Cause for Celebration

We’ve reached the point where you can count the days remaining in the school year on the average person’s fingers. Exhaustion, fatigue, and perhaps delirium have set in. You and the students are racing one another out the door each day. Congratulations on making it through another year.

Before you roll down the windows and blast “School’s Out for Summer” on your stereo, take a moment to think back to August, when you first encountered this year’s crop of students. Think about what they were like back then. You looked at them and thought to yourself, “These kids will never be able to [insert name of thing you were supposed to teach them to do].” Now think about them today, about all the skills, abilities, knowledge, and competencies they have now that they didn’t possess at the beginning of the school year. You’ve got a lot to celebrate.

Don’t keep your celebration to yourself, though. Make sure your students know how far they’ve come. As students creep through the school year day-by-day, they may not realize all they’ve learned during that time. It’s like dieting (so I’m told); if you weigh yourself every day, you may not notice much change, but when someone sees you after being away for a while and comments on how much weight you’ve lost, it feels really good.

In the same way, students need us to point out to them how much they’ve grown during the time they’ve spent in our classes. Or at least they need us to prompt some reflection on their own progress. Maybe you’ve kept a beginning-of-the-year writing sample that they can compare to their current work. Perhaps you can show them a “hard” test from the first of school that they now find ridiculously simple. Making a list of all the new learning from throughout the year can bring about a satisfying sense of accomplishment.

Celebrating successes, big and small, ought to be happening all year long; it’s a key to motivation. At the end of the year, though, celebrating growth can plant a seed that will lead to continued growth and curiosity in your subject area. Leave students feeling successful, and they will hunger for future success.

Make Coaching Part of Your Professional Development Plan

During these final days of school, many of you are having end-of-year conferences with your evaluating administrator and are receiving accolades and areas of growth based on their observations, your progress toward goals, and your professional learning for the year. Evaluations like these are no one’s favorite thing, neither for the evaluated or the evaluator, but the best meetings of this type conclude with both parties having an idea of what strengths have been reinforced and of what the next step is in the educator’s growth as a professional. If we are educators with growth mindsets, we don’t see appraisals as reflections of our worth as human beings but instead as opportunities to continue to hone our craft in what is an extremely challenging profession—one that no one ever really masters because there’s always room for improvement.

The hardest thing about any feedback—and something we need to be mindful of as we provide comments on our students’ learning—is that we tend to fixate on the negative. Thirty accolades can be undone by one “recommendation for growth.” That’s human nature. Do your best to conquer the monster of your negative inner voice and instead try to be objective. Force yourself to see that less-than-stellar mark as a guide to help you direct your improvement efforts next year. Turn those marks of “developing” and “improvement needed” into invitations to become “accomplished or distinguished.”

An instructional coach can be a valuable ally in your improvement. We don’t work for your principal; we work for you. And, unlike most every other kind of professional development, we bring the learning into your classroom and personalize it to your individual needs.

Here’s how:

1.  You identify an area of growth and contact a coach to help you. Or you contact a coach first, meet to talk about your situation and ideas, and let the coach help you determine an area of growth.

2.  Set a measurable goal along with the coach, determine what you need to learn to help you achieve that goal, and learn all you can with the guidance of the coach. Instructional coaches have experience with research-supported best practices and can provide you with resources to facilitate your learning. Because we know you’re busy, we can distill some of the learning and come to your campus to share it with you at a time that fits into your schedule.

3.  At some point, you could choose for the coach to observe your class to collect data. Even better, the coach could video your lesson so you can watch yourself and/or your students to get a clear idea of what is going on. Collecting data before and after the learning is a fantastic opportunity for you to document your progress toward your goal.

4. Part of the learning could involve observing someone else teach, watching the coach model part of a lesson, co-teaching with the coach, or rehearsing a lesson with the coach.

5.  Implement your new learning and collect data to see how it worked.

6.  High-fives all around if you met your goal. You can now continue working on another aspect of the same goal, begin a new goal cycle, or decide you’re going to just revel in your success. If you didn’t meet your goal, that’s okay, too. Your coach can help you implement Plan B (or C or D or E) until you see results.

That’s instructional coaching in its purest form, but it doesn’t always look like that. Sometimes, coaches help teams or individuals plan lessons, work on ways to implement differentiation strategies, set up classroom management routines, and turn other professional learning into action.

You’re free to share with your administrator that you’re working with a coach, or you can choose to keep it quiet. The coaching relationship is a partnership. What happens in a coaching relationship stays in that coaching relationship. Your boss will only know what you choose to share.

Instructional coaches can help with any of the four domains on T-TESS:  planning, instruction, learning environment, and professional practices.

