Quick Description of School and Classrooms:
The five of us were given a quick overview of Smedberg by the vice-principal. We learned that the school was built to hold 1200 students, but attendance is currently at 1780. Some of the buildings have the look of temporary structures, and several of the classrooms that I observed were pretty full. Next year the district will complete a new middle school and high school, at which time the student body should go back down to about 1100. This also means that a lot of teachers will be laid off at that time. Apparently there is no direct plan for transferring teachers. Rather, the teachers are on their own to figure out if they want to interview for the new school or stay at the old school and risk being laid off.
Smedberg is on a block schedule, but unlike the other block schedule schools I have observed, Smedberg is on an "odd" / "even" schedule. This means the students have different classes on odd days and even days. The general exception is the language arts class, which all students attend every day. Students taking math support classes also go to school every day. So, all of the classes run all through the school year.
Smedberg is also a year round school, meaning there is no long
summer vacation. Oddly enough though, the teachers do get extra
time off. They are on a track system, where every 3 month cycle
they get a an extra 3 week block of vacation. I'm not sure how
this works out as far as who takes over a class when the teacher is off
track (or are a block of students off track at that time too?).
It's a bit of a moot point anyway, because they are going to switch
back to a conventional schedule next year.
The Plan:
Mr. Silva 7th Grade Math: Mr. Silva ran a very standard math plan - except he ran it rather better than most. Unlike most teachers I have observed, he started out with a brief overview of what would be covered for the day, including mentioning that there would be a quiz the next time the class met. He even went so far as to discuss what would be covered in the next chapter, and he mentioned that the break period would have no homework. I thought this gave the class some feeling of structure and progression, and I thought it was well worth the small extra time it took to make the announcement. The standards, objectives, and agenda for the day were up on the white board as well (a standard practice I've seen in most classes I've observed).
After the agenda, the class went into the warm up problems, the
teacher took attendance, and I wrote down some environment
observations. The class had 38 students present that day (the
largest class I have seen anywhere so far). There was some sort
of teacher's assistant seated in the back - she looked like she might
be a high school student. Mr. Silva told me later that he had
moved the TA to the back to keep an extra eye on the students to help
discourage the use of cell phones (more on that later). The room
looked lived in, and posters on the wall described math from different
countries. I found out that the rooms at Smedberg are not
equipped with LCD projectors, although LCD projectors can be checked
out from the library when needed. I would like to do all my
lectures on power point using animation, so this would be a real issue
for me.
As the students completed their problems, the teacher used a random number chosen by a student to pick the students who would do problems on the board. Personally, I would prefer warning them ahead of time so the student could put extra effort into their assigned problem so they would have the maximum chance at getting the problem right. This has the possible advantage of confidence building, but does admittedly take away some incentive for everyone to do the work. After the answers were put up, volunteers were allowed to go up to the board on their own and correct the answers on the board if they saw problems. The teacher used some sort of ticket system to reward participation. I'm a big believer in small scale bribery so I like the ticket idea.
The teacher then read off homework answers and the students corrected their own work (they were told to use a different colored pen to do it). The teacher walked around the room at this point to see that they were correcting and not redoing. I thought Mr. Silva did a pretty fair job of "working the floor" and not just sitting behind the overhead projector. The teacher asked students to pick problems from last night's homework that he would repeat on the board. Again, this seemed like a good way to get class feedback and focus in on problem areas as opposed to just being redundant and working every single problem.
After a quick review of what would be on the quiz, the teacher went into a lecture on the next section. Here he used a technique that I've seen in every class I've attended, but I have a lot of skepticism about it. Basically, he wrote down new rules and definitions on the overhead projector, talked about the stuff he wrote down, and asked the students to copy down his notes into their notebooks. Now, I understand the learning theory behind this method. By combining visual, oral, and tactile inputs, it gives the students a good chance to remember what they were taught. This is all to the good. The issue I have with this method is it takes so doggone long to do it! This portion of class took over half an hour. During this time, the students mostly participated only one at a time with answers to a few questions that were posed to the class. By the time lecture was over, there was very little time to do any of the homework in class... and I fear for many of these students, if they don't do it in class, they won't do it at all.
