When I've talked to college professors, high school teachers, local business owners, and others who deal with our young adults I'm often told that the ability of these young adults to express themselves in writing is sorely lacking. Even in my fifth grade classroom I've seen an increase in students who struggle to write complete sentences, cannot use correct punctuation, and find it difficult to express themselves. Some of the causes are probably an increase in "textese" and the increased shift from a balanced curriculum to one that focuses solely on math and reading during the last decade of NCLB testing. Instead of looking at causes, however, let's look at five ways we can develop better writers in our classrooms and schools.
Photo Credit: János Fehér
Make a commitment to have each student write at least one complete sentence per subject per day. At first, this sounds like something that must already be happening in our schools. It's not. Think about the average math or science classroom. Often there is very little writing going on, and even less that is written in complete sentences. Instead of having students raise their hands to answer questions, make every student write their responses in complete sentences. Then choose a few at random to share their responses. In addition to building writing skills, you'll be using formative assessment to check the understanding of all of your students.
Get your students blogging. When your work is being published to a wide audience, you are more likely to pay attention to the details of your writing. The reading specialist and special education teacher in my building claim that their students' punctuation, capitalization, and spelling improved dramatically when they started blogging. Blogging also is a great way to get students in subjects outside of language arts writing as well. Asking students to share their learning ensures that they really understand the concepts being taught. It's impossible to write about a topic well without understanding it.
Grade less. Not everything that an author writes gets published. Students need opportunities to simply write for the purpose of writing. I can't tell you how many posts I start and then scrap. If I were being graded on each of my posts I'd stop blogging. I'm sure many of our students feel the same way. Just like students sometimes draw for fun, we should encourage them to write for fun.
Give opportunities for students to be creative. In the past 10 years I've seen writing become much more formulaic in schools due to the rubrics on standardized tests. We tell students, "If you do X, Y, and Z, then you'll get a '4' on the test." I can't think of anything more detrimental to building a love of writing, nor more likely to destroy a student's ability to write creatively. Allow students to illustrate their writings if they are artistic, write in verse if they enjoy poetry, or use web 2.0 tools to enhance their writings. Give students writing assignments that lend themselves to creativity. One of my favorite writing activities that I do with my class is to pass out cards with random narrative titles, main character descriptions, and settings. I then ask my students to put together a good narrative using the elements they randomly received. One student might have to write a story entitled "The Missing Day" that takes place in the old west about a pillow salesman, while another student gets "Elbow Soup" as a title, present day New York City as a setting, and an alien from the planet Oooff as a main character. Since we spend a lot of time talking about how good narratives are composed in reading class, the stories they write are usually very good.
Build a love of reading. It's very difficult to complete a job when you don't have access to the right tools. Students who don't read much often are lacking the vocabulary and figurative language skills to write well. Because of that they often have no confidence in their writing abilities and shut down any time they are asked to express themselves that way. For these students, helping them find the motivation to read is supremely important.
How do you develop writing skills in your classroom? Have you seen a change in the writing ability of students entering your class over the past few years? What else can we do to show students the power of well-written words?
Every teacher has had moments when they realize that their students have a glazed look in their eyes, are drooling on their textbooks and are on the verge of slipping into a boredom coma. We strive to make our lessons interesting, fun, and engaging, but sometimes we fail. Sometimes our hands are tied because we have been told by our superiors that we need to use scripted lessons from XYZ Textbook company because such lessons are backed by research, aligned to our state's standards, and helped a neighboring district increase state test scores by 3% last year.
I seem to get that glazed, drooling, semi-comatose look from my students at times when I am teaching reading. I love teaching math, history, and civics. I've gotten quite good at ditching the textbook in those subjects, letting students have more autonomy over their own learning, and creating lessons that are engaging. Reading is another story. I'm the rare elementary teacher who dislikes teaching reading. Because of that, I've lacked the confidence to totally ditch the textbook like I do in other subjects.
It's not that I don't believe reading is important, or that I don't like to read. I do. My problem is that I've found it difficult over the years to find ways to make the required reading series interesting in any way, and I've had difficulty identifying ways to ensure my students will pass state tests without it. Lately I've made a great effort to devise ways to both become more textbook free, and make our reading series/textbook tolerable. I've still got a lot to learn, but here are five ideas that I've used with some success:
Teach non-fiction reading skills in other content areas. Educational research has shown for decades that students learn best when reading is taught within content areas. Why school districts are ignoring this research and cutting social studies and science classes in the hope of increasing reading test scores is perplexing to me. A much better strategy would be to provide professional development to science and social studies teachers so that they can teach reading skills. I've found that once I get my students engaged with topics in those subject areas, reading information about those topics becomes more relevant to them.
