Oh, the Joys of Notes

Well written notes are amazing.  I mean, if you write something down, geared well towards how you remember things, you can recall events from long ago.

During this semester, I have written many notes on various topics.  Recently, I have read some of my old notes and have been amazed.  Sometimes I  just wonder what was I thinking when I wrote it.  Other times, I read a small bit and an entire memory comes up in my mind.

I know I mentioned it in a previous post, but note taking is something I have always wanted to be better at.  To just be able to summarize what someone is saying, while keeping the important points, is such an important skill.  The book we read tended to point out techniques more for taking notes on written material, but this would be a fabulous skill when listening to lectures (or a family member drone on and on...).

This is coming to mind now as my team is actively preparing to teach a lesson.  As we have prepared, I have read through my notes of not just the class, but of our lesson plan and the ideas we had as well.  I have been grateful for the notes I have had as my mind has turned up blank on many occasions when asked about a different part of the lesson.

So my goal for myself: work harder at summarizing what people are saying, without losing the important bits.  This is something I know will extend beyond work and into everyday life.

And that's important.

Preparing a Team Lesson

Group dynamics are fascinating.

I have recently been able to watch different members of different groups and how they interact when presented with a joint project.  There are those who take charge, or who want to take charge, those who do as asked, and those who do not want to do anything.

In my group, we have just the former two, fortunately.  Most amusing to me is the fact that I was placed in charge of the group when I would prefer to be a follower.  I know it is something I need to work on.

But what I have learned the most from this is that, when I have to, I can take charge.  It has helped me that my team looks to me for leadership, even though most of them are (in my mind), better than I for the position.  But having them ask me and look to me has helped me try to do better.  It has given me a goal to work towards.

On another note, I also was able to listen to some student teachers talk about their experiences.  Obvious, to me, the one thing all four of them said was the most important to learn and do well was classroom management.  However, I am grateful for the explanations they gave of what worked for them in managing their classrooms.  The most common response was to learn and call the students by name.  Some might think it a small thing, but I have learned already that it is very effective.  The director of a two-hundred plus voice choir created a huge chart matching the seating assignments in the practice hall with a cut-out picture of each choir member with their name below it.  I was always amazed how she knew everyone's name.  It made each of us feel important.

Another one was to follow through on your threats.  That I learned as a parent.  If you do not follow through, the kids learn that your threats do not mean anything and they ignore you.  The same is true for students, and can be very detrimental to your ability to teach.

The final one that stuck out to me was a method for handling unruly students; you talk to them away from the others (or at least their own peers) and you use subjects such as respect and community to guide them on proper behavior.  It reminded me of how it is rarely a good idea to embarrass a student in front of their friends.  On occasion, it might work, but often it is better to take care of such things in a more suitable environment.  People can really resent being humiliated in public.

Over all, a good week for learning.

Listen to a Lecture

We had the opportunity to hear a man who had been teaching for about six years.  He changed his career late in life and found a new passion in teaching technology.

As an interesting anecdote, I had met this teacher back when I was in the program a little over six years ago.  It was good to see that he had found what he truly loved.

I think what struck me the most, in listening to him tell us about what it is like to be in the field, was when he told of how much of a positive influence he was able to have in the first school he taught at.  There were a lot of poor families in that district.  As a result, there were students in difficult situations, many of whom just rebelled against everything.  He told a story of one student that he stayed after class to help with a project, and how he had not only affected this student, but the vice principal was impressed as well.

But it was how humble he was, and how glad he was that he could help students -- everyone really -- improve themselves and find what they want to do.

Regardless of where life takes me, this is an attitude that I want to cultivate.  Affecting life for good is one of the best goals you can have.

Tests

Sometimes things do not work out quite like we are hoping they will.  Most of the time, things do go as we wish they would, but not all the time.
Recently, I had the opportunity to present but, due to things beyond control, I still have not presented.  But, such is life.  We can have many things not turn out as we would wish.
In our last lecture, we learned about so many topics, but most about how to write tests.  This included lecture notes as well as some information that was a bit above what we are used to.
The idea that our tests could have so many options intrigued me.  I plan on having my notes with me whenever I create a test, so that I can not just have ideas, but be able to implement the ones I wish.

