Collaborative Learning Means All Students Are Vital

In the past I’ve had trouble conceptualizing what collaborative learning really entails. After Tuesday’s class, I feel much more confident about my understanding of it. The biggest takeaway for me was that in collaborative learning, all students need to be vital, just like the strips of paper in ‘Let’s Make a Square!’. Students will be able to tell when their role is just a dangling unnecessary one, and their learning experience will suffer. Just a guess, but I bet this is easier said than done. I believe that being intentional as I plan collaborative learning experiences will help as I try to make sure all students are important during the whole experience.

I recently read an article “500 Feet of Respect”  about a unit focusing on the fact that the criminal justice system is disproportionately full of students who are LGBTQ, black, and latino. While the article doesn’t explicitly discuss collaborative learning, I think it is an interesting example of a teacher intentionally forming groups during a unit to develop empathy and cross cultural skills. Throughout the unit, students in the New York City transfer school were placed into different groups for explicit reasons. When the class studied ‘disproportionality’ in math, straight black students worked together to analyze data about the imprisonment of queer youth. Straight and LGBTQ white students analyzed data about the imprisonment of black youth. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t acknowledge the presence of queer students of color and that is something I would definitely want to be mindful of if I found myself teaching a unit like this. As the unit progressed and the class prepared presentations for a panel of community members, the groups became heterogeneous.  At the end of the unit, students had a better grasp on the realities of other student’s lives and the classroom culture shifted as a result of working together for community panel.

Towards a Collaborative Approach

I need to listen to the contributions of my colleagues. Right now, I don’t practice this in the thoughtful way I would hope to. The contributions of my colleagues in 407 repeatedly show me how much valuable information other people hold, and Tuesday was no exception.

As we started drafting our chocolate chip cookie rubrics, I recognized it as a low stakes activity and checked out. I tossed out a few ideas but didn’t defend any of them. As we workshopped the rubrics later, I realized how useful a second set of eyes could be. I learned I need to be careful of confusing the quantity of a thing, say chocolate chips or vocabulary words, with their quality. I also need to be clear about criteria. Sometimes only half of the words I need to explain what I want make their way onto the page.  As I write this, I wonder why I didn’t see what I could learn from my colleagues during the writing of the rubric.

The answer I think, is that I am struggling to shift from being competitive to being collaborative. In the past, I’ve seen school as something I could win by getting better grades than my classmates. If I’m not getting graded on my cookie rubric, why bother? As I become a teacher, I’m valuing collaboration. I don’t just mean practicing collaborative learning in my classroom, but valuing what my colleagues have to share with me. Lesson planning with Laura made me want to have a co teacher for my whole career! As a teacher, what goes on in my classroom is not about having a better lesson plan than my colleague across the hall. It’s about working together to help support student success.

Observation Blog: What Happens When We Decide a Student is Tough?

What?
Something I’m working on is figuring out what it means to teach to the whole student, to really use a holistic approach to teaching and learning. What habits of mind can I adopt so that I don’t see my student’s ‘personal’ life as separate from their ‘academic’ life? Giving access to my content is about addressing their well being. What does this look like?

I did my classroom observations in the purple room. It was a privilege. My cooperating teacher really paid attention to her student’s whole selves. She knew who was working and who wasn’t in her student’s homes, what activities they were involved in at school, and what they were like as learners. I want to point out that all those before, during and after reading activities setting up camp in the middle of Subjects Matter are also setting up camp in the purple room. I saw some journal practices I’m definitely going to steal.

But the thing I keep coming back to is a particular student who consistently doesn’t participate in any of these activities. I’ll call him Adam.

So What?

Classroom observations remind me of musical chairs. Everytime you play, you end up in a different seat. Sometimes you’re an active participant for the whole game. Sometimes you’re on the sidelines pretty much from the word go. During my observations in the purple room, I’ve been a grader of notebooks, a silent notetaker, and a disciplinarian. During my first observation, I watched the whole class take out The Stranger and read Chapter 1. The whole class that is, except Adam.

“Do you have your book Adam?” I asked. He nodded and his eyes flicked to and from his backpack.  I replied sternly, “I think you should take it out since you’re going to be quizzed on it shortly.” He gave me an aggravated stare and he did not take out his book. My cooperating teacher gave me a tight lipped smile and raised her eyebrows.

Throughout my observations I saw several attempts to redirect his behavior by both my cooperating teacher and the special education teacher who is often present. What I saw communicated to Adam were feelings of anger and disappointment regarding his grades and participation. For example, the slamming of a gradebook on his desk, or curt remarks as he stared into space. Sometimes he was pulled out for a minute or two. I’m not privy to the content of those conversations. I’ve been told his current behavior is pretty much what has been happening all year, that he’s tough. I can’t be sure, but because of what else I’ve seen in the purple room, I’m guessing anger and disappointment were not the to go to responses in September. But the year has marched on, it is the 4th quarter and Adam might not graduate.

During my last observation, I had a little aha moment, Happy people don’t go through their day like that. What’s wrong? The floodgates of my own memories suddenly opened up.

 

Throughout high school, there would be weeks or months where I would refuse to go to school. In the mornings I’d throw violent tantrums. Some days I would convince my parents I was going, and as soon as they dropped me off I’d grab the RIPTA back to a now empty house. I wasn’t doing this to drive my mother crazy. I wasn’t doing it to drive my teachers nuts while they struggled to teach someone with such huge attendance gaps. I had stuff going on, and until I took care of that, I could care less about school. My mom say’s now that I was tough.

But what happens we decide a student is tough?

Now what?

