Meeting the needs of individual learners

 Since retiring from full-time teaching, I've been tutoring individual students for a public school system. In so many ways, it's a perfect job for me since I really enjoy tailoring the learning for individual students, assessing the success of the teaching, making improvements, and watching a child learn in positive, successful ways. 

This summer I'm teaching small groups of students in an ideal summer camp environment. The support for good teaching as well as the location and environment of the camp is a perfect match for me and for learners. The small class size, comfortable classrooms, super teaching assistants and colleagues, and terrific equipment and supplies makes for an ideal learning environment. That said, the teaching has reminded me of one of the greatest challenges teachers face and that's tailoring lessons to meet the needs of the myriad of learners in front of them. It's truly a challenging combination of science and art to craft lessons that engage and teach all students well. It's obviously much easier to do that in an ideal summer camp environment with small groups of students than in a typical public school environment with large class sizes and often less-than-desirable equipment or supports, but no matter how ideal the environment is, the challenge remains.

So how do we craft lessons that meet the needs of all learners in a classroom? Experienced teachers know that there all kinds of strategies to use to make that happen. As for my summer group which totals about 25 in total, I have been trying many different strategies and to date, I've engaged all the students for the most part with the help of my colleagues with the exception of one student. Today I'll try another strategy in an effort to engage this student who is somewhat resistant to the learning. I noticed a particular talent that this student has and I've incorporated that talent into today's lesson--let's see if it grabs her attention and pulls her into the learning. Time will tell. 

I wanted to write this post to clear my head with regard to how to meet this challenge, and I also wanted to write this post to acknowledge the challenge that good teaching is. It's tough to engage every learner in a positive way, but it's the exactly right aim of every classroom teacher to reach for positive engagement and learning for every student. That's possible and that should be the aim of every school and every classroom. Onward. 

Summer Math

 I'll be teaching math this summer to rising seventh and eighth graders. I've been thinking about the lessons I'll employ. Since it's summer camp, I want the lessons to be lots of fun, and thanks to the fact that I'll be working with small groups, we'll focus on lots of math talk, math modeling, and real-world problem solving. 

Teaching again

 In 2020, I retired from my 34-year teaching career. It was a tough decision, but due to my parents' health needs, my own health needs with respect to the raging COVID epidemic, and my disagreement with how the epidemic was being handled in the school system where I taught, I thought it a good time to retire. 

Upon retirement I responded to my parents' social/emotional and medical needs with the same gusto that I used towards teaching. I helped them to organize their house, attend their medical appointments, and gain a schedule of good care and good living. Like teaching, that work was not easy, but it was meaningful to me--it was the right thing to do. 

After my mom passed and then another couple years of caring for dad, it was time to lessen my parent-care role and think about my life overall. My siblings stepped in and assumed more care for my dad, and after thinking about my life, I decided to teach again. That was a very good decision for many reasons. 

First of all, I had gained tremendous teaching skill and ability throughout my many years as an educator, and to use those skills again not only felt good, but also served to help others. I loved that. Next, it was a stimulating choice--one aspect of teaching that I loved was the learning that goes hand-in-hand with teaching. That learning is intellectually stimulating and that made me happier and more interested and interesting. Also my new teaching position introduced me to new people and places who have enriched my life. 

Before embarking on teaching again, I looked at many types of jobs. First I took a naturalist job at a local garden. That was terrific. Next I took the job I have now as a tutor in a public school system for students who cannot attend school for a number of reasons. I love that job as I'm able to help students learn in a wonderful setting. And now, I may sign on to another position which will find me engaging students in a hands-on summer math program. I love teaching math and I love working with students so it should be another win-win teaching endeavor. 

Rather than volunteering, I like the structure and commitment entailed in a paid position. While my salary isn't great, the money is a nice addition which allows me to support a few causes and do a few things I wouldn't ordinarily be able to afford. 

Now that I'm teaching again, I'm revisiting some of the work I did as an educator for 34 years. Most of the work I did is outlined in this blog, so I've decided to reignite the blog and will add new posts from time to time. It's nice to be teaching again. Onward. 

Teacher Roles and Responsibilities

 This has been my most popular blog post. This post received almost 95,000 views. 

The Classroom Teacher: Roles and Responsibilities?

As education evolves so does the role of the classroom teacher.  What is the current role of the classroom teacher?  What are his/her responsibilities?  How does this educator prioritize and what is most important?  I consider the many aspects of the classroom teacher below.  I also propose reflection related to possible changes in that role for best effect.  I look forward to your response regarding this topic.

