Be a Connected Educator (Part 2)

https://plus.google.com/+SylviaDuckworth/posts/61rTzdcJ1yG?pid=6097161572876797314&oid=114228444007154433856

In last week’s post I shared a little about the value that connectedness can provide to educators. This week I want to share some of the ways that you can use social media for personalized PD. As I shared last week, online educator communities provide you with 24/7 access to people, ideas, resources, philosophies, and opportunities that can expand your world (and the world of our students). So here are some of the reasons I get excited to connect online:

Inspiration: Many of the new things that I try here at school are because of something I have learned through a tweet, blog post, or somewhere online.
Motivation: Several of the twitter accounts I follow are educators who love to tweet out pictures and quotes that motivate me to try to be better. That little bit of motivation can be such an awesome help!
Challenge: I intentionally follow some people because they have different opinions than me. I do this because I want to have a full background. Every once in a while something that someone shares truly challenges my thinking in a way that makes me reflect on my beliefs.
Camaraderie: I have been able to find connections with many other teachers and administrators all over the country/world!
Apps: You can use your digital connections to learn about new apps for a specific purpose, or ideas for better ways to use the apps you already have.
Humor: Just like our Friday funnies, there are funny things that happen in schools every day. Some of those things show up in my timeline and give me the opportunity to laugh.
Collaboration: Through online connections you can work with almost anyone in the world. You can find teachers all over the world teaching the same material, and create connections that allow you to learn from them, and they can learn from you.

So how do we connect? And how do we find the time? That’s total up to you, but there are a couple of options that you could try, and the amount of effort you put into them is totally up to you!

Our connections on social media allow us to connect with educators like never before! Matt Miller - https://www.flickr.com/photos/126588706@N08/14562418440/in/album-72157645530010989/ — Our connections on social media allow us to connect with educators like never before!
Matt Miller – https://www.flickr.com/photos/126588706@N08/14562418440/in/album-72157645530010989/

Social Media: For me, this is the best way to connect. Twitter is my favorite choice, but Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest are good ones as well. My favorite thing about Twitter is that every post is 140 characters or less. It’s amazing how much info can be packed into such a short amount of space. The biggest thing to know on Twitter is how to use a hashtag. A couple of my favorites are #edchat and #edtech. Tons of great ideas get shared, and if you post something with one of those hashtags, you will get a ton of people to see your post. (For more education hashtags, take a look at the links in last week’s post)

Blogs: There are thousands of blogs about education out there! Most of my favorite blogs that I follow are because of connections I have made on Twitter. I use Feedly.com as an RSS aggregator that keeps all my blogs in one place. Each time a new blog that I follow posts, it shows up in my feed. When I have time, I’ll peek at it. If my day is too busy, I’ll skip it. Feedly can also help you find other blogs based on topics you are interested in. In addition to reading blogs, you can also start writing a blog. Share the things you know – creation is one of the highest levels of thinking. It can also be a huge time commitment – these posts don’t write themselves! Some post daily, some are a few days a week, some are less regular than that.

Being a connected educator will make it easier to transform education in your classroom. You will find new ideas, you will be able to ask questions, and you will be able to share your own thinking and give back to the community! Invest the time that makes sense to you. There are days I don’t get on Twitter at all, and there are days where I have extra time and might spend an hour or two reading, adding, and building connections.

What tools have allowed you to connect and change the way you teach? Share with the rest of us below!

Be a connected educator (Part 1)

How often have you felt that you were “alone” in your classroom? You plan for your students – nobody else’s class is quite like yours. You plan for your content – nobody else is at quite the same place as you. It’s easy to build up walls and confine yourself to them. But think for a second… Is that what’s best for you? Is that what’s best for the kids in your class?

