The Art of Negotiation

I enjoyed class on Wednesday, as I thought we did a good job of not only continuing our discussion of curriculum and the creation of rich learning experiences for students (resources, standards, big ideas), but also got a chance to talk about some of the procedural and relational aspects that are such a big part of teaching.

We started class by thinking about what to do with students who don’t have a writing utensil. It’s a small example, but helpful. What I hoped you gained from that discussion is the importance of not just solving the everyday problems that are constantly coming at us as a teachers, but also of stepping back and looking at the larger puzzle of human behavior: Why is this student acting this way? What is she trying to communicate to me? What is the proper response?

I hope you saw that the meaning of “not having a pencil” can vary quite dramatically depending upon the student and the situation. Therefore our response would need to vary as well.

At the end of class, we considered the student who wrote to Ben that “you think you know a lot about teaching, but you don’t.” I suggested this student was trying to get under Ben’s skin by communicating something to him that was intentionally hurtful. I suggested that this comment was less about Ben and more about the student. If we let our egos get in the way of dealing with such a situation—our own need to feel liked and important—we are probably not going to do the situation justice.

Ultimately, I suggested we have to be comfortable being ourselves before our students. But, upon reflection, that is only part of the truth.

For we have to be comfortable letting our students be themselves too. And those selves may not make us very comfortable at times.

All teaching is ultimately a negotiation, a co-creation between teachers and students. Learning to teach is learning to make space for that co-creation.

Have a good weekend!

Teaching the Text

Our class thus far has focused on two insights that need to be developed by aspiring social studies teachers.

1)   All historical work comes with in-built perspectives and assumptions about the way the world works; and

2)   A text does not, in itself, teach.

Over the coming weeks, we will focus more on point one. Indeed, our first major assignment (due October 5) will be built around the importance of helping students learn to see the assumptions and perspectives hidden away in various types of social studies curricular resources.

But this leads us on to the importance of point number two. How do we help students with such seeing?

We examined selections from Ben’s textbook yesterday. We also compared the layout of his textbook to that of a typical French textbook. Through that juxtaposition, it was my hope that you came to see how important your role as a teacher is in guiding students through text.

Ideally, I suppose, texts would “teach themselves.” By that, I mean, they would have a theory about how attention works—how students learn. And that theory would guide the construction of the text in terms of content and layout. A student could just pick it up and use it—no other assistance required.

I think most textbooks do a pretty good job with this. But the fact still remains—when a typical secondary student looks at a text, they have little idea about “how to attack it.” They need your help.

As we thought about Ben’s text yesterday, we noticed the following aspects: narrative explanatory text, guiding and essential questions, headings and subheadings, vocabulary assistance, pictures, snippets of primary documents, etc. As we continue to move through the text in the coming weeks and months, we will see charts, maps, graphs, and many other things as well. Can we assume that students will know what to do with all of these various elements?

In short, no.

I started to imagine with you the possibilities for teaching the text. How do we set up the lesson so that students maximize the learning resources embedded in the text? How do we direct their attention in smart ways? How do we get them to see this picture as more than two “dudes” fighting in wigs and suits? How do we get them to see what you, as practiced students of history, see?

This is the art of lesson planning—sequencing student attention to “bring out” the learning potential embedded in the text. And this is what we will be practicing over the coming weeks—indeed, over the entire year.

Have a great weekend!

Creating a Reflective Practice

At this point in your semester, you are no doubt well in to your lead teaching. It’s therefore time to start turning your thoughts toward your MSU coursework.

No doubt, at times, your coursework feels like a hoop you need to jump through in order to finish the program. While that feeling is completely understandable, I would ask you to not get yourself in that habit of looking at things.

Your MSU coursework is a great opportunity to teach yourself how to manage the life of a teacher while still maintaining daily time for growth and reflection. Doing so is absolutely essential, I am convinced, to your long-term mental resilience.

Teachers are extremely busy. I don’t need to tell you that. The demands on our attention are innumerable. It is all the more important, therefore, to make time. The key to realize is that by giving, you receive; by giving time to yourself, you actually create more of it for others. These are the laws of mental efficiency.

