There's a lot of talk about Blended Learning, but what does it really mean? Fortunately, Khan Academy has a great series on the subject :)
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/ssf-cci/sscc-intro-blended-learning
For me, one point they make which I really like is that it's NOT just bringing technology into the classroom. It's actually integrating the technology along with learning spaces and learning professionals to fundamentally shift the educational methodology. Neither online education nor traditional school-building education, but something that blends the best aspects of both.
In addition to that core concept, what makes good blended learning goes farther still. Here are the core points laid out by the Silicon Schools Fund and the Clayton Christensen Institute as to what makes good blended learning...
1) Personalized: Students are not each receiving the same cookie-cutter package. Their learning path is tailored to meet their particular needs, including filling gaps, capitalizing on strengths, and giving extra focus to weak areas.
2) Mastery-Based: Students only proceed and earn credits once they've demonstrated mastery of the core concept, regardless of how long it takes. If they can show they know it, they can move straight on without having to sit through a prescribed number of hours of class. At the same time, they don't go on until they can show mastery.
3) High Expectations: Yadda yadda, every school and method touts their high expectations for students. Not that it's not important, it is deeply important. That's why everybody waves this banner. But it doesn't set anybody apart as a result.
4) This one's a big one, in my book. Student Ownership: This means students take agency over their own learning path. They make meaningful choices both about what to pursue and about how and when to pursue their learning. I think a large part of the lack of motivation we see in many students, at many schools, comes from a lack of ownership over their own learning. If we can authentically give students meaningful agency over their learning process, I think it could be a game-changer.
I'm wrapping up my first year as a full-time teacher. There's SO much to write about, but I haven't had the time or mental space for most of this year. Maybe over the summer, as I have a chance to reflect, I'll update this blog more frequently.
Monday, June 8, 2015
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Concepts I Want to Teach
This is more a note for my own benefit, than a regular blog post, but basically, I keep coming across some key ideas that I just feel it's incredibly important to teach. For example, critical thinking. I think everyone agrees that critical thinking should be taught--it's frequently referenced during discussions of the importance of education--but it seems to be strangely absent from any official curriculum. I don't know if this is an oversight, or due to some misguided idea that it can't be taught explicitly, but instead must be simply absorbed through enough exposure to "education," but in fact, critical thinking can be taught explicitly, and I am in fact doing so in my classroom right now.
To my dismay, my students are not taking well to it. I'm not sure if this is my failure to design and execute an effective curriculum, or whether it's due to a depressing lack of prior knowledge on the subject, but they are taking to my lessons on logic and critical thinking like a fish takes to air. Which is to say, not at all. These are probably the most difficult and least successful lessons of any I've taught so far.
Nevertheless, it's important enough that I keep plowing ahead, hoping that I will make an impression on their less-than-receptive brains. If there's one thing I want them to leave their year with me with, it's an awareness that you can't always take the world at face value, and some basic knowledge of how to tell truth from fiction.
I do think my curriculum needs work, but that's only natural given that this is not only my first year teaching this content, but in fact my first year teaching at all. I'll keep working at it, and hopefully getting better.
The point of this article is that critical thinking is not alone: it's one of several absolutely fundamental ideas that I want to bring to my students. I'm sure there's more on this list that I'm leaving off, but here are four that I have right now...
* Critical Thinking: As discussed above, I want to introduce my students to concepts of formal logic, logical fallacies, how to construct an effective argument, and how to recognize flaws in an argument. I want them to be able to recognize manipulative forces in the world around them, and have some intelligent suspicion toward information they are exposed to.
