Redefining my role as Teacher

[... first rays of light]
Originally uploaded by Stefan Mendelsohn

As each day goes by I find myself thinking more and more about what my new role as a teacher is in this digital and technical world we call teaching. I have come to an early conclusion that my goal as a teacher is to teach students how to teach themselves. It doesn't matter if I am teaching Math, Physics, Drafting...fill in the blank, in the end students may remember a few things from the content but the bigger picture is; did I teach them something about themselves and about how they learn best?
I find I am focusing more on being a resource and providing valuable resources to my students that help them achieve success in the content and understanding about how to learn. I have discussion weekly in my classrooms with students about "what is the point of school"? Through our discussions I get the sense that students are frustrated with the way schools are set up and how "pointless" some classes are. They make the point, "when will I ever use this again in my life?" My comment is that true, you may never need some or most of what you learn in school, but the important thing is that you learn how to learn so that you can teach yourself anything that you will need to learn in your lifetime. Most of the content I learned in school I had to reteach to myself if I needed it in University or at a job. So to me, the bigger lesson, the bigger picture is; can I teach my students what their learning style is and can I provide resources to help them discover and take advantage of what their learning strengths are?
To me this simplifies my teaching and makes me a more efficient teacher because I know where I should be focusing my energy and time. I am sure this philosophy of teaching, I guess you could call it, will change and evolve as I embark on my teaching journey but I feel I am on to something more foundational and valuable than trying to convince kids to learn this because they have to if they want to graduate or because they may need this if they go to University. If there is a method to the madness then maybe the madness might just make sense and be worth something in the end.

Student cheating

Sitting Alone
Originally uploaded by naraekim0801

This past week I had my first experience with students cheating in my class. Four of my more "energetic" students thought it would be a good idea to hand in the same drawing assignment. How do I know it was the same assignment? Well the geometry that the students had to create had the exact same blatant errors on all the drawings and since they handed them in all at the exact same time it was pretty easy to recognize the pattern. It kind of shocked me. I always kind of expected at some point in my career that I would come across students trying to get away without doing the work, but it was still disappointing.
I chose to call all the students to my desk and explain the situation. They didn't really deny it or fight back. I gave them all zero on the assignment. They didn't seem to concerned with the consequences of their actions. I didn't know if further action should be taken, such as a phone call home, but I figured if my son or daughter did something like this at school I would want to know. I made the phone calls home and each parent was thankful for the call and one parent even asked if I could send the assignment home with the student so she could make her son still do the assignment even though he would not receive any marks for it.
As a result of this incident the students involved seem to take the class and myself more seriously. Also, this has provided me the opportunity to make contact with the home and start to develop a relationship with my students home life. It was a real positive experience speaking with the parents and I felt as though I had an ally on my side as I tried to show these students the right and wrong of their actions.
This experience has reinforced to me just how important parental/guardian involvement is to the success of a student.

Feeling guilty about "not" teaching

So my new job is teaching in a non-traditional subject...drafting/architecture. Coming from a math background this is new territory for me. I am used to alot of direct instruction and playing the "sage on the stage" bit (although I was working on eliminating that as much as possible). Now I find myself in the role of "guide at the side" and it is really uncomfortable. I feel like I am not doing my job or doing a good enough job because I feel like I am letting my students discover learning and figure it out on their own by doing "it" rather than having me show "it". It's ironic because in my other area of specialty this is exactly what I was trying so hard to accomplish, now I have it and it doesn't feel natural. I guess it goes to show that it is one thing for a teacher to preach about giving up control to the students and it is another to actually have that happen. As I get used to this new role I am trying to find ways to be as effective as possible in this style. I do feel it will benefit the students more in the long run, I just need to adjust. This area of content is really well suited to problem based learning and experiential learning which is also foreign to math teachers.
I am excited with the possibilities that this will bring and I am confident that the experience that I will gain will make me a much more effective teacher if I ever do have to return to the math classroom.

First teaching job

So I am officially a working teacher. Now I graduated in December, thus, I was a teacher but now I am actually about to get paid to be one. It's exciting, scary and really overwhelming all in one breath. This picture says it best. I am barely keeping my head above water and then I turn around and there is another wave of doubt, frustration and anxiety that must be overcome as I proceed down my journey of teaching. I wonder if this is where the term "sink or swim" comes into play?
I know these feelings will pass and it will just take some time to get into a new routine and get comfortable with what I am teaching and how everything operates. Before as an intern at least there was someone in the room with you, now I'm THE teacher...what have I got myself into? It all comes down to change. It's funny, we know nothing stays the same forever and that to grow and evolve we must face change and even seek it out, yet when it gets here we wonder if we will ever experience "normal" again. I think I read somewhere, or someone told me that the feelings of being uncomfortable and uneasy is a sign that we are growing and developing as a person. Well if that is the case, there is a whole lot of growing and developing going on with me right now. I liken it to the analogy of a rock tumbler. You throw the rough, unfinished and raw rock in, it gets tossed around a bit and shaken up and then out comes this lovely unrecognizable piece of wonder. Maybe that is what is happening here. I get thrown into an unfamiliar situation, forced to "sink or swim", and challenged to put to use that which I have been taught and that which I have not. My hope is that I come out the other side, first of all alive, and second a more confident, effective and relaxed teacher and person.
If it was easy, everyone would do it.

