The Final Answer

In my last post I stated that "Almost all restrictions around content, programming for students with special needs, out-dated time-tabling requirements and the like need to be eliminated."

What was I thinking? Let me tell you. If you ask teachers what they need the answer is always the same. They need more time! More time to plan proper differentiated instruction, more time to create common formative assessments with their peers, more time to communicate properly with parents, more time to pursue effective PD within their schools and occasionally outside of the their schools. 

There are, however, two significant barriers to this solution that would yield results in the school, classroom, and the individual student. 

1) Public Opinion thinks that teachers already get far too much time off as it is. Guess what? The public is correct. Teachers get a ridiculous amount of time off, and any teacher that does not humbly and meekly acknowledge this fact when asked or confronted by it is doing the entire profession a disservice. We do not necessarily need to apologize for the fact that we get too much time off, but we do not to acknowledge and graciously admit that we are quite spoiled in this regard. 

We are Paid by the Public and Their Opinion of us Matters

We need to acknowledge it because how is the public supposed to understand that teachers, who already get so much time off, need more time??? I think part of the solution is self-evident. The long holidays should be moderately trimmed in order to find some of the professional working, non-instructional time. How's that for an unpopular, but ultimately correct solution?

Teachers know what is needed, and we need to be willing to give a little in order to get what we need. There are many ways this could be implemented: Re-structuring the school year so that it runs a little bit further into Summer, so that there is more non-instructional time in the school year is one way that I can think of. 

because there is a bigger more ominous barrier to getting teachers the time that they need

2) The cost of education is immense, and there is probably going to be less money coming into schools, not more, so how are we supposed to function when faced with the economic reality of education?

Let's just assume we won't be getting more money for education.

There are answers. Those answers are capture in the first sentence of this post. Imposed restrictions from above need to be lessened. The province should set bench-marks of minimum requirements, the ministry of education can share assessments that will identify when students are not meeting learning objectives, and schools can be given the freedom to program and plan for those students in a way that they deem appropriate. If students do not need six periods of "Language Arts" instruction, why should this be a criteria set by a provincial authority? If students do need seven or ten periods of math instruction per week, why are schools not given the freedom to program for these students and their needs? Give schools and school boards the freedom to plan, program and schedule in the way that they deem appropriate for their students. 

If the province and the ministry get serious about loosening their controls over how a school operates then there needs to be another avenue of accountability. Accountability based on academic benchmarks set by the Province that schools are responsible for enabling every student to achieve. 

I may or may not continue this rant in future posts. Until then, you're welcome for having the answers!!

More Answers

My last post was hastily written and submitted, and this one probably will be as well. When using this tool as a method of reflection does it really matter if my ideas are exact and my arguments well supported? Not really, I'm pretty sure most of my page views are a result of the pictures I so recklessly borrow from google images.

Borrowed pictures like this one

So please do not judge my hastily written posts, or the language with which I write them because I am quite aware that I do not have all the answers.

but I do have some answers!

Education Minister Jeff Johnson, as reported to me by David Staples at the Edmonton journal, is working on supporting and exploring "teacher excellence. The minister created the taskforce on teacher excellence, and he states that, “The task force will make recommendations on how we can better support Alberta’s teachers to ensure that every student has the best chance at success." 

The goals of this task force is to make recommendations and explore how best to support teachers in achieving the overarching goals of, 

• more focus on education rather than school,
• the learner rather than the system,
• building competencies rather than delivering content, and
• technology to support the creation and sharing of knowledge rather than to support teaching

Now if you will excuse the poorly written sentence above I would like to hit you with some answers, that is what I proclaim in the title of this post. These are the three steps that need to be followed. 

1. Let's group the top two bullets together. Both bullets can be read a little differently by replacing the word education with individual and replacing the word system "program of studies." What both bullets are driving towards is an approach to learning that looks at an individual student and addresses their specific needs for academic success. The minister, and on a smaller scale, Westlawn School, are both working towards actually achieving this goal right now by giving students periodic diagnostic standardized assessments of basic reading and numeracy skills. Not assessments based on esoteric, departmentalized exams that are written from the current program of studies. Have you seen the grade nine science PAT? Specific knowledge based questions whose only legitimate claim could be that it prepares students for similar tests in high school and certain post-secondary institutions. Standardized diagnostic exams that identify specific student needs and strengths. There is your answer!! 
2. Almost all restrictions around content, programming for students with special needs, out-dated time-tabling requirements and the like need to be eliminated. The only path to change is to find the time in the school day that allows teachers and administrators to design instruction for their individual students. My next post will go into more detail about what this needs to look like, and it will be full of answers. 
3. Technology utilization takes time, but it does not have to take additional training. Within every school-board there are a growing number of educators that possess a mastery of how to use technology to support learning, sharing, and real authentic contributions by students. These educators must be given time and space to use and share their skills with students and teachers alike. This time and the freedom within the schedule in order to properly implement it will be made available if the answer provided above in step two is followed. 