* Reading: In an ideal world, all of my students would leave my classes having developed a passion for reading, prepared to be lifelong readers and learners. Readers are better people. Science says so. So inculcating them into this passion is not only a service to them, but a service to everyone their lives will touch in the future. In fact, this is one of the reasons I'm considering switching to middle school next year: more impressionable students. Younger minds will be easier to indoctrinate into a love of reading ;)
* Writing: Writing is many things, but easy ain't one. While there are many, many tips and tricks for learning writing, I'm of the opinion that the cornerstone of any development as a writer has to be practice. Other techniques can supplement practice, but without practice, any other technique is limited. The best method I've heard of is writing an essay every single week. In my class now, with only 45 minute periods and no homework, I haven't really found it practical, but I hope to bring this sort of routine writing into my future practice.
* Grammar: Much of what is taught and learned in English class has a frustrating intangibility. Good writing is easy to point to, but hard to explain, hard to teach, and hard to measure progress of. Same with good reading. It's not impossible to measure, but progress is often slow and imprecise, especially compared to, say, mathematics, where every question has a clear right answer. Grammer is one of those tangible skills that can be taught, can be learned, and can be measured, and I would be neglectful to let my students out the door without a solid foundation in grammar.
* Shakespearean Language: I'm adding this one on last minute, mostly because (as stated above) I'm thinking of transferring to middle school next year, and while Shakespearean Language is a huge challenge, I think (like other new languages!) the earlier students are exposed to it, the easier it will come to them. If they can get a handle on it at 7th or 8th grade, they will be well-equipped for years of upcoming future English classes in high school and college--not to mention equipped to enjoy his rich works for their own sake.
The reason I'm making this list is to remind myself what I want my middle school students to walk out the door with after I get a year, or preferably two, with them. When I'm teaching next year, starting up in a new placement with younger students, I want to have this list as a reminder, a touchstone that I can come back to to guide my decisions in the classroom.
Are my standards high in expecting that 12 year-olds can learn Shakespeare and Critical Thinking? Yes, absolutely. But recollections of my own childhood, as well as observations of youth today, lead me to believe that with younger students, the "big idea" often comes easier to them than the details, which take time to memorize and solidify. Genuine understanding means getting the big idea behind it all, and young kids are better at that than we give them credit for. I think having high expectations, and imprinting these big ideas at a young age will leave them especially well-equipped going forward. At least, that's my hope!
To my dismay, my students are not taking well to it. I'm not sure if this is my failure to design and execute an effective curriculum, or whether it's due to a depressing lack of prior knowledge on the subject, but they are taking to my lessons on logic and critical thinking like a fish takes to air. Which is to say, not at all. These are probably the most difficult and least successful lessons of any I've taught so far.
Nevertheless, it's important enough that I keep plowing ahead, hoping that I will make an impression on their less-than-receptive brains. If there's one thing I want them to leave their year with me with, it's an awareness that you can't always take the world at face value, and some basic knowledge of how to tell truth from fiction.
I do think my curriculum needs work, but that's only natural given that this is not only my first year teaching this content, but in fact my first year teaching at all. I'll keep working at it, and hopefully getting better.
The point of this article is that critical thinking is not alone: it's one of several absolutely fundamental ideas that I want to bring to my students. I'm sure there's more on this list that I'm leaving off, but here are four that I have right now...
* Critical Thinking: As discussed above, I want to introduce my students to concepts of formal logic, logical fallacies, how to construct an effective argument, and how to recognize flaws in an argument. I want them to be able to recognize manipulative forces in the world around them, and have some intelligent suspicion toward information they are exposed to.
* Reading: In an ideal world, all of my students would leave my classes having developed a passion for reading, prepared to be lifelong readers and learners. Readers are better people. Science says so. So inculcating them into this passion is not only a service to them, but a service to everyone their lives will touch in the future. In fact, this is one of the reasons I'm considering switching to middle school next year: more impressionable students. Younger minds will be easier to indoctrinate into a love of reading ;)
* Writing: Writing is many things, but easy ain't one. While there are many, many tips and tricks for learning writing, I'm of the opinion that the cornerstone of any development as a writer has to be practice. Other techniques can supplement practice, but without practice, any other technique is limited. The best method I've heard of is writing an essay every single week. In my class now, with only 45 minute periods and no homework, I haven't really found it practical, but I hope to bring this sort of routine writing into my future practice.
