I
had just finished drafting a blog post for our first year #becomingeducational
students when I saw this challenge – and I thought I would share ‘the blog wot
I wrote’ – below – and a few thoughts about staff blogging for students.
Last
year when we first started our course blog (rather than just uploading
PPT slides to our VLE) we were a bit clunky in our own writing… we often
started with a recap of the what, why and how of the lesson … Funny really
because we wanted our students to blog to develop their academic voice and
power in a way that was ‘theirs’ that was them – all of them as they were – but
also the them they were becoming… We theorised this as quasi-academic writing
that allowed them to playfully and wholly perform themselves as they became the
academic they wanted to be (not necessarily the neutered academic that more
formal writing might process them into being).
And
– yes – we felt this process ‘worked’: students blogged – they had something to
say – and in the end even the most truculent of them wanted to have their say
about the course – about the assignments – and about themselves. Not a
plagiarised word in sight!
But
we changed too. We started to find our voices and ourselves – we started to
become the academics we wanted to be. (Cool.)
So
this year – we began blogging with a more freeform ‘voice’ trying to connect
with and better engage with our student readers… and suddenly writing promotes *our* learning – and we begin to say some of the tacit taken for granted things
that need to be said.
Anyway
– this week we asked our students to explore the University as a site and sites
of learning – ready for a Poster Presentation in a couple of weeks time – and –
oh yes – because we wanted them to SEE – to see differently – to see the taken
for granted stuff about education – about *their* education… and to start to
think about what they might want to do about ‘that’. So here’s what the process
of blogging helped us to write:
#becomingeducational
W5: look – see
This
week, W5, Study Week, we asked you to explore the University as a
representation of learning, teaching and assessment – and as a site or sites of
learning.
We
wanted you to develop your ability to observe – to really look and see what might
be happening somewhere – and perhaps see it as if for the first time. Real
‘seeing’ allows us to bring fresh eyes to things that we may have previously
taken for granted. Our new sight can give us fresh insight. This is a great
tool for a researcher and perhaps is especially essential for the education
researcher: after all, we’ve all been through school; we all ‘know’ what
education, teaching and learning are all about – don’t we?
Well
– perhaps we don’t.
After
all we enter schooling very young – and the schooling we get shapes our
experience and our understanding of what schooling is – can – and should - be.
However, as we become educationalists – perhaps we need to see what education
actually *is* - socially, politically and, yes, economically. Perhaps we need
to really see what it is and what effect it is having – and keep asking, who
and what is education for? Whose interests are served when education takes
place like this? Could it be different? Could it be better? What would ‘better’
look like?
Participant
Observation
We
asked you to really look – to see – to observe – and to start to analyse. You
were acting like anthropologists studying a new culture – and we are looking
forward to your findings. We mentioned ‘participant observation’ – this is where
somebody who is participating in an experience also tries to observe it. So as
University students looking at University learning and teaching spaces – you
were participant observers. On the other hand, you were not participating in
the group discussions or the corridor or canteen discussions that you were
observing. In preparation for your research project you might like to adopt the
stance of a participant observer in your lectures and seminars, in your own
study groups, in your peer mentoring encounters. As you do this you might start
to see what works well in promoting student learning – and perhaps what works
not so well. This might inspire you and help you to choose a research focus in
which you are really interested. Below is an account of how a study support
teacher prepared for her job by becoming a participant observer in her school.
Those
Research Projects – again
For
your research project we will ask you to investigate an aspect of University
teaching and learning in more detail. After experiencing being a student for
some time, you might find that you might want to explore particular practices
like reading and notemaking or group work or attitudes to assessment or
writing. You might come up with a completely different idea. We will be preparing
for this together in class – and the proposal is not due till W19 – but keep
your eyes open now – and use your Passion.
What
brings you joy? What breaks your heart? How can you use this to design your
projects? Check out this video on Passion Based Learning in the school sector: http://youtu.be/6kgdHp5amUM - and think
how you can use your passions here and now.
Teachers Shadowing Students:
What I Learned By Doing What I Ask Students To
Do
The following account comes from a veteran HS
teacher who just became a Coach in her building. Because her experience is so
vivid and sobering I have kept her identity anonymous. But nothing she
describes is any different than my own experience in sitting in HS classes for
long periods of time. And this report of course accords fully with the results
of our student surveys.
