In 2017, we’re really bad at delayed gratification. Even the microwave isn’t fast enough. I want results and I want them yesterday.
But for most of the really important things, we need to play The Long Game.
I write this on the feast day of St. Monica, a fourth-century African woman best known as the mother of Augustine, who was breaking his mother’s heart with his immoral lifestyle.
This holy woman followed her brilliant, worldly son all over Italy. Her best weapon, aside from proximity, was nearly 20 years of unceasing heart-rending prayer for him. Who (after he came under the tutelage of St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan) we now know as St. Augustine, author of City of God and Confessions, and a Doctor of the Church.
Persistence pays off, people. A good teacher never hurts, either.
It’s easy to see kids as they are, and not as they will be. Even for those of us with a vivid imagination.
But: there is a tomorrow. And the world doesn’t stop spinning when they turn 18.
And that goes for our college-bound students, and for our kids who don’t like math and don’t like school. Those are my people, by the way.
I read a couple of success stories today that made me smile. One was of a student of mine a year ago, a cross-country runner who is rebounding from injuries and took first place at an invite over the weekend.
He ran well at the state track finals last May and has put in the work all summer, so this win wasn’t altogether unexpected.
The second item made me do a double-take.
Woah. A solid student and a good football player in high school, he made a name for himself at a JUCO outside of Chicago, but the NFL is pretty much uncharted territory for a school not known as a football factory.
Good for him. But there were others, you know.
“There were eight of us, you know. It would mean a lot to them.” Image via mlb.nbcsports.com
One of the more interesting and unusual teachers I had in high school was my Journalism teacher, Ms. Mayer. All “creatives” stereotypes aside she was the type who dropped Jefferson Airplane references into her lectures, carried a travel mug of coffee everywhere (before Starbucks was a thing), challenged our thinking and let free spirits fly their freak flag.
I was a wannabe jock at the time. Her take on the jock culture in high school was: yes, the football players and cheerleaders should march in the Homecoming parade. Of course. But so should the girls who work at Burger King, the guys who fix cars with their dads after school, and the kids who play in garage bands. Why was their extra-curricular activity not recognized?
Know what? She was right.
Those guys I wrote about up there? They earned the newspaper coverage they got. Don’t take that away from them. But I also keep in touch with a lot of former students via social media. With some space between them and high school, they are now moms, and dads, and husbands, and wives, and college students, and graduates, and servicemen and women, and folks holding down jobs and grinding out a living every day.
Guess they’re doing OK in the real world, huh?
I’m just happy that I’m here to see it. But happier for them that they get to live it.
There’s two kinds of people in this world. Two kinds of teachers, too. You probably know them both.
If you’ve lived in the Chicago area for any length of time, or ever caught the WGN News when it was a superstation and not WGN America, you’ve probably seen Tom Skilling’s weather segment.
I want to love just one thing in my life, for just a millisecond, as much as Skilling loves the weather. He reported on #SolarEclipse2017 today from downstate Carbondale, IL, which was in the path of totality.
I’ve been watching Tom Skilling report on weather and climate-related issues for virtually my entire life. I’d bet you he would have walked the length of the state to be on hand for today’s event. His joy was authentic. He shared it with everyone around him.
Here’s how another Chicago-area teacher in my circle of tweeps reacted:
A former student just posted this on Facebook about a Chicago meteorologist. Are you that passionate about teaching? Hope so. Thanks John! pic.twitter.com/PIxOSlDuss
“The Washington Free Beacon captured a bizarre and funny clip from Fox News in which Smith mocks the eclipse, holding his mouse and phone in front of him to show how the eclipse works.”
I don’t know the motivation here. Maybe he was going for a too-cool-for-school, so-over-it kind of thing, and couldn’t pull it off. Maybe he genuinely didn’t get the national obsession with a celestial event that for a lot of folks comes along once a generation or so. But whatever the source, it wasn’t a good look for the guy who is widely seen (rightly or wrongly) as a voice of reason amongst partisans.
And if I know myself the way I think I do, some dark, cold Tuesday in November my little cherubs will be working my last nerve and I’ll be unable to suppress the temptation and I’ll let loose a similar string of ridiculous snark in front of a class full of kids.
