Teacherscribe's Teaching Thoughts
Inservice 2020
Attitude
Unfortunately, most adults seem to send the opposite message.
Then what is the chip in the vaccine for?
Start
You have to start and make progress every day.
Teaching Fallacy of the Week
I submit to you that there isn't really anything wrong with the students. I submit to you that there is something wrong with your homework. It probably sucks.
Be honest here, would you have done that homework when you were the age of your students? Be honest. Do you have all of your safety videos done? Did you really watch them all the way through? How many times did you have to retake those quizzes to pass?
Before I assign homework, I try to see if I would have done it when I was the age of my students. When I find homework that doesn't get done, it usually comes to me that the assignments are boring and boring.
Now you say, not everything has to be engaging and exciting!
I agree. Not everything has to be engaging. But it sure helps. (And again, apply your reasoning to the safety videos. Did you really watch them all the way through? Did you get them done on time? Or are you more like your students than you might realize???)
Is there any way for you try and make the homework more interesting? Perhaps connect it to the real world (another way of thinking it is by answering this question from your students' points of view: "When am I ever going to use this?").
My point with this fallacy is simple: it does little good to complain about kids not doing their homework. At least that's what I've found in my 23 years of teaching high school English. Whenever I make the assignments more relevant and engaging, things improve.
Book of the Week - Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom
This should be mandatory reading for every education major.
Teaching Thoughts
In-Service Week -
Inservice Teaching Thought #1 – The law of the lid.
As I write this, we still don’t know what the school year will look like come fall. But regardless of what it looks like (back to normal, blended learning, total distance learning, rotating schedule . . .), but the one thing I do know is that when it comes to leadership and what my students are able to accomplish in my room, I am the lid.
I came across this from the incredible John Maxwell. In fact, here is his explanation of the Law of the Lid.
Simply put – the more the person in charge is able to grow, the more the people they lead (employees, players, or students) are able to grow.
So, as we launch into the school year 2020-21, I want my students to achieve great things because of me and my leadership, not in spite of it.
Inservice Teaching Thought #2 – What is your NTP?
What’s your Noble Teaching Purpose?
I read Lisa Earl McCloud’s book two summers ago. It’s called Selling with Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud. In it, she talks about the importance of having a noble selling purpose. She studied top of the line pharmaceutical salespeople. She discovered that the best ones have some purpose that drives them and inspires them.
She visited with one rep who was the top seller in her entire area.
After shadowing her for several days, she asked her a key question on the way to the airport: “What do you think about when you’re on a sale?”
The lady responded that she Thought of one of her first times selling a certain drug. She was in a doctor’s office waiting for a moment to speak with the doctor when a little old lady came up to her and asked her if she sold a specific drug.
She did.
The lady said, “I just want to thank you. You have given me my life back. Since my doctor prescribed that medication, I can actually get down on my hands and knees and play with my grandchildren again. I can travel again to see my other children. Thank you.”
The pharmaceutical rep said that she Thought of that little old lady every single time she went on a sales call.
McCloud dubbed this a “noble selling purpose.”
So as a teacher, what is your noble teaching purpose?
What made you want to impact the lives of your students? What teacher made an impact on you? What assignment changed your life?
Ponder those and keep them at the front of your mind when you prepare lessons, design curriculum, or even enter your classroom.
Your students will be better for it.
For the record, here is a link to my NTP.
Inservice Teaching Thought #3 – Do you want your students drinking from a deep pool or a shallow, stagnant pond?
This relates to a story I heard on the Entreleadership podcast. A student in seminary school worked in the cafeteria. This meant he had a lot of early morning and a lot of late evenings. Walking back and forth from the cafeteria, he realized, brought him past the residences of his professors.
On his walks to and from work, he noticed that one professor always had his light on. It didn’t matter if it was 5:30 in the morning or 10:30 at night.
Finally, after class one day, he asked this professor why his light was always on.
The professor replied, “I am always studying.”
“Studying?” the student replied, obviously shocked. “How long have you been teaching?”
“This is my twenty fifth year?” the professor stated.
The student couldn’t help himself, so he asked, “Shouldn’t you have it all down by now?”
The professor grinned and said something that not only changed that student’s life but changed mine too once I heard him relate this story: “I decided a long time ago that I want my students drinking from a deep pool rather than a shallow, stagnant pond.”
What are you doing to ensure that you are not just going through the motions of your curriculum? What are you doing to always stay on the cutting edge? How are you injecting new life into your curriculum and classroom?
Why I Teach
I've always maintained that teachers learn best from other teachers. That was the case here as Mrs. Hruby schooled me in Google Classroom. Thanks!
Podcast of the Week - Shifting Our Schools: Moving from Attendance Focused to Being Engagement Focused
This podcast is a good reminder of how to shift from attendance focused to being engagement focused.
This is a short but impactful podcast. My favorite line from this is "Learning is engagement NOT attendance."
And I even got a great assignment idea out of this podcast. Instead of just having students write a literary analysis on "Young Goodman Brown," which I'm still going to have them do, but after they have written that essay, I'm going to have them create a tutorial video explaining how to write an effective literary analysis on a story of their own choosing.
Video of the week - Do Schools Kill Creativity?
