Hello, my name is Mr. Malley

Part 1: My Quiz Policy

Last year, I gave random quizzes in AP Psychology on a “variable ratio schedule of reinforcement.” My logic was that if students never knew when there would be a quiz, then they would always come prepared.

This, I learned, is untrue. What students did instead was search out possible patterns of behavior in my quizzing schedule. They would say things like “I didn’t think there would be a quiz today” or “Why do you always give a quiz on the days I don’t think there will be one.” They would guess whether they would have a quiz or not, and shape their behavior around that guess. If they didn’t think there would be a quiz, they wouldn’t study. If they thought there might be one, they would.

This is not the type of behavior I want to encourage. Based on the recommendation of last year’s AP class, I decided this year to give a daily reading quiz, reinforcing reading on a continuous schedule.

Part 2: My Quiz Make-up Policy

High school juniors and seniors have hundreds of reasons to miss my class. Many of them are unjustifiable. For example, it is reasonable for me to expect that students schedule vacations, senior pictures, extended lunches, routine doctor’s appointments, etc. around my class.

Based on this logic, last year’s AP students could not make up missed quizzes in my class. They went into the book as a zero. However, since I know that we’re all human, and that we occasionally cannot prevent missing class (illness, certain medical appointments, etc.), I dropped the lowest quiz score from calculation. This, in a sense, allowed each student one missed class every marking period (9 weeks), or two per semester.

Part 3: The Problem

I can’t help but wonder whether this is too strict, especially considering that I am now planning to give quizzes every single class period. If my classes meet five times every two weeks, that’s approximately 24 quizzes every marking period.

Perhaps I could offer extra work in the form of research that would make up for their lowest two scores. This would allow them the opportunity to turn their two lowest scores into high scores, offsetting the effect that an absense would have on their grade.

This, of course, would force me to do more work. I would have to not only read, comment on, and assess the papers produced by the make-up research, but I would have to come up with the research topics, something I would have to do in advance to anticipate students wanting to take the opportunity. After all, these are highly motivated students I’m talking about.

And, would these research papers be punitive? If so, then its not worth doing. Why create more work for my students if it does not reinforce learning the content I wanted them to know in the first place.

Part 4: The Solution

One thing that I would definitely like to do is create a menu of research questions/topics from which students must choose to present on at least once/twice per marking period. These presentations could be “multimedia” (podcast, blog, video, oral, paper, etc.). Questions would range from historical to analytical. Quizzes could be made up by completing additional questions from that list.

Now I think I’m on to something!

This year, all students will be required to present on one topic of their choice from a list of topics that I provide. This list will grow throughout the year; as I find new topics I will simply add them to the list. These presentations can use any media and will be graded using a rubric that I will have to make that assesses their understanding of the topic that they are presenting on.

If students miss class, they can make up the quiz by presenting on another topic of their choice.

Note: exceptions will of course be made for long-term extenuating circumstances (i.e. illness or tragedy).

This should a.) make absences undesirable, and b.) encourage in-depth study in psychology, and c.) actually boost the students grade by allowing them the opportunity to turn a zero into full credit.

I’ve spent the morning re-reading a chapter in Robert Fried’s remarkable book, The Passionate Teacher, about the necessity for teachers to develop a “stance” in the classroom.

What we have going for us is a philosophy, an attitude, a bearing, a way of encountering students based on a set of core values about kids and their learning potential.

I would argue that every teacher has a stance, whether they are aware of it or not. Even the cranky teacher down the hall, years past his last real moment in the classroom, has a stance; a message that he conveys to his students about learning, the content he’s teaching, and life in general.

The crux here is knowing what your current stance is, striving to achieve the ideal stance you have in mind, and knowing when a positive stance can no longer be maintained.

For instance, as is typically the case with new teachers, I talk way too much in my classroom. I fear giving my students control, so I lecture. I also fear not “covering the content” to the point where I frequently feel I’m no more than an animated encyclopedia of facts. And, as a result of this “stance” that I maintain, I always feel stressed in the classroom.

My stance, whether I like it or not, is ‘experienced’ by my students. While I make my lessons as fun as I possibly can, I have created a passive relationship between my students and their education. They come in, sit down, and take notes. I talk, and demonstrate, and change slides. I am essentially enabling thier ignorance!

As you can tell, this is not what I would prefer! I would much rather my students talk, demonstrate, and tell me when they’re ready to change slides.

