|
 In some of our classrooms, sometimes the most obvious goes unnoticed.
Sometimes we teachers are too busy to listen to what works for some of our colleagues or maybe sometimes we just figure it's too much work to adapt a strategy to our classroom. Some of us fear it might not work since each class is uniquely different. In some cases, it's been one of our students who will notice that something works rather well in your class, compared to their other classes. Well, that's what happened to me when I was teaching a freshman English class. One of my students taught me a valuable lesson. What happened was this: during my 5th year of teaching middle school language arts, I made it a habit of starting out every one of my classes by having my students copy the day's agenda from my "oldie but goodie" overhead projector. During the first 3-5 minutes of class the students would copy the agenda word for word into their binder. While my students copied the agenda on the screen, I did the things teachers do in the first minutes of class: pass back a quiz, set this and that up, gave him a note from the office, give her a pencil, scolded them for arriving 2 minutes late, peeked outside the room, wondering who screamed "Stupid!" in the hallway, loudly enough that three of my students chuckled. The reason to have the agenda was simple: get the students to write the daily goals and more importantly, give myself a few minutes to organize the first few minutes of class. The daily agendas were rather simple. They contained usually 3 or 4 items we would cover and the day's homework assignment-no big deal. But as it turned out, it was a big deal, at least to one of my students, Juan! And as I later realized, Juan was not alone since teens never travel alone but rather in herds. After we read through the agenda, I would get the class going. I would say, on average, the agenda took 3-4 minutes and the class would get started maybe 5-7 minutes after the tardy bell rang. A sample agenda would read something like this: 1. Collect chapter homework 2. Review 8 questions for chapter 7 3. Journal entry on "bravery" 4. Take quiz on chapter 7 5. Today's homework The agenda was a simple map to the day's activities. Well, one afternoon, I attended a meeting for one of my special needs students. It was a follow-up meeting for Juan, the one student that helped me realize how a simple practice, like writing an agenda can be an effective organizational tool for some students, probably more than we realize. Ms. Wilkinson, our special ed., coordinator met with me, Juan and two of his other classroom teachers. We were there to review his progress for the quarter that had just ended. Now, I should say that Juan was an impressive student. His learning disability made my class a challenge for him, but he had a great ability to communicate his ideas; he was not shy. During the meeting, Ms. Wilkinson asked Juan how he felt about his progress in his classes. Math was OK, history was boring, science was hard . . . Then he says that he liked language arts because the teacher wrote the agenda on the board and that made it easy for him to follow along in class. Juan explained a little more: the agenda, which he kept in his binder kept him from forgetting the homework. When Juan said this, he not only surprised me for his clarity, but I was reminded how important our students’ opinions can be. We teachers sometimes forget to survey our students about our class and the learning going on with and without us. So when Juan made these comments about what he thought worked well for him, I realized the agenda was probably working for many more students in my class, some who tended to be shy. Some students don't realize their comments about our teaching can be valuable to us teachers. After the meeting with Juan, I was pondering taking regular surveys of my teaching: maybe request some comments from the students to help me tailor my teaching? For the next day or two I was brainstorming: "What if I have no idea of what teaching strategies are working for my students? Shouldn't I use "data" to find out what works for my kids? Maybe I should call some big shot education professor at Stanford and ask for some advice? Would I have to prove through a test or two that the agenda works? Would I have to create an analysis of the data and conclude why it works for some students like Juan, and why it might not work for some other students? How would I know that any of my strategies work? Ask. But that sounded too simple. Test them? Of course, test them. The tests always prove a point." The next day I figured I could more easily invite my mentor teacher to my room. She could bring in her aging clipboard, her lukewarm cup of coffee and her perfect cursive writing and observe me and help me develop the agenda and more strategies. Unfortunately, she was unavailable for a few days, and then things got busy, and we tried to set up a date but then had to change the date because of monthly assemblies then I got an ingrown toenail and had to re-schedule again. And, as you probably figured, I am still trying to schedule that meeting. I gave up on those tough questions and continued with the brainstorming on my own. What came to my mind more often was the entire idea of how easy and effective a daily agenda became for some students. And I knew that many more strategies were out there in the classrooms of my middle school. Now I had to go out and find them.
|
