teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk

WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at dougbelshaw.com...

You’d think that in a week that’s been, globally, one of the hottest - if not the hottest - on record, people would be out enjoying the sun. It would seem that, on the contrary, the sun’s kept people inside blogging away at a very high level about things of importance. Perhaps it was too hot outside. I don’t know, fussy people…

First of all, and before I get into the roundup properly, I could spend a whole week analysing the DOPA legislation which has just been passed in the US Senate. Except that I’m not going to - I’m going to let people wiser and closer to the ground do that instead. I direct you to Vicki Davis’ Cool Cat Teacher Blog and her post What’s Wrong with DOPA along with Too Safe at Doug Noon’s Borderland blog.

So the things that I am going to include in this week’s roundup are:

• Christopher D. Sessums - Knowing me, knowing you: An exploration of how social software offers support for teacher research and professional learning
• Cool Cat Teacher Blog (Vicki Davis) - Series of posts on ‘Starting the School Year Right’ (1: Setting the Pace, 2: Establish the flow, 3: Create the plan)
• Ed-Tech Insider - Study: Multitasking hinders learning
• EdCompBlog (David Muir) - ICT: The C is for Creativity
• elearnspace (George Siemens) - In a globalised world, mediocre teaching is doomed
• elearnspace (George Siemens) - Why we pursue knowledge
• Weblogg-ed (Will Richardson) - How Blogging Connects

Christopher D. Sessums has posted an essay entitled Knowing me, knowing you: An exploration of how social software offers support for teacher research and professional learning this week which makes interesting reading. Looking at the role social software can play in pedagogy and teacher development, he takes the following quotation from Mejias (2005):

…true potential lies in helping us figure out how to integrate our online and offline social experiences. Thus, social software must live up to its name by relating to the individual’s everyday social practices, which include interacting with people online as well as people without access to these technologies…. Social software can positively impact pedagogy by inculcating a desire to reconnect to the world as a whole, not just the social parts that exist online.

Chris talks about how ‘educators who are researching, reflecting, and discussing issues and practice online have the ability to enact what they are researching and discussing in their daily practice.’ He goes back to my fundamental principle which is that to be an effective teacher one must also be an effective learner. This is not something that is necessarily completely in the power of the individual educator: school administrators and policy makers need to build in time for professional development whilst encouraging innovation through shared knowledge-making and the sharing of (and development of new) skills. The good thing about blogs, wikis and all things vaguely Web 2.0-ish is that they allow both non real-time and fairly real-time interaction without artificial boundaries being put in place.

Will Richardson quotes somebody by the name of Kim who talks about just this in his post How Blogging Connects:

Here’s the amazing thing about blogging for me. When I go home to my family or talk to friends, noone really wants to talk about education, or my ideas, or drop out prevention, or student achievement. Mystandard response to “how was your day?� is “great� and that’s about it. But I still have my students, school and it’s challenges swirling around in my head a substantial percentage of the time. So now I find blogging and it’s an instant connection to others who are interested in the same thing.

I’ve ‘met’ a substantial number of people interested in the same types of things as I am through blogs, forums and wikis. A few of them (hello Nick, Dave, and others on the Schoolhistory forum and elsewhere) I’ve met in the flesh as well. I was asked to give a presentation to European colleagues in Toulouse in my NQT year. Truly the Internet is a great leveller and a bringer-togetherer of minds!

One person’s thoughts and practices who I wouldn’t be exposed to without the power of blogs is Vicki Davis. She needs some kind of medal, she really does. I just found out today by a bit of exploration from her Cool Cat Teacher Blog that not only does she maintain other blogs but she comments extensively on other peoples’ (including this one) What a star! This week Vicki, as well as preparing the excellent and considered response to the DOPA legislation, has been looking at ways to start the school year off on the right footing.

Similar to the post I made sharing of some of the things I do in my everyday teaching (It’s the Little Things…) Vicki goes through what she does with her classes from day one (1: Setting the Pace). You can read these for yourself, but especially for those new to the profession I’d like to flag up the importance of the following:

I care - I greet them by name and make eye contact.

Teaching is all about relationships. No positive relationship = poor learning experiences.

How is the class structured? I talk about the work flow for that class, handout team lists, grading scale, major projects, my expectations and point out my homework board that is on a white board at the side wall.

This is the ‘framework’ within which students are expected to operate. Setting out your stall on day one gives students no excuses and allows you to be as consistent and fair as humanly possible

Discipline - If I have a discipline issue, I deal with it firmly, immediately, and appropriately. I follow the discipline ladder. Usually, I only have one or two discipline referrals the first week and one or two the remainder of the year. If you “let it go” the first day or week or month, kids will expect you to let it go the rest of the year!

…
Reward good behavior - I have bonus tickets for +5 on the lesson of their choice (keyboarding and fundamentals). These go daily to the first one or two people in the room who have started their work. I do this daily for four days and then intermittently throughout the remainder of the year. Partial reinforcement is a powerful motivator! Don’t just discipline the wrong, incentivize the right!

These two go together. The phrase which will be familiar to teachers in the UK is the common advice to NQTs of ‘don’t smile until Christmas’ - i.e. as Vicki points out in her introduction, ‘You can never be tougher than you are on the first day, first week, and first month.’ It’s easier to get softer but a good deal more difficult to get more strict. Set your standards high and expect your students to reach them.

Moving onto the second post in the series, 2: Establish the flow, Vicki looks at important things which can be easily overlooked which she puts under the headings people flow, paper flow, and information flow. The first of these means the room layout as well as how you expect students to interact with you and one another. How much group work will there be and how will you structure it? What are students to do when they’ve ‘finished their work’ - are they to come to you or you to them? The second, paper flow, essentially means involving students in the paperchase of everyday teaching. Appoint a monitor, bring in peer-review and proofreading of others’ work. Finally, information flow is thinking around the problem of how students will process the information you give them. How will your room give reminders to them? How will you make sure they remember/understand something? Can you say or do anything which will help students be better organized?

The final post in the series, 3: Create the plan, looks at planning ahead. This involves everything, pretty much: schemes of work, integration of key skills, rewards, paperwork (an important one!), projects, and finally for sanity…

To some, Vicki’s planning may seem a little prescriptive, but I can almost imagine her in action after reading so many of her blog posts; she seems like a dynamic, enthusiastic and creative teacher who is no doubt an inspiration to many who come across her. She’s a breath of fresh air in a profession which can, at times, feel full of people who are power-hungry, bureaucratic, and creativity-sapping. Which brings us to David Muir’s post ICT: The C is for Creativity where he rather cynically wonders:

How long will it be before tools like blogs find their way into Authority approved ICT pack? I can see it now… “Create three line blog post” - Tick. “Add comment to at least two posts.” - Tick. “Stifle all creativity.” - Tick, tick, tick… boom!

The answer, as several commenters on the post have already stated, is probably not long. But then at least it will be in the collective consciousness of teachers: there will always be those who go through the motions, the ‘mediocre teachers’. Or will there? George Siemens questions this (In a globalised world, mediocre teaching is doomed) - but then I’ll leave that reading, along with his post Why we pursue knowledge and Ed-Tech Insider’s Study: Multitasking hinders learning for private study…

 

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