Better Classroom Observation: How to Break Down a Door

In the beginning of my career I had some pretty rough classroom visits. I can talk about them because I’ve since moved on and  nobody will get their feelings hurt.

Classroom visit:
The head of department visited my classroom for the first 8 minutes of my lesson. In the debrief later that week, he said “It looked ok. I didn’t really see any evidence of differentiation though.” When I asked how I would differentiate in the first 8 minutes of a lesson, he wasn’t really sure.

Classroom visit:
Two deputies came into my room with a video camera and pressed record. They filmed me teaching, the students and the students’ books for about 15 minutes. Then they left. 5 years, later, I still haven’t seen that video and have no idea what the purpose of it was.

Classroom visit:
The Principal wanted to decide whether to renew my contract for the following year. So, with 3 weeks to go in the school year, he visited my classroom to make his judgement. He decided it was “ok” and I could stay on.

After these classroom visits, I only wanted to do one thing.

Classroom door, Locked down.

Needless to say, each of these classroom visits left me feeling worse than before it took place. They all occurred in the first 3 years of my teaching career. They very nearly ended my teaching career.

Then I moved schools.

There I met a giant of a man, both figuratively and literally. He was in charge of “Teacher Development and Performance” and asked if he could visit my class. He came in for the full lesson, took plenty of notes and then left, with a debrief already organised for the next day.

In the debrief he said the lesson was GREAT! He listed a multitude of things I’d done well. He couldn’t have been more complimentary. When he asked me how I thought the lesson went, I listed the things I could have done better. He asked me how I could have done them better and I told him. He said that was great reflective practise and sent me out of his office ready to conquer the world.

It was here I saw the value in the positive classroom visit. And my classroom door…

Come on in.

The Problem I Have With Most Models of Observation

Thankfully, everyone agrees that classroom visits shouldn’t look like those I experienced in my first 3 years of teaching. But…

So many classroom observational models start with this assumption:

“There is something wrong with your teaching. Through observation we can help you fix it.”

In “teacher-directed models”, we are kind enough to let the teacher tell us what their deficit is before we walk into their room. This is supposed to make them feel like they own their own professional development.

What then happens is we walk into the class and focus intently upon their deficit, the thing they consider their weakness. Then we’ll offer all sorts of great suggestions for them, based on the entire 60 minutes we were in their classroom!

A Better Way
Instead of starting from the assumption that there’s a deficit, why don’t we start with a different assumption.

“Every teacher in our school does great things in their classrooms. We should visit each others’ classrooms and see those fantastic things in action!”

Imagine, if every teacher in your school was being told, once a week (or fortnight or month, as often as you can), by a visiting teacher, “wow, I really like the way you did that. I’m going to try that in my class”.

The teacher who got visited feels great.
They’ve received a compliment on their teaching and they’re ready to go again. They’ll gladly have another visitor in their classroom any time.

The visiting teacher feels great.
They learned a new skill. They are certain they can adapt it and use it in their own classroom. They’d love to do another classroom visit, maybe they’ll learn something else fantastic.

Now multiply this across your entire school.
Every time a teacher visits another classroom they get another great idea. Without ever mentioning a teacher’s “deficits”, they’ll soon be rid of them anyway. They’ll be exposed to great teaching practice over and over and over again. They can’t help but get better with each visit.

Everyone is having a great time. Visits only ever mean compliments and new ideas. Two of any humans favourite things.

What you’ll soon have are classrooms with open doors.

“Great”, I hear you say. “Now that we’ve tricked them into opening their doors, we can start doing the proper classroom visits. The ones with targeted areas for self-improvement”.

No.

Positive classroom visits aren’t a gateway leading to something better. They ARE the something better.

My Class of Guinea Pigs

Question: Is it unethical to perform experiments on students?

Not the kind that would turn them into a comic book superhero or supervillain. Slightly less harmful but experiments all the same.

As a technology coach, it’s my job to help teachers use technology in meaningful ways in their classrooms. Sometimes that means going out and finding new apps. Sometimes that means finding new ways of using old apps. I search high and low for new websites, new software, new hardware. Everything. And it’s always changing!

