Day 179: Student Feedback

Today was "Bump-Up Day," a day for students to walk around the school and visit the classes and teachers that they will have next year.  The schedules are tentative, but I don't mind at all.  It gives me a chance to see the new students and make a first impression before they leave for the summer.

As of right now, my schedule for next year consists of Math 7 and Pre-Algebra.  Any student who was in Math 7 last year (all of my students) will be in Pre-Algebra this year, which will be interesting to see how they've grown over the summer.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to blame their last year's teacher for any gaps in their understanding...

There was interesting division between the 6th grade boys and girls.  The girls seemed eager to make a good impression while the boys seemed eager to show off on how silly they were.

All of this was good and interesting, but it wasn't the most important part of my day.

Bump-Up Day was after lunch.  Before lunch, we ran a shortened schedule where the students went to their regular classes for a grand total of 20 minutes.

Since the grades were due in yesterday and 20 minutes isn't much time to get into anything, many of the teachers were showing movies or having kids help to pack up their rooms for moving in the fall.

I decided that I had a golden opportunity and I took it.

When I students came in, I was sitting at the front of the class with a notepad.  I talked briefly about the importance of feedback and touched on several points that I had been attempting this year, such as discussion of process and the constant need for improvement.  I reminded them that this is true for teachers as well.

I asked them for their help in making me a better teacher and making the class better for future students (or themselves, in some cases.)

Specifically, I was looking for ways to motivate them, make the class more interactive and improve my grading system.  I made some suggestions and got their feedback.  They made suggestions and I kept notes.  Something came forward that was common across all of the classes:

"Homework should be graded or we won't do it."

I explained my issues with that.

1) Grading homework doesn't encourage kids to DO it, but it does encourage them to copy it, defeating the purpose entirely.  They agreed with this point and acknowledged that they always copied someone else's math homework.

2) I care about proficiency, not compliance.  If you do all of the homework and can't demonstrate proficiency, you aren't ready to pass and homework points give you a false sense of success.  If you have mastered the skills, then there's no need for you to do the homework just to keep your grade from dropping.

3) If you're only doing homework because it's graded, you're missing the point entirely.

After some discussion, we came up with a new system that would encourage homework for those who needed the practice while not requiring it of those who don't.

The new plan is as follows:

Before each section/unit/skill, the class will take a brief (3-4 question, 5-10 minute) pre-quiz that will be scored on the 0-4 scale that I've been using all year.  Based on their pre-quiz score, students will be set along different assignment paths, each designed to hit specific concepts and reinforce previous ideas.

"If you earned a 0 or 1, this is your assignment list for the section.  If you earned a 2 or 3, these are your assignments.  If you earned a 4, you'll do these."

At the end of each section, we will have a skill quiz, as we have this year.  A major difference here will be that we will have more skill assessments that are shorter, rather than saving up several skills for a big test.

Students who do not score a 4 on their assessments will still have the opportunity to reassess, but the requirements to do so will be MUCH more specific.  They will need to complete specific practice problems and attend a certain number of seminar periods, determined by their score.  They will then get to schedule a reassessment to demonstrate their knowledge.

They also had several suggestions for changes to the warm-ups and various activities.  I wrote them all down.  I'm taking their suggestions very seriously and will be implementing as many as I can in the fall.

I am grateful for their feedback.  Maybe next year, I should do this at the end of each marking period.  I worry, however that they wouldn't give me honest feedback for fear of repercussions.  That just means I need to do a MUCH better job of fostering trust in my classroom.

Day 178: The End-ish

Today was hard.

I had an disagreement with a good friend at work and even though we patched things up before we left on Thursday, I spent the whole weekend thinking about it.  Today, that teacher was out of the classroom working on duties for the end of year so I didn't get a chance to have any further conversation.

In addition to that, today was the last day of the 4th marking period and grades were due by 3pm.  Regardless of this, and regardless of the fact that the students have been able to take reassessments all year on any topic, I had several ask if they could stay after school today for help and take reassessment tomorrow.

Me: "Grades close today."
Them: "Oh...I practiced it over the weekend. Can I take it today then?"
Me: "...Which skill?"
Them: "What do I need to make up?"
Me: "You're telling me that you spent the weekend preparing for this and you don't know what you need to make up? What did you study?"
Them: "..."
Me: **waiting**
Them: "So can I do it today?"

My schedule for next year looks very much like it does this year, meaning that I will have all of my 7th graders again.  They will already know what I expect and the classroom routines, so that's a HUGE bonus.  I am, however, going to be changing rooms, so my current room is packed up and mostly bare, making the end of the year feel depressing.

To top all of this off, I attempted to go over the assessments that the students took on Thursday so they could have feedback before the year ended.  Most of them ignored me and I couldn't bring myself to tell them write stuff down.

After school, a few students stayed to do reassessments.  They had arranged this ahead of time so all of my other grades were finalized.