Here are a few areas from the T-TESS where a coach would be happy to assist you:

• Unpacking lessons from the curriculum and tailoring them to the needs of your students and your teaching style
• Communicating daily learning goals clearly to your students
• Integrating technology in a meaningful way to enhance student mastery of goals
• Using formative assessments to get a clear picture of student learning and to communicate that to students and parents
• Collecting data to measure student progress and adjusting instruction in response
• Framing lessons to engage and connect with students
• Providing opportunities for students to individualize their learning
• Promote authentic questioning and student inquiry
• Increase student ownership in their learning
• Plan for collaboration that maximizes student participation and accountability
• Promote high-level student achievement through goal setting, metacognition, and self-monitoring.
• Increasing your own content expertise in your subject area
• Sequencing instruction appropriately
• Using effective questioning techniques so that all students can access learning at an appropriately sophisticated level
• Adapting lessons to meet the needs of all students by using appropriate differentiation strategies
• Gathering input from students to evaluate the effectiveness of instruction and adjust if needed
• Creating a safe, efficient, welcoming classroom environment that promotes student leadership and high-level learning
• Establishing, communicating, and maintaining clear expectations for student behavior
• Developing rapport with and among students
• Reflecting on your practice to implement changes that result in improvement in student performance

Consider including a coach in your professional development plans for next year, and be prepared for powerful, personalized professional learning that can transform your classroom to increase student success.

With the end of school only days away, next year is probably the last thing on your mind, but in case you are interested, feel free to reach out to a coach now, especially if you’d like to meet during that back-to-school week in August. We can help you start the semester so that the year goes smoothly as you implement your powerful student-centered learning goal. We look forward to partnering with you.  

Far-Away Results

Where will your students be in 15 years?  What will they be doing? What will the world expect of them? How will the things you are doing in your class right now prepare them for that far-away result? 

In 15 years, my former students won’t be writing DBQs, but they will be taking in information, evaluating its content and credibility, and communicating their own conclusions about what to do with that information.   

In 15 years, they won’t be engaging in a Socratic Seminar about themes in Romeo and Juliet, but they will be in situations that require them to speak articulately to advance an argument, communicate clearly, organize their thoughts logically, disagree without attacking, support their conclusions with evidence, listen and respond to others, and connect ideas to the “real world.” 

In 15 years, you won’t find many of them working with a partner to stage and perform a duet acting scene from a play, but most will be collaborating with others, considering the visual and emotional impact of stylistic choices, preparing for a presentation, speaking in front of a group with poise and confidence, analyzing the motives of others,  and communicating to achieve a desired effect. 

In 15 years, most former orchestra students won’t be rehearsing Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, but the discipline, persistence, attention to detail, teamwork, patience, troubleshooting, concentration, focus, and direction-following they practiced will serve them well in their work and leisure pursuits. 

In 15 years, they won’t be solving a math problem, working on a coding assignment, or collecting data for a biology lab, but they will use logic, reasoning, problem solving, and analysis as they solve real-world problems as parents, employees, public servants, leaders, doctors, lawyers, programmers, and educators.

In 15 years, most won’t be playing flag football in P.E.class, but they will need to exhibit good sportspersonship, work on teams, develop “plays” and strategies, learn how to win and lose, exercise to remain healthy, and move with purpose and coordination. 

Even in the best project-based learning situation, the tasks students are doing right now in school aren’t the things most people do in the real world. Even so, what we ask them to do as students ought to develop the skills and dispositions they need to thrive in the world beyond school. If not, these don’t seem like worthwhile pursuits. 

As you are thinking about what you teach and how you teach it, ask yourself this key question: What transferable skills and dispositions does this require of my students, and how am I deliberately teaching students to develop them? 

This question has two important components:

1.  Transferable Skills and Dispositions: When planning instruction, great teachers ascribe to the adage, “Begin with the end in mind.” Unfortunately, we sometimes are a little short-sighted when we think about what “the end” is. The “end” shouldn’t lie in the course the student is currently taking. If the end is a unit test, a performance assessment, a product, or a standardized test, we are merely preparing students for a hurdle they have to get over to reach whatever is next. For some teachers, the end lies in a class the students will be taking down the road  (“I’m teaching you this because you’re going to need to do this in AP next year” or “You will have to do this in college.”). I’d argue that preparing students for the next level of academia, though helpful, is still a goal that matters more to us than it probably matters to them. Transferable skills—the ones we should focus on—are the ones necessary for success in life, that students will need to develop so they can go as far as they choose to go on the road to career and life success. Along with those skills are dispositions, habits of the mind and heart, that will accompany those skills. Teamwork, persistence, patience, empathy, tolerance, altruism, self-confidence, self-reflection, impulse control, and curiosity are among the dispositions we should help our students develop. Before we teach or assign anything, we should identify the transferable skills and dispositions involved; if these elements aren’t evident, we may want to reconsider what we are teaching and why.           

2.  Deliberate Teaching:  It’s not enough to provide tasks and activities for students that allow them to develop transferable skills and dispositions that will help them achieve far-away results. We have to be intentional and strategic about teaching students those skills. Asking students to reason through a problem won’t help the student who doesn’t know how to read the problem, take it apart, analyze its components, apply prior knowledge, choose the best tools for the job, work through a solution, and evaluate the solution’s effectiveness. Each of those transferable skills needs to be taught, probably not to every student but definitely to many. Skills don’t develop by accident, and they don’t improve without some metacognitive reflection. 

A few examples might help clarify these components. 

