Education – Page 7 – R. Tyler Horner

Pushing Others

One thing I’ve wanted to work on for the past couple of years is my ability to lead people who don’t think like me. It’s really easy to modify people who are on the same page with your, but pushing people to try new things and do things differently has always been a struggle for me. This week I took a new tactic with my department, and that is requiring change in small baby steps.

My department falls short in its adoption of technology of any kind. We have half of the department that does a very good job with technology and innovating in the class room, but we have another half that isn’t as innovative as our principal or our district is wanting out of us. In the past I would have allowed our campus technology person to present some technology and ask for people to try it out. This would lead to the tech-savvy people trying it out and reporting back to the group how it went, while the non-savvy people would get the pass on having to try something new. I want for everyone to get a taste of trying something with the possibility of failing, so I tried a new tactic.

This week I gave them a goal to be on Twitter for fifteen minutes over the course of the next two weeks (since we have Thanksgiving break next week. I based my number on an article I read extolling the virtues of Twitter as professional development and figured I would give my department a little more time than the article says. We each took a different educational hashtag to put into either Twubs or Tagboard and look for interesting articles. When we get back to school after the break, we’ll share our findings from Twitter and I’ll talk about using it consistently to innovate as an educator.

Students Grading Themselves

When my principal came to me at the end of the year last year telling me about the ROLE classroom and how she would like me to attempt it (with some other teachers) one of the things that made me leery was the idea of students assessing their learning for the grading period and giving themselves a grade with my assistance. I have now gone through this process with all the students in my class for the second grading period and I think that I have come to some decent conclusions.

First I think that students are more honest with you than you would think. My first grading period I was shocked at how many students were well thought out in their evaluation of themselves without much guidance in how to do so from me. Unfortunately for my students, since it was also my first time through the process I was still learning how to coach them up. This second marking period I added a Google Form for them to fill out beforehand that allowed them to process how they did this grading period and set some ideas of what their goals for the upcoming weeks will be and what their grade should be. The kids did even better with some prompting than they did when we began for the first time. I would say that 90% of my kids had a grade that I would have given them myself. The other 10% took a little bit of conversation to help them understand why their grade was either too high or too low. In the end, I reminded them that the grade is not important to me at all, I just want them to have an accurate representation of their growth this grading period.

Be careful with your prompting of children. I found that my kids had many of the same goals and usually they had to do with any prompting that I gave them to help them think through their growth. We finished a PBL late in the grading period and with that came a ton of different ways that my students could grow themselves for next time. When I reminded them to think through this on their Google Form, they all gravitated to one of a few basic skills for their goals. My hope was for them was to use my suggestions as a way to brainstorm specific skills each student needed to work on, but what I got was the path of least resistance.

The only other thing that I’m noticing with this process is that it takes time. For my classes, it’s taken me between two and three full class periods (of 50 minutes) to get a grade for every student. I have been asked a few times if I thought this was worth it, and I can legitimately say that I think this classroom experience is growing my students in ways that I could not have even planned. It was not evident in the first few weeks of trying, but the further in the school year we go the more convinced I am that this way of teaching is revolutionizing my classroom. I’m excited by where my classroom is heading and look forward to see where it is going to head in the future.

Presentation Fatigue

This last week was the first round of presentations for my classes. I go into this first round every year hoping that the kids will come into middle school with and innate ability to present information that they have learned. I show them previous presentations that have wowed me and point them to some of our eighth graders to help them with their technique. Without fail, there are always a few groups here and there that do an unexpectedly good job presenting for whatever reason, but realistically no group of students is any better than the rest at presenting.

It frustrates me too because our eighth graders are so good at presenting by the time they leave. I can’t help but wonder if the teachers are doing something in different ways that I’m not or if it truly is more about the age of the children. I don’t want to believe that 6th graders cannot physically or mentally handle presenting and just need practice, but the more I have students present the more I think that’s the case. If anyone out there has any suggestions please let me know you’re experiences because I almost feel like I’m getting down on myself.

