WCYDWT: Fare HIke

Reading the NY Times today I saw a blog post regarding the MTA's vote to raise the price for 30-day and weekly metro passes as well as individual fares. What caught my eye was that the article described one increase (for the 30-day passes) in terms of percent increase. That was all I needed.

Following the Meyer method, I got an image of the article and blacked out the percent increase answer for the students. I asked them to predict what the percent increase could be. We investigated the problem. I demonstrated how to find percent increase, which only a few of the students seemed to have learned before. Then, we checked our answer against a clean copy of the article that I printed later.

Overall, there was some learning and some excitement, but I can't help thinking that I could have done this better. What could I have done differently?

Before:

After:

Notes for next time:

• Next time black out the answer in Keynote, then print. My students spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to read through the dark splotch that I made with my pen before making copies.
• We tied in our steps for problem solving (Understand, Plan, Answer, Check) a bit too late. It would have really helped to direct their frustrations if we were introducing the structure earlier.
• The guessing/estimating gets a little distracting because the students attempt to revise their guess at each stage in our problem-solving process. It needs to be stated more clearly that while we can keep revising the end is to have a solution, not a guess.

The Odyssey, Oral Storytelling and the iPad

Today I had problem: I have students who are going to spend the next month reading The Odyssey, a book which I failed to fully appreciate when I was a college student reading it for the first time. I wondered how the high school students are going to be able to a) read the book without relying on Sparknotes, Cliffnotes, or other summaries of the text and b) get more out of this than if they were to just read it to themselves and not comprehend a good fraction of the narrative.

Here's my solution: technology.

How I got there:
Fortunately, I have MP3 files of the audiobook of The Odyssey that I bought for my dad years ago. I had planned to read along with the story using the audiofiles in order to experience the story as its original audience did, by hearing it from an oral storyteller. I had originally thought about posting the files somewhere online where the students would be able to access them, but the Fair Use Policy doesn't feel like enough license to do that. Then, I thought about putting the files on CD for students to burn to their own hard drives, iPods, etc. Finally, I remembered how my school is lending me this iPad and how I haven't been sharing it enough with the office (how surprising!). So here's the new plan:

1. Burn the audiofiles for all of The Odyssey onto the iPad.
2. Download the same edition for iBooks.
3. Lend out the iPad to teachers and students in the office when I am not around.

They can use it to curl up and read and listen to the text read aloud as they follow along. Presumably, hearing it performed will add more meaning than their straight internal narration with all of its stumbling for pronunciations of ancient Greek words and names. Then, we'll see if this is a better reading experience for any of them than the more traditional alternative.

I think it's crazy that it takes a very modern piece of hardware to inspire a teacher ask students to listen to an epic poem.

Addendum:
The NY Times had an article on how children may read more with access to e-readers.
I liked these stats:

About 25 percent of the children surveyed said they had already read a book on a digital device, including computers and e-readers. Fifty-seven percent between ages 9 and 17 said they were interested in doing so.

And:

Many children want to read books on digital devices and would read for fun more frequently if they could obtain e-books. But even if they had that access, two-thirds of them would not want to give up their traditional print books.

WCYDWT Challenge: Tie Clip

I spotted this very stylish tie clip on one of our school's staff members. Apparently he wears it nearly everyday, but I just noticed it.

I'm wondering what can you do with this? What would you ask students to discover? What would you ask them to explain?

Addendum: When I first saw this number pattern on the tie clip, I thought this could make for a nice easy introduction to looking for mathematics in everyday life. This number pattern itself is so simple "3, 6, 9, 12", but the presentation in Roman numerals makes it a little more enriching. We have some number theory lessons coming up and talking about Roman versus Arabic numerals could be a nice conversation starter. Plus, I like this really simple pattern to introduce students to the WCYDWT framework.

What most excites me about this whole idea though is how accessible it is to all the students in our Grades 1 to 12 building. The next step is to scale this larger and make it open to more people to contribute their own ideas and images. Why can't students take photos for themselves of interesting objects around the school? We have an upcoming pep rally and I'd love to see this be able to launch as a website before then so that we can roll this out as a competition among grades, something that builds up our school's culture.