Note-taking is a skill students need to master to be successful in school that they also need in the real world. In life, however, no one tells people what kind of notes to take, when and how to format them, and what they should write down. The transferable skills inherent in note-taking include recording important information, organizing ideas, evaluating the relative importance of ideas or details, summarizing, and more. If I make those decisions for my students (by providing a format, telling them what to write down, allowing them to copy my notes, and showing them how they should organize them), I haven’t taught my students how to do anything on their own. If, however, I teach my students to use various formats of notes, allow them to consider the best format for this particular situation, ask them questions about how they plan to organize their notes, provide time for them to compare their notes with a partner, and ask them to  evaluate the effectiveness of their own note-taking efforts, I’m teaching skills they can transfer throughout their lives. 

An English teacher requiring students to self-select books and read during daily silent reading time in class has the opportunity to teach numerous transferable skills and dispositions: developing a “reading life,” monitoring comprehension, building reading stamina, finding value and enjoyment in reading, knowing what to do when comprehension breaks down, evaluating what they read, thinking critically, setting goals, monitoring progress and growth, and responding to a text and to other readers. Most of these skills aren’t going to happen on their own, though. Merely letting students read unbothered isn’t going to grow these skills in students; the teacher’s intentional instruction matters. With strategic use of mini-lessons and conferences with students, teachers can identify what skills each student needs to strengthen, offer just-in-time instruction to build that skill, and monitor growth and progress. 

Asking and answering that key question—What transferable skills and dispositions does this require of my students, and how am I deliberately teaching students to develop them? —is the best way I know to turn good teaching into transformative teaching. Educators who become strategic about building transferable skills and dispositions in their classrooms are the ones who make a difference in the long run. Their students succeed now and are ready to achieve far-away results throughout their lives.

The Twin Monsters

Some students are easier to teach than others. For the first part of my career, my students were a breeze to teach. Most came from affluent or at least middle-class homes where education was a priority. Parents made sure students came to school fed, clothed, and equipped with supplies. A call home fixed nearly every problem in the classroom, from discipline to missing homework. Parents could—and would—bring their kids early or pick them up late if tutorials or remediation was required. All I had to do was show up, run an efficient classroom, assign some work, and grade a lot of papers. I held high standards for my students, and they, for the most part, rose to my expectations.

As time went on, our school’s student population started to change. We still had plenty of the old ready-to-learners, but an ever-increasing number of students showed up at the doorstep of our school with some obvious differences. Many came from poverty. Not all of them spoke English fluently. Quite a few came to us with limited skills. Some had moved from school to school and district to district throughout their educational lives. They didn’t look like our mostly-white, middle-class faculty and staff. They felt like outsiders among the affluent students. For a while we could ignore the changes and keep doing what we had always done. As gaps began to widen and disparities became more glaring, we had to do something about it.

I wish this paragraph could be about all the wonderful solutions we immediately discovered and how we turned everything around and created a dynamic place of learning for all students. The solutions, as anyone who has worked with challenging student populations knows, are not that easy to discover. Instead of talking about those solutions, however, I want to warn of two potential dangers that can surface when we work with students from educationally impoverished backgrounds. I have encountered them. Perhaps you have, too. I’m referring to the twin monsters of blame and pity.

The blame monster is an ugly one, with hundreds of fingers pointing in every direction. This monster appears early in the school year, as soon as the teacher discovers that “these kids” aren’t “where they should be.” The blame monster makes us question the credentials of the teachers who teach in grades below ours; turns us into armchair sociologists who blame demographics, economics, parents, peers, the media, cell phones, popular music, and the Kardashians; and causes us to make—and believe—all sorts of excuses about our students’ limitations. “These kids can’t!” is the battle cry of the teacher in the thrall of the blame monster. The monster spreads its deadly venom, infecting individuals, teams, and—horrible dictu!—entire campuses. Once the poison has spread, it manifests in a variety of guises:  despair, giving up hope, frustration, asking “Why me?”, feeling like you’re the only teacher/ campus/ district ever to face such odds. Teachers spend so much time finding causes for why their students can’t learn that they fail to focus on finding ways to get them to learn.

Teachers who know how to fight off the blame monster know that, though the monster is likely to show up in the first days of the school year, it needs to make its exit as soon as possible. Educators can’t control who walks into their classrooms; they can only control what they do with those students and how they make those students feel about themselves as learners and—equally important—as people. If the blame monster is still lurking around during the second semester and the students haven’t improved, teachers need to place the blame on themselves instead of on others or on outside factors. Quit blaming. Time’s a-wasting. Start teaching.

The pity monster is the blame monster’s less flashy but perhaps more dangerous sibling. Armed with an endless supply of Kleenex and hugs, the pity monster makes sure educators see how hard the lives of “these poor babies” are. Instead of seeing future possibilities, teachers attacked by the pity monster only see obstacles and hardships in the paths of their students, and—as any person with a heart would do—they feel overwhelming compassion. Rising from instinctual kind-heartedness, the pity monster feeds off the emotions of educators, making them fearful of being the ones who put one more difficulty or challenge onto the plates of these sweet kids and their sweet parents. The pity monster leaves a trail of low expectations; second, third, fourth, and fifth chances; thoughts of “It’s the best they can do;” and satisfaction with mediocrity. Students put their names on their paper? They get points. Students answer an easy question in a class discussion? They get a piece of candy. The teacher under the influence of the pity monster becomes the savior of the children, and all these poor babies have to do is show up and make a modicum of effort to receive praise, prizes, and high grades. The bar is set so low that any student can climb over it without difficulty. And if there is a struggle, the educator swoops in to rescue the poor, defenseless creatures and make sure they all succeed.

