4-5 Essential Skills for Educators

About a week ago, there was a comment on one of my blog posts inquiring about the 4-5 essential teaching skills that we learned during institute.  Aaron, this one's for you.

The five essential skills I referred to in that other entry involve the following: creating a unified management plan, investment plan, tracking system, backwards planning, and creating an efficient, transparent grading system.

I'll explain the unified part at the end, but first, the management plan.  You need to know the exact type of behavior that you want your students to exhibit at all times, make your expectations abundantly clear, and have a plan for every possible situation.  I think this is one of the reasons why your first year of teaching is so difficult - because you're just finding answers to each of the different situations that arise.  Not only do you need to know how you want your students to behave, but you also need to know what the consequences are going to be for each situation - and beyond anything at all, you have to be completely consistent.  As soon as the students know that they can get away with a certain behavior without consequence, they will exploit it.  They've very smart.

As far as specific management resources go, seriously, my biggest word of advice is to be completely consistent in everything that you do, as well as invest a lot in the front end on building relationships with your students.  My first year was really difficult, because I felt no matter how I tried to build my relationships with my students, I still felt a lot of anger towards their behavior.  This year has been completely different, in the sense that even though they often behave in a manner that drives me crazy, even when I'm reprimanding them for some behavioral infraction, I can still feel my love for them, and I know they can feel it as well.  It somehow takes the edge off of things.

In my credentialing program last year, we used a book called "Tools for Teachers" by Fred Jones.  I read the entire book last year, attempted everything that he talks about, and it completely failed for me.  Last year.  However, this year, I tried everything again, and it totally has worked for me.  That's not to say that my classroom management is perfect - far, far from it.  However, so many things in that book have been incredibly effective - especially Preferred Activity Time.  If you're wanting something to read, I'd suggest that.  And when you want to hear some specific lessons that I learned from it or how I made it work with my students, I'd be glad to offer specific advice.  And again, lest you find the information in the book to be ridiculous and ineffective, know that I have heard from teachers who've been in downtown Oakland, Compton, Watts, and other notoriously rough school districts, and heard them say that these other schools don't even compare to what takes place at our school.  So, if it works here, I strongly believe it will work anywhere.

The second key skill is implementing an effective investment plan.  By investment, I mean that your students actually care about participating in class, learning, and demonstrating mastery.  This takes some time - for me, about 3/4 of my first year of teaching - to figure out what it is that motivates students to want to learn and participate in your class.  There is no silver bullet here, but the key to this one is to never give up, and to continually evolve your incentive structures because student's interests are going to keep changing.

The third key skill (the one that boggled the district people) is creating a detailed tracking system.  In California, there are key educational standards.  Here's an example:

Algebra and Functions 4.1 (AF4.1): Solve two-step linear equations and inequalities in one variable over the rational numbers, interpret the solution or solutions in the context from which they arose, and verify the reasonableness of the results.

Now, mind you, this is a single standard.  However, how many skills could you extract from this single standard?  Here's a couple just to get started:

1. Solve linear equations (one step) with addition/subtraction
2. Solve linear equations (one step) with multiplication/division
3. Solve linear equations (two steps) with multiplication, addition/subtraction
4. Solve linear equations (two steps) with division, addition/subtraction
5. Do all of the above, but with inequalities (and know the specific rules that apply)
6. Define a rational number
7. Identify whether a number is rational or not

I mean, the list could go on and on.... I literally have to assume with my students that they know the VERY basic of mathematics, and even at that, I'm often way off.  We still struggle, consistently, with the basic arithmetic operations.

Anyhow, that's a lot of material to cover, and a lot of potential points of failure.  On the district benchmark assessments that they give us, they will include maybe 2-3 questions on this standard.  However, with students who are at the level that you'll be working with, odds are that they'll miss all the questions on this standard, and when they do - how does knowing that 100% of your students got 0% on standard AF4.1 help you determine where they have misunderstandings? Was it with the one step equations?  Rational numbers?  Inequalities?  There isn't a lot of resolution.