It won’t be a good look for me, either.
As teachers, we don’t want to be judged by our worst moment (although we hope to be evaluated on our best moments, right?).
I’ll make a re-commitment today to not judge Shep on an off-day.
My kids either. Because there’s two kinds of people in the world.
Teacher horror stories about adversarial relationships between school administration and staff abound. Not just apocryphal ones: I’ve heard from good people the real tactics used to drive teachers out of a building.
In 2017, after 15 years of recession, it’s cool to hate your job I guess.
But I’ve been at three schools under six principals, and I just don’t see it. Partly because I’m not a big unionist and don’t have that inherent distrust of management. But mostly because I’ve had really good administrators.
You know that saying “Attitude reflects leadership”? It’s true. For good or for bad.
I’ve been reminded on multiple occasions recently the effect that school culture has on me as a teacher. And by “culture” I mean “people”.
I spent my last teacher work day in an empty room hoping I’d have students desks for Monday. My office staff promised the desks would be there in time for school to start. They arrived at 5:00 Friday afternoon. Just in time.
My new classroom is also without computer workstations for the 3D design work my students do in Introduction To Engineering Design. We are in the midst of a lengthy renovation project, and making use of all the spaces in the building as construction continues. I’m currently triple-booked in a nearby lab. When the issue was brought to the attention of my principal he got it squared away in a matter of days and came to my classroom to report the news.
Friday I had to call off on short notice. Because I care about my job and my students, I drove in just to make sure everything was set up for my sub so he wouldn’t have to go frantically looking for something that should be right there for him. My office manager over subs saw me and said “I thought you weren’t here today”. When I told her what I was doing she just smiled and said, ” I already printed that out from your email. It’s all taken care of”.
What I’ve learned so far this year: If somebody in my building says something’s gonna get done, you can take it to the bank. It’s as good as done. Honestly, it’s been like that at every school I’ve ever been at. But I know that’s not the case for every teacher.
Does that shape my attitude about my job? I’m a worker bee at heart. Having a dad work 40 years at Inland Steel will do that. Pick up my hard hat and lunch box and metatarsal shoes and let’s go to work.
But yeah, when I know they mean what they say, I don’t have to stress over whether I’ll have what I need to do my job.
That’s as good as gold.
Kids aren’t adults. They don’t go to school and do our work just for their health. Some of them wouldn’t come here if you paid them. Believe me, I’ve had my share. There’s a ton of research out there on intrinsic/extrinsic motivation. Likesuch. Oh, this too.
Maybe we need a different way to guide students to getting done what needs done in school, and maybe learn a little something while they’re at it.
First Friday of the school year. Second year in the building. Had some Friday Fun ready to go. Instead, had to take a sub day for a family illness. Walked in at 7:00 am to set up my sub. Hat, shades, t-shirt, shorts, which is, as you might have guessed, not your standard-issue teacher uniform. And still, teachers and students I passed in the hallways recognized me and said “Hey”.
I’m pretty much floating on air right now thinking about it. And I’m a grown man. What does it do for a student’s attitude for me to smile and say “Hi” in the hallway?
I suck at classroom management. Kids don’t do things for me because I’m their favorite teacher. I’ve never been able to be a Drill Instructor, it’s not my style and besides I’m terrible at it. And yelling at 15 year olds makes me an ass.
And I don’t have that Obi-Wan thing.
I wish I did, but I don’t. If there’s anything at all that I’ve done right in regard to classroom management, it’s that I’ve built relationships with students. I’ve been honest that it’ll take me a minute to learn their names, but I will learn them. They know I love them, even if they make me crazy sometimes. I’ll smile and say “Hi” in the hall. I work to de-escalate conflict. I’ll be reasonable with my rules. We’ll have fun in class, maybe be a little goofy sometimes. It might get a little loud. There might be dancing.
I’ll never write a book or present at a conference about how to run your classroom. Nobody would read it even if I did. If you read this far looking for a solution in three easy steps, sorry I wasted your time. But a smile and a chin nod is a good start. It’s free, if not easy sometimes. But the ROI is Infinity.