Defeating the pity monster requires the fortitude to set high expectations for every student, to actually believe that the students can reach those expectations, and to make the student believe they can achieve them, too. All students have to know you believe in them and that you will help make sure they can do all they are capable of. This requires building relationships; seeing the student, not the deficit; banishing the “poor babies” mentality; and getting down to business—no excuses!—in a classroom where you maximize every minute of instructional time because, scholars, you have places to go, and we have work to do to make sure you can get there!

Teaching is a tough job, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers for how to magically reach every student. I have, however, seen enough students in enough schools and to have interacted with enough teachers in my school, my district, and in many parts of the country (and even some in other countries) to know that the twin monsters of blame and pity are real and highly dangerous. They sneak up when we least expect it, and they quickly have us in their clutches. Being aware of the dangers and not being afraid to call them out when they appear is the first step to eradicating them.

All students—no matter where they come from, what skills or deficits they possess, what they look or sound like, or what obstacles they face—deserves the chance for a bright future. The twin monsters want to keep that from them, and we can’t let the monsters win.   

          

          

But What Are the Kids Doing?

“I have the best idea for a lesson.  I found this new article on a website that I thought I could read to the students and then we could talk about it and how it relates to what we have been studying.”

“But what are the kids doing?”

“…and then I thought I would tell the students a story about that time I…”

“But what are the kids doing?”

“…using the PowerPoint to explain the concept of…”

“But what are the kids doing?”

“…with a video from YouTube that provides a great way to get the students interested in the topic of…”

“But what are the kids doing?”

“…and I could show them a model  and some really gross pictures of….”

“But what are the kids doing?”

In and out of the classroom, teachers spend a lot of time thinking about how they’re going to teach their students. Ideas come to us when we are reading, browsing online, sweating on the treadmill, driving, or even taking a shower. But not every idea that comes to us is classroom-worthy. Sometimes, something that sounds fun, intriguing, or creative still fails to pass the one-question test: “But what are the kids doing?”

Several weeks ago, I sat in a group planning for a one-hour presentation we would be giving at a meeting of the district’s principals. We spent quite a time brainstorming the components of the presentation before we began sketching out a lesson plan.  As we added to our list, one voice of reason in the room asked us contemplative questions about the lesson, most often the question, “But what are the principals going to be doing?”  If the answer was “Listening,” “Sitting,” or “Nothing,” we revamped that portion of the agenda to make the learning something other than a sit-and-get experience.

It occurred to me that “What are they doing?” is probably the most important question we can ask ourselves while we plan for our classrooms.  It’s so easy for us to pontificate in the front of the classroom—to be the wise conveyor of information, the witty raconteur, the know-it-all professor. Even if students are mesmerized by our monologues and lectures, research tells us they’ll only remember a small portion of the information if they simply sit and listen. Writing down what you say only increases their retention by a small degree. Allowing students to talk about the material with one another and asking them to do something with the content boosts their learning potential dramatically.  

I can already hear some of you thinking to yourselves (or saying aloud), “My students are much better behaved when I stand in front of them and lecture. ”  Perhaps.  You know, babies cry less when they are sound asleep, too.    

Others of you are thinking fondly (and perhaps defensively) about your class discussions, the ones where you are standing in the front and asking your class provocative questions to stimulate conversation. Those may be beneficial to the handful of student who are actively engaged in answering and debating, but what are the other twenty class members doing? (For the record, most of the time I was one of the other twenty class members, and I wrote a lot of letters to friends, doodled on the margins of my notebook, outlined the great American novel I thought I’d write someday, wished I were elsewhere, and dreaded being called upon.)

How about adding a quickwrite before your discussion to allow students to organize and plan out their thoughts? Could the discussion take place in smaller groups within the class so that all students can have the opportunity to contribute?

One of my favorite aspects of AVID’s classroom strategies is the emphasis on student engagement and active learning. Stay tuned throughout the year, and I promise more techniques you can use in your classes to find better answers to the all-important planning question:  “But what are the students doing?”

I challenge you to make your classroom a place where the students do most of the talking, most of the doing, and most of the learning. We shouldn’t be the only ones doing the work in our classrooms, should we?

How to Give Instructions That Kids Will Follow

How many times have you given what you thought were clear instructions only to discover that your students completely misconstrued what you wanted them to do? Or they responded with a billion questions after the fact?

Giving clear instructions can make or break a class activity. Poorly-delivered directions can cause confusion and chaos and can impede success and increase classroom management issues. In the past few years, one of my professional goals has been to work on the oral  instructions I give when I work with students and with adult learners.  I’ve listened, observed, and pondered pitfalls to determine what works and what doesn’t. Here are a few tips teachers can apply if they want to strengthen their direction-giving:

1.  Tell the students where they’re headed.  Remember what life was like before a GPS guided us everywhere?  For a few years, many of us relied on Yahoo Maps and other online tools to provide printed lists of driving directions to get us from here to there. Oftentimes, the detailed instructions were especially confusing if you didn’t look at a map first; it might take five separate steps to explain that you were supposed to get onto the Tollway going southbound. Taking a moment to preview the route could prevent confusion along the way because the driver could use the big-picture idea to make sense of the smaller instructional steps. Previewing the map also could've helped the driver get back on track when an instructional step was missed or misunderstood.  The same idea applies in the classroom. Unless it needs to be a surprise, teachers should probably let their students know what they’re about to do before providing instructions.  It can be something as simple as, “Today we’re going to learn how to use and share a Google Doc, how to create a folder to organize your Google Drive, and how to submit an assignment on Google Classroom,” or, “We’re about to set up our Writing Notebooks.”  Expert direction-givers Gordon Ramsey, Alton Brown, Emeril Lagasse, and Rachel Ray always let their at-home viewers know what they’re concocting before they start throwing ingredients together. Students, like TV-watching wannabe chefs, love knowing what they’re doing before—bam!—the instructions start flying at them.        

