Mr. Lindsay's Lessons & Lectures

Jan

21

Who is responsible here?

January 21, 2012 | Blogs & Blogging, Kids, My Thoughts, Reflections & Journals, Students, Teachers  |  Leave a Comment

“We will start unit 7 on Monday and math box checking will be different for second semester.  Up until now, students have been given an opportunity to have every math box checked the day before we grade them. All of the math boxes have a “twin” math box. Math box 7.1 has the same skills as math box 7.3, so we will only give students an opportunity to check the first set of skills. This will work out to be half of the total math boxes graded. The goal is to place more responsibility on the students to review their own work without relying on the classroom teachers. They are still welcome to bring home their math boxes at night.”

I copied these words out of an email that I received from a 5th grade teacher that was addressed to parents. I have very strong thoughts about the idea of promoting responsibility among students. It is my belief while we should encourage more responsible behavior among our students, we should not allow a student’s value of responsibility to interfere with his/her learning without teacher intervention. My belief statement is a bit complex so I’d like to explain.

While I have no problems with the concept increasing student responsibility in the email above, if a student begins to suffer because they are not following through on their responsibilities, then I believe it is still the teacher’s responsibility to intervene. We cannot allow students to fall simply because we are making a point about responsibility. Too many teachers use the idea of “placing more responsibility on the kids” as an abdication of their responsibility as the teacher. I would advise any parent to question a teacher who openly makes a commitment to wanting to “put more responsibility” on the kids. It is critical that if this is a new thing for the students, then the teacher must have structures in place to catch a student who might slip. As a parent, I would demand to know what happens if a student starts to slip and to not be satisfied by further responsibility being put on the kid. Learning is a partnership among all stakeholders, students, teachers, and parents.

I absolutely support a teacher’s efforts to encourage appropriate levels of self-responsibility among students. However, if a student starts to slip because she is not being responsible, the teacher needs to re-assert more structure, take off some of that responsibility, so that the student does not fall behind. As the student gains more confidence or becomes more responsible, then a little more responsibility is given. Teachers need to differentiate responsibility just as they would differentiate their instruction.

Jan

14

Don’t laugh at me. Learn from me.

January 14, 2012 | Learning Tools, My Thoughts, Reflections & Journals, Teachers  |  2 Comments

I don’t really understand the motivations of others to laugh at someone else’s efforts to strive to not only be better themselves, but when they strive to make the community around them better as well. I see this behavior all the time in middle schools where kids who achieved are ridiculed for their efforts and their success. I work hard to fight this mentality when I’m dealing with kids. It’s much harder to handle, and fight, when it happens among adults.

I have a passion for my profession. I have a fairly active “teacher” Twitter account where I read a lot of articles and ideas for improving my craft. If I read one that I think has particular relevance to a colleague or the entire staff where I work, I will send out that link to them. Maybe this categorizes me as an “overachiever” like some of my students.

Yesterday, I was sitting in a meeting where a teasing comment was made about my “reading” and the articles I send out. My first, emotional response, is one where I want to stop what doing that action that caused me to be teased in front of my peers. I don’t think that the teasing was done to publicly ridicule me for sending out articles on how to be a better teacher, but my initial response to it was to stop doing it.

But then I thought about my students, my achieving students, who I counsel all the time to never lower their standards although they may face teasing from others for their achievements. I tell them to keep fighting because it’s not about the other people. It’s about their own success and living by their own standards.

Good advice. I plan to heed it. I plan to continue with sending out items of interest that might help teachers teach, because it’s not about them. It’s, in this case, about me wanting to help others help kids.

Dec

21

When Kids Become Objects

December 21, 2011 | Classroom Management, Connecting with Kids, Discussion, Kids, My Thoughts, Teachers, Teaching Tools  |  Leave a Comment

“I have to go to work.” Work. That one word conjures up images of drudgery, depression, and gloom. We get so used to the daily routines associated with work that a lot of times what we do and who we deal with become almost like objects. Have you ever been treated by a cashier, a doctor, or a teacher as “just another person”? In that moment, you most likely were just another person who needs to be dealt with just as the person before you and the person after you. However, to you, the experience is more personal and the impersonal service and treatment leave a poor aftertaste.