When we provide more students the opportunities to share in the classroom, we are building bridges to the world instead of placing them in a silo. https://www.flickr.com/photos/126588706@N08/14749002232/in/album-72157645530010989/ — When we provide more students the opportunities to share in the classroom, we are building bridges to the world instead of placing them in a silo.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/126588706@N08/14749002232/in/album-72157645530010989/

If the answer you find yourself coming to is no, then it’s time to think about how to connect beyond the walls of you classroom. I think we all know that there is a wealth of information out there on the internet. Can you imagine what teaching was like before Google? (I’m sure some of you are saying “Yes! I lived it!”). I think we all know that we can find great resources with a simple web search, but sometimes we find a lot of junk too! Taking the time to sift through it all can be time consuming! What if there was a way to connect with others who did have students similar to ours, or who were sharing something that was just right for your class to do as well.

14746748124_db83c93b04_b — One of the best ways to connect with other educators is through Twitter! Matt Miller: https://www.flickr.com/photos/126588706@N08/14746748124/in/album-72157645530010989/

In addition to websites, there are also other educators out there waiting and eager to help you! Or they might be looking for the help that you can provide them. The community of educators on Twitter grows every week. According to one report from Twitter, about 1 in every 100 tweets are related to education, and there are about a half-billion tweets a day! You can tweet at someone, or just to a hashtag, and get a response in moments. For an overwhelmingly long list of education hashtags, check out this link: http://cybraryman.com/edhashtags.html. Some of those hashtags are related to education twitter chats – you can see a calendar of what’s out there here: Education Chat Calendar.

You can also connect with other schools and teachers for your students benefit. Earlier this year, my daughter’s first grade class did a Skype session with a class in New Hampshire to learn about geography and discuss a book from the Global Read Aloud. This was the third Skype session (that I’m aware of). Their online connections included chatting with the author of a book they read, and talking with another class in Colorado.

Last week Barbara tried out a Mystery Skype with her class (she can tell you more about how it went), and once the technology was working correctly, it was a cool experience for the kids in her class. All over HSE, there are elementary classrooms participating in mystery Skype’s to learn about new places and things. Want to know more about the idea behind a Mystery Skype, click here!

It’s also important to point out that here at RSI, we have several staff members who already use Twitter from their classroom. If you want to know more about it, just ask Jenna, Mary Lynn, Barbara, Christian, Samantha, Mary, or Krista and Jennifer (you can also click on their name to go to their Twitter page) about how they use Twitter to connect with the world beyond our walls. As a parent I also feel that Twitter enriches my understanding of what is happening in my daughter’s class. I have followed and subscribed to Lainey’s teacher, Courtney Gibson, and I get alerts whenever she posts a tweet (typically just once or twice a week). Sometimes she shares what they are doing, sometimes there is a picture, but always it tells me something about what the class has been doing which in turn allows me to have a conversation with Lainey about her learning. If you want to see how it’s used by her teacher, click here.

Online educator communities provide you with 24/7 access to people, ideas, resources, philosophies, and opportunities that can expand your world (and the world of our students). In next week’s post, I’ll talk a little more about some of the benefits of an online presence.

How have you used digital connections to improve learning opportunities for your students? What new things have you learned or tried? Share with us below!

How much is enough?

In this week’s post, I would like to build upon the ideas of a post from before winter break titled Choosing to Cheat. The concept of that post was built on the idea that we don’t have an unlimited amount of time in our days to be able to fulfill all of our priorities. Feel free to go back to that post if you would like.

For some of us it is difficult thing to think about cheating at anything. We might think “If I skimp here, my students might not get it.” Or we might say “If it doesn’t look pretty and perfect, I won’t feel as proud of it.” There are a lot of people who spend a lot of time in this school building. They are all effective or highly effective teachers. Sometimes it’s hard to leave the building knowing that there is more that could be done. But for all the teachers who put in long hours, there are others who do not spend that amount of time in the building. Does that mean that the teachers who spend less time are less effective? Or is there something more to the story?

