Blended Learning

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.

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!

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.

Learning as Creating Knowledge Rather than Receiving it

So, one of the big ideas we talked about in my class last night was the idea of the process of learning being an active, creative process, rather than a passive, receptive process. We've talked a lot about the failings of what the scholars call the "banking" model of teaching, in which students are the passive receptacles of a body of knowledge which teachers must pour into them. But while this intuitively makes sense, I've struggled with it because sometimes there are things that are simply facts which the students must know, and which they don't know already.

I don't want to go too far with saying one thing or another is true based simply on theory and readings, but the connection which makes sense to me is the juxtaposition of classroom teaching and Professional Development days that you often see in many districts.

I don't want to speak for every Professional Development system in every district, but what I've seen so far has been executed in a mode very much casting the teachers as passive recipients of the knowledge presented by some speaker. The things I've identified about this mode, at least as I've seen it done so far...
* Learners (who are themselves professional teachers in this case) are cast in a passive, receptive mode
* Material presented is simplified to the point of being demeaning to our intelligence and expertise as professionals in this area
--- composed of rigid, "one-size-fits-all" lesson plans or discipline/classroom management plans
--- cover the equivalent of the ABC's of pedagogy
--- present answers instead of questions
* Demands time that the participants feel resentful of and unrewarded by

By contrast, I also had an experience with the Mills Teachers Scholars, and am currently having an experience in my master's program, where each individual learner becomes a researcher as well, framing an inquiry project of their own design and carrying forth the research to study the topic and ultimately, present on it. This model...
* Casts learners as active experts who are creating knowledge through hard work, research, and personal insights
* Assumes intelligence on the part of the participants
--- presents questions, and learners do the work to find the answers themselves
--- tackles challenging questions of interest to the learners (rather than one-size-fits-all)
* Provides time, and so creates opportunity, for participants to pursue vigorous and meaningful learning opportunities according to their own interest and motivation.

So, in comparing these two modes of teacher learning, it's clear that there's no contest. One is a winner and the other isn't.

So why do we use the receptive mode in our classrooms?

Simply stating the theory, "students should be cast as creators of knowledge, not recipients," isn't as compelling to me as seeing the advantages and disadvantages of each model in action. The words themselves raise questions, complications can be found, edge cases--it's just not as clear. But comparing a model that works to a model that doesn't work gives me a more complete vision of not just the theory of what works and what doesn't, but an example of the practice that makes that possible.

So the question, then, is how can I create an environment in my own classroom in which students are creators of knowledge rather than recipients of knowledge?

Research projects are an obvious choice. And, to be fair, some of the most memorable moments from school come from research projects. (My data on that being personal experience and anecdotal.) When I hear students or former students talk with interest about a subject they studied, it's often one that they personally performed a weighty research project on.

But can this be executed in smaller, more daily ways? I mean, this ties into how it's good pedagogy to raise the question in the students mind before you answer it. Every day I give warmup questions. A lot of times the students don't know the answer, and they ask me. Does that count as casting them as creators of knowledge, with myself as the resource they turn to for answers? It seems roughly parallel to a mode in which students turn to encyclopedias or google for answers. But are they really motivated to answer that particular question, or are they simply carrying out rote behavior?

Moving away from rote behavior is key to putting students in the role of creators of knowledge. But...

Okay, here's another example. I'm trying to teach them grammar, right? So I have this set of powerpoint slides. They're wonderful and I'm doing one presentation a week, introducing a concept and then later reinforcing it with activities. This is basically casting students as passive receptacles of knowledge, right?

Is this an activity where it's appropriate for learners to just be passive recipients? Or is there a way I could cast them as the creators of knowledge? Have them do a research project on sentence structure, or something? Would that actually be any more successful?

Days of Wonder

Today has been a wonderful day. Yesterday was Veteran's Day, and we got it off even though it fell on a Tuesday. This meant, for me, that I had one day off, a single, precious day that was unscheduled and un-spoken-for, in which to catch up on those things which need doing but don't fit in my regular schedule.

In this case, among other things, that meant getting two couches to put in my classroom, and a metric dumpton of food and snacks for the kids. So... well, naturally it was a good day :)

I like the idea of making the room comfortable for my kids. I feel that it's easier to learn if your basic needs are met--food and physical comfort. Sleep too, but I can't do much about that. (The couches are not for sleeping--at least not during classtime.) Previously, I had the two soft armchairs, but with them in the back of the room around a little table, that area became a magnet for students to gather and socialize--sometimes at the expense of class focus.

What I'm doing instead, this time, is lining up all the best seats, the two couches and the two armchairs, in a broad curve as the front row of seats in the room. Behind them are a couple cool little tables, and then the very last row is composed entirely of the least-desireable conjoined seat/desk hybrids that are so ubiquitous--and so unpleasant--in classrooms. The experiment now is to set the class up this way, so that the most desireable seats are in the front, and offer open seating. If all goes according to plan, this will draw students to fill up the front row of their own volition, without me having to either assign seats or crack the whip to explicitly call students to move forward.

