teaching

Bridging the gap of expectations

Posted on by Mark Isero

favicon There’s a lot of talk in education about the achievement gap.

Before we deal with the achievement gap, however, we need to deal with the expectations gap. In short, teachers and students need to agree on what’s possible and what’s essential.

A few anecdotes from today:

  • A student is not silent during a warm-up activity. In our private conversation afterward, the student says she understands my expectation. But she also says (1) she wasn’t speaking loudly, (2) she wasn’t hurting anyone, (3) she didn’t agree with my expectation.
  • A student tells my colleague that it’s “impossible” to write three short paragraphs in 15 minutes.
  • A student, in serious danger of not graduating in June, doesn’t believe me when I tell her she must attend an activity that would offer her credit. “It won’t hurt me,” she says. “I can make it up.”

In all these stories, the student disagreed with the teacher on expectations, about what’s necessary to achieve — and about what’s good enough.

Before learning can happen, everybody has to be on the same page.

In my experience, a huge part of teaching is about building trust and relationship so that students believe me. After all, too many students — especially students of color —  have had too many negative experiences with teachers — especially white teachers.

One of my biggest challenges is convincing students that I’m on their side. I might believe I’m on their side, and I might say it, and I might act on it. But my students must feel it.

They must feel that meeting my standard is possible and that it’s valuable — that it’s worth it. favicon

teaching

Am I a teacher or a proofreader?

Posted on by Mark Isero

favicon My students’ skills in grammar and mechanics aren’t improving fast enough.

I’m not sure what to do. I’m convinced the problem has three parts:

  1. I’m good at identifying grammar problems but not good at teaching grammar so that students improve their skills,
  2. My students don’t spend enough time proofreading, and when they do, their approach is not meticulous enough,
  3. Despite my efforts, my students haven’t built a network of peers and adults to help them proofread.

My problem is not that students struggle with grammar. After all, I understand that learning is a process. But it’s worrisome that there are so many errors that don’t seem to go away.

Right now, in a short, five-paragraph essay, my students average 20-30 errors. That’s after a week of revision and proofreading. Many of these errors fall into these popular categories: possessive apostrophes, tenses, run-ons, subject-verb agreement, and commas after introductory clauses.

But then there are the bizarre errors: double periods, quotation marks that go the wrong way, misspelled names from the prompt, titles that are italicized and underlined, and uncapitalized names of characters.

When I read my students’ essays, I have an otherworldly experience. A few reactions emerge simultaneously.

  • Did they even proofread this?
  • They know this grammar rule. Why isn’t it automatic yet?
  • What am I supposed to do about this?

Really, I’m at a loss. All students have an online writing mentor who offers comments every week. I look at their essays every week and teach a grammar lesson based on patterns I see. Then each student has a peer reviewer. I even make them listen to Grammar Girl. Finally, 10 students have in-person grammar coaches, and eight other students have completed Grammar Camp, a small-group intervention I lead during Lunch.

Ideas, please? favicon

reading/teaching

Improvements to my English class

Posted on by Mark Isero

Booksfavicon January is a great time to make changes. After all, most students completely forget about school over Winter Break. Teachers can take advantage of that amnesia and implement improvements to their classes.

That’s what I’ve been doing. Even though my AP English class last semester was excellent, I am making some significant changes to improve my students’ learning. Here are a few of them:

1. Reading is the focus. Last semester, we focused on writing. And there’s more work we need to do. But my emphasis on writing shortchanged the importance of reading. Because reading is 45 percent of the AP test, and because reading is crucial for college (and for life), I am going to highlight reading and spend more class time helping my students read challenging texts.

So far, this is working well. My students are loving The Scarlet Letter, not just because of my enthusiasm for the book but also because I’ve purposely slowed down the reading pace at the beginning so everyone is on board. We spent the first few class periods reading as a class, then in groups, and finally in silence.

I’m realizing how crucial the teacher’s role is in motivating students to read. Even though this is a college-level course does not mean that I can just assign books and expect students to read them (and then get mad if they don’t). If I’m going to assign reading, it’s my job to teach reading. It’s my job to make the book fun and to prove to the students that they shouldn’t give up.

