I’ve repeatedly said that my favorite aspect of being a teacher is the opportunity to reflect and re-invent.  I feel like that’s the real purpose of summer, at least for teachers.  (I suppose the vacation part is nice, but I think most teachers do more than just hit the pool and watch Netflix.)

There are a lot of changes I want to make, and a lot of changes I need to make.  I’m not going to beat myself up here – that’s not the point of reflecting.  The point is to be fair.  I’m frustrated with some mistakes I made, of course, and looking at a lot of missed opportunities and perhaps unwise choices.  But I don’t think everything I did was wrong.  I also don’t think it was all right.  (How could you make any single characterization of an entire school year?)  I’m going to focus on three big areas.

INQUIRY

This is an ongoing struggle for me.  I really enjoy doing research and explaining my learning.  My students don’t often seem inclined in this direction.  There are two big obstacles – they often lack the requisite skills (both reading and search skills), and they often either lack a single, clear research interest, or they are reluctant or unwilling to pursue or share their authentic interests in a way that will be public.

I think this was the biggest surprise.  This might be worth a separate post by itself.  The first time I tried a “genius hour” variant, I only had about seven unique topics in a class of 25.  Many of my students were uncomfortable selecting a topic, and they wanted me to pick.  This is partly exacerbated by middle school dynamics, and partly by the perception of “work.”

Perhaps this is my biggest challenge.  Research is student-led, and student-driven.  And if the student isn’t leading or driving, it doesn’t get far.  I’ve tried big versions and small versions of inquiry, and never quite been happy with the results.  It doesn’t help that I changed content and grade level last year – I had to start over a bit.  I also often struggle with setting clear expectations and holding students accountable in a hugely diverse classroom.  This gets harder when I’m teaching a different grade and different content.  I’m excited to get another shot just at this.

In my ideal teaching world (my ideal classroom, something I’ve talked about before), inquiry is the centerpiece.  Kids learn more, work harder, and are happier in an inquiry setting.  Some kids need more help than others, but that’s always true.  An inquiry setting also puts me in a better, more interesting, and more relationship-focused role as a kind of “learning coach” instead of a spreader of information.

This relates to my other big goals, but it’s probably the biggest and most important area of focus.

STORY/NARRATIVE

This is a big area of research and thinking for me.  I started talking more about stories as a way of teaching and a way of showing learning last year.  I presented on this topic at a conference, and I’ll be presenting on this topic again later this summer.

Basically, I started using more stories as a way to explain and teach things last year.  I think I’ve always done that, but frequently my stories in the past were less purposeful and more self-aggrandizing (i.e., “My son was really interested in video games on the Nintendo Wii, and I used to school him at Mario Brothers . . . “).  At some point, I recognized that my stories – as useless as they often were – tended to be better remembered and understood than my explanations of key concepts.  If I told a story, however, it seemed to stick better.  If I told a story and used a visual to reinforce that memory, it stuck even better.

Writing stories went even further.  I found that I could help students in a more purposeful and effective way.  They were more likely to understand that the work of articulating a concept was theirs, not mine.  For example, I could ask students to draw and explain a food pyramid, but they were often looking for ways to rephrase someone else’s explanation – mine or someone else’s.  If I asked them to tell a story from the point of view of an organism in an ecosystem, they might ask about typical activities for that organism, but they often make their own choices and create their own story.  It’s also much harder to plagiarize this type of assignment than others.  While the product of this kind of thinking might not be the best evidence of scientific understanding, the process helps promote that understanding.  It also produces much greater depth of thought and many productive questions.

TECHNOLOGY

I’m going to be co-facilitating a workshop on the uses of technology in teaching writing in a few days, so this topic is on my mind right now.  I keep thinking about ways that technology makes things easier and enables new kinds of learning opportunities.  It is not, however, a great thing all by itself.  More technology is not always better, and a teacher who always uses technology might not be doing the best they can to help their students.

I think most teachers, especially those who have one-to-one devices, have already noticed that kids produce different kinds of work using technology.  If you ask a student to write a “book report” using pencil and paper, then ask them to write another book report using a chromebook or iPad, you will get different results.  It’s not always clear which kids work better one way or the other, let alone which way is best, but practice with my students this year showed that they were not as careful as readers when reading on their chromebooks.  If I wanted students to really engage with a text, I needed to provide a print copy.  Some students were more engaged with reading on their chromebooks, but many of those students were quicker to lose interest and get distracted.  They were also more likely to read the beginning and then stop, or just read one chunk, or sometimes even just stare at the screen.

Using technology well means having a clear goal in mind, and choosing the best tool for it.  I think we sometimes want to experiment with a tool – which is fine, and makes sense.  But at some point the kids need to be using the best tool to show or develop their learning and understanding.  Perhaps playing with a tool is the best way to do that.  Perhaps they need to hold a book to really get engaged in reading.  Perhaps we want them to be able to choose for themselves and hold themselves accountable for their own learning.  Whichever way it is, a computer is NOT the best choice for every kid every time.

I did a lot of “experimenting” this year, and I’m not sure that all of it was helpful or useful.  I think that helping kids become familiar with a limited number of tools, and helping them really master the use of those tools so that they become more focused on the product and less on the tool, is better than teaching a new tool every other day so that kids can try it and forget it.

The best question, then, is which tools are the most useful for my students?  Which are the best fit, and how can I help students master these tools so that they can effectively use them?

So I hope this three-pronged focus is more clear and fair, and I hope that it helps me direct my energy in the remaining weeks before we start another year of teaching and learning.  I have big goals again, and I’m excited to give it another go.  I hope to share more about this thinking and learning before school starts.  Thanks for reading.