Expected, Inspected, & Respected.
"We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience."
-John Dewey |
"We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience."
-John Dewey |
I recently finished reading Daniel Pink's When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. I've always enjoyed reading these kinds of popular science books but I read them differently now than I used to. Now, I'm always on the lookout for how the research might apply to my teaching. Here are a few of the nuggets I found in When: The first is that having math in the first two periods of the day rather than later in the day increases the math GPA of students. This is because tasks requiring analytical skills are performed better in the mornings when most of us are at our most methodical. Tasks requiring insight, however, are more easily tackled in the afternoons when we have fewer inhibitions. This is because being insightful requires us to be less vigilant about being methodical. Pink uses the following riddle to illustrate what he means by a problem that requires insight: "Ernesto is a dealer in antique coins. One day someone brings him a beautiful bronze coin. The coin has an emperor's head on one side and the date 544 BC stamped on the other. Ernesto examines the coin - but instead of buying it, he calls the police. Why?" Those who attempted this puzzle in the afternoon had a better chance of solving it than those who attempted it in the morning. (The answer is that if the coin had been minted in 544 BC, it couldn't have been stamped with a BC because no one would know about Christ's birth for another 544 years.) According to Pink, the research suggests that because of the human body's natural rhythms during the day, students might perform best in classes like math during their optimal time of day in the mornings and leave subjects such as art and creative writing for the afternoons during their non-optimal time of day. Another interesting thing that relates to education is the idea of chronotype. Pink says you can find your chronotype by answering the following three questions:
Pink states that, "After genetics, the most important factor in one's chronotype is age. As parents know and lament, young children are generally larks. They wake up early, buzz around throughout the day, but don't last very long beyond the early evening. Around puberty, those larks begin morphing into owls... By some estimates, teenagers' midpoint of sleep is 6 a.m. or even 7 a.m., not exactly in synch with most high school start times" (Pink, 29). In fact, "Today, fewer than one in five U.S. middle schools and high schools follow the [American Association of Pediatrics'] recommendation to begin school after 8:30 a.m. The average start time for American adolescents remains 8:03 a.m., which means huge numbers of schools start in the 7 a.m. hour" (Pink, 92). That is nonsense. Along with findings about the timing of the school day, there was some interesting research about the impact of breaks on testing. "Taking a test in the afternoon without a break produces scores that are equivalent to spending 2 weeks less in school each year and having parents with lower incomes and less education. But taking the same test after a twenty- to thirty-minute break leads to scores that are equivalent to students spending three additional weeks in the classroom and having somewhat wealthier and better-educated parents. And the benefits were the greatest for the lowest-performing students" (Pink, 57). The nonsensical part of this is that many school systems cut back on breaks and recess for children so that they can achieve higher test scores, which ends up having the opposite effect. The final tidbit I'll share has to do with how we give good news and bad news. Research shows that when people have the choice of getting the good news or the bad news first, they tend to choose the bad news first. However, when people are responsible for giving good news and bad news, they tend to give the good news first. This suggests that teachers shouldn't give feedback beginning with praise and finishing with criticism. My opinion is that strengths-based feedback should begin and end with good news, as it does in the good old compliment sandwich.
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On Wednesday, I led my fellow pre-service teachers in a 10 minute math activity at the University of Winnipeg. I began with a quick slideshow and explanation of how to be a good skeptic:
Then, I invited my classmates to follow these instructions:
If you care to see the raw footage of my presentation, here it is:
And if you care to read my reflection on the presentation, read on.