I also need to put myself in the shoes of every teacher on staff (about 130 at my school). I need to try my best to think like an english teacher, a science teacher, an art teacher, a woodwork teacher. Each of these teachers is a unique snowflake, as I’ve mentioned here before. 

In my fairly short career I’ve been a maths, science, digital technology and accounting teacher but nothing else. This means the last time I was in an english or humanities classroom I was sitting at the short desk, doing my best to pass.

So how can I know whether certain techniques, apps or websites will work “in the wild”?

I turn to the people in the school who have the most current and widest experience across multiple faculties: The Students.

Typically, I walk into my class and I say “Class, I have this cool idea/new app/ website but I don’t know if it really works in a real classroom or if teachers would find it handy. Can we test it out?”

Now they’re interested. Not only are they interested in the new learning they are about to undertake, but they’re interested in how we’re going to learn it.

Afterwards, we get to discuss not only the new learning, but also how it was delivered. As a result, my students are really reflecting on their learning and the method in which they’re doing it.

In the process of doing this kind of Beta testing with my class, they’ve also learned a lot of “educational lingo”.

Students say things like:

“Prism Scholars Lab really allows for good collaboration”

“This Self-grading Google Form allows us to get immediate feedback”

“The scaffolding in these questions works really well to prepare you for the harder ones”

Students can also tell me which subject they think it works best in and why.

I’m a big believer in “pulling back the curtain” when it comes to education. If our students know a little bit about differentiation or scaffolding or bloom’s taxonomy or growth mindset, that can’t be a bad thing.

Experiment on your guinea pigs today.

p.s. I know usually my posts are gif laden. I don’t want to let you down.

 

 

Learning is Not a Spectator Sport

In this week’s blog: Podcasts, Learning as sporting event, Ex-Student Olympians, How I disappointed my Pre-Service teacher and why I’m teaching less and less.

This week I’ve been making the daily commute just a little more productive by listening to podcasts. @mrdzito recommended I check out BBC 4’s “The Educators” and I was instantly hooked. Just people talking about what their passion is in education.

Looking for a familiar name in the list, I happened upon an episode with John Hattie of “super huge meta-analysis/195 influences/effect sizes” fame. The interview was a fascinating one and gave a lot of context behind what most teacher have heard a lot about.

Over the course of the interview John was asked about how much teachers should talk. Rightfully, he said “it depends”. But he also said:

---

“Students shouldn’t come to school to watch the teachers work” 

---

The boys school I teach in is a bit sports mad. For many, the dream is to one day represent the school in the 1st XV Rugby team. Maybe even the Wallabies.

This means I inevitably draw parallels between the classroom and sports.

Math exercises = training
Group work = Team work
Exam coming up = The Big Game

So in this world, I’m not really their teacher. I’m their coach.

---

So how does a coach give his players the best chance of success?

---

With Rio coming up in just a month, I’ve got a very special interest in one particular event. The Decathlon. Representing Australia will be an ex-student of mine, 21 year old Cedric Dubler.

Cedric, apart from being a hardworking and talented sports star, is also a keen videographer and vlogger. In the lead up to the games, he is posting weekly videos that chronicle his training each week. It is really fascinating viewing.

The interesting thing about these videos is watching Cedric train. Throughout the video series you’ll catch glimpses of Cedric’s coach keeping a watchful eye over things. But for the most part…

---

It’s the athlete that’s doing the work.

---

I had a pre-service teacher come to visit my classroom a few months ago. As usual, my students walked in, pulled their laptops out and started working on wherever they were up to. Small groups of students started working together, some individuals were watching video lessons and I was having small group or one on one discussions with students. The bell rang, I checked in with individuals as they walked out and the lesson was over.

Critically, at least in the pre-service teacher’s mind, I didn’t once address the entire class as a group.

In our debrief, the pre-service teacher had quite a few questions about the weird scene she’d just witnessed. But in essence, what she really wanted to know…

“Why don’t you do any teaching?”

Because I’m a teacher, I should do lots of teaching right? You know, teaching? It looks like this.

Is it possible, that if I teach less,  my students will learn more?

 

 

 

 

How Coffee Improved My Teaching

How a weekly coffee made me a better, more reflective, more fearless educator. Alternatively, what teachers can learn from cliff-divers

What if I told you that the best thing I ever did for my teaching career was to have a coffee?