Let students choose the subject matter of their reading choices. A few weeks ago I told my students to read the next story in our textbook, which was a narrative about a paleontologist. Three students looked interested. Seventeen moaned. I moaned. I don't really care if my students know about paleontology, dinosaurs, or anything else in that story. What I need them to know is how to identify setting, conflict, etc. Why should I force them to read something that they hate? I changed the assignment on the spot. Each student was allowed to pick one of six topics, and I handed them short books on those topics. They still learned what they needed to and were much more interested.
Don't make students take a test on everything they read. I read a lot. If someone forced me to take a test on each article, blog post, book, and magazine I read, I'd probably read a lot less. I'd imagine our students feel the same way. It's hard to build a love of reading in our students if we don't allow them to love reading. Isn't that the reading skill that's more important than all the others?
Use technology to give students purpose for reading. Writing the main idea of the passage they read in their notebook is not purposeful. Just typing that sentence makes me one step closer to the semi-comatose state I described earlier. Let them publish a book review on your class website or wiki. Let them create a study guide. Let them share their opinions about what they read in a blog post. It is impossible to create such things without comprehending what you read. If students have a purpose they care about for reading, they are much more likely to practice good reading skills like re-reading, deciphering the meaning of words, etc.
Allow students to get creative by incorporating the arts into reading class. Forced to read a boring textbook narrative? Ask students to create a comic book representation of the story that includes the rising action, conflict, climax and conclusion. Have students turn the narrative into a screenplay and then videotape themselves acting it out. See if students can create and record a ballad that tells the story in song. Better yet, give them the option to choose any of those three, or another creative way to retell the story. For informational/persuasive writing, product advertisements, commercials, and pamphlets can be great opportunities for students to get creative.
The biggest issue I run into when trying to implement some of the above ideas is time. We are supposed to read one textbook story per week. Sometimes I feel like I'm not doing my job if we spend three weeks exploring one topic. I have to remind myself that students are learning more when they are emotionally connected to the material they are studying, and that quality always trumps quantity when it comes to learning. It would be a lie to say that I don't fall into the trap of "covering" material and topics at times. Perhaps that's why I find teaching reading more difficult than math and social studies. I don't find myself falling into that trap as often in those subjects.
What are some ways that you keep students engaged when learning to read? Have you done any of the above activities? Do you have suggestions to improve them? What have you tried that didn't work? What are some stumbling blocks you face when trying to make reading fun and interesting for your students? I'd love to hear your ideas. Please share with us in the comment section below, and pass this post along to others in your networks so that we can get their ideas as well.
Friday's Five is a feature every week where I pick a new topic and list five items that I think fit best. Then I ask you to share your thoughts in the comment section. For an archive of past topics, check the Friday's Five Page.
Flickr/Vlastula
I believe that as we move further into the 21st Century, understanding mathematics is more vital than it has been at any time in history. Math at its very nature is problem solving and critical thinking, skills that are sorely lacking in many of our students due to the pervasive culture of standardized testing we are forcing them to suffer through.
Here are five fallacies about math that too many people believe to be fact:
1. Math is a series of rules to be memorized. Too many times we teach math as something to be done in order to get a correct answer. (i.e. Divide, multiply, subtract, and bring down in order to get the right answer to a long division problem.) Students start to believe early in their school careers that the key to learning math is to memorize these rules. The key to learning math is understanding why those rules work, though. It's much more important for kids to understand that division means we are putting things into equal groups than the rule mentioned above. The best math students are those who can creatively find different ways to figure out problems.
2. Creativity is important in other subjects, but not math. True math is creative. Rarely do we give students the chance to be creative in our math classes, though. I can't count the number of times I've heard stories of teachers taking points off (we'll save the discussion over the worthlessness of grades for another time) for doing a problem wrong, or not using the correct method to solve a problem. At its very nature, math is about creative problem solving. As Michael P. Goldenberg pointed out, Mathematicians don't calculate. They have computers and calculators to do that for them. Mathematicians solve problems. In our math classes, we should expect and demand that our students act as mathematicians and not calculators. We should allow them to explore different solutions, to fail, and to learn from that failure. We should give them problems that may not have a clear cut answer. We should have them identify problems in their community and try and solve them.
