EGALITE (EQUALITY)
As a teacher, one of the greatest pitfalls I admittedly semi-consistently fall into is letting my stronger students answer more questions than those who perhaps have greater difficulty with geometry and/or French. I tend to do this, both unintentionally and intentionally, largely in part to keep the pace of the class going when it seems to have reached a gridlock. After a solid minute of silence, I tend to abandon my practice of dragging on the wait time so as to get to the next set of problems. To do this, I’ve sometimes relied on a select few students in each of my classes to provide the entire class with the answer. And while this does procure the desired answer, it can sometimes be at the expense of ensuring all students are a part of the learning community I hope to establish within my classroom.
My goal as a teacher is to ensure all of my students, and not just a small, either overly-enthusiastic or mathematically-gifted, cohort, understand the course content when held up to a high degree of rigor. With this in mind, I must constantly remind myself of the necessity of involving my more reticent students in addition to those students who find math and/or French particularly difficult.
In order to henceforth better meet this goal, I’ve begun implementing a few measures which seem to have been met with portends of future success. One of the measures which has worked well so far has been the practice of giving extra credit to students on their upcoming test in return for those students going to the board to answer questions. During this process, I assure them (and follow through with my promise) that I’ll help them with the question in the eventuality that they should get stuck. This gives them an added boost of confidence – particularly in front of their peers, which they crave with the utmost ardor – in a math and/or French course, which more likely than not has been a cause of much of their academic suffering in the past due to many years of educational neglect. Another benefit of getting my more quiet and mathematically- or language-challenged students up to the board by offering extra credit is that it gives them an added, but well-earned, boost to their score in a class which they might otherwise have failed. It should be noted, though, that I do make them do the vast majority of the work themselves and will only offer a hint should they absolutely need it. I’m faithful to my duties as a geometry teacher, and refuse to simply give out points for no reason other than simply going up to the board. I still need to ensure mastery of the content has occurred.
Another practice that I’ve implemented of late with some success has been increasing the amount of cold calls in class. While some students have voiced their opinion that this feels like I’m picking on them, I still feel this technique serves a valuable purpose in that it forces my students to participate whether they want to or not. And while this technique of “no opt-out” is admittedly harsh at times, particularly when I call on a student who hasn’t been paying the least bit attention and is then mildly shamed in front of his or her classmates, the purpose (despite what my students may think) is not to serve as a “gotchya” moment in which I try to reveal my students’ lack of preparation or knowledge for everyone to see, but more a gauge of overall understanding of course content and a means of forcing my students who otherwise would never participate to do so.
One other key issue that I face on a consistent basis as a teacher is when my students fail to meet my expectations for learning. I like to divide this challenge and its respective solutions into two broad categories: failure to comprehend course material and deviations from expected classroom behavior optimal for learning to occur. In response to the first facet of the problem, I often tend to do one, maximum two, days of reteaching a particular lesson should my students demonstrate by either informal questioning in class, daily exit tickets, or test results, that a particular course objective has been completely unmastered by over 50% of the class. I do my best to do damage control by reteaching the critical components of the lesson without placing much emphasis on the tiny details and underlying intricacies of the objective. After these one or two days of remediative teaching, I then retest my students on this objective so as to quantitatively ensure that more mastery of the course objective has occurred than prior to the remediative intervention classes. However, I still tend to limit these types of reteaching days to one or two days total because I’m well aware that the pacing guide dictates that I still have to operate within a tight deadline in order to teach all objectives by the completion of the academic year. If these efforts still don’t produce the desired improvements in terms of mastery of course content, then I reemphasize to my students, particularly those who continue to struggle with the objectives, that my daily office hours after school are always a great means of mastering difficult course objectives using a more personalized approach in a far less hectic and environment.
Now, when it comes to occasional class-wide deviations from expected classroom behaviors, I’ve had much success in getting back on track behavior-wise by allotting no more than five minutes at the beginning of class to go over good classroom behaviors and what my expectations for the class are. During this time, my tone is very firm and resolute and I clamp down very stringently on any and all deviations from my now reiterated classroom expectations so as to show that they are of value to me and that I’m willing to uphold them. I’ve found that it’s also is important to be firm during this time because it shows that what the students think of you is ultimately of little importance. You’re not there to be their friend. Rather, you’re there to teach your class and you’ll uphold all the classroom behaviors necessary to effect this end even if it’s at the expense of students seeing you as a friend – which in my opinion has been the stem of many of my issues throughout my teaching career. I’ve also learned that for my classes, it’s detrimental to prolong this period of reiterating classroom expectations beyond five minutes or to have students physically act out what positive classroom behaviors look like since my students have candidly told me that these things feel degrading to them. I still have a long way to go in terms of getting my students to abide consistently by the expounded classroom rules, but I feel like these sessions of reteaching them have been very effective so far with regards to getting students to refocus and recommence behaving in accordance with them. This has been evinced to me by the fact that I usually have two to three good weeks of classroom behavior following these sessions before another one has been found to be necessary.
