New Things

As an American History teacher, I remember my lessons on the British invasion of America. When we hear that we think of early wars in our country's infancy. While I liked teaching that, my favorite British invasion was the musical one of the 1950s and 1960s. I love the Beatles and I love how changes in American and world culture can be tracked through their changes in musical style. A few boys from Liverpool started a revolution in culture and American thought using music. As much as I appreciate their music and the ever-evolving style, I also like their story. The world watched these young men grow up and change and it was this change that eventually led to their end. Some blame the influence of John Lennon's girlfriend, Yoko Ono, on the breakup, but true fans could see it coming back in 1968 (almost two years before they officially separated). The Beatles were changing and they were trying new things. Those things just didn't exactly move in the same direction anymore. Their evolution was moving them somewhere different.

Back in the fall semester, I sent an email to our math department urging them to try new things. I am certain that behind my back, I got some remarks or criticism. If I had received that email from my principal I would have done the same. The email simply said that they were working far too hard to be getting mediocre scores in Math 1. I didn't have a simple answer for what they should be doing, but I knew that it was time to try new things. This led to somewhat of an evolution. Our four Math 1 teachers took a field trip to see what math looks like in elementary schools. We observed math centers and guided small groups. We examined math software for K-8 students and how it is used. Then with some help from Mr. Shaw, the Math 1 teachers left the ways of traditional 9-12 math teaching and made a decision to try new things. They started this semester teaching every day through "rotations" (they are really centers). It's only been a few days, but I can tell you that it is the most engagement I have ever seen from 9th grade students. There have been a lot of visitors to these classes this week to see how it works and I have no doubt that there will be many more throughout the year.

My dad had a saying that I must have heard a hundred times growing up. "If you always do, what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always had." If you feel like you're working as hard as you can and getting the same results, maybe it's time to break away and try new things. I think Sir Paul McCartney would agree that it can work in your favor.

Taking My Medicine

After hitting the submit button on my blog each week, I read it one last time in the same format that you see it. I like to make sure that the layout looks right and check one more time for errors. When I read last week's message about having a hook and making your message interesting, I asked myself how I was practicing what I was preaching. You see, just like you, I complain about things that I sometimes think are beyond my control. I rant about laws and policies that I don't agree with and about parents that I cannot get to see things my way or engage at all. I am really always looking for that second part. I genuinely want our student's parents to support the school, you as teachers and their children's education. Just like you, I run into barriers and I complain.  It's tough when you hold a parent meeting and three to five parents attend. So when I read my words about making my message interesting, I realized that I was not doing that for parents. I needed to take a dose of my own medicine and I needed a hook.

This reflection prompted the insanely silly snow day message that went out to parents through phone calls and through Facebook and Twitter. I spent a morning writing the lyrics and Mr. Hazzard gave me a crash course in Garageband and I was off. I had no idea how well it would work. After over 100,000 views, 1,300 shares and a lot of texts, calls and comments in stores, I realized just how powerful a hook can be. I managed to get parents and the community to pay attention. While I don't intend on sending out every message from the school in the style of old-school rap, we do have plans for more creative messages that promote school events or important information that needs parent involvement. We have their attention, now we need to say something worth hearing.

The end of the semester is the perfect time to reflect on your practice as well. Take a minute and think about some of the great advice that we give to our students and how that can be applied and modeled in what you do. We preach attention and get distracted ourselves. We want creative solutions and problem solving and we give up on things we feel we cannot change. We are all guilty of it. We're human. But sometimes when we take a minute to try to see things in a different light we get a silly little idea that just might work.

Getting Hooked

As educators we spend quite a lot of time focusing our instruction and planning on content standards. We want to teach exactly what will be assessed and we want to maximize our time on those standards. Teachers spend time planning in their departments and over the summers focusing on the small nuances of state standards and how to fit each of those into lessons for the semester. With all of that time on standards, I think that sometimes we miss an essential first piece. We have to focus on the "hook." My clinical teacher always made me start each lesson with a hook. He said that if I didn't grab student attention in the first 5-10 minutes, then the rest of the lesson could be worthless.

Teaching has a lot in common with sales. You have to convince your class to buy into what you are doing. Your lesson is your product and they are your consumers. Every good salesman has a sales pitch and they know just when and how to use it. Teachers are the same. Now that the first semester's lessons are behind us and out content objectives have been taught, focus your second semester revisions on the hook. Grab student attention in the first few minutes to make all of your work on standards planning worth it.