3. Our best math students are the ones who score highest on our state standardized math tests. Those are the students who are best at calculating and memorizing. They are not our best math students. Standardized tests comprised of multiple choice questions and a few short answers cannot measure the understanding of mathematical concepts or the ability of a student to see the world mathematically. While on this subject, it's terrible that we punish kids who do poorly on standardized math tests by forcing them to endure additional bad instruction in math (standardized test prep). We should be teaching them to understand mathematics, not decipher test questions by looking for keywords, finding shortcuts to calculations, and how to format short answer responses. That just makes it harder for them to actually think mathematically.
4. It is acceptable to joke about not being able to pass an 8th (or 5th) grade math test. At least once per week I hear a teacher, parent, or member of the community make the statement that they couldn't pass a middle school math test, don't understand "that math", or say with a smile that they aren't good at math. Why do we, as a society, find this acceptable? A person who can't read on a middle school level is almost illiterate. They would never brag about it in public, and we would never want them teaching a group of students. Math ineptitude is not cause for pride. When students see adults display it as such, they are given silent permission to be prideful of their own stuggles in math. Is that what we want to promote?
5. We should teach things the "traditional way" because that's what parents understand. If parents really did "understand" math, they wouldn't have such a problem with their students actually learning it instead of just doing it. Many times at a parent teacher conference I've had a parent tell me, "I hated math when I was in school and never understood it. I'm bad at math." Then, 30 seconds later they are demanding that I teach their kid the same way that they were taught. Seriously? If you hated math and never understood it, why on Earth would you want your kid to have the same experience? For the past few years I have tried to keep an open line of communication with parents so that when they don't understand something we are exploring in class, they can notify me. When that happens I try to put a video demonstration by myself or a student on the concept on our class wiki so that the parents can see what we are doing. This has worked beautifully; parents and students end up watching the video together and the kids are able to teach their parents about the concepts to reinforce their learning.
Now it's your turn. What are your thoughts on teaching math, misconceptions, and the above thoughts? Have you had some of the same experiences? What other misconceptions do you think are out there about mathematics? Please share with us in the comment section below, and pass the post on to others using Twitter, Plurk, Google+, and Facebook so that we can hear their points of view as well.
Friday's Five is a feature every week where I pick a new topic and list five items that I think fit best. Then I ask you to share your thoughts in the comment section. For an archive of past topics, check the Friday's Five Page.
Flickr: Ewa Rozcosz
In order for our students to become more innovative, it is important that their teachers become more innovative. We need to model 21st century skills for our students to learn them. In today's educational climate, teachers face great resistance to this type of change and are encouraged to standardize their practices. Often they are told to teach canned lessons from a textbook. Here are five changes that would act as catalysts for innovation.
Switch the focus from standardized testing to formative assessment. - Standardized tests are taken once or twice per year and give a broad range of data on student achievement that is returned to teachers months after the student takes the test. Formative assessment yields specific data on student understanding that is delivered to teachers and students within lessons allowing changes in instruction to happen instantly. Teachers can then use that data to instantly determine the best way to change teaching in order to reach students that are falling behind. Formative assessment allows teachers opportunities to do what is best for students in creative ways. It also is proven to be highly effective in increasing student learning. Standardized testing leads to standardization, the opposite of innovation.
Showcase innovation. - Instead of faculty meetings and in-service days being spent on fire drill procedures, special education law, or months-old assessment data, administrators should identify the most innovative teachers and ask them to share what they are doing with their colleagues.
Replace textbooks with on-line versions created by teachers and students. - I came across an article yesterday about Minnesota teachers who created their own textbook. In doing so, they saved their district $175,000. Creating a textbook in itself is incredibly innovative. Because the textbook is on-line and easily editable, innovative pedagogy, alternative methods, and new ideas can easily be added as teachers and students discover them.
Limit filtering - Schools should embrace social networking and the exchange of ideas. Creativity inspires creativity. The more amazing ideas one is exposed to, the more likely they are to come up with amazing ideas on their own. The internet is not something to be feared, but rather something to be harnessed.
Encourage risk taking by allowing teachers more autonomy. - Fear of failure never led to greatness. We have a culture in education right now that places great emphasis on not being wrong. There is no emphasis on learning from mistakes or trying new things. Obviously, innovating is difficult in such a climate. Give teachers the freedom to try new things and to learn.
