learning Archives - Page 2 of 2

Goal Setting for Everyone

Goal setting is an important part of the learning process. It is important for our students and for us for professional growth. I wanted to include more goal setting for students this year, and also set some goals for myself.

Goal Setting for Students

I’ve been spending some time at the beginning of this year getting to know my students, both as people and as learners. One of the first things we did as a class was to watch this video on growth mindset from Khan Academy. Then, we discussed goal setting and I handed out these great sheets designed by 3AM Teacher, and we proceeded to set goals. I love these sheets and they’re well worth the price tag on TPT; however, I would recommend not using the sheet that explains what SMART goals are, especially if you teach middle school. The tagline for Relevant is “Hello, Lover”, which caused a seemingly endless fit of giggles from my 6th graders, and some “ew, that’s gross” comments from my 7th graders. The rest of the handouts, however, are wonderful for guiding students through the goal setting process.

It seemed that for many of my students, this was the first time they were encountering SMART goals, so it was challenging. Although we talked through the process and I modeled how to set a goal that was specific, measurable, achievable, and relevant, we started out with things like “To get better at writing.” Several probing questions later we got closer to a SMART goal: “I want to write longer paragraphs with fewer spelling mistakes”. Sometimes the goals aligned with what their teachers the previous year had set as goals for them, and sometimes their goals were different. What’s important is that they know what they’re working toward (and have a purpose for it), and I know what is important to them, and can begin to incorporate it into my instruction.

Overall, the first effort was successful, but I think the next time I work with them on goal setting this year it will be even better. We’ll be able to really evaluate if our goals were specific enough and measurable enough for us to be able to evaluate our progress, giving them a clearer idea of SMART goals look like, and, I’m hoping, helping to motivate them. They did have some difficulty identifying steps to help them achieve their goals. I think that was partially my modeling wasn’t great, and partially that they’re still not sure what that means. I’m hoping some reflection will help us to create better plans, but I also realize that as an adult sometimes it takes me a lot of time to formulate a plan, so maybe they just need more time.

Goal Setting for the Teacher

I just had my beginning of the year meeting with my principal. As a “probationary teacher” (meaning not yet tenured, not “on probation” as if I did something bad…), I have a meeting at the beginning of the year, and then she observes me twice and we have follow-up meetings on those observations. This year I set goals for myself in three areas: instruction and management, coaching, and self-care. I’m going to follow the same format I asked the kids to (but without the fancy paper). I’m going to share my instruction and management goals here. The others will come another time.

1. Improve my behavior management for my more challenging group.

I have one group (who I adore), but they are very challenging in terms of their behavior. There are a lot of reasons for this. Some of it is group dynamic, some of it is the combinations of individual learning differences. Some of it is what we as educators know to be true about kids who are in programs like the ACS/Learning Support program at my school–after a while students make the decision that it’s better to be bad than to be dumb, and they act accordingly. Some of it is that more intimate environment that we work in allows a certain level of comfort for them which has enormous benefits, but also students sometimes feel that the Learning Lab is a place where they can “let it all hang out”, and they let all the pent up energy out. But some of it is within my control. I want to be more systematic about the approaches I try this year, and really keep track of what’s working and what isn’t. Even though I know that it takes several weeks before one can see if a behavioral intervention is working, sometimes I jump the gun.

My plan: Create a way to reflect in writing, even briefly and bullet pointed, on what happened during each lesson with these students, how I intervened, and what structures and supports worked. I’ve had a colleague suggest ClassDojo, which might be helpful for tracking data, but I’m not sure how effective it will be as a system.

Who can help: I have several colleagues who can help me with this. This is one area though, where observation won’t be effective–adding another person to the mix completely changes the dynamic in small group teaching. Maybe videos?

2. Better integrate the technology I have available to me into my lessons, including finding more ways to leverage “regular” technology as assistive technology for my students.

