Quick Tips for Effective Teaching

As I've discussed in a previous post, I went through a period of time where I questioned if I was really meant to be a teacher forever. Luckily, over the last year, I've re-solidified my passion for teaching and have fully leaned into my personal philosophy of teaching without falling into the trap of comparing myself to others.

Although I've only been teaching for five years now (and of course have it NO WHERE near all figured out), I have been able to develop some tips that have helped me feel effective in my teaching that I wanted to share.

TIP #1: USE BACKWARDS AND UNIVERSAL DESIGN

I put this first intentionally because I think it's so important that teachers understand this process, and it's the catalyst for the learning that will take place in your classroom. I'm going to be brief, since I have an entire blog on Backwards Design here and plan to do another one on the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) soon.

For now, I'll briefly break it down for you with their definitions here:

Backwards Design: the process of starting with the end in mind - meaning you begin with considering your standards, then your assessments, then your resources, and end with planning your lessons around those standards and assessments.

Universal Design: a framework for teaching that proactively meets the needs of ALL learners - meaning you assume that the barriers students face when learning the material are in the design of the environment (i.e. your lessons) and not in the students themselves.

Both of these models encourage you, the teacher, to ask yourself these questions: what do my students NEED to know? What do they ALREADY know? How will these answers differ from student to student?

Consider this scenario. You walk into a staff meeting and hear that breakfast has been provided for you. Because you didn't have time to eat this morning, you're starving and excited to hear you can eat something during the meeting. But it turns out your admin provided some bagels and cream cheese. You see the rest of the staff happily eating away, when you look at your friend next to you knowing neither of you will be able to join them. With your gluten intolerance, you can't have the bagel, and with her veganism, she can't have the cream cheese.

We, as a society, have been trained to think that things need to be "equal." Unfortunately, EQUAL is not always EQUITABLE. The breakfast at this meeting was equal, yes... meaning everyone was offered the same things, but because you and your friend have different needs, it wasn't equitable. You won't be able to eat.

The same is true in our classrooms. When we provide material that caters to MOST students, we think we are doing the best we can (because we are providing equal opportunity to the rest), but sometimes we don't consider the differences in the backgrounds of students. Yes, I know most teachers accommodate for students with IEPs and 504s, but sometimes we don't know the limitations of our other students. Maybe your admin never knew you were gluten free because you had never mentioned it to him. Why would you? The same is true for our students.

Universal design ensures there are options available to meet ALL students where they are. It's the practice of framing your lessons so students can take what he or she needs to be most successful. You can read more about the groundwork and how to implement it into your class here.

TIP #2: USE RELEVANT MATERIAL

When I first started teaching high school, I felt this pull of HAVING to teach "classic" literature, but if I'm being honest, even as an English major myself, I never truly enjoyed these types of works. I made it happily through high school and college never having read The Scarlet Letter, Fahrenheit 451, Lord of the Flies, Pride and Prejudice, and other novels of the like. And while I definitely see the literary merit in reading these books, I DREADED having to drag my students through reading them when I wasn't passionate about them myself.

Luckily, it dawned on me early that while there is value in traditional works of literature, they weren't necessary to teach. The standards assessed in all grades and the concepts we cover can be taught just as well through the use of more modern day texts, and they keep our students more engaged in the process.

This isn't to say I never teach using older material (my students have read their fair share of John Donne, Shakespeare, George Orwell, and Jonathan Swift), but I am constantly on the hunt for more relevant materials to match each group of students I have. Some resources I've implemented this year include The Breakfast Club, Criminal Minds, Friends, Parks and Rec, Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, Trent Shelton's podcast "Straight Up," and modern day songs, commercials, and TED Talks.

TIP #3: COVER LESS, NOT MORE

I remember walking into a colleague's room to see their agenda for the day only to discover they were covering EIGHT learning targets in a single lesson (about 14 standards in the unit). My eyes almost bulged out of my head at the thought of the amount of overwhelm students would experience upon seeing that, and I couldn't help but wonder if they truly knew what they were expected to "master" by the end of the class period with so much being covered.

This isn't the teachers fault, though, really. Common Core has made us, as educators, feel like we have to cover everything in a single course, and there are a LOT of standards to get through. For ELA specifically, there are a dozen standards for 9-10 grade in reading literature alone, not even including the ones for informational text, writing, speaking and listening, and language. The result? Teachers going a mile wide but only an inch deep. We try to cover as many as we can throughout the term, semester, or year without ever truly diving deep into the standards that are essential.

My suggestion is to hone in on the standards you find MOST crucial and spend a good amount of time ensuring your students truly grasp the skill. Personally, I choose 1-3 standards per unit, resulting in one learning target per lesson (sometimes for multiple days in a row) to really develop those skills before moving on.

TIP #4: CHOOSE STANDARDS THAT FIT YOUR STUDENTS' NEEDS

It's not that I'm against the Common Core or canned curriculum (because I DO see value in both of these things), but I definitely think they need to be analyzed and evaluated to determine if they meet our specific student needs. As I mentioned, there are far too many standards for us to possibly cover them all, so deciding which ones are best for our students, in our area, with consideration of their goals, is essential.

Even breaking it down by state standards can prove to be ineffective. For example, what students in a largely populated Wisconsin city NEED to know, what they ALREADY know, and what they EXPERIENCE on a daily basis is vastly different than the students I teach in our small, rural town. In fact, it most likely differs within a school itself. What students in my elective classes need most is not always the same as what students in my core classes in the same grade might need most.

