Education and Process

Education is in the process. Process is the goal. Process, when repeated often enough, leads to understanding, insight and mastery. Process is not artificial.

Mr. Wiemers
http://mrwiemersshop.com

Check out this site which contains all the "Educational Favorite" websites:
http://edu.allmyfaves.com/

Mr. Wiemers
http://mrwiemersshop.com

Unbelievable PE Teacher Video

Click on this link to watch a PE teacher's amazing hand eye coordination and strategic use of angles combined with good luck and a whole lot of extra time:

http://www.snotr.com/embed/612

Mr. Wiemers
http://mrwiemersshop.com

Vocabulary Inservice

This week's best vocabulary laced sentence used in the shop was when I instructed the students, "Dispose of your saturated application material to avoid spontaneous combustion." They did not know what I said, but they showed a great desire to understand since combustion of one's saturated material does not sound like a condition where a full recovery was an option! So, I told them to make sure they threw the towels used to stain their tables in the trash outside so they did not start a fire. (I have a story concerning fire to blog later. I hope I do not forget.)

This week on Wednesday we had an 1:00 dismissal for the teachers to continue their research and development of vocabulary instruction that will be used through out the school environment. We reviewed and discussed our previous work concerning the theory of vocabulary, tier 1-3 words and strategies for vocabulary instruction. We entered the implementation phase that afternoon by reviewing lists of curriculum specific words. Some of the words where words the students would need to remember and use to achieve success in the next few years in high school or college. Others words were recognized as being necessary for the rest of the student's life.

We looked through huge collections of words that students should know. These soon began to look like labyrinths of lawless layers of letters, language and linguistic labels. This initial step of the implementation phase seems to be the most challenging. It has the potential of derailing the entire process in one of two ways. First, a disposition of discouragement could quickly settle in.

Second, teachers could disengage from the process, produce an artificial list, create a couple of activities and check "teach vocabulary" off their to do list with out ever having moved forward. (I've done that before. Often.) We are at a crucial point. Even the language used in the meeting to describe this implementation phase indicated an anticipation of this educational hazard when the following terminology was used describe it:

• Flexible - dictionary definition: "to be bent repeatedly, to be changed, able to be persuaded".
  
• Revisit - dictionary definition: "to reconsider something such as an issue of public policy or a course of action, especially when additional facts indicate that an earlier decision was inappropriate"
• Process - dictionary definition: "to be in a state of procession or of going; not the arriving to a destination or the completion of a trip."

We are at an important place in our vocabulary "discussion" that will determine if we end up creating education altering activities or not.

Mr. Wiemers
http://mrwiemersshop.com

Professional Development Day

One week ago the Dallas Center-Grimes staff spent a full day in professional development sessions. As we have come to expect the trendy buzz words were easy to reengage with since they were in the session titles, the handouts, the skits, the presenter's verbiage, and, if we were willing, we volleyed them back in our questions and our offerings of answers and insights. So, our sessions included:

• Iowa Core Curriculum
• Relationships focused on Positive Interaction
  
• Formative Assessment
• Rigor and Relevance Framework
• Understanding and Caring about the student
  

All in all it was a good day. The sessions included good presentations with a variety of ways to interact with the material and those around us. Like usual, I got out of it what I put into it. This is what I took with me:

1. Concerning the latest trends or buzz words: Once you peel off the buzz word label (formative assessment, rigor and relevance, etc.), if you have been in the classroom for more than 3 years, are still conscience of your surroundings and have lines of communication open with your student, then you are probably already doing these things, but you probably call it "common sense." What I do like is that during days of professional development like this I can spend time thinking about how I could do these things more efficiently, with greater frequency and with an identifiable goal and purpose. If I let it, the desire to teach and make a difference begins to surface. Because, honestly, even though it is common sense, sometime around February I am no longer conscience of my surroundings and I have lost interest in communicating with my students. Point: No matter if it is a trendy buzz word or common sense, sometimes I still have to be refreshed and reminded what my job is.
2. Iowa Core Curriculum: Because of our school districts desire to constantly be in pursuit of excellence and give attention to detail many of the things we have worked on in professional development over the past 7-8 years are dove-tailing together like a well built stairway that easily leads us into the ICC.
   
