1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Welcome back to the What in the World is Dyscalculia podcast presented by Educalc Learning. 2 00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:13,000 I'm your host, Dr. Honora Wall, and today I am on my soapbox. 3 00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:21,000 And I would like to talk to my fellow teachers about two pet peeves that have come up in my tutoring sessions this week. 4 00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:26,000 And they're really weighing on my mind. They're bothering me quite a bit. 5 00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:32,000 I am a follower of the pragmatic curriculum theory. 6 00:00:32,000 --> 00:00:36,000 I'm a big fan of Dewey and Vygotsky. 7 00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:49,000 And one of the many brilliant things Lev Vygotsky said is that the teaching environment can either contribute to or inhibit learning. 8 00:00:49,000 --> 00:01:03,000 And teachers, I want us to spend some time as we're getting close to the first report card of the year, reflecting on whether or not we are inhibiting our student's success. 9 00:01:03,000 --> 00:01:11,000 Are there barriers that we are putting into place that are keeping our students from doing as well as they can? 10 00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:16,000 That doesn't mean every student should be getting an A. That isn't realistic. 11 00:01:16,000 --> 00:01:20,000 Some students are very happy getting C's. 12 00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:25,000 That fits their work ethic and their attitude at the place they are in life. 13 00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:30,000 It fits their abilities and that's where they're happy. 14 00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:41,000 That's great. Students who should be at a B or an A level should not be held back to a C or a failing level because of things that we're doing. 15 00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:44,000 And that's what's on my mind. 16 00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:57,000 I have a student who is in high school and has a teacher in a public school who talks frequently about how she is in her 30th year of teaching. 17 00:01:57,000 --> 00:02:00,000 And this is something to be quite proud of. 18 00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:05,000 That's a long time to be invested in helping students learn. 19 00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:08,000 And it's quite an achievement. 20 00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:18,000 However, she also likes to talk about how she has been following the same grading system and using the same weight for her grades for 30 years. 21 00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:22,000 That is not anything to be proud of. 22 00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:27,000 This particular teacher weighs her quizzes and tests at 65%. 23 00:02:27,000 --> 00:02:37,000 So the student who does very well at classwork, moderately well at homework, and horribly on assessments is failing her class. 24 00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:48,000 If you guessed that this student has dyscalculia because a hallmark of the learning disorder is to do well and then forget math over time, you would be correct. 25 00:02:48,000 --> 00:02:55,000 I don't know if this teacher has any training in specific learning disorders, but I'm going to guess no. 26 00:02:55,000 --> 00:03:06,000 I can say with confidence that she's either not attending her professional development or isn't putting into place what she's learning in her professional development. 27 00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:13,000 Since this is a public school, I know she has to go through PD training in order to keep her certification. 28 00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:18,000 And I'm not sure what she's getting out of the PD that she's attending. 29 00:03:18,000 --> 00:03:30,000 Because using the same sort of assessments and weighing them in the same way she did 30 years ago is frankly inexcusable. 30 00:03:30,000 --> 00:03:40,000 There's no other profession where you would do the work that you did 30 years ago and still be seen as doing a good job today. 31 00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:47,000 In the world of office work, no one is sending a fax because now we send PDFs. 32 00:03:47,000 --> 00:03:50,000 And they can be filled in. They don't even have to be printed. 33 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:57,000 In the world of construction, construction workers aren't going around knocking on walls to try to find a stud. 34 00:03:57,000 --> 00:04:08,000 They're holding a hand held magnetized stud finder because it's faster, easier and more specific. 35 00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:19,000 Few of us would want to take ourselves or children or loved ones to a doctor who hasn't bothered to keep up with medical advances for the last 30 years. 