champion-in-training

Over the weekend I got absorbed in Doug Lemov’s book “Teach Like A Champion,” and I couldn’t wait to try out some of the techniques he recommends. So this week I have been trying to teach like a champion. So as not to overwhelm myself, I decided to try focusing on just two techniques each day.

Yesterday I chose “What To Do” and “100 Percent.” (Lemov gives each technique a proper name so they can be easily discussed. I think it’s genius.) “100 Percent” is intended to set the expectation that it’s not enough to give the teacher most of what she asks for. If I ask for quiet, I need to wait until every student is quiet before I speak. It sounds simple, but it was extremely difficult to put into practice. The writing lab is full of adult tutors — I’d guess there’s about a 1:3 ratio of tutors to kids — and it’s difficult to achieve authority when there are so many potential authority figures in the room. At first I was surprised by this, because I would have predicted that the strong adult presence would have a positive effect on students’ compliance with directions. After reflecting, however, I realized that unless the adults in the room can just as easily undermine the entire effort. If even one tutor continues to converse with a student after I ask for silence, or doesn’t actively enforce my request, the students will assume I’m not worth listening to and continue whatever they were doing.

“100 Percent” was a tough one. But I definitely like it, so I’ll keep working on it.

The premise of “What To Do” is that students are less likely to follow vague directions (“pay attention”) than specific ones (“put down your pencil and and turn to look at me”). I was somewhat skeptical about this one, but I decided to try it anyway. I had an opportunity right off the bat when a couple of boys at my table started playing with scotch tape. This galls me because it is a banned activity and it is wasteful. I told the boys, “Stop it, you guys. That’s banned.” Their only response was to look at me impassively and press the tape tighter over their lips. So I switched my focus to one boy and said, “Alonso, take the tape back to the bookshelf and then come sit here next to me.” Lo and behold, it worked. Not only did Alonso pick up the tape dispenser and take it to its place on the other side of the room; but he then returned to the seat I pointed out, which was across the table from the boy he had been messing around with.  It was incredible. I am definitely keeping this technique in my arsenal from now on.

Today I chose to work on “Strong Voice,” a technique with several components. Using “Strong Voice” means showing the kids that you refuse to lower behavioral expectations. It goes hand-in-hand with “100 Percent” because it dictates how to react if students are being noncompliant. And it’s difficult in the writing lab for the same reasons that “100 Percent” is difficult. (But I’m determined to get silence one of these days!) My biggest challenges were not talking over students and not engaging with misbehavior. These two teacher techniques are extremely important to authority because giving in to persistent noise and misbehavior shows weakness, and students will walk all over you as a result. It’s difficult not to talk over students because it is so hard to get their attention in the first place, and waiting for students to sense something wrong and grow silent doesn’t work with so many adults around. It’s equally difficult to avoid engagement with a student who is acting out for attention, especially if he has something interesting to say! Lemov recommends not even acknowledging extraneous comments, even to say “that’s beside the point.” It’s easier than it sounds.

So far I’m learning a lot from these recommendations. I plan to continue sampling a technique or two every day to find the ones that are most effective for me. I have come across some challenges, of course, but I foresee encountering some type of challenge in every environment I teach in. Even when I have my own classroom and policies, I’ll still have to meld my personal style with the school’s behavioral policies and maybe even contend with other teachers whose methods clash with my own. And kids will just keep coming up with new ways to irritate their teachers…

accommodating

I spent Thursday afternoon working with a kid who has a lot of things working against her: learning disabilities, mood disorder, hearing loss. She told me right away it had been a rough day emotionally and then had a minor meltdown regarding missing assignments. Her step-mom had highlighted all the missing assignments on the kid’s progress reports, which came out to about every other entry on the list. It was legitimately an overwhelming amount of work, and I can’t blame the kid for cracking under pressure.

I gave her a couple minutes to collect herself, then put the progress reports out of view and told her to prepare for her upcoming English test by working on some study questions. I was scared she would refuse to read, like so many other kids, but miraculously she settled down and was immediately absorbed in the book.

After a few minutes I grabbed a clean sheet of paper and started to compose a list of things the kid needs to do to improve her grade within the next week. First on the list were things she needs to ask her teacher about: a worksheet she lost, a couple of quizzes she needs to retake. Then I listed the projects she’s missing for no good reason, and finally the two assignments that aren’t due until next week. Next to each assignment I wrote how many points it could earn toward her final grade. It was a sizable amount; probably enough to boost her from a 65% to a C or B.

