Two pieces of teaching advice collided in my head on Wednesday:
“The one doing the work does the learning”
“Find a handful of tech tools and use them well”
In my never-ending quest for “something new” (the same quest that had me making a pot of Green Chile Black Bean soup for dinner on Monday) I needed a plan for solving one-step equations for my Algebra II class that is repeating the first semester. I love my go-tos but I’m trying to keep from burning out my kids on Desmos and Quizizz and MathXL.
It’s the perpetual challenge, especially in the era of remote learning: Trying to keep my students engaged and thinking deeply. Trying to get them an appropriate number of reps.
I need a both/and.
I wanted to resurrect an activity I’ve done in-person, where students (in groups or individually, depending on the class) write a multiple choice question with distractors, then I compile them into a Quizizz and play it.
To tweak it for remote learning, I had students use a Google Form to submit their equation, the correct answer, and the three distractors (with explanation of how they obtained the distractor).
Then I figured I could go make a copy of the spreadsheet holding the responses, and modify it to match the template to upload to Quizizz. I just needed to fill in the columns with the number of the correct answer, and the time allowed for students to respond. Easy peasy, right?
Google Sheets wouldn’t let me delete the columns with the student name and time stamp. Or the columns with their justification for the distractors. I could hide them, but not delete them.
Quizizz requires a .xls or .xlsx file for upload, which is no problem, I can download the sheet in that format. But when I went to upload the sheet with the hidden columns… error. Not sure exactly why, although I have my suspicions.
Yikes.
I kind of knew pulling this off in a five-minute break during class was gonna be like juggling flaming chainsaws. I just didn’t know it would fail completely.
Now look, I’ve had lessons blow up on me before. I’ve made adjustments on the fly in front of a room full of kids. I could for sure do it in a Google Meet, right?
I quickly realized my best bet was to input the dozen or so entries by hand. But I just as quickly realized that would take more time than I had.
Saved by the e-Day! My district has started Friday e-Learning days for the remainder of the school year. I need a half-hour or so of independent activity for tomorrow. Perfect.
“Hey kids, how about if I go make the Quizizz tonight out of your questions and answers, and then I make that the e-Day assignment for tomorrow?”
They were unanimous in their approval, probably because that meant I could dismiss them from the call five minutes early.
OK, so what did I learn today?
Keep trying. The need you were trying to meet was legit
There’s plenty of live-action things that will translate to remote teaching
This is one of them
Maybe a dry run of the tech the night before is a good idea
Kids are pretty forgiving
A little humility is good for the soul
They basically made their own e-day assignment which was cool
So I keep Googling around, and reach out to my instructional coaches for some help. I bet its a small tweak. And once I find out I can do it in five minutes in the middle of class, hoo boy are we gonna use this again, and again, and maybe again.
Also, that soup was fantastic. Lent-friendly (vegan actually), budget-friendly, filling, tasty.
We had an e-learning day today to allow for virtual parent conferences. My first appointment was scheduled for 7:30 am, and after some small talk and a grade update, the conversation turned to remote learning. “Do you think we’re going back? Like, when?”, that sort of thing. And then:
“You know the kids are laughing at this ‘remote learning’, right? They’re on their phones or their games while you guys are trying to teach them.” It wasn’t accusatory at all, she was just trying to make sure I had all the information I needed. But, Yeah. I know. I know.
I’ve got a 16-year-old and distraction is real.
It’s been part of my design for remote learning from the jump. Not because I’m so brilliant, but because I’ve spent 180 days a year around teenagers for the last 18 years. That brings a certain willingness to engage with the reality of a situation.
What I told her is: “I couldn’t stop my students from playing on their phones on a Google Meet even if I wanted to. I couldn’t stop them from using their notes on a Desmos or Google Form quiz or test even if I wanted to.”
It’s not the first time I’ve thought that thought.
Had this convo w/my fellow geometry Ts during our eLearning planning meeting. There’s no way we can play it straight. We couldn’t stop them from texting friends or googling answers if we wanted to. We have to design take-home or partner quizzes/tests. #teacherlife#onlinelearninghttps://t.co/1Gy7MUQBbq
Realizing that truth, giving away that power, has freedom to it. Plus, it’s forced me to accelerate my move to blended learning and given me plenty of reps for the eventual move back to face-to-face class, date TBA. I can write all the process-oriented classroom activities and quiz/test items I want. Since Emergency Remote Teaching went into effect last March, from what I’ve seen it’s the teachers who tried to make remote learning look just like in-person class are the ones who struggled the most. They feel like their kids are getting over on them somehow, cheating their way through every assignment and test (*cough* Photomath *cough*) and that is creating a very adversarial relationship between kids and adults.