As a former basketball player, I have long known the value of reviewing game tape. It allows a player to watch their actions with a critical eye, and make adjustments to improve their performance. As an EA, I thought that this common practice in athletics would be very useful if applied to the teaching profession. Simple mistakes such as speaking too quickly or softly, or not waiting long enough before soliciting answers from students could easily be corrected if a teacher was able to see themselves teaching. It surprises me that in the Education After-Degree program, although we have been required to engage in critical self-reflection many times, we have never been required to use video to do so. Without video, all we have to rely on is our own biased and faulty memories of how we believe we performed. As we all have a need to protect our egos, our memories generally paint us in a fairly rosy light. I think it is a missed opportunity to go through a Teacher Certification program without being required to watch oneself teach - especially when most people have smartphones with video recording and playback capability. The barriers to reviewing educational game tape are more psychological than technological. It can be uncomfortable to watch yourself and think, “Is that what I sound like? I didn’t know I said ‘um’ so much. Why did no one tell me I flail my arms like a maniac when I’m telling a story?” However, although the process may be cringeworthy, self-critical reflection should not be shied away from. It should be emphasized and esteemed in Canadian pedagogical practice as a way of showing competence, just as it is in the culture of Japan’s education system. That is why I took the initiative to record myself today. I watched the footage without the rose coloured glasses of memory, viewing my performance under the cold fluorescent lights, warts and all, for a more honest self-reflection.
As I do when assessing my students, I’ll start with what I thought were the positives of my presentation before I move on to the criticisms: I seemed confident and well prepared, my speaking voice was loud and clear, and the quality of the activity was excellent. My classmates seemed to be challenged by it and enjoyed the process of solving the questions and proving it to their partners.
Now for the really valuable part of reviewing the videotape: identifying areas of improvement. Although I seemed well prepared, it bothered me that because of my nerves or my forgetfulness, I forgot to reveal the MATH t-shirt that I had worn specifically for this presentation and didn’t use my daughter’s microphone with the built-in speaker.
It was better that I forgot the gimmicks than the content of the presentation, but I think it definitely would have been funnier. Especially with reverb set to maximum echo.
One key aspect that I would not have noticed without video evidence was how quickly I was speaking. If I could do it again, I would have explained the slideshow more slowly and deliberately. I have several EAL students in my practicum class this Spring and I need to become practiced at slowing down for maximum understanding. At least part of my rushing cadence was due to the nerves that come with presenting to my peers. (There goes my ego trying to protect itself again.) I will have to film myself in front of my practicum class to be sure that I succeed in making that change. Another thing I would change would be my instructions for picking up the two pieces of paper from the front of the room. At first I said that one partner should come and get one of each. That was fine. Then, when someone asked for clarification, I said it should be one sheet per partner, confusing things more than if I had said nothing at all. Whoops. Something that I wonder about is if it would have been better to announce the mathematical goals of the activity at the start of presentation, rather than launching straight into the explanation of how a good skeptic operates. Someone told me after the presentation that they were confused at first because it didn’t seem to have anything to do with math. I feel like I am getting conflicting messages about the efficacy of mystery as a pedagogical tool; some professors say that students should always know exactly what is going on while some say that a mystery can drive curiosity. I can see the logic in both arguments but it’s unclear to me when (or if) deliberate obfuscation can be beneficial. During math class on Jan. 24, my fellow pre-service teachers and I played a game where the goal was practicing turning fractions into decimals. The game was ok, but the really fun part for me was working with my opponent to tweak the game and make it even better. Here are the rules we started with:
Base Game Rules
Jack = 11 Queen = 12 King = 13
My partner and I both quickly realized that it was usually unnecessary to convert the fractions into decimals because we could already see who was going to win the round by comparing the fractions. Here's how we decided to modify the game in order to achieve a deeper level of understanding between fractions and decimals. Modified Rules
I imagine this game has already been invented and ours was simply a re-invention, but it was still kind of thrilling to come up with the ideas and play test them. The actual game was almost as fun as inventing it! There were plenty of times when we immediately knew the decimal because it was 1/2 or 3/3 or 2/10 but it's fine that no points were scored on those rounds because that builds automaticity with fractions and conversions.
Every day during my practicum in December, I read my Grade 8 class a poem. Knowing that they are crazy about memes, on December 11th, I read them two pieces that have been thoroughly memified: This is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams and For Sale: baby shoes, never worn, apocryphally written by Ernest Hemingway. I put together a small compilation of mashups and song parodies from Twitter for their enjoyment. Now, you too, may enjoy.
I had thought that they wouldn't recognize the songs and be familiar with Twitter but I had it the wrong way around: None of them had a Twitter account and they all seemed to recognize the songs. I think I may have enjoyed this poem of the day more than they did, but sometimes it's hard to tell - Grade 8 kids are always trying so hard to be cool.