As a whole, I make it a goal to include all my students in the positive learning environment I have hoped to set forth from them. I do my best to make sure that all students are included in it because I believe that all students are deserving of a quality education. However, sometimes students don’t fully meet the expectations I have laid out for their educational betterment. When this happens, I incorporate days of reteaching course objectives if the deviations are academic in nature or periods of reintroducing classroom expectations if the deviations are behavioral. I aim to continue doing this whenever one or both types of deviations from learning occur because I wholeheartedly am of the opinion that knowledge is power and opportunity, and I don’t want at any cost for my students to be at a disadvantage academically if I possess the means of enabling them to strive for excellence in my classroom.
My goal as a teacher is to ensure all of my students, and not just a small, either overly-enthusiastic or mathematically-gifted, cohort, understand the course content when held up to a high degree of rigor. With this in mind, I must constantly remind myself of the necessity of involving my more reticent students in addition to those students who find math and/or French particularly difficult.
In order to henceforth better meet this goal, I’ve begun implementing a few measures which seem to have been met with portends of future success. One of the measures which has worked well so far has been the practice of giving extra credit to students on their upcoming test in return for those students going to the board to answer questions. During this process, I assure them (and follow through with my promise) that I’ll help them with the question in the eventuality that they should get stuck. This gives them an added boost of confidence – particularly in front of their peers, which they crave with the utmost ardor – in a math and/or French course, which more likely than not has been a cause of much of their academic suffering in the past due to many years of educational neglect. Another benefit of getting my more quiet and mathematically- or language-challenged students up to the board by offering extra credit is that it gives them an added, but well-earned, boost to their score in a class which they might otherwise have failed. It should be noted, though, that I do make them do the vast majority of the work themselves and will only offer a hint should they absolutely need it. I’m faithful to my duties as a geometry teacher, and refuse to simply give out points for no reason other than simply going up to the board. I still need to ensure mastery of the content has occurred.
Another practice that I’ve implemented of late with some success has been increasing the amount of cold calls in class. While some students have voiced their opinion that this feels like I’m picking on them, I still feel this technique serves a valuable purpose in that it forces my students to participate whether they want to or not. And while this technique of “no opt-out” is admittedly harsh at times, particularly when I call on a student who hasn’t been paying the least bit attention and is then mildly shamed in front of his or her classmates, the purpose (despite what my students may think) is not to serve as a “gotchya” moment in which I try to reveal my students’ lack of preparation or knowledge for everyone to see, but more a gauge of overall understanding of course content and a means of forcing my students who otherwise would never participate to do so.
One other key issue that I face on a consistent basis as a teacher is when my students fail to meet my expectations for learning. I like to divide this challenge and its respective solutions into two broad categories: failure to comprehend course material and deviations from expected classroom behavior optimal for learning to occur. In response to the first facet of the problem, I often tend to do one, maximum two, days of reteaching a particular lesson should my students demonstrate by either informal questioning in class, daily exit tickets, or test results, that a particular course objective has been completely unmastered by over 50% of the class. I do my best to do damage control by reteaching the critical components of the lesson without placing much emphasis on the tiny details and underlying intricacies of the objective. After these one or two days of remediative teaching, I then retest my students on this objective so as to quantitatively ensure that more mastery of the course objective has occurred than prior to the remediative intervention classes. However, I still tend to limit these types of reteaching days to one or two days total because I’m well aware that the pacing guide dictates that I still have to operate within a tight deadline in order to teach all objectives by the completion of the academic year. If these efforts still don’t produce the desired improvements in terms of mastery of course content, then I reemphasize to my students, particularly those who continue to struggle with the objectives, that my daily office hours after school are always a great means of mastering difficult course objectives using a more personalized approach in a far less hectic and environment.
Now, when it comes to occasional class-wide deviations from expected classroom behaviors, I’ve had much success in getting back on track behavior-wise by allotting no more than five minutes at the beginning of class to go over good classroom behaviors and what my expectations for the class are. During this time, my tone is very firm and resolute and I clamp down very stringently on any and all deviations from my now reiterated classroom expectations so as to show that they are of value to me and that I’m willing to uphold them. I’ve found that it’s also is important to be firm during this time because it shows that what the students think of you is ultimately of little importance. You’re not there to be their friend. Rather, you’re there to teach your class and you’ll uphold all the classroom behaviors necessary to effect this end even if it’s at the expense of students seeing you as a friend – which in my opinion has been the stem of many of my issues throughout my teaching career. I’ve also learned that for my classes, it’s detrimental to prolong this period of reiterating classroom expectations beyond five minutes or to have students physically act out what positive classroom behaviors look like since my students have candidly told me that these things feel degrading to them. I still have a long way to go in terms of getting my students to abide consistently by the expounded classroom rules, but I feel like these sessions of reteaching them have been very effective so far with regards to getting students to refocus and recommence behaving in accordance with them. This has been evinced to me by the fact that I usually have two to three good weeks of classroom behavior following these sessions before another one has been found to be necessary.
As a whole, I make it a goal to include all my students in the positive learning environment I have hoped to set forth from them. I do my best to make sure that all students are included in it because I believe that all students are deserving of a quality education. However, sometimes students don’t fully meet the expectations I have laid out for their educational betterment. When this happens, I incorporate days of reteaching course objectives if the deviations are academic in nature or periods of reintroducing classroom expectations if the deviations are behavioral. I aim to continue doing this whenever one or both types of deviations from learning occur because I wholeheartedly am of the opinion that knowledge is power and opportunity, and I don’t want at any cost for my students to be at a disadvantage academically if I possess the means of enabling them to strive for excellence in my classroom.