That’s a losing proposition.
Look, none of this is good. The death and the grief and the financial losses, and the long-term health effects for the survivors, and the stress on teachers and parents and kids and administrators, and the kids who missed out on all the milestones of a senior year, the athletes who missed out on a shot at playing in college, the kids who miss their friends. I’m on record as supporting my district’s decision for remote teaching and learning this school year. It was based on the advice of our county health department and I’ll never fault an administrator who puts the health and safety of their students, families and staff first.
Would I rather be teaching in-person? You bet. But remote learning is our reality. So my job is to do that the best I can, and ask my kids to give me not 100%, but 100% of whatever they’ve got on that day with the promise I’ll do the same. And maybe learning will occur.
I remind myself often I’m in no position to complain. And maybe that’s because I decided to ride the wave and build activities that encourage and incentivize thinking and participating and creating vs. answer-getting, when the other option was to see how many PDFs of worksheets I could assign to my kids (not that I’m opposed to occasionally getting them some reps on MathXL or Quizizz).
I’m not the only one – everyone in my building is taking chances, trying new things or modifying their practices to meet the challenge. We have the support of our instructional coaches and building admin. It’s pretty sweet.
What I do know is that when I wonder if they are laughing with me or at me, I can guess the answer.
Talking pizza & totally underrated beefs with my Algebra II kids 7th hour today while they worked on modeling pizza prices.
There are still days I’m amazed they pay me to do this.
I like to think of myself as a pretty reflecive teacher (and a reflective person in general). Despite all the challenges I feel like the first semester of remote teaching and learning was a qualified success. But what do the people who have walked through the day-to-day with me feel?
I got a sense informally back in the fall when students in my school wrote feedback to a teacher of their choice, but I want to know more. The good, the bad, the ugly. Especially now, after 18 weeks of remote learning.
I saw my kids twice during Finals Week, once for the test and once for a study hall. Not necessarily in that order. So during the not-testing class meeting I asked my students to grade me. They were pretty lowkey about it, especially since I did it on a “study hall” class period when they could check out of class as soon as they were done with the form and go study for their next final. I know for sure some of them kind of breezed through it.
Others put some thought in to their responses. Either way, I appreciate their input. This seems like an appropriate time to be a “bad news first” kind of guy, so let’s go.
I averaged the responses from my six classes. The scale ran from 1 (“not at all”) to 5 (“oh definitely”).
4.06 Mr. Dull has interesting lessons
4.11 Mr. Dull has a good pace
4.13 Mr. Dull tries new teaching methods
4.17 Mr. Dull has a great sense of humor
4.19 Mr. Dull makes me feel important
4.32 Mr. Dull explains topics clearly
Averaging 4 on a 5 scale is not horrible, but definitely catches my attention. I felt a little bit like 3 of those categories are somewhat influenced by remote teaching. In the face-to-face classroom most students are used to a bellringer, homework review, a lecture, some guided practice, then independent practice and that’s the bell. A Desmos activity or hyperdoc or Quizizz probably stands out as a special event. But in remote learning, every teacher was probably using Kahoot or Quizizz, or having students collaborate on a doc or slides, or using Math XL or its equivalent. Thus “uses new teaching methods” and “has interesting lessons” probably suffered a bit. “Oh awesome, my seventh ‘go in a breakout room and collaborate on some slides with my classmates’ activity today. Happy happy, joy joy.”
Not gonna lie. That one hurt a little bit. I mean, it’s good that so many of our teachers are using engaging methods to teach their content, but for me personally that’s been something (I think) my students have enjoyed about my classes.
I’ll never pass up a chance to crack a joke in class, to break the awkward silence if nothing else. But without us being together in class, those little moments chatting with my kids at a table group were hard to duplicate. That’s the time my in-person kids get to see that I’m a “real person”. I think that probably influenced the “humor” result, and maybe the “makes me feel important” result too? I thought I worked pretty hard to build relationships during first semester. And there were definite successes.
But there’s also clearly room for improvement.