Now it's your turn. What changes do you think could be made to current educational practices that would encourage more creativity and innovation? What have you seen work in your school? What do you see holding teachers back from taking risks and being creative? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below, and pass the post on to others via Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and Plurk so that we can hear their ideas.
Friday's Five is a feature every week where I pick a new topic and list five items that I think fit best. Then I ask you, my readers, to share your thoughts in the comment section. For an archive of past topics, check the Friday's Five Page. If you'd like to make suggestions about future topics or discuss topics I bring up on the blog with others, make sure you click the "like" button on the right hand side of the page to join A Teacher's Life for Me on Facebook. Don't be shy about sharing the blog and Facebook Page with others. Each post has a "Tweet" button on top and buttons on the bottom that allow you to share in several ways, including e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter.
Flickr/nhuisman
When discussing the skills out students will need after graduation, creativity is always near the top of the list. In order to nurture that skill in our students, it's important that we model creative thinking in our teaching. A teacher who rarely takes risks and fears failure is unlikely to inspire students to attempt out-of-the-box thinking and innovative methods to solving problems.
With that in mind, here are five ideas that I've been thinking of trying out with my 5th grade students this year. These endeavors may end up being wildly successful or spectacular failures, but I can guarantee that students will find them more relevant than 40 problems in a textbook. I can also guarantee that any failures, on my part or the students, will be celebrated as learning experiences.
Create public-service commercials - Each afternoon our 5th grade students create a 5 minute news broadcast that is played the following morning. I'd like to have my class get into groups of two or three students, choose a cause that they feel passionate about, and create a 30 second public-service video that will be played at the end of a morning broadcast. In addition to 21st century skills like creativity and collaboration, this will certainly force students to meet several language arts standards in our curriculum.
Create math "how-to" videos for each of the four operations - It's important to me that my math students truly understand math. I expect them to do much more than get the correct answer to calculations. I demand conceptual understanding to the point that they can truly explain not only "what" they are doing as they solve a problem, but also "why" they are doing it. Often, my students tell me that it's the first time they have really understood math. To help others we will create a series of videos explaining the concepts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They will be shared on our class wiki. We've already done a few addition videos. Last year's class set the bar pretty high with their multiplication video, although they didn't make videos for the other 3 operations.
Partner with a local business to have students create an ad campaign - I've just started thinking about this one and whether it could work. I'd like to approach a local business or two and see if they would be interested in sponsoring an activity in which a few teams of students compete to create the best quarter or half page print advertisement. If it works out, the business would pay for the winning group's ad to run in the high school play's playbill or something similar.
FedEx Days - In Daniel Pink's TED talk video, he talks about how companies have sparked amazing productivity from employees by giving them the autonomy to pursue their own passions for a period of time. Google famously allows its employees 20% of their time to do this. Pink mentions how the software company Atlassian has gotten amazing results from what they call "FedEx Days." Basically the company gives it's employees 24 hours to work on whatever they want and develop a presentation of what they have accomplished. The term "FedEx Days" comes from the fact that employees have to deliver overnight. I'd like to give something like this a try and see what happens.
I don't know what to call this last idea, but it's something I want to try. I'd like to give my students a social studies test before we begin a unit. I won't ask them to actually "take" the test. I'm just going to hand it to them. I'm then going to tell them that they have a week or two to create the best wiki page study guide that they can for the test. I'll grade their study guide based on a rubric I create instead of grading the test as usual.
Now it's your turn. What are some creative ideas you want to try this year? What creative ideas have you tried that failed spectacularly? Which ones were brilliant successes? What's holding us back from being more creative as teachers? Let us know your thoughts, and please share your stories in the comment section below. Also, pass the post along to others on Twitter, Google+, Plurk, and Facebook so that we can hear their opinions and anecdotes as well.
Friday's Five is a feature every week where I pick a new topic and list five items that I think fit best. Then I ask you, my readers, to share your thoughts in the comment section. For an archive of past topics, check the Friday's Five Page. If you'd like to make suggestions about future topics or discuss topics I bring up on the blog with others, make sure you click the "like" button on the right hand side of the page to join A Teacher's Life for Me on Facebook. Don't be shy about sharing the blog and Facebook Page with others. Each post has a "Tweet" button on top and buttons on the bottom that allow you to share in several ways, including e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter.