So far, I've passed this image around just enough for a few staff members to find out whose tie and tie clip this is while a few more are still looking. Some of them were thrown off by looking for the tie itself and not the tie clip. Meanwhile, the owner has been wearing it something like 4 out of 5 days now. So far this has been a conversation starter for just a few of us who would probably talk anyway and maybe a few more still who just didn't have that much to talk about before. What can we all do next?

Mistakes Made Using the Socratic Method

While sitting in our school's office for 1-on-1 tutoring, I observed that a good tutor is a good at explaining, not necessarily questioning a la the familiar Socratic Method.

A lot of times when you see an adult trying to tutor a child you witness a dialogue that runs something like this:

Child: "It says to solve for x. It says 2x + 10 = 50

Parent: "So how do you solve for x?"

Child: "Uh,...."

Parent: "How do you do it, honey?"

Child: "Multiply?"

Parent: "No,.... What do you do first?"

Child: "Add."

This is frustrating for both parties, of course.

The problem here is that the Socratic Method is a great pedagogical technique, but mostly for teaching a class in seminar-type environment.

It is not a winning strategy for tutoring a single student in a 1-on-1 environment.

Here's why:

1. Unless a student is very bright, he probably don't know everything they are supposed to know. About anything. He may have some areas where he knows way more than you would think. But just try asking an average kid to remember metaphor vs. similar or order of operations. They are gonna slip up.
   
2. In a class, there are a lot of students that know nothing about a subject. But there are also bound to be some who know something. In the aggregate, a conversation can arise where most questions can be answered. Or an answer can be attempted. Which the teacher can guide. Maybe using the Socratic Method, and maybe not.
   

Let the tutors explain. The teachers can teach. And use the Socratic Method with caution, everybody.

It's 8:05 P.M., Your Homework is Late!

Following up on my previous post on how I want to stop grading, I thought it would be good to provide some notes from the field as we head in to our second full week.

• I sent out a "Math Checkup" using a Google Form. This was a pretty quick and easy diagnostic assessment that I made using NYS Testing Program multiple choice questions. A few students had trouble opening the form either in their e-mail or through a hyperlink, but after a few days most everyone had figured it out. I now know a rough estimate of each student's proficiency and could figure out the value-add at the end of the year if I give a similar exam. I also know a few topics to cover early on that I may have skipped over. Oh, and did I mention that I can skip collecting exams, grading the answers and entering the data into Excel?

• We have started to do nightly homework assignments also using Google Forms. When I gave out a quick survey at the end of this past week, I got the following results:

"The one thing that should change about this class is..."
"The homework" (1)

"The one thing that should NOT change about this class is..."
"The homework" (2)

Ever seen kids answer a survey and say that they didn't want the homework to change? And that one student is getting a paper copy printout tomorrow.

• While the students are completing their homework in Google Forms, I come home from school everyday and check my Google account after dinner. I always get to see who has completed the assignment already and can think ahead to what we need to review in class the next day.

The next steps for this project:

1. Reliability - This is an issue. Some kids have been reporting trouble opening the email or submitting their finished work. I think a few more test cases should help solve this.
2. Confirmation - Everyday students have come in to class asking "Did you get my homework?" It's music to my ears! However, I'd like for them to know that I received their work before then so there is no anxiety. Currently, I've customized the confirmation note, but even this leaves them wondering if it even worked.
3. Feedback - One possible solution to #2 is to give the students permission to view the results. This would be great because it could give them instantaneous feedback on whether they got it right or not. However, currently this would mean they could see everyone's answers. I need to make sure they can be trusted not to use that information for evil. I want to trust them, but we need to discuss this and maybe build up our group norms a bit. There is also the risk that they could cheat by seeing the answers then sending them to a friend. But that's why I love that time stamp feature that is built in. I wouldn't mind students submitting, checking and resubmitting. In fact, that would be the best. Video games good.

Some More Shocking Research on Study Habits

From the NY Times. For all the learners out there, these study tips were helpful. The general idea is that studying can be more effective by alternating the a) environment, b) content, c) schedule as well as by introducing some more frequent (self) assessment.

Alternating environment:

For instance, instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing.

And switching content:

Varying the type of material studied in a single sitting — alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and speaking in a new language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain than does concentrating on just one skill at a time.

