I Walk The Line

So, Johnny Cash sang about walking the line 60+ years ago, singing about how he tried to stay on the straight and narrow path of “being good” in the face of temptations. 

As I sit in my living room, I think about the many, many lines I am walking the line these days despite the fact that I don’t go very far (or anywhere). And how the line is ever shifting and confusing. Remember a month or two ago when we just had to stay in groups of less than 250 people? Or just use hand sanitizer more often? That WAS walking the line! 

So, here are a few lines I’m currently walking

• The line between getting exercise and being around other people.
• The line between being a good parent and a good employee.
• The line between braving Publix again or ordering takeout (and supporting a local small business).
• The line between needing Pop Tarts for mental health and not needing Pop Tarts for physical health.
• The line between needing to make an amazing, engaging lesson so the students actually do it and learn something and the line between needing to not spend 20 hours on a screen.

It’s a definite line.

Because A leads to B leads to C leads to D... like this ...

If I assign boring work, the kids won’t be engaged.  

If the kids aren’t engaged, they will stop logging in. 

If they stop logging in, they stop learning in my class. 

If they stop logging into my class, they might stop learning altogether. 

If they stop learning altogether, the fourth quarter is a waste.

If fourth quarter is a waste, my most struggling students will be even more behind than ever.

If my most struggling students are even more behind, then how will they ever catch up?

However ... 

I have to walk the line. 

Have you gone down the rabbit hole looking for some cool activity lately? The internet is a big place. Go looking for something more interesting than the usual stuff and you can spend hours and hours digging and sifting through the resources. You can get lost and sucked into a time warp where you search and explore for hours, emerging well after dark wondering where your day went. 

You have to balance your students’ needs with your own needs. This is always true, but work blends into home life a little more easily now that we can’t get into our cars at the end of the day and leave the school building. 

Number one, as Dr. Grego said in his recent email, please give yourself grace. 

This is not your regular classroom. You are not teaching five 45-minute lessons anyway. The kids are not in front of you. So, please give yourself and the kids grace to still work through figuring these things out. Let it be messy. Let lessons bomb. Be forgiving when the kids mess up or you mess up or when a lesson falls flat that you thought would rock. Or when the technology doesn’t work. Or when the kids don’t work. For real. 

Number two is that many hands make light work. How do you make a great lesson? How do you find great resources? Where do these colleagues find awesome virtual field trips and learning games? Divide and conquer! 

You can use the resources that come out of our office or share the work with your friends and colleagues. 

But please walk the line between finding engaging lessons and working too hard. Please don’t work too hard. Life is too stressful right now for you to spend 18 hours a day on your computer. 

But please don’t totally skip the engaging piece and just assign textbook readings with questions at the end. If we do that, we lose kids. And if we lose kids right now, it’s awfully hard to find them again.

What lines are you currently walking? How are you succeeding (or not) at walking the line between engagement and overdoing it? How are your kids responding? 

I really do want to hear from you. I really do miss you all! Email me at newmantr@pcsb.org 

-Tracy

Bunny Slippers, Siri, and Alexa

So, Now that we’re a couple weeks into this distance learning stuff, like most situations, I am finding some definite positives and some definite challenges to this working from home thing. (Note: there are no actual “positives” to COVID 19 itself. Be safe. Stay home!)

• Positive? Not taking an hour-plus every morning to get the kids to school in one direction and get me to wherever I need to be in the other direction! 
• Challenge? Needing that full hour-plus (broken up here and there) every day to read my kindergartner his assignment directions and set him up on each assignments (Note: his teacher is amazing. His assignments are very appropriate. He’s just a kindergartner and a bit attention-demanding)
• Positive? Not worrying so much about what I wear or dressing like a “real grown up”. Less time and hassle! 
• Challenge? I am about to WEAR OUT my fuzzy bunny slippers in APRIL, y’all! Real shoes are not worn except for my daily bike ride or walk around the neighborhood. Plus, I cut my own bangs and I’m pretty sure they aren’t very straight. It’s a hard thing to do when you wear glasses and need them to see to cut your own hair but they're in the way of the bangs.  