When preparing for my practicum at General Wolfe in September, I tried to think of a way that I could benefit the school outside of my contributions in the classroom, similar to the LEGO Club I started at Strathcona School last year. I initially proposed launching a lunch-time board games club, but my principal said there was no room in the schedule for any more lunch-time clubs. It didn't take long for a new idea to present itself. Although classes begin at 9:00am, students often get to school much earlier than that and sometimes get themselves into trouble because there isn't much to do except sit around in the hallways. On the first day of my practicum, I had to break up a full-on wrestling match. I noticed that without having an appropriate focus for their energy, some students were behaving poorly. Meanwhile, the gym was locked and dark. I asked if I could supervise in the gym before school and just like that, I'd found my niche. Each day of my practicum, I came to school early to open the gym, take out some equipment, and supervise - occasionally running basketball drills for those who wanted to practice.
There are hundreds of studies telling us that exercise is crucial not only for physical health, but for cognitive function and learning as well. Dylan Wiliam included 20 minutes of morning exercise for students as one of the main pillars of middle school reform in this BBC documentary. There is no doubt that having an open-gym from 8:00-8:45 would be a good thing for those kids who showed up to school early. It would keep them out of trouble as well as give a boost to their learning during the day. The question that remains for me is whether or not I should advertise this open-gym time to the rest of the school. The reason I "wrestle" with making this more broadly known is that I know how absolutely rabid the students at General Wolfe are about basketball. I know that many students who would normally sleep as late as possible, would set an alarm and wake up early to come and play ball. I wouldn't want to be responsible for students losing out on the 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep they need. Ideally, the choice between sleep and exercise should not be an either/or question - both are vitally important for good health. But in this case, should I risk student sleep deprivation by making an announcement to the whole school about the opportunity to come to an early open-gym, or should I refrain from encouraging sleep deficits by keeping quiet about it? I'm leaning toward advertising the availability of the open-gym but I'd love to hear what you think. Leave a comment below or get in touch on Facebook or Twitter. On the second last day of my winter practicum, I gave my students the opportunity to give me some feedback to improve my teaching. These are the results: Section 1: Evaluating Teacher Skills (Explicit Curriculum) Section 2: Evaluating Teacher Skills (Implicit Curriculum) Section 3: Other Thoughts So, there are some actionable items for improvement here. It's an easy fix to slow things down and write bigger. I only wish I'd known earlier so I could have made the adjustments right away. Maybe during my next practicum block, I should have students give me a simpler evaluation on a weekly basis, where they could write one thing they liked about my teaching, one thing they didn't like, and any suggestions they might have for improvement. As for the comments about a repetitive schedule, that was the point: consistent effort towards a goal - read and write every day to become better readers and writers. I also think that one of the reasons I rarely had any behaviour issues in my ELA classes as compared to my social studies classes (even though they were the same students) was that they knew what to expect, knew what to do, and knew how to do it because of the repetition. This evaluation was also written before we played Wits and Wagers and Minute to Win it games during our holiday party on the last day of school before break, so the fun was yet to come. I wanted to use Google forms for this teacher evaluation because it automatically gives you such a lovely visual representation of the data. However, as I didn't have ready access to the computer lab, the students filled out paper questionnaires and I input all of these student responses over the winter break.
