Engage?

The single most important element of a successful classroom is a teacher who designs assignments that keep the students engaged in learning. It helps if these assignments are also fun to complete. Disciplines issues including acting out, tardiness to class, and even failing students can be minimized and maybe even eliminated IF you, the teacher, think innovatively and make a focused effort to keep your students actively engaged in the subject matter and the learning process. Oh yea, it will make you an even happier and more productive teacher as well.

But how? How in this world of standards, standardized testing, exit exams and formative common assessments is there any time to spend on being creative when designing assignments for students? I’d like to suggest that you can both meet the objectives and be creative in your assignments. Here are few things to think about.

Authentically challenge the students.
Regardless of ability or learning level, all students can be challenged to improve, even within the same assignments. First, their assignments must be meaningful to them. As their teacher you need to learn about who your students are as people. This might be challenging to do at first, but the more time you spend working in the same teaching assignment with a similar population of children, the more you will get to know who they are, what they love, and how they work. Once you do, you can begin to tailor the work you give to fit the interests and experiences of the kids. For example: if you are an English teacher assigning a biography essay allow the students to chose subjects that they relate to. Sure you may end up with a dozen biographies of 2-Pac, but that’s acceptable so long as the kids are writing and completing their essays. In a history class you might allow the students to research their family history. In math you might take them outside and have them measure whatever they see. And the list goes on.

Second, you the teacher must set the achievement bar as high as possible and really challenge them to reach it. Don’t make the work too easy. If the student is not challenged to grow they will not grow. Embrace the standards and show examples of truly outstanding student work. Share your confidence in their abilities and urge them on to greatness. But your job does not end at the distribution of the assignment.

Give them support.
As your students strive to reach their goals, help them along they way. I often describe myself as just another human being on the road just a few more steps ahead of my students. My job is turn back and help guide them along the path a little ways. It’s important that your students believe that you believe in their abilities and potential to succeed. Of course, in order to be convincing, you really do need to believe in your students’ success. You can bet that they will know if you are pretending to believe in them, and they will resent it, and you. Good luck trying to motivate that classroom. But support is more than just motivation.

Teachers support their students by guiding them through step by step processes that will successfully lead the students to their goal. Some educators criticize “spoon-feeding” their students. I believe in it. By giving the pupil just enough for them to swallow or absorb instead of bombarding them with instructions and information works very well. Plus, by leading the kids step by step towards success, they learn the process well enough to repeat it on their own. This method also works with a variety of different learning levels. Students can work at their own pace when they know where to place their next step. The longer I teach the more I breakdown my assignments to smaller and smaller pieces. It might be micro-managing, but I watch the kids get better and better at learning each year. And they retain more too.

Hold them accountable.
Assessment is important. Meaningful assessment is even more important. Sure, there are times when a check plus, or a check minus is appropriate, but most of the time, students need more feedback then that. I like to write notes all over the margins, between the lines, and anywhere else I can fit them on my grading rubrics. I make sure that every aspect of the assignment is worth some points, even if it’s only one or two points. That way when the students study their rubrics they know that there is no area to fudge and no corners to cut. I don’t assign “busy work” either. Meaningless work equals time wasted on meaningless grading. Students resent wasting their time as much as teachers do.

Consistency is also crucial. Sticking to hard deadlines and subtracting a percentage of points for late work tells the students that their work matters. Holding your self accountable is important too. There is no excuse for not returning graded work to students in a timely manner. The best is a 24 hour turnaround, but that can’t always happen. All teachers were once students and we all know how annoying it is for an instructor to sit on your work and not hand it back within a reasonable amount of time.

In my opinion its important that kids enjoy school and that they have fun learning. It’s equally important that the teacher enjoy teaching and sharing their wisdom and the learning process with his or her students. If the teacher hates the assignment they give, there is no way the students are going to embrace it. Even the work that is mandated by the district or the course scope and sequence can be made to be engaging if the teacher is willing to find out how. Students who are engaged in their assignments will work harder to complete them and put forth their best efforts. The result will be smarter students, higher test scores and happier teachers.