Minecraft and Play by Play

I’m not too sure why I have always shied away from Minecraft as a teacher. Maybe it’s because anything that students want to play instead of doing school related things is difficult for a beginning teacher. Maybe it’s because our district hasn’t put it on every computer and iPad, unlike other games of this ilk. Or maybe it’s because I’ve been a bit stubborn and needed to change my attitude about something my students love to work with. Any way you look at it, my attitude changed this week and I decided to step out and give Minecraft a chance.

In my Texas History class we’re talking about the Texas Revolution and I want my kids to understand the battles, understand the momentum swings throughout the course of the revolution, and put themselves in the shoes of the Texas freedom fighters. With that in mind, I was putting together a project for our revolution unit I decided to try two different ideas that seem to be big hits with my students so far:

Create a reenactment of two battles of the Texas Revolution using Minecraft. For each battle include at least two recommendations for the Texas army that would have aided their campaign.
Create an audio recording of yourselves doing a play-by play commentary of one of the battles of the Texas Revolution. Be sure to describe major events, momentum swings, and who ultimately won the battle.

I wanted my students to be creative in their projects, but what I found is that the students are getting wildly creative with these two options specifically (there was one more) and have actively asked to get more time to work on these rather than doing other things. All free time this week was spent with kids working on these projects instead of leisurely activity. The kids really want to do well on these two because I think I tapped into some deep passions of my students without necessarily planning it that way.

I’m finding that my Minecraft kids are happy because they have a deep passion for Minecraft. They were going to be playing it anyway, so why not give them an educational reason to play it? On top of the engineering related reasons for them to play, now they can get another view of important battles in history using it. I’m also finding that my athletes are really pumped about the play-by-play option. Most of them watch sports religiously and are keenly aware of good and bad sports announcing. I tapped into this passion with this project and the kids have already decided in their groups who is going to by the “play-by-play guy” and who was going to be the “color guy”. The passion I’m getting for both is making me very excited to see the end results here in a couple of weeks.

Stop and Ask Why

I got the opportunity a couple of years ago to become the department head of the history department of my middle school. I knew this was going to be a challenge from the day I took it over, but I always thought that it couldn’t be too challenging. I guess I never stopped to think about how the people in my department could make me stop and ask why I’m doing things.

Very recently I’ve started to get challenged on some basic things that I took for granted. For instance, this year we opted to not issue every student a history textbook. We did this for a number of reasons, the main one being that we thought that we needed to use the textbook as a resource and not a crutch. My principal and I both thought that history from a textbook is a boring way to be force fed history. Some of my department disagreed, but went along with it. For the most part this school year it hasn’t been an issue, but this week I feel like I’m starting to get more resistance. I’ve gotten challenged in meetings and it has been referenced in our department meetings. Usually, this wouldn’t have bothered me very much, but I was absolutely exhausted on Friday and it seemed to linger with me.

All of today I reflected on the situation and I had to ask myself why I’ve chosen some things that I have. I think my assumption was that my department all thought the same as I did about these topics, but when they didn’t I had to go back to the drawing board. What I settled on was that we’re doing the things we are in the history department because my principal and I think it is what’s best for the kids at my middle school. Period. All I want is for the kids that walk through this school to be taught by the best educators possible. I think some people in my department get scared when they see test scores. My focus is not the test scores, it’s making the teaching in my department to be the best it possibly can be. I have to remind myself that often or I start to waffle on what needs to happen.