As teachers, we sometimes get so used to dealing with kids, typical misbehaviors, and the frustrations that go with them that we sometimes forget that we are dealing with people. Yes, they are younger and more immature, but that is all the more reason to never forget that each child is a person with feelings, worries, and frustrations of their own. Furthermore, as children, they are impressionable by each adult they meet, see on TV, or observe. In those moments of frustration, when we are angry and we raise our voices, we sometimes forget that we are dealing with very impressionable kids who see us treating them or their peers callously with little regard to their feelings of embarrassment, dignity, or pride. I certainly would hope that no teacher would ever purposely treat a student this way, but how we interact with kids sometimes becomes part of the daily routine of work and we can, at times, devalue the person in order to get through the moment.

In many ways teachers are no different than any other profession in that we get frustrated with our jobs and the people we work with. However, our responsibilities are different than many other professions in that we are nearly always surrounded by impressionable youth looking at our every interaction (and often questioning what they see as we did when we were young).

Take a moment, hit a mental pause button, when you feel your blood pressure growing. By doing so you not only give yourself a chance to think through the emotions and react in a mature manner, but also you are demonstrating powerfully how to resolve frustrations appropriately by resisting the urge to take revenge and handling your actions responsibly with dignity and sensitivity for all involved.

Sep

29

Adolescent Enigma: Perplexing Yet Magical

September 29, 2011 | 6th Grade, 8th Grade, Connecting with Kids, Discussion, Kids, My Thoughts, Reflections & Journals, Students  |  Leave a Comment

I just caught one of those magically perplexing moments in the halls of the middle school where I teach. I came up on an 8th grade girl talking very sternly to a 6th grade boy who has significant special needs. My immediate concern was that there might be an issue between the two students because the 8th grade girl has a history of being disrespectful, angry, and disruptive. However, as I got close enough to overhear the conversation, she was speaking to him sternly about his need to find his planner so he stays out of trouble.

Here we have a young lady who finds herself, unfortunately, in frequent trouble urging her younger brother to stay out of trouble and maintain good behavior. It was a wonderful moment, but perplexing at the same time. The 8th grade young lady clearly understands the need to follow rules and maintain good behavior. She was very clear about that to her younger brother, but she struggles to do the same for herself.

I wish I had the key to unlock that mystery. As much as I know and have experienced with adolescents, there are some behaviors that remain an enigma to me.

Sep

25

Common Bonds for School Improvement

September 25, 2011 | My Thoughts, Teachers, Teaching Tools  |  Leave a Comment

I’m sitting here on this wonderful Sunday morning. I have my coffee in front of me. The kids are sleeping. It’s my time to think. I came across a couple of articles that I bookmarked a while ago about indicators of student proficiency that are prevalent or common among high-achieving schools. While this article talked about “rewarding good teaching” and “using data to inform instruction”, what it didn’t point out is that the socio-economic indicators for these “successful” schools all trended toward the more affluent. By contrast, the schools that were shamed by being named as one of “those” schools with low scores and student achievement seem to share the common element of lower socio-economic indicators.

I’m wondering whether it would be appropriate or not, to stratify achieving schools by socio-economic indicators such as community median income or free and reduced lunch rates? Naming the highest achieving schools who have a 90% or more free and reduced lunch rate might be more helpful to other schools whose students share in the struggle that is going on at home. Chances are, and I haven’t researched this, that the school resources (not just financial, hard assets, or facilities, but also resources such as parental support or teacher turnover rates) in those schools will be more similar than when comparing schools from different socio-economic levels. There could be several different permutations of such a stratified structure, but the end goal would be for schools desperately seeking improvement to be able to find schools similar to them who are experiencing success.

My main concern with such an examination of schools would be that the word “stratify” would become synonymous with the word “segregate”. While in my mind, the goal of such a stratification would be for schools to find similar peers to help improve, such data might be used by politicians, community leaders, or business leaders as weapons to be used against our the schools (and students) who need the most support. By the way, the word “support” is NOT a substitute for the word “money” when it is used to describe the help our students need. There are plenty of ways to help kids that involve manpower, training and volunteerism without using a mass amount of new capital.

So that’s my thought on this Sunday morning after my first cup of coffee. Maybe once I get my second cup in me, I will take a crack at this whole Middle East peace process thing.

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