New (School) Year’s Resolutions

On this eve of yet another glorious year of teaching, I want to set three goals for myself to improve my work.  After reflecting on what my strengths and weaknesses are, and what I want to achieve, I’ve settled on these basics:

1.  More time for independent readings in class.  Each quarter will start with a good book chosen by each student from my lists, and I’ll set aside a couple of class days to read and take notes and/or fill out a log.  After that, they might bring in their own stuff for a few more days of reading here and there.  We read plenty in my classes, but it’s usually from the textbook, with most of their other reading being done on their own.  That doesn’t cut it.  This will pack in more quantity of reading, which kids desperately need.

2.  Speaking of desperate needs, we’ll do more short, spontaneous compositions with instant editing and feedback.  I always want to do more of this, but never get around to it, and it’s so essential.  Quick writing workshops with paragraph-or-two compositions that they’ll peer edit / I’ll edit and they revise in another quick draft, all in one day.  This will benefit their mechanics better than enything else I can think of.  This must be done every other week, at least. 

3.  Finally, I’ll be nicer.  Not in class, I mean, where if anything I should be more strict and where my ability to act enthusiastic when “on stage” serves me well, but outside of class, when kids come in for help or make up work, or when I see kids outside of school.  As it is, my painfully shy, introverted side takes over there and I tend to mumble dismissive one liners and look the other way.  As much as I hate to admit it, a more engaging personality from me does improve classroom performance for them, so here’s one to work on…

50 More Things New Teachers Need To Know

“Don’t hit the kids and don’t hit on the kids.”  If I had to summarize my best advice about teaching in just one saying, that would be it.  However, last summer’s post, 50 Things New Teachers Need To Know, went into a bit more detail and has now garnered thousands of hits, making it this blog’s most popular post.

During the school year between then and now, I’ve made some more notes and now have this new collection ready.  As I say at the end, take it all with a grain of salt, but I have no doubt that this list is more useful than a bachelor’s degree in education.  Furthermore, I like this list even more than last year’s.  Enjoy!

 

1. Cover any windows on hallway-facing doors to your room from the inside with paper. If administrators complain about it, just cover as much as you can at eye level.  You don’t need lollygaggers out there distracting students by making faces at their friends in your class.

2. PC Myth #5: “Your teaching skills are more important than content knowledge.”  In my own undergrad days, an early class taught me that I wouldn’t need to worry about subject knowledge because I already had more than the students would, and I should just focus on methodology, classroom management, etc.  As a result, I spent my first couple of years as a teacher watching all those college theories go down in flames, and desperately playing catch up on the English facts that I needed to know to teach well. 

3.  Always remember: administrators are politicians. 

Recommended Reading: The Deluxe Transitive Vampire

When I teach grammar, I try to come up with attention-grabbing example sentences.  The ones that come in textbooks are notoriously dull (“The person went to the place to get the thing.”), so I want to juice it up a bit and inject a bit of my trademarked brand of life into what most folks see as a dreadfully lame subject. 

Here are two examples of standard favorites in my classes:

I kicked the freshman. 

“Freshman” receives the action of the verb “kicked,” so it is the direct object.

I threw Paris Hilton a live grenade. 

What did I actually throw?  Paris Hilton?  Good gravy, no.  That would require touching her.  No, I threw a grenade.  That makes “grenade” the direct object.  Paris Hilton received the direct object, making her the indirect object.  And, hopefully, soon to be an irritating, repressed memory. 

This demonstration shares a bit of the twisted humor of Karen Elizabeth Gordon’s classic grammar “textbook,” The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed.  Gordon’s approach is to present clear, sprightly explications of general grammatical matters with examples that tend to be about supernatural, nocturnal creatures interacting in the prosaic lives of hapless mortals of a dizzying variety of idiosyncratic bents.  (The book never makes this explicit, but I suppose the title character is meant to represent the fact that a transitive verb, like a vampire, only functions when it has an object upon which to act.  Cute, yes?)

I labor intensively, ripping asunder the very dendrites of my brain in Herculean attempts to come up with more than few clever example sentences in class; Gordon has filled an entire book where every page presents at least a few laugh-out-loud such sentences.

Examples:

• The robot designated the dentist his partner.
• There are five more cupcakes than we have frosting for; I’ll leave them for that loner by the river.
• Sophie, abandoning her rented canoe, exchanges pleasantries in the shade with a newt.

On Effective Education: Why Don’t Students Like School?

