I enjoy conducting professional development, particularly when I’m commissioned to present on teacher wellbeing. I take the audience on a journey of various challenges a teacher faces during different stages of a 30 year career. Because I logged 34 years in a public school classroom, I have plenty of material. I enjoy describing my struggles at various junctures. Generally, I recreate a challenge that was unique to a phase I was navigating. Rarely in these stories, am I the hero. I love to talk about learning valuable lessons–that I often learned the hard way.
One such lesson happened 7 years into teaching. I call it my 7-year-itch lesson. I was 32, and I felt stymied. All the incentives in education were internal. Your compensation was based on experience and education level. There were darned few avenues of advancement. You could become an administrator, or a head coach, but neither of those options appealed to me. I felt trapped. So I left teaching and went into the private sector where I’d be compensated based on what I did, not who I was.
I have a good skill set for being successful in sales. But just because one has potential, does not mean one should select a certain career path. I had no idea how much I’d miss my students. The interactions I had with sales clients could not compare. These interactions were highly transactional and sometimes confrontational. I desperately missed my students and went hightailing it back.
This experience was immensely valuable, because I learned that my love for the relationships that blossomed between students and me far out shadowed frustrations I had with the job. My sabbatical, consequently, was hugely beneficial to my wellbeing.
I bring this up, because today I’ll interview a teacher that took such a similar hyattus. This episode is also special because Dora Riggs used to be my student. She not only left a cushy teaching gig in an affluent suburban high school, but she returned to an urban district. Her students and the community where she now teaches, while only 10 miles from her previous school, could not be more different. Dora will talk about her teacher gap year–and more interestingly how it and her new surroundings have impacted her. She loves her new school. She’s become a trauma informed teacher and a disciple of restorative practices. She’s a different teacher–a more empathetic teacher. Dora is going to explain why and how.
When I retired from teaching high school last year, I worried about losing all of the social interaction that I got from teaching 150 students daily. So, I secured an adjunct position teaching aspiring educators at Muskingum University. I also teach refugees how to speak English. These teaching gigs have been a joy, but it’s a different life because I’m only teaching 3 days a week–which is also a joy. My new-found freedom affords me the opportunity to explore, grow, and take risks. I also want to keep expanding my human capital. Relationships make life worth living and I love forging new ones.
One area of growth that I’ve been exploring this year is fitness. I have so much more time to workout now and I love it. I researched ways that I could challenge myself physically and grow myself socially. At the end of my exploration, I concluded that I should join a Crossfit gym. Crossfit significantly challenges you physically and promotes community. Crossfit gyms are highly social places. That was exactly what I was looking for.
I found an excellent local gym–Crossfit Polaris . Kristi Eramo is the owner and a prominent games athlete. I love her teaching style and was excited to learn from her and the other coaches at Polaris. Unfortunately, the Covid 19 Pandemic short-circuited my plans. After just 3 introductory classes, the gym was forced to close. I was left high and dry.
So, I got busy coaching myself. I pulled the workout of the day (WOD) off the Crossfit site and started doing them. I watched training videos and listened to podcasts hoping to improve my olympic lifting form. Lifting is a key part to Crossfit. I decided that I was going to take one of the most challenging olympic lifts–the snatch, and learn how to do it. Here’s a description of a snatch:
The snatch can be described as jumping a barbell through a range of motion and receiving it into an overhead squat.
And here’s a brief video if you’d like to see a young woman perform one expertly. You have to be strong, mobile, explosive, coordinated, and courageous to perform this lift. I’m starting from ground zero, but I’m determined to learn this lift.
When I searched for Olympic lifting techniques on Google, YouTube, and podcasts, one name kept materializing–Mike Burgener. Now all of you who’re inclined to exit this podcast because you’re not interested in learning about performing an olympic snatch, stop yourself. This program is not about lifting, it’s about teaching. And Mike Burgener is one of this nation’s premier educators. Here’s a bit about Coach Burgener:
He has a BA from Notre Dame and played on their 1966 National Championship Football Team.
