Connecting Elementary & Secondary Teachers

CC licensed photo shared by hanspoldoja

A few weeks ago I had a chance to meet with some grade nine math teachers from my school, grade eight teachers from our feeder schools, a guidance counsellor and a vice-principal. As I sat in the meeting I realized the in my 11 years of teaching at the same school, I had never actually met with elementary teachers. This struck me as being quite odd.

The meeting was coordinated by one of our guidance counsellors in an effort to improve our students' transitions from grade eight to grade nine in the area of math. As secondary teachers we shared some information about the content of the courses, but really focused on highlighting the differences in the streams (locally developed, applied and academic) and the pathways students could take based on their choices in grade nine.  We talked about alternate pathways and how there were a number of ways a student could move from one stream to another. The elementary teachers seemed very receptive and asked a lot of great questions. By the end of the meeting I had the sense that many of the teachers felt more comfortable and had more information to present to their students about recommendations for high school. I can't believe that we hadn't done this before.

For me the best part of the meeting happened once the official meeting was over. After the meeting there were lots of informal conversations about "What's the best way to teach X?" or "How do you teach Y?" and the like. It was great to see teachers connecting and discussing math. I think conversations like these give us a window into other teachers' classrooms. They allow us to share best practices, bounce ideas off one another and hopefully improve the way we do business. I think somehow we need to find more time to informally discuss how we teach math.

What does your school or district do to promote discussion between subject area teacher or to promote discussion between elementary and secondary teachers? What more can we do more to ease the transition from elementary school to secondary school?

The Value of Team Teaching

Teaching is generally a solitary process. We work on our own and develop strategies that work for us but we rarely get to see what other teachers do in their classrooms. After the experience I had with team teaching this fall, I would highly recommend taking some time to watch another teacher in action or if you can to find a way to teach, even if it's just one lesson, with another teacher.

This fall I had a large grade 9 applied level class. The administration decided to split the class. In the time between the decision to split the class and the actual split a number of students decided that the course was too difficult and they switched out. By the time the second teacher was assigned to the class there were only 26 students left on the list. We decided that we would try team teaching the course. In the past when I have heard talk about team teaching it was always two or more teachers who were teaching the same course. The team teaching meant that the they would plan together and do the same work in their respective classes. That's not what we had in mind. We had a small number of students so we decided that we would keep them in one room and teach them as one class with two teachers. We essentially created a math class with two teachers. What more could a math student ask for?

Throughout our time together I was often amazed at how much I was learning just by watching my teaching partner. He has a wide variety of classroom management techniques. It was great to see those techniques in action. I wouldn't say that my classroom management is weak but like most things in life I think I have room for improvement. Throughout the semester I was able to observe a bunch of techniques that I was familiar with, but for whatever reason wasn't using. I think in some cases I had heard about the techniques but had never seen them in action. Seeing how they actually work in practice made a huge difference. I'm hoping that some of those techniques become part of my regular routine.

As a side note, since midterm we've had a number of students who have not been performing well in the class. They don't have the work habits to be successful and aren't putting forth a solid effort.  We tried working with these students for a few weeks to help put them in a situation where they could pass the course. Many of them chose not put forth the effort. We decided a short time ago to offer the students who were failing an opportunity to get a credit at a lower level (a locally developed credit). We have now split the class in two and we could possibly have every one of those students getting a grade 9 math credit. This could potentially be an interesting model for student success.

If you get a chance, give true team teaching a try.

Know Your Audience

CC Licensed Photo by o5com

Over the past couple of years it has been a personal goal of mine to improve my presentation skills. I found it hard to improve because it was difficult to get honest feedback from participants. Often the feedback came from participants I knew who would say things like 'Good job!'. This is all fine and good, but it's not particularly helpful in finding ways of improving.  I also feel that people who attended my sessions may not have enjoyed them but were perhaps too polite to say anything at all. So, how could I truly improve?

I decided to make a conscious effort to watch presentations that I attended with a critical eye. I wanted to be able to leave a presentation thinking not just that a presentation was good or that it could use some work. I wanted to pinpoint what made the presentation good and what types of improvements could be made.

Today we had a professional development session about autism. The entire school staff was present as were a large number of people involved in special education from around the district and the community. The speaker was extremely knowledgeable about the topic, was well prepared and stopped her presentation a number of times to answer questions specific to what was happening at the school. Unfortunately, most of her talk was so advanced that I, along with others who don't have a special education background, were completely lost. It was clear very early on that she did not know her audience and wasn't able to adapt on the fly.

