By this time, I’d normally be back at school. However, here I am at home, not stressing too much about the imminent post-Labour Day new dawn. Having retired at the end of June, I am now in a different phase of life.
It’s the perfect time to reflect and to share with others, as I often do on my blog. As a classroom teacher of grade 11 and 12 World History who was also the school’s Student Success teacher, I had plenty of opportunities to share my teaching tips and philosophies with staff; my official job title was Student Success and Instructional Support. I had a newsletter, a Student Success website, and I gave numerous presentations to staff. I have previously shared on the OHASSTA blog, having started it online back in 2017. And, having worked with over 30 student teachers (teacher candidates) I was overly prone to analyzing, sharing, and questioning my own teaching strategies and style.
Recently, I was speaking with a friend (who happens to be a history prof) about my last grade 12 World History class. How amazing the kids were! How I felt like it gave me the opportunity to apply everything I’d ever learned. Well, not everything, but you know what I mean in that fairy tale ending kind of way. She asked me what made it so special.
Luck!!! It was a great bunch of kids who cared about history and the world
The students bought into it being my last class EVER
They seemed to welcome my interest in helping them become better writers and thinkers
My desire to “fix” problem areas in my course that had bugged me for years
My own “end of career resolutions”: no phones, no technology – just brains working
My willingness to be very strict about attendance and deadlines (let’s call a spade a spade: control)
A lot of experience
Reflecting is nice for me but not as useful for you, the reader, about to embark on either a new journey or an old familiar one. Here are the tips I can suggest for you, tried and tested by me over the past 28 years. I’m also keeping you in mind as you experience for the first time the new Ministry of Education policies regarding attendance and participation.
1 Calculate and plan your flow of lessons very carefully.
My secret sauce was that I planned day by day. It did not feel constricting to me. Rather, it was freeing knowing that I wouldn’t have a mad rush at the end of the semester. The most stressful part of back to school for me was getting everything into the plan that I wanted to. As I added new lessons, I had to get rid of others. This pained me. But it had to be done. There was still room for adaptation as circumstances required. Nevertheless, I always messed up in the final unit with much more time spent on the course culminating activity than unit content.
2 Be you
Ms. G was my teaching persona. She liked teaching with lots of role-plays, sharing stories about her love of history and history experiences. She was very organized and very anti-technology and anti-social media. She shared the books she was reading and pictures of her cats. …She did not like icebreakers or surveys where students identified their ‘learning style.’ She did not follow popular culture. Ms. G had many faults, too. She talked too much, she forgot to rotate student groups such that the students complained when she tried… and on and on.
In my experience, what connects a teacher to their students is their passion for the subject. Period. The rest is icing if you wish to put it on the cake.
Many years ago I learned a great first day strategy from Scott Pollock, a brilliant long-time colleague who teaches in Oakville. It’s called Teacher in a Box. The teacher fills a box with items that are reflective of them and the kids attempt to make inferences about the teacher based on this evidence. There can be red-herrings, too, and I’ve learned over the years that the room itself can provide context clues – such as posters on the walls, books on the shelves, etc. Here’s a link to a description of the activity on my blog.
Certainly the students could be asked to construct a box of their own for an introductory activity. For me, that might be more of a grade 10 history approach, rather than grade 11 or 12.
It turns out the exercise is really not about the teacher. It’s about the students building history skills from day one: analyzing, inferencing, hypothesizing, corroborating, contextualizing. The vocabulary of the course is being taught – experienced and practiced – from day one. For the first month or so, the teacher can constantly refer back to the experience. If you want to call this spiralling, that’s fine. It is a great strategy to help keep kids looped into the course and attending regularly because they know that a topic isn’t over once it’s taught; it’s always being developed and refined.
3 Variety is the spice of life
I truly believe that frequently changing up the type of lesson / teaching strategy is beneficial for the students. Sure, it keeps them on their toes. But it also strategically makes the course somewhat less predictable. That could really help if you’re struggling with consistent attendance. One of the most consistent throughlines in my courses was that most tasks, including quizzes, tests and the exam, were open book to emphasize thinking rather than memorizing.
The day to day flow of lessons should be somewhat inconsistent. One day could be a role play, one unit could start with a teacher-led introduction. A lesson could use old-school technology such as white boards and markers to “draw” their interpretations. For instance, last semester I had students draw their interpretation of our set of lessons on imperialism in China in the late 19th and early 20th century. The representations were all very clever, some of them very deep, such as a corn dog that made each layer a different aspect of imperialism. I will never forget that!
To “calculate” variety – which seems artificial – it’s important to consider the size and nature of the class. But take into consideration things such as a balance of student-centered and teacher-led instruction (hopefully never an entire class!). If the class takes well to white boards, then lean into them. But not everyday. Then it’s too predictable. If the class likes short skits or role-plays, then do them. But you’ll never know what the students might like and benefit from if you don’t try. Do not be afraid to experiment. In my last unit of teaching EVER I went back to seminar format which I hadn’t done since the early 2000s!
4 Don’t rely on technology if it’s not your thing
Unless you are the very brave and knowledgeable teacher who is going to teach students how to skillfully adapt to the AI future, don’t stress about not using technology in your classroom (other than the projector because visuals are crucial). Good old-fashioned pen and paper is quite beneficial for students’ brains, and of course it helps with differentiated instruction as well. If you’re into gamification and exploration of technology, go for it.