And changing the study schedule:

An hour of study tonight, an hour on the weekend, another session a week from now: such so-called spacing improves later recall, without requiring students to put in more overall study effort or pay more attention, dozens of studies have found.

Plus my own little pet project. Assessment:

That’s one reason cognitive scientists see testing itself — or practice tests and quizzes — as a powerful tool of learning, rather than merely assessment. The process of retrieving an idea is not like pulling a book from a shelf; it seems to fundamentally alter the way the information is subsequently stored, making it far more accessible in the future.

Teachers! Take note of this last one. It seems some of the things we spend a great deal of time learning about is not supported by psycho-ed research.

Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas. “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing [my italics]” the researchers concluded.

Study Tips That Work

The link is here.

I especially liked

• #1 - Adopt a growth mindset
• #4 - Test yourself
• #8 - Get handouts prior to the lecture
• #9 - Believe in yourself

#4 was misleading however, since the articles says "time spent answering quiz questions (including feedback of correct answers) is more beneficial than the same time spent merely re-studying that same material", and follows up that thought with, "self-testing when information is still fresh in your memory, immediately after studying, doesn’t work. It does not create lasting memories, and it creates overconfidence."

No Wonder They Don't Like Math

I started reading Polya's "How to Solve It" this morning and found some tasty gems immediately:

• "Thus, a teach of mathematics has a great opportunity. If he fills his allotted time with drilling his students in routine operations he kills their interest, hampers their intellectual development, and misuses his opportunity. But if he challenges the curiosity of his students by setting them problems proportionate to their knowledge, and helps them to solve their problems with stimulating questions, he may give them a taste for, and some means of, independent thinking."

• "... overhearing Polya's comments to his non-existent teacher can bring that desirable person into being, as an imaginary but very helpful figure leaning over one's shoulder."

• "Mathematics, you see, is not a spectator sport. To understand mathematics means to be able to do mathematics."

• "... to teach mathematics well, one must also know how to misunderstand it at least to the extent one's students do!"

• "Experienced mathematicians know that often the hardest part of researching a problem is under standing precisely what that problem says. [...] 'If you can't solve a problem, then there is an easier problem you can't solve: find it.'"

Next, I Will No Longer Teach My Class

At the end of my first year of teaching, I heard from another first year teacher, Mr. X., who taught a special education class with some really big challenges. He had some experience with technology and film production and so his fresh take on teaching was to:

1. Record his lessons in advance, and play them during class time
2. Work closely with his students who required the most personal attention during the time when the class learned via prepared video

Amazingly, this teacher was running his own focused Khan Academy in class. And then provided individualized special education service, while his lesson was being taught simultaneously. By him!

Now what does this have to do with me?

This year I am teaching a small class that needs a different approach to math. (Which I am fully intending to provide.) While I am teaching this class, I want to do the same thing that Mr. X. was doing. And I think, via a Technology PD session at my school, I've learned the way that I can do it.

VoiceThread

Here's what I know already I can do with VT:

• Post images
• Connect audio and video to those images
• Set up a slideshow presentation
• Write on the slides/images with colored pens (Just like Khan!)

I don't yet know what my capacity limits are for this site though. Can I do a whole lesson? Can I do a week's lessons? For how many classes? Semesters? The whole year?

What else can I do with this? Anything better out there that I've been missing?

So excited for the potential to clone myself in the classroom!

Teachers Unite! Let's Stop Grading!

Teachers are amazingly talented professionals with a wide range of skills from delivering content instruction to all types of learners to offering support and consulting to troubled youths. But, nearly across the profession, one particular skill has way too much time being devoted to itself: GRADING.

I want to cut my grading time down to nothing. I might not make it all the way, but the closer I get the better I'll be at every other thing, from lesson planning to instruction to advising and on.

How Am I Going to Start:

1. Watch YouTube
2. Get together a team of dedicated teachers, who want to plan smarter and grade less.
3. Try and try again until we succeed.

Who's with me?

Now, What I Want To Do as a Teacher

I spoke today with two incoming seniors about some topics that I felt hit the core of what it is I want to do as a teacher.

