Who would you want to work with?

We are in the process of making teacher-groups for Family Math Night. The teachers (MTH 221 students) will work together to develop an activity related to specific standards, try out the activity with K-6 students, and reflect on the activity's effectiveness. Throughout the project, teachers use frameworks from the 5 Practices and the Principles to Actions to inform their efforts. This is one of the ways I try to embed the work of teaching into the course.

Because I also want to prepare pre-service teachers to be your future colleagues, I am soliciting your help in identifying norms for collaboration. What are some things you look for in colleagues with whom you choose to work? I am trying to come up with five criteria that the teachers could consider as they evaluate their interactions with their peers.

I have a compulsion to use acronyms, so I made the checklist on the right using some suggestions shared on Twitter. Does this list work for you? If not, how would you adjust it? Please do not be limited by this format as you offer suggestions in the comments.

Thank you in advance for your contributions to the development of these future educators.

What do you mean we're on our own?

Chapter 4 from Math Exchanges ends by describing why collaboration is important.

Working together with your colleagues is the best way I can suggest to better understand the problem types, recognize strategies children use, and plan appropriate next steps for your students. Team meetings or teacher-formed study groups are a great way to start this kind of collaboration. (p. 81)

The teachers leading the chapter study last night wrapped up the discussion by focusing on this point. One said something like, "Yeah, because we are going to be asked to collaborate all the time: when planning, creating assessments, talking about student work. All the time. Right, Dave?"

I responded, "Actually, no." And the teacher who asked the question made a face. I went on a rant about teachers who shut their doors and "teach in silos." Here's what I wish I had said (with some parts of the rant included):

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When I taught middle school, I was on my own most of the time. I was the only math teacher doing project-based lessons. There was no one to collaborate with in my district. It was exhausting and one of the reasons I left to get my PhD.

There are certainly schools that foster collaboration but in my experience they are in the minority. Mostly teachers keep their struggles and their successes to themselves. And that lack of support is one of the reasons teachers give for leaving the profession.

This is why I ask you to spend so much time collaborating on projects like researching the topics on the Landscape, planning math exchanges, and running these professional development sessions. I want you to get used to working together - to asking for and expecting support from your colleagues. It is my hope that with this next generation of teachers, collaboration, not isolation, is the norm.

So I want you to remember the face you made when I said, "No. Teachers often work alone." That face was perfect. I want you to remember that face and use it whenever you encounter any resistance to collaboration.

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Yeah, it's still pretty much a rant. But in my defense, I am pretty passionate about teachers needing to connect. It's one of the reasons I promote the use of Twitter.

And the face the teacher made, you're probably wondering what it looked like. It looked something like this.

Am I in the way?

I have completed the first four days of the Cognitive Coaching^SM Seminar (CCS), and I am still in the process of consolidating my understanding. In a previous post, I considered the stagecoach metaphor used in the CCS. Here, I want to address another metaphor - the cognitive coach as a mediator of thinking. From page 33 of the Learning Guide:

the mediator intervenes in such a way as to enhance another person's self-directed learning (Costa & Garmston, 2002).

When this is combined with the Four Support Functions (coaching, consulting, collaborating, and evaluating), it requires the cognitive coach to determine what sort of stance he or she ought to take to facilitate another person's thinking.

When we encounter someone with an issue, our typical response is to try to fix it. That is, we get between the person and the problem. To counter this habit, the default stance taken by a cognitive coach is to step back; this provides the person with the space to own the problem and the cognitive coach a sense of perspective. Then the cognitive coach can more easily support the individual in making choices about the path to take and becoming empowered.

Sometimes, the person with the issue is stuck and unable to see any path forward. Given an explicit request for help, the cognitive coach takes on a different stance - consultant. (This is what most people mean when they think of coaching in education.) The cognitive coach steps into the path and provides whatever leadership he or she has to offer. The support might be a model ("If it were me, here's what I might do.") or a menu ("Here is a list of things others have used in similar situations."). As soon as the person becomes unstuck, the cognitive coach once again takes a step back and returns to a coaching stance.

When two people are working together as equals, then the cognitive coach stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the other person. They face the problem together, with each contributing 100% to the effort of obtaining a solution. This support function might be appropriate when co-teaching a class.

In the final support function, evaluating, the cognitive coach stands out of the way and observes the individual's performance. A shared set of standards are used to monitor the individual's progress toward a solution. If the same person is doing the coaching and the evaluating, then his or her role in every situation must be well-defined. Furthermore, trust must be established if this shifting of roles is going to work.