When I'm teaching my Honors class, I know that those students plan to go to college. I know I need to prepare them for undergraduate classes and gear my lessons to more formal, academic standards and settings. On the other hand, some students in my elective courses don't ever plan to attend a university. They may be going into the trades or working on their family farm instead. Will these students need to know how to compare a movie version to a written version of a text or to write a narrative? Probably not. But they WILL need to know how to present information clearly and address opposing points of view.

All of the standards are important; they wouldn't be standards, otherwise. But not ALL standards are essential for ALL students in ALL classes, and a bought curriculum or someone from the common core doesn't know YOUR students. YOU do... which is why it should be YOU who is deciding which standards you are assessing and focusing on within your classroom.

My tip? Sit with your department and discuss what you find most valuable to your students. Start by combing through the standards by grade, and then divide by different courses.

TIP #5: UNPACK THE UNIT STANDARD(S) WITH YOUR STUDENTS

Once you've chosen your standard(s), it's important to unpack those standards WITH your students for two major reasons:

1. It tells them what they are expected to master by the end of the unit

2. They are able to understand the standards when they read it in other context

In education, there are 29 critical verbs that all students should be able to define by time they graduate. In fact, 28 of these words are supposed to be mastered by the end of 6th grade.

These are the words we see in our common core standards and on standardized assessments - words like delineate and synthesize and determine. However, most of us know that if we were to tell our students to "delineate the development of the character," they would look at us like we have two heads. So what do we do?

Traditionally, we tend to change the standard absentmindedly and put it into "student friendly" language. We read the standard, simplify it down to its key parts, replace these words with synonyms, and THEN present them to our students.

This is great in making sure they understand what they are being asked to do, but not so great when it comes to them understanding the language of the original standard when they see it outside of the classroom. The problem here is that when we use verbiage like "Give a detailed description of the character's development" instead of "delineate the character's development" in their earlier years of education, students end up completely lost when they face these verbs later on. As a result, students fail to show their ability to describe the character development, not because they don't know HOW to do the skill, but because they simply don't know what they are being asked to do.

To solve this problem, I began unpacking standards WITH my students. I present the standard as is, verbatim from the common core. We read through it together, they write it down, and then we take time to dissect it together. We discuss what we think it means, take out the most important aspects of the standard, define the verbs and think of synonyms, and then we simplify it and rephrase it as a class. The result is a rewritten standard, in layman's terms, that they are able to understand, and they were exposed to the critical verbs and the language they will encounter later on in the process.

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TIP #6: EXPLAIN YOUR RATIONALE

Once I have the standards chosen and have unpacked it with my class, I like to go over WHY I chose it in the first place. I don't know about you, but unless I see the PURPOSE in something I'm doing, the task seems quite tedious and like nothing I would rather not do. Fortunately, as adults, we are USUALLY able to decipher the purpose behind tasks ourselves, but our students aren't always able to do so - especially when it comes to a subject that challenges them or one they tend to dislike.

This is why I always spend time answering the question "why are we learning this?" before every unit. It's important for students to know WHAT they are expected to be able to do (i.e. standards), but it's more important for them to know why that standard matters, which might be different for all students depending on their plans after school. Plus, it helps me avoid hearing the question "when will I ever use this?" that I know we've all experienced.

When my students are learning how to effectively structure an essay and write about a topic, I explain why it's important for students who are going to college to know this (to learn the formatting, to be prepared for what they're asked to do once in college, etc.), but I also explain how it's important for students going straight into the work force, into the military, or onto any other plans they have (to learn how organizing our ideas in a logical manner helps us better communicate with others and convey our point). My goal is that each student understands the purpose of learning the material so they can see the value in their own life.

TIP #7: REFLECT ON AND MAKE CHANGES TO YOUR LESSONS

My first year of teaching, I taught 7th Grade Literature five times a day. While there were sometimes downsides of this structure (it can get quite monotonous teaching the same thing over, and over, and over again...), there was one huge benefit: the ability to master a lesson by time my last class rolled around.

We've all had lessons that have completed FLOPPED before. Luckily, if that happened during 1st hour, I was able to make adjustments for 3rd hour, and then 7th hour, and then 8th hour, and so on. After teaching it for the 5th time, all the adjustments needed were made and updated so they were ready to go when we got to that same unit the next year.

When I switched to high school, however, my whole structure changed. I went from 42 minute classes to 85 minute blocks, and I started teaching three different classes once a day instead of the same class multiple times. Again, many upsides to this, but it made it difficult to implement changes right away. I teach some classes only once per year, so some lessons I teach for one day in September and won't have the chance to repeat it until a full year later, which made it hard to implement the changes right away.

To help me remember what I thought went well and what needed to be changed, I got in the habit of keeping a reflection log. Not only do I take notes on a hard copy of errors needing to be fixed for the next time I teach the lesson, I also keep a Google Doc full of reflections categorized by unit. This way, by time the unit comes around the next time, I can peek at this and jog my memory of changes I wanted to make the year prior.

TIP #8: FORMS CONNECTIONS WITH YOUR STUDENTS

Need I say more? Focus on building a rapport with your students before you expect to make major strides with them in their learning. We all know we learn better from people we enjoy being around... the same is true for our kids.

BONUS TIP: HAVE FUN

... life is too short to be serious all the time. Remind your students that you're human, too.