During remote teaching we met twice a week for 80 minutes each, and 40 minutes every Friday. That’s 200 minutes per week, compared to 250 minutes a week during face-to-face instruction. We knew right from the jump that we couldn’t cover everything in the curriculum map – something would have to go. We agreed as a department that we would take a “power standards” approach to instruction – identify the most important topics in each unit and make sure we teach those. But as teachers I know we probably felt a bit rushed at times. So our students probably did too. So it’s up to me to make sure that in the time I have to explain topics clearly.
How can the class be improved?
So what went well?
4.80 Mr. Dull respects each student
4.78 Mr. Dull does a good job of treating all students the same
4.70 Mr. Dull keeps the class under control
4.70 Mr. Dull seems to enjoy teaching
4.66 Mr. Dull dresses professionally
4.64 Mr. Dull provides time for review
4.59 Mr. Dull says words clearly
4.57 Mr. Dull’s tests reflect the material we learned
4.56 Mr. Dull grades fairly
4.52 Mr. Dull uses language we understand
“Respects each student” and “Treats all students the same” should be a given. It’s super-important to me that that is how my students feel when they are in my class. The times in my career when a student has felt disrespected, well, they let me know. One way or another. So I’m clearly not perfect. But I’m high-key ecstatic that those were my two highest grades during remote learning, when relationships are tough to build.
But that aside, there were two pairs of responses here that I’m really pleased with. “Says words clearly” and “uses language we understand” has been a thing with me throughout my career. I’ve always walked a fine line between using layman’s terms for concepts in algebra and geometry, and using the precise mathematical language they will encounter on standardized tests and in future classes. It’s a “both/and” rather than an “either/or”. If I do my job right they get the support they need, when they need it. But in addition, I completed the SIOP training through my district this fall, focusing on best practices for serving learners of a second language. One of the teacher tactics is known as “comprehensible input”:
SIOP teachers realize that English learners acquire their new language differently from majority language speakers and their instruction includes a variety of SIOP techniques so students comprehend the lesson’s key concepts. Examples of language accommodation techniques include teacher talk that is appropriate to student proficiency levels; restatement; paraphrasing; repetition; written records of key points; and previews and reviews of important information. Additional techniques include demonstrations and modeling of tasks, processes, and routines; gestures, pantomime, and movement to make concepts more clear; opportunities for students to engage in role-plays, improvisation, and simulations; visuals and supplementary materials, such as pictures, real objects, illustrations, charts, adapted texts, audiotapes, CDs or online resources (perhaps in the students’ home languages, if available); and hands-on, experiential, and discovery activities. Further, teachers explain the academic tasks they expect students to perform, orally and in writing, with demonstrations, modeling, and sample products as needed.
I’m extremely happy that my students already feel that I am connecting with them in appropriate, comprehensible language. Plus, here in The Region, we speak the same language, in more ways than one.
The other grouping that caught my eye was “provides time for review”, “tests reflect the material we learned”, and “grades fairly”. Those things ideally go together always. But especially in a remote learning environment, I’m satisfied that my students felt that they were well prepared for tests, that there was no “gotcha” on my assessments, and that their grades reflected their learning.
I decided early on in the remote learning environment that I would not assign work outside of classtime, except for studying for tests. I felt that if students showed up in my class every day and were engaged in the activity we were doing, they should receive full points for their participation. Tests and quizzes were graded for accuracy, and the points split about two-thirds daily work/one-third tests. So really the only way to fail was to ghost me entirely. Which happened in a few cases. But the kids who gave me what they had every day, got what they needed at the end of the semester.
Oh yeah… “dresses professionally”.
Teaching From Home teachers are single-handed lay bringing back the Oxford & cargo shorts look.
Also pioneering the “too much Halloween candy/not enough water” nutrition plan. (Not recommended). #teacherlife
Sometime during the fall I had back-to-back moments, one from a student and one from a parent that absolutely made my day. I shared it on Twitter and the ensuing conversation filled So. Many. Buckets. The responses to the open-ended items on the Teacher Report Card are kind of the digital equivalent of those notes we used to keep in a file for the “Tapatío and Tears” days (as Ed Campos Jr. says). Let ‘er rip:
At my school we typically do not keep the same students for both semesters of a year-long class. Which can be good or bad. But starting in about 10 hours I get to start all over again meeting kids, learning names, building relationships, creating memorable lessons, and teaching algebra.
The teacher report card will help me keep my “wows and wonders” at top of mind while I do it.
