This I Believe

Yesterday Chris Lehmann posted a list of his 10 core beliefs as an educator on his blog, Practical Theory.  He asked his readers to post their core beliefs.  After some self-reflection, here are mine. 

What are yours?

This I Believe

1.  The most important things we do as teachers:  the moments that our students will carry with them for the rest of their lives, the truly meaningful actions that define who we are as teachers – cannot be measured.  If you think they can then you don’t understand what we do.

2.  Learning to love learning is more important that any information with which we can try and fill a child’s head.

3.  Children are born learners.  They are naturally curious and creative.  Teachers should do everything in their power to avoid participating in practices that stifle that curiosity and creativity.

4.  Measuring learning is significantly less important than actually learning.  It should be done only when doing so when the measurement is helpful to the learner.

5.  Grades do not help students learn.  They help adults rank, sort, and judge students.  Students need meaningful feedback from others to learn.  Numbers and letters placed on top of a test are not meaningful feedback. 

6.  The decisions we make in schools should be based upon what is best for the children we serve and not upon what is popular with parents, politicians, colleges, and corporations.

7.  Teachers need to get better.  Every teacher should be pursuing the goal of improving as a professional.  Teachers should be models of life-long learning.  If we focused our energy on providing the support, resources, and inspiration for EVERY teacher to constantly improve instead of identifying and firing those teachers who are “bad” using sketchy test data, every student would benefit immensely. 

8.  Math is not a series of procedures to be followed in order to arrive at correct answers.  Some think they are not good at math because they couldn’t memorize procedure.  Others think they are great mathematicians because they could.  In reality, there are many great mathematicians for whom calculation is not a great strength.  And there are many great calculators who are not good mathematicians.  We need to change how we present mathematics to our students so that “school math” and “real math” are one and the same.

9.  We live in a time of ubiquitous technology.  Student learning should happen in an environment that reflects that fact, but technology is just the tool of our time.  Good teaching is not determined by the technology used but by the quality of the pedagogy.  The basis of good teaching has been the same for millennia, but it may look very different in the 21^st Century than it did when Socrates was teaching Plato.  Just as the Socratic Method was grounded in inquiry, our pedagogy should be student centered and driven by inquiry.

10.  Decisions should be based on data, research, and experience.  Too often decisions are based on data that is most convenient to obtain, cheapest to gather, or cherry-picked to prove a political point.  This does a terrible disservice to our children.  Using data incorrectly is more harmful than not using it at all, and some things cannot be quantified.  Just because we cannot measure what is truly important (see #1) does not mean that we should put importance on what we can measure.   

 

Open Letter to Legislators

The following is a letter that I recently sent to a state legislator.  I believe the sentiments are applicable to many locations and not just Pennsylvania, so I am publishing it as an open letter here.  Individual names have been eliminated from this version.

Dear Legislator,

Thank you for your e-mail keeping me updated on the status of the current legislation and your views.  I appreciate that you are looking at the legislation from many different points of view and that you have seen some of the ways vouchers will hurt the students in our district.

I would like to share the point of view of a classroom teacher with you, however.  I enjoy debating politics as much as anyone else, but I assure you the following sentiments are based on what I have come to understand as a teacher who is committed to inspiring my students to develop the attributes they will need to succeed in life.  These comments are not motivated by a desire to protect teaching jobs, or any other union agenda.  They are simply what I believe is best for students.

Any legislation using standardized test data in a punitive way will have a negative effect on students.  This includes legislation that allows students to use vouchers to transfer from "failing schools."  Even though there are no such schools in our district does not mean that students here will be immune from the detriments of such a law.  Administrators, teachers, and students will still face pressure to "pass" tests that do not focus on 21st century skills our students need.  Those skills will continue to be ignored, and our students will continue to graduate unprepared for the world into which we are sending them.

In the past decade we've seen a great change in the world.  As the internet has evolved, computers have become ubiquitous, and portable devices have become more prevalent, information has become easy to obtain instantaneously.  Preparing students for this world in the same way we prepared them before it is negligent and harmful.

I have also seen a change in my students.  They are increasingly unable to think critically.  They are less creative.  They are less comfortable working with others to complete tasks.  I believe the majority of teachers would agree with these observations.

