By Stephen Lazar, on January 8th, 2012%
At the beginning of the year, I set a number of goals for myself, one of which was to reflect on said goals every two months. My second set of reflections are in italics below.
Teaching
I will improve the way I give feedback to students. Formally, I hope to develop a system to give students feedback about writing that meaningfully a) tells students where they are, b) what they need to do to improve and c) is efficient enough that I can provide frequent and timely feedback to all students. I also need to make sure I am giving informal feedback more frequently to all students. (I hope that moving to a Standards Based Grading system will enable these things to happen organically).
At the end of the semester, I saw that a good chunk of students had changed how they went about trying to improve their grades. Instead of asking for missing assignments or extra credit, students were asking how they could demonstrate improvement in different learning goals. This seemed to be a good indicator that I’m doing well with the first two parts of this goal. I am still struggling with being more efficient in grading, and am thinking that might be a persistent struggle for as long as I teach (and that is okay).
Students will have multiple opportunities to rethink and revise their answers to large essential questions throughout each unit, and will also reflect on and revise all major work.
I have been widely divergent in achieving this goal. I have been better at using large essential questions to guide my class. For the past few months, the question “How Democratic is the US?” has been at the center of everything we have done, and it has been rewarding to see students’ answers to this question evolve as we’ve looked at different events. At the same time, I have yet to have students do major revision of their work, and need to work this into my plans for second semester.
I will solicit bi-weekly feedback from my students to ensure they understand why they’re doing what they’re doing, and to give them a voice in what happens in the class.
I am abandoning this goal. Bi-weekly was too frequent, and I am finding I am getting much more useful information from informal verbal check-ins than I did from my survey.
Leadership
The Social Studies Critical Friends Group will meet once a month, and will be valuable for its participants.
I’m very happy with how the group has been going. As we meet more often, I’m starting to see lots of connections made between various presentations. I wrote a more thorough update last month.
Advisory
100% of my new advisees will either graduate or earn at least ten credits by June.
Thirteen out of fifteen are on pace. One of my advisees is transferring to a school that will give him a better chance of progressing. Unfortunately, I had an advisee miss most of the past two months for health reasons, but she’s back and I hope to help her get back on track in the coming weeks
100% of my advisees will be accepted to college, and will have a plan to pay for it or whatever else they choose to do next year.
About half of my advisees have been accepted into schools they are willing to attend. In February, we need to begin looking at how to pay for it.
Personal / Professional Development
At least once per week, I will write and publish a piece of writing about teaching social studies, be it about my practice or teaching in general.
I’m still mostly on pace for this one, and am proud that in the last two months I have had three pieces published to much wider audiences:
Every two months, I will write and publish a self-evaluation of how I am doing on these goals.
Check. Check.
By Stephen Lazar, on January 5th, 2012%
Two months ago, Nancy Flanagan wrote a great piece about changing her mind when it comes to school reform, which inspired me to do the same at the New York Time’s SchoolBook:
I used to think that if I didn’t know the solution to the problem, I could figure one out. I now think some problems are so complex that there can never be a silver bullet.
I used to think we needed to create model schools that could then be replicated. I now think that it is so hard to sustain a model that each school needs to be invested in its own unique vision.
I used to think our goal should be to create systems of great schools. I now think great schools are so hard to create and maintain that our goal should be to create good and sustainable ones.
Read the rest here.
By Stephen Lazar, on December 2nd, 2011%
My big project for the year was to start a Critical Friends Group for small school Social Studies teachers in NYC. The Critical Friends Group has had three formal meetings at this point, and has taken on a powerful life of its own. Of the 12 members initially recruited, seven have been at all three sessions; where a very strong supportive, yet critical, community is developing. Our last two meetings have included outstanding work from members of the group. At the first, my co-organizer and myself presented, and last Monday, two of the other members of the group shared. Two presenters brought their curriculum maps: one looking for general feedback, the other looking for ideas on how to serve the top third and bottom third of his students better (in a classroom of two teachers with 50 students, adding the opportunity for creative solutions). Another ran a PD session that he is considering doing for wider audiences, and I brought in student work to get suggestions on helping my students move to deeper levels of understanding.