It’s Finals Week in my district. And in the era of remote learning, the final, like everything else, needs to be re-thought. And maybe re-imagined. Back before break our department met and planned for how each PLN would create a final. The Algebra II teachers decided to recreate the pencil & paper district final in Math XL. That sounded perfect. Except: Math XL, for all its awesomeness, is not really set up for churning out reams of multiple choice questions.
So it was time to make a decision. We had some time, but that time would evaporate quickly as the commitments of winter break took over our lives.
We needed a final that checked a number of boxes:
Quick grading turnaround
Appropriate length
Self-grading
Can use images for multiple choice options
Can include math symbols
And, oh yeah, can work with high-quality multiple choice items
Meeting with my Algebra II colleague we knocked around ideas, and after some back-and-forth I offered to create the final. First I checked out Problem-Attic, which offers extensive item banks. You can create PDFs with the free version but you can’t export to say Canvas or a Google Form without a school license. Then I tried duplicating the district final by creating custom problems in Math XL, but that’s a no-go on a chromebook. That functionality requires a Mac or Windows machine. And my personal laptop wasn’t up to the task.
OK, Desmos then? I love Desmos assessments but I haven’t taught myself Computation Layer yet and so I think I would have struggled to make the self-checking problems we want.
So I decided on Google Forms. I haven’t made a quiz in Forms before, but I watched a video once, and hey, first time for everything, right?
I feel like I’m pretty fluent in GForm. It was my go-to as a shell when we flipped to Emergency Remote Learning in the spring. This is just a couple more buttons to select and we’re good. So I was able to recreate the district final with little to no trouble. EquatIO solved the math symbols issue. Took a little longer than I wanted, but turned out OK.
Reflection time. Couple of logistical things:
The biggest drawback to me, that I didn’t see until I went through and took the final myself, is that students don’t have the ability to move back and forth between questions. That’s not super-horrible on a multiple choice assessment, but it definitely confirmed our decision to intentionally create a shorter final (20 items, 16 MC and 4 free response).
What about my kids who can use extra time? I can’t really have them keep the tab open until they see their study skills teacher, and if I use locked mode they don’t even have a tab. That’s an accommodation that’s in the IEP and it is non-negotiable. As a work-around I ended up printing the form to a PDF that was the size of a phone book and emailing that to the special ed teachers so they could have the questions to help students finish up in their study skills class. I offered to stitch together the form results and the in-person results to make sure my kids got full credit for all their answers and did not feel rushed. It turns out that a handful of kids did take advantage of this offer. I ended up utilizing the “edit after submit” feature in Forms for the kids that needed additional time. I didn’t publicize it to my classes at large for obvious reasons but for this limited number of students (and in pandemic era when I’ve learned to be more… flexible) it was fine.
Many of my kids struggled with uploading photos of work during the year, and I didn’t want right/wrong on a final exam item to hinge on tech issues, so on the free-response questions I had them type their work in to the answer box. Without access to math symbols, it was not pretty, but functional.
My poor colleague who made a copy of the final for her classes had a massive glitch with kids getting an error message when they submit but thanks to our awesome district tech coordinator we got that ironed out.
Would I do it again?
For unit quizzes or tests I’m sticking with Desmos during the year. I steer away from MC in general except for finals, and Desmos is such a big part of how we “do math” on the daily that it seems wrong to switch gears at test time. That said, I can see using GForms for a daily quiz or check for understanding. Easy to make, self-grading, student feedback. It had its place. So sure.
And everything I learned about writing Desmos assessments helped me write a better GForm final. I need items that reveal process or thinking. Shawn Cornally’s Think Thank Thunk blog is defunct but he once wrote an eye-opening post about his experience visiting the midwest office of a major testing company and discovering the process that went into creating high-quality multiple choice items. I kind of riff off those ideas, and Rafe Esquith’s “test prep” plan as well. He’d have his kids play “guess the error” to try to generate the distractors to the multiple-choice released items his district used.
I didn’t run into the post until I was deep into grading the free-response items on my final but these ideas from Matt Miller’s Ditch That Textbook blog are worth a thought too.
And mad props to my fellow algebra teacher for taking a chance with me. She let on that she wasn’t super-familiar with Google Forms so that gave me a little bit of free rein but also a responsibility to not blow her or her kids out of the water. We might be (metaphorically speaking) bruised and bloody after a semester of remote teaching but we came out the other end in one piece, with a new tool in our kit. I’ll take it.
