What did I learn from the interactive journal process?

I loved the blog process, so much in fact that I immediately implemented it in my classroom. From our blog, I learned the fundamentals, how to set it up, what to expect, to have the students comment on one another's, etc. The conversations occurring on my classroom blog are carried over into our Monday debates. So much fun! In our class, I really enjoyed reading the conversations between my classmates, as well as the individual posts. Thanks for the great idea.

Q&A #2

Q: How are you going to implement what we've learned in this class into your teaching and/or supervising?
A: I have already implemented a few things...

• First I started with a blog. Then I made the blog more of a dialogue between my students by having them comment on each other's ( The Sociological Perspective)


• I give more effective feedback on their written work


• I tried that "Organized Conversation" (that's not what it was called, was it?) activity we did a couple of weeks ago. My students exhausted all ideas after the first 2 turns, so we're going to work on that again. A lot.


• My final project is to re-write a unit of my curriculum in the UBD model. If it is successful, I might put some effort in over the summer and do all of my units.
• I plan on having a cooperative learning activity for my students' final project using collaboration, technology, and self-evaluation.

Michelle's question about having one curriculum model for everyone to use: I think this is a really good question. Last week we all presented different examples of curriculum from different schools. Even the schools using UBD (Roxbury and Hackettstown) use the model in different ways. Hackettstown's had a lot more information (which is not necessarily a good thing) than Roxbury's. Roxbury's seemed to be more useful and concise. Shouldn't there be a mandatory format that everyone should use? With Grant Wiggins' input into the NJCCCS, I think more and more schools will begin to use UBD to format their curriculum. But should it be mandatory? I don't see why not, as long as schools could be trained for free.

What factors are at stake when evaluating curriculum?

• Is the document useable? A curriculum is useless unless it can actually be used. A new teacher should be able to come in, pick it up, and begin teaching. It should include standards, essential questions, activities, and assessments.
• Is the document up to date? Does it keep up with modern pedagogy? Does it include 21st century skills?
• Does it cater to multiple intelligences, different skill levels, different interests?
• Are the assessments formative, or only summative?

My model for curricular evaluation was Scriven's Goal-Free Model. This seems to me to be more of a teacher evaluation model, rather than one to evaluate curriculum. It refers to Knowledge of Subject Matter, Instructional Competence, Assessment Competence, and Professionalism. These are not issues of the curriculum, but of the teacher.

Exit Card

Three Things I Learned:
1-I had no idea pictures need to be cited. I have so many powerpoints where I haven't done this. Flickr seems to be an awesome source for photos, but I wish there were more of the visually stimulating ones useable.
2-If we hadn't learned about Twitter in class, I would have no idea what all of the hype is. It seems to be referred to everywhere these days.
3- The difference between evaluation and assessment. I thought they were the same thing.

Two Thing I Thought Interesting:
1-All of the different uses of technology: Google reader and documents, Jing, Diigo, Wikispaces, blogging, slideshows, etc.
2-I love reading everyone's blogs. We all have different fears and strengths about education and this class, it's interesting to see what they are.

One Question: Is all of this technology a "fad" or a trend? If we devote all of this time to learning it, will it become part of our educational culture, or will it be passe in ten years? I think the latter, but I'm wary.

Answer to Dan's question: How do we get our building administrators to see the value and give us the time to integrate the tools into our professional lives?
In order to have my supervisor or principal see the value in these tools, I would have to personally figure them out and use them, and show off the results. If there is quanitifiable AND qualitative evidence that they are beneficial, they would have to see the value and start the research process and offer training.

Response to Another's Blog

I would like to respond to Dan's blog from March 9, "Why are American students lacking motivation?" I have a terribly cyncial response to this question: they lack motivation because they can. For the most part, even the most mediocre of students will have a moderate level of success in this country. The laziest of the lazy will still get their flatscreen televisions, their new clothes every season, and vast amounts of food to fill their ever-expanding bellies. If one doesn't get great grades and doesn't go to college, they will still likely find happiness in their lives. The same cannot be said for many other nations in the world. People in impoverished countries would kill for all of the comforts we have, for the chance to read books, and eat three meals a day plus snacks. We take it all for granted, or at least the newest generation does. I've narrowly escaped this Generation Y mentality (having been born in the 70s and not the 80s or 90s), but I see it everyday.

So, who is at fault here? Is it the parents? The school systems? The students themselves? The latter is not possible, so it is a combination of the first two--parents and schools. The kids in my classes are extremely coddled. We don't like for them to have bad grades, we don't assign enough homework because of all of their "activities," they don't receive enough punishment for their juvenile behavior. They swear in front of us. I would never in a million years have thought it was alright to use the "f" word in front of a teacher or another adult. We had midterm exams last week. They knew they were coming. What are you supposed to do on a test day? Eat a good breakfast and bring a pencil. I ran out of pencils because 1/2 of my students didn't bring one because they expected we would all give them one. I should have let them try to take the test without one, but if I had, then I'm cruel, the student would have failed, and the parents would have called. I often wish I were a teacher instead in the post-WW2 era when parents were tougher and the schools could get away with being more strict. Somewhere along the line there was a split from this attitude. Is it the baby boom children reacting against the way they were raised and feeling a need to show their kids more "love and affection"? How do we get back there? I had a bittersweet kind of a laugh recently. I ordered the "2 million minutes" video to show my students, and when it came I looked at the cover. On the top is a classroom of Indian children, sitting in their uniforms in neat rows with hands crossed in front of them. If you flip it over, it looks like MTV party time students haphazardly sitting in their seats. It made me laugh, and then made me sad. How can we bring back the motivation that exists outside of our country? I'm going to make it my goal to find out.

Necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes...

What knowledge, skills, and attitudes do you think your students will need to be successful? Are you teaching to their needs? If not, what do you need to change?

Successful financially? As citizens of the world? Those are two very different questions. To be successful financially, our students need financial literacy. They need to know about savings, credit ratings and FICO scores, interest rates, how to properly use a credit card, mortgages, financial aid, mutual funds, paying bills, the stock market, life insurance, how not to open up those "10% off" store credit accounts, etc. No matter how intellectual a person is, everyone can learn and use the above knowledge and build security for themselves. To me, this is what successful is. Are we teaching this? At my school, it is only a select few who choose to take Life Math, and these are the kids who just want an "easy" math credit. The "smartest" of the kids are too busy with their AP and Honors classes to be bothered with information like this. They go to college and are at a loss. They get that first credit card and use it for everything, without having full understanding of the repercussions. This information should be mandatory for all graduating seniors. I know, at my school, a number of teachers have been trying to get this into the curriculum, but it always falls on deaf ears. I do what I can to talk about a number of these things when I teach my Social Class unit in Sociology, but I don't have complete knowledge of all of these topics to do it justice.

As far as being a successful citizen of the world, students need critical thinking skills, evaluative skills, and the ability to make decisions and choices. Horace Mann was correct that the purpose of education should be to create an informed citizenry capable of making the difficult decisions all members of a society encounter, such as in voting. This is exactly what I strive for. When presenting students with two different scenarios, can they intelligently evaluate the options and make a decision? If we focus on the higher level thinking skills, they should be able to do this. Can they make a reasonable argument for this choice? I do not know if other teachers do this, but, to answer the question, I do believe I am teaching to their needs in this regard.

Our own question and answer

Q: In what ways do you use your department's curriculum? Line for line? As a basic guideline? Don't use it at all? How helpful is it to you? Did you receive it before you started teaching, or did you have to seek it out?

A: In regard to the history section of my curriculum, I use it as a basic guideline for my lessons. I was given the curriculum a couple of months into my first year, which isn't exactly the way it's supposed to be, is it? To be honest, I haven't looked at in in about two years, but I did have a hand in writing the most recent version, so it is actually modeled after my own lessons already in place. As for my Contemporary Social Issues course, I do not use it at all. Half of the writtten curriculum is for psychology and the other half for sociology. About 2 years ago, my administration told me I could not teach the psychology component because I do not have a degree in psych. (But, I don't have a degree in sociology, either?!?) So, then I needed to "stretch out" the sociology component to fill up the rest of the semester. Instead, I have added more units of study and expanded on what was already in place. I have added a significant writing aspect to the course, as well. It is a completely different class than what is in our curriculum. I expect I will be re-writing the curriculum for this course when the time comes, and I will model it off of what I already teach.

NCLB and "Teaching to the Test"

No Child Left Behind has not had an effect on my classroom. I do not teach Math or English, and there has been no demands on me to prepare my students for standardized tests, except for writing my "essay" questions in HSPA-style. Therefore, I do not spend any time "teaching to the test," as it applies to standardized testing. In my own way, I do teach to the test, as I write all of my tests myself, and make sure I teach my students everything on them. When reviewing for tests, we play games that include questions directly (and indirectly) from the tests.
No Child Left Behind includes high stakes testing; if the students do not pass these tests they will not graduate high school. If I did have to prepare my students for such tests, I would undoubtedly join the masses and "teach to the test," but I hope I would not do so to such an extent as to only teach test subject matter. Is there a way to do both? Or do these lessons ultimately consume all of a teacher's time?

Use of Standardized Test Results

Standardized test results are used for a number of purposes at my school:

By the English and Math departments:

• to help guide instruction, students spend time in class doing HSPA-style writing prompts and math problems to improve their scores
• scores do not predict which level class a student is in, their success in the year's previous class does

By Guidance:

• in scheduling,does a student who previously failed need a remediation course to help them pass the HSPA next time?

By Special Services:

• they use 8th grade test scores to determine if a student should be exempt from having to pass the HSPA in order to graduate

By the principal and superintendent:

• they use scores to look at the bigger picture, in terms of how well we are teaching our students, and to plan future programs to increase scores

By me:

• As a history teacher, I do not use the data from standardized scores at all
• I do assist the English department by writing my essay questions in the HSPA-style, thus making the students more familiar by the time they take the actual test. This is mandated by my supervisor, and is something I have no problem doing.

