Kate Baker on Giving Students' Meaningful Choice

At #CEL13 (the conference for English leaders at #NCTE13 in Boston), I had the pleasure of moderating a presentation by Gordon Hultberg @pradlfan about student choice. I didn't know her at the time, but Kate Baker @Ktbkr4 attended and on January 4, when I had almost forgotten the session, she blogged her thoughtful and detailed responses to that conversation. Such is the power of connected educators who revisit conferences through blogging and Twitter and keep the conversation going. (Kind of like blended learning: discuss in class and continue the conversation online after school.)

Click Kate Baker's blog  or see my comments below in red

How often do we give students choice and how are teachers' own personal preferences represented in the choices we allow?
Good point, Kate! I allow limited choices to students that are within preset parameters: "choose essay prompt A or B." Do we ever give students authentic choices?: "By unit's end, design a project, paper, or presentation that demonstrates deep learning." What kind of rubric would we need for that? 
The session prompted participants to examine the ways in which we offer choice to our students: the texts they read, the assignments they complete, scoring, grades, participation.... The list goes on to encompass all facets of our classroom activities and procedures.
Even setting up classroom rules? How students should conduct themselves during discussions? Will students eventually be running the school? Would that necessarily be bad? (I digress.)

Aptly named, this session forced me to reflect on the choices I provide for my students and how I can transform the decision making process.  When I reflect on the choices I offered students during the first years of my career, I usually provided them with options that I would have wanted as a student, but here in lies the problem: I was providing the choices I wanted. I was not really walking in their shoes; I imagined myself as I WAS as a student.  My intentions with providing choice were sincere, but who I am now is much different from the student I was 20 years ago, and who I was then is much different from who my students are today.
How often do teachers really "walk in their shoes" instead of projecting the teacher's preferences? Such is the power of conferences with thoughtful presenters and open-minded educators.
In the past 2 years, attempting to offer my students choices that are not biased or preconceived, I offer a "Show Me" option instead of an assessment I design for unit tests. Students "show me" that they know the material by synthesizing their knowledge and skills into some kind of product. I want to see that they can be an expert in their own right. The students have complete choice to show me that they know the material, and I grade it using an OSU rubric (Outstanding, Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory). Oh, okay, you answered my question about a rubric.
Instead of taking a test on the Trojan war, one of my students last year chose to write a multi-scene screenplay of the Apple of Discord episode. Her writing was captivating and she showed me she knew the origins of the Trojan War without ever selecting A,B,C, or D on a multiple choice test.
What a progressive vision of assessment! Not just in theory, but in classroom practice! I'm in awe (I mean, I'm inspired to try this with my second semester seniors for their last assessment).

Much like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, the more we control internal and external factors, the more opportunity we have for choice and the more power we have in choosing for ourselves and others.
As we move up Maslow's hierarchy, we constantly make choices at every level and our circle of loci expands. If our needs aren't met, we won't move up the hierarchy and seek that opportunity for risk.
Students' lives are controlled by teachers and schools even after school, except students can choose when to do homework or how thoroughly. Kate's vision proposes giving students authentic, real decision making powers to promote more responsibility, more risk taking, more creativity, and more sense of individual agency. What a vision! (check out the graphic)


Did you make this, Kate Baker? Please retweet!

Kate Baker did make this graphic. (I did a google image search.) Kate, you inspire so many teachers. This needs to be re-tweeted until it goes viral!

Lessons learned:

• To thoughtfully engage after conferences extends conversations beyond the moment
• Student choice is not a simplistic concept, but has the power to transform our students' sense of personal agency and ownership of their learning
• Teachers everywhere should experiment with choice in their own classrooms and then report back on Twitter (with the hash tag #studentchoice) and in blogs.

Thank you to Gordon Hultberg for presenting in Boston and thank you to Kate Baker for continuing the worthwhile conversation beyond the conference. It just goes to show you, it's not always the size of the audience but quality of attendees that matters.