I read this fantastic book review this week in the Wall Street Journal (courtesy of a link from Arts & Letters Daily–let’s give credit where credit’s due).  Daniel Willingham’s new book, Why Don’t Students Like School?, gives the perspective of a cognitive scientist reviewing the research on the psychology of education.  Among his assertions (as reflected in the book review) are:

• “When we confront a task that requires us to exert mental effort, it is critical that the task be just difficult enough to hold our interest but not so difficult that we give up in frustration….The challenge, for the teacher, is to design lessons and exercises that will maximize interest and attention and thus make students like school at least a bit more.”
• On drilling: “research shows that practice not only makes a skill perfect but also makes it permanent, automatic and transferable to new situations, enabling more complex work that relies on the basics.”
• “He advocates teaching old-fashioned content as the best path to improving a student’s reading comprehension and critical thinking.”
• And my favorite part, on multiple intelligences: “No one has found consistent evidence supporting a theory describing such a difference. . . . Children are more alike than different in terms of how they think and learn….At some point, no amount of dancing will help you learn more algebra.”

I added a comment to the WSJ article commending this book for deflating the vacuous trends of politically correct schooling today.  My professional development classes and meetings drive me bonkers.

 

This book isn’t in the local library system’s inventory yet; better put in an order.

 

An Idea For Teacher Evaluation

Based on some reading I’ve done (such as that covered in some posts a couple of weeks ago), and my nine years of teaching experience, I’d like to suggest a way of more effectively measuring teacher competence.

Traditionally, administrators observe bits and pieces of a few classes, and spot check the teacher’s lesson plan book, basing their evaluations largely on criteria related to how the lesson plan book demonstrates cohesion with school district standards and syllabi. 

This really doesn’t work.  Lesson plan books are better at recording what has already happened than at committing to what will happen–in a good classroom, there is so much flexibility and adaptation as teachers respond to immediate needs that any lesson planned more then a few days in advance is essentially worthless, anyway.

What I suggest is evaluating teachers based on their grade books. 

More Research On Effective Teaching

I’m reading Richard E. Nisbett’s new book, Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count.  Its chapter on effective teaching mentions the Department of Education’s web site, What Works Clearinghouse, and its sister site, Doing What Works.  

 

I checked them both out, and they look promising.  Like most education research, they’re clearly geared primarily towards elementary education, but there is some good stuff for math and science teachers, as well as for staff development, which I find myself caring more and more about. 

 

Regarding Nisbett’s book, I’ll simplify the chapter about effective teaching thusly:

 

Based on correlating extant research, do the following things make schools better?

 

Spending: no

Charter & private schools: no

Class size: yes, for younger children

Teacher education and certification: no

Inexperienced, rookie teachers: no (negative effect)

“Emotionally supportive classrooms”: yes

Computerized instruction (for math): yes

Two Recent Articles On Effective Teachers

What makes an effective teacher?  What’s the meaning of life?  What do women want?  (Blame Freud for that last one, not me.)  These three questions have excited so much postulating and pontificating that many thinkers have given up on trying to answer them at all, instead resigning themselves to the apparent inevitability of resolving such baffling conundrums.  However, recently, two of America’s best major magazines have run thought-provoking features intended to address the first query above. 

 

            Malcolm Gladwell (author of the bestsellers Blink, Outliers, and The Tipping Point) reported in December 2008 on the burgeoning field of statistical quantification as it relates to the field of education in The New Yorker.  Gladwell summarizes the findings of one expert in the piece as showing that “the difference between good teachers and poor teachers turns out to be vast,” noting that teacher competence has a far greater impact on student achievement than class size or even (perceived) school quality.  Another expert—Jacob Kounin—emphasizes the importance of what he calls “withitness”—a preternatural awareness of a class’s immediate climate.

 

           

Liberal Teachers

It surprises me that so many teachers are liberals.  My associations with many dozens of teachers over the years has shown that we’re almost unanimously in agreement on the things that hold back student achievement: apathetic parenting and cultural poison that subverts our efforts.  These are both (at least in our current political climate) essentially conservative concerns. 

And yet, our most vocal teachers, as well as administrators, unions, and districts, tend to obsess over ideas that are inherently liberal: increasing spending, adding more bureaucrats and programs to the system, and increasing regulation of what individual campuses can do.  This, despite the total failure of any of these things to do any good at all for the several decades that they’ve been in vogue.

Anybody else reminded of the caucus race in Disney’s version of Alice in Wonderland?  Leftist policies tend to bring that to mind for me.

