Yesterday, in class we talked about this Ted talk. Is the single story danger? My answer will be if you look from a single, narrow perspective, it is dangerous. Enjoy watching this video.
Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.
As I woke up super early this morning, I wanna post something POSITIVE to begin my day beautifully. We need justice, compassion, and forgiveness. We cannot overcome the things we ignore. Devote your self to LOVE. Be brave enough to care!
Artist and poet Cleo Wade recites a moving poem about being an advocate for love and acceptance in a time when both seem in short supply. Woven between stories of people at the beginning and end of their lives, she shares some truths about growing up (and speaking up) and reflects on the wisdom of a life well-lived, leaving us with a simple yet enduring takeaway: be good to yourself, be good to others, be good to the earth. “The world will say to you, ‘Be a better person,'” Wade says. “Do not be afraid to say, ‘Yes.'”
I just finished reading the assigned articles and writing my papers and posts. Recently, I have become a bit nocturnal…just because during the gap of taking courses, I have nothing serious to focused on. I have not taught the twins since they went back to Kinmen, I have not heard from I-Shou since March 31, and there are too many uncertainties about my ELEM696 class and the comprehensive exam. I doubted myself but I couldn’t change anything. I was a bit struggle abut my curriculum course because the material that the professor asked us to read were a bit difficult for me as a non-native… even if I earned my MS in curriculum development &instructional technology. However, now things ended up well at least for now. I have achieved everything I have to do on time.
It goes without saying that teachers are very busy.
So it’s not unusual to hear their concerns about the lack of adequate time to do everything teachers need to do: plan, individualize instruction, test, assign grades, collaborate, innovate, reflect and of course, teach. No one, not even teachers, can add more hours to a day. The key to finding more time each day may be to use strategies that make the most of your available time.
Formative Assessment
Interestingly, teachers have found that implementing the instructional process of formative assessment can actually maximize time for teaching and learning.
-Remember these major steps of effective formative assessment.
-Clarify learning goals and criteria for success;
-Plan and implement instructional activities that include the gathering of evidence of learning;
-Analyze the evidence and provide rich, descriptive, actionable feedback;
-Adjust instructional/learning activities to address learning gaps;
-Involve students in self-evaluation;
-Activate students’ peers as resources for learning.
Research has shown convincingly that these practices can help teachers make the most of their instructional time and raise student achievement levels significantly, particularly for underachieving students.
Implementing the formative assessment process means shifting our thinking about how assessment is used in the classroom—from gathering evidence of student learning after instruction, to gathering that evidence while learning is occurring.
You can do this by building in opportunities for students to provide evidence of understanding through short, instructionally-embedded assessments that are focused on clear learning targets. These evidence-gathering opportunities help students understand what they currently know and can do.
Teachers can also adjust their instructional actions and provide descriptive feedback to students on what they need. Taking the time to ensure that students have learned what was taught allows the teacher to move forward with instruction—saving time typically spent having to reteach later.
You can’t do everything–or not equally well, anyway. One easy way to save time as a teacher is to reduce your workload by focusing on teaching what’s most important by using the 40/40/40 rule in teaching.
This deceptively simple statement has far-reaching impact, and points back to the above. How exactly you accomplish this would be a fantastic topic for a book. Project-based learning, place-based education, ‘living’ student portfolios of work, and student-led conferences are just a few examples of how this can happen.
How useful this is–and if you can also use collaborators from outside the classroom–depends on what grade level you teach, but one of the most important rules in teaching is to never work harder than your students. This isn’t easy to pull off and very well may not be a ‘simple’ way to save time as a teacher, but over the long run can be one of the most powerful.
Assigning students specific tasks, teaching through stations and literature circles, having systems for make-up work and grading, and so on can all go a long way to save you time in the classroom.
In the era of the new College and Career-Ready Standards, it is critical that teachers take time to clearly articulate learning expectations that support the content, skills, and processes inherent in the standards. Clarifying learning expectations not only helps teachers focus instructional time on what’s important, it helps engage students in learning and understanding the criteria for success.