I don't mean to sound so arrogant, but the issue is less complex than many educators claim, and it is also more involved and professionally informed than all of the arm-chair educators like David Staples and almost every mis-informed and well meaning member of the public claim it to be. 

People have been teaching for a long-time. The answers are well known. 

Don't Worry I have All the Answers

There is an columnist at the Edmonton Journal that is weighing in heavily on the state of K-12 education in Alberta. I want to use his thoughts as the catalyst to re-start my blog this new year.

David Staples Columnist for the Edmonton Journal

I appreciate the passion with which David Staples is discussing educational issues, but not because I necessarily agree with him. I appreciate his opinion because it opens the discourse around a topic that is very important.

I would hate to misrepresent anything that he has said, so I encourage you to explore his ideas and his writing at the Edmonton Journal. His most recent articles:

1. Grade inflation and flex time harm education, high school teacher warns
2. Alberta schools are no longer the best
3. Students ‘cheated’ by way math is taught, say educators and parents

all take an aggressively negative position towards how learning is being delivered within Edmonton and Alberta, and his most recent blog post Johnson pushing for teacher excellence, lower stakes testing applauds the minister of educations future plans for reform. 

Please read his ideas, they will certainly get you thinking and maybe even a little angry. One of the important ideas to note while reading his critique is that he most likely represents the majority opinion of many Albertans. 

A discussion worth having

I didn't want to reply in the comment section of the journal, so I thought I would return to my blog to enlighten everyone with my response. It should you comfort you all to know that I have all the answers to the problems that David Staples has raised!!!

Diagnostic testing and monitoring of individual student growth is critical and fundamentally important. In this measure I agree with David and the minister. These tests need not be tedious and expensive, they need to be designed to capture the students that are falling behind and do not possess the basic academic skills that they need to be successful. 

There is an answer, and it need not be complex

Once these students have been identified then they need to be given targeted intervention. Their teachers need to be given the freedom to stop worrying about the prescribed curriculum, so that they can help the students get up to grade level. Once the diagnostic tests show that the students have been pulled up to grade level, then they can return to the curriculum as it is in it's current state. 

The key barrier is that there is rarely the room or the freedom at the school level to provide the interventions that are needed. 

Teachers need to be given the time to work with each other on addressing their classroom needs. This time together (from experience I think it needs to be at least two to three hours a week) will help ensure the interventions are effective, and it will also help teachers decrease their work load by working with one another creating assessments, holding each other accountable, helping each other with problems and sharing ideas and resources. It is called a Professional Learning Community, and it is the second most powerful idea that I have encountered in my career. 

PLCs are powerful

90% of academic problems in Alberta schools will be addressed by implementing the two ideas from above. I could counter almost of David Staples critiques within the two ideas that I have presented here. There are still significant educational issues that have not been addressed here, but don't worry I have the answers to those as well.

One issue that I do need some help with: ATTENDANCE!! How do we address the students that just don't come to school? We make school a positive place, but some students just do not come to school enough? David any answers?

FNMI Local and Global Connections - Hawaii Skype Project

This post is a little different than previous posts. Here is one of the projects I am working on. Any comments? Suggestions? Possible Global Connections?

Overview: Using skype to connect with Native Hawaiian youth, students and community members at Westlawn will compare and contrast the local and global impact of colonization.

Objective 1: Students will understand their own story by crafting prepared responses to questions posed by Native Hawaiian students. The authentic and novel audience that skype provides will encourage students to create thoughtful responses to the questions.

The Exchange of Stories adds Value to all Parties

Objective 2: By inviting community members (parents, guardians, formal representatives of the FNMI community) to this event we will be bonding over a learning experience. It is our intent to bring the classroom activity of the day into the students home. We will conduct a survey of student involvement following the skype event to measure whether this goal was met.  

Objective 3: It is our goal to spread the idea of the First Nations, Metis and Inuit experience around the world, thus sharing our story far and wide. We will pay close attention to spreading the story of the Cree people around the world.