Rampant stress. Like the kind you can feel welling up in your chest.
That was me Friday afternoon, 63 hours before students walk through my new classroom doors to begin the school year.
As background: we’re in the midst of a three-year, $140 millionrenovation project at my school. It’s being done in phases, so teachers have been shuffling from room to room as the construction project advances. “Flexibility” is practically our school motto.
Under Construction. That space on the left will be the new music wing. Photo cred: me
My principal is a good guy with a really strong team. I don’t imagine it’s easy overseeing a huge 4-star school that aspires to be a top-10 school in the state each year. Doing that while in the midst of remaking the physical plant sounds like trying to defuse a bomb while someone repeatedly pokes me in the kidneys. There’s a million moving parts complicating the already complex process of opening school. “Building the airplane while flying it”, as the saying goes.
After a day of meetings, I arranged the desks and chairs into pods for a couple hours on Thursday. Good way to burn off nervous energy. These desks belong in the room of the teacher who was using that space last spring while her hallway was rebuilt. I knew intuitively the furniture was probably headed back to her room, but I held out hope her new classroom might be getting a furniture makeover.
Clean slate. At least I’m gonna have some bumpin’ speakers. Photo cred: me
So with freshman orientation and the activities fair eating up my morning, I shot a quick email to my office staff hoping for guidance and asking (gently, since everybody’s got a to-do list a mile long on the day before school opens) who I should see about getting some desks delivered.
Then I went to work. It was the best way I could think of to stave off the vision of my kids sitting on the floor for class Monday. I’m a first-day veteran. I know what my job is: to be ready to teach on Day One. They’ll tell me what to teach, who to teach, and where to teach, and I’ll take it from there. Friday’s Motto: I’ll do what’s in my hands and trust that others will do what’s in their hands. It’s all good.
(Sounds a little bit like this post from Sarah Carter, whose One Word Goal for the year is “grace”.)
And by the time I left the building at 5:00, the custodial staff was rounding up student desks from all corners of the building and delivering them to my room. Just like I knew would happen.
Broke: Here’s the Syllabus
Woke: Here’s how we do things around here
Bespoke: Let’s do math and collaborate!
I’m loud. mostly because my students are loud. And after 10 weeks of summer, I’ve found I typically lose my voice by the end of day one. Because I talk too much. “Hey kids, I’m not gonna read the syllabus to you because I know you can read”…. then I read them the syllabus.
Students will reflect using a Google Form and submit a snap of their work solving the system (after we discuss and defend arguments) through Canvas.
I’m hoping to welcome a group of students who may not have had great math experiences in the past to my classroom. And have some fun.
In the last week before school I read Ditch That Homework by Alice Keeler and Matt Miller. This activity integrates several of their suggestions. I think it’s a good first step to making my classroom more student-centered and student-friendly.
We’ll introduce course expectations to students on Tuesday and to their parents on Wednesday at Open House. I’m hoping my kids will do some of the PR work for me after Monday’s activity. Either way, by then most of the stress of Back To School will have dissipated.
It’s Year 15 for me. And Year One for me and my students.
“As you will find… there is often a number of solutions to any given problem.”
Alice Keeler and Matt Miller propose an alternate solution to the problem of homework. In their book Ditch That Homework, they lay out their reasons for making a change:
I’d bet that anyone who has taught for any time at all would be hard-pressed to argue against these points. So, OK, parents, teachers, students all have their issues with homework, but can we really just walk into class tomorrow and go “No homework tonight! Or, ever!” and not change anything else?
Ditching the textbook isn’t an act, it’s a state of mind. Same with Ditching Homework. It’s not “OK kids, snapchat each other and scroll your Twitter feeds for 45 minutes. See ya tomorrow!” We’re talking about a philosophy, a mindset, of redesigning everything in the service of teaching and learning. To quote the authors:
“If we want to develop well-rounded human beings, higher quality assignments are a step in the right direction.”
My school is going 1:1 this year. There’s no better time to make the move to a full-on student-centered classroom, making use of technology and good pedagogy to eliminate traditional drill-and-kill homework.
