MRA Conference Reflection

As I’m ½ way through day two of a state wide conference outside of my content area, I’m having some beliefs reaffirmed. In education, all too often we lock ourselves in our silos and forget to take a step back and see the broader picture.

What I’ve learned at MRA has less to do with specific individual techniques about guided reading, or writers workshop and more to do with the shifting paradigm of teaching and learning. Great teaching in any content area inspires students to ask big questions about the world around them, shows them a need to learn deeply (in order to answer their own questions), and as a result, inspires curiosity inside them to continue the learning. If we authentically create these learning processes in literacy or any other subject we will be showing students that they have the ability to impact the world now, instead of asking them what they want to be when they grow up.

In the opening keynote Alfred Tatum said that one of his goals for his students is to help them become “urgent souls.” I deeply believe that becoming an urgent souls has very little to do with the content standards that we cover but has EVERYTHING to do with the way we cover the standards.

Are we growing students who will be connected to each other solving problems in careers we don’t know will exist yet or are we growing factory workers for jobs that are being eliminated every day?

How Do We Break Down Our Students’ Silos?

One thing that all people have in common is that we feel uncomfortable when we’re being judged negatively. The degree to which we feel it and what we do with that uncomfortable feeling varies, but we all feel it. The danger in this is allowing this uncomfortable feeling to prevent us from seeking meaningful feedback. We as teachers need to open our students up to feedback and help them learn to give each other meaningful feedback rather than judgment laced critiques.

I think that the first thing we need to admit is that this problem is exacerbated by traditional feedback. Formal feedback usually comes from the teacher to the student at the end of the learning process. As the student reads the feedback they are reading your words as they feel their dreams of a 100% melt away. Your feedback causes a negative reaction that they can’t help feeling instead of inspiring them to get better. We teach kids to have a fixed mindset because our system for growth in many cases is punitive. In this case grades are doing a good job at ranking students but not doing a good job at helping our students continue to grow their understanding of the subject matter. So… what can we do about it? I have a few ideas but I’d love to hear yours in the comments.

 

Set Clear Learning Goals – 

Help your students begin with the end in mind. If they know exactly what they need to do in order to show you that they understand the material they can help coach each other to get there. When my students are working on a project, I have them give me exit slips that explain what grade they would give themselves on a particular standard and how they plan to earn the next grade up. It helps them realize where they are and what their next steps are to move forward. While they’re filling out the slips they often whisper to each other (and me) to figure out what their next steps should be. When they come in the next week they have actionable self-reflection and can hit the ground running.

 

Stress Iteration –

Feeling judged stinks. It stinks even more when you feel like you were done. When our students feel like they’re showing their peers a work in progress the feedback they get can feel more helpful.

 

Teach How To Give Feedback – 

We as teachers know that feedback should be judgment free and tied to concrete examples in the students work. In my class today I watched two fourth grade groups seek impromptu feedback from each other and heard one say “I heard your chorus and understood it was your chorus because it came back with the same words and melody. I’m not sure what section was your verse because I never heard a second melody come back.” That is direct, actionable, concrete, and judgement free. Both groups walked away with new things to work on and more concrete understandings from listening and giving others feedback. We all know the person doing the most talking is the person doing the most learning.

 

Know That You’re Still Important – 

I still give just as much feedback as I did before I started actively helping students learn together. There is just 30(ish) times as much feedback happening in the room.

 

I always love hearing new ideas. What are ways that you help students grow together as a community of learners? How do you help enable peer scaffolding?

Growing with a Student Teacher

First off, I have to say I won the student teacher lottery.  My student teacher @ochoajon8 came into his summative experience ready to take over his own classroom.  I discovered that all of my self preparation to have difficult conversations was completely unnecessary and I needed to think completely differently about this process. Here’s what we’ve come up with.

I observe Jon formally 1-2 classes per day in a shared Evernote notebook so he has my notes to augment his own on how the class went.  I format my feedback with these three headings:

  1. Lesson notes – this includes word choice, general observations (positive and things to improve)
  2. Reflective Questions – These are questions designed to get him to think about things that we need to think about.  Some have been about our planning process, some have been thinking about the very positive things that are happening and how to make them happen more often.
  3. I notice you’re improving on… – What has made Jon so great is that his reflective practice is already well established.  He shares his own personal growth goals with me and I let him know where I’m seeing growth.  He’s great at self monitoring, but a second set of eyes is always a good thing.

 

Keeping all of this in a shared notebook in Evernote has turned this process into a two way dialogue about how the day went.  It was difficult to talk about the specifics of the day before I started taking detailed notes and sharing through Evernote.  In addition, the time constraints of our day made it difficult to plan and have the conversations we needed to have.  Seeing his fresh perspective in his responses to my feedback has turned this into an extremely symbiotic relationship.

 

How have you framed your formal relationship with your student teachers?

What ways can we improve this process for the good of all?

 

Stuck on an Escalator

Over the summer I stumbled onto this video and thought it would be a great way to begin to create a culture of learning this year with the students I lead – Stuck on an Escalator

While watching the video most students chuckle and get frustrated with the characters in the video.

“Why don’t they just walk up the escalator?!”

After the video finishes we talked about how the video was literally about people getting stuck on an escalator, which is kind of silly.  It’s deeper meaning is the powerful one; most of the time the solutions to your own problems are just a few mental steps away.  After students talked and shared experiences they had last year working in groups I made them two promises…

1. There will be a time this year where you will be stuck on the escalator.  You’ll come up to me thinking you need my help but if I can see that you’re really close to figuring it out, I’ll tell you you’re stuck on the escalator and give you more time to work.  If I tell you this, don’t get frustrated, get excited because you’re really close to a solution!

2. There will be a time this year when you are working in a group and someone else is stuck on the escalator.  If you get frustrated with them at a time when they are already frustrated with themselves it will just make the problem bigger.  If a group member is stuck, be patient and help!  Think of a time you were stuck and how you would have wanted your partners to help.  Be the change you want to see.

I want my students to feel like its ok to struggle with their work.  We all struggle with our work.  We don’t need to get frustrated, it will just take time and planning to solve.  Giving them a silly metaphor to understand struggle has taken our community one step closer to dealing with frustrating situations with empathy instead of judgment.