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I’m so glad you asked 
This year in addition to teaching 7th and 8th grade history and an Upper School US History class, I will be the ITF for the middle school history department. ITFs (that stands for Instructional Technology Facilitators) are part of the newly formed ITT (Instructional Technology Team) at our school. It’s a new way of organizing instructional technology support. On one level it felt a little awkward to be asked to “re-introduce” myself to colleagues I see virtually every day, but I suspect that my role will be similar to what I’ve done without a title in the past- helping people think about ways to use technology to enhance student learning and supporting them in that use. (I think it’s important to pause here to note that anything I do know about technology is the result of hundreds of conversations- with our former Instructional Technology Director and colleagues and with educators on Twitter and at conferences. I’m deeply grateful for the ways they’ve helped me learn.)
At the beginning of my time during the department meeting today, I emailed department members a Microsoft OneNote page with pictures of some wacky looking 19th century inventions and asked them to guess the purpose of these pieces of technology from a prior century. (You can take a similar quiz on this BBC site.) We talked about how some of the inventions were precursors to modern day technology. The telautograph, for example, might be considered an early form of a fax machine. Some of the inventions, such as the hat tipper, were examples of innovation that we no longer use today.
After that, department members filled out the following form. (Click on the image to view the full form.) It asked them to identify one way they’d incorporated digital tech that was working well and why they thought this was the case, one thing they’d thought about using digital tech for but hadn’t and what was hindering them, and how they thought an ITF might support their work in the classroom.
I projected their responses, and we briefly talked about them. One department member noted that she’d used Dipity successfully in Language Arts and looked forward to trying it out in World Cultures. One of the other faculty members asked what Dipity was, so we took a brief detour to look at one of the timelines an Upper School student in my class made last year. Other teachers mentioned creation and curation of video and the use of wikis for collaborative student work.
When it came to things they’d like to use digital tech to help benefit student learning, members listed ideas from increased opportunities for presentation to spaces for student reflection. In some cases, these ideas had been hindered by a lack of know-how and in other cases, equipment needs (lack of mini-projectors) had kept him from trying out the idea. They suggested that an ITF could be useful to them by helping them imagine places where technology might be used to enhanced student learning in ways they hadn’t previously imagined and consulting regarding current projects and ideas.
At the end of what I had planned, one of the department members said, “So, what was that site we just used?” which led to a quick intro to Google Forms. We talked about the possibility of using them for student feedback on units and as exit slips. What I loved about that conversation is that it emerged organically (although I’ll admit I was secretly hoping that someone would be curious enough to ask 
), rather than being “I will now offer a workshop on Google Forms.”
At the end of my portion of the meeting, one of the department members said, “Thanks, Meredith. You’ve helped me already.” That seemed like a good start to the year.
Students in our history classes are working on creating exhibits for the Museum of World Cultures, which we hold on the last day of school. Each section will take one of the cultures we’ve studied and create a theme room with exhibits designed to teach visitors (parents, siblings, friends, teachers, and administrators) about the culture. We’ve spent a couple days brainstorming about what students already know about the cultures and what more they’d like to learn.
Today was the day where the rubber needed to meet the road, so students could be ready to begin creating their physical displays and digital interactives. Students had been divided into groups focusing on aspects of life which cross cultures, such as communications, government, and social structure. In general, I’d heard students discussing interesting and exciting ideas, but I had some concern about the logistical feasibility of several of the ideas. While I wanted to give the students the freedom to fail and experiment, I also wanted to help them think through their ideas as clearly as possible.
At the beginning of class, I decided to ask each of the groups to come up with a simple 1-2 minute “pitch” for their portion of the room display. After each group offered their ideas, the other members of the class would respond with promises the saw in the ideas and potential pitfalls. I had no idea if this would ferret out the ideas that I was pretty sure were going to be problematic, but I figured if it didn’t work, I could always “pull a teacher” and tell them that they needed to come up with something else.
The results were encouraging. Coming up with a pitch forced groups to clarify their thinking and their classmates added ideas to improve exhibits. Some groups agreed that they would toss out questions to the class as a way of settling disagreements they were having. I was really impressed by the thoughtful praise and respectful critiques students offered each other. Groups who had ideas that I’d been concerned about (for example, a nativity play for the Christianity exhibit in the World Religions room) came to the realization after hearing the concerns of their classmates that they should probably go in a different direction. I think some of them had a bit of a hard time letting go of their ideas, but it was nothing like the resistance students have put up in the past when I’ve told them they weren’t allowed to do something and ultimately, they were the ones who made the choice.
Today’s class has me thinking about feedback and critique and who we are best able to hear it from. Often, it’s not the person in charge.
I want to reflect on this (and the other reflections from students who taught the class) in a future post, but for now I just wanted to share…
I learned that teachers actually have a really difficult job that they make look really easy because they do it all the time. I realized that they create lesson plans every night, and then teach class the next day. They always have to grade assignments and evaluate student participation. I think that by being able to teach a class you have to know ridiculous amounts about your area of study, and this is why people go to college to be teachers, so that they are able to teach classes on a certain subject. I’ve learned why teachers get so stressed about things being late, and it’s not just because they’re mean, it’s because they have so much to do and little time to do it.
Here’s to all of you who do it every day.
“Where would any of us be without teachers- without people who had passion for their art or their science or their craft and they loved it right in front of us?” -Mr. Rogers
Next year will bring a new set of preps for me. I’ll be teaching 7th and 8th grade (European and American) history. Moving to a new grade level team and a new set of classes was a tough choice. On one level is not that big of a change- same school, same general area (humanities), and same division- but this will be my fourth year teaching here and not one of those years has had the same set of preps.