I’ve heard it said of Gandhi, that when told he would have a particularly busy day, he committed himself to doubling the amount of time he would devote to meditation and reflection. Only in that way would he ensure that he could be fully devoted to the work he needed to do.

This is, therefore, about the discipline of building a reflective practice.

My advice is that you devote approximately 10 minutes a day to each of your MSU courses during the next few weeks.  But make this 10 minutes essential. Make it regular. Don’t let anything else crowd it out.

I recommend that you write about what you are noticing about your case student. Write about what you are seeing, what you are noticing, and what you are learning. Create character sketches. Doodle. Free write. Explore.  While some of your writing will be exploratory, my guess is that other writing you do will be able to go directly into your final case study report.

I’ve learned that university students are pretty vocal about what, in a course, works for them. That can be a mixed blessing. But mostly it’s good. University professors don’t have the option of allowing the silence of students to trick them into believing that everything is going just great for every single student in their class.

I think it was different in high school. Since students were less accustomed to speaking up, unless I actively sought out their feedback, it was rarely offered. Unless I really took the time to examine what was happening to a student in my class, it was easy to assume that everything was mostly fine.

Reflection on the lives of children and teenagers is one of the greatest sources of growth we can have as a teachers. I invite you to use this case study assignment to get yourself in the habit of using it to improve your practice.

But doing so requires discipline. It requires regularity. It requires us to set priorities around our own continued growth as teachers.

Have a great rest of the week. Sharpen those pencils—your March Madness bracket is just around the corner!

Kyle

Surviving the Late Winter Blues

Yesterday, I read an interesting article by one of my favorite theorists, Adam Phillips. 

Phillips has written books such as Missing Out that I have found very helpful as I have written about the role of frustration in both our personal and professional lives as teachers. Phillips is a psychoanalyst working out of London, but I find his insights pretty universal to the entire human condition.

In his article, Phillips provides an interesting take on the Christian version of the Golden Rule: Love your enemies as yourself. And what is interesting here is that Phillips doesn’t argue that we are falling short in our attempts to live out this moral rule--rather, he says that we have lived out this moral rule all too well.

How is that, you ask?

Well, Phillips spends a lot of time in his article unpacking the fundamental ambivalence that underlies everything that matters to us in this life. The way in which love and hate often alternate for us in our deepest and most intimate relationships. In particular, he does a wonderful job showing how our consciences--under the guise of self love--often inflict a lot of internal damage.

In short: We are usually incredibly hard on ourselves. It’s therefore no surprise that the disgust we often feel with ourselves gets communicated out onto others.

Phillips’ is a not a feel-good message about self esteem. Rather, I think it’s about recognizing the way in which we often set ourselves up to fail by holding unrealistic expectations of our ability to manage and control the world.

When I get mad at a student or colleague for not responding the way I want them to, am I not in essence also getting mad at myself for my inability to get them to act the way I think they should?

What if we freed ourselves up from some of these expectations? What if we just focused on being more honest, with our students and with ourselves, about how things are going in the moment? What if we framed every teaching moment as an inquiry into the state of our relationships--with each other (I’m really annoyed with you all right now), with the subject matter we are teaching (This is terribly boring), and with the world we are attempting to understand and change (This textbook underestimates the amount of dysfunction in our government).

This is an incredibly hard time of year. It’s easy to fall into bad habits. It’s easy to let our emotions get the better of us. I invite you to take a less combative and controlling attitude towards your world and try out an attitude of acceptance of what currently is. Let honesty and authenticity be your weapon of choice. Expect that the world will return to you what you give it. See if this change in attitude helps you--for one period, for one day, for one week.

Take care!

Kyle

Ethical Dilemmas in Accommodating Students

Today, we got pretty deep into a very perplexing and complicated dilemma of public schooling teaching: How far and to what degree do you accommodate the needs, behaviors and preferences of your students? 

I left class totally excited about that conversation and the degree of depth we achieved in it.

On the one hand, we can say something like: Rules are rules. No excuses, no exceptions. If the rules, criteria and expectations are clear and transparent from the start, then the facts are what they are. A democratic society depends upon a set of predictable and consistently enforced rules and procedures in order to ensure that fairness reigns and justice prevails.