I saw last year as a learning year for myself. This year will be a stance year. I will work harder at becoming the teacher I want to be.

Well, today’s the last day of exams. I have to show up tomorrow to clean up and organize my room, but at 2:30 this afternoon my teaching duties will be over until September. That’s a very good thing.

Jon, a graduate that I taught this year, stopped in for a chat yesterday and made me think about how much I (the teacher) have learned. I was telling him that even after formally studying Psychology in college for two years, 90% of what I now know about that subject was learned this year! That’s no exaggeration.

There’s a lesson in the above statement, I think. If you consider all the years that people spend in college, and divide that by the amount of time actually spent studying the content they so earnestly devoted themselves to learning, how much knowledge does one really end up with in the end? With the exception of the exceptional, not much, right?

Now, multiply that knowledge by the motivation to deliver that studied content to a group of seventeen-year-old students. Suddenly, you end up with a remarkable ability to recall information!

The more I teach, the more I realize that if I want my students to learn, I have to engage them in sharing what they know with others. Otherwise, what’s the point of remembering?

Happy summer.

Starting with the class of 2011 (next year’s incoming Freshman), every student who graduates from a Michigan high school must have a (documented) minimum twenty hours of online learning experience.

To satisfy this landmark state graduation requirement, the Social Studies department at Niles High School will incorporate “blended learning” into their curriculum next year.

As part of the planning process, I met with my department chair this afternoon to discuss the logistics of such an undertaking. I thought it might be helpful to others if I share my thoughts and findings:

• I’m serious when I say that the twenty hours of online learning needs to be documented.
  

  It is up to each district as to how to track the 20 hours of experiences. It is suggested that a district use the same manner of tracking online learning experiences as they currently do in tracking a student’s community service hours … These online experiences may take place between grades 6-12 to meet the graduation requirement.
  – Online Experience Guidelines: Companion Document

  To do this, I will probably pull a complete monthly log from Moodle’s reports. However, this is still a messy plan considering sense will have to be made from those logs. I’ll have to spend some time thinking about this one!

• Simply having a learning management system on your server is not enough to qualify a school as providing an online learning experience. Specifically, even if a school has Moodle and requires every teacher to use it, those teachers must be able to demonstrate how they are using the Internet to promote online learning skills.
• Schools must show that teachers and students are building working relationships online. The best example of this would be a school that provides a wiki that all students are required to contribute to, and that is guided by the input of the teachers.
• The online instruction must align with the Michigan Technology Standards and Expectations.
• A school’s plan for providing online instruction must include instructional goals, objectives, strategies, and assessments that are aligned with content area state standards, benchmarks, and expectations.

Two months ago, my department chair and I were under the impression that online research fit the bill for this new requirement - well, it doesn’t if that online research is exactly like library research, but on the web!

If schools want to embrace this legislation (which they should), then they need to make a wholehearted effort to train their teaching staff in the use of Web 2.0 tools and give them the time to brainstorm how such tools can be applied to enhance their classroom lessons.

Today being the penultimate meeting of my AP Psychology class, I asked students for feedback regarding what I have done: the activities I’ve chosen, the demonstrations I gave, my delivery method, etc. I also asked students to write a word of advice to next year’s AP Psychology class that will help them succeed.

Not surprisingly, 90% of students shared the opinion of this student:

Reading the assigned text is definitely important. It may be long. It may be boring. But, it is important. It helps fill in the gaps in the lessons and is often quiz material.”

Also no surprise was that half of my students do not appreciate my “pop quizzes” that assess their reading comprehension - a point I also grew uncomfortable with as the year progressed. If my goal is to get students to read their textbook (which it is), then pop-quizzes have proven themselves to be a very unsuccessful tool.

The students who read textbooks read my textbook. The students who do not read textbooks, do not read my textbook. Imagine that!

So, I’m thinking of possible alternatives (in no particular order):

• Five-question quizzes at the start of every class over the section of the textbook I will be covering that day (believe it or not, this was suggested by a number of students).
• Ten-question quizzes at the start of every class. Five questions from the previous lesson. Five question over the section of the textbook to be covered that day. This will reward studying while reducing the harmful effects of bad quiz scores on the overall grade.
• Reading journals to either supplement or supplant quizzes. If supplemental, make them worth more than the quizzes. Collect a random sample of reading journals each class for assessment.
• Student wiki of psychological concepts to be updated by students throughout the year. This would be a challenge to a) grade, and b) preventing social loafing.

