New Teacher

Casting Out Nines says “Learning Objectives Matter.”

In assessments, preceding each problem there was a little blurb that said what learning objective the item was addressing. For example, an item on proof by contradiction might be preceded by the statement, “The purpose of this item is to assess your skill at proving conditional statements by contradiction”. So simple — and very helpful for both instructor and student.

I like this idea.

I always tell my students I never do anything for one reason, but this at least would make sure they knew what one of the reasons was.

5. Create stunning slides.
Slides are optional, but if you’re going to use them, make them great. Even if you’re not a graphic designer, it’s relatively easy to stand out from the crowd of bullet points and PowerPoint templates, by licensing high-quality images from stock sites like istockphoto and Veer, or searching for Creative Commons-licensed photos from Flickr using Compfight (just make sure you read the licensing terms carefully, especially for commercial use!). And Garr Reynolds’ book Presentation Zen Design will introduce you to basic design principles for creating slides from the images.

And if you are a graphic designer, check out Nancy Duarte’s beautiful book Slide:ology, for a stimulating guide to the creative possibilities of slide design. Nancy and her team designed the slides for Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” presentation and feature film, so she knows a thing or two about creating slides with impact.

6. Keep it simple.
Simplicity – focusing on core themes and eliminating fluff – is the key to a lot of great design, great writing, great music, great dance, and great art of many kinds. It’s also one of the things that makes presentations powerful and memorable.

This is all you need for a truly great presentation:
One big idea
Three key points
One compelling story
One idea per slide (and no more than six words)
One clear call to action

from 99%’s How to Create a Captivating Presentation

From the CHE fora, dr_mk’s post:

I’ve taken to putting all their grades on the course management system and letting it calculate their “final” grade.

Then I download the grades into Excel and do the actual final grade calculation, where I drop some grades and weight things according to what I laid out in the syllabus.

Since the overall final grades that I calculate are usually higher than the grade that the CMS spits out, I don’t get a lot of “how close was I to the next higher grade” types of questions, because they think I’ve already bumped them up a grade.

I have been in a situation where new information and new ideas are becoming more highly valued. One of the older books on creativity which I have and occasionally re-read says that we should get out of our fields; we should look in other people’s fields for answers that you can use in your situation.

So, in an attempt to do that, I am listening to an EMSEduCast podcast. Using technology in the classroom is part of what is covered in EMSEducast Episode 120. They talked about tech used to continue classes, even during snow days, and how webcasting can be helpful for teaching folks who can’t come to a classroom.

Technology included:
Blackboard
Smartboard- Bridget, webcasting tool
–slide on Blackboard screen and could draw on iPad and have it show up on screen
–do surveys

Tips for new educators:

Feel comfortable in front of an audience speaking. So practice teaching in other situations.

Make sure the students are DOING more than they are listening.

Make the stories are relevant, realistic, and personal. Tell stories that show how you have had to deal with whatever you are speaking about. (Thinking about that for my class: How have I had to write evaluation papers? When have I had to do analysis? When did a presentation via technology make a difference for me?)

Don’t tell stories that are only semi-related.

Make sure that you understand your technology and use it properly.

Preparatory time is very important. Make sure you are hitting the most important points. Don’t necessarily tell them everything, but make sure you have strong points.

Add a visual component to your classes. Bring props. Use them.

See if the new concept can be related to a previously discussed concept.

Break students into small groups to do scenarios. Then come back as a group and de-brief the scenarios.

It was an interesting listen. I may add it to my regular review.

“You must become indispensable to thrive in the new economy. The best ways to do that are to be remarkable, insightful, an artist, someone bearing gifts. To lead. The worst way is to conform and become a cog in a giant system.”
–Linchpin by Seth Godwin

Right now English teachers are still indispensable.

We teach the writing classes. But that is changing. At my last SLAC, the business departments and the social sciences departments took over the writing classes for their majors. At my current SLAC, the English department is considering handing those over to the major departments because those departments are squawking so much about the classes. (Don’t do it!)

How can you personally become indispensable where you are? (Don’t do that if you are an adjunct. Find someone who will pay for the milk, rather than cutting you up for steak a piece at a time.)

How can we engage students when we lecture?

Have you ever given a lecture to a class where everyone sat still the entire class period? One where the students did not jump and run as soon as (or even before) the bell rang? If you have, how often have you wondered exactly how you managed that? If you haven’t, do you dream of this or just give it up as an impossible dream?

According to Robert B. Cialdini, students can become engrossed in a lecture with a single, simple feature at the beginning. They will listen raptly, eagerly and not even shift when the bell rings, if we start our lecture with it. They will clamor to know the answer, even when they should be out the door on to their next class.

