lazy 0ch0

In returning to the classroom this year, there is a lot that I’m joyfully rediscovering. I recently wrote about teacher aesthetic and building community and how those parts of my teaching have reemerged after so much time teaching online. Recently, another dimension of in-person teaching has grabbed my attention: music.

When I think about music in the classroom, I think about the five senses. Upon entering the room, for example, students can see the furniture and feel the temperature. If the chairs are set up in one large oval instead of groups, students’ interests will pique and they will probably wonder why (at least in my room). This seating arrangement is used to increase the awareness of others and induce different ways of thinking. If the windows are open and it’s chilly when they walk in, students will place their arms across their chest and desire a sweater. Without one, they’ll probably have a hard time focusing that day. These simple scenarios reveal how the classroom environment affects the body — and student behaviors and mindsets as a result.

I think this is also true when it comes to music. If I’m playing a catchy song when my students walk in — something brimming with melody — I believe it lights up my classroom and sets a positive, uplifting tone. The song can stir emotion, breed confidence, and establish a collective rhythm that lives in the background of our classroom. If the song is pouring out a set of quality speakers, all the better! (SmartBoard speakers are trash.) The music may not explicitly help students to calculate average rate of change or prove two triangles are congruent, but it can help manufacture the conditions under which they can do these things.

That said, it’s probably not surprising that I play music at the start of class and while my students work. I did this before and during remote learning, but it feels different since we’ve been back. The experience is livelier, more vivacious; the songs are hitting harder and the head nods, finger snaps, and body sways add warmth to the classroom climate. The tunes I play is a curated playlist of mostly R&B, hip-hop, and pop — both modern stuff and throwbacks — that I bump from a set of Bose speakers. The songs you’ll hear inside my room are no doubt a reflection of me (I need to vibe too), but I do my best to ensure my students’ joints are there, too. I ask them for music recs all the time. They keep me and my playlist current.

When I walk through the hallways of my school and listen, practically every classroom is absent of music. This reminds me that harnessing the power of music in the classroom pushes back against the norm that academic spaces need to be quiet and orderly spaces. This perspective dismisses the role of the body in teaching and learning. It guarantees that classrooms are purely intellectual and void of emotion (especially those in math and science disciplines). It means that hearing Jay-Z fortify us with his swag or Alicia Keys buoy us with her smooth vocals is unnecessary and even nonsensical.

I can’t disagree more with this belief. Being back in the classroom has helped me remember why.

bp

With the return of in-person learning, this school year has presented me with plenty of challenges. One of the biggest has been building community. After being away for so long, helping students identify with and feel connected to the classroom again is important work.

As the first semester ends, I want to reflect on some of the ways I’ve welcomed students back and worked to rebuild a classroom community. Instructional routines have contributed, but most of my community-building has non-academic roots. Some of my approaches are playful and unplanned. Others are more intentional and thought out. Methodologies or origins aside, the end goal is to humanize the classroom and foster a sense of belonging and connectedness for everyone — myself included. They make teaching and learning sustainable during these erratic times.

First, there are my rocks, my essentials. These are the routines I’ve relied on year after year. I don’t see myself doing away with them anytime soon.

• Friday Letters. The top dawg. I’ve been receiving and writing letters to students for 8 years now. More than just checking in, we co-author stories, explore new languages, play games, and do just about everything else through our weekly letters.
• Token of appreciation. This is a warm-hearted routine that gets better as the school year passes. Staff at my school even have a token now. We pass it at every faculty meeting.
• Burn Five Minutes. A daily routine that I cherish. I never quite know where it’ll take us until we arrive there — and this is precisely why I love it. It’s our window to worlds both inner and outer.
• Co-generative Dialogues. Critical conversations with students that directly impact how our classroom functions. They position me as a learner from my students and are a highlight of my week, every week.
• Handshakes. A new favorite. So far this year I’ve created 30 distinct handshakes with 28 different students. We’re now performing them mostly contactless due to Covid, but the camaraderie that comes along with them never fades.