I have no problem admitting that I left a few things off the list. A 5-point vocab worksheet from February is not going to help her nearly as much as a 50-point chapter summary, and I wanted to keep the list at a manageable length.

All things considered, our session couldn’t have gone much better. By the end of two hours she had finished two pages of study questions and accomplished a good amount of reading. When her dad arrived, she was laughing because someone in the book had used the name “Prometheus,” which sounded funny to her, and then she had a lightbulb moment when I told her who Prometheus was. (Is there any literature that doesn’t tie back to mythology?)

Dad was impressed with my agenda, leading me to realize that parents get just as overwhelmed by long lists of missing assignments as their kids do. Both of them seemed relieved to see things written out as a to-do list. It’s funny how the same information presented a different way can look positive rather than daunting. But I guess the marketing industry figured that out a while ago!

I’ll be waiting to hear how much the kid got done over the weekend… Hopefully the meltdowns are over with and she can get down to business.

(Incidentally, my mom used to call missing assignments “outstanding work,” which always confused the heck out of me because in my mind the word outstanding has positive connotations. Although I was never in danger of failing a class, I did sometimes forget to do a bit of homework. I even had a meltdown now and then, usually because I had underestimated the amount of work a project would take or because I didn’t feel like doing homework all weekend or maybe I was just hormonal. I mean, we’ve all been there, right?)

I watched “The Reader” last night. I’m not going to ruin the ending for anyone, but let’s just say it had a powerful impact on me and reaffirmed my faith in books. …Not that it has ever wavered.

i’m not very helpful

The other day, one of the kids in tutoring was trying desperately to get me to do his homework for him. He wanted me to read his worksheet out loud so that he could write a summary. I told him I would have done it if he had asked politely, but because he had demanded my help, I didn’t feel so keen on cooperating.

He was getting frustrated and running out of time (his dad was waiting in the parking lot), so he started getting creative in his attempts to win my assistance, refusing to give up the assumption that I would do the work for him. Among his top arguments were:

“This isn’t college, ok? Don’t freak out.”
(Kid logic: It’s so easy, you may as well do it for me.)

“Do you see this big ‘N’ right here?”
“Yes.”
“Ok, so can you read this part for me?”
(Kid logic: If I divert your attention, I can trick you into doing it out of confusion.)

I’ve noticed that this particular student tends to get a lot of assignments that require summarizing — and that he usually takes as many shortcuts as possible to summarize the information as generally as he can, rarely paying attention beyond the surface of the text.

uno

Today was my first day at my summer internship at 826LA. (Yes, it is summer already.)

First I helped prepare the tutoring center to host 50 third-graders on a bookmaking field trip. A few of us had to leave just as the kids were selecting their main character: Psycho Python.

There were plenty of people helping with book production, so a couple of other interns and I got sent over to Venice High School to help a teacher with her writing project. The assignment was to write a 20-line poem based on Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son.”

Of course I jumped at the chance to go because L.H. was the first poet I ever adored, with the possible exception of A.A. Milne.

Being seniors within three weeks of graduation, the students were less than enthused by the prospect of doing work. Several got mired in gunky, clichéd metaphors. Others had to be coaxed into writing anything at all. Generally they had to be prodded from merely listing obstacles to describing how they overcame those obstacles, theoretically at least. Kids know their strengths; they just don’t know how to use them.

After doing the H.S. thing for a couple of hours, we returned to 826 just in time to prepare for after-school tutoring. For me, this meant three hours of discussing everything but homework with a precocious sixth-grader who was dead-set on avoiding his assignment. He asked me about the 2000 presidential election; I directed him to his graphic organizer. He asked me about video game consoles; I pointed out some important technologies developed during the Shang dynasty. He wanted to know about district representatives and voting rights and the merits of a fascist system versus a democratic one; I compromised and allowed him to read his notes as speeches in the style of various politicians (Dubya, Obama, Gov. Schwarzenegger).

It was a good day.

on lockdown

I witnessed my first teacher-on-teacher fight today. The root of the debate was a topic I’ve been meaning to address on this blog: locked doors. Specifically locked library doors. The school where I tutor has very limited accessibility during the day, so that the only way to get onto campus is through the main office. Unfortunately, the school does not seem to have been designed with lockdown in mind, because the quickest way to proceed to classrooms from the office is through the school library.

