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[robertdeanlyon-blog]

Fellow teachers, we get it. External mandates like technology and inclusion make our jobs more difficult. However, a spoonful of sugar can help. What is the spoonful of sugar in our profession? The needs of the students. By seeing your students succeed in ways that they previously haven’t because of your implementation of your administrator’s demands, hopefully you realize that it’s all worth it. Teach on, friends!  

[robertdeanlyon-blog]

Some Advice: Dig Deeper

The underlying message of this social media campaign over the last few days has been the idea that teachers must “dig deeper” into external mandates from their administration and the government. However, in practical terms, what can a busy and overworked teacher who is struggling survive the school year do to implement this philosophy of digging deeper? There are reasons, after all, that external mandates receive resistance from in-service teachers. While pre-service teachers may consider lots of differentiation, for example, to be a no-brainer, to real teachers in the field, it may be overwhelming enough to plan one lesson, let alone several variations on one lesson. When a teacher is presented with an external mandate, is there anything that can bring hope to the overpowering situation?

The primary way that you can dig deeper into the external mandates that you are presented with is to do your own research into what the external mandate, whatever it may be, is all about and how real teachers (not educational researchers or professional development speakers) are dealing with that external mandate in their real world classrooms. For example, differentiation and personalized learning are major pushes in education today. However, that doesn’t mean that you have to create individualized lessons for each and every one of your students. If you do your research and learn more about what differentiation is, you’ll see that it’s not as overwhelming as you may think if you don’t take the time to dig deeper into the idea. Furthermore, by digging deeper, you may realize that the external mandate is actually very beneficial for students. In my experience, knowing that something is good for my students (even if it seems like more work on my end) is sometimes the extra motivation I need to get over the difficulty of having to do something.

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Standards

To some teachers, standards are an obstacle that impede their ability to provide high-quality instruction that is good for students. However, even if the standards are bad, teachers should be able to use their professional judgement to emphasize the important standards and briefly cover the standards that are less necessary or attainable. Not every standard is created equal, and the appropriate action for designing good instruction in accordance with the state standards will vary dramatically depending on the perceived quality of the standard according to the teacher’s professional judgement.

If teachers dig deep into the concept of standards, they will find that standards (even the “scary” ones from the Common Core that all teachers are now being told to refer to) often have laudable goals that are difficult to disagree with. For example, many people (teachers and parents alike) have spoken out about how math is being taught under the Common Core. They say that the new methods of teaching math are inefficient and confusing. However, the reality is that these methods came from backwards planning the standards, which place a much greater emphasis on numeracy and critical thinking. Can anyone seriously disagree that number sense is a good thing to impart to future generations? By digging a little deeper into standards, you may begin to appreciate their purpose, which hopefully will cause you to implement them with more fidelity in your classroom.

[robertdeanlyon-blog]

Data-driven Instruction

Yesterday we introduced the “Dig a little deeper” campaign, which encourages teachers to focus on the parts of external mandates that are good for students. However, what does it mean for something to be “good for students”? In our opinion, “good for students” includes anything that meets students’ social, emotional, developmental, and academic needs.

One essential component, even if it is viewed by some teachers as an external mandate in itself, is the idea of data-driven instruction. In 21st century educational practice, education must irrevocably be based on observable, quantifiable behaviors. To figure out why, you must merely think of the definition of learning that you may have discussed in your teacher preparation courses. To teach anything, you must use an external process (an instructional strategy) to target an internal learning process (i.e. encoding, activation of prior knowledge) in hope of creating an internal product, which the teacher is supposed to observe through an external product. Without that external product at the end, we are at a loss to know if our instruction was actually effective or not. Therefore, it is important to plan for quantifiable outcomes throughout the instructional planning process. At the beginning when you choose an instructional goal, avoid those fuzzy verbs like “know” or “understand.” Such vague verbs do not lend themselves to a quantifiable outcome for students and other stakeholders. After the instructional goal and the selection of your essential content, create your assessment plan first thing. This is critical for the ideas of Backwards Design. After you implement your assessment, you will be able to see who needs remediation and who is able to advance. In the end, I hope I have showed you that while data-driven instruction is thrown around as a buzzword, it is actually at the heart of “good for students”! Without data, how can you make informed decisions about a student’s progress? Have a good day, teachers!

[robertdeanlyon-blog]

Dig a Little Deeper

Sometimes, teachers are complainers. From all sides we are being hit with requirements, mandates, expectations, and educational buzzwords. Through all of this, it is easy to become overwhelmed and turned-off from engaging constructively with these mandates. We may tell ourselves that our current educational practice is “good enough.” Over the next several days, we will be sharing motivational messages about digging a little deeper and finding the good in what we’re asked to do as teachers. After all, even the most ridiculous requirements generally have a good premise, right? It may be difficult to find sometimes, but to maintain your mental health and to be the best teacher that you can, we encourage you to find that marigold is what you’re asked to do. For example, have after-school meetings got you down? Have you had enough of your principal telling you what to do? Our advice is to break that mandate down to its core so that you can find one kernel of how that mandate may be good for students. Could that extra study hall that you were asked to cover be used to strengthen relationships with your students outside of your regular courses? Could you use it to observe students’ homework practice, so that you may teach study skills more effectively in your classroom? We know it might seem difficult or pointless at first, but if you dig a little deeper and find that little piece that helps your students, you may realize (as Mary Poppins used to say) that a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.