TAGT Annual Conference

I found out this week that I’ll get the opportunity to go to the TAGT Annual Conference in Houston, TX. I briefly looked over the session list for the conference and I got super excited because there are a number of wonderful presenters that will be there. My short list of people I’ve seen before that I’d love the opportunity to see again are:

Dr. Brian Housand – I saw Dr. Housand present at Confratute this summer and really enjoyed his personality and way of presenting information. He does a lot with technology and introduced me to some new things to try in the classroom.
Dr. Joyce Juntune – I saw Dr. Juntune at our district’s summer training conference. She overwhelmed me with data at the time (it was the week after the end of last school year), but in a good way.
Dr. Bertie Kingore – I’ve seen Dr. Kingore at a number of conferences before and has left an impression on me as a gifted educator.
Kimberly Kindred and Melanie Ringman – These two find ladies work in my district and have done a great job teaching. I’ve had the opportunity to hear Kim speak before and it’s worth it. Great educators doing awesome things in the classroom.

I’m hoping to see some of these presenters at the conference, but also get the opportunity to find some new favorites. I’ll be sure to share some thoughts after the conference is over in December.

Applications Galore

Applications are one thing in this world that I never really feel good about once they are submitted. Sometimes I feel like I over think things and people don’t really care about all the little details that I have spent hours agonizing and word-smithing. Other times I wonder if the people I submit them to think I’m the biggest idiot that has ever walked this planet. I wish I could master the art of applying for something and feel good about the results. This week I got to apply for two different education related things that I’ve long wanted to be a part of.

I first heard about the Google Teacher Academy when I began looking at Twitter as more than another form of Facebook statuses. When I heard that they were offering one in London I figured that it wasn’t in the US, but it would be a fun place to travel to and a world-class experience of learning from both Google and other educators. After sitting down with my wife and talking about the expenses we decided I could apply, so I did. The actual application wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. I did like their limits on the characters you can use, which really forced me to think through everything I put in the application. The only difficult thing about the application is the creative 1 minute video about one of three topics. I searched up some examples that had been used in the past and really wanted to make a video that was as creative as I could make it in one minute. My video is not the best quality (due to the lack of a super nice camera and microphone), but I think the end result was well done and more creative than I thought I could pull off in a short amount of time. Now that everything is submitted I have to wait a couple of weeks to hear back. I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but I’m really excited about the opportunity to participate.

Every year our district’s education foundation offers educator grants to innovate in the classroom. I’ve never participated because I’ve been a coach and haven’t really had the down time to fill out everything in the time allotted. This year I wrote a grant based on the ROLE classroom that I’m running this year as well as an idea I heard about this summer. The idea is to let students decide how they would like to learn and cater that learning specifically to them. The idea is to have some students learning through a completely online unit design, some students learning through a blended unit design, and some students learning through a more traditional teaching method at the same time in the same classroom. To help facilitate this, I wrote my grant for some iPads for my classroom to help with the online unit. I’m really excited about this grant and if I am able to get the funding for it I will have my hands full during the winter months rewriting my units in three different ways. Of my two applications, this is the one that I’m least sure about because the application was written from a business point of view, but I’m not in the business world. I tried my best to decipher the application, but I hope they get the heart of my application.

At the end of the day, I did everything I could to make both of these a reality for me. I’m really hoping I get accepted for both. Big things could be happening in my classroom later this year!

Student Conferences – Round 1

This week was the end of our first marking period. Most of the time this would mean that I was frantically uploading all the last minute grades for the students and ensuring that there were comments and citizenship grades. This time, however, was marked by me sitting down with every student in all my classes and talking about their grades and setting goals for the second marking period.

The first thing I learned while I was meeting with students is that it takes a lot longer than I predicted. I left room for the last three days of the marking period figuring that I would take two days to get it done, but giving myself some room just in case. What I found was that it took me approximately 5 minutes per child for my sixth graders and between 5 and 10 minutes per seventh graders. I think this has to do with the fact that I know my seventh graders better because they were in my class last year and we have more goals to set and things to discuss. When you multiply that out, that is a lot of time being taken up conferencing with students, but I’m really looking forward to seeing the change in students this next marking period and the conversations that happen at the end of it.