2. Homework is every night. Most teachers assign homework per class, not per night. An assignment is due the next class, and students have until then to complete it. For my students, that doesn’t work. They put off the assignment until the last minute instead of doing a little bit each day.

This semester, I’m assigning homework seven nights a week — yes, even including Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. I want to impress on my students the importance of daily study. Sure, college won’t be this way, and perhaps I’m enabling my students by telling them exactly how to do their work. Their professor next year won’t care, and maybe my students will flounder. Nevertheless, my job this year is to get my students to read and write well. So far, this little change is making a big difference in homework completion.

3. We’re meeting every other Saturday. There just isn’t enough class time to prepare for the test. So I got my students an AP English prep book (with a DonorsChoose grant) and hosted our first AP Saturday a few days ago. We focused on test taking strategies, especially on the reading section. (The test is not easy.) My students would rather sleep in or do something more fun on a Saturday morning, but they all showed up, and I know that they secretly appreciate my commitment.

I am hopeful that these changes will improve the class and encourage my students to work hard. We have only five months before the AP test, and I’m getting nervous about their chances to pass. I’d love it if they did well on the test; all we can do now is keep pushing. favicon

teaching

A classroom of calm and purpose

Posted on by Mark Isero

favicon Today, my students participated in a Socratic seminar on The Scarlet Letter. Half the class talked about the book while the other half did independent work. Then they switched.

The discussions were only OK. In fact, I was way more impressed with the students working on the other side of the room.

Most students were reading the book. Others were taking turns on the computer to complete an online homework assignment. One went to the bathroom. Another wrapped a raffle gift for the end of class.

They did all of this with calm and focus, without any prompting, and without distracting the students in discussion. They understood what the main event was and made sure not to disrupt the proceedings. Not only were the students quiet, but they were also engaged in their own work.

I didn’t have to tell them my expectations before, during, or after. They just did the right thing.

This is what I’m looking for in my classes — that we know where we are, what we’re doing, what the goal is, and how to get there.

As a teacher, I love working with students, irrespective of their academic skill level, who have deep respect for each other and their education.

A well-functioning classroom — where there is respect, support, and empathy — is something all students and teachers deserve every day. I am fortunate that I get to work in such a classroom this year. favicon

teaching

An experiment on cheating

Posted on by Mark Isero

favicon My students have good morals — most of the time. When it comes to cheating on quizzes, though, their standards are different from mine.

I give a weekly quiz that includes a little reading comprehension, a few tone words, and a couple literary terms. Although not a huge part of the curriculum, the quizzes are important in making sure that students have breadth of knowledge for the upcoming AP test.

At the beginning of the year, I told my students I trusted them not to cheat on the quizzes. In fact, we went over the answers immediately, and students corrected their own quizzes. This process worked until I noticed that the students’ scores seemed high — perhaps too high.

I am not the type of teacher who distrusts his students. After all, I believe in them. But to test my suspicion, the following week, I had students grade their peers’ quizzes. The first time, grades plummeted, but after that, the scores quickly rose again.

Then there was last week. Two students who sit next to each other had almost identical (wrong) answers. I approached them, and both students denied they’d cheated.

So today, I decided to do an experiment. I made four versions of the same quiz. (Teachers do this all the time. I’ve done it before, too.) In my opinion, it’s a complete waste of a teacher’s time, but in the school game — which includes cheating — it’s sometimes a necessary evil.

(One may make the rebuttal that the quiz itself — my decision to assess traditionally — is setting up the students to cheat. I don’t buy that argument.)

What were the results of my experiment? Well, quiz scores declined drastically, but not as much as I’d feared. My analysis is that many students have likely been cheating on 1-2 questions per week (and that some have been copying the entire quiz). My hunch is that students chose to cheat because it’s easier and takes less time than studying.

Now that my little experiment on cheating is over, the question is what I do next. Do I tell them what happened? Do we talk about cheating? Or do I continue making four versions?

What do you think? favicon