Archive for the ‘Instructional Techniques’ Category
#55) Removing the Training Wheels
My oldest daughter loves to ride her bike. Up and down the sidewalk, she breezes by with a happy confidence that comes from riding without training wheels. Last summer she, just like my youngest is doing now, rode her bike with tentativeness. A cautious restraint that says: “I don’t want to fall”. Because that was her guiding thought, she fell often; but then something happened. She noticed the other kids were having much more fun and riding their bikes much faster without training wheels. Once we removed her training wheels, bike riding became one of her favorite activities.
For my fifth year of classroom teaching, I chose to take a leap of faith. I had earned tenure teaching in Ypsilanti but was eager for change and new challenges. When I began teaching first grade in Highland Park, I could not have imagined the magnitude of challenges that were in store.
On the first day, I remember sitting at my desk about 30 minutes prior to the arrival of students and wondering, “what have I gotten myself into?” In the previous 14 days, I
- Was bedside as my grandfather transitioned from life;
- Served as a pallbearer during his funeral;
- Broke numerous speeding records as I drove across Michigan rushing to Chicago to reach the downtown offices that administered marriage licenses 10 minutes before closing;
- Got married and went on a honeymoon;
- Returned to Chicago at midnight Friday and drove to Michigan for an 8 am job interview;
- Signed a contract with a new district, resigned from the old district, and cleaned- out my old classroom;
- Attended professional development and set-up my new classroom on Monday.
As you could imagine, on the first day of school that Tuesday morning I was feeling as if I had survived an emotional hurricane. Only to learn that the storm was not over.
The biggest storm weathered during my experience in Highland Park had very little to do with Highland Park. The biggest storm was changing my pedagogy. I had been a creative, engaging, and progressively more effective teacher in the previous years. However, I had a tendency to build my instruction around textbooks and curriculum guides. Somewhat like teaching with training wheels. While in Highland Park, I evolved as a teacher because I finally grew beyond those training wheels.
Highland Park is a small and very impoverished city. The children arrive at school with life experiences that would evoke immense pity. A number of the children bring a defensive edge and aggressiveness that they use to protect themselves from further disappointment. The district also serves a large transient population, whether those families were homeless, poor people moving from place to place to avoid eviction, or students from Detroit Public Schools who transferred for expedient testing and placement in special services only to take their completed I.E.P. back to Detroit. The city and school district of Highland Park continue to face daunting challenges that threaten their existence.
It was in Highland Park that I learned just how much of a context-setter the environment and community could be. Because I had taught kindergarten at an advanced pace during the three previous years (I taught second grade as a first year teacher), my curricular expectations were beyond the demonstrated academic skill of my first graders in Highland Park. I want to emphasize demonstrated academic skill is much different from academic aptitude; all of the children in my class were intelligent. Yet, it became quickly apparent that our resources, textbooks, workbooks, and supplementary materials, were inadequate for what and how I needed to teach. I had to teach without training wheels.
In hindsight, it appears to have been a combination of necessity and professional maturity that prompted my teaching evolution. Becoming more comfortable teaching without training wheels was a monumental time in my growth as an educator. As I have grown, I have learned that the best teachers teach without training wheels. They research, acquire new information, actively participate in workshops, experiment, and then synthesize those experiences and more into relevant, captivating instruction.
With the first days of school upon us, I enthusiastically wish that this year is your year to teach without training wheels!
#28) My Love for Learning Centers / Kids Say the Darndest Things
One of my favorite strategies for instruction and classroom management was the use of learning centers. Learning centers being the simultaneous use of a variety of distinctively different learning activities with varying levels of difficulty.
My comfort zone hovered around four to five learning centers with five to six students working at each of them. The most challenging center would be the newest skill / objective that I taught. I would actively teach / guide / facilitate at this learning center. A second center that required a balance of input from me and independence from the students would be located nearby for my periodic interjections. The remaining activities would require student independence on skills they needed to perfect. For example, here are a few centers I would use during language arts time:
A) My Center – Reading aloud from reading level texts
B) Somewhat Independent Center – Creative writing with prompts and guidelines
C) Independent Center A – Writing spelling words, dividing them phonetically and using them in a sentence
D) Independent Center B – Sentence Pyramids beginning with a word (a noun), then making a two word sentence with it, then a three word sentence, a four word sentence and so on.