Anyway, I think I realize now why so many education professionals are liberals.  It must be an automatic defense mechanism, because being a conservative teacher is enough to drive anyone insane.

It’s easy to keep running around trying all these new programs in our schools and crying for more money, because that strategy can never fail: if results don’t improve, just insist that we haven’t come up with enough programs and money yet.  The beautiful thing with this strategy is that it allows us to focus on things we can control: the teaching profession can keep tweaking the details of campus routines endlessly and without benefit, but (much like the thinking behind the stimulus package) at least we’re doing something, right? 

Certainly this approach is much easier (and more sanity-friendly) than resigning to the truth that the vast majority of the factors that influence the quality of our work are well beyond our control.  Why would any administrator try to improve the conditions of a community that produces lackluster students–a Herculean task, to say the least–when he or she can just get on board with the established program: fiddle around with the procedures for department meetings in your school, assign teachers more paperwork, and lobby for more education spending?

There’s just no natural incentive for teachers to be conservatives, because it will only lead to more frustration. 

My students this year are ten times more productive than my students were during my first few years teaching.  Did I become a better teacher?  Not at all; I do most things exactly the same way.  I just got a job in a better part of town.

The Kind Of Day This Teacher Lives For

Friday was productive.  I didn’t plan anything special, but by about the middle of the day, I realized that it was a really good one. 

After a simple error identification and correction exercise on the projector for a warm up (courtesy of Yahoo!), most of my classes were studying Oedipus Rex, which I’d perform aloud as they read along and stop two or three times per page to summarize in my joking, pop-culture heavy style (“So Oedipus is getting all paranoid and Tiresias just keeps throwing down sarcastic one-liners,” or “‘Get hence, ye scurvy, pockmarked, wrathful knave’? I didn’t know Paris Hilton lived in ancient Greece!”).  Most of this goes over reasonably well.

The middle of the day was just a few minutes spent correcting an assignment from last week in class and a brief quiz over today’s Oedipus reading, then I checked that they had brought in novels for this quarter that fit my length and difficulty requirements (almost all did).  The last half hour was given to letting them read on their own (a grade being given for staying on task), and those without books were given the first chapter of Anna Karenina to copy–the rationale being that copying work of such terrific quality is a decent exercise in itself (a language arts version of tracing, really; an elementary activity which we too often ignore because it’s not jazzy enough for the postmodern classroom), it’s the only way most of them will ever get to encounter this famous classic (“Every happy family is alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”), and the farily boring nature of the work should be an incentive to bring a novel in next time (though this sometimes backfires: some of the lowest achievers–those who tend never to bring books–actually love basic skills work, cherishing its lack of higher thought and engagement.  Some remedial students would jump at the chance to copy the dictionary all day, every day, if it meant never having to think or do real work.). 

Anyway, it was during the silent reading time of one of these classes that, as Mozart’s overture to The Magic Flute was playing over king.org (which my computer speakers waft into the room most days), I realized what a pleasantly productive day this was.  In class after class, nearly everybody was engaged in useful mental training.  Too many educrats these days chant their lemming mantra that a class must be noisy and rowdy to be learning something, but I find that kids today are overstimulated, and creating a calmer environment is a necessary antidote; if work is mature and challenging, they’ll usually respect it and rise to the occasion. 

Recommended Reading: Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire

I first read about Rafe Esquith in an article in National Review.  After that, I read and enjoyed his book, There Are No Shortcuts.  Esquith espouses a teaching ethic that is heavy on emotion and personality, but that is more than balanced out by incredibly high academic standards and a work ethic that would make your average Marine cry. 

I don’t think everything in Esquith’s methods would work for me, but I can’t help but respect someone who gives 150% of himself to teaching, not to make kids feel good, but to guide them into becoming truly intellectual giants.  (Esquith is most famous for putting his students through a full professional production of a Shakespearean play each year, a task that, especially considering his many other ambitious units, has him running his classroom about twelve hours a day, six days a week.  And these are fifth graders.)

As I’ve been gearing up for the new year, I wanted to read something that was inspirational, practical, and not a bunch of warm fuzzy gobbledygook.  So I checked out Esquith’s more recent book, Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire.  Where There Are No Shortcuts focused on Esquith’s philosophy and anecdotes, this newer volume is a nuts and bolts how-to of teaching like he does.

Like I said, a lot of this stuff really wouldn’t transfer to my high school English class, but after reading the first two chapters–one about reading and the other about writing–I did go back and take some notes.  For someone whose language is often so reminiscent of PC nonsense (Esquith says the priority on the first day of school is to “establish trust”), his actual work routines are strenuous, and completely dedicated to independent achievement.  Rock on. 

