Often we hear people bemoan a perceived or real decrease in sustained reading in our students. Teachers express frustration that students don't read outside of class or are not reading at a level that teachers feel they should be at. This year our Senior English students were doing independent reading choices for 20-60 minutes a week in class, and I know more classes have added this across all grades. So as the Senior English teachers prepared for our Independent Reading Book Circles, I asked my students to do a brief journal entry on successes and barriers when it came to their reading.
In the words of Paulo Freire in Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare to Teach, he says, "As a practical-theoretical context, the school cannot ignore the knowledge about what happens in the concrete contexts of its students and their families. How can we understand students' difficulties during the process of becoming literate without knowing what happens in their experiences at home or how much contact they have with written words in their sociocultural context?"
I want to share some of their responses here. They certainly caused me to step back and reflect as we set our goals and targets for our unit: was our goal a quiz at the end? Was our goal just to finish a book? Was our goal to inspire a love of reading? In the end our goal was to have sustained dialogue about a reading both within one book circle and across books.
Motivation and work ethic are two common phrases uttered by teachers at times, usually in a negative way: Why don't students care about this? Why do they wait until the last minute? Why won't they get off their phones? And there are definitelyso many reasons to discuss and improve intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, learning targets, assessment practices for us as educators, and so on.
But one thing I've also been trying lately in my classes is to re-frame how I speak with students who aren't "on task." Instead of walking around and saying "get to work" and "why aren't you working," I'm asking them, "What can I do to help you be successful?" or sometimes "Under what conditions can I help you demonstrate what you are able to do?" I remember our principal using a similar question once in terms of working with staff, and I thought, this may work with students as well--not all the time, of course. Sometimes students just need to get to work.
However, sometimes we need to change the conditions under which they are working to make them more successful. That could mean letting them sit outside the classroom door or on the floor. That could mean letting them put headphones in to take away distractions--or whatever best fits your students, your environment, and your subject. Additionally, this re-phrasing makes the conversation less antagonistic, which can help to alleviate any tension or frustration. Students may be more willing to say they don't understand something or need a handout they are missing if we aren't coming off as aggressive and frustrated. I have found this with my group of seniors and our most recent essay.
In the end the outcome may be the same no matter how we phrase it, but I've found some more unwilling students actually open up and say what they need to work on--again, not always, and not all students--but perhaps more than I would have in the past.
If you're thinking, "Habits of Work seems like a shady, character-based rando category," it's one that my department had in place and that I at first wasn't that into either. However! I've already been doing character work for the last two years based on the KIPP character traits and the amazing book How Children Succeed: grit, curiosity, and the hidden power of characterby Paul "my last name is awesomely ironic" Tough, and since I believe in mastery teaching, it all comes together. As long as kids have turned in a draft or whatever on time, they can redo or retake the assessment later. But this makes some kids feel like, "Hey! I can turn all of this in the week before midterms!" which is not cool and also not fair to me. So first drafts are due, class time encourages completion, and Habits of Work means no A unless you're doing stuff on time and being a generally good participant and respectful person.
Why would I include those "soft skills"? Because they're what most of us are required to do for our jobs. A lot of our graduates are hitting college heartbreak hard when they find out that no, their professor will not take late work whatsoever, and no, there is no "retake center." I want to do right by them, and that means this is a piece of the pie. Check out three of KIPP's adorable and useful character posters, with description and the rest of the 7 here: KIPP character traits
In talking about this with colleagues, one idea was a progressive late work policy over their four years, from no penalty (just noted) to not being accepted. While some college professors may accept late work, many (most?) do not... and most work places aren't cool with you doing things when you feel like it, either. Okay, so what does this look like for me? Along with those posters & minilessons (which are still works in progress, ideas welcome!), here's the weekly goal sheet and then Quarter 1 reflection I had students do:
Want to know more about this so-called character work? Check out my posts on character and grading.
Midway through our "EG Lead Learners Team" meeting today, my brain was afire with big-picture ideas. Now I'm the kind of person who is critical of ideas (my own included), but once I'm excited and have done basic research about something, I want to run with it. Give it a "trial by fire," persay, and see how it goes, reworking along the way.
I left the conference with an educator crush on Myron Dueck and feeling intrigued by a 4- or 6-point grading scale based on below basic, basic, proficient, and mastery levels.
After viewing a bunch of different teachers' grade books (one from 1946, then the rest modern & online), I didn't see any I thought were effectively communicating student progress or fairly assigning grades. Then I looked at my own. I didn't like that one either (though I did like it a lot more than the others at least?). So I set some goals for my 2nd quarter:
Soooooo my current grades are feast or famine. Which is maybe encouraging(?) because if a kid turned stuff in (at ALL), they're at a B. If s/he didn't... it's F City. Ugh, it feels intimate to share this:
Now, by the end of the term, that "grades are real!" hustle will kick in and I'll get more essays and etc. But is that fair? Am I doing this right? If a kid has not turned in aaaaaanything, I can't assess them, so it's listed as missing (which counts as a zero). They can make this up whenever. The sooner the better. Yep, made phone calls home. Yep, conferences with kids. Yep, referred them to the tutoring center. If I didn't do the Missing/0 thing, that kid would think they were passing and then ::SURPRISE, YOU FAILED!:: would happen the last week of the quarter. :/ Should they be passing at all if they have done zero work? E1 FD is Essay 1 First Draft, then E1 R is the revised version. Vocab is mastery oriented (vocabulary.com), self-paced, and falls under reading skills as does IR (independent reading). The grammar tests are self-paced. SAT is multiplied by zero and is not a score, just a baseline "fyi" for kids from our first SAT Writing in class test.
So here are my big idea steps/goals for Q2:
break down skills based on the Illinois grades 9-12 ELA Common Core (<that was ridiculously tedious to actually get to)
create descriptors of each level of ability in each skill
redesign rubrics based on skills
update gradebook for quarter 2 with all skills; include related assignments in comments section (Haiku Learning seems like it would be a fantastic standards based grading system, though I just discovered it and have never used it)
Ooookay. Sounds like I have enough for right now. I'm not even sure I can do this for Writing/Grammar, Reading/Vocab, and Speaking by next term. Ideas and *constructive* feedback welcome!
Want to know more about Habits of Work? Check out my post: HoW & Character
This year our Senior English students were doing independent reading choices for 20-60 minutes a week in class, and I know more classes have added this across all grades. So as the Senior English teachers prepared for our Independent Reading Book Circles, I asked my students to do a brief journal entry on successes and barriers when it came to their reading.
In the words of Paulo Freire in Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare to Teach, he says, "As a practical-theoretical context, the school cannot ignore the knowledge about what happens in the concrete contexts of its students and their families. How can we understand students' difficulties during the process of becoming literate without knowing what happens in their experiences at home or how much contact they have with written words in their sociocultural context?"