Using learning centers promoted a level of on-going activity in my class and was also a reflection of how I like to work. I would give the directions for each center to the whole group before designating which particular center I wanted them to start. I would set a timeline that would encourage student accountability as they were responsible for completing all the centers within the designated time.
Learning centers really help me cover a significant amount of curriculum while also permitting whole and small group instruction. As an instructional and classroom management strategy, I found learning centers to be tremendously effective.
I must share that while teaching kindergarten, one of the learning center activities was to create an invitation for parents to attend an after-school event. The invitation was to be crafted in the form of a personalized letter complete with a heading, a salutation and a complementary closing line. The closing was “Love” and the student’s name. After I gave the directions and modeled how completing this activity would look, one of my boys raised his hand with a question formed as the most hilarious statement uttered from a five year old. He said, “Mr. Duncan, I don’t know how to make love.” The classroom assistant and I burst into blushing laughter. This boy was referring to his disappointment with making the letter L backwards. At the learning center, I was able to properly demonstrate the proper way to make an L when writing love – truly kids say the darndest things.
#24) Bad kids … our fault or theirs?
There are no bad students.
That bears repeating – there are no bad students.
I am not an idealist. Nor am I an overzealous optimist. I am someone who feverously believes in the power of educators. Moreover, I know the key to having a classroom without bad kids is determined by an educator’s willingness to grow outside of their comfort zone.
Indeed, there are students who bring emotional, behavioral and other challenges to school. Their home or lack of contributes heavily to the raw material that shows up at our classroom doors. As educators we have the knowledge and ability to shape that raw material into a more developed, better prepared student.
However, in many circumstances it comes down to a choice:
a) Will we choose to adjust our instructional techniques, adapt some new strategies and be willing to demonstrate the patience needed for those things to show results; or
b) Will we spread blame, admonish the child for not adjusting to our rigid practices and give up on this opportunity to grow personally and professionally?
I once supervised a teacher who took great pride in the organization of her classroom and the performance of her students. While she did work hard in cultivating that learning environment, one important factor should be noted – her class was assigned the top 25 achievers from the previous year.
We had a special needs student who was doing poorly in another class. He had even once extended a visit to the bathroom as an opportunity to leave the building. When we transferred him into the high achievers class, it was with the expectation that the structure of the room would be to his benefit.
Amazingly, it was.
He responded well to the structure of her class. He looked forward to coming to school. Although he had needs that impaired his performance, his effort skyrocketed and began to have a positive impact on his work.
The tragedy was that the teacher hated it. Maybe she hated me for the transfer, I cannot say. I can say her perception prevented her from seeing the strides that the student was making. She complained about him not sitting in his seat. I visited the class several times and staying seated was not his preference. He stood at his desk in the rear of the class and attempted to do the assignment. During each of my visits he was on task, sans the comfort of his seat.
My perspective was that this student had disliked school and was a proven risk to leave the grounds. Now he is on task, excited to come to class and needs redirection to sit in his seat. I saw it as significant progress.
Progress that was aborted when upon returning from the resource room a scenario ensued during which the teacher made a comment about the child having been retained. He had been retained in kindergarten but really had no perception that he had failed. Her callous comment in front of the class sent a wrecking ball through his progress.
Did the student present challenges? Yes. Did he require the teacher to change her instruction? Not really, his IEP required his instruction to come in the resource room where he spent over half of his day. Did he require her to change her perception? Yes and that is where she failed. Her stubborn position snuffed out the joy of learning for that child. His parents and future teachers must repair the damage. While we are left to ponder how often does situation such as this play out in our schools and how have we contributed to hurting a child’s potential?
#19) Do You Really Want To Win?
This blog entry will be featured in the upcoming book:
#13) Finding Your Voice
This blog entry will be featured in the upcoming book:
REFLECTIONS FROM THE FRONTLINE
(For ways to help your teachers develop their voice, click our T3 -Tailored Teacher Training link.)
Click photo to listen to my favorite Miles album