January 1

3 Reflections from a Standards Based Grading Rookie

Students at work in my Geometry classroom!

This fall, not only did I return to the classroom after a 2 year hiatus as an instructional coach, but I joined and led an Algebra II team that had agreed to launch Standards Based Grading.  We were given a week over the summer to upend our current curriculum and start from scratch with the Common Core State Math Standards.  With the help of our instructional coach, we had developed a strong curriculum map and began writing our first assessments, rubrics and lessons.  We weren’t the first team to take the leap.  The previous year, the Geometry team was not only the inaugural team to take the Standards Based Grading jump in our department, but also our school.  While it wasn’t easy and took a great deal of time and effort to redesign the curriculum and assessments, it was deemed, overall, a success.

  1.  Room for Growth At the end of the semester I had students reflect on our classroom norms as they related to themselves as a student and as a classmate and, of course, my instruction.  On the back of the evaluation, I had them also share their thoughts on Standards Based Grading.  I was particularly impressed with the thoughtful reflection of one student, “It favors the students’ education over their grade and the work they complete.”  Yes!  Another student wrote “(I like how) we retake the test we do to better ourselves.”  They’re really starting to get the basic values that are the foundation of our practice: prioritizing learning over grades, and growth over time.  But, in reflection, I’d like to continue to prioritize growth mindset language in my classroom.  For example, I give pencils that say “Got an A with Mrs. J” for students who receive an “exceeding the standard” rating of a 3.5 or 4/4.  I was thinking that I should also give a prize to those who’ve most improved from the first standard to the second in an effort to honor growth.  My colleague, Patrick, also suggested that we call the second assessment we give for each standard as the “Growth Assessment.”  I like that, too.
  2. Struggle with Student Motivation By far the biggest struggle that’s been voiced among my colleagues is the frustration over the lack of student homework completion.  Math is a skill and, like any other skill, requires practice. I’ve told students more times than I can remember that mentally assenting to mathematics done correctly does not mean that you can perform the skill as well.  You can’t just watch football and think you’re ready for the NFL.  Nonetheless students think they can.  We’ve talked about counting homework for points, but the teachers in Algebra I remind us that student work in their classes reflect little effort and, sadly, copying.  They cringe at the thought of giving that caliber of work points towards their final grade.  So, we return to making the argument to students about the importance of homework to improve understanding and summative performance. I would LOVE any insight any of you might have!
  3. Admiration and Respect for My Team  I wasn’t the only one without experience in Standards Based Grading.  On the team, which comprised 8 teachers, there was only one who was also on the Geometry team and he was a huge contributor, helping us to avoid pitfalls and encouraging us to focus on what he felt would give us the strongest start.  That being said, everyone embraced the challenge and appeared eager to contribute to the major undertaking, which included a division of labor and group edits.  While we certainly believed in the tenants of Standards Based Grading, that is, a student’s grade should reflect what they can perform, articulate and understand and not a student’s behavior, we had to be honest about the practical rubber-meets-the-road type pitfalls, such as student motivation.  We also needed to reflect on the flow of curriculum, the shifts in our pedagogy, and our team dynamics.   We didn’t always agree.  In fact, often we didn’t.  But, our team is professional, reflective and fun.  We tangled until we could live with the outcome and may revisit it again.  We are currently on the “act – reflect – new action” cycle of education and are content with that.  Truly, I feel blessed to work with such a thoughtful team of educators.

Overall, I would deem semester I a moderate success with room for my personal growth.  I hope to move forward in shifting mindsets towards growth and away from a focus on grades.  I want students to know what they know and what they don’t know.  I want them to learn the benefits of practice towards peek performance.  And I want to continue the good work of a team that cares about what’s best for students, even if we don’t always agree on how.  Also, I’m grateful to have the privilege to work with students.  Teaching isn’t for the weak, but it’s the most rewarding job there is.  It never gets boring, to be sure.  Here’s  to the future–have a great 2019!

