During this conference I decided to attend the session “Failure is
an Option.” This caught my eye because in society we have been told repeatedly
that failure is NOT an option, I was interested to see the perspective of the
speaker because this is something that we are trying to get our students
comfortable when they fail a quiz and not let this deter them from improving.
Mark Dohn from Tilt Shift Education started the session by showing us a video
of a girl doing flips…wait for it….on a shower rod! Disclaimer: no one was hurt
in the making of the video. He began by asking us what the girls learned from
this dangerous activity. As many of us answered, the girls, besides knowing how
to flip, not much. This is when he brought up the idea that students need to
feel comfortable with failure and know that it is an opportunity for
improvement. Mark, who has taught in Los Angeles before, incorporates teaching
students the difference between mistakes and failures. Mistakes, as he
explains, are instances that occurs “in the moment.” Failure refers to a
culmination of many mistakes but overall, students should know that mistakes
and failure= lessons to be learned and opportunity for improvement.
One of the biggest obstacles I have faced in placement is students
shutting down and giving up when they don’t do as well in assignments or
quizzes. I have been working with a student that even when he knows the answer
he refrains from participating in class because he feels he “is just going to
fail the class.” One of the points of Mark’s
talk was that of allowing students reflect about mistakes and failure by
incorporating technology. He showed us a video of one of his students
reflecting on his technology project. The student not only reflected on what
mistake he did but also what allowed him to move forward and what he had
learned from the mistake. This got me
thinking about the students I work with and realized that 1. They are curious
every time I set up my camera to record a lesson and 2. That they love being in
front of the camera. Students like to pose and talk to the camera, I began
thinking why not allow them to do this but using Mark’s strategy? Students are allowed to retake quizzes before
the unit test but they have to conference with me before retaking the quiz,
sometimes they might be a bit shy to talk to their teacher as opposed to
talking to the camera. I will begin setting up my camera before school and
allow those students that would like to do a morning reflection to video record
themselves and I can review these recordings (with consent of course) to not only allow me to gain data about how to
improve lessons but also allow students to reflect. I truly enjoyed attending
the talk by Mark that further encouraged technology use in the classroom not
only for lessons but also for reflection and ultimately for learning.
The second talk I attended was by no other but by the 2014 Teacher
of the Year, Gary Abud. Gary is an instructional coach at Grosse-Pointe. Through
his talk, Gary not only had the presentation available online but his
presentation was also interactive through GoSoapBox (GSB.) GSB allows questions
to be answered as well as allowing the audience to ask questions and vote the
questions that majority of them find interesting to move them up the question
list. I found this a great tool not only for his presentation but also for use
in class, this will allow students that have the similar questions not to feel
alone when asking the question. I also learned about how to work with the administration
(in my future teaching job) in regard towards teacher evaluation. Gary
mentioned that collaboration was essential for this to occur, and talked about
the wonders of Google docs for teacher evaluation.
Lightning talks!
One of the last talks I attended was the lightning talks and they
call them lightning talks for a reason, they are fast! Each speaker has only 5
minutes to give their talk and inspire the audience (at least they inspired
me.) A few of them spoke to me in volumes. Staring with Erin Klein, whose main
point was to encourage curiosity in the classroom and to allow students to
pursue this curiosity. She asked a great question, are you too busy to improve?
This not only applied to teachers but also to students. How are teachers
working towards improving their teaching? Are the students’ voices being heard?
If yeas, how? (Ok the last two questions were crossing my mind I listened to
Erin’s talk.) A quote form Erin that spoke volumes to me was, “the best
teachers are those that tell you where to look but not what to see.” Guiding
students through biology is different than just going through the motions and “feeding”
them knowledge. Students need to be allowed to discover biology through
experiments and class discussions not just by sitting in a lecture and memorizing
terms. Erin’s class did a Class Con (aka educational Comic Con) where students got
to interact with each other and discuss different topics of the class and about
how to get involved in the community. Her class volunteered in the Battered
Women’s Shelter together as a class after a discussion of A Child Called It.
This is something that I would like to try in the future, where biology
students can collaborate together to help put in the community.
One of the lightning talks that touched me the most in a personal
and educational level was that from Trevor Muir from Kent Innovation High
School. Trevor told us the story of a female student who could barely stay
awake during class, who was passing her classes with a C and who at times
looked too tired to function. This story hit close to home for me because through
middle school and majority of high school, I was that student. The reason the student
was always tired was because she had to go home and take care of her siblings
and clean her house while her mother worked and after all this, do her
homework. I didn’t go home and take care of my siblings, my older sister did
that, I instead had to help my mother at work, selling fruits and vegetables on
the side of the road and acting as a translator for those customers who did not
speak Spanish as well as those officers who often threatened to send us to
court. There was no set schedule for my parents and I in terms of hours or days
and my homework schedule got done between times I was not helping and after we went
home after sundown. My parents had no days off and in turn, neither did my
siblings and I. Weekend mornings were set from picking up the produce for the
week and sell through the day and trying to work through a calculus problem
that took 30 minutes was nearly impossible when I was interrupted very often. I
managed to pass the class first semester with a B but barely passed it with a C
the second semester due to my hectic schedule but to me this was a win, because
I still managed to pass the class that allowed me to complete my math credits
but I can see the disappointment in my teacher’s eyes that I couldn’t focus.
What helped me through this was my English teacher that opened his doors early
in the morning to let a couple of us finish homework, even if it mean that he
had to wake up 30 minutes every day he never let us know, he told us he liked
to be at school early to get caught up with things. Trevor mentioned in his
story that the girl “conquered algebra by day and struggle by night.” Teachers
that are able to recognize this make the different between students giving up
or continuing the fight every day even when they are too tired to finish that
last problem. I hope that in the future I will be someone that will help
students through this struggle in the smallest ways possible just like Mr. Hoy
was for me because like the quote at the end of the conference, “this
conference is not for us but for the students…”
(Image obtained from Google Images)
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