This might be the most popular TED Talk of all time. It certainly was instrumental in putting TED Talks on the map. If you're unfamiliar with Ken Robinson and his mission in life to reform education, this is a great introduction.
If you've seen it before, take a moment to watch it again. His humor, kindness, intelligence, and ability to turn on a moment and crack a joke that lights up the whole room is something to behold.
We will miss you Sir Ken!
Thoughts from Twitter
Give this a try in your classroom . . .
The Sticky-Note Book Report
I use this with all of my classes. It starts with me handing out note cards to each student. Then I ask them to write down three subjects they are interested in reading about. Then I also ask them to put down two subjects they have no desire to read about at all. From that list, I select (either from my own classroom library or from our media center) several books for each student to choose from. Ultimately, the student will select one book to read.
I give students an entire week to read in class. I put out a large box for students to set their phones in so there are no distractions. Then I hand them out a package of Sticky-Notes. Students then must annotate the book with at least 50 Sticky-Notes as they read. The idea is to have student chronicle their thinking and connections to what they are reading.
Ultimately, students will turn in their book along with their 50 Sticky-Notes. Then I look through their notes to see what they were thinking about and what connections they were making as they read.
After that, students are tasked with giving a ten-minute book talk to the class. For their book talk, each student must summarize the book, talk about what they found most interesting, discuss one odd or strange thing about what they read, and answer questions from their classmates.
This book is, without a doubt, one of the best things I do in class. Students almost always don’t just enjoy their books; they end up loving them. The key is that I tie the book to what they are really interested in. That makes all the difference!
Some of the most popular (and beloved) books –
Night by Elie Wiesel; The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch; Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom; Columbine by Dave Cullen; The Devil and the White City by Erik Larson; The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot; Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer; The Power of Habit by Charles DuHigg; The Blind Side by Michael Lewis.
Article of Interest - "Five Reasons Why You Should Use Video with Google Classroom"
As an English teacher, the speaker noted how time and again he would return papers to his students who would just scan over (very quickly) his comments (and these were comments he spent a lot of time adding in while he was grading the essay) to find the grade. Then they'd nod or shrug and move on.
What was actually learned? Nothing. A grade was earned, yes, but is that learning?
One bit of advice this teacher had was instead of writing comments on students' papers, he created a screen cast of him grading and evaluating their paper. As he recorded himself, he noted the errors and explain in detail (even showing how to fix them in many instances) how to address them and then he justified the rubric and left a question for the student to respond to.
This is how he gives feedback for all of his papers. No more written feedback. It was all video feedback.
He found that yes it does take more time, but he found that his students actually fixed their errors more often after watching his videos as opposed to just reading (maybe) his comments.
Bonus content of the week -
In case you missed the previous installment of Teaching Thoughts
Chief Inspiration Officer of Room 205
I am married to the most amazing person in the world, Kristie. It was love at first sight. At least for me. And it still is.
We have four wonderful children, Casey, Koko, Kenzie, and Cash. And now we have been blessed with five grandchildren!
I also happen to have the greatest job in the world: teaching English to high school students.
I am in my 23rd year of teaching at Lincoln High School. I graduated from Lafayette High School in Red Lake Falls in 1992. I decided to enter the field of education because of two amazing teachers, Mr. Mueller, my fourth and sixth grade elementary school teacher and assistant baseball coach, and Mrs. Christianson, my 9th grade English teacher.
I attended Northland Community College, and had my life changed by the amazing Dr. Diane Drake. Then I transferred to Bemidji State University in 1995. There I had amazing professors who further inspired me to teach English (Dr. Helen Bonner, Dr. Mark Christensen, Susan Hauser, and Gerry Schnabel). I graduated with my BS in English Education in 1997.
I student taught with the wonderful Lisa Semanko and then began teaching full-time at LHS in 1998.
I took a year's leave of absence in 2001-02 to return to BSU for my MA in English. There I had the privilege to teach and work closely with my greatest mentor, Dr. Mark Christensen. I earned my MA in English in 2006 and was honored with "Thesis of the Year" for my creative non-fiction, braided, multi-genre memoir, "Meeting Myrtle: A Biography."
In 2013, thanks to my dear friend and mentor, Dr. Jodi Holen, I was offered an adjunct teaching position fall semester at the University of North Dakota. Tuesday nights I teach Intro to Education: Teaching and Learning 250 from 5-8. Those three hours fly by in about ten minutes.
Then in 2016 I was blessed to win a WEM award (thanks to a nomination from a former student (and now an elementary school teacher), Ciera Mooney).
In 2017 I became part of the #pineconepd podcast club along with Brian Loe, Jeff Mumm, Kelsey Johnson, Kelly Weets, Josh Watne, Tevia Strand, Megan Vigen, Mariah Hruby, Laura Brickson, Loren Leake, Katie Hahn, Melora Burgee, and new members all the time. This has been one of the best forms of PD I've ever been a part of. They make me a better teacher every time we meet. Please think about joining us in the summer at the Pine Cone Pub from 6:30 - until we've solved all the world's problems. For that evening anyway.
Thanks to the inspiration of Shane Zutz (our former principal) I devised this as a way to distribute my Teaching Thoughts and add more content to, hopefully, help out and inspire others.
Email: kurt.reynolds@myprowler.org
Website: http://teacherscribe.blogspot.com
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