Category Archives: reflection

Don’t smile ’til Christmas

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grumpyPhoto credit

At the risk of jinxing myself, I’d like to take a moment to talk about kindness. Why might I be jinxing myself? Well, I had some great classes this semester, and I suppose it’s possible that my personal philosophy about kindness may go out the window if I have a group of hooligans next semester, but one can hope…

This year I decided that one of the things I would very conscious of was being kind to my students–even when I didn’t receive kindness in return. That may sound easy, but oh, there are days. . . . Basically I felt that for some students, kindness from a teacher was the only form of kindness they received all day. And I also thought that it was important to remember that students (like all people) might have very challenging, stressful, terrible things going on in their lives that have nothing to do with me. Now some may say that I’m a push-over, but I don’t really think I am. I still expect students to earn their marks and I expect certain standards of behaviour, but when I deal with those issues, I don’t think I gain anything by being sarcastic, or negative or domineering.

The bottom line is, if I scare students into behaving, I may have a quiet orderly classroom, but I’m not going to have a positive learning environment. I went to a Marcia Tate workshop where she discussed brain-compatible learning, and felt pretty vindicated because she shared statistics that showed that when students were under stress or feeling anxious, they aren’t able to learn effectively. So I think we should do everything we can to help students to know that they are respected and cared for, and that they can take risks without fear of humiliation or being centered out.

I figure, if the worst thing a student can say about me is that I’m a push-over or a softie, I can live with that. I don’t think it’s true, but even if it is, it’s  better than living with the thought that I caused some student unnecessary pain or humiliation because I felt I had to maintain the upper-hand in some power-struggle.

Teachers coming out of teacher education programs get a lot of advice about “not smiling until Christmas.” If I could give some advice, I’d say:

Don’t let anyone try to tell you what type of teacher you need to be, and never lose sight of the big picture.  We are not factories churning out widgets. We are human beings trying to help other human beings learn, and they can’t learn if they feel threatened.

 And now, I’m going to record some of the notes I got from students at the end of their exams–not because I’m trying to boast or because I think these notes make me candidate for teacher of the year, but because soon I’ll be faced with a new group of students, and I’m going to need these reminders to get me through the tough times. I also want to add, I marked their exams before I read any notes! And I will resist the urge to correct the spelling and grammar.

Thank you Ms. Barker for a wonderful english class. This is probably one of the classes I will most miss from this semester, and perhaps even this year. I really liked the use of technology and I liked the way you taught us. Thanks. Good luck next semester. -Alex

Thanks for an amazing semester. You did an awesome job with this class and I feel I have learned so much from my experiences here. you made getting up for this class every day enjoyable. I can honestly say although I’m glad to be leaving high school behind me, I’m sad to be done with this class. Thank you so much for everything you do! -Sara

I don’t think you should change anything about yourself or improve your the best English teacher I have ever had. I learned a lot being in your class and I love you as a teacher.-Shannon

Usually in my English class I wouldn’t get involved because I felt my opinion didn’t really count. But you showed the entire class it’s perfectly fine if you don’t understand the text or have an opinion that people might not agree with. In college we as adults need to know where we stand in life. You taught the class to be unique and to stand up for what we felt is right. I will never forget the second day of class having us decide to agree or disagree to questions that really mattered. Those questions got us thinking not only in the answer but what we believed. Thank you for showing not only me but the teachers and students that English can be fun again. -Celine.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go get some tissue.

Reflections on this semester’s love affair with technology

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Othello wordle

I could use the extended metaphor of a torrid romance with a sexy bad boy to describe my experience with technology this semester, but that might a bit overblown and, some might argue, a product of my students’ obsession with Team Edward vs. Team Jacob. Zombies are also trendy right now, but I don’t think brain is equipped to fashion that metaphor right now.

So, let’s get to it.

As I finish up this semester I’ve had some hits and misses. If you’ve read some of my other posts this year (and I know, they have been few and far between. New school, new challenges, new excuses), you’ll know that I approached my classes with year with a kind of outlook that can only be described as naively optimistic. I saw rainbows and puppy dogs everywhere I looked. I assumed my students would be putty in my hands because they were digital natives and I GOT them. So, in summary:

Stumbling blocks:

  • I didn’t consider that other members of the staff might resent the fact that two English classes were scheduled in a computer lab every day when access to computer labs is already at a premium. Not my fault, but it didn’t really matter.
  • Although my students are digital natives, they were not all tech-savvy
  • Although most of my students use social networking sites and web 2.0 apps on a regular basis, a number of them balked at using these tools for educational purposes
  • Many students were opposed to sharing their work (even though many of them are okay with showing inappropriate pictures on facebook!)
  • Some of my students have adopted anti-technology positions in, what I can only assume is, a desire to please authority figures who condemn technology as frivolous or non-academic.
  • Paper: I still need paper for some things, and for some reason I feel like I’m being judged as a bad teacher if my students don’t have any paper handouts. I’m working on it.
  • Oh, and apparently I adopt every new tool that interests me.

