My Day at Ed Camp
By Barry Garelick
I
attended an “Ed Camp” recently. This is one of many types of informal
gatherings of teachers to talk about various education-related topics.
The camp I attended took place at a charter school that prided itself on
a student-centered approach to learning. In keeping with the school’s
focus, the camp also took a student-centered approach: participants
wrote ideas for sessions on Post-It notes which were placed on a
whiteboard. The conference organizers then put the Post-It notes in
categories that formed various sessions which were then led by whomever
wanted to lead them.
The topic suggestions were placed into nine
separate categories/sessions. For each of three one-hour periods, there
were three sessions that participants could choose from. I chose
“Motivation,” “Feedback in lieu of grades” and “The balance between
student-centered and teacher-centered in a classroom.”
By way of
background, I went to school in the 50’s and 60’s and am on a second
career of teaching math in high school and secondary school after
retiring several years ago. I am considered by most to use “traditional”
practices rather than the progressive techniques one sees today. A few
decades ago there was a mix of opinions on what are considered “best
practices” in teaching—some of which included traditional methods. The
older generation of teachers, however, has been almost entirely replaced
by the new guard.
This has resulted in a prevalent new
group-think which holds that traditional teaching is outmoded and
ineffective. The participants at Ed Camp were of the new guard; mostly
people ranging in age between 20’s and 40’s. A few people were in their
50’s or early 60’s, but were subscribed to the same group-think. From
what I could tell, I was the only traditionalist present.
Motivation Session
All
participants at this session generally agreed that motivation was
important and that if classrooms do not have focus, there is loss of
attention. They also agreed that students did well in a structured
environment and that set routines and clear expectations were
motivators. These two consensus items were uttered with the same
somnambulant automaticity with which many say grace before chowing down a
meal.
Participants then went to town describing various
motivating/engaging activities including having students spell out words
using their bodies to shape the letters (though I have forgotten what
this had to do with whatever was being taught). After a few more
suggestions, someone pointed out that no matter how engaging the
activity, the novelty of it wears off, so you can only do it a few times
before students are bored — which, I suppose, leaves teachers with the
option of more traditional approaches like a warm-up question and then
teaching the class.
The issue of group work came up. Group work
ranks high on the group-think spectrum as something worthwhile for all
students. So when a teacher said that group work may be difficult for
students who are introverts, the feeling of cognitive dissonance was
distinctly present in the room. But the dissonance was quickly
dispelled by the same teacher who brought it up. “Well, think of it this
way,” he said. “How many times have you gone to professional
development sessions and the leader says ‘Now turn to your neighbor and
discuss such and such’ and you go ‘Oh, no! Do I have to?’” General
agreement ensued.
“But,” he went on, “You kind of think to
yourself, ‘Well, OK, let’s get this over with’ and pretty soon you’re
doing it and it isn’t that bad. So I think maybe we just have to get
kids to think beyond themselves and just go with it, and they’ll see it
isn’t that bad.”
I’m fairly certain most of the attendees had been
through—and probably hated—professional development sessions that were
group-work oriented. But if there was any disagreement with what he
said, it was not voiced.
There was consensus that students
responded well to competition. Teachers noted that students like to see
high scores posted or go for extra credit assignments or questions on
tests. Such agreement was surprising given that it goes against the
trend of the “everyone is special” movement in which all students win
awards or graduating classes have multiple valedictorians. Unless one
includes competition as being an integral part of collaboration and
working in teams and groups, competition would seem to be its
antithesis.
Another unexpected result was related by a second
grade teacher who taught at the school where the Ed Camp was held. She
had assigned her students to groups and arranged her class in clusters
of desks as many classrooms are these days. One day her students asked
her, “Can we be in rows facing the front of the classroom?” She tried
to reason with them, explaining that when she had been in school she
always had to sit in rows and would have loved the opportunity to sit in
groups. They told her that it was easier to be in rows because they
wouldn’t have to twist around to see what the teacher was doing at the
board. The students assigned themselves numbers randomly so the teacher
could put them in straight rows according to their numbers. Since this
was a student-centered decision at a school that valued student-centered
activities, the teacher reluctantly went along with what they wanted.
Think Pair Share: Harbinger of Things to Come?
The
initial premise of the next session I attended—feedback–was that
students should be given guidance rather than interim or even final
grades. This is not a new concept, as evidenced by a recent comment I
saw on a popular education blog: “When numerical/letter grades are king,
real learning is kicked to the curb, along with meaningful assessment.”
Like
many educational ideas, this one sounds like it ought to be superior to
a system of grading that many have accused of being unfair for years,
until you get into the details—things like subjectivity and how students
will be assessed. The moderator—who did most of the talking in this
particular session—said that in guidance-based regimes, students should
be told whether they are doing a task correctly or incorrectly and that
the key to completing a task was to ensure that students had an
appropriate process. I couldn’t be absolutely sure, but it sounded like
process trumped content.