In order to be more effective in our time management, we have to think about the concept of the minimum effective dose (MED). Tim Ferriss, the author of The 4-Hour Workweek, defines the MED as:

“the smallest dose that will produce the desired outcome. Anything beyond the MED is wasteful. To boil water, the MED is 212 degrees Fahrenheit at standard air pressure. Boiled is boiled. Higher temperatures will not make it more boiled. High temperatures will just consume more resources that could be used for something more productive.”

There are lots of examples out there of people who have cut back the amount of time spent, only to find that it actually improved their outcome. As a runner I always taper the amount I run in the last couple of weeks leading up to a big event so that I will feel fresh on the day of the race. Every year at the end of the NFL season you hear analysts arguing about whether a certain team should rest their star players prior to the playoffs. I follow a couple of blogs that post daily, but rarely do I have time to read them every day. On the days I miss a post, I feel as though I am missing something that could be important. If the authors of those blogs cut back to 3 posts a week, I wouldn’t be upset. I might actually be able to read everything they post!

Ultimately, we have to remember that our audience are the kids sitting in our classroom. No matter how hard we work, they are only going to take in as much as they think is necessary to be able to complete your upcoming performance task. So think, are you trying to over boil the water in your classroom? Remember, water temp can’t go over 212 degrees, no matter how much energy you put in. At the same time, no amount of overwork will cram more info into your students’ heads if they can’t absorb it. Keep your focus on your goals and what you want to accomplish. Try to reduce the wasteful or ineffective things we do, and ultimately we will use our time in more valuable ways! In the Choosing to Cheat post, I shared the chart below. Focus on placing your energy in the activities that we believe will help our students grow.

Use this to help guide your thinking and the areas where you may choose to cheat.

As for how much time to spend at school, I can’t say that there is a correct answer to that questions. At different phases in my life there have been different amounts of time spent. I feel that through appropriate time management, we can all do our job to the best of our ability, and meet the needs of our students in a reasonable amount of time.

Have you ever tried to over boil the water? What are some of the things you cut when your realized you were doing more than you actually had to? Share in the comments below!

Teachers vs. Students

It’s the beginning of class, and you are checking to see what students came to class prepared, and you get to “that” student (admit it, a name just came to your mind!), and of course, they are not prepared for class today. This is the third time this week, and who knows how many times this month…

All of us have been there at one time or another. It can be so hard not to take it personally. In your mind you may think about the amount of time you have invested in that student, or the help that you provided yesterday to make sure that student was organized and prepared to be able to finish the homework, or maybe you think of the assurances you had from the parents who told you they would help make sure work was being completed. How can we not take it personally?

Of course, the reality is that for the vast majority of our students, they are not doing this purposely (although on the day I am writing this, I did see a student with a t-shirt that said “I’m just here to annoy you!”). In fact, you are probably the furthest thing from their mind when a student does not complete his work. Instead, the lack of completion could be for a lot of reasons (maybe they didn’t understand how to do the assignment, maybe they didn’t want to do it, maybe they thought it was boring, or maybe there was nobody at home to make sure they did it – you get the idea, there are lots of possible reasons). I think logically all of us understand that students are not intentionally coming to class unprepared in an effort to drive us crazy, and yet we can’t help but feel that way.

One of the great beliefs I have about education is that relationships are one of the keys to success for our students. I know that many of you feel the same way. We take the time to build relationships with all our students. We feel invested in each of them. We can’t help but believe that the feeling is mutual. Unfortunately, our students don’t always feel the same way. Sometimes even with our best effort, it is hard to help all our students to feel connected here at school.

When “that” student comes to class unprepared, the simple solution is often to get angry or frustrated. It is much more difficult to figure out the answer to the key question – why?