1. Teach like an economist, not like a teacher. Economists think about opportunity cost and would teach the lesson that makes best use of the given time, attention and other precious resources. But some teachers will teach a lesson just because they taught it before, or because its part of the curriculum, or because its on the test. I don't want to get trapped in the mindset of being a teacher like that.
2. Teach students the things they need to know to succeed anywhere and everywhere. Again, teaching to assessment criteria and curricula are essential. But how about teaching what they need to know to succeed in other classes too? How about prioritizing? Time management? Leadership? Critical thinking? Problem-solving? Aren't these the things we need to know to succeed throughout high school? And in college? In our careers? In any endeavor we undertake?
3. Know what each individual student wants to be, know, and do and then teach this to them. I know that I like math and that history teachers tend to like history. I also know that these subjects are meaningful to us because they not only pay the rent but also give our lives purpose. Does this apply to every teenager who walks into a classroom? Aren't there some students for whom sports, dancing, magic, painting, etc. give the purpose to their lives? Won't some of these same students also one day pay their rent from something related to their experiences as athletes, ballerinas, card sharks, and artists? Shouldn't we encourage "extracurriculars" as having meaning beyond an after-school activity? Isn't that last history assignment displacing some time that a student could have spent on developing their hobby into something greater and more meaningful? What comes first? What the student wants to know or what I want them to know?

Of course there is a balance to strike between what I want to do and what I have to do as a teacher. I'd never want a student to fail as a result of a selfish desire to teach them more of what I want them to know. Still, I'd rather try and fail at these goals for my teaching career than never consider their importance and limit myself to a narrower view. I couldn't work like that and I won't.

Why Do I Want to Be a Teacher?

Late last night I had an excellent conversation with a student who came at me with one of those questions that you usually provide a short tweet-like answer to: "So how did you decide to become a teacher?" Often I might answer this with a "Well, I never studied to become a teacher. I actually studied economics." Or a, "I just really enjoy it." If I were interviewing for a new teaching position, of course I would be asked the same question and provide an answer similar to the latter, "I really enjoy teaching and the challenge of working with interesting young people...".

Truthfully though I already know the answer here. I think I value certain qualities in my work, those being (in no particular order):

1. Creativity
2. Freedom
3. Challenge
4. Intrinsically Rewarding

On #1, as a kid I always pictured myself becoming a writer or film director even though I never devoted much time and practice to those pursuits. On #4, I remember in college having a moral dilemma with every career I considered (business/economics didn't seem to be helping the world enough, even medicine seemed like I would only be helping a few people and the good I did would depend on the good done by others).

With teaching however, I get to hit all of these core values right in the sweet spot:

• For #1 and #2, I have learned over the years how much creativity and freedom is involved in teaching and I think this would be very difficult to give up. Once you have a job that allow you to indulge your myths of being a lone wolf and visionary artist that it a tough addiction to break.
• For #3 and #4, obviously teaching teenagers to enjoy math, science, or any subject that isn't eating or chatting is a challenge is a great challenge, but where this job gets truly rewarding is when you get to learn who your students are, what they want to be and can help advise them on how to get there.

If I have students who share my values and get to find studies and work that connect them with those values then I'm excited at that possibility. But the greatest thing will be if they are able to realize their own persona values and discover a path to transforming those values into decisions that affect the rest of their lives.

Duelling With Math

In my history of mathematics course, we are reading William Dunham's Journey through Genius, which I highly recommend for those who can admire a good proof.

The thing that has got me so excited about this class though isn't the beautiful theorems we're reading about. Far from it. It's the sense of storytelling that you can create by including some of the history of math into your teaching.

I was blown away with the historical perspective I gained in reading the following passage (p.134-135) about mathematics in the Renaissance:

"[A]cademic appointments were by no means secure. Along with patronage and political influence, continued service depended on the ability to prevail in public challenges that could be issued from any quarter at any time. Mathematicians like [Scipione] del Ferro always had to be ready to do scholarly battle with challengers, and the consequences of a public humiliation could be disastrous to one's career.

"Thus a major new discovery was a powerful weapon. Should an opponent appear with a list of problems to be solved, del Ferro could counter with a list of depressed cubics. Even if del Ferro were stumped by some of his challenger's problems, he could feel confident that his cubics, baffling to all but himself, would guarantee the downfall of his unfortunate adversary.

"Scipione apparently did a good job of keeping his solution secret throughout his life, and it was only on his deathbed that he passed it along to his student Antonio Fior."