Classroom Teacher as Manager
In many ways, the role of a classroom teacher is that of manager.  He/she passes out and collects numerous forms, takes attendance and lunch count, responds to illness, supervises recess, manages transitions, responds to parent emails, notes and phone calls, organizes the coat rack, finds lost mittens (and other articles), prepares/cleans a classroom environment, orders materials and creates an atmosphere for learning. These are all time consuming tasks, but not tasks, in general, that require extensive subject knowledge or instructional understanding.  Should all of the tasks above be the responsibility of a classroom teacher?  Would it be better to broaden the responsibilities above to all faculty members so that every professional educator has responsibility for the management of a relatively equal group of students, or would it be better to start a new role in schools, one in which people are hired to manage the procedural aspects of running a school including attendance, lunch count, recess duty, transitions, coat rack organization and more?

Classroom Teacher as Social Skills/Behavior Counselor
A large part of teaching involves coaching and mentoring related to social skills and behavior.  Students come to school with all kinds of attitudes and readiness with regard to learning and working together, and teachers work day in and day out with students to develop their abilities related to optimal social skills, behavior and emotional intelligence.  This is an area of school life where I believe advisory groups would be better than homerooms as advisory groups could include all professional educators in a building which would mean smaller social groups to guide and mentor related to optimal social skills, behavior and emotional intelligence

Classroom Teacher as Academic Coach, Mentor, Guide and Instructor
With the move towards greater interdisciplinary project based learning, and the need for expert teaching related to specific skill development in reading, writing and math, I am wondering about this area too.

• Have we reached a point where we need to re-look at professional responsibilities in the academic realm?
• Do we know so much more now about the art and science of teaching that one-size-fits-all classrooms have become outdated and inefficient with respect to optimal learning?
• Is it time to embrace a model of school that includes a greater use of targeted teaching responsibilities and content areas?  For example, as a fourth grade teacher, there is a lot to know about current math, science, reading, writing and social studies content, pedagogy and methodology.  With the current tools available, the sky's the limit for what we are able to do with students, yet when we try to do it all, our efforts are sometimes diluted and less effective.  
• What are the developmental implications related to school structure and environment? What types of environments and instruction are best suited for students at particular ages?  

For best effect, optimal engagement and student confidence, I believe it's time to restructure the roles, schedules and responsibilities related to academic instruction.  With this in mind, I proposed a model last year.

A good way to start this restructure is to consider the efforts that currently work related to student learning, engagement and confidence, and those efforts that are less effective. Then begin replacing less effective strategies and efforts with activities that make students want to come to school, engage and learn as much as possible.

Further, the time to respond to students and families through editing, correcting papers, writing report cards, assembling portfolios/files and analyzing data has traditionally just been considered a classroom teacher's responsibility.  For some roles, this after hours work adds up to multiple hours, and for other roles there is little to no additional responsibility related to this.  This "on your own time" work has created a wide variety of responses and actions.  I think the time has come when this work needs to be considered as part of the teacher's overall on-time tasks in the school house which means that response time becomes a consideration when creating schedules, prep time and collaborative meetings.  In one school I read about recently, writing teachers were given smaller classes and greater prep time due to the great amount of time it takes to coach writing skill and proficiency with care.

Teacher as Collaborator
As schools respond to research which supports greater collaboration, how does that affect a teacher's work and skills.  Generally veteran teachers were used to working in relatively isolated situations, hence there's a learning curve related to collaborative skill, attitude and effort.  Also, school schedules often don't leave time for professional collaboration.  Fortunately I work in a system that has put aside three weekly times for collaboration including PLCs, common grade-level planning time and Wednesday inservice hours.  This is a step in the right direction.  Collaborative cultures in schools will develop if time and learning is devoted to building that culture.

Education evolution requires the evolution of roles and responsibilities.  I believe it is a time when we must begin to reconsider the classroom teacher role with regard to current cognitive research and a focus on best effect.  How can we create a school structure with roles and responsibilities that lead to optimal engagement, learning and confidence for all students? I am very interested in this discussion as I believe it holds potential for better schools.  Please don't hesitate to comment with links, arguments and other ideas.

Related Post:
We Can't Be All Things

Note:
I wrote this post several years ago. It has been my most popular blog post. Today, April 3, 2015, I updated my thoughts on the role of the teacher. Please take a look.

Transitioning to a book of ideas, links, and practices

 

If you know me, you know that I like to think, analyze, create, write, and share my ideas. Way back when my teaching ideas and practice were challenged, I began writing a blog about my teaching thoughts, ideas, experiences, and practice. Over time, that blog including 7,511 posts has been read 1,988,197 times. My children like to joke that more than half of that number belongs to me, but I know that's not the case. They keep me humble. 

Now, with an overfull cloud file of ideas and posts, it's time to put the most significant ideas, thoughts, experiences, and practice into a book to free up file space and have a concrete vehicle to share with educators, like me, who want to think deeply about their practice and the ways schools should develop over time. 

I've got a long list of projects, and I'll add this to the mix. If you have any thoughts or ideas for me, please share. In the meantime, if you're looking for teaching/education thoughts and ideas, feel free to search this blog. Onward.