Spring Fever?

It happens this time every year. No, I’m not talking about the exhausted crash and burn landing into spring break. I am talking about contract renewal time. That time of the year when teachers have to decide, “Do I really want to come back and do this again next year?” It’s easy to sign early in the years, especially before tenure kicks in. But as time goes on, and one year starts to blend into the next year, the signing of the contract becomes a symbolic milestone when I sit down and seriously reflect on what exactly it is that I am doing in education as a teacher? Am I still an effective educator? And is this really the place I want to be 12 months from today?

It usually starts for me much earlier then the moment I actually have to sign or waive my contract renewal. Generally by the start of second semester I have begun the process of actively looking around for a new job. Some years its in teaching, some years in other professions. I suppose it’s a healthy thing; questioning my purpose in the classroom and desire to continue. After 12 years in my current position at my current campus, you’d think I get it into my head that this is where I belong. But I can’t avoid the process, and in many ways I think going through the job hunt and interview procedure helps me to refocus my efforts back into my own classroom. Kinda like testing the waters and deciding its better to stay on the island.

Last year I found my “dream job.” One of my all-time favorite places in the world is the central coast of California. If you’ve never been, go soon. The people are friendly, the scenery is breathtaking, and the weather is amazing. My grandmother spent her last years in the area and I spent as many weekends as I could afford visiting with her and soaking up the environment. In January of last year I found a job post for a Drama teacher at one of the local central coast high schools. I started my career as a Drama teacher and I’ve never lost the desire to teach Drama full-time. So I applied. I got a call for an interview and with great excitement and anticipation I refreshed my resume and got all gussied up to go. I was sure that the job was mine before I even sat down with the Principal and interview panel. Although I felt very confident and shared by authentic enthusiasm for the position, I was turned down. I was disappointed to say the least. My dream of moving my family to paradise was gone. But after I got over the rejection I took a deep breath and refocused my efforts back into the job I was actually getting paid for at the moment. When contract renewal time came, I gladly signed my contract for another year.

And what a year it was! In the months that followed I got word that funding had finally been secured for my classroom to received a completely new set of computers. I had been working with machines that were at that time in their 7th year, and in desperate need of being replaced. New machines meant new software which meant new curriculum that I had to write. So my summer last year was filled with hours of research and writing to prepare for this school year. Things with the new machines didn’t start off so well. While the district was willing to provide funding for stuff, they were unable to find funding for technical support. So I was left on my own with the one-day-a-month support of an engineer from Apple. Thankfully, we worked out all the issues by the end of the first semester and now things are working great.

Then the fever hit again. This time it was a job in my second favorite state, New Mexico. I have a long family history in the area, although no immediate family history there. I’ve always want to live and work where my ancestors made their start in the United States. I was randomly looking around for job posts when I found one that fit me like a glove. An almost exact match to my current position. I went ahead and applied without a second thought. Again I got a call to interview, but this time I paused. (You could say I blinked.) I paused because I knew that if I was in fact the chosen candidate for this position at this new school far away from where I currently work and live I would not be able to follow through and take the job. I knew that deep down in my heart I was just pretending, and that the place that I really belong as a teacher and an educators is exactly where I am now. In other words, the fever broke. Before I left for spring break I signed my contract for one more year.

I suppose the saying, “The grass is always greener,” is true. As a young teacher I looked at the seasoned guard as being somehow weaker or less innovative or less successful if they were in the same assignment or in the same classroom for a long period of time or even a career. My very first year as a high school teacher my classroom neighbor was a gentleman who had been teaching the same subject in the same classroom for the past 30 years. “That will never be me!” I told myself. However, I no longer see teachers like this as failures. Teaching is a very difficult job to endure. Sometimes it helps to look over the school yard fence and think about what it might be like to play on someone else’s grassy field. But for now, I know who I am and where I belong, and that’s where I plan to stay for awhile longer.

Transparency?