I am extremely luck to have a number of tech resources, both in terms of hardware and devices (1:1 laptops/MacBooks, my personal iPad, student smartphones, student e-readers, interactive whiteboard) and in terms of software/apps: Schoology, Google Apps, and a variety of tools provided by the school for use by both students and teachers. With so much available, it’s easy to get bogged down in all of that technology and end up just using it, and not necessarily purposefully, rather than integrating it into instruction, so I decided to focus on just a two things:

Creating digital portfolios to track progress toward student learning goals using my iPad, the student laptops, and a TBD app. I’ve been reading and rereading Matt Renwick‘s awesome book, Digital Student Portfolios, in order to get some ideas. Being able to curate evidence of student progress toward their IILP (International Individual Learning Plan) goals will really help with decision making for placement, and help foster conversations with parents. It will also make students think about I think Schoology might be the way to go, but I’m not sure how well it will work–it’s designed to be a learning management system, not a portfolio. I might be better off making individual Google Sites for each student.
Using Schoology to help provide support materials for students. Basically, I want to flip the front loading of content and supplemental curriculum support that used to be the main activity in Learning Lab so I can focus on skill building work.

I don’t have a plan for how to implement this yet. I’m still working on it. But I do know that I have a few educational technology specialists at my school who can help.

I’m excited to pursue these goals this year and share what I learn along the way.

Do you teach goal setting to your students? Do you set professional goals for yourself? How do you track your progress?

Is Confusion Productive?

Two weeks ago when I was at CGC Miami, we had a couple of conversations where the idea of confusion came up. One was when we discussed what happens in one’s brain when learning happens–not fMRI scans or anything, just feelings, attitudes, etc. Then we had another discussion about what learning looked like in a classroom. The word “confusion” came up in both contexts. A woman who was sitting at my table was taken aback when several of us mentioned confusion as something that we expect to see in our classrooms when learning is happening.

“It’s like yesterday,” she said (clearly, I’m paraphrasing from my memory for dramatic effect). “All of the words people use to describe learning are so negative. Learning is positive. We should be using positive words.”

Many of us began to defend confusion as an essential and productive part of the learning process. We were not, however, successful in convincing her, and ended up leaving it off of our chart, though two other groups ended up including it. It led me to the question: Is confusion always negative? Can confusion be productive in the classroom? If so, how do we coach students through confusion and through to deeper learning and understanding?

What does learning mean and how does it relate to confusion?

I think a big part of whether or not we, as teachers or as learners, are comfortable with confusion has a lot to do with how we define learning. If we define learning as remembering a series of facts, then confusion is unacceptable. It means that we as teachers are not being clear and we need to find a better way to present the content. However, if we are defining learning as making connections, developing concepts, exploring dilemmas, and adding the skills necessary to do all of this to our repertoire. When we define learning this way, confusion is inevitable. In this definition we are making sense on concepts and ideas. We’re working in an area that might not be comfortable for us, but once we work our way through the confusion, we know and understand so much more than we did before.

I have a favorite quotation about this kind of learning. I wrote it out neatly and put it on the front of the binder I had in grad school (yes, when I went to grad school people still took notes on paper and put handouts into binders). I hung up a copy in my first classroom/office, and have continued to hang it on the wall of every classroom I’ve had since. I even include it in the first Power Point slide for my grad students on their first day of literacy intervention practicum. (PS–If my crafty sister is reading this blog, I would love a pretty cross-stitched version of this to hang in my intervention room for my birthday…hint, hint)

Generally, we touch on many apparent irrelevancies, and learning implies that at most times we are at least partially confused. Just as one cannot think one’s way into growth, there are times when we are not aware, indeed cannot be aware, that what one is doing is providing the basis for significant growth and discoveries. – John Miller Chernoff (1979)

This quotation is not from an education book. It’s from an ethnomusicology book called African Rhythm and African Sensibility that I bought for a college course called “Political Economy of the Music of the African Diaspora” (yes, I went to a hippie, artsy college. What of it?). Because of this one sentence, I have moved a book that I probably won’t reread, that has margins full of the pretentious notes of a college senior (most of which seem to be about Todorov’s Double Bind), from place to place, apartment to apartment, for over ten years.