The school strictly prohibits use of the library as a passageway from office to classrooms. To this end, the door from the main office to the library remains locked at all times. Unfortunately that’s not the case with the door at the opposite end of the library, which leads to an inner courtyard. (I suspect this has something to do with the fire code. More on this in a moment.)

The locked door creates several predictable problems:

• Visitors who enter the main office with the library as a destination (including the other tutors and myself) have to ask the secretary to let them into the library or bang on the door until someone notices them.
• Students have free access to the library through the courtyard.
• Students who enter the library through the courtyard get interrogated about why they are in the library.
• People who are trying to do legitimate activities in the library get distracted by the interrogation, which is often loud.
• Students view the library as a restricted area, which is unfortunate.
• (Apparently) students are discouraged from coming to the library (and activities that occur in the library, namely tutoring) because they get locked out.

The teacher brawl centered on this last point. One of the other after-school tutors, who also works as a teacher in the school, became upset with the library attendant (who I suspect is not actually a School Librarian) over the issue of student attendance. This tutor claimed her students do not consistently show up to tutoring because they attempt to enter the library through the locked door, give up and go home.

(I would add that motivation may also factor into such a student’s decision, but I was only an onlooker.)

The library attendant’s defense was that he was only following school policy. He also pointed out (legitimately) that all the students know the rule and should know how to get into the library by the back way if the main entrance is locked.

The conflict escalated as the tutor berated the librarian and expressed her disapproval of the policy, insisting that the door should not be locked in the first place, yada yada yada.

Although I agree that the policy is stupid and the students should be more welcomed in the library, I was thoroughly horrified by the tutor’s outburst. It was inappropriate for her to question the librarian’s authority in front of her students, especially when there was nothing he could do at that time to resolve the situation. Not only was she wasting her students’ time (and, by proxy, government dollars), but she was also distracting other people working in the library.

Not a particularly smart move.

I have to make a brief return to the issue of fire codes, because I cannot figure out how this school could possibly be in compliance.

I have tried a couple of times to leave campus through the courtyard adjacent to library, and both times I ended up at a locked gate and had to retrace my steps through the courtyard to the library, through the library to the main office, and through the main office to the parking lot.

The school grounds are completely surrounded by an iron fence. The gates in the fence are all chained and padlocked. Where the courtyard would join with the parking lot, a chainlink fence stretches from the school building to the iron fence. Unless you can fly, this campus is impenetrable.

I am honestly curious how this is legal. It seems that in the case of a fire, students fleeing school by the western end of campus would have to scale a fence and run all the way across the parking lot to leave school grounds. I can’t even imagine how a person in a wheelchair could be evacuated in this direction. Presumably he or she would have to enter the library (through an unadapted door, for the record) and exit through the main office.

Naturally, I am also concerned that students’ access to books is being restricted. But at least they still have a library. I suppose we should be counting our blessings where we can.

pass go, collect $200

Other Tutor: [To my student.] Wow, this is a great tutor you have here. You’re really getting your money’s worth in tutoring, aren’t you? You know, you might even think about slipping some 20s under the table…

Student: [To me, without hesitation.] Would you like that in Monopoly money or Game of Life money?

excuses, excuses

I know, I know. It’s been a while.

After winter break it was difficult to get back into the swing of teaching– and blogging. Apparently it was hard for the kids to get back into learning, too. My most consistent student from last semester has only attended tutoring twice so far in 2010, when she used to come two or three times a week. Another student switched his schedule from Thursday/Friday to Tuesday/Thursday because he had too much trouble concentrating on Fridays.

While working with this group was never easy, they have been dragging their heels more than ever for the last month or so. Sometimes they simply refuse to attempt any work, and they will whine or drive each other into fits of giggles in an attempt to waste as much time as possible. Working with one student at a time isn’t usually too bad because I can match the student’s pace, but working with several students can get truly exhausting.

Sometimes it feels like playing three-on-one basketball; just as I try to intercept from one student, he passes the ball to another. Last week we had issues with kids texting under the table. This week, just as I got that under control, an epic bout of flirting started up between two of the students, with the third putting in a valiant effort to stay focused but repeatedly getting sucked off track just as the other two settled down. I can only hope that when I finally get my own classroom, creative lesson plans and relevant material will be sufficient to keep my students’ interest. But I can’t help but worry what will happen when there are 32 kids in front of me if I can’t even handle three.