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July 3

5 Reasons I’m Heading Back to the Classroom (After Instructional Coaching)

This year I have the opportunity to transition back to the math classroom after two years of instructional coaching, and I’m taking it!  While the decision was not easy, I felt a longing to return to the classroom since the day I left. I wondered if the feelings stemmed from a lack of experience and transitioning from being a veteran teacher to a novice coach.  I had shared with my team 

and administration that I wanted to return after the first year, but after listening attentively to me, they encouraged me to stay saying they felt I was well-suited for the role and perhaps with more experience and confidence, I might feel differently.  However, my administration said they’d support my decision to return, if that’s what I wanted.I decided to spend another year serving my school as a coach.  There were MANY things I enjoyed about instructional coaching, and I plan to share them in another blog post.  But, let me share the key reasons I’m returning to the classroom.

  1. Kids  Without a doubt, the number ONE reason I want to return to the classroom is my desire to work with kids.  When I walk down the hallway, I well up with the empathy I feel for students whose eyes reveal their insecurities.  I want to engage in their conversations; speak truth and encouragement into their lives. But, I’m always one step removed.  Even when working in classrooms, I was the lady who came into their class for a day, and at most, a few days. It’s hard to build drive by relationships.  After being out of the classroom for two years, the number of students with whom I had relationships had significantly dwindled and the thought of getting to a point where there were none was devastating to me.  
  2. Party Planning  While I’m no Angela Martin (Office reference), I love planning the party and watching the magic of learning happen.  In coaching, you help to plan someone else’s party for someone else’s students. I miss designing creative ways to engage MY students and watching the joy of MY students as they learn.  It’s entirely selfish, I know. Perhaps a person who is more selfless would be more comfortable riding in the sidecar, but it was a tough transition for me.
  3. Focus I LOVE to learn, and coaching allowed me to open up my learning to include all content areas.  I have an increased passion for literacy strategies, the NGSS practices, best practices in co-teaching and other content areas as well.  But, I miss being able to have one focused passion.  I LOVE MATH! A colleague once shared with me how she remembered when I was in the classroom, I had made students love math, too.  Yes! That’s what I want–for them to love it with me; to build their confidence in a content area that opens countless lucrative opportunities for them.   
  4. A Full Toolbox While I am nowhere close to being a perfect teacher, I’ve spent the last two years building my toolbox of strategies.  You know what’s no fun? Having a lot of tools without being able to use them. In coaching, I’d share the strategies I’d learn and watch other people use them.  That always brought me joy. But, I’d like to give them a whirl myself. Again…selfish, I know…
  5. Beginnings and Endings  Yes.  In coaching we have a beginning and end to each year and there are timely PD opportunities we like to offer teachers.  But, there is nothing like a brand new class list, planning for community building, and getting excited for a first day.  Likewise, there is no greater relief for a teacher than closing the books on the year, knowing you’ve poured yourself out as best you could for students.  I love a clean slate. I missed it in coaching.

All this being said, I hope my school knows that I have loved serving them as an instructional coach the past two years and am so grateful to have had the opportunity.  I appreciate my administration’s encouragement and the confidence they’ve had in me. I’ve grown so much as an educator and I hope to share my experience as a coach in my next blog post.  

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October 7

Equipping Students in the Era of Fake News

The term “fake news” was introduced to every day vernacular by our current president.  Since then, it has been assigned to just about any reporting that was unfavorable or news that did not support one’s personal world view.

Rather to dismiss these claims, however, we can teach students what constitutes “Fake News.”  Let’s focus primarily on web sources, since our students will typically begin their research there.

Determining what news is fake or real is harder than we think.  I read an article by Tennessee Watson entitled “To Test Your Fake News Judgement, Play this Game.”  The game, Factitious allows you to test your fake news radar.  Sadly, not even this educator (two thumbs pointing at self) could successfully detect real from fake news.  Go ahead, you give it a try!  See if your fake news radar is better than mine.  Difficult?  I know!  My thoughts began to center around the danger this posed for students in what seems to be a post-truth world of information.

If YOU don’t teach them, who will?  Oftentimes, I think research skills are dismissed by content area teachers outside of English or Social Studies.  If your students use the internet to gather information (and they SHOULD), this falls on your shoulders as well.  We tend to over-scaffold our students, sending them to sources that have already been vetted.  While that will provide them with reliable information for now, it will not prepare students for life beyond the classroom.  Without the appropriate skills to equip students with discernment, the internet is the modern day equivalent to the Wild, Wild West.  We are sending them unarmed, vulnerable to sites that appear factual, but present “alternative facts” upon which they will build their beliefs and world views.