All just thoughts at this point. Luckily, I have about 3 months to think about it!

As the year comes to an end, it’s time for reflection.

I spent about two class periods last year working on management. Next year, I’ll spend two weeks.

• I want papers typed in APA format. So, I need to have them submit a “mock-paper” in APA format!
• I want assignments turned in on time. I know that it seems like late papers shouldn’t be that big a deal, but when the end of the year comes and I can’t assign a due date without 50% of the students turning in papers late, I have a serious problem! Next year, late assignments will not be accepted. Extensions must be approved in writing, and their will be no garauntee of approval.
• Reading quizzes every day. Two consecutive scores below 60% will warrant a call home.
• Syllabus outlining the entire year (readings, assignments, projects, etc. all included). Since high school is too unpredictable to provide dates, I will use units and days (example: Cognition: Day 1, Cognition: Day 2, etc.).
• Seating chart dictated by their chosen seat on the second day of class. After that, I will choose where they sit. No exceptions. I am too unorganized to do this in any other way!
• Room and row captains. Sounds elementary, but row captains will be responsible for passing out and collecting work and handouts for absent students in their rows. Room captains will help pass out work collected during the previous class. I need structure; this should get me there.
• Kleenex boxes for extra credit.
• Reading logs?
• One-minute papers at the end of each class.
• More online assignments and assessment (to be thought about this summer).

Thoughts and feedback requested.

Three weeks ago, I was at my wits end with my only 9th grade U.S. History class. I didn’t know what to do. I was tired; they were rowdy. We were all anticipating the summer vacation. Just before I totally burnt out, I started a new policy. I’ll write it here how I remember saying it:

For today’s class, you all start with 100 points. Right now, everyone has an ‘A.’ Throughout the class, I will add and subtract from your 100 points as I see fit. Participate constructively, I add points. Disrupt class, I subtract. This addition and subtraction will be completely my call and may even occasionally seem illogical. Nevertheless, my word is final.

This new policy changed the atmosphere in my classroom in a second. Immediately after I said this, a student raised his hand and asked if everyone in the class had an ‘A’ - a point I had just made. So, I wrote his name on the board and subtracted 2 points. The class laughed. I started my lesson. When the student complained, disrupting my lesson, I subtracted another 2 points. Later, when the student raised his hand to answer a question about U.S. History, I gave him 2 points back.

For the first time in weeks, I had control over the climate of that class! I had created a method for awarding desired behavior and punishing behavior that was disruptive.

It was so effective, in fact, that I used it in my AP Psychology classes when they got a little too distracted by graduation being so near. For example, today’s lesson was going down the tube; I simply couldn’t compete with 30 students suffering a terrible case of senioritus (and some junioritus). As soon as the game began, two students had lost 10 points each, testing the system. Then, they started getting points back, as they asked questions. Then, students all over the room started asking questions (good questions!). At the end of class today, half of my class had 2-5 points extra credit. It was truly productive. People learned.

I had a professor that would do something like this discretely. He kept a folder with our names on it. When we spoke, he noted it. When we spoke well, he made note of that too. I can see myself bringing something like this into my classroom management plan next year. It worked better than I ever would have imagined.

The one thing that no teacher education program can prepare its students for is efficiency. And, efficiency is the lesson that is sorely needed.

Just consider the numbers:

• I teach six classes of thirty students. So, at any given time, I am responsible for the grades, homework, and general personal growth of 180 people. Considering that “No Child [can be] Left Behind,” this stresses me out a bit. It takes me over a month to learn the names of these 180 students, alone.
• I teach each class for 88 minutes, every other day. So, in a two week period, I will see each student five times. I am to update parents of the progress of their children once a week through an online gradebook that my school uses. For students who are “at risk” of failing, I am to call home every two to three weeks. If I cannot contact a parent by phone, I am to send a certified letter notifying the parent that the child is at risk. If the student continues to fail despite these attempts, I am to “differentiate” my teaching plans to accommodate the student’s specific needs.
• I teach three classes a day, five days a week. This means that in any given week, I will teach fifteen lessons to fifteen different groups of students. Some of these lessons will be repeats of previous lessons.
• I am given 1/4 of my work-day to do all of the planning for my classes. Zero planning typically takes place during my planning period, due to the fact that I am correcting assignments, entering quiz scores, and making copies. A veteran teacher in my building once said:

Teaching is the only job where you get nothing done at work.

