Month: June 2023

Teacher Report Card: False Summit Edition

Back in my running days I became aware of a concept called the “false summit”. Sometimes on hilly terrain a runner will approach what looks like the crest of a hill only to realize it is actually a plateau and there is still more elevation to conquer. It can be demoralizing and definitely forces a runner to hone the mental part of their game.

Source

My teacher friends know the school year can be kind of like that. We started a week later than most of our surrounding districts back in August and built in a longer fall break in October, as well as taking a four-day weekend at Easter. As a result when most nearby kids started summer break around Memorial Day, my district calendar ran through the second week of June, and then jumped right into summer school.

(Summer school is not a bad gig, by the way. There’s a group of regulars amongst the teachers, and this year I’ve got a pretty solid contingent of former students with me trying to make up credits. Which makes me question my teaching skills a bit but on the positive they are good people to be around. And a little extra cash for three weeks of work is also beneficial.)

Keep putting in that work, my babies

Some conference and presentation committments kept me busy as well. I’ve been careful to build in time to rejuvenate body, mind, and soul over the last month. Now with summer school winding down I finally have a little bandwidth available to process the 22-23 school year. It feels to me like it was a good year. Would my students agree? One way to find out, right?

The tool I and many of my online connects use for that purpose is Matt Vaudrey’s Teacher Report Card. (Make a copy and edit to suit your purposes if you wish).

(Previous recaps here, here, here, here, and here). It’s some of the best feedback I get every year.

Replying anonymously, students rank me from 1 (never happens) to 5 (oh yeah definitely all the time) to a series of statements.

My response rate of 43% (55/126 rostered students) was a bit lower than in recent semesters, partly due to low attendance on the days I administered the survey. Representative enough for our purposes I guess.

How’d I do? Academically I scored well in:

  • “provides time for review of material” (4.47)
  • “gives tests that reflect the material in the unit” (4.46)
  • “gives enough time for assignments” (4.38)
  • “gives good, fair assignments” (4.27)
  • “grades fairly.” (4.22)
  • “leads good class discussions” (4.22)
  • “tells us our learning goals” (4.13)

And in terms of classroom culture I was strong in:

  • “respects each student” (4.78)
  • “dresses professionally” (4.76)
  • “does a good job of treating all students the same” (4.67)
  • “seems to enjoy teaching” (4.49)
  • “treats me as an individual” (4.47)
  • “encourages different opinions” (4.42)
  • “keeps the class under control without being too tough” (4.38)
  • “tries to see the student’s point of view” (4.35)

And where can I improve?

  • “tries new teaching methods” (3.87)
  • “has a good pace (not too fast or too slow)” (3.93)
  • “explains topics clearly” (3.95)
  • “has interesting lessons” (3.98)
  • “answers questions completely.” (4.11)

The areas of strength and growth are pretty consistent over the last handful of years, and there’s a bit of a regression to the mean. My highs are a little lower, my lows are a couple clicks higher. For what its worth. My stats people could tell me if the variance in numbers is large enough to be significant.

What do my kids like best about the class?

  • “the teaching is Amazing”
  • “Mr Dull’s humor”
  • “Its quiet (kinda), gives us second chances and sometimes third, wonderful memes, and good teacher.”
  • “The depth of the notes”
  • “even if you do not understand something he will help you.”
  • “I like that we have a safe space to make errors without feeling judged.”
  • “The environment is relaxing and laid back.”
  • “It doesn’t make me feel excluded from others because I don’t know how to speak English.”
  • “How nice everyone is and no one makes fun of anyones questions.”
  • “I like we don’t have homework”
  • “He teaches the subject really well.”
  • “its like a safe space”
  • “The music in the beginning”

And how can I improve the class?

  • “It’s math class… it can’t be”
  • “Add more posters/ make it (homey)”
  • “accurate study guides’
  • “I guess make it more engaging but that is also the students fault not making it so.”
  • “Allowing more time for review.”
  • “Talk to the students more.”
  • “maybe make the students answer u more idk u just answer your own question if no one answers.”
  • “Slow down on teaching and explaining”
  • “This may just be about my experience in this class and my difficulty speaking your language, but it would provide help on exams.”
  • “Not Giving Multiple Papers at Once (Save the trees)”
  • “I think the only thing that would improve the class is the students communication and participation with each other and Mr. Dull. Our class right now is seemingly quiet and reserved and so the class has little communication and participation.”
  • “less tests :)))”

No lie, if there’s anything that really stands out to me as an area of improvement from this year is finding a way to get more student out-loud participation. Got to give that some thought for August.

And their parting words for me?