He has an MS from the University of Kentucky in Exercise Physiology, where he was also the strength coach.
He was a captain in the Marine Corps.
He’s a Senior International Weightlifting Coach for the United States.
He’s considered the Godfather of Olympic Lifting for Crossfit.
And for decades, Coach Burgener was a proud public educator–teaching high school physical education in California.
I got to know Coach Burgener because I sent him an email asking a question. The next thing I knew, I was in his Level 1 weightlifting class. This is a special man and he’s going to talk about his mentors and challenge you to not only listen to the ones you already have but to be open to new ones.
Create a goal. It could be something new you’d like to do, or an area where you’d like to grow.
Find someone who could help you obtain this goal and be open to their mentorship.
Finding a mentor can be transformational. By being open to mentorship, you may just transform yourself into a mentor. Mike Burgener would not be who he is without Father Lange. And Father Lange probably was unaware of how profound his influence would be once he started mentoring a young Mike Burgener.
I just checked the human toll of Coronavirus before I wrote this sentence. The US is on the verge of 20,000 deaths and the world has surpassed 100,000. It’s been awful to watch these numbers climb. And I, like hopefully you, remain isolated in my home reading way too many news stories about what’s going on in largely isolated cities and towns and overcrowded hospitals. The whole thing is sad, weird, and unsettling.
I will say, however that during this dark time, I’ve gotten myself into a routine with some positives. I’m getting more sleep because I don’t have to set an alarm. I’m eating healthy because my wife and I prepare every meal, with the exception of our once a week pizza night. I workout for 90 minutes most days. And my wife and I enjoy sitting down and watching a program together each night before bed.
But those are the only positives I can muster. Man do I miss interacting with people. I get really sick of interacting on my computer or phone and also sitting at my desk. I’m seriously thinking about purchasing a standing desk just to keep moving. Now if you’re getting sick of social distancing–think how sick your students are of navigating online lessons. Sadly, they have a ways to go till school is out.
This situation reminds me of a January in the late 1970s. I was in high school and the Midwest got clobbered by a catastrophic blizzard. We were out of school for a month. There was no interaction between the school and students at home. There was no internet and no social media. My friends were able to walk to one another’s houses. There was no social distancing, but the snowy environment did lead to a lot of cabin fever. My friends and I treated the entire time like summer vacation. We played in the snow for a month and forgot about school work. We desperately missed seeing our friends and going to basketball games and school dances, but otherwise we just rolled with it. Please remember that although your students are probably bored, given the option between watching Netflix or doing school work, for many, would be an easy choice. When crafting lessons, starting from that understanding will help.
I recently participated in a Times 10 Roundtable Webinar offering ideas for teachers on how they could instruct their students remotely during this bizarre time. I was joined on the panel by Joe Sanfelippo a superintendent from Wisconsin and Chrissy Romano-Arrabito an elementary teacher from New Jersey. The panel was moderated by Mark Barnes who’s the founder of Times 10 Publications. The discussion was well balanced because we got a broad perspective from Joe, and a younger student and economically disadvantaged perspective from Chrissy. I focused on specific ways you could stay connected with students. I’ll expand on those ideas in this episode.
I’ll focus on 3 tools that can maintain and perhaps facilitate deeper relationships with your kids during this challenge. These platforms will also help you teach your classes. I’ll offer these tools as suggestions, if you have something you’ve utilized that works better for you, go for it. I’m more interested in ends and not means.