Finding the answer to the question of why is not easy. The answers that students will give run the gamut – I forgot, I had a basketball game last night, my parents couldn’t help me, etc. A lot of time we see these answers as excuses. Instead, maybe we should look at them as clues. If they say they forgot, are they disorganized? Do they need additional support so that they won’t forget in the future? Could you help them set an alert on the iPad or phone to go off in the evening to remind them of the work they have to do tonight? If they say that they had another activity, can we assess what they do have done to see if they understood the concept? Do they need more work time here at school? We can’t control how their time is scheduled outside of school hours, but we can help control how that student uses their time here at school. If they say they didn’t have a parent to help them, then do they need to have the concept retaught to them? If a student needs a parent’s help to be able to complete a homework assignment, then they don’t really understand the material.

In last week’s post we discussed growth mindset in teachers. An argument could be made that situations like the one described at the beginning of this post could be the perfect opportunity to use some of what we learned about having a growth mindset. Instead of taking it personally when a student isn’t prepared for class, look at it as a puzzle to be solved. Try to understand why the student isn’t prepared. Once you understand the why, it will be much more likely that we can approach a solution. If you don’t have an idea of how to help the student, talk to your colleagues, counselors, or administrators to see what ideas they may have (collaboration = more opportunities for growth!).

If you’re still struggling to come up with a way to motivate the student, come at the problem from a PBIS perspective. Most of our kids who struggle simply want attention of some kind. Getting negative attention is easy, but when given a choice between a positive and a negative consequence, most kids will choose the positive (it’s amazing what I used to get kids to do for a sticker or a jolly rancher!). And if you show them that it is possible to earn that positive consequence, then they find success. Once they show a pattern of success, you can make it more difficult to earn that positive feedback, and hopefully the student will begin to learn that the feeling of success from a job well done is a good enough reward (I know that this process takes longer than we like, but it does work!).

Instead of looking at the unprepared student as the enemy, spend some time thinking about them as a puzzle. If you don’t know what will motivate him, spend some time to get to know him (2 for 10 strategy). Look back on one of our earlier posts: Know your kids – Love you kids for a little more on how a 2 minute conversation can help you learn about your kids.

What success have you had in motivating the unmotivated or reaching the unreachable? Spread the wealth! Share some of your experiences in the comments below.

Growth Mindset for Teachers

Over the past couple of years I have had several conversations with members of our school community about the idea of Fixed Mindsets vs. Growth Mindsets. I previously shared a video featuring some of the findings of Carol Dweck. In those conversations and in that video, the discussion is framed around how to help our students to develop a growth mindset. What about all of us? How do our mindsets impact the learning that takes place in our classrooms? How might those mindsets impact our relationships with students? As a review, I included a couple of graphics showing the difference between a Fixed or Growth Mindset. (I know the pictures below appear small – if you click on them, they will be easier to read).

https://teacherpaulp.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/darkside1.png

https://teacherpaulp.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/growth_mindset_poster1.png

According to Dweck:

In a fixed mindset students believe that their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that’s that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching, and persistence. They don’t necessarily think everyone’s the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it.

What if you reread that statement, but you replace students with teachers? Where do you fall? Are your abilities as a teacher a fixed trait, or do you believe that your talents and abilities can be developed through effort? Are you somewhere in the middle? Draw a continuum with Fixed on one end, and Growth on the other. Put an X where you think you are, and then ask if you are comfortable with that location on the continuum. If the answer is no, how can you move that X to where you want it to be?

Yes, even you have permission to fail! Just make sure that you learn and grow from those failures! https://www.flickr.com/photos/126588706@N08/14826069893/in/album-72157645530010989/

One of the things that concerns me most for teachers comes from the second sentence of Dweck’s definition above. Is it your goal to “look smart all the time and never look dumb”? What does that show our students? If we tell them that they should see failure as a first attempt in learning, but never model for them what it looks like to fail and then improve, what message are we sending our students? Do we really want to have an attitude of “do as I say, but not as I do”?

