The Future of Reading -New York Times

The Future of Reading
Students Get New Assignment: Pick Books You Like

This is an interesting New York Times article about some teachers and districts letting kids read whatever they like in English classes in order to encourage them to read more and like what they read. I understand why teachers would do this, however, I wonder if we should abandon the great books of our history and culture so easily.

Perhaps we simply need to do a better job of making the case to our students for these books so they actually want to read them. Maybe the failure is ours, not theirs.

Teacher man: a memoir - Google Books

Teacher man: a memoir - Google Books

I can't put this book down by the late Frank McCourt. A line struck me as I'm preparing for the first day of school on Tuesday. He writes of teaching, "If you don't learn to love it, you'll wriggle in a corner of hell." Love it folks!

Trying Something New

In an attempt to find new and better ways for my students to build their skills in English and a desire to make my class more relevant, exciting and consistent with our modern world, I'm considering trying something new this year.

While reading Howard Gardner's analysis of Google's practice of allowing its employees to spend one day a week working on their own innovative project in Five Minds for the Future (see the bookshelf at the bottom of this blog) this summer, I thought, why wouldn't this work with students?

I'm thinking of calling it "Innovation Friday," Here's the idea:

• Students create an ambitious project of their own design that requires them to show they have achieved or grown in specific standards, personal goals, and class goals.


• Each project proposal must be approved by the teacher.


• Every Friday, students spend the entire period working on their project, while dedicating a certain amount of time outside of class to it as well


• We do three of these projects throughout the year. The first is individual. The second is chosen and completed by a small group. The third project is an entire class effort.


• The results or outcomes of the projects must be posted online for community viewing and comment.

The reason for doing the individual, small group, and class version would be to better simulate the different kinds of experiences they will have in the future.

My fear in doing something like this is giving up control and that some students just won't get it, procrastinate, and turn in low quality work. I think I could mitigate this by raising the bar on their projects when I meet with them about their proposals, having them turn in progress reports, developing a grading rubric with the students, and meeting with individual students throughout the process.

I will also have to give something up if I'm dedicating Fridays to this activity, but I think overall it will add more variety, excitement, creativity and learning about personal responsibility to my class.

Any suggestions? Am I crazy?

Do Teachers Need Education Degrees? - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com

Do Teachers Need Education Degrees? - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com

These editorials from the New York Times are fascinating and illustrate what a fluid and strange profession teaching is. There seems to be no true consensus in our society (although many examples of forced consensus) about what children should be learning, how they should learn it, how we should measure it, to say the least about how teachers should be trained and what we should be doing.

Over the long run, I hope this blog will help teachers (and myself) navigate this incredible ambiguity.

As far as the specific debate above, I would say teachers do need education degrees, but most teacher credentialing programs should be changed to more of an apprenticeship model, with less time in the college lecture setting and more time in the schools they will be working in, practicing their craft in the classroom. At least in California where I am credentialed, it seems like much of the course content has to do with political mandates rather than serious explorations of the pedagogy and philosophy of teaching.

I'm curious to hear what other teachers think about the credentialing process and their experience.

By Sarah Fine -- Why I Left Teaching Behind - washingtonpost.com

Thanks to great teacher Christopher Greenslate for finding this piece:

By Sarah Fine -- Why I Left Teaching Behind - washingtonpost.com

Ms. Fine reports feeling "undervalued" as a teacher by the administration in her inner city school, friends, and American society. It seems the charter school she worked for sought to improve education without much input from the teachers. This hierarchical style of educational reform seems destined to fail.

More and more research seems to imply that children with less educated parents need more physical time in school to close the achievement gap. Some charter schools have figured this out and shown powerful results. The problem arises when schools, like Sarah Fine's, try to extend the school day and school year without increasing teacher compensation, reducing teacher pay to around 10$ an hour. No wonder charter schools have such a high rate of turnover.

The Obama administration has embraced (see the New Yorker abstract) the charter school model as practiced by the KIPP and Green Dot schools. I only hope they don't try to make these changes on the cheap, forcing more good teachers out of the profession. In this sense, perhaps Ms. Fine shows insight in her feelings about the value American society puts on education, learning, and teaching.

Day to Day Success in Teaching

Remember that as a teacher you’re in it for the long run whether it’s the class, the school year or your career. This is a dangerous profession in that you can set yourself up for burn-out or simply hating what you do. Depression or feelings of impotence can insinuate their way into your spirit if you don't guard against them.

