Category: English

You don’t have a pencil, but you have…

~ Kevin ~ Leave a comment

The day before break, there is joy in the air for most teachers that is nearly tangible. A much deserved break is upon us. For many of us, it’s two weeks to rejuvenate. Two weeks to catch up with our friends and families. Two weeks to relax and to focus on us—which is perfectly okay—rather than on everyone else.

When we come back from break, our interactions with kids will reflect this “down time.” We will be more patient and more lenient. We will be friendlier and, perhaps, our truer selves. Having had time away from the stress and the constant push to do more for those who need it most, we will be fresh again.

But it won’t take long for some of us—and I will admit that I have defaulted to this before—to show a side of us that isn’t the positive person that we once wrote about in our undergraduate teaching philosophies.

So with this post, I want to address the elephant in the room after winter break: How can a kid have that new __________ (insert object, item here) but can’t seem to ever bring a pencil to class?

Admit it. You will wonder it. You might think it. You might even really, really want to ask.

But what will it accomplish to ask the student, particularly in front of their peers or the class? How does it improve your relationship, which actually does matter for teaching and learning to occur, by snarkily asking about their lack of supplies?

Quick answer: It doesn’t.

Long answer: It can do irreparable harm. You’ve made the student feel inferior and stupid. You have implied that they don’t value your class, or that they value it less than another material object, like a cellphone.

But if you talk to the student, you might just find out that during the holidays, they had a parent re-enter their life temporarily. For some students, it is all too common to have a parent come back in their life during the Christmas season and then to disappear again. As one student shared with me, every year his dad buys him a new cellphone, computer, or something that’s expensive because his father thinks that the amount he spends on him will demonstrate how much he cares.

The student shared with me that he knows better. The visit will be temporary instead of permanent. It will last long enough to resurrect pain from so many years of absence. And then he will disappear again. But that doesn’t mean he throws away what he was given. But while he might still use the gift, it does not have to become a reminder from us when we see that he doesn’t have a pencil the next time he’s in our class.

I even could go on and on about the desires of humans to fit in, even though some of us don’t. For some students, getting that one item is the only thing they want and keep asking for because it feels like everyone else around them has it. (And let’s be real: We all have bought things that we didn’t need because others had them. Raise your hand if you ever purchased a Beanie Baby.)

I recently saw this Facebook post that went viral about parents pretending that gifts came from Santa.

santa

I don’t share it to advocate the message about Santa, but I do share it to emphasize the point about the disparity in Christmases that exist with so many of our families. I will be the first to say that teachers are overworked and underpaid, but I also know that we can forget that we sometimes live much more comfortable lives than most in the communities we serve.

The easy way out is to judge and assume. The more difficult route, the route where we seek to understand with our students instead of shaming them, will help us establish a safe and supportive environment that is necessary for learning.

Bruce R. Taylor and Glenn Kummery (1996) wrote about the different types of shaming in their article about family conferencing. They discuss stigmatizing shame and re-integrative shaming, and I think this can have profound effects in our classroom. The first is meant to label offenders, like the time that my then-seven-year-old niece continued to refer to herself as a “bad kid,” and the other is meant to “reject the deed and not the doer.” Our actions with kids need to reflect this.

So with the new year quickly upon us, remember to listen more than you talk when it comes to kids. What are they saying but, perhaps, without words? What are you communicating when you point out that the new iPhone 8 could have been 8,000 pencils? Compare that to what you want to communicate. For me, it is that my classroom and school will support any student in his or her learning, and I will work really hard not to make them feel ashamed along the way. I can’t control who comes into their lives outside of my classroom, but I can welcome them every day and not make them feel embarrassed when they enter my room.

 

 

Build a Positive Culture with Assessment

~ Kevin ~ Leave a comment

I think one of the things that is often overlooked when it comes to establishing a positive and supportive culture in our classrooms is assessment. As teachers, we can sometimes feel as if we have no control over it. I’ll admit that I know I have felt like this before in the face of common assessments and standardized tests. But we have more control than we think, and we need to work to reclaim not only the term but also the use of assessment in our classrooms.

I first learned about the idea of construct and consequential validity when I read Beyond Standardized Truth by Scott Filkins. In this book, Filkins explores both ideas of validity, and argues that “What happens to the student as a result of taking a test (including accounting for the instructional time devoted to participating in the assessment) is as central to the test’s educational validity as the quality of its construction” (19). He breaks this down further by posing a set of questions to help differentiate between the two. One of the questions that I think is most important is this: “Is the student in any way harmed by the assessment?” (19)  

As teachers, we spend a lot of time thinking about the validity of the construction of our assessments. We ask ourselves, Does this measure what we want it to? We think about whether or not the items are inclusive and that they honor students’ identities in order to reduce bias. We ask whether or not the assessment matches our learning targets and whether or not it is of appropriate difficulty, but we rarely ask what our assessments do to the learning environment. Will our assessment leave students feeling empowered or defeated? Will they feel as if we have prepared them along the way, or will the expectations of our assessment surprise them and damage their sense of self-efficacy, motivation to continue,  and trust toward us? 

