Ball Babies

As is often the case, the highlight of last week came at tennis practice.

A seventh grade boy who's new to tennis, but very athletic and picking it up quickly, joined two girls who play happily together at the bottom of our ladder. I had overheard the pair create a game as they started warming up: they'd name the ball, then count aloud how many times they got it over the net in succession as they played a short game, and consider the total number of volleys the age their 'baby ball' reached before dying (being hit into the net or out of bounds). I raised an eyebrow when I heard one gleefully cry to the other, "You murdered our baby! She was only nine!" and seeing me do so only intensified their giggles.

I was, naturally, very curious to see what he would do when he realized that this was the short court warm-up they'd begun. He's a sweet and tender guy, I didn't know how he'd respond to this silliness, and I was pretty sure he hadn't realized what they were doing. Creeping closer to their court, I heard one girl start to explain, interrupt herself and say, "You'll see." Sure enough, she named the ball Bella, started hitting it over to her partner, and when Bella failed to clear the net at a young twelve years old, the girls lamented that she never got her driver's license, or went to prom, or got into college. As soon as they were done with their faux eulogies, one girl plucked a ball from the hopper, turned to the boy, and said, "Ok, what do you want to name this one?"

This boy - the son of a former pro athlete, who wrestles and roughhouses on the basketball courts every day at recess, who sticks around at the end of practice to hit hard against the wall, who serves with power and intensity these girls don't even dream about - didn't miss a beat.

"Paul.  Paul the Ball."

My heart melted, even more when Paul met a tragic end (at only eight!) and the boy who named him  moaned, "He didn't even make it to middle school..."

A Random Thought on Rubric Writing

I'm a bit of a rubric-aholic. I fastidiously tweak rubrics I've had and been using for years, and fiddle with formatting ad nauseum. While my attention to these details tends toward the obsessive, it's because I do feel so strongly that students desperately need clear guidelines and expectations to be set forth in order feel that they can reach the defined benchmarks.  On the other hand, I worry sometimes that in my effort to be explicit, I'm encouraging formulaic responses, and becoming too prescriptive about what final products should be.

I was talking about this tension with a colleague who summarized it thusly (thanks, Erik!): We want the task to be ambiguous, but the path to success to be clear. That is, we want students to have opportunities to exercise choice and interpret some goals for themselves, but also to understand with certainty what would define a successful or effective output.

What a paradox! I suppose it's not too different from advice I once heard in an education class: don't let the scaffolding become the house.

Confessions of a Conference Junkie

I love attending conferences, especially in the summer. For real.

I know some people might roll their eyes or do a sarcasm check when they hear that, but it's true. I've been surprised in the past by how many colleagues I respect in so many other ways and for so many other reasons are completely disinterested in this kind of professional development. While I completely understand the importance of protecting my time off on weekends and breaks, and the difficulty of planning meaningful learning opportunities for my students in my absence, the benefits of participating in a good* conference far outweigh those competing interests.

*Before I go further - yes, it's true, not all conferences are created equal. There are bad ones. Those are terrible. There's nothing worse than giving up that time off or with your students for something that doesn't offer authentic learning or inspiration. I'm sure that many of the teachers who don't pursue conferences now have been burned by bad ones in the past.

**A second caveat - I also know that there are tons of teachers who do want to pursue conferences but aren't in schools or districts that can support them financially in those endeavors. I am privileged to work now in a school that has demonstrated a commitment to self-selected professional development, and not all of us do. I'm sorry if you're not as fortunate right now.

So, why do I find them so rewarding?
First and foremost, I learn so much. At the best conferences I've attended, I have been exposed to technology tools, pedagogical approaches, and inspiring speakers I never would have learned about or from otherwise. Even when concepts or content isn't as brand new to me, other attendees share their own applications and integrations in fresh ways. I always leave with dozens of new ideas I'm eager to mull over or put into action.

That inspiration and reinvigoration of my practice is the second key benefit. It's easy to fall into routines, to do things the same way year after year; attending conferences helps me stay dynamic and evolving. It's been a long time since I've felt like I had to reinvent the wheel with my most beloved units; conversely, I haven't ever done them exactly the same in subsequent years, because there's always something I've learned about or seen done in the time that's elapsed that I want to try to bring in myself.