What's wrong with traditional math assessment?

Ever since my first experience as "the teacher" in a classroom I've always felt uncomfortable with the way we traditionally assess math. The traditional unit exam breeds last minute cramming and memorization of procedures and questions by the student. This is followed by an all to common brain dump of useless information (i.e. math content) about 10 seconds after they hand in their exam. There must be a better way. Now after reading a post from a student on Students 2.0 it seems as though some of the students feel the same way!

Students 2.0 via kwout

Could this be the sparks of something new burning in the future of teaching and assessing of mathematics?
Personally, as I went through my university career I learned that I would never memorize all the questions that could be asked or all the different scenario's that I could possibly encounter, but what I could do is understand the principles and key ideas underlying all the questions and thus be able to apply those understandings to whatever I faced on the exams. Ironically enough it took less time to study this way then it did when I tried to do one of every type of question I might face. This discovery didn't come until about my second year of university, which was preceded by my k-12 schooling, two years at a technology school, and a year of university classes...oh the wasted hours memorizing and agonizing over all the information to take in.
Now with this new found outlook and a desire in our students to want to be tested more meaningfully I feel the time is now for something new to develop. There is a difference between knowledge and understanding. Wiggins & McTighe have a great book out called, Understanding by Design, that explains this idea and how we can design our teaching and assessing to facilitate understanding. Closely related to this is the idea of Bloom's Taxonomy, which was published back in the 50's but wasn't very popular until recently. The idea is to get students to think about the content (no matter what it is) and to bend it, twist it, shape it, and make it fit into scenario's, contexts, and applications that differ from what they have seen it in before. Basically we are looking for the student to demonstrate the ability to transfer knowledge across into other areas or applications.
In math this may come about as problem solving, projects, presentations, or research into real life applications. I have found one great resource on the net that has a collection of great higher level mathematical thinking objectives involved in the assessment tasks. It was put together by Harvard graduates from 1993 to 2003 (a fairly credible source, don't you think?). Here is the link.
So as I make my way through this crazy world of teaching I learn from the past, refuse the status quo of the present, and anticipate change for the future of education.

Hired to teach?

So the high schools are writing finals this week, thus, me being a substitute, will probably be having the week "off". Being a recent grad and getting letters in the mail that have big sums of money owing on statements that come from the banks and various loan agencies is not a real happy thing. Plus, it is a balmy -45 degrees celcius today...not a real good start to the week. Then after lunch I get the call..."Hi Tyler, this is so and so at THE high school. We would like to offer you a full time teaching position for the second semester." As I try and sort through what has just been said to me the principle goes on to describe what comes next in the whole job offer process.
With a baby on the way and my wife due to go on maternity leave next week you could say, perfect timing. And now the sense of satisfaction as my child starts its life I can look it in the eyes and not feel like a dead-beat dad and actually support my family (wow, who would have known getting that University degree and racking up all that debt would have paid off so soon).
My issue is this. I am hired on full time for next semester. I will be teaching four classes in a school I have never been in, to kids I've never met, with staff I don't know and here's the kicker...I don't even know what the classes I am teaching are yet! I must have missed the how to teach a full load with no prep time class at university. The old sink or swim...ahhh isn't life grand. All I can say is I am grateful for the opportunity and hopefull that there will be some helpful people at the school I will be teaching at. Let the mayhem begin!

Students teaching students

During my internship I was having a discussion with one of the teachers in the math department and she described a situation that she had with her grade nine math class. Basically they took the students from one class into another class (same grade and subject) and basically they had the students from one room be the teachers to the students in the other class. So peers were teaching each other. Below is the description from the teacher involved.

"My grade 9's had already completed sections on adding/subtracting with polynomials. I had introduced them to alge-tiles as an aid to do this. I made sure all my students were comfortable using the alge-tiles. The other gr. 9 class we went into had not started this section, so I matched my students in pairs making sure the pairs complemented each other as far as ability. Stronger with weaker etc. I prepared a teaching guide sheet for my students to make sure they taught all the concepts to their group. The learners(Gr. 9's who had not covered the material) had worksheets they had to complete to show their understanding of the lesson. Each group had 2 teachers to 3-4 learners. Some of my teachers were not ready to take on this role as they had not completed their assignments so they worked on those in the same time period. Alge-tiles were given to each learner. It was most impressive how on task 50-55 Gr. 9 students could be all in the same classroom. We had used a science lab so there was lots of room to spread out. I had numbered all the work spaces so I assigned my teachers to an area and the other teacher assigned his students. We had agreed to place my strongest teachers at stations were they would be matched up with his weaker students. I used 8 stations. The students enjoyed the activity and accomplished the objectives. We hope to reverse this process at another point in time where the teacher/learner roles will be reversed between the two classes."