In addition, another student stayed.  She didn't have any assessments to take, but was sitting quietly in a desk.  When I approached her, she broke down crying and opened up about the stress that she's been under at home and at school.  She suffers from many of the same anxieties and depressions as I do, so I knew where she was coming from.

I let her talk.

She had a weak start to the year, but at the beginning of this marking period, when she realized she had made a mistake, she made a serious effort to pick up the slack.  She has been working with a tutor before and after school almost every day and has shown remarkable improvement.

I am deeply proud of her and tell her so often.

As hard as my day was, her opening up to me made everything better.  I have to keep reminding myself that if I can help improve the life of one student, then I've done well.  It's a step in the right direction and I will keep it in the forefront of my mind for as long as I can.

Teaching middle school is hard.

I keep forgetting how hard it is to actually be a middle school student.

Day 177: Final Assessment

The 4th marking period is one of almost constant disruption.  A large portion of my schedule and that of my students is used to take standardized tests.  The 8th graders take the PSSA and I proctor the Keystones.  Students are shuffled around the school and normal classes become infrequent.  In addition, there are tons of end-of-the-year assemblies, trips, meetings and performances.

This means that my classes have only had 2 assessments.  We've been covering material, but the opportunity to formally assess those skills hasn't really been in the cards.

In looking over the assessments from today, I'm coming to some conclusions and asking myself some questions.

I think we need to be doing more guided practice.

I know that many of my students struggle with synthesis.  When given A and B, they often have difficulty coming up with C unless explicitly shown how.  Even then, it's often difficult.  When problems don't look exactly like examples, there is deep struggle.

I've also come to the conclusion that I need to be helping them to build the habit of using the resources they have available, specifically sample problems and notes.  Next year, I'm going to be much more deliberate about note-taking.  Instead of asking the students to bring their workbooks each day, I'm going to have them bring a 3-ring binder where we can put the pages from the workbook, collected into chapters.  This will make it much easier to keep sections together and to insert notes and examples between sections of the workbook.

I think with many of my kids, vocal repetition may be helpful.


We have spent 2 weeks working on properties of exponents, but I'm seeing lots of mistakes, and not ones that are similar or consistent.  In many cases, they are applying "rules" that we didn't ever talk about or use in class.

At the same time, I pulled half of the test questions from the review sheet and they were treated as unfamiliar.

There are other issues as well, such as the ability to determine whether an answer makes any sense.

"A store buys a ring for $120. If they mark it up by 150%, how much should they charge for it?"
"$18."

I know where this answer comes from.  They converting 150% into a decimal, but put that decimal in the wrong place, making it .15 instead of 1.50.  My issue is more that no thought was put into thinking "this makes no sense."

Does this come from lack of understanding, or rushing and not checking?

Day 176: Turning The Wipers Back On

I have made a huge mistake.

I stopped writing.  Since the start of the 2013-2014 school year, I wrote a reflective blog post every day that I was with students.  In that time, I only missed 2 days.  I know myself well enough to know that if I had taken a day off, I wouldn't start again.

The same thing happened with my running schedule.  I was consistently running 4-5 days a week.  I took a week off after my half marathon and didn't start again.

About a month and a half ago, I was tired and I took a break from blogging.  There were no excuses for doing so and no real reason, although several people told me I was allowed.  I should not have stopped.

Blogging has been a grounding force for me.  It has required me to think about my entire day, rather than just the pieces that stick out.  It has forced me to examine my teaching holistically, identifying strengths and weaknesses.  It shone a light on the ways I taught that needed to be improved and the ways in which I was succeeding.

Without blogging, I slowly fell into the teaching trap which is too common.  I forgot about my successes and focused too heavily on my failures and frustrations.

@JustinAion I don't think you're looking in the right places then... and I'm sure your students would disagree.

— Robert Kaplinsky (@robertkaplinsky) May 23, 2017

Robert was completely right. Blogging had been helping to keep me balanced.  I was writing about the bad, but also the good.  Without it, I was focusing only on the things that I was finding challenging and frustrating.  I was spending all of my energy on the students who haven't shown the kind of growth I was looking for.

I had forgotten those who HAD grown.  I had forgotten the relationships that I had built.  I had overlooked the students who come to me when they have things they need to talk about, those who will cry in front of me and no one else, those who see my room as a place where they can be safe.

Changing school districts this year has been nothing short of a tectonic shift.  The strategies and tactics that I used in my previous district have been of minimal use to me here.  I changed communities, curriculum, students, colleagues, administrators and assessment strategies.  I started woodturning.  I freely admit that I did WAY too much and when something had to give, it was blogging.

It shouldn't have been.

In a torrential thunderstorm, I turned on my wipers because I found the motion distracting.  I veered off the road.  I don't think I hit anything major, but I've had several near misses.  I have many changes that I need to make for next year, but I think blogging needs to stay.

I don't think I realized how much it was helping me.