I’m not sure what says more about the coach of the 2019 NBA champion Toronto Raptors – that he wears “Just For Looks” clear-lens glasses (even though he’s had LASIK to correct his vision) so his mom could find him on TV, or that while coaching in Great Britain he’d regularly spend a day’s wages to mail-order VHS tapes of Chicago Bulls games so he could study the Triangle Offense popularized by Phil Jackson.
Nick Nurse is the ninth and youngest child of an athletic Iowa family (he was the fourth brother to start at quarterback for his high school) who shot his way into a Division I basketball scholarship, then played four years at Northern Iowa. He left his first college head coaching gig with his tail between his legs and after a brief stint as a college assistant he landed a job coaching in London, that well-known basketball hotbed.
He won championships, moved around to different clubs, and started plotting how to break into coaching at the pro level in the US. He attended the NBA Summer League in Vegas and found he was terrible at networking. His last European coaching gig left him literally broke after the team folded. Nine championships in 12 years and he was out of money and at the end of the line.
He returned to Iowa, stayed at his sister’s house, and set about trying to get back on his feet. He did more than that. Driving through Des Moines he passed a brand-new arena, and eventually he set the process in motion to bring the city a team in the NBA Developmental League (D-League). Which of course promptly named him the team’s head coach. Which started him on a journey that led to the pinnacle of the pro basketball world.
As he points out, when he was named the head coach of the Raptors he was 50 years old. And about to begin his 30th year of coaching basketball.
Overnight sensation, right?
Nurse lays out the lessons he’s learned throughout his career, some from mentors and some through hard-earned experience. Of course, because every book is a “teacher book”, I read a lot of it through that lens.
My big takeaways:
One of Nurse’s mentors, former Florida State/Arizona/Northern Iowa (among other stops) football coach Darrell Mudra, would go upstairs to the press box at the start of every game, connected to his sideline by a headset. He believed in giving away power to those closest to the action – his staff, and ultimately, his team. For Nurse, that means listening to his players, taking advantage of their knowledge:
“As an NBA head coach, I hold the whiteboard at timeouts, and I call the plays at crucial moments. I have the last word. But if my point guard or other smart, veteran players tell me what they want to run, I hear them out.”
I can’t walk in to class every day saying, “so, kiddies, what do you want to do today?” But I can listen when they say “can we have a work day today?” – they are letting me know specifically what kind of support they need from me that day. When they tell me a certain style of review is going to work better for them than what I have planned, I have a tendency to pay attention. Especially if they’ve already demonstrated to me that they will put in the effort to practice and learn.
But more than that, I want to continue to give my students an opportunity to own their own education. If pouring information into their heads while they sit there passively worked, I’d do that. But I want them to be curious, to struggle (productively) with questions where there is no clear answer, where they can’t just do a quick google search and be done.
(In a related story, I just started reading Alright Alright Alright, Melissa Maerz’s oral history of the making of Dazed and Confused. The director Richard Linklater famously told his actors to “bring something with you to Austin”. He wanted them to make the character their own – he said if the finished product was word-for-word faithful to the script then they had failed. It sounds like “giving away control” might be a generational thing. A little counter-cultural then. And maybe still is now.)
Mudra recognizes that players’ personal goals do not always mesh with team goals. Which makes old-school coaches (and teachers) wince. “There is no ‘I’ in team” and all that. What Nurse came to realize “is that a big part of my job is to recognize my players’ selfish goals – in all their particulars – and then find a way to make them come in line with the team’s need to win.”
As he says,
“It is not in my interest, or my team’s, for a star to feel like less than a star. At crunch time in an NBA game, we depend on alphas playing like alphas. I’m not here to bring them down to earth.”
Nurse also relates how he bargained to get value from some of his marginal players. I was reminded of something my mentor teacher told me long ago about grades. He taught a class for students who needed two years to successfully complete freshman algebra. For many of them, math was not their thing and school was not their thing. He built in supports for them (open-note quizzes, a sliding point scale for homework based on effort & completion) and that effort to meet them halfway got him more production from his students than they might have otherwise given. So what happens when one of his kids had given absolutely max effort and was sitting on a 58% for a quarter? He knew if he gave that kid an F he’d lost them for the year. I mean, why work harder than you ever have, just to fail anyway? Hell, you can sleep through every class and doodle in your notebook and get an F. And then that kid is a classroom management problem for the rest of the year. No thank you.
