MeTA musings

"Can you believe Johnny cheated on his math homework for the second day in a row?  You'd think he would stop copying answers from his friends after I gave him a zero!  He's not learning anything and will surely fail the test."

Have you been in on one of those conversations?  Perhaps you've even been the one issuing the zeros.

Been there.  Done that.  Still working on it.

It hit me one day.  It wasn't rocket science though.  I need to talk to these students and ask them to change their behavior.  A few students actually admitted that they were lost.  My words to describe their situation - these students were too lost to even consider asking for help.  At the time, my classroom was run as if I was administering a test each and every day: points were awarded based on correct answers on homework.  Students want points.  Copying was worth the risk to them.  Things had to change.  I began what I now call "critical conversations" with these students.  When I sense a student is extremely lost, I will write a note on his/her paper asking if there is a way I can help and/or if he/she is willing to come in outside of class for remedial work.  If this does not solicit a response from the student, I will usually talk to him/her one-on-one during or right after class.  Finally, if the situation warrants, I will contact the student's parents to make them aware of the situation.  Most recently, I have seen a student every day after school for almost one week as a result of the parent communication.  Don't get me wrong, this is not a magic bullet solution to helping struggling students.  Some students never respond.  Some parents aren't as willing to help.  Creating this culture of caring is the piece of the puzzle I believe will yield the biggest results in the long haul.

I try to have these "critical conversations" with my entire class from time to time.  Speaking in transparent and direct terms to students is the biggest component of a critical conversation.  Sometimes they come in the form of a warm-up problem at the beginning of class:

"The person who does the work is the only one doing any learning!" (Harry Wong)

A science teacher wandered into my room yesterday after school.  In addition to many hallway and after school conversations with her, I have also passed on several articles related to standards-based grading and formative assessment techniques.  Towards the end of our conversation, she admitted, "I am going to do this."  We walked through her current grading scheme as well as the projects, assessments and assignments she typically uses each semester.  This turned into a brainstorming session on transforming to a new system reporting standards rather than assignments.  One of the hang-ups was reporting responsibility.  She really wants to emphasize and communicate responsibility with her students both on a daily basis (coming to class prepared) and on assignments (turning in an assignment on time), so she is going to create a "responsibility" category and weight in between five and ten percent of the overall grade.  Without this responsibility caveat, standards-based grading just wasn't going to happen for her.

Our conversation has kept me thinking about why standards-based grading makes so much sense. It went something like this:

Teacher: So if I give a student a second chance on a lab report, do I average the grades?

Me: With the new system, a student may not need to redo the entire lab report.  Maybe he/she just needs help with the data analysis section.

Teacher: Okay, so if they redo the data analysis part, do I average those two scores?

Me: You could, but that wouldn't be much different than what you're doing now, right?  What if that student's second draft of the data analysis was the best data analysis you've ever seen?  Shouldn't that student receive the same score as if he/she had done an awesome job the first time? or the next time?  My philosophy is that new evidence of understanding should replace old evidence.

Teacher: That makes sense.  What about a student that turns in a lab report late?  I usually take off points.

Me: That's where your responsibility category comes in.  If that student turned in a really great lab report, then that should be communicated with parents rather than taking off points like you used to do.  This should make conversations with parents and students much easier, right?  A less-than-perfect score is no longer as mysterious.  Was it because it wasn't up to par?  Was it because it was late? A combination of the two?  Explaining that mystery is history!

Teacher: I need some more time to think about this.  Matt, I am going to do this. 

After the conversation, it hit me. It's more about changing the norms and values of the classrooms in my building and less about a particular grading system.  Are our grading and assessment practices clearly communicating student learning?  Is time the variable or is learning?  Evan Abbey summed up the culture piece much more eloquently than I can in a recent comment he made on my blog:

"...The traditional view is of a teacher as gatekeeper, sorting out students, not letting them to a diploma without the proper amount of effort to make it through the gate.

This does 2 things which are undesirable. First, it sets up teachers to be in an adversarial position against students, which often sets students up to feel that they have to be opposed to learning as well as the teacher. And second, it makes failure a terrible, terrible thing. I would argue that failure actually is a critical ingredient in learning (as Edison would attest).

The gardener approach flips that around, where the teacher is on the same side as the student, helping them attain measurable standards of learning, and letting students gauge their growth themselves. The student drives the data collection and assessment, looking at their learning against those standards and determining 1) how much further they have to go, and 2) how they are going to get there. The teacher encourages and facilitates learning.

