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Middle School Matters Podcast #21

How has professional practice changed over the last 10 years?

• Medical Model.
• Teaching ALL (Each and Every) Student
  • Inside-Outside in the Middle Reflective Strategies for Middle Level Teachers by David L. Puckett
  • Drumming to the Beat of a Different Marcher by Dr. Debbie Silver
• Data
• Collaboration
• Expectations
• Edutainer

How do you tear down the walls of the fiefdom?

• Establish a relationship with another teacher.
• Videotape yourself
• Discuss practice
• Interdisciplinary units

Observation of another

• Set up a reciprocal arrangement
• Agree to the ground rules and norms of observation.

Center the Observation and discussion around observable characteristics:

Observable Characteristics of Effective Teachers

• Begins class promptly and in a well-organized way.
• Treats students with respect and caring.
• Provides the significance/importance of information to be learned.
• Provides clear explanations.
• Holds attention and respect of students, practices effective classroom management.
  • “Studium Discendi Voluntate Quae Cogi Non Potest Constat.” – Marcus Fabius Quintilianus
• Uses active, hands-on student learning.
• Varies his/her instructional techniques.
• Provides clear, specific expectations for assignments.
• Provides frequent and immediate feedback to students on their performance. Praises student answers and uses probing questions to clarify/elaborate answers.
• Provides many concrete, real life, practical examples.
• Draws inferences from examples/models and uses analogies.
• Creates a class environment which is comfortable for students….allows students to speak freely.
• Teaches at an appropriately fast pace, stopping to check student understanding and engagement.
• Communicates at the level of all students in class.
• Has a sense of humor!
• Uses nonverbal behavior, such as gestures, walking around, and eye contact to reinforce his/her comments.
• Presents him/herself in class as “real people.”
• Focuses on the class objective and does not let class get sidetracked.
• Uses feedback from students (and others) to assess and improve teaching.
• Reflects on own teaching to improve it

http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/teachlearn/resources/peer/guidelines/index.html

National Middle School Association Standards

• NMSA standards and guidelines could be turned into observation statements and used to help assess teacher performance.
• What if we took a snapshot of ourselves as teachers from the viewpoint of the stakeholders?
• Survey Administrators, Parents, Students, and Teachers.
  • Survey Prototypes:  Listed as “Dispositional Inventories”

Other:

• The Ohio Middle School Association’s Annual Conference, February 21-22, 2008 in Columbus, Ohio (www.ohiomsa.org)

1. • Sample of session topics:
     • Dealing with difficult people, Ed. Vittardi
     • Because You Teach, Monte Selby (Keynote)
     • NMSA Toolkit, John Swaim
     • Effective Collaboration Practices, J. Wilson
     • Enhanced Leadership: The Principal’s Role as a Change Agent, D. Major
     • Podcasting: A Creative Hook to Master the Achievement Tests, H. Grunenberg
     • Starting RTI at the Middle Level, B. Kermayner
     • Transescent Transitions to Middle School, S. McGirr (Magnolia Room, Session III 1:45 – 2:45 p.m.)
     • Engage ’em, Assess ’em, … and Watch ’em Achieve: The Classroom Performance System, D. Delaney

• The Michigan Association of Middle School Educators, March 13-14, 2008 in Saline, Michigan. (www.mamse.org)
• Japanese Scientists put a camera in a brain!
  • What I could do with this ….
• Michigan Joint Education Conference, July 25, 2008 (www.mijec.org)
  • Presenters wanted on interdisciplinary education topics.

We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character- that is the goal of true education.
Dr. Martin Luther King.

Ideas to try:

Side-by-Side (team level activity)

• • On a team, take a half day and send the students to advisory.
  • Assign a question sheet which the students fill out for the first 30 or so minutes of the half-day advisory.
  • Allow students to select group board games.
  • Call students up to you and have them sit beside you. Ask them to pick two or three items from the sheet to talk to you about.
  • Rotate through topics allowing them to initiate conversation and prompt as the conversation goes along.
  • Source: MAMSE Conference Advisory session 2005.

