Trends of the Week @ NTA

Hi to all,

It is hard to believe we are already at the end of Cycle 2! Here are some trends and some of my other thoughts about the week:

Giving Directions to Students

With your use of BMC and What to Do, most of you know how to give clear, verbal directions to students. Although narration gives us additional opportunities to reiterate our directions, many of our students need to see the directions as well. For academic tasks please make sure you are also giving students directions visually. Whether these are on a chart paper, the white board, the ipad, overhead transparency, etc. this will support those students who need to refer to the directions after they have heard them. You also can quickly point to the written directions for a student who needs a reminder as to what to do.

Time Management

This week, I received an email from a resident from last year’s class. He shared with me how challenging it is to manage his time efficiently given the amount of meetings he needs to attend. Within a two-week period he identified 15 meetings he went to. As your teaching load increases, your workload will increase, and your time will become even more precious. Here are some time management tips that have helped me:

• · Schedule everything! I use my Google calendar and also use the Tasks option. This even applies to the weekends.

• · Pick days to come early and stay late. Keeping balance in your life is the way to avoid burning out and feeling overwhelmed. Instead of arriving each day at 7:00 am, choose certain days that you will. Instead of staying each day until 6:00, choose the days you will stay until 6:00. Thursdays were always my late days. I did all my planning for the next week on Thursdays and made all my copies and prepped my materials on Fridays. That left my weekends for assessing student work and other professional work (National Boards, doctoral coursework, etc.).

• · Buddy up! This was not something I have really needed, but I know many people are motivated by meeting a friend at a coffee shop and working together.

• · Take advantage of when NTA is open on Saturdays. It is a quiet place to work and you will have needed materials nearby.

What We (Teachers) Can Learn from Jay-Z

One of my favorite education bloggers, Jose Vilson, has a must-read piece at Education Week-Teacher. In a well-written and thought-provoking piece, he discusses what teachers, at all stages of their career, can learn from the career of Jay-Z. Here is a quick excerpt:

All teachers make mistakes. At the end of the day, we have regrets. We didn't listen to a student when we should have. We didn't take advantage of a professional development opportunity. We could have better planned a lesson. None of these mistakes will break us—unless we fail to learn from them and they become patterns in our careers.

His words remind me that mistakes and missteps are part of our work. It is what we learn from these mistakes and what we do with this learning that will either strengthen our practice or cause us to burnout.

Please read more at: http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2011/09/27/tln_vilson.html?tkn=ZVPFGUVICPlLwYOIpDvdDdd9zvNflIj5svTb&cmp=ENL-TU-NEWS1

**Full disclosure: I am a co-author of the book Teaching 2030 that Jose references at the end.

Enjoy Fall Intercession! I’m looking forward to seeing everyone well-rested and ready to go on 10/17!

Best,

Carrie

Trends of the Week @ NTA

Hi NTA Mentors and Residents,

Well, our 7^th week is coming to a close. Raise your hand if you are looking forward to Fall Intercession? Yes, my hand is up! The break will surely leave us feeling rejuvenated and ready to have a strong Fall with our students.

Since I have been “on fire” about supporting all of you this week with hallway transitions, I will start with that:

Hallway Transitions

Yes, there have been some challenges and successes this week. Successes include:

• Using ipad2’s to communicate the goal time to students (Ms. Lyons has a cool app for this)
• Increased used of nonverbal cues to communicate with students
• More consistent use of timers to collect data on students meeting (or not) their goal time

Residents, here some coaching points to consider as you address your individual challenges with leading hallway transitions:

• · Address students calmly and firmly when you need to redirect. Remember if you are getting frustrated, take a breath, and calmly and firmly restate expectations (being mindful of economy of language) and give individual consequences if needed. One suggestion is to carry a class roster with you to note if individual students receive a consequence.
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• · Make sure students know the goal time and let them know if they made it or not when the transition is done. If they are meeting the goal time, challenge them to decrease the time by a minute. Kids love a challenge!

• · Consider tying meeting the goal time to a classroom level incentive. Students may need more immediate gratification with the incentive if they are far from meeting the goal time/expectations.

• · Praise with thumbs up, whispers, smiles, or some other way but work to maintain a quiet/silent hallway

Be a student of the Signature Strategies

In my efforts to be a more effective coach, I frequently reread “Teach Like a Champion” and look at the accompanying video clips. Very often I find myself noticing something new or thinking about a strategy in a new way. This week, Dr. Gardiner shared an email response she sent to a resident who was thinking has some questions about the strategies. With Dr. Gardiner’s permission, here is a bit of what she wrote:

Historically (and contemporarily), children of color & children living in poverty achieve less, are suspended & disciplined more, and referred to special education in disproportionate amounts. So, typically, or at least too often, teachers take a deficit approach to children of color & children living in poverty. To me, the Sig Strats say, “hey, these are social, academic, behavioral skills (and teacher behaviors) that if explicated to children, can help them achieve. So, teach them, don’t blame them for not knowing what will help them be successful in the dominant culture.” So, teach the rules (for success in school and beyond) & also empower students so they can enter a system and change the system. Also, the Sig Strats are just a few tools in a much larger contextual practice with an end goal of increasing students' life opportunities.

So, for the “eyes on me” or “the book” or the “overhead”, to me that’s about focusing attention for learning, but it can slip into a means to control. When I ask for eyes on me, it’s about readiness to learn—and I only ask for it when it really matters b/c it doesn’t always.

