Open Mindedness

This week, I learned a valuable lesson in open-mindedness. Since the beginning of our classes at Stevenson, we have kept Carol Dweck's growth mindset in mind as we write our assignments. This week, I was definitely caught up in my other work, and was frustrated with an assignment. We are learning about new and innovative ways to implement technology into our classrooms and I had convinced myself that I already have all of the useful technology that I need at my disposal. I was frustrated with the provided list that was given to us, and I had already written about the other media aids that either I use or assign the students to use.
As I was sitting at my computer Wednesday night, I realized that I had never heard of SWAY, a Microsoft Office presenting tool. Watching the tutorial video, I went into it wondering how it was any different than PowerPoint. After the video I had resigned that I was going to write about it. However, this all changed the next day.
During homeroom, I decided to show an example of SWAY (the red panda example) to my advisory. I was surprised to find that the students were very interested in it. They immediately began searching for other examples and a couple of students downloaded the program, which is provided through the school's Office Suite for the students. The students unanimously agreed that they liked SWAY better than PowerPoint. They especially enjoyed how easy it was to transition between slides and that one could organize the navigation and text box direction in any way they pleased. Because of my homeroom, I will be organizing a new lesson plan for reports on Nutrient Cycles using SWAY in November.
Reflecting on this week's assignment, I learned the hard way that I need to be much more open about allowing new materials and lessons into the way I teach. It is super easy for me to get into a groove, especially since I have been teaching the same material for four years now. However, because I still a relatively new teacher, and one who is now taking my first education classes in this program, I need to be mindful that there are resources that may be new and different that can seriously benefit the way my class and lessons are conducted. It also makes me excited to learn about more resources for my classroom in as this class progresses.

Grades

This week, I was part of a two day professional development conference over grades at my school. It was eye opening. One of the reasons that the conference took place was over accusations from outside sources that there had been grade inflation at some of the local private schools. This sparked a necessary (in my opinion) conversation with our faculty regarding the overarching question: What are grades at this school? For state standards, this may be fairly straight forward. However, because this school does not need to follow any specific guidelines for curriculum, this is a much trickier question. In my group, we looked at the overall system first and figured out quickly that grades are there to represent mastery. We also have an effort grade system per semester to recognize the students that may not do well on summative assessments but have put efforts into pursing the best of their abilities. This is interesting because the effort grades do not show up on official transcripts.
One of the more frustrating aspects of the grading aspect in our school are our grade books. While we have a grade book system integrated into our LMS, there is no option for the students to track their grades. It is a closed grade book. Because of this, as well as a lack of requirement for a specific grade book, some teachers use other programs such as Haiku or Engrade online to allow students to track their own grades. There are arguments on either side of the open/closed grade book issue. For closed grade books, some teachers would like students to have a conversation with them if they would like to know their own grade. This is a great strategy for some students, as it increases the ability of the student's communication with a teacher. On the other hand, there are some student that are not doing well in a class and will not inquire about grades, allowing them to "slip through the cracks". For open grade books, it allows the student to keep track of their own work in terms of grades, tardiness on assignments and assessment averages. It also allows for parents to see their child's grades. This can be a blessing or a curse. Some parents have been know to inquire about every assignment that is below what they consider an acceptable grade for their child (sometimes this is as high as an A-). This obviously creates much more work for teachers, especially since the student should be the one asking about how to improve their own grades.
As one can imagine, this is a complex issue, and one among many. However, I am excited that this is a conversation that we as a faculty are having. I am actually looking forward to our next professional development opportunity at school!

Higher Level Thinking

This week, I had some cool breakthroughs in the classroom. This week we read about questions that promote higher level thinking. What was refreshing was that most of my students already ask those types of questions. Upon reading about higher level thinking, you would expect that the higher achieving students to ask the critical thinking questions. However, this is mostly not the case. I have found that the majority of the deeper questions come from average or weaker students. Most of my higher level students simply would like to know an answer so that they can memorize it, write it down on a test, and move on. My other students often would like to know how something works or how it relates to their own lives. I asked some students about this last year, and they told me that it is easier from them to create a relatable story about a concept in order to remember it. I will also say that this is a generalization, and there are definitely exceptions to this in my classroom.

