Creating a Warm and Intellectually Challenging Classroom

A great article for the summer written by Suzy Boss, an education reporter I've been following of late.

This article distills advice from Dorothy M. Steele and Becki Cohn-Vargas, two researchers who've been looking at ways to boost student empowerment in the classroom. The article ends with a checklist that I think I might want to post at the door in my classroom.

"Empowerment" seems like a buzzword, I know, but a few years back, Joe Sicilian did a great 3 session PD on student empowerment that had my mind buzzing for weeks afterward. I borrowed a ton of ideas from that session. Some worked, some didn't, but the students were generally enthusiastic because I was trying something different.

That experience reminds me that this whole "chaotic" classroom thing is something I've been gravitating towards at least half my career here at Curtis. The last two years, for me at least, have been about keeping my eye on the ball, namely the year-end standardized test results that confirm, at least to an outside viewer that whatever changes you've made within the classroom aren't detracting from the educational bottom line. Giving students greater control of lesson content and pacing is all well and good, but the Algebra 2 Regents has a broad range of topics a class needs to work through in a given year.

Boss' article doesn't focus on any particular discipline or subject. It keeps the advice open-ended, so that Geometry teachers and U.S. History teachers find it equally applicable. Again, it's more of a philosophical refresher as you find yourself thinking about the classroom environment you hope to create in the first weeks of school.

PBL @ Tech ISTE 2015

An open, crowd-sourced document created during the latest EdTech conference is pretty much a roll call of technologies and tactics teachers are using to restructure classroom time. Throwing a link up here just so I don't have to go scrambling to find it again on Sept. 10.

Genius Hour

I just read a discussion thread in a teacher forum where a second grade teacher mentioned using a "Genius Hour" model in her classroom.

A quick search of the term "Genius Hour" led me to the slick teacher-to-teacher site geniushour.com, which features a short, front page video in which the narrating teacher explains how he employed the concept in his own classroom.

The concept draws primary inspiration from Google which, in an effort to attract and retain top talent, lets employees devote 20 percent of their workplace time to unsupervised pet projects.

Projects have to be consistent with the company mission, but beyond that simple dictate, the worker is free to carry out the project in whatever manner they choose.

More than a few high level Google products, gmail most notably, started their life as sideline projects of this type.

In education terms, 20 percent free time allotment translates to one class period per week. Hence the term Genius Hour. In the video, the teacher lays out the guidelines he uses to keep the work productive. He also discusses some interesting projects that have come about as a result of this classroom management policy.

Suffice it to say, the Genius Hour concept seems tailor made for the Chaotic Classroom approach. I can see it being really popular with the students, especially in math class where the daily lesson grind can take a toll on student and teacher alike.

I owe a follow up post on my experiences and experiments with Geometry Regents Review this summer. The experience has me rethinking class routines, focusing more on building a predictable, weekly cycle of lessons and tasks as opposed to a daily cycle. I'm not sure whether I have the planning chops to pull it off just yet, but I see a way to use a free period incentive of this type to encourage better practice and a more accountable use of classroom time in the days leading up to that free period.

Embracing Messy Learning [Article Review]

I'll admit it: Block, a humanities teacher at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, had me at the title. Still, it's the middle of the essay Embracing Messy Learning [links to Edutopia website]  that packs the real punch.

Block discusses the power of choice and how important it is to plan and execute class projects in a way that takes that power away from the teacher puts that it squarely in the hands of the students trying to learn.

While I think most of us would agree that giving students the ability to choose topics, research methods, presentation styles, etc. is a powerful motivator, we approached the choice issue only indirectly in our two spring PD sessions, I think.

Again, I think there's that fear component -- that students, much like teachers, can easily fall pray to option paralysis and spend major chunks of class time spinning their wheels -- that makes us hesitant to throw the "choice" term around too casually. As a math teacher, however, I've seen students respond well whenever I've presented students with a menu-style lesson plan. Why not go even further and recruit students into writing that daily "menu?"

For every teacher who worries about students responding negatively to lack of "structure" in the classroom, Block presents a countervailing viewpoint, one that sees this wheel-spinning stage as vital to the creative process. More importantly, Block shows how giving students time to flail makes the classroom a better modeling environment for adult-level decisionmaking.

A powerful article by an author who appears to be traveling down a parallel professional road.

