One of my professional growth goals that I set for myself at the beginning of this year was to effectively implement teacher-guided, student-led project based learning in my classroom. I student taught last year in a project-based learning school with a high SES demographic of students and as I approached this school year I thought that with a little bit of struggle and effort that I would be able to effectively implement this philosophy in my classroom pretty seamlessly. Wow did I underestimate the magnitude of work that is required to do this. Firstly, the school I student taught at had been a PBL school for 11 years with the students being introduced to this philosophy of education starting in 4th grade. Secondly, this demographic of students are much more initially receptive and successful in the less structured environment that is PBL.
I am making strides towards my goal of facilitating an effective PBL classroom, and I know this is a worthy pursuit, however the rate of progress is much slower than I originally had anticipated. I believe this is due to a couple main reasons. My students have been trained their entire life what school looks like. This, primarily, has been desks in rows with the teacher talking. That of a traditional classroom. I am finding that I am needing to start from the very basics in teaching academic and social behaviors conducive to effective learning in a PBL classroom. This is more difficult and time consuming than I had originally anticipated. The second main reason I believe that I am not progressing at the rate I thought I would is due to the lack of structure built into PBL models. The success of this philosophy is largely dependent on cultivating a motivated, self-guided learner – without as much structure or guidance. I am finding that many of my students do not have as much structure in their homes as the demographic of students that I student taught last year. This is not better, or worse, it is just different. This lack of structure at home, I believe, then necessitates a slightly higher level of structure in the classroom. I did not originally provide this. At the beginning of the year I would set the students free to inquire into the project of their choice with a couple days of free work time. What I found was a chaotic classroom with less than 30 percent on-task behavior. After attempting and failing at this a couple of times I finally came to the realization that the students must be taught, and trained, how to behave and think in a student-guided learning environment. Instead of setting the students free with a guiding sheet of directions, a grading rubric, and free-work time I am now finding that in order to cultivate the level of thinking and motivation found in many PBL classrooms I needed to provide more structure within the PBL model. I am now providing shorter, more regulated chunks of work time, more student check-ins, a greater level of explicit pre-instruction, and a more dynamic approach to helping students. We are well on our way to reaching the levels of engagement and cognition that I know are possible in my classroom via a project-based learning model… it’s just taking a little bit more time!
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I feel incredibly fortunate to be at the school that I am at, with the administrators that I have. The principal and assistant principal are pretty incredible leaders. To sum up their philosophy I would say that hire the teachers to do a job and they have complete trust and faith in those teachers to do their job. They support, empower, and say “yes” to their teachers. Our administration feels as if their main job is to make teachers jobs easier. They assume all risk and pressure from the district and state without projecting any of it onto their teachers. Every decision they make is filtered through the question of “is it best for the kids?”. On that note, they believe that collaboration and teamwork, amongst both the staff and students, is paramount for providing the best environment for kids. This has made my transition into collaborating with my team members a pretty seamless one.
The past two weeks in our geology unit we have been learning about the rock cycle. We, as a class, have been trying to answer the question of what causes the surface of the earth to look the way it does? The surface of our earth, or the crust, is comprised of rock. And thus in order to understand what the surface of the earth looks like, we must be able to understand the rock cycle, or the process through which minerals are recycled between three different rock types. During this rock cycle mini unit, I tried implementing the strategy of data-driven instruction. I taught as I normally would have, then we took an assessment (as we normally would have) however where my instruction changed was at this point instead of simply moving on to the next concept, I analyzed ALL of the assessment results and sorted the conceptual ideas from the assessment into three categories – areas of strength, areas of challenge, and critical needs. Then, using this data, I went back redesigned some of my activities and provided additional instruction in areas of challenge and critical needs. For those students who were strong on all concepts of the assessment I had a couple of extension activities for them to do. After these interventions we went and took the assessment again and saw a tremendous increase in assessment scores.