As I was entering responses on our home computer, Andrea asked, "Don't you have a computer in the classroom?" And I said, "Yes, but only one - not enough for everyone to fill out a form at the same time." And she came up with the brilliant and obvious idea of just having students fill out the form one at a time while the rest of the class was reading or writing. I will remember that for my practicum in spring. Yesterday, one of my professors told a story today about how one of his teachers came to him as an administrator with a problem: he had a student who considered himself a neo-Nazi and the teacher wanted to know what he should do about that. Should he let the student share his views in class or should he shut him down and not allow the debate to happen at all? My professor said that as long as the student was being respectful, he should be allowed to say what he believed. The teacher should model democracy in the classroom through free speech, letting reasoned debate reveal the ignorance of the student's position. One problem with this stance is that it defeats itself. It is not possible for someone to espouse Nazi doctrine and remain respectful. Just because you can avoid using the N-word while saying people of African descent should be enslaved or slaughtered, does not mean it should be allowed in class. Another problem is that free speech only applies to relations between citizens and their government. It means you can't be prosecuted for things you say in public (within limits), it does not mean that you, or the rest of your students have an obligation to listen to hateful rhetoric. I wouldn't tolerate intolerance in my classroom and lend legitimacy to a student with alt-right arguments by giving them a platform, no matter how small that stage might be. Instead, I would talk with them one-on-one, maybe discuss with their parents (as long as I was fairly certain that's not where the student was getting it from), or get in touch with a former neo-Nazi like Maxime Fiset to correspond with the student directly. I didn't say any of this to my professor because it was 5:00pm, class was almost over, and I'd been at the University since 8:00am. I was half hoping that one of my classmates would do the dirty work of challenging the professor - it would prolong the class, perhaps, but we would have the opportunity to find out if there was more to the story and to hear from other perspectives in the class as to what the best approach may be. It might be worthwhile bringing it up again because there's a good chance this professor would be willing to have an open and honest discussion about it. Update:I raised the issue yesterday in class and we all had a good discussion about it. It became clear that my classmates agreed with me about not letting hate have a platform (at least the ones who spoke up). However, it became less clear as to what the situation in the teacher's classroom really was. He said that maybe the student in question was making a presentation about Nazi motivations during WWII without saying that was how things ought to be. In that case, I could see the value in allowing the student to present. If you simply demonize the people who believed (and continue to believe) in Nazi propaganda without looking at their motivations and underlying beliefs, it's difficult to understand why the war happened at all.
Our professor wanted to make the point that if we ever have to teach family studies, there will be sensitive subjects that come up and we will have students who have opinions on things like homosexuality and abortion that we won't agree with and we need to have a plan in place for how to handle those things when the time comes. Message received. As I shared earlier, my English classes during the month of December generally followed this outline:
The the quick write only had three rules:
I knew that it would be difficult for students to write without something to respond to or some kind of prompt; it's easy to be intimidated by a blank page. To make it as easy as possible for them to fill up the page, I told them they could write about what they had for breakfast, a favourite story, the plot of a movie, describe a tiny moment, write down the lyrics to a song, or even practice their autograph if they wanted to. I also put the poem of the day immediately before the quick write so that they could respond to that if they wanted to and posted a prompt about the poem on the projector at the front of the room. The secondary reason for these poems and prompts was to get the students thinking about possible topics for their personal narratives that they would be handing in. Here are some of the poems and prompts that I provided: "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred Lord Tennyson "The Man He Killed" by Thomas Hardy There were two poems on this day. We did an activity where I read The Charge of the Light Brigade and afterwards, told them to stand on the far left side of the room if you thought war was senseless, on the far right side of the room if you thought war was full of heroism, and somewhere in the middle of the room if you thought it was a mixture. Most people stood near the centre. I asked them to do the same thing again after reading them The Man He Killed to see if their answers might change. Most people still chose to stand in the centre of the room. The stories that came out of this writing prompt were my favourite. "As I Grew Older" by Langston Hughes "Beethoven" by Shane Koyczan "Knock Knock" by Daniel Beaty (Not really a poem) "Point B" by Sarah Kay (TED talk spoken word poetry) We didn't do a quick write on that day. "If" by Rudyard Kipling I also threw in one of my favourite clips about how to shape a narrative by Kurt Vonnegut: "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou There are many children of immigrants in my classroom, so this quick write produced some interesting stories about how their families came to Canada. "Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou There was no quick write on this day. "A Hero" by Robert William Service "This Is Just To Say" by William Carlos Williams I'll have a separate post about this one, because it was on a grander scale than most. Here is the prompt from the poem: For another change of pace, I read the illustrated children's book, When I was Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant and prompted them with this: "Success is Counted Sweetest" by Emily Dickinson "Like Lilly Like Wilson" by Taylor Mali "Hero Worship" by Robert William Service I always looked forward to reading the poem of the day but I was never quite sure if the students enjoyed it. I threw myself into the readings, making them as dramatic as I possibly could, memorizing Carroll's "Jabberwocky" so that I could act out the slaying of the beast, or shouting, "Not good enough!" as loud as I could during Koyczan's "Beethoven". The only feedback I'd get were nervous snickers and silence. But at the end of December, I had the class fill out a teacher evaluation and received several positive comments about how they liked the way I read them poems.