Actually, I recommend this book for everybody, not just for teachers.  For one thing, even though we all went to school ourselves, unless you’ve spent time in the profession, you have no idea just how much corruption, stupidity, and heartbreak really exists behind the scenes of a school.  Esquith has great stories about these institutional failures, and isn’t afraid to name names.  Second, his class ranges the gamut of curriculum, from humanities to hard science to pop culture to character development, and his many specific examples are a joy to consider. 

Read the chapter where he describes, in painstaking detail, how to get the most out of a visit to Washington, D.C.  He bases this on decades of annual field trips there.  I’m going to copy it and use it as my official travel guide the next time I go.  And the chapter about his after-school classic film club…priceless.  My wife’s had a copy of Charadeon her shelf for years; I never thought I might like it until I read Esquith’s praise of it.  I think I might try to start something similar at my own school.  (Last year, during a discussion with a class, I made a passing reference to Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  The class came to a grinding halt as I faced thirty blank stares.  They had never seen it.  They had never even heard of it.  And this was an honors class.  Sad.)

One quibble, though.  Esquith makes a big deal out of how his success comes in a poor, crime-ridden neighborhood where most homes don’t have English as a first language.  The implication is that he’s teaching “disadvantaged” minorities, yet this book has lots of pictures of his students…and virtually all of them are Asian.  Most every picture looks just like the one you see on the cover here.  There are a few Hispanic kids in the book, but only a few, and not a single black kid.  I have to wonder if Esquith’s school population is really a tough to teach as he suggests; all of the kids in the pictures have nice, preppy clothes, are clearly well nourished and groomed, and show no physical sign of coming from lower class homes. 

This isn’t a bad thing, of course, but it would be disingenuous of Esquith to sell himself as a master teacher of poverty-stricken youth if he’s really teaching primarily the children of hard working first or second generation Asian families with stable homes, a strong work ethic, and who place a high value on education.  I could be wrong, but the pictures make me wonder.

Still, it’s a great read, and it gave me exactly what I wanted: a boost of enthusiasm sprinkled with a few practical ideas.  It’d do the same for you, no matter what kind of teacher you are, or even if you aren’t a teacher at all.

On Teaching Literacy

A parent of a student recently sent me this survey as part of her masters’ program, and asked for my input.  Following up on my last post (and trying to make up for the deficit of education-related posts this summer), I thought I’d share some of my meager thoughts here.  Perhaps they’ll be of interest to someone.  My replies to the questions are in italics.

 

Upper Elementary through Middle School and High School

 

What grade do you currently teach? 10th–Sophomores

What grade have you taught? All grades 6-12 (and college)

What subjects have you taught? English I-IV, English R/W I-II, Composition, Forensics, American Literature Honors, Modern Literature (college: English 101 and 102, World Literature)

 

1. What aspects of literacy do you hope that your students have been exposed to prior to your level? These could include activities, state objectives, or materials (pieces of literature). By high school, the most important aspects of literacy would be reading fluency, genre awareness, basic literary terms (setting, plot, figures of speech, etc.), and, ideally, some memorization of literature.

 

2. What Reading deficits and disabilities do you encounter most? Comprehension, fluency, willingness to engage difficult material.

A. What are your most used remedial tactics for these problems? Reading aloud to them is the best overall intervention, as well as guided practice using strategies like making predictions, evaluating an author’s methods of narration, and identifying themes and encouraging students to analyze and apply them.

 

4. In regards to phonetic awareness skills, what theories of practice do you support and/or not support?

C. Do you see phonics facts like Math teachers see addition/subtraction/multiplication/ division facts; that if a student does not master these early, he or she will continue to have difficulties? Yes; for example, early training in Latin and Greek word roots is essential to development of advanced vocabulary.

B. How do students at your level need to use their phonics skills? Primarily for decoding difficult new vocabulary; at another level, for tracking complex sentence structures in difficult texts.

C. Do you see any outside influences that detract from phonics skills; such as popular language among peers or media influences? TEXT MESSAGING!

 

5. What are you feelings about parental involvement in Literacy? Describe your ideal situation. I’m unsure about this: we might be able to instruct students without parental help, but certainly not against parental illiteracy. Have you read Freakonomics? The best statistical predictor of student acquisition of literacy is a language-rich home environment, established by the parents’ own habits. As such, if schools are going to advocate for improving their communities, I sometimes wonder what we could do to “reach out” to parents better; offer more classes and activities that involve them in reading with their families, perhaps (maybe sponsoring family/community book clubs?).

