#WmChamberlain

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Help Daraja Academy Provide Education for Girls in Kenya

I grew up and now teach in very poor, rural community. In a nation of the very advantaged my students have less than most. Many of my students benefit from social programs provided by the government as well as charity provided by our local community.

As a youth pastor I am painfully aware of how a few dollars can make a huge difference in the lives of families that just can't quite make it to the next paycheck. I see the struggles families have that are always on the brink of financial ruin, with the only real safety net the kindness of others in our community.

I know many of you are also a witness to similar situations in your schools and in your communities. I understand that charity begins at home.

Over the past few years I have become very aware of the world outside of the city limits of my small town. Many of you have made me reconsider many of my thoughts and priorities. You have shown me that sharing and caring no longer should be contained in a classroom, it needs to extend throughout the world.

Now I am asking you to help out some children that live outside

of our communities, outside of our countries.

The Darja Academy is an all girls secondary boarding school in Kenya. The school offers opportunities for girls to get an education and empowers them to fight their way out of the poverty they live in. Now Darja has an opportunity to raise funds through Nike's Girl Effect. If you donate any amount to Darja you will give them a vote that may put them in the top six candidates. Not only will the money you donate be used to help educate their students, if they get enough votes they will have receive a huge publicity boost.

I am going to donate because I know that although charity begins at home it should not end there.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

The Don'ts of Attending EdCampKC

My first visit EdCampKC was a powerful, yet painful experience. While I am wistfully viewing all the excitement that is the anticipation of the next camp I want to share with you my thoughts. Typically I would join the other posts and give you advice on what to do while you are there, but not this time. This time I am going to tell you what not to do.

Do not attend an unconference with the sole intention of learning about new tools you can use in your classroom. Edcamps are not about tools, they are about sharing ways to become better teachers. Sharing with others will help make personal connections.

Do not attend an unconference and attend a session each time one is offered. Gather a few of the other attendees, find a quit place, and get to know each other. Make personal connections.

Do not attend an unconference sit quietly in the back. This is not a time to be a shy guy or gal. Make a point of introducing yourself to others. Join in conversations, make personal connections. Smile!

Do not attend an unconference and plan to leave immediately when it is over. Take some time and sit with others and reflect on what you have learned. Go out to dinner with them and make personal connections.

You have an incredible opportunity to become more than the teacher behind that blog, or the face behind that Twitter account. You have the opportunity to do something that most teachers don't have, the opportunity to find people that are truly passionate about what you are passionate about. This brings me to the last don't. Don't blow it.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Today Was A Good Day: Student Innovation

Lakin decided to create a paper model for her Explorers PowerPoint. She sketched the idea for each slide on paper so that she could organize it and tweak it before she created her presentation. Because she had already organized her pages and received the feedback she needed she managed to put her presentation together in just a few minutes. Instead of spending time on the computer making decisions about what information to include and how she should organize it, she focused on finding great pictures to emphasize her points (to the point of not even needing text on some slides!)

This was not a technique that Lakin was taught, she thought of it on her own (or maybe she had heard about it somewhere else but forgot.) Ours students can and will learn without us (sometimes despite us). I wonder if sometimes I am more of a roadblock than an expressway on their learning journey. Below Lakin explains what she did and what she learned.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Are You Afraid to Ask Your Students What They Are Learning?

When I ask my students simple questions like "What are you learning?" I often get answers I do not expect. One of the problems I have as a social person is that I tend to think everyone thinks the same way I do and at the same time. I don't seem to "get it" when I get an answer different than one I expect.

When I ask these questions below, I was expecting specific answers. At the very least I would assume the answers would be similar, but they are not. Typically my reaction is to immediately "correct" them so that they parrot back the information to me.

Is it really fair to tell students what they are learning? When we ask the question do we have the right to not like the answer? In this case, I don't think the questions are too difficult for them to understand. I do think that some of the students were trying to give me the answer they thought I wanted, but obviously not all did that. Should I try to give them the answer or at least lead them to what I want them to say?

I am not sure that me telling them what they learned will actually translate into what they actually learned. I am also not sure I have the right to discount what they are learning because it isn't what I want.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Why I Require My Students to Blog

In a perfect world children would have access to all information, tools to create whatever their hearts desire, and the time to explore every whim and fancy that takes them. Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world. Adults have to make choices about what children must learn and (very often) how they will learn it. Because of this, I require my students to blog.