My other community builders are unique to this school year and even unique to a particular class period. There’s no way I could capture them all here, as so many small moments chip in and do their part — but here are a few standouts. They’re mostly the result of an unexpected or random moment that I picked up and followed into the unknown. Localized and reflections the relations I have with my students, they may not exist beyond this year (or even next month) because my classes will no doubt evolve and find new ways of bonding.

• Whisper World. Whisper world is a fictional place that my 7th period class travels to whenever there is noticeable silence in the room. In whisper world, whispers are the only way we are allowed to speak to one another. It’s silly and funny and was born one random day when I realized that it was so quiet in the class that I could whisper my direct instruction. I whispered for the rest of the class and we got a kick out of it. A couple weeks later it happened again. It was so unique and different that I formalized it with a name. Now, anytime it gets unusally quiet, I’ll whisper something and the class knows exactly where we’re headed. Whisper World!
• Fruit Names. Back on Friday, January 7, New York City was hit with a fast-moving snowstorm. In my ninth period that day, I had a staggering 4 kids in my class (normally there’s around 20). Feeling urge to spend class time differently, instead of doing math, I asked: Which fruit best represents you and why? I heard all sorts of interesting things that day, but the best part happened the next day when we decided that the fruit we chose would become our official “Fruit Name.” For the kids who weren’t present for the original talk, we spent a few minutes on Monday choosing their fruits. In our class, each person’s Fruit Name is interchangeable with their real name. We have a Coconut, Banana, Mango 1, Mango 2, Papaya, Apple, Pear, and plenty of others. A visiting colleague even played along and made his name Acorn. Ha!
• Post-it wall. Back in November, a student in my fifth period class wrote “Write how you feel” on a small whiteboard and passed it around the room during the lesson. It was unplanned, unsolicitated, and completely warmed my heart. I spoke to her after class and we decided to turn it into a daily routine. Every day (or almost every day) she writes a question on a Post-it note and passes it around the room while we’re working. The questions range simple (What is your favorite show?) to heavy (What is your biggest fear?) to optimistic (What’s somthing you’re good at?) and they’re different each day. After we all respond, she sticks it on a wall we dedicated to the Post-its. The collection is growing by the day — it’s wonderful.
• “Gotta Catch it.” (This one has no real name yet.) This is my latest antic and perhaps the most fun. It involves me saying someone’s name at random during class and then throwing a Kooshball at them (they have to catch it). It’s mainly just random people at random times, but I am strategic at times too. It’s kind of like when someone throws something at you and says, “Think fast!” I do it a few times per class, if I remember. It has turned into a fun challenge. Some classes have started a +/- system where we count how many catches/drops we have throughout the week.
• Math penpals. Covid has prevented this charming idea from becoming a routine, but it’s special because the community it fosters extends beyond our classroom. Our hand-written letters bound us to another math class that is halfway across the country. The excitement of writing and receiving our math-themed letters is unlike anything I’ve done as a teacher.

bp

During the 2021-22 school year, I’m having weekly co-generative dialogues (or cogens) with my students. In an effort to help me process these talks and document progress, I summarize and write reflections after each cogen. This is the 14th post in the series.

Dividends
With minimal reminders, I had a whopping seven kids today. Two were old heads from the previous cohort who arrived on their own accord. Another was simply hanging out in the room as the cogen was about to start, fascinated as to why several of my students are sitting around a dressed-up table with snacks on a Thursday afternoon. I asked the student if he wanted to join and he happily grabbed a seat. I had another student explain our purpose of the cogen to him before we began.

With a new member joining today on a limb, it’s apparent to me that the cogen is starting to sell itself. Students see its value and trust the space — or at least these students do. The curb appeal also helps. I think my doggedness in meeting every week is paying off.

Choice Quiz
As we begin, I ask the kids about their week. Any midterms? Where have your stress levels been? They reply that they have been pretty chill — most had only one midterm this week. Curious, I do some probing into how their teachers went about reviewing for their midterms. What techniques did they use? Were they effective? One student saw where I was going and asked if I was looking for strategies to use in our class. I was (their chem teacher had an interesting idea that I might try), but added that I also wanted to help them reflect on their week.

