Hapara

On Thursday I attended a training session about Hapara. Hapara is essential for any school that is heavily using Google, especially chromebooks. It is an app that can be added to your Google Chrome web browser. In addition, there is also a Hapara extension that is added to Chrome to allow it to work better with the app. Hapara runs in the background on every student's chrome account (they don't even know its there). Then, Hapara's teacher dashboard allows any teacher to have access to any student's Google Drive. When assignments are completed as a Google Doc, but not shared with the teacher, the teacher doesn't have to email the student and wait for them to share it. They can just go into their Drive and grab the assignment, or see if its complete. The teacher can also make comments in the assignment that can serve as valuable feedback for the student.

Hapara also gives teachers the ability to view whatever the students are viewing. If the students are using their Chromebook to check Facebook, the teacher can send them an anonymous message that pops up on their screen, such as "Get back to work!" Furthermore, the teacher can go ahead and close the Facebook tab in the student's browser and open a new tab for the website they're supposed to be using.

There are a few catches, though. If the students learn about the extension and app, they could disable it or remove it. One teacher said she had been using it for several years, and the students never figured that out. The students also have to be signed into their school Google account for it to work. It can't monitor their personal Google account.

The lesson: technology brings new challenges, but it also brings new opportunities. Never before could students access the class' resources or their own assignments from anywhere. There is no more "I left my homework at home." The dog can't eat the Cloud. Hapara helps us use all the benefits of technology in the classroom while minimizing the downsides.

Meet the Parents

On Wednesday night, York had an open house, where all the parents come in the evening to follow in their son or daughter's footsteps. They are given their kid's schedule and spend 6 minutes in each of their kid's classes. We put a PowerPoint together for each of our two preps - chem and honors chem - to show to the parents. The PowerPoint was made easy with the Google Chrome "Explain and Send" extension. It allows you to take a screenshot of your screen, crop it, and mark it up with circles, arrows and text to highlight the important parts of a webpage.

Luckily, I didn't have to do a polygraph test.

Megan used the entire 6 minutes to talk about her background (and I introduced myself as well), what we do in class each day, how the students are graded, and where online resources are. There is a lot to cover and only a few minutes to do it, so you have to think about what is important for the parents to hear. I would guess that the two things they care about most are 1) how can they follow up with their kid and help them stay on top of assignments and 2) where can they find the resources if their son or daughter misses class or loses a worksheet. These were the two things we focused on.

Let's Stop and Think a Minute

In a nutshell, good teachers think about what they are doing; bad teachers do something because they either did it last year or because everyone else is doing it. I'm surrounded with good teachers.

The Chem teachers at York began a new routine this year: daily reflections on that day's objective (see the link below). Each lesson has at least one objective - the key concept or skill for the lesson. At the end of the day, we wanted students to write down a reflection about how well they understand that concept or can do that skill. The idea was that this will act as a journal of sorts and give the students a snapshot of their progress as they look back on the lessons come test time. However, its also part of their progress grade, which presents us with a dilemma. Is it fair and to give the students a grade on their opinion of their own understanding? This would mean the overconfident student gets a higher grade just because he thinks he knows it all.

We needed to stop and get back to our original goal: do we want this to serve the students as a tool to help them study and learn the material (in which case it shouldn't be graded), or do we want this to be an assessment for us to gauge the students learning prior to the test (in which case it should be graded)?

I think we found some middle ground. We discussed replacing daily reflections with a end-of-the-section reflection in which we can gauge the students' understanding of the overall section and how all the daily lessons and objectives fit together. We still need to work out the kinks, which we'll discuss more tomorrow.

Sixth Sense

Today I write about a really good strategy for classroom management, which means it didn't come from me. To give a little context, one student's brand new shoes got stolen last Friday. Based on when the shoes were missing and last seen, and what students were coming in and out of the room at the time, one of the teachers had it narrowed down to one or two kids. One student in particular had been testing the waters for a while, seeing how much he could get away with. He was confronted, a police report was filed, and he had coughed up a pair of shoes by Monday.

Now if he was in my class, I don't know how I would have handled it from there. The experienced teachers have a sixth sense about this stuff. The thief's teacher had been noticing from day 1 that this student is an attention seeker in a rather rude and disruptive way. She was explaining her strategy from here on out: ignore all his attempts at negative attention and emphasize positive feedback for the rest of the class. Within a day, she is already seeing that his demeanor is beginning to shift. He wants to be a part of the class, like everyone else that is getting attention and praise from the teacher. He is learning how to do that in a positive way.