The Vehicle that gets Attention

Timeline:

• Students will be chosen during the week of September 30th - October 4th. The event will be open to all students, but I will be speaking with the native students in grade eight and nine individually in order to encourage their participation.
• During the weeks of October 21st - October 30th I will be providing time after school and at lunch for students to prepare their responses to the given questions which will be posed by the students in Hawaii.
• During the week of November 4th - November 7th Students will rehearse their responses in front of the camera in the library where the skype call will be taking place. We will also take this time to gather any props that may be required.
• November 7th Confirmed Date for Skype call - 12:30:2:00

Community Involvement: Students that are selected to participate will invite family members to the event. Parents and community members that express interest in attending will also be encouraged to participate and be given the opportunity to address the students in Hawaii.

Measures of Success: This project will be regarded as successful if the following criteria is met:

1. There are at least 6 parents or community members that are involved on the day of the event.
2. Students report that they did discuss this project with their parents/guardians in their survey
3. The skype call is received positively by our counterparts in Hawaii.
4. Participating students are able to verbalize a meaningful connection between the colonization story of the Native Hawaiians and their own peoples story.

EDUC115N How to Learn Math Final Post

This is my final review of the EDUC115N class: How to Learn Math.

I want to troll through the resources and link to the most valuable items that I am going to put to use in my math class.

Developing a Growth Mindset

All students can learn math, but they don't know that yet, and juggling, yes juggling, can help teach them that. We are going to start our math class learning how to juggle. I need students to understand that with the proper instruction and the proper mindset that they can learn anything. They should also begin to understand how it is the brain works.

Goal #1

• Students Develop a Growth Mindset
• Students Learn how the Brain Learns

After this we will use an activity called number talks each and every day. We do not leave the first two goals behind forever. We revisit those ideas over and over, but we also build on them. The class needs to practice making mistakes and celebrating them, using them to learn and eventually realize that mistakes are where the real learning happens.

Goal #2

• Students become comfortable making mistakes
• Students begin to develop number sense 

Number talks is basically where the teacher gives the class an equation to solve mentally. Students do the mental calculations. Students’ strategies are shared and discussed to help all students think more flexibly as they work with numbers and operations.

For example: 9.8 + 8.7

1. Get students to estimate before attempting to solve. 
2. Ask students to mentally solve the problem.
3. Have them explain to partners and the class how they solved the problem.

It's much more involved than this, but the idea is that students see different ways to solve things, they are free to make mistakes and they develop language and thinking skills needed for math.

Students should talk to each other and the teacher about ideas – Why did I choose this method? Does it work in other cases?  How is the method similar or different to methods other people used?   

Goal #3

• Students see themselves as capable at learning and succeeding in math
• Students think creatively and openly about numbers 

Mathematics classrooms should be places where students believe:

1. Everyone can do well in math
2. Mathematics Problems can be solved with many different insights and methods
3. Mistakes are valuable, they encourage brain growth and learning

EDUC115N Review #9

I am going to post one of my answers to a question in the course. This is about the process that students need to use when encountering math problems.

My metaphor: Brain Building Construction Zone

Students will be taught the metaphor that doing math is like building your brain, and every math problem is a brain building construction zone. 

When given a math problem you don't just jump in and start building the answer you have to slow down and read the signs. Students will be taught that in this construction project, when given math problems to solve there are important steps to follow: 1) Say it 2) Draw it 3) Estimate it. These are the pre-building steps that students need to slow down and pay attention to. If they don't understand enough to make an estimate than they need to stop and go back to the drawing board. This is like making an estimate for a customer. Before they build they need to be able to describe what their end product should look like, just like in the buildings and materials trades. 

Pre:Build = Before Solving
1) Say it 2) Draw it 3) Estimate it

Once their customer has agreed to their estimate then they can build. To build they need all their math tools, and they need the right tools for the job. Most of the explicit teacher directed math lessons will happen here. Sometimes they may not have the tools and may need to learn how to use new tools. 

Here is a math tool. 

When they have mathematized they need to test their building project and refine or revise as needed. Once done they step back and look at their project to see if it is ready to be sold. Can they describe it to a potential buyer in a way that makes sense. Has their project actually been built, or is it just a mess of math material that nobody understands?

Describe it and revise if needed.

To recap. In the math brain building construction zone, stop and read the signs, then say it, draw it, estimate it. Then build it with your math tools. Make sure it is perfect by refining and revising. Then sell it to the customer by describing it in a way that makes sense.

The process will help students see math as a creative act that they control. 

EDUC115N Review #8

Number Talks #2

In my last post I introduced the idea of number talks. As I worked through session five of the How to Learn Math course I was shown examples of number talks from a college classroom and a grade three classroom. Granted the students in the college classroom were being taught how to use number talks, but the task still helped them understand math on a different level. 