I have found this quotation both relevant and inspiring to me on my journey as an educator (how many veteran teachers remember at some point during their first year of teaching how all sorts of seemingly disconnected ideas from student teaching and education coursework suddenly came together in an ah-ha! moment?), and relevant and inspiring to the students I teach. I originally hung this quotation up in my room as a reminder to me that being confused and being uncomfortable (which I often was during my first year of teaching) meant that I was probably laying the groundwork for learning, growth, and discoveries. I didn’t intend it to be inspiring to students–it seemed too long and too complex. But when I had a student ask me about it, and then ask if she could copy it into her notebook, I knew that (1) I had underestimated my 6th graders, and (2) that it is important to let students know that being confused sometimes is OK and that learning is all about working one’s way through confusion and out to the other side.

For confusion to be productive, we need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable

A big part of letting students know that it is OK to be confused is helping them get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Without this, it is almost impossible for confusion to be a productive part of the learning process. But how do we get students comfortable with this?

For starters we need to create a safe learning environment where it’s OK to fail. Learning needs to be seen as a process that we’re all working through at our own pace. I think standards-based grading and letting students have do overs, retakes, etc, also takes us toward this. I have definitely seen anxiety about grades keep students from diving in to something that they’re not necessarily comfortable with or stopping them from grappling with a difficult topic and jumping right into “Can you help me?” or “What do I do next?” This is a challenge that I see not only with my middle school students, but with my graduate students as well. If students are constantly worried about getting the wrong answer and thus a bad grade, how can they work through confusion and into growth?

Students need tools to work through confusion

I really agree with CGC that we need to teach students how to learn, and for me part of that is teaching students about problem solving, perseverance, and resilience. I don’t want to get into a discussion of “grit” (for some reason, the term really annoys me), but I do want to start a conversation about teaching these skills. It’s something I’ve always found tricky, especially since in the past I’ve worked with kids classified as EBD (having emotional or behavioral disorders) that had a really low tolerance for frustration. Teaching them these skills was a much different, and much slower process (and it sometimes involved calling in the crisis para…)

There are some things that I’m absolutely sure about. In order for a student to learn these skills we need to embed them into our general curriculum. As teachers, we need to model these skills repeatedly, and think aloud about how we use positive self-talk in order to get ourselves unstuck when we’re confused or have a problem. In reading, teaching things like self-monitoring and fix-up strategies, and in math giving them tools for each of the process standards. The good people at The Math Learning Center who did our training this past June had some great ideas about hanging questions up on the wall that students can ask themselves while working through problems. There’s also a great post here with some ideas. And next week, I’ll be following up on these ideas with a post on self-regulation and Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD), which is something I’ve been doing a lot of reading about this summer.

But what about more complex problems? Or times when the information we’re taking in doesn’t make sense because it conflicts with something we know or believe to be true? How can we help our students, as the professor of the aforementioned class put it, “enter the contact zone” so learning and knowledge transformation happen? I think we need to make all of these areas come together: comfort with being uncomfortable, a focus on the learning process, a de-emphasis of grades, and explicitly teaching how to work through problems.

What do you think? Is confusion productive in the classroom? What tools have you given your students to work through confusion on their own?

Being a Reflective Educator: Doing My PD Homework

By Antonio Litterio [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

By the time I post this, I’ll be heading to Miami for the CGC Mapping Our Common Ground conference/workshop. As I’m writing this, I’m working on my PD homework. It’s not that I’m not enjoying it–I am. It’s useful, it’s interesting, I can see how it applies to what we’ll be doing at the conference. But it’s hard to put down The False Prince. Seriously.

