Tag Archives: teaching

I’d rather tell you than smell you

I started my career teaching middle schoolers for 9 years. Every spring I had a chat with the kids about how their bodies were changing and it was time for them to start showering more frequently, if they didn’t already shower every day. And if they weren’t already using deodorant, it was time to talk to their parents about getting some… and then actually using it every day.

I always started with the same line, “I’d rather tell you than smell you.” I would follow up with, “…and if I tell you, I’m doing you a favour, because I don’t get as close to you as your friends do, and so if I smell you, your friends can smell you too. And because I’m doing you a favour, I’m not going to be embarrassed about telling you.”

I will admit that a few times over the years I chose to have a female teacher address this with a female student. This was because in these circumstances I thought it would be devastating to the child if I said it, and the intent is to help them, not horrify them.

Now that I’m in a high school I still use that line. I said it last Monday as we started weight club, and I’ll share it again in the spring. I had the conversation with a boy in Grade 10 a few years ago, and he thanked me publicly, in front of friends and their families in a grad speech. That was something I never expected.

It’s not mean, it’s an uncomfortable thing to share, but not as uncomfortable as the student’s friends would feel, sitting all day next to someone that could use a shower or some deodorant. It’s easier for me to say something, than it is for their friends.

We teach values

Mathematician and philosopher Gian-Carlo Rota on teaching: “A good teacher does not teach facts, he or she teaches enthusiasm, open-mindedness and values.” Source: Indiscrete Thoughts

I remember once, early in my career, the topic of abortion came up in my class. It was a student that brought it up as we were discussing debating skills. I decided that I wouldn’t share my opinion. I would let the class make their own choice. That they deserve to decide for themselves.

It was at that moment I realized that I was telling them my choice. I was sharing my values.

We can’t teach without sharing our values. To pretend otherwise is ignorant. And so we should be thoughtful about the values we choose to share.

We need to value kindness, forgiveness, and openness to new and different ideas. We need to value effort. We need to show that when we discipline bad behaviour, we are disappointed in the behaviour not the child. We need to be restorative, not punitive. Patient, not easily frustrated. Willing to admit we are wrong. Tough with our expectations, but supportive rather than combative when expectations are not met.

Our values define the kind of teachers we are… and we pass those values on to our students whether we think we do or not.

Like it was yesterday

April 5, 2007

Yesterday, I was in a meeting with a parent and one of my students, (why do teachers have parent meetings about a teenage student’s education and not have the student there too?)

The parent observantly noted that although her son could be physically in a room, he could often ‘disconnect’ and be elsewhere in his mind. For him to be more successful, he would need to engage more in what was going on. I told him, with all honesty, that I too had that problem to the point that my parents worried that I might have been on drugs (I wasn’t). It took until my Grade 13 year (Ontario, Canada) to recognize that I needed to be a participant in the classroom in order to ‘stay connected’.

As I was talking my student interrupted and said, “I just had a flash of insight, I’m a mop not a sponge!”

He got it! And today he proved it. He was a fully engaged participant in my Math lesson. I can hear myself in upcoming classes, “Remember to be the mop”.

———–

That was from my Pair-a-Dimes blog post, “I’m a mop not a sponge”: Metaphors all the way down. Last night I found out that this young man passed away unexpectedly. It’s so sad to hear news like this about a former student. I immediately remembered this incident, this moment in time when I saw a light bulb light up in a young kid’s mind.

This was my last year as a Grade 8 teacher. There are other memories of this student, but they are more distant, faded… it was over 14 years ago. However this memory, I remember like it was yesterday.

Thoughts on homework

Have a listen to this parent, reflecting on homework after helping her son:


(Direct link to the TikTok)

A decade ago I wrote that “I question the value of most homework“, and that still stands true. This parent adds an element that I hadn’t thought of.

Over the years I’ve restated my thoughts a number of times, but I’ll try to be succinct here.

When is homework a valuable use of a child’s time?

1. It usually isn’t. I want to start and end with this point because we have students in school for most of their waking hours. We don’t have a clue what they go home to and how much time and support they have, if any, with parents after parents get home from work. What we do know is that there is a lot of inequity in support and students who are most disenfranchised often have the least amount of resources to get homework done. The school day is long enough, and school is where there is the most equity for supporting student needs.

2. When they are doing extensions on work they want to do, or is hard to do at school.

Examples:

• An assignment that provides choices and those choices include doing extra or extending learning beyond the classroom… but done by choice, not required.

• A passion project where a student might work with a parent using a tool at home that isn’t available at school, like a scroll saw or soldering iron for example.

3. When they are asked to teach something to their parent, or interview them.

Examples:

• Teach you parent 3 different ways to add together two 3-digit numbers

• Find out where your grandparents were born, or interview your parents about your heritage.

*Both of these examples require sensitivity to provide alternatives for some students where these assignments might be challenging for them.