August 3 Geometry Regents Review

About two weeks ago, one of the supervisors at Curtis called me up asking if I'd be available to teach a five day Regents Review course for the upcoming Geometry and Common Core Geometry exams.

It was a weird request if only because I hadn't taught Geometry since 2012 and wasn't too current on the changes imposed by Common Core.

Then again, the money was good. That and the fact I tend to enjoy Regents Review classes, where you can be a little more relaxed than in a regular classroom setting, led me to say yes.

Going in, I figured it was a good chance to push forward on some of the classroom management strategies discussed in our spring 2015 meetings and on this blog.

For me, that meant switching away from the usual chalk-and-talk or SmartBoard presentation format and running everything through a growing collection of laptops I've started bringing to every classroom I visit. I also saw it as a good chance

Technology being a double-edged sword, I immediately found myself up against two obstacles: 1) Google Classroom wouldn't register any kid with an email address outside the curtishs.org domain -- i.e. just about every kid who showed up that day. And 2) the laptop I'd borrowed to run the SmartNotebook software was having a troubled relationship with the classroom's built in SmartBoard system. It was at this point that I thanked myself for bringing four additional laptops (my own personal MacBooks, plus a Chromebooks and two Notebooks. Stealing a trick from my last two substitute coverage experiences, I handed each machine to a kid the moment he walked through the door, asking him to fill out a start of class survey I'd whipped up that morning on Google Forms.

With nary a shrug, each got down to work, supplying the necessary info while I took the moment to think ahead.

Shifting away from Google Classroom, I decided to have each kid register into Trello, a management system I'd been running throughout the spring.

If you don't know anything about Trello, it's basically a digital bulletin board. What you do as a project (or class) manager is create a series of lists representing the workflow of whatever project you're trying to execute.  List headings for my review session, for example, included Research, Waiting for Teacher Feedback, Reflection. Basically, each list is a stage I wanted students to go through before moving on to the next task.

Within each list, you can basically create a card "icon" out of thin air. This new icon can represent anything you want it to represent and can be dragged from list to list, giving the manager a quick visual indicator of progress (or lack thereof)

Again with the double-edged sword thing: I hadn't really put much thought that morning into what each card represented in the case of a review session, and the blank slate nature of the Trello "card" format is that can orient your project workflow to just about any cardinal point on the compass. For example, did I want each card to be representing an individual student or group of students or maybe something a little more abstract, like a topic or question of interest?

As the kids went through the hurdles imposed by Trello's registration process, I realized that it probably made the most sense if the card represented a sample problem from the test we were going to go through. I wanted to start with the first Common Core Geometry exam (administered in June) and my objective hope was that I could get each kid to take ownership of at least one problem and present its solution to the group.

Trello's wonky registration process was yet another bug/feature Rorschach test. From across the hall, I could hear another teacher already launching into a lecture review for the U.S. History regents, while my first three students were still waiting to get confirmation. I debated whether to scrap the exercise altogether, until the first kid's computer screen showed the main Trello page with "Geometry Regents Review" as an accessible "board. " I suddenly realized that I now had a chance to give each kid a staggered one-on-one tutorial on how the system worked and how I expected them to carry out the review process.

Things went pretty swimmingly from there. My first registered kid worked his way through the first problem on the test. It wasn't the toughest problem, but in our back-and-forth -- logged via text messages on the "Problem 1" card, I emphasized that the point of a review session isn't to master the problems on a previous test so much as to anticipate how the same topic or skills might show up on the next test. The problem in question (Problem 2 on the June 2015 New York test) asked which transformation, of the four listed, might result in a shape not congruent to the pre-image.

As other kids launched their own Trello sessions, the first kid and I were able to play the role of a fictional test writer and come up with away to rewrite problem's language -- which of the following is not evidence of an isometric transformation -- recylcing the same four answer choices.

Things weren't perfect. I had one kid in the sparsely attended morning session who could work his way successfully through only one problem in the time allotted. Still, I'd gotten the interface up and running and the other two students, once instructed, seemed to take flight, cranking through four problems a piece and completing a brief reflection survey I'd attached to the end stage.

Most importantly, I hadn't panicked, abandoning ship out of fear that the students were going to start getting restless.

The experience was helpful, because the first session, which had started at 9, ended 10:30. Each kid took his leave and over the next 10 minutes, the second shift rolled in. I was soon walking another three students through the registration process. Then another three. Then another eight.

