What defines a "High Performing" classroom?

by: Mery Tellez

Creating high performance in our classroom is definitively a challenging and interesting question to answer.  In an effort to do so, I am going to analyze three different strategies or techniques, that have proved to help improve or have been successful in different scenarios:  The strategies used by Chinese Math teachers, The STEAM and PBL techniques, and the Whole-Brain Teaching Strategy.

So let’s get started with PBL.  After reading about this, and watching some of the classrooms working with PBL and STEAM, particularly, the Roller Coaster Physics video referenced below, I can clearly see a couple of components that get me excited about it.  The management of feedback between themselves (students) and evaluation pieces are clearly determining of the success of this strategy.  Providing opportunities for students to be communicators and knowledge or information bringers is definitively one of the highlights of the strategies of PBL.  It is remarkable and it seems like this level of empowerment, is one of the pieces that contributes to the development of a collaborative, well behaved class as well. This seems to be the technique that brings together most of the positive behavior that is experienced by a classroom with students, highly motivated and challenged.

The norms and procedures designed by the teacher in this STEAM classroom, are designed to guide the progress and to give some sense of structure to the kids while they develop their projects.  Given that these projects are big tasks that involve and require a long term planning and organization, it is understandable that this level of organization and planning is pre-provided for the students, but I cannot help but to wonder specially in some of the discussion that are evident in the video from the Roller Coaster Physics lesson, if there isn’t too much guidance from the teacher.    How much of what is being presented is teacher guided and how much is actually student created.  I see a lot of teacher intervention. It is a difficult balance to provide guidance without falling towards intervention.   

At the end, the most valuable piece of information that I would like to transfer to my own practice is definitively the intention of the projects. Real-life experiences do play a roll particularly in student motivation and sense of achievement.  Seeing a grade in a paper cannot compare to the excitement that you can clearly see in the group at the end of the video when the marble stopped and didn’t crash at the end of their roller coaster.

PBL creates the foundation for students to later be able to translate the knowledge from their different areas into products and ideas.  My students in the IB program will have to join other students in other areas of the group 4 (Sciences) to create a project in which each member will bring in pieces from their different experiences, and I think that giving them the chance to face challenges and to have opportunities for inquiry and discovery is the right path to help them to be able to comply with that kind of challenge at the end of their IB diploma program and later in life.

The second strategy or technique that has been historically proven as efficient and high performing is the Chinese math techniques.  From the video and the article from Reynolds (2014), I’ve taken some aspects that seem to be more worrisome than inspiring.  The whole-class particularity that we can see in the video and in the article, might be efficient, but one cannot help to wonder, how many kids are left behind in the noise of the chanting.  How many kids are simply following along while the same ones are the only ones participating and repeating?

I believe the success of the Chinese math technique is not so much on the technique but on our evaluation system.  Is not that it is effective or more effective than any other, is simply that is such, that it benefits our current evaluation and classification of abilities systems.

In the article we can see how in the Chinese system, there are teachers that openly accept that they are teaching to the exam, not to develop a skill or any kind of higher level thinking ability. 

So, when it comes to the question of high standards, I will have to say: definitively, but I also will ask to re-evaluate what those high standards are or should be for our classrooms and educational system. 

The article also makes and emphasis on the lack of horizontal alignment with other subjects, and it is quite interesting how this contrast with the previous example of PBL in which great value is given to integration of areas and application of knowledge. Skills that will be crucial for our students in the future, much more so at least, that their latest score in a standardized test.  Bottom line, this technique, gave to me a better perspective of what not to do according to what I value and want to see in my students.  More on this later.

Lastly, I read and watched a couple of videos about the Whole Brain Teaching.  After learning and reading about this technique, I realize that I might be much more close-minded than what I thought I was, as I felt immediately reluctant to utilize any of the techniques suggested by this movement.  I forced myself to see the benefits in the behavioral rules or in the expectations that teachers have for their students under the whole brain institute, but I can only see a couple of very isolated advantages in this technique.  Particularly in regards to discipline and control, or better, to keep students in task.  It seems like it was much easier to identify a student out of task during individual or group work as it is easy to spot the one that is not doing crazy movements.