The instructional process becomes more transparent when success criteria clearly articulate expected performances of understanding and skills. This allows teachers and students to use time more efficiently when interpreting evidence of learning as it unfolds.
Adding on to #4 above, rethinking the role of teachers of students in the classroom can allow students can pick up foundational knowledge and skills on their own, rather than through large group lectures or other teacher-led instruction. They can do this using online tools or other resources, either within or outside the classroom.
Some activities that have typically been considered homework—such as practicing skills introduced in class—can move into the classroom. This doesn’t mean that teachers should dispense with large-group instruction entirely. Variety is the spice of life. However, this approach allows teachers to spend more of their classroom time checking on student understanding in a variety of ways.
Another way to save time as a teacher is to share the responsibility of learning is to ‘activate students’ peers as resources’ through small group work.
The delivery of instructional content or facilitating learning through small groups can also be a way of having the students and peers check their understanding themselves against the success criteria. This allows teachers opportunities to spend their time assisting students who have the greatest need for support.
Terry Heick has said this again and again–in how to reduce teacher workload, for example: don’t grade everything!
Most evidence of learning gathered for formative purposes should not be graded. This evidence is collected during the learning before students have reached the level of attainment they will by the end of a unit. It would be unfair for their early work to be counted toward summative grades. Rather, the early work should be thought of as preparation for subsequent—and fewer—summative assessments (another time saver).
When everything is graded, students are motivated by the grades: “I got 80 percent right; I don’t care what I missed. Besides, I can get extra credit for some things I do.” Research has shown that over-grading inhibits learning. Of course, the first time students are asked to produce work that is not graded, they may not take the assignment seriously. But when they are reprogrammed to realize that what they’re practicing will show up later on the test that does count, they soon will develop the motivation to learn, which formative assessment experts assert is critical.
The ungraded work yields the rich feedback that students use to reflect on their work and that students and teachers use to identify learning gaps and decide on the next instructional steps.
Build time into lesson plans for students to review progress. When students have the opportunity to reflect on their learning and apply feedback to improve their work, they can see their progress and advance their learning.
By giving students major responsibility for their learning, using class time differently, and changing grading practices, teachers can gain time that might be put to better use. Teachers may not be able to change some practices on their own. Education leaders need to understand formative assessment and support teachers in implementing it effectively—to allow teachers to focus their time on their primary goal of helping students learn.
This is obviously not ‘simple,’ either. How to automate and what to automate and when to automate in your teaching is a complicated thing. That said, some automation in the classroom is more obvious than others: Taking attendance, self-grading assessments, systems for grouping students and exit slip collection and more are all low-hanging fruit, here. More on this topic, soon.
Don’t try to do it all. Being a martyr only leads to burnout. Use your aides, paras, and even parents to lighten your load. Don’t do something for your students that they can do for themselves. Empower your kids to take on the tasks that take up your time. Even younger students can help with organizing lesson materials and filing things away. Kids love to organize.
Not all solutions are technology-based. Brother International says two-thirds of us spend at least half an hour each week looking for lost digital items. Letting things pile up on your desk (or digital desktop) is a sure-fire way to lose things you’ll need. Here are a few tips to clear the clutter from your physical desktop.
Bonus: Collaborate with other teachers online
Some teachers harness the power of lesson planning sites to save time. Use your PLN to gain ideas, tips, resources, strategies, webinars for teachers, and more.
Reference: https://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/8-ways-teachers-save-time-classroom/?fbclid=IwAR3y6EyLE58o97W-cz_Q7ZcGhazFs8lf00dMh4ae2misfBqh5olkSxBY9i0
This was true before the pandemic. Now? I could be given an extra 14 hours each day and still not have enough time. Teachers don’t have enough time to grade. We don’t have enough time to plan. We don’t have enough time to eat. Heck, we don’t have enough time to pee. Please help.