Again, with only four laptops to share, I felt the acute urge to cut bait and go with a standard review. By about the 11 a.m. mark, though, I had a critical mass of motivated students working their way through the research/feedback/reflection process, giving me enough time to register each kid both to the class and to Trello. Rather than run the laptops around the room, I eventually selected a "superuser" from each geographical corner of the room, had them invite in their neighbors or, failing that, manage the card/ticket writing process for them.

It wasn't pretty, but it was a pretty good facsimile of what to expect in a regular math classroom. Were some kids bored? Yes. Did more than a few sit idle for the whole 90 minute period? Also, yes. Did a few leave the room in frustration? Maybe.

The ones who got working, however, appeared to be filling out legitimate cards and by 11:30, less than 45 minutes before the end of the session, I found myself in a position where, all I had to do was look at the list of cards in the "waiting for teacher feedback" pile to get an instant sense of who needed help on what? Even better, the students had a visual sense of who was first in line to get the teacher's attention.

Like a lot of educational experiments, this one hovered somewhere in the gray area between out-and-out success and utter disaster. A couple times I was able to deliver a quick review on circle equations, a huge topic on the test, without calling for complete silence or worrying that I was distracting students focused on other topics. As I told the students at least three times, in between thanking them for their patience, this was the ultimate goal: To give each student help on the exact problems that most concerned them. If students chose to take that as a signal to sit and do nothing, that was their choice, I allowed, but a wiser use of the available time would be to look past the problems you knew you could answer and focus on the few problems where you still needed a little help from the teacher.

Perhaps the best indicator of success, however, was the momentum of the second day's session. As soon as I arrived on the floor, I tested the lock on the neighboring computer room and found it
accessible. Writing up quick sign for the classroom, I directed my students to the computer room, where we could each line up behind a monitor and deal with the Trello system individually.

This time around, I had roughly eight students. And while it still took about 30 to 45 minutes to get everybody through the Trello gateway, things were in full productive swing by 10 a.m.. Like an air traffic controller, I was checking off feedback requests almost as soon as they came in. Even better: I reached the point where I could respond to those feedback requests in writing, raising the lexical bar of the conversation, if you will.

Once again, the second sessiondrew almost double the number attendees, including two who never quite managed to get through the Trello signup problems. Both students attributed the impasse to not remembering their gmail passwords (Trello, like a lot of online education apps, appears distinctly biased against accounts bearing a non gmail address, so I had students attempt to re-register through gmail). Part of me felt guilty for letting these students twist in the wind. Then again, another part of me realized that losing track of your email password was the 21st century equivalent to not showing up to class with a pen or pencil.

Results of my first "chaotic classroom" lesson.

The assignment was a group project.  The goal of the assignment was to encourage and develop the following 21st century workplace skills: teamwork, collaboration and time management.  The class was divided into six groups of 5.  Each group had to prepare a google slide presentation on "Bodily Systems." Note: This topic was an attempt at cross-curriculum integration.  All students had just completed that unit in Science.  Existing knowledge is helpful in reducing the amount of time students spend on the internet doing research.

Each team was assigned a team leader.  Each student had to record their work on a daily progress report.  Each group member had a piece of the assignment but the final project had to be a uniform, cohesive product.

In conclusion, I found that this assignment motivated previously unengaged students.

interactive questioning

I learned a great way to create questions that the students can't wait to answer!

https://getkahoot.com/

An interactive way for students to answer questions by using their phone.  The teacher creates questions, or a survey and the students answer via cell phone.  The quicker they answer, the more points they get so they get excited about answering the questions.

The Stanford d.school model

Stanford Design Thinking Virtual Crash Course.

I first read about the Stanford School of Design (or d.school) back in 2011 (when this year's seniors were freshmen).

I've tried to slip in some of the d.school's "design thinking" concepts and strategies into the classroom ever since. I especially love their "bias to action" philosophy, being a leap-before-you-look type of guy.

Anyway, the d.school approach is chaotic in the mathematical sense, meaning that there's an underlying set of rules, values and a guiding structure but the goal of each interaction is to unleash creativity which eventually leads to unpredictable results.

Think of a well-paced musical jam session only instead of notes, you're trading ideas on how to build a low cost water filtration system for African villages, say.