Walk The Line (individual Advisory activity)

• • Challenge students to line themselves up in order, by birthday, from January to December without using lips or sound.
    • Other methods of organization: student number, street address, alpha order by middle name, alpha by first name.
  • Check for success. Mentally keep the number of errors in month and date in the back of your mind to use later.
  • Ask them to turn toward you and touch the outer edges of their feet. For the remainder of the activity they must remain connected.
  • Define success in the next step of the activity as, “Everyone gets across the finish line.” They will most likely forget this little tidbit, which is ok as it is a learning experience in and of itself.
  • Rules for walking the line:
  • Outer edges of feet must stay connected. (Note: This is where you keep track of the number of errors in the line-up part of the activity. If there are two people out of order, allow two or so separations of feet as you progress through the game.)
  • Everyone must make it across the finish line.
  • If feet separate, the entire group must start over.
  • Set the goal out a distance from the group and let them problem solve a solution. There is more than one way to solve this problem.
  • Possible solutions:
  • • The “Side Slide”: Students move to their right or left and snake across the finish line keeping constant pressure on the foot next to them. It looks like a giant U turn/Michigan Left.
    • The “Shuffle”: Students move forward in little, tiny “shuffles” keeping their feet together as they inch toward the finish line.
    • The “Inch Worm”: Students move one foot at a time forward and move in a wave down the line forward toward the finish line.

Who are You?
Introductions (Getting to Know You)

• • Supplies needed: Foam Ball
  • • Start by having the students form a circle.
    • Each student will say their name and then toss the ball to another student. Each student can only get the ball once (thus, the student’s have to pay attention).
    • Once they have done that, have student’s say the name of someone in the circle and then toss the ball to that person. Again, each person gets the ball only once.
    • Once they seem to know everyone’s name, the teacher can time them. Give them time to talk about strategy to see if they can “beat” their previous time. (Eventually, they will figure out to go in a circle). Discuss with them the process for improving their time. Did different students take on different roles? Was it important that everyone participate and cooperate?

Sponsor a Soldier (Advisory level activity)

• • One of the key ways to take one’s mind off of one’s life problems is to focus on the needs of others.
  • Many sources to find soldiers overseas in need of letters or care packages.

Teacher Appreciation

• • The advisory chooses one teacher who has made a difference in their lives that week or month and writes a short note articulating how they were helped and in what fashion. This can be sealed in an envelope if the student is concerned about others reading the note inside.
  • If available, students can put together a small breakfast for the teacher to enjoy.
  • If that’s not an option, make a “LifeSaver” note where LifeSavers are strung together and the note(s) of appreciation are attached at the end of the string.

TP Shuffle (individual Advisory activity, higher level of challenge for both the advisory teacher and the students involved)

• • Materials: 3 or 4 3.5 x 3.5 inch beams and 4-6 cinder blocks and a relatively soft place to fall.
    • Note: Don’t use beams you want to use later as construction material. Humidity and weight will warp these quite well.
  • Set up:
    • Put the beams inside the cinder blocks so the rest a few inches off of the ground.
  • Challenge:
    • Students can pick any spot on the beam to stand. You want to see how many seconds they can stay on the beam. If there looks like there’s a tight fit, put in another beam (I’d recommend two full 10′ beams and then cut the remainder in 5′ lengths to scale the challenge to the number of students participating in the activity.) If there’s too much space, take away a beam.
    • After all the students have the hang of standing on the beam for a period of time, tell them that the two end people must switch spots on the beam without anyone touching the ground in the process. If anyone steps off or falls off, the process begins anew.

Origami

• • Materials: directions, paper, patience, and an origami book with a variety of challenge levels.
  • Rationale:
    • There can be a point at which extending a lesson/activity can be beneficial by having the students teach each other something.
  • Process:
    • Allow students to select their own piece from choices you have provided.
    • Students practice pieces.
    • Students teach other members of the advisory how to make their piece and experience the interpersonal side of teaching others.

