A Road Less Traveled?

I just finished the last chapter of John Spencer’s book A Sustainable Start and I am both inspired, comforted and terrified all at the same time!   The letter he wrote back to his new teacher self reminds me of the letter a professor had us write a short time ago to our future certified teacher selves.  By the way, it is hard to believe how close we are getting to that day – less than four months now. 

I am inspired by Spencer’s transparency in sharing all of the ups and downs of his teaching experience, comforted that he has been through so much and still loves teaching, and terrified that it will soon be me who will be worried about all the details of a new classroom (what to put on the walls, how to build classroom community, what procedures to put in place, how to develop an authentic PLC, how to differentiate lessons to challenge each student at their own level . . . the list is endless). 

Maybe his best piece of advice in this chapter is to not “forget everything you learned in college.”  Although we will not be able to apply all of the great strategies and theories we have been learning about in our certification program (at least not all at once!), keeping them in mind will help continually stretch our practice as teachers.  I hope I will continue to take risks trying new things, as we have been pushed to do in our student teaching program, even if things will often not turn out how I had planned.  I hope I will continue to be open to learning from my mistakes and that I will be able to share mistakes and successes alike transparently with other teachers so that we can help and learn from each other.  Public, vulnerable, transparent, risk-taking – that all sounds rather scary, but I hope my future new teacher self will embrace these traits and will be able to look back one day at the forks in the road we will all face as we start our careers in teaching and see that taking this road will have made all the difference.  

The Power of Observation

This school year I have had the opportunity to work in three different classrooms and observe five others.  I have seen teachers that are immaculate planners and teachers that plan much more loosely (while not “winging it”), teachers that stick pretty close to the curriculum scope and sequence and teachers that only use the curriculum as the bones on which they build their own lessons and also a few who have the freedom to implement their own curriculum as long as standards are being met.  I’ve seen teachers who rely heavily on technology and teachers who eschew it, teachers who retain pretty tight control over their students and teachers who trust their students with a lot more freedom, teachers who like to talk and teachers who prefer to listen. 

I admire each and every one of these teachers.  They all have different preferences and styles, but they all care deeply about their students and are effective at pushing their students forward in their own ways.  Seeing so many different (and successful) styles of teaching is encouraging.  It is good to know that we can grow into many different types of teachers as we take on our own classrooms.  It has been fun to “try on” different ways of teaching based on ideas I get from visiting these different teachers' classes and to figure out which fit me and grow me as a teacher and which just aren’t going to be my style. 

It has also been encouraging to see that visiting other classrooms can be part of an ongoing effective teaching practice.  This quarter I have witnessed teachers visiting and giving feedback to their peers both at the elementary school where I student teach and in our university classes.  It seems teachers are really making an effort to break out of the old isolationist mindset and are proactively working together to share ideas and stay sharp.  This is the kind of school community of which I desire to be a part.

New(er) Math

The way we are learning to teach math today is very different from how I learned math in the 70’s.  It’s even quite different from what we called “New Math” when my children were in elementary school ten years ago and new inquiry-based mathematics curriculums were being introduced.  Parents (including me) who had learned math the “old way” were perplexed by the new methods and wanted to just show our children “how to do it” (i.e. via memorization and algorithms).   It wasn’t until I started substitute teaching in a class that used an inquiry-based curriculum that it began to make sense.  It still seemed difficult for some children though (including my younger daughter), as this particular curriculum left the investigation tasks very open-ended and mentioning the algorithms seemed almost taboo.   It was possible for a student to do the activity and not grasp the underlying concept.  It seemed that the pendulum had swung a little too far away from direct instruction.  

The newer math curricula that I am seeing in schools now (and I presume is being widely used across the country) are a nice blend between the two extremes of "old math" and "new math".  These curricula have something for a wider variety of learning styles – those who learn best from reading, seeing, hearing and/or doing – and combine direct instruction (mini lessons) with independent practice and investigation.  I like that the algorithms are no longer ignored, but instead are introduced as a “short cut” or "more efficient method" after the underlying concepts are understood.  This not only helps the students to remember how to use the algorithms, but also when to use them and why they work.  In addition, understanding the underlying concepts of algorithms helps students gain a sense of reasonableness when using them. 

By misskprimary on Flickr

This week I had a direct experience in which my old ways of thinking about math collided with the newer math methods I am learning.  Our math methods textbook asked us to solve 76 x 89 in our heads.  The old me would have started visualizing the algorithm in my head “6 x 9 = 54, write down 4 and carry the 5 . . . “ but the new, enlightened me first thought “the answer will be about halfway between 6300 and 7200 because I can round these numbers and see that 70 x 90 is 6300 and 80 x 90 is 7200.”  Next, I started breaking the problem up in a way that I never would have done before taking Math Methods classes this year.  I converted the 89 to a “friendly number” and multiplied 90 x 70 to get 6300 from which I could easily subtract one group of 70 to get 6230 and did the same with (90 x 6) – 6 to get 534 and could now easily add these two numbers to come up with my answer of 6764.  The funny thing is that I then quickly did the algorithm to "check" my work and the answers didn’t match.  Taking a second look I realized I had made an error with my old reliable algorithm!!  Good thing it’s not too late to teach this old dog some new tricks.

Teaching Requires Diplomacy

This past week our school conducted mid-year student-led conferences and I learned that teachers must be skilled at diplomacy.  I already knew that our class was filled with a very diverse set of students, but what I learned this past week is that their parents are a magnification of that diversity.  Some are supportive, others critical; some want to know what they can do to help their child at home, others believe that it is a teacher's job alone to help their child (academically and socially); some are open to seeing issues that need to be addressed; others deny problems even when presented with clear evidence.

My cooperating teacher is usually a "tell it like it is" type of person, but I saw her become a skilled diplomat during these conferences.  I paid close attention and wondered why she chose to emphasize certain strengths and weaknesses ("areas for growth") while ignoring others, watching as she pushed some and pulled back with others.  It wasn't because she was intimidated by them, she clearly had an agenda in mind.  At the end of each day of conferences, we would debrief and she would explain.  Her reasons were often rooted in prior knowledge of dealing with this particular family, but she also told me that she had learned the hard way during her first year as a teacher to "kill them [parents] with kindness" and to pick battles carefully.  She reminded me that it was not our goal to prove ourselves right and the parents wrong (which ends up alienating them in most cases), but instead to do the best we can to get each child what they need, which often requires a working relationship with the parents.  She reminded me that we may not be able to get everything a child needs, but if we can get and keep parents on our team, we are likely to do more for the child with them than without them.

My CT also did a great job modeling how to sandwich bad news with good news -- another important diplomatic skill.  Every conference began with the student sharing his or her "top 3" best pieces of work from the first term that they had self-selected to include in their learning portfolio.  She prompted them to explain not only what it was but why it was important and why they had picked it as an example of their best work.  Students then presented their "goals," "glows," and "grows," for each subject area, including life skills.  "Grows" are areas where they are still working toward their goals and it was during this part of the discussion that my CT would skillfully insert her views of which areas needed improvement.  She used very positive language however such as "my goal for you in this areas would be . . . " or "my hope for you to grow as a learner would be . . .," always asking if the student and parents agreed before pressing forward with a proposed plan of action and often enlisting their suggestions.

Because she ended each conference with an "I am proud of you because . . ." statement, each child left with a smile on their face despite some hard conversations that had been skillfully sandwiched in the middle.

The bottom line . . . always keep it positive and always put the child's needs first.