So many interesting and powerful ideas were presented in the videos I watched for this week's class. The videos were, A new culture of learning (Youtube talk), by John Seely Brown, Five minds of the future, by Howard Gardner, and Bring on the Learning Revolution by Sir Ken Robinson, and The surprising science of motivation by Dan Pink. I also read an article from Forbes Magazine by August Turak, entitled, Can Creativity be Taught? There is so much to glean from the messages of these authors and presenters. Here are some of the major themes I noticed in the messages: Autonomy and Agency: Dan Pink mentions that successful companies such as Atlassian, have figured out that employees come up with the best ideas when they are given a free day to delve into anything they would like and present their work and findings to the team later. As a teacher, I would be elated to be able to choose my own focus, style, or study for the year and present what I did to my peers at school. I know that teachers are in their little classrooms trying out new things constantly but we're not talking about those things that teachers are most passionate about. Likewise in class, I'm not talking about the things my students are most passionate about. But were I to give them the freedom and tools to do some research I know they would blow me away. This summer when I completed my learner profile assignment and had a long interview with one of my students from that previous school year, I learned that he had learned everything there was to know about geckos, after spending countless hours on youtube and informational websites. Motivation: I am fascinated by the study of motivation. August Turak shared how many studies have demonstrated that participants actually perform worse when offered a monitory reward for completing a task or solving a problem first. Motivation is closely tied to agency. Humans are so much more motivated by their own passions. Even being given the freedom to explore something new can create a desire in itself to invest a lot of energy into the new topic without need of a reward. In my credential program, I learned quite a lot about intrinsic motivation and choice theory only to find that in all elementary schools I interviewed for and subsequently worked in, external rewards were the name of the game. This external reward element has now permeated my own teaching because it is so tangible to students but letting the joy of learning and the sense of accomplishment in and of itself be the primary reward for learning is something I'd like to better foster. Collaboration/Community John Seely Brown cited a Harvard study that showed that the best predictor of student success in college was not their gpa nor their SAT score, rather their ability to join or form study groups. This was music to my ears as I continue with my study of peer teaching. Sometimes I wonder about the students who aren't passionate at all about what we are studying, and the students who are passionate but are being held back by their peer learners. Fostering a Creative Mindset: We have so many standards and pacing guides that we focus on that sometimes we forget that most importantly we must teach a "questing mindset." Information is changing all around us but students who are passionate about topics, pull together with others to learn more from each other. Information and processes are constantly changing around us that it hardly makes sense to focus teaching on algorithms and procedures linked to an old system of productivity. Changing habits of mind seems to bet the best way to move forward.
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I feel I am at the crossroads of three very important journeys in my masters project right now. First, I am supposed to be reading about how to research and write by reading the research books, The Power of Questions by Beverly Falk, and Action Research by Craig Mertler. But I'm also supposed to be researching peer-reviewed literature at the same time. I also want to do some reading up on the authors, Jo Boaler and John Hattie, who I think could be seminal authors for my work. Lastly, I am in the thick of my first cycle of action research in the classroom. I wish I could have had this done earlier but...here we are. My action research cycle is very short, two weeks. However, even in two weeks, I have seen so much growth. I am researching the effects of peer teaching in 2nd grade math and I have to say it is THRILLING to watch the kids open up like they hadn't before, when given a chance to collaborate. I used assessment data to separate kids into tutors and learners and I think this has really been key to having successful peer teaching happen in our Zoom breakout rooms. I hop from room to room watching and listening. On Friday, a student who, before this, never spoke to his peers, ever, was having a full conversation about the math task with his team member. I am also finding some big benefits to Zoom even though I'm tired of working on Zoom just like everyone else. The learner has to share his/her screen and the tutor has to use her/his words to explain what to do or ask questions. The screen sharing role avoids the common problem of one student doing all the brain and written work and one sitting on the sidelines watching. Another plus is the added help in explaining technology tools. Of course I've modeled time and time again how to manipulate and use tools on Seesaw to complete assignments but now that students are having to complete assignments in front of each other, they are getting real time help from their classmates with the tech. One student didn't know how to hold the trackpad button down and drag at the same time to draw a simple line. By doing the assignment with him, his peer could help instruct him regarding the use of technology. That is the fun part. The difficult part is being at this point where I feel that everything is priority number one or I need each building block to get to the next and there is no way to stack them in a sequenced order for me to climb up. I know I'll get through this busy phase soon and hopefully the data shows what I've been seeing so I can have something substantial to write about. Linda Darling-Hammond shines an honest spotlight into the dark corners of our education system. After reading this book, anyone should be able to understand we need some serious educational reform. While it leads you down a dark path, it's necessary to travel the path to see the light at the end. Her last chapters delineate some tangible steps to take towards real school reform and policy change. One part that really resonated with me was her quote that "curriculum material should not prescribe lesson content or pacing." This is a constant struggle for me. I am grateful for curriculum resources that are readily available to me but the flexibility to teach students where they are doesn't feel like present. We rarely give a pre-test in math because what purpose would it have if we have to methodically trudge through lessons anyways? Currently I am struggling with how to teach our very hands-on math curriculum, often aimed at higher achieving students, during virtual learning when many students have gaps in their knowledge. Our district has also purchased DreamBox which is an adaptive math game. I should probably be using that data to look into student needs and teach from there. Merging the two programs seems impossible.