There were some articles to read, but there was also a “So What?” activity to complete. A “So What?” activity is a reflection activity that asks participants to think about particular ideas or concepts (What) connect to prior learning and their own experiences (So What?–CGC actually did this part for us, explaining a common definition of each “What”), and then figure out what they will do with these concepts (What Next?). In this case, we were given a list of CGC’s guiding principles with explanations and then we had to reflect on what this meant for ourselves and our school. How can we get there? What do we need to do? What’s the action plan?

I work hard at being a reflective educator, but sometimes it is hard to put in the time during the school year. I reflect on the basics–how my lessons went and how students responded; my interactions with teachers in coaching situations or meeting about students I teach, but the big questions take a the downtime provided by summer to really delve into. I’ve learned a lot by doing this activity and wanted to share some of my reflections with you, since I’m working on not just being a reflective educator, but a connected educator too.

The portions below in regular type are from the CGC “So What” activity. The portion in italics is my reflections on how it relates to my own practice. It was difficult, because this is a conference focused on curriculum planning and development, following a specific learning ecosystem developed by CGC. Since most of my work involves intervention or work with teachers, it was a challenge to think about how

We need to define our learning terms.

“Before we can teach for learning, we need common understandings, simply and practically expressed, about what actually happens when we learn. We believe learning includes conceptual understanding, mastery of competencies and development of character traits and have defined each of these components. We support schools in designing learning based on these definitions.”

My teaching focuses on scaffolding understandings and reteaching to help students master competencies. Helping the school to articulate these competencies and then create plans to help students meet them will be extremely important.

People can learn how to learn.

The most important advantage we can give students is to support them to become proficient, self-directed learners. Through our Learning Standards, we support the explicit teaching of the competencies that underpin learning, supporting students in becoming the owners and directors of their own learning.

My job is primarily teaching students how to learn, but I want to work to be more transparent about the process, both with students and with my colleagues. What are the gaps that exist and need to be filled in order to teach students to be learners? How do I assess to find the gaps and then create an intervention plan? How to I instill a love of learning while teaching students to learn? I think the last one becomes the most difficult, because often I am asking my students to work on what is hardest for them, and perhaps connecting that to an assignment that doesn’t meet their particular learning needs. However, I really don’t want to use how others are constructing their curriculum for not making changes that need to be made. I’m just not quite sure what to change yet or how to do it.

Learning happens best in rich, relevant contexts.

Learning is more enduring in authentic contexts in which students can engage with issues, dilemmas and perspectives in settings that are meaningful to them. We support embedding the learning of concepts, competencies and character traits in relevant contexts in order to close the gap between the world of curriculum and the world our students actually inhabit.

This is something I struggle with…I do intervention/remediation work. It is largely skills based. The concepts are things like “how do patterns help us make sense of our world”, and lessons largely connect back to what’s happening in the classroom. It makes it difficult to do this, but I know I want to do more. I have been toying with the idea of creating a bunch of broad Learning Lab Essential Questions (like the patterns question above) to help students make connections between what they do in my class and what happens in their other classes. I’m not sure, however, how well this accomplishes making the context “rich and relevant”.

In learning, less really is more.

Content coverage does not equal learning. To learn conceptually, students need to inquire, think and theorize. They need the space to make meaningful connections between ideas. That means selecting sufficient content to support deep, sustained engagement with our three kinds of learning….and no more than that.

How can I create this space in an intervention classroom? Often it means taking a step back from my natural inclination to explain, and the worry that if, in my small group setting, if I’m not up and talking and constantly working with students rather than letting them work somehow I am not doing my job (or others won’t think I’m doing my job–and yes, this has happened and does happen) I think this also means that I need to try to shift teachers’ perspectives of what I do—if a student works on a project with me, I’ll provide guidance, additional scaffolding, graphic organizers, etc, but this doesn’t mean the work will be perfect, and it doesn’t mean I’m constantly hovering over her to make sure she’s getting work done. If I’m doing that it’s my work and not her work.

Learning is personal.

Individuals have different starting points, different interests and will follow different learning pathways. We support personalizing learning to the maximum extent possible, including the provision of appropriate levels of challenge and choice, and the provision of timely, constructive, personalized feedback, along with opportunities to act on that feedback.