I don’t think that my mother or my cooperating teacher use the word tough as a label that makes it okay to give up on adolescents. But I do think that the language we use shapes our perceptions and vice versa. When we say a student is tough, it can shift the onus of academic success completely onto their shoulders. He’s tough, what can I do? A habit of mind I want to try out, in my efforts to teach the whole student, is to replace the word tough with hurting. I think a hurting student is one we can help, one who has wounds we can help them heal. I think that shift in language will help set me up to keep trying, to find more patience, and to never forget that the student and I are both responsible for their learning.

Where I Try To Convince You It Is About Race

 

H/T Breakthrough Providence

I’m really pleased that some folks are continuing the conversation we had on Tuesday on their blogs. It’s an important conversation that is too often swept under the rug. As you might have guessed, I believe that the way teachers are well, teaching, is being affected by the fact that Central Falls has a high Latino population. In this post, I hope to convince y’all that is the case.

“While no one thinks white teachers are knowingly treating minority students differently, researchers are finding more and more evidence that subtle differences add up and may help explain a very big problem: The fact that African Americans and Latinos on average do worse on achievement tests than whites.” (Brunden 2014)

I am not saying that (white) teachers are intentionally trying to undermine the success of students of color, but I am saying they are doing it. I personally feel that the way we construct racism in America makes it almost impossible for people to admit when they have been, well, racist. But let’s be honest, a person’s ethnicity can and does influence what we think about how intelligent they are, what their families are like, and how we think they will treat us. No one is colorblind. Myself included! We’re not going to become more culturally responsive teachers by ignoring that fact. Don’t try to tell me that the only reason multiple women in our class were told to carry mace was because CF is economically depressed.

Mountains of research show that "teachers attribute ethnic students' lack of achievement to the students themselves, their parents, and communities” and not to their own abilities as a teacher (Irving 2003). Essentially, this means that compared with white students, when students of color don’t do their reading, or perform poorly on a test, teachers are much more likely to think, Well, they must have parents who don’t care, or Well, the challenges of this community are just so tough, instead of Hm...what do I need to change about my teaching practices? (Landsman 2004, Tettegah 1996, Ziechner 92). (See those citations? I’m not making this up, I swear!).  When we catch ourselves doing this, we need to admit it and figure out ways to change our practices. That's part of what it means to be a reflective practitioner, right?

Students in one St. Paul, Minnesota, high school talked about a teacher who asked the white kids in an advanced placement class the tough questions but turned to the few black or Latino students when she had an easy question that "anyone could answer." When confronted with this situation, the teacher was stunned. She realized it was true and admitted, "I just assumed you didn't know the answers, and I didn't want to embarrass you." (Landsman 2004)

I love this example for two reasons. One, a teacher admits to a mistake she was making, specifically a bigoted mistake. That is hard to do! Two, her intentions were good: she didn't want to embarrass her students. As a person trying to have these difficult conversations about race, I need to remember that a teachers behavior comes from a place of trying to do what is best for their student. We all want student success, right? But let's please remember that race and ethnicity matters. And if you don’t believe me, take a look at the rest of this WONDERFUL photo set by Breakthrough Providence posted on Thursday. I can’t help but think students have heard these comments from peers and adults.

Please leave me lots of comments or questions, I would LOVE to engage in a dialogue with all of you about this! I know we are all just trying to be the best teachers we can be!!

References

"Breakthrough Providence Anti-Bullying Photo Campaigns." Anti-Bullying Photo Campaigns | Facebook. Breakthrough Providence, 10 Apr. 2014. Web. 11 Apr. 2014.

Brundun, Jenny. "Teachers Undo Personal Bias to Help Students of Color Engage." Colorado Public Radio. N.p., 5 Feb. 2014. Web. 11 Apr. 2014.

Irvine, J. J. (2003). A Proposal for Change. Educating Teachers for Diversity: Seeing with a Cultural Eye. (70-86). New York: Teachers College.

Landsman, Julie. "Confronting the Racism of Low Expectations." Educational Leadership 62.3 (2001): 28-32. Web. 11 Apr. 2014. <http://ipsdweb.ipsd.org/uploads/PDAC/Confronting_the_Racism_of_Low_Expectations.pdf>.

Tettegah, Sharon. "The Racial Consciousness Attitudes of White Prospective Teachers and Their Perceptions of the Teachability of Students from Different Racial/Ethnic Backgrounds: Findings from a California Study." The Journal of Negro Education 65.2 (1996): 151. Print.

Zeichner, Kenneth. "Educating Teachers for Cultural Divsersity." National Center for Research on Teacher Learning (1992): n. pag. Web.

Goodbye to Linear Thinking!

Effective teachers are clear, organized, warm.

In my Ed. Psych. notes from Spring of 2012, this is written several times. I’m beginning to see that if I want to be clear, organized, and warm, I need to stop thinking about lesson planning, teaching, and learning as a linear process. Understanding by Design encourages us to to think about acceptable evidence of learning, and make objectives from there. This week our conversations about questions made me think about answers. Designing questions needs to happen around the kind of answers I want. As Dr.Horwitz pretty explicitly said, designing questions also needs to happen divorced from the linear presentation of Bloom’s Taxonomy. There is a time and a place for every level of question, and I don’t have to start the day with knowledge level questions and work my way up to the evaluation ones.

Laura and I did some lesson planning together on Tuesday afternoon to plan for a lesson we taught on Wednesday (stay tuned for that blog post!). I found myself starting off with knowledge and recall level questions, saving the evaluation question for later. But then we caught ourselves! We revamped our plan, and there was an evaluation question in the prompt we used for the hook.

As I’m writing this, I realize that the answer we were looking for with all our questions was really well aligned with our objectives and our assessment, which was an exit ticket. So, one: yay! But two: questions, answers, objectives and assessments should all be linked, and I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about that before. They all need to be well connected to best support student learning. Something to keep in mind if I’m going to be that clear, organized, warm teacher I want to be!