The way to be a gardener instead of a gatekeeper is to ditch grading, which is teacher-centric, arbitrary, and set up for comparisons against other students for the purpose of ranking (and rejecting). In its place is to use standards-based reporting, where the standard of learning is objective and measurable, and students are not comparing themselves against anyone else but the standard...."

It's less about standards-based grading and more about creating a "gardener" mentality in our schools.  Standards-based grading is merely a framework that makes allowing new evidence of understanding to replace old evidence of understanding much more fluid.  As excited as I was to see a colleague embrace standards-based grading, I was even more elated to see her realize the need to allow new evidence to replace old evidence of learning.  Had we not talked about a standards-based grading system and its contrast with traditional grading practices, I am not sure if this new realization would have taken place.  Richard Elmore (as quoted in Revisiting PLCs at Work) talks about changes in practice as a means for a larger cultural impact:

"Only a change in practice produces a genuine change in norms and values...grab people by their practice and their hearts and minds will follow" (p. 108)

I learned a very important lesson yesterday.  It's not ALL about standards-based reporting, but more about rethinking the way we view assessment as a tool rather than a hindrance for learning.

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague today that followed-up a heated discussion that took place yesterday among several staff members over lunch in the teachers' lounge.  Yesterday's ongoing question was, "Do our grading practices promote compliance or learning?"  For example, when a teacher continually awards five points for merely completing a homework assignment, we're sending a hidden message to parents that the way their student can raise their grade is to make sure that all of their assignments are turned in.  Consider the following fictitious email communication:

Dear Mr. Townsley,
I logged on to PowerSchool last night and saw that Johnny's grade dropped from a C to a D.  Is there any extra credit he can do to raise his grade?

I look forward to hearing back from you today!

Jane Doe

or I'm guessing any secondary teacher can relate to this one:

Dear Mr. Townsley,
Jessica told me that she has been turning in all of her work, but her grade is still an "F."  Could you send me a list of the assignments she is missing so that she can get her grade up?"

Thanks,
John Smith

How often does parent communication emphasize turning in assignments, late work and following directions?   These are all examples of compliance or "doing more work."  Wouldn't it be great if parent communication instead looked something like this?

Dear Mr. Townsley,

Suzie does not seem to have a passing grade right now.  Could you send me a list of the concepts and ideas that she still does not understand so that she and I can work on them together?

Thanks,
Sam Johnson

My colleague had a great "aha" moment as she thought about this conversation last night.  She agreed that traditional grading systems promote compliance and often report out responsibility rather than learning.  She challenged my thinking by suggesting that many parents are happy to ask about compliance and responsibility in relation to grades not only because it is what they were used to in school, but also because it is something they can control.  Parents can quickly and easily ensure that their children are completing assignments.  There is great satisfaction in holding homework completion up as bait for free time watching television or playing video games.  "Once you have your essay written, you may play Halo."  She went on to suggest that many parents might begin to feel helpless once they realized the reason their student was failing Algebra wasn't because he/she wasn't turning in their homework, but instead because he/she is unable to solve two-step linear equations.  Further evidence of this idea plays out when thinking about elementary report cards which tend to be descriptions of skills and abilities rather than letter grades.  These skills are typically less cognitive and presumably a larger portion of our society has mastered them, so parents may be willing to accept a skills-based report card at this age.  Parents are better able to control and teach those abilities at home, so there is more of a sense of ownership.  This sense of control seems to decrease as the content students are expected to know and apply becomes more complex and unfamiliar to the average citizen as students progress through the public school system.  Anatomy and calculus have a stigma attached to them that writing cursive and subtracting integers don't seem to possess.

Here lies a new reality in challenging system-wide change towards a more "standards-based" reporting method in our schools today: traditional grading schemes promote a "compliance" mentality and parents seem to be happy with it because they feel like they have more control.  "Un-schooling" both students and parents is a natural first step, but what does this look like?  As one of only two teachers in my building currently embracing standards-based reporting, I see a steep hill ahead. 
  
Is "parent control" a valid challenge to standards-based reporting?   If so, what can be done at a system-wide level to overcome this challenge?

"Children are not mature enough to understand the ramifications of academic failure; therefore we cannot leave achievement to student interest alone.  In this country, we require individuals to be age 16 to drive an automobile, 18 to vote in an election, and 21 to drink alcohol, yet we regularly give children "licenses to fail" at a much younger age when they do not exhibit immediate interest in academics..." (p. 25) 

Note: This is the fourth post in a series based on the book Never Work Harder Than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching by Robyn Jackson.