2.  Avoid the fillers. Someone at some point in history taught teachers to be too polite:  “Okay, so…Now, what I’d like you to do, if you don’t mind, is to take out a piece of paper—if it’s okay with you—and a pen, preferably, or, if you don’t like pen, a pencil.  I need you to be quiet so that you can hear the next instruction, if you will.”  Some teachers spend so much time apologizing in advance, avoiding giving commands, asking "if you would" or would you please" questions, and sugarcoating their verbiage that the directions get lost in the shuffle.  How about this instead?  “Take out a piece of paper and a pen.”  I don’t think this “harsh” demand is going to damage any students irreparably, and the fewer words we say, the more important each spoken word becomes.

3.  Make sure students are ready to receive instructions before you give instructions.  Don’t tell students how to fill out the top of the scantron while you’re in the middle of handing out the scantrons unless you want half the class to turn in a scantron with no name and no information on it.  Don’t start explaining where to find a Google Form when ten students are still turning on their computers.  Don’t begin instructions when a gaggle of girls is huddled in the corner of the classroom discussing the homecoming dance proposal that occurred during the passing period.  Establish your class routine for getting students’ attention, get their attention, make sure all students have what they need, and then begin your instructions. If you don’t make sure they’re ready, be prepared to repeat yourself or to watch your students invent their own interpretations of the instructions.

4.  Keep the instructions simple and direct.  This one is self-explanatory. Tricky instructions overwhelm learners. Break the procedure down into manageable steps, and state the steps clearly.  Verb + direct object.  “Take out a piece of paper.”  “Fold the paper in half, hotdog style.” “Trade papers with your elbow partner.”  

5.  Provide written instructions, too.  Simplified written steps projected on a screen or on the board can help students who are visual learners or who lag behind. Pare down your written instructions to the most essential wording, and elaborate as needed while you present them orally.

6.  Have a signal so you'll know when to proceed.  "When you've finished marking the text, put your pen down so I know you're ready to proceed." "Sit down in your seats after your entire group has shared their prewrites." Simple visual cues can help you determine when to give the next set of instructions. 

7.  Help the slowpokes catch up by providing “bridge” instructions.  You'll inevitably have a few students who lag behind the rest of the class. Some of them might be dragging their heels because they're unsure of what they are supposed to be doing. I'm fond of adding a little bridge to let everyone know how to catch up with the rest:  "After you've underlined the sentence you think is the main point of the article, write a paraphrase of that sentence in your writer's notebook."  The students who are confused or delayed then know to speed up the previous step and rejoin the class.                         

               

8.  Keep them from jumping the gun.  When you begin giving instructions, some students start before you've finished what you have to say. Starting off with, "Stand up and find a group of three people who don't sit at your table," will cause several students--or the entire class--to leap from their seats to locate their group before you tell them what to do. I recommend giving a cue at the beginning of your instructions to let them know when to begin.  "In about a minute, when I turn on the music..."  "After I finish these instructions, on the count of three...." Providing a clear signal prompting them to begin the activity will keep them in their seats and attentive while you tell them what they need to hear. 

9.  Don’t overload.  We're all guilty from time to time of giving too much information at the beginning, which leads to us having to repeat ourselves later. We begin by saying something innocent like, "Stand up, find a partner, discuss the question on the board, and then draft a summary of your response in your notebook. Then, you're going to list pros and cons for the statement you wrote down." A better approach might begin like this: "When I say 'Go,' stand up and find a solemate--someone who is wearing shoes similar to yours. When you find your partner, stand side-by-side, face me, and quietly wait for the next instruction. Go!"  Once you've ensured that everyone has found a partner, you're ready to continue. 

10. Ask for questions in a way that will get the questions you want.  I've found that "What questions do you have?" works better than "Are there any questions?" This doesn't give the students an easy "no" answer and doesn't presuppose that there will be no questions about your instructions. Even the best instruction givers sometimes leave the students with legitimate unanswered questions. 

The art of giving clear instructions is not easy to master. All of us can continually improve. But if you are mindful of the pointers above, you'll soon find that your students become more compliant and that your classroom runs much more smoothly. 

Now, when I say 'Forward this blog post,' send this to three of your teacher friends who might need help with instruction-giving so they can learn what you just learned.  They will thank you later. 

Thanks for all you do to make your classroom a successful learning environment for all your students. Forward this blog post!

