Category Archives: Phil Miller

Surrounded by Experts

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Sometimes our school focus on collaboration has felt like an added pressure, a box to check or a goal to complete. When asked to be intentional about collaboration and include it in my goals, I have sometimes felt that I am trying to force something to happen. Who will I collaborate with within my department? What about across departments? How do our subjects align or complement each other? How can we help students make connections?

    At the beginning of this year I created goals to help me collaborate effectively. My most collaboration-centric goal focused on my teaching of the Frosh Wellness: Mind, Body, Spirit course, which requires intense, daily work between religious studies and kinesiology. While I have been focusing a great deal on effective collaboration for the Frosh Wellness course, I have also found myself collaborating in surprising ways. 

    This year I have taken advantage of the fact that I am surrounded by experts in their fields. For those who may not know, this is my 8th year at Carondelet, but my first year full time teaching. As you can imagine, this new role has brought about new challenges and opportunities. I teach 3 sections of the junior religious studies course, Symbols & Ethics. The two central focuses of this course are Sacraments and social ethics. The students learn about the 7 sacraments, as well as topics such as sustainability and the environment, abortion, poverty, hunger, immigration, racism, the criminal justice system, sexism and a variety of other topics that impact our world today. My background is in theology and yet I find myself touching on climate (the environment), art (sacraments & spirituality), biology (abortion), economics (poverty & hunger), globalization & politics (immigration) and the list goes on and on. With every social/ ethical topic that we cover we look at 

Sacred Scripture – What does the Bible have to say about this topic?
  1. Sacred Tradition – What does the Catholic Church have to say about this topic?
  2. Logic/ Science/ Reason – What can we learn about this topic from experts and from the world around us?
  3. Personal Experience – What experiences have you had that impact your understanding of this topic? (Example: Your race may impact how you understand racism)
  4. When teaching #3 – What science and experts in the field can teach us about a particular topic – I have found myself seeking out colleagues for help. When I taught about our responsibility to care for all of God’s creation, I sought Susan Domanico and Michelle Koshi for help. I had the students research environmental concerns and write advocacy letters to people in positions of power (politicians, CEOs of companies, etc). Susan helped me come up with a list of potential environmental concerns and gave me an extensive list of resources. Similarly, Michelle, connected me with a number of online resources based on the different topics that students would be researching. Susan’s knowledge of environmental science and Michelle’s competency in library science empowered me to teach with greater confidence and depth. 

    When I taught the Sacrament of baptism, I wanted to incorporate religious art to highlight the important symbols and theological themes of baptism. I reached out to Andrew Kjera and he was able to come into my class to share a guest-lecture on symbolism within religious art. The students were then invited to create a piece of art using Sketchbook (an app that I was not familiar with, but that Andrew recommended), to express their personal connection to the themes of baptism through symbols. The outcome was tremendous! See a few examples below…

    When teaching about Hunger, students watched a documentary called “A Place at the Table,” which tells the story of hunger in the United States. The documentary touched on US agricultural policies and farm subsidies. Knowing very little about this topic, I sought out Mitch for conversation. Our short conversation in room 26 during break helped prepare me to tackle this topic in class. Similarly, when teaching about poverty, I wanted to touch on income inequality, and taxes. I went to Christina Leveque who teaches Financial Algebra with my questions and after a brief conversation felt ready to include these topics in my lesson. 

    I have brainstormed best practices to help students think critically about assigned reading with Michael Schooler. Phil Miller and I have talked about the history of labor unions in the United States (my class studied labor unions as part of our unit on the Dignity of Work)… and the list goes on and on. 

    If you are like me, you may feel slightly intimidated by the culture of collaboration at Carondelet. However, I have began to overcome my apprehension to collaborate by recognizing the great resource that my colleagues are to me. Collaboration is not a forced goal to achieve, but instead begins with an acceptance of the gift of my colleagues – experts in their field, thoughtful and eager to share what they know. Any time I have asked colleagues about their area of expertise I am always humbled by their willingness to share their knowledge and time. They are excited about their subject and have such great insights and ideas. I have truly learned so much from these mini collaborations that have taken place this year and will continue to seek out the expertise of my colleagues in the future. 

    I’m wondering – what kind of mini collaborations have taken place for others this year? Who has helped you understand a topic with greater depth or brought expertise to your curriculum that has enriched your classroom? 