Darling-Hammond also talks about the need to go deeper with our standards instead of farther, allowing students to apply knowledge "in ways that analyze, integrate, and use understandings in transferable ways." In comparison with other countries making gains in education such as Finland, the United States has a much too lengthy list of standards per grade level that leaves little room for individual school sites and teachers to pace themselves according to student need or dive deep into concepts. These countries can take several months to teach important concepts while we rush through topics to prepare students for standardized tests. If we want kids to dive into inquiry-based learning and 21st century skills, we will have to stop focusing on a long list of items to check off before spring testing. The reciprocal intelligent accountability mentioned in her last chapter is something I think would greatly improve our education system primarily because it divides the responsibility of school improvement among the school and educational authorities and builds trust between school leaders, teachers, and educational authorities. Right now, it doesn't feel as though teachers are very involved in the policy and evaluation processes and educational authorities aren't held accountable for making their expected outcomes attainable. A point I've brought up in my previous blogs that I saw reflected in Darling-Hammond's last chapter is the need to stop using "simplistic measurements such as average school test scores" which incentivize schools to push away ELs and students with special needs. Success should be measured in student growth, not proficiency. Our schools are the biggest glaring example of inequity in our society since, as Darling-Hammond so eloquently wrote, they are the "dumping grounds for the failures of the system...[because] they serve the powerless minorities and the constituents without clout." One hundred years ago, John Dewey stated, "What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must we want for all children in the community. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.” We cannot be content with a system in which only some students get a real slice of the pie while others are left scrambling after crumbs. This tugs a little at my own conscience after having only taught at charter schools. I am proud of the success stories of the charter schools I have worked at where parents had to come together with a vision for their school community that was brought to fruition. However, I understand that what is working in my school community should not be a privilege but a standard that other schools can access as well. As long as we view education through the lens of scarcity and competition, we will continue to see inequity for our students. I am glad to know so many educators who want to change this. I've spent at least a couple days now looking for literature that ties to my study on peer teaching. For some reason, the only literature that pops up in my searches that halfway supports my research idea about the effects of peer teaching in 2nd grade math class, are dissertations, and many of these are from studies performed in secondary or higher education schools. I think the dynamic of peer teaching changes quite a bit in the lower grades. I narrowed my search to peer reviewed articles only but am still having difficulty finding something relevant to my study. I decided instead to turn to a book I already had on the shelf, John Hattie's Visible Learning for Teaching, to at least get some concrete ideas on the subject. I typed up some quotes into my literature review spreadsheet that were helpful. What I learned was that the effects of peers on student learning is high but peers are most advantageous to learning when the teacher mitigates the negative effects that they can also have on each other. Hattie states that often teachers think they are facilitating collaboration and partner work by arranging student seating together but this doesn't actually change anything. Hattie shares that most learning takes place when student tutors get feedback and work with the teacher to set mastery goals and evaluate learning in their group (Hattie, 2012). A swirling concern in my head is the upcoming switch from virtual learning to a hybrid model of part-time virtual learning and part time in person learning. This switch, first and foremost will cause me to lose half my students. Apart from this, I will have to think up a safe way for students to engage in peer-tutoring/teaching while in the classroom. Perhaps we will continue to use Zoom and headphones in the classroom....wait, do I have headphones? Will I be getting them? That's another can of worms... I have also been swimming through data collection ideas and finally began to create some tools today. I used the K-2 21st Century Rubric from Salvador Elementary to guide my creation of a Google Form with 10 questions in Spanish, each of which students respond on a Likert scale. I am somewhat worried that Google From's inability to read questions to students will cause a barrier for some students to respond to the questions accurately. Instead of including all 20 of the questions on the original I parsed it down to 10 questions mainly focusing on collaboration and communication since these are the main areas I want to study. As I move forward, I realize that I must be mindful of my data collection tools. I have an open ended interview that I want students to complete via Seesaw with voice recordings as well as a collaboration and communication Google Form mentioned above. This is apart from the Bridges unit assessments and STAR Math data for the quantitative academic data. Am I setting myself up to be drowning in data? I figure, if I don't need one of them, at least I have the data and can decide later not to use it. |
Minna NummelinLife-long learner and dual language 2nd grade teacher. Archives
April 2021
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