If A Student Helps Another, Is It Cheating?

One of the thoughts that came out of my most recent observation was the notion that having students help each other was not cheating.

It made me pause a bit.  I had not really given it much thought about how different a test was from real work situations, but it is true.  Throughout my career, in each of the different fields I have worked, we were always encouraged to ask for help and to help others.

But school has always been different.  There we are constantly being measured and observed.  Our work is to be our own, not that of our neighbor.  In this case, it makes sense that we should not necessarily collaborate.  Unless, that was part of the activity.

However, non-collaboration (meaning having someone help you is cheating) does have a place in the real world.  What comes to my mind are job interviews.  There you are on your own, completely, and you need to be able to perform so that your future boss can see that you are exactly what he or she needs.  This working-under-pressure that we learn from tests can go quite far to helping us to get a job.

Now then, when I provide any instruction, what sort of teacher will I be?  Will I want each student to learn alone, be pushed and stretched so they can pass any interview, or would I prefer to let them collaborate, grade them as a group (if necessary), and prepare them for the actual work by teaching them how to work in a team?

Likely a mix of both, leaning more towards the group or team work.  There will need to be some work that they do by themselves, but I intend that people under my instruction learn how to work as a team and to share the responsibility for both good and bad.

Be Specific...

There are so many different things you can try to teach in a single lesson.  Imagine, for a minute, that you want to cover the history of technology.  What will you teach?  Will you cover the general history of all technology, or delve more into one or more specific ones?

Both in my classroom observations as well as my peer observations, it has seemed to me that, in general, it is better to try to be specific.  There are occasions where a general overview is desired.  To continue the hypothetical situation, it might be good to start with an overview of all the different ways technology has grown, perhaps covering how almost everything we have is related to some technology.

But if you are teaching an entire ninety minute period on tech's history, you can cover a lot of topics and not teach very much.  I really liked some of the discussions I have been involved with where we discussed picking something specific and trying to tease out the point you are trying to make.

Following that line of thought, suppose instead that you decided to teach the history of technology and that you pick the engine as your subject.  You can still pull history out by looking at what makes the engine possible (the wheel, coal or gasoline (for steam or internal combustion), smelting to get better metals, etc.) and thus get the point across about how things have changed or grown without trying to also cover textiles, circuits, agriculture, etc.

Both examples have merit, and depend on what your goal is as a teacher for that particular lesson, but I think that, personally, I will be leaning towards the specific topics, making sure to instruct my students to look for similarities in other forms of technology.

Are your students really listening?

An interesting thought was brought up in a recent discussion:  How do you know if your students are really listening to what you are trying to teach?  I gave the first answer that came to my mind: test them.

It's something I assumed was natural.  After all, that's how all the teachers I ever met while growing up did it.  In one class, the teacher even went as far as to have random quizzes if she felt the students were drifting off.  Ah the memories...

But others in the discussion brought up interesting possibilities.  Some of these suggestions included incentives, assigned roles in a role-playing scenario, make it a contest, word bingo.  Throw in tricks was my favorite.  You (usually) announce to the class that, now that you have explained everything, you will then work through a problem on the board, but that you will purposefully do something wrong, and it is the students' job to figure out the error.  Brilliant.

My father, who is also a teacher, likes to use the following phrase whenever the students catch a small error, such as spelling:
"But I never make mistrakes!"

Now I'm wondering how I can incorporate these ideas in my next lesson...

An observation of teaching

It is one thing to read about and talk about classroom management and think about how you would do it yourself.  It is quite another thing to observe it first hand.

In a good sized high school, an auto shop instructor attempts to teach his students how to maintain and repair their cars in a way that not only the school itself and the district approve, but in such a way that the state approves as well.  He described it as a bit challenging to figure out, but he managed to come up with a series of skills that the students should learn, basing much of it off of a Boy Scout merit badge on auto repair and maintenance.

