1. Fear of repercussions of not having a perfectly managed classroom cut down on how often teachers are willing to take the risks.
2. Not only is establishing norms important, but also modeling, what they look like.
I've done several different modeling scenarios over the years. But I just got an idea for something fun.
What if someone from the BH community zoomed in as a guest for 15 minutes or so to have a conversation with the teacher?
It could be a "safe" topic, but one that would generate a genuine, and civil, exchange of differing viewpoints. Students could observe different norms and protocols in action and write/speak/post a response to their observations. Not only would this be live-action, but it would demonstrate that a free exchange of ideas is not always with the goal of persuading or convincing someone to change their mind. Conversation is not always a debate.
I love this response. But of course short term and long term are not an "either/or". The best among us, and the most trusted to be given the freedom to teach from their hearts have been able to strike a balance.
What is the respectful push back to an administration who believes that all teachers doing the same courses must be at the same place at the same time? (incidentally, I find great irony in the insistence on "differentiation" within the classroom when the afore mentioned parameters are expected.)
Donnetta, Letting our students in on our thinking processes and articulating them out loud can be powerful. One of my more memorable moneys in my career was having an open discussion about our next trimester unit and what would be included in it in front our our students. They of course got to weigh in later in the process, but we wanted them to see us engaged in principled and informed disagreement. Good on you for doing this, many teachers have been led to believe this sort of "vulnerability" is a sign of weakness or incompetence, that couldn't be further from the truth.
Do you have an actual lesson plan that you could post? Think of someone new to this discussion venue, working in a zoom meeting, that wants to start developing protocols.
If you could post something you have created instead of just listing a resource (not that all of the resources people have posted are not golden) teachers could have a recipe to use as they start to cook up a new educational dish.
Here is a link to a rubric I use to assess leadership. drive.google.com/.../view use it via portfolio based process and students move through the levels. AN IMPORTANT CAVEAT is that we are changing the language to move from "novice" to "owning it" (we don't want to use the term mastery any longer for obvious reasons).
Now, imagine using the language from this in a rubric you create to score an essay or a collaborative activity? You can break down aspects of it and assess students (and they can self assess and you can determine how to weight their input or their peers' input) on curiosity in a research paper or collaboration in group work, or empathy in a reflective essay. Some will argue that you can write empathetically without being empathetic. That's fine. I am not assessing whether or not someone is empathetic; I am evaluating if they understand what empathy is given how they reflect on their engagement with a topic, etc. If they choose to act that way always, it's up to them - but I do find that assessing for these competencies helps grow them!
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Hi Donnetta, Thanks for reengaging with this topic. With a couple of months of school under our belts and so many of us still teaching online, your observation is definitely on my mind, too. A couple of…
I second what Stacey has outlined here. Teaching students to engage in meaningful conversation is a lifelong skill that far outweighs any momentary content outcomes. I find it's crucial to specifically…
I'm glad you brought this discussion back to life, Kathy.