Flipping Things Around

This post is a little late - writing on Monday about last Friday. I haven't written much about our one section of Honors Chemistry, so I thought now would be a good time. Honors Chem at York is what we call "flipped." Instead of spending class time teaching the lesson and then sending students home to struggle through the homework on their own, we reverse the order of things. For homework, the students watch and take notes on a "Screencast," which is a recording of a teacher explaining the material. This opens class time up for students to do the actual work associated with the lesson - when teachers are there to correct misconceptions, answer questions, and check for understanding. It works with some subjects (such as math) more than others (such as English). This format creates a large amount of front end work on the teacher's part to create and record each screencast, but once its done, it can be used for several sections of the same class for several years and puts most of the responsibility to learn on the students.

This brings me to my next thought. Because we do a lot of flipped instruction for the Honors students - students that are more motivated and responsible than your average high schooler - it easily leads into thinking that these kids teach themselves. To some extent, this is true. They do take more ownership of their learning. However, I need to be careful to not allow myself to fall into the temptation of believing that they don't need instruction, correction, or guidance. A student that teaches herself should be pushed further, not just allowed to teach herself. Similarly, what does this mean for my other students? I also can't allow myself to think of them as unable to take responsibility for their learning.

We love to categorize people. Two categories are Honors classes and general classes, which is appropriate and helps us meet their needs, but the categories must always be balanced out by the individuals.

Follow the Leader

Megan and I had some good debrief time for a few minutes at the end of the day today. We were commenting on the observation that each class seems to have a natural leader, regardless of whether or not that leader is a positive influence. Each class has one student that is willing to speak up and share his opinion (and it is a guy in every case). In the Honors class, the leader starts off discussions, asks questions no one else is willing to ask, or helps to keep his group on task. In one of the general Chem classes, the leader cracks jokes, ridicules other peoples answers, or contributes to distractions. However, we started off by calling him out at the beginning of the year for not contributing to a positive environment. He's repeated the phrase now himself several times, calling other people out for negative comments. To him, it's a joke and a way to gain attention or respect in the classroom, but he is helping us keep that consistent theme going in the classroom, which will also serve a dual purpose of placing more weight on times when we remind him to be positive, since he's the one reminding everyone else.

Each class has its own dynamic - this is just one example. Megan and I talked briefly about how we can let these leaders lead the class, as long as we are leading them. We can use their leadership to our advantage. As long as I'm always handling the classroom with confidence, I can work to manage the classroom culture through identifying and guiding the natural leader among the students. Each class will have its own culture. I've seen that already. Third and 4th periods are calm and subdued in comparison to 5th and 7th, which are far more eager to talk and joke with me and each other. I have to find the balance of letting the kids form their natural culture and me creating a culture that is positive and conducive to learning. 

Watch and Learn

Today I taught an entire class period...well, almost. Megan started the period off with some announcements and other items, but then I took over for the rest of the period, which was fun, because we plated a penny in zinc and then heated it to turn it into brass, making it look like gold. We used this demo to work on formulating and testing a hypothesis. Some students had a hard time explaining how the copper penny all of a sudden looked gold.

 I strategically opted to teach our last section. I think it went pretty well, but only because I watched Megan teach the same class three times earlier in the day. Watching her makes a huge difference in giving me an idea of how much time to give to each aspect. Megan and I talked about how I could work on my flow throughout the class period - flowing from one topic or task to the next - which will naturally get better with time. I have noticed myself getting more comfortable being in front of the class and I think that helps with having smooth transitions. When I'm nervous, I find myself always rushing to the next thing I want to cover, rather than taking a breath and letting the students have a second to soak up the information.

Options for Homework

Its day 3 of full class. I'm ready to get into the material. We've spent a lot of time covering things like the syllabus, lab safety, and how to access materials on Google Drive, as well as trying to learn as many of the 138 names as I can. Even though it is sometimes painful to spend time going over such basics, I know that without the time spent on it, the students will soon feel quite lost. By the end of today I have realized one thing that the students are still confused on, despite going over it several times: Homework.

This year, we are giving the students two options to do their homework: they can either read the book and take notes on their reading, or they can finish their daily activity sheet and add a reflection to it. Almost every day, the students use an activity to learn the material. Usually, we don't get through all the questions on the sheet in class, so they are able to finish it and write a short reflection to fulfill their homework requirement. The key is that they learn the material. There is no point in doing extra problems or work if they have already learned it. By having to write a reflection, they will be unable to copy "answers" and they will easily be showing whether or not they truly understand the concepts covered. Click here to see the Reflection template we created. The "Making Sense" question is a reference to the activity sheet. Eventually, I think we'll progress to having them submit the reflection through Google Classroom, which was just released by Google.

Fighting Battles

It has been said that we should "be kind, for everyone is fighting their own battle." 

I must remind myself to always ask students to fill out a survey each year. From just a few simple questions, I have already learned so much about my students. I have learned some of their struggles, ways that I can connect with them, and what they are concerned about. As I mentioned in a previous post, we asked the students to fill out a survey on Google Forms. The responses automatically populate a spreadsheet that we can view, and it is constantly updated as students submit the form. Here are just a few of the responses we've received:

"I would love to be an engineer hopefully working for Union Pacific because my uncle works for them and he makes a great amount of money and has the most amazing life so I look up to him a lot and hope to be just like him ever since I was little."