What is this single feature that we can add to the experience?
If you are intrigued, not just wanting to know the answer, but wondering when I will give it, then you won’t be surprised to hear that the key to engaging the audience is a mystery.

No, I don’t mean we don’t know. I mean it is a mystery, a puzzle, a tale that involves questions. It’s a mystery story.

What if I told you that in sixty minutes, I could increase your average college grades by a half a letter grade–for the next four years?

That’s the mystery I offered my students yesterday. Now the research has been done (though only using minority students) and I know the answer. I can increase their college averages by simply letting them know, making them believe, giving them sufficient examples to show that everyone is confused by college. Apparently many people are unaware that college students are often doubtful of their decisions, frustrated with their efforts, and confused about what to do next. Learning that is sufficient to increase their confidence and their grades.

Can I give you a more extended example?
That’s a short example and certainly not one that engages attention for a long time, at least not as I set it up here.

But is there a way to extend an example? Of course there is. Here is one from Cialdini’s 2005 Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology article.

One of the most successful book sections I registered was written by an astronomer. He began a 20–page section with a puzzle: How can we account for what is perhaps the most spectacular planetary fea- ture in our solar system, the Rings of Saturn? There’s nothing else like them. What are the Rings of Saturn made of. anyway?

Then, he deepened the mystery by asking how three internationally acclaimed groups of scientists could come to wholly different conclu- sions on the answer. One, at Cambridge University, proclaimed they were gas. Another group, at MIT, was convinced they were made up of dust particles. The third, at Cal Tech, insisted they were composed of ice crystals. How could this be? After all, each group was looking at the same thing, right? So, what was the answer?

I will not take you through the whole process of discovery and tell you how the differing backgrounds of the teams—astrophysicists here, as- tronomers there—led them to look at different aspects of the phenome- non and how a crucial measurement error led one team down the wrong path. Suffice it to say that the process of unraveling the mystery was not unlike the process of scientific investigation, wherein hypotheses are generated, implications are tested, nonproductive approaches are taken, errors of interpretation are made, and evidence is marshaled until a sat- isfactory resolution occurs. By the way, this is no small benefit of the use of mysteries in our lectures. The process of resolving mysteries is re- markably similar to the process of science. So, in the use of the mystery approach, we not only give students information about content, we also send them a sub–rosa message about process.
Let us get back to the main point. Which answer was revealed at the end of 20 pages? The beautiful, mysterious Rings of Saturn are mostly dust! Actually, they are ice–covered dust, which accounts for some of the confusion, but they are mostly dust nonetheless.

Now, I do not care about dust, and the composition of the Rings of Saturn is entirely irrelevant to my life. But, that scientist had me turning pages like a speed–reader. Here’s the telling thing: I am sure that I will never forget the answer to the mystery he constructed. Moreover, I am sure that I will never forget how three groups of scientists could have been so confident in their opposing answers to the question. This strikes me as an enormous advantage of mystery stories. They can get our stu- dents to become engrossed in and to remember important material that they otherwise would not care about because it does not seem relevant to their daily lives. Mystery stories do not need personal relevance—they bring their own. (24)

Cialdini doesn’t just offer the mystery story: a mystery, the players in the mystery, a discussion of possible alternatives for answers to the mystery, and finally the denouement as a way to improve lectures. He offers an additional tool as well.

There is another way to improve lectures.

Have you ever noticed that students are riveted by some material, not even noticing that the class period has gone by, while some material has them shifting (or Facebooking) through the entire class?

There’s a reason for this. It’s not really a secret.

Boredom.

When the students are wiggling and tuning us out, it is because they are bored.

Why are they bored?

Students are bored, not because we are boring, we are not inherently boring. All of us can remember an engaging discussion, a particularly well-told joke, or a story that we told to a breathless audience.

Nope. It is not that we are boring.

We are bored.

Yes, I said it. (Well, Cialdini said it first.) We are bored. We know the material isn’t that interesting, so we are bored. Our being bored makes our students bored.

How do WE become engaged in our own lectures?

We find something interesting, something engaging, something we think is fascinating and we add THAT to the lecture.

Just having an addition that is unique, interesting, and engaging TO US is enough to make the lecture more engaging to the student (28). We need to be excited in the classroom. If we are, they will become more excited.

Today’s lecture (in my class) is going to be about a proposing a solution paper. We are in the process of writing those in my fyc classes. But the beginning of the lecture, which is really a repeat of the reading we did yesterday, is a two-minute movie featuring Dr. Davis as Albert Einstein and starring Gandhi as my personal Socrates. There’s a really lame joke on the mispronunciation of precedent being understood as president, a discussion of the principle of fun as a guide for my solution, and a belch. (It is a college class, after all.)