So you take all the standards, and break them up into very, very basic, easily digestible pieces of knowledge that can be taught in simple steps.  Then when you write your assessments, write them in such a way that you can determine if a student has mastered a particular skill.  So, using the list I created above, assume that you have a test addressing the 7 skills I listed above, and you have two questions for each skill.  Suppose that a student gets 2/2 on skill 1, 2/2 on skill 2, but then 0/2 on skill 3, and then again 2/2 on skill 4.  Immediately, I know that there is some basic misunderstanding that this student has dealing with multiplication in two step equations.  And I can work with that - it gives me useful information.  This is information that knowing my student got 0/3 on standard AF4.1 would never tell me.  You'll learn all about this at institute, but that was a brief priview.

The fourth skill is called backwards planning.  I'm not sure if you're familiar with this, but I had the good fortune of taking two years of college courses where literally, this is all we talked about.  Anyhow, the basic idea of backwards planning is just taking a look at where you want your students to be (for the sake of this article, let's assume the you want your students to ace the state competency exam), and then to literally create a path that will make it possible for your students to achieve your goal for them.  So, in my instance, I looked at the state 7th grade math test, and looked at the skills that I felt would give the most "bang for the buck" (most questions on the test) that I ALSO felt were the most relevant life skills for them to learn in mathematics.  Then, knowing what I wanted them to get out of my course by the end of the year, as well as the type of test questions that I want them to be able to answer, I mapped my entire year out so that starting with day 1, I knew exactly what lessons I was going to be teaching for every day of the entire year, how long my units were going to be, and where I could afford some flexibility for those unpredictable days that will certainly come along.

Truly, backwards planning is all about knowing where you want to end up, and then creating a feasible plan to make it happen.  This has proven immensely challenging with education, because there are sooooooooo many factors that are completely out of my control.  But then at the same time, it's been incredibly beneficial, because I have a clear vision of how I want my classroom to run, and it turns out that it creates strong structure and expectations, which students actually crave.  Again, you'll be all over this at institute, but if you're really curious and want to get a jump start to be prepared, do some Google searches and look for more - this is definitely a key skill.

And finally.  Figure out how you want to do your grading early on, and then stick with it.  And be extremely transparent with your students, and make sure they know at all times how their actions affect their grades, and make it clear exactly what those grades are.  It is easy to quickly become inundated with papers and student work.  Come up with a plan of how you want to handle it.  I came up with a system that has been super effective in my classroom, and a number of the teachers at my school have since picked it up because it's worked so well.  It provides an opportunity for my students to be cognizant of their grade and see how everything (participation, homework, behavior) relate back to their grade in my class.  I know school isn't only about grades, but it gives you another point of leverage to work with students if you can get them invested in their education.  And truly, ultimately, that's what it all comes down to - helping them to become successful, and take charge of their education.  Also, this part can really salvage your sanity, so it's definitely worth putting some thought into.

Now, back to the unified part.  The reason I say unified is because truly, when it comes down to it, everything that you do in the classroom is going to be linked together.  It really starts with creating a strong backwards plan, breaking down the standards to allow you to know what you're going to teach, figuring out how you're going to teach it, how you're going to track it, how you're going to get your kids to care about learning it, how you're going to reward them for doing so, how they're going to behave as they're learning, and how you're going to give them consequences for disrupting their education and that of their peers.  It all needs to be tied tightly together, because they're very, very interrelated.

I hope this gives you a starting point.  There are about a million more things that I could say, but this is already sufficiently long.  Best wishes!  Feel free to reach out to me with any other questions you may have.

The Student Becomes the Master, and the Master ... Gets Promoted?

I get slightly nervous when veteran educators start coming to me for advice about their jobs.  And we're not talking about people who have been teaching for 3 or 4 years, we're talking about people who have been in education for over 25 years.  And this isn't information that I know because these people's actions demonstrate the type of mastery that you'd come to expect after dedicating so much time to a pursuit, but because they constantly mention it on a semi-daily basis.  They just find places to slip it in, you know, like "When I was a classroom teacher 20 years ago..." or "24 years ago after my first year of teaching..." or "Back before the internet, when I started teaching..." or my favorite "Man, you almost weren't even alive when I started teaching!"

