More About Social Studies

I think my favorite class this term is social studies. I will confess, I am naturally more interested in Social Studies than most other areas but that's not why I like this class so much. Let me tell you why I do:

• Every student writes a lesson plan every week. At first this seemed like a lot of work (and it is) but what better way to get ready for the reality of teaching, right?
• Every student has to teach at least two lessons during the quarter, again great practice which isn't always easy to fit into a class schedule.
• As with many classes at AUS, the professor is very practical in his approach. This is part of the reason every student writes a lesson plan each week, so that we can share and critique them and compile them all at the end of the quarter so each of us will leave the class with nearly 100 lesson plans ready to go. That is awesome!!!!!

In that vein, allow me to share with you a few of the topics on which we have seen lessons this term:

• A world history lesson in which students review and discuss the impact of European feudal society and play a short card game.

• A middle school lesson looking at the lives of women in colonial America.

• A 3-4 day lesson in which students re-create a supreme court case concerning contemporary school segregation.

• 6th grade geography lesson about uneven distribution of world population and resources.

These are just a few of the lessons that I have either seen in class already or can look at in their entirety on our class website. This course has really emphasized the balance AUS strikes between necessary (but not always applicable) theory, and useful (but not without the theory background) application.

Other aspects of this class that I enjoy are: the reading selection (including Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States), and the fact that our final class will consist of going out for dinner and drinks. What more could you want?

Till next time, Cheers!

Thoughts on Bonus Pay

So there's been a lot of scuttle but here in Seattle about the new teachers contract. If you are interested you can read the highlights on the link below.

http://www.seattleschools.org/area/news/1011/20100915_Board_Approves_SEA_Contract_FINAL.pdf
There was a lot of conversation around Antioch during the debate before the new contract was approved because there are some major issues at play. The real game-changer is this: the new contract includes an incentive pay provision by which teachers who receive high performance ratings and whose students are making acceptable academic progress get a bonus.

Advocates point to the seemingly obvious logic that teachers will perform better if they get paid more to do so. Critics are wary of the efficacy of this system, knowing that teacher performance is just one factor among many which impact how well students do in school. A few casual conversations with fellow students seemed to show that most students at Antioch (at least among my classmates) were in favor of connecting teachers pay with student achievement.

But recently, Education Week came out with a an article reviewing the results of a major study which asked the question "Does incentive pay for teachers lead to higher performance amongst students?" To my surprise, at least in this case, the answer was NO.

Read the article.

www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/09/29/05pay_ep-2.h30.html

Tell me what you think, should we be spending our time and money elsewhere if incentive programs don't work?

Halfway! Looking at Quarter Three

This week I would like to shed some light on my classes this term. As we hit the mid-point of the program my cohort has this quarter of classes and one more in the winter and then it's student teaching for ten weeks followed by one final quarter in which we write our masters thesis. This quarter our classes are math methods, social studies methods, science methods, and assessment practices.

I have to say, I have been a bit surprised by our assessment class. I knew there was more to assessment than simply making tests, but I wasn't so sure it would be easy to fill an entire quarter with worthwhile material. So far, it doesn't seem to be an issue. The course focuses on the concepts of assessment for learning as well as assessment of learning. Although I had seen and used things like improvement portfolios in the past, the overall concept of using assessment as a way to support and increase learning (assessment for learning) was something I hadn't thought much about specifically.

To give a better idea of some of our class reactions and reflections I would like to share some insights from our weekly readings which have been posted to the class discussion board.

"'The guiding belief or value underpinning this book is that the greatest potential value of classroom assessment is realized when we open the process up and welcome students in as full partners during their learning.' While reading Chapter One I became aware of how much of an emphasis the author puts on student involvement. This had never really occurred to me as in my time at school there was never an equal partnership between me, the student, and my teacher; there was only self editing, the requirement of several drafts for each paper, and a few red comments on the returned final paper. There was never any deeper thought that went into the growth of my writing skills. I would have much preferred to have open communication with my teacher as to the things that I personally could improve on. Instead it was whatever was the next step in the curriculum for the entire class. If I ever needed extra help with any assignment, I would not know where to begin to fix the problem. Because of my own experiences with not receiving that extra voice that I needed, I really like what the authors have said about involving the student. It is a very true statement that involving the student is the most important key to that student’s improvement. The story of Emily showed how beneficial it is to make sure that the student is completely on board with the writing process, and the importance of knowing exactly what is going on with their own writing. An individual’s success depends on the time and effort put into their progress, both by themselves and by their teacher."


"What Stood Out:
'Please never underestimate the power of your evaluations of student performance and the impact of your feedback on your students. For us as adults, its a grade that goes in a grade book or a score we average with other scores, but for the students it's always far more personal than that. It's how they decide how they fit into the world of people who this thing called "writing," or "reading" or "math." Indeed they interpret your feedback to decide whether they fit in at all.' pg. 13

I agree with the author that it is crucially important to understand how evaluations will be experienced by the students in our classroom. Under the pressure's and many demands placed on us as teachers, it will be easy to rush through evaluating and inadvertently provide our students with less than helpful feedback on their performance.
Though this affects all students regardless of grade level, I'm assuming that it is even more crucial during the primary years when students have not begun to differentiate themselves from their work if that's even truly possible. However, to know that schoolwork successes and failures as described by a teacher about a student plays such a fundamental role in the development of where a person fits in not only the classroom but the world and furthermore the development of their sense of self, I hope all pre-service teachers will be empowered to allow and plan for thoughtful evaluation in everything they do as it pertains to student work."



This class has certainly underscored the necessity of quality assessments and the impact assessment can have. At this halfway point of the term and the program I can hardly wait to finish out these classes and start to put things into practice in the classroom.