Kevin Corwin's Blog

Are we teaching to the 21st Century at Edmonds Woodway

kcorwin — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:38:26 +0000

All this 21st century education stuff has me a little worried. I am not sure we are teaching this way at my school. And my kids graduated and are currently attending the school I teach at. From what I saw, my kids went to school, listened to the teacher and did homework and took tests or wrote papers. I am sure, at least I hope I am sure, there was more going on. But was it this collaboration, critical thinking, group work, problems solving work that we read about this week? If that is what the kids need I do not think my kids will be ready. Now, my oldest is in college and I am certain my younger one will end up there as well, so they have another opportunity to get these skills there. Was all of this supposed to be learned in K-12 education, or does it bleed over to college.

We do not teach this way in the math department. We do the traditional lecture, homework, test. The kids grade comes 70% from the tests. We have not done a group project. They work at their table groups, but only solving math problems that they have been shown how to do minutes before on the board. No critical thinking. There is not even oversight to see if everybody is participating, sometimes I have seen one kid do the work and the others just watch, or not watch in some circumstances. This comes, I believe from math departments saying, get the material taught, in this order, this week, this day. This leaves no time to implement things that we are learning in methods classes. No higher level Blooms Taxonomy.

And what about our nation? Are we doing enough of this, producing enough kids to get the jobs necessary to make the US competitive in the future? The stats we read this week seem to say we are way behind. How far behind are we, and if we do not catch up, where will that leave us? There will always be jobs in education, which is where both of my children think they are headed, so that doesn’t worry me too much. But I knew a lot of the kids that my daughter was friends with and very few were pursuing the professional jobs that were mentioned in the readings. Maybe I do not know enough kids, but it is not what I am hearing.

Is it possible that this nation can lose enough ground on the rest of the world that we cannot compete with the countries that are teaching kids in this way? The reading did not say anything that I picked up about what other countries are doing about this, but it definitely inferred that we are behind other countries in testing. And if the testing is an indication of future 21st century job holders, which I am not sure if it does, then it seems to me that we are in trouble. How long will it take to educate the educators on how to teach this way and then how long will it take for this education to get us going in the right direction?

So many questions. As I said at the top, I am a little worried. Can it be that we get so far behind, and lose so much ground to other nations, that we are no longer the dominant force that we are now? Will the best and brightest 21st century leaders in America leave to work in other parts of the world, an American brain drain. And where does all this put my children? And my grandchildren? Do we need to be a dominant force in the world for us to lead productive happy lives? Just the fact that I thought to ask that last question is kind of scary.

Collaboration tools 10/19/09

kcorwin — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:26:54 +0000

There are a lot of things I like about Web 2.0 and it use in my future classrooms. I have come to really enjoy my own blogging and the reflection time it give me. I think it will do the same for students in the classroom once they figure out how to do it. This weeks topic is equally exciting for me to think about as a teacher. Collaboration can be a powerful tool, it always has been, but teaching students to collaborate with technology will be an excellent introduction to how to work in today’s workforce.

I am looking forward to the collaborative project in this class so that I can become a little more comfortable with the technology we will be using and therefore be able to teach students to use it in the future. Peer editing and face to face peer review of writing projects always intimidated me. I did not like speaking in a group in school, I was afraid what I would say would sound unintelligent and reflect bad on me. I had trouble coming up with things to say on the spot as well. I would probably have been much more comfortable with this task in an on-line format. I think it will work for a lot of students as well. There are plenty of students that have no problem with reviewing other students work face to face, but I think most are not. I think this would be a great benefit of web 2.0 collaboration.

Working together on a group project, either in two’s like our project, or in larger groups is a great skill to have as the students move on to college or into the workplace. One of my delicious bookmarks is an article about the new web 2.0 tools and tools used by businesses large and small to collaborate internally and externally. These technologies are cutting edge, developed by companies including IBM. They have there differences, but they also have a lot of similarities as well. One of the points of the article is that going forward these two technologies should begin borrowing from each other, taking the best of both. The more web 2.o our students know, and the more the SOA’s(business usage) come closer to web 2.0, the better equipped our students will be to join the workforce.