This video shows a single crash course. It runs a little over an hour in length, but because they've recorded the full session, you can speed through the static passages.

The main things I think a teacher can borrow from this video are the strategies used to gather everybody's attention and how keep groups moving onto the next task and not be afraid to impose a little time pressure on the participants. It's also interesting to watch how the session leaders behave and keep busy in between the moments of whole group attention.

This particular session starts with a simple set of reciprocal interviews in which two participants ask each other to reflect on the gift-giving experience. The end goal is to generate some ideas on how to make gift-giving more rewarding to both the giver and recipient alike.

Encouraging and cultivating a problem solving mindset in your students

This psychology's research shows that we can change our mindset:

http://examinedexistence.com/carol-dweck-on-fixed-mindset-vs-growth-mindset/

Regents Review Questions and Ideas

Diana Callahan and Anna Shapiro

Questions to ask before structuring Regents Review for Algebra and Geometry classes:

1. How can we keep students interested and motivated?
a) Are games academically beneficial or just entertaining?
b)How can we make review more interactive and get all students involved?




2. What is the best way to structure a review?


We are deciding if it's better to review by topic or just to go through practice questions in the order they were asked on the past exams.




3. What are the best strategies for retention?
a) Does assigning practice questions for homework help?

Idea: Students create index cards by topic to help them retain information. They must complete their own research on each topic. They can use chrome books, notebooks, laptops from classroom, past review sheets, and any other resources they may have. The index cards will be used to help them solve practice Regents problems.

Another Idea: Students will create their own review sheet using methods as described above with the index cards. For this activity, students will be split into groups by topic. They will use laptops to do research and be required to write key ideas, find 3 Regents questions and solve them using the methods described in the review sheet.

Sam's student-centered classroom!

Great way to incorporate student's voice!  Student's have a choice but will they work on the stuff they don't get?

My second half of Week 14 lesson plan.


This comes after a disaster day (May 19, which included a bomb threat evacuation on top of three subpar classes in a row) in which, upon reflection, I felt myself drifting away from fundamental principles from the first professional development session.

Before writing this lesson, I tried to codify those fundamental principles in a single page document I could pass out at the professional development session: Questions to Ask Before Structuring an Assigment.

 

Three Key Questions [Thoughts before the May 20 PD session]

Questions to ask before structuring an assignment:

1. What is the work product?

As noted in the last session, tests and quizzes appear to be the primary work product in a typical math class. Not surprisingly, student buy-in tends to dwindle as the year develops.

Art and journalism classes have an edge on us in the motivation department, because the student has a more personal stake in the outcome. The work reflects their unique identity in many ways. For example, in doing a podcast assignment, the student gets to pick the topic of discussion and the questions for the interview. In the editing process, the student gets to control what gets said and when. The score is of secondary importance to the simple act of putting out something that affirms the student’s own choices.

In short, if the work product is meaningful to the student, it gives students who might otherwise drop their heads a chance to lend whatever talent they have to the effort.

2. How can I build pride of work into the assignment structure?

Adolescent students are a paradoxical blend of impulses: They’re constantly competing with one another for attention, status, sexual capital, etc. And yet, they’re hyper-aware of adult criticism and situations that lead to such.

Long story short, they know when to fold ‘em. And quick.

Journalism teachers report success in work cycle that puts the grading process in the middle. Students build a draft independent of teacher direction (and criticism). Once this draft is completed, the work is submitted for peer review. It is during this review that common sense critiques emerge  (e.g. “Shouldn’t the project have a title?”). The teachers are using peer-pressure, essentially, to raise room level standards and triggering whatever pride impulse the student might have to compel a revision.

3. How much do the students really need me to learn this topic?

The answer varies depending on the teacher and the room, but I think most math teachers would agree that the best and worst students will continue along their regular trajectory regardless of lesson style. That leaves the vast middle to win over. Any strategy that puts two-thirds of the room on your side is worthy of experimentation.

Student Initiated Classroom in the Cloud

TOK Groupwork: Cycle 2 -- With Work Samples

This was my second attempt to put some of the concepts we'd been discussing in the first PD cycle into play in Theory of Knowledge classroom.

I will post a reflection on my first attempt at a later date. Like a lot of first attempts, it was a little shaky, so I didn't feel any strong urge to broadcast the results.

