Summer Reading -- Teacher's Edition

I've got two book recommendations for you, but you might think I'm crazy -- they're both about teaching. Perhaps you think that reading a book about teaching is the last thing that will relax you over summer break. But these aren't your everyday books about teaching.

(Disclaimer: Both of these books have been around for awhile. I read them years ago. But that doesn't make them any less good, does it?)

And now, without further ado, the titles. Educating Esme by Esme Raji Codell and Teacher Man by Frank McCourt (yes, the Angela's Ashes Frank McCourt). Yup. These aren't books espousing a bunch of educational theories or pedagogy (though, if you know me, you know I love those books, too!). They are, rather, memoirs (Codell's is actually written in the form of a diary) and both chronicle the beginning of their respective teaching careers, Esme's as a fifth grade teacher in Chicago and Teacher Man's as a high school teacher at a vocational school in New York, NY.

I can't really say, based on these books, that Codell and McCourt are good teachers (or bad teachers, for that matter). But I can say that they are honest teachers. There are lots of ups and downs portrayed in these pages. Many I can relate to, and I'm sure you can, too. Many I can't. I've never taught in the types of schools Codell and McCourt taught in. So, I guess what I like about each is that I gain an appreciation for the struggles of teaching in urban/inner city schools; I like the authors' candor; I like when the books make me laugh or nod along when I can relate; I even kind of like when they make me cringe if I disagree; I like how they remind me of what it felt like to be a beginning teacher.

Happy reading this summer! Feel free to share any titles you recommend (they can be dorky books about teaching, or, if you're cooler than me, not!).

Games in the Classroom: Not ALL Fun & Games

Do your students play games in your classroom as part of the content and skills they are learning? Great! Games can be an excellent venue for formative assessment because they provide awesome opportunities for immediate feedback and support.

Check out this post from Edutopia for some specific examples. This is a wonderful time of year to think about introducing games to your classroom to keep up that student engagement and motivation as the days get sunnier and warmer.

Concerned about just how you can use games as formative assessment, using the informal data you gather by observing your students to inform future instruction? Give your district's instructional coach a holler -- she'd be glad to collaborate with you on this! 

It's Not Over 'Til It's Over

Yup. It's mid-May. State-testing is just about wrapped up. Educator evaluations are being finalized. June, and, with it, the end of the school year, is literally right around the corner.

It can be hard to stay motivated and engaged at this time of the year, for students and teachers both. But we must, mustn't we? After all, there are still weeks and weeks left of learning (don't shoot me; I'm just the messenger, y'all!).

If you're having difficulty holding onto a feeling of excitement for the classroom right about now, maybe it's time to throw caution to the wind and try something new. It might be just the thing to give you that burst of energy and enthusiasm to carry you forward until that last bell rings.

The great thing about trying something new now is that you know your students SO well at this point. It can be tricky to "experiment" earlier in the year, especially when you're just getting a handle on who's who in your classroom. But if you try something out now, with students you know well, you may feel comfortable enough with it in the fall to begin the year with it!

So, if you're interested, think about the following possibilities:

• Maybe you've never felt quite comfortable with -- or never even tried -- a workshop format with your students. Why not try it out now?
• Perhaps you know you should use formative assessments more often to inform your instruction, but the day-to-day life of a teacher has slowed you down and distracted you from this. Now could be a great time to play around with it a little more.
• Maybe you find yourself using the same ol' activators and summarizers you always use -- or maybe you find yourself having strayed away from these valuable tools. Now could be the time to learn about some new strategies to use at the beginning and/or the ending of a lesson.
• You've always thought about trying to tier a lesson, but you're just not sure how. Now's a great time to learn more about this, especially with your knowledge of your students!

The possibilities are endless! If you'd like some guidance and collaboration, you can always contact your district's friendly instructional coach. *wink, wink.*

Dealing with Defiance

It's not overly fun to think about, but sometimes we have students who can be defiant in the classroom.

My number one piece of advice in this kind of situation is to not take it personally. Usually, there are a myriad of factors leading to a student's defiant behavior, most of which probably have little or nothing to do with you as the teacher. That said, sometimes the best starting place is to try and explore what is causing the defiant behavior. Who can you talk to about this that may have some insight? The student's guidance counselor? The school psychologist? The parents? Other teachers who have had success with the student? Often, knowing what's causing the behavior can be a good way to begin to know how to address it.