I have already seen the power of collaboration in this ARC program, as I have learned a great deal from fellow students. Going a step further and collaborating on this new technology and putting out a product is very exciting for me. I hope to learn as much as I can about this process and be able to pass it on in the classroom.

10/15/09

kcorwin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:35:24 +0000

I taught another lesson yesterday and my field supervisor was in attendance to watch. I felt ok about the lesson, not great. I think I hit the subject pretty hard, maybe too hard. It was a little repetative, but the kids in that class seem to need it. They did not do too well on their first test, even on stuff that was gone over multiple times. In fact they made several mistakes with order of operations and with negative numbers. That is stuff they should have seen since junior high, and we have emphasized it in class, but it is still not sticking. So, I had them do an excercise in class and repeated it for each form they will see in their homework. I did not get too much feedback after the lesson, I guess it will come next week. Jay and I have a meeting next week to go over the lesson and other things. And my teacher did not offer any feedback, I have now asked for some and she must be waiting until we have a moment to talk about it. I feel like it would be better if I could get more feedback sooner.

I am going to take over going over the homework at the beginning of class for three of the five classes I have. They are all the same class, so I will only have to prepare one set of homework 3 days a week. We have every other day block classes so each class only meets 3 days a week. That should help me integrate into the classes even more than I have so far and that will feel good. I feel like I am just now getting to know the kids on a deeper level than answering math questions. I am having conversations during down time in the classroom, when they are working on their homework that goes beyond math to their lives and that is one thing I love about working with kids. So it has been slow in coming, but I am happy that it is starting to come, I have been wondering when or if it would happen. I would like to be very comfortable with the kids, and have them very comfortable with me before I take over the class later in the year. It’s coming and I have plenty of time.

I still am having some anxiety before teaching. This last one was the first lesson that I not only presented, but also planned. I have been parroting my teacher in a class after watching her do it the class before. I see the lesson plan in advance and then watch it, then do it. This time I planned the lesson and it caused some extra anxiety. I guess my confidence is not where I want it to be yet. In time I guess, experience will lead to increased confidence.

It is homecoming week here at EW so it has been a fun week. I plan to attend the big spirit assembly tomorrow and the football game tomorrow night.

Blogging In Education 10/12/09

kcorwin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:13:13 +0000

This weeks readings started with a look at the technology standards. Integrating technology has already begun as early as grade school. My daughters have been producing power points for class projects for many years. But technology is moving way past power points. The use of a variety of technology tools for projects like senior culminating projects has not caught on at the high school I teach at. My daughter graduated from this school and most of the projects have been outside activities or extended essays. The presentations by the students that I know about were notebooks describing a project, with pictures showing the project from beginning to end. The digital photography is the most technology used. The teachers at this school need to be able to teach these technologies, but it has not really begun here. The kids are using the web 2.0 tools they are comfortable with, mostly the social networking. I do not know of any kids that are blogging for a class here at Edmonds Woodway. We are a big school however and I do not know the curruculum of all the teachers. But it is not being talked about by anybody that I have heard.

Blogging or using blogs to create classroom communication between teacher and student or between students is a concept that I like. I was not excited about blogging for our time here at SPU, but I have grown to like it very much. Not only do I like it for classes like this, instead of word documents that I have to save and print and go back and find at a later date if I need it, but I have found the self expression and reflection to be a great time for me to relax and recall the days activities both at school and at SPU.

Blogging for use in the high school classroom is an exciting tool for me to consider as I enter the teaching ranks next year. I am not sure exactly how it would work in place of a teacher website, but it would defiantly be more interactive. I would want to have a calendar on my website, and that may not be possible in a blog, but I am not sure. It would take a little getting used to but if I could tag entries with something like “homework” or “class notes”, I can see it working. I am not sure how a high school student would take to reflective blogging, but you never know, maybe for some it will be a way to express them self in a way that regular education tools never provided for them. I like the possibilities.

