Students - The Best Part of Our Jobs

I love hearing when people complain about their jobs. It is really funny some times. Maybe it is funny because you can laugh when you have a great job that you really love. I have often thought, now that I am a few months into having my own classroom and a “real” job in the “real” world, what the best part of my job is. Is it the fact that I am surrounded by an awesome staff? Well that is great, but not it. Is it the fact that I get to work with a bunch of technology on a regular basis? Well, that too is great, but not the best part. Is it the fact that I get to work in a school that is constantly pushing the idea of education in the 21st Century? That too is an awesome aspect. However, I think hands down the best part of my job is the students.

We would not be there if it were not for the students. At the same time, the students make the job so much of not a job it is amazing. I just blogged about how they are different every day. Yes, they are, but that is the exciting and amazing part of this job. The best part about the students that I can articulate so far in my teaching career is helping them understand something “stupid,” watching them grow from a struggling student to one leading the class, being there through the low points, and watching them be passionate about something because of a connection you personally made with them.

Helping them understand something “stupid” - Hamlet, by many students’ first impression, is just that - “stupid.” However, after spending two hours yesterday morning (my students were on a field trip) with one group of eleventh grade students who previously thought that idea, they understood the material. They were excited about the material. They actually left with smiles and were excited about Monday.

Watching them grow from a struggling student to one leading the class - I have a student in one of my classes that has an IEP and does struggle through a lot of material, especially in my class. However, with Hamlet he has latched on and gone to town. I provided him, with the assistance of our special education coordinator, a variety of resources including the “No Fear Version” of Hamlet and he has gone to town. He understands the material very well. He is passionate about it. So much so that this week I had him sit down with a group of usually high achieving students and explain to them, in his words and using the text, what was happening. It was an amazing flip of a student from the bottom of the class academically and engagement wise. Now he is my go-to student (we all have these - right?) for Hamlet. He understands it and I have even given him the task of writing out some of the notes on the SMART Board. I am excited about his future in my class and I am trying to figure out how to achieve this same result in the next unit.

Being there through the low points - One of my high achieving students came to me after class on Thursday and wanted to talk. She sought me out and I listened to her issue. I tried to comfort her in the best ways that I could. It just amazes me the amazing difference of being there with these students. Some days I think it would be a whole lot easier to be a full time technology guy, but you cannot trade a conversation like that for anything. It is just, as the Master Card commercial states - Priceless. It was amazing to see her yesterday and her how thankful she was of the time that I spent talking to her and the huge difference that made for her that day.

Watching them be passionate about something because of a connection you personally made with them - It is stressed by college teachers everywhere to make connections with your students. Marc Prensky would take that a step further and say find out what their passions are. I, taking from both of these ideas, would say not only find out their passions and make the connections, but participate in their passion with them.

This week was the first annual “Spirit Week” at our school. It ended with a dance last night that I was planning on chaperoning. Why? I don’t really know, but I knew it was going to be a lot of fun. It came to be Thursday afternoon and the organizer of the dance came up to me and asked for a huge favor...she asked me to DJ the dance. Now, bare in mind that I have been around sound equipment for a fair amount of my life, enjoy listing to music and hanging out with high school students, but I have never DJ’d a dance - until last night.

Yesterday in class I mentioned to one of my students, who I knew from previous interactions has a passion for music, that I was going to be the DJ for the dance. She kind of shrugged and said “OK.” The rest of the day went by and I started the dance off and it was kind of lame. An interesting thing happened. Did you know that black and white people generally have their own favorite styles of music? So I was playing all this typical “white kid music,” as one student phrased it, and no one was dancing. Then my student from the ninth grade showed up. She was fired up and wanted to help out with the DJ gig. She respected my role as the DJ, but offered her own opinions. She made that dance what it was - an awesome party. She pulled out some of her music and we had a great time.

Her passion - music.
My passion - connecting with students.

Both of those passions were intermingled last night.

I could have shut her down and told her "No" and not taken any suggestions from students, but I didn’t. In fact, I set-up a Poll Everywhere poll for song suggestions. I screened them on one computer and played them on another computer. We had an awesome night because I allowed it to be about the students and connecting with them - in particular this one student. My relationship with her has increased exponentially. Plus, we had one heck of an awesome dance.

In conclusion, the best part of my job is hands-down the students.

What’s the Point?

