Monthly Archives: December 2013

December 28, 2013

Goals for 2014

I have a hard time condensing my posts to a couple paragraphs so I’m really going to try to keep this one short and to the point.

  • I want Edcamp Parkersburg to become a reality.  I know it can happen.  I’ve got some hurdles in the road but I think some people have stepped forward that can help me knock those hurdles down.  I’ve connected with individuals that have hosted successful Edcamps and I’ve got an appointment to speak with Edcamp foundation chair Kristen Swanson January 7.  I think this could become an annual event showcasing the best learning experiences for teachers.  There is a tremendous need and tremendous potential for this event.  It could be a game-changer for classrooms in this region.  
  • I have developed a passion for giving my students unique learning experiences that are often neglected in my traditional classrooms.  Activities of higher-quality are more difficult to measure and activities of low-quality are often easy to measure, thus low-quality learning activities are what our students get 99% of the time.  I suspect that teachers are used to these low-quality learning experiences because they are easy to measure and I’ve found that a lot of teachers only invest time into things that can be measured.  I personally feel that the things which aren’t easily measured are probably more important in life.  I would like to invest more time and energy into activities that improve communication, problem-solving, perseverance, and self-directed learning.  Maybe this will come through more meaningful projects chosen by the students.  Maybe it will occur through more communication and discussion from problems like these.  I’ve not arrived at a definite solution here, but I’ll keep trying.
  • I want to continue to refine my grading practices.  For example, since I started SBG, I have realized that I actually need to assess more often and reduce the number of standards present in my official tests.  I had started doing this, but I think I need to go even further.  I need to not be concerned with the number of grades in my grade book but rather the quality and validity of what those grades represent.  Organization is not my strength, but I need to be more organized with my tests, retakes, etc.  I need to incorporate more writing and communicating into my tests somehow.  This is a big part of my classroom, but is nearly absent from my assessments.
  • Entertain the idea of having a radical type of parent-teacher conference.  I’d like to engage parents in a what’s coming up learning experience for Mr. Oldfield’s math class.  I’d like parents to know how they can help their student and what to look for from my class.  I learned from our last student-lead conferences that there are still a number of parents who want to be actively involved in their child’s learning, they just don’t know how.  I’d like to show them some ways they can be active and carry some weight in this partnership.
  • Reach more homes during school orientation, August of 2014.  I always reach the homes of my homebase students and they get a full dose of how to communicate with me.  I always miss out on the other homes from other homebases.  Since I still have those students as part of my classes, it’s imperative that they get a more worthy dose of my communication lines.  I actively employ several lines of communication and I’d like to have more homes on board.  I just have to find a way to reach them first.
  • Reach every student and home with a positive note at least once during the second half of the school year.  I’ve also got to do a better job of documenting this somehow
  • Last, I want to continue doing the things I’ve started in 2013.  I know if I can just continue engaging in the learning experiences I started this year, I’ll continue to grow as an educator and a leader.

*I reserve the right to add to this list as I see fit.  For now, these are my goals heading into 2014.

December 28, 2013

Reflection on 2013

To borrow the heading from Eric Sheninger’s blog, this blog provides my views on effective educational leadership, effective communication with students, effective grading practices, and effective methods of establishing a student-centered learning culture.  It also provides my personal goals for 2014.

2013 most certainly represents the year in which I began a total transformation, professionally.  I joined Twitter and started to immediately connect to educators whose thinking was, at the time, far ahead of mine.  I’ve since become involved in a few educational chats, when I get the time.  I basically choose my chats by the topics that interest me.  I also don’t chat every night or even every week, though I try to at least browse the archives of something each week.  I’m at the point that is in stark contrast to how many educators may feel about Twitter chats: “I don’t have time or interest in sitting around the computer reading people’s opinions.”  I actually feel that I can’t afford to miss the conversations that are taking place on Twitter and if I go a week or two without any connecting, I feel like I’ve missed out on learning opportunities that will improve my practice.  I feel like someone is having a conversation about a solution that I’m seeking about my classroom.