I was so taken with this idea that I came up with some slides for a game that I'd like my students to play: Math Duel. (see slides below)

I've seen teachers have students generate their own questions for each other, but how about setting it up within the historical context of famous men and women in the course subject. I've got to give a lot of credit to Dunham for writing such a thrilling history of a subject that gets a bad reputation as too dull and black and white.

How I'm Staying Busy This Summer

Over the next few weeks, I'll be busy working on an ICL project for the Vancouver Island Program.

I'm hoping this not only serves as a good introduction for me to working at my new school, but also creates a program that I'd like to stay involved with over a longer term.

I also have History of Mathematics course to complete before leaving for BC.

I'll get back to reading about Euclid's proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. I'm definitely expecting some new ideas/blog posts to come from this class.

How Can I Get My Young Reader to 10,000 Hours of Reading?

By now the advantages of practicing something for 10,000 hours are widely publicized. My summer vacation to visit my family has turned into an experiment to get my little sister to become a voracious reader. After she re-read a few favorite books she was ready for a real challenge: the Harry Potter series.

We picked up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone from the local library. After a quick practice read-aloud and the five-finger test we dove into reading HP together. The motivation was there, but it was definitely a challenge. The beginning of the book is filled with strange vocabulary and some British-English that is quite confounding for a young fledgling reader (YFR). But I realized that the great thing about her having picked this book was that if she came to love it, she could just go and go and go ... . At a total of a whopping 4,167 pages, the series puts YFR well along the path to the magic 10,000 rule.

I used to disparage the HP series since I didn't see how the books were any better than the highly entertaining movies. I have learned and changed my mind. Reading the HP books is big. 4,167 pages of anything is a huge investment of time and attention in our impatient society. It deserves special recognition. It's way more of an accomplishment than the participation awards we give out for playing on a team and it ranks up there with earning a rank in the Boy Scouts. So I've created my own HP Reading Certificate and passed them out to the first 3 HP readers I saw. See it here:

If you have read the complete series and would like your own certificate to prove it, leave your email in the comments and I will try to pass one on soon.

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.

Education Books Which Have Influenced Me Most

In nearly chronological order:

• Teaching as Leadership - The Teach For America manuals started it all for me. Introduced me to the importance of backwards planning.

• Tools for Teaching by Fred Jones - Given to me by my first principal. Every chapter and possibly every page had an important idea that I'd immediately wished I'd started out with.

• Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol - Friends and coworkers had referred to Kozol's books as a source of inspiration. What I took from this book was a deeper sense of how unequal our society can be and perhaps how there has been some real progress in the last 20 years even though we are still far off from true equality.

• Whatever it Takes by Paul Tough - I'd heard about the book over a year ago and already knew something about the Harlem Children's Zone, but I really learned something from this book. It took a deep gaze into how HCZ operates and how it has succeeded where others have failed. I truly came to appreciate the importance of early education through reading this.

• Teaching with Love and Logic by Jim Fay and David Funk - I haven't read more than a few excerpts from this book, but the lessons learned this far have shown me that it belongs on this list. Communicating your genuine concern is easy to do and it works.

I'll just add that while they may not have published books, Doug Lemov and Dan Meyer have had real things to say and we all need to catch up to them.

What A Teacher Says

"That's not safe."

"I didn't see him/her. I saw you."

"This is your job."

"I expect you to..."

"I treat you with respect so you'll know how to treat me."

Reminder of Lessons Long Forgotten #1 - Enthusiasm

People dig it when you are enthusiastic about your topic. Enough said.

Crazy Idea #2 - Homework via Social Media

My students like phones. They like instant messaging. They may even use Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, though I haven't gotten that close with them yet.

I on the other hand am a little forgetful. And disorganized.

That's why I see a great opportunity to provide my students with homework via various forms of social media.

My plan looks something like this:

1. Explain to students that they will have some homework assignment that can be sent as text messages, tweets, Facebook wall posts, etc.
2. Provide reading assignments where they must read an assigned text and send me their summary of the text as their social media homework.
3. Post this homework assignment on a designated Twitter account and set some deadlines for when the homework must be turned in by.
4. After the deadline, refuse to accept late work. (All messages will be automatically time stamped thanks to the relevant website, wireless service, etc).
5. Tweet the first correct answer submitted with the student's name as a reward. This award may also go to late submissions that exceed expectations.
6. Grade assignments by checking the relevant websites and my various inboxes, all of which I check throughout the day anyhow.
7. Provide retributive written homework to all students who did not submit homework promptly and properly.

