Month: January 2017

Day 1: Flurry of Feelings

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How science teacher Amber feels after her first day…

Excited? Happy? Overwhelmed? Stressed? Exhausted? These are all feelings I would expect to be feeling after my first day, but instead I feel nervous, doubtful and underwhelmed. My initial reaction to these feelings was you shouldn’t be feeling this way, this is what you wanted to do – is it really what you want to do? I worried about my emotions. I worried that if I didn’t feel the excitement and joy that teaching brings, was I really cut out for it?

After fretting, I realized how much of a closed mindset I had. These feelings weren’t feelings of failure. They are feelings of success. Instead of focusing on things that went wrong, I focused on things that could have gone better. Instead of wishing I had done things differently, I spent time thinking of how I can change for the future. Being nervous, critical of my work, and reflective only mean that I care, that I have chosen the right career, and am ready to be a teacher.

Here are some of my critical reflections:

1. Was I too nice? 
I spent the first class engaging students in a fun lab activity and getting-to-know-you activities, rather than spending 85 minutes on the course outline and moving into content. I think that this went over really well as students were far more engaged in participating in class discussions with me and their peers after the activity. For example, students were on their phones less after the activity than they had been prior, and were actively participating when we created our classroom charter. But now I wonder, was I too nice? Instead of setting any expectations from me, we set class expectations. We shared laughs, ate cookies and told stories. Are students really going to think of me as an authoritative figure after this class? My hope is that this class began the the formation of good relationships that I have with students, so that I won’t have to incorporate “classroom management” as explicitly. I’ve decided that tomorrow or the next day, I’m going to revisit the classroom charters and go through explicit parts that I feel are important to enforce. Hopefully, this will reinforce my authority figure but since I am approaching it from the charter than they made, it will be less “class rules” and more “this is how we can respect our teacher.”

2. Are my lessons too long?
I planned for today’s lesson to only take 65 minutes. In one of my classes, it took the full 85 minutes, the other I didn’t finish what I had planned. Now I am concerned that all of my lessons will be too long and that I’ll be constantly pushing my lessons over. I’m now really critical of my plans and am keen to cut out details that are unnecessary, and I’m also really keen on watching my timing in class more. I also hope that I can reduce my worry over this, as learning shouldn’t be kept to a schedule.

3. How am I going to make it these 10 weeks? I’m exhausted already.
Day 1: 2 hours spent in the car, 10 hours spent at the school, 3 hours spent teaching, and a few hours ahead planning. I’m already exhausted. My feet and back hurt, my neck aches, and I’m ready to sleep for hours. But with time, I know that I will become used to these long days. I will be excited to wake up at 5am to have a great day at school. I will be excited to stay up late marking and planning, because this is what I want to do. Don’t get me wrong – I am excited about tomorrow. I’m just not used to the long days so my excitement isn’t as strong as I hoped it would be. So instead of dwelling on my exhaustion, I’m going to eat some ice cream, watch some TV and go to bed early. That I can get excited about.

It was only day one. I have 45 more days to go. I know they will go by fast, and I know that every day I am going to learn more. Learning will come from within – through an open mind, taking risks, accepting failure and celebrating accomplishments. In the words of my idol Ms. Frizzle, learning only occurs when you take chances, make mistakes, and get messy! Bring it on day 2.

The Final Countdown

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Practicum starts two weeks today. Everyone is buzzing – either from excitement, stress, caffeine overloads, or a combination of all of them. I have been focusing on the stress: can I get my unit plans and lesson plans done on time? will the students like me? will I be an effective teacher? how can I reduce all of this stress?

I think its time for a mindset switch. To calm down, I have a SODA: Stop, observe, deliberate, and act. I stop, take a few deep breaths. I observe my emotions, my thoughts, and how I am (or was) acting. Deliberate is where I plan what I’m going to do and engage is trust thought processes. Then I act by putting these plans into action, but with a changed mindset.

In times of high stress, sometimes I feel like I need a pep talk, words of support and encouragement. I have learned to take solace in YouTube sensation Kid President’s pep talks. After observing that I’m stressed, feeling discouraged, overwhelmed, beaten down or ready to give up, I choose to watch Kid President’s first pep talk (video below). Without fail, I can watch this video and feel transformed, ready to take on new tasks and be awesome. I can act on these new feelings, refreshed and ready for the challenges that I just bogging me down. I watch these videos and I am ready – ready to face the storm of fear and excitement, confusion and growth, and teaching and learning.