4. When ample time has been given in class, and students didn’t use their time well.

Note: Sometimes kids need more scaffolding at school to help prevent this from happening, but as long as they are capable of doing the work, this is a logical consequence.

5. Occasionally when big projects or presentations are due, homework might be necessary.

Note: This should be something only required occasionally, not weekly. Sometimes work piles up a bit around big deadlines. It’s healthier to teach students that some deadlines like presentations matter and need to get done on time, while other things can include extensions and more time at school for support.

6. Go back and read #1 again. That’s it!

Choice time for teacher Pro-D

Last Friday I had a Pro-D, Professional Development Day, with the Inquiry Hub staff. We started the morning with a book talk, sharing what we have learned from books we are reading.
A few weeks ago, I had my teachers fill out a form sharing the title and link to a book that they wanted to read for their own personal development. I said that it didn’t have to be education-related, just something they wanted to learn from. Even though I said no obligation for follow up, my iHub staff suggested the book talk as part of their Pro-D day.

I loved hearing all the ideas and educational connections they made to the books they were reading.

Next, we moved on to personal learning time. We each shared what we were exploring, planning, or investigating, and then had an hour and a half to work on it. For example, two teachers worked on updating a questionnaire we give students when the apply to the school. Another teacher worked on a unit in one of his courses he thought needed work, and another teacher created a ‘Diversify your feed’ document and shared it with our staff and students:

I decided to create this image using information our team developed at our previous Pro-D. My way of making sense of our vision for the school:


We got together again (digitally, we weren’t meeting face-to-face) after lunch to share what we’d done, then we did some group planning around our timetable next year… a real challenge in a small school with a small staff that offers so many options for students.

Most of our day was about choice. Teachers got to share learning from a book of their choice, then they got to choose what they wanted to work on, before getting together for collaboration time. We spend a lot of our day at Inquiry Hub giving students time to work on things they want and need to work on. Our students have a lot of self-directed time at our school. It only seems fitting that when it’s time for our staff to learn, that we do the same.

Even though teachers got to choose what book they learned from (it didn’t have to be the one I gave them, although that seemed to be the one they mostly shared from), they were able to be really diverse in their sharing. Even though there were no constraints on what their personal learning time was used for, we shared our intentions before splitting up to spend that time on our own, or together by choice. We had accountability built into the day, but it was filled with personal choice.

It’s not just our students who benefit from choice in learning, our teachers benefit greatly too!

Teaching and Trust

I surveyed our Grad 9’s a couple days ago. Coming from middle school, and getting stuck in a single cohort, they really didn’t get the experience at our school we wanted for them. At Inquiry Hub our students usually connect across grades, and interact as a larger community, which is important in a really small school. But although we were able to give them full days, unlike large schools with a lot more cohorts to manage, the environment our 9’s came into is far more like an extension of a single class in middle school than a high school. That said, they really don’t know what they are missing compared to a regular year here… they’ve never seen it.

I asked them to write on a piece of paper, a positive, a challenge, and/or a suggestion or wish, and I collected them. They could write about any or all of these.

Here are a few of them:

The challenges and suggestions were all related to covid restrictions, with less clubs, and a lack of connection with other cohorts. Beyond that the comments were very positive.

“I like the open and just overall welcoming environment.”

“I like how you can structure your own day…”

“I like how our courses let us set our own goals and learning paths.”

“Even though our community is so small, I like how close we’ve all gotten.”

One comment in particular was quite interesting to me:

“I love how much the teachers trust us here.”

I agree that our teachers give students a lot of freedom, and choice. And students at iHub get a fair bit of unstructured time to work on what the want/need to work on. But I never thought of this through the lens of trust, like this student.

When students feel trusted, they feel empowered, they feel they have a responsibility to keep that trust. It’s an interesting lens to see the dynamic of the classroom through. How does the relationship between the students and the teachers change when trust is given and valued? Where does the responsibility for learning fall in a trusting relationship? What else is fostered in a trusting environment?

Kudos to our teachers for creating such a wonderful learning environment in these challenging times.

More like real life

I enjoy seeing teachers talk about assessment like this:

The best part of the clip is when Mrs. Lemon says, “I wrote better tests that focus less on recall and more on application.”

Although, I love the ending too… “At the end of the day, this is more like real life. There are very few circumstances where are you don’t know the answer to something and can’t look it up.”

What future are we preparing students for? How is our assessment demonstrating this? Are we showing what we value by what we measure, or are we just measuring what’s easy to measure?

Many years later…

Somewhere between the years 2000 and 2002 I taught a grade 8 art class. I was teaching a lesson on drawing faces with pencil and one student was a far better artist than me. She could really capture the details of the face, and not just be anatomically correct, but also bring life to her drawings. However she was hesitant to go dark with her work. It lacked contrast. Her drawings were like beautiful but faded photocopies.

“Don’t be afraid to go darker.” I would say. She would try and the image would get ever so slightly darker, but still look faded.