I would encourage you to once a week record a YouTube video of yourself for your students. Just take a video on your phone and upload it to YouTube. If you have a Gmail account, you have a YouTube account. This video can explain what’s next, but it should also encourage. Here’s a link to the video I sent out last week. If you want to stay connected to students, on a weekly basis let them see your face, hear your voice, and read your body language. They’re used to seeing you everyday. This doesn’t have to be a big production. Just record a message to your students every week and then share it with them. Add some levity to your weekly todo list by giving kids a virtual tour of your home. Record in a different room each week. Record in the kitchen during meal prep and describe what’s on the menu. Please make the message positive. “You all did a great job last week!” “I loved some of your creations!”. Your weekly YouTube message is not a forum for airing your grievances, “Hey–you guys need to submit your assignments on time!” If you need to deliver such a message, that should be done one-on-one to offending parties and I’ll address such communication momentarily. But for your weekly class-wide broadcast, keep it upbeat. Students need to hear a positive message.
Which brings me to one-on-one interactions. I know some teachers that are utilizing virtual office hours and Facetime and other such tools. Bravo! Keep it up. I’m going to promote 2 tools which have interesting attributes. What I love about both is that participants aren’t time bound. They don’t have to be receiving or transmitting in a specific time frame. Both of my tools are like emails in that respect–but so much richer as I’ll demonstrate.
Remind is an app I became familiar with 2 years ago. My principal promoted it as a way that he could directly communicate with the entire staff, or individual teachers via phone texts. The beauty of the Remind App is that it hops right on your phone, which everyone seems to be addicted to anyway. I must confess, at first I found this method of communication invasive, but I soon grudgingly acknowledged that I was more aware of what was going on in the building. And, my principal and I got into some side messaging about unrelated topics that were highly enjoyable. I remember once a lengthy text chain on the Ohio State Michigan game. I got to know the guy better because of Remind. It’s really simple why Remind is so successful, people read texts before they read emails. Even before this crisis, I had all of my students join my Remind. It has facilitated understanding and relationships. Here’s a link to an episode I recorded last fall where I interviewed some of my students who lauded this app. Remind has been invaluable during this crisis. You could use this app as an outstanding delivery method for your weekly YouTube video.
As much as I love Remind, during this crisis I’ve found myself primarily communicated with students via Voxer. Voxer is the 21st Century walkie-talkie. I prompted this app many episodes ago and I find it fascinating that I’m circling back and using it. There are 2 wonderful things about Voxer. Number 1, students can hear your voice and respond with theirs. This helps erase the obstacles presented by this virus. While it certainly isn’t a face-to-face conversation, it’s still a vast improvement over sterile text. With voice inflection you can communicate so much more. Have you ever misinterpreted the tone in a text or email? I sure have. A voice message contains all the flavors of your voice–a voice your students have probably missed. And they can talk right back to you. And they sure have. One of the biggest problems with online instruction is that students aren’t sure what they’re supposed to do. When that occurs, students send me a voice message, “Sturtevant, I don’t understand Job 3.” And just like with Remind, these messages wait to be consumed by the recipient when they’re ready. The second massive benefit of Voxer is ease. I can talk a heck of a lot faster than I can text or type. It’s so easy to push a button, record my voice and move on. Because it’s so easy, I find myself sometimes broadcasting to my whole class, or individual students who may have an interest, messages that are not academic in nature. I’ll offer menu suggestions, workout suggestions, or streaming suggestions. One can also share images and links. It really has become my default. And it’s been a great way to maintain and deepen those relationships.
Episode Template
The Problem:
Students and teachers are growing distant due to the CoronaVirus.
The Solution:
Utilize tools so they can see your face, communicate with you easily, and hear your voice.
What you can do Tomorrow:
Record a brief video encouraging your students, upload it to YouTube, and then share it.
Set up a Remind texting group for your class. If your students are too young for this, set one up with the parents.
Set up a Voxer group chat with your class. Again, if your students are too young for this, set one up with the parents.
Emails, texts, and written instructions can only communicate so much. Let students hear your voice and see your face. Maintain, if not deepen, those important student-teacher relationships during this extended period of online instruction.
Well, for at least the next 2 weeks, I’m forced to teach my class in a virtual fashion. All teachers in the great state of Ohio are in the same boat.
