Bad Blood

There has been a lot of “bad blood” circulating through the CF school district ever since 2010. Due to the low academic performance of the school district, the high school in particular, they were required to make some drastic changes. CFHS has consistently been one of the lowest achieving schools in RI, leading them to a required school-wide intervention. There are four intervention models that can be chosen from, in which the TurnAround Model was found most suitable for CF.

This transformation required a lot of big decisions, including giving the whole staff at CFHS layoff notices indicating that they may not be rehired for the following school year. Having read the conditions of the TurnAround Model, in which all current teachers will undergo screening and only 50% can stay on staff, I know why certain actions were made. I get that, if I were a teacher at this school, I would be mad to be notified that I might get fired, but part of me thinks that a lot of these teachers didn’t understand what was happening and why it had to happen.

After the implementation of the TurnAround Model, most of the teachers were kept on staff, yet “bad blood” persisted. This has caused tension between staff members and is creating a hurtful atmosphere. Most teachers have stayed because of their students. As a teacher, your first priority should be your students’ needs. However, some teachers may still have clouded judgment, even after four years, which has kept this tension between coworkers.

Now, some actions are being reviewed regarding restructuring the school district. There has been discussion about moving grade levels around so that the schools will be grades K-3,4-6, and 7-12 (these details are a little fuzzy to me still regarding which grades will be in which schools). A lot of people have been misinformed about this plan and has created a lot of negative attitude, especially in the high school. This rearrangement is meant to create smaller, more inclusive classroom at the primary school level. However, I think a lot of people at the middle and high schools don’t understand what is being done and why (once again).

Personally, I think that the school board should make a clear announcement to all school members, including students, teachers, and parents, informing them of the changes that are being planned. Stating that there are forum hearings that people can attend is different than taking the extra effort to create, let’s say, a school-wide assembly that clearly explains to everyone what these changes are and what effect they will have. This will lead to a better understanding for everyone.

As a secondary/middle level educator, I do have one concern: How are these “improvements” to the elementary school impacting the middle and high schools? I have been learning the importance and characteristics of a middle school, and the plans to be put in place will be ripping away that whole concept of middle school that I have been learning and that most districts should be striving for. Also, seventh and eighth grade are being squished into the high school, which leaves little room for so many people. This change will, I assume, create a Junior/Senior High School, in which middle-grade students will most likely end up following the structure of high school, eliminating structures such as teams and community that provides students with developmental support, which makes a middle school so unique. This also means that a lot of teachers will be moved to a different school and may need to change their teaching approaches based on the new environment. High school seems to be the place where a lot of students in urban school lose their way and can’t get the assistance and support that they need. I feel like moving up seventh and eighth grade to the high school will create this lack of academic support at an earlier age, causing an increase in student decline.

It could just be my biases, but I think that this redesign should be used in the high school setting - this idea of smaller, more inclusive classrooms that can focus more on students’ individual learning needs. I understand how it can be helpful in elementary school, providing students with extra support at a younger age, but I think it would be more helpful for high school students. Maybe this will help the blame-game, where everyone is blaming someone else for the students’ lack of “basic, lower-level” skills, such as literacy and arithmetic. There may be good intentions, but I think that the people who are creating this design are too pulled back from the individual schools that they might be losing out on other opportunities and creating more issues than they realize.

Book Clubs and Big Ideas

Continuing on with Daniels and Zemelman, we read about book clubs and inquiry units and how to incorporate them effectively in our classrooms.

I have been learned a lot about book clubs this semester in another one of my courses through the use of literature circles. Having now read about strategies to create effective book clubs, I now understand the way our literature circles have been designed. One key concept is to let the students choose what they want to read. We were provided with a handful of book options for adolescent literature and were given a brief description of each. From there, we each chose the book we liked best and created a group. It is a small class, but we managed to have groups of sizes three and four. It is important to keep the groups small so that everyone can participate, but not so small that there isn’t enough exchange of ideas.

Book clubs and literature circles are “structured discussion groups” that allow students to share and build on each other’s ideas. It is a good idea if everyone has a role so that there are specific components of the book that are being addressed and it can help lead the discussion along. And although they may not be formally addressed, there should be some structural and behavioral rules to go along with the groups as well, such as actually reading the book and participating in discussion. Book clubs help build social skills by creating meaningful and thought-provoking discussion that is mostly created by the students. The teacher should have little input in the group – maybe an overarching question here or there, but not a big player in the group, as I have also learned from my own literature circles in class. A lot of the time, when the teacher enters the group, discussion ceases, but they are merely there to monitor and help push the discussion along – and sometimes to grade you. Be careful how you grade though – make sure it is constructive to what you want the students to be learning, such as preparation and reading activities.