Time Spent Test-Taking

In response to the amount of time I spend giving tests in my classroom, I would say the following:

Tests have a number of purposes in my classroom... I use them to make sure the students are learning the material in my objectives; I use the data to assess where I need to spend more time; and I use them to teach responsibility (students must study and be prepared otherwise there are severe consequences as evidenced by their grades). My class is a junior/senior elective, and I do not give grades for most of the activities we do in class. In an effort to make the class more like a college-level class (they do receive dual credit through the community college), I only give grades for papers and tests. It behooves the students to have more tests than less in case they receive a poor grade on one.

I do not have much of a response for the latter part of the question. There are no state tests given for sociology, nor history. If I did, I would spend plenty of time practicing tests similar to the state tests because practice makes perfect. Again, it is beneficial to the students to be prepared, and not have to "wing it."

RAFT: Supervisor vs. Parent

Parent: Good afternoon, Mrs. Steinen. I’m calling to talk about my son, Clyde. He received his schedule today and we noticed he has Honors History next year. He’s currently in CP History, and we’d both like for him to stay there.
Supervisor: May I ask why that is?
Parent: Well, it’s so easy for him, he’s bound to get an A grade.
Supervisor: I hope you don’t mind, but I’d like to have a conversation with his current teacher and get back to you about this.
****After discussion with teacher****
Supervisor: Hi, Mrs. Stale. This is Mrs. Steinen; I wanted to follow-up with you on our previous conversation about Clyde. I talked to Mrs. Lucas, and she told me that Clyde is head and shoulders about his class, and that he would really benefit from being in the Honors class.
Parent: If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather have him in CP. The high A will look much better on his transcripts than a B in Honors. Also, he has fencing meets, Boy Scouts, horseback riding lessons, and working at the soup kitchen, so the extra homework would just be a burden to him.
Supervisor: Actually, a B in Honors is better than an A in CP, as far as colleges are concerned. Clyde will be more challenged in Honors; he will be able to use his critical thinking skills more often; he will also write more often, which will surely help him when he goes to college. Don’t you want him to learn more and be more challenged? Also, if Clyde has all of those extracurricular activities to his name, plus his stellar gpa, he will have no problem at all getting into a college of his choosing.
Parent: Really? I didn’t think about that. Alright then, let’s do the Honors class. But, if his grades start slipping, I’m calling you back and we’re going to switch him out.
Supervisor: Mrs. Stale, let’s deal with that when, and if, it happens. Let’s be positive, and you should enjoy the fact that you have a really smart kid. Good-bye.

Using data in the classroom

To be honest, I do not use one iota of formal data in my classroom. Until I read Morrison’s article, I thought I was isolated from the issue. Two of my three classes are a senior elective in Contemporary Social Issues, and the other is a "traditional" level of US History 2. I have no standardized tests from which I can receive feedback on what I’ve been teaching. After a unit has come and gone, there is such a time crunch that if a number of my students did not fully understand a concept as evidenced by a low test score average, I still must move on, and there are no consequences. There is no concrete prerequisite to learning about different events in history (though it makes more sense if one understands what happened before) or different ideas is sociology, as there is in the various steps in learning math or science or writing.

I’ve come to realize, though, that my ideas on what exactly data is, have been misconceived. Apparently, I am well on my way to making major changes in my own teaching in regard to data, as I do use data on a daily basis, albeit informally. My classes start with a do now refresher question from the previous day’s lesson or with an anticipatory question about a theme from the current day’s lesson. Judging from the class’ responses, I can vary my lesson based on what they remember, or on what they already know. Unfortunately, my pop quizzes are usually punitive in nature, though I do take the results from them and expand on concepts that need more clarification.

I emphasize writing in my sociology classes, and I tell my students they will become better writers by the time I’m done with them. The way I can prove this is by using a rubric to grade their essays, and looking at the gradual increase in their scores over the course of the term. If I ignore the outlier scores from the lazy students, I can show them that their grades do in fact increase from, let’s say 86 to 89 to 91 to 94. What do I do with this information? I can’t think of anything, except continue to require the highest standards from my students when it comes to writing reaction papers, knowing that it pays off in the end.

Morrison wrote that we need to realize there is more to data than standardized tests, and we will be on our way to making changes in our teaching that will benefit the students. By realizing this, I can actually see the importance of data, and can try to think of new ways to use it, even informally.

How have assessments or tests influenced my life?

The first major test I ever took was in third grade to see if I qualified for the Gifted and Talented program in my district. I think it was a super-special G&T program because of the 15 or so of us taking the test, only one was qualified. I even remember his name even though we were not friends; he ended up skipping a grade and is currently a professor at Oxford (at age 30!). For some reason, I never quite got over this, as the test made me feel inadequate. I wonder how current school assessments make our students feel, or if they don't really care about them.

As a social studies teacher, I do not currently have to "teach to the test" as there are no state mandated history tests yet. I have plenty of time to spend on what I want within my curriculum as long as I reach the end of the material by the end of each term. That is, if I want to spend a month on the Civil Rights movement, I can, as long as I know I'm going to have to skim over the more modern topics. I've heard through the grapevine that there will be a history test coming in the next two years or so. I'm curious how this will change how social studies teachers teach.