What a Week!

Background Information

Since the last entry, I had minor surgery which caused me to miss 4 days of school.  I came back for one day and then we went out for Thanksgiving.  This meant that there was about twelve days in between the day of craziness and the next grade level meeting.

Monday means Grade Level Meetings

On Mondays we have grade level meetings with the principal (sometimes), the reading specialist, and me.  During these meetings we discuss data, upcoming events, students' needs, and whatever else the teachers want to talk about.  This was one of the times that the principal was unable to attend.

The first teacher in was the teacher who was behind in his objectives.  He was angry that his evaluation had gone so badly and that no one took up for him.  He was angry that other people in the district (principals, superintendent, school improvement personnel, etc.) were looking at his data and discussing the deficits.  I let him vent for a few minutes, but then was able to get him refocused on the problem in front of us - how to get through all of the objectives in the time allotted.

One comment that he kept saying was that he could "skim" through the objectives, but he wanted to teach them thoroughly.  I need him to be somewhere in the middle.  It is not fair to the students to not even expose them to material before making them sit through an assessment with the material on it.

I gave him a 9-weeks calendar and together we mapped out when he was going to teach which objective.  I also discussed with him that when I go into the room, he should be doing small group lessons and I will be one of the small groups.  I told him that I could either work on the current or past objectives.

I felt that we left on good terms - there was a plan in place that I could share with the principal and others.

Unpacking the Standards

In the next three grade levels, I shared what our district calls "unpacking the standards" with the teams.  This is supposed to help the teachers focus in on what the objective is, then we can discuss strategies and activities as needed.

I have been supposed to be doing this weekly with the teachers, but I hadn't started it consistently.  The results of the 9-week Benchmark tests convinced me that I needed to incorporate it into our weekly meetings.

I had good math talk with the three grade levels.  We also discussed that they can come and plan with the Reading Specialist and me on Fridays.

Then it was time for the third grade team. . .

Because of the data from the benchmark tests, my principal moved the lowest performing third grade teacher to kindergarten and had the kindergarten teacher go up to third grade.  They were told about it before Thanksgiving and the switch was to take place on the same day as this grade level meeting.

When I passed out the unpacking the standards for the current SOL, the teacher who had originally planned the "distributive property lesson," said, "Is this still about the distributive property?"

I told them that I did need to share this to make sure everyone knew what the objectives were.

The teacher then produced a copy of a Teaching Children Mathematics article about the distributive property.  From here the meeting went downhill - fast.  I had three teachers, mainly two of them basically telling me that I was only worried about using the name "distributive property", that I did not want them to be creative in their lessons, etc. One of them asked me when I was going to start pulling students because I hadn't done it in a long time - hmmm I guess she forgot about the surgery and Thanksgiving . . .

I did apologize for interrupting her lesson, and told her that I should have waited until after the lesson to address the situation, to which she told me that after I left (5 - 10 minutes into the lesson) that she didn't teach math the rest of the day because I had upset her so much.

After listening to them rant, I told them that surely they had time to assess that particular objective and they said emphatically that yes they had taken it and that the students had shown much improvement.  The one teacher (with the student teacher who did NOT spend time on the distributive property) told me that she had a 76% pass rate - not great, but a great improvement.  The other teacher said that her students were also making gains - she was unable to tell me her pass rate.

I told them that the principal said that they must plan with me on Fridays, to which I got more protests.

When they left, I was done!  The teacher who had just been moved to third grade sat with me for a minute and commented on the team she was now joining.

The final grade level came in and we had a lovely meeting - no rants about going over the unpacking the standards or meeting with me on Fridays.

Data and Meeting with the Principal

I pulled up the data on the three teachers on the online test that one of them had created.  Teacher 1 had indeed had 76% pass rate.  Teacher 2 had 55% pass rate, and Teacher 3 had 38% pass rate.  That is improvement???

I informed the principal about the meeting and the data because this problem was and is too large for me.

Tuesday - Thursday

I worked my regular schedule, but I spent my time in the "new" third grade teacher's classroom.  For the small group instruction I pulled students out of Teacher 3's class.

One of the new teachers, who had only taught whole group lessons, started doing small group stations in response to our talk.

Friday. . .

I was busy meeting with different grade levels except - you guessed it - the 5th grade teacher and 3rd grade teachers. I'm sure the 5th grade teacher forgot and I was in the middle of another project, and I forgot to call him until too late.

Teacher 1 was absent - she told the principal that she had made dentist appointments for her children and her months ago.  Teacher 2 had been on a field trip, but I saw her in the hall before her planning time.  I called up to the room of Teacher 3 and the resource teacher told me she was at planning (where, I don't know).  I called up to the new teacher's room, and she quickly came down.  We made a plan for this upcoming week.