Craig

The Value of Looking Back

Recently, my Facebook feed has been littered with posts from people about things that occurred one, two, or more years prior. “On this day one year ago” photos pop up, accompanied by comments like, “Hard to believe this was just one year ago,” “I forgot about this, “ “Wow, we’ve all changed so much,” “I was such an idiot then,” or, “Can you believe we were so concerned about that?” 

People are drawn to moments from their past that contrast to their present selves. “Throwback Thursday” photos often have the added purpose of highlighting the fashion and style atrocities of yesteryear with the implicit idea that we all look so much better now that we have the sense not to wear those parachute pants or style our hair in that once-fashionable mullet. 

The end of an academic year is an ideal time to have a Throwback Thursday of our own, to ask our students to project themselves back nine months into the past to see how they’ve grown and changed as a result of being in our classes. What do you know now that you didn’t know in September? What can you do now that you couldn’t do at the beginning of the school year? If you had it to do over again, what might you do differently?

This type of reflection belongs in the review weeks at the end of the school year. Ask students to create a graffiti wall displaying what they’ve learned. Have them compare a sample of recent work to a similar assignment from the beginning of school. Brainstorm a list of everything they wouldn’t know if they hadn’t taken your class. Let them reflect in writing about how far they’ve come, the obstacles they encountered along the way, and how they dealt with them. Encourage them to make some notes for themselves for next year so they don’t drive into any of the same potholes later.

Goal setting is a key aspect of instruction in our AVID classes as it should be in all our classes. Equally important is the time to look back at where we’ve been, celebrate our progress, and redirect our focus to the future.    

Like the Roman god Janus with two faces—one looking forward and one looking back—we  use our past experiences to steer ourselves successfully toward what is to come.

Thanks for all you do to help your AVID kids (and all your kids) make impressive strides on the road to success. 

Craig

What Reality TV Can Teach Us About Assessment

Back before I finally pulled the plug on my cable TV, I was once a reality TV addict. My favorites were the competition shows, the ones that pitted ordinary people against one another in a weekly competition, eliminating one person at a time until a victor emerged. Today, while I was doing a bit of last-minute rubric analysis with my students to make sure they understood the writing expectations for next week's state assessment, it occurred to me how much I could learn about good instruction--and particularly assessment--from the television I used to watch so avidly.

Let's take Project Runway as an example. On this show, a crop of wannabe designers performed ridiculous weekly challenges in hopes that a celebrity panel of Heidi Klum and her team of fashionistas would deem their garments worthy of remaining "in" the competition for another week. While designers toiled in the workroom, Tim Gunn periodically popped in to monitor progress, dispense advice, ask questions, make faces, and provide helpful suggestions about how the judges might react to the hastily assembled products. When the time limit expired, the designers paraded their outfits in front of the judges who each offered feedback and candid opinions before making a final judgment and declaring one of the designers "out." Throughout all of this, the producers of the show provided viewers with snippets of interviews with the contestants discussing their progress or lack thereof.

This design-and-judge approach is not unlike what goes on in classrooms all over the world. Teachers present challenges to their students, allow the students to work on them to demonstrate mastery, and assess the final products according to a rubric. Too often, though, we leave Tim Gunn and the interview snippets out of the equation. We go from assignment to summative assessment without allowing for formative assessment and student feedback along the way. Then we are frustrated when the final products don't meet our expectations or are surprised at the number of students who didn't succeed. Educators can't forget that it's our duty to check in with our students periodically along the way so we can catch them before they veer too far off track and offer them guidance to get back on course. Without the wisdom of Tim Gunn, the designers on Project Runway would struggle unnecessarily with a tricky seam construction, get bogged down on an insignificant detail, and fail to manage their time adequately, resulting in an unsatisfactory, slapdash, or incomplete final product. The show's interview clips provide opportunities for the contestants to voice their own understandings of the task and their progress. Similarly, we should require students to talk about their understanding of the assignments in their own words, to summarize the elements of the rubric, and to reflect on the work they are doing as they are doing it rather than waiting to reflect on the final product only. By encouraging this metacognition and awareness of the task and expectations, teachers can help students guide their progress, focus on the most important elements, and produce the best results possible.

Another show I miss from my cable television days is The Worst Cooks in America. In this delightful series, a hapless and inept bunch of newbies, who have been nominated by their loved ones due to their lack of culinary skills, enter an industrial kitchen to be mentored by two celebrity chefs who each take a team of non-cooks and attempt to pass them off as trained professionals. Each week, the chefs-in-training learn a new technique--poaching an egg, filleting a fish, making a sauce--and, once they've supposedly mastered it, get to create a meal on their own to showcase their new skill. After the "learning" stage in which the chefs offer guidance in the kitchen, the competitors must complete the final task without supervision while the celebrity chefs cower nervously in the corner and pray that their proteges can perform without their assistance. The final meal is eaten and judged, and one sad loser says goodbye to the TV kitchen and goes home to inflict his or her under-appreciated cooking skills on the family.