Do your students understand your assignments? Do they know exactly how they are evaluated? Is your grading system clear and clean? Are you sick of students asking, “How much is this project worth?” Do you use a rubric for evaluation of student work? Do you give your pupils the evaluation grading rubric ahead of time? Do you issue regular progress reports on your own? Do more students pass your class then fail your class? How transparent is your evaluation process and your approach to grading your students?

In my first year of teaching high school I shared a group of remedial students with another teacher. When grading time came we sat down to assess our students’ progress. I brought my grade book, as did my partner. We went through the roster, student by student, sharing our individual semester scores. I offered my numerically calculated objective evaluation. My colleague also shared a number in the grade book, and then added comments like, “well, he didn’t work that hard, so instead of a B I’m going to give him a C+.” Shocked, I innocently asked, “Can we do that? Are we allowed to change a grade based on our subjective evaluation of the students’ effort in spite of the earned and recorded mark?” My collaborator told me, “sure.” While I DO NOT personally condone such grading practices I will not criticize those who do grade students in this manner. However, as an advocate for kids, I want to suggest that all teachers strive to be as transparent as possible in their approach to assessing their students.

In the school of education credential classes that I teach I recommend using rubrics to grade student work. When I started teaching teachers I used rubrics occasionally and never shared them with students. Since teaching rubrics to others and advocating their use in the classroom, I’ve made a more focused effort on using them more often. Now I experience clearer teacher/student communication and improved student performance. And my rubrics have gotten more detailed as well. In the past, I used a few general categories with arbitrary point values. Now I break every assignment down into multiple specific categories and line items assigning smaller values between 1 and 5 points to each area of evaluation. I give the students the appropriate rubric as soon as I give the assignment. Now as the kids work they can self-grade.

That’s only the half of it. As a result of using more detailed rubrics, my assignments have become clearer and cleaner. Once upon a time I might assign an essay and simply state, “Tell me about your summer vacation.” Now whenever I assign just about anything I include much more specific information like, “Your essay must include 5 paragraphs of at least 5 sentences each. You must use correct spelling and grammar. Be sure to put your name date and period number in the upper right hand corner. Write the heading ‘My Summer Vacation.’” I teach in a computer classroom, so I can also add, “Use a 12 point font, 1” margins, and double spaced lines.” This way I can take each one of these smaller instructions and evaluate students on whether or not they met the assignment criteria. By embedding these instructions clearly in the assignment, and in the rubric, students know exactly what is expected of them.

It gets better. By using this approach to the giving and evaluation of student work, the students can self-grade. I include a check-off list as one of the columns on the rubric. As students complete their work they literally check-off what they have completed. When all the checks are placed, the assignment may be turned in. At the very least the student can feel confident that they have fully completed what they were asked to produce, and I no longer have to return what I cannot assess because the child left their name off the paper or forgot a heading. Helping our pupils to develop this type of self-assessment is a great way to help them in many areas of their lives and their futures.

Many students today have a very difficult time with backwards planning or backward design. They are unable to see the goal and work in reverse to find a starting point that will help them reach their desired target. As teachers we do this instinctively all the time. I learned it from producing plays. First I decided what I wanted the production and the experience to look like in the end. Then I made choices that I believed would lead me to my ultimate vision. It doesn’t always work, but having the goal clearly in mind makes it easier to develop the steps required to get there. We teachers have the benefit of giving our assignments more than once, so each time we see the student make an attempt, and struggle in a specific area, we can make adjustments to help them along the way. By analyzing our assignments in this way we can strive to make them more understandable and as a result, offer students the opportunity to produce better results.

The regular grade reporting cycle asks most of us to total up points and turn in a letter or numerical grade about once a month with semester grades being issued twice a year. That’s good communication with students and parents, but we can do better. Many students at my high school carry around a “Friday Report” every Friday and ask their teachers to record a mark and to list any missing assignments. Sure, it’s a pain when you’ve got 4 or 5 or more to fill out each hour. However this type of regular communication with students simply adds to the clarity of the assessment process. Sadly, those who most need these weekly grade check-ins usually don’t ask for them. Anything that we can do to help all students to teach themselves to be attentive, productive, contributing members of our world is worth our time.