A few years back, Columbus State Community College commissioned me to create an online version of one of their history classes. It was a tremendous learning experience. When I embarked on that journey, I kept reciting a mantra, Make lessons impactful and engaging. I was able to achieve this throughout the creation process and it’s guiding my efforts over the next few weeks.
I learned last week that Muskingum, like all higher ed institutions in Ohio, would be closed until the end of March. My experience creating online content gave me a dose of confidence that I could weather this storm. In this episode, I’ll share my template. This template is grounded in Bloom’s Taxonomy and you can use it every week until the crisis eases and we get back to normal.
The final caveat is that my students have internet access. If your students are really young, or don’t have access, this template would have to be adapted.
Before we get into the template, I’d like you to take a moment and just breathe. Things like this happen. I’ve learned that flexibility is not just a physical thing. You also must be flexible emotionally and dispositionally.
Taoism is attributed to the perhaps legendary Lao Tzu. One illustration attributed to this perhaps fictional man is a comparison between a large stately mature tree and small supple sapling. During a powerful storm, the sapling swayed and arched effortlessly in the strong winds, while the massive stiff tree snapped in half under the strain. I’m going to challenge you to be more like the sapling, not just during the next few weeks, but in general. We’ll survive. Your students will learn and be fine. Take a deep breath and understand that this is not business as usual. In fact, take some time over the next few weeks to do some things around the house you’ve been putting off, or do something fun with your family. Revel in the fact that for the next few weeks you don’t have to set your alarm!
Okay, enough with the pep talk. Let’s dive into this template. Do you remember learning about Bloom’s Taxonomy in Intro to Education? I hope so. It’s a wonderful, simple, and applicable model to apply to instruction. Here’s a refresher course:
The base levels focus on understanding
The middle levels involved evaluation and application
The apex challenges students to create something
This template is going to prompt students to master all 3 levels.
I encourage you to utilize a central Google Doc which will act as a GPS for the lesson. I prefer using a HyperDoc, because they look cool. Here’s a link to the episode where I interviewed the HyperDocs Girls if you’re unfamiliar. Here’s a link to the HyperDoc I sent my students yesterday.
Once you have your lesson idea, please also consider recording a brief YouTube which will give students some guidance and a bit of encouragement. If you have a Gmail account, you have a YouTube account. Set up your phone to record a video and then once recorded, upload it to YouTube, make certain it’s public, and then put a link at the top of your Google Doc. You’ll see this at the top of my HyperDoc. Here’s a direct link to my weekly pep talk.
In my Intro to Education class this week, we were going to focus on Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Growth Mindset. This alteration of the typical school calendar represents a truly teachable moment. In using Bloom’s as a guide, it’s initially essential that students have foundational understanding. This understanding will form the base of Blooms. My students are going to master 3 things:
Chapter 4 from our text (which elaborates on Bloom’s Taxonomy)
Carol Dweck’s TedTalk
An online resource created by Alyson Hobrecht entitled “Inspire a Positive Growth Mindset in Yourself and Students”
I added a level of accountability and prompted students to build something that will benefit them once finals roll around and they’re forced to review this material. Each student must create a 12-term Quizlet set on these resources, obtain a sharable link, highlight their name on the landing pad (which I’ll describe later), and then insert the link to their Quizlet sets.
After students have obtained an understanding of the growth mindset, I challenge them to apply it to a real-life scenario. In this case where I’m teaching college education majors about Bloom’s Taxonomy and the growth mindset, the application process was simple. Students were to speculate how they’ll cope with an anticipated challenge during that trying rookie year as a teacher. If one can predict an obstacle, one has a better chance of mitigating that obstacle. This is a powerful real-life application. Your challenge is to dream up such an application for your lesson. If not a real-life application, dream up an engaging challenge where students are forced to evaluate the concept you’re teaching. Make certain to use the middle sector of Bloom’s as your guide. Once students have obtained an understanding of your lesson, push them to evaluate, or apply it. This represents higher levels of thinking as you climb Bloom’s pyramid.