It’s important to note that this doesn’t mean my students will never practice math. They’ve made it quite clear to me that they need reps to learn the skills in Algebra II. I just want to make the most of our time together in class, in school, to give them as much support in that effort as I can.
I committed to reading this book as a skeptic. I wanted Miller & Keeler to sell me. That lasted like a day. Less that 24 hours after I started reading, I’m sitting in the waiting room at my son’s doctor all nodding my head and going “yep” every two minutes.
The Why wasn’t an issue, as I addressed in Part I. I was (and am) way more interested in the How. Miller suggests easing into Ditching Homework, a bit at a time, and the next thing you know, it’s gone. But I want to be able to be up front with my students and their parents about what I’m doing. And that means having my strategies in place on Day One.
Parent communication is big with Miller & Keeler. They recognize that parents can be your best friend when they’re on your side. And you want them on your side. The authors went to the extreme of creating a Parent/Guardian Contact Log in Google Sheets for readers to use. Nice touch.
So what’s the secret? Miller & Keeler ask teachers to build relationships with students and parents, leverage brain science, encourage students to own their own learning, and to commit to giving timely and useful feedback. In other words, I already have the pieces in place. I just need to use the right tools in the right order at the right time.
One tactic presented in the book is the “in-class flip”. By making use of a learning management system such as Google Classroom or Canvas, teachers can publish a playlist of tutorial videos that students can use to get up to speed. By using Screencast-O-Matic or Screencastify, teachers can actually record their own notes in video form to include in the playlist. Thus teachers can use tech to provide a support for struggling students. Combined with intentionally created groups, students can use the resources at hand to help themselves while the teacher makes the rounds to provide assistance and feedback.
As an added bonus, the teacher gets a chance to sit with every student, albeit briefly, every day. Instant relationship-building opportunity.
In my experience, by using intentional student groups, teachers can also make use of the “You Do – Y’All Do – We Do” method of lesson design. Students are given a chance to work individually, then meet in small group to compare work and push the ball forward, then the teacher convenes the whole group for additional notes, as needed.
I think this is the lynchpin that makes the whole thing work. Turning a 50 minute class inside out: more student talk and student work, less of students sitting passively while the teacher fills the air with words.
Another tool the authors recommend for building relationships with students is using a “student survey”. A great example is the Teacher Report Card used by MattVaudrey (link to copy for your Drive here). Students are brutally honest (you may have noticed this). But it’s worthwhile knowing how your students think your class could be better (most of us are our own worst critic, but sometimes we don’t see things as others see them), and then using acting on those suggestions. I’ve done it via Google Form and as a class discussion. It was totally, totally worth it.
I’m as addicted to my phone as anyone else. When I want to sit and concentrate on a task, such as reading, I’ll put my phone in another room. Yet still, as I was reading Ditch That Homework the other night, Mrs. Dull caught me in the midst of a deep thought, lost across the room. Her question, “what are you thinking about?” was legit. I was making a deep connection between an Alice Keeler anecdote and events in my own teaching career. Had I waited until finishing this book to ponder, that immediate hook would have evaporated.
Keeler & Miller recommend using what we know about brain science to improve our students’ learning. As an example, what I did in the anecdote above is an example of “retrieval”. I stopped reading, and made a cognitive connection. What does this look like in class? Could be Think-Pair-Share with a shoulder partner, the “Y’All Do” portion of the lesson intro where students share out what they’ve discovered with their group, a summary question or statement as part of Cornell Notes or an exit ticket, or a spiral review. Restating the information helps cement the learning.
The authors are also large fans of movement – using physical activity to stimulate thinking. This could be an Instagram stroll where students seek out “math in the real world”, snap it, and describe what they see in the caption. Maybe include a class hashtag? With one of my most challenging algebra I classes, I would occasionally instigate a 5-minute dance party at the outset of class before taking a quiz. That was a tough one to explain to my dean as he walked into my classroom while I pounded out a beat on a table while ten of my students were rapping and dancing around the perimeter of the room. To his credit, he got it. He knew what I was trying to do by letting students blow off some steam.
The chapters “Ditch Those Habits (cited above)” and “Ditch That Remediation” alone are probably worth the cost of the book.
