Proving I can study with distractions

[velvetpage]

1) Teaching and learning as priorities
• Slogans around the school: "Whatever it takes" or "Failure is Not an Option"
• Administrators supported teachers as professionals, trusted them, made it possible for them to focus on teaching, supported them with resources
• Unacceptable for students to disrupt the learning process; significant blocks of time dedicated to instilling behavioural norms in students
• Teachers came to work to practise and improve on their craft of teaching, => enthusiasm

Reflection: I need to work on the "unacceptable to disrupt the learning process" piece the most out of this list; I'm not good at insisting on a lack of disruptions

2) Supplemental support is provided for student learning
• Extensive tutorial support is offered and available to all, often on teachers' own time
• Every student is given remedial help at the beginning in addition to (not in place of) regular lessons
• Many teachers gave out phone numbers so students could reach them at home for help; schools provided the cell phones for teachers to do this
• Long blocks of time for math; 90 minutes or more, like our literacy blocks
• Excuses not accepted; if it's hard, access the help that's available and solve the problem

Reflection: Our school needs more of this, and we need to co-ordinate with the existing homework club to make sure they know what we're doing and are supporting us in it. But what we really need is a lunch-hour remedial help program for those who have already fallen behind. We also need to put the same emphasis on math that we put on literacy; unfortunately I can't see that happening if we're going to fit everything else in as well. First priority for next year: insist that the phys. ed. teacher send my kids back five minutes early from his class, so they get their drinks and their books and are ready to learn at 9:05 in math - instead of 9:20 or 9:25, leaving me half an hour to do math. Sorry - your phys. ed. class does not trump my math class to the tune of twenty extra minutes twice or three times a week.

3) Review of basic skills
• Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, especially at middle schools
• Memory devices used to drill math facts until the kids knew them cold; then review, review, review

Reflection: I'm pretty good at this at least as it involved multiplication, but it's really difficult to keep drilling it after 75% of the class has learned it. I really liked the idea that spec. ed. students were expected to do the same work with higher support; these schools consider it insulting to suggest that some students can only do half the work. I think that idea probably needs finessing in our system, because reduced workload is the single most common intervention in most IEPs for math, and it shouldn't be.

4) Teaching resources available
• Lots of hard copy resources, books, textbooks, internet, manipulatives, calculators
• Consultants often wrote grant proposals to get more money for the school's initiatives
• Math consultant/resource person on hand; teachers mentored by other teachers

Reflection: well, my goal is to be the math consultant at the school level within two years, so I guess I'm on top of this. I need to do research into grant proposals and what's available for small elementary schools in Ontario.

5) Teachers have regular access to professional development
• Resource person finds new grant money and gets commitment from the staff to do it
• New teachers are given a year to get their feet wet, then they're expected to take on some PD
• Mentoring available for new teachers

Reflection: this is definitely true of literacy, and I suspect it will become true of math. The bit about trusting teachers to be professionals and do their jobs is key in any PD plan implemented for a school. I've had the experience of trying to turn a school around with a principal who played the blame-and-shame game with her teachers, and it didn't work. Improvement began when we got a principal who paired high expectations with high support for the teachers as well as the students.

Comments

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

My seventh grade math class made drills fun by having kids compete to finish as quickly and accurately as possible. I would be wary of timing everyone because it could demoralize the kids who are slow, but I think having kids compete to be the fastest five or fastest eight to ten finishers, and just letting everyone else finish un-timed after that, could work well.

I like the idea of remedial work happening along with, rather than instead of, regular lessons. I had classes (especially middle school science) that were doing entirely review into November, and that was just ridiculous. Obviously review has some value, but I think there needs to be room for kids to move ahead at the same time.

I really like the idea of a lunch-hour remedial program as well.

I would be cautious about giving all kids on IEPs the same expectations as the other kids. I'm concerned that that could leave kids really overwhelmed, spending hours a night on homework, and burning out at relatively low levels of education. I think there's got to be some sort of strategic happy medium between having consistent expectations and accommodating disabilities. I'm sure that high support would help with that happy medium, but providing high support doesn't work as well at home, and I'm concerned that special ed kids who need a lot of support in the classroom would still end up with oodles of questions left over to do at home.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

That's assuming the high expectations = more questions. It doesn't have to. I'd rather have kids explore one or two questions thoroughly, and figure out what they learned from them, than have them do forty questions of progressive difficulty and limited deep understanding.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

Oh, okay; I was thinking that the idea that it was insulting to suggest that some students can only do half the work (which is seriously problematic because it considers the idea that a student's ability level restricts them to be insulting) meant more questions for the kids who currently have 'reduced workload' on their IEPs. I guess your note about "finessing" that idea means that you'd give the special ed kids high expectations in ways that didn't necessarily involve them slogging through the same questions as everyone else when those questions will take them a lot longer than everyone else?

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

If math involves slogging for ANYONE, it's not going to be something most are excelling at. It is possible to teach math well with minimal slogging. I don't believe in large numbers of questions for anyone; there are better ways to reinforce concepts than that, like math journals (oral or written or technically-supported writing for students for whom writing is a significant area of weakness) or other ways of explaining their understanding using the two or three problems they worked through as their examples.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

Interesting! I tended to learn math best by working through the problems, and I never understood the concept of math journals, but the latter may have been due to my issues with levels of structure in writing assignments. But one of my high school teachers had us do "summary notes" for each unit, and I found that concept much more accessible and helpful.

[hendrikboom.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever mentioned yet that I'm proud to call you my friend.

-- hendrik

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Aw, that's sweet. Thank you.