Month: October 2010

Classy: Modeling Marking Texts

As the Grade 11 students are reading books of choice for the most part this year, I’ve been working to incorporate types of texts outside of novels into our reading. This has taken the form of long form journalism pieces, op-eds, short stories or anything else. Part of what we’re working toward is endurance in reading. Part of what we’re working toward is reading as a social experience.

I’ve known about the Think Aloud as a reading strategy for a few years. I’ve tried to stay away from it for the sheer boredom of it. It doesn’t ask much of my strongest readers and can feel as though I’m patronizing those students reading at lower levels.

I decided to take my voice out of it. Here’s how it worked:

  1. I posted the link to this article on moodle along with four questions:
    1. What is the purpose of this article?
    2. What is the evidence the author uses to support his claims?
    3. What do you think the future of paper as a medium for transmitting writing is?
    4. How does this article shape your understanding of the world?
  2. Students had time in class to begin reading and thinking. What they didn’t finish became homework.
  3. When they entered class the next day, I handed them printed copies of the piece with the notes that came to mind as I was reading.
  4. The students had approximately 7 minutes to mark up the text with any thinking they had and wanted to add to my notes.
  5. We gathered in a circle where I set ground rules such as, “If we get off topic, ask a question,” “Tie it to the text,” and “Challenge thoughts you don’t understand or agree with.”
  6. Conversation began with each speaker calling on the next.

What happened was a great reminder of the kind of conversation our students are capable of. It’s what they were hoping for when we went to the Town Hall Meeting. At one point, it occurred to me we could benefit from adding our school librarian’s voice to the mix. I called and invited him.

Matt, a grad student completing some observations in our class, commented afterward on how the students had kept the conversation moving even when I was on the phone. I’m hoping it’s because they owned the conversation and I didn’t. In fact, the rules within discussion are that I too must raise my hand and wait to be called on when I want to contribute.

That was classy. What do you think?

Sec. Duncan: Brandon and Devon have some lingering questions.

We had the opportunity to take about 40 students to a Town Hall Meeting on education hosted by A&E, Comcast, The School District of Philadelphia and Temple University today.

Rather than posting my thoughts, I was curious what the experience brought out in our students. Here’s what Brandon had to say –

Brandon’s thoughts on the town hall

When he publishes the blog he mentions at the end of the interview, I’ll be certain to push it here.

UPDATE: One of the other students, Devon, who attended today published this to her tumblr. It’s reposted here with permission:

So I went to this thing with school today.. It was about education and how we can teach better. The only people who actually were able to talk were the students.

I thought it was going to be a whole bunch of high school students asking some very important people questions.. but instead there were college students asking some very silly questions towards one specific person. My schools really different from other schools, and even though we can be intimidating, we ask really good questions about things.

Two people from our school were able to ask questions, and really interesting questions that could have been turned into a conversation if they wanted it to.. but the people who were on the panel decided to completely avoid those and talk about something else. Needless to say it was REALLLLLY aggravating.

Honestly I think they just didn’t want to think about an answer, and even though they think we’re doing things right with education.. they don’t want our opinions on things.. What the heck is up with that!?

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Talk TO me

To the “superintendents, chief executives and chancellors responsible for educating nearly 2 1/2 million students in America”:

Hi.

I’m a teacher.

Please talk to me and not about me.

I understand we’ve been talking about each other for a while, and I’d like to work on ending this game of phone tag.

We keep leaving messages for one another in public places and, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little embarrassed. It seems people are starting to look down on my profession.

Weird, right? Especially since you keep talking about how important my profession is.

I hate to say it, but I think some of the things you’ve been saying may have played a role in that.

You’ll pardon me for saying it doesn’t feel as though you care very much for teachers. If I’m wrong, I’ll happily await the data showing facts to the contrary. Just leave a comment with a link, and I’ll check it out.

I wanted to thank you, though, for drawing attention to the importance of teacher quality. I’ve been working on mine since I entered the classroom in 2003.

From in-services at the end of school days to sometimes weeks-long trainings in the summer to attending professional conferences, I’ve really attempted to learn as much as possible.

That’s just the formal stuff. Since right around the time it launched, I’ve been connecting with teachers across the world through twitter and other social media tools to help me workshop ideas for helping my kids learn. Are you on twitter? If you are, follow me.

Plus, I’ve been using my blog as a space to play with ideas before implementing them in the classroom as well as a place to share the things that work so others can take them an build off of them.

Oh, also, I’ve connected with a couple of non-profit groups nationally and internationally that work to help teachers be better, well, teachers.

This summer, I even started work on my Master’s degree. It’s not required or anything, but I thought it would help me teach better.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to.

What about you?

What kind of learning opportunities have you been taking advantage of? I’ve seen a lot of stuff in the news about what I should be doing in my classroom and what we should be doing in my school to improve learning, so I was just wondering where you’ve been learning.

If you’re looking to start an advisory board, I’d love to join.

I haven’t seen you in my school lately, but you’re welcome to stop by. I haven’t cleared it with my principal, but I’m sure he’d be fine with it.