To this end, I try to use as many local examples for things as I possibly can. It is important to have photos or to be able to take students outside so that they are able to actually experience topics or concepts themselves. The other week, students learned about ecological footprints. With this, the students learned that each person in the world on average should have 2.2 hectares of arable land to live off of (resource wise). When a student inevitably asks what a hectare is, I take them all outside and have 4 students mark out a 100 by 100 meter hectare plot. Students see how large just one is, and get excited about the prospect of having two and a quarter of those plots. However, when I tell them that they must live off of that land for any resources they need, they realize how small that land is. I then have them reference a calculator they have already taken (the class average is 10-14 hectares per person of resources used) and ask them to imagine how much resources each of them actually uses. The students draw many important conclusions from just staking out how large a single hectare is.

Tech and techless

I am writing this blog post from my tent on the Appalachian Trail. Through a great amount of effort, I convinced my school to allow me to lead weekend backpacking trips over the next two months. Despite the day being rainy, the 4 boys that came along have had smiles on their faces all day. The trip has been difficult. Not physically for me, but mentally. I have had to switch from the leader who does everything to the instructor who sits back and gives advice. Backpacking is something that I have been doing since I was 12, and for the last 10 years, something that I have been comfortable doing on my own. Now I am in the role of teaching these high school juniors and seniors the same skills I learned at there age. The problem is, I have them on autopilot and when I have to instruct, it slows everything down immensely. Navigating takes longer, dinner takes forever and cleanup happens after sundown (which is terrible when you have to do it by headlamp.) However, I am here to teach these boys why it is fun, and that it isn't such a technical, challenging experience that some people make it out to be. I need to work on sitting back and putting my confidence in these guys. After all, we've been prepping for this stuff after school for the last two weeks. This trip has been a huge wakeup call to me and my teaching skills.
On a technological note, I had a very successful class using laptops in a productive manner. Most importantly, I got the students to have their laptops open for the whole period and kept them so busy that they didn't have time to be distracted. The assignment was to work in groups of four and build one to three slides on a specific type of pollution. The students sit in groups of four, so I asked each group to designate a scribe. Most groups immediately pointed at the highest achieving student at their table, thinking the rest of them would not have to do any work. I had expected this, so once I had the list of scribes on the board, I then announced that the scribe was in charge of designing and arranging facts , but was not allowed to do research. I emailed a link to each of the scribes for a Google slides presentation and assigned each group a type of pollution. Their handouts had criteria for what the slides should contain and a warning that messing with other slides or posting inappropriate things in the slideshow would result in an automatic 40% reduction. This is because in the past the students have used Google docs for study guides to post strange pictures of their peers in my class.
The lesson went perfectly and the students were excited to share what they had found on their pollutions. They were also excited that they had just built a great study guide. I'm glad that I am getting useful ideas and strategies from this class.

Blog for week 5- Observation

This week was my first observation and I was extremely nervous. I have been observed by my coworkers before, but this was the first time since I had applied for my job that I was observed by someone that I was not very familiar with. The last time I had been that nervous in front of a class was the day that I taught a lesson in front of the entire science department for my interview. However, once I had started on the the actual lesson, I was back into the swing of things. The lesson was one of my favorites from the introductory chapter. The students are learned a day before about modeling systems. To get them on their feet I had the students walk around school to find something they could model as a system. After an extensive refresher on the components of a system, the students wandered around school for 10 minutes and came back with examples drawn on a note card. Each group was required to have a different answer, and they did wonderfully. The examples were diverse and accurate, and overall the class did a great job.
At the end of the lesson, I was actually happy to have constructive criticism. Because of some shifting around of jobs in the science department, it has been an entire year since I had had someone observe my classes, and Ann did a great job in finding areas that I could improve in.
One thing that I would like to do more of is scheduling out the class on the board for the students. Ann suggested that I write very detailed layouts of the class before the students walk in so that they know exactly what to do, but also so both the students and I stay on track for the entirety of the period. The observation was also gratifying in that Ann pointed out a number of things that I had learned from the program that I am implementing in my lessons. I had not realized that I was doing that! Now, I am actually looking forward to my next observation and I cannot wait to see what the final outcomes of my studies will be.