 

Comments welcomed here or also on Kate Baker's blog

Holly Clark's New Year's Resolutions

Here are some educator's New Year's Resolutions that I want to adopt!
                             Click here to see Holly Clark's blog
Holly Clark @HollyEdTechDiva has more than 5,000 followers on Twitter and she posted these resolutions  (and challenges to educators).

Holly's goals, with my comments in red:

1. As educators we will begin to give students more voice in their learning. (Let's give students voice in their writing, choice in their reading, agency in their learning, and options in demonstrating what they've learned.)

2. Teachers everywhere will make a pledge to teach without students in rows and without standing in front of the class for one month. (For only a month? Flexible furniture facilitates re-configuring classrooms, group work, circling desks, and other configurations.)

 

3. We will begin to re-evaluate the “data” we get from multiple choice tests and look to find more formative and imaginative ways to assess learning. (I'm reading Common Formative Assessment (Kim Baily & Chris Jakicic 2012). Admin has promised that we will talk about assessment this semester and I want to be ready!)

4. Students will be allowed to connect with other classes, and teachers and administrators will stop being afraid of YouTube and Twitter. Instead, teach kids how to critically think about these forms of media. (I'm using Chatzy.com as a backchannel during films and discussions and searching for other seniors that blog so we can comment on their blogs. Twitter is blocked by tech.)

5. In 2014, Digital Citizenship won’t be simply a discussion about cyberbullying, but rather about teaching students how to be savvy online learners and collaborators. (Yet to teach this, but I must.)

6. When using a computer in the classroom, teachers will find more ways to integrate technology other than online research or writing a paper – try a Mystery Skype, Google Helpout, or collaborative reading with Subtext. (Used Subtext last year. Trying to use tech for innovative learning.)

7. Students will begin to house most of their work in digital portfolios. This will help them build and understand the importance of their web presence and allow them to share their learning purposefully with a wider audience. (My student's blogs are like a one-year portfolio. But I'd love to organize multi-year digital portfolios school-wide.)

8. When designing lessons, teachers will ask themselves, how will this “impact student learning” and how will this get students “ready for their future?” (Teaching seniors, I design everything for college readiness. But is that enough?)

9. Educators will stop asking students questions on tests that they can google – and instead ask rich questions that require real critical thinking to answer or solve. (Love this! No more regurgitated answers! Only thought-provoking questions!)

10. Don’t give students questions to answer  -but allow them to ASK their own questions and creatively find the answers – even the wrong ones. (Click Right Question Institute and read Make Just One Change for a systematic way to have students generate their own questions. I observe a lot of teachers, and even Socratic questions have the teacher directing the conversation. I've tried Socratic Circles and student-led discussions with good success to make students less dependent on the teacher, make more eye-contact with other students rather than addressing all remarks to the teacher, and give students more responsibility, agency, and independence for discussions and their own learning.)

 

Let 2014 be a breakthrough year for all of us teachers!

SECOND-SEMESTER SENIORS

The Myth of Senioritis in 2^nd Semester Seniors

Months ago my seniors started warning me, “Don’t expect any work out of us second semester.” Seniors enjoy mystifying and dramatizing slacking off at the end of high school. I’ve taught seniors for a decade now and some of it is just an attitudinal stance in the midst of burnout, while some is

real. Junior year is perceived as the hardest year, with SAT and ACT high stake tests, G.P.A. concerns for college admissions, and many students taking A.P. classes for the first time. But seniors report that first semester of twelfth grade is harder: taking the SAT and ACT one more time and praying for an extra 100 points; taking SAT II tests, which are harder still; grades still counting for college; more A.P. classes; and college applications with the Common App, writing scores of essays about “Why do you want to attend our institution?” No wonder seniors want to believe second semester they can just coast.