I enjoyed his ingenuity in creating his curriculum as well as the laid-back manner in which he interacted with the students in his class.  It was amusing to me that everyone, the teachers and students included, referred to him by first name.  I know that it can be detrimental to be too much of a friend to your students, but while his manner was personable, he was not "their friend" but clearly a caring instructor.  I do not know if I could pull that off, but he certainly could.

During part of the activity, in which the students were learning how to change the oil, he used a system where one student was the narrator, reading the instructions out loud, and the rest took turns doing each step.  The instructor also had the students alternate between boys and girls, thus making sure that even those who wanted to hide in the back (I observed both boys and girls) had the opportunity to participate.

The first period that I was observing existed because of a driver's education course that only lasted half of the school year.  As a result, there were a good number of students in the class that were obviously hesitant about doing anything with a car, but the instructor lovingly cajoled them into trying and, for the most part, everyone participated.

At the beginning of the next period, I witnessed one of the best anticipatory sets ever.  With winter coming on, the instructor had the students help him describe what happens when water freezes (it expands) and then transitioned to water in an engine block, and how the block itself could crack and be ruined.  This then perfectly led into how to test and maintain the coolant system in a car, and how to begin getting the vehicle ready for a cold winter.  This is something that I want to emulate.  He had those students' attention extremely quickly and held it during the entire lecture/discussion portion of the class.  None of them wanted to lose a car this winter due to the outside temperature alone!

In summary, I considered him to be an amazing teacher.  His love for his students was obvious and their respect for him was also great.  In all honesty, if I had been able to take his class while in high school, it is entirely possible that I would have ended up as a mechanic instead of a computer geek.

Teaching Styles

One of the most interesting things to observe is how each individual person teaches.  Because each person is different - they approach each subject with their own preconceived notions, ideas, and personal history - it is natural to assume that everyone has a different method, or at least variations on the most common styles.

Recently, I have had many opportunities to watch peers and professionals as they instruct various audiences.  Some of my peers, who are just learning, have the opportunity to try different methods to see what works best for them.

Professionals, on the other hand, are usually familiar with and are more likely to have found what they feel is the best and to stick with it, for good or ill.  Two professionals that I recently observed are in some ways similar and others completely different, illustrating my point.  Mr. C. is rather laid back and prefers that the students teach themselves, for the most part.  I agree with his thoughts that, in many cases, students are "spoon-fed" everything and are not necessarily taught how to figure things out.  While nice in principle, what happened instead was that a few students learned the material really well by both doing it themselves and then both teaching and (more often) doing it for the other students.  Many of the students ended up floating along in the current without making any effort to paddle towards the learning objective.

To be fair, I observed Mr. C.'s class in the middle of the year when things were mostly hashed out and the students knew what they needed to do.  I really would have liked to have seen his class during the beginning of the school year so that I could observe the initial setup and explanations of all the various modules.

For Mr. H.'s class, I was fortunate enough to observe the administration of a test.  At the beginning, Mr. H. went over the entire test and, in many cases, reviewed what the answers were.  I was given the opportunity to assist in grading the test and was sad at how many students missed the parts he reviewed.

Overall, Mr. H. seemed in more control of his classes.  I think it came down to the end of the period.  In Mr. C.'s class, as soon as the bell rung, the students would just leave in a rush.  In one case they lined up by the door waiting for the bell to ring.  Whereas in Mr. H.'s class, before the bell rung, he set the students cleaning up, including pushing their chair in and making sure everything they put all their tools away.

There were things I liked about both teachers and several items I will try to incorporate myself whenever I will be teaching.  I especially liked Mr. H.'s quieting/attention technique where he starts counting down from 10 and when he reaches zero, whomever is not ready to listen is given some sort of mark against them.  At his school it was a mark in their citizen book, though he offered the student the option of doing push-ups instead.  I could see myself doing something similar...

The Three-Person Problem

I have to say: Gong's book, Learning & Teaching for Exponential Growth: A Three Person Problem, has got to be one of the best non-fiction books I have ever read.  It was part epiphany, part obvious, and part wow.