Blogging allows students the opportunity to write to a larger audience. I will not use the word authentic because I believe that students often write for their teachers, which would make that writing authentic to them. I don't want my students writing solely to me, they need to be able to communicate with a much larger, varied audience. I will not be their lifelong interpreter. While there is no guarantee that posting words on the internet will ever garner an audience, I can guarantee that the community of learners in my control will be viewing these writings and (with a bit of coaching/begging) leaving comments that are meant to create conversations.

Conversations are critical to blogging. While there are some who don't mind writing words only they will read, most of us have an inborn desire to have someone respond to our ideas. One-way conversations are an anathema to us whether they are done verbally or in writing. We need the opportunity to share our wants, needs, desires, hopes, dreams, and fears as much as we need the opportunity to have others share them with us. A blog post that doesn't create a conversation is a sad thing indeed.

Students need the opportunity, as well as the time, to develop conversations with their writing. To create online relationships that can enrich both their thoughts and their self esteem. No longer should they be required to languish in unfulfilling relationships created solely because of where they live. Their passions are shared by others who can be reached by carving out spaces online and searching for others doing the same.

As the adult, lead learner if you must, I know these things to be true and because of that, I must require my students to blog!

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

A Better Way to Learn and Teach Vocabulary

In Marzano's Classroom Instruction That Works there is a section that explains how the use of visual representations of words help student recall them. This makes a lot of sense since it requires students to create a picture in their brain that is then attached to both the word and its definition.

The way I approach this in the classroom is to:

Write the word on the board.
Draw a picture of what the word reminds me of or means to me.
Explain why I drew that picture.

At this point the students have a reasonable idea of the definition. They have also had a picture (poorly drawn of course) that represents both the word and its definition. Then the students are expected to:

Create their own pictures which are not the same as what I drew. This requires them to use their own idea. This means they have two pictures that represents the word and its definition.
Write their own definitions in their own words. Notice I do not write a definition for them to copy. The student either infers the definition from my explanation or they may look the definition up from another source. The important part here is for the student to make the definition "theirs" by using their own words, not copying.

This is a learning activity and needs to be addressed in that way. I explain to my students that learning their vocabulary takes effort. Copying definitions or matching words with definitions will not help them learn, they need time to reflect and create using the words.

Please note, I am taking a "grade" on this activity this year. While I would much prefer the students do this activity because they see the value, my school district requires two grades from each core class each week. I do not give grades for the students' "right or wrong" definitions. If they do the work (and it is very obvious if they do) they get "credit".

Where is the proof this works?

I have to fall back on anecdotal evidence to make my case here. I was extremely frustrated for a long time with some of my students lack of success with our standardized reading tests. Many of my ESL students had a very difficult time being successful remembering what the 5-8 vocabulary words they had to study.

At some point I stumbled upon the section in Classroom Instruction That Works that addressed learning vocabulary and I jumped on it. After implementing this new activity my students that historically scored poorly on the vocabulary portion of the reading tests immediately improved.

I did some "debriefing" of these students to see why they thought they were more successful. They attributed it to extra work they were doing with the drawing and defining. They felt (best word I have to describe it) that it worked for them. The only difference in the way vocabulary was approached in my class was through this activity, the students were still required to do the traditional worksheets they had been doing.

When I reflected on the activity I decided there were three possible reasons for the increased scores on the assessment:

The new activity worked.
Having to spend more time working with the words worked.
A combination of extra time and the activity worked.

Since I wasn't writing a research paper, I decided that the reason this activity was successful didn't matter. The fact that it was successful was all the reason I needed to continue having my students use the technique.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Everybody Needs a Back-Up Plan

There has been a lot of chatter about Missouri Senate Bill 54 that goes into effect at the end of this month. (I have been one of the most outspoken) but as my friend Kyle Pace so eloquently expressed; What's Done is Done. Since I am a problem solver I decided to create a back-up plan for my students this year. What do you think?

Thursday, June 23, 2011

What I Learned This Year

My homeroom students on the last day of school.

Here we go again...3 years later and we're still going strong. There were a lot of new and exciting changes for me this year that I have not experienced in the past. This was my first year to teach at the same school for more than one year, it was my first experience as a head coach, first experience coaching cross country, and it was also my first experience as a computer applications teacher. With this many changes in my professional career there was plenty of valuable experiences that I have learned from this year which makes this end of the year reflection that much more easy. Let's do this, here is my reflective post for year three.