Since it’s been a while, here’s an update on what I’ve been reading so far in 2010:

the underlying problem

For your pleasure (and horror), I have paraphrased the following dialog from a conversation I had with my mentor teacher (T) this morning.

N: What really boggles my mind is that you give your students time during class to do all their assignments, and they still don’t do them.
T: Right, because they’ve learned in elementary and middle school that they can pass without doing any work.
N: No one is going to pass my class without doing any work!
T: Oh yes, they will.

That right there, folks, is what’s wrong with education in America.

one for the ages

Today I was in my practicum classroom helping some kids on their social studies worksheet, and I ran into a dilemma.

A big dilemma.

What do you do when the kids don’t understand the dictionary definition of a word? I’m talking about kids with learning disabilities, but the same situation could apply to kids in the lower grades or kids who are learning English — kids with limited vocabularies, in other words.

The worksheet had a list of sentences and the kids were trying to fill in the sentences from a word bank, but they didn’t know any of the words. Not one. And everyone knows — either from being a teacher or from once being a kid — how hard it is to get a kid to look up words in the dictionary. Let alone 10 of them.

One of the sentences was something like ” During the Stone Age, or the ____________, the first tools were developed.” Both kids wanted to fill the blank with “Ice Age” because they saw the word “age” and figured that was a match. (They weren’t really even reading for comprehension, just looking at the patterns between words.) So I said, “Wait, is that true? Are the Ice Age and the Stone Age the same thing?” and got the obvious answer: “No.”

I told them to skip that one and come back to it when they had fewer choices. Twenty minutes later they had narrowed the bank down to two terms: “Paleolithic era” and “technology.” I made a stupid mistake and said “This’ll be easy; you both know what ‘technology’ means!” only to receive stares full of question marks. They have all those expensive computers and interactive chalkboards in their classrooms, yet they don’t know what it’s called. I’ll be darned.

So, I had them look up the word “paleolithic.” Enter dilemma. Their dictionary, a standard classroom dictionary (this is no Oxford Unabridged)  gives a definition to the tune of: “designating or of an Old World cultural period before the Mesolithic, characterized by the use of flint, stone, and bone tools, blah blah blah.” (This one’s from Webster’s New World College Dictionary, by the way.)

So how does one react to such a dilemma? I made them look it up implying they would find the answer. It took them a lot of work to find the page, and to locate the word on the page, and then they struggled on every other word until I told them to stop reading and they had no clue what they had read. If they can’t equate “era” with “age,” chances are they won’t fare any better with “period.”

I’m stumped on this one. Short of just playing dictionary and telling them what it means (i.e. giving them the answer), what does one do?

“the computer exploded!”

I survived my first day of student teaching. I even did some teaching, not just sitting (as I had predicted). And, most importantly, the middle schoolers didn’t scare me and I didn’t run away screaming.

This particular observation was for an intro to special ed course, so my mentor is a special ed teacher and I spent most of the morning in her classroom, where she teaches resources (super structured study hall) and pull-out language arts for sixth graders.

I don’t have much of a grasp on which skills are appropriate for each grade level because I was placed in an accelerated program starting in first grade. It was clear, however, that these students were functioning well below even my most minimal expectations. All of them had difficulty reading and a couple could barely write a sentence. (It’s important here to distinguish between a sentence that is essentially correct even if it contains some spelling or grammar errors and a sentence that makes no sense whatsoever even after you translate misspelled words.)

What really struck me was the lack of correlation between verbal skills and reading comprehension skills. Most of the boys in the class (yes, they were all boys) participated actively in the discussion, raised their hands eagerly to answer questions, and spoke logically. Most of the period was spent introducing new vocabulary words, and the boys seemed eager to define each word using anecdotes. Yet when it came to writing, they were very limited in their ability to express themselves. Interesting…

Speaking of anecdotes, here are a couple:

• One of the vocab words was “conflict.” The teacher asked “what’s an example of a conflict?” to which a student replied, “like, Latinas and white chicks?”
• There were ten vocab words written on the board, and the class soon developed a sort of contest to see who would be the first to earn each word (and earn the teacher’s praise). At one point they were discussing the definition of the word “dreading” and one boy began waving his hand around in the air. When called on, he blurted out “mailbox!” which was the next word on the list. I’m glad I didn’t snort out loud, because what I immediately thought of was this:
  

  

Also, incidentally: Three out of six boys in the class told stories in which a computer exploded. And one boy told us he eventually wants to work at McDonald’s.

Amazing.