I’ll admit, it’s never fun to make a mistake in front of a group of students. But let’s think about the concept of gradual release – I do, we do, you do. We would never assign our students something they have never done before without modeling it and expect them to be successful on their first try. Instilling a growth mindset in our students means we have to be willing to take risks, and sometimes fall flat on our face. Then, we can model for our students what it looks like to get back up, dust yourself off, make an adjustment, and do better the next time.

If you look at yourself as a learner first, and a teacher second, you will recognize that this craft we carry out is something that we are all learning. Every day that I’m here at school, I see someone doing something that I’ve never seen before. When I scroll through my Twitter feed in the evening I often end up reading education related blog posts that provide me with new ideas or ways of thinking. I see things my friends share on Facebook, and I get new ideas. Hopefully you see your experiences here at school, and those outside of school, as something that you can learn and grow from as well. Hopefully you’ll be looking for ways to shift your own mindset further down that continuum towards the ideas of growth.

Throughout this month I hope to use this forum as a way to look further at the Growth Mindset continuum, and in particular focus in on how our mindsets can affect our relationships with the students sitting in our classroom.

In the comments below, feel free to share with us a time that you may have fallen flat on your face. What steps did you take to correct it? What did your students learn from your failure? Or you can share something that you plan to try that you aren’t quite sure how it will work out. What are you nervous about? What’s the worst that could happen? I look forward to hearing from you!

Reflection

To set the scene, imagine that you are in your classroom. You are getting the kids started on one of your standing assignments that everyone in the room knows will come each week:

You: All right, let’s all get started on (insert that assignment that your students hate to do).

Class: Collective groaning. From the back you can hear one student say “Why do we always have to do this?”

You find yourself wondering why the reaction is like this – you might think to yourself “they loved doing this earlier in the year!” Fast forward to the due date. As you are collecting the assignment, you see that the students who play school well completed the assignment, but it’s clear that they put forth the minimum amount of effort possible. You also notice that some of your students did not complete the assignment, and no amount of effort from you is going to get them to finish the task – you could have them work in the hall, take away recess, call parents, etc. – nothing is going to make a difference for those students.

As a teacher we have all experienced this. So here’s the question – why do we keep asking our students to complete assignments that they hate? Why do we keep giving assignments that students don’t put forth much effort, or simply don’t do the assignment at all? Why do we keep giving assignments that put the effort on us to run down the missing assignments when the students are putting no effort into the assignment?

When I was writing last week’s post, I inserted the HSE²¹ Best Practice Model. As I put it into the post, something jumped out to me in a different way than ever before. Look at the Best Practice Model above – in this blog I have spent a lot of time talking about the boxes on the outside: Student-Centered Approaches; Cognitive Curriculum; Fundamental Classroom Conditions; and Transfer of Learning. Last week for some reason, the purple circle that connects them all jumped out at me – in particular the word at the top “Reflection.” Given that New Year’s Day is approaching, I would guess that a lot of us are taking time to reflect on the last year, and many of us think first of our personal life, however reflection is an important aspect of teaching as well. What better time to take a few moments for reflection than to do so over the 2 week winter break?

Think about how your year has gone so far. What’s working well? What isn’t? Do you often have situations like the one that I referenced at the top? How could you adjust your assignments so that they don’t get stale? Even the most engaging activity today may get old and stale to our students if we do the same thing every day or every week over a long period of time. Find some ways to mix up what you are doing in your classroom to increase student engagement. For me, an important part of reflection is also getting feedback and ideas from my colleagues. If you have an activity that has gotten stale, talk with your colleagues – see if anyone has an idea of how you could spice up that activity and make it more engaging to your students. Or maybe you will just decide to let that activity go for a while – replace it with something else that might serve the same purpose.

If you never take the time to reflect, you may miss out on opportunities for growth as a teacher, as well as opportunities to help your students grow. As I reflect on this school year, one of the things I am most disappointed in is the amount of time I have had to spend in my office rather than out and about during the school day. One of my resolutions for the new school year is to spend more time out in our classrooms seeing the awesome things that you all do on a daily basis with our students. Please help hold me accountable to this goal!