Take a Stand

• • Materials: Short news or policy article (www.izzit.org, The Annenberg Project, etc.) that generates an opinion that can be measured on a scale of 1 to 10.
  • Process:
    • Students formulate an opinion on a topic and the place themselves on a scale from 1 (very pro the article/opinion) to 10 (very negative the article/opinion).
    • Take the line that is formed and divide it in half. Students step out, turn toward the 1 end of the line and then walk so the two lines are next/across from each other. 1’s should be across from 5’s and 5’s across from 10’s. Then they discuss the basis of their opinion in terms like, “I think …”, “I understand …”, “I hear you say …”, “I disagree with …”, “I agree with …”.

CopyCat
Communication

• • Supplies Needed: Paper & Pencils
    • Have students pair up (birthday order and fold in half, random numbers, take a stand, etc)
    • Instruct 1/2 of the students to draw a simple shape on their paper.
    • Without their partner seeing the drawing, the first student simply describes the shape to their partner. Their partner is to replicate the picture as closely as possible. The partner may not talk at all. The describer can NOT look at the drawing of their partner.
    • Have them compare drawings. How close are they.
    • Have the students switch roles and complete the assignment again. This time, however, the one who is replicating may ask as many clarifying questions as they want (but they still can’t look at the orginal).
    • Discuss which one worked better and why. Discuss Why we ask questions? Did the questions result in a better product? Was it easier? Less frustrating? Extend to classroom assignments. (You may even want to a student volunteer to come up and receive complex homework assign directions. Then have that student deliver the directions to the class. Have the students write down what they understand the assignment to be and discuss).

Take a Side
Have students take a side about a variety of topics.

• • • Ask a variety of questions and have students line up on one side of the room (hallway) or the other.
    • You can ask controversial or basic questions.

Resources:

• NMSA Bookstore
• Stenhouse Publishers: Adventure Education for the Classroom Community, Laurie S. Frank (spiral bound edition)

Please share your Advisory Activities via the Comment Section.

Definitions:
According to NMSA:
Advisory programs are designed to deal directly with the affective needs of [young adolescents]. Activities may range from non-formal interactions to use of systematically developed units whose organizing center are drawn from the common problems, needs, interests, or concerns of [young adolescents], such as “getting along with peers,” “living in the school,” or “developing self-concept.” In the best of these programs, [young adolescents] have an opportunity to get to know one adult really well, to find a point of security in the institution, and to learn about what it means to be a healthy human being. (p. 40)

Among the purposes of the advisory, Stevenson writes, are to

• ensure than each student is known well at school by at least one adult who is that youngster’s advocate (advisor);
• guarantee that every student belongs to a peer group;
• help every student find ways of being successful within the academic and social options the school provides;
• promote communication and coordination between home and school.

Traits of Achievers:

1. Achievers spend more time in conversation with adults — eight to ten times as much as non-achieving students.

2. Achievers receive explict achievement training such as music lessons, sports coaching, skill, craft or hobby instruction.

3. Achievers have a regular pattern of behavior; they can count on certain routines in their lives regarding after school activity.

4. Achievers engage in anticipatory behavior, planning for tomorrow, next week, next summer or the long-term future.

5. Achievers participate in activities extending the opportunity to read and write by being engaged with technology or other activities which require them to read high level material and communicate with others for a specific and important purpose.

6. Achievers engage in constructive learning besides homework, such as hobbies, games and related intellectual or high skill endeavors.

7. Underachievers over participate in unsupervised recreational activity, such as watching T.V., or just “hanging out.”

8. Later research (Johnston, 1992) found that Achievers describe themselves as doing something “important” or “special” in their homes, families and communities, such as taking care of a younger sibling, preparing family meals, helping with chores or helping in a family business or other activity.

Some statistics about teacher – student relationships:
In a recent survey of middle school teachers, parents and students in five large northeastern and Midwestern states, the advisory program of the middle school came under the most intense criticism. Although 75% of teachers and 68% of parents found that advisory programs were promising ways of helping students develop strong self-concepts and decision making skills, only 32% of teachers and 40% of parents thought the program was fulfilling those goals. Further, while nearly 90% of parents and teachers agreed that it is important for a student to have one adult to whom he or she can turn with a problem, only about half of the parents and two-thirds of the teachers believe that this condition exists for all children in the school.