Which leads us to the creation phase–the apex of Blooms. I love to challenge my students to express themselves in unfamiliar ways. Blooms promotes such creative challenges. This is where the magic happens. In this case, I challenged my future educators to produce a 3-panel comic on StoryBoardThat. Typically, we’d spend a portion of a class period learning how to create via this platform. That is not an option this week. So, I turned to the world’s most prolific educator YouTube for guidance. I found a wonderful and brief tutorial on how to create using this platform. Once students mastered the unfamiliar platform, they were challenged to illustrate and create a brief narrative based on their anticipated rookie teacher growth mindset obstacle.
The final ingredient in this recipe is the landing pad. There needs to be a place where students can share their efforts. Learning Management Systems make that easy and you can certainly go that route, but if you’d like more student collaboration, another option is to create a landing pad. A landing pad is merely a Google Doc that is the class roster. But with this doc, you alter the share settings so students can edit it. This allows kids to highlight their names and insert links to their own creations. For the StoryBoardThat prompt, I created Google Slide Presentation and put in Can Edit mode. Each student was challenged to generate a screenshot of their comic and insert it on 1 slide and on the next slide compose a narrative describing how they’ll master this growth mindset challenge. Once everyone’s images and narratives are on the slide presentation, students can collaborate and peer evaluate!
I plan on using this template every week till the crisis eases. Hopefully, I gave you some ideas that you can utilize.
Episode Template
The Problem:
Teachers are at a loss on how to proceed with online instruction.
The Solution:
Apply Bloom’s Taxonomy via a template that can be used each week.
What you can do Tomorrow:
Decide what lesson you need to teach this week
Create a HyperDoc which acts as the lesson’s GPS
Create prompts that satisfy all levels of Blooms
Create a landing pad for students to submit work
When faced with challenges such as this, remember Lao Tzu’s example of the supple sapling. You’ll weather this storm a lot better if you relax and accommodate the powerful winds.
I always referred to February as the Dog Days of Education. The weather, at least for those of us who reside in the northeastern quadrant of these here United States, is pretty bleak. Any newness of the second semester is long gone. As the weather warms, at least just a bit, your opportunities for snow days diminish and even if it’s still frigid and snowy, perhaps you’ve already used your allotted quota. Spring break, that magical academic elixir, is still a ways off. Students, teachers, and even administrators are starting to get, as my mom used to say, a bit bucky. All of these factors make the topic of this episode a perfect antidote for the February blahs.
About a month ago, my publisher Mark Barnes tasked me to evaluate some of x10 Publishing’s books. One of my assignments was to assess Quit Point. As part of the review process, I first checked out the Amazon author’s page. I was floored to learn that Adam Chamberlin and Svetoslav Metijic live only 20 miles from me. My old school competes against theirs in sports frequently. Because of our proximity, I was immediately intrigued by these guys. I was further intrigued as I reviewed their book.
Adam ChamberlinSvetoslav Metijic
Quit Point is all about how teachers can spot when students are about to give up and then what teachers can do about it. I cannot imagine any educator who possesses an ounce of empathy not being fascinated with this topic. And isn’t mid February a perfect time to take action when the symptoms of apathy are often acute? If you feel that way…and hopefully you do, please give this episode a try and then check out these guy’s book. As you listen to them articulate their ideas, I’m certain you’ll find them engaging, funny, and totally on point.
To learn more, please visit Adam and Svetoslav’s website.
Episode Template
The Problem:
Many teachers aren’t sure how to proceed when students are reaching their quit point.
The Solution:
Teachers need to recognize this phenomenon and then take action to fix it.
What you can do Tomorrow:
Compose a list of kids who seem to be struggling.
Reach out to colleagues who also have these students and see if they’ve spotted any dips in effort and attitude.
Focus on building momentum in that first 5 minutes of your class.
Closely monitor student’s reactions to your new approach, particularly those who’re on your concern list.