It’s been inspiring to see the work that other great teachers are doing, and it’s pushed me to think deeper about a lot of things, particularly the essential questions I use for historical inquiry. At the same time, our group has not been shy about offering critical feedback, and it seems that all four presenters have left with strong suggestions for improving their work. It’s the latter that has excited me the most, and seemingly other members as well.
The past meeting added a new level to the group that I had not thought of, but bodes well for its future. Both presenters brought collaborators with them. For the group to be sustainable, I think it will be imperative to organically bring in fresh blood in this manner. One of the guests is teaching at the iSchool, which is doing some really innovative things (here is the class she talked about), and I hope she will join the group permanently to add a very different perspective into the group.
The one area where the group is not developing as I hoped in its writing component. I had a vague idea of reflective writing being a part of it that never really crystalized. Given the value of teacher’s time, I am wondering if it might be worth scrapping that component, or if its worth further research to make it more valuable. It is also worth noting that we write for the first 30 minutes of our meetings, which a significant number of participants miss because of their travel time to our meetings.
By Stephen Lazar, on November 25th, 2011%
Tuesday, I went and met with a group of student teachers up at Vassar. I hoped to share with them some of the many reasons that makes what we do the greatest job in the world, though part of me fears that a lot of what I said, particularly about how hard it is to find a teaching job these days, might have overshadowed what makes this job great. So in the spirit of Thanksgiving, here is a list, in no particular order, that highlights just some of the reasons I cannot possibly imagine doing anything else:
- Students come to me excited every morning to ask me if I “saw that on the news last night.”
- I work in an environment where collaboration with my co-workers is always valued more than competition with them.
- Each year, I get to meet and deeply know 100+ new people.
- I didn’t have to work my way up the ladder to do the work I want to do; I’ve been doing that work since day 1.
- Teaching is so intellectually demanding and challenging that it always provides new experiences to keep me interested.
- I get to work with adolescents at the moment when they are defining who they want to be for the rest of their lives, and to help them think about that.
- I get to see Facebook status updates from alumni that thank me for introducing her to Baudrillard so she was the only person who understood it in her class.
- I once got a letter from the worst behaved student I ever had on the day of his graduation thanking me for showing that I cared about him by not letting him get away with the behavior others ignored because they got tired of dealing with him.
- I often find out that a random remark I said off the cuff really stayed with a student.
- I have a job that makes me want to continue to improve constantly.
- I get to be humbled over, over, and over again.
- There are thousands of other people with the same commitment and thoughtfulness that I have working on the same issues.
- I get to help students understand the meaning of democracy.
- I get to help students learn to better express their selves.
- I get to make students complain regularly that their heads hurt because they’ve never used their brain in the way I’m asking them to.
- The letters I occasionally get from other teachers letting me know that my writing has helped or inspired them in some way.
- The letters or comments I get to write thanking other teachers for helping or inspiring me in some way.
- Constantly learning about new ways to be better at what I do.
- Being challenged by my students to learn new things and consider different viewpoints.
- I get to take students to Ellis Island, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and on college trips around the Northeast.
- I can honestly say I love what I do and would not want to do anything else.
By Stephen Lazar, on November 6th, 2011%
At the beginning of the year, I set a number of goals for myself, one of which was to reflect on said goals every two months. My first reflections are in italics below.
Teaching
I will improve the way I give feedback to students. Formally, I hope to develop a system to give students feedback about writing that meaningfully a) tells students where they are, b) what they need to do to improve and c) is efficient enough that I can provide frequent and timely feedback to all students. I also need to make sure I am giving informal feedback more frequently to all students. (I hope that moving to a Standards Based Grading system will enable these things to happen organically).
While there have been some road bumps in getting students on board with SBG, I think they are starting to get the hang of it. Thanks to SBG, students are getting clear feedback for each assignment on where they are and how to improve. I need to create better systems to get students to make the effort to revise their work. While still not where I need to be, I am doing better with getting students work back in a timely manner.