I think there are some definitely positives and negatives/challenges to teaching from home, too. Anyone agree with me? 

• Positive? The kids are quiet. Or if they’re not, you can’t hear them so it doesn’t bother you or each other that much (except in class meetings on Teams)
• 
  Challenge? The kids are quiet! You can’t tell if they’re learning anything or if they’re daydreaming or ignoring you or watching Tik Toks all day. 
• Positive? No bathroom passes. No scheduling computer labs. No worrying about who has a pencil. No passing out materials. No raising hands. No waiting for a copy machine line or running out of copies for the month. 
• Challenge? Uh, no paper or book materials! No student hands to raise or see. New logistics problems -- getting digital materials to kids in the best and most efficient and useful ways. Ways that open and work...

And here’s another issue...

DOK Levels of thinking. Some definite positives and challenges here, too!

• Positive? You have every digital resource at your kids finger tips. Every kid has a (digital) textbook AND a device! The “assignments tab” is finally working! (thank goodness!) Suddenly, half the problems that used to thwart your day are gone (copiers, textbooks, pencils, bathroom passes, chatty children)
• Challenge? “Right there” questions don’t work anymore. They just don’t! The kids are just going to google them. Or text their friends. You can no longer ask “When did ___ happen?” or “What’s the name of ___?” I mean, you CAN, but it sure isn’t very useful. . 

We talk about things being ungoogleable (Just say that word out loud. It sounds so awesome!). That’s become important since the beginning of the days of the internet. It’s become even more important that we ask kids to do more than regurgitate shallow facts. It is even MORE important in the days of kids having personal cell phones and personal devices in class -- or AS their whole class experience!  

It is CRUCIAL today, now that every single kid is on a device all day long. 

It makes no sense to ask kids to spend time on “right there” questions when they’re all on devices. They can literally click “control-c” (copy) and “control v” (paste) without spending much (or any) brain power on comprehending the question or the answer. 

We need to move on past low level questions anyway. This digital learning moment should help us accelerate that.

Low level questions and memorization were important for centuries before photocopy machines, to pass on culture, history, knowledge, and oral tradition. 

And then came the internet. And now, instead of needing to memorize these pieces of information, we can Google them. THere are so many more pieces of information than there used to be anyway.Or, weirder still, we can ask Youtube (did you know that more teens ask Youtube questions than Google?) Or we can ask Alexa or Siri. 

And now our students are online all day for school. 

Who was the 16th president? Control-C and Control-V. 

When did Rome become an Empire? Control-C and Control-V.

What happened in Miranda v. Arizona? Control-C and Control-V.

They don’t actually LEARN anything that way. 

So, part of our teaching change is POSITIVE now that every kid has a device and we can all take virtual field trips and play Mission US or iCivics games. 

But part of our teaching is a definite CHALLENGE because we now can’t really use one of those standard teacher tools: low level questions. I mean we can, but without being in person, it becomes mostly busy work that is instantly cheated on, WITH parents noticing,and we can’t catch the cheaters. Yikes! 

So, what do we do instead?

We can move up the DOK Wheel, even one level. It’s the 4th quarter anyway. Kids have learned 3/4 of their school year and they are smarter and better readers than they were in August. So, instead of “right there” questions, let’s ask them to summarize, use context clues, infer, predict, or find cause/effect. You all have been doing these things all year. So let them try once with scaffolding (if they REALLY need it) and then take the scaffolding away and let those kiddos fly on their own! 

The key to this is QUALITY OVER QUANTITY. 

I’d rather have three or four (or two?) good questions that are mid or high level on the DOK than ten low-level DOK questions where the answers really come from Alexa or Siri. 

If you’re tempted to ask “right there” questions, try one of these instead.