Third, I meet awesome people. I believe we're all better at what we do when we talk and exchange ideas with as many people as we can - it calls to mind a motto that hung in a dean's office at a school I once worked at, "All of us are better than any of us." The network of professionals I've met and maintained relationships with is an incredible resource.

Finally, in attending them, and presenting when I can, I model exactly what I want students to do - step outside my comfort zone, pursue my passions, and form connections with people and ideas. What could be better?

Making the (Argument Against the) Grade

When people ask me what my least favorite part of teaching is, it's a no-brainer: grading. I could write countless sonnets about all the ways in which and reasons why I hate it. It's not just that it's so time-consuming (it is) and steals precious weekend hours (it does) or that I labor over how to express the most appropriate, individualized feedback for each student (I absolutely do!); my biggest complaint is that I'm increasingly convinced that this part of my job - assigning letters and numbers to student products - does little to help them learn.

On the other hand, they do lots to distract students from learning objectives, to increase competition among students, and to raise student and parent anxiety. None of that, frankly, is good for my classroom or the learning opportunities I'm trying to create there. I'm not the only teacher who's been interrupted as she introduces a new activity or assignment to be asked "how many points" it is, and we've all spent time consoling students whose disappointment over a single assessment led to tears, anger, or the silent treatment. As fabulous as the parents in my community are, they're still more apt to ask about grades than they are about growth on other continuum.

I'm not saying grades don't motivate students. Certainly, some students crave the recognition that comes with acknowledgement of achievement, whether it's an A+, a gold star, or honor roll, and that desire fuels work. But I question if those students are really engaging in authentic learning and not just high-level people-pleasing; in fact, I can't help but wonder sometimes if the learning that happens in those pursuits is incidental to the grabbing of the carrot at the end of the proverbial stick.

None of this is intended to disparage students who want to succeed academically. I respect students who hold high standards for themselves; I respect them more if their assessment of whether or not those standards have been met is derived from something bigger than the number or letter that appears in a gradebook.

Is this a lot to ask of a student? Maybe, but then I feel like it's our job to help students respond to a lot of other types of feedback and consider other means of evaluation. (To be fair, we need to do the same work with their parents - if we don't want them to obsess over grades, then the onus is also on us to explain our concerns in ways that don't rely solely on bad quiz scores.) A friend teaches at a school where students don't get letter grades at the end of the term; instead, they schedule 15 minute conversations with each teacher to talk about their progress, looking together at important products during the discussion and setting goals together for future improvement. It sounded magical, she said, and liberating... until she found over and over that students would engage in these conversations, saying all the right things, and then as a calculated, almost-afterthought, venture somewhat tentatively, "so, that would be, like, an A-?" It's the in-person equivalent of watching students flip to the last page of a returned paper to see the grade, ignoring all the meticulously crafted questions and comments about choices and structure - to them, the final grade is the most important thing; to me, it's the least.

None of this is revolutionary at this point. This Atlantic article is already a few years old, but feels as just as fresh as last spring's conferences, and it's just one of many recent pieces that questions the efficacy of grades. All over the place, schools are (and have been) experimenting with different formats for summative assessments; student-led conferences, student-curated portfolios, student-designed capstone projects and other options provide opportunities to demonstrate their learning - and more importantly, reflect on it. I'm not sure of the best path away from the traditional grading system so many (too many?) of us are still using, but I'm curious about what better alternatives exist.

Table Talk: A Favorite Discussion Format

As an English teacher, I struggle continually to come up with ways to make in-class conversations meaningful, relevant and engaging for my students. The challenge isn't coming up with questions worth discussing - that part's easy. The challenge is that despite the most careful and deliberate scaffolding and norms-setting, I'm frequently disappointed and frustrated by how easy it is for some students to become either passive observers or dominant speakers, and that students don't retain ideas from class discussions the way they retain information or observations that are shared in a more traditional, transmission model, which leaves me questioning the value and efficiency of setting aside so much time for these conversations.