I know as teachers we love to joke about the performance enhancing effects of caffeine but in this case it wasn’t about that. It’s about the company I was keeping while I was drinking that coffee that counts.

The First Coffee

It started about 3 years ago now. I was the lone nut in my new school (I’d been there about 9 months), flipping my maths classroom for the first time and really enjoying it. It’s a large school and I was flat out, so I hadn’t really met that many people outside of my maths staffroom bubble.

A teacher from the other side of the school (PE department!) got wind of what I was doing and wanted to try something similar. So we arranged a time to have a chat.

That hour was the most productive PD I’d ever had in my life. Here was a teacher who was…restless (she might say hyperactive). She was excited about education, she wanted to try new things and she wanted to make a difference.

After the hour of conversation was over, I realised this seemed quite different. I realised…

Teacher’s don’t  talk much about education 

Staffrooms talk about the weather, the upcoming election, the new australian curriculum, little Timmy, Jimmy and Sally, all sorts of things.

What we don’t talk enough about is our classrooms. It’s rare for teachers to ask each other “What cool things have been happening in your classroom?” or “What are you struggling with at the moment?”

The Routine

Over the next 2 years, We settled into our schedule. About once a fortnight, it was coffee time. We used the one spare period that we shared to grab a coffee and talk about education.

We talked about our flipped classrooms. What was working, what wasn’t working. We both saw the value and we were determined to make it work. We endlessly workshopped our problems over lattes and banana bread.

We talked about teaching in a BYOD school. 56 screens (laptop and phone)  in one classroom, how do you make that work to your students’ advantage? We taught in different subject areas, so we often ended up using different tools. But we always had to justify it to each other.

We Became Fearless

Have you ever been to a place like this?

I’ve never been a fan of heights but I have jumped from a few cliffs in my time. In my experience there is a way to increase your courage instantly.

This is partly what our weekly Coffee Chats were. We were endlessly goading each other into trying something new, taking a risk. Then we’d meet up the following week to see how that cliff jump had gone and start planning the next one.

The End/Start of an Era

A little while ago I came to a coffee chat armed with an advertisement for head of PE that I was certain my fellow cliff jumper should apply for. She’d seen it but of course it seemed like a pretty big cliff…

But she jumped, she got it and she just finished her first term as Head of PE at a great new school.

We caught up just yesterday for an end of term coffee and nothing has changed. We’re still plotting, scheming and egging each other on.

Her latest jump is the wonderful world of twitter and blogging. Maybe you should follow her @suzietjin or check out her new blog at http://www.suzietjin.com/

The Long Apprenticeship Just Got Longer

As teachers, we serve incredibly long apprenticeships. We enter school as 6 year old children and watch and learn from our grade 1 teacher. We learn to count, to read, and intentionally or not, we learn to teach.

We spend the next twelve years moving from classroom to classroom, teacher to teacher, learning all the time.

When we eventually become teachers, we are the sum total of the teachers who taught us. We take the good bits, vow not to repeat the bad bits, and all things considered, we should be better educators than the teachers who came before us.

Not only are we the total of the teachers who taught us, but the teachers who taught them, and the teachers who taught them and on and on backwards.  For example, if each of your 10 teachers was the product of the 10 teachers that taught them, then you’ve gained the wisdom of 100 teachers.

If we project this dubious mathematics back through time, I’d suggest you’re the product of 1 Billion teachers or so!

In summary, you have the collected wisdom of all of the educators that came before you.

Unfortunately, this long apprenticeship is starting to fail us.

The pace of change in our classrooms today means that what worked for the teachers before us may not work for us.

My apprenticeship did not prepare me for a classroom in which every one of my students has access to the internet through not one, but two devices at any point in time. When I was serving my apprenticeship, this was the sum total of screens in the classroom.My apprenticeship certainly didn’t prepare me for a time when absolutely any information could be found by reaching into your pocket and asking “siri” about it. If you got lucky, you might have had a chance here.
I was tempted to put actual paper encyclopaedias here. But I guess I’m not that old.

So where am I going with this? Maybe our apprenticeship just got a whole lot longer.

To keep up with what it takes to be a teacher, we’re going to have to keep learning. An endless apprenticeship. But learning from where?