For those of us working directly with students, it's easy to see the correlation between the above statements and the increased focus on standardized test scores.  I am not writing this because I am forced to teach to the test.  I am not.  I choose not to.  I choose to teach my students to learn 21st century skills like collaboration, innovation, critical thinking, and digital communication.  Most teachers are not as fortunate as I am.  They either lack the support of administration or lack the confidence to take a leap of faith.  In either case, good teaching is prevented by fear of a test that provides data which cannot be used to guide the teaching of students until months after the test is taken.

I am a huge proponent of data-driven assessment.  The assessments and data must be much more immediate than that which we get from standardized tests to have any impact on student learning.  Data must be collected within lessons and days.  There is much research to support this.

Just because data is easy to collect and organize does not make it the best data to use.  Standardized tests were put in to place to benefit many people.  Students were not among them.  Anyone who believes otherwise has either not spent enough time working with students or has a political agenda.  It is time we focused on what's best for students in education.  Any reform that doesn't is destined for failure.

Thank you for your attention and for your consideration of the above ideas.

Best Regards,
Michael A. Soskil
5th Grade Teacher

Friday's Five: Ways to Use Formative Assessment

Tweet
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 other readers, make sure you click the "like" button on the right hand side of this 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 buttons on the bottom that allow you to share several ways, including e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter.


We've all had students that try blend into the background.  They are the students who never raise their hand, sit there silently when you call on them until you choose someone else, and go through the school year determined to participate as little as possible.

We've also all been in the situation where several of our students have failed a test when we thought they knew the content.  Even though we recognize that they haven't learned what they were supposed to, we often feel we have to move on because of the amount of material that needs to be taught in a school year.

Is there an easy way that we can make sure all of our students, even the ones who try not to participate, are learning?  Is there an easy way to determine whether our students really know content before testing them?

The answer to both of those questions is a unequivocal "YES!"  There are several types of formative assessment - long term (like semester or end-of-year), medium term (end-of-unit, etc), and immediate (in-lesson).  It's the daily, in-lesson, formative assessment that is most important to increase learning for all of your students.  It also allows you to diagnose where you need to change your instruction so that your students learn what they are supposed to before they are tested.

Formative assessment is a way to diagnose the patient, instead of waiting for the autopsy.

Here are five simple ways to start using formative assessment to ensure all of your students are learning:

1. Get a set of individual white boards and have your students use them.  Have your students constantly show you that they understand what you are teaching them by showing you on their white board.  A quick glance around the room will tell you who understands and who doesn't.  Make sure the students that need more help get it.  
2. Stop having your students raise their hand to answer a question.  When that happens, you only get an answer from one student.  Instead, have every student write the answer to the question in their notebook or on an individual white board.  Maybe have them share their answer with a partner, and let the partner write it down, or have each student record an answer in a VoiceThread or Blabber.  It doesn't matter how they answer, just make sure that every student is responsible for giving an answer and justifying it.
3. Use exit cards.  At the end of a lesson, pose one short question to the class that deals with the day's lesson.  Have them answer the question on an index card and hand it to you before they leave.  Take a quick look at the cards.  If all the students knew the material move on to something else the next day.  If many couldn't answer the question correctly, start the next day's lesson with a review.  If some of the students need more help, build in an intervention into the next day's lesson.
4. Demand that students tell you when they don't understand.  I've found that colored cups work well for this.  I stack a green, yellow, and red cup on each student's desk.  If they understand what I am teaching, they show a green cup.  If the cup is yellow, they need me to slow down.  If the cup is red, I need to stop and re-teach something.  How do I make sure that they are telling me the truth? If someone has a red cup, I choose someone with a green cup to do the re-teaching. 
5. Let them give you a "thumbs-up."  During your lesson, ask a few yes-or-no questions of the class. Have them respond with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.  You'll be able to quickly assess which students are not understanding your lesson.  

Lately we've heard a lot about "Data Driven Instruction."  Too often it means sifting through standardized test data.  The data we need to be using to drive our instruction is the data we get from formative assessment techniques like the ones listed above.  That data is easy to understand quickly and allows us to make changes immediately to ensure that our students learn.  Dylan Wiliam had a great way of putting it when I saw him speak.  His quote went something like this:  "Teachers who do not use formative assessment and then wonder why their students failed a test are like pilots that never make course corrections and then wonder why they ended up in Cleveland instead of Miami."

Now it's your turn to share.  Do you use formative assessment in your classroom?  How?  Do you have other techniques or ideas to share?  Leave your thoughts on these questions, or anything else you want to add in the comment section below.