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...