“Darker!” I would say.

“It is!” She would retort.

“Not enough, go darker.” Or, “You know what I’m going to tell you!”

It was a banter that went on all year, because no matter what we did in art, she had a pencil journal that she also worked on. Again, her work was beautiful, but too light.

Fast forward to yesterday, and this former student, now a friend on Facebook, did a tribute drawing of an older photograph, of a loved one. (It’s 5:30am, and I haven’t asked to share the story, so I’m not sharing names or details.) The drawing is beautiful with rich dark highlights, and still has her soft touch that brings her drawings to life.

I commented on the photo:

“Beautiful. Nice to see that you are no longer afraid to use rich dark shades 😜”

She replied,

“NO joke, I was actually hearing you repeat to go darker/not to be afraid to commit to it and smiling about how this many years later your teachings still come out 😊”

And,

“I even wondered if you’d consider it dark enough 😆 glad to see I’ve made progress with it!”

My response,

“It really is, and you’ve captured [your subject’s] sparkle… not easy to do in a drawing. I love it! ❤️”

I truly enjoy interactions like this. They warms my heart. They remind me of why I wanted to be a teacher, and make me miss being in the classroom.

We are lucky to live in an age where we can connect with former students and celebrate their marriages, the birth of their children, or just check in with them when things aren’t going their way. And it’s so much fun to know that we can make small differences in their lives, long after they’ve left our classroom.

Rewind

A year ago we were heading towards the March break and, at the end of February, had no idea that we would return from the break doing remote learning. I was recovering from breaking my kneecap, and not mentioning Covid-19 or physical distancing yet here on my Daily-Ink. That changed in March.

What a year it has been! Part of me wants to call it a rollercoaster ride, part of me wants to call it a long straight drive on a deserted road through the prairies. No matter how you look at this past year, it is nothing any of us expected a year ago.

Rewind to the end of February 2011, I was a principal in China, and found out I’d be coming back to BC to be vice principal of the adult learning centre. This would lead me to my current position both with Coquitlam Open Learning and co-founding Inquiry Hub.

Rewind to February 2001 and my wife and I had a 1 year old who completely changed our lives. February 2002 our second was born.

Rewind to 1991 and I had not graduated on time from university and went to a different university to finish my degree, choosing this school so that I could play varsity water polo. This brought me back home and I ended up lifeguarding and coaching at a high school. I wouldn’t be a teacher today if I hadn’t made this move and got experience working with and coaching students.

How will I look at February 2021 a decade from now? Will it be a blur in the covid years, or will it be stepping out into a post-covid frontier? Maybe that’s going to be February 2022… I think we will have to keep driving the long prairie road for a while, and look forward to slow and gradual changes in the coming year.

Blockchain and education

Blockchain defined: Blockchain is a shared, immutable ledger that facilitates the process of recording transactions and tracking assets in a business network. An asset can be tangible (a house, car, cash, land) or intangible (intellectual property, patents, copyrights, branding). Virtually anything of value can be tracked and traded on a blockchain network… ~ IBM

One place that I see blockchain technology being used in education is credentialing. Right now a general arts degree at a good university is a credential that says, ‘I know how to study, write essays, and express my ideas’. Unlike professional programs like engineering or law or med school, a general arts degree is about building more general skills. More and more jobs are not requiring a professional focused degree, but also demand more specific skills than a general degree.

Can a potential job candidate manipulate pivot tables in Excel? Or understand the basics of coding in python? Or use a design thinking process? These questions aren’t always answered by a degree, and might be answered by a certificate. What if Microsoft or other large companies delivered skill-based credentials through online courses? What if when you received certification of completion of the course, you didn’t just get an easily copied and doctored paper certificate, you also got digital certification that could not be doctored by you, but could be verified by anyone?

Imagine having a digital portfolio that linked to all your credentials in immutable ledgers. Your skills could be verified and job descriptions could include expectations of specific skills and credentials. What do you know? What can you do?

So, maybe in the future a college degree will be less impressive than a series of verifiable skills. Maybe high school students will start getting these credentials before they graduate. To me this had a few implications to think about:

1. If we move to a more skill-based economy, how will this affect our school curriculum?

2. If credentials and credentialing become a major driver to workforce hiring, will this force more specialization in high schools?

3. Where does that leave the soft skills like communication, critical thinking, and creativity?

Some people think that credentialing like this can replace teachers, I don’t. I think teachers become more valuable. Let credential testing and digital training measure the skills that are easily measured, and let teachers loose on helping students be more creative, more entrepreneurial, and better problem solvers. Let teachers focus on helping students trying things that are epic, things that are so big they are likely to fail, and help students understand perseverance. Have teachers focus on developing communication and cooperation skills, and helping students understand the importance of learning and process.

Credentialing won’t diminish the role of the teacher, it will magnify their importance in creating leaders and problem solvers. And to me, that’s the more exciting part of being a teacher.