Tag: learning

Over 22 hours

When you teach at a small high school, like I do, you where a lot of different hats. There’s a ton of stuff that needs to get done and are fewer people to do it. Naturally, everybody is asked to do a little more, especially teachers.

But what happens when your responsibilities as a content teacher take a back seat to your other commitments around school? Even worse, what happens when these commitments are handed down to you by school leadership?

Of the five math teachers at my school, I am the only one who teaches a full course load of mathematics. The four other teachers teach math, but they also have inherited a host of other teaching responsibilities, including study hall, advisory, and non-math electives. One math teacher teaches computer science and another does robotics.

This means that out of a possible 25 class periods available each day for math instruction by licensed math teachers, only 19 are dedicated to pure mathematics. With 45-minute periods, this translates to over 22 hours of math instruction that is lost per week due to programming alone.

I’m not saying that my colleagues’ current teaching responsibilities aren’t important to our school community. Advisory, when done right, is invaluable to the social and emotional well-being of stduents, which schools often neglect. Computer science and robotics are outstanding opportunities for students and we’re fortunate to offer them.

Nor am I saying that programming 30 teachers and 500 students is easy. It’s highly complex, with a lot of moving parts, especially when space is limited, as is the case at our school. If I asked around, perhaps I would discover that other core teachers function similarly and this isn’t a math-specific issue.

All of these concerns are valid. However, this doesn’t negate the reality that our students are offered far less math instruction than what is optimal. If students as a whole are doing less mathematics throughout the day, they will learn less mathematics as a result. Despite all the challenges, can’t we do better? ∞

Grading Time

How many hours do you spend grading during the weekend?

A colleague recently asked me that question. When he did, I asked him — no lie — three times to confirm the word “weekend” in his question. I emphasized the letters “E-N-D” each time to ensure I heard him right. The question threw me for a loop. It was asked with the assumption that spending hours (plural) on the weekend grading is the norm. This is problematic.

His question made me think once again about how teachers balance the time we spend grading with our need to gauge student learning and provide feedback. Grading large amounts of student work doesn’t correlate to understanding what students know or offering meaningful feedback. Similarly, too little grading produces gaps in how well I perceive student learning and offers infrequent opportunities for feedback. Striking the right amount of each can be tricky, especially during the first few years of teaching.

Establishing a good balance in grading practices means more than having a weekend not filled up with marking papers — although that is a goal in and of itself. It also means my assessment strategies are targeted, efficient, actionable, and yes, imperfect. I will never be able to access everything a student is thinking. Finding a reasonable compromise is necessary. It means I can dedicate more time to reacting to students’ thinking because I spend less time discovering it. This is no easy task, but I think it should be a goal for every teacher.

A guest visit, a disservice

Today, I had a visitor. It was someone from the superintendent’s office. I didn’t do anything different with my classes than I normally would, but the school put on the typical dog and pony show. There were freshly minted bulletin boards and colleagues wearing ties who otherwise wouldn’t have.

Because my school usually chooses the teachers that are observed, I’ve come to view a visit to my room as a nod to my teaching. I must be doing something right for them to choose my room, right? Remembering this keeps me from feeling too much pressure or buying into the masquerade.

When he entered, my students were immersed in their whiteboards, tackling average rate of change. They were killing it. I assessed their work from the center of the room and shifted students to different groups based on my observations. With each passing minute, the students grew more confident. Their work was evidence.

A few minutes into his stay, my esteemed guest struck up a conversation with me. He was curious about my assessment tactics. He said he had been in other classes using vertical whiteboards and wanted to hear my take. Given all the activity around the room, how did I know what “level” each student was at during at any given moment? How did I promote productive struggle? How did I mitigate it? How did this lesson fit into my bigger goals for students?

I explained how, for this lesson, my assessment relied on my active observations of students. I needed to fully attend to student thinking, as demonstrated on their whiteboards, to position and re-position my students to be successful. I also mentioned that my students have an exam tomorrow, and this lesson served as their review. Everytime I answered one of his questions, he had another ready. After a while, I grew frustrated.

I had no problem with him wanting to talk to me about the lesson. A clarifying question here or there never hurt anyone. This is natural.

My issue is that he peppered me with question after question while I was trying to do the thing he was asking me about: assess. Our conversation slowed my momentum in gauging student understanding, prohibited me from putting them a position to help each other, and subtracted from my students’ learning. I respectfully said this to him at some point, around the 5-minute mark of our exchange. I couldn’t resist because he didn’t look like he was prepared to slow down his inquires.

He politely disengaged with me and allowed me to play catch up with all that happened on the whiteboards. Having been plucked out of my flow state, I was in disarray. A few measly minutes remained in class.

Despite his good intentions, he did my students a disservice. He stole precious minutes away from their teacher who was optimizing unit review, all to satisfy his needs. On the surface, because I wasn’t leading a class discussion or demonstration, it may have appeared that I had time to explore his wonderings. I didn’t. My assessment was active and ongoing, each passing moment strategically stacked on the previous.

Given his position, expertise, and vast experience in moments like this, I would have expected him to notice what I was doing and recognize my need to be fully present with my students. Of all people, he should have known to respect the process. To cure his curiosity about my decision-making, connecting with me after class would have been a better approach.

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66%

When I think about most teachers I know — primarily those who I’ve met at the two schools I’ve taught at and through MƒA — one thing is undeniable: These people love their jobs. They have a passion for improving and serving students in increasingly unique ways. They move with compassion and care. They make decisions to advance students far beyond their knowledge of content.

Besides, what dedicated teacher wouldn’t love teaching? The magic that’s generated when you connect with a young person and help them grow is flat-out addicting. The job is hard and the bureaucracy can be taxing, but my work with students is a puzzle that keeps me young. It keeps me searching for answers that give my life meaning. It’s the type of work that begins and ends with love. Because I feel this way, it’s not hard to identify when other people do too.

All this was on my mind when I asked a colleague last week, “In your experience, how many teachers don’t love their jobs?” I hadn’t given much thought to the question until I said it aloud that day. What he said blew my mind: “I think 2 out of every 3 teachers do not love what they do.”

My mouth flew open. I was borderline offended. 66%? HOW? How could such an astounding number of teachers not love working with young people in the context of education? How could he make such an assumption? Did he not understand the ramifications?

In that moment, with these questions pushing their way out of my mouth, something changed within me.

I was scared.

If his hypothesis were true, it means that each day 66% of students are situated with a teacher who doesn’t lead with love. It means that 66% of classrooms are places where students and teachers simply show up, as if teachers and students are variables to insert into a formula for learning. It means that 66% of teachers teach exclusively with their heads and not their hearts.

This gives me pause.

If love isn’t at the core of a teacher’s instruction, the ten months that students and teachers are allotted together can still result in something both can be proud of. Students don’t need teachers who love them and their jobs in order to be successful. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t something missing.

Is my hopeful perspective into the hearts of my fellow teachers misguided? If the overwhelming majority of teachers do not love their jobs, as I blindly assumed, where does this leave my perception of the state of education? Where does this leave my teaching? Where does this leave students?


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