Now, for the good news:

  • Some of my students changed their minds. I had a student tell me that initially, he was “creeped-out” by edmodo, because he didn’t really understand what it was. He is a thoughtful cautious student who has taken to heart all the warnings about the dangers of posting too much information about yourself online. As the student learned that social networking sites can be leveraged for positive purposes, he came to love edmodo because he found that he could access assignments and send me messages using a tool he was already using (um, that’s the internet if you’re wondering. Or the “the infornet” as my mother-in-law calls it).  Edmodo has been a huge success. It’s eliminated a great deal of paper–not to mention excuses.
  • Ning: I used Ning for a number of different purposes. At first I didn’t really know how I’d use it (I’m finishing my action research project on this and I’ll post it soon so I won’t go into great detail here), but eventually the most significant use became blogging. Some of my students were skeptical about the Ning at first, but their work stands for itself. They shared and read ideas they would have never otherwise encountered. They also reached much deeper levels of synthesis and analysis because their posts were not “published pieces” in a traditional sense.
  • My website and class blog. I did a pretty good job of updating my class blogs on a daily basis. Now when I scroll back through my posts, I have a wonderful series of snapshots of my semester. It’s fantastic. I never managed to update my “daybook” or planner the way I’ve kept my blog up to date.

In the immortal words of Joss Whedon, “Where do we go from here?” (Oh, Buffy, how I miss you)

  • I’m going to use Ning even more, and try to do even more with student blogging now that I have evidence that supports its effectiveness.
  • Edmodo: I need to do more training at the beginning of the semester so that students use edmodo properly. (How to submit an assignment vs. how to send a link)
  • Use less paper. I can do it!
  • Bring in Diigo. Love Diigo, but didn’t really get a chance to try it.

I think that’s plenty for now. I’ll keep you posted.

I promise.

No really!

Digital Natives?

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“Digital natives” “the Net Generation”… these are terms I hear a lot. I’m on Twitter and Facebook. I blog. I text. I create content and upload it on a regular basis. I’m not online constantly, but I do feel a need to stay connected, and I get excited about the possibilities for sharing and collaborating that exist because of web 2.0. I keep reading that this is what my students do too. It’s what they want from teachers. So when I was planning for this year, I thought about how I could make my teaching more representative of the world they experience outside the classroom. I thought about authentic writing tasks. I thought about anywhere anytime learning and created blogs and edmodo classes. I even started to think about how to use cell phones in the classroom. My new principal was so excited by this that she scheduled 2 of my senior academic English classes in a computer lab! I was so psyched! I even made a funky intro movie for my classes.

And then, at the end of my first class on the first day, it happened. A polite and friendly student said to me, “Um, it’s kinda weird being in a computer lab for English.”

My heart started to race a bit as it does when I get anxious.

“Weird good? Or weird bad?” I asked hopefully.

She smiled, not wishing to offend. “Kind of weird bad. Like, it’s English class. I don’t really think there’s a need for technology.”

My heart sunk. Literally. I found it in my left shoe at lunch.

Now I know, I know. It was just one student. I know some of them were as psyched as I was. But I got the impression from a number of them that this idea of a 21st century English class was just as threatening for them as it must be for some teachers. I really didn’t expect that.

It made me wonder. Where is this coming from? My current theory is that most students probably are digital natives. I’m not sure they’re as savvy as we’d like them to be, but most of them are comfortable using technology (that’s what they told me on the survey anyway). But I think that some of them have gotten the message from parents and teachers that technology is bad. It’s a distraction. It’s a toy. It’s something you ban. It doesn’t have a place in a serious academic classroom (maybe?). And these students are the “good” students–academic, disciplined, polite, respectful. They really listen to the messages they get from adults. And they’ve gotten the message that this is bad.

I’ve had to change my mindset about technology in the English classroom. Instead of it being the expectation, it is an option. It is another way for me to differentiate my instruction. They don’t have to post comments on the blog (but I wish they would). They don’t have to submit assignments on edmodo (but it’s usually more convenient that way). I’ve told them I never want to get an angry phone call from a parent saying, “You told my son he HAD to submit his assignments online.” It’s an option.

It’s so strange for me because, yes I’m interested in technology, but I’m doing this because I thought it would be good for the students. I thought they would prefer to learn this way. I thought I was making life easier for them–not harder.

Sigh. It’s still early. And I think some of them are coming around. The girl who spoke to me on the first day made a wordle and shared it with her classmates via edmodo. That’s kind of weird good.

