Teaching often feels like an overwhelming job. In order to help students, schools develop the academic as well as the social and emotional aspects of a child. Teachers have the challenge and privilege of acting as teachers, guides, counselors, parents, and mentors. It can feel like a lot - especially when you have students who have great needs in Social Emotional Learning. I think the best way to tackle this is to take an approach to teaching in which educators try to educate the "whole child". This means to try to bridge the gap between your class content and the students lives. It means developing the social emotional learning of students in addition to just the content area of your classroom. Social emotional learning should be part of your overall "content" area. In my classroom this takes a couple of different forms. The first form is having the students collaborate with their peers. This develops both their social and emotional resiliency skills as they frequently run into challenges during collaboration. Occasionally group work will require teacher mediation but for the most part students learn how to handle disputes themselves. Other forms of "educating the whole child" includes not shying away from applying rules, and trying to form personal connections with the students. Personal connections can help the students immensely as they understand that there is an adult who cares about them. This can be greatly encouraging. Applying the rules is a necessity of classroom management, but I think that it also helps the students grow by learning through trial and error what appropriate social behavior looks like and how to deal with the emotional turbulence getting in trouble and entail.
On our school site, educating the whole child is even more inclusive. The roles that a teacher fills within the classroom are fulfilled by people with those specific job titles. There are counselors to help the students. There are opportunities for students to get involved in student government. There are many clubs and a wide variety of classes for students to take that can help them develop a variety of skills. Educating the whole child is difficult but I'm confident that my school site has the means to help most students. In EDUC222 we talked a lot about the history of education as well as what it means to develop college and career readiness in our students. In my classroom - especially since I have mostly 11th grade students - I will focus a lot on developing 21st century skills to get the students ready for life after high school. I will try to incorporate projects and group work in my class to get the students to develop digital literacy as well as good collaboration skills. I will try to engage my students in high level thinking as often as possible to reflect what a job would be like in their futures. Finally, I think that this course helped me broaden my understanding of the intention of school. School is not only about learning content like math, science and english. School provides a foundation for our society. I love school.
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Digital literacy refers to the ease of which individuals can use technology to solve problems, socialize, collaborate, and gain information. The 21st century has requires that students become digitally literate as the general direction of careers is going towards greater and greater integration with technology. Students should have literacy in a variety of digital tools including but not limited to research, reporting, collaborating, socializing, solving problems, and how to behave appropriately online. It is important for us as educators to support students in their pursuit of obtaining skills in the digital age because it is required for the 21st century work place.
Digital Citizenship plays an important role in cultivating digital literacy within students. Students need to know how to use technology appropriately which includes understanding what appropriate collaboration and use of social media looks like. This is crucial because students use technology inappropriately all the time. In my classroom - especially at the beginning of the year - I receive homework that is turned in written in text message language. I also hear stories about students posting inappropriate things online. It has lead me to conclude that students don't naturally have good digital citizenship and that teachers need to devote time to helping their students become better digital citizens. This will help students with college and career readiness. Greater fluency and ease of use of a variety of digital tools will help students be more prepared for college and careers. Improved digital citizenship will help students not get in their own ways. Teachers often lament the fact that their students don't have enough support at home to be successful in school. My discussions with other teachers on this topic have typically been defeatist. The prevailing belief among my fellow teachers has been that we can't do anything to help our students are home if their parents aren't checked in. There is some truth to that - we don't have the same level of influence outside the classroom as we do inside it. However, we do have the ability to be community builders and organizers. We are excellent at forming connections with people and that can extend to forming connections with parents and our communities.
In order to foster family and community connections I intend to try extending the activities that I have my students do at home. I'd like to get the parents to be involved in the specific activities that the students are doing. This could be having the students complete experiments at home that require the help of a second person. Currently we are about to start a unit on electricity and magnetism. A good example of this practice would have the students and parents make a simple voltaic pile. This is a slightly labor intensive project in which parents and students can make simple batteries out of pennies and vinegar. After the construction of the battery, the student's family could then play a short game in which they shock themselves by touching different levels of the battery. This is a fun experiment that could make physics more social and approachable. Secondary to this - I would like share with the parents resources that could allow them to help their students with physics. The challenge with students having support for physics at home often includes the fact that family members haven't taken physics themselves. At Tracy High we have after school resources for students to attend for free tutoring. There are also online resources that I can share with parents to help them. My hope is that by providing parents and students with tangible methods of getting extra help we can make physics more approachable and a celebration of how great school can be. There are many barriers that prevent students from college and career readiness. Many students comes from low socio-economic backgrounds which can limit future prospects. Other students don't have support at home for education and preparing for the future. Some students face cultural biases embedded within education that are difficult to root out. It is our responsibility and privilege as educators to help these students overcome these barriers and be ready for the future.