From the responses that the students had and the excitement that the teachers showed from this activity makes me hope that I might get to try this idea out for myself someday. As we all know, teaching something is the best way to learn it and I think that the students that get a chance to experience this for themselves is very powerful for their understanding and long term storage of the material.

So simple

" I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."

-Albert Einstein-










If we do nothing else but instill this in our students are we not successful?

What have we created?

I recently had a friend of mine, who is taking her masters of Ed Physchology at the University of Regina, email me this picture and asked what my response to this would be. Well this is what conclusions I came to:
At first I looked at it and was thinking it was about young students just starting their school experience and how our bureaucratic, policy ridden education system has stripped them of their sense of wonder and ability to imagine.
Then I went back and read the saying at the top again and noticed the the word "She" was capitalized throughout the passage. This got me to think that maybe the "She" is really mother earth, or mother nature. Which paints a whole different picture. If we look at it from that perspective then this whole picture speaks to me on a more human sense.
To me this is describing how human beings see themselves as above or outside nature and all its elements. We tend to think we can "control" or predict nature and thus contain it or curb it to do what we want it to do when we want it to. It also speaks to our loss of inner-self and our inability to recognize our connectedness with everyone and everything in the universe. We strip away the feeling, intuition and instinct because we can't describe it, predict it or trust it. Thus, we label and categorize everyone and everything because to us it makes sense and reduces the unknown. Also, the serenity and calm that the figure in the tree is surprisingly glaring which emphasizes societies hectic pace and tiring sprint to the "finish line". With deadlines and the need to "succeed" we have no time in our life to just sit and exist. We are groomed to think we should be productive all the time. We should feel guilty because we should be doing something instead of "wasting time". The last line, "now She goes to school and She can only read words" is interesting. For me, I look at life as a learning/discovery experience and thus the world or our lifetime is in essence spent at school. But all we are learning is the words (ideas) that others or human kind deems worthy of passing on. There is no more self discovery, it is all taken on trust that those before us are correct. We have lost the ability to question and seek out our own answers or find new ones.
What do you think?

What if...

What if we let students study what they wanted and we taught them the math, science, social, oral skills and reading skills that go along with it. Instead of forcing the students to learn what we want them to learn why don't we teach them what they want to learn? I recently read an article on student learning and how they retain knowledge. It spoke about how we don't store new information in our long-term memory until we ascribe meaning and relevance to our prior knowledge. Being in the discipline of mathematics I spend a good deal of my time going over concepts and ideas that were covered in the course or sometimes even the two previous courses. Students ability to recall prior learning is becoming a serious stumbling block to further learning built on prior knowledge.
My feeling is that if a student is allowed to select some topic or idea to study then the relevance and meaning will be more likely to occur since the students motivation to learn is intrinsically driven because of the self declared interest in the topic. For example, when a young boy is all of a sudden introduced to the land of dinosaurs they will read every little bit of information about them and can recall names and facts that I'm sure most paleontologists would have to look up. If we are there to guide them in their discovery of learning we can emphasize the math, science, English, etc. within their selected area of interest.
Now obviously their is going to be questions of how can we guarantee all students will be getting the same education? And, how can we assess and evaluate what they do know? First of all, I don't think we can say that even now every student is receiving the same education. The gaps in resources from one school to another and various curricula being taught throughout the country is preventing students from getting equal opportunities in our education system. Secondly, the way we have traditionally assessed and evaluates students is superficial and irrelevant in my humble opinion. So would we really be that far off than we are now if we just let them learn what they wanted to learn and guided them to the different avenues of leaning along the way? At least they might remember something.

I have recently come across some software that incorporates such an idea. Now I am not endorsing this companies software but I think it has huge potential to open students up to discovery and expose them to cross-curricular learning. I will give you an example. Let's say a student was interested in birds and wanted to make a bird house. During this process the student could learn about the birds that might inhabit their bird house (biology). Along with that they may look at environmental issues(which could lead to social issues) that may be affecting these certain species of birds(Science, Social Studies). Also, the student could learn about ratio and proportions of the house, slope of the roof, cost to make it (math). The student could also learn about different types of wood to use, which is strongest, easiest to build with (physics). The student could learn about supply and demand, marketing and budgeting if they wanted to produce for distribution (business/accounting/English). Maybe they could look up how different cultures view birds and what role they have in their society and how birds have been viewed in the past (History). This is just an example but you can see where it can lead.
This may not be the answer or maybe just the tip of the iceberg, but I think the way we approach leaning has to be changed to incorporate and encourage student inquiry and love of learning.