Go visit another classroom
Try your best to build a culture of classroom visits in your school. You can do that whether you’re the principal or just a regular teacher. The key is to visit with the purpose of learning. Don’t go to criticise, judge or appraise. Go to a person’s class to learn something new. If you do learn something, make sure you thank them for it!

Talk in your staffroom
Ask questions. About teaching. A simple, “how would you teach this?” gets a great conversation started. If you try something in your classroom and it works, make sure you share it with your fellow teachers.

Get onto twitter
If you’re reading this blog you’re probably already on twitter. But are you using it in the best possible way? Gather a large community of like minded followers and ask questions. Shout out to your professional learning community if you’re looking for a new tool or a website. You’ll be amazed by how quickly somebody will have a great answer for you. Don’t forget to share all the great tools you’ve found as well, people will thank you for it.

Learn from your students
Embracing the fact that your students know more about some things is a very freeing aspect of teaching today. Student asks you a question that you’re not sure of. Ask them to find the answer for you and report back. Interested in a new tech tool but not sure how to use it? Why not ask your students for help?

Don’t be scared to try new things
Your class will need to change over and over again in the coming years. Don’t be afraid to try new things. Sometimes they’ll work, sometimes they won’t. But the most risky thing of all is not trying anything new. In today’s society, if you’re not getting better, you’re definitely getting worse.

Good luck to all in your endless apprenticeship.

Please Ditch the SlideShow

An interesting paradox has slowly been presenting itself.

When I talk to teachers, I sometimes ask them about whether they use PowerPoint, Prezi, Google Slides or some other form of SlideShow in their classroom. The most common answer by far is, “Not Really“, “It’s not really my thing“, or “very occasionally“.

Yet whenever I see teachers in front of other teachers, at a conference, a seminar, a PD session, the same thing happens. POWERPOINT TIME!

Recently I attended a talk about the internet of things. The presenter (note that word) was standing in front of approximately 300 experienced teachers telling them how the huge number of devices connected to the internet was changing everything. She did this all with the help of her trusty PowerPoint presentation. PowerPoint. Invented in 1987, before we even had the internet!

Up until recently I found myself doing the same thing.

Until one day I was furiously trying to make an engaging SlideShow (and failing) when I realised something. I Don’t Teach Like This!

When students are learning in my classroom, I want them to participate. I don’t want to talk at them, I want them to engage. I want to hear what they have to say on the matter, I want to question them, I want them to question me. I want INTERACTION.

A SlideShow emphasises the importance of the person up the front. The things you have to say are so important that they can’t only be said in words, they need pictures too. The entire thing is completely one-sided. But here’s the truth when you’re presenting to a group of educators.

So, How can we provide something of worth to our audience while allowing them to engage and contribute. Why don’t we use that new-fangled “internet of things” to help us out.

I’ve blogged before about How I use a BackChannel in my classroom. I think a BackChannel is so much more important when educating adults. Everybody deserves to benefit from the collected wisdom in the room and a backchannel helps us to achieve that. It also means that teachers can question what you’re presenting at any time. A wonderful way to make sure that your presenting something meaningful to your audience.

Tools I like to use for this kind of thing are:
Today’s Meet
Socrative – If you like you can watch a brief video tutorial I made here
A Google Doc editable by all

And if you absolutely must use a PowerPoint, please consider switching over to Google Slides instead. They have a wonderful new Q&A feature which allows your audience to question your presentation as you go and discuss. You can watch a quick video about Q&A here.

Hit me in the comments below or find me on twitter @joelbsperanza I’d love to hear what you think… because there’s a lot of ideas in the room.

Edit: 5 minutes after I posted this, @MatthewOldridge  read it and tweeted the following at me.

“Powerpointless!” Why on earth didn’t I name this blog post that? Hilarious.

Twitter, another great way to engage with the bright ideas in the room.

 

 

 

 

 

How to Hold an Opinion

If somebody called you a fence sitter, you almost certainly wouldn’t think of it as a compliment. You can’t be indecisive, you can’t hedge your bets. We need people with the courage of their convictions.

Recently a principal had the courage of his convictions and he banned laptops from his school.

But some people would prefer to go all the way and move towards a Paperless school?

So here we have two opinions on the issue.