Also, we're not just talking about teachers, but we're talking about the people who are leading this organization.  Coming to me - a non-traditionally trained instructor with a total time in the classroom an order of magnitude less than the total number of months these people have been in education - for advice on how to do their jobs.  Don't get me wrong, I'm flattered and all, but come on people...  If this is what we're coming to, maybe we should switch jobs.  I'd say I'm about due for a promotion, but I've observed that thanks to the union, those only seem to come when you do an exceptionally poor job at your current position.

Speaking of which, did I mention that I'm supposed to be one of the Union Representatives at my school?!  No joke!  Those of you who have been following my blog probably have a pretty good understanding of my feelings towards the unions (if you don't read here, here, and here), so hearing this may be a shock to you.

I was elected jointly with Katey, the other TFA teacher at my school.  She had a great analogy to describe how it happened, which I'll utilize.  It's like we were the slow kids in school, and were the last ones to say "Not it!"  (I literally told the staff "I can't stand the Union, I loathe the fact that I am obliged to join it to teach here, and don't support them at all", and they still wanted me to do it.) Anyhow, it happened, and so supposedly we're representing the union at our school, although neither of us really has any clue what to do.  Although perhaps I should modify that to say I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing, and thankfully Katey has been extremely dutiful on following up with her Union responsibilities. It's been suggested to me that perhaps the most damage I can do to the Union is abstain from doing anything at all in my current position, which I've considered.  However, due to the respect that I have for my fellow educators, I feel that I would be doing the most damage to them by not doing anything, so I figure I should probably step up my game.  Something feels amiss.

PS - While you're here, please click on this link and vote for my idea in this Social Media in Education competition that I entered in to - I'd greatly appreciate it!

Please Vote!

Our idea for the Rightbrainsare.us competition has been posted, and here's the link:

http://rightbrainsare.us/ideas/%E2%80%9Ca-thing-worth-having-is-a-thing-worth-cheating-for-%E2%80%9D-w-c-field/

Please help us win by clicking on this link and clicking on the pink heart (like) in the top left!  Tell your friends and help us make our idea become a reality.

Also, if you should care to, please read our idea and feel free to post some feedback.

Expanding my Realm

A couple weeks ago I posted a link to a video, and made a blog entry about my shifting interests toward educational reform and such.  Since then, things have gone a bit further.  For starters, my buddy David Blake and I entered this competition called "No Right Brain Left Behind".  It was a fun little competition, we'll hear how we did in March.  I personally think the quality of the idea that we came up with when compared to the amount of time that we put in to brainstorming it is downright brilliant.  At some point maybe I'll pitch it here and see what you all think.

Until then, please follow us on a blog that David has been maintaining for the last few years, called hackingedu.com.  He's invited me to start posting my finds on that site, which I am glad to do see that he already has an established readership.  The intent of the blog  is to post our daily finds regarding trends and the direction that the evolution of education is taking/going to take.  See you there!

How Teach for America Works

I keep talking with friends and family who have some seemingly very basic questions about Teach For America, and I realized that most people have no idea how Teach For America really works.  So I decided it's probably time (after over two years of involvement) that I bring down the shroud of occlusion.  Plus with the 20th Anniversary TFA Summit going on right now, I figure there's no better time than to talk a bit about the program.

College students (and pretty much anyone else who wants to get involved) apply for TFA around graduation.  They go through a rigorous interviewing process, which lasted over four hours in my experience, and then within a few weeks receive word as to if they've been accepted to the program or not.

Upon acceptance, new corp members attend a summer institute training program near the region of their acceptance, or at least relatively close.  I was accepted to work in the Bay Area, but my training was in Los Angeles.  Close enough, right?  Anyhow, over the summer program, we learn all the basics of what TFA has determined are the skills and qualities that make for effective teachers. Not only do we learn about them, but we get to put them in practice as we teach summer school for the local school districts.