Students will have multiple opportunities to rethink and revise their answers to large essential questions throughout each unit, and will also reflect on and revise all major work.
I wrote about this earlier, but I feel like I’m just starting and therefore haven’t really done much major work yet. Students have returned to some essential questions, but with all the time I’ve spent on various current events, there hasn’t been much unity or flow from week-to-week. I planned way too much for the course, and need to start thinking about how to pare things down for next year to focus on only a few questions, while still developing the wide range of citizenship-literacy that students need to thoughtfully and actively participate in our democracy.
I will solicit bi-weekly feedback from my students to ensure they understand why they’re doing what they’re doing, and to give them a voice in what happens in the class.
I’m off on this goal, as I’ve only gotten feedback from my students twice to this point. I’m not thrilled with the form I was using, and will create a new one to use with my students this week.
Leadership
The Social Studies Critical Friends Group will meet once a month, and will be valuable for its participants.
We’ve had two meetings so far, and things seem to be going really well. I got a lot of positive feedback from participants after each the first two meetings, and am excited to see the group continue to develop and grow.
Advisory
100% of my new advisees will either graduate or earn at least ten credits by June.
Fourteen out of fifteen on pace. I have a meeting set up with the family of the fifteenth for next week to come up with a plan to help get him on track.
100% of my advisees will be accepted to college, and will have a plan to pay for it or whatever else they choose to do next year.
Wonderfully, 3 of my 15 students have already achieved this goal. My school is part of something called the Pipeline project for Southern Vermont College, which allows us to choose five students to send there with nearly-full scholarships. I was very excited for three of the five this year to come from my advisory.
Personal / Professional Development
At least once per week, I will write and publish a piece of writing about teaching social studies, be it about my practice or teaching in general.
I’m very excited to be on pace for this goal. This is one I was worried about maintaining, but am happy to have achieved.
Every two months, I will write and publish a self-evaluation of how I am doing on these goals.
Check.
By Stephen Lazar, on October 27th, 2011%
Cross posted from my Critical Friends Group blog, where our monthly writing prompt was, “What is something you are currently struggling with in your practice?”
As the call for progress reports went out, I found it hard to believe that a quarter of the year was done. I’ve pretty much felt like I’ve been in warm up mode thus far, which among other things, has meant I have yet to begin a project with my students, or any other form of assessment beyond essays and written check-ins. Whereas there has been some inquiry, it has all been bounded, with me doing the research work. I’ve yet to set my students free to come to their own conclusions from their own information. I’m grappling with how to make my Government & Economics course more student-centered and driven.
This has never been a problem for me before. In all previous history courses, I’ve maintained a good balance of a few weeks of content, followed by a few weeks with students doing inquiry-based project work related to the previous weeks’ content (at least until the end of the year, when my class became a test prep factory). I’m having a hard time trying to figure out why this is an issue this year.
Part of me just feels overwhelmed my the sheer amount of information students should know to be active and reasonable democratic citizens in our quasi-capitalist economy. My nature as a history teacher was to reduce what I was supposed to teach (do they really need to understand the Proclamation Line of 1763? I think not), whereas I now find myself thinking expansively about what students should understand (I mean, how could I not help students understand Judith Butler’s theory of gender peformativity when talking about identity). I also find myself embracing the ability to drop everything and discuss current events. Thus far we’ve spent a couple days on Troy Davis, a day on Steve Jobs, and a week on Occupy Wall Street and direct democracy. I feared that this would be something I would not be able to bring myself to do. Perhaps I’ve gone too far, though.
By Stephen Lazar, on October 19th, 2011%
My new school has an school-wide interim assessment process for all classes where students are assessed on the same skills three times a year to track growth and inform instruction. Unlike most “data-driven” initiatives, teachers at my school collaborate together to design the assessments and determine levels of performance. The “data” we get from these assessments then is actually valuable in identifying areas where students need support. The Social Studies assessments focus on creating arguments using evidence from documents. My first essay in my government & economics course asked to students to agree or disagree with the statement, “Identities are created by marketing.” The documents I used are here. My reflection follows, with some of the data below it.