My Take Aways

I HATE conflict of any kind.  I don't mind having to correct children, but I HATE being in the position of making adults behave.

I understand that the third grade team is stressed - if the principal was willing to move one teacher so quickly, what would stop her from moving another teacher, namely any one of them?

I have done all that I can do with this team at this time.  I need to focus in on the new teacher, who seems very happy to accept my help.

The enforcement of  Friday planning MUST come from my principal, not me.

My focus is and always will be providing the students at my school the highest quality of instruction possible.  I cannot let teachers' rants cause me to back away from that focus!

Twilight Zone at School

At my school one grade level is departmentalized - so I only have to work with one teacher in that grade level.  That sounds good, right?  Last year, this one teacher failed to teach all of the objectives for the first marking period.  We discussed the harm to the students' academic achievement when you omit teaching the required curriculum.

This year, I was proactive and created a 9-weeks calendar for this teacher, and had the teacher write down when each objective would be taught.  He didn't turn in lesson plans, but that is administration's responsibility (or so I tell myself).  I go into his room 3 times a week, but there is usually a whole group lesson - why would he do that with the special ed teacher and I in the room.  Sometimes I would take small groups of students to my office to work on their math skills.

Guess what?!  He still didn't teach all of the objectives.  He never touched the distributive property or orders of operations.  His scores are in the toilet.  Someone from the central office came and talked with him.  He was told that 1) he needed to teach and remediate all of the objectives, and  2) he needs to do small group instruction so he can differentiate the instruction.

You are now entering the Twilight Zone . . . 

I started the day in 4th grade.  This new teacher does so much cutting and pasting of notes into interactive notebooks.  Everyday!!!  She says she doesn't like doing it, but some how feels obligated to do it.  

Then I went into 3rd grade.  They were also cutting and pasting notes into interactive notebooks.  The (new) teacher didn't know how to pronounce "commutative" property, and there was very little instruction on what the commutative property was.  The students were just cutting and gluing.  I must add that there is a special education teacher (who was on the computer), a one on one (who was on her phone), the teacher, and me in this room where we are cutting and pasting during math.

But THEN the teacher pulled out the next cut and paste for the interactive notes - on the DISTRIBUTIVE PROPERTY (5th grade objective) instead of teaching 2-digit by 1-digit multiplication. I stopped him.  I told him that he should not be giving this to his class because it was a 5th grade objective.  He looked at me like a deer in the headlights and said, "but it was in the packet!"

I took the sheets to the grade level chair and asked her about it.  She has a student teacher who had written the lesson for the day.  Students were in small groups, no one was cutting and pasting, and they were all working on multiplication of 2-digit by 1-digit.  They were even using base-ten blocks to model the problems.  The grade chair said that she didn't know anything about the worksheets, but that I should check out another teacher on the team. 

I went to that classroom where the 3rd grade teacher had distributive property written across the board.  I told her (yes, in front of her students) that she should NOT be teaching this.  She said show me, so I showed the students how to multiply the bigger numbers.  She said that the strategy that I showed them was what they were going to do on Thursday - obviously I messed up their plans.

I didn't even bother going to the fourth 3rd grade teacher, but she told me at the end of the day that she had also followed the packet and taught the distributive property, although she said she didn't understand WHY she was teaching it.  My question is that if the teacher doesn't understand why she is teaching something, how are the students possibly making connections and learning???

What is this magic packet???  Why are they following it instead of the curriculum????

How can a student teacher make a better lesson plan than three teachers with their teaching license?

But the Twilight Zone doesn't stop there . . .

Later I entered into the 5th grade classroom - remember the day before a person from central office and the principal told him he needed to catch up on the objectives and teach in small groups?  Well, he was doing a WHOLE group review lesson of adding and subtraction of decimals and fractions.  I sat there in disbelief!!!

My Take Aways

I have discussed this with my principal, so now meeting with me once a week for planning is mandatory. 

Using so-called interactive notes where they use the math time to cut and paste has got to stop.  The students need to be using manipulatives and there must be small group instruction.  

What else???

I need to monitor more closely what and how the math is being taught, and stop taking for granted that the teachers know what they are doing (that sounds harsh!)  I hate confronting adults!

Our children are great!  They deserve much better!

A Tale of Two Teachers

Background:
I was asked to write for my district a curriculum pacing resource guide for second grade during the summer.  A few weeks ago, I saw the stack of worksheets the second grade teachers were planning to use, and I got a bit cranky.  I told them that since I had written their CPR, I should see at least some of the more rigorous activities and lessons in their lesson plans.