Even if just one student’s motivation is negatively impacted by our assessment, our entire learning environment suffers. Sometimes we are quick to acknowledge this about external assessments like the ACT or SAT when we see students’ reactions as they receive their scores, but we sometimes avoid their reactions when they receive their results from our own assessments. And then there are even those teachers who pride themselves on how difficult an assessment was, rather than celebrating how many students succeeded.

Regardless of the norms that we establish or the countless times that we reiterate to the class that we “care” and are there to “support them,” it all means nothing if the way we assess them feels like a kick in the stomach or a slap in the face.

Rick Stiggins reiterates a similar point as Filkins in The Perfect Assessment System, where he argues for educators to rethink how, when, and why they assess in their classrooms. And this line stopped me hard: “You might show me the most valid and reliable assessment in the world, but if the results it generates lead students to give up in hopelessness, it may not be a high-quality assessment, for the simple reason that it may do far more harm than good” (84).

He continues later by writing that “assessment FOR learning” is important because “A student’s emotional response to assessment results will determine what that student decides to do about those results: keep working, or give up” (85).

Stiggins mentions that students who seem to always encounter failure in their assessments, can begin to think along these lines:

“This hurts; I’m not safe here”

“I can’t do this either”

“Why is it always about what I can’t do?”

“Feedback hurts me—scares me”

And these responses are in direct contrast to the type of mindset we want to cultivate in students. Those who develop positive views of themselves begin to want more success and embrace feedback, while those who experience negative consequences begin a downward spiral that can affect the rest of their educational experience. 

If we want students to take risks in their thinking, to challenge themselves, to try something on, we have to create spaces where they can try again. We have to embrace the messiness, the idea that first attempts aren’t always right. We can prove to our classes that we will support students with assessment, using our informed practice to help all kids learn.

Brookhart and Moss argue in Learning Targets that learning targets help develop students who are “assessment-capable” or “students who regulate their own learning” (79). And if we want students to really be capable of embracing and using assessments and feedback, we have to be mindful of the messages that our assignments send to students. If they are one-shot assignments, then we tell students that we don’t value mistakes or the learning process. We expect them to get it within one opportunity, something that anyone who has ever learned anything knows is not the case.

We also cannot forget that very real reality that assessments–and I use the term broadly here to include many kinds, including essays, performances, tests–are experiences for students. They do not just do these things; rather, they do these things under particular conditions and experience effects afterward. There is a direct connection to an emotional state of mind and well being that we cannot separate and we have to think long and hard about.

We must also think about how this contributes to the culture of our classroom. Do we want students who value their grades or who value learning? What do our assessments reveal at the end? This can also lead into helping students develop different types of goals. Sometimes students buy into the idea that performance goals matter more than mastery goals. As Moss and Brookhart also mention that students that choose performance goals (like getting an A on a test) are “more extrinsically motivated and rely on rewards or praise from others” (67). We can work to help students become interested in mastery goals, who want to “increase their competence,” put in effort over longer periods of time, and “expect to receive feedback on how well they are doing and how to improve” (68). The latter is the culture around goals that I would want in my classroom. 

I end with a final reminder that we have students in our classrooms who have not felt successful in very long time, if ever at all. With the start of the year upon us, I ask us all to think about the ways we can assess students to inform instruction but to also support and build students’ confidence and winning streaks. We can ask how our assessment will impact students’ motivation, and we can actively work to develop an assessment culture where everyone learns and thrives.

Talk Matters

~ Kevin ~ 1 Comment

“Thanks for talking to me like I’m normal.”

At the beginning of the summer, I began to scan documents into Evernote. I knew that reducing my entire classroom’s contents wouldn’t be easy, but I didn’t anticipate how emotional I would get when stumbling across letters from students.

It’s this line from a former student and mentee that lingers in the back of my head. And it’s this line that is on my mind as I shift into a new role as an assistant principal for the following school year.

The way we talk matters. Whether it’s to our students or to the other adults in the room, our words do things. They have incredible power. Like the student I briefly mentioned above, our words can make someone feel “normal,” or they can make them feel infinitesimal. During this time in public education when we feel as if so much is beyond our control, how we talk to colleagues and kids is completely up to us. And as Peter Johnston wrote in Choice Words, “A teacher’s choice of words, phrases, metaphors, and interaction sequences invokes and assumes these and other ways of being a self and of being together in the classroom” (9).