My experience? High-achieving students (A+ and A.P. students) don’t slack off, actually cannot despite their intentions to, because they’ve been thoroughly conditioned—but with a few notable exceptions every year, which frustrate senior teachers. Medium range students who were working hard to keep up or who were just doing enough to earn B’s, tend to do less and less at home, but in the classroom are thoroughly engaged—that is, in the hands of very capable teachers who engage seniors and set the intellectual bar high, but not the workload. Second-semester seniors are less and less motivated by the fear of a grade of C (though selective colleges have been known to rescind acceptances for a severe drop off in achievement). Some teachers rely solely on grade anxiety to externally motivate students to make an effort and to do lots of work. External motivators lose their potency near the end, which may frustrate teachers but may be healthy for students in the big picture. Grade anxiety doesn’t encourage innate curiosity or the natural love of learning, which in many students atrophied years ago—especially in high-pressure college prep high schools—to be replaced by grade grubbing and just doing enough to get by.

I’ve learned to lighten homework expectations second semester; mostly I need them to read pages in short novels (Heart of Darkness, The Stranger, Kafka’s Metamorphosis) because I don’t have

enough class time (200 min./week) to have them read it all in class. Some stop reading at home, and as we know, some never did (see Kelly Gallagher’s Readicide and Carol Jago on how even A.P. Lit students can fake it). Nonreaders make English teachers squirm uncomfortably (I am right now!), but Penny Kittle’s Book Love and other independent reading programs are an antidote, and I try to get them to read free choice books, like Hunger Games, The Fault in Our Stars, and so many others, as a second track of reading.

Every grade has its challenges, and most teachers have a grade they prefer; some teachers love middle school kids but wouldn’t be caught dead teaching seniors, whereas I like teaching seniors, despite their developmental challenges, despite senioritis, and despite the lower demands I find I have to make. The 2001 NCTE book Writing at the Threshold gave me the title for my class blog

called College Threshold . I like teaching students on the threshold of young adulthood; even if they talk a big game of senioritis, I find I’m not frustrated with my students, but, like their parents, ready to let them go and face a new crop of rising seniors.

Comments with differing opinions are welcomed.

Podcast with Carol Jago on Talks with Teachers

TALKS WITH TEACHERS (PODCASTS)

A series of podcasts with big names in the field of English and Literacy (Chris Lehman, Grant Wiggins). The first podcast interview TWT#1  was with Carol Jago: 

(Former NCTE president, editor of California English , author of With Rigor for All, 2011 ; Papers, Papers, Papers, 2005 which I’ve used to help English teachers with the essay grading load--teachers are not copy editors!)

In the podcast  (also available as text) she recommends and comments on the following:

      ·         Follow key educators on Twitter.
      ·         Poetry Foundation website

• To improve student writing: Have students put a slash mark at every end punctuation. It will allow students to see their sentence variety, which is an important element in effective writing.

       ·         The unplanned classroom discussion which goes anywhere except where planned.

• She also talks about literature as being one of the most amazing technological advancements ever, transporting readers to other worlds.
• We teach great literature too early for kids.
• Teachers as learners
• No copy editing but responding to student work that results in changes in student behavior
• Using visual art as warm up activity to writing.

Like many English teachers, I am a big fan of Carol Jago, attend all her presentations at CATE and NCTE, and read all her books. If you love reading and books, you simply must follow her on Twitter @CarolJago for her book recommendations and all book awards announcements. Carol is very approachable at conferences and is a real leader in the field of literacy and reading.

 

Good choice to start with Carol Jago on Talks with Teachers.

New Year, New Blog

New Year, New Blog             January 1, 2014

On New Year’s Day 2014, I’m making a commitment to blog regularly about teaching reading and writing and the technologies that boost student learning.  New Year’s seems a propitious day to make a (foolish or worthwhile—choose one!) commitment. Last November I tried to complete the NaNoWriMo challenge where people try to complete 50,000 words of writing in the month of November. Though I fell a bit short, I actually found writing 1600 words a day very helpful to my thinking and to my writing. I’ve been teaching students a long time (decades), am using Twitter for my Professional Learning Network to follow stellar teachers of literacy, and have been teaching blogging to my students for my more than five years.

My burning interests?

1.       How to teach writing and reading more effectively!

2.       How to start an independent reading program at my school.

3.       How to use classroom technology to enhance student engagement.