36 00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:28,000 Teaching is a profession. We need to take it seriously and we need to keep ourselves educated on what's new in the world of education. 37 00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:37,000 And this includes the way we grade, the types of assessments we give and how much weight we give to our different assignments. 38 00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:50,000 No one area of an assessment tool, be it classwork, homework, projects or assessments, should be weighted so heavily that it overshadows all the other work the student does. 39 00:04:50,000 --> 00:04:56,000 That means the grade book is not an accurate reflection of the student's mastery. 40 00:04:56,000 --> 00:05:03,000 It might be an accurate reflection of how well they test under pressure, but unless you're teaching a class and testing under pressure, 41 00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:08,000 you're not accurately measuring what you're supposed to be measuring. 42 00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:12,000 This speaks to reliability and validity of assessments. 43 00:05:12,000 --> 00:05:15,000 It also speaks to keeping up with the times. 44 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:25,000 And this really sticks in my crop because we need to respect the advances of our profession. 45 00:05:25,000 --> 00:05:29,000 We need to respect universal design for learning. 46 00:05:29,000 --> 00:05:40,000 We need to respect the way people show their knowledge and that can come in many, many forms, not only from an assessment. 47 00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:48,000 Teachers, take a look at your grade book and ask yourself, what are you using to assess student knowledge? 48 00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:51,000 How much weight are you giving it? 49 00:05:51,000 --> 00:05:59,000 Does this create an accurate picture of your student as a learner? 50 00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:09,000 Especially if you have students who have learning disabilities of any kind, are you accurately recording and tracking their abilities? 51 00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:18,000 Or instead, are you accurately recording and tracking your outdated beliefs about how a classroom should run? 52 00:06:18,000 --> 00:06:21,000 It's time to get with the times. 53 00:06:21,000 --> 00:06:25,000 1988 called and they would like their teaching methods back. 54 00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:30,000 I have another student, a high school student, who attends a private school. 55 00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:36,000 And in the class he's in right now, he has a teacher he enjoys working with. 56 00:06:36,000 --> 00:06:39,000 He's doing well in the class. 57 00:06:39,000 --> 00:06:52,000 He still has struggles and we spend a lot of time in tutoring analyzing his strengths and weaknesses and how he can emphasize his strengths and accommodate for his weaknesses when he's taking tests. 58 00:06:52,000 --> 00:06:54,000 And he's doing fine. 59 00:06:54,000 --> 00:07:00,000 He's feeling a lot of pressure to complete his homework because there's an excessive amount of homework. 60 00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:06,000 And the teacher let them know something I found interesting. 61 00:07:06,000 --> 00:07:11,000 The current teacher will be teaching for the first semester of the year. 62 00:07:11,000 --> 00:07:17,000 And then in the second semester of the year, a college professor is coming in to teach the second half. 63 00:07:17,000 --> 00:07:32,000 And the current teacher let the class know she gives so much more homework and they should be prepared that once they come back from the holiday break, the homework is going to increase exceptionally. 64 00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:36,000 Because of, honestly, I don't know why. 65 00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:44,000 All I could think when I was talking with this student was that winning a hot dog eating contest does not make one a gourmand. 66 00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:54,000 Simply assigning a ton of homework to bury students in is not an accurate way to assess whether or not they paid attention in class. 67 00:07:54,000 --> 00:07:59,000 An excessive number of homework problems does not increase mastery. 68 00:07:59,000 --> 00:08:15,000 There is a point in any action we undertake where we are learning and then we are becoming more proficient and then we are feeling very confident and then we reach mastery. 69 00:08:15,000 --> 00:08:19,000 Honestly, it does not take that many homework problems to reach that point. 