 

6. What are your personal theories on literacy instruction; its practices and goals for you level?

A. What reading programs have worked best for you? Describe what element(s) of the program were the most beneficial.

B. How do you approach multi level reading groups? At the high school level, this is difficult. For independent reading projects (which I try to do quarterly), I encourage individual students in the library to select books of an appropriate difficulty level; I’ve even offered different reading lists to different groups of students based on their ability.

C. What are your best/ favorite reading comprehension instruction techniques? See my answer to 2A.

D. What are your major checkpoints/milestones throughout the year, and how often do assess; such as beginning, mid-year, and end of year? For literacy, I would my “major checkpoints” would be the tests I give on each our quarterly in-class novels(Huck Finn, Ender’s Game, etc.), which focus on comprehension of major aspects of writing (plot, character, style, etc.); and, for their independently-chosen novels, a report that focuses on summarizing those things, and responding to the text in various ways, including evaluating it and illustrating scenes from it. So, each quarter should have at least these two differing major assessments of their literacy, as demonstrated by how they’ve interacted with two differing texts.

 

7. What proportion should be given to literal questions vs. high order thinking questions? This might sound like a cop-out, but I say “lots of both.” Heavy doses of questions and activities that hit all six areas of Bloom’s taxonomy offer the best means of making the most of a text. I’ve found that if I offer “question starters” to students based on all six levels and have them finish the questions with material from their reading, then trade papers and answer each other’s questions, they usually impress me.

 

8. What proportions should be given to reading materials such as short story, novels, and nonfiction? Before the 20^th century, fiction was often seen as little more than a toy, but I would argue that it should predominate in our humanities studies. Reading fiction invites students to track character and plot development over time, as well to grapple with understanding narrative devices such as metaphor, theme, and satire, which are more rarely used in fairly direct non-fiction works. In addition, literate fiction can convey much the same factual information that non-fiction can, but with a greater artistic care and narrative craftsmanship that helps improve student interest.

 

9. List which written works you would consider classic, whether they are novels, short stories, novellas, or an author in general, for your grade level. Contemporary “young adult” literature is often touted as increasing student interest; my experience does not bear that out. Besides that, I’m an inveterate classicist, and prefer assisting students in studying the Western canon as much as possible. That being said, I also think it’s worthwhile to introduce students to superior, worthy materials in the world of current literary criticism, such as Harold Bloom. These two approaches reinforce each other quite well.

 

10. How much time do you devote to independent reading in your planning? How much would you with complete freedom? As implied in my answer to 6D, I use both assigned class readings as well independently-chosen works. However, the essays, stories, and novels used for class are obviously covered in greater depth. The “outside” readings are mostly offered to help spur lifelong reading interests. To that end, (I should append this to my answer to 6B), when I give lists of titles to be used as a guide for independent reading, I try to mediate small “book club” discussions in class based on groups arranged as per same/similar titles/authors/subjects. This works quite well. “Complete freedom” in a classroom only results in anarchy—titles for independent reading must always be approved by me before they begin. If a title is inappropriate or below their level, I try to redirect them to options that are more suitable.

 

11. Summarize the reading skills necessary for a student to be fully ready to pass your grade level. For the sake of space, I might refer you back to my answer to 6D.

 

12. How would you describe a student that is a fluent reader of any age? “Rare.” Ha! Sorry. Seriously, such a student can identify favorite genres, even specific titles and authors that interest him/her. He or she would likely have a library card. He or she would also likely be able to give examples of books that he/she “liked more than the movie version.”

 

13. How do you avoid being in a vacuum in your field? Um, I suppose by not getting inside a vacuum. Sorry, but I don’t know what you’re driving at here.

 

14. Do you have any comments or input that you think are necessary for Reading teachers of levels beyond yours are important to know about the students’ prior training, skills, or anything else? One important thing I can think of that hasn’t been covered yet is this: promoting lifelong reading interest is important and worthy, but not something that we can ultimately control. As such, expending too much energy on stimulating student interest is unproductive. We might want students to love reading as much as we do, but if there doesn’t seem to be much hope for individual students, or even whole classes, to attain that characteristic, we shouldn’t let it be a barrier for us. We need to be able to continue immersing them in the literary canon and reading skills that form the core of our civilization without feeling that we must “convert” students to our love of the subject.