Cycle Three: Schools as Embryonic Communities

I think it’s interesting to compare what schools can be with my experience with schools. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time at four schools- the one where I attended high school, the one where I did my senioryear field work, the one where I interned, and the one where I currently teach. The size and makeup of the student bodies at the schools and the communities they’re located in vary quite a bit, but the buildings themselves and the courses offered and required for graduation are strikingly similar. I found this week’s coursework about a green school, the Finnish school system, teacher and student communities in schools (and extending beyond schools), and Dewey’s ideas of what schools can be interesting but unfamiliar. Why is it that so many diverse options about what schools can look like and how they can be organized and run exist but so little diversity exists in our schools? I know that there are certainly exceptions to my experience with schools, but I think that the vast majority of schools are similar to the one’s I’ve worked at.

William Ayers offers a different view of the classroom, perhaps similar to Dewey’s, or John Hardy’s, challenging the concept of classrooms full of rows of desks. I enjoyed the quote in chapter two of Dewey’s (1915/2001) The School and Society in response to his difficulty in finding what he considered to be suitable desks for his school: “I am afraid we have not what you want. You want something at which the children may work; these are all for listening” (21). Most classrooms within my sphere of experience are arranged exactly for that purpose- students in rows facing the board, encouraging the type of learning most commonly engaged in in our schools- the attempted transfer of information from the teacher to the student, with little room for collaboration or student input on the learning. My classroom is set up a little differently I have rows of desks in three sections making a u-shape with a large open space in the center. The front/ board is still the center of the room, but it allows for a little more interaction across the classroom, as students are facing each other, and the center of the room being open facilitates activities that require students to move around the room as well as allowing a “stage” of sorts for student performances. For the most part, teachers are forced to do what they can with the space and furniture they’re supplied with by the school. If any more students had been added to my classes last year, I would have been forced to fill in the open center to accommodate them. One thing Ayers did to open space in his classroom is to eliminate the teacher’s desk. That would create a considerable amount of space, but would leave me with nowhere to do the planning/ grading work that I spend so much time doing at my desk! Even brand new schools that I’ve toured have all had generally the same use of physical space- desks, tables, etc. Wouldn’t it be different (and incredible) if schools were designed with student learning in mind! John Hardy mentions in his description of the green school he build in Bali that his former school was designed by the same person and built out of the same materials as the prison and the insane asylum- is that the best we can do?!

I’m also intrigued by the different ways schools can be structured to better foster real learning. I’m particularly interested in the benefits of teacher and student groups staying together for extended periods of time, as they do in the Finnish school system and the HiPlaces model. My concern with this is that I’ve had some classes that I don’t think would have benefited anyone to stay together. I know it would require more work, but I think careful consideration of which students have classes together would make the time spent in class more productive. For example, I had 40% of my discipline problems in one class last year. (That’s exact, I’m analyzing the data for my inquiry project.) Part of this was because of the makeup of the class, there were several students involved in opposing gangs. I was new to the school and the area and had no idea what was going on, but when I asked a colleague to observe the class and offer feedback she picked up on that immediately. When I discussed the problems I was having with my principal, she asked to see my class list, and her initial response, after hardly a glance was, “these kids never should have been in a class together.” (That’s an issue of itself- if our school were set up with teams and communities as in the HiPlaces model, would it eliminate some of that tension? Or would that not work because of the issues in the community where I teach?) If she could identify that so easily, how much extra work would it take to review class lists and try to prevent situations like that from happening in the future, at least for the newest and least experienced teachers? I’m not the only one with a situation like this, another new teacher at my school struggled so much with one particular group of students that his mentor described it as if someone had intentionally grouped all of the students with known behavior issues in one class. I suppose in a model like HiPlaces the selection of students for the different teams is more carefully thought out than the scheduling at my school seems to be.

I don’t mean to sound too negative here, I’m glad to learn about the ingenuity being employed in schools worldwide, and excited about the possibilities that they offer the many schools that are still structured like the one I attended or the one where I work now.