The one concern I have, that was addressed in the reading is the safety issue. Will this become for some a way of bullying or belittling another student, me as the teacher or the school as a whole. Also, I would need to protect students from outsiders coming in to the blog and presenting hazards for the students. The article mentioned a scenario where we want our kids to be expressive about who they are, but limiting their expression by not allowing personal information, including pictures. Kids love posting their pictures, it is a big component of the social networking site, Facebook. Facebook is password protected, but the blogs we use are out there for others to see.

I found a blog site Edublogs, http://edublogs.org/ that I am going to investigate further for possible use in my classroom, when I get a classroom. I do not know if I could use it this year as a student teacher, but maybe I will investigate that as well. I bookmarked it on Delicious, others should check it out.

10/11/09

kcorwin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:30:27 +0000

Ready for another week to start. Did a lot of homework this weekend and am feeling a lot better about my tech class. It was all so out there, but with some repetition and practice I am coming around and have expanded my vocabulary well beyond what I had imagined before starting this class. I am not sure if I will be able to handle the web-site making later this quarter, but I am getting more comfortable with what we did this week. The multi-culturalism class is very academic. I struggle with vocabulary in that class, but am following along nicely. I enjoy the class at SPU. I feel like I am totally new to this multicultureism because I just never think about it. But in the classroom at the high school, I am being exposed to a number of different cultures. I am going to have to think hard about lessons I give later in the year where I have to build in a multi-cultural component into the lesson. We are still waiting on our final class to begin. I think it is a methods class, but we have not received anything from anybody regarding the class. Oh well, I just hope that we don’t get a full quarter shoved into whatever is left of the quarter once we do finally begin the class.

I have to give an original lesson, complete with showcase lesson plan, this Wednesday in one of my Algebra 1 classes. Jay will be there observing and this will be the real deal. I am still working on the lesson and am going to ask my teacher for some help tomorrow. I had a good week last week interacting with the kids, so hopefully that will continue into this week. I think building those relationships now will help me as the year goes on and I finally take over on a permanent basis. I think it is going to be difficult for the kids to let go of Ms. Fisher after several months and buy into me teaching. So, the better the relationships now, the easier it will be. I have heard how difficult it is being a student teacher, not being my class, but it is what it is and I am going to put in the work now and hopefully reap the benefit later. So, off to bed for another weekend, this coming week is homecoming. I think I am going to need my rest.

9/7/09

kcorwin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 04:27:42 +0000

Another week done. I think I was able to connect with some more kids this week which makes this job a whole lot more fun. I wanted to do this in large part because I love hanging out with teenagers. They give me energy. I am usually a wallflower in a group of adults, but get me to youth group and I come alive. I love welcoming the newcomer, something I would never do with adults. We are preparing for tests next week, so the kids were working independently and in small groups and I was able to walk around the room and insert myself into their conversations and help them with their math at the same time. My master teacher told me this week not to wait for a kid to raise their hand for me to mingle with the kids, but rather to go to each table and ask what they are working on and offer help. They usually will ask for help at that point. And at the same time I am able to interact with their conversations. This week of trying that technique that helped a great deal for the kids to get to know me and their trust in me will build from this type of interaction. Sitting in the back of the room watching my teacher is growing a little old, so this week was a great distraction from that.

Next week I do my first formal lesson for Jay Faber. I have not planned it, but will this weekend, then ask my mentor teacher for feedback. I am not going to stress about it now, it is time for bed.

Learning 2.0 Week 1 Post

kcorwin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:36:51 +0000

Learning 2.0 is a new term for me. In fact I had never heard the term Learning 1.0. Technology evolving right before me and I do not even know it is happening. So, 2.0 will kind of be my baseline although I now know what 1.0 is all about also. What I found interesting is that in reality I am familiar with what is going on out there, I just did not know it was an evolved form of something I also did not know existed in the 1.0 lingo.