70 00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:38,000 And if you are a teacher who is paying attention to your students and listening to them in class and looking at the work that they turn in and truly analyzing homework so that it is not just busy work, there is an actual purpose to it, which is so that you can tweak the instruction and support your students. 71 00:08:38,000 --> 00:08:48,000 If you are looking at that work, you get a feel for how many questions your class needs to do in order to show mastery. 72 00:08:48,000 --> 00:09:09,000 I encourage you teachers to reflect on the amount of classwork you assign, the amount of homework you assign, and how much time can you honestly spend analyzing that work so that you know which students have reached mastery and which have not. 73 00:09:09,000 --> 00:09:20,000 How many people are doing homework for completion using math app or copying off a friend or just putting down any answer because they know that you are so buried in paperwork you don't have time to check their work. 74 00:09:20,000 --> 00:09:23,000 They just need to write something so the page looks full. 75 00:09:23,000 --> 00:09:26,000 What a waste of time. 76 00:09:26,000 --> 00:09:28,000 What a complete waste of effort. 77 00:09:28,000 --> 00:09:32,000 And what kind of message does that tell our students? 78 00:09:32,000 --> 00:09:38,000 First of all, it tells them that as long as they do something to look busy, we will stay off their back. 79 00:09:38,000 --> 00:09:41,000 That is not the point of homework. 80 00:09:41,000 --> 00:09:53,000 Second, it tells them that we like assigning things that they will find stressful and we don't have a real concern for how our homework fits into the context of their lives. 81 00:09:53,000 --> 00:09:59,000 We know that for all children, rates of anxiety are going through the roof. 82 00:09:59,000 --> 00:10:02,000 Rates of depression are going through the roof. 83 00:10:02,000 --> 00:10:04,000 We know kids aren't getting enough sleep. 84 00:10:04,000 --> 00:10:09,000 We know most kids are over extended with extracurricular activities. 85 00:10:09,000 --> 00:10:15,000 And for students with learning disabilities, we know that all of these things are amplified. 86 00:10:15,000 --> 00:10:18,000 So what kind of message are we sending our students? 87 00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:22,000 Not one that's rooted in social emotional learning practices. 88 00:10:22,000 --> 00:10:27,000 We're not letting them know that we're concerned with how our class fits into the context of their lives. 89 00:10:27,000 --> 00:10:33,000 So we're not really showing a lot of concern for them as people as they move through our classrooms. 90 00:10:33,000 --> 00:10:36,000 That's a sad statement. 91 00:10:36,000 --> 00:10:44,000 Teachers reflect on how well you know your students and what they do outside of your class. 92 00:10:44,000 --> 00:10:47,000 Do you know if they feel overwhelmed? 93 00:10:47,000 --> 00:10:50,000 Do you know if they feel like they have enough time to complete their homework? 94 00:10:50,000 --> 00:10:54,000 Do you know if they feel engaged in the material you're assigning? 95 00:10:54,000 --> 00:11:01,000 Or are you just keeping them busy so that you have a lot of paper moving back and forth and you can say that your class is rigorous? 96 00:11:01,000 --> 00:11:04,000 That's not rigor. 97 00:11:04,000 --> 00:11:12,000 I'm really hoping that this message gets to teachers who need to reflect on their practices. 98 00:11:12,000 --> 00:11:15,000 There are ways we can contribute to learning. 99 00:11:15,000 --> 00:11:20,000 And there are so many ways in which we are the inhibitor. 100 00:11:20,000 --> 00:11:23,000 We are the barrier. 101 00:11:23,000 --> 00:11:29,000 We need to spend time looking at ourselves to see not only what can we do to support our students, 102 00:11:29,000 --> 00:11:37,000 but in what ways are we holding onto outdated ideas that are hurting our students? 103 00:11:37,000 --> 00:11:43,000 In what ways are we ignoring the realities of our students' lived experiences? 104 00:11:43,000 --> 00:11:50,000 And what kind of message are we sending to our students about how we feel about them as people? 105 00:11:50,000 --> 00:11:59,000 What are our personal goals for each student when they get to the end of a year in our class? 106 00:11:59,000 --> 00:12:01,000 Do we want them to feel worn out? 107 00:12:01,000 --> 00:12:03,000 Do we want them to feel stressed? 108 00:12:03,000 --> 00:12:07,000 Do we want them to have a negative experience with what they've done? 109 00:12:07,000 --> 00:12:12,000 Do we want them to feel like it was a terrible challenge and they didn't get much out of it, 110 00:12:12,000 --> 00:12:15,000 but at least they passed, they survived. 111 00:12:15,000 --> 00:12:18,000 They're glad they don't have to think about that ever again. 112 00:12:18,000 --> 00:12:24,000 Or do we want them to leave our classrooms feeling like they've learned something they did not know before, 113 00:12:24,000 --> 00:12:28,000 both in math and about themselves as students? 