There are definite advantages in some of the used strategies such as paraphrasing, and short lesson instruction.  It is true that you lose kids as you extend your talking.  And grabbing back their attention can be a real challenge.

I think this is one of the aspects that I feel I could actually incorporate.  Breaking information in smaller chunks, and making really short lessons, then stopping and giving space for collaboration and individual work, and then making the lessons spiral into new content while reviewing the content covered already.

At the end, watching and reading about the different techniques oriented to high performance, makes me question what does it mean to have high standards for our students, and how can we define what a high performance class is.

The performance of our classes is given by many different measures; internal assessment, school wide or district wide assessments, standardized tests, university acceptance, retention of students in HS, completion of HS, all of those standards for performance are different for each one of us and vary from country to country and from school to school.

In my current situation, I have a group of students from 7^th, 10^th and 11^th grade that are going to be measured by international standardized assessments, and my class will be classified as a high or low performance class based on those results.  These students come from many different backgrounds and individual demands in their families and their cultures. 

For me, as a professional, my first measure is their learning, despite the fact that I need to comply with my school and their families’ demands, I go to my school and plan my classes everyday with the only intention of helping them and accompany them while they progress against their own levels and as they succeed on their own goals.  But the reality is that I need to also keep reminding myself of our external measures, and of my obligation towards them to push them towards those goals as well.

In looking at the different strategies presented above, I find myself doubtful as of to what use do any of them have to my current classroom.

I guess there is value in any of the pieces I mentioned already before, and I do plan to implement them and make it part of my teaching, but to me there has to be something else, that makes me feel not only successful number wise, but also motivated to see them grow, and not in scores, but also as human beings, and as thinkers, and as future builders of our society.

What I am aiming for, is more in the lines of inquiry based instruction, and developing deeper thinking skills in my student (along with whatever content they require).  I have seen first hand the adults that have come out from memorizing, and content repetitive based system, and I have seen the current status of our society, and I firmly believe that what we need is definitively not another generation full of diplomas, high scores and massive amounts of information, but instead we need an analytical, compassionate, creative and interested in problem solving group of adults that could help our society to move forward.

The interesting part is that it seems like there is such a think as a perfect scenario; methodologies and movements like the deeper learning network (Lenz, 2014), have been able to successfully probe the effectiveness of their programs under many of the afore mentioned standards: school retention, higher scores, college graduates, stronger interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, equal opportunities for learning and being successful for diverse groups of students are only some of the results compiled by this network.

“Test scores are everything but an indicator of what our students can do” – This quote from Clay (2016), has been more compelling for me, than any of the videos or articles I mentioned before. In this article, Clay talks about intrinsic motivation or the lack of it, and its effects in student performance.     

Her strategy: Autonomy, Purpose and self-motivation.  Helping her students to build these crucial skills, has helped her to improve test scores, but more importantly to show them that at the end it is about them, about their own growth.  She has presented testing to her students under a different light, and has show them real motivation on improving, and I believe her success is more than anything else based on the fact that her strategy came from them, from their needs, from their beliefs and from their realities.  Her first step was to survey their feelings about testing, and the reasons they think hide behind their low scores.  Through this, she has empowered them to take ownership over their own strategy for improvement.

With that in mind, I would like to conclude by saying, that I intend to do exactly the same, I will not follow any of the afore mentioned strategies, not even this last one, the only thing that I will do, is to continue to get to know my students, is to connect with them, and to find the best way possible to use any or all of these strategies as my toolbox to device the perfect strategy that will fit only them, only this year, only the now. I will plan for them, and not to follow a trend, a research or a success story from far away.  And I invite you all to do exactly the same.

