Tag: Reflection

Shark Week: A Case Study in Education

It’s that time of year again, when the Discovery Channel has their week of programming known as Shark Week.  As a boy, I can remember being glued to the television watching program after program about something that intimidated me so much.  I am so scared of sharks, that I really don’t like swimming in the ocean and I used to be scared  in the deep end of the pool.  That being said I still tune in every year to see the new programming that is basically the same thing over and over.  Then I ran into this article about Shark Week and it struck me that it informs millions of viewers each year about marine biology and most of those people probably aren’t interested in science at all outside of this week.  What can we learn from Shark Week as teachers?

There is Emotional Attachment

There are two types of people that watch Shark Week, the shark conservationists and the people that want to watch people or animals getting eaten.  We all know people will rally to a cause like saving a species, especially when it is being harvested in huge numbers.  Discovery Channel is not the only group that has taken on this topic, but they do a pretty good job of making this issue with shark populations.  I wouldn’t say that this is the forefront of their shark coverage, but they do promote shark conservation on some level to a huge audience.  The there is the sadistic side of humanity that is really only watching to see blood in the water.  These are the same people (like myself) that watched Nick Wallenda walk across the Grand Canyon just to see if there was a chance he would fall.  There is something about watching an animal that chances are most will never come into contact with ripping apart fake seals, whales, boats, etc.  The funniest part about watching for this reason is most of the action in Shark Week is directed toward inanimate objects or is allusions or dramatic reenactments of actual events.

What if we could illicit these types of feelings on a daily basis in our classrooms?  The number one question I get in class relates to how concepts or ideas apply to kid’s lives.  Can we create emotion in our methods of teaching that would create meaning for kids?  Is it possible to conjure up such strong emotions in a classroom on a consistent basis?

It Brings Together All Kinds

Between the conservation of sharks and the bloodlust of shark programming, a variety of people are brought together for a single week.  A huge percentage of people I run into are excited about the beginning of Shark Week from all parts of society.  Old friends from high school on Facebook, peers on Twitter, and children I’ve talked with at church have all mentioned Shark Week without any prompting from me.  Imagine the conversations that could be started with such a common bond.  Background, political beliefs, economic background, and even race all are minimized when the topic of Shark Week is brought up.

Is it possible for me to teach concepts in class in such a way that it brings together all types of kids?  Is it possible that there are inherent topics that are so provocative that children are so interested that little else matters?  Is there a way to tap into such topics without renting a national TV station for a week every year?

The Information is Reliable

Outside of a few random programs trying to find new information about a species, most of the information is repeated hundreds of times in a given Shark Week.  It’s a wonder that after this many years we still want to watch the same basic show premise hour after hour in repetition.  In reality, there are very few new shows every year, and this year they are adding a live program to end the day, which is not necessarily scientific in nature.  With all this boring content, what we do find is that the information presented is repeatable, which is huge when it comes to scientific experiments.  Multiple sources are all drawing similar conclusions about a topic, which is a huge desire in data collection and research.

This makes me reflect on my preparation for class as well as my students collecting of data.  Do I do a good job of checking the sources of some of my material or do I trust that the textbook is providing me all the answers I need?  Am I challenging my students to find multiple research sources that say similar things before presenting it as facts?  Do I look at things in a scientific way, or do I shoot from the hip sometimes?

Conclusion

I hope that when a student leaves my history classroom they are as passionate about Texas History as many people are about Shark Week.  Hopefully, as I continue to feed my nerdy desire to know more about sharks, I’ll continue to glean new ideas and ways of thinking about teaching through an expert like Shark Week.  Whatever they started all those years ago has become a universally recognized phenomena that masterfully teaches all types of people about marine biology.  Hopefully, one day, all education can do a job as wonderful.

Reflecting on Blended Learning

One of the many things teaching related that I’ve run across is the Middle School Matters website and podcast.  Being a middle school teacher it made sense for me to learn as much as I can about the middle school mindset as well as learn from others in the trenches.  As I was listening to their latest podcast (show 249), the guys brought up the idea that sometimes we are looking for the one classroom model to teach all students at all times.  They brought up that maybe the idea of blended learning (defined as using teacher driven learning, student driven learning, flipped classroom, etc. where it fits best in the curriculum) is what we need to look at an not focus on only one model.