What resolutions have you set for yourself? Personal or professional, share them in the comments below. We can all help hold each other accountable to our goals and resolutions.

Choosing to Cheat

There have been periods in my career in education where I felt as though I was living at school. Back in my coaching days I would often arrive at school around 6, work on grading, planning, or whatever else needed to be done, teach a full day, coach my team, come back to my room to do more work, head home for a quick dinner, grade something else, go to bed, and do it again tomorrow. In those days I was cheating my other priorities – my family, my friends, and my health. How many times have you looked at your to-do list and felt that there was no way you could get it all done? I know that there are days that I walk in to my office with 3 things on my to-do list that are left over from yesterday. Over the course of a day I may add several new items to it, but am not able to cross anything off my list. In those moments, I choose to cheat. I can’t do it all. There are 24 hours in a day, and 168 hours in a week. Sometimes there are things we can’t make it through.

Do you ever feel like your to do list looks like this?!?!

We all have important things in our life that take up some of those 168 hours in a week, and while we are all professional educators, there are other priorities in everyone’s life. Here’s the thing about choosing to cheat though: we have to be strategic in the ways that we choose to cheat. I keep to-do lists (some are on my phone in the reminders app, some are jotted on scraps of paper in my office) and when I create them, I also prioritize them. Certain things can only be done when there are students here, others can be done first thing in the morning, or after my afternoon bus duty. Phone calls to parents – that can happen anytime (thank goodness for *67 and the speakerphone feature so that I can call while I’m in the car). When you look at the things that you are doing in your classroom, prioritize them. Think about the needs of your learners – are you doing things to help the students in your classroom grow? If you can’t emphatically say yes, then that may be something you need to choose to cheat on. Keep in mind, cheating isn’t about slacking off, but rather it’s about making sure you are intentional in how you use the time you have.

Throughout the process of HSE²¹, one of the messages that Danielle and I have always tried to share with you is that we don’t expect you to do it all right now. When our teaching and learning team (Jan Combs, Phil Lederach, and Stephanie Loane) came to present a few weeks back, one of their slides talked about “More of this” and “Less of this.” Take a look at that slide to the right. If you’re spending a lot of time in the less of column, that may be something that you need to reexamine. It’s also important to look at the HSE²¹ Best Practice Model (below) to guide our intentional thinking about what is best for the learners who walk into our classroom every day.

Think about the things that you value most. Do you devote your time accordingly? If not, you are probably stressed out, unhappy, and might feel unsuccessful. To be a good teacher, you have to be in the right mental place. Think about the choices you make and how they are benefitting you and your students. If you are making choices that don’t benefit you and your students, try to find a way to make a change. Be willing to set aside things that do not hold as much value, and instead focus on the things that are most valuable to you and the students in your class.

What are some of the ways you choose to cheat? Are there things you have given up, or maybe don’t do as often? Maybe there are things you focus on for a while, then let fall out of focus, only to come back to later. Share in the comments below how choosing to cheat has helped you to be a better teacher and a more rounded person.

Get in the backseat and let them drive!

At the finish line of the Hilly Hundred. Watching the other riders come in!

Many of you know that a physically fit lifestyle is something that is important to me. For quite some time I have gone through phases of running, biking, swimming, or lifting weights. In most of those activities, I seem to hit a plateau and feel I can’t get over the hump to improve any more. Then, someone will convince me to do something to force myself to take it up a notch. One year I participated in the RAIN ride (Ride Across INdiana – a one day bike ride from Terre Haute to Richmond), and this year I completed two half marathons – a feat my younger self would have told you was impossible. Each of these events forced me to get over my plateau, and I did that through training. In the past I always had simply worked out, but to prepare for these events I had to truly train. In work out mode I would show up, do my workout, feel pretty good about it, but I didn’t push myself to go above and beyond. In training mode I had to create a schedule the forced me to go further or faster than I had in the past, and hold myself accountable so that I could achieve my goals.