She wrote:
I have made a terrible mistake.
I waited fourteen years to do something that I should have done
my first year of teaching: shadow a student for a day. It was so eye-opening
that I wish I could go back to every class of students I ever had right now and
change a minimum of ten things – the layout, the lesson plan, the checks for
understanding. Most of it!
This is the first year I am working in a school but not teaching
my own classes; I am the High School Learning Coach, a new position for the
school this year. My job is to work with teachers and admins. to improve
student learning outcomes.
As part of getting my feet wet, my principal suggested I “be” a
student for two days: I was to shadow and complete all the work of a 10th grade
student on one day and to do the same for a 12th grade student
on another day. My task was to do everything the student was supposed to do: if
there was lecture or notes on the board, I copied them as fast I could into my
notebook. If there was a Chemistry lab, I did it with my host student. If there
was a test, I took it (I passed the Spanish one, but I am certain I failed the
business one).
Teachers Shadowing Students: My Class
Schedules For The Day
(Note: we have a block
schedule; not all classes meet each day):
The schedule that day for the 10th grade
student:
7:45 – 9:15: Geometry
9:30 – 10:55: Spanish II
10:55 – 11:40: Lunch
11:45 – 1:10: World History
1:25 – 2:45: Integrated Science
The schedule that day for the 12th grade
student:
7:45 – 9:15: Math
9:30 – 10:55: Chemistry
10:55 – 11:40: Lunch
11:45 – 1:10: English
1:25 – 2:45: Business
Shadowing My Students: Key Takeaway #1
Students sit all day, and sitting is
exhausting.
I could not believe how tired I was after the first day. I
literally sat down the entire day, except for walking to and from classes. We
forget as teachers, because we are on our feet a lot – in front of the board,
pacing as we speak, circling around the room to check on student work, sitting,
standing, kneeling down to chat with a student as she works through a difficult
problem…we move a lot.
But students move almost never. And never is exhausting. In
every class for four long blocks, the expectation was for us to come in, take
our seats, and sit down for the duration of the time. By the end of the day, I
could not stop yawning and I was desperate to move or stretch. I couldn’t
believe how alert my host student was, because it took a lot of conscious
effort for me not to get up and start doing jumping jacks in the middle of
Science just to keep my mind and body from slipping into oblivion after so many
hours of sitting passively.
I was drained, and not in a good, long, productive-day kind of
way. No, it was that icky, lethargic tired feeling. I had planned to go back to
my office and jot down some initial notes on the day, but I was so drained I
couldn’t do anything that involved mental effort (so instead I watched TV) and
I was in bed by 8:30.
If I could go back and change my classes now, I would
immediately change the following three things:
§
mandatory stretch halfway through the class
§
put a Nerf basketball hoop on the back of my door and encourage
kids to play in the first and final minutes of class
§
build in a hands-on, move-around activity into every single
class day. Yes, we would sacrifice some content to do this – that’s fine. I was
so tired by the end of the day, I wasn’t absorbing most of the content, so I am
not sure my previous method of making kids sit through hour-long, sit-down
discussions of the texts was all that effective.
Shadowing My Students: Key Takeaway #2
High School students are sitting passively and
listening during approximately 90% of their classes.
Obviously I was only shadowing for two days, but in follow-up
interviews with both of my host students, they assured me that the classes I
experienced were fairly typical.
In eight periods of high school classes, my host students rarely
spoke. Sometimes it was because the teacher was lecturing; sometimes it was
because another student was presenting; sometimes it was because another
student was called to the board to solve a difficult equation; and sometimes it
was because the period was spent taking a test. So, I don’t mean to imply
critically that only the teachers droned on while students just sat and took
notes. But still, hand in hand with takeaway #1 is this idea that most of the
students’ day was spent passively absorbing information.
It was not just the sitting that was draining but that so much
of the day was spent absorbing information but not often grappling with
it.
I asked my tenth-grade host, Cindy, if she felt like she made
important contributions to class or if, when she was absent, the class missed
out on the benefit of her knowledge or contributions, and she laughed and said
no.
I was struck by this takeaway in particular because it made me
realize how little autonomy students have, how little of their learning they
are directing or choosing. I felt especially bad about opportunities I had
missed in the past in this regard. If I could go back and change my
classes now, I would immediately:
§
Offer brief, blitzkrieg-like mini-lessons with engaging,
assessment-for-learning-type activities following directly on their heels (e.g.
a ten-minute lecture on Whitman’s life and poetry, followed by small-group work
in which teams scour new poems of his for the very themes and notions expressed
in the lecture, and then share out or perform some of them to the whole group
while everyone takes notes on the findings.)