My instruction is largely personalized, but how can I make it more so? I think integrating the International Learning Plan (ILP) into the program this year is going to help a lot with that. Last year was my first year, and yes, I assessed and set goals, but without a formal system to track those goals and the progress, I did tend to gravitate toward activities I could do with the whole group, rather than individualizing. I also would like to start harnessing the power of our 1:1 laptop environment to do this as well. I started a bit last year, but would like to do more.

Everyone has a right to learn.

All people, no matter their learning differences or economic circumstances, should have optimal opportunities to learn. We support inclusive international education and concerted, collaborative efforts among our schools to contribute to the improvement of learning and teaching in locations where there is an expressed need.

Reading this I pretty much did a happy dance and jumped up and down. This is what I want to happen in our school–in all schools. Not that I’m always pro full-inclusion (e.g. is there more harm than good done if one does intensive phonics work with a 5th grader in the class when the rest are well past that or is it better to pull the student out?); however, I think a more inclusive environment puts the responsibility for the success of all students on all teachers.

I need to make more of an effort to work with teachers on how to reach all of the students at our school. This also means beginning to rethink how the school works with students who are having learning differences as well, and look at what is most appropriate for each student. Creating more opportunities for coaching teachers on how to differentiate and discussing students with specific teams (because we’ll have teams next year!) are really important. I’m still working on how to implement this, but I’m excited to try.

Learning is scalable.

The principles that apply to student learning apply also to adult learning and organizational learning. We support schools in applying this belief, bringing consistency and common meaning to processes such as professional learning and organizational change management.

This is a big one for me next year. I get to somewhat be a part of the PD process, since our focus next year is differentiated instruction. I really believe that schools need to make a bigger effort to differentiate their PD. I’ve been working on creating a self-assessment where teachers can rate their level of comfort with specific aspects of differentiation and use that to help guide them toward appropriate PLCs, in-house workshops, and PD experiences outside of school.

Learning is a social activity

While invaluable learning comes from personal reflection and moments of personal insight, we remain a social species. We support schools in creating cultures of sense-making through substantive conversation, encouraging planned, focused team learning and providing opportunities for students to lead learning conversations with their peers.

I really want to create more opportunities for students in my intervention classes to work together. I’ve done things like peer teaching, having a student who grasps a concept well teach another, and I often do group discussions about why particular strategies are effective, but how can I go beyond this? I tried something new this past year when I was teaching persuasive writing and added debate, having the students closely read an article together and then construct an argument as a group on an assigned POV, then the groups tried to persuade the other. Afterward the students planned and wrote their persuasive paragraphs for the side that they thought was the most convincing. I want to spend some time thinking about where I can integrate more of this. Writing is a natural point in intervention work to make this happen, but where else can I create space for learning that is social?

I’m really excited for a few days of collaboration, learning, and looking for deeper answers to these questions, and I’m can’t wait to share all of the new ideas and learnings that I’m sure will come from the conference.

How do you work at being a reflective educator?

Any answers to the questions above? Advice for me as I try to make my ideas into reality?

Summer Sabbatical (Not Just Vacation)

Last Summer at Long Bech, photo by Samantha Mosher — I may get a view like this occasionally, but most days I’ll be hard at work.

As a teacher you always hear from friends, family, and even complete strangers you just happen to be chatting with at a gym or at a barbecue: “Wow. A teacher’s summer vacation. That must be really nice. It must be your favorite part of the job.” I think it’s this misconception about teachers’ summer vacation that lead Justin Tarte to post this, which I adored. It got me thinking, do we as educators need to reframe how we talk to others about summer vacation? We know all the time we spend prepping and learning for, or just plain sitting and thinking or daydreaming about, our next school year. All the time we spend learning both teaching skills and content that we’ll pass on to our students, or having experiences out in the world that we can turn into amazing classroom experiences for our kids. Teachers’ summer vacations aren’t vacations. They’re sabbaticals, where we learn and grow as professionals and prepare for the next school year. I think the point Justin Tarte was making in his post is that sometimes we focus on the other benefits of summer vacation, rather than the other aspects and it could give others the wrong impression.

