Jan

7

Behaviour management techniques for the classroom that really work.

Filed Under "At-risk" students, SOS for Teachers | 2 Comments

Someone the other day was asking me about behaviour management techniques for the classroom that really work. I have written here , here and here about classroom management before. Take a look if you have time. I think that Doug Belshaw, who is taking a bit of a break from blogging, also has written an excellent post on this very topic, and I’d like to share it with you too. Here’s the link to Doug’s blog.

Thanks Doug, and I hope that what I have shared here with you is useful.

Nov

25

Common misunderstandings about teaching

Filed Under SOS for Teachers | 3 Comments

I don’t know about you, but in the last few years I’ve been to so many educational conferences, lunch and learn workshops and professional development sessions during and after school I’ve lost count. I’m not complaining. Far from it. I’m absolutely delighted that my Board is making it possible for me to meet people who have made the commitment to be life long learners and share strategies and insights that they value. When I leave these sessions , I feel energized by what I’ve learned and by the people I’ve met. I usually come away with an insight or strategy that I can use in the classroom for the benefit of my students. I love the internet for that reason, too. I can just google any topic and find the latest developments. When I find something really cool, I take it back to school with me and share it with my colleagues. It gives us something positive to talk about. The internet really makes every day a professional development day.

Oh yes, getting back to all the exciting ideas that have come away during all the PD sessions I’ve attended.. It seems to me that at the end of every PD session, as I walk out the door I hear some teachers saying that they don’t have time to do whatever it was that we’ve just been introduced to because they have so much content to cover the content in their course. They hardly have enough time now to do what they have to.They could never take the time to do x, y or z because they would never get through the textbook. When I hear this argument, with all due respect to all those teachers who tell me this because I do respect them, I think that can’t be the case. But, I’m told time and time again that teachers have to finish teaching all the content which is usually the entire text book so their students will be prepared for the next grade and the next textbook- I presume.

Why does it have to be that way? Do students really have to learn all those facts? Who made that decision anyway? I keep asking that question every time I hear the ” I have to cover the content and textbook” argument. So, when I came across Chapter 5 of Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s book Schooling by Design: Mission, Action, and Achievement I was intrigued. I’ll admit I was a little brain dead when I started to skim through chapter 5. It had been one of those more interesting days in the classroom.You know the one that sucks all the energy out of you and leaves you feeling like a zombie.

When I got to the section titled Teacher Misunderstandings and read ” Misunderstanding 1: “My Job Is to Cover the Content”, my brain came to life. What was that? The system was overloaded with content because when content standards committees at the different levels met to decide what was essential, they came up with an overly ambitious list. I can see that happening. When you really love a subject area, it’s hard to draw the line between what’s really necessary to know and what would be nice for students to know. One summer not too long ago, I was on a curriculum writing team for the school district I work in, and we had a really difficult time cutting things out. We sat around the table for a long time debating what to leave in and what to take out. Everyone had their pet area that they wanted included- me too.
Wiggins and McTighe explain that the ‘my job is to cover the content” misunderstanding stems from the best of intentions. The various standards committees are including more content than is absolutely necessary and the text books publishers are trying to include all of the content in their textbooks so that the textbook adoption committees will choose their textbooks over their competitors. Then there is the tendency for some teachers to think that they should only use the textbook to teach the content of the course.

I was at a series of workshops last summer and met someone who was going to teach at a brand new school and the department she was in was not going to use textbooks. They were going to use teacher created materials. I don’t know how that worked out. I do know that I haven’t been totally happy with any textbooks I’ve seen, and if I was forced to use just a textbook, I would hate it. I like having the textbook as a resource, but I also like developing my own resources to meet the needs of my students. Fortunately, my Board offers lots of opportunities for professional development. so that I can do this. It’s actually very exciting.

Why do some teachers think they have to cover what’s in the textbook ? According to Wiggins and McTighe, some teachers think that’s what their supervisors want , but they found no evidence to support this. Nor have they seen a teacher’s contract that has stated that a teacher’s job is to cover the textbook. Clearly, it’s a misunderstanding to believe that the textbook has to be covered. The textbook should only be a resource, not the syllabus.

What is a teachers job then if it’s not to cover all the content in a course and not to cover the text book? Wiggins and McTighe argue it is

to cause understanding, as reflected in worthy accomplishments…. facilitating the learners’ insights and coaching them to transfer their knowledge and skill, as reflected in significant performances involving such transfer.

You know, just reading that quotation is inspiring. Yes, that’s what I want in my classroom. I want all of that. I want understanding reflected into worthy accomplishments. I want skills and knowledge to be reflected and transfered into significant performances. I want all that, but I’m not always getting it. What I got this week was three of my almost- eighteen year old male students throwing Lego pieces at one another behind my back. Don’t ask! I think they’re bored with the topic at hand. To be honest, so am I. It’s time for some thing new. The flying Lego made that clear.

OK, let me move on to the second teacher misunderstanding. While some teachers mistakenly believe that the textbook is the syllabus, and they must teach all the content in the text book, other teachers feel that they shouldn’t use the text book at all and prefer to develop their own interesting resources to engage students. Wiggins and McTighe argue that this is all well and good, but sometimes teachers “get lost in the activities and lose sight of purpose as well as results… activities must be seen as a means to important learning ends and not ends in themselves. They go on to suggest that teachers need to ask questions like the following ones about the activities they plan for their students to ensure that the activity is the means and not the end in its self.