I’m really looking forward to presenting this little two-minute movie, including Gandhi’s Homecoming Queen wave from the moon, in class.

Because I am excited about it, the students will be more excited about it as well.

Ever heard that proverb “like begets like?”

Here’s an example of it in teaching.

from LiveScience.com

This is something to think about. Some of our students crave something new every day, while others are lost the more we change the classroom.

So, having an order to the classroom is good for those who are very shy and afraid of new things. Having something new scheduled to be in the work every day might help them.

Having something new scheduled every day is also a good way for the adrenaline junkies to stay connected in class.

It’s just a thought. I haven’t actually made any strides in introducing this. It’s come up, though, and I wanted to get it out there and see if someone else has seen this impact their classroom and, if so, how they have dealt with it.

College teacher Siobhan writes a post entitled Fail Better about how her students were failing to succeed because they thought they could not succeed. It was a harrowing time for a teacher, trying to get a point across to students who would not even try.

“But you can do SOMETHING, if you stop worrying about doing it wrong. If you sit there for two hours and write a bunch of notes and come up with a thesis statement or a literary device or anything, I’ll give you any points I can give you. Then, when you take it home later to revise, you’ll have something to start the next draft with. You might fail this essay. But if you fail the essay, THE WORLD WILL NOT END.”

She talks about their reactions, her response, and her attempt to help them find meaning in the difficulty. It’s a good, personal example of how teaching is not always simple.

In the post, she refers to a New York Times article What if the Secret to success is Failure?

The long essay talks about a group of people deciding that character is important and attempting to figure out how to teach character in school. They came up with a list of seven character traits they thought would be essential for success:
zest,
grit,
self-control,
social intelligence,
gratitude,
optimism,
curiosity

Their focus on character traits has helped their students. And that focus has added fuel to the students attempts to improve themselves.

One day last winter, I was speaking with Sayuri Stabrowski, a 30-year-old seventh-and-eighth-grade reading teacher at KIPP Infinity, and she mentioned that she caught a girl chewing gum in her class earlier that day. “She denied it,” Stabrowski told me. “She said, ‘No, I’m not, I’m chewing my tongue.’ ” Stabrowski rolled her eyes as she told me the story. “I said, ‘O.K. fine.’ Then later in the class, I saw her chewing again, and I said: ‘You’re chewing gum! I see you.’ She said, ‘No, I’m not, see?’ and she moved the gum over in her mouth in this really obvious way, and we all saw what she was doing. Now, a couple of years ago, I probably would have blown my top and screamed. But this time, I was able to say: ‘Gosh, not only were you chewing gum, which is kind of minor, but you lied to me twice. That’s a real disappointment. What does that say about your character?’ And she was just devastated.”

They have made a difference in the students by not only having a list, but explaining the list and showing how each of those character traits will help them succeed. When the students get off track, calling attention to how they are missing the boat reminds them of their need to succeed.

Many students who are from affluent areas, with helicopter parents and teachers focused on self-esteem never learn what it takes to succeed when things are difficult:

the struggle to pull yourself through a crisis, to come to terms on a deep level with your own shortcomings and to labor to overcome them

That’s what the article says is important. Because no one can be good at everything. No one can find everything easy.

“The idea of building grit and building self-control is that you get that through failure,” Randolph explained. “And in most highly academic environments in the United States, no one fails anything.”
…
Randolph wants his students to succeed, of course — it’s just that he believes that in order to do so, they first need to learn how to fail.

So, failing is the beginning of success.

If we have students who are failing, we can encourage them with the knowledge that failure in an instant is not failure in everything. If we can ingrain that into their psyches, then we will have given them a springboard for success.

I tell my students on the first day of class that I have at least two reasons for everything I do in class.

Most of the time they don’t call me on this. It would be fine if they did, though tiring.

However, having told them this, when the “Why do we have to do this?” whine comes up, I begin by reminding them that I don’t waste class time on anything that isn’t useful in at least two different ways. Then I explain the two ways that whatever they were fussing about is important. Often the things they fuss about are the ones I actually have three or four reasons for instituting.

“Why do we have to read each other’s work?”
1. Because you can see if you are on track.
2. You can help your neighbor see if they are on track.
3. If the work you read is particularly good, it gives you a bar to reach.
4. If the work you read is particularly bad, it helps you re-examine your own work to make sure you don’t look that terrible.
5. It teaches you critical evaluation skills that you can apply to your own writing.
6. It gives the student feedback that they might be more accepting of than mine. Or that might dovetail with mine and let them know that I am not the only one seeing the problem.

If you use this, though, make sure you have thought enough about your teaching strategies to know why the things you have included are important pedagogically.