I am familiar with this technology more than I know. I hear about podcasting almost every day on sports radio. The conduct an interview and then post it to their website to listen to again, or for the first time if you missed it. I have even gone to the website, on one occasion and listened to a pod-casted interview. How technologically advanced I really am! I keep a blog, so I am familiar with that. My sister lives in Africa and keeps a blog to keep us updated on their family and provide pictures for us to see. And with Julie and Julia, nearly everybody will have at least an introduction to a blog. And of course, my teenagers have facebook sites. Actually my wife now has one, mostly to keep in touch with my oldest daughter who has moved 300 miles away to go to college. The function that allows pictures is worth a lot at our house. So, with my wife having a facebook page, I get on and peruse it to see what is going on, and am fairly entertained by it.

Social bookmarking, which I have now started, and this Wiki thing is new to me. Actually, I have heard of Wikipedia, but have heard that with anyone able to post on a site, it is not always very reliable. Anybody can post any thing my kids tell me. But the term wiki, buy itself is new to me. I am sure that there are many more applications(if that is the right word) in this 2.0 world that will be new to me as we go along.

I was interested to read what 1.0 is and glad that it is not totally going away. This kind of direct instruction can be useful and valid in the classroom. Just as direct instruction in the classroom has not gone away as new methods of teaching are being taught, I hope 1.0 does not go away. Saying that, I do not use that technology, but maybe I will learn and have it come in handy some day.

References:

Cobb, Jeff (2008) Learning 2.0 for Associations. Found at http://alearning2o.com

10/5/09

kcorwin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:29:17 +0000

Another week of work is over and I am still not used to the full time schedule, and this week it got more intense. We started back at SPU for the fall quarter and I feel a little overwhelmed. There is a lot of work in the classes we have and we have not even started one of them. It feels like a lot more work than summer, but then I realized that it is a 10 week quarter, not a short 5 week summer quarter. That made me feel a little better about the load, but it is still going to be a lot to do and teach too.

I taught a lesson on Friday in Geometry, my first in that class. It did not go well. I was teaching two concepts and the first one was not a problem. But the second one I do not think I ever got it through to the kids. I was not sure how to approach it so I consulted with my teacher. She gave me an idea and I went with it. I made a visual and broke the concept down into pieces. They looked at me as if I was an alien. At one point some of the guys were laughing and I could not figure out why. Of course, I wondered if it was directed at me. I will never know, but it did not feel very good and I could not shake it all weekend. It was a short class period due to an assembly, so they did not have time to start their homework so that I could assess whether or not they got the concept. I am sure some of them did, but how many? I am going to have to put that one behind me and move forward in a hurry. I have to remind myself that I have taught a grand total of 3 lessons in my teaching career so I cannot judge my effectiveness quite yet. And I cannot let it effect my confidence. It would not be good to lose confidence in myself this early in the game. On to the next lesson.

10/1/09

kcorwin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:44:25 +0000

I did my second lesson yesterday and my first lesson in front of my field supervisor. It went pretty well, with one exception. It didn’t really phase me, but I made my first mistake on a math problem in front of the kids. I was working our a problem on the white board and I was near the edge of the white board. The writing became smaller and messy and I must of transposed a number because the solution was wrong. Luckily it was lunch time, in a split class, they were coming back after lunch, so I excused them, telling them I would do it over when they got back. They did not seem to mind or even care. When they got back I finished the problem correctly and everything went ok after that. Having Jay there did not phase me either. It was an informal first visit without a lesson plan required, and I was repeating a lesson I watched the period before, so it was not a stressor. Each new experience seems to have a little less stress involved. Tomorrow I have another new experience, a lesson that I planned and will be giving without watching my mentor first. We only have one section of Geometry so I am on my own. We did go over the concepts together and I consulted her on some points of the plan so it is not all original, but more than my first two lessons. The stress has not hit, but maybe tomorrow morning. The class is early in the day tomorrow and since it is Friday, it is not a block class, so it is only 45 minutes. I am not completely sure about one concept, but I have had her help me with it, so I think I am ready. I just need to get down what I am going to say more clearly before tomorrow.