I’ve wrote that Twitter isn’t the cure-all for educators.  It’s really not.  There are many means of connecting, it just seems to be the one that suits me the most.  I really don’t have time to invest in another avenue at this point, so I stick to Twitter because I’m seeing results.  It’s actually the first place I look to when trying to find something like project-based activities for graphing equations.  Google is actually second!

In 2013, I also started an Evernote portfolio.  Like many who start Evernote, I can now say that I need to invest some more energy into organizing the resources I’ve stored there.  I do have them organized by tags, which is helpful when looking for something later, but I have read about others who are way more organized than I am.  Evernote has proven to be one of those must-haves for me and I can’t imagine going without it and the Chrome extension, Evernote Web Clipper.

I started this blog in 2013.  It originally began as a means to communicate to parents and students.  That was my original thought.  My interest in learning eventually took over and as I read blog posts from educators I was communicating with via Twitter, I realized that I could do the same thing.  There was nothing preventing me from putting my thoughts on cyberspace and sharing them with others.  I remember the first time I asked Eric Sheninger and Tom Murray to share one of my blog posts.  That post ended up in India, South America, British Columbia, Australia, and many parts of the US.  I started to receive some really encouraging feedback and it was all because I wrote down some thoughts.  Thoughts that were a direct result of the learning that occurred through reading tweets, blog posts, and conversations on Twitter.

This blog has definitely lead to me becoming much more reflective than I ever dreamed of becoming.  This mode of being reflective is more about occasionally sitting down and thinking about growth and change that has occurred recently.  I actually think it’s always a part of me now.  I constantly reflect on things I used to do in my classroom, even in real-time as common situations present themselves in my classroom.  Those that have acquired this sort of reflection know what I’m talking about.  Maybe it just comes with experience.  I actually feel bad when I see students from 2-3 years ago because I can’t imagine how terrible I was at that time.  I recall completely irrelevant conversations I had in class, impractical grading practices I had back then, and even the classroom management strategies I was using then.  I recall how I was superglued to the curriculum map, despite what students and data were trying to tell me.  

2013 has definitely brought me closer to my students.  I have developed more meaningful and purposeful relationships with them.  We’re having better conversations in class.  I can ask even more of my students now than I ever could think of asking 2-3 years ago.  I’ve learned a lot about developing and fostering those relationships with all students, especially the ones who need it the most.  I’m using way more data and feedback from the students.  Before, I never would have even thought about asking the students.  Now, when I come to a fork in the road, I ask them and they direct me where to go.  They’re very honest too.  I’m thankful that my students can be honest with me because they know I’ll be honest with them.  I’ve received such great feedback from students, parents, and colleagues by providing my students with a voice in my classroom.   I’ve stopped being afraid of social media and began to leverage it’s power to enhance the relationships I’ve built with my students.

Grading has definitely changed for me in 2013.  I’ve started a journey towards standards-based grading.  This journey started by participating in #sbgchat and reading blog posts from SBGers like Garnet Hillman.  I quickly realized how antiquated and almost meaningless my current grading practices were.  I decided to change and it’s not been easy and it’s not completed.

Along with updating my grading practices, I’ve also given a lot of thought towards the purpose of homework in my class.  I’ve read Sal Khan’s book The One World School House and that alone began a tremendous shift in my thinking.  But he ignited a passion in me to determine the effectiveness of homework, feedback vs grades, the flipped concept, blended learning, and using data to drive your instruction.  All of these concepts have appeared in my classroom in some capacity during 2013.

In the next post, I’ll look ahead to some goals I have for 2014.

 

December 16, 2013

My experience with flexible grouping

I began the school year with a fair amount of homogeneous grouping of my students.  I was notified of this prior to the school year so it wasn’t a surprise.  I’m writing this as a reflection of the process and how I’ve made it a successful one.  This subject is extremely sensitive among educators and a quick Google search will reveal advocates and opponents with relatively solid arguments.

It didn’t take long before I realized which class of students could be described as those students who previously had struggled in math class.  I invested a lot of time and energy trying to empathize with them about their prior experiences in math classes.  Their experiences in math classes were far different than mine, so it was important that I try to get an accurate picture of their feelings towards math.  I could imagine how awful it must be to walk into math class feeling behind everyone else (in a heterogeneous class).  I could imagine how hopeless it would feel sitting down to take test after test I was not ready for.  I could imagine how frustrated it would be to receive a homework assignment that I had no clue how to do and no one at home to help me with it.  I could imagine the fear and embarrassment of being called upon in math class when I really didn’t understand what I was asked to do.

