What’s working for me at school? My teaching revolution.

I’ve been teaching for a lifetime now, and many things remain constant. Where I teach, students are still of mixed ability and, when they come to us in year 7, most can invariably write reams of poorly spelled text without using a full stop. Somehow, it is part of my role as a teacher of Year 7 English, to eliminate the run-on sentence. I’m wondering if when I die it won’t matter any more. Perhaps I should just roll with it; let the language regress to some unpunctuated past; get over myself. Students seem to communicate efficiently on MSN in their abbreviated codes. I’ve almost capitulated to ‘quote’ being used as a noun. It even appears thus in respected VCE English texts. Has the world ended? Am I an old fart for caring? Possibly not. After all, Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves has been a best seller.

Back to my teaching revolution. About three years ago, I made the tentative decision to bring technology into my senior English classes.

How did this happen? Initially, I’d decided to reduce the number of handouts I gave to all my years seven to twelve students. I didn’t think these printed notes were enhancing teaching and learning. (I wasn’t even thinking of the trees.) The handouts contained what I considered to be invaluable information, whatever it was, that I wanted students to absorb and use, and indeed some students did value these resources. However, just as many students tuned out during the lessons; failed to engage. Many handouts were surreptitiously folded into paper aeroplanes which flew a few times around the room or were jettisoned into the rubbish bin on the way out. Other handouts met their crumpled end amongst the detritus accumulated in the bottoms of school bags. Consequently, many students returned to the next lesson having lost the handout and thus needing a replacement. Somehow, the prepared, photocopied notes were ‘too much information’ for the average student. As long as I was preparing notes for my classes, most students weren’t actually thinking or writing much. I’m not talking about mindless copying of boards full of notes. I suppose I’m talking about note-making based on students’ contributions; writing down ideas; plans; vocabulary; definitions – material that can be remembered, revised and used in extended pieces of writing. I wanted to engage students more in contributing to discussions; force them to think. And it does bother me that students in Years 11 and 12, who at our school are required to hand-write their School Assessed Coursework essays under exam conditions, often struggle with the task, in some part due to their use of computer word processors.

So how did this lead to my teaching revolution?

For a few years now, I’ve taught two Year 12 English classes both of which require the same curriculum. And when other teachers are sharing your classroom, it’s a bit selfish to cover an entire whiteboard wall with terrific notes that you’d love to use with your other class and write PLEASE LEAVE! at the top. Every time I erasedthese notes it seemed like such a waste.

I toyed with the idea of using an interactive whiteboard. We do have one – yes one – in our school of 900 students. However, I felt this would lead to more photocopied notes and back to base one.

Instead, I decided to use a data projector – we have three of those! - and my lap top computer. This would have two advantages, I thought. I’d be able to re-use those wonderful student-discussion inspired notes and I’d be able to efficiently store my class materials and be rid of some of those arch files. However, I was unaware of how brilliantly the technology would work, once I got the hang of it.

After being ‘in-serviced’ by an IT support person, I trialled the set up with my Year 11s. The first lesson was hysterical. The students were mischievously delighted with the idea of me using the data projector. I couldn’t get the projection the right size on the whiteboard. I was fumbling, publicly and hilariously, as far as I could gauge from the laughter, with my toolbars, trying to enlarge the image. I’d foolishly used the Inspiration software thinking I’d be doing these brilliant Venn diagrams and concept maps – as I’d seen one of my colleagues do - while my students’ heads expanded with all the learning they were absorbing. Well, the students – a great bunch of people – didn’t learn much that lesson. But we had a few side-splitting laughs, so it wasn’t a total waste.

At this stage, I might have given up, but I didn’t. I kept practising. I decided instead to project a Word document onto the whiteboard. This worked very effectively once I got the font to the right size. Easily done.

