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 |
For the final project of this summer course, we were asked to do/create/present something that would be useful to us and demonstrate our learning from the course. It was so liberating to be given the freedom to pursue what we deemed valuable to us as developing educators! This summer, I had wanted to learn how to screencast, how to use assistive chrome extensions for reading, writing, and accessibility, and how to generate closed captions in Youtube. This project was the perfect motivator to get me off my butt,
learn some new skills,
and get some university credit as a bonus.
I wanted to learn how to screencast because I will be able to use it to pass information on to my students, to empower my students to learn by teaching others, to allow those students lacking confidence to present slideshows and other materials without having to physically be in front of an audience, and to facilitate various other classroom activities.
I wanted to learn to use assistive Chrome extensions so that I will have the expertise necessary for me to differentiate for all learners in my classroom when it comes to technology. Closed captioning is important for similar reasons of accessibility. Without further ado,
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I felt inspired today by the first words Mr. Kanamori says to his 4th grade class on the first day of school. He asks, "What's the most important thing this year?" and they answer, "To be happy!" His overarching goal for his class is how to live a happy life. It's the kind of idea that's so simple and seemingly obvious that you kick yourself for not having thought of it yourself. In early and middle years especially, students should learn to love coming to school, to live with meaning, to grieve together, serve each other, and enjoy the one life we have.
I'd like to share a piece of wisdom we received from Professor German. When faced with a stressful situation, try to handle it with GRACE. You can find more details on the hows and whys of the method here.
When my father had a stroke at 50 years old, I attributed its cause, at least in part, to the stresses of teaching. I concluded that in order to live a long and happy life, I would have to find a profession that was relatively stress free. Nothing is entirely stress free, but being an educational assistant was in a field I was interested in and was certainly less stress than being a teacher. I enjoyed the work and was content with my choice. I began to change my perspective on stress when I saw this TED talk by Kelly McGonigal, which led to a re-examination of my choices. She argues that stress is good for you if you can change your mindset toward it. She says that when you believe that stress is bad for you, it is, and when you believe that stress is your body's way of preparing to do its best, that's what it does. This mindset shift saves lives and makes you a better person! McGonigal says, If you’re anxious and your heart is pounding and you’re sweating, if you’re able to remember that: Okay, well this anxiety is distracting or distressing, but I also know that that anxiety, that heart pounding is my body trying to give me energy that in some way my body and brain are trying to rise to the challenge. Literally just remembering that five seconds when you’re experiencing anxiety can transform that anxiety into a physiological state that actually gives you more energy, that actually gives you more confidence. And being carefree is overrated anyway. Who wants to be free of care? I care a lot! McGonigal cites studies showing how high levels of stress are "associated with a greater chance that you would say you learned something interesting yesterday, a greater chance that you experienced joy, love, and laughter yesterday." Things that create meaning in our lives, are things that tend to cause stress in our lives as well. These videos are great, but if the subject interests you, I highly recommend her book, The Upside of Stress. I'm not too worried about burnout because I've changed my outlook on stress. Thank-you, Kelly McGonigal, for bringing that change and allowing me to take a leap into a life where I will have the opportunity to create meaning for myself and my students through teaching.
I am surprised that I have never heard of setting classroom goals at the beginning of the year rather than class rules. Garth German suggests adopting two goals when it comes to classroom behaviour:
It's a lot better than the first two images in my google image search when I typed in class rules: Having respect and safety as the class goals makes a great deal of sense to me because those two words create an umbrella that seems to encompass all the little rules that can bog down and confuse what should be a simple set of behaviour guidelines. Most class rule lists strive for between 3-5 items, but two items can hardly even be called a list! My other favourite set of class rules is: Before declaring the rules to my class at the beginning of the year, I would ask for the student's input about what some of those rules might be. This shows the students that their voice matters and their ideas will be valued. Additionally, they may be more accountable to rules that they have helped to create. After the process of deciding what sorts of behaviour are and aren't acceptable, I might just suggest that their list could be simplified, and if they were on board, we could end up with safety and respect.
Yesterday, I had to give a 20 minute presentation about how to be a good substitute teacher. The catch was that we had to present using only our own technology because we were in groups of four and not everyone could use the setup in the classroom. I wanted to be able to read my speaker notes on Google Slide but couldn't do it if my Chromebook screen was being used to show the slides. So I bought an app called Slides - Presentation Remote by demobo.com and used it to rehearse my presentation. It was amazing... at home. When I got to the University of Winnipeg, it didn't work. I called the IT department to help me figure it out and was told that the university doesn't allow the pairing of devices over their WiFi. I figured out a crude workaround and the presentation was really excellent but it could have been so much better if I wasn't tied to my laptop. I wanted to roam around and use huge arm gestures like Mr. Garvey does in the sketch, but unfortunately, that was off the table (like everything on Mr. Garvey's table when he gets really angry).