A few years ago, I started working on a discussion format that would address these and other challenges. Before I outline the details and discuss the benefits, an admission: NONE of this is brand new or completely mine. Any teacher who has guided discussions for adolescent students will recognize elements of Table Talk and will likely have integrated pieces of it themselves. In fact, the whole idea is an extension of Chalk Talk, an activity in which students take turns visiting the board and recording their own thoughts on a single idea or focused question, and which is nicely described here. The iteration I describe below represents the latest, but probably not last, evolution of the idea as it exists for my students.

So this is what Table Talk looks like in my classroom:
Students, usually in groups of three to five, travel to different posters in different corners of the room. Each poster has a single question on it, and as they arrive, students read the question and then quietly write their own responses, adding as many different thoughts as they'd like. After a pre-determined length of time (usually between five and ten minutes), students rotate to the next poster, and this time read classmates' answers as well as the original question, and respond to whatever inspires them. In general, the length of time they have at each poster gets a little longer each round (since there's more to read first), and we continue until all groups have visited each poster. The completed posters provide the outline for our whole group discussion.

Why do I love this activity?
1. Individual accountability - Every student responds at least once to the primary questions. One of the reasons I keep the groups small is to monitor that everyone is writing at each poster, at least once.
2. Anonymity - Unaware of whose comment is whose, students consider all the comments thoughtfully. Students who've been in classes together for years before they reach my room have often pre-determined who's "good at English" and who's not; hiding the identities of the authors on the poster means that each idea is given equal weight. Moreover, students who are unsure of themselves can test out an idea and see how it's received without having to publicly own it.
3. Wait time and reflective time - Students have time to formulate their ideas; speed doesn't determine whose ideas get discussed or noticed. They also have time to think about their classmates' contributions before they respond on the poster or in the whole-group discussion that usually follows.
4. Variety of useful input - Students don't have to feel as if they have a brilliant answer to the question in order to participate; it is just as legitimate and valid for a student to write a clarifying question about another's response, to provide an additional example to support an opinion already documented, or to share a relevant quotation. Even less confident students can offer helpful contributions.
5. Simultaneity - Students are able to engage at the same time at each poster; there's no need to wait for each other.
6. Authentic artifacts - I photograph the posters when they're done and post them to our class website so students and review them for a unit test or as they prepare a final essay.
7. Movement - Physically moving from station to station gets kids out of their seats and helps mark a transition to another question or topic.
8. Flexibility - There are lots of ways to modify the activity for different purposes or groups (more on that in a minute).

Naturally, there are some caveats. Students need to buy in to the QUIET idea, for example. It is both tempting and common for students to start chatting within their groups as soon as they've added their first comment; I've found that reminding them that they can keep adding more comments or can respond even to the replies shared by their own group members can help keep them focused. Depending on your group of students, you might also need to provide some guidance about what constitutes a "good" response. In my room, for instance, we talk about the fact that "Yes," "disagree," or a smiley face - by themselves - don't do much to create a richer discussion; continuing with "because" or "and" or "but" provides more meaningful content.

How might you modify it?
1. For assessment - If you do need to use Table Talk as an assessment, you could certainly have students sign or initial their comments and evaluate them based on a participation rubric.  If your class is small enough, you could even achieve this without names if every student wrote in a different color pen or marker.
2. To integrate technology - There are a number of applications that might facilitate a digital version of Table Talk that could be used to allow a greater level of autonomy and self-pacing, or for the activity to be completed outside of class. A Padlet or even a shared Google Doc could provide an online parking lot for student responses; VoiceThread would allow for students to share sound recordings of their responses as opposed to written ones.
3. For length - Obviously, depending on the time available for the activity, the number of individual questions, the rigor of the questions, and the amount of time each group gets per poster can be shortened or protracted. Maybe not every group gets to visit each poster. That's okay!
4. For extension - There are a few different ways I close this activity. Sometimes, when every group has gotten to every question, I just collect them, hang them up front and select some golden nuggets myself to highlight and discuss. Other times, groups are responsible for summarizing one particular poster for the whole group, including both common and outlying ideas. When I'm pressed for time, I'll ask group members to review all the comments on a poster and put stars next to two or three that deserve attention when we can return to them during the next class. The more likely that the content on the posters could be useful in a final essay or project, the more time I spend debriefing them.

So that's Table Talk. It's not the only discussion format I use, but it's among the most popular with my students, for whom it's a familiar routine.