Student views of the nature of adult-child relationships are even more disturbing. In this sample, students reported the following perceptions of their relationships with teachers.

Most alarming is that students feel that they know so little about their teachers — or are so uncertain of their relationships with the adults with whom they spend much of their time. It is difficult, probably impossible, to form a guidance-oriented relationship with someone you know so little about.
How do schools overcome the perception that advisory is an extra, that it takes away instructional time, causes extra work for teachers, and is so contrived in an attempt to “connect” to kids that it is irrelevant.

A2 and AYP

• How does A2 effect AYP?
• Is there a relationship with academic progress?
• Proposed solutions abound. Hold the parents legally and financially accountable for the actions of their children. Get tougher with juvenile offenders: adjudicate them as adults, set up boot camps, build more prison facilities. Throw disruptive youths out of school. Take away their driver’s licenses. Withhold welfare payments.All of these solutions have one thing in common: they are institutional, organizational and systemic solutions to the problem. They assume that by changing the school system, the justice system, the welfare system…any number of systems…we will produce better behaved and more successful children.

  All of the solutions suffer from one fatal flaw: a overzealous faith in the ability of large-scale interventions…systems…to produce good children and youth. They don’t. Good children are raised by communities of adults who share common beliefs and values about what constitutes reasonable and appropriate behavior, who accept responsibility for sharing the wisdom of their years and experience with children, and who share a common commitment to all of the children of the community and nation.

  http://www.middleweb.com/johnston.html

• The advisory period is the linchpin in the middle-school movement, some experts say. Many middle-school programs suffer from poorly implemented advisories, however. This week, Education World answers the question What makes a successful advisory? We also include activity ideas for improving advisories! “I think an advisory of some type is essential to a middle-school program,” teacher Pamela Chandler told Education World. “These kids have needs beyond academics that must be addressed. Advisory allows for a consistent, cohesive program that puts all school community members on the same page.”http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr127.shtml

Advisory Activities

Team Academic Support
Students report to Advisory for attendance and then go to the Team Teacher they need additional help from for the duration of the Advisory.

Team building/Adventure Challenges

• Promotes learning to work with others.
• Promotes communication with a purpose.
• Promotes interpersonal relationships.
• Creates success and success breeds success.

Relationship building

• Creates a sense of belonging for students in the school.
• Adult-student relationship.
• Easier to keep tabs on a student.
• There are schools who use Advisory to make disciplinary and academic phone calls home.
• Underscores one of the principles from Understanding Poverty by Ruby Payne: Relationships are a top priority among the poor.

Personal General Observations

• Advisory at the end of the day doesn’t work out the best.
• Advisory has to be scaled to the needs of the individual advisory and to the needs of the school. Cannot be “programmatic.”
• One way to think of choosing items for Advisory is to ask oneself, “What can I do with the students or have the students do that will take their focus off of the problems of life and put their focus on readiness for learning for the day?”

Well, there is a delay in the posting of podcast #19. Funny thing about trying new things, sometimes they just don’t work out. In this case, I tried switching from Audio Hijack Pro to WireTap Studio Pro. All went somewhat well, at least for Shawn. The thing is, only Shawn’s bit got recorded. Since I talk too much, there are large gaps of silence. We’ll have to rerecord at a future date. On the other hand, we had a chance to practice.

Troy

Welcome to Podcast #18.

We discuss the education systems of China, the States, and India. Our conversation centers around a new video called, Two Million Minutes: A Global Examination. The video spotlights six high school students, two each from China, the United States and India. The video makes the case that students in China and India work harder, spend more time working on school work and take school much more seriously than their American counterparts.

The video “sounds an alarm” about the educational system in America according to its producers.  The video has its critics and supporters.