This teacher's summer vacation means fresh baked scones for breakfast — ah, the luxury of baking scones for breakfast

And, you know what, I’m not ashamed to admit that teachers’ summer vacations are nice. I can wake up when my body tells me it’s time, instead of when my alarm starts blaring around 5:30 AM. I can exercise more frequently, and have the occasional leisurely breakfast (like the one to the right) or go wait in line for Shakespeare in the Park tickets, and maybe, like Justin Tarte suggested, I guilty of talking about those things and giving others the wrong impression of what teachers do in the summer. I definitely spend a good portion of my summer, like most teachers, working. It may not be the same summer camp and summer school jobs I took early in my career to make ends meet, but I am working nonetheless. It is different work than during the school year, but it’s good work and necessary work.

Most teachers love to learn, and during the summer I get to indulge my inner learner full-time. Don’t get me wrong, during the school year I am constantly learning from my colleagues, from my students, from research I’m doing to improve my own practice, but summer moves at a different pace and my learning can be more self-directed and I have the time to follow all of those ideas down various rabbit holes where I don’t have the time to go during the school year.

I generally set goals to keep myself on track. This summer I’m hoping to take my professional learning–my summer sabbatical–to new places by becoming a more connected educator, both through this blog and through other platforms like Twitter. But in addition to the blogging and tweet-chatting I really hope to:

Read all of the books I bought at ASCD 2014 (and then some)

I have quite an ambitious list. I don’t know if I’ll get through them all, but I’m excited to try. The first set on my list are:

The ASCD Aria Self-Regulated Learning for Academic Success by Catherine Germeroth and Crystal Day-Heiss. I’m a big fan of the SRSD writing approach and want to start including more self-regulation work in my classes across subject areas (and especially in math).
Memory at Work in the Classroom by Francis Bailey and Ken Pransky: Memory is often an area where students who I teach struggle, and I always feel like I don’t have enough strategies for them. I’m hoping this will help me.
Close Reading of Informational Texts by Sunday Cummins: I’ve been reading a lot about the potential close reading has for improving reading comprehension with struggling students and I’m hoping to add more of it to my practice next year.

Learn a lot about curriculum design at the CGC conference

I was really excited when my principal selected me to be one of the school’s representatives at the Common Ground Collaborative‘s conference in Miami in July. This group includes teachers and administrators from international schools who are working to create a more inclusive, understanding-based curriculum. I’m even more excited now that I’ve started doing some of my homework.

Rethink my classroom design

This past school year was my first year at my school. I didn’t love the way I ended up setting up my small intervention classroom/office. I’m not sure if it’s conducive to the type of work I want to do with students (and I certainly am not set up to store all of this).

Make the two day summer workshop happen!

My friend and colleague Pooja Patel and I proposed this idea last year (well, Pooja came up with the idea and asked if I was interested and then let me propose it with her): to run a summer institute for teachers who are graduates of our program to summarize the latest research and methods in literacy instruction, assessment, and intervention. And over a year later, it has been brought to life: Cutting Edge Reading & Writing Instruction for Teachers. If you’re in NYC in late July, you should come.

Rethink the sequence and delivery of the curriculum for my graduate class

This is going to be a process. Class doesn’t start up again until January, but I really want to get my students thinking more diagnostically and using more observational data to decide where to go next in their interventions. I’d like to spend some time chatting with other teacher educators and reflecting a bit more on what worked and what didn’t this past year. May was not a time when this could happen, but June and July are.

Of course, I may get to a beach and I’m definitely headed out of town for a wedding or two and to visit family. Maybe I’ll take a few hikes and knit up some sweaters for the fall, but I can’t wait to start my summer sabbatical and engage in some professional learning.

How do you use your summers? Any interesting professional learning lined up?