An open-ended blog prompt is a rare opportunity. What should I write about? I feel like after these 11 months so far, there is always something to write about. My time in graduate studies has made me more consciously reflective and has given me new language and lenses to talk about things. I can talk about things in reference to Baggio or Darling Hammond. I could even use November as a reference point in spite of the retroactive nature of his argument. Just having all these ideas floating around, regardless of their academic merit, opens so many doors for discussions. However, I decided to talk about a different lens. The ones my students have of me.
For our required second round of research, I developed and shot and simple survey to get some data on my current cohort of students. Most of it was straightforward stuff, self-report Likert scales, multiple choice opinion questions. I mostly designed it to give me some nice graphics and workable numbers for my capstone website. On a whim, thinking maybe I could get a nice quote reel going, I gave my students a short answer question, asking them why they thought I did certain things. The results, while not unexpected, were profound to me. I asked students why they thought I liked to give them options for how to work in class and they gave me a range of reasons from college preparedness to efficiency to preventing boredom to letting students work to their strengths. They gave relational answers about me trusting them or how they thought it was kind of me to not force them to do something boring. There was really a greater variety than I expected. This really made me consider how my students have been viewing the things I have been trying in my classroom. It made me consider how me being in the Touro program has bled over to them. I used to feel a little conflicted about trying out crazy new ideas in my classroom. My main reasoning for this was that in trying to do something totally new I would almost certainly make mistakes or miss things. Sure, the new thing might be better a few years down the road when I work out the kinks, but those few years of students will suffer the rough patches. That has just been a bitter pill to swallow. I definitely felt this way about students who were caught in the middle of the Common Core transition. There were holes in the standards as we moved from NCLB to the Common Core State Standards. There was a lack of good curriculum as textbook companies just slapped Common Core stickers on old books. We are just now seeing students stabilize. They are just now showing up at sixth grade with the expected standards covered. It was such a raw deal for those students stuck in the middle. Even just one year of shaky math instruction can have a large ripple effect on a student’s education. However, the survey I just completed, while FAR from rigorous, might have something to say about that. My students, despite the mistakes I’ve made as I alter my classroom, can see what I am trying to do. They can name the reasons behind why we do what we are attempting to do. In a way, when we try to change our practice, we are modelling lifelong learning and growth mindsets. We are showing with our actions that innovation and improvement are valuable. We show that change is worth risk and that mistakes can happen without ruining everything. Our students watch what we do closely, seek to understand why we are the way we are, and can be successful in that endeavor despite our growing pains. It is true that innovation sometimes has immediate costs for long term benefits and it can feel unfair to the students who are just passing through our rooms, but I feel like it models a great lesson for them. Maybe my brand new inquiry unit on proportions falls flat or maybe it isn’t as interesting to 12 year olds as I think it might be. My students can see that I value building something better, despite setbacks, more than living in the past.
4 Comments
11/27/2017 08:32:05 pm
I can completely relate to being anxious or overly thoughtful about trying out new stuff that may or may not work in the classroom. It can be really challenging to test out new ideas with a roomful of students blinking at you. I also worry about wasting any of my minutes with them - or more accurately, wasting THEIR minutes with me. Like you, however, I've come to the conclusion that the learning process must be lived out in real life for it to have lasting value. My students see me as innovator and problem solver, and that might encourage them to recognize that solving problems is a life-long adventure.
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james landis
11/27/2017 10:00:59 pm
Patrick,
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Nancy
11/28/2017 05:48:09 pm
Patrick,
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Dan
11/30/2017 06:34:09 pm
Patrick,
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