   • Iowa Core Curriculum Home
3. Career Trends: The internet is 5,000 days old! By 2010 there will be more jobs in Iowa than we have qualified workers to fill. Iowa Core Curriculum will focus on: Literacy, Math, Science, Social Studies and Career Skills. Career Skills will develop the students: employment opportunities, financial literacy and technological skills.
4. Relationships: Any relationship must have some level of mutual respect. This includes between teacher and student. Some see this as some kind of modern approach or cultural deterioration. These are factors affecting education today, but lets go back to common sense. I remember being asked almost twenty years ago why I interacted with students the way I did. Even back then my reply was, "I first have to have some kind of relationship with the kid before I can expect to have him listen to me because of who I am." Sure, you can go through your whole teaching career spouting, "Listen to me because I am the teacher. I am your superior. I have the social right to be respected." True. I teach my kids at home that very thing concerning teachers, police officers and, especially, their Dad! But, it sure is easier to teach and parent when the kid trusts you. Respect makes society function. Trust builds relationships. Obviously we prefer to have both. And, we can.
5. Formative Assessment: Well, someone figured out that testing and scoring at the end of a chapter does not increase learning. It merely records what learning did or did not happen. If this is "new" information then it appears that for years we have an entire education institution with no common sense. Are we here to grade students or teach students. I remember speaking to a crowd many years ago saying, "Just because you taught it doesn't mean they learned it." I realized I had hit a nerve when I saw every one's head drop and they began to write in their notes the concept that teaching and learning are not a cause and effect duo. In fact, many times in my shop the students are learning, but I am clearly not teaching. So, to many teachers it is a great disappointment to learn that the "teacher" is not a prerequisite for the "learner". But, for an "educator" this information provides a sense of freedom and relief. We set the goal, aim the student and facilitate the natural process of learning. When they reach the goal, we move on. Evaluation or assessment should be taking place along the way to help determine what the student needs to know before they reach the goal. Assessment is more for the teacher than for the student. OK, this can become very idealistic very quickly so I am going to move on.
6. Quadrants of Rigor and Relevance: This concept for me was academically challenging. It took me a while to even figure out what we were talking about. I still do not understand the vocabulary used to define the four quadrants of Rigor/Relevance. They are Acquisition, Application, Assimilation, Adaption. I really got set back when it was explained to me that my eighth grade end table project was relevant but not rigorous in its current curricular status. In order to make it rigorous the students would have to recognize a mistake, analyze it, correct it and then correctly evaluate it as a success. The actual terms and steps the students would need to undertake to achieve "rigorness" would be: Knowledge/Awareness, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation. Point: I really do not understand this and I am probably going to need either more training or need to increase my spin in presenting the middle school curriculum as simply just a basic introductory class designed to prepare students for the "rigorisms and releviances" they will be exposed to in high school. Pass the buck and grab the bail out!
7. Understanding and Caring: The last session of the day drove home the painful point that we are not working on an assembly line but working with living, breathing, feeling souls of young people. We can never fully understand their situations, their fears, their abilities nor their potential. It was at this point I realize how unworthy I am to be called "teacher".
   

Mr. Wiemers
http://mrwiemersshop.com

Vocabulary in the Shop

Since one of our building goals is focused on vocabulary we spent yesterday afternoon's staff inservice reviewing Marzano's six steps for effective teaching of vocabulary. They are:

• Provide description, explanation, example
• Ask students to restate in their own words
• Ask students to construct a picture, symbol or graphic
• Engage students in activities that help them add to their knowledge
• Ask students to discuss terms with one another
• Games that allow them to play with terms

What does this look like in the shop? Well, for example, the other day I was giving the eighth graders a demonstration on how to glue together boards to make their table tops. After I had squeezed the glue across the edge of the board I said to them, "redistribute the bead of adhesive equitably." As expected, a couple of students quickly replied, "What did you say." So I translated my words into middle school language, "smear the glue on the edge of the board so there are no dry spots left." Then we joked around with the original statement a couple of times and I explained the phrase "bead of glue" and "adhesive".

The other day I called the class over for a different demonstration and said, "What I am about to show you will be advantageous for you." Because of the teaching staff's focus on vocabulary this year the students are acutely aware, it seems, of words they do not use in their own daily vocabulary and they asked, "what is advantageous?" I gave them a quick multiple choice answer asking them to tell me which of my following statements correctly defined advantageous:

1. advantageous is a disease a person gets from watching too many Super Bowl commercials. This meaning can be recognized by the "ad-" which refers to advertisement and the "-ageous" which distinguishes it as a disease.
2. advantageous refers to something that is a benefit to you or brings you some advantage in some situation or process.
3. advantageous is a corruption of an old, archaic English word for bandage.

After a few moments of discussion they unified on choice 2 but thought choice 1 was funny and had to consider choice 3 because they really didn't understand what that one meant.

I agree with Marzano, of course, even though he was not presented as the god of vocab in yesterday's inservice but simply as a voice of one who has carefully researched and made some intelligent conclusions. (And, made a lot of money selling his book and doing seminars.) But, I would add my own un-researched and less-intelligent opinion concerning teaching vocabulary:

• Sometimes we created artificial learning situations expending 110% of our effort for about 5% results. I do not like artificial learning situations because we live in a real world and habitually ignore that it is constantly teaching us.
  
• Most (or, 95% - an undocumented number) of my personal learning of vocab seems to have come from hearing conversations, reading, or listening to other people talk. I heard or hear words and begin to use them.
• Concerning preparing students for standardized testing one of the greatest means of decoding a word is to understand etymology. To understand English a little bit of insight and experience with Latin and Greek provides a great basis for student empowerment in decoding words. Here 5% of knowledge is going to provide 100% improvement in vocab ability (again, these are undocumented, estimates from my own imagination, but the point is: a little knowledge of Greek and Latin will provide greater insight into vocab. This would be very beneficial on standardized testing.)
• When I go to the men's room in an Italian restaurant (Macaroni Grill, for example) they are not playing music but instead of reading from an Italian-English dictionary . . . should we be playing the vocabulary words anticipated on the standardized tests over the intercom and over the speakers on the school buses?

I will be addressing the above points in my new book "A Shop Teacher's Guide to Improving Vocab". The book will be just a little longer than this blog because it will include an index. Don't miss my coming seminars where you can buy a signed copy of this book!

Mr. Wiemers
http://mrwiemersshop.com