• What is the main/central idea? 
• What is the author’s claim?
• What evidence does the author/video/art/chart give?
• What is the cause of ___?
• What was the effect of ___?
• Summarize _____.
• Compare ____ to ____.
• What’s the difference between _____ and _____?
• Infer what the author/artist is trying to say about ____?
• Predict what you think is going to happen next.

I know that my fuzzy bunny slippers count this distance-learning as a positive. And my parenting-while-working-from-home definitely counts this as a challenge. 

But as we work through our positives and challenges, let’s make sure to roll with the punches and be intentional about quality over quantity and mid- to higher levels of thinking. Nobody is paying us to teach Google, Alexan, or Siri. Plus, those guys know all the answers anyway. 

How is your instruction shifting with our current way of work (other than bunny slippers all day)? Have you thought about and adapted to the fact that your students are Googling or asking Siri or Alexa the answers to all the low-level questions? As always (and more now that I only see one other adult all day!) I LOVE to hear from you! Email me at newmantr@pcsb.org 

-Tracy

Teaching To Who?

Imagine you had a class of 26 kids. Not to get into a discussion about class sizes (nope! Not going there!)  but so we can “name” them Kid A through Kid Z for the purposes of this conversation. 

Now, let’s assume we can rank them according to whatever criteria you think is most important to your class — FSA Reading scores, midterm scores, grade in your class, GPA, etc. 

(I know we don’t actually rank children. That’s a lousy thing to do and a terrible way to treat kids. But since these are fictitious children, will you humor me?)

So let’s assume Kid A is your highest achieving student and Kid Z is your most struggling student. 

Who do you teach to? I mean, when you’re planning your lesson, which achievement level is in your mind?

Let’s assume that you had already planned a lesson that was ON GRADE LEVEL, not below grade level because we think the kids aren’t ready or they need this other thing first. 

Most teachers would say they’re teaching to the “LMNO” region of the class. The middle. Kid M. They plan their lessons to the middle abilities, the middle achievement group. 

I think they definitely start there. And then they groan at the idea of Kid T, Kid U, and Kid V (and let’s not talk about W, X, Y, and Z!) and the struggles those three are going to have. And then they adapt that lesson downward so that Kids  T, U, and V can do it. 

Which is honorable and kind! 

Meanwhile, Kid A is done with the assignment and doing her math homework before you’re done giving directions. Kids B-E are working diligently while you give instructions. 

But Kids F-S ... that’s 15 kids that are acting up. That’s 15 kids (plus the the earlier five, Kids A-E) for whom this assignment is now was too easy. The lesson that WAS on grade level is now below grade level. 

And just like that, we have lowered our expectations of the whole class. We don’t allow the whole class to do on-grade level, meeting-standards level work. 

Because we were kind. Because we were worried about certain kids. 

I remember Kids T, U, and V. I loved them. I worried about them. I got tired of seeing them constantly frustrated. I hated for them to fail, so I set up assignments where they were more likely to be successful.

But in doing so, I cheated the rest of my class. I underestimated the rest of them. When I said “they can’t do this assignment”, I meant “Kid T through Kid Z” couldn’t do this assignment. 

Kids T-Z are struggling for sure. They’re more likely to act up because they’re frustrated. They might be more needy in the attention department. But they’re 7 kids. I have nineteen kids that CAN do this assignment. 

And this is where we talk about scaffolding and opportunity. 

It wasn’t fair of me to deny those 19 kids the opportunity to try to do those assignments. I had low expectations and that was wrong. I cheated them of the chance to excel. Of the chance to learn. 

Those seven who weren’t ready? There are a million ways to scaffold the task so they COULD be successful. I could have 

• Sat with them in a small group to help
• Had them do fewer parts of the assignment (5 questions instead of 10)
• Highlighted some key passages to help
• Frontloaded some vocabulary 
• Let them work with a partner
• Given them extra time
• Modeled the first part of the task
• Given them sentence starters 

Ok, you’re thinking. Maybe I won’t direct my lesson to the “TUV” range. I can just keep it at the “LMNO” level where I started.