I think it would be better to do the review quite a bit more quickly - with pre-written slides and the rules and definitions provided on handouts (so no note taking is needed - they just listen). Then the extra time could be used in class to put the new information into use - perhaps by starting off the homework in a collaborative manner. I think this would be a better use of the limited class time available - especially considering that most students aren't really going to put in any time outside of class. Note that perhaps some advanced classes might work better with more class time devoted to lecture, since they probably do their homework.
[Writer's note: Anyone reviewing this please let me know what you think of my theory.]
Mr. Silva did have a couple of other little teaching tricks that I especially liked:
Other Teacher Pre-Algebra:
For my second day of observation, Mr. Silva's class had a test.
So, he took me around to find another teacher. Most of the
teachers that he wanted to send me to observe were unavailable or also
giving a test, so he finally took me to observe his last choice.
I can understand why he didn't want to take me to the teacher, because
frankly she was probably the worst teacher I've observed to date.
I never caught her name, but I think I would rather let her be
anonymous anyway because I really don't want to put down in writing
that Ms. so and so was a bad teacher.
This teacher had no agenda on the board whatsoever (or any posters
or anything colorful either), and she didn't really seem to have much
enthusiasm for the kids. Also, her manner was a little bit odd
(not odd in the sort of way that would put off most mature adults, but
odd in the sort of way that inspires kids to really rip into
them). Most of her students seemed painfully board, and maybe
only 1/4 of the class was tuned in. I think one of the teacher's
problems was that her questions to the students tended to be fairly
vague. The students didn't know how to answer them, so the ones
who weren't directly on the spot just sort of tuned out.
Anyway, I don't want to put a lot of effort into ripping on a bad teacher who might be trying to do a good job but who just lacks the people skills - so instead I'm going to talk about a particular thing I saw in her class.
One of the students in the class spent almost the entire class using his cell phone to do text messaging. I've never seen that before! I'm pretty sure he wasn't cheating (they weren't testing or anything), I think he was just having a conversation with a girl. I later guessed that this girl was just across the room - because I saw one sneaking looks at a phone she kept hidden behind a sweater. At one point the teacher sent the boy outside for a quick chat, and I think she asked him to give her his phone. I don't know exactly what was said (I might be assuming), but somehow he kept the phone, and a few minutes later he was sending another message. I imagine he denied doing anything and she didn't want to challenge him on it.
Boy, does this seem like a big problem! I asked Mr. Silva how he handles this issue, and he told me a few things:
I know that kids are also using cell phones to try to cheat
(although frankly this seems like a pretty hard trick to pull off even
with picture phones since you need to show work on math tests), but the
idea that they have such a huge potential distraction sitting in their
pockets or their backpacks seems like just another challenge to pile on
top of the teacher classroom management workload.
Off Topic Rant:
Note that I have made a very good living in a profession where
abstract mathematical and logical thinking is an absolute
necessity. Math has been very good to me, and I would like to
have a chance to convince kids that math can be good to them too.
Even so, I don't really understand this obsession with getting every
single high school student passed through algebra I (which is an Elk
Grove graduation requirement). It has become such an issue
for the district, if a kid isn't meeting the goal he has to take double
math classes to try to get up to speed before graduation.
The fact is, there is a large minority of people who need to be able
to do math very well - like engineers and certain other equivalent
professions. Everyone else can pretty much get by knowing how to
do the math you should have learned by the end of 7th grade.
Also, if you are going to actually make your living by being an
engineer (or some other math intensive profession), you have to love it
and you have to be good at it -
really good! In a way, attempting to bring every single student,
whether they show the least bit of desire or aptitude or not, up to the
level required for engineering school is similar to trying to train
every single one of us to compete in
professional sports. For a pretty good portion of the student
body
it's just a complete waste of time because first, the aren't
interested, and second, they are unlikely to come up to the level of
ability where they would actually be able to use it in a career.
I think we should go back to how it was when I went to school. Everyone had to have basic math skills, and everyone took classes to help them be as good as they could be given their basic aptitude and level of interest. For some kids who aren't going to college this is going to mean math aimed at bookkeeping, balancing a checkbook, and stuff like that. If their interests change later and they decide they want to do algebra after all - every junior college offers it, and they can get back up to speed on it then.
Just my opinion.