We agree that American education can improve. We believe that we need to continually work hard at improving the education that all of students receive. However, we also think that some of the things that are happening are positive. We also found some data that questions some of the generalizations that are brought up. Let’s start with an article from Business Week:

About That Engineering Gap…

One would expect that the numbers used in such debate would be defensible and grounded. Yet researchers at Duke University have determined that some of the most cited statistics on engineering graduates are inaccurate. Statistics that say the U.S. is producing 70,000 engineers a year vs. 350,000 from India and 600,000 from China aren’t valid, the Duke team says. We’re actually graduating more engineers than India, and the Chinese numbers aren’t quite what they seem. In short, America is far ahead by almost any measure, and we’re a long way from losing our edge.

Unfortunately, the message students are getting is that many engineering jobs will be outsourced and U.S. engineers have a bleak future of higher unemployment and lower remuneration. This could result in a self-fulfilling prophecy, as fearful young scholars stick to supposedly “outsourcing-proof” professions. In other words, we have more to fear from fear itself.

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/dec2005/sb20051212_623922.htm

Another topic is the movement about ten years ago to model our educational system after the Japanese model. Instead of just pilfering the best of the system, some wanted us to adopt everything from the Japanese model. Now, the Japanese are looking to the Indian system for ideas:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/business/worldbusiness/02japan.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ei=5087&em&en=b9192c2e9589de75&ex=1199595600

Some additional Observations:
1.  Mathematical/Logical intelligence types made a movie espousing their mathematical/logicalness.
2.  Powers not expressed in the Constitution are reserved to the States.  This, as a technicality, lies outside the purview of the Federal Government.
– Inter-State Commerce Clause:  Senator Levin (D-MI) has stated at a Michigan Civics Association meeting that he would the clause to regulate &
Federalize education.
– Block Grants
3.  The power of choice (Adam Smith). Increased demand for engineers in China and India decreased need in the U.S.
– The motivation to change:  “Their parents also seem less intimately involved in their schooling.”  It will only happen when parents feel an economic
need for future change.
– Planned economies vs. Free Market economies.
4.  Nice use of the “glittering generalities” tool.  Yea, there’s only 30 seconds to influence, but it paints with a broad brush.  Does not account for
individual change.
5.  1980’s Europe set the “international standard” for education and the huge push was “foreign language” education.  Gotta know a European language.
6.  Differences in the definition of engineering between U.S., China, and India.
7.  Planned vs. Free Market Economy
8.  Transactional vs. Dynamic Engineers:  “In contrast, transactional engineers possess solid technical training, but not the experience or expertise to apply this knowledge to larger domains.  These individuals are typically responsible for routing tasks in the workplace.  In the United States, transactional engineers often receive associate, technician or diploma awards, although they may also have a bachelor’s degree.  In other countries, these engineers are produced by lower-tier universities, with thinner curricula and a weaker emphasis on research, group work, applied engineering, and interdisciplinary thinking.”  (SSRN-id10819223 p. 9)

Finally,  a call for  presenters:

Michigan Joint Education Conference is looking for speakers to talk about their interdisciplinary units/lessons in June.

The National Middle School Association’s Annual Conference will be in Denver next year and the deadline for presenting is January 31, 2008.  You can also make nominations to the Board of Trustees on the website.

The Michigan Association of Middle School Educators will be holding their Annual Conference on March 13 & 14 at Saline Middle School in Saline, MI.  Visit the website for conference registration information and put it on your calendar (or iPhone) and make plans to attend!  Links have been included here, but you can always check up on the website by clicking the MAMSE direct link here on the website.

This is a little late to post, but some might still be able to swing it. The Ohio Middle School Association is doing a workshop on Scheduling for a Middle Grades School in Columbus, Ohio on January 14th. The cost is $95.00 and lunch is included. Bring a copy of your school’s schedule and look at the schedules from featured schools.

The OMSA’s Annual Conference will be on February 21 & 22 at the Hilton Columbus at Easton in Columbus, OH. Kathy Hunt Ullock, Cynthia Johnson, and Monte Selby are the featured speakers this year. If you can’t make the session on scheduling this is a very good place to get some middle school ideas and be around people that love people that you love: your students.