The thing I love about thinking about this show in relationship to the classroom is that it emphasizes the importance of supervised practice on specific skills. The celebrity chefs don't just throw an unwieldy task at their trainees and hope it goes well. Instead, they demonstrate the week's focus technique, allow the cooks to practice it with guidance, provide feedback, and then step up the difficulty by asking them to apply their knowledge to a more challenging, complicated task. This is exactly what we should be doing as teachers. Instead of assigning an entire essay, project, or lab report and hoping the students can figure out all the individual components and put them together into a suitable final product, we should allow students to complete a portion of the assignment--or a sample portion of a similar assignment--and offer feedback before we ask them to combine multiple skills into a final masterpiece. An art teacher could ask his students to practice sketching, shading, and texturing in small assignments in a notebook before drawing a still life for a major-grade assessment. Writing students might learn how to develop thesis statements, write introductions, and incorporate research using correct citation in separate lessons before having to pull all those skills together into an entire essay. A PE teacher or coach drills her young athletes in dribbling, shooting, and blocking before putting them on the court to play a full game.

Throughout the year in my class, I've tried to apply these principles to help my students succeed in the various challenges I've placed before them. Recently, that's been true as I've worked to make sure they are prepared for the weirdness of the expository essay on next week's STAAR test. I've allowed them to explain the rubric in their own words. I've modeled effective word choice and revision and have allowed them to practice on their own and on others' writing. I've offered feedback along the way. We've dissected example essays. We've written thesis statements, brainstormed supporting anecdotes, blended sentences together with transitions, outlined, drafted, and assessed our work and the work of others.

Next week, you can find me cowering in the corner and praying that my students can successfully complete whatever challenge the STAAR test makers throw at them.







         

How We Do It All Day Long

At the end of the second of five class periods, the guest speaker turned to me with a look of exhaustion and asked, "How do you do this all day long?"

By the end of sixth period, she was, as they say, "phoning it in." A glazed expression in her eyes, she continued to click through her PowerPoint slides and deliver the same art history lesson with the same inflections, the same pauses, and the same practiced information. My students sat there dutifully taking notes, some of them occasionally jolting back to semi-alertness after nodding off momentarily.

Early in the day the speaker told me she didn't have much experience with high schoolers, that she aspired to teach college students so that she could lecture and they could take notes.

Please note that I'm not trying to disparage this brave guest speaker who spent a long day sharing some valuable and interesting knowledge about the art of the Tang and Song Dynasties. Clearly, she knew her stuff and had prepared carefully for her day with my students.

But as I sat and watched her deliver the same lecture five times throughout the day, I had ample time to ponder her question: "How do you do this all day long?"

By the end of the day, the answer became clear. It's not about the content; it's about the students.

Though I like to fancy myself a pretty interesting public speaker who can deliver a 50-minute lecture with witty anecdotes, intriguing nuggets of trivia, abundant humor, and powerful visuals to accompany my ideas, the reality is that if I get too engrossed in my own knowledge-spewing, my students are passive and bored to tears.

The secret to surviving an entire day of teaching the same thing one period after another is to focus on the students. Involve them. Allow them to talk and question. Let them generate knowledge. Permit them to reflect and digest.

One of the many things I love about AVID is its instructional emphasis on WICOR: writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading. Even a "lecture day" provides opportunity for at least three of these: writing, inquiry, and collaboration.

The average person (and teenagers sometimes don't perform at average-person capacity) can only pay attention to a speaker for about ten minutes. Most of us drift off more quickly than that and begin making mental shopping lists, thinking about relatives who deserve a call, or dreaming about things beyond the parameters of the lecture hall or classroom.

The easy fix for this is to follow the 10-2-2 model. Lecture for a maximum of ten minutes; allow the students to write, revise, and reflect on their notes for two minutes; and ask the students to share their thoughts, questions, understandings, and reflections with a partner for two minutes. After that opportunity to interact on paper and with others, the students' brains are recharged and ready for another ten minutes of teacher talk.

An even better solution is to ask the students to do something creative with their learning--a quick presentation, a drawing, a bumper sticker slogan, a tiny poem, a monologue, a skit--and to share their products with the class. I assure you that what the students will have to say is a billion times more interesting and more memorable than anything you've got stored up in your well-practiced lecture.

The added bonus of allowing this type of interaction is that each class period is different. Though the content remains the same, the student input keeps it fresh for the teacher. The day is a lot less repetitive when you, the teacher, get to hear from the authentic voices of students.

So in answer to the guest speaker's question, "How do you do this all day long?", my response it that I do my best to focus on the students. I enjoy their unique personalities, laugh at their jokes, listen to their stories and personal connections, welcome their questions, clarify their confusion, and remember that they're the ones who are supposed to be getting something from the time they spend in my classroom.

That's how I've done it for 22 years, and I hope that's how I continue to do it until they wheel me out of my classroom someday in the distant future.