Keeler points out that “Ditch That Remediation” is the longest chapter in the book. Here’s where the rubber meets the road as far as helping students own their learning through improved study skills, research skills, and critical thinking skills.
If you handed me a pile of cash and told me to spend it in one place for my former district, I would have walked the money to the offices of AVID. It was 2000 miles, and I’m not even kidding. The program was in place at my first school, and it was worth twice whatever we paid for it. When I had students coming to my class before school ,after school, at lunch, asking for help… I thought “No big deal. Of course, all students are like this”. Nope. My next 13 years of teaching disabused me of that notion. The kids in the program learned study skills, including Cornell Notes and how to get help from teachers outside of class. The improvement for my AVID kids vs. the rest of my enrollment was noticeable.
In addition to note-taking skills, we can offer students a chance to create, either by expressing what they’ve learned in a new way such as a video, e-book, or electronic poster; or by creating questions about what they’ve learned. An example of that from my classes is DIY Kahoot. After learning how to make good distractors for a multiple-choice exercise, students groups made their own Kahoot questions for a chapter on graphing linear functions. I gathered up the questions, made a Kahoot, and we played the game the next day in class. As I said at the time: “Are my Track 3 kids learning Algebra? They’re trying, which is what I ask. Are we having fun? Oh, hell yeah.”
Probably the biggest challenge for most teachers is offering opportunities for critical thinking. We take the math word problems labeled “real-world” and hand them to the students like we’re doing them a favor. Keeler points out that most textbook word problems are very formulaic. “Follow these steps and you’ll get an answer”. Bad. If you’ve seen Dan Meyer’s TED Talk “Math Class Needs A Makeover” you know what she’s talking about.
Meyer famously promotes a style of lesson design known as Three-act Math. The idea is to ratchet up the Depth Of Knowledge (DOK) of our work in class. As Keeler says, “note-taking is DOK 0“. How do we give our students a chance to think critically?
Alice Keeler calls DOK a “Bloom’s Taxonomy for critical thinking.”
The series of themed bellringers I used the last couple of years lived in DOK 3, where students were making claims, explaining their thinking, and justifying their answers.
My last big takeaway is the idea of students “owning their learning”. I’m reminded of a student in my first year of teaching whose IEP allowed him to decide when he was done with homework. If I assigned 30 problems and he felt like he got it after doing 5, well then, he was done, and I was to accept that as complete.
If that sounds unfair, it’s been awhile since you sat in front of an insanely long algebra problem set.
In a relatively early light-bulb moment, I backed off of homework for my algebra classes a few years into my career. I’d assign 10-15 problems, enough for them (and me) to know if they “got it”. I wasn’t trying to kill ’em with math. Overall, it was a good move. The ones that understood the skill didn’t have to spend an hour on needless repetition, and the ones that didn’t grasp the skill weren’t gonna try all the problems anyway.
Is there a chance my students are mature enough to know when they’re done, and to know when they need more practice? Yeah. Is there a chance they’ll blow it all off and do nothing? Yep. It’s worth giving them the opportunity to try it out. All of us scraped a knee and an elbow up before we got good at riding a bike.
My hope is that MyMathLab can provide opportunities for extension & differentiation. I can make a self-paced, self checking assignment, put it in my students’ queue, with instructions to work on it until they are confident in their skills.
This as much as anything sums up the “Ditch That Homework” ethos: students own their own learning. They get help when they need it in class, have an opportunity to do engaging, meaningful activities in class, and understand the math skills at a deep level. And isn’t that what we wanted “homework” to do in the first place?
So in unpacking Ditch That Homework, I see from my own 14 years in the classroom that I have the tools in place to be able to re-invent my classroom with my students in mind. The addition of on-demand laptop/chromebook use means we can make use of Desmos or Excel or a Google search at the drop of a hat. And that I can build in the meaningful activities that used to require reserving a computer cart from the library (hit-or-miss proposition sometimes).
I love teaching. I don’t love how I ran my class sometimes. If you think endless worksheets and multiple choice tests make students miserable, check on their teachers sometimes. This is a much more enjoyable way to do school.
