Could you last a day in your students' shoes?

by Kirsten Fletcher

As teachers, I think we sometimes run the risk of becoming so absorbed in our daily tasks that we lose sight of how our students receive our carefully crafted lessons.  At the beginning of the school year, I read a powerful blog post by Grant Wiggins about a High School Learning Coach whose principal recommended that she spend 2 days in her students' shoes. When she tried it, she was surprised at how absolutely exhausting it was to sit and listen, take notes and tests, work at someone else's pace all day, and never move.

A few weeks ago, I got my own glimpse into my students' lives when I asked them to write a bilingual poem about their own identity. Some wrote light-hearted poems about pop tarts or their favorite band. Others expressed, in a few bilingual lines, how heartbreaking it is to not qualify for scholarships or college admissions. One of my students submitted the following poem outlining a day in her life.

I'm embarrassed to say that I am sometimes so concerned about writing my lesson plans, posting grades, preparing for my observation, keeping up with my PLN, and completing all my "teacher" duties, that I forget the impact that all my daily decisions have on the lives of my students.

Seeing school and home responsibilities through my student's eyes has made me seriously consider the amount of homework I'm giving on a daily basis. Seeing her express her anxiety over losing points for late work makes me think twice about docking points for student work. Realizing that my students aren't getting any more sleep than I am makes me want to cut them some slack when they don't say "Bonjour" back to me or when they grunt in response to my well-intentioned "Ça va?".

Most of all, I'm grateful to have students who are willing to share their experiences with me, and I continue to strive to deserve their confidence.  I've learned that I need to make more time to listen to what they need if I'm going to teach them anything. Thank you to my amazing students for this valuable reminder. Merci!

Reasons to Collaborate

By Mark Heintz

As the holiday season winds down, I find myself thinking about the conversations I had over the past few months.  The holiday season is when I have time to catch up with family and old friends. Often, there are new people I meet, and once they find out I am a teacher, they share their own experiences with education.  Many are positive, and they share memories of great teachers and coaches that impacted them.  But, often they talk about the state of education and how it is worsening. They share stories of ineffective teachers and how they wished they would have gotten more out of their time at school.

My response is to compare schools to television.  I tell them to look at the typical T.V. series and how many people are involved in the development process. They have writers, directors, producers, costume designers, actors, actresses, acting coaches, set designers, special effects specialists, advertisers and the list goes on.  Each person works together to create a single series.  The typical series is comprised of about twenty-four episodes and targets a specific audience. Despite all of the people involved, over 50% of new T.V. series fail.  All of the collaboration with trained professionals with typically a budget of millions of dollars, and they still fail.  Now, I understand they fail for a variety of reasons that are often not at the fault of the people involved in the making, but the point remains that they fail.

I then compare the television industry to teaching. It is not a direct comparison, but I watch a lot of T.V. and am a teacher, so I talk, and now write, about what I know.  I tell them a teacher typically plays all the roles in the developmental process of a television series.  As teachers, we are writers, directors, producers, costume designers, actors/actresses, coaches, set designers, special effects specialists,  advertisers and the list goes on. We deliver around 180 "shows" a year to an audience that is compelled by law to attend.  The audience at the high school level is hormonal, developing their identity, self-centered, sleep deprived, and not always wanting to be there. They cannot simply pause the show or set their DVR to come back to it when they are ready. The audience can criticize or praise you to your face as the lesson progresses.  Even if a student is hungry, going through a crisis, ....they are there to learn.

I make the comparison not to wallow in self-pity or showcase how great I am or all teachers are.  I make it to show people's memories or understanding of their educational experiences might not be the clearest. They might have been going through something at the time they were learning and just because they cannot remember every detail from history or whatever subject, does not mean they did not grow in the skill development or as a human being.  I also point out that education is in the pursuit of educating everyone.  I feel every year we, as educators, get better at that pursuit.

As I reflect on the conversations, I see the need for teachers to collaborate with one another.  Also, we need to collaborate to develop new teachers.  We need to foster their spirit and skills so they can continue in the educational pursuit of every one.  We need to collaborate to share current research and best practices.  We need to work together to ensure we do not feel isolated with our daily problems.  Bottom line, we need to collaborate with one another.  It helps us grow as an institution and to help the public understand what we do in the classroom and the school.  Working together helps all students feel welcome and can foster their individual needs in a classroom of many.  It helps lessen the load of teachers, so they can spend time giving feedback, support and better instruction to students.   It helps the community as a whole become better.

Blended Teaching and Learning Strategies in a 1:1 Classroom

Today the CollabLab welcomes guest bloggers Amanda Baran and Dawn Ferencz.  Amanda, a Special Education teacher at Elk Grove, can be reached @MrsABaran.  Dawn, an English teacher at Elk Grove, can be reached @Dawn_Ferencz.

Hello colleagues!  We are (fairly) new users to the iPad this year with our 1:1 pilot for junior students in Prep American Lit & Comp.  When asked to discuss how we utilize iPads in the classroom, we were happy to share.  

For us, a mix of technology and more traditional teaching and learning strategies in the classroom seem to work best, especially with struggling learners.  Below is an outline of a lesson we did earlier this year that utilized traditional, hands-on, and technological devices to support learning and provide our students with a “Day in the Life of a Puritan” experience (prior to our reading of The Crucible).

First, students reviewed the basics of Puritan living with a standard PowerPoint we created to highlight key elements.  Students too notes (using good ol' fashioned pen and paper) about the main ideas regarding Puritan life including naming, clothing, church ideals, free time, meals, homes, and punishments.

 

Next, we had several volunteers from each class dress up in clothing from the time period (long,dark outfits, hats for men, handkerchiefs for women, etc.), practice certain free time duties (knitting and tending to the animals and farm), partake in a common meal (bread, cheese, dried meat), and get arrested (thank to class guests Sean Berens & Rip) and receive a typical punishment (the stocks).

  

Once any student who wanted to had a turn partaking in the activities, students were assessed on what they learned.  They were able to use the notes they took from the PowerPoint, what they saw and did in class, and anything they remembered from our discussion to create a Pic Collage (iPad app) showcasing pictures and descriptions of what they learned about the Puritans.     

The combination of reinforcing the material with a PowerPoint, hands-on experiences, and technology allowed us to reach all students.  With varied learning styles, we tried to ensure that each student had the opportunity to understand, process, and show that they comprehended the day’s lesson.

We find that most days our lessons consist of one activity that utilizes the iPad and at least one or more that do not.  For example, we may read an act from The Crucible in class and then have the students respond to a discussion question online using their iPads.  Or we run a presentation via the Nearpod application that asks for responses from students while presenting information (answer a question, draw a picture, vote on a response, etc.) and then review what we have learned using a whole-class discussion face-to-face.  We were nervous about the wide array of applications and how we were going to turn ours into a virtual classroom, but the truth is that a combination of technology and traditional, non-technological methods of teaching work best for our classes.
  

For us, a little goes a long way; we like to strike a balance in class and always have a back-up plan depending on students’ needs that day