This post is about six things teachers can do in their own schools and classrooms to improve the entire field of education in the 2010-2011 school year.
1. Say hello at the door.
I used to think this was silly until I read that the few words exchanged at the door may be a students’ only positive interaction with an adult all day (maybe even their only personal interaction with a teacher all day). It gives students a chance to know I care about them as individuals and lets students who may have misbehaved the day before know that they have a blank slate this morning. It also means students can’t escape in my classroom. Right away students are accountable to me in a nonthreatening way. They’re not going to coast in this classroom. Think of all the students coasting through school who we might be able to reach if we all just said hello.
In order for your classroom not to fall apart while doing this, you must have an activity for students to start on as soon as they get to their desks. I’ve used Daily Language Review as my morning warmup. The morning warmup routine has to be established so I wouldn’t send students into the room on the very first day without me.
So that I don’t get bored, I even say hello in different languages. Aloha, buenos dias, shalom, etc. mix it up a little so it keeps it interesting and quickly a rapport develops between teacher and student. Sometimes students have something to tell me and it gives me an opportunity to get to know them. Over time, I teach students to stop in the doorway, look me in the eye, and say good morning back as if they are going on a job interview. These are skills students need but I only teach them once students feel comfortable.
2. Eat in the teacher cafeteria.
Shocking advice? If you find your teacher cafeteria to be a hotbed of negativity there’s only one way to change that. You need to go in there and be an engine of positivity. Brainstorm instructional strategies instead of complaining about students or change the subject entirely and talk about your trip to Hawaii or the latest episode of Glee. Families eat together and if your school faculty is to be a family then they need to share a meal and learn to get along. When a school “family” is a happy one then individual members of that family are happy. When teachers are happy, students are happy, and it makes a school a better, safer, more productive place.
3. Teach authentic writing.
Stop having students simply write for their teachers. Stop correcting everything for students. Stop telling students what the purpose for their writing is and start asking them to decide on a purpose for their own writing. I strongly recommend Nancie Atwell’s In the Middle: New Understandings About Writing, Reading, and Learning which talks about teaching Reader’s Workshop in Middle School. Nevertheless, I’ve found it to be invaluable advice for teaching writing in elementary school in the way it gives students responsibility for making their own decisions and includes extensive use of mini-lessons and modeling to teach missing skills.
The weakest area in California student test data seems to be “Writing Strategies.” It’s no surprise since this part of the test measures students’ ability to analyze and revise text and I doubt they are learning this in their classroom. In order to teach writing, you will need to be a writer yourself.
I’ve written about teaching writing before. I also recommend Dean Shareski’s recent post, Writing, Are We Teaching it Wrong? which excellently points out many of the problems with our current teaching of writing.
4. Incorporate Multi-Media Into Every Lesson
In my last post, I wrote about The Right Way to Show a Movie in Class. Teachers can also use realia to bring subjects to life. Make it a point to include relevant manipulatives, photos, videos, realia, audio CDs, iPods, or web sites even just a little bit in every lesson.
While I’d like to think that my personality is charming and my stage presence dynamic, there is a limit to how much engagement I can garner with just my voice, my face, and and my unending wit. If everyone used something besides themselves and a piece of chalk to teach lessons, learners of different modalities would be engaged and school would be all around better.
5. Teach Art as a Discipline
You may have heard about it but the L.A. Times recently published a database of teacher effectiveness (more on that some other time). In examining several schools I’ve worked at, I’ve found that consistently the most effective teachers teach art and teach it well in addition to all academic subjects. If done right, art can lead to higher level thinking and problem solving. If you’re going to have students draw, teach them to make straight lines, curved lined, dotted lines. If you’re going to teach students to drum, teach them rhythm and how to count. If you’re going to teach students to dance, teach them how to use different parts of their bodies. And most importantly teach them to analyze artwork. How to Talk to Children About Art is an excellent book that helps teachers who feel ill-equipped to talk about art how to do so.
Use art, not as a Friday fun day activity, but as a discipline and it can lead to higher level thinking.
6. Teach Test Prep Two Minutes Every Day
If you haven’t noticed, the public wants greater accountability for teachers. I would agree that standardized testing is not the best way to measure student achievement but it’s the measure that the public wants to use. While we’re busy coming up with better measures, let’s play the game. If your students are higher level thinkers, critical problem solvers, and sufficient readers, why shouldn’t they be able to do well on a test…unless, they’re not familiar with the format of tests. Teach students to eliminate obviously wrong answers, teach students, to read questions before reading passages, teach students how to use the process of elimination. If test taking is a game, let’s teach our students how to play.
What are you going to do this year to make education better?