The second thing I learned was that most students were pretty honest with their level of work and effort over the course of the marking period. I would say that the students that did the best this marking period were often the hardest on themselves. It was a great opportunity for me to remind them of all the awesome, creative things I’ve seen from them this marking period. I only had one or two students that were way outside the range I would have given them as a grade. For those students I reminded them of their effort and level of work and they revamped the score they gave themselves on their own. I was shocked at how honest my sixth and seventh graders were.

My next iteration of student conferences will include some sort of google form or written assignment that has my kids think through the process of negotiating a grade and advocating for themselves. I think my kids have the ability to think through their growth as a student and reflect on their output for a marking period. If I can combine this while developing their ability to argue a position about their grade for a marking period I think it is time well spent. I also would like to have a spreadsheet with all the feedback I’ve given to the student over the course of the marking period. Our online grade book has some great features, but one that I still would like to see is the ability to print out the comments I’ve given the students over the course of the first few weeks of school.

These are minor inconveniences when compared to the potential revolution in the teacher/student relationship. I’m so excited by the conversations I’ll be able to have with every one of my students in a few short weeks and I’ll continue to post my thoughts and reactions to this ROLE Reversal process.

Flipping for Change

Our history department is doing something that I’ve really been interested in trying for a while. We are all taking a way of making our lessons more engaging, trying them in our classrooms, and then reporting back to the rest of the department about how they went. I made sure when we talked about this to mention that this does not need to be a perfect attempt, we just need to broaden our horizons of teaching a bit.

When we developed out list of engaging classroom activities, I had my eye on Socratic Seminars because my wife loved them in the classroom. I decided to let the rest of the department choose first and I would take whatever was leftover. I ended up getting to try flipping a lesson and using Skype in the classroom. Both of these ways of teaching have interested me, but I’ve needed a push to get myself started, so maybe this is it. I’m working with my awesome iTeam person to get the creative juices flowing.

Have any great experiences with these lesson models or others you find particularly engaging? Please let me know!

Towers and Governments

I try to bring simulations into my classroom whenever I can. What topic is better to simulate for students to understand better than governments? I’m sure I’m not the first person that has used something like this to help teach government types, but I’ve really enjoyed seeing students better understand how governments operate after this classroom experience.

First I break my students into five to six groups, usually these have about four students in them. I then tell the students that they’re “grade” for the day is based on how well they function as a group mimicking the government type that I give them. There is no grade for the day (I tell them this after we’re done) and we have already learned a little bit about governments so this isn’t that big of a shocker for my students. Next, I tell the kids that the job their government needs to complete is to build the tallest freestanding tower they can with a bare minimum of supplies. I always use leftover things that I have around the classroom, and this year is was a few pieces of paper, some notecards, some straws, some pencils, and a small amount of tape. I let the kids brainstorm their towers as I go around and give them their governments. Some governments are tougher than others with this simulation, like communism, but most are able to be handled by my 6th graders. The governments I used this year were:

Republic/Democracy – Every person must vote for every decision the group makes. They may not vote to elect a leader or change their government type.
Dictatorship/Absolute Monarch – Appoint one person the leader the dictator/monarch and they must always have every person in their group actively doing something. These can be productive things or non-sensical things like singing songs, doing pushups, etc.
Anarchy – Give only one group this government type. These kids can go around and steal supplies from the other group. No one can be physically violent to them and once they touch a supply it is theirs with no questions asked.

I usually give my kids about 15-20 minutes to build their towers. What usually happens is the anarchy group is so busy stealing stuff that they have a ton of supplies, but barely something you could call a tower to show for all their materials. The republic group is frustrated by how long it takes them to get anything done because they have to vote on everything. The monarchs usually are passive or they completely take advantage of their powers as the ultimate leader. After the activity is over and the towers have been judged, we have a class discussion about the good and bad of every government type and how those apply to modern day governments. After that, my kids reflect on their governments and what type of government they think is the one they would select for a country they might start in the future.