Based on the students’ essays on marketing and identity, there is a range of development on different skills. The majority of students write in a way that shows they are college ready, and most of those who do not are close. However, students are showing they are not ready to make valid arguments. Most students know to make arguments, but their generalized claims need to be supported by concrete and specific evidence. They also need to recognize that making a good argument involves recognizing shades of gray and opposing opinions.
The largest area of growth for my class is in sourcing information. Nearly all students presented all or most information carelessly as facts, rather than showing that the information represented perspectives, or worse, came from advertisements. Additionally, students need to learn to group evidence from multiple sources to support their claims, rather than letting the sources dictate the organization of their arguments.
Both needs are already being addressed in my class. We are now practicing sourcing together with every single piece of information that is set forth, be it reading or video. As this concept seems to be entirely new to students, I expect quick improvement. In order to help students learn to group relevant evidence together, I am having them write individual paragraphs where they need to use multiple sources to answer a question. These sources offer differing views, so it also helps students get in the habit of recognizing the multiple complexities or sides of issues we discuss. Just for one example, students this week saw a video showing how direct democracy is being used to make decisions as Occupy Wall Street, but also read an op-ed decrying the state of California’s ballot initiative process.
As we move into looking at politics, students will have even more practice with looking at issues from various sides. The class will rarely focus on what is the right policy stance, but rather, how a policy should be “sold” to different constituencies. Students will participate in a couple of simulations from the Buck Institute where they take on the role of politicians trying to appease various groups on both sides of the aisle.
Notes: Standard areas are in all CAPS, followed by the indicators of that standard. 4=Excelling, 3=Succeeding, 2=Developing, 1=Beginning
|
ARGUMENT |
Controlling Idea |
Supporting Evidence |
Multiplicity |
USING EVIDENCE |
Connections |
Quoting |
SOURCING |
CONTENT |
Outside Info |
Validity |
WRITING |
Organization |
Intro/Conclusion |
Thesis |
| Average |
2.01 |
2.26 |
2.27 |
1.60 |
1.69 |
1.67 |
2.03 |
1.27 |
1.99 |
2.21 |
1.99 |
2.47 |
2.50 |
2.46 |
2.54 |
| Standard Deviation |
0.71 |
0.72 |
0.85 |
0.77 |
0.67 |
0.63 |
0.68 |
0.51 |
0.75 |
0.81 |
0.73 |
0.77 |
0.76 |
0.81 |
0.74 |
| Count: 4 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
3 |
3 |
2 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
| Count: 3 |
15 |
23 |
28 |
9 |
5 |
6 |
14 |
2 |
10 |
23 |
12 |
30 |
31 |
31 |
33 |
| Count: 2 |
38 |
36 |
24 |
21 |
35 |
35 |
41 |
15 |
40 |
30 |
39 |
28 |
28 |
25 |
27 |
| Count: 1 |
16 |
9 |
15 |
39 |
29 |
29 |
14 |
53 |
17 |
14 |
17 |
7 |
6 |
9 |
5 |
By Stephen Lazar, on September 30th, 2011%
Cross posted from the NYC Social Studies Critical Friends Group Blog, based on this prompt.
Last year, I began really changing how I used primary source documents in class. For most of my career, I used primary documents to give students factual information and eyewitness accounts to what was going on in various times and places. I had somewhat blindly accepted that it was better to use primary document to “bring history alive,” rather than relying on the deadened accounts found in textbooks. I also imagined I was “empowering” my students to become historical interpreters, rather than relying on politically correct interpretations put forth in the textbook. In reality though, I don’t believe my students experienced primary documents that differently from how they would have experienced the textbook. I wasn’t teaching them to interpret, but rather to find factual information in relatively unproblematic texts I had chosen with a clear takeaway in mind.
Last year, I began doing much more work putting primary documents in opposition to each other. This forced students to do the critical work of historians in order to construct history for their selves. I began selecting primary document sets that, if not outright contradicting each other, forced students to take multiple documents into account in order to draw complex conclusions about causation and historical significance. Very much connected, I shifted from having my students do analytical writing to doing persuasive writing using primary documents, thereby forcing them to use the documents as evidence to support their claims.