I was disappointed but I took my own advice and let it roll off my back like water off a duck, and was flexible like a good substitute teacher must learn to be. What you won't see or hear in the slideshow below are the awesome voices I used and the ukulele playing that my group was subjected to. Here's my slideshow. As always, I love to hear your feedback and constructive criticisms. It was suggested by one of my fellow pre-service learning facilitators (Garth German's favoured terminology), that the school year is too long and should end in May because most of June is just babysitting after the report cards are finished. That is absolute baloney! First of all, if school ended on May 31st, schools would still have the same "wasted" time at the end of the year, only it would be a month earlier. I could go on and on. The end of the school year is only a waste of time if teachers waste it by filling it with videos and busy work. June could be like A&E's old slogan: But with two well placed pauses and a change in inflection, the meaning changes completely - June becomes: Teachers need to remove those metaphorical commas and realize that June gives them the time and freedom to pursue the passions their students really care about, without having to worry so much about assessment or curriculum. Hopefully, June isn't the first time that happens in a child's school year. I hope teachers make time for genius hours and 20% time to explore their students' interests, empowering their learning along the way. I find the following chart I borrowed from George Couros's blog helpful when thinking about compliance, engagement, and empowerment.
Garth German, my professor in the School Systems course I'm taking right now, describes himself as a talk-thinker - he figures out what he thinks about something by talking about it. I consider myself a think-talker - I like to taste my words before I spit them out. Today in class, I was surprised to find myself talk-thinking in front of 30 of my pre-service teaching peers. Garth was talking about how he didn't like the acronym "CYA" (Cover Your Ass), because a teacher's primary concern should be about the safety of the children, not shielding themselves from litigation. If you follow safety protocols, your ass should be covered just fine. I countered by sharing an experience I had during my first term as an educational assistant. I was working with a girl in Grade 3 or 4 in a small room one on one. When I left the room, another EA stopped me and said, "I noticed that the blinds were drawn. You should never be alone in a room with a child where no one else can see what you're doing." I told Garth and the class that in that example, opening the blinds does not protect the child because I know that the child is not in any danger from me, it only protects me from being sued. However, as I was speaking, I realized that making sure that no one even has the opportunity to hide the abuse of children protects everyone. I'm completely with Garth on this one; the motivation behind following the laws and protocols in school should be the safety of the children, not CYA.
Building relationships is the most important thing in education because, as Theodore Roosevelt once said, I also know that an important part of building strong relationships often includes physical touch. However, physical contact between students and teachers can be problematic because the perception of that touch by the child can be far from the innocent intentions of the teacher. No matter how pure the intentions of the teacher might be, the (mis)perception of that touch is very real in its consequences. For this reason, I have distanced myself from hugging students. Since I am 6'9", the head height of many children happens to be the same height as my swimsuit region and unexpected hugs can be awkward. I don't want to become the subject of litigation because of a misperception of intent but I also want to demonstrate love for my students. When I read Harry Wong's The First Days of School a couple of years ago after deciding to apply for the faculty of education at the University of Winnipeg, I thought I had found the solution to this conundrum. He is a proponent of shaking hands with each of his students as they enter his room, and his practice is backed by some great research from R. Allan Allday at the University of Kentucky. The studies he conducted showed that in classrooms where the teacher greeted the students at the door, "there was an increase in student engagement from 45% to 72% and students got on task faster, compared to the control class that was not greeted." I thought I had my strategy for teacher-student contact in the classroom all figured out. However... ... today, in class, a classmate talked about how her cooperating teacher conducted a survey on the first day of school asking the class if they were huggers, handshakers, or high-fivers. (I would add fist-bumpers as a possibility). The students were invited to update their survey answers at any time if they wanted to change it, no questions asked. I think that's brilliant, so I will steal the idea. And as long as my students don't come at me with a surprise hug, I'm more than willing to take a knee or find a step ladder in order to make the hug as appropriate as possible. I also like the advice that when you are hugging a child, always be the last one to let go. You never know how much they need it. Now,
Today, our professor asked us this question and I thought of this TEDx talk by John Hattie that I saw with the staff at a recent West Kildonan Collegiate PD day. He looks at the affect various educational practices have on learning and comes up with some startling conclusions. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember any of the conclusions he came to, so when it was my time to answer the question in class I talked about how chairs and desks in most classrooms are all the same and don't fit the needs of all learners (although things are getting better). If you don't have 16 minutes to discover the results yourself, here's the summary: Numbers in red: Harmful to learning Numbers in yellow: No real effect on learning Numbers in green: Beneficial to learning Most debates about educational improvement revolve around these things but none of them make a big difference in student achievement. Who the kids are or what they've been through doesn't have a big impact on student achievement. These programs don't affect student achievement much either. Technology is in the same boat, and it's looking like all the things that don't have much of an effect on educational outcomes are going to need a bigger boat. To reiterate, things that have a large influence on student achievement are: The things that matter most to student achievement are: If Mr. Hattie's results are to be believed, then this is where schools should be focussing their efforts. It was surprising to see collaborative teachers so high on the list but I'm happy to see that mistakes as a tool for learning ranks in the top 3. Mistakes in my classroom will be expected, inspected, and respected.
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David Wiebe
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