For this class period we did some studying of different instructional models. In particular we learned about Challenged Based Learning and flipping the classroom. In Challenge Based Learning or CBL, students encounter real world challenges that require brainstorming and often teamwork. These real world problems are often more engaging for students than a made up problem. In a flipped classroom design, much of the input is done at home as homework, often through videos, so that students can come to class and work on engaging activities with peers and with the guidance of the teacher as the "guide on the side." Last year, we were required to teach the whole class two twenty minute lessons over Zoom in language arts and math and then hold office hours. Our instruction could be live or pre-recorded. I learned to make many pre-recorded mini-lessons and accompanying exercises on Seesaw and use my shorter live sessions for checking in, review, and having kids connect with each other. Kids who needed help with exercises could pop in for help during my other office hours. This year, my entire day plus more is taken up by synchronous instruction...that's 5 hours per day. Most prep time is taken up by a twice per week team collaboration meeting requirement, staff meetings, and IEP/SST meetings. I love the idea of having a flipped classroom, but as it is, it takes me at least 30 minutes, often an hour, to design a nice Seesaw activity for my team with a 5 minute video all just for one math lesson. My question has always been, how and where do teachers find the time to develop both in class and out of class materials? I am bothered whenever I see students' eyes glazing over and I know it's because they need to be more actively engaged. Having them take part in an activity during the entire class would alleviate this problem but can I trust 7 year olds (and all their parents) to watch my instructional videos at home? I think most did last spring, but not all. As for the real world challenges, I think if it were the end of July, I'd be able to come up with some great ideas. Right now, it's hard for me to find real world problems that students would actually get excited about for all the topics we are studying in math. I was scratching my head over real world problems for measuring things with inches and later feet. The whole concept feels real world to me. They can measure their pencil boxes, their shoes, their room length, etc. but these are not real world problems until they fix something that was a need. Especially teaching virtually and kids not being able to work in groups (physically together) make it difficult to think of applying this right now.
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Listening to Zaretta Hammond's presentation on culturally responsive teaching entitled, "Inequity by Design" gave me something to chew on this week. By the title, some might think that culturally responsive teaching is about multicultural awareness but this is its own category. Culturally responsive teaching focuses on improving all students' information processing skills which open the door to related areas such as multicultural awareness and forming a community of learners. I loved Hammond's quote by Lev Vygotsky that "children grow into the intellectual life around them." Educators need to set up their students to access a positive intellectual environment, slowly changing any derogatory narratives they tell themselves. Another important point she made is that teachers don't necessarily need to add more rigor to their curriculum but need to prepare their students with skills that will help them succeed through the rigor. The key ingredient here is TRUST. Setting up a foundation of trust with students enables the teacher to push students to heights not possible before. In thinking about my own students, I think about what hard work it was to create that foundational trust with my students online this year. However, I later asked them to do many cognitively difficult things and they rose to the task. Zaretta Hammond mentions a few cultural learning tools to improve processing skills. These are puzzles and patterns, memory (d = 0.67), talk and wordplay (d = 0.82), and perspectives (d = 0.85). I have experienced great success in working with repeated activities with slight variation to improve student academic performance as well as confidence. Because of repetition, students today are doing things that we would have thought impossible before such as logging on to a daily Zoom call and using Zoom tools, navigating and utilizing a daily practice app homepage, and using online multiple modalities such as drawing, photo, and voice recording tools to show learning. Along with repetition, I have found that the majority of my class has benefited from having the chance to work on assignments with a peer, seeing and hearing their perspective. Some students who were not even logging in to their assignment portal were now working with a partner to complete that process along with the academic exercise. Especially some strugglers learned a multitude of skills that I wouldn't have been able to see if students hadn't worked in pairs. These include saving assignments correctly, changing the size of text boxes, etc. that previously were barriers to them even though I had modeled to the whole class countless times. Students also seemed to just be enjoying the learning process more with a partner. After the first or second day trying out assignment work with a partner, I had one student who had been struggling shout "I love school!" The technology I thought would be a barrier (screen sharing in Zoom breakout rooms) now became a tool that forced partners to use their words to talk each other through assignments instead of having partners copy or worse, do the work for their partners. My hope is to keep experimenting with more culturally responsive practices to create better connections of trust and bring my students to new levels of learning. 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. 