In the meantime, it's best to think of how you will approach classroom management with this particular type of student. Here are some pointers from my own experience and research:

Address the behavior as privately as possible.
This is crucial, especially with adolescents. If you reprimand a defiant student in front of the entire class (even if the reprimand is rather "gentle" from your perspective), you have placed that student in a situation where he or she feels the need to "save face" in front of his or her peers. This need to "save face" may very well cause the student to engage in defiant behavior with you -- often, an adolescent with defiant tendencies sees no other way out of this kind of situation other than to escalate it.
However, if you pull the student aside after class to have a private one-on-one conversation with him or her, you'll often find the dialogue to be much more effective in helping to change student behavior. He or she will typically not be defiant in this kind of situation, because there will be no need to "save face" with no peers around to witness your dialogue.

Use positive, versus negative, statements.
Instead of telling potentially defiant students (or any students, for that matter) what not to do (i.e., "Stop talking"), try telling them what they should do instead (i.e., "Please listen" or "Focus"). In this way, you'll be giving the students expectations of how they should be behaving, which some may truly not be aware of. And you'll lessen the likelihood that they will react defiantly.

Use "I" statements.
Try stating things in terms of what your needs are as the teacher, instead of imposing what you see as the needs of the students on them. For example, instead of saying "You all need to stop talking so you can learn better" (something your students may, unfortunately, try to disagree with), try saying, "I find it difficult to keep everyone's attention when there are other conversations going on. That's why I need you to be quiet at this point and focus your attention here."






If you're interested in reading more about how best to interact with defiant students, check out this link, which goes into a nice amount of detail on causes of defiant behavior and approaches to dealing with it in the classroom. Or work with your district's instructional coach (wink, wink) to see how you may be able to turn things around in your classroom.

It's That Time of Year!

Happy almost May, readers! It's graduation season, and tomorrow I get to be part of the festivities at Northeastern University.  I have the honor of being the guest speaker at the pinning ceremony for NEU's undergraduate education majors.

Since I've been hacking away at my speech this week (it has to be ten minutes long!!!), I thought I'd do myself a favor and double dip here on my blog. So, if you'd like to read some sappy inspiration, I share with you my speech (sorry -- it's kind of long -- did I mention it has to be ten minutes?!!?):

"Good morning. I’d like to thank Dean Caron for the opportunity to speak at today’s ceremony. It is a true honor.

Congratulations to all of you. Certainly, congratulations on graduating and on earning your degrees. The completion of an academic milestone such as this deserves a lot of praise. But I’d also like to congratulate you on your choice to pursue the field of education. In my fully biased opinion, it is the best field out there. Working in education will provide you with challenges large and small; if you let them, these challenges will motivate you, inspire you, and fuel your passion for making a difference in the lives of your students and, perhaps, for making a difference in the field of education at large.

When I first began my educational career in September of 2000, I had a lot of expectations. And I was right about a few things – teaching was going to be awesome, and it was. I would love my students, and I did. But there were boatloads of things I never saw coming, situations that my incessant watching and re-watching of Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society and Michelle Pfieffer in Dangerous Minds couldn’t prepare me for. So, today, I’d like to share with you a few things to expect as you enter this wonderful profession.

First, what to expect from the students.

Sometimes, your students will be smarter than you. I’ve taught high school students who have had insights on literature that I would have killed to have come up with. And I’ve worked with first graders who have devised routines and structures for how the classroom should best operate that were way more effective than the teacher’s original plan had been. Don’t let this throw you. Invite your students’ voices in. Expect to learn as much from your students as you hope they will learn from you.

Some of your students will hate school. Don’t take this personally. Some of them will be struggling against a structure of schooling that doesn’t work with their learning style, or with where they are developmentally. Invite these students to become learners. Discover what kind of learning environment will work best for them – do they need the freedom to be able to move around a bit?; Find out what they get excited about – is there a way to work basketball into an upcoming math lesson? Expect your students to learn in different ways from one another and to be interested in different things – learn from these differences and allow them to make you a stronger teacher, someone who can teach all children, not just those who thrive within a traditional classroom setting.

Some of your students will have accomplished amazing feats just by making it to school in the morning. Some are dealing with unimaginable home lives, some are working part-time or even almost full-time hours to help support their family, some are struggling through substance abuse and addictions. Expect to be needed desperately by these students – expect them to need compassion, expect them to need a hug, or the occasional granola bar for breakfast. Most of all, expect them to need you to believe in them, to need you to give them important work to do and important things to strive for.