Sources:

Biffle, C. (2011, May 31). Whole Brain Teaching Richwood High - The Basics [Video file]. In Youtube. Retrieved November 11, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iXTtR7lfWU&feature=youtu.be

Biffle, C. (2011, February). One Minute Lessons | Total Visits 751 | Whole Brain Teaching. Retrieved November 11, 2016, from http://wholebrainteaching.com/beginner/one-minute-lessons/

Chen, C. (2011, June 13). 3rd grade Chinese--math class [Video file]. In Youtube. Retrieved November 11, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7LseF6Db5g

Clay, V. (2016, May 11). Intrinsic Motivation vs. Standardized Tests. Retrieved November 11, 2016, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/intrinsic-motivation-vs-standardized-tests-valencia-clay

Migdol, D. (2012, October). Roller Coaster Physics: STEM in Action [Video file]. In Teaching Channel. Retrieved November 11, 2016, from https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/teaching-stem-strategies

Lenz, B. (2014, October). New Evidence: Deeper Learning Improves Student Outcomes. Retrieved November 11, 2016, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/new-evidence-deeper-learning-improves-student-outcomes-bob-lenz

Reynolds, M. (2014). Explainer: What makes Chinese maths lessons so good? Retrieved November 11, 2016, from http://theconversation.com/explainer-what-makes-chinese-maths-lessons-so-good-24380

Developing a positive climate in the classroom

by: Mery Tellez 

  There are many aspects that need to be considered in order to ensure a positive experience for our students in the classroom. Having a positive climate in your classroom is only on of them, but certainly a crucial one for many different reasons.

As educators, this is more than a requirement or good practice, I believe it is our obligation towards our students to offer them a space where they will be set for success, a physical space and a community environment in which they can feel valued, respected, and motivated to participate and to grow.

 Research demonstrates the positive impact in student learning gained from a positive environment and a positive student-teacher relationship, both extremely linked to each other.  Students who are valued, and who have a voice, are students who can concentrate on what is important.  Coming to school everyday, actually feeling an positive interest on being there, can certainly make the difference in a learning experience.

There is also the preventive aspect of a positive climate.  Classrooms in which the relationships are healthy, positive, and in which the spaces and attitudes have been purposefully set for students to participate and have a voice, are naturally safe spaces in which bullying situations and challenging behaviours, are significantly less frequent, and more efficiently resolved when they present themselves.

The end goal is to turn our classroom into communities, in which we all should be taken care of each other.  We cannot forget this is one of the most powerful ways to deal with bullying, setting the responsibility in the hands of everybody, and empowering the bystander to take action.  Trust, and a feeling of being respected is fundamental in bullying prevention.

But these are not the only reasons. We spend an average of 8 hours with our students every day. We all share more time together at school that we often do with our own families. With this in mind, how would you like the space you will spend the majority of your day look like?, and what kind of environment would you like to be in day after day? Certainly, a positive one sounds much better, if only, for your own peace of mind.

This brings us to one of the aspects that we should consider when designing and planning for a positive learning space, you!.  We are as well a key component of our classrooms, and evaluating and being conscious of who we are, our strengths and aspects to improve, will as well make a big different in how our classroom will be setup.  Throughout my 11 years as a teacher, I have been blessed with the opportunity to teach in very interesting classrooms. I have had several classes in which I have had almost as many nationalities as students in the classroom. I myself am an expat, and the mother of what is known as a third culture kid. All of these aspects are fundamental to the definition and the actions that I need to take in order to build the positive space I want for my students.

I am currently teaching in Beijing, China, in a private international school with English as the first language of instruction.  The student population is composed in its majority by ELL students.  I am Colombian, which means that the language in which I teach, is also my second language. Additionally, I am currently making the effort of learning Chinese as my third language.  I have found this to be an advantage in my classroom, because I feel that being an English language learner myself, I am aware and able to understand the process and the struggles my students go through.

This is just an example, but I hope it illustrates my point.  Understanding your own cultural background, the unique combinations of circumstances that makes you who you are, should probably be the starting point to later be able to understand those same unique, varied circumstances that make up each one of your students.  And knowing, understanding, and more importantly, embracing that uniqueness is a key component of a healthy, positive community within your classroom.  There is no way your students will be respectful and open to each other, if you are not constantly modelling that behaviour yourself.