In the first few weeks of school, I went about my teaching just as I had every other year.  I was trying my best to keep every class at the same pace, on the same schedule.  After all, it’s a pain when your classes are all at different levels, right?  You’ve got to plan a different lesson for each class, design appropriate instructional materials, identify weaknesses and determine efficient ways to address those weaknesses.  It finally dawned on me that I was fighting the very thing I had asked for in the first place.  I also realized I was part of the problem for those classes of students best described by the previous paragraph.

I made a silent commitment to myself and to those students that I would change their feelings towards math and would stop the relentless battering of fear, embarrassment, and frustration.  Early in an 8th grade math course, it doesn’t take long to realize which students aren’t proficient in adding and subtracting negative numbers.  I’ve taught 8th grade math long enough to know that a weakness in a fundamental skill such as adding and subtracting negative numbers will lead to a fearful, embarrassing, and frustrating year of 8th grade math.  I had to make a change in my classes.

I realized that until these fundamental skills like adding/subtracting and multiplying integers were strengthened, there was no reason to race through the curriculum covering concept after concept because I knew my students would never see mastery or proficiency with their current skill-set.  I also realized that I needed to reverse their perceptions about math.  This became a turning point for me and those students who had previously struggled in math class.

I decided to spend a week on skills that I knew those students could perform with a measure of proficiency.  We practiced reducing common fractions.  We practiced turning a fraction or decimal into a percent.  This completely changed the outlook on what I was able to do next.  Now my students had experienced some success.  They could feel the tide was finally turning.  I was able to get more of them talking in math class.  They were so appreciative and responsive to my attempts to give them something they could complete!  This set the tone for the weeks to follow.  I began to really differentiate my plans and preparation for these classes.  I felt relieved of the pressure and demands to maintain pace and cover the material.  Now my students could come to math class with hope and a positive attitude.  Now I could come to class with hope and a positive attitude.

I know what you’re thinking.  “Do the students realize which classes are the ‘slow class’?  How do you implement flexible groups without stigmatizing students?”  Developing that trust and honesty with students is crucial.  Students need to know their teacher is out for the best interests and wants them to succeed.  Albeit, this is true no matter how your students are grouped, but it is even more important to develop this early when students are grouped by ability.  Give your students a chance to succeed.  That chance needs to be much different than the one they were previously given.  Students need to see that you’re willing to adjust the pace of instruction so give them the opportunity to provide feedback about how the class is going.  See a version of my students’ responses about my class.  When you come to a fork in the road and not sure what to do, ask the students.  I also incorporate Standards Based Learning and Grading, which allows my students to retake assessments designed to demonstrate mastery of standards.  When I hear students who have historically struggled in math say “I finally got a 100% on something” or “I haven’t got an A on anything in math since fourth grade” I know that the student appreciates my efforts.

I’ve identified a few things that have made this transition successful for me and my students:

  • Adjust the pace!  One-size does not fit all.  The same target is OK, but use a variety of vehicles to get there.  When I get to a fork in the road and not sure whether to move on or stay put, I ask the students.
  • Let your students feel successful early and often.  This is very important and will help remove any evidence of the stigma that clouds ability-grouping.
  • Be open and honest about what skills need filled in and what needs demonstrated in order to move.
  • Actually move students.  This is NOT a static group.  Students need to flex and be moved to classes where they’ll remain challenged.  To date, I’ve moved 11 students with the help of my school counselor.  Students will catch on if no one’s schedule ever gets changed.  Be wary of the stigma.
  • Give students a voice and receive their feedback.  Students respond more positively when they know they have a voice in the process.  Every student in my lowest class understands they are there to succeed, I believe in them, and the focus is learning.  The alternative has not been forgotten.
  • I feel this is the knot that ties it all together: communicate communicate communicate.  You can’t be too positive.  I send at least 15 positive messages via text, email, card, or pat-on-the-back every week.  It’s actually easy to do once you start.