B2S Hopes

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For those of you not in the know, B2S is my code word for Back to School. When I was a little girl my dad (an elementary principal) would outlaw the phrase “back to school” during the summer–not because he disliked his job, just because he appreciated his holidays. Now that I’m a teacher and so is my husband, I completely understand the sentiment. I believe it was my friend Andrew (also a teacher) who cursed me for mentioning my back to school anxiety dreams in July, but he used the term “b2s” and now that’s what I call it.

So on the eve of b2s with far too much work to do to write a lengthy post, I thought I should take some time to think about my hopes and plans for this year–keeping in mind my priorities that I made back in June.

1. I hope that I continue to implement and model what I view to be effective assessment and evaluation strategies.

2. I hope to be patient and open-minded. I have a tendency to get so passionate about my beliefs that I don’t really listen.

3. I hope to listen more and talk less.

4. I really really hope that the gamble admin took by timetabling me in a computer lab pays off in that I get my students to do some really exciting stuff.

5. I hope that if my kids do exciting stuff, that other teachers recognize it and don’t think it’s weird that an English teacher is in a computer lab.

6. I hope they will let me keep some books in the computer lab.

7. I hope that my kids like me (I don’t care what people say. It matters. They don’t have to like me for me to do a good job teaching them, but it sure makes the job nicer).

8. I hope that I do right by my students.

9. I hope that I don’t lose sight of what’s important and feel dragged down by the Debbie Downers of the teaching world.

10. I hope that I make a difference.

11. I hope I’m not too cheesy.

Good luck to all you teachers, administrators, and students who have either just started or are about to start a new school year. Remember, as Sir Ken Robinson says: “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”

Ambition

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A lot of people have asked me about my “career path”, and most of them are surprised that my answer doesn’t include getting into administration. They often seem a little deflated as though administration is obviously the ultimate goal for any ambitious, moderately capable teacher.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m very impressed by the obvious work ethic, ambition, self-confidence, and determination of those young administrators out there (and the not so young ones, Dad). I’ve met many of them and I’m convinced they’re in it for the right reasons and they feel very strongly about their abilities to impact student achievement. I just don’t think that that’s the only way to have an impact in education.

I haven’t completely figured out what I want to be doing as a teacher ten years from now, but I do know that it will involve being in the classroom. I’d like to do my masters, I’d like to write, do some action research. . . . I have lots of ambition, and to prove it, here is my ultimate goal: I want to be a exemplary teacher. I want to be a rock star among teachers. I want to be the kind of teacher about whom other teachers will say “Oh, go ask her. She’s an awesome teacher.” I want to be a really good teacher.

Quite frankly, I don’t think it gets more ambitious than that.

Priorities

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I’ve learned so much this year that it’s tempting to throw myself into every initiative that comes across my desk and to want to change everything about my teaching all at once.

It’s tempting.

It’s also INSANE!

So I’ve decided to set some priorities for next year, and I’m following the model that my friend Kevin shared with me, that he learned from a speaker in his Master’s class. This person held up one hand and said that he was so busy he decided that he would have five priorities (Get it? Five fingers? Five priorities. I guess you only get to have six priorities if you’re the bad guy who killed Inigo Montoya’s father, in which case you’re going to die anyway so…) not just for work, but for your life. If something doesn’t fit one of those priorities you have to say no. Easier said than done, but I’ll give it a try. I just need to figure out what my priorities are.

Well first of all, it seems important to me to make sure that my relationships with my family and friends should be at the top of my priority list.

Then health. That can be physical, mental, and spiritual.

Yikes! That only leaves three left for professional priorities!

All right, well we all know that I want to find ways to bring more web 2.0 into the classroom even if I don’t have a beautiful shiny wifi Apple-sponsored computer lab (But seriously, that would be amazing).

Two left!

Assessment and Evaluation: No big surprise there. I want to continue to refine my understanding of good assessment and evaluation practices and how to bring together the ideal and the reality in order to support students. I like this one because it encompasses a lot of other things that I’m passionate about.

One left! Well people keep asking me what my ultimate goal is in this profession. Do I want to go into admin? Do I want to go back to the board office? Do I want to go to grad school? For now, I’ve decided that my ultimate goal is to be a really really good teacher. To some people that may not sound like a terribly ambitious goal, but it is to me. I think it’s easy to become complacent in this profession. I think that you have to keep pushing yourself to get better and to continue to see yourself as a learner. I never want to have the attitude that “I’ve been doing this for 20 years; there’s nothing new anyone can tell me about teaching.”  So my fifth priority is to view myself as a professional learner. That may sound a bit too vague but I know what it means.

So that’s it for now. I may come back and revise these later. Do you have any priorities or goals for next year?