improve my teaching

When I surveyed my kids at the end of last year, most of them had the same criticism: that they don’t do enough projects in my class. I had set out to change that this year, and thus far it has gone pretty well. Thus far into the first quarter, each class has had a major project and a major exam, and the projects have been fairly significant in content / rigor. I even did a socioeconomic project for my Algebra 2 Honors class, and the result was interesting. (Some kids did a brilliant job; others ignored my various feedback and aimed for the minimum, as might be expected in all situations.)

But, I’m also getting some pressure, both from myself and from the school, to hurry the pacing along. The projects have been great, but time-consuming, and therefore we’re a little bit slower in the pacing than we would ideally like to be. I have yet to find the right balance.

Our school also does periodical student reviews of teachers. We’re supposed to survey each class every quarter, and summarize the results for our supervisors. I’m curious to see what the students have to say about my teaching, although I’m clearly going to take it with a grain of salt. I am almost certain that most students will say that I give too much homework, even though I only give a moderate amount (albeit daily). I guess we’ll see!

so I am choosing improvement of my teaching as my mission.

The keynote speaker at our faculty convocation talked about “millennial students” and how to reach them. The speaker is a psychology professor who interviewed tons of students about their college experience. We got to see portions of the interviews. They don’t like too much lecture (who does?); they want to participate and work in groups; they like doing more than one thing in a single class period; they want some kind of credit or grade for everything they do; and they like teachers who can use technology.

All that is right up my alley and mirrors much of my own teaching technique, but I want to ramp it up.

Today was the second day of class. The first day was syllabus discussion, students introducing themselves, and so on.

Today, I started off with work on vocabulary. It was a participatory exercise, and took about 20 minutes. Then, I showed a 5-minute YouTube video on a conformity experiment. I asked them if they thought they would have conformed and invited comment. They spent 20 minutes reading an article on conformity and answering questions, which I told them I would not grade “right or wrong” but would put a checkmark in my gradebook to show that they had been in class and done the exercise. Enough checks can earn a dropped zero for a missed quiz or a dropped low grade on a quiz.

For fifteen minutes or so, we talked about the article and their answers to the questions. I told them we’d come back to the article on Thursday for a deeper analysis and a second set of questions.

Then I introduced a chapter in the main text, gave an assignment, and told them they could check Twitter for the assignment if they forgot.

No lecture? Check.
Participation? Check.
Group work? Not today.
Variety within the class period? Check.
Credit given for work done? Check.
Use of technology? Checkaroonie.

Good job today. Now, to keep this up for the rest of the semester.

1. Getting student feedback early and often
2. Finding a good way to break up the lecture in my larger class without wasting too much time
3. Explicitly addressing the habits and executive skills that students will need to succeed in my classes (time management, organization, persistence, etc.)
4. Grading promptly
5. Assigning projects that students can be proud of