One reason teachers never have enough time is because we spend a lot of hours in meetings. Please be judicious with our time. Keep staff meetings short and to the point. Don’t be afraid to ask the teacher who always has more questions to speak to you after the meeting. Better yet? Forgo the meeting and shoot us an email.
It never ends. The emails, the extracurricular activities, staffing the concessions stand, the grading. Late at night when the words on the page begin to blur, we pour ourselves into bed, only to get to school early the next morning. We know there’s not much you can do to change this, but recognition and appreciation go a long way.
No teacher is going to pass up the opportunity to tell their principals their favorite snack in hopes of seeing it turn up at a meeting. If you want to lure us to meetings, bribe us with food. But at this point in the year, could you please shelve the ice breakers and team-bonding activities until we have a little more mental bandwidth?
If you add something new to my plate, take something off. My plate is now more like a platter, and even that’s overflowing. Something’s gotta give, and I’m afraid that when I finally do drop a ball, you’ll reprimand me without realizing how heavy my load is.
When parents and community members come barging into your office with complaints, please back me up. When I send a student to the office for not wearing a mask correctly or texting in class, please back me up. Please don’t override my grades or give in to every squeaky wheel.
Most administrators I know talk out of both sides of their mouth on this one. On one hand, we must hold our students to rigorous standards, but on the other, low grades make the school look bad. I can’t do both things without compromising my integrity somewhere.
Please remember how much of our own, unpaid overtime we devote to this job. When teachers finally decide to step away from school responsibilities to prioritize family or self-care, don’t make us feel guilty for doing so.
As foot soldiers in a school, we see things from a perspective that is different than yours. We have valuable insight to contribute to decisions being made at the building level. Include us at the table where decisions are being made – a smoother rollout of any change is guaranteed if teachers are aware of the changes, and staff buy-in is stronger if we feel that our voices are being heard.
This is the principal version of a subtweet. The admin notices a staff member isn’t following a policy and wants to issue a correction, but instead of pulling that staff member aside and talking with them directly, the principal sends an all-staff email. You know who the email is aimed at. We know who the email is aimed at. The only person who doesn’t? The one person you should have talked to directly in the first place.
No offense, but unless this is literally your first year as an administrator, you have no idea what we are going through. Your classroom days were pre-pandemic, and this, folks, is a whole new ballgame. The kids are exhausted. So are we. Everyone is stressed all the time. This is not sustainable, and we need your support now more than ever.
One of the greatest gifts an administrator ever gave me was the opportunity to go observe other teachers in my building. My principal taught my classes for half the day while I got to do some on-the-ground PD. We know you have classroom experience, but we wonder if you’ve forgotten the day-to-day demands placed on a teacher. And let us tell you principals, doing this is a win-win for everyone.
We all have ideas, pet projects, or petty annoyances. What I wouldn’t give for an administrator to come to me, sit down, and ask, “How can I help?” Many of the things on my list are small and manageable with some support, but they would go a long way toward improving my classroom quality of life.
Professional development is great – if it’s the right kind. Many teachers understand the “flavor of the month” element of PD and this tends to give us whiplash. Instead of bringing in the latest and greatest, ask us what we would like training in. I guarantee that most of us relish the chance to be students for a change, but we want to feel like our learning is relevant. We would love to tell principals exactly what tools we need to help our students and ourselves succeed.
No one goes into teaching for the money. We are here because we love this job. And we love the kids. We are educated, trained professionals with the students’ best interests at heart. Please trust us to do our jobs.
In the end, teachers want to work with our administrators to build a better school community for the
students and families we serve. The way forward is mutual trust and respect. We’re all in this together.
Reference: https://www.boredteachers.com/post/what-we-could-tell-principals?fbclid=IwAR2h9I1HQ-3sZVD9m2YlJaiF2i5SUXQ9a-9DzVKEBGNTJlIUwga1wzk_6pI