"If you want to raise your expectations of your students, you first have to raise your expectations of yourself. " (p. 85)

Of the principles I've blogged about so far, principle 3, "Expect to get your students there" is one in which the self-assessment indicates may be a current strength. Several of my colleagues (perhaps those among this blog's audience may even attest to this) often pass off comments such as, "Don't you ever go home?" or "It's Friday, time to leave school for a few days!" I do not mention these comments to give myself some sort of virtual "pat on the back," but rather to support my perceived strength and a point Jackson makes on p. 91.

"The more important you believe something is, the more time, attention, and effort you will put forth to make it happen."

I am not afraid to admit that I like my job as a high school math teacher. I enjoy the reverse commute from the "big city" to the "bedroom community" every morning and afternoon. In general, I truly look forward to the students and staff I interact with during the school year. I value my job as an ongoing opportunity for making a positive impact in the lives of the future generation. That's me. A worthwhile task that's a pleasure to take part in.

What about the students?

Is it fair to say that the students in your classroom and mine are frequently embarking in a "worthwhile task that's a pleasure to take part in"?

When I first started teaching, I thought my class was in good shape when they were all quietly working on a task I had assigned. Yikes, was I wrong! My value was on control rather than learning. Jackson makes another point that made much more sense to me recently,

"The consequence for not completing work or completing it well should be that students have to spend more time getting it done right." (p. 94)

This is why I, like others are suggesting, hope to implement a new "consequence" for not completing important tasks. The consequence is, "a new opportunity to learn it!"

This will not be an easy change to make in my classroom of high school students with jobs and extra-curricular activities. "Requiring" them to come in outside of class is not as easy as keeping an elementary student in from recess for remediation, but I think a few small changes can be made to better support this philosophy:

1. Increase parent communication. Explain to parents early and often if/when their student is not "getting it" or "turning it in" and the value of coming in to "learn it."
2. Look for the WHY. A question to be constantly reminded of is What can I do to help you, the student? Look for ways to figure out why a student is not turning in their assignment or what specific misconception he or she is struggling with.
   

In both of the changes suggested above, I believe I have been on the right track, but need to "up the ante" a bit. As classroom teachers, we all need to expect to get our students there.

What practical ways have you found to raise expectations of yourself and your students? Feel free to leave your comments below.
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(On a related note, I want to welcome a new reader to MeTA musings, Robyn Jackson via Twitter!)

This is the second post in a series based on the book Never Work Harder Than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching by Robyn Jackson.

Jackson's first principle of great teaching is "Start where your students are." As I stated in the initial post of this series,

"I need the most help in improving on principles 1 and 7."

When I first saw the topic of this principle/chapter of the book, I thought to myself, "here comes another rant about building upon students' pre-requisite knowledge." I was anticipating a lecture on using assessments to assess students' misconceptions before instruction or even some tips on how to better embrace the constructivist learning theory. I was familiar with the assertion that...

"When we encounter something new, we have to reconcile it with our previous ideas and experience, maybe changing what we believe, or maybe discarding the new information as irrelevant. In any case, we are active creators of our own knowledge." - Constructivism as a Paradigm for Teaching and Learning

I have my own philosophy of how this idea caters to some, but not all, aspects of math education, but those details are better described in a separate post. Wow, was I wrong about the direction the author was going with this principle. She touched on content and procedural knowledge and the need to

"ask students to explain how that concept might be relevant to their own lives." (p. 37)

but she also extended her thoughts to soft skills such as how to take notes, find information, study for tests and come in for extra help. A big "aha" I had from this chapter was how master teachers help students develop these "non-cognitive skills" as well. I was surprised to read example after example of teachers who did the "little things" to enable their students to experience success. The author makes it seem so simple to do...

"She didn't waste time trying to motivate her students to do well. Instead, she created a classroom culture around trying hard and working together to accomplish goals." (p. 46)

All of this "classroom culture" stuff makes sense to me, but implementing it is admittedly a challenge and something I need to think more about. Because this is an area of growth for me, I have decided to make a short list of measurable goals to address this principle as it relates to non-cognitive skills during the upcoming school year.

1. Model four different test-preparation study strategies during the first nine weeks of school to my math students.
2. Create a schedule so that each student comes in for "extra help" once during the first nine weeks of school. This goal will hopefully encourage students who wouldn't otherwise seek help outside of class to see the value of one-on-one instruction and remediation.
   

