Category: Education

To Textbook or Not to Textbook

The state of Texas has decided that this is the year that Social Studies gets to purchase new textbooks.  And why shouldn’t they, it’s only been twelve years since the last textbook adoption for Social Studies.  As a brief aside, think about that for a moment…what in your life has been around for more than twelve years.  Twelve years ago I had just graduated from college, unmarried, and wondering what I was going to do with my life.  All that is beside the point though.  As I sat in a meeting listening to different textbook publishers extolling the virtues of their product and subtly bashing the other publishers, I began to realize that maybe publishers have gone beyond the requirements for a textbook.

First of all, textbook publishers seem to think that all teachers have no brain and would like for someone to do their jobs for them.  All of the publishers we looked at had pre-made lesson plans designed to cover all the TEKS we need to cover.  While I appreciate all the time spent on all the lesson plans, I’ll never use any of them.  I’d also like to survey all teachers and see how many would plan on using any of these lesson plans except in extreme scenarios.  I’m not saying that there are zero scenarios where these would be useful, but I’m saying they should be the exception, not the rule.  If districts see it beneficial for a teacher to use textbook curriculum rather than design lessons to meet the needs of their students, why even bother certifying teachers in the first place?

Second, every publisher hyped up their outside partnerships with other content specific experts, but do I need that?  Publishers attempted to sell us that documentaries, foldables, mind-maps, animations, visuals, primary sources, and audio content were top of the line and that only they have access to them.  In reality, little to none of the content was designed specifically for their textbook from these outside agencies.  I can access almost all of the useful material without buying the textbook because it was made for other purposes and was copied and pasted into the textbooks.  I could at least make the argument that the textbooks could be more useful and cost a lot less for the districts if they left out all these partnerships and concentrated on their textbook.

The main benefit I saw with the publishers is that they are making the long, slow transition into the digital age.  Publishers, by nature, prefer print media, but the rest of the world prefers digital media.  All the publishers we looked at had some sort of online component that could be used on either a computer or smart phone.  Some of the publishers did it better than others, but all attempted digital content.  Until 100% of students have access to the internet at home, textbooks will be necessary, but at least they are starting the transition.

Textbooks are not the devil.  I choose not to use them in my classroom as much as the publishers would like, but I do see benefits of textbooks in the classroom.  I wonder if publishers assume too many teachers need their bloated offerings to do their job.  I also wonder if all this bloat is “necessary” or ” trying to make districts feel good about their purchase”.

Badges, We Don’t Need No Stinkin Badges

I’ve never been a badge guy.  It’s not that I don’t like showing off my accomplishments or don’t like little rewards along the way.  I’ve never gone out of my way to do things to get badges.  I’ve tried to give out badges in my classes, but I’ve never followed through to consistently give them out in my class.  Recently, my district has started giving out badges for using technology in the classroom and for the first time, the allure of badges is working.

Let me start off by saying that I have not become obsessed with badges, and frankly there are few people who do get obsessive about such things.  I have not suddenly started twitching and showing signs of badge addiction.  Believe me when I say that I will not be joining a “badges anonymous” group any time soon.

When my district sent out a website outlining the various badges you could earn, I laughed a little under my breath.  I figured that I would get to it when I could, and that’s precisely what I did.  The e-mail sat in my inbox for a couple of weeks until I had some “free time”.  I had a couple of minutes before my next class, so I browsed the list of possible badges.  Most of the technology I have used in class before, but there were a few I had never heard of, but maybe I would get to applying for some badges later.

I thought that I had forgotten about the badges all together, but then I found myself thinking about how I’d used some of them in class.  Then all of a sudden I found myself asking my wife if she had heard about some of these things that I had not.  As I was getting ready to go to bed later that week, I found myself looking some of these things up on my iPad lying in bed.  A little nagging desire to know what everything was and how I could use them in class…and it would not leave my brain.

I also started asking questions about the possible badges.  “Why did they choose these products over all the other ones out there?” “Why should I use this product that will get me a badge over something I’m more comfortable with?”  “Who is choosing this list?”  I started interacting with the material on a level that I had not intended.

In the end, I’ve applied for two badges and received three.  I’m not going out of my way to earn badges, but I’m at least willing to consider these services.  And that’s the point, isn’t it?  The point of the badge system isn’t to have 100% of students earn every badge, it’s to have students think critically about their choices and be introspective.

Badges – 1
My Preconceived Notions – 0

Stressing Like a Rock Star

it’s that time of year.  The holiday season is over, back to the grind, standardized tests are looming.  In my previous years of teaching I have seem stress levels increase and was able to provide some stress relief.  This year, with state testing looming large a few months from now, my stress level has gone up a lot.  Throw into the mix that a few visits to my classroom (which I welcome) and some big time illnesses spreading around my household and that makes for a week to remember.  With all that said, I had to remind myself of a few things and cling to the things I know to be true in my classroom to pull me through.