“It’s a deal, it’s a contract, it’s an agreement that you, as student and family, make with educational institutions. It’s an agreement in which, for it to be worth it to you, elements must stay balanced.
As in: Not everything the school is going to ask of me is going to great or even valuable. There are going to be irritating aspects of school. But all of that is balanced by what the school experience gives.
Just like the rest of life, right?
So just as in the rest of life, we make constant cost-benefit analyses. Is the good I’m deriving worth the cost I’m paying?”
Spending some time today pondering: How would I answer a parent (or a student) asking that same question: “Is the good I’m deriving worth the cost I’m paying?”
School starts in a week, and I’m having long thoughts about grading and homework and how class time is spent and everything. I can do better. I know my grading/points system was out of whack last school year. Many times I knew a student’s letter grade didn’t really reflect his ability to do math.
I have to fix that.
I know there’s a premium on time when classes are 50 minutes long. I want kids thinking and arguing and defending their positions and solving problems and working together and practicing skills and having a chance to ask questions and get feedback on their efforts.
And I’m pretty sure that unless I invent a way to elongate time that I can’t do all those things in one class period.
Along comes the Dynamic Duo: MattMiller and AliceKeeler. The question has been around for a while: is homework worth the time and aggravation? Does it encourage learning? Does it increase the educational divide between students of different socio-economic classes? There is much research that at least suggests there is a better way. These two well-known teacher/presenters aim to provide the why and the how for doing things different.
I’ve been reading Matt’s blog for years. I read his first book, Ditch That Textbook, around this time last year. I’ve seen videos of Alice pitching her homework theories. To be honest, the Halo Effect is strong around these two. I’m predisposed to read their stuff, punch my fist in the air and shout “Yes”! So I’m intentionally adopting the posture of a skeptic as I read #DitchHW. Playing the Devil’s Advocate. I’m trying hard to punch holes in their argument. I’ve got a tendency to take a new idea and run with it. I want to make sure this one has staying power. To justify putting my teaching money where my mouth is.
But they’re making their case well.
Alice Keeler: “But what did they get in return for their investment?”
I don’t know about you, but when I don’t see the value in something I’m asked to do…. I don’t want to do it. That just sounds like the set-up for a power struggle. Even if the research leaned towards homework as a great educational tool, the kids who refuse to do the homework won’t do the learning. And that’s a problem.
Here’s what I saw in my classroom. Pick a year – could be 2003, 2008, 2012, or last May:
About 35% of my students legitimately do the homework on their own
Another 30-40% copy the work from the students in the first group
The rest don’t do homework at all
Even when I point out they are getting points just for effort, enough points in a quarter to equal a quiz score
They’ll copy homework blatantly in class from a seatmate
They’ll snap their homework and text/snapchat it to friends
They will see similar problems a week later on a review sheet and look at me like they’ve never seen that type of problem before
Learning has not occurred, people.
On the other hand, the best days for my students are days when there is collaborative work, with students having chances to help each other and to get help and feedback from me.
That sounds like something I’d like to have happen more often.
These two really know how to get my attention, that’s for sure:
So the bait has been set. Time to reel in the catch.
Miller and Keeler go on to suggest ways for teachers to build relationships with students and parents so that we get buy-in from our two most important stakeholders, offer tips to provide timely and useful feedback, and they examine the brain science of the change-over that will help students own their own learning.
So the Why is in place. We’ll look at the how, and process my takeaways, in Part Two.
When I was in high school, my buds and I had goals. We wanted to steal enough material from the chem lab to build a still, like Hawkeye Pierce on M*A*S*H.
Makerspace, Korean-War-style. Via mash4077tv.com.
Pretty unrealistic, I know. In those pre-Google days, I’m not sure we even knew exactly what parts we would actually need. But we thought we had a decent shot at emulating Jeff Spicoli and ordering a pizza into class.
That never happened, either. Despite our inability to pull off the wackiness of Hollywood high school kids, senior year was pretty awesome, from a social standpoint at least. I had no idea what I really wanted to do after high school.
Have I mentioned that we all really wanted to be like Spicoli? (Source).