The main course today is the Choice Quizzes that I administered this week. Select students in each of my classes were rewarded with these quizzes for achieving the class DeltaMath goal. The Choice Quiz — which I gave twice this week — consists of two problems. The students choose the problem that they want me to grade. It was my first time doing these types of quizzes (usually there’s just one problem that they solve), so I was eager to see how it went for the students. The Choice Quiz was the result of the cogen.

Their first piece of feedback they gave me had nothing to do with the choice aspect of the quiz: there wasn’t enough time to complete it. I administer quizzes at the end of the period and, in all of my classes, the students had to stay after the bell to finish the quiz. Of course, that’s on me. I felt bad about this during class when it happened, and offered to write late passes to any student who needed one.

That said, I didn’t fully consider the ramifications until today’s cogen. Soon after I brought it up, a student said politely, “Mister, I was in the middle of the quiz when the bell rang. I didn’t have enough time to process the question or think how to do it.” Another kid said, “That also happened to me. I heard the bell and my brain just shut down because I had a midterm in the class right after yours. I needed to get there on time so I rushed and made a mistake on the quiz.” And this isn’t a one-time thing because another student commented, “Every time I see a quiz in our class, I hope I have time to finish it. It usually runs over.” In hearing them out, I think about all that I try to fit into a class period and cringe inside. It’s inconsiderate of me to expect them to stay even just a few minutes past the bell.

Acknowledging that my planning needs to be improved, I pivot toward the content of the Choice Quizzes. How did they feel about the options I gave them? Did the quizzes meet their expectations?

I approached each of the two Choice Quizzes slightly differently. On the first (Type 1), the two problems on the quiz aligned with two separate topics that we are studying. On the second quiz (Type 2), the problems both dealt with the same topic. The students noticed this and had a lot to say. Their initial reaction was an appreciation for Type 1 because they could choose the problem that they knew more about (i.e. which one was easier for them). In this way, the students felt like they had actual options. Type 2, on the other hand, didn’t feel like it incorporated choice at all because both problems on it were linked to the same topic (they were very similar and resembled one we did in class that day — like all quiz problems do).

As their teacher, I expressed how giving all Type 1 quizzes can be problematic for me. If students only choose problems on topics they feel comfortable with, how will I ever know what they don’t know about topics they don’t feel confident doing? Type 2 quizzes allow me to target my assessment. They nod at my point but step up and deliver some potential compromises. They pepper the cogen with questions.

Could I hold off on Type 2 quizzes until the end of a unit so that the problems on them can be more diverse? What about mixing in ungraded (feedback) quizzes more often to help me assess what students know and don’t know? I only did one of these and haven’t gone back to it. Since students don’t know the topic that will be on any quiz, they also wondered if I could somehow “emphasize” which topic it will be before the quiz begins? What if I simply found a balance between Type 1 and Type 2 quizzes?

They give me a lot to think about, the most promising being that I should loop in low-stakes quizzes more often (i.e. feedback quizzes). I forgot all about these assessments and the students seem to appreciate them. I’m also thinking about how the balance of Type 1 and Type 2 is a strong idea. Of course, none of this matters if students don’t have time to complete them!

DeltaMath Day
As we head for the hills, I announce to the cogen that we will have our first “DeltaMath Day” next week Friday. Next week is going to be a 3-day week, but I think we can make it happen. They smile, glad to hear the news.

Feedback on the fly + math bingo
On Tuesday something insightful happened with one of the cogen members. He came up to me at the beginning of class and asked whether I could use more worked examples in the Do Now (the problem we start class with). I had been doing this regularly all year but hadn’t used one in a while. He said that he liked them and that they help him understand common mistakes. I thanked him and ended up using a worked example both yesterday and today. In the midst of our discussion today, I brought this up to the cogen as a great example of providing me in-the-moment feedback on what they’re experiencing. In this way, I encouraged them not to wait until Thursday to offer suggestions on what they think can be improved about the class.

Something else: the cogen students’ are running Bingo tomorrow! I’m excited — and a little nervous — to start this next phase of the cogen: co-teaching. Updates next week.

bp