Check out Adam and Sveti’s book.
You’re an empathetic educator. If you weren’t, there’s no way you would’ve listened to this podcast. Hopefully this episode gave you some ideas on how you can rescue students who’re on the verge of quitting.
The State of Ohio, where I’ve taught my entire career, is not unique. Students in certain classes that the state considers essential are subject to end of course exams. Student performance on these standardized assessments are a key ingredient in their instructor’s evaluation. If you teach one of those classes, you’re hopefully all about progress monitoring. The last thing you want is to get a terrible surprise when your student’s performances materialize. Throughout the semester, you want to make darned sure your kids are on track.
I was one of those teachers, however, that did not have a state-mandated end of course exam. I taught electives. In Ohio, the alternative for teachers who teach electives is for them to complete an SLO–which stands for Student Learning Objective. You were asked to demonstrate with data that your students grew during your class. Sadly, and I feel badly confessing this, this requirement was a bit of a joke. All you had to do was to give a really hard preassessment. The students would struggle on this benchmark and then do much better on their finals. It was therefore easy to demonstrate with data student growth.
As a consequence, and once again I’m not proud to admit this, I didn’t do much progress monitoring in my elective classes. I felt really guilty about my past efforts when I began teaching assessment to college students. I was upfront about my slacker efforts in the past and I then became passionate about encouraging my future educators to frequently monitor student progress regardless of their curriculum.
Ryan McLane
To help in this endeavor, I brought in a guru. Ryan McLane was a high school social studies teacher, the principal at a middle school, the principal of an intermediate building, and now he’s an elementary principal and the district director of special education. He’s also the author of Your School Rocks. He’s observed, managed, and conducted progress monitoring at various levels and in diverse subjects. He also does a magnificent PD on progress monitoring. My students loved his presentation, but more importantly, they felt empowered. They’re now anxious to answer the following questions in their upcoming job interviews:
How do you know if students are learning?
What are you going to do for those who struggle?
These are important questions for any teacher–particularly if you teach an elective. Ryan will talk in this episode about how elective teachers can become progress monitoring officinados. And before you start wondering, This is a podcast on engagement. What does progress monitoring have to do with that? Stay tuned. Ryan is all about engagement. He’s going to explain how you can take a concept that seems dry and clinical–progress monitoring, and make it engaging and empowering for students and teachers.
Episode Template
The Problem:
Teachers in classes where there aren’t end of course exams are not doing enough progress monitoring.
The Solution:
Teachers in such courses should independently embrace and administer progress monitoring.
What you can do Tomorrow:
Approach your administrator and ask for guidance in implementing progress monitoring.
Choose a unit that will act as your trial balloon.
Determine what skills or information students should master during the unit.
Decide how and how frequently you’ll monitor progress.
Explore ways to enhance student involvement in the monitoring process to make the experience more engaging.
As a teacher, you have an obligation to ensure student learning. Progress monitoring offers proof!
When I was in my early 30’s, I got the 7-year-itch. NO, NO, NO…not to split from the lovely Mrs. Sturtevant, far from it. I was questioning my commitment to education. I was an ambitious competitive young guy. My college peers were climbing corporate ladders. They were wearing suits to work and bringing in some serious bank. They seemed so much more adult.
I’ve always been goal-oriented, which was fine for the first few years in teaching when I was still figuring out the job. But my early 30’s I found myself wondering, Can I be satisfied doing this till my mid-50’s?
I’ve always been a person of action and so I determined it was time to take some. I left Education to become a salesperson in the private sector. I reasoned that I possessed a good skill set for sales. I was right, but guess what? I was miserable in my new role. On my hasty exit from my classroom, I totally failed to inventory the wondrous positives of being teacher. I was a popular guy in my school and I loved my students. The first 5 minutes of every class was always devoted to bonding. I would describe what was going on in my life and the students would share about their existences. I totally took this magnificent bond with my students for granted. In the private sector, no one cared what I was reading, what workout I was doing, or what I made Mrs. Sturtevant for dinner the previous night. Instead my interactions were highly transactional.