I initially made the change because I realized that in my previous years teaching US, I wasn’t really having my students doing much thinking about history outside of their project work. When I began constructing a new global curriculum last year, I wanted to ensure students were playing authentic roles not only on projects, but also regularly in class. While my major assessments had always asked students to include more than “just the facts,” the way students had been learning hadn’t done the same. I was asking myself, “How can this work be more engaging, challenging, and worthwhile?”
My initial change was just on some gut hunches; I’m not sure I could have articulated any of this at the time. The “data” that led me to the change was the mostly boring writing I was getting from students. Once upon a time I had looked forward to reading student essays, but I realized that since I was no longer asking students to think in service of the Regents gods, I was also not getting the best work from students that allowed them some level of individual expression.
I knew the change was successful when students started being excited by what they found in primary documents, and when I saw them actually using that information in their work on a regular basis.
My thinking on this got pushed exponentially farther than it ever would have otherwise when I started working on the NYC local assessment pilot for the new teacher evaluation system. The three other people on my team were all brilliant at doing this kind of work. Most importantly, they named some of the things I had been doing, but not doing so intentionally, so that I could recreate some of my successes. They also named the specific skills students needed, and gave me tools to teach these skills.
Now, I’m wondering about how to fully integrate this kind of learning into my government & economics course in a way that moves students beyond the dominant “token-liberal vs. token-conservative talking head” political discourse so prevalent right now in the country. How do I get students to move beyond the simplistic “I agree with this perspective over that perspective,” and towards one where they can critically articulate and analyze the rhetorical structures and tools being used to manipulate viewpoints, and the discourse itself.
By Stephen Lazar, on September 30th, 2011%
Over the summer, I had a wonderful reenergizing experience doing professional development around teacher leadership at Swarthmore. Coming out of the week, we were all asked to initiate a leadership project of some sort for the coming school year. As I was moving to a new school, I was in the unique situation of needing to find something to do outside of my school.
As I was brainstorming ideas, I remembered a conversation I had a few weeks prior with Kate Weiss, a teacher who I met while doing a Facing History seminar. Like myself, Kate was a Social Studies Department Chair and the senior history teacher before being done with her first decade of teaching. We found we had much in common in terms of feelings of stagnated professional growth, isolation, and frustrations with our schools as they reached maturity. I found myself wishing I had met her much earlier; perhaps the past two years would not have been a little bit easier.
When I got back from Swarthmore, I met with Kate, and we decided to try to do something to help teachers in similar situations, by forming a group of NYC Social Studies teachers based on the Critical Friends Group model. I am very excited by the group we were able to assemble to meet monthly. We have 11 rock star teachers from 7 different NYC public schools, as well as a full time social studies coach. The group includes numerous department chairs and teacher mentors; everyone in the group shares some leadership role at some level. We met for drinks a few weeks ago, and had our first formal meeting this past Monday.
Our plan is to meet monthly. At each meeting, all teachers will spend the first thirty minutes doing some reflective writing, which will be shared on our blog. Then, 2-3 teachers will present their work, student work, or an issue they face as a leader using National School Reform Faculty protocols. We hope that we will challenge each other to grow as teachers and leaders as we share resources and ideas. We have also committed to sharing as much as possible publicly, so the work of the group can benefit others beyond the walls of our schools.
Our blog is now live. Please subscribe and comment as posts arrive. Below, is our official mission:
The mission of the Social Studies Critical Friends Group (S2CFG) is to provide accomplished social studies teachers, who have foundational experience in the classroom of at least three years, with a peer network to support their continued development beyond that which the small school can always provide. Taking inspiration from both the National Writing Project and the National School Reform Faculty, S2CFG members will hold monthly in-person meetings in addition to participating in an online network to share and develop best practices, curricular units, and performance tasks. The group will also provide a forum for teachers to discuss the issues they face in formal or informal leadership roles in their schools. Members will be expected to produce at least one piece of reflective writing each month about some aspect of their professional practice, as well as present at least two NSRF protocols during the year looking at either their classroom or larger school issues. Members can expect to gain a wealth of ideas and support from other strong and accomplished social studies teachers. However, it is our goal that the S2CFG will not only give teachers an increased sense of community and purpose for their own professional lives, but that it will also serve as a springboard to develop teacher-leaders who will serve as professional and curricular developers for the larger education community. S2CFG will share our work (units, performance tasks, tools and documentation of our project) across networks of schools, and members will have opportunities facilitate and present at various conferences and institutes.