The case for not grading final exams

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There is talk around Carondelet about the value of final exams. Rather than a mere rehash of what students learned during the semester, final exams should have the potential of elevating students to a higher plane of learning. A great final exam gives students the opportunity to synthesize the most important ideas they have learned and apply those ideas in new contexts.

Although final exams are a very useful culminating activity, I hate grading them. So, I would like to propose an alternative.

Here are two reasons why students should grade their own final exams:

  1. Evaluating your own performance is the ultimate metacognitive activity. Students could complete an extra assignment after their final exam that leads them through a metacognitive process. Students will be required to justify their final exam grade through a number of criteria. Students will continue to learn even after the final exam!
  2. At least in my classes where I give lots of assignments and tests throughout the semester, final exam scores rarely influence the student’s semester grade. Is this the case in your classes? If so, then why should we grade those exams? In the self-grading scenario, teachers grade only the final exams that move a student’s semester grade up or down.
Please respond to this post if you think I should (or not) pilot this new grading system.

Shadowing Ellen Bezanson

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I highly recommend playing the role of a student at Carondelet. Matter of fact, I’d like to do it again with yet another student to get even more perspective. Here are my takeaways:

  • Stress (or lack thereof): Ellen had an easy schedule that particular day, so I was fooled into believing that school is an easy, enjoyable gig. We had two subs, including one study hall. We ended the day with yoga, where I was able shake off the cobwebs and work on my downward dog and corpse pose. Ellen and other students said they liked to end the day with a relaxing class such as yoga. I was also talking to Annie Raines who was in that class, who was off to then do her cross country and jump in to her 5-AP-homework-evening.
  • Sitting: During 1st period French, I regressed back to my own teenager days — remembering how difficult it is to focus in class when I’m not doing the work. Perhaps students are desensitized to this way of learning and have gotten use to it as a way of life. I did notice throughout the day that there was a variety of activities; lecture, group work, quiz, class discussion. Group work was practiced in almost every class.
  • Why students learn: While we were waiting for Science to begin, I was reflecting on Amanda Jain’s wall graphic showing why math has real-world relevance. I asked a group of four girls in the science class the question: Why does our educational system require students to learn math? The intent of my question was not to challenge the nobility and importance learning math, but to see if students understand the relevancy of what they are learning in school. I was hoping they would say things like: to teach us how to reason, think, learn process, learn logic or how to solve problems, etc. The girls had no idea why they were studying math since they had no interest in pursuing any math-related career. They contrasted this with the relevancy of English classes where they have the opportunity to create and share their own ideas about humanistic topics. To be even-handed about this, students should understand the relevance of all the subjects learned in school…my opinion.
  • Boys: Also in French class, I heard that Ellen and her two study partners had a clarification question but were too unwilling to raise their hand and ask. I decided myself to be bold, and tell the teacher the girls had a question. The girls then had no problem asking the question. I also noticed that the boys and girls all segregated themselves into gender-specific groups with the exception of one girl. Later in the week, I asked Anne Bossert about this phenomenon and she said the boys did have a quieting influence on the girls in this class. I find that true in most of my classes as well. Are the presence of the boys a negative influence on the girls? If so, how can our female students learn to be more self expressive when boys are present? How can we as teachers enable them to tap into their own self confidence, boys or no boys?

What makes a GREAT thesis statement?

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I was able to quickly and efficiently get the best thesis statement from each of my two AP US History classes. We write individual thesis statements, then group, then whole class, then reflect/analyze the best written statements.

  1. I project an essay prompt on the LCD. Each student writes a thesis statement. 
  2. Students are placed in groups to choose the best thesis statement in their group, revise, and then to scribe that revised thesis statement into a Google Doc. I then have 4-5 of the best thesis statements in each class.
  3. Each class votes on the best thesis statement from the other class to mitigate home bias.
  4. The next day we had a whole class discussion in each class on why the students voted for those particular thesis statements.

Wealth of Nations Gallery Walk

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The objective of this activity is for students to understand several of Smith’s concepts, each defining the basis of a free market economy. Four “stations” were set up; one in each corner of the classroom which had an 11×17″ poster with a different excerpt from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations set in 48 point text.

I placed my economics students into teams of 4 students. Each team would visit all 4 stations and work together to summarize the key point of the excerpt into one or two sentences. Teams typed in their summaries into Google Docs which I reviewed with the entire class and chose the most accurate summaries. Smith’s language is difficult to interpret, and the team approach made it more accessible for the students. They liked the process of reviewing each other’s summary and finding out which team had the most accurate interpretation. You can do this procedure with any DBQ or set of primary sources.