I’ve always struggled with models of teaching because none seem to fit my classroom just right.  Currently, our school is really pushing PBL in the classroom, and I’m helping pilot some ROLE strategies in the classroom this year.  Others in our district are pushing the SEM model, flipped classrooms, or are emphasizing STEM.  It’s easy to see great teachers using a certain model and think to yourself “I need to try that”.  I think it’s folly though to change the bent of your classroom year after year just to find that the outcomes don’t quite work for you and try again with something different.  Maybe the greatest skill we as teachers can learn is how to use the strengths and weaknesses of all the different methods of teaching combined with intimate knowledge of each of our students to cater each unit to maximize learning and produce based on that knowledge.

If that’s the case, this still doesn’t give us any room to sit back and relax as a teacher.  It means we need to be actively looking for teaching models that we haven’t tried.  We should be scouring professional development opportunities and take advantage of our colleagues with varying backgrounds to expand your knowledge as a teacher.  We should constantly be innovating and learning.  We should take risks, just like we ask our students to take risks in class.  We should relish the chance to get new technology in our student’s hands even if it doesn’t go too well the first time.  The more we push ourselves as teachers, the more we are able to push our students in the classroom.

First Sunday at Church

Today was Caroline’s first day at church and there was one first during church, one first after church, and one interesting discussion that followed:

One First During Church:

We dropped Caroline off at Little Village, which is the children’s ministry at our church.  We put our parent pick-up sticker on her, left some instructions for the lovely ladies in the nursery, and made our way to church.  We sat with some friends of ours and the service started.  Haley was nervous since this was the first time we’d left our baby with the church nursery.  The service began and everything seemed fine, until five minutes later when the nursery paging service illuminated our parent code which meant we needed to check on our baby.  Haley left to go see what was going on and when she came back approximately 20 minutes later she told me that Caroline had been hysterically crying and had spit up all over one of the nursery workers.  She had gotten her to fall asleep in one of their baby rockers and we held our breaths until the end of the sermon, and then grabbed her and moseyed on our way.  Definitely not how we envisioned Caroline’s time in the nursery, but not the worst I’d ever heard either.

One First After Church:

We met with a girl we knew from church about the possibility of her moving into one of our guest rooms for the fall semester.  We presented what we thought was a great blessing for her, and she thought it would be great.  We’re hoping that this works out and that we can use the gift of our house to bless others.  We really wanted our house to be a ministry opportunity for our family and beyond.  If this doesn’t work out that’s completely ok, but it would be a great opportunity for us and her.  We’ve tried to think through all the possible downfalls of this and really be intentional about making sure we’re above reproach.  The major hurdle was the possibility that Haley were to go out of town.  The solution we came up with was for me to go to my parent’s house for the evenings Haley is out of town just to make sure there is no way for anyone to call anything into question.  Hopefully this won’t be the only time we can use the house God blessed us with as a ministry opportunity.

An Interesting Discussion:

The sermon at church was talking about the local church body and how they are being very intentional about the ways they are encouraging our discipleship.  They laid out their plan for every level of church, from children to adults.  While most of the age ranges made sense, the issue of youth ministry at our church left Haley and I with a big discussion.  Haley grew up with a strong youth group that allowed her to forge lifelong relationships with her friends at school as well as provided adults that consistently loved and discipled her.  Our church’s stance is that they don’t use a “program-driven” youth ministry, and they outlined why that is.  While Haley and I both understand their point-of-view on the topic, we don’t necessarily agree.  Our stance for now is going to be to see how the youth ministry morphs over the next few years and make a decision about youth ministry when Caroline is closer to that age.  Haley and I both agree that we love their children’s program as well as the theology of the church, but we want to have other adults than just ourselves pouring wisdom and the gospel into their lives as they grow up.  It was a great discussion for the two of us and one that we will have to revisit later.

Don’t Get Stagnant

When I was in little league, my coaches used to tell me that if you’re not getting better you’re getting worse.  I never really understood that growing up, but now that I’m on the wrong side of my sporting career it makes sense.  I try to remember that during the summer where it’s really easy to fall back into what we’ve always done before.

Luckily my principal has either intentionally or randomly chosen to change the course I’ll be teaching almost every year I’ve been teaching which keeps me on my toes.  It’s helpful, but as I’ve reflected on the beginning of the school year, I realize that they have always gone well but I’m beginning to wonder if I could do more or do things differently.  I want to front load the first week of school with information gathering about my students to help me in meeting their needs throughout the school year.