Some of our students are in work out mode. They show up, they do their routine, and they go home. Some get good grades because they can play the part, others do well because it’s what their parents expect, and some don’t do well at all. Then there are the students who are in training mode. Something grasps their curiosity and they run with it. They truly learn because they can see where their education is taking them

Sitting in the backseat and just along for the ride... — Sitting in the backseat and just along for the ride…

One of the goals that teachers should have for themselves is to help students take control of their own education, to put themselves in training mode. Unfortunately, some of our students don’t yet have that attitude. So… how do we get them there? It all lies in the mindset of the student. If a student doesn’t see the relationship between what they are doing in your classroom and what they want to do one day, they aren’t going to buy in. To get them to buy in, we have to know the kids and know their goals. Goal setting and conferencing will allow us to learn more about our kids and their interests. Then we can help guide them in their learning so that they see the connection between what they are doing in class and their future.

How can we get our kids hooked on their own learning? Giving them opportunities to set their own goals, and choices in their learning will help!

Once we know that the kids see the value in what they are doing, the next step is to hand it over to them. Once again going back to the HSE²¹ best practices model, student choice plays an important role in best practices. Giving up control can be scary – there could be issues, but the fear of possible issues should not prevent us from providing students with the benefits that come from letting students take the driver’s seat of their education.

If you’re looking for ways to integrate more student choice, look into Genius Hour or Twenty-Percent Time programs (Gmail exists because of a Twenty-Percent Time project by an engineer at Google). Or you could look for other ways for students to innovate in their learning. Start with a learning goal, but give students the choice of how to share their learning at the end, or give them choices in how they will reach the learning goal. Not everyone has to do the same thing, and some kids may be able to take their learning beyond the work out phase and into the training phase when given more choices.

What have you done that has allowed you to give up control? How did it go? What were the good things to come from it? What struggles did you find?

Importance of student feedback

A couple weeks ago I had a post on how to influence students (click here to see it again). This weekend I was reading a post by A.J. Juliani on his blog titled “The Future of Learning” and I saw an article that related to my previous post, but he looked at things from a slightly different perspective.

What are the best ways to give feedback to our students?

Through reading Juliani’s blog, I ended up reading a research paper written by a team of psychologists from Stanford, Yale, Columbia, and several other well known schools to look at the type of feedback that is given to students. In this study the authors were testing to see if the type of feedback given on an essay written by 7th graders could result in greater effort (as measured by an increased number of revisions), and improved quality of final drafts.

While there have been many studies on how to provide praise to our students, there has been limited research in how to provide meaningful criticism that will result in improvements for students. Many of us place our criticism in the format of 3 stars and a wish (or something of this nature) to boost self-esteem before delivering the criticism.

The reality is, self-esteem is not the key to being able to hear criticism, but rather trust is the key. Boosting self-esteem will not always boost trust. When trust exists, we are able to see criticism as information to help us improve.

In the experiment, some students received “wise feedback” while other students received “neutral feedback” on their papers. Simply through the type of feedback that was given to a student, there was a marked improvement in students choosing to revise their paper (a 40% increase in student effort) and improvement in overall performance on the final paper (you can see the study here).

So, what was the magical feedback that led to such extreme improvements? What note was written on the top of each paper with similar feedback below? The experimental phrase was:

“I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.”

That’s right – 19 words written on the top of the paper. In other aspects of the study, these words helped develop greater trust between the student and the teacher, which in turn provided students with a sense of belonging and connection.

For the students who were in the control group, the note at the top of the page looked very different. It simply said “I’m giving you these comments so that you’ll have feedback on your paper.”