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. This week in class I have been asked to reflect on my own journey through 21st century learning and how I am growing in the skill of implementing better 21st century skills in my lessons. Interestingly enough, in our last staff meeting, we were asked to reflect almost on the same thing but especially on our use of technology. It was made clear that rigor and deep learning can certainly occur without technology but if used correctly, technology can enhance these factors. So I had to ask myself, am I using technology in my teaching because I was told to? Am I using technology to do the same thing I would have done without it? Or am I using technology to do something new that wouldn't have been possible before? Yes, yes, and yes. In order to really get assignments from my students last spring during distance learning, I had to learn how to use a new tech tool that our district choose for lower grades, Seesaw. In order to talk with multiple kids at the same time and see their faces, I had to learn to use Zoom. At first, I used these tools to replace what I would normally do in the classroom. As I've learned about the programs and other fun features, I am slowly learning how I can do things that wouldn't have been possible before, and with enough modeling and guidance, my students can too! These are very simple things, but they feel like growth for me personally. For example, I have learned to use the "participants can only chat with the host" feature in Zoom to quickly check for understanding. I've also been experimenting with using Seesaw's blog feature where students can comment on each other's work that is published there. The blog allows for a wider audience of family members and classmates so students really feel like their work is being published. In the classroom, I often only had time for a few writing presentations and then had to move on. Now, everyone gets to present their hard work after every project. As a second language learner myself, one of the best things I could do was write in my second language and read it back. With online video and voice recording tools, students all have the opportunity to read their work allowed and even listen to their own recording. As I dive into my research question surrounding peer teaching in math, I want to continue to master these technological collaboration tools so that students find them to be a help and not a hinderance. In the SAMR hierarchy of Substitution-Augmentation-Modification-Redefinition, perhaps I am between augmentation and modification, just beginning to get a glimpse over the horizon of using technology to make large gains in learning by doing what was previously impossible.
In my latest reading of Darling-Hammond's book, The Flat World of Education, I learned of research that showed just how valuable quality teacher training is. I have to say that, while I feel like I am in a very demanding teaching situation, I am also so thankful for the training I have received. As I've noted in a previous blog, it is absurd that teachers faced with the biggest challenges in classrooms with the most need, often get the least support and training. I am glad I got precisely what I was looking for when I decided to come to this district. As a last note, I know that 21st century learning is not just about technology integration and my hope is that my skills will develop evenly in technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge (TPACK). I know I have an unending road of 21st century learning ahead of me but baby steps will continue to lead me in the right direction. Why are we educating kids in batches? That was a question asked by Sir Ken Robinson in his talk on Changing Education Paradigms. We are still hung up on some outdated ways of doing education and he is trying to shake us up. Of course we would never agree to this ideology today but our education system is built on and for those who excel in traditional academia and hasn't grown to be flexible and nurturing for many others. One of my favorite parts of his seminar was when he asked why we still hold to this "assumption that the most important thing kids have in common is how old they are?" It is wonderful to have kids of similar ages creating friendships and learning together but perhaps that is not the best way to meet learners' needs. When I attended middle school in a one room schoolhouse, kids of all ages 1st - 8th grade had to learn to play kick ball and capture the flag together. There wouldn't have been enough players for a team if certain kids were excluded due to age. There were many benefits to learning to help and play with kids of different ages. In our current system, kids feel less than if they don't move with their age group along the path of "grade-level" concepts. But if this expectation could be done away with, and we could normalize the idea that all of us develop understandings in different areas at different times, perhaps we could even build a much healthier student and parent body that was less prone to comparison. Another fascinating point brought up in his speech was the study on "divergent thinking," or creativity in problem solving. Robinson stated that the highest level of divergent thinking found in students occurred in Kindergarten and decreased in these students as they advanced through school. That was a sad statistic for me and one I would like to learn how to reverse at least in my own practice. Strangely, while divergent thinking decreases as students move through the education system, these same students have access to information through technology unlike any generation before them. So much information is constantly available to both students and teachers. We can't even conceive of what that information availability will look like and how we will access it in the future. We are teaching a world of new citizens for a world we cannot yet imagine. But as Adora Svitak and Dalton Sherman share, us adults have to be ready and willing to prepare kids to lead us into the future AND to let kids lead us into the future by empowering them. For some reason I was under the impression that videos demonstrating the use of technology in the classroom, even in the young learner classroom, would be prevalent on the internet. While I'm sure they