There are supports that are intended to help students reach these goals. My site, Tracy High, has an AVID program for preparing students for college. Our school also does a good job by provide CTE (Career and Technical Education) with our culinary arts, agricultural department, and shop classes. We also have guidance counselors who do a good job getting students into the correct programs. Teacher trainings are also provided every Wednesday to help prepare teachers to support students using with new instructional strategies. I've found the weekly school trainings to be helpful. In particular, I've found that AVID strategies to be helpful. As they pertain to science recommended strategies include methods of note taking, and group work to foster critical thinking and collaboration. Through discussion in my Teacher's College class I was made aware that most people have implicit biases that can negatively impact students. These biases can be diagnosed with the help of tools like Harvard's Implicit Bias Tests. I plan on taking these tests and discussing my results with my colleagues. My hope is that with the help of my mentor teacher I can remove my implicit biases. I want all of my students to be successful. Other strategies that I will use include checking in with the students to verify how they are doing. I will also provide students with additional time to receive help in the form of office hours. I believe that if students have the supports they need - they will be successful in whatever they choose to do after they leave my classroom. I truly believe that educators can have an enormous, lasting and positive impact on students. If we can successfully eliminate the barriers to success then we can help generations beyond our students. We can help our students become productive members of society who are problem solvers for our communities. I think that the NGSS standards and CC anchor standards for literacy have just enough freedom for the teachers to be creative and develop deeper learning experiences for all types of learners. To elaborate, for our NGSS standards in science we are given the standard descriptions and then a list of what will or will not be tested by the state. We aren't told what everyday of class must look like or exactly how to teach. With the standards as the guidelines we have the freedom to develop project based learning experiences for the students that can help replicate what work will be like for the students in the future. The framework and storylines that are embedded within the state standards can help us teachers determine what good projects could be for students. An example of this mode of teaching would be a project based learning experience for physics where students design helmets for the NFL to minimize the concussive force players receive when they get hit. By approaching education and teaching through project based learning, teachers and students can have more freedom of expression, engagement and representation. Students can engage with the material in a variety of ways and can focus on what interests them. In science we can build on the NGSS standards by applying the CC anchor standards for literacy by having our students prepare presentations, do research, and collaborate. This can help students navigate both college and careers in the future as they will some experience from the classroom that is analogous to the experiences they will have within their careers or future education.
In conclusion - how will this help our students? It will prepare them for the world which is less structured than the classroom. We need to develop our students to be both flexible and resilient. The great news is - this can be a lot of fun! The premise for this blog post is difficult to answer. No teacher can be everything to everyone. No teacher can teach students everything they need to know to be successful in the 21st century. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try though and there are meaningful steps that we can take to help our students. I think the first step is to recognize the magnitude of what the students face. The 21st century has people experiencing a constant barrage of social media that shows us how wonderful things are for everyone else. I feel like life isn't wonderful for everyone else - at least not all the time and students need to be able to reconcile what they see online with their own lives. They need to realize that their lives are perfectly valid and okay. This really has to do with mental health and I think it is a core crisis that modern society faces. As a society we have become so successful overall that the problems that plagued our ancestors aren't the same as the ones our students will face. I feel strongly about teaching students resiliency as a 21st century skill. I think that STEM is all great and good but before we can even get to that as educators we need help our students form a stable foundation. That stable foundation needs to be resiliency in the face of societal pressures. To understand that mental health is important and that it is okay to not know everything. But it is great to want to learn.
Modeling these concepts is not enough. I 100% agree with that - I think that we need explicit instruction and we need to help our students practice. Frankly - I'm a little worried about what our students will face in the future. I don't know everything and certainly don't know the best strategies for teaching overall. All I know is that I want to try to help. How Much DO Teachers Really Work Per Week?
Teaching is a difficult profession and teachers are notoriously overworked. As a new teacher I find that on average I spend 60 - 70 hours a week working. This includes lesson planning, grading, answering emails, attending staff meetings, calling parents, creating educational videos, gather supplies, holding office hours and dealing with behavior problems from students AND parents. That's not a complete list and it's is just the "work-time" burden. There is a growing body of evidence that teachers face an even greater emotional burden that simply can't be set down at the end of the day.
