The History Teacher 2.0

Class Take Over!

This should be required for all teachers at least once a quarter. I don't know how it would logistically work out, but if I ever become an administrator, I'll make it happen. Somehow. The this I'm referring to is a take-over day!

TAKE OVER! @AletoJR took over my classroom today w/ @chambersmwh #centersd pic.twitter.com/He9DhJodEH
— Alec Chambers (@ChambersAlec) April 22, 2015

I've had an observer in my class named Michael Aleto for a little over a month. He is a teacher in training at a local university in Kansas City. He was placed at Center High School, where he was then placed with me. I was a bit nervous about this for two reasons at the start:

I don't teach in a conventional manner. I know it almost never turns out like this, but I still have this nagging anxiety that visitors to my room will think that I am teaching totally wrong. This is part of why I love going to other teacher's rooms and telling them later how awesome I thought it was;* part of our responsibility as teachers is to build each other up.
This was my first long-term observer. Would he be bored? Would he ask me ridiculous questions all the time and take up all of my free time? Would he be terrible with the kids and force me to have an awkward confrontational conversation? These are all questions that ran through my head.**

*Assuming that the class was, in fact, awesome!
**Yup. Welcome to my mind. A scary place.

I am in a phase of wanting to see others teach and wanting to learn from collaboration. I know that this seems like it should be obvious, but it's actually a lot harder than it seems. In any profession, there tends to be more to do than there is time in the day. Teachers are certainly not alone in wishing that there were more hours in a day, but teachers have the unique issue of essentially having to put on a brand new performance each and every hour. In addition, we get a very short amount of time in each day to both plan each performance and assess the student's mastery of the topic of the performance.

Teaching is very unique, and we are often so busy that the idea of spending some of our planning time in another teacher's classroom can quickly seem counter-intuitive. In theory doing this makes sense. In practice, it makes more sense to grade, to plan, to call parents, and sometimes to beautifully do absolutely nothing but think. This is what being ridiculously busy does - it stifles creativity and growth.

I need to remember that in my own classroom.

Having Michael take over my class today was a great opportunity to watch him teach for an entire day. I was able to give him some feedback and observe him adjust to the various issues that come up while teaching an entire day of classes. He did really well, both from my observation and from chatting with the students as they left class.

Just as important, it was an opportunity to simply observe my students. We get caught up in teaching our own classes that we sometimes do not have the time to just watch. We are problem-solving this or trying to teach that - we forget about some of the quieter students who at times just blend into their surroundings and get their work done. Not that I saw anything truly revolutionary, but I certainly got a chance to notice things about my students that I had either not noticed before or that I simply needed a good reminder.

It'll be interesting to think about this in a week. Will I teach any differently in the next week? Will I pay closer attention to certain, quieter students? Will I pay closer attention to body language signs that I saw today?

All good questions. I'll let you know what comes of it!

And just in case you missed it in the previous post, here's a really awesome video I made with my group answering the question, "What is learning?" in kind of a fun way!

Until next time - onwards!

Thanks for reading this blog! I hope you'll consider taking a moment to comment below and turn this into a conversation. Whether you are an educator or not, we have all had common experiences with education both good and bad. I want to hear what you think!

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What is learning?

Made by one of our fantastic students, Sierra Jones, 9th grade, Center High School

I'm trying this new mini-project with my students. I'm having them write a guest blog post for this very blog. It's pretty clear that an end-goal could not be to publish all of the student's blogs onto this space here. I have around 140 students and I'm asking for around 300 words per student. Some quick math gives us 42,000 words (I hope I'm right. If not, I teach social studies - leave me alone!) which are far too many to post all together.

What I've decided to do instead is make this a little bit of a competition. I've told the kids that I'm going to pick the top 6 to 18 blogs* and I will publish those blogs on my site. To make the work a bit more realistic, I've also told the students that whichever blogs get picked will need to go through an additional step of editing with me. Extra credit will be given to incentivize this process, but it shows that there should be a few drafts before publishing work. All the students will go through 2 drafts. Those who get published will go through 3 to 4 drafts.

*I know that number seems random, but it is 1 to 3 blogs from each of my 6 hours of classes.

I gave the students some guidance on what would guide my decision. I did not use a classic rubric because I wanted to represent that holistic writing is important, especially when writing a narrative like a good blog post very often is. There is no single formula, but there can be guiding questions that show the student what I am looking for in their writing without limiting their scope. Those questions were:

Does the student provide a thoughtful answer that is interesting to read?

Does the student show deep meta-cognition in his/her writing?

Does the student use quality grammar and sentence structure?

How will it turn out? Who knows! I will say that this is the most intensity I've seen come from a writing assignment in my teaching career, and that's worth something. I've had several students who normally don't ask me a lot of questions coming up to me and asking for guidance or advice. This shows that there has been a chord struck. Kids like attention. I want to give it to them for a positive reason.

In addition to the posts, which will hopefully come out sometime next week in their fully published forms, we made a video centered on the question of What is Learning? It is truly amazing how much kids like to watch themselves on video! For this particular one, I took volunteers who had something to say and stitched together their answers to the question. It's a bit silly and goofy, but it's a great window into my classroom and the students that I get the privilege of working with every day.

I'll also say that going through this activity has been really good for me. The students can be really frustrating at times, as teenagers tend to be. I try to be upfront with my students and have told several of them recently that they are starting to gnaw on my patience; some have responded well and some are going to need the message worded a bit more strictly. By this point in the year, I have been amazed by every single student and been frustrated like hell with every single student.

Making this video brought me to the edge of tears and got me all sentimental - it is so important to do things in my class that help to remind me every so often how much I love my kids. In the midst of them being teenagers, they are also becoming young adults. Having taught for nearly 5 years at this point, I'm able to see the bigger picture more than when I was a brand new teacher. I can more easily identify progress that may not necessarily look like progress in the traditional sense; that could be a student handling a situation with a touch of maturity or showing kindness to a student that is normally ignored in the social hierarchy that too often dominates high schools in America.

More on the student guest posts coming soon!

Thanks for reading this blog! I hope you'll consider taking a moment to comment below and turn this into a conversation. Whether you are an educator or not, we have all had common experiences with education both good and bad. I want to hear what you think!

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Connected Educator Day - MAY 2nd, 2015

Picture via www.connectededucators.org

Being a connected educator is a must in the modern world of education. There is simply too much out there in the world to NOT connect. There are too many great projects; too many incredible teachers; too many informational and entertaining videos; too many organizations ready to give time and money and resources; too much of everything that is good in education. If you are not connected, or at least are not trying to connect, then you are doing a disservice to yourself as a professional and, more importantly, you are doing a disservice to your students!

Having said that, if you're reading this blog, then I'm probably not talking about you! So thanks for connecting. Maybe think about leaving a comment today so that we can all learn from each other!

Connected Educator Day - May 2nd, 2015

May 2nd is Connected Educator Day. This is exactly what it sounds like - a day to encourage others around the world of education to become more connected. If you haven't been on Twitter yet, try it out. Specifically, think about joining #satchat for a special Saturday morning session. If you don't blog, try it out. It starts as personal reflection, but turns into a really wonderful place to share and gain ideas. If you aren't on Voxer yet, get there and connect with me. I'll show you a few great groups to join.

If you are a little leary of the #edtech world, then connect with others around your building and district. Can you start a book club, perhaps with a little Teach Like a Pirate? Can you start a monthly meet-up for teachers in your district where you talk about successes in your classroom like #kcedu? Can you walk around your building and see other teachers doing their great work and find some inspiration there?

Whatever it is, get connected and keep learning!