There have been unexpected advantages. First, you know that when you turn to write on the whiteboard you lose a little – sometimes a lot – of your connection with your class. On many occasions when I turn to write on the whiteboard the class erupts into irrelevant talk. Or projectiles fly just outside one’s peripheral vision. “Hello?” I’ll say. “I’m still here; haven’t left the building. Back to work.” I turn back to the whiteboard and it starts again. Unless you’re one of those people who can face the class and write legibly on the board – and I’ve recently seen a brilliant presenter with this skill – or one of those teachers who terrifies students into submission – and happily I’m not one of those - like me, you probably get frustrated that your students disconnect when your back is turned and you have to waste a bit of your precious teaching time getting them back on track. Well, using your typing skills, your laptop and your data projector, this doesn’t happen!

And there’s more. I can sit down occasionally - hurrah - and direct class discussion more effectively. Somehow, it seems more civilised and much more educational. No more problems with the illegibility of my handwriting. Given I can touch-type quickly, my note making can keep pace with the discussion. If students are absent I can easily print, or email them notes from the lessons they’ve missed. It’s easier for students to keep track of discussion and to make notes; good for those visual learners. Furthermore, it helps me to keep track of my progress with a class, or a text I’m teaching.

With the addition of a couple of speakers, it’s great for film viewing too. Anything you can see on your screen can be projected onto a whiteboard.

Young techno-savvy teachers will not see this as revolutionary. However, I know that many of my colleagues - some not so old - are shy of technology. But I’ve proved that you only have to start using technology to develop your skills and become comfortable with the equipment and experience your own teaching revolution.

What’s the downside? Well, I teach in a battered portable classroom with no blinds. The sun blazing into my early morning classroom has me scurrying for the whiteboard marker. Another problem? There are only three data projectors in the school for which several teachers must compete. One has to book ahead and can be occasionally caught short when a teacher fails to return a projector to the resource centre after use. The inevitable five to ten minute round trip to the resource centre to collect the data projector is a pain when one is teaching a ‘full-on’ day. But, that’s life in an under-resourced state school. (And there was the time when my computer crashed, mid-lesson. School IT gurus to the rescue and my files were saved. Don’t forget to back up your files.)

I used to suffer from a condition that I called ‘whiteboard – formerly blackboard - arm syndrome’ – a chronic ache in my upper right arm. No more.

Dumpster ruminations

It’s that fraught time of year. Reports. Deadlines. Desk cleaning. Dust. Desiccated old moths, the dried remains of old insects swept from the top shelf of my desk. Today, finally free of teaching duties for the year, I’ve successfully disposed of useless lessons and out-dated texts that I’ve been hoarding, some since 1999 when I began teaching at my school. Four long round trips in the rain to the dumpster to fling boxes full of crap. Despite my inclination to hoard, just in case, I rarely reuse materials from past years. Somehow, they lose something in translation from year to year. Success with one class doesn’t guarantee success in another, or in subsequent years.

I dislike working in teams writing VELS units with over zealous teachers. Why expend all that energy for what will inevitably, for me, be a one off?

In fact, I detest writing ‘units’ of work. I haven’t really done this since I was a student teacher. It was a requirement. Still have my leatherette book of handwritten lesson plans. I wrote units when I had the luxury of only being required to teach two lessons a day on teaching rounds. Once out there, teaching twenty-one forty-eight minute periods a week – Ah! The early ‘eighties! – I abandoned ‘the unit’. How else could I get through the shitloads of marking?

Would I become a better teacher if I began preparing units, filling in tables and ticking boxes? Recently, with other members of my faculty I’ve spent time working through the Essential Learning Standards and the Principles of Learning and Teaching and planning a Year 7 unit of work on the novel, “Parvana’s Journey”. I still haven’t completely written up the ‘unit’. Yes, it was beneficial to work with colleagues to talk about what we do and why we do it. And we had the luxury of a dedicated curriculum day to fill in the documentation; tick the VELS and PoLT boxes. But if I had to articulate a ‘unit’ in such detail for everything I teach I wouldn’t have survived in this profession. Don’t fancy tagging an extra ten hours onto my forty-five hour weeks for the sake of writing up ‘units’. I’m not sure of the point, for me. Considering what I’ve dumped into that blue bin today, it would be a waste of paper.