  1. Confide in someone.  For me this was easy, my wife is always my sounding board for stressors in my life.  This week however, she was sick and that took its toll on my mental health.  I tried to confide in her without overwhelming her sick condition with my stress.  At the end of the week, when all was well in my house, I took the opportunity to really confide in my wife and that cures a lot of stress.  She provided me with perspective and reason that gets lost in the shuffle sometimes.
  2. Know that you’re doing the right thing in your classroom.  This presupposes that your doing the right thing in the classroom.  I took some time this past week to reexamine some choices I’ve made for my classroom this year.  While I can immediately list some things I would like to change next year, I also see the track that is leading to achievement in my classroom.  I also have a plan for preparing for what is to come in my classroom.  Just reiterating the plans for my classroom reminded the little voice inside my head that yes, we are on the right track.
  3. Take some alone time.  I really enjoy time to sit and think without the need for conversation.  That being said, I also have a toddler and a pregnant wife who like to talk with me.  I had to be very intentional to get away from people and spend some time thinking about things that don’t revolve around my classroom.  It was very therapeutic for me.

I know that these stresses are managed not done away with, but my weekend has included all of the following.  I have refueled my confidence and I’m ready to reenter the fray of public education.  Thank goodness for a weekend of recentering myself!

Finding My Voice…Again

I think something that was under-sold to me as a beginning teacher is the need to find your voice as an educator.  I would look at other teachers and think that they had it all figured out and I wished I could be more like them.  This school year has been a wakeup call for me in a lot of ways because I have to relearn everything I knew about school operations and at the same time learn a completely new content.  Throw on top that I have never been in a tested subject before and it has been quite a whirlwind for me.  Throughout this year I have learned the importance of teaching style and working alongside people who think differently than you do.

Until this year I have never taught early US history in my life.  As I reflect, I know that I have taken this course before, but I can’t really remember when.  I have helped with tutoring for state testing before this year, but other than that I have little recollection of what happened in US history.  I knew that I could probably create all the curriculum I would need on my own, but that seemed like a lot of trial and error along the way.  The other team for my grade has a very good US history teacher so why would I not learn from her?

As the year has progressed, I’ve found myself less and less enthusiastic about the content that I’m teaching.  At first I really couldn’t understand why that was, but as I reflected more I found that it was because I was teaching through my co-worker’s voice and not my own.  In this case, it’s completely necessary for me to learn from her and do some similar things in my classroom, but I don’t know that our rooms will ever be carbon copies ever again.

Teaching Linear or Concept Based History

In some ways I think that History teachers are complete traditionalists.  We look back into the past and try and translate the virtues and vices of people from the past and make it relevant to future generations.  It seems we have a built in excuse for “good ole boy” syndrome because everyone in the past seems like a larger than life character.  Sometimes we need to break the mold of traditionalism and move with the times of teaching.  In the case of history, it seems this comes down to whether you teach sequentially through history or if you teach in a concept based curriculum.  I would like to have a more definite opinion about the topic, but I am still in process.  I can say though that the choice for a US history teacher is less clear than I thought it might be.

I overhear teachers from time to time snicker under their breath at the idea of teaching linear, sequential history.  Concept based teaching is all over the place and with changing times comes an idea that newer is always better.  I will agree that there are certain things I despise about linear history such as the roller coaster of interest in US history.  Maybe this changes from teacher to teacher, but I would say that there is relatively high interest in the US Revolution, the Civil War, and to a lesser extend the colonial period.  Conversely, there is very little inherent interest in the Constitution and early republic units.  I would say that these may partially be inherent to the age of history and partially because of my interests in the history I teach, but they exist nonetheless.  Linear history also can make it difficult to compact history into understandable chunks.  When we get to the sectionalism section of our curriculum it is difficult for students to remind themselves the extreme differences in the colonies that would lead to the Civil War.  Curriculums are also not equitable in how much time we spend on each unit.  I have heard a myriad of reasons (excuses?) for this over the years ranging from revisionist history to personal preference to the weight of the TEKS on the unit.  If we are to believe that all US history is important, could we not be more equitable in the amount of time we spend on each unit?  Each of these indictments are not a deal breaker in my mind for teaching history sequentially, but they are things that we need to be intentional about in our teaching of history curriculum.  I think we as teachers are aware of these difficulties, but the question is how are we working in our classrooms to minimize these difficulties.  In “good ole boy” history classrooms, I would say these are not even considered because that’s the way they’ve always been taught history.  While this can be the stereotypical old guard history classroom, there are some things that are of great benefit in this classroom.  Foremost on my mind is that we do justice to history by telling it how it happens.  We can see cause and effect relationships in things, we can decide for ourselves what characteristics of eras are when we learn history the way it happens.  If we teach without the surrounding context we lose something beautiful in history: the beautiful way our history fits together to make us who we are.  If we do the hard work of making connections and generalizations for our students we rob them of some of the beauty of history.  We also are given the ability to revisit concepts multiple times because, oddly enough, history repeats itself.  We are constantly dealing with similar events, causes, effects, and relationships in the course of history so why not use those as an opportunity to revisit these ideas?  The least important reason that we should consider sequential history (at least in Texas) is that our standards are written that way.  I am not saying that my state has it right or that we should teach to a test, but I am saying that they have written their standards in a way that makes sense for a sequential teaching of US history.  For my first year of US history, I have taught through mostly sequentially and it has helped me understand how history fits together.  I am not convinced that this is the best way, but there are some definite advantages.