The COVID-19 pandemic has really emphasized what society is missing when teachers aren't teaching in their usual manner. Parents are struggling to find child care without schools being in person and students are struggling even more, as their social interactions have been severely limited. A poorly recognized reality is that "Schools are the 'de facto mental health system for many children and adolescents'". This all emphasizes how important teachers are to our society and that we need to figure out ways to support our teachers. You can donate to teachers through wonderful programs like Donors Choose or Adopt a Classroom. You could also - you know - slide your teacher friend $20 bucks to keep him/her from having to jump through the hoops of having to deal with that bureaucracy. I think that perhaps even more importantly - you could help by changing how we talk about our teachers. The average teacher is hard working, extremely generous, and cares deeply about his/her students. Politicians and more generally - society - often point to the perks like summers off when they discuss teachers and how much they work. See for yourself. Try out the calculator below to see much much teachers work. If you are a teacher - share your results in the comments below. The 21st century student is headed for a job market that is vastly different from any historical market. Modern society has such a breadth and depth of jobs, skills, and tools that it is no longer possible to be a jack of all trades. This reality begs the question: What can we do as educators to prepare students for future success? I've struggled with this question a lot. Recently I taught students engineering skills through a project in which they designed bridges online. Afterwards we 3D printed and tested the bridges. It was a great experience for the students. However, the software they used wouldn't be used by professionals in engineering nor are most products made with 3D printing. We were held back by the resources available to us. We are in distance learning and have a tiny budget ($50 a semester). The difficulty in teaching professional quality skills is concerning. Is this the best we can do for our students? Physics isn't intended to teach vocational skills - but I want to prepare my students for the future. What can I really teach my students skill-wise with $50 a semester? What do students need to be successful? I think that the answer lies in adaptability. Students can't learn everything they will need to use in the future. Students need to be capable of learning on the job and they would benefit from being fearless in attempting learning. This is difficult to achieve for anyone. Sadly students often get beaten down by education and they often forget that learning is wonderful. Wondering is wonderful. Teachers should focus on developing adaptability and critical thinking going forward - but how do we teach that? The only conclusion I can come to for my classes is to try to practice them however we can and model those traits myself. There are issues with this approach. Students seem to really want specific job related skills out of education and it's challenging to get students to recognize the value of such a intangible skill as being able to learn anything. The history of education can provide some insight into this dilemma. Public education within the US has not existed in its current form for all that long. Within colonial America, education had been primarily intended for religious students. Black students weren't educated in a wide spread manner until post Civil War Reconstruction and then it became the norm for schools to be segregated. As a society we started to get closer to modern public schooling with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. In the early 20th century, high schools started to become more common and there was a initially great focus on teaching liberal arts. Public schooling has gone away from a focus on liberal arts. Modern schools cram the words STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) or STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Arts Math) down the throats of all new teachers and into the minds of all students. It's a wonderful thing but is it enough for our students? Right now we are at an inflection point in US society. Students are growing up to become gullible and persuaded by conspiracy theories. Critical thinking, heralded by both STEM/STEM initiatives and liberal arts programs, isn't being tempered by learning about rhetoric. It's made our students vulnerable. How did we get away from emphasizing liberal arts? Did we? Historically one can point to the struggles the struggles of the 20th century. We had two World Wars followed by a Cold War where societal strength in STEM became an absolute necessity. It still is - we see the US under constant threat from cyber attacks, the world is literally getting hotter, and we're current in a pandemic. STEM can help solve all these problems but it is only a part of the equation. The resiliency and adaptability that students need for the 21st century job market are the same skills we need as a society to maintain stability. Simply put, we need to keep pushing liberal arts in addition to pushing STEM/STEAM within the US. If we can do that - everyone will benefit. High school education is only a portion of our learning process within the US. Post secondary programs and more generally post secondary education also need to continue to push our students forward with both STEM/STEAM and liberal arts. History has shown us the education is a reflection of society. Right now - with the conspiracy theories that are rampant and the horrible violence in our capital - it seems now more than ever we need to focus on preparing our students to be adaptable and able to think critically. What do you think? Leave a comment below!
Teaching sometimes feels like an experiment. You form a hypothesis about what you think will work, set up your procedures, attempt to manage the variables (I'm looking at you poorly behaved individuals), run your class, and then reflect on the results.
This year I've been trying out a fun experiment. I've been writing weekly stories with recurring characters for our Wednesday class quizzes. At the end of each quiz there is an installment of a story in which the student has to answer questions in order to thwart the BAD GUY. However, over the course of this first semester the students have come to learn that the BAD GUY and GAL aren't so bad after all. They have motivations and desires that make sense when they are explained. Even the BAD GUYS love physics and they are constantly getting up to different shenanigans. The overall story is a bit silly, and intentionally a bit high octane. The students break the BAD GUYS out from jail aboard the international space station, aliens invade and of course there is a prophecy. It's a ridiculous story and the students love it. It's great fun. I can't say at this point that using storylines to teach will improve test scores or that even that it is a powerful tool. I can say that it is enjoyable and it's delightful to model joy for our students in this difficult time. Try it out and let me know how it worked for you! On a side note - below is an annual storyline that I'm working on setting up. Let me know what you think in the comments below!
In the age of COVID-19 our society has changed. Students across the US have not been attending school in person. The majority of students are in distance learning, some are in-person and some have disappeared from our schools altogether. Parents are having to figure out alternatives to school in order to get child care for their children. As an educator it's incredibly concerning. People often think of school as only about providing education. It's so much more than that.
School is for building community. School is for providing students with a safe place. Period. Many students don't have safe and stable home environments. School CAN provide that. School gives students the opportunity to see what being responsible looks like and how to behave responsibly around others. School allows food to be distributed to those in need. It allows adults to check in with students to make sure that they are OK. School is about building people up. It is the bedrock of our society. I can't wait until we can go back to in person school such that we as teachers can more effectively help our students. The video below went viral on the internet a while back. I think that it misses the point about the value schools provide to our society. I hope that in the age of COVID people can better understand the value of a strong educational system. What do you think? Leave a comment below. |
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April 2021
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