Some Pros:

• Saves paper.
• Saves time since I am reading less homework. (140 character limits are great.)
• Provides a way for students to know the homework (Twitter account) even when they forget to write it down or are absent.
• Keeps me better organized.
• Keeps students more focused on summarizing a text well. The 140 character limit is a strength and not a weakness in this sense.
• It should be fun for the kids and create some incentives for them to do work promptly and even to do high quality work.
• Focuses students on the main idea of a reading, not on the spelling, grammar, punctuation of their writing.
• Keeps my focused on their ideas and not their writing, which I often am tempted to correct even when the assignment is assessing something else.
• Provides a way to fact-check when a student says s/he already turned in her/his homework.

Some Cons:

• All fun aside, students still need to write.
• Most students need to make drastic improvement in their writing and this won't help aside from helping with concision and focus on a main idea.
• Some students may not have the tech savvy or access to keep this going (of course, they could always just replace a tweet-HW answer with a Post-It answer on my desk.)
• Let's students off easy when it comes to writing about their reading. Only so many ideas fit in 140 char's.
• It could be difficult keeping track of so many sources of info.

Once again, I lack the experience to know how well this could work. I can't wait to get it set up and report back, but in the mean time please posts your thoughts on how this idea could be a better one.

Crazy Idea #1 - Video Bell Work

I plan to implement a new system in my classroom in the coming week, namely to begin each class period with a short video (say a max of 10 mins.) during which the students will be required to complete some short assignment, comparable to an extended Do Now, or warm-up exercise. Below I will shares some of the pros that I see for this technique as well as some of the drawbacks that I'm anticipating.

Some Pros:

• Students will come in knowing what to expect procedurally.
• Students will be eager to enter the classroom and settle in in order to watch the video (provided I succeed in finding videos that are both entertaining and education-oriented).
• While students watch the video, their attention will be fixed on the screen, releasing me from the need to supervise as directly as I would otherwise and allowing me the freedom to handle a variety of administrative tasks that are best addressed early in the class period.
• I can connect the short lessons that I will provide to the students to the video I have chosen. (For example, I'm planning to show a clip from an Obama-McCain debate in which they argue their perspectives on US military policy. I would connect this with our current chapter on Athens and Sparta to show how Obama-McCain compare with Athens-Sparta in the sense that they show a cosmopolitan and hawkish perspective on war, respectively).
• I can teach a wider range of communication skills by covering video, film, music, etc. with a metacognitive approach, rather than just relying on written words and my own speech.
• I can provide concrete visual connections to those students who have trouble comprehending the abstraction of our written texts.
• Class may be just a smidge more fun.
• I can say more in my lesson by talking less (I think my students will greatly appreciate this aspect).

Some Cons:

• Students may not be as interested or invested as I anticipate in starting each class with a video.
• Students may be too distracted in watching the video to pay attention to the work I have assigned to guide them.
• Students may interpret the use of video as a license to switch into a passive mode of thinking rather than engaging with the material in a way that they might with a written text.
• Students may be distracted by the video and miss out on the more important aspects of the connections between the video and our learning objectives.

I'm sure there is a lot more downside than I'm anticipating at present. But, I'm eager to get started with this idea so I can see exactly what will work and what won't.

Does anyone else have some ideas about what I could be missing?

Welcome!

I am writing this blog in order to publicize some of the unfamiliar and unconventional teaching methods that I will attempt to employ in my 6th grade humanities classroom at a NYC charter school. I have limited formal training as an educator and less than a year's worth of experience as a public school teacher, but what I lack for in experience and training I will try to make up for through innovation and critical thinking about my goals, objectives, and methodology.

My hope is that by committing more of my ideas to a written log, I will better organize my attempts to innovate in the classroom. Furthermore, by sharing my ideas I hope to gain insight from others who have more of the experience and education that I lack, perhaps reminding me of why some things never change but perhaps also opening up some new ground for others.

Wish me luck!