After a 1-year sales gig, I hightailed it back to the classroom. It was so good to be home. It was a magnificent learning experience that I still value and it helped me become a much better and more content educator.
But my early frustrations with teaching were certainly not unique. Let’s face it, teaching doesn’t possess many extrinsic motivators. I don’t know that that is necessarily a bad thing. Merit pay has never really delivered on its mythical promises. But there are darned few career advancement opportunities. You could become an administrator, a head coach, a department head, or a guidance counselor. If you’re ambitious, you must content yourself with creating the best classroom experience for your students. That’s wonderful objective, but perhaps, we need some more options.
Michael Brilla and his beautiful family
And this dear listener is where my buddy Michael Brilla walks on the Hacking Engagement stage. Michael is a passionate social studies teacher who’s been on this program before. He starred on Episode 105 promoting StoryMaps as a marvelous platform. I loved his energy and I utilize StoryMaps every semester, even with my college students. Michael is creative and ultra-approachable. His students just love him. So why in the world would he leave his magical classroom and assume a new role? Please stay put dear listener and learn the what, the why, and the how. Who knows you might come up with an idea to explore this new year.
Episode Template
The Problem:
Teachers sometimes feel stuck in the job with few opportunities for career advancement.
The Solution:
In a patient and long-term way begin to explore options.
What you can do Tomorrow:
Inventory all the amazing things about being a classroom teacher.
Inventory your strengths.
Begin networking with colleagues and administrators about opportunities.
Assume an open-mind about new roles.
Please, always count your blessings as a classroom teacher, but don’t neglect to explore professional opportunities. Who knows, perhaps a new rewarding and important role might be in your near future, if you’re open-minded enough recognize it.
I once had a veteran colleague lament about the state of teaching. He meditated, WIth all the that they’re making us do, if I was in college today, there’s no way I’d major in Education. Apparently, he’s not alone in this sentiment. If one searches “Decline in Education Majors”, one will find plenty of evidence that many undergrads feel exactly as my colleague expressed. Here’s a link to 2019 Forbes article which relies heavily on data from the National Center for Education Statistics. Over the past decade, Education has suffered the largest exodus compared with other majors–a decline of 19%. While I’m sad that declining numbers of young Americans consider teaching a wonderful career path, this phenomenon does create wonderful opportunities for potential teachers. In the future, jobs may be easier to secure. Teacher pay may have to increase because of supply. This episode will feature one of these aspiring teachers–Joce McBurney-Buell.
Joce McBurney-Buell jocelynm@muskingum.edu
Last summer, I traveled to Muskingum University to meet with the my dear friend the outgoing Department Chair Rae White. In the midst of our day, she invited me to lunch in the gymnasium which was hosting freshmen students who were also being oriented to campus. Rae and I plopped down at a table full of young people to break bread. Seated beside me was a young woman who seemed to know a lot more about Muskingum than an incoming freshman. As you probably guessed, Joce was my table neighbor and was about to embark on her junior year. She was on campus that day to help ease freshmen with their significant transition from home and high school. As we interacted, I was thrilled to learn that Joce is an Education major. As I observed her and interacted with her, it became quickly apparent that this young women had it going on. I just knew–and it’s been confirmed by future interactions, that she was destined to present to my Intro to Education students, which she did last week, and appear on my podcast, which is this episode.
We’ll discuss her goals and motivations, but what really excites me is what Joce represents. Students such as her point to a bright future in American education. The young people that I interact with in the Education major are excited, driven, and passionate about the calling. Don’t get too discouraged about the Forbes article. There are some magnificent young teachers on the horizon.
Episode Template
The Problem:
Education is not an attractive major to many young Americans.
The Solution:
Open your room to aspiring teachers.
What you can do Tomorrow:
Indicate to your administrator that you are open to aspiring teachers being part of your class.