Tonight it curriculum night here at EW, but I think it will be a non-event because I will have a very small part in it. I will be introduced as the student teacher and that is it. So mostly I will stand around and look pretty. I may field a question if one is directed to me, but I doubt it. I will be ready anyway.

I am doing some more observations today and then I will be down to one more. I have enjoyed it and today I am watching a couple of reputable teachers, one in math and one in history. Both were teachers of my daughters and one was at the time her favorite teacher.

9/29/09

kcorwin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:08:49 +0000

Back to blogging, it has been a few days, a longer break than usual. This week I am presenting two lessons, preparing one of them on my own. The other we did jointly and will each be giving the same lesson to different periods of the same class. Also, Jay Faber, my field supervisor will be visiting the classroom for the first time, watching me give a lesson. It will be an informal visit, not requiring a formal lesson plan, that will happen soon enough. The lesson I am planning for Friday, Jay will not be there, I am using the template just to get some practice. I have not done one since the class this past summer. I have been visiting other math teachers this past week and have some more this week after visiting non-math teachers the previous weeks. I am visiting a History class this week, but mostly math. I observed an Algebra 2 class last week and was fascinated by the dynamic with a freshman only class. It was 2/3′s boys and they were pretty squirlly compared to the older students or the freshman that are ahead in math a year or two. Ms. Fisher and I have had no classroom management issues so far this year, but Mr. Freeman had to do some managing during class to keep it moving. Several times he had to ask for quiet and attention and on two occasions he had to move a kid away from his original group. The kids knew where to sit, but it seemed like they got to pick their seats originally. Most sat in the back of the room and the tables were mostly broken up by gender, the boys with boys and girls with girls. He handled it well I thought and got through his lesson pretty well. I also saw two classes that we have taught by other teachers, Algebra 2 and Algebra 2 Honors. Ms. Fisher was particularly interested in my thoughts on the honors class because that class is new to her and she feels like she has to move too fast. This teacher I watched has no trouble getting through the information and giving the kids time in class to work on homework, something we have not been able to do. Ms. Stroncek gets through two sections of the book each day with time to spare. Watching her I noticed that she does not mess around. One example on the smart board and one example for the kids to do and then on to the next topic in the text. She explains everything, but only once and she expects the honors students to understand and be ready to move on. I told Ms. Fisher and she said that she will try it and see how quiz and test scores are and go from there. The first test yielded many A’s and a some B’s, but very few C’s and D’s, no F’s. So maybe these honors kids can keep up on there own and have the luxury of covering more material before next years class, arriving more prepared and ready to go. The other class, a regular Algebra 2 class, was interesting in that he taught a little like Ms. Stroncek, not a lot of repetition, moving through material pretty quickly and then giving them time to work on a test preparation worksheet. This week I am visiting some higher level classes, AP Calculus and AP Stats. These teachers have been around longer and are considered the best teachers, warranting the higher level AP classes.

I am having technology issues with a new Mac in a PC world. I have had to fight, scratch and claw to get anyone to help me get wireless, email and other services that the regular teachers have on their district issued laptops. I still do not have access to the printer. Also, some of the software has Mac compatibility, but the last version, OS, and I have the new version, OS X. So I have not been able to access test generators, easy planners, teacher issues on line or an activity generator that Ms. Fisher uses. I finally got wireless, although it only works about half the time in our section of the building and I finally got hooked up with the Smart Board. So, I have about half of what I want, but the year is early and I will keep working on it. I am hoping to get an ethernet cable wired to my “desk”, a table next to the sink, but have not been able to contact IT about it yet. I really need to access email without plugging into Ms. Fishers or someone else’s ethernet at their desk. Everyone is at their desk before and after school and I only have a planning period every other day. Oh well, maybe it will all work by the time I start teaching full time second semester.

That is all for now, I think the observation discussion counts for my observation debriefing requirement, if not let me know.