Back in the Saddle

My absence from and eventual return to blogging is not an uncommon subject for my posts; indeed, here I am again, recommitting to making more time for deliberate written reflection. My goals now aren't necessarily the same as they have been in the past.

For one thing, while I'm sure some posts will focus on my use of technology in the classroom, it's not my sole area of focus. I'll be focusing more broadly on 21st century teaching, which I've come to strongly believe has more to do with approach and philosophy than it does with devices and applications.

Additionally, I'd say that I have a more personal aim. The school where I work now has been integrating mindfulness daily for over a year, and I've embraced more deliberate reflective practices in my classroom. Looking back and working to express my observations and conclusions meaningfully is one way I can practice the thoughtfulness and attention I know is so critical to true engagement.

Before I began writing about my return, I reviewed some of my older posts, and it was both thrilling and a little frustrating to see that so many of the concerns on my mind a few years ago are still relevant to me now. Even among the drafts that I've yet to publish are half-started pieces about things I just had conversations about last week at lunch.

My work is cut out for me.

Caring About Sharing

When I was a senior in high school, I won an award from a civic association that my guidance counselor convinced my mother was a big deal.  It was called, plainly and simply, the Caring Award, and I'm sure it was not a whole lot more than recognition of hours spent in community service and leadership in youth organizations that my counselor had submitted.  In either case, what I remember vividly is that the banquet dinner was held the same night as my boyfriend's state championship game, and I was incredibly resentful of having to attend, in all and only the ways that a teenage girl can be.  I actually mocked the slogan on the certificate, "Sharing is Caring," and the cheesy speeches that were given the entire way home.

This came to me when I was thinking about this post, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.  The post, though, is really, I swear, more about a few lessons I've learned recently about sharing Google docs with students.  My school recently acquired a mobile Chromebook lab, so I've had an opportunity to try some things that weren't possible for me in the past, and the learning curve has been steep. Some of my most significant (and immediate) findings around issues of sharing documents with students:

1. Think carefully about which editing privileges students really need.
In one of my first forays into using shared documents in a writing lesson, I created a document that my students could access from their Chromebooks, and it contained thesis sentences I wanted them to revise.  How great, I thought, it would be for them to see multiple revisions in real time right on the document...  It was a disaster.  Students were totally overwhelmed and disoriented by how frequently the text on the document was moving, and I was concerned that some students were altering the text with help and pointers inadvertently; twenty-three active users made the whole process sloppy and hard to manage.  After my first period, I decided to modify the document settings so students could only comment instead, and in the next class, the exercise went much more smoothly

2. Provide templates to expedite work.
Sometimes, I want students to play in ambiguity, to develop their own criteria for success, to think creatively and boundlessly about possibilities... other times, I need them to finish a product on a tight timeline.  Sharing a template with them to work from eliminates some of the (often, very slow) presentation-planning that occupies a group that should be more concerned with content-creating.  Not long ago, my class was split into five groups, each of which read a different non-fiction article to support our study of The Call of the Wild.  Each group collaborated to create a multimedia summary of their text, supplemented by images or videos.  In the old days, we'd go to the computer lab, and they'd huddle around one monitor, or make a mess of a file by sending it, opening, adding, re-saving and re-sending it; this year, the Chromebooks came to us and students could work at the same time, on the same document, without wasting a lot of time setting up slide designs and layouts.  One class period was sufficient to prepare their work, and they presented the very next day.

3. Sharing allows for simultaneity.
It's a simple point, but one I appreciated after experiencing the above collaborative activity.  Even in a lab setting, without documents that are actually shared, students need to work sequentially, or if they're working independently, at least one needs to be the aggregator to compile each person's contributions.  With shared documents, students can work on their own content sections at the same time, and no one gets the extra job of stitching things together.

4. Sharing makes collaboration more visible.
If you  as the teacher create the shared document, then you will get emails when comments are made and resolved.  This gave me a delightful window into the process that different groups were using: Which groups were still going back and forth at 9:00 p.m. the night before sharing?  Which group members were largely absent from the exchanges happening among collaborators?  Which student that doesn't usually speak up in class offers substantive and supportive feedback to peers from the safety and security of his own bedroom?  This was a totally unexpected surprise the first time I planned an activity like this, but it's now one of my favorite reasons to dot it.