On the other hand, we can say: Context matter. Not everyone starts the race from the same place. So it’s not so much about where each individual starts as where we collectively end up. Equality of opportunity means nothing absent equality of resources and means. A democratic society depends upon sharing resources in order to ensure that opportunity is truly equalized.

And so it goes . . . 

Here are some dilemmas.

• Do we accommodate a student who is tardy to our class because she overslept, due to being up late studying?
• Do we accommodate a student who requests to re-take an exam because he was feeling ill on the day of the test?
• Do we accommodate a student whose parents request she be excused from watching Schindler’s List because the family believes that the movie overstates the extent and depth of the Holocaust’s brutality?

In the above examples, I’ve tried to point out the range of accommodation requests that come at us as teachers.  I want you to see that they are all, more or less, ethical dilemmas.

I also tried to write dilemmas that would push me, as a teacher, in different directions. I would probably not accommodate the first, I probably would accommodate the second, and I would have a very hard time accommodating the third--though, if pushed, I would probably view it as an exercise in free speech that I would be hesitant to deny.

My point? I am not “all for” or “all against” accommodation. It really does depends.

But what does it depend on?

I have two pieces of advice here. 

First, know what matters to you. Pick your battles. Things like talking while I was talking, putting your head down in class, or coming in tardy--these were all things that felt disrespectful to me and made the classroom chaotic or uninviting for other learners. I had a very low tolerance for any of these behaviors and was pretty inflexible with them all. 

But, when it came to student work, I felt differently. If I was going to take the time to grade it, I wanted it to be good. Since I couldn’t get to all my student’s work in one or two days, what difference would it make if it came in one or two days late? As long as students took initiative to request an extension, I was usually ok giving it.

This leads me to a second piece of advice. Last week I linked to an article about reliability in grading that mentioned the work of  Douglas Reeves. I think last week’s article made some important points. 

Increasingly, it appears, grades will come to be tied to specific standards. This is already how a lot of elementary schools work, and I think middle schools and high schools might head in that direction as well. Doing so gives us a lot more helpful and accurate information than a single grade that represents a mixture of ability, achievement, effort, attendance and compliance.

When I give a student two extra days to do their best work, am I increasingly or decreasing the reliability of grades as indicators of student learning? When I give a zero for not doing their homework, am I increasing or decreasing the reliability of grades as indicators of student learning?

I’ll return to my sunny optimism and assert that each child is gifted to enrich the world in ways we can only begin to imagine. As teachers, I think we want to act in ways that bring out these gifts, rather than stifling them.

Perhaps, when viewed in this light, the question of accommodation becomes not so hard after all . . .

 

Finding the Special through Assessment

Thank you for a great class on Friday! I am pleased with the level of engagement and collegiality in our class!!

As I have told some of you, I have an interest in European education. I taught for several years in Hungary and I have done research in French classrooms. As we talked about assessment and students with IEPs, it recalled for me some of the things I observed in those classrooms.

We are very used to think about mastery as 90% in the US. Indeed, for us, there is hardly another way to think about what “mastery”--or what an “A”--represents.

It might therefore interest you to know that in France, 14/20 is a very high--even an exceptional--grade (everything is always worth 20 points in France--don’t ask me why). 

I have heard stories about US teachers who spend time teaching in France and are shocked to receive parental complaints about them being “too easy graders.” Americans, it seems, are all too willing to give out unheard of scores, such as 18’s, to their students.

My point? Grading is often a somewhat subjective enterprise.

Now, there are test writers who use very sophisticated procedures as they work. Think about the IQ test. Most of the population will score 100. That is going to be the most common score. It represents “average intelligence.” Scores will naturally cluster around that number, with increasingly fewer scores as you move further away (up or down) away from 100. This is the idea of the normally-distributed bell curve.

In such a test, 100 means something fairly objective. 

But in most assessments that we as teachers write, there is nowhere near this level of certainty. I can write an assessment on which the most able student will receive 50/100. Does that mean this student failed? Does it mean the test was too hard? Or does it mean that that 50/100 represents “mastery” for that content on that particular exam?

When I think about assessment, I think about it as an opportunity for students to show me what they can do. My goal as a teacher is to find assessments that best allow me to see what each student can do. To accommodate my tests to their unique skills, interest, and knowledge.