Cycle Two: Challenges and Opportunities in Building Classroom Communities

I’m currently working on an inquiry project about building classroom communities, because I noticed a correlation between positive classroom communities and student achievement in my classes last year. With that in mind, I found this week’s content particularly interesting and enlightening. In my interviews with students for my inquiry project, several of them told me that in a class with a really good atmosphere, there was a lot of time spent in groups, doing both content-based work, and just spending some time getting to know each other (and often a combination of the two.) Several of the students described their “good” example of a class as one in which the students had fun learning together.

My school has been doing walk-throughs to analyze how student time is spent, and repeatedly finding that the majority of class time is spent on whole-group instruction or individual, quiet work on worksheets, etc. Because of the talk about those findings in our staff meetings and PLC’s, I had already been trying to focus on how to incorporate more group work in my instruction (generally easy since my main goal in instruction is communication), but after hearing what my students had to say about how they perceived classes with lots of group work, I determined to make this even more of a priority in my planning for next year.

The Tomlinson & McTighe (2006) chapter on differentiating instruction was possibly the single most useful piece I’ve read in a teacher education course. I’ve always grappled with the idea of differentiated instruction, knowing it would benefit my students, but always got stuck somewhere around varying my instructional techniques but not actually individualizing anything- because I didn’t really know how and didn’t have the time to figure it out. This chapter lays out the basics and gives enough concrete examples that any teacher could start implementing them with a little extra careful planning.

At first when I read the analogy about universal design- the idea that it’s easier to plan something like a ramp for a sidewalk rather than try to add the ramp later, and also the idea that, while designed for people in wheelchairs, the ramp is useful for mothers with strollers, etc (95).-I only thought about the time this extra step in lesson design would require. I do differentiate instruction on some level regularly, but last year there was only one time that I was really proud of my efforts. I was teaching the difference between the preterit and imperfect tenses in Spanish (two past tenses), a major grammar point for Spanish learners. A certain portion of my class had just barely scraped by Spanish 1, could hardly conjugate a present tense verb, and so were lost at sea when it came to contrasting two different past tenses, while others in the class could conjugate in their sleep and had memorized the rules for when to use which tense on the first day I introduced it. To accommodate for those differences, I made a preliminary assessment to determine groups, along with three different sets of activities for the day- ranging from basic conjugation to more abstract uses of the verb tenses, according to what the students needed practice with. The lesson went great, and I was able to spend some time with the struggling students who really needed a little one-on-one, but it took me three times as long to plan, since I had to come up with essentially three lessons, as well as figure out how to make them all work simultaneously.

A later analogy in the chapter really resonated with me- comparing starting to incorporate differentiated instruction with starting an exercise habit or a healthier eating plan (106). I’m a runner, I enjoy cooking, and I’m somewhat self-conscious, so the struggles of starting and sticking with a regime is something I can really relate to. I can also relate to the success side of it- since it’s become a habit for me, I no longer buy it when friends say they’re too busy for exercise. I think- if I have time for it you could definitely find the time! As Tomlinson & McTighe put it, “the changes are awkward at first,” but “many illustrate the benefits to their lives” (106). As Cheryl Caggiano, a teacher who works hard to differentiate instruction puts it, “It’s crazy, insane, and I don’t get paid enough,” but she does it anyway- because she can see how beneficial it is for her students (Schumer, 2003). I can find the time to make little changes to all of my units, even if I have to start small- it’s worth it.

The other chapter I gained a lot from this week was the Johnson & Johnson (1986) chapter on grouping. I was particularly glad to find this chapter so useful because, before reading it, I had chosen this book for my final project, thinking it might tie in well with my inquiry project. Groups make differentiating instruction easy because they can be working on different tasks, with varying levels of difficulty, and at varying paces, and, as I found in my student interviews, they help “build relationships among the students” (171).  This also meets my school’s goal of having less full group instruction or students working alone. Using the tips given in this chapter, even full group instruction via lecture can become a cooperative effort by breaking up sections of lecture with discussion tasks to be performed in small groups.