In many history circles, sequential history is considered archaic.  Why would we teach kids things in order?  We need to get them to look at things from a macro level and the way to do that is to use common themes running through history to make connections.  As with sequential history, there are some things that need to be at least considered if you want to make this your teaching method of choice.  The biggest issue is that sequencing of history can be completely thrown out.  My state standards place an importance on being able to formally and informally sequence things in history.  They also are very good at providing a quote with a date on it and expecting the students to be able to place it in time and answer a question about its time in history.  If you do not have an idea of relative sequencing in history it is going to be almost impossible to answer these types of questions.  A good life skill for kids to have is the ability to figure out where in history something happens, but it is almost impossible if a student doesn’t understand the flow of history.  My biggest pet peeve of conceptual history is that often the concepts are personal preference and may put emphasis on areas of history that have no bearing on US history or the future history content.  Ideally student’s history knowledge builds on itself year after year.  If my concepts in US history do not lead to the growth to their ninth grade year, have I robbed my students of growth they would have gotten in an old school history class?  Again, these are not reasons to not to teach conceptually, these are things that need to be compensated for in the classroom.  With that being said, conceptual history does have some distinct advantages.  By covering similar instances at the same time, it allows for very good discussion of important topics.  If I had the ability to have a good, well informed class discussion about “which of the United States’ wars was the most revolutionary?” without having to reteach the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 to do so that would be awesome.  Using the same thought process, it is easier to see how things change over time.  You can talk about how the tactics in the Revolutionary War would or would not have worked for the Civil War or similar topics.  Conceptual history education also allows for the educator to show their passion for specific topics to compensate for less interesting parts of the history curriculum.  Talking about how democracy has changed over time is far more interesting than learning the principles of the constitution in a vacuum.  Conceptual history, while being the method du jure in history circles, has its ups and downs that need to be compensated for.

What is best for kids is always on my mind as an educator.  I want my students to hold on to and retain as much of my content as I possibly can.  To do so, I need to remove as many barriers to learning as I possibly can and compensate for those that cannot be removed.  I constantly struggle and debate about whether conceptual or sequential history is the best way to teach history curriculum, and I think that is a good place to be.  As a wise educator once taught me, “learning happens in the struggle.”

A New Beginning

This summer has been summarized by change.  I’m changing schools, school districts, and subjects taught.  The thing I’m most excited about is that I’m going to be closer to home.  My commute wasn’t awful, but now I’ll work about ten minutes away from where I live.  This is going to allow me to work with kids in my community and hopefully allow me to bring about change for the good in my area of Denton.  I was so sad to say goodbye to Coppell, but it was a move that I had been thinking and praying about for a long time.

The other main change that I’ve been thinking a lot about is leaving the G/T classroom for a district that does not have a specifically gifted history classroom.  In my new district they have Pre-AP as their only distinctive grouping.  I’m not going to start a debate for one and against another because that’s not productive at all.  The change is stirring up philosophical questions for me like, “is separating gifted kids what is best for everyone?”, “what is the best way to break up students into leveled groups?”, and “how will my teaching need to change given my new context?”  I’m not sure that I have answers to any of these questions, but I’ll be wrestling with them throughout the next few school years for sure.

Reflections on the School Year

During the course of the craziness that is a state testing week, I’ve had time to reflect on some things that I’d like to research more about this summer.