* Grammar: Much of what is taught and learned in English class has a frustrating intangibility. Good writing is easy to point to, but hard to explain, hard to teach, and hard to measure progress of. Same with good reading. It's not impossible to measure, but progress is often slow and imprecise, especially compared to, say, mathematics, where every question has a clear right answer. Grammer is one of those tangible skills that can be taught, can be learned, and can be measured, and I would be neglectful to let my students out the door without a solid foundation in grammar.
* Shakespearean Language: I'm adding this one on last minute, mostly because (as stated above) I'm thinking of transferring to middle school next year, and while Shakespearean Language is a huge challenge, I think (like other new languages!) the earlier students are exposed to it, the easier it will come to them. If they can get a handle on it at 7th or 8th grade, they will be well-equipped for years of upcoming future English classes in high school and college--not to mention equipped to enjoy his rich works for their own sake.
The reason I'm making this list is to remind myself what I want my middle school students to walk out the door with after I get a year, or preferably two, with them. When I'm teaching next year, starting up in a new placement with younger students, I want to have this list as a reminder, a touchstone that I can come back to to guide my decisions in the classroom.
Are my standards high in expecting that 12 year-olds can learn Shakespeare and Critical Thinking? Yes, absolutely. But recollections of my own childhood, as well as observations of youth today, lead me to believe that with younger students, the "big idea" often comes easier to them than the details, which take time to memorize and solidify. Genuine understanding means getting the big idea behind it all, and young kids are better at that than we give them credit for. I think having high expectations, and imprinting these big ideas at a young age will leave them especially well-equipped going forward. At least, that's my hope!
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Inquiry Process
Been a while since I've posted here. There's so much to consider in the whole process of teaching, a lot of balls to juggle, both physically and mentally. The number of things I would like to write posts about here is overwhelming, but unfortunately so are my physical responsibilities, so setting aside the time or--even more relevantly--the mental space to process and post a blog entry is always a challenge.
Anyway, I've made it through my first semester of teaching. On to the second. So far, this has been the most rewarding job I've ever had (and I've had some good ones!) I'm working at a continuation school, so you'd think this would be harder, but in actuality, I think it's easier. I have more time to work with and get to know each individual student, and that feels like this wonderful luxury, especially since I know I may not be able to enjoy that same luxury next year in a conventional school.
So as we move into the second semester, both of BTSA and my Master's program, a requirement of each is to undertake an Inquiry Project. At Mills, we're learning the value of and procedures around being a Teacher-Researcher, or, as we call it this semester, undertaking Action Research.
The essential idea here is that in addition to practicing, you undertake a systematic, rigorous exploration of some element of the teaching practice that puzzles you or raises questions. It is perfectly acceptable if your inquiry touches on broader themes that are of interest to you, but the question itself must be specific enough to be manageable in the space of a single semester.
So... I'm looking for a single, discreet inquiry question. It should be relevant to my broader interests, but small enough in scope that I can tackle it in a relatively small amount of time.
Picking and articulating the Inquiry Question is one of the hardest yet most important parts of this whole process. It's from there that all the other work of the inquiry process stems; without a good starting point, the possible gain from the rest of it is limited.
So what do I study?
There are a few ideas I have in mind. At the moment, I'm still thinking about broader themes rather than applicability. Here are some of my ideas...
* Student Affective State: I understand student brains in an open, curious, happy affective state are much more receptive to authentic learning than student brains that are closed, unhappy and defensive. This is of interest to me, as I think joy in the classroom is an oft-neglected subject. But I have no idea what my specific research question would be.
* Reading: I am keenly interested in developing the reading abilities of my students, and regularly push them in my classes to read above their level in the hopes of pushing them to develop and expand their reading skills. I would be very happy to do a project around reading, and I have some ideas about strategies I could explore in the classroom.