"[My dream job is] A child's therapist because children go through very tough childhoods and I myself have had a little rough past and I find that if children have a safe place to talk. They will let out their feelings and it will help."

"I struggle with science because there is so much reading and memorizing equations."

"It takes me a long time to understand modern things, especially things like science and computers and I am not very smart I just work very hard for my grade and to learn."

"I really struggled in science in middle school"

"I want to be a teacher that helps dyslexic kids b/c I have dyslexia and I would love to shw [sic] them that you don't have to let it keep you down and you can do just as well as the other kids."

"I am an ELL student, and i just moved to this country almost 2 years ago."

Building the Culture

Today was the first day of class. On several occasions, I watched as students tested the waters, sometimes unintentionally. Megan handled it beautifully, always exaggerating a bit because it is the first day. You can always back off a bit on classroom management; its much harder to ratchet it up. A few students came in late, tried using their phones, or tried to not participate in what the class was doing. When Megan confronted a student, it was entertaining to watch some of the other students cringe a bit and look at each other. However, afterward, Megan and I talked about the importance of following up.

One student in particular she put on the spot to participate in class. He was embarrassed and just wanted the situation to end. She pushed him, telling him that he could do it, that every bit of what he had done was good, but he needed to keep going. As he was leaving class, she pulled him aside and said that she pushed him because she knew he could do it. He smiled, thanked her, and left class. We talked about how that personal touch has to be a part of every classroom management situation. Through this, we worked to build a culture of confidence and hard work. At the same time, students learn they can't get away with an easy "I don't know."

Planning and Streamlining

Today is the final day of preparation before the start of class. We went through all of our Google Forms and Docs, making sure than the right people can open and/or edit them. We are using Google Forms for student surveys at the beginning of the year as well as the Retake request form that I mentioned in the previous post. We also spent a lot of time streamlining the Google site and linking it up with Google Drive, where the students will be able to access all handouts, worksheets, and forms.

We also spent time in our team (5 teachers) planning and walking through what to cover on the first day, which was incredibly helpful for me, as well as two other teachers (one new teacher and one long-term sub). We spent a lot of time on grading policies, described in the syllabus. The emphasis is always on learning, never on "points," which is why we allow retake tests and tests make up 60% of a student's grade. Another 25% is formative checks, which are made up of Progress Quizzes, Reflections, and Audits. The quizzes provide immediate feedback because they are always reviewed immediately after they are taken. By the time the student leaves the classroom, they know whether or not they understand the material and what they missed. We also wrestled with the flexibility of grading the quizzes, since they are very short (about 3 questions) and decided to use "Rate Your Understanding" as a general guide, rather than being strict about points when grading. Even if the students get every question wrong, they still receive a 5/10 because they were there to submit evidence. A 0/10 would mean that no evidence of their learning was received. Zeros skew the grades too much to be used on a 3 question quiz.

Googlizing

Today was the first institute day at York. There were many meetings to which I had little context, but they were nonetheless helpful to get an idea of 'teacher life.' In the afternoon, we started working beginning of the year stuff, like syllabi, safety contracts, and other policies and procedures. York is a Google school, more and more each year. Leading the charge to Googlize is my cooperating teacher, Megan Ewald, among a few others. She gets me excited about using technology in the classroom. Today we dove into Google Sites and Forms as if we knew what we were doing. We didn't, but we figured it out, mostly. We created a Form for retake sign ups. Students go online, fill out the form, and submit it. This kicks it to a spreadsheet that all the chem teachers share that we can filter by teacher, period, or anything else we set, making retake organization completely paperless and instant. We can even set up the form with multiple pages so when the student says that Mrs. Ewald is their teacher, it kicks them to another page with her availability to schedule individual help. Pretty cool, if you ask me.

Introduction

Hello there. I am now a blogger for the first time. Allow me to introduce myself: my name is Ben Yergler. I'm a student at Wheaton College pursuing a Master's in Teaching. I was fortunate to be placed at a great high school to do my student teaching in Chemistry and Honor's Chemistry: York Community High School in Elmhurst, IL. After only a few weeks interacting with the Science Department, I can already tell this is going to be a great setting. The partnership, excitement, and expertise among the staff is excellent. How can I make the most of this experience? Answer: this blog. I'm going to learn a lot this semester. I'll remember more of it if I write it down. The blog will allow me to embed files, videos, documents, and links so that I can easily save them forever and share them with whomever. I'll try and capture a little snippet each day of what I learned, what I tried, how I succeeded, and how I failed. So here it goes, my first blog...