Rubber > Metal

According to Wikipedia, John Dunlop was the first to use rubber on wheels in the 1880s. He decided to use rubber on his son's bicycle tires because he was getting severe headaches from the rough ride that his metal wheels were giving him over bumpy roads. Genius.

Dunlop, and several inventors after him, recognized that flexibility makes all the difference. I have been discovering that the same is true in teaching. The other day, we were supposed to show a video as part of the introduction to the activity. I had forgotten to check the video to make sure it was still accessible (it had last been used the previous year) for all the teachers until Megan asked me about it roughly 15 minutes before class. We had to scramble to find it in the computer among the scores of files, upload it to Google Drive so every teacher could use it at the same time, and make sure the sound for the video would connect through the hookups in the classroom. Hooking up the audio sounded complicated, so I just aborted that idea and narrated the video myself as it showed silently. Other teachers had portable speakers to use with the computer, making it much simpler. A few knew how to hook up the audio in the classroom quickly and it worked for them.

One teacher, however, was determined to use the audio in the classroom, but had never hooked it up before. She struggled each period to get the audio going, and I don't think she ever did get it to work. She became very frustrated and it clearly ruined her entire day, adding much stress that didn't need to be there.

I cite this as just one example of the many times I have seen and experienced the benefits of flexibility. The road is full of potholes - media doesn't work right, students come in late, the copier breaks down, a fire drill absorbs 10 minutes of a period you needed, or students need more time to understand something you thought would be quick and easy. I've noticed a pattern: the teachers that excel have an ability to roll with the punches and improvise on the fly to make the best of every situation.

Running the Show

My last post was 15 days ago. Wow, sorry about that. Things have been a little hectic, to say the least. Student teachers are required to act as the full time teacher for a minimum of 4 weeks. I'll have no problem meeting that goal. As Megan and I were talking about transitioning into full time teacher mode, we both thought there was no point in waiting to make the switch. Even though I was hesitant, because its more comfortable being the side-kick, I knew that I would be better off jumping in sooner rather than later.

In the transition I have certainly had my mistakes - hesitation on responding to rowdy students or not keeping my head wrapped around everything that has to get done. I have had a hard time staying more than one day (or even a half day) ahead. This, combined with the newness of not having Megan in the room on a consistent basis gives me a general sense of tension. I need to remind myself that this is still new, I'm not expected to be perfect at anything (although I'd like to be), and to take some time to relax a bit. I think I perform better as a teacher and I enjoy it more when I am relaxed. It can only get better from here.

Getting Personal(ity)

Today I taught third period, which is the first section of our General Chemistry class. It being the first of four, I didn't really know what to expect. How long will the students take on their activity? What do I need to go over? What can I skip? What are the key misconceptions that I'm going to need to correct? I didn't really know any of this since I had never taught the lesson to anyone. Since it was the first attempt, it made me a little tense. Since I was a little tense, it made me a little boring. Ok, very boring. I like chemistry, and even I could tell it was boring as I listened to the words coming out of my mouth. It had to have been bad for the students.

This has been a recurring theme over the last few days that Megan, I and others have been talking about. I'm not a boring person (at least I don't think so), but I become one in front of a class. It seems so artificial to work myself up and get excited about content that I've known for years and that seems intuitive to me. Over the last few days, several other teachers have confirmed my sentiment. 1) Its always hard to know how to teach something the very first time, and 2) many times, it feels like you have to act far more excited than you actually are to draw that excitement out of the students.

One teacher in particular said that she has learned that having excitement and personality in your teaching comes with confidence. The more time you spend teaching, the more confident you become. The more confident, the more relaxed. The more relaxed, the more excitable.

Having personality in my teaching is incredibly important. It makes me relate and connect with students more, It makes the students more interested and engaged, and it makes me enjoy it more. All of this results in students learning more, which is why I'm here in the first place!

Experimenting with Children

I knew this day would come. I had my first official failure. Megan and I decided to try a little experiment. I was going to teach an entire period and Megan was going to step out of the room for a few minutes, just to see how things would go. The students were doing an activity where they move about the room and record data at different stations. I was comfortable with Megan stepping out and the students were on a roll. However, I started to notice some students not staying with their lab groups - they started to work independently. I told a few of them to work with their teams. Then I started to notice the class becoming a little louder than it normally is, which is when I started to notice myself getting a bit uncomfortable with how things were progressing. I continued to walk around, keeping the students on task and answering questions.

About the time I decided to call all the student back to their seats to start the discussion portion of the period, I saw a couple of boys poking each other. As students were heading back to their seats, Megan came back into the room and it started getting much quieter. She gave the pokers a look and they went back to their seats. I led a time of discussing the activity, the students did a check-in question (exit slip), and the period was over.

As we talked about the period, I told her that I had started to get uncomfortable with how loud the students were getting and that they were wandering off on their own through the stations. I had hesitated on what to do. I was glad that she had come in when she did, as it definitely helped to bring everyone together for the end of the period. Megan advised me that you need to nip it in the bud immediately when you start to get that sense of discomfort (I saw her do that the very next day).

Looking back, I'm glad we ran our little experiment. Looking forward, it tells me that my presence doesn't have as much weight or authority as I thought it had. It has given me a chance to have time to think about what to do in a situation like that, and through our debrief, I now have several options I can use to help calm things down. I sense that I am in a better position the next time things start to get a little rowdy. And there will be a next time.

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.