  • I’ve run across the idea of gamification in the classroom.  It’s an intriguing idea to me, but I need to see some examples to help me wrap my head around it.  I understand the concepts but for some reason I’m having trouble wrapping my content around it.  If anyone has any good websites for resources that show real world games used in a classroom I’d love to hear from you.
  • I’m interested in better ways to motivate students when it comes to classroom management.  I feel like I have a good relationship with my kids, but I want to break the cycle of having external motivations to act better.  I really want kids to internalize the reasons we need to act civilly in class.  I want to experiment with things like Classroom Dojo and similar products to better understand how I can use them in the classroom to my advantage.
  • I’m always on the lookout for how to streamline my classroom so that kids only have to go to a single location to understand and access everything for class.  I’m not super good at it currently.  I’ve tried Edmodo before, experimented with Google Drive, and housing everything in my classroom website and all of them have their flaws.  I’d really like to simplify as best I can.  I need to be intentional and really think through and commit to one thing for a school year.  We’ll see if I can make this happen.

Formative Assessment

Formative assessment, and assessment in general, is a hot button word in the education word right now.  That is a fancy way of talking about the ways we as teachers make sure that our students actually know the concepts that we are teaching them in the classroom.  What I have also found as I review my practices in the classroom is that formative assessment is always happening if you know where to look (or listen) and that it does not have to be a daunting task that we dread doing with our students.

Before I begin my discussion of formative assessment, let me start by saying what it is not.  Formative assessment is not a child regurgitating exactly what you taught them, it is not a test of any sort, it is not right and wrong.  My position is that formative assessment should be varied over the course of the school year, engages the students in different ways, and should be happening at all times of the day.

None of us like the tedium of doing the same task over and over.  If we as adults do not like having to do menial tasks on repeat, why should we expect our students to do the same things over and over while remaining engaged?  I try and assess my students as many different ways as I can during the course of the year so that my students are never bored by allowing myself to become stagnant.  We all fall victim of falling into routine during the course of the school year and to some degree that is not a bad thing.  We all need to have routine in our classroom or there would be chaos, but what if you tried out one new way of assessing your students every week?  I think you would be shocked at how much more interesting your class could become simply by applying one new technique per week.  Think about all the teacher training hours that have been spent looking at different techniques for assessing understanding.  I know if I opened up my filing cabinet (or Evernote), there would be mountains of things that I highlighted at the time that sounded so great to use in my classroom.  Rarely, if ever, do I go back and review these documents and take advantage of them.  The current push in my district is to utilize iPads and web 2.0 technologies in the classroom which means I am bombarded by different things constantly that I can leverage in the classroom.  Between training hours and technology at my hands I can easily find the space in my lesson plans to try out one of these per week.  My current technology is using Kahoot in the classroom for a quick assessment of knowledge.  In reality it is not that much different than other quizzing services…until you factor in the competitive aspect of the program.  My kids have loved competing with each other to make the leaderboard, even the kids that could care less about their grades.

I am a visual learner.  If I see something on the screen I can remember it really well without ever seeing it again.  In fact, when someone asks me a question about a seminar I have attended, I can usually picture the particular slide in my head.  Imagine you are a student who is a kinesthetic learner sitting in my classroom.  If I, as a teacher, do not go out of my way to vary my teaching, the kinesthetic learners in my room could be in for a long year.  The point is that we usually teach in the way that we enjoy to be taught.  Some people really enjoy having lengthy discussions with their classes, some people enjoy building projects, others enjoy multiple technologies working together, and some like to lecture and be listened to.  All of these are not necessarily good or bad, but too much of anything leads to students who could care less about what is going on in the classroom.  I have found this year in my classroom that simply giving students the choice of two different methods of proving their knowledge of a topic will increase engagement.  On almost every assignment I have given at least two choices and do my best to vary the assignments to hit different learning styles as well as student passions sitting in my classroom.  I have found less student grumbling about school work and more creative submissions.  There are some flaws to my research and you may not get perfect results, but wouldn’t it be more interesting to look at a variety of things rather than grading the same submissions over and over?  One of my personal favorites is allowing the students to create something that proves their knowledge of a concept.  This really helps the kinesthetic learners in my classroom.  This school year I have had one student build a replica of an early shotgun using cardboard and another student has build a realistic replica of the Alamo using Minecraft.