114 00:12:28,000 --> 00:12:35,000 Have we impacted their work ethic so that they understand they can succeed if they put in the right amount of work? 115 00:12:35,000 --> 00:12:40,000 Do they know what the right amount of work looks like for them? 116 00:12:40,000 --> 00:12:45,000 Set those personal goals for yourself for this school year. 117 00:12:45,000 --> 00:12:49,000 Shake up whatever you're doing with your gradebook if you need to. 118 00:12:49,000 --> 00:12:52,000 Take a look at the homework you're assigning. 119 00:12:52,000 --> 00:12:56,000 Take a look at the kind of classroom activities you're having students do. 120 00:12:56,000 --> 00:13:01,000 And do those have enough weight in your gradebook to make a true difference? 121 00:13:01,000 --> 00:13:10,000 We need to decide if we want students to be busy or if we want them to be engaged with material. 122 00:13:10,000 --> 00:13:15,000 We all have to go through PD training. 123 00:13:15,000 --> 00:13:18,000 There's a lot of great PD training out there. 124 00:13:18,000 --> 00:13:26,000 Not only do I create training for teachers, I attend training as much as I possibly can, 125 00:13:26,000 --> 00:13:36,000 because there are people out there who have great ideas, fantastic things that I can use in my classroom to change my students' experience. 126 00:13:36,000 --> 00:13:42,000 I don't have to use everything in my classroom, but I can pick and choose what's most appropriate for my classroom 127 00:13:42,000 --> 00:13:53,000 when I engage in professional development, understanding that this is a way to increase myself as a professional, 128 00:13:53,000 --> 00:13:58,000 and it shows a respect that I have for my career. 129 00:13:58,000 --> 00:14:03,000 I'm sure most people listening to this, most educators, are already in that mindset, 130 00:14:03,000 --> 00:14:08,000 but we have too many teachers who are not in that mindset. 131 00:14:08,000 --> 00:14:15,000 This might be a conversation that we want to have with our coworkers or with our administrators. 132 00:14:15,000 --> 00:14:20,000 If you're an administrator listening, these are the kind of questions you want to talk with your teachers about. 133 00:14:20,000 --> 00:14:28,000 Yes, I know we need to keep teachers in the classroom, but we need teachers who are actively engaged in being current, 134 00:14:28,000 --> 00:14:41,000 actively engaged in doing what we now know to be best practices, actively engaged in growing themselves as professionals. 135 00:14:41,000 --> 00:14:44,000 I did go a little off topic today in this podcast. 136 00:14:44,000 --> 00:14:52,000 It is related to dyscalculia because the students who are impacted are students I teach who have dyscalculia. 137 00:14:52,000 --> 00:15:02,000 I do find in my tutoring sessions and I talk with a lot of home schoolers, these are some of the reasons why they have not been successful in the past. 138 00:15:02,000 --> 00:15:10,000 I promise in future podcasts I will try to stick more closely aligned with the topic, but I really need this message to get out. 139 00:15:10,000 --> 00:15:16,000 Teachers, we have got to modernize. We have got to grow in our own profession. 140 00:15:16,000 --> 00:15:25,000 We have to treat what we do with respect and see how the career field has changed over time. 141 00:15:25,000 --> 00:15:29,000 Be proud of the number of years you have spent in the classroom. 142 00:15:29,000 --> 00:15:37,000 As of this recording, I've been an educator for 17 years. That puts me in the seasoned educator category, 143 00:15:37,000 --> 00:15:46,000 but I don't ever want to be a tired teacher and I don't ever want to be a teacher who clings so much to the good old days 144 00:15:46,000 --> 00:15:51,000 that I'm not aware of my current best practices that I should be following. 145 00:15:51,000 --> 00:15:59,000 And I want to be aware of what I could be doing differently that could make a positive difference for my students. 146 00:15:59,000 --> 00:16:06,000 I hope that you take some time in the beginning of this school year and do the same kind of reflection for yourself. 147 00:16:06,000 --> 00:16:19,000 As always, if you have ideas for future podcast episodes or if you have any comments about what I've said in this or other episodes, 148 00:16:19,000 --> 00:16:27,000 please reach out. My email is honora- at educalclearning.com. 149 00:16:27,000 --> 00:16:31,000 You can find educalc learning on Facebook and on LinkedIn. 150 00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:37,000 You can go to our website, educaalclearning.com, and reach us through that venue. 151 00:16:37,000 --> 00:16:43,000 I would love to know the experiences you have as parents, as students, and as teachers. 152 00:16:43,000 --> 00:16:47,000 What are you finding about yourself when you reflect on yourself? 153 00:16:47,000 --> 00:16:57,000 How can you contribute to your school community in a way that can help invigorate and modernize some of your coworkers? 154 00:16:57,000 --> 00:17:06,000 And as always, I thank you for listening to the What in the World is Dyscalculia podcast, and I will speak with you again soon.