So the other “big idea” here is inquiry units. An inquiry unit has multiple components – large and multi-faceted with open-ended questions; makes reading real; covers a topic of importance for your subject, students, and the world; has clear goals and immediate satisfaction (no one likes hearing “You will use this in the future”); creates opportunities for student choice; has a meaningful process for sharing…the list goes on and on (but I think I got most of it).

There is definitely a lot to process there, but inquiry projects should have meaning and create opportunities for students to learn in their own way. These units should be guided at every step, making sure it’s not too big for the students to handle.

One example of an inquiry-based project is a RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, Topic). This type of project allows students to explore a specific topic from a certain perspective and share what they learn with their peers. I recently did a RAFT assignment for this class in which I had to do a textbook analysis and write a letter to the department textbook adoption committee, me being the department head, and convince them whether or not to adopt the textbook that I analyzed. It was definitely a longer and harder process than I expected, but I learned more by actual doing it on my own.

One thing that really stuck out to me in my reading, though, was when the authors said that you don’t need to cover all subject areas when creating an interdisciplinary unit. I know this is understandable because reaching every content area is a large task, but it made me think back to my last post and how math usually gets left out. I created a four week interdisciplinary unit last semester with a few classmates that was based on the theme of cooperation, and it seemed like when trying to apply themes to math, it was harder. I feel like most people would give up on trying to fit math into a unit, but it gets so easily overlooked that it’s being left out. My goal is that no matter who or where I am teaching, I will integrate math as much as possible when working with colleagues to create an interdisciplinary unit or inquiry-based project.

Why You Hatin' On Math???

A lot of people complain that they don’t like math and that it is so much different from all the other core subjects we learn in school. Even some of my pre-service teacher colleagues believe that it’s hard to apply a lot of the concepts about reading and writing strategies to math because of its different nature than say English or History. Math is being identified as its own little world in education, having its own language, but in reality, every subject has its own language, content, and progression.

Math is identified as being different from the other subjects because it is not subjective. Math is very straightforward and to the point. There isn’t a lot of room for discussion, debate, opinions, or any deeper form of literary understanding. We can go through proofs or look at the history to see where something came from, but you can’t really say “I think this is what Newton was trying to say when we was creating this equation” or “I disagree with Pythagoras’ proof” because math is fact and it has been proven.

You also read differently in math. Throughout this semester, we have been talking about reading and writing strategies to use in the classroom in each of the different subject. We talk about a lot of different strategies, but not all seem to fit in place in math. You have to sift through and figure out what can work and how you can use it. Think about this though. I read differently in English, History, and Science. Does that make each of them different? Can I use every strategy I learn about in each of those subjects? I talk differently and use different words in history than I do in math? Why does that make math the outsider?

Sure, with math, you may have to adapt some strategies and may not be able to find themes or emotions in what we read, but that doesn’t mean those strategies are non-existent. A textbook in math usually has examples and practice problems and equations rather than paragraph after paragraph of information. Does that make it a bad thing? I never learned anything from my history book, reading those long, dry chapters of one-sided stories and extracting information. But my math book showed me how to work out problems and build my understanding, building on what I have previously learned. Do you need to know how to read Nathaniel Hawthorne in order to understand Shakespeare or to write a thesis? No. It doesn’t build on what you have learned. Neither does history. You learn American History in one class, Ancient Rome in another, and European History, and they expect you to remember all of these different dates and people that you don’t really care about. There is such a wide span of content to be covered and none of it builds on each other. Where’s the sense in that?

Just because something isn’t easy to apply to math doesn’t mean you can’t. I can draw vocabulary trees. I can make a Venn Diagram. I can find books to read, even if they’re not the type of books you expect. Why does math have to be different from everything else? Putting it in its own little box away from all the other contents takes away our ability for interdisciplinary learning. Don’t be scared of math…embrace it. It’s not going to change, there are multiple ways to go about it, and turning it away is giving off a bad vibe.

Take some time and think about some of these questions:

Why do you or don’t you like math?

What makes math so different from your content area?

What are some similarities between math and your content area?

How can you use math in other contents?

How can you use other contents in math?

I don’t want to sound like I am babbling on or bashing anyone’s content, but think of how much math gets hit on. Why do you think that is? Is it okay for math to be compared to all other content areas?

P.S. This is not how I expected this post to come out. I just kinda went for it!

What? So What? Now What?

What?

I spend an entire day at CFHS observing one teacher’s whole school day (for confidentiality purposes, I will refer to her as CC). CC has four Algebra II classes that she teaches every day. Since she is creating the same lesson for four different classes, each with different needs, she builds accommodations into her activities, a concept known as Universal Design.

So What?