I also had my master's class tonight, and instead of the usual exhaustion, I felt happy, even buoyant. When I'm not drained and braindead, this class is so wonderful for sparking ideas. Something about getting together, hearing other teacher's perspectives, and bouncing ideas around really gets the old brain juices flowing. But... in the spirit of trying to stick to one idea per blog post, I'll save those for future posts!

Teaching Math vs. English - Skills, Interest and Learning

Today was gratifying. For the last two weeks, I've been running a special CAHSEE math study group. Today, in addition to the normal meeting, we had 1.5 hours optional after school. Not only did most of the class stay for it, but two students stayed an additional half hour after that, just because they were having fun.

The really cool thing? Those two who stayed were the same two black girls (and only two black girls in the school) who were the most disillusioned and disaffected at the beginning. By the end, they were laughing, solving complex problems, and saying things like, "I feel smart!"

It's been interesting doing this math study group. First, I've enjoyed it enough that at this point I feel really excited about pursuing a math credential, which my school wants me to do, but previously I'd been feeling a little leery of. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it's made me think about teaching English.

In math, there's a right answer. There's a tangible, demonstrable skill, attempts can be quickly iterated, and answers can be provably right or wrong. In a way, that makes it so much simpler than teaching English!

Looking at my English practice (and commonly the practice I've observed in other classrooms) there is little building of skills. A lot of the measure of success seems to be "did they understand what happened in this book/movie/poem?" While, sure, checking for understanding of the text seems to be a core aspect, it's hardly sufficient on it's own. That should be the /starting point/ not the end.

I have also seen classes where skills were emphasized to the exclusion of appreciating the story... and that was no better. All too often, an excessive emphasis on grammar or whatever quickly becomes overwhelming and undendurably dull.

So where's the happy middle ground? How do I teach hard, tangible, measurable English Skills, in a way that is both fruitful and fun?

I think a lot of the reason teaching math can become fun, even for struggling students, is when it becomes accessible enough that a) they feel a measure of success and triumph, and b) each new problem becomes another opportunity to triumph over a puzzle and get that rush again. Can that model even work in English?

Or, going back even further, what essential skills should I be trying to teach in English? I feel like the work we've been doing is worthwhile, but I also feel like it could be more.

The Blackboard

For a while now I've been wanting to get into posting more regularly here, but everything always seems to be "go, go, go!" with one urgent task after another, and never any time to sit down and reflect, so I've had trouble finding the time for it. But I keep coming across these little discoveries or insights, and I'd like to record some of them here, to the best of my ability.

Hang on, my breakfast burrito is done in the microwave. This is important.

...

Okay, we can continue now. The question of course, is where to even begin. Pedagogy? The students? The school? The content?

Typically I would like to use my first regular post to do an overview, but there's so much to consider that even a weak attempt at an overview would fall well short of the mark while simultaneously being beyond the scope of a short blog post--as limited by the fact that my class starts in 25 minutes.

So instead, today, like future days (at least, according to plan), I'll focus on a single small aspect of the classroom. Today, I'd like to touch on the blackboard.

In the back of my classroom, there's a chalk board that I don't use for my teaching. It's behind all the students, I don't like using chalk anyway, and leaving it blank gives the students a space to express themselves. Inevitably it quickly becomes filled: names, dates, graffiti, and art seems to pop up there like mushrooms after rain.

Today, there is a work of art by one of the students, apparently from Nightmare Before Christmas. It's a beautiful swirling piece, with a couple standing on top of a jack-o-lantern hill. On the left side is a quickly drawn ghost haunting a house (we're approaching Halloween now) and below that the words, "Pray for Ronnie, I know you'll make it through this!" next to some graffiti. Given that at least two of my students have friends who have died of gunshot wounds, and at least two of my students have been injured by serious stabbing wounds, whatever risk Ronnie is in may be very serious.

I enjoy seeing what comes up on the board, both as works of art in their own right, and as expressions of my students thoughts and interests.

However, this question is not just one of aesthetic interest, it's also a question of practice: often the illustrations and words that appear there are, to put it mildly, not school-appropriate. Graffiti is especially challenging, as it's nearly indecipherable to my untrained eye. The stylized marks and letters, combined with a shorthand unique to that subculture, make it completely impenetrable to me.

Yesterday another teacher came into the room and gasped at what she saw in graffiti in the wall. Apparently it included things like, "kill the police" and other messages that she did not find appropriate.

So where do I draw the line? It seems unfair to ban anything I don't understand, and I want to make room for them to express themselves, but there are also certain expectations I must hold up as a teacher.

I think, as a practice for this blog, I'll be satisfied with raising a good question, even if I can't/don't answer it. So there it is.