But what are those actions or those behaviours that I should be modelling to my students?  How exactly do I show them respect for their cultural backgrounds, and how can I help them to build a positive environment for all of us?  The following are a series of strategies that I have used or plan to use in my own classroom.

• Value student’s identity:  This is normally done with the little things you do everyday, like asking them for help to pronounce their names correctly.  Showing them how to pronounce yours, allowing yourself to be a learner as well and learn from them, from their languages and traditions and cultures.  There’s a school in Beijing that offers Chinese lessons for foreign teachers in the afternoon.  The incredible powerful part of this story, is that those lessons are taught by the same MS and HS students.  It is programs like this, easily implementable, the ones that build positive school culture and positive teacher-student relationships.
• Make the physical space their own:  Organising and decorating my classroom is one of my teacher nightmares.  This is one of the strategies I will certainly implement in my next school year.  Having students help you on the decision making process, locating resources and classroom displays in places that make sense to them.  Students should have a voice in the space they will be sharing with you, that sends the immediate message that the space will be ours, not mine.
• Building a culture of dialogue:  We need to be willing to listen more than we talk, and this simple statement is challenging for teachers everywhere.  When we open ourselves to listen, when we accept the possibility for our students to teach us from their own knowledge and experiences, we are teaching them to do the same with others, to share and to be humble, and open to listen to others as well.
• Set behaviour issues as opportunities for learning: Behaviour management is a delicate process of finding harmony between structure, and empathy.  Students should be encouraged to help since the beginning in the definition of what they want their class to be like, by helping structure what those common agreements between us as a community should be.  After that, each behaviour issue that arises should be address in a way that show students companion and understanding, and that helps them see opportunities for growth from them.
• Speaking Up: Another very important behaviour we should model to students is that of a up stander, who does not stay quiet in the face of injustice, or when stereotypes or bias behaviour is observed.  We are also responsible for not allowing this kind of behaviour from anyone, not even or specially from other adults.

Continued growth as professionals, keeping ourselves updated, building a community ourselves with our colleges and the society around us, are some of the other strategies we can implement and that will be example for our students.

Future of Education

by: Mery Tellez

The following audio post describe some of my estimations and impressions about the future of education based on current and predicted advances in the technology industry.

How do you envision education in 10 years for now?  Leave your comments below!


Play Audio Blog

Sources:

AITSL (Producer). (2012, May 7). 21st Century Education [Video file]. In Youtube.com. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA1Aqp0sPQo

A. (Producer). (2015, September 16). 5 Technologies That Will Change Classroom Education [Video file]. In Youttube. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loFL5gT_m8I

Hu-Au, E. (2016). Virtual Reality for Education. Retrieved October 25, 2016, from http://virtualrealityforeducation.com/about-us

Jugaru, G. (2016, June). 5 Top Augmented Reality Apps for Education. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/augmented-reality-apps-for-education/
Poh, M. (2016, September 30). 8 Technologies That Will Shape Future Classrooms. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/future-classroom-technologies/

A case for Mobile Devices for Learning

by: Mery Tellez

I have always been an advocate of technology as a tool for learning, in the current job market, technology skills and computational literacy is more and more becoming a must in almost every industry, and a work reality like this is the one for which we should be preparing our students for.

Mobile technology has transformed the way we communicate radically, and as with any other technology, mobile devices should be seen as an additional tool available in your classroom to enhance your students experience instead of being seen as an impediment or an obstacle in your teaching.

Teachers have been traditionally known for being reluctant to change, if you have a functional classroom, students that are learning, and all seems ok, then why to change it.  If is not broken why to fix it right? Well, the issue is that it is broken, if our students are not currently learning in your classroom how to use the tools, and the communication means they will be required to use for the rest of their lives, then something definitively needs to be changed.