Let’s say you have a class where you start off okay, then things start to drift. Students may seem to lose motivation, you have some discipline problems or just a sense that strong progress has halted in your classroom. You begin to feel like you just want to get through that class every day and you’re not happy to see them.

To deal with these situations you must reinvigorate yourself every morning and not think of the big picture. Just think about TODAY. How am I going to make today a great day? Given everything else that’s gone on, my failures, their failures, what can I do today to make this class work? How do I have to change? If you go into class each morning and work with the focus on that one class or student immediately in front of you, rather than get overwhelmed by the work load, the apathy, the long term goals, or the long term trajectory of a student, you will see you can turn the tide in a class.

There will always be students who come in with negative attitudes who don’t want to learn. As a teacher, you have to win them over. Convince them not only with your arguments and reason, but with your pure exuberance and belief in yourself, subject and life. The cockeyed optimist is the successful teacher at any level. You have to believe in the face of cynicism, class after class, year after year, student after student and day by day.

If you can’t generate that enthusiasm within yourself and students perhaps it is a sign this profession isn’t for you. It’s simply tough being a cynical person, and then going in to confront the cynicism of your students. You have to be an optimist to teach well (See The Passionate Teacher on the bookshelf at the bottom of the page).

Another piece of thriving day to day is avoiding burn-out. There’s an enormous amount of work to do outside of the classroom just to stay afloat, even if you do control what you’re grading. You have bureaucratic work, collaboration, meetings with students and parents, e-mails, etc. Set schedules so you can create a rhythm for yourself.

For example, Mondays and Tuesdays might be days where you grade and organize student work. Wednesdays and Thursdays you have a set time for some exercise after school or doing something that recharges you. I would recommend that you do these recharging activities before you go home to avoid collapsing into exhaustion when you get there.

Stick to your schedule. People will ask you to meet about this or that, but you can’t let your physical and mental health consistently rank second if you are going to survive for the long term. These are not luxury goods. They are essential. We have a responsibility to model physical and emotional health to our students.

You could be the most intelligent, intellectual person in the world, but if you’re unhealthy, you are sending the wrong message to your students about what it means to be an adult. They will sense your lack of health and want to check-out of the world and model of adult life you are offering, which makes them much less likely to learn from you. Take care of yourself!

Assessment

English Rubric Blog adapted from Michelle Mullen

This is a controversial topic. In my classroom I like students to be able to do things. My assessments are skill based and ongoing. I assess kids during class discussions, essays, projects and presentations because I want to see what students can do, not remember.

I think many teachers get too wrapped up in grading and grades. We think of grades traditionally, as a way to give students a final evaluation and everything they do is just a piece of that. This shouldn’t be the model at all, each assessment should be formative, not something used simply as a part of a grade. We should use the assessment to help that student learn. Too often teachers, parents and students think of it all as a part of a final grade. Most parents will ask their children, "How are your grades?" fifty to one over "What did you learn how to do today?"

My grading is also not point-based. I use holistic rubrics for major projects and the overall grade. This sometimes gives me a lot of headaches, not because it is a difficult system, but because students and parents are trained to see everything through the lens of points rather than what their work shows about their learning. The rubrics attempt to put the focus on learning. Click here for the English Rubric I use (created by Michelle Mullen slightly adapted by me). Click here for the AVID Rubric I use (created with Blaze Newman).

The effect of a point-based system is that it teaches students and parents to simply play the game of gathering points rather than focus on their learning. With the holistic rubric, students have to fit a profile rather than gather points. Students then have to make an argument for their final grade. There are some things that are recorded as point values, but these do not make up the complete grade.

I do feel like I’m swimming against the current in this because most teachers are still using the traditional systems and I have to educate students and parents about my system, which does take time. However, I have seen many teachers spend so much of their time on accounting in their point systems, getting so bogged down that they don’t even have time to think about their teaching. Many teachers do the same thing year after year simply because they are spending all the time when they’re not teaching a class on grading. Don’t fall into this trap. You must have some reflective and creative time dedicated to improving your practice.

Part of being a healthy professional is giving yourself time to reflect. Many teachers will say they don’t have time or their classes are too big. I can’t reflect. I just have to tread water. If this is the case you are doing a disservice to yourself, your students and your profession.

Find ways to cut back on your grading. Don’t grade everything. Do peer grading. If you don’t have time to really assess students and you feel like you are just accounting, accounting and accounting, there is something wrong with your grading system. Step back from what you’re doing and ask yourself: Do I really need to count every piece of work? What can I let go of? Can you know through less time consuming means what students have and haven’t learned? Don’t let the accounting suck away at your time for actually helping your students.