Lessons from My Worst Nightmare

I don’t usually dream about school.  Several weeks ago, however, I had such a terrible nightmare that it’s continued to haunt me ever since. Here’s what happened:

I was in another teacher's classroom trying to teach a Romantic poetry lesson to all of the students—past and present—who have made it clear at one time or another that they were not Mr. McKinney fans. Personal attacks were made. Words were manipulated and thrown back at me. I couldn't find the page numbers in the book. I said things that were clearly hilarious, and no one laughed. I couldn't remember Keats' name and wouldn't let myself go on until I remembered it (I was so certain it was a two-syllable last name beginning with a C but was not Coleridge). The PA was broken and kept coming on randomly throughout the period, which did not start or end on schedule. Long pauses as I tried to figure out what to do next gave the students a chance to mutiny. A student had found something incriminating someone had pinned on a Pinterest page I made but have never used, and he announced it to the class and wouldn't let it go. My attempt to silence this student and turn this interruption into a “teachable moment” failed epically. I didn't have anything graded because my home laptop had a virus that gave me only a black screen of death when I turned it on (true story). Lesson plans were missing. No one could or would tell me what we learned previously, and what one kid told me was definitely not what we had learned. One student was digging through the teacher's desk drawers to retrieve her Spanish teacher's special rubber stamp to dishonestly add stamps to her homework card, and she refused to surrender the stamp or the card to me when I asked. This led to a confrontation in the supply closet which—though nothing inappropriate happened—would no doubt result in a he-said-she-said accusation of inappropriate behavior with no witness to defend me.  And, worst of all, two students were flagrantly in violation of dress code, the dress code referral forms were nowhere to be found, and a confused stranger was manning the phones in the Student Center when I tried to call for help. My later-in-the-day co-teacher, Linda, showed up at some point near the end, and I looked at her with tears about to fall and told her she might be on her own because I was considering taking a personal day, effective immediately.

I’m sure Freud would have a field day analyzing the goings-on in my dream, and a shrink could help me identify the roots and causes of what was troubling me. Instead, I’m going to use this as fodder for this week’s blog.

I don’t normally write about classroom management, partly because I don’t consider myself especially skilled in that area and partly because it doesn't fall under the heading of AVID’s WICOR acronym which often guides my topic selection. This dream, however, brings up six valid points about effective classroom management, all of which my “dream self” disregarded.  

1.  Walk into the classroom prepared. Dream Mr. McKinney had no idea what he was teaching that day, didn’t have materials and page numbers handy, and looked to the students like he didn’t know what he was doing (which was accurate). Without a plan in place to engage students actively, teachers like Dream Mr. McKinney are setting themselves up for a disaster, or at least for a period where little learning occurs. The days when I don’t have a clear idea of what I’m teaching and try to “wing it” are typically the most stressful.

2.  Don’t leave dead space between activities. One of the most important things I’ve learned about teaching is to give special attention to the transitions in my lessons.  How will I get students efficiently from one part of the lesson to the next? How will I handle distribution and collection of materials? How will I minimize dead space and not allow students to drift away? Sadly, Dream Mr. McKinney did not learn this lesson, and the students used a moment of dead air to unleash chaos in the classroom.    

3.  Sometimes you have to ignore things.  In the middle of the class, a student said something that attempted to get Dream Mr. McKinney off track. He knew what buttons to push and what to say to get his teacher’s attention away from the task at hand. Instead of letting the comment slide and continuing with the lesson, Dream Mr. McKinney stopped class to address the comment, tried to engage the student (apparently, Dream Mr. McKinney forgot that the teacher seldom walks away unscathed in an in-front-of-the-class confrontation), and attempted to seize the opportunity to turn the off-task, inappropriate comment into a teachable moment by sharing an ill-timed mini-lecture with the students.  While such a lesson is something most students need to hear, no one is “teachable” in the midst of conflict.  Every attempt to put the student in his place caused the student to counter-attack with more intensity. The lesson Dream Mr. McKinney learned: strategically ignore some comments and don’t discipline a surly student in front of his peers.

4.  If you ignore too many things, you’ll lose control. I love how Dream Mr. McKinney gets worried about a dress code violation at the end of the dream after everything else has gone awry. Too late, dude. While an effective teacher lets some things slide, he also knows that firm and consistent enforcement of rules and policies throughout the year stops problems before they spiral out of control.  

5.  Don’t let your emotions get involved in disciplinary issues.  At every opportunity, Dream Mr. McKinney allowed his emotions to control his actions. I can distinctly recall feeling the rising levels of anxiety, frustration, and anger while I was dreaming, and at the point when a calm head was required to diffuse the situation, Dream Mr. McKinney was hardly thinking rationally. Students love to see teachers blow their top because it’s kind of funny. Don’t give the students that joy.  Discipline with a cool, detached, demeanor and deal with the observable facts and logical consequences. Not being prepared (see #1 above) raises teacher stress levels and makes you especially susceptible to losing your cool.

6. Take care of what you can yourself, but know when to call for backup.  I’m a firm believer in handling disciplinary issues myself. The office has enough to deal with, and I've found that solving the problem with the student myself helps minimize future issues more effectively than outsourcing my discipline problems to the principal. Sometimes, though, a student needs to be removed from the classroom in order for the other students in the room to be able to learn. Dream Mr. McKinney was unprepared to deal with the discipline himself and didn't have a plan in place when his call for backup failed. I have found that if I make a practice of handling most discipline issues in my classroom (rather than being The Teacher Who Cried Help on a frequent basis), the principals are quick to respond when I finally do have to call them to intervene because they know the situation requires their aid.

I’m sure I could dredge up more lessons from the mistakes made in my horrendous dream, but the time I’m spending reliving this nightmare is causing me some stress. Rather than worrying about things in the dream world, I should spend some time planning my next lesson so this nightmare doesn’t happen in real life.

Thanks for all you do to help your students realize their dreams (and to avoid nightmares for you).

-Craig