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Teachers who have gone through the CCS have told me that awareness of these support functions and the ability to move between them improved their instruction. They stress that thinking like a cognitive coach has helped them to focus on supporting the development of self-directed individuals. Mostly, this entails not standing between the students and their learning.

#TeachingReminder: Get out of the way!

Do they know what it looks like?

I find it easier to see the hidden figure when I know
what I am looking for. (from)

When I ask teachers to fill out an action plan identifying their current challenge in teaching, I sometimes get comments like these:

• Students are not engaged in the lesson;
• Students do not take good notes;
• Students fail to do quality work;
• Students struggle to apply what we are doing to new situations;
• Students do not engage in productive discussions; or
• Students cannot work well in groups.

My initial response is usually to ask, "Do they know what this looks like?"

This happened recently around the last issue, group work. When I asked the question, the teacher responded as they typically do, "I don't know. I haven't addressed it explicitly." Herein lies the problem; too often we expect students to come to class with certain skills that they do not possess.

As a middle school math teacher, I spent considerable time at the beginning of the school year focusing on fostering skills associated with working effectively in groups. For nearly two weeks the students took part in "plays" representing productive and unproductive groups. After reflecting on these experiences, we created expectation around working in groups that were referred to throughout the rest of the school year. This was time well spent as it allowed me to work with individuals and small groups confident that the remainder of the class knew what was expected of them as they worked together. (It also served another purpose. Near the end of the second week, someone inevitably asked, "When are we going to do math?" Before my two-week bootcamp on groups, students rarely begged to do math.)

Unfortunately, it is not the beginning of the year, and the teachers was looking for something to do now. We brainstormed things that would support the development of productive group work through explicit action. For example, the teacher was tired of constantly reminding the students to get back on task, so I suggested setting a timer that went off at regular intervals as a reminder that they ought to monitor whether or not they were being productive. If students start ignoring the timer, stop the activity and identify some of the positive behaviors exhibited during the activity. Next time an activity involves group work, remind the students of those positive behaviors and try again. Once they complete an entire activity, set the timer for longer and longer periods of time until the students begin to self-monitor their efforts.

What are some examples of ways that you have ensured that your students know what group work (or some other classroom expectation) looks like? I would appreciate your thoughts in the comments so that I can share them with the teachers I am coaching. Thank you in advance for you participation.

 

What is an EdCamp? Part II

In my previous post, I offered an overview of my experience at EdCamp Detroit. Well, it did not provide the entire experience. I still need to share my presentation and the wrap-up of the unconference - that is the purpose of this post.

I called my presentation, Collaboration between College and K12 Classrooms: Win-Win-Win-Win. It was essentially based on two of my prior blog posts: one dealing with using technology to support distance learning and my dream to reclaim assessment from politicians and testing companies. Earlier EdCamp Detroit sessions on technology and collaboration also gave me some resources. Mostly, though, I wanted to listen to the participants' experiences and ideas about ways to consolidate our efforts to improve education.

Consequently, my PowerPoint was fairly bland. The version provided here includes backchannel comments from Kristen Fontichiaro (@activelearning) who tweeted much of the session. I am grateful for her contribution.

After my initial remarks, I opened up the conversation to the participants. Some of the College-K12 collaboration experiences included: Preservice teachers acting as substitute teachers and an Autism Center in Novi partnering with a local university. Kristen also made us aware that the University of Michigan is already exploring a lab school.

The new ideas generated were wide ranging. A member of the local college faculty suggested that her students could hold extracurricular classes to address K12 students' interests. A high school social studies teacher thought that it would be helpful for college students to describe the process for entering and succeeding in college to potential first-generation college attendees. Participants also suggested using Skype as a way to provide homework support, using college students to staff existing projects like Destination Imagination, and teaming college students with National Honor Society students in mentoring younger students.

I am sure there were other ideas that I missed (always the problem with making a list). Several times I found myself so engaged with the conversation that I forgot to take notes. I would ask that you please add any other suggestions in the comments.

While these ideas were amazing, it was the connections that I made that I found most meaningful. I now have contacts across the state. Tech-savy contacts that I will tap this coming fall when I have 60 preservice teachers in need of experience working with real K12 learners. I went from my session to wrap-up filled with ideas and hope.

EdCamp Detroit ended with a summary of the day, another brief Skype session with Dan Callahan at EdCamp Boston, and door prizes. What sticks with me most is a question asked by Nick Provenzano: "What if your next Professional Development day was an EdCamp?" Well? What if...