SHOULD WE GET RID OF COMPUTERS FROM SCHOOLS?

Two diametrically opposed opinions on the topic. It makes for lively debate and holding such a strong opinion will apparently get your face on TV or in the newspaper. But it’s no way to think critically about anything.

For or Against. Yes or No. Black or White. Pro or Con.

We’re starting with the wrong question! The issue of technology isn’t a question with a yes or no response. How about a question like…

How useful is technology in education?

Well that’s better, but it’s still a very broad question. How useful is technology for what aspect of education? For collaboration? For note taking? For direct instruction? For literacy? For Numeracy? For Home Economics or Economics? For Physical Education or Physical computing? And what kind of technology?!

Now for any one of these questions I think you should be very happy to be anywhere on the continuum below.

But this isn’t the full story. Because not only am I asking you to be a fence sitter, I’m also asking you to be an itinerant fence sitter! On any issue that requires an opinion, I’m asking you to hold your opinion with a very loose grip indeed.

Read, talk, discuss, think and allow your opinion to be swayed this way and that. This is a Growth Mindset, changing with the time. Something a little like this.

Ask yourself, would I rather have the courage of my convictions, or  the courage to say, “I’ve changed my mind”?

Learning through teaching

About a week ago, I finally decided to move my lightboard from my spare bedroom to a disused room at school.

The result was a great tandem teaching session with a colleague, a new blog post, a funny gif and a lot of interest around school from teachers.

Did you ever get a particularly cool new power tool or cooking utensil and start inventing reasons to use it? Maybe you bought a new hammer and then started wandering about your house looking for loose nails that needed one more tap. Or you bought a sodastream machine and thought… “I wonder if custard can be carbonated” (hint… it can’t).

So with my lightboard conveniently located in a room next to my classroom it was only a matter of time before my students had a go with it.

We’d just come to the end of our unit on direct, partial and inverse proportion and my year 10 students thought they had it totally nailed. But as we all know, knowing something and teaching something are two different things.

The lesson was pretty simple. Students had two tasks to complete in pairs over the course of two days.

Task 1: Make a video explaining a key concept that you have learnt in the unit.

Task 2: Create a revision sheet in google docs complete with answers.

It was great to see these students have the tables turned on them. Suddenly the lessons they’d been so used  to seeing me teach they had to try to teach in their own way. and they really did a fantastic job with it.

I impressed on students that teachers don’t teach with scripts, we kind of “wing it”. So as they were preparing their lessons they made sure that they knew the stuff inside out and would be confident to just teach it on the fly.

Their revision sheets were fantastic as well. Lots of thought went into them, with a progression from easy questions to more difficult questions towards the end. It was interesting to see students try to come up with modelling style questions, coming up with creative ways that these proportions can be used in reality.

The conversations at the end of the two lessons were really positive, with all students enjoying their video making, showing them off to family and friends around school. They are looking forward to finishing another unit so we can do it all over again.

How about you, do you ever get your students teaching?

 

The Case Against The Case Against Laptops

This blog post is a response to an article I took umbrage to earlier this week.

The Case against laptops in the classroom.

“The Case” that is made can be summarised as follows:

1. Students get distracted by laptops (facebook gets mentioned here).
2. Taking laptops away encourages “real discussion”.
3. People are poor at “task-switching” (with more facebook mentions).
4. Studies show people learn best when they take notes by hand.

Let’s take a look at each of these one by one.

1. Students get distracted by laptops.

The world’s greatest technological advance when it comes to education was Paper. Paper is amazing. You can write notes on it and you can review them again and again. Books are made of paper and where would education be without books? But what about the case against paper?

The case against paper

Computers, Paper, windows, small bugs and light breezes all distract students. Students get distracted.

When do they get distracted? When they’re not engaged. I see computers as my “canary in the coalmine”. If my students are using their laptops to escape my class, it’s because I’m failing in the fight for their attention.

Here’s a direct quote from the article that had me scratching my head:
“In fact, studies examining the efficacy of laptops in the classroom date back to 2003, when a pair of researchers from Cornell gave two groups of students – one with open laptops, one with closed – the identical lecture and then tested them on the material immediately afterwards. Guess which group did better.”