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Modifying Instruction for ELLs

While the prompt for this week’s reflection activity at Boyer High School condescendingly refers to English Language Learners as an example of “external mandates/constraints,” I do not view these students as a constraint or burden. In fact, having these students in class opens up many possibilities. I would love to have more English Language Learners enrolled in world language classes. For example, many ELLs in the United States come from Spanish-speaking countries. Having these native speakers in my Spanish classes would be a great asset because they would be able to contribute their cultural expertise and a sense of authenticity to the classroom. Furthermore, it would provide social and academic benefits for the ELL because they would have a chance to be the expert in one of their classes, and it is well-supported in research that ELLs are more successful when they receive academic intervention in their native language as well. Although it may be a challenge to differentiate and ensure that the ELL learns English while helping to teach Spanish to peers, I believe that it would be do-able and beneficial for everyone. Even if the student is placed in a third language classroom, the placement would still be quite advantageous because the student would bring a different perspective to the classroom, and it is a more level playing field for the student to achieve. While other students such as those with severe learning disabilities are different from ELLs, they are still integral members of the classroom community because they force me to remember Universal Design for Learning in my planning.

[robertdeanlyon-blog]

A Reflection on Technology

As we consider the implementation of the Don Murk Tech Grant at Boyer High School, I find it important to remember that we must look at our goals for students before we decide on the tools and resources that we may use to achieve those goals. As a language teacher, my overarching goal is for students to gain functional language proficiency and cultural understanding. So, if a piece of technology does not enhance those goals in some way, I don’t believe that it should be used. To give an example, using Google Streetview (or better: 3D glasses) to “travel” to a different country is a significant enhancement over a slideshow of static photos. Students will gain cultural insights that they would not have otherwise.

However, this isn’t always the case. Teachers often get distracted from their learning goals by the newest and greatest tech tool. From my observations in classrooms, the problem is usually not that the tech tool is ineffective at meeting the goal (though it may be). The problem is rather that some uses of technology may be less efficient uses of time. For example, I have experienced that when I ask students to pull out their devices for an online activity, it takes upwards of three minutes for the students to turn on their devices, connect to wifi, open the website, log in, etc. Over the year these lost minutes of instructional time add up, and inevitably, there will be a great deal more of lost time when the technology stops functioning. Therefore, once again, teachers must consider if the technology is so significant of an enhancement that it outweighs the possible drawbacks. If an equally-effective low-tech option exists, why not spend that extra instructional time on a quick review, a warm-up, or even a classroom-bonding exercise. Time is precious, and I don’t have time to wait for redundant websites to load.

So, what technology is worth the cut in my opinion? How should the language teachers spend their 100$ from the technology grant? My first choice would be a learning management system, but luckily, Boyer High already takes advantage of the Canvas management platform. Beyond that, I think that my 100$ would be very well-spent on a subscription to Señor Wooly. Unlike some tech-tools, Señor Wooly is something that I would be able to use more than just once in a while. Wooly’s educational videos and related-activities are extraordinarily engaging for students, supportive of Boyer’s Spanish curriculum, and they also (most importantly) are founded on research-based principles of language acquisition.

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A Reflection on State Standards

To put it simply, I don’t believe that state standards pose a challenge to my educational philosophy or the students’ best interests. While it may not be the case in some subject areas, the proposed academic standards for world languages in Pennsylvania are limited in number (14 per level) and incredibly vague on the essential content, which means that teachers have the flexibility to meet the standards and still teach almost anything they would like. Although the lack of guidance on what should taught may be frustrating to some teachers, I actually find the PA standards to be liberating because of the fact that they call for language usage and culture, not the memorization of grammar rules. Currently the world language teaching profession is undergoing a major pedagogical shift from grammar-and-vocabulary focused curriculums to a more proficiency- and research-based view of second language acquisition. Although the traditional model still dominates in many schools, I feel supported in knowing that the standards have my back. If I were ever questioned about why I spend so much time teaching about culture and speaking in the target language instead of focusing on explicit grammar rules, I would be able explain (among other reasons) that I merely backwards-planned from the PA world language standards, which place a heavy emphasis on culture and little-to-no emphasis on the demand for 100% correctness that is prevalent among language teachers.

As mentioned, teachers of other subjects likely view the matter of state standards differently. If the world language standards encouraged pedagogy that was against my educational philosophy and bad for students, it would certainly be quite difficult! However, even if the standards are bad, teachers should be able to use their professional judgement to emphasize the important standards and briefly cover the standards that are less necessary or attainable. Not every standard is created equal, and the appropriate action for designing good instruction in accordance with the state standards will vary dramatically depending on the perceived quality of the standard based on the teacher’s professional judgement.