Media Bias  and Fact Checkers  After playing Factitious, I realized that I could not discern fact from fiction based on the title alone, rather the reliability of the internet source was much more likely to influence whether the information was reliable.   Since then, I’ve used Media Bias/Fact Check  which offers researchers a rating on two key indicators: bias and factual reporting.  While every source typically has some bias, the factual reporting can help readers to determine the factual reliability of the source.  Since the website seemed difficult for me to navigate, I found the quickest way to check a source like, for example CNN, would be to type “media bias fact check CNN” in the Google search bar, where you’d see this report which rated CNN a left bias with mixed factual reporting, similar to it’s conservative counterpart FOX News.  What is particularly helpful is that propagandist news sources such as the Conservative Daily and it’s liberal counterpart, the Democratic Review, are reviewed and clearly deemed “Questionable Sources” by the site.

A Powerful Exercise in Media Review  If students are always given texts that are reliable by teachers, they will come to the conclusion that all text is innately reliable.  To convince students otherwise, you might engage in research on a topic in which there is an abundance of research on all sides of the issue.  Assign students different articles from all along the spectrum.  Create a horizontal line placing opposing views on either extreme.  Have students determine where to place their assigned article based on what they deem is it’s appropriate place based on evidence from the article.  This exercise would not only allows students the opportunity to reflect on bias and opposing viewpoints, but also would prepare students to make well-informed claims on the topic based on a plethora of evidence from all points of view.  For teachers to quickly access texts representing multiple views all along the spectrum they can use a web resource called All Sides which allows users to search a topic and sorts web resources by left, center and right.

Another Powerful Exercise in Media Review  In order to help students to reflect on how they search, ask them to engage in this meta cognitive exercise.  Here’s what this might look like.

The teacher asks students,  “Which is better, to study in the morning or at night?” and then, follow up with these instructions:

  1.  Quick write a few personal thoughts in response to the question.
  2. Search the internet for an answer.
  3. Write down ALL the steps you took to find your answer.

Students can share each step and categorize it is a good or questionable practice for internet searches.  After that, the teacher engages students in a conversation about how each of the topics can influence how they might search for information on the internet.

  • URL Common Sense  Which sites are typically more believable:  those ending in .org or .com?  Students think that .org is typically more believable. After all, pbs.org is a fabulous, altruistic site that students enjoy.  I wonder if they would maintain that opinions if they knew that Neo Nazi  websites would also typically carry a .org URL?  Also, they typically believe .com must be unreliable since it is typically associated with commercial use, therefore sites bearing it’s name are trying to sell us something, right?  Keep in mind that most mainstream news sources carry that domain extension.  This is certainly a conversation worth having with our students.
  • First is Not Always Best  The website that tops the list of our Google searches is chosen not because it is the best or most reliable source, rather it is the most popular source.  That is, it has received the most “clicks.”  With concern about bots and political activism, we cannot rely on the fact that what is most popular is also most reliable.
  • Authority of Source  When students research for answers, they may stop the search at the title.  In order to access the evidence and reasoning upon which the claim was built, students must read, or at least skim, the article.  Is the conclusion based on the work of an expert in the field?  What makes someone an expert in a field?  Was quantitative or qualitative data used to reach that conclusion?  All of these questions must be answered before a student can accept the claim upon which the title was built.

Early and Often  In order for students to learn how to discern facts from fake news, we’re going to have to start teaching students digital literacy the moment they begin to use the internet to obtain information.  And, like most learning, teaching students to be wise consumers of the internet will have to be a recurring theme throughout their academic career.  We (I teach Math) content area teachers can’t place all the responsibility on literacy teachers.   For example, science teachers might have additional concerns about search results.  For example, scientists would want teachers to consider if the research is peer reviewed.  All educators must own and prioritize wise internet use as a skill that will empower students far beyond their years with us.   #Kidsdeserveit

I’d like to thank Patricia Tylka for the two very practical strategies in this article.  She presented a fabulous session entitled Coaching Digital Natives through Research in the Age of Google at the Illinois Reading Council’s Annual Conference this weekend.

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