Here’s an experiment I conducted. See if you can spot my error.
On day 1 I walked to school. On day 2 I walked to school carrying a bicycle. It took longer to get to school on day 2. So I threw my bicycle in the bin!

There’s a better way to use that technology buddy!

A laptop used properly can enrich learning in ways that no other classroom material can. Was there a discussion or a back channel being used online during the lecture. Were interactive websites or programs being used here? Nope, THE SAME LECTURE.

What they basically performed here was The Famous Stanford Marshmallow experiment. They put a temptation device in front of students and they got tempted. Surprise!

2. Taking their laptops away promotes “real discussion.”

Again, this one puzzles me. If I had to guess, these lecturers are spending a large portion of their time lecturing, so when are the “real discussions” happening? With a laptop in front of every student, a real discussion can be happening with regards to the content being taught through websites like todaysmeet, versoapp, peardeck or 100’s of others.

Not only can real discussions be had online while the lecture takes place, but this often allows the introverts in the class to find their voice. Not the same 5 students putting their hands up. Everyone can contribute to online discussions.

Maybe we could hear from another student?

One other advantage of an online discussion is that sensitive issues can be discussed using anonymous discussion boards. People can speak their mind freely and debates can be sparked that wouldn’t happen otherwise. (don’t worry teachers, anonymous to the students, you could still see who wrote what).

3. People are poor at “task-switching” (with more facebook mentions).

Absolutely. People are poor task switchers. But again, why are your lessons so terribly boring that your students can’t resist switching tasks?!

At the risk of repeating myself, if the laptop was used as a part of the lesson, they wouldn’t be task-switching. They’d be engaged.

4. Studies show people learn best when they take notes by hand.

Every one of my students use laptops in my classes every day. But how do they take notes?

WITH A PEN AND PAPER!

Computers for the most part aren’t note-taking machines (although people with dyslexia or dysgraphia, among others would say they help enormously)

In Conclusion

Going back to my earlier paper example, if your students are making projectiles instead of writing prose, should we all go back to slates? Or do the positives of parchment outweigh the negatives?

As teachers we’ve been given a powerful gift to engage and empower our students to learn.

A computer is so much more than a glorified type-writer. Use it.

 

 

Why I FistBump

In our class every lesson starts the same way:

.

Every student, every lesson. Comes to me and we perform the “bro-iest” of moves, the FistBump. It’s the most important part of the lesson.

I know it seems corny. Like I’m trying to be a cool sitcom teacher or something. I’m not down with the kids. In the words of Abe Simpson:

My reasons for the FistBump are grounded in much nerdier, pedagogical ideas.

There’s several reasons I use the FistBump.

 1. Respect

I don’t speak at length about classroom behaviours at the start of the year. The only thing I ask is that students are respectful in my classroom.

• I ask that they respect me in my place of work.
• I ask that they respect their peers right to learn.
• I ask that they respect themselves enough to give each lesson their all.
• In return, I respect them as individuals and give them my all each lesson.

My students and I understand that each lesson, each fistbump is a renewal of that commitment to respect.

2. It Fosters Relationships

You can tell a lot from a FistBump.

• A hearty FistBump with a big hello. (looking good champ)
• Limp wristed FistBump with eyes cast downwards. (rough day huh?)
• The FistBump while talking to friends. (time to focus buddy)

Getting a good gauge on what sort of headspace each student is in t the start of a lesson is great.

3. We negotiate our individual learning goals.

I run a Flipped Mastery classroom. This means that each student is at a different stage of their learning each lesson. I need to find out fast where each student is. What better way to do that than to ask them?

At this point, I should tell you that each FistBump is accompanied by a question.

“Hey man, what are you learning today?”

If they can’t answer that question, I send them back out the door to think about it. Usually, however, they can say something like…

“I’m having trouble with the distance formula, can I get a hand?”
“I think I’m ready, can I do a diagnostic test?”
“I’ve got this easy stuff sorted, can you give me some really hard questions please?”

Imagine a class where every student states their learning goal, in their own words, the minute they walk in the door! Sure, those aren’t textbook “learning goals”, but they mean something to the student, and that’s when learning goals work best.

One final thing.

If you do add the FistBump to your teaching repertoire, don’t forget to always save one last FistBump for after the final bell rings…

Self FistBump! You earned it.