This is your time. This is my time. This is our time. – Kid President

 

So much to do, so little time: Unit and Lesson Planning with Inquiry

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Winter break – a time of friends, family, and festive cheer. If you aren’t a BEd student that is. I spent my break brainstorming, planning, worrying, fretting, writing, deleting, questioning and dreaming. It was game time to put plan as much as possible to be prepared for my upcoming practicum. Here is a summary of the thoughts I had with regard to planning and incorporating my inquiry into my unit and lessons.

Planning is a lot harder than I expected:

This isn’t because I didn’t know what to do with the content. I had too many ideas that I liked and didn’t have enough time to fit it all in! I had to weigh the pros and cons of each activity, and placed the ones that didn’t make the cut into the “To try at a later date” file.

Planning also takes a lot more time than I thought it would! Writing out exactly what we would be doing, the probing questions, guessing the timing, making the handouts and notes… I would spend many many hours on one lesson and only be partially satisfied. I still go back and change the lessons up. I hope that as I become more practiced and confident, my lesson plans will take less time to make.

Incorporating study strategies is also a lot harder than I expected:

I’ve been planning my first two weeks of the practicum, which is an introduction to science and safety unit. We cover safety, measurement, lab equipment, the scientific method and designing experiments. There isn’t a lot of room for study strategies to come into play in these first two weeks, other than having a class dedicated to study strategies and self-regulation skills. I didn’t want to do this as I think it would be too much of a lecture and students wouldn’t be interested. I wanted to incorporate these skills into the unit so they could practice the skills on content they would be tested on. The nature of the first unit doesn’t mesh well with the study strategies.  A lot of the content is memorization and application, which doesn’t fit with the study strategies that I wanted to teach them.

Due to this clash, I have decided that since I have time, I will incorporate a study strategies class into my first two week unit. Students will spend time looking the study strategies they use, others that they don’t use, and how they could implement them into their routines. I plan on setting it up as a hook, lesson, then carousel activity where students can choose what they want to learn more about and improve on. The carousel will contain areas on specific study strategies, time management tips, test taking tips, how to handle test anxiety, etc. This allows the students to focus on what is important to them. Students will then write a reflective journal entry on why they chose those categories, what they learned, and how they plan on implementing them. This gives students more autonomy over their learning and skills, and helps them evaluate points of weakness and seek help.

I still plan on incorporating study skills into activities and assignments, but those will happen in later units that I’m only beginning to plan now. I intend on using the journals frequently to check in on student understanding. I also plan on using flash cards for vocabulary, summarizing sections at the end of notes for students to write the key points, and concept maps that students can build on throughout the unit.

There just isn’t enough time:

I had this amazing idea that I could plan half of my practicum prior to it even starting, but I’m realizing now that it just isn’t possible. To do it right, I need to slow down and spend my time focusing on a few days at a time, rather than a whole unit. My plans thus far are very thorough, but they don’t extend further than two weeks into the practicum. I don’t think I’ll make it further than this as my plans are a constant state of flux. I can’t keep one day to stay the same, I’m always finding ways of improving it. I’m proud of my desire to have the perfect lesson, but what is perfect on paper might not be in practice. I am eager to see what happens when I teach these lessons to my students.

Self-regulation and time management: Monkeys, Monsters and the Student

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On a practicum visit last semester, I was introduced to this TED talk by Tim Urban. Funny, exceedingly accurate and very well illustrated, it made me ponder my own struggles with procrastination and those of others, including my students. I highly recommend you watch the video if you have the time.

A (very) brief summary for those who didn’t watch the video:

Urban describes the brain of a procrastinator as having parts: the Rational Decision Maker and the Instant Gratification Monkey. The Rational Decision Maker has all the intentions of doing work to meet deadlines, but the Instant Gratification Monkey interrupts and always brings the person off task down a spiral of useless YouTube videos. When the deadline has approached, the Panic Monster steps in and scares everyone. The Instant Gratification Monkey runs away and the Rational Decision Maker is put into overdrive to complete all the tasks necessary to make the Panic Monster leave.

Don’t you wish you had watched the video now? 🙂

Experiences with Monkeys, Monsters and the Student: 

I am a self-proclaimed self-regulated person: I set goals to meet deadlines, I plan how I will achieve these goals, and I reflect once the process is over on how I could improve next time. The most important point in this process is the plan. My plans consist of two strategies: break the task into smaller units with individual deadlines, and assign each deadline a reward. This system allows me to combat my Instant Gratification Monkey because I consistently have gratification waiting at the end of a goal, along with the immense feeling of satisfaction at completing a goal. Some rewards are small (watching an episode of The Office or eating some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream) while other rewards are large (going out with friends for the evening or going away for the weekend). These rewards work sometimes, but frequently the Instant Gratification Monkey strikes and I’ll be up watching cat videos all evening.