Know Who Your Boss Is

As a teacher I find myself doing quite a bit of people pleasing on a daily basis...however, the major issue with this is that it becomes very easy to get wrapped up in what people think of you. If you are not careful you can become completely consume with trying to please some many individuals that sometimes your own students get left out of the picture. It is very important that remember the reason that we got in the business in the first place, the kids.

Our decision making process should always be student centered and not centered around pleasing adults.

Students always need to be our primary focus and we should really consider how are we serving those students...rather than how are we serving our administration. Furthermore, it is very important to keep in mind that whatever may be going on in your professional or personal life that your students deserve our complete attention and that we should never let the extrinsic factors affect our performance for our students.

Don't Expect Others to be as Excited About Change as You Are

I've mentioned before in my writings that I am very much an optimist and I try to maintain a positive outlook. In the past I have never seen my optimism as being a fault, but this year I was shown that it can create barriers in the teaching profession. I'm the type of person that really enjoys professional development sessions...not because of the time off from work, but rather for the quality of the material being presented (assuming it's a quality presentation). However, this year I really started to take notice to the naysayers that exist in PD session. You know the type, the ones that sit in the back of the room and constantly check their Facebook status and often mutter under their breath "this will never work". I have never understand these people and I suppose I never will because it seems that they never give new ideas a fighting chance...and I'm quite the opposite. I'm the one who is in the opposite corner geeking the new ideas that are being presented. I guess the moral of this lesson is that you cannot allow others to stifle your own excitement and joy that you experience in teaching or any other facet of life for that matter. I feel like the teaching landscape is full of individuals that once had a fire and excitement for the profession but somewhere along the way they joined the darkside. You have to embody the aspects of teaching that you enjoy and not allow others to influence or steer you away from that.

Don't be Afraid to be an Outsider

Along the same lines of the previous topic, if you are planning on being true to yourself and not falling in line with the rest of the crowd then you cannot be afraid to be an outsider. There have seldom been moments in my teaching career where I have felt like I fit in...and to be quite honest I'm okay with that. I have never been a person that excels in social situations and I tend to focus a lot of my time and efforts at school to basically hanging out with my students and not the adults in my buildings. However, I would much rather be the person that is an outsider because of my focus on my students than someone that seeks approval from other teachers in my building.

I'm very happy with the teacher that I have become.

I play my music way too loud, I eat my lunch with students and not in the teacher's lounge, I enjoy being connected to my students through blogging and social media, and I enjoy being immature. It took me a while before I was comfortable with not fitting in with the rest of the crowd but I realized that my common core of beliefs were important to me and that I needed to be myself and not worry about the perception that others have of me.

Don't Touch The Keyboard

The one teacher that I do speak to on a daily basis is Mrs. Barron...otherwise known as my classroom mom. She is the one go to person that I have for everything and this year she shared with me some excellent advice. She explained to me that while she worked for a airline as a tech support trainer, one of the main points that they instilled in their employees was to never touch the keyboard when training an employee. The idea is that if you touch the keyboard and take over the task that they are not trying to learn than they will never learn how to do it on their own and you end up doing all the work. This is very applicable in teaching as well. Often times when we are teaching a task to a student and they are having difficulties completing the particular task, it is very easy to take over and basically do the work for them...because we can always do it better. However, the major issue with this is that if we do the work for the students then they will never fully master the skills. No matter how difficult it may be we must resist the urge to take control of the keyboard.

This means that our students will struggle a little bit in the front end but it will help them excel in the end game.

Don't Get Comfortable

The biggest fear each teacher should have is becoming comfortable. Now that I'm moving into my fourth year of teaching and my second year I'm starting to realize that things are not near as hard as they use to be...planning, grading, instructing, and all my teacherly duties have become more routine as I have gained experience.

While routines are good in the sense they allow me to be more effective, they can also be bad because they can foster apathy.

This year I have really been fearful of turning into a teacher that has become very comfortable to the point of coasting through their daily work. I began to pick up new tasks that would challenge me and prevent me from developing routines. I found myself joining committees that I would have never volunteered for in the past and picking up PD sessions that sounded somewhat interesting. The whole goal here was to not become stagnant and to keep moving my professional career in a forward motion. Teaching itself is a very comfortable job that offers security...and often times comfort and security does not create an atmosphere that highly motivated individuals. However, we cannot afford to be passive in education; we need to be willing to be "movers and shakers" and be advocates for the changes that need to happen in our schools. The teaching profession needs individuals that are passionate and willing to exceed the demands of the traditional 8-3 teaching format...is this not an achievable goal?

Mr. McClung

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