Never Work Harder Than Your Students: Chapter 3

We are doing a book club with our 2nd and 3rd year teachers in our district and reading the book Never Work Harder than your students.

Chapter 3 could be summed up as:

If you don't believe in yourself, who can you believe in?

Some of the main Take-aways I have from chapter 3 are as follows:

• We drag kids through curriculum
• We need to look at the expectations we have for ourselves before we can expect things from kids
• The difference between the expectation and the standard is:
• Standard is the bar
• Expectation is your belief that the students can reach the bar
• Just because you raised the standard doesn't mean that you have also altered your belief that kids can reach those standards.
• If you believe students won't meet the standard, then that belief will play out in your classroom.
• An expectation is the confidence that something will happen

An expectation is what you get when you multiply the probability of an occurrence and the value of that occurrence.

• Beliefs are what we think is true
• Values are what we think something is worth
• Our expectations are the intersection between what we believe about our teaching situation and our own abilities to handle it and what we believe is important.

Pygmalion Effect

• Blind belief in our own talent
• Bet to take anything and turn it into something better

Teachers go to work believing they will end up with a masterpiece, not because the raw material they are working with has some innate potential but because of the power of their own ability to create a masterpiece.

It's about you...

• Students pick up on our expectations fairly quickly.  They then formulate judgements about the kind of teacher we are and decide how hard they will work in our classroom
• If we believe in the student, we will pull out all the stops.
• If we are not confident in our ability, we will lower our expectations
• lowered expectations is a self-protective measure
• You want to raise expectations of your students, you first have to raise your expectations of yourself
• Rather than focus on the problem, focus on how to solve the problem

Stockdale Paradox

• Optimism creates despair
• Never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end with the discipline to confront the most difficult of reality.

Have faith in yourself

• If we believe what we are doing is important, we are more likely there is a way to prevail
• Faith based on your ideals, what you believe is important
• Do you value your students following your rules, being quiet and cooperative?
• Do you value engaging activities with the material and learn to be critical thinkers and effective communication.
• What do you value?  When you determine what you value, you will determine your faith...

Confront your reality

• The way we decide what to focus on is what we value.

Our beliefs function as a filter through which we sift our reality.

• Our decisions are based on our beliefs and the magnitude of our teaching task as well as our own abilities.
• Asking the right questions will grant you the opportunity to change your beliefs or let them be challenged.
• Be humble enough to know that you don't have all the answers
• Be willing to "stop" doing something you are doing...
• When you get data or information do you use it as an opportunity to blame someone or to improve?

Whole Equation

• Balance your focus on both sides of the paradox
• What can I do today to move toward my goal despite the reality of my circumstances?
• How do you see your individual reality?

Wrap it up...

If a student is failing, then it means that I haven't found the right way to get through to them.

We Sit'n here talk'n bout practice...Not a game, not a game, Practice!

Our district is currently doing a book study on the Art and Science of Teaching.

See other posts here:

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 6
Chapter 8

This chapter is on giving students opportunities to deepen their understanding.

Or as Allen Iverson would say, We're going to use the Blog post to talk about PRACTICE!

MISCONCEPTION ALERT!
Deepening your understanding does not mean doing the same thing to the same depth that was done before.  That is just practicing, which is fine for somethings.  Deepening means going to the next depth of knowledge.

My take-aways are:

• Students need opportunities to practice new skills and deepen their understanding of new information.
• Students need time to extend their thinking
• Part of this process is students recognizing their own misconceptions
• "Students need a sound foundation to build new awareness."
• Determine what kind of learning they need it is skill based (procedural) or knowledge based (declarative)
• Assign tasks as determined by kind of learning they are doing...

Building new awareness:

• Schema Development
• linking old learning and new
• challenge existing perceptions
• Procedural knowledge
• the "do" of a learning goal
• develops from declarative knowledge
• involves adding, editing, and delting steps
• fully developed seems automatic
• also termed as "fluency"
• Need for practice to make this automatic
• guided practice involves "gradual shaping of a procedure facilitated by teacher guidance"
• OVER TIME PROCEDURAL KNOWLEDGE IS SHAPED BY THE LEARNER.
• Developing Declarative Knowledge
• reviewing and revision are key
• Students need at least 4 exposures to integrate something into their existing knowledge base. (Rovee-Collier, Nuthall)
• No more than 2 days between exposures (Think about this as it relates to Professional development)
• Ways to improve declarative knowledge
• revision - as in writing
• error analysis - revising ones own thinking
• Similarities and differences - think Venn Diagram, classification also work
• homework - extends learning opportunities that are limited byt he school day

Facts about homework (Don't shoot the messenger, I don't like homework either)

• Relationship between amount of homework students do and their achievement level were found positive and statistically significant.
• No clear benefits of homework at the lower levels (below grade 6)
• Homework should:
• Foster good study habits
• foster positive attitude toward school
• There is no correlation between time spent on homework and student achievement
• For secondary students there are benefits to homework up to one to two hours a night, after that it diminishes greatly.
• It's not the time spent on homework but the proportion completed that impacts achievement
• Parent involvement with homework is positive when:
• There are clear roles
• Parents are not experts
• Parents can ask clarifying questions to help students summarize
• Give students practice, but make it focused, and meaningful

Action steps for your classroom:

1.  Let students find similarities and differences often (compare, classify, create metaphors, analogies)

2.  Help students identify errors in thinking (faulty logic, attacks, weak reference, misinformation)

3.  Practice, Practice, Practice.... Structure practice, gradual release, develop fluency)

4.  Use Cooperative groups with a focused intent

5.  Assign PURPOSEFUL homework

6.  Allow students time to make corrections in their notebooks/journals/blogposts/googledoc files.