And here’s something I can promise you to expect from ALL of your students. They all want to succeed. It doesn’t matter if they act like it or not. It doesn’t matter if they’re acting up in class for a multitude of reasons, reasons that can sometimes be seen, but are often unseen. No child comes to school hoping to fail that day. Help them to succeed.

There are a few things you should expect from adults, too.

Expect lots of advice and expert opinions (even from those who have never stepped foot in a classroom as an educator). You may or may not have noticed that I’m five months pregnant. And as a woman who is in the middle of her first pregnancy, I now consider myself a bit of an expert on getting a lot of advice thrown my way, often unsolicited. And most of that advice seems to be designed to scare the living daylights out of me.

It’s not all that different from the amount of unsolicited advice and opinions that come your way as an educator.

I’m not always sure why so many people prefer to focus on the negative. But, oh, they are out there. You’ll find them in the staff room among your fellow educators, and you’ll find them on social media among your Facebook friends. There seems to be a lot of negativity floating around out there – there are some people and some sources that will want to fill your mind with all the perceived barriers to being a good teacher. They’ll tell you you can’t teach effectively these days because of the Common Core, or because of standardized testing, or because of a certain school’s discipline policies.

And I won’t sugar coat it – these things can get in your way at times. They can be frustrating. But they do not have to limit your effectiveness as a teacher. I work with teachers every day who teach engaging lessons, who find ways to motivate and challenge all students. They find ways to do this because they have kept their eyes on the prize. The students themselves.

You’re in education to shape young minds. You don’t have to let anything stand in your way of this. You can start, in big and small ways, to break down some of the barriers that traditional structures of education have put in place. You can encourage girls to pursue studies of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. You can inspire them to be leaders. And the young boys? I’ll be the mother of a young boy in about four or four-and-a-half months. You can encourage him to love learning. You can provide structures in his elementary school classroom that are developmentally appropriate for a seven or eight year old boy. You can make it possible that learning doesn’t have to be about sitting still and quietly listening for 45 minutes.

I’m here to tell you that this is possible. Maybe you’ll work in a non-traditional school that’s finding exciting and new ways for classrooms and for learning to function. Maybe you’ll work in a public school that is committed to the Common Core and to standardized testing. I’m here to tell you that, in either setting, you can be an effective educator.

How? First, take a lesson from my pregnancy and don’t listen to the naysayers. They’re going to be out there. Avoid them. Surround yourself with strong mentors. And I’m not talking about just your first year or so of teaching, here. Surround yourself with strong mentors throughout your career. I’m 14 years in, and I still meet up regularly with positive, strong educational influences.

And don’t stop there. Insist on being a lifelong learner. Continue your education, formally or informally. Read, read, read. Read stuff by people who are on the same page as you. And read stuff by people who stand for things you think you may disagree with. Be open to having your mind changed. Go to workshops. Take classes. You can be the positive voice the field of education needs now. More importantly, you can be the positive voice our students need now.

Thank you, and, again, congratulations."

Thanks to all the educators in my current and past school districts for teaching me about a lot of what I included in this speech -- that there are effective, wonderful educators in this world doing great things and changing students' lives!!

Take Some Time to Relax

Let the countdown begin! There are mere hours left between us and April vacation.

I suspect that most teachers will use at least some portion of their vacation time getting some grading or lesson planning done. But my wish is that you all take some well-earned time to relax and reset. After all, once April vacation is over, we'll be in the "home stretch" -- filled with beautiful days, spring flowers (and showers, most likely), and lots more learning to do!

Here's a one-minute video to start your vacation off with a chuckle -- how do students think we teachers relax?

Enjoy!

Flipping the Flipped Classroom

Lots of teachers are interested in the flipped classroom model, but are concerned about a few issues:

• What happens if/when some of my students don't watch the online tutorial or lecture in preparation for class the next day?
• What about my students who may not have access to the Internet at home?

While there are several ways to address these valid concerns, in this post I'll share one education blogger's solution -- to actually flip the idea of the flipped classroom so that the flipping still occurs within the walls of the classroom.

Since the word "flip" and its variations made too many appearances in that last sentence and I've now probably left you with more questions than answers, please take a look at this Edutopia blog post by Jennifer Gonzalez. While she admits there are pros and cons to her method as well as to the traditional flipped classroom method, she provides good food-for-thought in examining how to solve the above concerns.

Interested in flipping your classroom, either the traditional way or via Gonzalez's approach? Give me a holler -- I'd love to help you out!