Human Voices Wake Us

This was posted on LeaderTalk: “The teacher must come away with a lesson learned also. If a student can think she can get away with a copy and paste product from a web site or an online encyclopedia, then the assignment has not been particularly engaging or thought provoking. The teacher should come away with the understanding that assignments need to engage, to challenge, and to promote an inner dialogue with material student are studying. If the student can just copy and paste to fill out a traditional ten pages, then it is time to re-examine the assignments being imposed.”

I’ve had this type of conversation many times with others.  If teachers are worried about students “copying” assignments, maybe teachers should really be worried that they are giving assignments that are easily copied.  I’ve been there.  As a teacher I devised ways to keep students from cheating on the excellent assignments I got out of the supplemental materials (sarcasm intended).  I made them put their notebooks up around their assignments, I made 4 different versions of the same things and labeled them A, B, etc.  I took points off for items that were obviously copied.  All of these ideas were from other teachers.  Finally I got to a point in my teaching when I realized that the problem was with my assignments, not the students.  It took a little more thinking to come up with assignments that would have to be individual.  It took a little more time to grade (and I couldn’t give my student aid an answer sheet and have him/her do it).  But I discovered that I actually enjoyed reading what came out of the kids’ heads.  I discovered it wasn’t the amount of grades I had, but the quality of the assignments that mattered.  (Note: I once taught with someone who would have 90 grades a six weeks.  That wasn’t a typo- NINETY.)  Now I’m looking toward being a teacher of teachers and wondering how to convey this information to others.  Do I tell them it’s easier?  Do I tell them they won’t have to worry about cheating?  Do I tell them the students will be more engaged?  Do I tell them to just do it, or they’ll be fired?  (I know I can’t do the last one…though it would be nice…)  

Why is it that the best things you learn about teaching come after you’ve left the classroom?

I attended a Working on the Work conference.  It’s about engaged learning.  I got really fired up.  I think we can all agree that lessons should be engaging, yada, yada, yada.  But WOW gives you a framework to evaluate lessons and emphasized that you have to change your belief system before you can have engaged learning.  You have to get rid of the belief that students who do the work and earn grade greats are being compliant, not necessarily learning anything, at least not anything they’ll retain.  Worksheets don’t work.  Lecturing doesn’t work.  Multiple choice doesn’t work.  Yes, I know all about standardized testing.  But, hello?  what are we doing to our kids?  I remember one lesson from high school because it was personally relevant and changed my way of thinking.  How many lessons do you remember?  Now I’m starting to get ticked off at the worksheets my son is bringing home for homework.  Math every night.  I asked him if it was work he didn’t finish at school, but he said, no, it was just homework.  Pointless!  I really hope this philosophy will spread quickly through the district so my son will have engaging teachers, not ones who will make  him memorize facts to regurgitate on a test later.  Or ones who will have him read a chapter and do the questions and vocabulary at the end.  Don’t get me wrong, he’ll do well because he’s a good student.  But what will he get out of it in the end?  Certainly not how to be a creative thinker.  Certainly not how to adapt in an ever-changing world.  Maybe he’ll learn how to correctly bubble.  I have to go cool off now.

I accompanied a high school AP on some walkthroughs of math classes.  What I noticed most was the use of overheads or the front board.  In every class students were at their desks working on worksheets or lined paper while the teacher was in front teaching.  When discussing with the AP later, he said that is a typical math classroom.  Madeline Hunter 101.   While most of all the students were on task, I wouldn’t say they were engaged.   Even though I used to teach English, I can imagine how challenging it would be to teach math without overhead, board, book, worksheet, etc.   Fortunately our district has an incredible online curriculum warehouse.  Why are these teachers and others doing what teachers did 50 years ago?  (See previous post on out of date education and read the article.)  After observing these classrooms, I was worried that, when I was teaching, administration might have seen the same things in my classroom.  I racked my brain trying to think what I had done in the past.  Used an overhead?  Yes, to give notes, but I only did that once a six weeks.  Used the board?  Rarely, other than to post info, journal prompts, or objectives.  Students did worksheets?  Not unless I had a substitute.  Me talking at front and students sitting and getting?  Maybe to intro the lesson, but definitely not the whole period.  Now, I do not in any stretch of the imagination think I was the most awesomest teacher ever.  I know I had a lot of improvement to do.  But because I used many group activities and engaging lessons, I thought about my fellow English teachers and how they did much of the same things.  That got me to thinking on whether there was a correlation between high English and social studies scores and the kinds of activities in those classrooms versus low math scores and the activities in those classrooms.  It would be interesting to find a math teacher with innovative, highly engaging lessons centered on group learning and see how his/her standardized test scores compare to his/her counterparts.  Just a thought.

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