I printed unit handout packages for easy annotation. Over the years I moved away from in-class note-taking toward annotating. It requires skill for the students to learn to do it effectively. And it requires close monitoring by the teacher to ensure that students are actually doing it. So many kids will say they want to read the whole thing (page, reading, primary source document) first before annotating. I really emphasize as I move around and watch the annotations in action that waiting is not helpful. The point is to be in the moment, looking for connections to historical thinking concepts (HTCs), themes, bias, context, previous topics, etc. This keeps students engaged and avoids mindless highlighting. As you are circulating, showing samples and suggesting tips, you are gaining insight into each student’s strengths and weaknesses.
As a Student Success teacher, I was often in the halls and had the opportunity to see a lot of classes in progress. I don’t want to judge here (because I was not always privy to exactly what was going on) but I saw too many kids looking at screens and too many teachers sitting at their desks. In my teaching philosophy, I was the facilitator of learning; that had to be done standing up and walking around! Constantly.
Another bonus of annotation and open book evaluation is that students soon learn that poor attendance will automatically lead to poor results. Without annotations in their binder, they will have to re-read (or read for the first time) the course handouts in order to “do” the evaluations.
If you are constantly interacting with the students, whether in groups, pairs, or individuals, this will also help you with the “participation” mark. You won’t have to guess to assign them a level.
5 Skills above content
This may be controversial, especially as a history teacher! To me, skill development is more important than the course material. Don’t get me wrong; I loved the content and spent a lot of time on it. I believe history is a crucial part of a student’s education and there should be more of it.
Teachers should absolutely make skill development visible. I believe very strongly that it shouldn’t be hidden in the course as if you’re trying to sneak vegetables into pasta sauce by blitzing them in the food processor for your children. History teachers should WANT their students to be cognizant of the skills they are learning, so that they are aware of their personal toolbox and its strengths and areas for improvement. That’s one of the reasons why I love HTCs; they allow for a lot of critical thinking. If you look at the flow of lessons link, you’ll notice that there’s a column devoted to the accompanying skill for each lesson. To be honest, there are so many skills that aren’t even listed on that document, especially since I put such emphasis on helping students become better writers. Sometimes the teacher isn’t even consciously aware when they’re teaching or facilitating a skill. Try to be aware.
Your students will be entering into a very competitive world for which they will need to develop transferable skills. In my yearbook a wonderful graduating student who will be studying engineering wrote that he “promised” he would continue to apply the critical thinking skills he learned in my classes. That brought tears to my eyes.
6 Strict control of phones to enable thinking
As a teacher who attended a lot of professional development and delivered a lot of PD, I always felt guilty about not living up to certain expectations pertaining to student-centered learning. I still remember a Ministry-led PD session (back when that was a thing!) introducing teachers to the concept of inquiry. There was a diagram of a spectrum of strategies, with the ultimate goal being less teacher control. Well, as much as I became an inquiry teacher (in my own way), I never gave up very strict control.
Here I am not referring to strict behaviour. I mean strict in terms of putting limitations on the students. Possibly because I juggled a Student Success career which took up 90% of my time with my classroom teaching, and partly because of my nature, I was always hesitant about giving up too much control in terms of academics; I pre-selected approved sources, I forced students to use the TDSB Virtual Library databases (not that I feel guilty about it at all!), I brought in books (YES!) from the school library, and I made the course culminating activity dependent on sources I created with no outside research at all. I never gave free rein. To me, structure is a good thing, though I could have loosened up more.
That said, I never felt guilty about very strictly limiting access to technology in the classroom. For many years I had a phone “hotel” in my classroom. It was a large closet shoe organizer in which each pocket had a number so kids could remember where they put their phone. It was securely screwed into the wall by a kind caretaker a long time ago. Over the years, it became a struggle to get kids to use the hotel. This year, I supplemented the hotel with two other options: a box that I called the box of evil devices, and the back counter of the room (which I was lucky to have). I also had to deal with students who used their laptop as a phone.
Every class began with “Good afternoon everyone. Please put your phone in the hotel, in the box or the back counter. Not in your pocket, not under the desk. It’s for you – I want to see your brain working.” I had very good compliance. If someone didn’t comply they lost their phone pretty quickly to the box! Having said I preferred variety to predictability, I will note that this is one area where predictability is an asset. Having spent so much time in Student Success trying to get kids to be aware of the effects of their phones on their learning, I just could not stomach them in my classroom. I made it no secret that my class was demanding; yet I would teach everything needed in order to be successful. That would not work with phones vying for attention. Kids knew that and respected it for the most part.
In case you haven’t gone this far with control of technology, phones need to be out of sight and out of mind for the ENTIRE period. Otherwise, you are always in competition with them. I’m sure you know this very well. The addiction will not go away if you don’t deal with it directly.
The one area where I never cracked the code was earbuds. I asked and asked students to remove them. They take attention away from learning just as much as phones. I admit that I gave up. I urge you not to.
In sum…
I hope these reflections will be of use to you as you plan the semester ahead. I look forward to sharing more with the OHASSTA audience. You can search the fantastic OHASSTA website using my name for previous articles I’ve written. Please feel free to use the resources on my website. You can also email me for a consultation or with questions at risa@cabal.org
Have a wonderful start to the school year.