Remember that feedback tells us about the relationship that we hold together. Feedback like what you see in bold above gives the students some clear messages: you’re part of this group; we have high standards; and I believe you can reach those standards. So what lessons can we as teachers take away from this? In the post from Juliani that led me to this research study, he referenced an article by Daniel Coyle, the author of The Talent Code. His lessons from this study are as follows:

Connect: As John Wooden said, they can’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
Highlight the group: Seek ways (traditions, mantras, fun little rituals) to show what it meas to belong in your crew.
Don’t soft-pedal high standards: Don’t pretend that it’s easy – do the opposite. Emphasize the toughness of the task, and your belief that they have what it takes!

Have you found success in sharing feedback in this manner? If so, share with us how you let students know that they are part of the group, the group has high standards, and your belief that the students can reach those standards.

Sometimes our feedback can be a little misguided... — Sometimes our feedback can be a little misguided…

Enhancement or Transformation?

Being that we are in the second year of a 1:1 program, we all know that adding technology to education comes at a cost – money, time, and effort. If it’s done well, technology can transform teaching and learning. If it’s done poorly, our students are left holding a “$1,000 pencil” according to George Couros (@gcouros), a Canadian principal and education speaker. As I said last week, our pedagogy must drive our technology. Don’t use tech just because our kids have an iPad; instead use tech to create a learning experience that would not have been possible otherwise. Remember, we want to integrate tech where it works. Hopefully the rest of this post will provide some ideas about how to transform education for our students.

Most of us have seen the SAMR model (to the left) as a framework to help you evaluate the best technology in your classroom. This framework is developed from the bottom up. As you see in the graphic, the creator of SAMR places Substitution and Augmentation in the Enhancement group (think of enhancement as the most basic change – it may improve the lesson, but maybe not the thinking). Then there is a dashed line before you get to Modification and Redefinition which fall in the Transformation group (think of transformation as a thorough change in the form of education – it will improve the lesson and the thinking). Many teachers find that dashed line to be a tall fence to climb. In essence, to get over that fence, teachers sometimes have to throw previous activities out the window and create something new, and other times it requires a complete redesign of the activity. In order to make that jump from augmentation to modification, here are some ideas:

Know your goals – don’t think task or app, think learning outcome.
Think about things you’ve done in the past and identify their strengths – what experiences were important for students, and what were the areas of growth from those experiences?
Find a tool that can meet your goals and has similar strengths – with a quick Google search you can find websites and apps that might work. Scan their features to see if something does what you need it to do.
Keep an open mind – don’t eliminate a tool just because you’ve never used it before.
Generate several ideas for activities – make a list of possible tools. Cross out the ones that you don’t think will work.
Put the plan into action – remember that the best way to learn new tech is to play with it. If you don’t know a tool yet, don’t feel like you can’t let students use it. I have yet to have a student tell me “I can’t use this, we haven’t had PD on it!” Students are just as capable of playing with an app or website to figure out what it can do, and if they’re really stuck, they’ll use Google or YouTube to help them figure it out. Plus, if it’s new, students will be more excited and engaged!
Be ready to adjust on the fly – remember, failure is part of the learning process. If something doesn’t work, go back to the drawing board. Sometimes our willingness to model failure will help our students accept the idea that we learn and grow in times of failure.

One other idea that may help you to transform education for your students is through collaboration. Don’t feel like you have to redevelop everything you are doing on your own. Get together with others who teach the same subject as you and pick a topic. Bring some of your favorite activities that fit that topic, and collaborate to find a way to make the jump from enhancement to transformation. Then, after you try something, come back together to talk about what worked well, what didn’t, and what you would do next. And if meeting together is not possible, use tech to collaborate – create a shared planning document in Office 365, or Facetime with your colleagues to plan when you both are free but cannot be together.

On Matt Miller’s website there is an excellent article titled 10 ways to reach SAMR’s redefinition level. Follow the hyperlink for some great ways to take it up a notch!

Where are you in terms of the SAMR model with the tech you are using in your room? Do you feel you are sticking to the enhancement zone, or have you jumped the fence into the transformation zone?

The View from 518