VELS and PoLT. Teachers making a difference. Supposedly, anyone can be a successful teacher if he or she thinks about ‘what is powerful to teach’. For more buzzwords, check out the Sofweb site. It all sounds so brainstorming pizzazzy. Meanwhile, I’m just sitting here watching the wheels turn round and round. Trying not to be cynical. Trying, unsuccessfully, to avoid writing fragments, rather than sentences.

News break. Fraud still stressed despite hols.

First week of sure to be fleeting school holidays, but still can't stop thinking about school, particularly Year 12 English, and how my students will fare. It's also my second year running of being the parent of a Year 12 student, which adds considerably to the stress load. I'll be glad when the final exams are over and my kid - currently watching television and eating a late breakfast prior to hopefully doing some work - is off enjoying a well earned vacation. I've foregone my own trip up north this year to accommodate the exam schedule of my kid's school. It runs for the second half of week one of the hols and the first half of week two. The coordinators - well, those who have to supervise exams - at that school have my deepest sympathy. At my own school, we schedule practice exams for the first three days of term 4. Piles of marking under pressure on the first weekend back, but at least I'm spared working during the hols. (Marking on the weekend? What else is new?)
Chris Wheat's article in The Age about the proposed English Study Design made lots of sense. Perhaps because his views coincide with my own.
My kid's on MSN now she's finished brekkie.
Time to nag.

VCE English 2007 English Lite?

I’ve been reading the debate in The Age about the proposed 2007 VCE English/ESL Study Design with much interest. Tony Thompson ("English Lite is a tragedy for students", The Age, 12th September, 2005) laments ‘dumbing down’ in the new Study Design. He also says he teaches in an ordinary suburban secondary college. I have a bit of insider knowledge here. Both my kids recently attended that ordinary college. I, too, teach in an ordinary suburban secondary college; a different one. Perhaps some colleges are more ordinary than others.
Thompson says “a few years ago, we pulled To Kill a Mockingbird from the year 10 reading list. The students have never stopped complaining and next year it is going back on.” Interesting. Personally, I loved To Kill a Mockingbird when I first read it in 1970. I’ve enjoyed teaching it over the years, too. The first time was back in 1979. The last time was in 2002. (Maybe if I’d applied the multimedia approach, as I did with Of Mice and Men, my year 10 kids might have enjoyed it more.) Unfortunately, many of them didn’t have the skills to read the text, so worthy classic or not, what’s the point if your kids can’t read it? (And there’s always the risk that the ‘well-meaning’ English teacher will read the whole thing aloud to the captive audience! One enterprising student carried a little pillow in his backpack so he at least knew he could sleep during this ‘well-meaning’ teacher’s English classes.)
We no longer booklist Mockingbird at our school. I’m unaware of any complaints from students or parents. No one has begged to return it to the booklist, not even the teachers. Nor do we force students to read Macbeth at Year 11. My focus is improving literacy. My aim is to booklist texts that most students are able to, and will want to read, even if they’re relatively ‘easy’ reads. (At year 10, we booklist Bernard Beckett’s Jolt. Worthy themes. Driving narrative. Most students and teachers love it.)
I don’t see the proposed English Study design as lacking intellectual rigour. If the course lacks rigour, that will probably be down to the people interpreting the course at school level. One can’t just rely on ‘doing’ a text each term, an issues SAC and the craft of writing then a bit of a run up to the exam with a few practice Writing Tasks and analytical text responses. One might have to be a bit more inventive. For me, the present Study Design has almost become a bit of a comfort zone. (I still remember all the freaking out that was happening when VCE was introduced in 1991. That was a fun year. The year of English as political football. I digress.)
Perhaps we should be encouraging those students more inclined to enjoy reading and analysing books to take English Lit Units 1 to 4.
I’m pleased the ‘old warhorse’ (Thompson's term) issues unit is still there. When I’m teaching issues, I tell my students that this is the most important part of the course. I accept that many of my students will never read another book after they leave school. (Of course I tell them they don’t know what they’re missing when they tell me they can’t understand how I could possibly enjoy reading.) But they will certainly be deluged by the media and they need to be able to recognise how easily they can be manipulated. (Outfoxed was a text we included in our Year 12 course this year. Worth watching.)
At present, we teach three VCAA listed texts at VCE, as do many schools. The other text is decided at school level. So, in 2007, we’ll teach two from the VCAA list, and no doubt, several others.
In my ordinary school, there’s no way I’d ever teach Hamlet at Year 12, even though I love it. It’s not about me.