I was good at math and science, and finally settled in on pre-dentistry. That lasted, like, a semester. Teaching was not even on my radar screen. Safe to say I took an L on my career goals as stated at age 17.
But in the grown-up world, it’s important to keep in mind goals need to be specific, measurable, and achievable. Day-to-day, year-to-year improvement at teaching is all of those things.
To everything there is a season. Photo cred: me.
It’s early August. The school year is here. Or soon will be. Happy New Year, BTW.
It’s my 15th year of teaching, my second at my current school. I’ve done this enough times that the basics of the first week are pretty much scripted. And I’m new enough at my school to know I should still be asking plenty of questions.
On the positive, my courses are already set up in Canvas, and since I was a travelling teacher last year (and probably again, at least to start this year), I don’t have a whole lot of “classroom stuff” to set up. I can put about 96% of my efforts into curriculum planning & lesson design.
And thanks to a blogging challenge from my online PLN, a chance to sit down and plan intentionally for the year. To set some goals.
The two major initiatives in my building this year are a move to a 1:1 environment, and de-tracking our math classes. Big changes. Huge. Like, you can’t just roll up to the door on Day One and wing it.
For 1:1 I’m gonna lean on my PLN. I see Desmos Activities being a much bigger part of my classroom when I don’t have to wrestle a computer cart across the building to use this awesome tool. MyMathlab is the other piece of the puzzle for outside of class, self-paced, self-grading practice.
For de-tracking I look to my lean on my department team. They’ve taught Track 2 and Track 3 (where I was last year). They have intimate knowledge of how the two classes might mix, and how we can anticipate our students’ needs. Got a big planning meeting set for next week, but I imagine I’ll be in touch with the ladies on my team on a regular basis throughout the year. I’ve taught mixed-ability classes at a previous school and I’ve got some practices in mind that have seemed to benefit all students. Time to brush up on flexible seating and on-call groups, especially for formative assessment & quick feedback purposes.
For day-to-day lesson design, I’m still wrestling with two pieces. I need to make a call on bellringers & homework.
For the last two years, following the lead of one of my onlineteacher connects, I’ve used a rotating series of tasks for bellringers. I know that giving my students an opportunity to begin each class with an opportunity to think deeply and critically, with a low barrier for entry, is beneficial. They don’t always see things the same as I do, tho. Several students, used to “sit & get”, wanted to spend less time on estimating or justifying, and more time on practice and note-taking. In a 50-minute class, they may have a point. Part of that is classroom management, and transitioning from task to task. That’s on me. If I dump the MTBoS-inspired bellringers, I am going to use a 3-2-1 or summary exit ticket. One way or another, I’m determined to have brain cells rubbing together in my class.
My big leap this year may be homework. We’re talking like Lance Armstrong/Deadman’s Hole-level leap here. It’s a little scary. But more and more I’m wondering if homework is doing what I need it to do for my students. Alice Keeler and Matt Miller have written a book (Ditch That Homework) that outlines the case. I’ve got it on order. For me, the big issue is: Can I give students the opportunity for practice, and the quality feedback they need, and notes, and everything else, in a 50 minute class? I bet the time we use “going over” yesterday’s homework can be re-purposed. And I’m already on board with “You Do – Y’All Do – We Do“.
My mental conflict is: how to balance discovery with practice. Part of that is me accepting alternate ways of students showing their learning. Ain’t but one way to find out. And the case for making the move is pretty solid:
Oh God. Number 4. I hate the fake “let me copy your homework” dance. Infographic via Alice Keeler.
From an Xs and Os standpoint, a couple of student support goals that I did haphazardly last year: Videos. Worked-out answer key. Posted to Canvas. Every. Damn. Day. If homework is going to go away, these are two critical pieces for my students, especially those that need additional help. I’m just going to have to carve out the time to make this happen.
So that’s it. Goals for the 2017-2018 school year. Last year I was getting my feet wet in a new building. My most trusted advisor, knowing my preference for out-of-the-box tactics and knowing the culture in my new building reminded me to “keep your head down” in year one. I’ve gone to school on myself and my students. In Year Two, it’s time to Rise Up.
Tweaking For No Reason 