I remember all too well sitting down in English class in my high school years, and even into my college years, and being told that we are going to read and study {fill-in-the-blank here}. That was not appealing to me. That did not have a point to me. That did not make sense to me. That was not relevant to my life. Why would I want to read something that I did not know why I was reading it in the first place?

That assignment, to just read something, has puzzled me ever since. Why? What truly is the point of reading this text?

This constant battle, if you will, to have students read material and my struggle to get them to accomplish this feat - whether it is Shakespeare, currently, or something else in the future - led me to an important revelation that began back in my teacher education program.

As teachers, we learn that we need to scaffold learning and that assigning any type of work or material to our students needs to clearly serve a purpose. The only problem and difference between knowing that and our students is that our students have no clue why they are doing the work. That lack of communication between the why of the teacher and the why of the student created the problem when I was in school.

At Arapahoe I began, with Anne and Kristin’s help, to begin to formulate lessons, activities, and homework that truly was meaningful. That truly was relevant. That truly did make an impact on the student’s lives.

Why?

Because I explained to the students exactly why they were doing what they were doing and shared with them the benefits and reasons for that assignment/activity/homework that they were about to accomplish. I tried at least to do this on a regular basis.

Now at the FAIR School Downtown I have once again ran into some trouble in terms of reading material. Take for instance, Shakespeare and Hamlet in particular. Why oh why would 9-11th grade students want to read this play? I thought about it for a while and then with the help of my good partner in the English department, Ben Jarman, we came up with a few ideas. Hamlet has in it themes about: not trusting your parents, death, a ghost, lots of fighting, love, and a search for identity. Clearly some of those themes can be debated and looked at from a variety of different angles, but Ben and I decided first to look at those. Next was the idea and task to get students, before we even picked up the text, excited about learning and reading this amazing work of literature (Ok, maybe that is an English teacher talking, but that is what I think. Others are entitled to their own opinion). Now Ben wanted to, as he called it, “Get the Hamlet fire burning” and really get students excited about what they are learning from the beginning. I agreed with him that this was important, but struggled with exactly how to reach our students. Ben had some great ideas and he thought about really just talking to the students about the material and trying to “light the fire” that way. I thought that was good, but then I tried to consider what else would make this exciting to a student in today’s world. So I considered some sort of exciting Keynote presentation, but then I realized that even that, however cool it may be that it would not be the most exciting thing I could produce. I looked to a resource that I used a few times while student teaching - Animoto.

What I produced was this video: Hamlet Introduction Video

To me this was something that I used to engage the students. They thought that it was really cool and engaging. It was great to bring in the images from the SparkNotes Comic Book version of Hamlet. The use of that in class has really allowed the students to get past the hard part of Shakespeare - the language - and really focus on the content, which is what we want them to understand anyway. In all reality I think it was the combination of the words, the pictures, the text, the music, and the fast pace of the movie that made it exciting to the students. They enjoyed it and one student even commented, “[The video] made me excited to read Hamlet.” Cross that off the list - the students were excited about what they are reading and we were able to accomplish that in an exciting and applicable way for the students.

However, since then the “fire of Hamlet” has began to burn low. We started off on this high point and now we are chugging along - probably because we are close to the end and excited about the final projects. When I look back on the unit though, there have been many times that I think the fire could have just gone out. One thing that Ben and I have done is make sure that there is a guiding, focusing question up on the SMART Board for every reading, every group activity, and for the entire unit. Those reasons, in conjunction with our introduction video, have really made the “fire of Hamlet” sustain throughout the unit and allowed it to really take a place within students’ minds.

Now I am not here to say that I don’t get the “this is stupid” or “I hate Hamlet” comments every once in a while, but I will say that even though some students struggle with completing the actual assignment they at least do not have that “Why are we doing this and what’s the point” feeling that I had growing up.

I also look forward to bringing this video back into class next week as we wrap up the unit and have the students relate to and make connections with it and their own lives. Ben and I have made connections throughout this unit with the students, these themes, and their lives, but it will be great to bring it back in again. Then I cannot wait to see the individual connections that students will be able to make as we finish this unit. As they really take the text of Hamlet and make it their own through a group video project. As they really take this text and make it into something that has a point - a point to each of them personally.

