Art and Science of Teaching: Chapter 8

Our district is investigating The Art and Science of Teaching by Robert Marzano (@robertjmarzano).  


Disconnected empathy.  That is the essential learning with this chapter.

While reading this chapter I kept thinking how much I take teaching personally.  It's my craft, it's my passion, but the chapter kept reminding me to disconnect and not take so much personally.

Here are my takeaways:

• The quality of relationships is key to student learning
• Everything comes back to "guidance and control"
• How much are you as a teacher committed to the well-being of ALL participants
• "We are a team here and succeed and fail as a team.  Additionally I have stake personally in the success of each one of you."
• Be consistent
• My biggest weakness is "The causes of many behaviors labeled and punished as rule infractions are, in fact, problems of students and teachers relating to one another."
• Teachers need to be "considerate, buoyant, and patient."
• Show the appropriate amount of dominance and cooperation
• Have emotional objectivity
• Brophy and Everston (1976) state: "professional view of their students looking upon them primarily as young learners with whom the interacted within the student-teacher relationship  elicited the highest result of student learning.
• Classroom needs a sense of community
• A teachers actions as well as their works are "listened" to by the students.
• Teacher Enthusiasm is key
• Use humor....when appropriate...
• Action Steps for your classroom:
1. Know something about each student, invest in them, get to know everything you can.
2. Engage in student activities, go to their events, care about them and their families.
3. Talk to every student every day, or as many as you can.
4. Personalize learning (Blog posts on this one are plentiful: 1, 2, 3 )
5. Smile, care, engage, interact, be interested...
6. Use humor....when appropriate...
7. Enforce both positive and negative consequence (this one I still struggle with) 
1. Acknowledge when students follow the rules instead of just when they don't
8. Practice removing yourself from the situation
1. Listen, you are not going to love every kid.  Use a consistent tone.  Give them the benefit of the doubt.  What could have possibly make them act the way they did.  Reason with them, support them, it's not personal.

Art and Science of Teaching: Chapter 1

Our district is investigating The Art and Science of Teaching by Robert Marzano (@robertjmarzano).  

I originally read this book in 2008.  I loved it.  I fell in love and used it to catapult my craft of teaching for the last five years.  Since taking a new job in a new district I have started over in more ways than one.

I'm going to use these spaces to post my largest takeaways from each section.  Enjoy, challenge me, question, use this to move yourself forward.  I'm excited for this new endeavor.

Here goes:

Introduction:

• Schools have little impact on student achievement that is independent of their background and SES.
• Better teachers yield better results from students
• "Mathematical models are false" there are patterns but no certainties
• No matter the strategy there is no silver bullet that works for every student
• Effective teaching is 1-part knowing your students and 1-part knowing how to teach

Chapter 1:

• "Set goals, track progress, celebrate success"
• "Goal setting has a general tendency to enhance learning"
• Feedback is as important as goal setting
• Celebrating effort is as important as progress or product
• Capitalizing on student interest has a positive effect on student motivation
• "A learning goal is a statement of what students will know or be able to do."
• Two kinds of learning:
• "declarative learning: informational in nature"
• "procedural learning: Strategies, skills, and processes"
• After a learning goal, write a rubric.
• Have students write what they know, want to know so you can wrap up with what they learned in a unit. (KWL strategy)
• Even though teachers make a rubric, let students make their own student friendly version.
• Challenge students to track their own progress and take charge of their own learning.