I’m excited to try new things with grouping in the coming school year- not just ability-based grouping, which often pushes some students to the top, while leaving others to languish in the dust, but base groups that stay together throughout the year, informal groups for small tasks, groups based on interests, etc., and I’m hoping that the implementation of those grouping strategies with both contribute to a more positive classroom environment (which I believe will positively affect achievement), and offer opportunities for differentiated instruction (also shown to positively affect achievement.)


References:

Johnson, D. & Johnson, R. (1986). Learning together and learning alone: Cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Schumer, F. (2003, November 9). One classroom, many minds: A paddle for the mainstream. The New York Times. 

Tomlinson, C.A. & McTighe, J. (2006). Integrating differentiated instruction and understanding by design: Connecting content and kids. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Cycle One: Interpretations of the Meaning and Causes of Failure

This week’s readings really challenged my beliefs about the question posed, “What does it mean to fail?” My original response would have been something like the quote on this poster, “When your best just isn’t good enough,” you fail, and that’s it. You didn’t achieve what you set out to do and you probably never will. Looking at failure as a means to achieve growth, however was a new idea for me. Paul Tough expands on this idea in his article, “What if the Secret to Success is Failure?” in which he describes the work of Dominic Randolph, headmaster of Riverdale school in New York City in teaching character to his students. Randolph describes his most valuable experiences as originating in “years of trial and error, of taking chances without a safety net,” an experience most of the students at his school never have (Tough, 2011). Their well-intentioned parents want the best for them, and so they do everything they can to prevent their children from failing in any way, and are quick to pick up the pieces if they should by some fluke still manage to fail. Randolph believes (and I agree) that these students are missing the valuable learning experience that comes with failure.

Gee, in his article, “Good Video Games and Good Learning,” also points out the necessity of failure in learning to be successful. “The player uses initial failures as ways to find the boss’s pattern and to gain feedback about the progress being made” (Gee, 2005). If video games teach students that it’s okay to fail as long as they take what they’ve learned in the process to do better next time, why can’t schools? Likewise, successful teachers need to be willing to take risks, trying new techniques and methods, testing theories, to find what works for their ever changing groups of students.

Something that greatly hinders that willingness to take risks is fear. In video games, the student can save the game before trying something difficult, and go back to that same place if they fail, so they haven’t really lost anything. In a classroom full of judgmental adolescents it’s not so easy to learn from the failure and move on as if nothing had happened.

Parker Palmer, in his chapter “A Culture of Fear” discusses fear from the perspective of both the student and the teacher. He references the silence when the teacher asks a question, and the students are afraid to take a risk and fail in front of their peers. He also mentions his personal fear as a teacher, being “fearful that I am not just a bad teacher but a bad person, so closely is my sense of self tied to the work I do” (Palmer, 1998, p. 36). Those are both fears I can relate to. I remember many instances of knowing the right answer but not saying anything for fear of making a mistake, as well as some instances where I was relieved I hadn’t said anything because it would have been wrong, or mortified that I raised my hand and said the wrong thing. And as a teacher who pours myself into what I do, I, like Palmer worry that if I fail it will be far more than just failing professionally, it will be complete personal failure.

I like Palmer’s way of connecting student and teacher success. Teachers reap the benefits from successful students (a better future society, personal fulfillment in their career) just as students reap the benefits from successful teachers (preparation for the future). I think this connectedness is key in overcoming fear of failure. I teach Spanish, and a student who is afraid of making a mistake is never going to learn anything in my class. I have to create a class atmosphere in which students are comfortable enough with me and with each other to open their mouths and try, not worrying if what comes out is perfect the first time or not. Relationship building fosters that form of connectedness. Teachers who spend time getting to know their students find out what students are interested in, which will inspire them to get involved in the class much more than any textbook activity is likely to do. Students are also more likely to take risks when they have a relationship with the teacher because they can trust the teacher to handle their perspective failure in a way that won’t humiliate them. 

References

Gee, Paul James. (2005). Good Video Games and Good Learning. Phi Kappa Phi Forum, 85 (2),   33-37.

Palmer, Parker J. (1998). A Culture of Fear: Education and Disconnected Life. The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life (pp. 35-60). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Tough, Paul. (2011, September 14.) What if the Secret to Success is Failure? The New York Times Magazine.