are, I had a hard time finding them. Finally I ran into a video called "Differentiating Instruction Through Interactive Games (Tech2Learn Series)." When I saw this video, it reminded me of just the kind of thing I had always wanted to do with technology. I have always wanted to use technology to keep kids learning the basics in an engaging way, while I take small groups deeper into their own need to knows. I loved watching how the students in the classroom used various strategies to solve math problems. Another beacon of hope was that these were younger children who were benefiting from adaptive math game technology and an adaptive math program that my district has purchased for us! I've had so many conversations with my brother, who is fairly into gaming and is confident that if the classroom contained more game-like elements, leveling up, points, attainable challenges, etc., then students would be so much more motivated to participate. The classroom in this video seems to portray just that. From what I've noticed over the years, intervention, when available, is primarily put towards reading. I can agree that reading is of the utmost importance in life. However, this means, that whatever intervention resources there were, have now been used up, and math is left trying to catch up. I've wondered how students could get the differentiation they need in order to succeed and feel confident in math. I think technology would make a huge difference in this way. For a couple of other awesome videos that are also linked in my Innovative Learning Portfolio, take a look at:
I had 4 hour drive I had to fit in at some non-crucial time during the first full week of distance learning classes this week. I decided to multitask by listening to my masters course reading assignment via audiobook while driving. Twenty minutes into the book and I found myself falling rapidly into the black abyss of the current dire situation we are facing as a nation. Perhaps this wasn't the best book to listen to instead of read, because every few minutes I found myself replaying the last 30 seconds of narration. "Did I just hear that statistic right?" "Is it really that bad?" "Are we really ranked that low on the list?" Of course, however, I knew the answers to these questions already was yes. I've heard many of these statistics before.
Why has the United States not undergone the educational revolutions that other countries such as Finland and Singapore have? One statement by Darling-Hammond really resonated with me about our apathetic stance on equity. We are too comfortable with inequality and the idea few getting more and many getting less. The idea that we have digressed when it comes to segregation in American schools is astounding. Another good point brought up by the author is that equal funding does not mean equal access to opportunity. Will schools with large numbers of special education needs and English language learners have differing and possibly more expenses to meet their students' needs? Yes. I always get a little uncomfortable when someone starts to talk about ineffective teachers...This was the topic of a portion of the first three chapters. Most everyone who gets into the teaching profession knows that it won't be an effortless path leading them to the top of a mountain of disposable income. They are usually people who like learning and want to help others. I have to say that there are varying degrees of teacher effectiveness and we know that is a key element of student learning. It is sad that there are so few teachers at times that districts recruit teachers straight from credential programs before they've even experienced student teaching. As a side note, the "teacher shortage" phrase is a myth. There are plenty of people who would like to become teachers if they knew they would be given the freedom and respect as the teacher-action researchers that they would become. A competitive professional salary would also make a big difference in teacher candidates. My first two years teaching were in a small (3 teachers) school in a very low income community. With the often difficult community/cultural aspect of the work and the complete lack of salary schedule, the school had teachers coming in and out year after year. As a result, kids didn't feel very impressed with their school either. This was an independent charter school which makes budgeting different but even with regular district public schools, it seems obvious that teachers who have a more difficult work scenario where student needs are higher, should be paid more. Instead, they have the low paying jobs and students in those schools can never get their foot in the door of successful education and effective teaching when they continually have to build relationships with new teachers. What needs to change? We live in the land of competition. This can be good and motivating at times, but kids, teachers, and parents should not have to engage in a competitive battle to gain their right to an effective and successful education for all. We have to be uncomfortable with inequity. We also have to do better in training such a vital workforce as the teacher workforce. How is it that my last educational technology class before the pandemic of 2020 was a college course (it was great for its time) in which I made a webquest? Aside from training in technology, teachers and teacher candidates need time and mentors, not more assignments. I once read that new teachers in Singapore are given many hours less a week of classroom teaching and more hours of preparation and reflection with mentor teachers. Going from a teacher credential program to your first two years teaching in which you complete almost the same types of assignments over again but now with a full time teaching job, is not what I would call supportive of the already stressful situation a first year teacher faces. This is not to say that assignments and courses in credential programs can't be improved either. It's time to rethink what we've been doing and how we've been taught. |
Minna NummelinLife-long learner and dual language 2nd grade teacher. Archives
April 2021
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