In the case of this second project, things glued together better, thanks in large part to me using the project management tool Trello, which Deb recommended, instead of a spreadsheet to monitor work flow.

Another key improvement over the first cycle was the simpler nature of the task. In TOK we wrestle with some pretty heavy language and some very heavy concepts (Aristotelian empiricism vs. Plato's Theory of Forms, cartesian duality, scientism, etc.) To make things more accessible -- and to relate it to a parallel writing assignment, their introductory college essay, I challenged students to focus on telling a simple story about a person significant to the history of science.

I started with a project with an "auction" in which I announced the profile subjects, I was in the "market" for: Galileo, Mendeleev, Mendel, Einstein, Curie and Newton, along with two major philosophers of science: Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. I gave each student a post-it, 5 minutes to pick a topic and do some cursory research and told them to go the place in the room associated with that profile subject to see who else wanted to collaborate.

I'd tried this motivation before, so I had a feeling it would work well. It did. For the first day, I mainly kept out of the way. My only involvement was to play match-maker, recruiting students and throwing ideas toward the projects attracted only one or two takers. Once the room gelled into stable groupings, I basically instructed all groups to keep adding post-its until the bell rang. By the end of the period, I had a pretty good visual sense (via number of post-its) on which groups could work well independently and which groups needed help.

On the second day, I challenged students to come up with a "story board" depicting a key before, during and after storyline in which the profile topic (or the culture of science) made an important breakthrough.  My key focus here was Mendeelev and his painstaking development of the Periodic Table.

On the third day, I handed out a blank sheet written in a storyboard template. At the time, I was hoping to get a member from each group to produce a storyboard for us to post on the wall, but only a few groups were able to deliver anything. I decided not to rush the process and used the class time to focus on pinning down project parameters for the second week.

Pinning down project parameters basically amounted to getting groups to name their leader, to start and share a presentation file to me and to confirm the existence (via a Homework form) of an ongoing "Works Cited" document. What instruction I'd been offering to the whole group had focused on the need to push past easy sources (e.g. Biography.com, wikipedia.org and to come up with something an academic would respect).

One new twist I added to this project was a peer grading component -- again through Google Forms. I created a 20 pt. rubric based on five main components, each scored on a 0 - 4 scale:

1. Uniqueness of work product
2. Quality of Overall Execution
3. Quality of Content (including images and layout choices).
4. Quality of Writing 
5. Degree to which the work offers a good representation of the Curtis IB program

The highest scoring presentation posted a 17.75 out of 20 points, proof that, even when given the chance to stuff the ballot box, IB students are pretty tough peer graders.

The following is a list of the top four scoring presentations:

• Dmitri I. Mendeleev [17.75 pts.]
• Galileo Galilei  [17.56 pts.]
• Father of Modern Genetics  [17.18 pts.]
• Marie Curie [17.08 pts.]

Note Before the May 6 Session

Here's the rough agenda I was planning for today before my Wednesday schedule got reshuffled.

Emphasis on Work Product

In our first cycle, we titled this session "Running a Journalism-type Classroom." One of our first points of discussion was that this title was a little awkward. This led, in turn, to the catchier "Chaotic Classroom" title.

One thing that quickly came out of the first meeting, however, is that the journalism teachers are miles ahead of the teaching staff when it comes to getting their students to focus on what it takes to develop a meaningful work product. In other words, when students interview each other for an article or podcast, it isn't just about checking off boxes on some grading rubric: It's about telling a story that both you and your peers will respect.

This is a big challenge in math and, from what I've seen in the last week, business classes as well: Projects have a meaningful aim, but they also have a busywork component that many students quickly sniff out. Maybe it's distance between the subject matter being discussed and the student's own experience. I'd like to discuss how to close the gap between journalism and the rest of the school when it comes to getting basic students to show pride in work.

Relating my own teaching experience since the last PD session, I have put my Theory of Knowledge classes through two project cycles. In the first, I had students research and write about general topics related to science: the Scientific Method,  the role of peer review in science, etc. The resulting presentations were kind of lame and uninspiring to grade. It was a good learning experience, but I think I was learning more than the students were.

For the second cycle, I tried to "story" things up a little. I asked the students to pick from a list of revolutionary figures in the history of science and discuss that person's life, focusing on what elements, both personal and historical, made that person revolutionary. For example, students writing on Galileo, were to investigate the historical context (the late Renaissance), the thinking that preceded Galileo (the Copernican heliocentric model), the tools that facilitated Galileo's research (the telescope), not to mention Galileo's personality when it came to defying the scientific and religious authorities of the age.