Reach out to your local institutions of higher learning that have education as a major and communicate this openness.
Someone helped you get to where you are today. Please be a mentor for an aspiring teacher. And you just might find, if you help a student like Joce, that you’ll learn as much from her as she’ll learn from you.
2 years ago, I was teaching high school and our building principal setup the Remind App for our staff. I must confess that at first I found the app annoying. The flurry of messages I was receiving from our fearless leader was invasive. Granted, many of the messages were germain to being a teacher at our school and some of them were essential such as, We’re on a 2-hour delay and Don’t forget, I’m observing you tomorrow. Grudgingly, I began to acknowledge the value of this new mode of communication and collaboration.
This fall, I embarked on a new education journey as an adjunct at Muskingum University. I decided to give Remind a try with my students. I quite simply embraced the old cliché, When in Rome, do like the Romans. Over the past decade, I’d experienced the frustration of unrequited emails sent to students. Young folks aren’t big fans of emails, but they text the hell out of one another. Remind embraces this proclivity. The messages come through the recipient’s device as a text and the receiver can then respond. But Remind isn’t just a group thing. Teachers can message students or parents individually and then carry on conversations just with them.
On its surface, Remind may seem like it’s ripe for inappropriate communication between students and teachers. If those anxieties are stirring in you, please visit this page to read what Remind has to say about its commitment to security and protecting students.
To help describe how this app works from the student perspective, I conscripted some of my current primary sources. Taylor Clemons, Rader Felumlee, and Macy McAdams are my current students. These magnificent future teachers will also speculate on how they’ll utilize this app in their eventual classrooms.
Taylor Clemons, Rader Felumlee, and Macy McAdams
Episode Template
The Problem:
Student-teacher communication needs to be improved.
Last year, I was teaching high school and our administration assigned a book study to the staff. We read and collaborated on 15 Fixes for Broken Grades by Ken O’Connor. This iconic book is an interesting and provocative read. It challenges standard operating procedure in terms of the way students are assessed. The fix that stirred the pot the most amongst our faculty was Fix #2:
Don’t reduce marks on work that is submitted late
In the program, I mistakenly refer to Fix #2 as Fix #4. On its face, Fix #2 makes sense. You don’t want to punish a behavior academically. But, wouldn’t Fix #2 encourage procrastination and irresponsibility?
Interestingly enough, during my first day this past week with my college students, i challenged them to collaborate in groups on the creation of class norms. One topic that all struggled with was how to deal with late work. To a group, students were in favor of score reduction. I found this fascinating and so we embarked on a magnificent tangential conversation on should an instructor, which they all hope to be one day, punish a behavior academically? The ensuing conversation caused a titanic paradigm shift in many of my students. This episode might be similar to the discussion in my class last week in the sense that you might think about this issue differently.
I’ll discuss this fascinating idea thoroughly this week with Josh Frame. Josh is a middle school principal and he embraces the idea that students should not suffer academically for behaviors.
Josh Frame
We’ll talk about how he sold this idea to his staff, how he managed the pushback, and how he’s adapted his school’s response to students who are not appropriately pursuing learning. Here are some outstanding links Josh shared:
This is a fascinating discussion that may leave you with unanswered questions, but hopefully might inspire such conversations at your school.
Episode Template
The Problem:
Students are being punished academically for behaviors.
The Solution:
Embrace Ken O’Connor’s practice of not reducing marks on work that is submitted late.
What you can do Tomorrow:
Inventory your school’s policies on late work.
Consult with your principal about Ken O’Connor’s book.
Create an ultra-engaging prompt.
Assign students the prompt and explain that you’d like their completed work on Friday, but also indicate that you’ll not reduce their scores if it’s late. Just make certain they understand that they are required to complete it.
Sit back and evaluate what happens.
Punishing kids academically for a behavior is wrong. Let’s explore ways that we can inspire students to learn without this destructive practice.