I have really only heard of the phrase “Universal Design” in my Special Education class. In most classes, we learn the importance of creating modifications for our students because everyone learns differently and at a different pace, but now I am actually seeing those accommodations in action. Out of CC’s four classes, two of them are inclusion classes while a third is all ESL students. In order to keep each class on track, she plans for each class’s needs ahead of time and builds it into her lesson. When you think of this while planning, it is so much easier than trying to make arrangements during the lesson or creating multiple lessons.

When creating lessons, CC works with her co-teacher, DB, to create worksheets for the students. In these worksheets, they break things down into the smallest steps possible. They try to think of where students might struggle and clarify difficult areas. This way, learning is scaffolded by instruction.

CC also has to make accommodations for the gaps in learning achievement. Some students in her class work at a faster pace and finish the work before the end of class while others don’t pay attention or don’t understand their work. She works through these differences in the worksheets she creates for her students. She allows the students to work in groups during class after they have gone through a few examples together. She judges how many problems to give the students to solve, in which case the students who understand the material have enough work to do in class while the rest of the class, if they didn’t finish, does it for homework.

Seeing CC plan an activity for each of her classes makes me think of the diversity you can find even in one classroom. It seems so much easier to build different students’ needs into one lesson from the beginning rather than creating different approaches for each class. It takes more effort planning when you do it this way, but it makes teaching it a little easier.

Now What?

Now that I have seen this concept of Universal Design, I have a better idea of why CC does what she does and how to create accommodations into a lesson from the beginning. As I planned my first lesson to teach in CC’s classroom, I used a packet she had created for the specific topic that we were going to cover. She broke the problems down into a step-by-step process for each problem and used vocabulary they have been learning in the unit. I emphasized those terms and asked questions to make sure that students knew what the terms meant and how to use them.

It didn’t seem to take that much more effort creating the assignment. She created the first page, breaking it down and labeling steps, then copied the format for the rest of the examples and practice problems. By taking that extra effort, it was easier to teach the concept because it was already broken down into steps for me to explain and for the students to understand.

When I create lessons, from now on, I will try to think of my students’ needs and build that into the lesson. When you think of areas that students will struggle, you can think through how to explain it and create multiple approaches to it. Then, as I teach it in different classes, even from year to year, I will already have a basic foundation for my instruction that I can continue to modify as necessary.

Reading, Thinking and Community

As teachers, is it our responsibility to create an atmosphere in the classroom that is conductive to learning and to teach students skills and strategies they should develop in order to activate their minds. Continuing in Subjects Matter, chapters 5 and 7 talk about using reading strategies in the classroom and how to build a community of learners. By putting these two components together, we can create a thought-provoking classroom.

In order for students to be successful and active readers, we need to introduce different reading strategies in the classroom, no matter what content you teach. We have discussed before the ideas of pre, during, and post reading strategies. These strategies can be as simple and common as Venn Diagrams, but they can promote strong thinking as students read. By providing them with tools for reading, students can interpret and apply what they are reading to other tasks. For instance, one strategy is to create a conversation with the text, or with other students about the text. Even in one of my classes, we write book notes in the margins of our textbooks, asking question, making arguments, and agreeing with concepts we are reading about. It allows us to think while we read and make connections to the book, enabling us to remember better what we read. The professor then used sticky notes to guide us into deeper levels of thinking as we read our text.

I feel like when someone learns a strategy that they like or have learned a lot about, they begin to apply to other things. This is a little off topic, but the other day I learned about Miscue Analysis, a strategy used to test students' reading abilities. After we learned about it and practiced it, I found myself starting to use it outside of class. I went to a conference over the weekend and started miscuing the keynote speaker. I think that if a student, no matter what age, learns a new strategy that they find interesting, once they have learned it, they will bring it with them outside of the classroom, which is why it is good to teach students so many different reading strategies. They are bound to find one that they like and will get a lot out of it.

The other thing that is important is creating a community environment in your classroom. No matter what school or age level, it is important that students are welcome and feel like a part of something. We need to create a “social support” in to guide what we say, do and teach. We need to make it personal – relating content to the student and issues that are bigger than the classroom; we need to listen to our students, know who they are, and believe that they can succeed. Support also comes from their peers – respecting one another and working together, learning from each other. It is important to provide students with opportunities to help and learn from each other.

This is one lesson that I want to make sure I take with me as I become a teacher. Class is no fun if only one person is in charge and no one else has a say in anything. It’s important to make the students a part of the lesson – let them explore and engage with one another. Students learn a lot from each other, so it’s good to let them learn on their own sometimes. I want my classroom to have some fun and feel like a community. In order to do that, I have to get to know my students and let them get to know each other and themselves. Allow students to make mistakes and grow – both academically and personally.