So, to me the intent is not to "control" students, but teach them how to be successful learners—there are lots of ways to do that. Sig Strats offer some options. Framing means that I believe in you & your potential and I'm going to help you (sometimes force you—tough love) maximize your potential. And, I think the ultimate goal for children is to be lifelong, empowered learners who use knowledge for their own & the collective good.

I share this with you because I think it is helpful to be reminded of the “why” behind the use of the strategies. It is not about controlling students, although it is crucial to maintain a classroom that is safe, calm, and orderly. It is really about maximizing instructional time and the opportunities for students to learn.

On to week 8!!!

Best,

Carrie

NTA Trends of the Week (Week of 9/12/11)

Hi to all,

Well, the 6th week of school is under out belts. All of our 2nd-8th grade students have completed their MAP Tests in Reading and Math, and we will finish with science next week. Residents, you should know this data about your students. For those of you who teach math or writing only, make sure you know their MAP scores from reading. We expect all teachers to be reading teachers so that data is crucial to your planning.

Shout Outs

• To Stacy Barrett: Wow! What a smooth, Tight Transition leading your 6th graders from specials to the 4th floor on Thursday morning. Stacy used nonverbals/sign language effectively. The students were so quiet Ms. Jones did not even hear them until they were right behind her. Keep it up!
• To Jasmine Floyd: Another model of Tight Transitions! Your crisp, clear directives and voice of a "no nonsense nurturer" made the transition from the classroom to the cafe on Thursday quick and orderly. Again, keep it up :)
• To Megan Stewart: Having students Cold Call each other during a whole class discussion gave them ownership over the discussion. Nice!

Domain 1/Planning and Preparation

• During the planning process, it is imperative that you write clear lesson objectives that articulate what students should know and be able to do at the end of your instruction. This goes for mini-lessons, differentiated math/reading groups, read alouds, etc. If you are not clear about what students should learn/know/be able to do, you will not communicate it clearly and your students will be unsure of what you are doing with their time.

Domain 2/Classroom Environment

What to Do

As a teacher it is critical that your keep your emotions in check (see Lemov "Emotional Constancy"). When your emotions are not in check you get frustrated and often fall into nagging students. For example, a teacher who does not have their emotions in check and is frustrated may say, "You are in 5th grade and you are lining up like kindergarteners!" This does nothing to get students on the right track. What the students do need is a calm, firm teacher to name the desired behavior by using What to Do. Here are two other examples to illustrate this:

NO: Why are you moving before you've heard directions? YES: Stop. Wait to hear the directions.

NO: Why aren't you lined up yet? YES: Everyone walk to their line and face forward.

Mentors, you can help with this by bringing your residents' attention to their language by scripting, using audio record, or video

capture. Have your residents think about the messages their verbal and nonverbal communication sends. Then, have them

determine more suitable word choice if necessary.

I have a wonderful book titled "The Power of Our Words: Teacher Language that Helps Children Learn" by Paula Denton. It is

all about the teacher's words and tone of voice. Please see me if you want to borrow it. Language (verbal and nonverbal) is one

the most important teaching tools, if not the most. Use it wisely!

Tight Transitions

Part of what made Stacy and Jasmine's hallway transitions so effective was that they hardly spoke to students. You might be thinking, "Wait Kamm, with BMC you taught us to narrate. If I am going to narrate I am going to talk." So, let me unpack a bit more what made their transitions so effective and why they did not need to verbally narrate.

1) They used nonverbal cues/signals to communicate with students. Students knew what these nonverbal cues meant.

2) When they did talk it was to give students a quick, firm, calm directive.

3) There was no overt praise, just a thumbs up or a "Well, done 404. We made our goal time."

Remember we want to contribute to the hallway being a level 0 space. Part of that means we need to be as silent as possible in our communication with students. So, as we move forward into week 7, check to see that you:

• Have a goal time for each transition that has been communicated with students. Create an incentive if needed.
• Use a timer for transitions to collect data towards the goal time. Again, communicate this with students.
• Use your ipod to capture the audio so your mentor can hear your words with students.
• Determine what the nonverbal signals are you will use with students and make sure they know them.

Positive Narration

I am seeing more use of positive narration, but we are not there yet. J-Factor and Positive Framing-read each of these in TLAC and ask yourself these questions: What is my plan for better utilizing Positive Framing? In what ways can I incorporate J-Factor into my instruction and interaction with students? Also, check out the video clip of Ms. Austin form the TLAC DVD. She illustrates this well.

Domain 3/Instruction

Think Time

With giving think time, you want to do some work to make it more likely that everyone in fact is going to be thinking about your question or prompt. So, instead of saying "Can someone raise their hand and tell me what to do next" and give think time, try "Everyone think about what to do next" and give think time. It is a small tweak, but again communicates a firmer expectation that everyone is expected to think.

Domain 4/Professional Responsibilities

True Grit

This week I have been obsessed with the word "grit" thanks in part to this article by Paul Tough in the New York Times (a must read about how the KIPP schools develop grit in their students: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/what-if-the-secret-to-success-is-failure.html?_r=1). So, KIPP has created a report card that assesses students character (you can see it at the article-I'm kind of obsessed with it). One of the traits they assess is grit. Students who demonstrate grit:

• Finish whatever she or he begins
• Try very hard even after experiencing failure
• Work independently with focus

This got me thinking about the importance of teachers having grit, especially those who are effective in high need schools. Grit to me means working though the failures, having a strong sense of urgency about getting it right, and not settling for mediocrity in ourselves or our students. What does having grit mean to you?