What did I take away from the presentation? When presenting I need to find a way to get feedback from the participants to gauge where they are. This will allow me to adjust the presentation as I go. I guess in the classroom this is what we call the 'student voice'. If students already know the material, move on quickly. If it's over their head, slow right down.

What tricks or tools do you use for gauging your audience?

"We're Only Students"

"We're Only Students" was as comment I heard from one of my students about a week ago. I was asking my class to do something that was a little challenging and out of frustration and a little in jest this was her comment. I almost went into the traditional 'It's not that hard once you get down to it' speech, but I paused for a second and thought to myself that the comment needed a little more attention.  I'm not sure if I paused because I was offended by the comment or I thought my students should be offended or because I thought they needed to think better of themselves. Certainly, had I made a comment along the lines of "You won't get this. You're only students", I can almost guarantee I would have faced a backlash.

My response to the class was essentially the 'don't sell yourself short approach'. You're not ONLY students. You ARE students. You have endless opportunities ahead of you. We talked about how they were the future leaders of governments, corporations, industries, etc. We talked about competition and how in the not too distant future they would be competing for spots at universities and/or jobs and how they can't just settle for good enough. I mentioned that if they wanted to be as successful as they could they needed to work as hard as they could starting now. They needed to seek out challenges rather than trying to avoid them. We also talked about pursuing their passions. My message was if they didn't start now someone else was already getting a leg up.

In any case it turned out to be a ten minute discussion, which was much longer than I had anticipated. One of the comments I overheard was "Wow, a motivational talk in math. Who would have thought". I guess some of them took the message to heart though I'm sure some of them saw this as just a ten minute break. 

The Frustration of Learning

Recently I needed to replace the shingles on my roof. I decided to go with a steel roof instead of shingles, figuring I could do the work and save on the labour costs. I had been told by many people that putting up steel was easy and it didn't take long. This confirmed my original thought and I ordered the materials.

Now I should mention that I'm much more comfortable, and competent at, pounding a keyboard to move bits than pounding in nails with a hammer. I began by stripping the old shingles, fixing the bad spots in the roof and strapping it. This process alone had taken a lot longer than what most people said it should take to do the entire roof. I was feeling a little discouraged but I was determined to do the work properly and later discovered that most of the people I had spoken with had much simpler roofs than mine.

As I worked I learned a lot about roofing and a lot about myself. I think my best learning came from making mistakes. Doesn't all learning happen from making mistakes? I would make a mistake and then get really frustrated about it. This didn't help much since as I became frustrated I was more likely to make more mistakes. I recognized that many of my students likely get stuck in this cycle. Most of my frustration came from the fact that I was being slowed down. I just wanted to get the job done. I'm guessing that students are often in the same boat. They don't really care about the learning they just want to get the job, work, assignment, etc. done. After a while I realized that my frustration was counter productive. I decided that it would be much more productive to view my mistakes as learning opportunities. This small shift in mindset changed my entire outlook. No longer was this a project that had to be completed in a hurry. It was a project that I was going to do right and one that I could take pride in.

I think that frustration is an important part of learning. I need to let my students know that, and I need to work to ensure that they know it's a natural part of learning. I need to encourage them to work past the frustration to get to the reward side. I have a feeling that if they can get to the reward side once, getting there again will be easier.

No Office Day

Last week the principal and two vice-principals at my school decided to participate in 'No Office Day'. The idea behind the day is that administrators decide to spend the day in classrooms rather than in their offices. Our administrative team modified the day a little so that they could each spend a period in some classes. I was really excited to see this happening. I think that too often administrators get caught up in the paperwork, emails and dealing with the problem students and as a result don't have the time to see some of the great things going on around the school.

It was great to see the principals in a classroom chatting with students, asking questions about the work or life in general. It allowed the students to see that the principals are more than just school figure heads. It showed that they cared about the work in the classroom. It reminded me of Angela Maiers' TED Talk titled You Matter. By spending some time in the classroom the principals showed that all students mattered to them.

At the end of the day I thanked each of the principals for stopping by and informed them that the students really enjoyed the visit. All three of them said that they enjoyed the day and were keen to do it again. I hope it becomes part of their regular routine.