This should be enough motivation for us. As teachers, it is our responsibility to educate our students to be able to be productive, positive members of the society. And how can they possibly be if they are not being prepared for what they will be facing. 

Some will argue that the least our students need, is us teaching them how to use technology, but I feel we are forgetting that is not only about using it.  Is about understanding how, when and why to use it, and more importantly, how to use it responsibly and in positive ways.

To me, teaching technology in the classroom is the same as teaching manners, we cannot assume they will just have them, we need to show them, with our example, and we also need to explicitly give them opportunities to learn about them, and be there when they make mistakes, and help them understand why it was a mistake and how to make it better.  We need to show them what is appropriate and what is not.

On the other hand, why wouldn’t we use mobile devices in the classroom? For those who have been enthusiastic about the use of technology in the classroom before, or even for those who haven’t, this is a unique opportunity in our hands.  Everyone will agree that as teachers, everything we do is an effort to improve the learning possibilities of our students.  Why would we deprive them from an opportunity to learn, that in many cases is right there, literally at their fingertips?  Mobile devices are not available for us all, that is a reality.  Hopefully eventually that will change, and the possibilities will be the same for all.  But right now, we do have a vast group of students and schools with access to laptops, online courses, IPads, chrome books, cellphones, or any combination of possibilities for us to provide a mobile learning experience for our students.  We have it right there, sitting in their pockets or backpacks, or hidden away in their lockers because of the fear we feel of loosing control, and we are not using them. 

If by this far you are convinced and you want to give it a chance, then the following guidelines or recommendations based mostly in my experience will hopefully help you to have a positive outcome with mobile learning: 

1. Learning comes first:  The very first step when planning a mobile learning activity, should always be your learning objective.  Start by deciding what is the objective or objectives that you want to address, what is it that you want your students to concentrate on.  If you start your planning with this in mind, then it will be more difficult to turn your mobile learning experience into a busy time with IPads activity. 
2. Plan ahead:  Planning is not limited to having a lesson plan downloaded sitting on your desk, but it implies for you to test the activities yourself, to have backup plans, devices, materials, etc. The success of your students during the lesson will depend mostly on your ability to be prepared. Additionally, their attitude towards the activity will also be more positive if they can tell how much effort and time you have put into this.
3. Reuse: No need to re-invent the wheel to begin with.  If this is your first time using mobile devices, and you feel unsecure about what to do, remember that someone has done it already, and it is perfectly valid to search, and recreate or redesign what others have done.
4. Is not about the device:  Be careful with the technology gap.  There will be students in your classroom that don’t have the same access to internet, or last generation devices, or even the skills to complete the task.  You need to prepare for everybody and do not assume they will have what you need them to have.  This is a delicate topic that is not discussed enough, and we do left kids outside when they have a different device, or no internet at home, or lack of tech skills compared to their classmates.
5. Get the tech team on your side:  Ask for help! Make sure that your technology coach, or tech guy if your school doesn’t have a coach is aware of what you are planning to do. Simply because they might have suggestions that could make your life easier, and they could also offer to help you to setup whatever is needed to setup.  They will also have the knowledge about your school connection limitations or requirements that could help you warranty a successful experience.

These are by no means the only considerations you need to make, it will be challenging, it will require hard work, but, all in all, the engagement from the kids, the connections they will make, and the learning opportunities that you will offer them will be the best reward for your hard work.

Sources:

Daccord, T. (2012, September 27). 5 Critical Mistakes Schools Make With iPads - edudemic.com. Retrieved October 24, 2016, from http://www.edudemic.com/5-critical-mistakes-schools-ipads-and-correct-them/

Prensky, M. (2005, December 2). Shaping Tech for the Classroom | Edutopia. Retrieved October 24, 2016, from http://www.edutopia.org/adopt-and-adapt-shaping-tech-for-classroom

Roggenkamp, D. (2010). Gathering Authentic Language Snippets with Mobile Devices. Retrieved October 24, 2016 from: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_4BhgdIQcnXV21FdUxlTGxRb2M/view