Long story short, the work came out a lot better and was a lot more fun to grade. For the first time this year, I felt like I had something I'd be happy showing to I.B. parents, not to mention other I.B. teachers.

I think this focus on generating a quality work product over grading individual student performance is a critical mind shift that needs to be discussed in depth. How do we incentivize and broadcast good work, so that students know that they're not just generating something for the teacher's eyes only? Should we be working the Art department into this discussion as well? This is something they deal with on a daily basis as well.

Brainstorming and the d.school Model

My department has been doing teacher-to-teacher intervisitations.  I used this as an opportunity to sit in on Christine's class for a week in Room 341. One thing I quickly noticed is that, once students have taken their seats and logged on to the computers in Room 341, the teacher practically has to shout at the top of her lungs to get the full room's attention.

Journalism teachers might have more experience on how to get the whole group to turn away from the computer screen, but even then, you've got the machines battling you for student attention every second of the lesson.

My advice to Christine after my second visit was to not fight the technology, to let students focus on the computer and communicate via online commenting or direct person-to-person interaction. I watched her do this on the third and fourth day and noticed a big uptick in the productivity level of the room.

Looking back, I think Christine's idea to get a group discussion going in the early stages of the project was a noble one. It just seemed like too much of an uphill battle to be any fun for her or her students. How can we build better discussion into the cycle, especially at the front end when we're really trying to get students to think creatively? We talked about getting students to be thoughtful about their work after the first draft. What about before?

Stanford's Design School (or d.school) runs an interesting series of courses on what they call "Design Thinking," borrowing ideas from the best tech companies. The course puts a heavy focus on the brainstorming process and creativity. I think our students would love this kind of instruction.

This video runs through a full hour-long design cycle class. It's too long for a single PD session, but the first 10 minutes give you a taste of how they get a room full of adults to turn off the devices and thinking about a project from a total blank-slate perspective. I think we can steal a few of these tricks to get the ideas flowing a little more smoothly in our classrooms.

Detecting Signal amid the Noise

As we noted in the very first discussion, there's a difference between good chaos and bad chaos. It also takes a while for a teacher to know that difference.

This came up in my observation of Christine's classes. There were times when her students were on- point, executing and displaying accountable talk and, yet, she couldn't see it or hear it (for various reasons) and therefore wasn't getting the positive feedback she needed to know what was working well for her.

I'm sure the same thing goes on in my classroom. My eyes and ears are trained to seek out the four or five kids blatantly off task instead of the four or five kids doing something mind-blowingly creative. I can't "read" chaos as well as some teachers can, so I tend to play it safe when it comes to lesson planning.

Like I said above, emphasizing collective work product over individual performance seems like a good place to start. It requires both a psychological shift on the part of the teacher and a cultural shift on the part of the entire classroom, though. What should teachers still on the back end of this shift be looking for? I'd like to hear more about what the process looked like for the more experienced teachers as they went through it the first times.

In short, how do rewire our brains to seek out the positive and not worry so much about the negative aspects of increased student independence?

Statement of Purpose

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

Sam: The official title of this professional development session was “The Journalism-Type Classroom,” an awkward last-minute phrase I came up with when I heard the school was still looking for teacher-led PD sessions.

The morning before the first session, I retitled it “The Journalism-Inspired Classroom.” I teach math, not journalism, but I figured journalism, at least at Curtis, had the more established “brand” when it came to decentralized, tech-driven classroom management.

I wrote up a brief essay, Why journalism as a classroom model?, to explain the choice of title and my own professional link to journalism. During the first meeting, Cadence, the co-facilitator who does teach journalism, lamented that I switched away from “The Post-Modern Classroom,” a title I’d used when suggesting our initial collaboration.

Eventually, we gravitated to “The Chaotic Classroom,” sort of a joking reference to a comment I made after doing a prep period in Cadence’s room while one of her freshman groups was working on a podcast project.

“So what do you think?” asked Cadence afterward.

“A little chaotic,” I said. “At least to a math teacher’s eyes.”

“Good chaos, though,” added Cadence.