One of the difficult things for me at the beginning of the school year is getting my fifth graders comfortable using technology and what they learn in class to create meaningful content for our class wiki. For most of them, computers have been nothing more than a way to chat with their friends, practice skills, or play games. Being creative and innovative is foreign to them.
Flickr/DeSales University
With that in mind, today's post is going to focus on five of the easiest tools with which students can learn to be creative. These are not only great tools to use with students in the classroom, but they are a great way to get students acclimated to using technology without being overwhelmed. As an added bonus, these are great tools for the teacher who is just starting out using technology in his/her lessons because of their simplicity. To see some more of my favorite web 2.0 tools, have a look at the Friday's Five post from May 13, 2011.
Wordle - There probably isn't an easier web 2.0 tool. Wordle takes a list of typed words, or any text and turns it into an artistic word cloud. There are lots of classroom applications for word clouds. One of my favorites is to have students make a Wordle with their spelling words on Monday. Words they got wrong on the pretest they have to type more often. This has the twofold effect of having them practice typing the word more often and making the word appear bigger on their word cloud. They then print out the word clouds and take them home, using them as place mats and studying at each meal.
Bubbl.us - There are lots of tools out there for making visual diagrams, but I've yet to find one that my students learn how to use faster and easier than bubbl.us. My students have used this tool to show relationships between characters in books they've read, to show different ways that numbers can be represented, to create flowcharts, and for many other purposes.
Make Beliefs Comix - When I was looking through my Delicious links for web 2.0 cartoon creators, over ten sites came up. Out of them, Make Beliefs Comix is by far the easiest to use. It may not have as many options as the others, but it's still incredibly useful for allowing students to tell stories digitally, or share what they've learned with the world in cartoon form.
Timetoast - Timetoast is timeline creator that allows the user to add pictures to the timelines they've created and the ability to embed the timelines in webpages, wikis, and blogs. This tool is fantastic for allowing students in history classes the opportunity to explore events, find images that go along with the events, and to write summaries of those events for the timelines they create.
Create-a-Graph - This site does exactly what it's name implies. It easily allows students to create graphs. In addition to obvious uses in math class, my students have used Create-a-Graph as a tool in preparing projects and reports in Social Studies classes because of the quick, simple way one can turn historical statistics into something visually appealing.
Now it's your turn. What are some web 2.0 tools and websites that you use in the beginning of the year to get your students used to being innovative with technology? Have your students used any of the above tools? What did they use them for? What plans do you have for them in the future? Please share your thoughts with us in the comment section. Also, pass the post along to others using Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, and Google+, so that we can hear from them. I'd love to hear what others are doing in their classrooms.
Friday's Five is a feature every week where I pick a new topic and list five items that I think fit best. Then I ask you, my readers, to share your thoughts in the comment section. For an archive of past topics, check the Friday's Five Page. If you'd like to make suggestions about future topics or discuss topics I bring up on the blog with others, make sure you click the "like" button on the right hand side of the page to join A Teacher's Life for Me on Facebook. Don't be shy about sharing the blog and Facebook Page with others. Each post has a "Tweet" button on top and buttons on the bottom that allow you to share in several ways, including e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter.
Flickr/Express Monorail
Right now I'm on vacation with my family at the Most Magical Place on Earth, Walt Disney World. On top of enjoying the wonderful experiences that this place provides for myself, my wife, and our two kids, I have increasingly become fascinated by Walt Disney, the man. As I've learned more about him and read different biographies and accounts of his life, I've come to realize that many of his core beliefs match up with some of the topics I've blogged about and believe in strongly, such as the need to teach through storytelling, the need for innovation and creativity, and that people are most productive when they are inspired by what they are doing.
Below are five quotes by Walt Disney that I've found inspirational. I'm sure there are lots more out there.
"Imagination is the mold from which reality is created." - The beginning of Walt's introduction to Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland could be found in a 25 cent pamphlet that was sold during Disneyland's early days. We need to promote imagination in our students and find ways to keep educational policy and standardized testing from forcing us to "educate" it out of them.
"Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children." - This quote of Walt's can be seen inside the American Pavilion at Epcot on the lower level. I think most of us who became teachers would agree with him. It's probably what inspired us to pursue our jobs.
"All your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them." - I'm not sure the origin of this quote, but I love it. On one of my bookshelves at home I have a small statue with this quote on it.
"Around here, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening new doors and doing new things because we're curious, and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." - This quote of Walt's can be found at the end of the movie "Meet the Robinsons." Walt's constant vision to the future and for finding creative solutions to problems is something we can learn a lot from in education.