I wrestled for the past three years with not loving the content I was primarily responsible for teaching. I think this in some ways was a useful experience. When you love the content that you’re teaching, there’s the danger of losing your capacity for empathetic imagination and thinking that all your students find [fill in the blank] as thrilling as you do. There were aspects of what I was teaching that I truly enjoyed, but I never felt so in love with it that I couldn’t understand why a kid might have difficulty caring about it. I think this fact also drove me to work harder and ask for help more often. Feeling totally at a loss for how to teach some aspects of the English curriculum drove me to the English Companion Ning, which has been an incredible resource for me over the past three years.
But when the opportunity came up to teach something I love, I decided to take it.
It’s tempting to think that a change of scenery will mean that everything that’s hard about teaching will disappear. If I can just find that magical set of preps or position, I will suddenly become a wunder-teacher who can pound out trimester narrative reports in two hours and never take any longer than overnight to grade papers. The anxiety that I feel when trying to teach writing won’t crop up in other places, and every project will be executed perfectly.
But I’m sure these things will follow me in some form or another, so I’ll keep chipping away at them. What’ll will also be coming along, though, is the love of history and story that drove me as a child to sneak into the bathroom and read biographies by the night light.
How you decide when it’s time to make a change? What has followed you through the changes?
The student-taught lessons are coming to an end in our US History class. After teaching, I asked students to reflect on the following questions. Below each question I’ve posted some of the student responses.
Did your lesson go according to your plan? If not, how did it vary? Was this a good or bad thing?
My lesson went pretty accurately to plan. There were a few times I needed to ad-lib due to the fact that some things took longer than I had anticipated. I did not get to send out the game I wanted everyone to play, and I did not get to show my video, but since the debate was going well, I asked another question for them to talk about because they seemed interested. It wasn’t necessarily a good or a bad thing, I just observed it as an obstacle that everyone is eventually going to need to overcome because not everything is always going to go according to plan.
My planned lesson ended up about 5 minutes early but I quickly thought up the idea of quizzing the students on “what food came first” based on the food timeline they had all looked at for their hw. Definitely ended up being a good thing, because it brought the class back to a more standard learning style (after the making of strawberry shortcakes), while still keeping the class fun and interactive.
The picture taking from the magazine took a lot longer than I had anticipated, so I didn’t get a chance to do the last couple of things I had planned. I don’t think this was good because the beginning was mostly reflection and I wanted to get into the video and scenarios.
Do you felt you engaged the students? How could you tell?
Sometimes engaging the students as difficult in the conversations because it wasn’t a very controversial topic. But I feel like I did a good job working with that, asked each person so say the major thing that hit them from the reading. Also, I think that giving every few people an event and putting it on the board in a timeline forced everyone to think and participate. I thought the game was a good way to participate as well.
Yes, I did. I felt like bringing candy was critical, primarily because when you announce people will be rewarded for their participation, it instantly spiked interest. Most of the people were talking during the debate that I started, which made me think that the people were interested in the topic I asked them to debate on. Also, people were talking and raising their hands whenever I asked questions, even though through the homework I learned that everyone did not particularly have an interest in baseball.
What would you do differently if you were to teach the lesson again?
First of all, I would have picked a topic that was more interesting to the class. Baseball was interesting to me, so it made the class very easy to teach, and made it possible for me to change the plans on the fly when something unexpected happened. I would have picked a topic that more of the class was interested in because it would have potentially led to more questions back to me, rather than just a couple of questions from the students, and a lot of questions from myself.
I would leave more time for discussion. I feel like that’s what everyone gets the most out of because it opens up different ideas and perspectives. This was also a topic that people are interested in talking about, so everyone was generally engaged during the discussion.
I would probably ask people to close their computers, because I realized they weren’t necessary, and was the source of some distractions. Also, I would try to figure out a way to bring more debate into the class.
What did you learn from teaching? How might you be able to apply this learning in other contexts?
I learned that teaching is a lot like putting on a play or a performance. Even though you are up there presenting to your friends and classmates, they mostly just stare blankly at their computers if you are not asking them direct questions. Teaching has to be difficult to constantly keep 16 and 17 year olds entertained for a block of time. I think i can apply this to other contexts when I am working with younger students for tutoring or volunteering and also in public speaking, be sure to keep the information straight forward and the important things at the beginning.
I learned that it is harder than expected to willingly engage everyone in a topic you find interesting. I also think that I learned that I need to directly ask questions to an individual and not the whole class. I think it gave me more respect to the difficulty that teachers have keeping a class engaged, especially when they are forced to teach on something that is particularly boring.
I learned that it is frustrating when people don’t listen or participate. From now on, I will definitely try more to minimize side conversations.
I learned that people are active when the topics are things that they are interested in, I could try to get people to relate to topics in various ways so that everyone can be engaged.
It’s pretty hard to keep everyone engaged unless the topic is really interesting. Also it’s necessary to keep debate going for the length of the whole period so that was a little challenging. I think being able to keep discussions going is important especially for job interviews and college interviews. They look for a person who is friendly and can keep a conversation, not someone who answers with one word.
Tonight I’m hosting a twitter #engchat on creating cross-curricular experiences in the English classroom. As someone who has had difficulty declaring loyalty to a single subject for most of my academic career and as someone who teaches both English and history, I’m deeply interested in creating experiences for students to learn outside of discipline-specific boxes.
Some questions to jump start the discussion:
- What benefits do you see to creating cross-curricular experiences? How do they enhance student learning?
- What are obstacles and logistical challenges to creating cross-curricular experiences? How have you successfully navigated these challenges?
- What tools have you used to facilitate cross-curricular experiences?
Feel free to join us on Twitter or to post your thoughts as a comment below. I’d also love if people would be willing to share links to projects and experiences they have successfully implemented.
