Relationships with Students

I am learning about Evidence-based teaching this year.  I believe it is the similar to performance-based learning which we have been studying and working on since the days of Mastery Connect.  Evidence-based learning has many elements to it, and one of the most important elements of it is teacher-student relationships.   To forge excellent relationships with your students it takes time, energy, patience, and care.  You need to show them that you will be willing to go the extra mile for them, and yet you also need to have the highest of expectations for their success.

It seems that the growth mindset works for this concept.  It may be difficult at first to imagine that you can care for and know every student that you work with.  It may even seem overwhelming at first.  However, it takes perseverance, it takes asking your students tons of questions, it takes understanding where each one of them comes from, and it takes making decisions based on where they are, not where you think perhaps they should be.  It takes bringing them from the place they are at, to the next place, or to the place after that, wherever that may be.

I remember early in my career I came to see my principal about some behavior issues with one of my students.  He would just take things from my desk, without asking.  He was surly, and arrogant.  I complained to my principal about this, and he said words to me that I have remembered and thought about to this day.  "It is our job to take our students from wherever they are, to the next place, no matter where they begin.  It is not our job to judge where they begin, but instead to help them move forward from that place."  I have lived by that mantra with my teaching, since then, and I have often caught myself beginning to judge, but take a deep breath, wait and think again.  We must show that we care for our students first, and then we have to apply pressure to them, which is the same as having expectations of them, but without a sense of judgement as to where we think they should be.  This will only bring us frustration as teachers, and this will turn into apathy, aloofness, and eventually burnout.  My principal from the early nineties has helped me stay away from all these things, and I hope this will keep me going for as long as I am healthy, happy and well-adjusted enough to teach music, drama, and all the other things we teach in middle school!

Care and pressure, patience, empathy and seeing a student as a whole person are the most important elements of forging great relationships with your students.

Exceeds ideas

I have recently been told that Exceeds options need to be ONLY about the standard that is being assessed, and that it is not an exceeds if the student goes to the next year's standards to push himself to a higher level.  This seems to me like a very linear way to examine the idea of Exceeds.  It occurred to me in our discussions in our meeting with other arts related teachers, that couldn't exceeds be the way a student might take the standard and apply it in a different way towards another standard.  Here is an example of what I am talking about.  A student does a project in printmaking in art.  Then the student has a different project to do which addresses a different standard, such as creating a sculpture.   The student takes what she has learned in printmaking and on her own uses that skill while she is also creating a sculpture.  This is an exceeds, I believe, because it is a creative and new way of applying one skill to another newer skill.

Another example of this might be that a student has learned all the notes of the treble and bass staff.  What if they took that knowledge and applied it to a composition standard, and learned how to play a piece that they have composed as well.  Why are we not allowing school to mirror the world we live in more readily?  Just because it is too hard to calibrate?  Please!  If a student wishes to take an idea or a concept to its furthest level, it should not only be allowed, but also encouraged.  If we don't mirror life, then what message are we trying to send to our children about lifelong learning?

Also, why are we so rigid about next year's standards and the year after that?  If a student has met the standards in sixth grade, then can't that student just move on to the standards of another grade?  And why is that NOT possibly exceeds?  Why are we giving students a message that going beyond, is only staying at their grade level, when if they are truly gifted, they should very much be encouraged to exceed the standard by going to another grade level to do it.  Just my two cents for the third week of school!

Formative Assessment

What is formative assessment?  It is checking on understanding, it is helping students see where they are making mistakes and putting them on a more solid path to success with the standards.  It is creating "Do Nows" at the beginning of class to see where everyone is in the process, it is creating "Exit Tickets" to see how people have progressed through the class.  It is re-directing, re-evaluating, re-grouping, before, during and after larger assessments.  It is discussions in class about the material that has been presented, or about readings that you have been doing with your students.  It is homework, and how that relates to the standards, domains, and other possible important ideas.  It is anything that a teacher uses to help students along the way towards success, towards grasping concepts, towards realizing their persevering selves in the long run.

As a music teacher, I am constantly using formative assessments in my classroom.  I have a "Do Now" on the board every day.  I give students time in class to create rhythm pieces, or create songs, or practice pieces that are from books on the piano.  As they are working, I go around and check on their work, and this is formative assessment.  I work on rhythm combinations that we clap or speak out loud, and when they are doing these, I listen for those who are not getting it, or who are not clapping or speaking the rhythms along with us.  I ask for volunteers to do rhythm solos, and this helps my students to try out their combinations by themselves and perform these for the class without the high stakes of knowing it is for a "grade".  However, if we are really using the formula of standards based reporting correctly, there really is nothing BUT formative assessment, because the end result is no longer to have a "final grade", the end result is for the students to have reached and mastered the standard.  So- in "PBL" as it has been named, all assessment should really be understood as "formative" rather than a "final" or "summative" assessment, otherwise we are not helping the students to reach their potential in every subject.  As there is always more music to learn, more rhythms to play, more ideas about music to "master" there will be no end to "formative assessment" in music class at York Middle School!

Here we are reading and learning at Gma's house, formative assessment is the best way!! ⇪

I took the summer off from my blog, and I read, and taught classes at the recreation department, and I spent several days at the beach, hiking, on an island, and enjoying the time off to regroup, revitalize, re-evaluate, and re-visualize my world.  It was a great time, and it is always a little bittersweet to begin the intensity of the schedule again.  I am excited always, though, about the new school year, and I have students I have had all last spring so I know them, and already have a relationship with all of them from the spring before.  It helps to hit the ground running, because I already know them all so well.

This year our school is thinking about three very important ideas:  Formative assessment, feedback, and differentiation.  In the next few posts, I will be blogging about these three subjects, as a way to think about my teaching at the beginning of this year.  At the end of the school year I will then blog again about these three subjects, and see how my thoughts have metamorphisized. (maybe not a word, but you know what I mean.)  I look forward to this exercise and to sharing my thoughts with the reader, which may only be me, but will be helpful in moving my teaching to a more advanced level.

I am excited about the new year, and this is all I want to say for today, but will write again after the year begins to see where we are.  Happy Fall everyone, and happy Labor Day Weekend!