By Stephen Lazar, on September 25th, 2011%
One of my goals for this year is to gather regular feedback from my students. This is something I did regularly in the first few years of my career, but moved away from doing for no good reason.
I took my survey from Understanding by Design. Friday, I asked asked students for thoughts on the following questions:
- What was the most interesting thing we’ve done in the past two weeks? What made it so interesting?
- What was the most boring thing we did in class the past two weeks? What made it so boring?
- What worked the best for you the past two weeks in this class? In other words, what specific activity, lesson, technique, or tool helped you learn the most? Why?
- What didn’t work for you the past two weeks? What activity, assignment, or lesson was the most confusing or unhelpful? Why?
I also students whether they agreed with the following statements:
- The work was focused on big ideas, not just unconnected little facts and skills. We are learning important things.
- I found the work thought-provoking and interesting.
- I was very clear on what the goals of the unit were. We were shown what was important, what was high quality work, what our job was, and what the purpose of the unit was.
- We were given enough choice or freedom in how to go about achieving the goals
- The assessments were just right. What we were asked to do was a “fair test” of our learning.
I’ve summarized some student responses below, as well as including data from the binary questions.
What We Did the Past Two Weeks
My first week included a series of lessons on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. My goal in starting the year with these lessons was to get students thinking about the kinds of knowledge and learning that is typically valued in school, and to contrast it with the knowledge of the real world that would be essential to my government and economics course. Students read the piece, drew pictures of the allegory, and then we reenacted it, interspersed with relevant scenes fromt The Matrix. Students were formally assessed for their understanding of the Allegory in a Socratic Seminar where students were asked to discuss the connections between it and Rumi’s “There are two kinds of intelligence.” In the second week of school, we began a unit on Identity & Media, discussing the categories that make up our identities, the differences between race, ethnicity, culture, and heritage, and watching excerpts from Race: The Power of an Illusion.
1st Period Feedback
The main takeaway from the feedback the first class gave me is that I have a very diverse class with diverse interests. About half the class loved the stuff we did on the Allegory of the Cave, the other half hated it. The same was true for the clips we watched from Race: The Power of an Illusion. The most positive feedback was for the class discussion we had on the difference between race, ethnicity, culture, and heritage.
2nd Period Feedback
This class was equally split on the Allegory, though with some really strong positive reactions to it. This section was also more split on the conversation about the difference between race, ethnicity, culture, and heritage. There were also very strong positive and negative reactions to the Socratic Seminar. I also got my favorite line, ““To me, learning that race is fake was pretty epic.”
3rd Period Feedback
Again, had really strong positive or negative reactions to the Allegory sequence. Differently from both other sections, there was specifically positive and negative reactions to both looking at The Matrix and having students draw pictures to help them understand. There were not any other consistency in responses from this class.
Data
My Thoughts
I had not been very happy with how the Allegory lessons went. My goal in starting the year was to do something high interest and thought provoking that all students could engage with, and despite the really positive feedback from students, it was clear that my Allegory sequence was the wrong was to accomplish what I hoped to.
I was also surprised to see that the most negative feedback came from my second period class. I had actually thought things had been going better in that class than my other two, but I was mistaken.
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About Me I am a NBPTS Certified Social Studies and English Teacher in Brooklyn. I work with teachers to support Project and Inquiry-Based Learning. My writing on policy and practice has been published on the New York Times, Education Week, and Gotham Schools websites.
You can also follow me on Twitter @SLazarOTC. |
