, and always coming up with new questions to ask.  Why would we not want to have active learners in our society, in our future, and more importantly, in our classrooms?

Disciplinary Dilemma

High school students are an interesting specimen.  They are old enough to realize that the work you “make them” do may not apply directly to what they want to do with their lives.  Of course, they don’t know what they want to do with the rest of their lives, so how do they really know whether they’ll need it or not?

Like math for instance: how will they know that they don’t need geometry?  What if they decide they want to be an architect, or contractor, or even a lawyer (proofs)?

High school students also act very similarly to elementary students.  They need to be engaged to stay interested in their work.  They need someone that believes that they can succeed to believe it themselves.  They need tough love and structure to survive, even though they would never admit it.

The dilemma that I have is being tough enough on the people that are assigned in my room so that they will have that tough love and structure that they need to succeed, but to also make a welcoming learning environment, but not so welcoming that people feel they need to get in trouble just to be in here.

ALC Revisited

It is now nearing the end of November, and I believe I have made a small impact on the lives of a few students here in the Alternative Learning Center.

I’ve only had a few referrals sent to me for behavioral reconstruction: drug use, fighting, insubordination.  And with each of these cases, no matter why they come to me, the main focus is to keep them up-to-speed with their academic work so that when they get back into the classroom, it’s like they never left.

We also spend about a period or 2 a day talking about real-life discussions, usually based around why they might be in my room in the first place.  This is our Character Education time.  For example, with the students that made bad decisions regarding drugs, I found some (corny) videos about teen drug use on Discovery Streaming.  Corny as they may have been, it gave us great discussion points.  There was a part in the video that talked about parents who use drugs, and how it effects their children.  I told them as we started that section that I was not playing it because I thought badly of their parents.  I was playing it because with the teen pregnancy rate on the rise, odds are they’ll be parents before long, and need to consider it from the parent’s point of view, bringing in a whole new discussion topic.

There are also people that get referred to me for academic reasons.  I see several students for help in preparing for the January New York State Regents.  They’ve struck deals with the principal and the teacher for credit recovery (I failed a class, instead of taking it again, I’ll get a crash-course in what I need to pass the Regents, and move on to other things come Spring).  Those are students that I am scheduled to see on a regular basis.  Then there are the students who I get a head’s up about from their teachers, saying that they’re on the verge of failing, and maybe they just need some extra support.  I usually have to hunt those students down in their study halls, because 80% of the time, the students that need help don’t want to ask for it.  Our school also puts out a weekly list of who is failing what classes, and how many.  I have made it my goal to focus on students that are failing 3 or more subjects to help to shorten this list.  Of course, sometimes my schedule is a little full to put my full attention on this dire task.

In all of these situations in which I’m seeing students, first and foremost I try to show them that I care.  Many of the students that come to me have lost hope long ago.  They cannot see the light at the end of the high school tunnel.  Sometimes they need help realizing that the “real-world” will be here before you know it, and there’s at least one person in this world (this school?)  that cares how you enter it.  Sometimes, that can make all the difference.

Teacher quotes

Here are some notable quotes that I’ve heard myself say from time to time.  Feel free to borrow them with your students:

“Yes, I’m expecting you to think, and you know what?  Your employers will too!”

“I cannot tell you off the top of my head what you will need to know this for later in life.  All I can tell you is that some day, you may regret not taking the time to learn it now.  Plus, you want to graduate, right?  You want to leave and be successful?  Then you need to pass this course, and you need to do this work to pass it.”

“Why do you have to write it out?  Well, I’m not psychic.  I can’t get inside your head.  Writing it out is one way to help me see how you got that answer (what you think about this topic).”

“I know my voice is annoying, but it sticks in your head, doesn’t it?  If I keep saying what you’re supposed to do over and over again, it’s annoying, but you’re less likely to forget.”

“I know you don’t care, but I do.  And I haven’t given up on you yet.  So please don’t give up on me.”

“I know you hate essays, and so do I.  But they are a necessary evil.  Like I said, I’m not psychic.  And we need to practice in order to get better.  Once you get better at something, they’re not so bad anymore.”

A new look at Classroom Management

Yesterday, my school had the opportunity to listen to Brian Mendler speak.  It was refreshing, to have a professional development speaker that moved around, and didn’t rely on his powerpoint, and didn’t read to us; that engaged us and made us feel valued, and motivated us.  Well, me at least.

Something that students appreciate from teachers is their honesty.  Brian Mendler showed us that yesterday.  He honestly told us about real situations, his real story.  He honestly told us about how teachers are perceived from students, and we all laughed – because it was true!  And you could tell the nerves he was hitting by the people how were uncomfortably laughing versus people who were out-rightly laughing.  He talked about teachers that were rigid and policies set in stone, and people who got caught in power struggles.  And then he talked about strategies to do instead of the rigid ones that we all learned from our own teachers.

He talked about empowering the students.  Students rarely get a chance to have power, but they will try to get it whether you give it to them or not.  They can either fight for it, or you can give it to them.  And it doesn’t have to be an “I give up” form of teaching (which I’ve also seen in classrooms).  It’s giving students power in a constructive way.  Let them omit a question on the test and replace it with one that they really know the answer to.  Let them ham it up in front of the class for 3 minutes to start the ball rolling (instead of them hamming it up during your lesson).  Talk with them individually – it doesn’t have to be a conversation, you could be giving them positive (or negative) feedback in their ear for only them to hear.  But, make sure you equally give positive feedback to cancel out the negative.

He talked about keeping the kids in the classroom as long as possible.  Now there are some veteran teachers that cringe at this.  But let me explain why it’s important.  Students know that if they bug you enough, you’ll kick them out of their class.  It’s not a punishment for them if you kick them out of math.  And when they inevitably come back, you’ve got an even bigger problem than you started with.  They have all the power and they got it the wrong way.  And you let them have it that way.  So how do you diffuse the situation?  Humor.  So they call you names.  You can take it, you’re the adult, remember?  What do you tell your kids to do in a fight situation?  Walk away.  Try it.  Let them have the last word.  They need it to save face to their friends, and they will have the last word if it’s the last thing they do in your class.

He talked about Multiple Intelligences learning, indirectly – using the gym for teaching graphing, singing songs to learn content in any area, working in groups to work on inter- and intrapersonal personalities.

We shared strategies with each other, and practiced some of the ones he discussed:  4-2-1, group work with roles (leader, writer, presenter, etc.), music stands, green-yellow-red cups, carpet squares – the list goes on forever.

It was refreshing to get back to an idea of teaching because we’re passionate about it, not just because we have to.  I don’t want to be the kind of teacher that counts down the days, months, and even years to retirement.  And I don’t want my kids to have those kinds of teachers either.