Of Mice and Men goes multi-media

Inspired at this year’s VATE conference by Sarah Boland, author of To Love Veronica Bee, I thought it was time to give the hoary old beast, Of Mice and Men, the multimedia treatment. I explained the concept to my Year 10s. (And by the way, for the past three years, most of these students have been passive recipients of entire novels being read aloud at them.) They were to read the entire text, then produce an ‘art form’ based on their reading. We had a bit of a discussion about what they could do and they actually seemed moderately aroused by the idea. Is it do-able? I asked, knowing little about getting students’ work on-line. Yes! beamed Girl In The Back Corner, normally resistant to anything. That was enough for me.
Thought I’d need to be very regimental about deadlines for this project, so I set the due date four weeks in advance. The students seemed okay with that. I intended to use the expertise in the classroom to overcome my shortfalls with technology. (You have to understand that I’ve never even held a video camera.) I devoted all class time for each of the four weeks to completing this project. To assuage my fear that they might not actually do anything during that time, I anchored them, and me, in their regular language development program, so they were submitting written work each week and getting their usual feedback.
The outcome? Seven weeks later, the project is still a work in progress. The positives? More students were engaged in what they were doing. The whole experience reminded me of my drama teaching days. Kids who work, get on with it; kids who bludge are even more conspicuously bludging.
We had some Japanese exchange students and their teachers visiting the school at the time. Very conservative people. (Our Japanese teacher, bit of a comic, warned me not to mention the war to one of the older men!) Anyway, these teachers wandered into my chaotic classroom. Students sitting on tables, hats on, swinging their legs; someone rolling on the floor in the corner; the Japanese exchange student seemed bemused at the freedom compared to his school back home. I asked him what it was like at his school. Another student translated my question and the boy keyed in what translated to ‘discipline’ and ‘regime’ on his little computer.
I explained the project to the visiting teachers, and despite the mayhem, I managed to throw in a couple of words like ‘multiple intelligences’, ‘ICT’, Middle Years Literacy, VELS – like they really cared! – and pretended, fraud that I am, that I was in full control of a planned, highly educational, literacy enhancing ‘unit’. Smiles set on their faces, they bowed out of my classroom. Wonder what they thought.
So what did my students do with Steinbeck?
Two groups decided to make films of scenes. Both groups wrote huge scripts; lines were rehearsed. The girls filmed Lennie and George doing the ‘ketchup’ scene. They dressed up and brought props. I was treated to the sight of this little group, sitting amongst the trees, one of them stabbing at the top of the can with a knife (!) and Lennie, improvising in a southern drawl saying “Why don’ you just use the ring-pull, George.” Pity their video camera wasn’t working properly. No sound. They had to do it all again.
The boys did the fight scene where Lennie crushes Curley’s hand. They didn’t bring along any props, but as they were filming in the sick bay, they took advantage of what was available. So Curley wore a surgical glove to keep his hand soft. This was a feature of the film. So was the mercy dash through the admin block and out to the canteen, with groaning Curley and his mashed hand on the sick bay stretcher. A couple of concerned teachers made spontaneous cameo appearances.
Both videos are in the process of being edited.
Three students decided they were going to write a children’s picture book based on the novel. These girls struggled to motivate themselves. Full of good intentions, but quite often off track with Dolly and gossip. Then they had a fight and one of their group, Girl In The Back Corner, decided to go it alone. What did she do? Presented a very nice looking book of character studies, but with very little evidence of actual engagement with the text. She copied the lot from a text book. No doubt developed her copying and typing skills. The other two approached me at the eleventh hour to show me their kids’ book. In one illustration, two cartoony hayseedy looking bumpkins are sitting under a couple of trees by a stream A blonde frilly floozy is talking to them. The accompanying text says: This is Candy, Curley’s wife. She’s going to give her money to George and Lennie so they can buy the farm they’ve always wanted.
- Have you actually read the book?
- Bits of it.
- Well, you didn’t read the bit about Candy being a bloke.
They panicked. One of them did an all-nighter and managed to produce a very effective cartoon strip, which the other one coloured in.
Another student dressed up as Crooks, the stable buck, and filmed a plausible dramatic monologue. Another devised a Power-point slide show based on a chapter of the text. Another did a collage.
A couple of boys worked laboriously on a animation using Flash. This was particularly good, because one of these boys hasn’t done any work, at all, this year. He proved to be a bit of an expert and taught the other boy how to actually work the program.
Three boys did very little, but they did hang around on the periphery of the other groups and occasionally read the parts of absent students or operated the video camera. I have to see this as a positive. They were more involved than they are when we are doing more conventional English.
I learned how to operate a video camera and how to design web pages. I also had lots of exercise charging around the school checking on the various groups.
Did the kids have fun? Definitely. What did you learn? I asked. You’ve got to read the book! they chorused. You’ve got to cooperate; work as a team; learn your lines; learn to use the computer programs for animation and editing; keep on task. In their evaluation, however, they conceded that it was really easy, and tempting, to bludge. This is problematic. And the whole thing looks very casual and I spent a lot of time wracked with guilt because students easily got off track. Hence the frantic running from place to place. I suppose the lesson is to stick to deadlines, make sure the equipment is available and functioning properly and be prepared to push and support those students who are inclined to relax.
And no one said This is shit. Why do we have to read this shit book?