Epiphany because it led me to so many "aha!" moments where I thought of how I could use this in teaching my own kids, in guiding them to a love of learning, or of teaching the children in my Sunday School class, helping them find joy in both learning and teaching each other and others, or with just how I can learn more myself and find greater enjoyment.  It did a great deal towards helping me to find that joy in seeking out new knowledge and gaining new insights.

Obvious because so much of it was like walking out into the sun and saying "yes, it is bright."  I have heard many times that one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it.  This forces you to organize your thoughts and to put things in your own language, or manner of speaking.  That reinforces whatever you are teaching in your own mind, helping it to be solidified.  This was something I knew, and yet I was excited to find it mentioned within the book, most likely since it confirmed what I believed to be true.

And "wow" because it succeeded in amazing me.  There were so many ways it pushed my understanding and provoked my thoughts towards higher meanings.  The entire idea of exponential learning just boggles my mind.  And yet it also calls to me.  I have always loved learning, but I had previously felt that learning at exponential speed and recall was only for the lucky few.  Now I have a goal to strive for and a task to complete.  I want to learn at that rate.  I want my family to be able to learn like that.  I want everyone I meet to learn like that.

Pondering about Teaching

Pondering is such a wonderful word, evoking an image of someone lost in thought, their mind turning a concept over and over in an attempt to make more sense out of it.

At least, that is what comes to my mind.

And teaching is such an interesting topic to ponder about.  People all have their own views on what, how, and when something should be taught.  It was fascinating to read the Wong's book The First Day of School as it presented such an interesting perspective.  Even the way the book was written indicates the authors' belief that repetition is important.  They repeated the title concept several times in each chapter, not to mention the different concepts for each chapter.  It happened so often that I am not sure I could even mention any examples.  They all run together in my head.  I still feel a little beaten, metaphorically, by the concept hammer.  "I've got it, already.  Can we move on now?"

Don't get me wrong, almost all of the concepts and thoughts in the book gave me a feeling of "Yeah!  That's the way to do it!" and "Why didn't most teachers I knew while I was growing up do things like this?

One that stuck out to me the most was the idea of procedures in classroom management, as opposed to rules.  I agree, and yet I disagree.  Maybe I'm getting too old, but the idea of changing all rules into things that are just done seems likely not to work.  At least not if you do away with rules entirely.  Used in moderation, I think it could be quite useful.

On a different subject, the last lecture was phenomenal.  It inspired me to try to find more joy in learning and to bleed this over into the rest of my life as well.

That, and now I want to learn how to speed read...

What is Teaching?

Teaching is an interesting topic.  It begins with a thought, progresses through actions, and leads to imparting knowledge, instructions, and wisdom.  We start with some information to share, proceed to actions which can include preparation, discussions, research, and finally reach the point where some of this original information manages to lodge itself into the mind of the student.

To me, teaching is an art form.  Everyone has a different style, some of which can be categorized, and the final product is still left to the student to interpret.  Some explanation can occur, but things are still largely influenced by the past experiences and previous knowledge that brought the student to that point in the first place.

And if teaching is a form of art, learning is a form of appreciation.  What we appreciate - what we enjoy - stays with us.  We appreciate not just the art the teacher gives us, but time that goes into it.  And like the true masters of art, the best teachers are appreciated the most by their students.

Teaching, therefore, should be a work of love and heart.  We teach because we love.  We love our students, we love the subject matter, and we love making a difference.  The learners are then able to feel the love the teacher has for all of this and it gives them hope and confidence, as well as a feeling of security.  My favorite teachers growing up were the ones I felt I could trust.

This coincides greatly with some of the things I have learned about being an effective teacher.  Simple things like "please" and "thank you" and smiling should be obvious, and yet I remember teachers who did not do that, who always sounded like they were ordering us to do something.  The teachers who were kind were always more respected.  The militant teachers might have silence, but students often hated them.

In contrast, I preferred being in the classrooms of the self-proclaimed "mean" teachers, who were often some of the most polite.  They called themselves the mean ones because they had rules and stuck to them, which was what I preferred.  Interestingly enough, most students feel the same.

It seems to me that, as I study and learn more about teaching, I learn more and more about what kind of teacher I want to be.