So I encourage you, even we as teachers know what the point is in completing an assignment and how it should relate to our students’ lives, we need to share that with our students time and time and time again. Because that sharing, that has made a huge difference in reducing the amount of push back I get on assignments, provided an increase in the level of completion on assignments, and has increased the satisfaction level with my students with their homework, daily work, and group work.

Do your students know what the point is?

I encourage you to tell them...or better yet, let them figure it out with your guidance!

Partnering, Sharing, and Hamlet

Marc Prensky is a good friend of mine and is probably best known for coining the terms Digital Native and Digital Immigrant. Lately he has been working on his newest book called “Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering for Real Learning.” I got a chance to preview a copy last month. This book, when it comes out this spring, will really turn the tide towards what is truly important in education - partnering with our students instead of direct instruction, where we are the only ones doing the instruction. In Marc’s partnering model, which really isn’t that new or different from anyone - what is different is the terms that he has put around this idea and the multitude of resources he provides in this book to reach the Digital Natives in your classroom. It was a great read and one that I can’t wait to pick-up at the bookstore this spring.

One idea that I really pulled out of there is the idea of sharing and working collaboratively with one another - the students mainly - but in all reality I wanted to work a bit more with the other English teacher in our high school Ben Jarman. He and I team teach one section of 9th grade and then I have my own section of 9th grade. He also teaches two sections of 11th grade and the 12th grade English classes. While I take over and teach the 10th grade. We work very well together and going into the year Ben has been a lot of help as my mentor checking in with me, helping me deal with student issues, and really more than anything being there as a sounding board. A few months ago we both started to think about the next unit that we were planning in our classes. Ben wanted to cover Hamlet in 9th grade and then in 11th grade he wanted to cover Midsummer Night’s Dream. I was looking at going through The Crucible with my 10th graders...and then we started to think about it...is there any way that we can take Marc’s idea of partnering and apply it to what we are doing in our classroom? Well, we looked at a few different things, like our ideas for the semester and the guiding question for the unit and the focus on the arts school. We decided to do something radical, something that I have never done before: We are teaching Hamlet in 9th, 10th, and 11th grade. Obviously we have differentiation with each grade level and we are covering with a bit different emphasis in each grade level, but the interaction between each grade level has been amazing. As we were thinking about this proposal and sending text messages back and forth - how about that for planning time - Ben’s reaction when it really started to hit us about how immensely powerful it would be to have all three grade levels together covering the same material was priceless. Ben texted me: “Mind Blowing.”

That is exactly what this has been from the beginning. The interaction between Ben and I has been absolutely amazing. We have been able to partner with one another each afternoon and really plan out exactly what we want to cover and some really creative ways to do it. One of the reasons that we decided to cover Hamlet with all three grade levels is that we wanted everyone on the same page, because this being the first year of the arts magnet and really being at the groundbreaking level of crafting and making this high school what we want it to be, we thought it would be good to cover this play. In addition, this way the students have not ever covered any Shakespeare in any other classes before encountering Hamlet and so they are all getting the base foundation with this play. There is no way to teach a play without acting it out, but in English class we really wanted to focus on less of the acting part because we wanted to leave that up to our acting teacher so that in his acting classes, which are primarily 9-11th grade, they can cover the acting stuff. Plus, that cross-curricular support has been an amazing blessing and has made the content come more alive for the students in those acting classes. Then our focus in English class became to understand the content within Hamlet and to really focus on appreciating the art that Shakespeare created. Through this unit we have really encouraged and pushed students to work with one another across the grade levels. It has been totally awesome to see the 11th graders working alongside the 9th graders to help each other out with their homework. This part has been absolutely amazing, but I think hands-down the most beneficial part of this unit has been partnering with Ben throughout the whole process.

Now this is not exactly the way that Marc wrote for the term to be used, as he defines and looks more at partnering in the classroom with teachers and students, but I think that it also applies to teacher to teacher work. Ben and I, because we have been intentional about this unit and planning, have met every afternoon to plan the week, to look ahead, bounce cool ideas, and lessons off one another. Then we divide the work and really knock the teaching out of the park. It has been such a “Mind Blowing” experience because we each bring really unique and amazing passions and gifts to the table and putting both of our heads together has produced some pretty amazing lessons. It has helped both of us become better teachers and has drawn us together in amazing and wonderful ways. It has also given me a great idea of what partnering in the classroom, as how Marc defines the term, could and does work given the right parameters.