As I was redesigning some of my rock cycle activities I was admittedly quite unmotivated. At the time I felt as if the only reason I was doing it was so that I could receive a grade in my masters class. It seemed low in importance on my list of priorities, and was quite a bit of work… especially grading and analyzing all 120 assessments. It provided me a fair bit of stress and it wasn’t the most exciting to goo back to school to teach about the same concepts for a 4th, 5th, 6th day in a row. HOWEVER, what I realized is that by analyzing the assessment results and tailoring my instruction, I had a better idea of where each class, and each individual, were in relation to the standard than I have all year. It was cool because it was a deeper understanding of their current level. I had a much deeper understanding of the innerworkings of my students brains. Secondly, it felt good that this data-driven instruction approach was in alignment with one of my beliefs on education – depth over breadth. That it is more beneficial to humans to learn fewer things at a deeper level than more things at a more superficial level. I will work to incorporate data driven instruction into every one of my units moving forward. My year thus far has been, all things considered, overwhelmingly positive! That being said, and certainly not unexpected, I have had some lessons flop to epic proportions. Just this past Thursday I designed a lesson that I knew was incredibly decent. Very average. I knew it wasn’t a great lesson going into the day but I simply did not have time or mental energy to devote the energy necessary to make it the bomb, hands-on, student-directed inquiry lesson that I like. Anyways, turned out this lesson flopped! I won’t go as far to say as it epically flopped, but it certainly wasn’t good. Anyways, the strategy I chose to implement on this day was “summarizing and note taking”. This strategy, by the way, is highlighted in Marzano’s article 9 High Yield Instructional Strategies. Needless to say, it was likely less the lesson strategy and more the energy I brought to it that day.
The meat of the lesson was to read an article on Volcanoes (from Newsela) and then complete a summarizing activity to draw out the pertinent information relative to our geology unit that day. To start off, I was having “a day” the day before and to give myself an easier night prepping than the normal amount of energy I put into my lessons. Secondly, leading into the day I simply was not excited about what I was about to teach. I think the students picked up on this right away. I believe that the best lessons, and the best way for humans to learn is through natural inquiry. Through intrinsically developing ones curiosity to a point that they are motivated to develop their own questions for which they can then set out to inquire about that day. This lesson was not this. This lesson was front loading information and me trying to tell them why they should care about reading this article. I did not establish their why sufficiently and then set them free to summarize… HOW FUN!!! Secondly, I have many English language learners in my class, and a handful of others reading far below grade level. I also neglected to provide adequate differentiation and translated materials. I think it is pretty obvious at this point, but I will try to refrain from using this strategy on the regular. And if I do I will most certainly build up the why prior and will provide differentiated and translated texts. I just completed the final version of my literature review – What are best practices for social justice education in the secondary science class? I used the word literature review perhaps a touch ignorantly due to the fact that I really didn’t know the difference between a literature review and an annotated bibliography. Now, after reading Comparing the Annotated Bibliography to the Literature Review I feel as if I have a good grasp on the differences. I, indeed, was correct from the beginning in calling my literature review a literature review.
As we all know, reviewing literature is an incredibly arduous process in which one must search ALL of the existing literature on a topic, then synthesize it, and portray in a succinct manner what the literature states. How does one begin this? How does one start to tackle a task like this? Well, the process that I chose was two-fold. First, procrastination. Large periods of coffee, YouTube, surface level inquiry, and procrastination. During this period I felt a little overwhelmed, a little lost, and the task seemed daunting. Fortunately, however, I am genuinely interested in my literature review topic and this naturally lent itself to me finding some mid-summer motivation to start grinding. When attempting to digest the mass quantities of information I was absorbing I, inadvertently, chose to lay out my research in an annotated bibliography. I transcribed all the useful and relevant resources I stumbled upon, organized them on a Word Doc, and then wrote a one paragraph summary of what the research said and why it was relevant. This was step one in completing my literature review. Once I had my sources laid out, however, I took the annotated bibliography one step further to turning it into a literature review. As Comparing the Annotated Bibliography to the Literature Review states, a literature review differs from an annotated bibliography in that a literature review digests and regurgitates the information at a slightly deeper level and is portrayed in more of a story – consisting of an intro, body, and conclusion. I believe this demands a slightly higher level of comprehension and yields an overall deeper understanding of the body of literature available on a given subject. This is exactly what my literature review is. Self-care and the field of positive psychology has been a driving passion of mine now for about 3 years. The idea of well-being, health, sustainability, and self-care practices are something that I ponder day in and day out. That being said, I feel as if I do a really good job with 7 of the 10 “stress busting secrets” that Vicki Davis highlights in her article “10 Stress busting secrets for teachers”. The ones I feel I do a good job of are:
I modified my lesson between each class and made slight improvements to it throughout but none the less it was quite abominable. During the day I felt overwhelming pings of stress. I felt thoughts of inadequacy. And I felt guilt that I was not providing a quality learning environment for those students who most desperately need it. When I left school that day I went and CRUSHED myself on a killer bike ride up in the mountains and this was the best thing I could have done. I want to remember this. I want to repeat this both as a recovery form and as a preventative measure for coping with events like this. Exercise outdoors, interacting with nature, is one of the healthiest and most primitive things a human can do. Not to mention that when you are suffering physically due to lack of oxygen, your brain can’t dwell in the negative self-thoughts. And when you’re done you always rest well! It goes without saying that while biking it is near impossible to be on any forms of social media. And if you can bike with FRIENDS (connection) I truly feel as if this is the antidote to stress. This bike ride was exactly what I needed. It cleared my head and allowed me to reset going into the next day… which happened to be one of the best days of my year thus far. Before I dive into how the IRB process has been for me, personally, I will dive a little into my thoughts on the IRB process in generally. 3 words I feel accurately represent the IRB process would be - necessary, well-intended, and hoop-jump.