What strategies have you used in your classroom to help students develop "non-cognitive" skills?

Robyn Jackson says...

"Mastery teaching is not about the time you put in. It's what you do with your time that counts." - Never Work Harder Than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching, p.2

I will be starting my sixth year of teaching high school math this fall. As I look back, a brief time line comes to mind illustrating some of the challenges of the profession and how I've attempted to tackle them.

• Classroom management (years 1 & 2) was addressed through building a positive rapport with students. Reading The First Days of School and implementing a series of procedures helped immensely, too. I feel like I have a relatively good handle on this area right now.
  
• Diversifying instructional strategies took some time as well. Questions such as "When should students work in collaborative groups?" and "When is direct instruction most appropriate?" were common thoughts in years 3 & 4. This is an area I hope to improve on this year. More in later posts.
• Last year, I took a deep look at my assessment practices. Reflecting upon formative assessment and standards-based reporting were at the core of this blog. DuFour and his colleagues asked several questions that sum it up best
  1. Exactly what is it that we want all students to learn?
  2. How will we know when each student has acquired the essential knowledge and skills?
  

After talking with colleagues and sharing my success stories this past year (with the underlying hope that they, too, would "buy" into these changes), I realized procedures, instructional strategies and changes in assessment were not the true hurdles to be jumped. Each of these aspects of teaching and learning were related to my classroom culture. In an earlier post, I lamented on this very topic.

Emphasizing the importance of what we do and why we do it on a frequent basis is a first step...

As I begin to revise my assessments as well as classroom syllabus and communication blog, I realize that it's not about the time I or my students put in. It's what we do with this time that counts. How will I best use the first few weeks of the academic year to entrench in the minds of the students that in Mr. Townsley's class "it's about learning" above all else?

Robyn Jackson also said...

"...I believe you don't become a master teacher by simply doing what a master teacher does. You become a master teacher by thinking like a master teacher thinks." (p. xiv)

I believe I'm at that point in my teaching career where I want to start using my time to do more than check papers and create new homework assignments. Jackson suggests several principles to build upon this mindset. I plan to blog about each one individually over the next week or two to keep my mind focused on making the most of my preparation time for the rest of the summer. The principles are as follows:

1. Start where your students are.
2. Know where your students are going.
3. Expect to get your students there.
4. Support your students.
5. Use effective feedback
6. Focus on quality, not quantity
7. Never work harder than your students

Based on the self-assessment provided at the beginning of the book, my strengths lie in principles 3, 4, and 6. I need the most help in improving on principles 1 and 7.

I hope you'll considering joining me on a quest towards better "thinking like a master teacher thinks."

Me:

"Why do I give you time during class to work on your math problems?"

Students:

"It is busy work? You want us to do something during class?"
"You're a nice teacher? You want us to have less to do outside of class?"

Wrong! Neither was the the answer I was looking for today. The point I was trying to make with my students as we end the school year is the value of collaboration. While students are in class, they have access to....

• answers posted on the board - that's right, all homework answers are "free" in this classroom
  
• other students who are generally working on the same assignment - an invaluable resource as group work is highly encouraged on a daily basis
• me, the instructor as I wander around the room and peek over their shoulders looking for common misconceptions and answering as many questions as possible in the allotted time.

Can I really blame my students for answering the "why class time?" question? Next year, I plan on focusing more on classroom culture. Emphasizing the importance of what we do and why we do it on a frequent basis is a first step in this direction. Here's a start at a few frequently asked questions and the responses I'd like my students to ideally answer after a semester in my classroom.

1. Why am I assigned homework problems each and every day?
   Homework is practice. I need it to figure out what I "know" and what I "don't know" so that I can ask questions when I don't understand something. Not doing homework is like not trying on a pair of pants in the dressing room before purchasing them - a risk!
   
   
2. Why do you get time during class to work on homework problems?
   During class, I have access to answers, friends and my teacher! At home, these resources are not readily available. It's like looking for food at the grocery store - all around me!
   
   
3. Why do we take quizzes in this class?
   Quizzes are a way to find out "what I know" and "what I don't know" in a more structured format. It's a great opportunity to get detailed feedback and learn from my mistakes.

This list is just the beginning as I continue to think about changing the culture of my math classroom. Looking ahead to next year, what questions (and ideal responses) are important to you as you think about the classroom culture?