AVReading

We have this remarkable tendency to remember the things we like, and forget the things we don’t.  It’s a form of confirmation bias that, if it goes unchecked, ensures that we will likely make the same mistakes over-and-over again.               Though this cognitive bias did not have a name in his day, Charles Darwin was quite aware of this tendency.  In fact, to avoid the pitfalls of this mistake, he developed his own “golden rule” of reflection:  if there is contradictory or inconsistent data, immediately write it down.  In his own words, “I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favourable ones” (Darwin,1887).             I think this problem is magnified in the classroom, where we make so many decisions each day.  Sometimes to just survive, we have to forg...

  I had one of those days a few years back that really tested my resolve as a teacher.  We were about three weeks into the year, and my 5th hour, had been a pretty difficult group.  In working with my co-teacher, we were hoping to create an environment of engagement and collaboration versus one of submission and control.  But our attempts were proving to be ineffective.  On one particular day, I walked into the room to find a young woman wrapping the cord of the window blinds around her neck, a fellow classmate who then went into some type of anxiety triggered seizure, and a third student who felt the need to pull down his pants and reveal his underwear to the class.  When both my co-teacher and I returned to our room after dealing with seizures and pantslessness, we discovered that. . . the young woman who had been wrapping the cord around her neck had now locked us out of the room!  It was a moment of absolute absurdity. And my...

  For me, the idea of a reflective teacher used to conjure up images of a wizened-- yet pretentious-- English teacher, sipping tea, alone in a classroom with some classical musical playing in the background.  In part, I think this is due to the fact that we consider reflection and contemplation as something elitist.  The truth is, we don’t really have a lot of good role models for reflection.  For most of us, we likely never saw behind the curtains of our favorite teachers.  In fact, chances are we made most of our judgments about what makes a good teacher through the process of “apprenticeship through observation” or the process of constructing mental models of good and bad teaching simply by what we observed as we sat through years of schooling (Lortie, 1975).  The logic is that since we have not seen teachers reflect and think, we do not think it is important.  And since we do not think it is important. . . we don’t do it.  An...

  A few years back, we had a thoughtful administrator who opened up our faculty meeting with an image of a street sign.  On the pole with the street sign, the city had posted six or seven other notices and ordinances which seemed almost absurd.  In some cases, the message on one sign seemed to contradict other messages on the same pole.  The administrator used this as a metaphor for districts, schools, and teachers that are not thoughtful about their choices.               Making thoughtful choices, however, is not as easy as one might think, especially under the circumstances that we are often expected to perform.  There are so many different duties and expectations placed upon teachers, and our schedules are so compressed, that the spaces in which we teach can sometimes feel more like emergency rooms than classrooms.  Just as we catch our breath from one prep, we must mov...

       Back in March, a student came to me with the suggestion that we should do a unit related to Native American culture.  It was one of the few suggestions this student has made this year, so I jumped at the opportunity.  (It worked out well, since we typically change units every three weeks.  As long as I can find material for them to read and respond to, and as long as I pull in the standards to engage with those materials, we can study just about everything.)               Fortunately, we have an amazing wealth of resources in our building-- especially when it comes to incorporating Native American lessons and activities.  For starters, Lisa Turgeon’s monthly newsletters are filled with excellent lessons, units, and resources.  I have been able to lean heavily on her newsletters for videos, readings, and activities.  Equally as amazing has been ou...

  When I set out to do my doctoral study in 2009, I was convinced that the affordances of these new digital texts was going to level the playing field in our schools.  My theory was that much of our inequity in education had to do with access.  Students who could readily access the textbooks and information of schools would succeed, while those who did not would struggle.  Therefore, we just needed to make these texts more accessible to more students, and all students would have the means to do well.              I now realize that my thinking was, at best, a little incomplete.  The beauty of completing the dissertation was that I began to realize the complexity of the situation.  Not only did I come to the conclusion that our educational problems reached much farther than access to text, but that even the wonderful affordances of digital texts were not really all that wonderful...

              Even in the years before quarantine, we have seen a dramatic uptick in students who suffer from anxiety.  Researchers are unsure as to whether therapists have started diagnosing more people with it or whether other environmental or social conditions within our society have factored into the increase.  Additionally, we are diagnosing more students with trauma than ever before.  A 2007 study by Copeland et al. estimated that 2/3 rds of youth will experience at least one traumatic event by the age of 16.  The rate of change in our lives has also significantly complicated the problem as students today experience significant social and technological shifts in their lives.               Schools have never been an absolute safe harbor for every student.  And today, even those who had traditionally been able to f...

  I take comfort in the knowledge that there is not a “cure-all” to approaching reluctant or resisting students.  It allows me a measure of grace when that one tool I use doesn’t work all the time.   Some students respond to threats that you will call home, or to being removed from the classroom or written up.  However, that tool is largely ineffective if teachers rely solely on it or other similar punitive measures.  In some cases, they seem extreme in light of the relatively small offense that the student has committed, like talking out of turn, using foul language,  leaving a mess in the back of the classroom, showing up late, being “disrespectful”, refusing to put away the phone, or simply not doing their work. Without nuance to your approach, students begin to feel as though every offense is punishable by removal or detention.                  ...

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              Throughout grad school, I was a little surprised to learn that  assessing comprehension was actually much more difficult than I had ever known.  Prior to that, I thought we could ascertain a student’s level of understanding by simply asking them a few questions and having them respond in oral responses, written responses, or even in reading quizzes.  I discovered that each of these come with limitations, since we can not truly get into someone’s brain to see what it is they are thinking or understanding.  Each type of comprehension check requires a rather indirect expression of what the brain is experiencing.  In meaning making assessments that require writing, the assessment assumes that the student is capable of writing skills strong enough to confidently put words to the page expressing what it is they know or think.  This format favors those who have a gift for w...