The first weeks of school for my school is relationship building and introducing the students to our school.  We have a project based learning initiative at our campus, so last year I put together a PBL for our 6th graders to introduce them to the process we go through for project based learning as a school.  We found in it’s first year last year that it helped the new 6th graders better understand project based learning and the expectations their teachers had for them.  It also helped the kids learn more about the school and our policies up front so they all knew what basic policies (library, technology, late work, etc.) were in the beginning which meant we didn’t need to cover them in our classes individually.  The 6th grade team though it went really well and with a few tweeks it will be done again this school year.  I’ll put up a post in the next few days where I outline this grade-wide project.

While refining the school-wide project, I want to do a better job of understanding all my students from the beginning.  I did some reading on My Beginning of the Year Student Questionnaire by Pernille Ripp and her other post on Parent Questionnaires I decided that I could easily collect a lot of information very easily.  I’m also going to try Curriculum Compacting with at least one student this year, so knowing more about each child’s interests will help me to create projects and products that they find interesting and engaging.

The other big change in my classroom is that I’ve been asked to be in a pilot group of teachers employing Results Only Learning Environment in my classroom as well as Standards Based Grading.  I’m really excited about the change in grading especially.  I know it will be a lot of work in the beginning especially while I’m getting used to it, but I realize that it’s better for my kids.  I need to reread parts of the book to make sure I’m on the same page with the rest of the people who are piloting this concept.

I’m trying to be intentional about changing up my routines as I go through my career teaching so that I don’t turn into a formulaic teacher.  That being said, I want to make sure I’m doing things that have real meaning and purpose for my classroom.  I don’t want to push the envelope just for the sake of pushing the envelope, I want to make sure that it adds to my classroom or is research based.  What are you doing to change your teaching this school year?  Are you getting better or getting worse?

Coaching Change

This week is one of the biggest in my career as a teacher.  It might be on par with my appointment to department head of the history department at my school and the day I was hired in my district (which was tougher since I was alternatively certified).  This week I officially signed paperwork that says I will teach from now on, but not coach.  It’s a bittersweet ending, but one that is the best for me and my newly formed family.

I have coached since the day I entered the classroom.  To be honest, coaching was really something I wanted to try as well as a way to get my foot in the door with a district.  When I was single, I thought I could coach for the rest of my career.  Sure there were long nights and early mornings, but what else did I have to do?  As I began to progress through engagement and into marriage time became more precious.  Suddenly there were more forces at work pulling me all over the place.  I wanted to do everything, but I was severely limited due to my coaching responsibilities.  My wife and I began talking about what a family would look like and our desires for how it would operate.  We didn’t agree on everything, but we did agree that coaching and family life don’t go together in our household.  We decided that when we began our family it was time to begin looking for the ability to teach but not coach.  I lucked out this year because some situations happened that opened up a full time history teaching position for me to take.  Part of my brain thought I would have to leave my district and search for a position that didn’t require me to coach, but luckily that didn’t happen.

I’m really happy to be able to commit to more family events this upcoming school year.  I’m excited to be able to take off a Monday, Tuesday, or Friday during the football season without being deathly ill.  I’m really excited to be a true department head for the history team.  I’m sad to not be around the awesome group of coaches at my school as much, but I’m excited to begin the rest of my teaching career.

Reflecting on Paternity Leave

I head back to my classroom tomorrow.  It’ll be a bittersweet day in that I’ll have to leave my baby girl at home, but I will head back to my kids who I have missed.  As I look back on my plans for paternity leave, I wonder if I could have done better with my plans.

My plan for paternity leave was to have my kids produce an end of the year project where they created their own country.  It included all of the themes and skills that we have been building on throughout the year.  They had to place their newly formed country in a body of water that was not already occupied by land.  They needed to understand how their location would affect their climate and in turn how that would affect their economy.  They needed to choose a government for their country and understand how it would affect their people.  They had to invent a flag for their nation as well as an anthem for their country.  After they created all these elements they had to reflect on how all their decisions would shape their country and how their culture would form.  All in all, I think it’s a great concept for a project to wrap up the year and have the kids show off all the knowledge they have acquired over the course of a school year.

The problem I fear for this project is that I wasn’t there to help kids along.  The substitute teachers we employ are great people, but I’m not sure that they could help a struggling kid to recall certain things we’ve learned throughout the year.  I tried to leave hints and prompts for the sub to help remind my kids (who are GT level kids by the way) and I am hoping for the best.  I also wonder if it was the best thing for the students.  The best is for me to be in the classroom, but given the fact that I was going to be absent for two weeks was this the best I could have done?  I guess I’ll find out tomorrow as I return and see what they have produced.

If anyone has any advice for such long-term plans and how to continue to push kids while not directly being in the classroom I would love to hear from you.