§
Set an egg timer every time I get up to talk and all eyes are on
me. When the timer goes off, I am done. End of story. I can go on and on. I
love to hear myself talk. I often cannot shut up. This is not really conducive
to my students’ learning, however much I might enjoy it.
§
Ask every class to start with students’ Essential Questions or
just general questions born of confusion from the previous night’s reading or
the previous class’s discussion. I would ask them to come in to class and write
them all on the board, and then, as a group, ask them to choose which one we
start with and which ones need to be addressed. This is my biggest regret right
now – not starting every class this way. I am imagining all the
misunderstandings, the engagement, the enthusiasm, the collaborative skills,
and the autonomy we missed out on because I didn’t begin every class with
fifteen or twenty minutes of this.
Shadowing My Students: Key takeaway #3
You feel a little bit like a nuisance all day
long.
I lost count of how many times we were told be quiet and pay
attention. It’s normal to do so – teachers have a set amount of time and we
need to use it wisely. But in shadowing, throughout the day, you start to feel
sorry for the students who are told over and over again to pay attention
because you understand part of what they are reacting to is sitting and
listening all day. It’s really hard to do, and not something we ask adults to
do day in and out.
Think back to a multi-day conference or long PD day you had and
remember that feeling by the end of the day – that need to just disconnect,
break free, go for a run, chat with a friend, or surf the web and catch up on
emails. That is how students often feel in our classes, not because we are
boring per se but because they have been sitting and listening
most of the day already. They have had enough.
In addition, there was a good deal of sarcasm and snark directed
at students and I recognized, uncomfortably, how much I myself have engaged in
this kind of communication. I would become near apoplectic last year whenever a
very challenging class of mine would take a test, and without fail, several
students in a row would ask the same question about the test. Each time I would
stop the class and address it so everyone could hear it.
Nevertheless, a few minutes later a student who had clearly been
working his way through the test and not attentive to my announcement would ask
the same question again. A few students would laugh along as I made a big show
of rolling my eyes and drily stating, “OK, once again, let me
explain…”
Of course it feels ridiculous to have to explain the same
thing five times, but suddenly, when I was the one taking the tests, I was
stressed. I was anxious. I had questions. And if the person teaching answered
those questions by rolling their eyes at me, I would never want to ask another
question again. I feel a great deal more empathy for students after shadowing,
and I realize that sarcasm, impatience, and annoyance are a way of creating a
barrier between me and them. They do not help learning.
If I could go back and change my classes now, I would
immediately:
§
Dig deep into my personal experience as a parent where I found
wells of patience and love I never knew I have, and call upon them more often
when dealing with students who have questions. Questions are an invitation to
know a student better and create a bond with that student. We can open the door
wider or shut if forever, and we may not even realize we have shut it.
§
I would make my personal goal of “no sarcasm” public and ask the
students to hold me accountable for it. I could drop money into a jar for each
slip and use it to treat the kids to pizza at the end of the year. In this
way, I have both helped create a closer bond with them and shared a very real
and personal example of goal-setting for them to use a model in their own
thinking about goals.
§
I would structure every test or formal activity like the IB
exams do – a five-minute reading period in which students can ask all their
questions but no one can write until the reading period is finished. This is a
simple solution I probably should have tried years ago that would head off a
lot (thought, admittedly, not all) of the frustration I felt with constant,
repetitive questions.
Conclusion
I have a lot more respect and empathy for students after just
one day of being one again.
Teachers work hard, but I now think that conscientious students
work harder. I worry about the messages we send them as they go to our classes
and home to do our assigned work, and my hope is that more teachers who are
able will try this shadowing and share their findings with each other and their
administrations. This could lead to better “backwards design” from the student
experience so that we have more engaged, alert, and balanced students sitting
(or standing) in our classes.
Those interested in learning more about
shadowing and/or using our surveys for
free, contact me; This article first appeared on Grant’s personal blog; Grant can be found on twitter here; adapted image
attribution flickr user flickreringbrad; Teachers Shadowing
Students: What I Learned By Doing What I Ask Students To Do
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