I've been working in schools as an educational assistant (EA) since 2004 and I've lost count of how many times I've heard students call each other gay. My response to this has evolved over the years. Early on, to my shame, I would sometimes ignore it, telling myself that they weren't trying to be hateful. Other times, I would pull the student aside, get down to their level, and take an empathetic approach, saying something like, "You have sideburns. How would you feel if people called each other 'sideburns' when they wanted to call each other stupid?" Students often responded by saying, "I wouldn't care." The older I get, the angrier it makes me to hear this kind of ignorance repeated in classrooms and hallways. I'm not angry with the students as much as with the insidious culture of casual homophobia and bigotry that was here long before they were. It perpetuates itself through off colour jokes, insults, and endorsements in the media. For instance, Community is one of my favourite TV shows, but scenes like this: give students implicit permission to continue thinking that it's an acceptable and humorous term to use when insulting their friends. It's not. If kids continue to mindlessly parrot casual hate by their peers, older siblings, and Youtube celebrities without being challenged, the cycle of bigotry is allowed to continue; it's easy for a way of acting to become a way of thinking. I decided a few years ago not to let it slide anymore. I also thought that this particular infraction deserved a categorically different response from things like running in the halls or being loud in the library. Instead of getting down on their level, I would tower over them and quietly, between my teeth, seeming barely able to contain my fury, say something like, "I don't think you realize the number of people you're hurting when you say hateful stuff like that. I don't think you're trying to be hateful, I just don't think you know how many people here have cousins, or brothers, or sisters, or friends who are gay and feel just awful right now because of you. You don't know who might be gay and feel like they have to hide it because of people who say those kinds of things. I don't want to hear that kind of thing from you again." The emotional delivery of the message and the fact that it's not a question usually means I don't get any snarky back talk. I had a feeling that I would eventually hear someone call one of their classmates gay during my practicum and was prepared to take that simmering anger speech and turn up the volume to deliver an impactful message to the whole class at the same time, instead of having to deliver the speech multiple times to different individuals. On November 28th, I had the opportunity to try this tactic and it definitely had an impact. My cooperating teacher (CT) was away for the day and, as it was early in the practicum block, some of the students were pushing boundaries to see what they could get away with. When a student (the same one who gave me problems during the snow ball fight writing activity) exclaimed, "That's so gay!", I let him and the entire class know, in a booming and angry voice, that homophobia was absolutely unacceptable in my classroom. The room went silent as 26 pairs of eyes turned from their writing workshop activities to watch me shout at a boy who tried unsuccessfully to defend himself against my anti-homophobic tirade; I would not hear his attempted explanation of why it was ok for him to say that in class. By the end of it, the class (and probably the class next door) knew exactly where I stood on the issue of using the word "gay" in a derogatory manner. I'd like to think that this was an effective intervention but the truth is that I really don't know. According to Chip and Dan Heath, my simple, unexpected, and emotional message would have a high probability of sticking in the brain. However, I don't know if it actually changed any minds or if it just means students will be more careful about how they speak around me in the future. I also don't know if the damage I did to any relationships with my students outweighed the good it may have done. All I know is that I would like everyone, and Hollywood in particular, to follow jomny sun's lead and leave ironic bigotry behind. Let me know what you think is the best way to deal with this problem. Is it sometimes a good idea to yell or make an example of someone in front of the class? I think this incident was a big part of the reason why I continued to have problems with this particular student throughout the rest of my practicum. Was damaging our student-teacher relationship worth it? Did it change any minds or did it simply change his behaviour? Does that even matter? If it's easier to act your way into right thinking than to think your way into right action, is simply stopping the offensive action a win? What strategies have worked well for you in your classroom? Leave a comment below to share wisdom or your own experiences with casual bigotry.
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David Wiebe
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