Now that many of us are at the midway point of our summer vacations, I invite you to think about these questions that are guiding my own work this fall about language and community.

How do you want to position the person in front of you?

Johnston also says in Choice Words that “Language works to position people in relation to one another” (9). What is the power structure you want to create? Will everyone feel valued and welcomed? Are some people’s ideas more valuable than others’ ideas?

It’s not too early to start to think about how you can be intentional with your language, especially when the positioning occurs in conjunction with your position. Will you share the locus of control, or will you allow an existing hierarchy to continue in your classroom or building? Will you be the “sage on the stage” or will you take a more student-centered, constructivist approach?

In Using Discourse Analysis to Improve Classroom Interaction, Lesley A. Rex and Laura Schiller also encourage teachers to think about how they position students. They note that “Becoming aware of our assumptions about students and how those assumptions lead us to position students has much to do with student engagement and motivation” (13). They continue by explaining it isn’t simple work to reflect on the ways in which we engage and position students. They note that “we think we know our assumptions about our students… yet our words can give us away” (9).

What identities will be created, and what stories will be told?

Johnston also gets at the idea that language is “constitutive.” In other words, “It actually creates realities and invites identities” (9). We all know the student who has been embarrassed so many times because he said the wrong thing and is now entirely reluctant to participate. We most certainly know the colleague who feels as if her opinion is never valued in important conversations. I wonder about the language that has been shared with both of these people that has shaped their identities of feeling unable or helpless.

Johnston continues later by adding that “To understand children’s development of a sense of agency, then, we need to look at the kinds of stories we arrange for children to tell themselves” (30). I would even go further and say that we need to look at the arranger. Who is shaping and contributing to the vignettes of students’ identities?

How will you work to ensure that the existing identities are challenged, and create spaces where new identities can form or be arranged? Whether you start back in August or September, it’s a new opportunity to create spaces where new identities can develop or existing ones can be refined. I’m not saying this will be easy, but we have more power than we often think about when it comes to the very people forming in front of us. Our identities are always malleable and works in progress, but our language has to be open enough that it can allow this identity work to happen on individual and group levels, or our language can reinforce the very identities that exist in front of us.

And this work takes time! As Rex and Schiller also note, “It takes repeated displays for others to recognize someone’s identity” (20). They continue by adding that the same is true for students’ thoughts about teachers. Identity work doesn’t happen over night; it takes weeks to occur. But we do need to be intentional early on about the “repeated displays” that will take place in order to allow those identities to form, especially if we are rewriting old identities.

What are your iconic phrases?

“Make good choices.”

“You are better than that.”

“What are you reading?”

I polled a few students during the summer and asked about my own language. These are the top three responses that students sent back to me when asked about what I say most often.

What I like about the third one in particular is that it assumes that the student has developed an identity as a reader. I don’t anticipate that they aren’t reading; I, instead, assume the opposite.

Think about the unwritten messages that your most common language implies. Are you assuming the best of all the people around you, or are you letting other things get in the way? What’s even more important is to think about how some of the phrases you say too often negatively position others or create identities that are not as conducive to learning as you’d like.

How will you repair moments when another “loses face”?

Rex and Schiller also introduce the idea of “saving face,” when someone works to protect their views about themselves so they are not embarrassed or diminished (45). Sometimes this happens. It is inevitable. In fact, I still remember the time my fourth grade teacher told me—in front of the entire class—that I did a project “entirely wrong.” Our words can linger and the damage can last if we don’t intentionally work to repair hurt identities.

One of the best ways to notice if we need to repair and help “save face” is by reading students’ body language. As Rex and Schiller also point out, “In order to determine if we have threatened our listener’s face, we should focus not only on what we meant, but even more on the listener’s reaction” (45). So if we see a student slouched over, turning away, or ask immediately to leave the room after contributing, we know that we have done something wrong. So it is our responsibility to intervene. In my own experience, students have appreciated my intervention when things go awry. And they most certainly will! We’re working with humans here. One move that I make regularly during discussions is to act as the clarifier. I’ll use a prompt (often it’s some form of “So, what I heard you say is…) and help the student enter a position of explaining their point in different words so that everyone can better understand.

How will you name and celebrate what they have done?  

Johnston also writes that “Children, and adults, often accomplish things without any awareness of what they have done” (15). As teachers, especially within the content areas, we have the ability to name and label the specific things students do that are quite complex. They might do them automatically, but we can invite them into disciplinary specific ways of thinking by sharing the language and helping them name their moves.

 

The old saying goes that “talk is cheap.” In education, I would argue that it’s our currency. It’s where we get the “most bang for our buck.” Spend your words wisely and intentionally, and don’t be afraid to have open, honest conversations about language.