He brought up math as an example and
said, “I like to give kids problems they don’t know how to do.” This is
not the first time I’ve heard this. While I agree that students should
be given challenging problems, I also believe that they need to start
from a place that they know and advance bit by bit to variants on a
basic problem structure to be able to take on non-routine problems.
Such
process is known as scaffolding, but modern purveyors of education
theory hold that scaffolding should not be used and that flexible
thinking –applying prior knowledge to a new and unfamiliar problems or
situations—comes with repeated exposure to such problems. Supposedly
this develops a “problem solving schema” and “habit of mind” that is
independent of acquired procedural skills or facts. But to pull off what
this teacher wanted—having them solve something totally different than
what they’ve seen—students are given feedback. The feedback is in the
form of questions to motivate them to learn what they need to know and
ultimately to solve the problem in a “just in time” basis.
The
notion of supplying feedback in the form of guidance seemed to this
moderator to be a new and cutting edge thing, and in fact announced that
the activity of “Think-Pair-Share” was antiquated and should be
abandoned. “Think-Pair-Share” has been around for at least 10 years.
The first time I heard about “Think, Pair, Share” was in a course I took
in ed school. Briefly, students work together to solve a problem or
answer a question, discuss the question with their partner(s) and share
their ideas and/or contrasting opinions with the rest of the class.
But
now it was considered passé, the main problem with it being that
students didn’t know what to say to each other about whatever it was
they were to discuss. And that was likely because they had little or no
knowledge of the subject that they were supposed to talk about, and
which was supposed to give them the insights and knowledge that they
previously lacked.
Did this mean that perhaps there was now some
evidence that direct and explicit instruction could have beneficial
educational outcomes? No. Feedback and guidance was the new “Think Pair
Share.” Student-centered and inquiry-based approaches are still alive
and well. And in closing, the moderator added that students need good
solid relationships with one another and with the teacher. To this end,
the moderator said, putting students in straight rows will NOT build
such relationships.
I was tempted to bring up the story of the
second grade class that insisted they wanted to be in rows but we were
out of time. In fact, we ran over and I was late to the last session on
the balance between teacher and student in a student-centered classroom.
Defining Balance—or Not
The
conversation in the third and last session of the day was already
underway with some talk going on about how effective student-centered
communication is fostered using something called “Sentence frames” or
“word moves”. These are a set of certain phrases students are encouraged
to use when engaging in dialogue, such as, “One point that was not
clear to me was ___”, “I see your point but what about ___”, “I’m still
not convinced that ___”.
The discussion was in the context of
procedures used in conducting student-centered classes. I didn’t know
how much about balance they had discussed, and although it is not my
habit to interrupt a discussion, I did inject myself using the following
sentence frame: “So what do you think is the balance between
teacher-centered and student-centered instruction?”
The responses I received were immediate:
“Oh,
I just talk at the students forever and go on and on,” said a youngish
woman. Another teacher chimed in, “Yes, I tell them that it would be
so much easier for them if they just listened…” This went on for
another few seconds, and though I was tempted to use a sentence frame
like, “I see your point but what about___?” the one I chose was a bit
more aggressive. “Is that your answer to my question?” I asked. “You
think a teacher-centered classroom as all about lecturing with no room
for questions or dialogue?”
The woman who first answered me said,
“No, I was just being funny.” The conversation turned serious once again
with the answer to my question being that the teacher-centered portion
of a student-centered classroom is, “teaching the students to be
student-centered successfully.” That, roughly translated, means giving
them instructions and guidance to do their student-centered
inquiry-based assignment.
Example: “In ten minutes, you will
complete an outline of what you are going to investigate. Go.” Ten
minutes pass, teacher spot checks various outlines. “Now one person will
be the lead investigator, another will be the note-taker, the third
person will write the conclusion and the fourth person will do the
presentation.” And so on.
The conversation turned to “student
outcomes” and “growth-mindset.” This last phrase, a concept made popular
by Carol Dweck, is the theory that students can develop their abilities
by believing that they can do so. The term has taken hold as its own
motivational poster in classrooms, professional development seminars and
Ed Camps across America. Someone remarked that the idea of growth
mindset itself is a student-centered concept. I suppose it is, if you
combine belief in yourself with hard work, instruction, and
practice—things I don’t hear much about when I hear about
growth-mindset.
“Growth-mindset” led into students’ beliefs in
themselves, which led to how grades are bad and rubrics were better. A
middle school social studies teacher lamented that he was stuck giving
students grades because the school district required them, though most
of the teachers in his schools used rubrics not to grade, but to provide
feedback to students. (The charter school at which this Ed Camp was
held did not give grades, but rather student reports. After the social
studies teacher’s lamentation about grades, one teacher who taught at
this school cackled “I’m so glad I don’t have to keep grade books
anymore!”)