I bring up my own struggles because the Instant Gratification Monkey plays a role in all of our lives. No one is immune to the Instant Gratification Monkey and if you claim you are, you are just lying to yourself. Some people can combat the monkey better than others depending on their motivation and self-regulation. My question is: are adolescents more prone to give in to the hands of the Instant Gratification Monkey? Adolescents have less experience dealing with deadlines, focus on extrinsic rewards much more heavily than adults do, and are experiencing information, media and entertainment instantaneously at all hours of the day.

The skills that I use to combat the Instant Gratification Monkey are self-regulation skills. Time management is a key skill that many people I know and have interacted with fail to have, all claiming that it is a skill that they were not taught in school. I think it is more important now than ever to teach our students about time management. If gratification is frequently at our finger tips, how can we ever be effective learners or workers?

The future of procrastinators:

Urban’s final comments in the video were about two types of procrastination: deadline versus non-deadline. When people procrastinate without deadlines, people watch their life go by waiting for them to participate. This has to do with a person’s motivations; those that are intrinsically motivated do not procrastinate on life, they live it to its fullest. My hope is to instill intrinsic motivation in the classroom as well in the lives of my students, so that our future is full of life go-getters who only give in to the Instant Gratification Monkey to procrastinate deadlines, not life.

Urban, T. (2016, Feb.) Tim Urban: Inside the mind of a master procrastinator. Retrieved 10 Jan 2017 from https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_master_procrastinator

Self-assessment and the self-regulating student

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Thinking about how to incorporate self-regulated learning (SRL) skills and study strategies into the classroom has brought me to a component of teaching and learning: self-assessment. I want to incorporate SRL skills and study strategies into my teaching so that students can be more effective learners and are more efficient at studying with the goal of achieving more on their summative assessments. I have already planned on using study strategies as means of formative assessment throughout a unit, an example of assessment for learning. After reading John A. Ross’ “The reliability, validity and utility of self-assessment,” I believe that using SRL skills as assessment as learning through self-assessments of assignments can help enhance student’s self-regulation skills and can improve their self-efficacy.

Why self-regulation and self-assessment go hand in hand:

“We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.” – John Dewey

Students who are self-regulated learners monitor their learning process, set goals and use effective strategies to meet them, and modify their behaviors based on feedback (Zimmerman, 1990). I believe that self-assessment can be an effective tool for students to monitor their (academic) progress by providing themselves feedback on where they need to improve or change their strategies and behaviors. This is a clear example of assessment as learning as student are able to reflect on their efforts, evaluate their performance and determine their strengths and weaknesses.

What the research has to say:

Ross’ article is a review of research on student self-assessment. One of the main findings was that self-assessment can contribute to increased achievement and improved behavior in students (pg. 5). Ross summarizes the three processes that self-regulated students use to monitor, interpret and modify their behavior:

1. self-observation (i.e. focus only on areas that are being assessed),
2. self-judgement (i.e. determining if and how well they met their goals), and
3. self-reaction (i.e. interpreting their level of satisfaction based on their goal achievements).

The central finding of Ross’ review was that the reliability, validity and utility of self-assessment can be enhanced by teaching students how to properly assess their work (pg. 5). Ross outlined the self-assessment training that he has used, that I hope to be able to implement into my teaching practice (pg. 4-5):

1. involve the students in defining assessment criteria (e.g. for assignments that they will self-assess),
2. teach students how to apply their created criteria (e.g. model an application of the rubric),
3. give students meaningful feedback on their self-assessments (e.g. discuss differences between self-assessment and teacher-/peer-assessment), and
4. guide students on how to use their assessments to develop action plans (e.g. help students create short- and long-term goals, as well as what strategies they can use to achieve their goals).

Ross also indicates the positive effect self-assessment training can have on student self-efficacy. Ross states that when students are learned in self-assessment and teachers foster self-assessment through rubric design, students can perceive themselves as successful, interpreting their performance as mastery (pg. 6). Self-efficacy is enhanced vicariously in the classroom when self-assessment is incorporated into assessment, such as when students are given more responsibility and ownership in their learning by creating rubrics (pg. 6).

Using self-assessment in my teaching practice:

Based on Ross’ review, I intend to use self-assessments with my students to enhance their self-regulation skills, monitor their self-efficacy, and provide another source of feedback. Self-assessment is a great method of tracking student learning goals (both curriculum and their own) and offers a method for me to provide guiding feedback on how they can incorporate new skills or behaviors to achieve their goals.

Citations:

Ross, J. A. (2006). The reliability, validity and utility of self-assessment. Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation, 11(10), 1-13.

Zimmerman, B. (1990). Self-regulated learning and academic achievement: An overview. Educational Psychologist, 25(1), 3-17.