This wise veteran teacher told me, look, you keep a column in your gradebook for extra credit, throw some points out there from time to time or for completing a sub assignment, and then at the end of the grading period if you need to write a “5” in that column to get a kid over the threshold to pass your class, you do it.
Nurse needed a certain level of performance and production from some of his bench players. He keeps a statue of an elephant on his desk to remind him to have the hard conversations with people. He’d flat-out tell them “what you are doing on the court right now is not helping us and it’s costing you playing time. Here’s what I need you to do. If you do these things, here’s how it will benefit you.” Two-way street, right?
Early in his career, Nurse identified proper shooting form as a key to success in the game. Borrowing a concept from the corporate world, Nurse says “Any business ought to focus relentlessly on its core mission.” And what’s more core in basketball than scoring? Score more points than the other team, you win. Simple as that. Nurse developed a step-by-step tutorial and even a specially marked basketball to help his players improve. He says it’s a message that he has passed along to his players: “If you want to stay in basketball, devote yourself to shooting. If you’re already a good shooter, become a better one.” (My corollary is: if you want to get better at math, do math).
Building on that concept, he developed a philosophy he refers to as “the shot spectrum”. Certain shots offer a high return – a drive to the basket that results in free throws, a made three point basket. So there are certain areas on the court where Nurse wants his team to take the majority of its shots. And there are other shots that are not worth the trouble. What used to be known and loved as “the mid-range jumper” is now absolute poison.
Nurse (a man after my own heart, clearly) says “It’s math and it’s not complicated”. If you make 50 percent of your two-point shots that’s 100 points on 100 attempts. Making 35 percent of 100 three-points shots is 105 points. (Nurse got some blowback on that theory from no less a basketball mind than Phil Jackson – missing 65 percent of your shots puts a lot of pressure on other aspects of the game, primarily rebounding and transition defense. But the modern NBA has confirmed Nurse’s philosophy).
So what’s next? He had to coach his teams to use those favored areas, and avoid the no-go zones. That was a hard sell to guys who modeled themselves after Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant or Dirk Nowitzki. He went so far as to place X’s on the practice floor in tape to mark the targeted shooting zones, and offering four points in a scrimmage for a made three-point shot from a corner, and subtracting points when players attempted a long two-pointer.
What does that look like in a classroom? Rewarding what I value in class. I’m not above bribery. When I flipped my class I started giving points for completing the notes before class, but only if they also completed a 3-2-1 summary I attached to the notes. I not only wanted them practicing the skill we were working on, I also wanted them thinking about what they learned and what questions they still had. Do you just want to go through the motions and “gimme my points”, or do you want a real payoff for your hard work? Changing the culture is a long slog, but what Nurse eventually found is that his players policed themselves when it came to shot selection as they started to see results.
Buy-in is a beautiful thing.
In his first year in the D-League his team had so many close losses, he felt like he needed to examine how he and his players were handling end-of-game situations. He and one of his assistants spent all summer holed up in his basement drawing up end of game plays for every imaginable scenario. The two of them filled whiteboard after whiteboard, inbounds plays from every location. last possessions against every imaginable defense, all their work entered to a spreadsheet. Even now Nurse spends time every practice scrimmaging in a tie-game, one minute to go scenario. Scoreboard reads “90-90”. Clock running. So in a real game, his players aren’t flying blind in that scenario. They’ve simulated it dozens of times.
I thought back to my Calculus I course at UNLV. The instructor was a firm believer that there should be no “gotcha” on his tests – he should be assessing what he taught. (As an aside, he was an adjunct who worked in risk management for a credit card company as his day job. He had some different thoughts about math education and education in general. In a good way. A lot of it has stuck with me). One hundred percent of his test questions came directly from the homework. If you had been keeping up with the assignments every class meeting, you’d already done every problem on the test. So in preparation for his tests, I’d open up my Calculus text, start on the first section of the chapter, and re-work a few questions from each part of the assignment. Then on to the next section, and the next, until I had done maybe 30-40 problems total. It took hours, but I knew when I sat down in front of one of his assessments there was nothing in there I hadn’t done before, correctly, multiple times. Total peace of mind. And I friggin’ aced that class.
I’d never tell my kids to study 3 hours for one of my tests. But the basic concept is the same. If they can do what we’ve done in class and on the review, the sky is the limit on how well they can do on a quiz or test for me.
