One of my greatest fears as a teacher is stagnation. This is a challenge in our profession
because there is great satisfaction in achieving mastery of a lesson or unit, only
needing to make minor tweaks and adjustments from year to year. My first principal, Sister Liam, recommended
that at the end of every year I throw out all the lesson plans I had created
and start from scratch again in the fall.
While I never had the guts to do that exactly, her advice instilled a
willingness on my part to be flexible and open to reinvention in my
instruction. So when Hayley asked me
last spring if I would be open teaching three sections of blended English this
year, I saw it as a great opportunity to get knocked out of my comfort
zone.
Over the summer I took an online class through Stanford on
blended teaching and read as much as I could absorb without feeling overwhelmed. One thing I realized early on is that a
blended class has many different appearances, and that it is important to
create a model that works for a particular school, subject and student
population. My starting point for creating
my own blended classes was to ask the question, “What problems in my current
classes can a blended model improve?”
Often in education, we are pummeled with possibilities for what we can implement
into our classes, but it is essential to identify the problems first before looking
for solutions. After a bit of
reflection, I realized that there are two primary issues that I believe blended
English classes can address.
Issue One: The Bell Schedule
Last week I was sitting at the library desk working with
Joan when the bell rang. There are some
locations around our school, the library desks being one, where that jarring metallic
thought scrambler is especially amplified.
Throughout a seven period day, the bell rings 16 times, each one an
indication that our students should stand up, shift their attention and move on
to something entirely different. This
mass Pavlovian response to the ringing of a bell has always struck me as one of
the most unnatural behaviors exhibited in schools.
Throughout the day, students continually enter the realm of
the next class, and teachers, like me, often feel that every one of those
forty-five minutes is essential.
Sometimes I can get so caught up in my own content that it becomes a
challenge to have empathy, or even recognition, for my students’ challenge of
pivoting from trig identities to a rhetorical analysis to an overview of
mercantilism, on and on until they get home and have piles of homework awaiting them. I
cannot think of any professions (with the exception of teacher) that require
such a halting, fragmented pace. These
days are exhausting for me, and I at least have the benefit of teaching the
same subject all day. While I still
believe that it is in our students’ best interest to learn a breadth of
subjects in school, the reality is that our current schedule allows for limited
cohesion in their learning.
A blended model can address this issue. My students meet twice a week, and complete
the online assignments on their own time.
They are not required to do English work during the class period that
our days do not meet. This way, if they
want to work on their chemistry homework during third period because it is still
fresh in their minds, they have the freedom to do so. Or, they can even take a break if they need
to refresh after a challenging test. The
flexibility in schedule afforded by blended classes allows students more autonomy
in their learning. They can identify how
they work best instead of trying to fit within a uniform time model. Much like college, and careers, they are
expected to complete rigorous work, but are self-determining in how to pace
themselves.
Issue Two: The Challenge of Teaching Revisions and Differentiated Writing Instruction
One of the most important skills that I try to impart in my
students is to understand that writing is a process.
Good writers understand this and are not
afraid of what Anne Lamott calls “Shitty First Drafts.”
In fact, this blog entry originated with an
island conceit, blended classes being the island and me being some sort of intrepid
explorer.
I’m ashamed to admit that there
was even a message in a bottle for a draft or so.
Thankfully I have enough good sense to
identify my own garbage writing and vaporize it with the delete button.
My students are still learning this though,
and sometimes struggle differentiating between their best ideas and their still
“emerging” ideas.
With the stress of
deadlines and their own procrastination, they often shoot for good enough in
their written work.
It is challenging to
get them to accept that deleting sentences that have already been written and
saved can actually be a step forward in their compositions.
I encourage, and often require, my students to go through a
process of prewriting activities that usually follows a course of brainstorming,
finding evidence and organizing before beginning to write. I tell them that they should write drafts of
their work and I encourage them to come meet with me to discuss the progress of
their essays. Some do, but many do
not. I would love to collect rough
drafts and offer individualized feedback before they turn in their final
drafts, but with the number of students I have this is logistically
impossible. I can either offer
superficial feedback, or get the drafts back days later when my students’
momentum and enthusiasm has fizzled. Not
to mention that I generally prefer sleeping at night over reading essays.
While a blended class is no panacea in and of itself, I am
trying to use the schedule to improve my instruction of the writing
process. My English 4 Blended students
are currently writing an essay on The
Glass Castle, and I am requiring that they meet with me for personal
writing conferences so that we can discuss their progress. Next week, my classes will meet on Monday as
usual then the other days are broken up into forty minute increments. During each time period I will have about six
to eight students in my class working on their essays and meeting with me to
discuss the drafts of the work that they have submitted so far. My hope is that not only does this reinforce
the idea of writing being a process, but that I can offer individualized
instruction to each student so that I can address their various skill levels.
At the risk of another overwritten blog post, I want to conclude
by articulating a few takeaways from my early days of teaching blended classes.
1. Planning is totally transformed. Instead of thinking week to week and filling
days with activities, I realize that I must plan long term in my blended
classes. This has forced me to put the
end of unit assessments and learning objectives in the forefront of my
planning, and create activities that build towards those goals. This has made me think, what are the specific
learning objectives in any given English class?
We all want our students to get better at writing, reading and critical
thinking, but how do we specifically deconstruct those skills?
2. There is less student contact in a blended
class. As a teacher who understands the
salesmanship required in convincing students that they should want to read
literature and write essays (despite their strongest inclinations otherwise) I
have always made a concerted effort to connect to my students. I’m a mostly mellow dude in life, but I know
how to ratchet up the swag during class.
I make an effort to talk to a few different students every day, ask them about their lives
outside of class and show them that I am invested in all of them as people, not just students. When I
only see them twice a week, it is challenging to build that rapport, and it
sometimes feels like we spend too much time going over a checklist of the work
that they are going to be completing online.
3. I need to improve my online presence. I am someone who uses technology minimally in
my personal life – I have never even had a Facebook account. So this is a bit of a steep learning curve
for me because I need to find ways to be present online. So far, I have learned the importance of
giving feedback to work submitted online promptly, and I sometimes participate
in online class discussions. I am also trying to contribute regularly to our department blog to get a sense of the type of online work that I ask my students to do. But I am a
novice and am open to any suggestions that anyone can offer.
On the first day of my blended classes, I told my students
that I will fail sometimes this year. My
approach is to be attentive, open myself to new ideas, push my ego aside and
learn from my mistakes. I tell my A.P. Language students over and over
again, it is necessary to write bad essays to learn how to write better ones. Growth mindset is not just for students – it
also needs to be embraced and modeled by teachers.