  • Are the learning outcomes clearly identified and embodied in the work?
  • Do they reflect important enduring outcomes( big ideas in the discipline) or simply “nice to now”?
  • Do students know the intended learning outcomes and spend time processing the activities in terms of those goals and the purpose behind various activities?
  • Can students explain the purpose behind various activities.
  • Do we have appropriate evidence of learning important ideas and in meaningful ways?
  • Were the time and energy devoted to the activities commensurate with the resultant learning and a wise use of time given all other obligations?

You know, these questions are very useful ones to ask, especially for me. I like activity based lessons and asking these questions would help me stay on track. I certainly don’t want the intended learning outcomes to get lost in the activities I have my students do. Quite the contrary. I want the activities in my classroom to be engaging and effective. That’s one of the challenges of teaching that I relish.

The final misunderstanding Wiggins and McTighe talk about is the one where some teachers think a teacher’s job is to teach to the test. Let me just say something here. I’m on the Literacy Committee at our school and the pressure is really on. Since the government has decided that all students must pass the provincial grade ten literacy test in order to get a high school diploma, there have been meetings ad nauseum on how best to prepare students for the test. Students need to get a grade of 75% on the literacy test in order to pass it. There’s something I don’t get about the provincial standards though. 75% is the provincial standard for passing the literacy test , yet students only need to get a grade of 50% to pass their other courses. I’m sure someone has an answer. If you happen to, please tell me .

Some teachers argue that we should teach to the test so the students will be as prepared as possible for the Literacy Test. What happens then, as far as I’m concerned, is that the test hijacks the regular curriculum, and class time is spent practicing test questions like the ones on the literacy test. It becomes a “drop everything else and teach to the test endeavour”. At my school, we did a blitz where every subject teacher spent one class teaching to the test in some way. Let me tell you the teachers who said they had too much content to cover before we had to teach to the literacy test were outraged. They argued that they don’t have enough time now to cover everything so why was valuable time taken from their class to prepare kids for the literacy test. They’re not English teachers they said, and teaching literacy is the job of English teachers. I guess they don’t really get it. Do they? Every teacher in every subject is a literacy teacher.

Now there is a more compelling argument against teaching to the test than the one I just discussed. Teaching to the test is not best way to go. As Wiggins and McTighe so eloquently noted it, the best way to raise the test scores in the long run is to :

teach key ideas and processes contained in content standards (content that is purportedly tested) in rich and engaging ways; collect evidence of student understanding and transferability of that content via robust local assessments; and, raise standards and quality control for local assignments to gather evidence of all that we value, not just what is easiest to measure.

In closing now, I just want to review the teacher misunderstandings that Wiggins and McTigne discuss. One misunderstanding is that a teacher’s job is to cover content. Another misunderstanding is that a teacher’s job is to engage learners with interesting activities( no flying Lego, please) , and finally a teacher’s job is to teach to the test. If these are the misunderstandings about what a teacher should do, what then is a teacher job?

It’s to cause understanding, as reflected in worthy accomplishments … facilitating the learners’ insights and coaching them to transfer their knowledge and skill, as reflected in significant performances involving such transfer.

 

Let me say that again- a teachers job is to cause understanding, as reflected in worthy accomplishments … facilitating the learners’ insights and coaching them to transfer their knowledge and skill, as reflected in significant performances involving such transfer. I just love the eloquent way Wiggins and McTigne define our job as teachers. They make it sound so noble. I especially like “worthy accomplishments ” and “significant performance”. Of course, Wiggins and McTigne apply these terms to students, but I want them to apply to teachers as well. I want them to apply to me- worthy accomplishments and significant performances. That’s my goal for myself and my students. My worthy accomplishments and significant performances are their worthy accomplishments and significant performances and vice-versa.

 
icon for podpress  Teacher Misunderstandings [15:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (385)

Apr

5

One way to make classrooms safer

Filed Under "At-risk" students, Blogging in and out of the Classroom, SOS for Teachers, The Way I See It | 2 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to make classrooms safer for teachers and kids. I think it would help if teachers got more training about managing kids in ways that didn’t bring the worst out of kids. Teachers don’t get get much training in this area. I have my special ed specialist in behaviour management, and I feel could use more training on how t0 deal with some of the disturbed kids we get in schools. I know we’re teachers and not members of an emergency task force, but still we have to deal with all kinds of kids with all kinds of problems so we’d better know what to do that works or at least doesn’t make the situation worse.

I’m not saying that more training would be a magic wand and make the problems go away, but I do think more training to help us deal better with the disturbed kids we have in our classes would help. I’ve observed classrooms were the primary management strategy was it’s -my-way-or-the-highway. Well, the my-way -or-the-highway approach does not work with kids today. It might have in another time and another place, but not here and now. This power trip approach causes all kinds of problems. Let’s just say it. Some teachers are bullies. It’s a simple a that. I’ve seen what happens in classes where teachers have this approach. Students sit there seething with resentment and plot on how to get even. Unfortunately they go to their next class still seething and plotting , and the next teacher wonders what in the world is wrong with this kid. It’s a teenager’s “job” to rebel against authority, so of course some kids at some times aren’t going to do what we ask the first time we ask it. But, teachers don’t need to make things worse by using ineffective approaches because they don’t know any better or because they won’t change their management strategies or style. Learning how to deal with the troubled, troublesome and troubling kids we have in our classroom is in our best interest. The kids aren’t going away and we are the adults.

 
icon for podpress  One way to make classrooms safer [3:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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