The exciting thing for me, and this is also something from Marc that I remember reading a few years ago, is that Ben and I are trying to figure out how to share this unit with other teachers everywhere. I look forward to spending part of Winter Break doing this. Marc wrote an article in 2007 titled: “If We Share, We’re Halfway There.” In this article Marc talks a lot about the need for teachers to share the things that are working in their classrooms on the web so that other teachers can find out what is going on. He writes in this article: “The fastest route to engaging our students (and our teachers) is re-using, in our own way, those things that are already working. But we can’t do that until we know about them! Technology can be our savior here.” This idea also came up in Marc’s new book in which he wrote: “Until this posting and sharing begins to happen in a regular and systematic way by partnering teachers, we are, sadly, re-creating almost everything on our own, time after time, which is a terribly inefficient way to do things and a huge waste of partnering teachers’ time and effort. So please, as you succeed in partnering, be a sharer!”

Ben and I before were creating everything from the ground up for every day by ourselves, but now we are partnering and creating much better and more effective lessons for our students. We have shared this idea and partnership with other teachers within our building, which in turn has inspired them to partner also - not only two teachers with one another, but across disciplines. Now as a high school we are looking at creative ways to work together in the 3rd quarter - English, Civics, Science, and Math. It has been immensely powerful to work together. The future for partnering, both between teachers, but more so in my classroom on a daily basis between students is looking very promising.

I look forward to sharing all that Ben and I have created through this Hamlet unit in a few weeks. Anyone have a creative way to share lessons - one that has worked before? I was thinking about creating either a Wiki or a Google Site, but I didn’t know if anyone else had a better idea.

To borrow the words from Marc, when we share, we truly are halfway there. Halfway there to creating powerful, engaging, content-driven, and amazing lessons in which partnering can thrive - both for the instructors and the students.

Ninety-Seven Days

Ninety-seven days ago from today I was sitting in the first staff meeting at the FAIR School Downtown. A lot has changed since then, but one thing remains - I am still very excited about what I get to do every day: teach students and integrate technology effectively.

Throughout that staff meeting I had a whole lot of emotions. Everything from excitement to nervousness to a real worry if I was going to fit in with these teachers. Well, ninety-seven days later I am reminded by a few words that our principal said to us on that afternoon of September 3, 2009. He said, “If not now, when? If not us, who?”

Those words have been inspiring me since that day to continually reach higher, to continually push my students and myself to be better for them. They deserve the best and it is my job, our jobs, to give that to them. If we are not going to start giving them the best, most prepared, well equipped education for the 21st Century right now, then when will it happen? If we are not going to do it, then who will? If we are not going to start reaching out to our students and really start educating students to be successful in the future, and not only on the state and federally mandated tests, then what are we doing?

Over the past ninety-seven days I have learned a lot. I have gotten through my first few teaching units in both classes - the 9th grade and 10th grade English. In 9th grade we looked at To Kill a Mockingbird and then spent a month working on Five Paragraph Essay writing. It helped immensely that at Arapahoe High School this is one of the units that I designed and taught. This time though, we were not two weeks behind schedule. One of the things that you do learn is to stay a bit more with the schedule. In English 10 we covered Of Mice and Men and then spent time on two of the Six Traits of Writing.

I have learned many things about students and about how a classroom works. The best part of this job is not teaching the content or playing with all the cool technology - both very enjoyable parts - the best part is actually interacting with my amazing and wonderful students on a daily basis. To figure out their passions, to push them each individually to succeed and then helping each of them achieve their goals on a regular and long term basis has been a big focus of these first two quarters. Whether that is understanding why Hamlet is acting crazy and who the ghost is, which we have been looking at recently, or trying to figure out how to pass the state writing test, later next month so that they can graduate, the students have been the best part of the whole job. Just yesterday I spent a large part of my preparation period helping one student, who was kicked out of another class, complete her missing assignments for my class. In doing that I was able to support her, get her to do something productive, and help her understand the material in a greater way. She left not feeling upset because she was kicked out of her class, which she probably should have been, but instead she was confident and excited that she was caught up and understood the material. In looking at all the things that I did yesterday, that one act of giving up my prep period to help another student out, get on her level, and really make that material come alive was the most rewarding, but also the most important thing that I did.

It is through interactions like yesterday that I realize the words of my principal continue to ring true: “If not now, when? If not us, who?”
We need to be better.
We can be better.
We will be better.
That is our challenge.

That is my challenge.