"That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be twelve years old. They patronize. They treat children as inferiors. I won't do that." - This quote is from Walt Disney World: Then, Now, & Forever, a theme park exclusive book that was sold by the Disney Company. To me, it sounds a lot like great advice for elementary teachers and politicians who make educational policy. Stop being such adults all the time. Allow yourself to be fascinated. Allow yourself to wonder and search for answers along with your students. Treat your students with respect and let them follow their dreams and curiosities instead of worrying about covering material all the time.
Now it's your turn. Which one of the above quotes speaks to you? Do you have another Walt Disney quote, or quote from someone else that you love? What are your thoughts on Walt's quotes or some of the things he accomplished and/or created during his lifetime? Share your thoughts in the comment section below, and pass the post along to your friends and colleagues. We'd love to hear what they have to say as well.
Friday's Five is a feature every week where I pick a new topic and list five items that I think fit best. Then I ask you, my readers, to share your thoughts in the comment section. For an archive of past topics, check the Friday's Five Page. If you'd like to make suggestions about future topics or discuss topics I bring up on the blog with others, make sure you click the "like" button on the right hand side of the page to join A Teacher's Life for Me on Facebook. Don't be shy about sharing the blog and Facebook Page with others. Each post has a "Tweet" button on top and buttons on the bottom that allow you to share in several ways, including e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter.
Chris Poulin/USFWS
Ask a parent what qualities they want to see in their children when those children become adults.
Ask a teacher what qualities they want to see in their students when they graduate high school.
Ask your neighbor what qualities they want to see in the next generation of young adults that will be living in the neighborhood.
Ask a businessperson who is looking to hire someone to work at their business what qualities they want in their employees.
I can guarantee that none of them will respond that they are hoping young adults will be able to find the main idea of a passage, identify the author's purpose for writing a poem, or be able to calculate the mean of a series of random numbers without context. With that in mind, today's post will focus on five subjects that are largely ignored in schools today due to the culture of standardized testing and the push for "accountability." I don't think that one can argue that a focus on the following five areas in schools would not be beneficial to our students, our communities, our country, and the world as a whole. If our students were "proficient" in these areas, everything else would take care of itself.
Innovation - We are robbing students of motivation and an understanding of what they are capable by forcing them to only perform tasks related to multiple choice questions on reading and math (those terms are used loosely) tests. It used to be that "creating" meant that students would glue cutouts from a magazine in a shoe box. Now, technology gives students the ability to share what they've learned in many ways instantly. Their writing can be published instantly on a blog for the world to read. Their videos can teach children thousands of miles away. The possibilities are vast and numerous, and we need to take advantage of them.
Empathy - The ability to understand others emotions and be compassionate is something that is rarely focused upon and is of paramount importance for our students. There are numerous studies that show that empathy and success in business are closely linked. A Google search for "empathy and success" produces over 770,000 results. Even more important than business success, however, is the fact that being able to empathize makes one more able to help others.
Service - In my experience, nothing gives a person a feeling of self-worth and a satisfaction of having filled one's purpose more than the act of helping others in need without expecting a reward in return. We should be giving our students opportunities and encouraging them to find ways to provide service in areas about which they feel strongly.
Critical Thinking - This crucial skill, which is closely related to innovation, is the one that has been most ignored due to our current standardized testing craze. There is simply no way to truly measure the ability to problem solve and think critically on an easily scored multiple choice assessment. Teachers don't demand critical thinking because they don't have time; they are forced to teach students to interpret test questions that measure low-level thinking skills instead. Teaching critical thinking takes time, leads to unpredictable lessons, and puts students in control - all things which are frowned upon in many of our schools.
The Love of Learning - We have to stop using our schools as places where we fill students' heads with facts. Unfortunately, most of what we teach can be Googled in less than 30 seconds on their phone, which too often we won't let them take out of their pocket. Our students have figured this out and largely find school to be irrelevant. I wish I could say that they are wrong. We need to start using schools to show them the power of learning. If we combine the above four subjects and teach our students to empathize with others, allow them to find ways to help others they can become passionate about, and give them opportunities to develop their creativity and critical thinking skills, what we will start to see is students who take control of their own learning. They will learn without us asking them too. How often do we hear complaints that students don't study? What if they were so engaged and passionate about a topic that they didn't view learning outside of school as studying, but rather as necessary to fulfill a desire deep inside of themselves?