Literally, as a teacher, I want to “catch” students acting smart. That’s how I think about my job.

It’s a different mindset, but one I would ask you to consider. 

Is our job to rank and sort our students, or is it to empower them to do increasingly well on a range of diverse, real-world tasks?

I put a lot of stock on informal, diagnostic assessment. It’s a way of thinking about universal screening. That I am constantly documenting the circumstances under which different students can excel. That I use that knowledge to not only structure up my curricular and instructional decisions, but that I also use it to make decisions about assessment and grading.

I love being that teacher who can uncover hidden potential in my students. That teacher who can legitimately point to outstanding work from a student who may be doing poorly in other classes. Please think about this perspective as you undertake your case studies.

You will be sending me your Case Study Proposals this weekend and I will be responding to them as quickly as possible. By next Friday, January 30, you will need to have done some work toward the next step of the project, the Analysis and Interpretation stage. 

For class next week, I know it says you should bring a paper copy of your Analysis and Interpretation. That is not necessary. Rather, in whatever form--paper, notes on your computer, jottings on the back of a napkin--I would you to bring the ideas you have started to form about your case. Read at least one article that helps illuminate something about your student (use the course library, prior MSU readings, or materials you find on an Internet search), analyze all assessment data you have about this student, and reflect on the functional meaning of the student’s behavior in your class (what is gained by acting this way?). 

These are the next things I want you to send, via email, by Saturday evening, January 31. 

Have a great week!

Having a Growth Mindset

Thank you for the warm welcome you gave me last Friday. I really enjoyed our discussion. I hope you did too.

One of the takeaways from class for me was the importance of maintaining a growth mindset over the course of not only your internship year, but your career. Indeed, of your life. 

Certainly, there are going to be days where we are just happy to survive. Just finishing seems like a victory. As Roseanne Barr once said, “I feel that if the kids are still alive when my husband gets home from work, then hey, I've done my job.” We might sometimes feel the same way as teachers.

But we have to do more than survive. Or to put it more clearly, we must both survive and grow each day of our lives. This is especially so as teachers.

Certainly, in the job interview situation, one question we will receive will key in on this issue. The question will want to know how we came to improve in some area of our practice. 

I suggested that the ideal way to answer this question is  by framing it in positive terms. Something you have come to see as both as an area for growth and as something have gotten very good at. I think framing it this ways helps show that you live within a growth mindset.

If you talk about something you were not good at and were forced, through a situation, to deal with, then it perhaps suggests to me that you are not seeing that the maintenance of growth is the central calling of the profession. 

Having a growth mindset means you are pro-active, it means that you are constantly looking for ways to get better. It means that you are not just passively reacting to what is happening to you, but that you are taking responsibility for shaping your classroom into the most inspiring learning community it can be. 

Answering questions in a positive way demonstrates that you take it as a given that getting better is simply part of the job. That you expect yourself and your students to get better each day. That you don’t need someone watching over you in order for you to be a fellow journeyer on the path toward excellence.

One of the central goals of TE 801 and TE 803 is to help you develop such a growth mindset. We want you to see that you have some control over most situations that take place in your classroom. That though the laws of social interdependence, you are a part of every student behavior. That your own growth as a teacher can also create optimal growth opportunities for your students.

Your central assignment for this semester is the Case Study project. In it,  you have the opportunity to document for yourself and your future colleagues what a growth mindset looks like in your own life. You will have the opportunity to demonstrate the resourcefulness you can bring to helping others in their own educational journeys.

As you think about the student whom  you might want to focus on this semester, consider a wide range of possibilities. There are many ways to think about this. Here are some questions you might ask yourself, just to see if the answers surprise you or help clarify anything. What students are the last that tend to come to your mind when you think of a class? What students seem most open to your influence and assistance as a teacher? Which students are most like you when you were in high school--and which are the most different? 

Remember that you will email me the proposed subject of your Case Study by Saturday, January 24. In about a page of text, you will “frame the case” by telling me about the student, your relationship to the student, what you hope to learn by studying this student, and why this is important to you. I hope you will involve both your field instructor and your mentor teacher in this discussion.

Please let me know if you have any questions! Have a great week!

Kyle