I spend an average of twenty hours working outside of work. While I know that this time will decrease with every year that I teach, I didn’t realize this would be necessary in college.

I know it sounds like I’m complaining, but I love my job. I truly feel like I am doing something remarkable; I’m working with young men and women to broaden their depth and understanding. I am involved in their personal growth. That’s fantastic.

Nevertheless, the teaching profession is not without its pitfalls. And, one ought not be mesmerized by the illusion that teaching is all about making a difference in the lives of children.

Not to get political, but our current education model is all about results. What is the result of each teacher’s work with their students? What impact are they having on their ACT scores? What are they doing to ensure that each student is actually learning? How many times have they really accommodated their instruction to meet the needs of Timmy, the boy in the back of the room with ADHD? By the way, Timmy is not supposed to sit in the back of the room; didn’t they read his IEP?

Teaching is wonderful, but it’s tough ….

One major problem with teaching large groups is that I rarely (if ever) get constructive feedback from my students about what they understand and what isn’t quite clear. It’s as if the group mentality is:

If nobody else is asking questions, then I’m not asking a question either. I don’t want to look like I’m the only one not getting this. If I’m the only one confused, then that must be my fault.

This frustrates me because it is my sole desire to ensure that students understand the content I’m trying to teach.

The classic measure of student understanding has always been formal assessment - tests and quizzes. However, it seems to me that such measures come too late and are too finite to be helpful to the learning process. Simply put, using tests and quizzes to measure student understanding is like checking the oil in your car at the end of a long journey. In the end, you learn that your car was low on oil, but after the damage has already been done.

I recently came across one way of quickly and effectively checking understanding that continues each daily lesson into the next without ending the conversation with an assessment. It’s called the One-Minute Paper.

Here’s how it works:

At the end of every class, you ask your students to answer variations of the following two questions (I would recommend having them each grab an 3×5 index card on their way in the door to use for this purpose):

1. What was the most enlightening moment of class today?
2. What unanswered questions do you still have?

The next day (or at the end of every week), you begin class by answering/addressing these questions. For example, I taught this lesson on standard deviation that left a lot of my students in a statistical stupor! I knew that they were having trouble (their body language spoke louder than words), but had no idea what they were having trouble with. I asked them, “What don’t you understand,” but nobody could (or would) successfully explain where the problem was. Had I a method such as the one above, I could have decreased the linkelihood that they remain confused.

This is definitely something I will institute right from the start of next year.

Being a psychology teacher, I’ve always wondered if my student’s complaints about PowerPoint presentations were the result of either:

1. laziness, or
2. my reliance on an ineffective teaching tool.

Richard Mayer, an educational pscyhologist from the University of California, Santa Barbara, has done extensive research on the role of media in the context of learning. According to him, it is not so much the PowerPoint that is bad. Rather, it’s the common misuse of PowerPoint that has given it a bad reputation. During a past interview, Mayer used the following analogy:

We would not necessarily say that books are rarely a good method, because books can be designed using effective or ineffective methods. In my opinion, the same principle applies to PowerPoint.

The point I take from this quote is that any resource used in a class can be good, or it can be bad! It’s effectiveness as a tool depends solely upon the way that it is used. In this way, PowerPoint is a tool in much the same way that a hammer is. A bad carpenter will never frame a sturdy house.

As a student of psychology, I know that I frequently step over that line between effective and ineffective use of PowerPoint in my classrooms. The truth is that when I study, I keep my notes in PowerPoint - meaning that I teach what I thought was important while I was learning! For this reason, my PowerPoint slideshows can be long - bullet-point, after bullet-point, after bullet-point. Occasionally, even I stumble on what I am teaching because, metacognitively, I cannot understand why I would give such small details their very own bullet-point!

Alas, my methods are the result of my own ignorance and inexperience. Occasionally, I realize what was most important in my lessons weeks after my lesson was taught. Shortly after that, I realize that what was important was but one bullet among hundreds that I put on the screen.

To end, here is a summary of cognitive processes that ought to be taken into consideration when preparing media for students:

• people learn better from words and pictures than from words alone (multimedia)
• people learn better when extraneous material is excluded rather than included (coherency)
• people learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented at the same time or next to each other on the screen (contiquity)
• people learn better from animation with spoken text than animation with printed text (modality)

people learn better when material is organized with clear outlines and headings (signalling, heirarchy)

• people learn better from conversational style than formal style (personalization)