I use the word "well-intended" because I believe that IRB itself was set in place out of positive intentions. The IRB is in place to protect the subjects or all studies and that, I believe, is a great thing. I just watched the film "Stanford Prison Experiment" and clearly there is a need for this. That is why I chose my second word - necessary. The third word I chose to use was hoop-jump. I chose this because I was hired as a professional to cultivate the best humans possible. And this is what I try to do - every single day with ALL of my energy. This has proved to be super difficult this year and has used up every last bit of my spare time. Given my intentions, and my prior knowledge of research from my undergrad chemistry degree, the IRB process to me feels like one gigantic hoop to jump through on my path to becoming the best educator I am capable of. The IRB process in itself was not stressful for me, however the very nature of taking time to complete it meant that was not time that I was spending developing my lesson plans for this week.. and that in itself was stress inducing. I feel that I have about 16 other things that could have been higher on my priority list than trying to sculpt verbiage as to why me trying to be a good teacher is not going to cause any physical, social, or physiological harm to my students. Now, as I was completing my proposal to the IRB I had two main events that evoked some deeper emotions within me. The first event that evoked emotion within me was when completing the potential risk and harm section. Although I thoroughly believe that my research poses zero potential harm or risk to my students, this process forced me to ponder potential risks and scenarios. I found myself going down a DEEP rabbit hole creating incredibly improbable situations of how a subject could experience social and/or emotional and/or psychological harm through my research. As I was doing this I felt two emotions – fear and giggly (that’s an emotion, right??). I was superficially fearful that these improbable situations could arise, and then giggly in that I had to laugh at my brain for how ridiculous the situations I came up with were. The second event that evoked emotion in me was when I was attempting to create out the questionnaire to give to the subjects of my study. I will not be conducting my research until February of 2020 in a unit that I have never taught before. I am still lesson planning for next week, let alone trying to think about what I will be doing in 4 months time from now. I am being forced to submit a questionnaire to implement in 4 months time from now with little understanding of what exactly the unit will look like where I will be conducting my research. And little time right now to do anything about it – which, I understand, is my fault due to my average time management skills. The emotion that this evokes is frustration. I want my research to be the best it can be and I feel as if my questionnaire will not be of highest quality due to creating it with out having FULL understanding of what EXACTLY I will be teaching during my research. This could be solved by unit planning right now for this upcoming February – it’s just that I need to figure out next week before I start thinking about February. Anyways, aside from some of the hoops that I feel I am jumping through, I understand that the IRB is necessary and well-intended. Looking at the four ideals highlighted in the article Building A Sense of Community – 1) Establishing a respectful tone 2) Establishing a bond with and among your students 3) Creating a community that values all students 4) Helping students resolve conflicts – I feel as if I have some quality strategies to meet student needs in all four of those categories. That being said, I feel as if right now I could use the most amount of support in the 4th ideal – Helping student resolve conflicts.
