10 things you can do this week that will make you a better teacher

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working together with a variety of different teacher groups in a variety of different places. But all of the conversations have somehow shifted back to the same basic compelling question:

What does an effective teacher look like?

It’s a great question to ask. We’ve always paid lip service to professional development and learning but it seems as if only recently has the question been taken seriously. The Common Core literacy standards for history and the newly revised Kansas history/government standards are demanding more from our kids – and from us.

So I started thinking about things we can do to get better as social studies teachers. Not stuff organized by our administrators. Informal sorts of things that can make us more effective. I came up with ten. I’m sure there are more but ya gotta start somewhere.

What would you add? Subtract from the list?

Liquid Networks, PLNs, and growing professionally

So what does a liquid network look like?

• Start by having a conversation about the themes of A Clockwork Orange and A Brave New World with your college-age son home for the holiday break. Realize that the topic has morphed over into brain research. Reference Steven Johnson’s book titled Mind Wide Open. During Mind Wide Open conversation remember that Johnson’s latest book, Where Good Ideas Come From, also references brain research and collaboration.
• Continue the conversation later on historyfriend’s blog post about creating a community of scholars. Reference Johnson’s Good Ideas book. Do search for link to book. Instead, find a TED talk by Johnson about his book. Listen to the TED talk. Suggest video to historyfriend.
• Share discussion with face to face office colleagues and online network. Gather more ideas about how best to organize classrooms for collaborative learning. Realize that these ideas would be perfect for your upcoming cohort session of 40 middle school teachers.
• Walk away smarter because son, Johnson, historyfriend, Amazon, TED, office colleagues, and online friends all combined to help you develop a new idea for how to organize a Teaching American History meeting.

Productive stupidity

Do you ever feel stupid?

For some of us, the feeling can be a daily occurrence so I’ll re-phrase the question.

Do you ever feel stupid . . . on purpose?

Because if you haven’t purposefully gone out of your way to feel stupid, I’m gonna suggest that you’re not doing your job correctly. Give me a minute. It’ll make sense eventually.

I ran across an article last week that talked about the importance of being stupid while doing science research. The author describes how very bright science students, successful in high school and college, fail miserably in graduate programs. They’re used to memorizing the answers and acing the tests. When they have to generate their own questions and solve previously unsolved problems, they feel stupid and quit.

Basically the author says that being stupid is not necessarily a bad thing – he describes it as “productive stupidity”:

We don’t do a good enough job of teaching our students how to be productively stupid – that is, if we don’t feel stupid it means we’re not really trying. I’m not talking about “relative stupidity,” in which the other students in the class actually read the material, think about it and ace the exam, whereas you don’t.

Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time.

While the article is concerned with science students, I see a lot of parallels in history teachers. I think a lot of us did great in high school and college. We enjoy history so it was easy to memorize stuff and spit it back out. The problem is that when we get in the classroom, we stop learning.

As a group, it seems as if most social studies teachers don’t read history books. Don’t watch documentaries. Don’t take history classes. Don’t take advantage of free training and learning opportunities. And I think that we don’t because it can make us feel stupid.

My question is pretty simple:

Are you working to be productively stupid? Are you ignorant by choice?

Over the last year, I’ve had the chance to work with 40 middle school American history teachers in a Teaching American History project. There’s a lot of experience and content knowledge in the room. But they have all purposefully chosen to be a part of the project to learn more by being productively stupid.

They ask great questions. They struggle with problems. They share ideas. And by admitting that they are “stupid,” they are becoming smarter, better teachers of history.

It’s okay to be stupid. Admitting it is the first step to recovery.

End of the year – Student evaluations and self-reflection

Really? The end of the year? Weren’t we just shoveling snow?

I guess it is May. And you know what that means . . . yup, student evaluations. You know . . . having students evaluate you and your teaching over the last nine months.

I never really thought much about having my students complete evaluations during my first couple of years teaching. It was obvious, even to a rookie teacher, what needed to change. Plus, it just wasn’t done. I mean, who asks for the opinions of school children?

I would always spend time reflecting at the end of the year:

• What went well?
• What went wrong?
• Were my assessments valid?
• Did I handle classroom management issues effectively?
• What content should I add / eliminate for next year?
• Do I need to adjust my rubrics?

But it was only one point of reference. And we know how incomplete administrative evaluation can sometimes be. Some excellent mentors eventually convinced me that feedback from my customers would be a good idea, that a good student evaluation can help in my reflective process.

So I started talking more with my kids, both informally throughout the year and formally at the end. Questions about the classroom environment and arrangement, did I provide enough time for projects, how well did I respond to student questions, did I create a friendly learning climate, what strategies and activities worked best, what sort of communication works best, more or less technology and what they liked / disliked in general.

Students should feel free to put their name on the evaluation or complete it anonymously. And while you’ll need to take the information with a grain of salt. you also get some great feedback and insightful comments.

I’ve attached a quick sample. Feel free to adapt it for content and age levels.

Teacher Evaluation by Students

Reflect away.

Not Yet Convinced about Not Even Past

Mmm . . . got an email several days ago announcing the debut of a new web site published by the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin.

Titled Not Even Past after the famous William Faulkner quote

The past is never dead. It’s not even past

the site claims to

speak to everyone interested in the past and in the ways the past lives on in the present.

The authors go on to suggest:

History leaves no life untouched and the story of every life deserves to be told. Not Even Past is, first and foremost, a home for these stories. It is also a place for all who are interested in history to meet one another and share their viewpoints, to learn what books and films historians are reading and watching, and to gather perspectives on national, international, and Texas events of contemporary interest.

And so far, it’s a good start.

Not Even Past is broken up into several different sections including:

• Read
• Watch
• Discover
• Listen
• Texas

Each section looks at different events through different media – Read equals book review, Watch equal video overviews . . . you get the idea. The concept is a good one.

Create a place for history people to get together and talk history stuff.

But I would have liked a bit richer and deeper selection. Most of the sections contain a very limited number of goodies. I could have also done without the Texas section but like they say, “it’s a whole ‘nother country” so . . . And I understand it’s a university history department but it wouldn’t hurt to be a bit more K-12 friendly.

That said, I do think it will become a very useful place for history geeks to hang out, read new things, learn new stuff and meet other history geeks. I especially like their idea of offering virtual “classes” that provide a different way of discussing history and history books.

The site’s got a large-ish team of folks working to create content and it will continue to get better. Head over, register and join the conversation.