We’re used to visitors from all over the world, so you don’t have to worry.

I don’t want to make it sound like we’re the only ones who would welcome you.

In fact, I’ve been writing a bit recently about some other teachers across the country who have taught me quite a bit.

You might be surprised to hear about it, but quite a few teachers are doing some great things in their classrooms. If you’ve got a feed reader, go ahead and subscribe. I’ll be writing about more teachers soon.

In fact, I know at least one teacher in every state personally. You should too; they’re doing some amazing work.

Hey, I wanted to tell you not to be that upset. I know several studies have come out talking about how important my job is and how important my principal’s job is, and I know it’s got to be difficult that not much has been written about how important your job is or the great changes you’ve made in students’ lives.

Again, if you want to get that message out there, leave a comment. I’ll tweet it out.

Oh, something else. And, I’m midwestern, so I’ll have to admit to being a little uncomfortable broaching this topic so publicly, but I’ve got some questions about money.

First of all, I know the government has allocated quite a bit of money to helping schools and districts improve teaching and learning.

I was just wondering why nobody checked in with me or my colleagues about how we could use that money to shape lives and help our kids. Now, if you e-mailed me about this, I’ll have to admit I didn’t get it. I even checked my spam folder.

One other thing about money.

Quite a bit of talk has been batted around lately about the idea of merit pay.

I’d like to decline.

It’s just that I don’t want my kids thinking I’m teaching them stuff so I can get more money. I’ve got this thing going where I help them come up with questions about their lives and their worlds and then help them to work to find answers to those questions.

I worry that, if they found out about merit pay, they’d start to wonder if I was just teaching them stuff so I could get paid more rather than because I wanted them to be thoughtful and caring citizens. I’m sure it’s not what you meant, but I’d rather not have my kids stop trusting me.

Plus, added bonus, they’re already doing well on the tests you’d probably use to help determine how much I’d be paid, so that’s taken care of.

Right, enough talk about money.

If I could just make one more point before signing off. Actually, I made it before. Please talk to me and not about me. You see, in all this talk about how important my job is, I’m starting to get the feeling you don’t think I’m that important.

Reduction in Force (and Spirit)

When I ask her how much of her information I can share, Megan says, “There’s a part of me that says put it out there, but there’s a part of me that is a little more concerned than I’d admit about losing a job.”

The thing is, Megan’s already lost her job – 3 times.

A teacher in a district in the Southwest, Megan has been RIF’d (reduction in force) three times in her 7 years as a teacher.

Megan explains the process to me.

In March or April, principals deliver form letters to teachers’ classrooms letting them know RIF will be announced.

“People have been pretty understanding,” she says, “Still, it’s a form letter.”

Each time Megan has been RIF’d, she’s been hired back, learning in June or July where she’ll be teaching and signing a contract near the end of August.

“When I got the last one,” she tells me, “I put a piece of red duct tape on it and wrote something like, ‘This is like a spring day. In just a minute it will change.'”

It did.

Megan is teaching at the same school she started at – sort of. It was combined with one of the other schools in the city this year, so it’s not quite the same.

Luckily, Megan got laid off from the now-defunct school as well, so she’s in the unique position of knowing and having worked with both faculties.

While she’s talking, there’s a hopefulness you wouldn’t expect from someone who’s had this experience.

“One thing that’s good is that I’ve been able to work with a variety of different teachers,” Megan says.

At the same time, the reality of the situation is difficult to ignore. She describes the faculty as existing in two separate campes. “It’s not very connected. There’s all these fractures in something that could be built with a very strong foundation.”

Adding to the tectonic stress is the budget freeze in Megan’s district.

“We actually took a hit if you look at the numbers and not how they phrase everything.”

“I think it’s difficult for teachers to continually build rapport with admin too. It’s hard for people to start new programs if they don’t feel like they’ll be supported financially or professionally. If they don’t feel like it’s going to last more than a year, people don’t want to put energy in.”

She talks of running into two former students at the grocery store. She’d thought, before getting RIF’d, that she would be teaching them again this year. The students have been forced  to build new connections with their new teacher, and Megan say’s it’s not going particularly well.

“We spent a lot of time building that classroom community,” she pauses, ” If I’d been able to work with them for two years, the strides we could have made with them as learners would be different than if we have to start over every year.”

Megan’s starting to feel the stress of the seemingly constant reshuffling as well.

I ask her, if the three notices haven’t put her off teaching, where she sees her breaking point. What would push her out of what she describes as her dream job?

“As they try to streamline things and make things more efficient and less costly, I feel like I have less freedom. When I feel like I don’t have the freedom or trust of my administrators to facilitate learning, then I’m going to have to go.”

She admits to having it easier than some, “My feelings would be very different if I had kids or a mortgage or giant amounts of debt to pay off.”

Though Megan says she stays in the community because, “I feel most at home and I feel as though my voice is most valid,” I have to worry that no one is stopping to listen to that voice or the voices of thousands of teachers like her.