  • “Your class is fun and your a good teacher”
  • “keep up the good work and I feel bad because you have to deal with them bad kids.”
  • “if my friends do have you next year, then they should know you are a calm, funny lenient person”
  • “I love your outfits and song choices you play!”
  • “if there was a 10 for comedic level that would be cool.”
  • “i hope you have a great summer and you were such an awesome kind hearted person!”
  • “I hope you have a great summer break.”
  • “MIAMI HEAT IN 6”
Source

Yeah, I wanted Jimmy Buckets to win a title too. Can’t get everything you want I guess. Get to the finals and find out that’s the toughest seven games yet. I can relate.

But any year that ends in a chance to win a championship is by definition a good year. One to look back on fondly.

I can relate to that too.

“Learning Is Iterative”

Late May, early June every school year I have flashbacks to college. Hanging on by my fingertips to make it through the end of the semester, knowing that an intense week of finals stood between me and a break for summer.

It felt like that this year for real. Hoo. I committed to presenting two sessions at the South Shore Summer of Learning Conference, plus my Equitable Funding working group from Teach Plus needed to put together a presentation (from a distance: two of us in the Region, two in Evansville) to summarize our learning during the course of the year for the year-end Showcase. That’s a lot of learning, and Displays of Learning, all packed in to a two-week or so span.

So, the South Shore Conference. My first time in person since 2019. I intentionally took last summer off, just to recover. I was pretty psyched to see teacher friends in person, and to sit in on sessions from folks who had something to teach me.

My Day Two morning was spent in the keynote and the breakout from Cornelius Minor, a middle school teacher from Brooklyn.

His breakout was titled “The Game Has Changed”, so we started on the same page. His philosophy is “Teaching is the inverse of learning.” Put another way, You taught, but how do you know that they learned?

He hooked in the hoops junkies right from jump.

For my youngbloods, that’s Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan in about 1991 or so. Magic was the bridge from the early 80s Bird-Dr. J era to Jordan’s dominance of the 90s. That’s a hell of a line: “These new kids are messing things up.” It wasn’t a old man shaking a fist at the clouds. It was one of the greatest players of all time recognizing he needed to match his game to the times. Adapt or die.

As Minor put it, “Don’t be that guy who’s like ‘man I was killin’ it in 2014′”.

The teaching game has changed. In a lot of ways. Now more than ever we need to ask ourselves, “You taught, but how do you know that they learned?” And maybe more important, how do we keep our kids from shutting down before learning can happen? Minor walks his talk: he challenged us to find a partner and teach them to put on and tie a shoe. Then he called out the quality teaching practices he saw, and used the experience to make his point.

Here’s how I paraphrased Minor’s message in my notes:

Teaching is iterative. We can’t tell, we need to show & demonstrate. Iterative? There is a 100% chance the first time a student tries a new thing its gonna go real bad. If they get it the first time, then you didn’t teach them. They already knew it before they got to you. 🙂

Second try goes less bad. The third try? Decent. Then we keep going until we get to proficient. But school often demands that kids “get it” on the first attempt and we penalize those who don’t. And on top of that, that’s when we assign a grade. (Sam & geometry).

So kids either refuse to engage at all (because they get scolded when they do bad the first time so they just don’t try) or, they get the bad grade after the first try and never make the second try.

Pushing through past the second try is “engagement”. Staying committed to the task when the task is not going well. (Need the social, emotional, and academic tools to stay committed tho).

All that goes for teachers too. There were 1000 of us signed up for the South Shore Conference (which were the first two days of summer break in my district). My cohort of 12 in Teach Plus, the 50 teachers who took part in the IDOE’s Teacher Leader Bootcamp, PLC time in my building, a year of PD and collaboration supporting our transition to a project-based learning school. Reading. Learning continuously, and applying what we learned to improve teaching and learning.

We’re all trying to keep learning, pushing past that “second try” in whatever challenge we face. For me this week, that looked like signing up for a Desmos webinar on their scripting language, Computation Layer.

The Desmos people have published a treasure trove of resources and I’ve been trying to teach myself CL since about forever, with marginal success. I needed a teacher. Or in the case of this webinar, two.

It helped, for real. I feel like I can bring some of my existing activities up to modern-day standards, and create some new, visually engaging activities to help my kids learn.

It’s been a good June personally and professionally. Got a week left of summer school and kids are piling up the credits.

And then we can exhale. But we snuck in a little Friday evening chill time this week. Because the body and soul need refreshing too.

Never happier than when we’re by water. That sunset was so perfect I didn’t want it to end. Quality payoff for a pretty intense last month or so of work.