This became the theme of our first meeting: How does a teacher trying to take advantage of all the new technology available in the classroom distinguish between the “good chaos” -- i.e. 30+ students working at different speeds and in different styles but generally towards a common objective -- and “bad chaos” -- 30+ students interpreting the lack of an immediate grade and a dominating “teacher voice” as a sudden signal to go full on apeshit? 

Having encountered the latter outcome more than a few times in our teaching careers, all teachers sitting in on the first meeting agreed that it was this fear of “bad chaos” that was stifling our attempt to court “good chaos.”

"Learning to let go is a big part of it," said Cadence.

Admittedly, not every teacher is in a career stage or work situation where courting chaos, even on the smallest of scales is the best idea. Some might even argue that the typical public school classroom needs *less* chaos, not more.

I think almost all teachers, however, will acknowledge that the forces of time and technology are working against those trying to maintain tight control of the classroom environment. I also think that many would acknowledge that chaos has its beneficial uses, especially in situations where creativity of thought is the ultimate end goal. Indeed, in mathematics, we have an entire field of study, “chaos theory,” which puts forward the notion that just as predictable patterns can lead to unpredictable outcomes, so too can unpredictable patterns lead to predictable outcomes.

So, it was in this spirit of “chaos” that we decided to investigate our own best practices as veteran teachers and look for ways to make the “chaotic classroom” model a little more “viral” within the Curtis H.S. instructional culture.

A Student Initiated Classroom

Just thought you might find this interesting: The Classroom in the Cloud proposal:
http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud?language=en

Experiment results:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLtUl2CP8ak

The Evaluation Conundrum

THE CHALLENGE OF "LETTING GO." THE EVALUATION CONUNDRUM.

In our April 1 session, we discussed the challenge of adopting a student-led instructional model. All three teachers attending the PD session are in the business/mathematics department and have the same administrator conducting our observations. Each teacher has experience breaking a classroom into small groups, with each group working at a different pace and possibly pursuing different goals. One common concern in listening to our colleagues who teach the journalism classes, however, is that many of the things that look promising to a journalism teacher look "chaotic" to first time visitor from the math department, especially a math department administrator charged with giving that a teacher a "lesson" grade.
The following is a rough transcript of what we talked about:

Deb: My evaluations have called for an exit ticket or some form of assessment to make sure every student is or was on task during the observed class time. What Cadence is talking about, having different students working at different phases of the project, doesn’t seem to fit with this in my mind. Also, the observer wants to see continuity. When he walks around the classroom, he expects to see everybody doing the same task. Pretty much.

Sam: As Cadence noted last week, the traditional idea that an effective teacher must keep every last kid in the classroom engaged and on task doesn’t necessarily sync up with what the Danielson rubric looks for in “highly effective” practice. This came up in her post-evaluation: The observers admitted that the lesson didn't look like what they were used to giving a high score to, but when they went down the rubric checklist, they almost had no choice but to score it highly effective. 

The Danielson "highly effective" criteria put a heavy, heavy stress on student initiative. Part of the price of getting students to show more initiative is letting unmotivated students flail or even blow off the assignment altogether. To quote Cadence, “The bottom line is there’s a percentage of kids who are going to be disengaged whatever you do,” so the teacher's main job is to encourage the students who do show initiative in the expectation that the freedom to do creative, more meaningful work will eventually serve as a recruiting tool for unmotivated students. 
This is where the phrase "letting go" becomes more than just a joke-y catch phrase.

What I hear in my evaluations is that many students appear disengaged. I can keep them on task, for the most part, but I’m like a sergeant barking out instructions all the time, trying to maintain a tight formation. This is wearing on the students, and it’s wearing on me. Groupwork has been successful at times, but the technology component has been lacking. I see a chance to do so much of the math instruction through Desmos, where a student is more free to experiment and can share the work to me via a link as a formative assessment and proof of accountability. Unfortunately, Desmos is a little too cumbersome on the smartphones. I see the opportunity, however, to do more interesting small-team projects with a handful of Chromebooks.

Christine: I’m a new teacher, so every lesson plan is an experiment, pretty much. My classes are project-oriented. Their project is using the technology. To increase ownership, I might solicit students on the next topic of the project. Room 331 is designed to facilitate clusters. I’m going to make the top-performing student the “general” and ask them to create document that all five team-members can work on. The general is responsible for the other four people at the table. For right now, I’m just getting awesome ideas.