One of the thing I am noticing is that students need to have a firm grasp of the times tables for this level of math to work, so as I think about teaching my strategies class part of the class will have to be dedicated to helping students memorize the times tables. Number talks can help with this, but I really believe the times tables will have to be visited everyday.

One method used in the number talks lessons was the use of dot cards. Students were shown dot cards and asked to describe to their peers how they added up the number of dots. This process had students talking mathematically and with precision. The teacher then created visualizations of what they were saying. It was really quite surprising seeing how ten dots on a piece of paper helped students learn the key lessons: numbers can be broken down, they can be manipulated, they can be decomposed into "friendly numbers."

After the dot cards lesson I saw how number talks were used to develop an understanding that math is far from static or concrete. Number talks gets students talking about creative, but precise, ways to solve problems in their heads. It gets students doing the talking and the explaining instead of the teacher, and number talks concludes with a visual representation of what was solved. This is a practice that will work in a jr. high classroom. 

EDUC115N Review #7

Now we are getting into the meat of this course. The work of developing a growth mindset is a year-long pedagogical guiding point, one that needs to be taught, developed, revisited and reflected upon, but what should the day to day math lessons look like? I know some big ideas have been mentioned in the class, and here in this blog. Students need to make sense of numbers, talk with each other when trying to solve problems and be given the space to think creatively about math, but again, what about specific lessons.

Enter Number Talks. An idea and a method of teaching that can be used everyday in the math classroom, in order to increase fluency and automaticity, and, at the same time, help students with the conceptual understanding of numbers.

Not Quite what I meant

Number Talks is all about freeing a students mind from thinking that there is only one way, one right way to solve problems in math, and it works like this:

1. Give a problem with the instructions that you can't write it down or use the traditional method of solving it. ex) 18 times 5
2. Have students share and describe how they got to the correct answer. At this point students are learning a) how to talk about numbers or b) how other students think about numbers.
3. Talk about the different methods that are used. Here the teacher can step in and create visual representations of the student's explanations. Many of the rules of mathematics can be explicitly taught here.  

Having kids solve problems in different ways teaches them number sense. It teaches them the ability to break numbers apart, or decompose the numbers, and regroup them. This ability is a key foundation for all of math. It also teaches that math is creative and flexible. With activities like number talks students walk away from their math lessons understanding numbers, instead of blindly remembering and following formulas. 

EDUC115N Review #6

This is the half-way point of this course, and I want to offer a little review of the major idea of the course. I was able to tell a family member about this course yesterday, and he asked me, "so what does have to say about how to learn math?" I was happy that I actually had an answer to provide.

Stanford, through prof. Jo Boaler, is very clear about what students need in order to learn math. Students need to develop a growth mindset. They need to know and believe that they, everyone, can learn and understand math. Not as a, "you can do it!" false self-esteem thing, but as a fact about their brains, "anyone is capable, with hard-work practice and the right teaching methods, capable of succeeding at math. Students need to be taught how their brains work, given the opportunity to experience real learning, and reminded often that all students are capable of growing their understanding.

How we teach, allowing students to struggle, talk to one another, find different approaches, and make sense of the math they learning. How we help students in the classroom, praising mistakes, withholding answers, keeping things open to students thinking. How we assess, providing feedback instead of grades, celebrating mistakes as opportunities for learning, focusing on growth. All of those things, that is how students learn math.

EDUC115N Review #5

This is one of the posts I have been wanting to write because it concerns a topic I have often discussed with colleagues and people not in education. Many many teachers and even more people not professionally involved in education believe that ability based groupings of students makes sense, is best for students and is the most effective way of organizing a school in order to help teachers be successful. I have always disagreed with ability based groupings, and it turns out, so does professor Jo Boaler, professor of Mathematics Education at Stanford University.

One of the reasons people like ability grouping is because it makes sense in their normal life, and in their learning outside of school. Someone that has never done Yoga would not enter into an advanced yoga class, and why would someone that is great and experienced at Yoga go to a beginners class?

Not for beginners

The question is, should schools, particularly jr. high schools take the common sense approach called ability grouping or tracking?
The answer is no, and here is why: it encourages, in all students, a fixed mindset. Whether a student is placed in the high, medium or low group they develop fixed ideas about their ability. Even the students in the high group think they are there, not because they work hard and persevere when given challenging work, but because they are the smart kids. When students realize they are in the low group everything begins to unravel. The EDUC115N course says it nicely.

There are many pieces of research, and other valid reasons for why ability grouping just doesn't work. The Fixed mindset versus a growth mindset is one of the most compelling.