Check out Sarah Boland’s website www.bumble.com.au It’s very inspiring.

VELS pd activity for teachers with ADHD

The Fraud is at a meeting to discuss curriculum matters and the new Essential Learning Standards and how they will be implemented. Also present are department heads, level coordinators, the principal. It’s been a long day. It’s a long way from over. Around the long table eyes glaze over as more downloaded photocopies, in plastic envelopes this time, to give them increased importance, it seems, are distributed. The Fraud and her colleagues dutifully take them and put them in folders. And then we’re into an activity, the purpose is apparently to validate our current teaching practices; to model an activity which we’re to present to our own faculties. Write about a time when you really thought that you were teaching effectively. What were you doing? Why did it work? How many examples do you want? the Fraud asks. She scribbles down the required three examples. Next, we cut out our work. Our leader pastes our efforts onto coloured prism board. The Fraud is again amazed at how much pleasure some people gain from this cutting and pasting process. Kinaesthetic learners? The colourful display of our efforts is posted on the wall. Now we are given coloured sticky dots. We all must take four. We’re to stick our dots against the lessons with which we most identify; the best lessons. At this stage, Fraud has hit the four-thirty wall. It’s an age thing. Do I have to actually get up? she asks. Yes, says the leader. Fraud collects her dots and stands at the back of the group of her colleagues who are dutifully leaning in to read about others’ lessons. The LOTE teacher hits a few points with his Principles of Learning and Teaching knowledge. Gets a few dots. Fraud doesn’t get any. She’d like to think it’s down to her handwriting. The meeting concludes an hour and three quarters after it began. The Fraud ponders the purpose of the activity, which worked for some, on the way home. It failed to augment her understanding of VELS. Similar ‘hands-on’ activities have worked well in the past for the Fraud when she’s been teaching twenty-five year eight students, thirteen of whom have ‘diagnosed’ ADHD. Well, it worked for about ten minutes until the students worked out how much fun could be had by snipping the tops off the Blu-stiks and firing them at the ceiling, where they stuck. Some of them are still up there four years later.