* Student Production: It's well-established in theory, but often hit or miss in practice, that students should not just be passive receptacles of knowledge, but should create and re-create representations of their understanding, whether verbally, in writing, or through other media. I think this is incredibly important, but there are a lot of questions as to how to bring that into the classroom. Narrowing it down to one avenue to explore would be the challenge.
* Tangible Skills: I'm an English teacher, and I hate to say it but it's a little harder to narrow down the specific, tangible skills that students are learning in English. Reading Hamlet may be widely accepted as important, but what tangible skill does it build? I could see it being very fruitful to investigate this question more deeply and attempt to articulate both what some of the tangible skills are that English teachers and how to measure those. In my own practice, teaching typing, handwriting, and grammer are some of the tangible skills, but though I'm sure the real skills I'm teaching extend beyond those three areas, it's a little harder to pin down those more abstract skills. There's a question here.
Well, just getting my thoughts down for now. I'm going to need to narrow it down, not just to one of those four categories, but also to a specific, measurable, investigate-able question within that broad area of the educational practice. More on that later, hopefully.
Anyway, I've made it through my first semester of teaching. On to the second. So far, this has been the most rewarding job I've ever had (and I've had some good ones!) I'm working at a continuation school, so you'd think this would be harder, but in actuality, I think it's easier. I have more time to work with and get to know each individual student, and that feels like this wonderful luxury, especially since I know I may not be able to enjoy that same luxury next year in a conventional school.
So as we move into the second semester, both of BTSA and my Master's program, a requirement of each is to undertake an Inquiry Project. At Mills, we're learning the value of and procedures around being a Teacher-Researcher, or, as we call it this semester, undertaking Action Research.
The essential idea here is that in addition to practicing, you undertake a systematic, rigorous exploration of some element of the teaching practice that puzzles you or raises questions. It is perfectly acceptable if your inquiry touches on broader themes that are of interest to you, but the question itself must be specific enough to be manageable in the space of a single semester.
So... I'm looking for a single, discreet inquiry question. It should be relevant to my broader interests, but small enough in scope that I can tackle it in a relatively small amount of time.
Picking and articulating the Inquiry Question is one of the hardest yet most important parts of this whole process. It's from there that all the other work of the inquiry process stems; without a good starting point, the possible gain from the rest of it is limited.
So what do I study?
There are a few ideas I have in mind. At the moment, I'm still thinking about broader themes rather than applicability. Here are some of my ideas...
* Student Affective State: I understand student brains in an open, curious, happy affective state are much more receptive to authentic learning than student brains that are closed, unhappy and defensive. This is of interest to me, as I think joy in the classroom is an oft-neglected subject. But I have no idea what my specific research question would be.
* Reading: I am keenly interested in developing the reading abilities of my students, and regularly push them in my classes to read above their level in the hopes of pushing them to develop and expand their reading skills. I would be very happy to do a project around reading, and I have some ideas about strategies I could explore in the classroom.
* Student Production: It's well-established in theory, but often hit or miss in practice, that students should not just be passive receptacles of knowledge, but should create and re-create representations of their understanding, whether verbally, in writing, or through other media. I think this is incredibly important, but there are a lot of questions as to how to bring that into the classroom. Narrowing it down to one avenue to explore would be the challenge.
* Tangible Skills: I'm an English teacher, and I hate to say it but it's a little harder to narrow down the specific, tangible skills that students are learning in English. Reading Hamlet may be widely accepted as important, but what tangible skill does it build? I could see it being very fruitful to investigate this question more deeply and attempt to articulate both what some of the tangible skills are that English teachers and how to measure those. In my own practice, teaching typing, handwriting, and grammer are some of the tangible skills, but though I'm sure the real skills I'm teaching extend beyond those three areas, it's a little harder to pin down those more abstract skills. There's a question here.
Well, just getting my thoughts down for now. I'm going to need to narrow it down, not just to one of those four categories, but also to a specific, measurable, investigate-able question within that broad area of the educational practice. More on that later, hopefully.
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