Cooperation amongst individuals and (large) groups of individuals is arguably the one thing that has allowed humans to be the dominant species on our planet. There are no other species that can cooperate in groups as large as 1000 individuals – an average size for a U.S. public high school. That being said, there are obviously still many instances of individual and group conflict EVERY day in EVERY school. When teachers, such as myself, stumble upon these conflicts how can we act in the best interest of all? What strategies can we implement to mitigate this conflict both short-term and long-term? How about resolving this conflict when the root of the conflict is gang related, family related, or tied DEEPLY to a certain set of beliefs? Or when you only have 1 minute until the next group of 32 students comes barreling through the classroom door? I have been experimenting with restorative justice practices which have seemed to work really well for me however that being said I still most certainly have had numerous conflict resolution opportunities that completely flopped. The other day two boys were bickering at one another during class. One took the others pencil, then the other drew on the others homework, then the other ripped the others homework, etc. until both of the students were about in tears. This happened right as they were about to leave to their next class, and right before my next group of 32 humans entered for their class. Not knowing exactly what to do in this situation and not having sufficient time in the moment to deal with it properly I forced insincere apologies out of both of them, made sure they were both safe, and sent them on their way. In the moment, I had a slight sense of guilt because I knew this was only a little band aid over the internal wound. It was a short-term solution to a potentially long term issue. I found out later that day that the two boys continued their bickering throughout the entirety of the day, until finally a veteran teacher “dealt” with it in her last class. If I were to go back and re-do this situation I certainly would have done some things differently. Firstly, I would have held them after class, got my next class started on their bell ringer, and then given adequate time to debrief the situation with them – implementing restorative justice practices during this circle with them. I believe this would have been a better long-term solution however my next class also has some challenging (but awesome) students and I was in the moment worried that if I didn’t give them the attention they needed that they could have also erupted into a steaming ball of conflict. Anyways, this is one situation that I will most certainly be faced with again and will continually practice and refine. I feel confident, however, with the structure and framework of restorative justice practices. This year thus far has taught me so many things. SO many. A lot about teaching, a lot about life, and a lot about myself. One of those things that has become very apparent as of late is currency. To me, especially right now, time is the ultimate currency. More important money, I simply wish to acquire time - time that I can use to reflect, relax, play, maintain health, connect with friends, etc. At this point in my school year I am currently lacking this currency… to put it lightly. Although I’m not necessarily proud of this, one thing that I have done in an effort to regain some currency is get creative with my grading and assessments. I have been struggling to find time to grade all assessments, enter all grades, provide constructive feedback etc.
With that said I tried a new type of formative assessment that has been able to grant me some time back without neglecting grades. I recently tried having students use Flipgrid – a web-based video platform where students record a video of themselves responding to a prompt. This video then syncs with the class and other class members can go and watch the videos, learn from them, constructively critique them, and leave feedback on their videos. The students then receive feedback from their peers and all I need to do is watch the 30 second video to see where their learning is at in relation to the standard. This technology, www.flipgrid.com, was naturally engaging for the students and super user friendly. Overall it was a great experience using it. One major problem that I encountered with this app, however, was that many students do not want to see their face on a screen. It triggers some insecurities and I saw a couple of almost breakdowns. Fortunately, we were able to discover the feature of the app that allows you to put an emoji over the screen if you do not want your face to be shown. In the moment I was surprised and did not forsee this as being an issue however now, looking back at it, I totally understand this and should have seen it coming. All humans are dealing with their internal struggles with self-confidence, peer judgement, our self-image, etc. and this is especially heightened when one is a tweenager just now starting to dive in on the inner journey. Aside from the emoji over the screen, a second way we dealt with this problem was to have individual conversations with the students who were struggling, attempting to build self-confidence and esteem. If this failed I allowed for those students to address the prompt directly to me, in person, but not in the presence of their peers. This worked well. A second issue I encountered was with simple technology – the usuals. Some students didn’t know their login or password, some computer batteries were not fully charged, etc. Being that this is my first year teaching, I am viewing this entire year as one big experiment. Sampling the possibilities, refining what I like and discarding what I don’t. This is something that I will most certainly continue to use and refine in my classroom and I would highly recommend to all my colleagues. The videos are HILARIOUS, and really thoughtful. I spent most of my summer thinking about what I wanted to conduct my capstone research on. I knew I wanted my research to inform my practice and help make me the best teacher I can be. That was upwards of 3 months ago now, and more importantly, it was prior to the start of my 7th grade science teaching position. I have moved from the world of idealism and theoretical frameworks to the world of real. Fortunately, not much has changed.
By far the most challenging, time consuming, and and fulfilling aspect of my research proposal has been constructing my Lit Review which will inform my research. Sifting through hundreds of previous studies, articles, videos, blogs, etc., and then boiling the information down into some fundamental practices for which I can implement in my classroom. This was difficult but was certainly most helpful and fulfilling. As I was conducting my lit review research however, it was not all peaches and I most certainly didn’t feel the most fulfilled at the time. What I gained though, was 5 fundamental practices for how I can best implement social justice education in my 7th grade science classroom. The section I most enjoyed completing on my capstone proposal was the introduction. This gives a little insight as to who I am. I love thinking about the big picture, putting things in perspective, finding the relevance, and naming the “why”. This came naturally to me and was a very energizing section. The section of my proposal that felt the most draining to complete was the section identifying the risks, benefits, and informed consent. I understand the need for this section, and don’t mean to mean to belittle its implications however this section to me felt a smidge bureaucratic. I would like to think that I have the common sense and morality to conduct an ethical research project without having to jump through the time consuming hoops. Overall, working on this proposal has been a helpful practice as it mandated that I sat down and thought about my research, procedures, implications, etc. |
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December 2019
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