The social studies teacher said that what used to be an
A under the old grading system was now a C in his class using his
rubric. He didn’t go into details about his rubric except to say that he
bases grades on it, and “meets expectations” would be a C. “I tell
parents that I have no problem with a student who gets a C in my class,
because that means he or she was meeting expectations. If a student
wants better than a C, they can go over the rubric with me to see what
is required.”
This struck me as strange. If you give tests and
assignments that cover the material and take some effort to do well on
them, then maintaining an average of a 90% or more would assure some
mastery of the material. Or does he consider that to be “middle school
stuff” and to get an A under his rubric now requires—what? I never
found out. Classes I’ve seen that use rubrics have several: rubrics for
group work, presentations, collaboration, essay analysis, presentations
and so forth, and there are many categories – like this one for a
project presentation in a middle school social studies class . How does
one differentiate between “strong student creativity” and “exceptional
degree of student creativity” under the “Originality” category? I
suspect it’s a matter of “I’ll know it when I see it”.
As time
grew shorter, discussions cascaded onto each other, culminating in a
discussion about homework. The social studies teacher said he didn’t
assign homework, and this turned out to be the practice of most of the
teachers in the room. Some of the teachers did report that they received
pressure from parents about lack of homework. Parents who ask their
kids what they do in school and get the usual “Not much” often follow
with “Well, what’s your homework?” and were dismayed to find that the
student had none. Parents confronted various teachers, arguing that not
assigning homework will not prepare students for the real world. The
social studies teacher who was emerging as de facto opinion leader for
the session said that in the real world you didn’t have homework, so why
should we expect it of our students? This was a bit confusing given
that teachers do a lot of work at home. In fact, in many professions it
is not unusual to have to do work at home.
But he went on. “And if
the real world is high school and college, first of all, not all
students go to college. And show me the evidence that homework in high
school prepares them for college.” This is the type of argument that
seems beguiling if you practice saying it in front of a mirror with an
audience applause track playing in your mind. Or alternatively, saying
it at Ed Camp sessions like these.
“It is not preparation for the
real world,” he repeated, and then clarified that he viewed homework as
largely drill and practice activities which in his view held absolutely
no value, and certainly, in his opinion, is not something done in the
real world. (I should note that I was the only math teacher in this
session, but I decided to keep quiet given the reaction when I asked my
question at the beginning of the session.)
With parents
spotlighted as detractors from how teachers conducted their
student-centered classrooms, the session ended with one teacher
lamenting how one parent complained that, “This education of my child is
becoming my job.” The teachers all identified with having heard that
before. “Gee, sorry to hear that being a parent is so tough” was the
general response in the room.
Having been in the position of a
parent raising a daughter subjected to student-centered classrooms, I
think what that parent meant was not so much, “Why should I be involved
in my child’s education?” but rather: “I’m doing a lot of teaching at
home that should be going on in the school.” Many parents have
complained that students are not being taught grammar, math facts, and
other necessities of education, but which teachers of student-centered
classrooms consider “drill and kill” and “drudge work.” That may
account for the popularity of learning centers like Sylvan, Huntington
and Kumon, which all focus on these things.
The Group-Think of Teaching
Driving
home from the Ed Camp, I was reminded of a movie I saw long ago called
“The Wicker Man,” in which a deeply Christian, Scottish police officer
investigates a missing child on an island in Scotland that practices
paganism—and in the end is burnt to death as a human sacrifice to the
islanders’ gods. A key point of the film was that the officer’s religion
counted for nothing in the midst of different and prevailing beliefs.
The winners in such conflicts are those who by virtue of numbers have
the means to enforce their beliefs.
I wondered whether in ten
years’ time more parents would accept the inquiry-based and
student-centered approach more readily as a result of having been
subjected to such techniques themselves? Or would there now be a
permanent split: parents who came through the system who are happy with
their kids being taught as they had been, and parents who had benefitted
from the more traditional techniques used in learning centers or from
the dwindling number of schools who practiced them? Would the ideas and
techniques discussed at Ed Camp be viewed as outmoded, just as
“Think-Pair-Share,” so popular a few years ago, had fallen out of favor?
Or would they be replaced by a slight variation of the same thing?
Whatever
the outcome, it was fairly clear to me that any new educational
techniques would be portrayed as a measured and informed decision, a
step in the right direction and, of course, progress.
—————
Barry Garelick has
written extensively about math education in various publications
including The Atlantic, Education Next, Educational Leadership, and
Education News. He recently retired from the U.S. EPA and is teaching
middle and high school math in California. He has written a book about
his experiences as a long- term substitute in a high school and middle
school in California: “Teaching Math in the 21st Century”.
The post A Math Teacher’s Day at Ed Camp appeared first on Education News.
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