mel's treatise on teaching, pt. 1
When I started teaching, I read the curriculum guide which told me some basics of what I was 
supposed to teach, and then I taught. I did my best teaching, planned assignments and scaffolded ideas, and then I gave my students some sort of test to see how they did. I also gave a test because I needed some grades for the grade book and tests are expected in high school classes. If students didn't do well, I suggested they study harder, come work with me after school, and sometimes I offered to let them retake the test.
I had a few epiphanies those first few years. One was that I could usually predict a student's test score before s/he ever took the test. Another was that sometimes it was hard to figure out what to write the test about. Writing tests was hard in itself because I'd never taken a test writing class (although I had taken a lot of tests). I'd put some vocabulary matching, some multiple choice, some short answer, some true and false. The questions on the tests were ones I made up, or got from a test bank, and the most important factor was often finding the right number of questions to make the points add up right.
Several years ago I had my biggest A-ha! moment. It came from working with a lot of special education students. I found myself saying, "The most important thing to know in this unit is....". And then, it hit me that all students should know, before I start teaching the unit, the important things that I want them to know. Additionally, the test should match those important things so I can tell if they really learned it or not. Wow! All of a sudden, planning a unit become much easier, writing a test became easier, and (surprise, surprise) my students started doing better.
This success made me a bit cocky, so I revisited some of my previous assumptions. I thought about the fact that I could usually predict which students would do well on the test and which wouldn't. So the next logical question was, if I know they're going to fail the test, why give it to them? Isn't my goal to get them to learn the material? I became a lot less focused on getting grades in the gradebook and a lot more focused on whether my students were actually learning. I also realized that I'd sometimes be surprised when the student who had sat so quietly and smiled so nicely really hadn't done much or learned much. I needed a way to figure out how they were doing before the final, high points test. So I gave more small quizzes, took some dipstick assessments, and revised my teaching accordingly.
My colleagues in the English department were always willing to talk teaching and we realized that if we all did sort of the same thing in the same classes, not only did it keep parents and administrators happy but students did better in their next classes, and the teachers of those future classes had it easier because they knew students had been taught certain concepts in previous classes. As such, we all agreed to have about the same number of essays and read a similar number of books.
When the school district started talking about PLC's and teachers collaborating and creating essential learnings for each class, it made sense to me. We'd been doing this informally already and in my mind, it was good for kids. Basically the idea behind Professional Learning Communities is that students should learn the same essential skills and concepts no matter which teacher they end up with, and students at one school in the district should learn basically the same skills and concepts as students in other schools. Additionally, by clearly identifying these skills before you teach, teaching will be more focused and precise, planning and testing is easier, and student learning will improve.
I have realized in the past few months that what makes great sense to me doesn't always meet with acceptance from other teachers. Some teachers feel that the personality and preferences of the teacher are more important than consistency. Some teachers worry that if they agree to general essential learnings, the school district will force them into a lockstep, prescriptive curriculum that eliminates creativity. Other teachers are convinced that essential learning discussions are just a ruse leading us to common unit tests and final exams. And I think some teachers just don't want to have to learn to plan or teach in a different way, or change what they've always done.
The world of education that I work in now is not the same schema I started teaching in. Expectations have changed for what students should know and what schools should be providing students. Research on education and learning has offered new insights about what happens in schools, ways to improve, and how to help students. Instead of the traditional "teach, test and hope for the best" the expectation for teachers should be "tell 'em what you want 'em to know, check to see if they're learning it, and reteach it if they aren't."
This year is a big growth year for me. Not only am I taking coursework in education, I'm getting new professional development, getting to focus on different aspects of teaching, and pondering the system from a different perspective. Education is on my mind. Some days I feel excited and hopeful, other days, I worry about the whole thing. I think I've been a good teacher, but is the system, the teacher herd bigger than the individual? Is the power of status quo stronger than the uncertainty of change?
supposed to teach, and then I taught. I did my best teaching, planned assignments and scaffolded ideas, and then I gave my students some sort of test to see how they did. I also gave a test because I needed some grades for the grade book and tests are expected in high school classes. If students didn't do well, I suggested they study harder, come work with me after school, and sometimes I offered to let them retake the test.I had a few epiphanies those first few years. One was that I could usually predict a student's test score before s/he ever took the test. Another was that sometimes it was hard to figure out what to write the test about. Writing tests was hard in itself because I'd never taken a test writing class (although I had taken a lot of tests). I'd put some vocabulary matching, some multiple choice, some short answer, some true and false. The questions on the tests were ones I made up, or got from a test bank, and the most important factor was often finding the right number of questions to make the points add up right.
Several years ago I had my biggest A-ha! moment. It came from working with a lot of special education students. I found myself saying, "The most important thing to know in this unit is....". And then, it hit me that all students should know, before I start teaching the unit, the important things that I want them to know. Additionally, the test should match those important things so I can tell if they really learned it or not. Wow! All of a sudden, planning a unit become much easier, writing a test became easier, and (surprise, surprise) my students started doing better.
This success made me a bit cocky, so I revisited some of my previous assumptions. I thought about the fact that I could usually predict which students would do well on the test and which wouldn't. So the next logical question was, if I know they're going to fail the test, why give it to them? Isn't my goal to get them to learn the material? I became a lot less focused on getting grades in the gradebook and a lot more focused on whether my students were actually learning. I also realized that I'd sometimes be surprised when the student who had sat so quietly and smiled so nicely really hadn't done much or learned much. I needed a way to figure out how they were doing before the final, high points test. So I gave more small quizzes, took some dipstick assessments, and revised my teaching accordingly.
My colleagues in the English department were always willing to talk teaching and we realized that if we all did sort of the same thing in the same classes, not only did it keep parents and administrators happy but students did better in their next classes, and the teachers of those future classes had it easier because they knew students had been taught certain concepts in previous classes. As such, we all agreed to have about the same number of essays and read a similar number of books.
When the school district started talking about PLC's and teachers collaborating and creating essential learnings for each class, it made sense to me. We'd been doing this informally already and in my mind, it was good for kids. Basically the idea behind Professional Learning Communities is that students should learn the same essential skills and concepts no matter which teacher they end up with, and students at one school in the district should learn basically the same skills and concepts as students in other schools. Additionally, by clearly identifying these skills before you teach, teaching will be more focused and precise, planning and testing is easier, and student learning will improve.
I have realized in the past few months that what makes great sense to me doesn't always meet with acceptance from other teachers. Some teachers feel that the personality and preferences of the teacher are more important than consistency. Some teachers worry that if they agree to general essential learnings, the school district will force them into a lockstep, prescriptive curriculum that eliminates creativity. Other teachers are convinced that essential learning discussions are just a ruse leading us to common unit tests and final exams. And I think some teachers just don't want to have to learn to plan or teach in a different way, or change what they've always done.
The world of education that I work in now is not the same schema I started teaching in. Expectations have changed for what students should know and what schools should be providing students. Research on education and learning has offered new insights about what happens in schools, ways to improve, and how to help students. Instead of the traditional "teach, test and hope for the best" the expectation for teachers should be "tell 'em what you want 'em to know, check to see if they're learning it, and reteach it if they aren't."This year is a big growth year for me. Not only am I taking coursework in education, I'm getting new professional development, getting to focus on different aspects of teaching, and pondering the system from a different perspective. Education is on my mind. Some days I feel excited and hopeful, other days, I worry about the whole thing. I think I've been a good teacher, but is the system, the teacher herd bigger than the individual? Is the power of status quo stronger than the uncertainty of change?
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