Is what I describe above possible? Yes, but not in a culture based on assessment and test scores. It's being done right now in several amazing schools. Unfortunately, those schools are the exception. We need to change the culture of education so that this type of education is what is expected. What if we defined success by the positive impact we have on others rather than by how many low-level thinking questions one answers on a once-per-year assessment?
Now it's your turn. Are there any important skills that you think we are not teaching our students? What are some ways we could teach these topics in our schools? Should schools be teaching the above qualities? Would our society be better served if we left the development of these qualities to parents and continue focusing on reading and math? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below, and share the blog with friends and colleagues. We'd love to hear their opinions as well!
There have been many individuals that have had a great impact on my development as a teacher. I can think of many colleagues, administrators, conference speakers, and educational leaders who have helped me to shape my personal philosophies, pedagogy, and practices. Since our growth as professionals is something that never ends, I wanted to take some space on this week's Friday's Five to share some of the people that I have found inspirational. I hope that you will take a moment to share some who have impacted you either in the comment section, or on the blog's Facebook page.
For those who missed last week's Friday's Five, every week I'll be picking a topic dealing with education and listing 5 things that I think fit that topic. Last week's topic was web 2.0 tools. If you've got suggestions for future topics, please share them with me on Plurk, Twitter, or Facebook. After I give you my list, I'd like you to participate by sharing your ideas on the week's topic in the comment section.
As I said before, there have been many who have made an impact on me in my career. Below are five, in no particular order.
1. Dylan Wiliam - A few years ago I spent a week in Hershey, PA at the Governor's Institute for Data Driven Instruction. One of the keynote speakers was Dylan Wiliam. To say that his presentation influenced me would be a great understatement. He convinced me of the need to change my lessons to include in-lesson formative assessment, and showed me ways how it could be done. He introduced me to the concept of professional learning communities, and showed why they are so important. He helped me to solidify my belief that the pedagogy we use in our classrooms is more important than any other factor in boosting student learning, and that putting focus on other areas just distracts us from what's important.
2. Sir Ken Robinson - If tomorrow I was asked to choose the new United States Secretary of Education, SKR would be my choice. I saw him deliver a keynote last year at the Pennsylvania Educational Technology Expo & Conference (PETE & C). I don't think I've ever had the pleasure of listening to anyone else that understands the shortfalls of what we're doing in education and the direction we need to be headed in more that him. Some of you may have seen the clip of a SKR talk that's been floating around the internet from RSA Animate. If so, it's worth watching again. If not, I promise it's worth watching.
3. Patti Duncan - Before attending a session she was giving at PETE & C in 2009, Patti and I had worked in the same district but only communicated via e-mail. I wanted to meet her face-to-face and introduce myself, so I decided to drop in on her presentation on "Building a Professional Learning Network (PLN)." It is probably the most important hour of my teaching career to this point. Dylan Wiliam convinced me that collaborating w/ other teachers was important. Patti showed me how to expand that collaboration globally through social networking. Since that point, my PLN has become invaluable - a source of new ideas, inspiration, support, discussion of educational topics, and a place to get feedback on activities I try in my classroom. Having a PLN of hundreds of teachers all over the globe has made me grow as a teacher in ways of which I never could have dreamed. You can read Patti's DEN Blog here.
4. Steve Leinwand - When my district was exploring ways to improve high school math achievement a few years ago, they brought Steve Leinwand in for a few hours in the summer to talk to the high school teachers about ways to change pedagogical practices in their classes. I don't remember how I ended up in that session (since I teach 5th grade), but I'm sure glad that I did. This is where I discovered the power of asking "why?" Steve's talk started me on the path toward demanding understanding from my students, and not just the correct answer.
5. Dan Meyer - I came across Dan Meyer's blog about a year and a half ago when a member of my PLN shared one of his posts on Plurk. His views on teaching math are visionary. Many of the activities I have done with my math classes in the past year have been inspired by his posts. To get an idea of his vision for how to change our math classes, take a look at his TED talk: Math Class Needs a Makeover.
Now it's your turn to share. Who is someone that had an impact on your growth as a professional? Let us know by leaving a comment.
Don't forget to re-Tweet, re-Plurk, or share this post on Facebook. Like many of you, I love being exposed to new ideas and people who can help me grow. The more people we can get contributing, the more amazing educators we can find to help us on our journey.