Teacher One has been teaching for at least 8 years.  She was not happy when the principal and I told her that the worksheets were unacceptable.   Last week, she came into my office with a baggie of laminated cards, handed them to me, and said, "I don't know what to do with these!  You are going to have to show me."

Since it has been 4 months since I wrote this, I had to ask her to tell me where they came from.  She looked up the web site: http://www.k-5mathteachingresources.com/support-files/skipcountingcards.pdf 

After having my memory refreshed, and sorting out the cards so they were in an understandable order, I was able to show her a few ways that I might use them.

Teacher Two has been teaching for 2 months and came to me after school for some help with her lesson plans.  I asked her what she had planned already, and she pulled up the same activity.  HOWEVER, she told me the ways she was going to incorporate the activity into her lessons.  The only thing that I can honestly say that I added to her lessons was using Two Ways to Count to Ten by Ruby Dee and Susan Meddaugh as an opener for teaching skip counting.

Reflection
Teacher One wants to do activities with her students, while Teacher Two is looking at the learning objectives/targets of her students.  I need to be mindful when I meet with teachers to ask them what they are trying to teach and why, rather than focusing in on the activities. I will especially have to be mindful when working with Teacher One, to help deepen her understanding of what she is teaching rather than going through a series of activities and wondering why her students aren't learning!

Solving Word Problems

The hardest part of my job is having confront teachers.  I hate any kind of conflict and do just about anything to avoid it.  Today I had to address a problem and it turned out positive!

The first teacher has been teaching for about 6 years.  I walked into his class for math, and he had several word problems showing on his SmartBoard.  As the problems were read, he had the students "flashing" their hands when they saw the key word(s) which helped them understand what operation to use.  My heart sank!  No comprehension of the problem, not strategies, just key words!

The worst problem is how do you point something out without the teacher's spirit.  So I did a few things: First, I copied out the article, Caution: Avoid Key Words! from Teaching Student-Centered Mathematics Grades K-3, by John A. Van De Walle and LouAnn H. Lovin, because he and I had already had a discussion about this last year.  I wanted him to see that it wasn't just my personal preference, but that he was going against what was considered best practices.

The next thing we discussed was  the four square problem solving method, UPS-check that we have been doing at the school before he got there.  This is basically a graphic organizer showing the four steps of problem solving by Polya - understand, plan, solve, and check.  I then showed him a video of one of his colleagues leading a lesson with it that I had taken the previous year:

https://youtu.be/CPgX3NTdMCE


His response was that it took her 15 - 20 minutes to solve one problem!  I told him that it is OK for students to work on one good problem during a class period, if the students were learning how to problem solve!  The clincher was when I told him that she had 87% pass rate in math and he had only had 75% pass rate!

I also wanted to give him  a second strategy to give the students, so I showed him the bar method (AKA Singapore Math) which our text series uses.  I even showed him the wonderful web site,  Thinking Blocks  and we went through a few problems.

At the end of the day, he came to me and said that he really had not been teaching key words (I guess blinking the hands at the key words meant something else!).  He was going to start using the UPS-check because the students had learned that last year.  However, he was not going to use the bar method because he didn't know it well enough.

I see that with him I need to encourage him to use more than one representation during his lessons.  I will also have to help him to learn more than one strategy to teach students!

New School Year, New Start!

OK, I'm not great at keeping up with blogs, but I hope that being in this group of mathematics specialists and meeting once a month will encourage me to keep up!

Professional Developments

The first three weeks that I was back at work, I had to deliver five days of professional development!  Three of those days I was presenting on making connections with representations.  The Virginia Department of Education made this easy because they have the PowerPoints and the facilitator's guides for each grade band:  K-2, 3-5, 6-8, Algebra, and Geometry!
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/instruction/mathematics/professional_development/index.shtml

I was presenting the K-2 band, but the people running the first sets of workshops failed to put that into the program, which meant that high school teachers came into my workshop.

During one session, two high school  and one middle school teachers attended.  As we went through the activities I could see that the two gentlemen were increasingly put off with having to go through the activities.  I even overheard one of them say, "They don't need all of this stuff!  They just need to learn the algorithms!"  

I assured him that if he went onto the VDOE website, he could see that ALL students needed to work through the five representations, whether they were in elementary school or high school (or college for that matter!)  I know what the high school scores are like in our district, and I wanted to ask him how his scores were and that perhaps he needed to learn new strategies and representations to increase those scores!  

Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting the same result.

The other high school teacher, I am pleased to say, came to me and said that she could see how these representations could help her students increase their understanding.  We were able to talk for a few minutes and I suggested she look into Dan Meyer's 3 Act Problems  http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2011/the-three-acts-of-a-mathematical-story/