Our Family Feud

When I was in second grade our school had a program called Reading Around the World. It worked like this: students had reading sheets where they kept track of the books they read every night, parents signed off, and when the student returned to school their reading totals were updated with a marker on a giant colorful cartoon map of the country/world in the longest hallway in the school. I ate this up. I was either first or second in my class for the Reading Around the World totals, mostly because I wanted to earn the cool prizes that came with it, especially the little rubber sneaker erasers that were so coveted by my classmates.

Ever since then, I have yet to see a system that created such a strong focus on reading, although there are some great programs out there being used by some of the charters schools I've worked in. Let's just say if I ran a school, this would be my number one academic priority. Forget the tests, gimme the books!

Photo: Rachel Beth Polan

So when I came home to see my family and I asked my sisters what books they were reading and got embarrassed stares, I decided to do something.

Our family is now keeping track of our reading and competing against one another using a GoogleSpreadsheet. Let's just say the results have been stunning so far.

Highlights:

• Of my 4 initial invites to edit the doc, 3 of them are already using it, including the 2 targets.
• We took an emergency trip to 2 local libraries yesterday to stock up the family with family (reading) feud ammo.
• I crept upstairs at 12:30am last night and found my youngest sister reading near the end of her first book already. This morning when I checked she'd already updated that she finished the book and was on to the next one.

This is definitely happening again for my students next September!

How Was I As a Student?

Most public schools in the NYC-area closed yesterday or this morning. The private schools have been on vacation since the beginning of the month. Summer break is here.

The start of next year seems so far away, that I'm going to shift gears for a while and work less on plans and schemes and do more reflections. I have gotten a good education out of this past year and learned and developed a lot.

The challenge is to take the next few weeks and look back on what I've learned and get meta-cognitive about it.

Lately I've been thinking about how difficult it is to get students to match my expectations for them. I often find myself daydreaming back to when I was a student and wondering about how it was that my teachers, parents and role models taught me the standards that I've internalized. I have seen videotape of my teaching before and received feedback on my work as a teacher, but I'll never be able to see what I was like as a student. That's what I'd really want. To be able to see how I was taught, and how my peers were taught, and how we responded.

Until I have this information, or a real close proxy for it, I will be missing a great opportunity to get much better in preparation for next year.

Favorite Practice #2 - Snapping Good Read Alouds

First the problem with read alouds:

I used to be paralyzed with fear at the thought of teaching in the lowest grades of elementary school. I teach math - algebra, geometry, equations, exponents. I'm not equipped to teach reading.

Like many I have taught a single person how to read; I did the whole Hop on Pop/Cat in the Hat thing with my sister and would claim her as one of my earliest pupils. However, reading with one person is 1/1000th as hard as teaching a class of squirmy, distracted students.

That's why read alouds are great. 1) Teacher reads, everyone else follows along. 2) It mimics the benefits of the reading-learning relationship between a reader and his sister/child/friend/etc.

However, there are many problems with the read aloud.

1. Can't tell who is listening at any given point in time.
2. Don't know if they are reading or just listening.
3. Hard to tell whether there is comprehension until its Q and A time.

So finally, Best Practice #2 goes to a second grade teacher at Achievement First Crown Heights for his use of a snapping good read aloud.

The simple method works like this:

1. Teacher reads.
2. Teacher pauses.
3. Teacher snaps.
4. All students reads the next word.
5. Repeat steps 1-4.
6. Q and A time.

This easily solves read aloud problems #1 and #2 above. #3 is trickier, but its a lot easier using this method than otherwise.

Now read alouds are a snap. And fun for the kids too.

Grading Regents

I had my first experience grading state regents exams today. It felt like a terrific rite of passage, like jury duty. Only I was disappointed to see firsthand what Diane Ravitch described in The Death and Life of the Great American Education System, including how a student can receive a passing grade for scoring about 1/3 of the possible points.

Currently Reading - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Since I picked up APOTAAAYM, I have been blown away by the different approaches to education that Joyce depicts in his novel. The first 100 pages have described his protagonist receiving a geography lesson from his aunt and the Catholic/Jesuit education that he receives at various boarding schools and colleges.

As I was reading I had the sudden realization that as antiquated as the Catholic-rote-memorization methods seem to my digital age perspective. There is some very valuable stuff there.

I would even speculate that some of the Achievement First methods that have puzzled me, (i.e. funny acronyms, short verses describing an algorithm) are really just a variation on something the Catholic schools put little Dubliners through centuries ago.

I think I just figured out how I can combine my interest in poetry with my gig teaching math and science.

Favorite Practice #1 - What is my teacher reading?

In order to succeed we must build strong relationships with our students and minimize the barriers that divide us. There are countless approaches to take but one of my favorite practice is also my favorite thing about Explore Charter School. At Explore, every teacher's door has a simple sign saying:

Mrs. Teacher is currently reading ___________ by Author X. Next, she will be reading ___________ by Author Y.

It's a nice window into each adult as a person and may even spark some interest in a curious student who wants to know who this teacher is and why they would bother reading a book with a silly title like "What the Dog Saw".

I'll have to track down a picture of one of the signs. May need some help in doing it.

There are some places I would want to take this idea though:

1. The "currently reading" and "next" book is nice, but why not find a way to also have a list compiled of the teacher's life reading list. That way kids could see more of the books their teachers have read and be exposed to more titles.
2. I don't know if students enthusiasm for these signs matches my own, but they have to have strong incentives to motivate their interest here. Why else are you doing it if not for the kid?
3. Students need to do this for themselves too! I've seen lots of book logs, reading logs, reading journals or whatever you want to call them, but I don't love them as much as the life reading list because a) its easier to look back on a list of titles than a stack of reading summaries, b) the list is something that the student can take on and add to even after the classroom project is done.

Later, I'll plan to address my own plans for how to make this work.

When the Student Takes Over

for the master.

This will not be pretty. This will be infinitely derivative. Such is life.

I learned about Dan Meyer from another teacher who handed me his manifesto "How Math Must Assess". I had it, but I didn't get it. Here I am over a year later feeling like Dante being sent into the Earthly Paradise (teaching mathematics to adolescents) only I look back and see that Virgil (Meyer, with whom I've never corresponded,) is headed in a different direction.

So now I'm left to the classical tradition of stealing from the Masters. I repeat, this will be infinitely derivative.

I started today to apply Meyer's method of writing all my ideas down and storing them in a GoogleDoc. From there will come many of the future posts that you will see here. None of these things start with me, though I'm determined to forge the way for others, elders and betters included.

One idea from my list from today is this:

Goal - Teach other teachers by year's end

Strike that. It starts now.