That’s definitely a start. But I’d like to challenge you further. 

Every kid deserves a chance to STRIVE. To stretch. To be challenged. Can you take that lesson written at the level where your Kid L, Kid M, Kid N, is now and help them stretch to the next level? Can you challenge those kids to get to where a Level G is? What about a Level D (in this scenario, not a grade of a D)? 

The goal is to continually raise our kids higher, to challenge them further, to push them harder. (Not in a pushy way) 

Every kid deserves to move up, from Kid Z to Kid A, from our “Level Ones” and our “Level Fives”. Every single kid. 

When we teach to the lower level or to the middle achievement level in our class, we don’t help our kids stretch to the next level.

And stretching kids up to the next level is our whole job. 

How do you already do this? How do you remember to stretch your kids and “up” your lessons? As always, I love to hear from you! 

The Connection Is Made

It’s getting down to the end. We have less than six weeks of school left (!!). The weather is  gorgeous. The kids have Spring Fever. The “senioritis” is trickling down to junioritis, freshmanitis, eighthgradeitis, even sixthgradeitis! It’s intermittently testing season and field trip season and schedules are all funky and out of whack.

How on earth do we keep any continuity or connections between topics and lessons from one day to the next?  

Especially when we don’t see one group of kids until Thursday because of testing/field trip/special events?

As usual, my magic wand is in the shop. And my magic bullets are in the mail.  

But it definitely wouldn’t hurt to be more intentional in having kids make connections.

Here are two ideas that you can work in, regardless of how frequently -- or infrequently -- you see your kids this month.

1. 
   Clifhangers: How do we remember the important points of Game of Thrones or whatever TV show we haven’t seen in a while? The shows usually helps us out by leaving us with a cliffhanger at the end of one episode.

Cliffhangers are great for that last one-minute of class when you don’t  have time to start something else. Just throw out a fairly interesting question from tomorrow’s lesson and remind kids to “stay tuned” to find out.

• What are some of the most important Supreme Court cases of all time?
• What is Lincoln going to do when states start seceding?
• How can the Roman Republic stay a republic when it adds all this new territory?
• How smoothly do you think these former colonies are going to move into independence?
• What different areas are going to outwardly fight against integration -- and which areas are going to fight passively?

It’s ok that they don’t have the answers. They’re NOT SUPPOSED TO! A cliffhanger is there to make them curious about the next lesson. It’s supposed to engage their brains a little after your class is over.

We know it’s not likely that they will ponder that question all night and lose sleep over it. But even if it crosses SOME of their minds once or twice, then their brains are “primed” and ready to connect new content to the old content.

Curiosity is a powerful force for engagement and learning. And it doesn’t require a lot of prep to add in.

2. Previously On: The next way to help kids is to regularly ask  kids what they remembered from yesterday’s lesson (or the previous time’s lesson) -- ask as bellwork or during the lesson intro.

There are several ways to do this.

• You can just flat out ask -- “what did you remember from yesterday’s lesson?”
• You can toss out a couple of terms from yesterday and ask what they have to do with the main topic.
• You can ask a review question about the previous lesson, test-style.
• You can ask kids to turn and talk about what they know or remember about the previous lesson’s topic.

3. Connections: Put a couple of terms from recent lessons on the board. Then ask kids to use a certain amount of them (6? 10?) on their paper -- with ARROWS showing how they are connected.

This helps kids explore the connections between topics which helps build schema and solidifies it all in their heads.

It requires the kids to not only know the content, but know and understand how each goes with another.

How can we help kids make connections within and between content? How can we help them keep some continuity when our schedules get crazy? How can we start the review process a little bit at a time?

Help kids make connections. Try it!

And let me know how it goes! Email me at newmantr@pcsb.org

-Tracy