(A complete side note here - if you are reading to find out more about how TFA works, skip this paragraph. It blows my mind that in the 6 weeks of my summer institute training, there were about 4-5 essential skills that I learned which have become a key part of my teaching experience.  These key skills are things that seem like second nature to me, but when I share them veteran teachers, it blows their minds.  A few weeks ago we had a district professional development where we talked about analyzing data from district assessments.  The assessments they give are horrible, and my students do awful on them, and they tell me absolutely nothing.  So I keep track of my own systems that have a much higher resolution for interpretation, and thus are much more informative.  I brought my system with me to the professional development, and ended up having to more or less tell the district supervisors why their system was ineffective and that I wasn't buying in to it and show to them why mine was so much more effective. The district people didn't seem to take it very well, but everyone at my school who was sitting at the table were pretty blown away by what I had been doing.  And I had to laugh afterwards when Katey said on the way back to the school "These are things we all learned within the first two weeks of teaching... It isn't rocket science.")

Following our institute training, we return back to our areas of assignment and start teaching.  Now, how we get the jobs at the schools that we are teaching at varies wildly.  Some of the people at institute already had their teaching assignments when they arrived there.  They had been some of the lucky few who had been able to interview with various schools prior to going to institute.  I, however, was not.  So in between the time of institute and the first day of school, I had about 7 different interviews with various schools and principals in San Francisco. We were instructed to take the first job offer given, regardless of which position we preferred, and the first offer I received came about 15 minutes after I left my interview at the school where I'm currently working.

We complete all the paperwork with the district that we are slated to work in, and from that point we become employees of the school district.

Henceforward, our interaction with TFA becomes limited to communicating with our Program Directors, Professional Developments, and any corp members with whom we established relationships during institute.  We aren't employed or paid by TFA - more than anything TFA becomes a support resource to help us function in the classroom.

As corp members, we commit two years to operate as TFA corp members in our respective schools.  But since we're employees of the school district and not TFA, after the two years are up, we're no longer considered corp members.  But we can still remain in the school, district or state we're teaching in, because again - we're still district employees.

If I could summarize the role that TFA plays in education, they basically just affirm to the districts that the people they are recommending for hire have passed their own requirements, and if the district has confidence in Teach for America, then they can have confidence in their candidates.  Now, what these candidates do once they become employees of the school district while using the resources of Teach for America - that's where TFA really earns its track record.  I suppose that's what you get when you hire a bunch of motivated, type A personalities who don't have a good understanding of what it means to fail.

I'm not going to dive in here to debate as to whether or not I agree with the mission or effectiveness of Teach for America.  However, I look at the sad state my school is in, I see the carousel of teachers that have rotated through there in the short year and a half that I've been there, and see that I'm practically an island of pure stability for these kids - there's no possible way that my being there has been any WORSE for my students.

If you have any questions about how this whole process works, I'd be glad to discuss them - please just throw them out in the comments section.

I wish

I wouldn't mind this.  At least these parents are involved.

Oragami is the new science

I overheard this conversation between my students today.

"Come on bro, it's time for origami class."

"They have that here?!"

"No, the new science teacher. That's all we been doin'. "

The WB Difference

Last week I had a meetingwith a bunch of teachers at one of the other schools in the district.  We were meeting in one of the teacher's classrooms, which started right after the students were let out and so there were still a number of them roaming the hallways.  I was sitting in such a position that I could easily see out of the classroom's open door into the hall, and noticed whenever a student came walking by.  There came a point, about thirty minutes into the meeting, when I noticed this young woman come running down the hall on a trajectory for the classroom our meeting was in.  As soon as she got to a position that she could see there were 20 adults engaged in a meeting in the classroom, she slammed on the brakes, quietly turned around and left.

Who knows what she wanted.  Maybe she had a question she needed resolved, maybe she needed another copy of the homework for the evening, maybe she just wanted to talk with her teacher.  The point is, she recognized that there was a meeting in progress, and had the propriety to realize that her needs could be postponed or delayed until there was a more opportune moment to talk with her teacher.

This caused me to chuckle as I reflected on the staff meeting at our school earlier in the week, where a very similar experience took place.  We were about 30 minutes into the meeting down in one of the teacher's classrooms on the lower floor of our school.  One of her students came thundering down the stairs and burst into the classroom where all of the teachers and administration in the school were engaged in a meeting.  Instead of realizing that there was something going on, he called out his teacher from the doorway, announcing that he'd lost his homework and needed another one.  So she got up and helped him out.

That's the WB difference - we do what it takes to get the job done, even if our students are completely out of line.