Also: Nurse and his assistant, Nate Bjorkgren (now head coach of the Indiana Pacers) tell young coaches about that endless summer with the pizza boxes on the floor and the whiteboards covering every wall, the young guys all think it’s cool, then they ask for the spreadsheet. Nurse always tells them “No” – they want the work product without doing the work. It doesn’t work like that. He’d even tell them,”You’re missing the whole damn point.”
There is no magic bullet. I could have slid by without spending hours preparing for a chapter test. But doing the work put me on the Dean’s List.
The last two paragraphs of the epilogue are fitting for a guy who drove the team van to games in front of nobody in a country where few cared about basketball, and who has coached the most talented players on the planet to a championship in front of a worldwide audience. He reflects on the idea of “winning the last game”, wherever you are, whatever level you are at. That matters. And then:
“All I’ve wanted to be is a coach. To get better at the craft and to make individuals and teams better. I’ve found satisfaction and enjoyed the hell out of it anywhere I’ve been afforded the opportunity to lead a team.
For anyone in the profession, the lesson has to be: Live in the present. Throw yourself into each day. And if anyone ever offers you a bigger job, be damn sure you’ve prepared yourself to succeed.”
You don’t have to be a hoops junkie (or a teacher) to enjoy Rapture: Fifteen Teams, Four Countries, One NBA Championship, and How To Find A Way To Win — Damn Near Anywhere. If your job involves working with or managing people, you’ll definitely relate to many of the situations. If you’ve chased a dream, if you enjoy travel, if you’ve waited forever for a breakthough, if you’ve ever made your own break, if you think there’s a better way, if you ever wondered “what if?”, if you’ve worked harder than anyone else at something, you’ll nod your head.
Stereotypically, Midwest people spend all winter longing for summer.
Can you blame us? Beach sunsets are glorious. Photo cred: Mrs. Dull
But there’s an extra sense of déjà vu on this third day of January, 2021, the last day of winter break. It feels like one particular aspect of last summer all over again. Teachers spent a good part of the summer planning for multiple contingencies – would schools re-open in person? All remote? Some type of hybrid?
The best advice I got was to plan for remote and work backwards from there, the logic being that it’s easier to make an in-person lesson out of a remote lesson than the other way around.
My district has been 100% percent remote from the jump, planning on a return to in-person learning to start the second semester January 19.
But changing the calendar hasn’t changed reality. Covid is still in uncontrolled spread nationwide, we’re masking up and distancing, my son’s district is still sending out a daily email stating the number of positives throughout the district – in other words, 2021 looks a lot like 2020 so far.
My district is planing to address the issue at its next board meeting Tuesday. So I won’t know for sure for a couple of days what semester two will look like. In a survey of families, elementary parents are split 50-50 with secondary families favoring remote learning 60-40.
So I’m planning accordingly. If we stay remote (as many nearby districts have announced, at least for the third quarter) then it is status quo. Maybe a few tweaks here and there. Desmos and Quizizz and Math XL and Eduprotocols have carried the weight. I could always try for more verbal engagement from my students. Breakout rooms were good for that during first semester, I’d check in individually with pairs or groups of students and get & give feedback.
But if we are in-person? That would seem to be a no-brainer. I mean, it’s what we all trained for and have done our whole career, right? Except.
In-person pandemic school is nothing like what we are used to. Masks and dividers and distancing, and no shared materials, and teacher stands at the front of the room.
But also: my students now have a semester of 1:1 technology usage under their belt. We’ve done some cool stuff. I’d like to keep going. And that means we can do “group work” even when my students are physically distant.
I don’t know for sure if the students are keeping their devices if we return in-person next semester. That’s probably my first step – get that question answered and go from there.
Then go back and skim “The Perfect Blend” and get ready to roll with blended learning.
Until then, we had a day to get away on Saturday. A place to clear our heads, and have the beach to ourselves. Mostly.
I’ll be sitting on that beach in the sunshine soon enough. Physically distanced, probably.
We are definitely Four-Seasons Beach People. It’s gorgeous all year round. Beauty takes on different forms in the winter, might have to make some different preparations as far as clothing & footwear, but it feeds my soul every time.
I feel like there might be a message for me in there about the preparation for pandemic teaching & learning the second half of the school year.
That’s a wrap on the #MTBoSYuleBlog for me this break. Feel free to check out the tag for the toughts of some really good teachers. And don’t feel bad if it takes you a while to soak it all in.
Tweaking For No Reason 