When it comes to assessment, our job as teachers is never ending.  We should always be paying attention to conversations, products, working habits, reading ability, as well as dozens of other things in the classroom.  All of this helps build a picture of the students in our classroom and their ability to comprehend the material they are being taught.  The students do not even have to be aware that it is happening at the time that you are collecting information.  Even basic conversations I have with my students is a way for me to gauge understanding.  While my kids are working I will walk around and discuss elements that they are working on or have already completed.  This allows me to alway keep in mind where they are at and what they need clarification on.  This gives me a big advantage as a teacher.  When you rely on quizzes at the end of a section or unit you are at the mercy of your kids understanding it the first time you tell it to them.  The majority of the time this might confirm your student’s level of understanding, but what if it does not?  Then you are “behind” because your students need to re-cover the material so that you can press on.  Either that, or you are leaving huge gaps in knowledge for your students to catch up by themselves.  If you are constantly assessing your students, it is very easy for me to recover the missed material the following day so that the gap is not as large and the students are not completely clueless when you are covering new material that builds upon old material.  My favorite way to accomplish this is to listen at all times.  Some of my kids think that I could be a wizard because I hear everything.  When I look like I am not paying attention I am listening.  I have been known to hear minute details while having a conversation with someone else in my classroom.  This gives my students the pressure of knowing that I might come and talk with them about anything that is happening in their conversation at any time.  You might be surprised at all the things you can hear if you just tried.

Choices, choices

This school year I’ve really been trying new things and being intentional about a few specific things.  I’m really finding some interesting things  about middle school age kids and their learning abilities and habits.  By far the most interesting thing I’ve learned about students has been in the area of voice and choice.  If nothing else from this year, I’ll always opt for student choice because of the change I’ve seen in student attitudes toward work.

I had read many articles and studies that talk about increasing student engagement and achievement in the classroom.  Recently I’d heard a lot about the idea of increasing choice as something that would increase both.  I decided that it couldn’t hurt, so I decided to try it a few times across both of my grades that I teach.  With my sixth graders I noticed that the students seemed more energetic and excited when given the opportunity to choose from assignments that both show the same knowledge and skills in different ways.  I decided to kick it up a notch and started using different learning styles and ways of communicating knowledge and what I noticed was that the kids did not complain as much (which is relative) and were being more creative in the things that they turned in.  When I combined that with the ability to work in collaborative groups my sixth grade classes are buzzing with active learning.

The more difficult class, or so I thought, was my 7th grade classes.  The majority of these classes had me the previous year, so I figured they would be more set in their ways when it came to the work they turned in.  What I found was that similar tendencies happened with them even despite their comfort level with me.  I did find that I needed to tweak my wording just a little bit to encourage creative and out of the box thinking.

Overall, I think that voice and choice over the course of the fall semester was a huge success.  It is also so simple ti incorporate into my class that I see no reason to take it off of my lesson plans.  I highly recommend trying it out in class.

TAGT Conference Reflection

Every year my district’s awesome parent advocacy group for gifted students offers scholarships to go to either the National Association of Gifted Children Conference as well as the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented Annual Conference.  Every couple of years I apply for a scholarship so that I can continue to grow in my teaching of gifted students and try and stay on the cutting edge.  This year the conference was in Houston, TX and I got a scholarship to go.  I came away with three thoughts on my time there.

  1. I love hearing about the different G/T programs that are offered around the state.  This conference is a melting pot of people from all levels of gifted education from all over the state as well as the nation.  Every time I go, I hear about how different districts provide services to their gifted students and I’m always amazed at the variety of programming.  I made a point this year of asking people to explain their programming so I can become better versed in all the shapes and sizes of gifted education.  I’m particularly fascinated, this year, by hearing about district’s magnet schools for gifted children.  This totally makes sense, but until this year’s conference I’d never hear of such a thing.
  2. I’m lucky to be in a district that is so forward thinking when it comes to technology.  Every time I go to a conference I’m interested in learning about the newest and greatest technology that people are using.  Outside of Dr. Brian Housand’s technology presentations, I really didn’t find too many new things this year.  I know that this has a lot to do with the technology specialists on my campus as well as my district’s push to put as much technology as they can in our classrooms.  One of the presenters was throwing out everything she could think of to try and stump me, but I’d heard of everything she had.  I’ve had the opportunity to see Dr. Housand a couple of times this year and I really enjoy his presentations because I always learn a few new things to try out.  This time it was some new techniques for designing presentations as well as geosettr.
  3. I made the decision to attempt to present at the conference next year.  I’m going to talk with a couple of my co-workers to see if they have any interest in presenting as well.  I’m mulling over my topics that I might present on, but for now I’m thinking it would either be on narrative feedback in the classroom or student voice and choice.

The tail end of my trip to Houston was possibly the most memorable part of this excursion.  North Texas was in the midst of one of the largest snow/ice storms I’ve been around for.  I left the conference a little early to try and beat the ice freeze on Friday, but unfortunately I didn’t leave early enough.  It took me around 3.5 hours to travel south to Houston from Dallas.  On the way back it took me 8+ hours to drive to Dallas, and I still didn’t make it all the way home.  Memories.