Snow Day Collaboration

Sigh.

So another snow day. Another day where I could be teaching my kids the wonders of Newton's Laws, but instead I'm stuck at home fretting over all the time I'm losing.

However, I'm not sitting on the sofa eating bon bons and doing my nails. I'm actually getting work done. And believe it or not, I'm actually collaborating with Mrs. Eagle on this work even though she's at her house across town (and in the woods with really bad roads).

First, a bit about collaboration. Mrs. Eagle and I have collaborated for the past six years. Honestly, neither one of us can even begin to imagine putting together lessons without the other's input. Why reinvent the wheel? So every week we get together, along with Mrs. Hummingbird who is the new 7th grade science teacher on her team this year, and spend about thirty minutes discussing and going over what we want to do the following week. We throw out ideas, go through our files and find cool stuff, and it's a real give and take. By the time we're done, we've come up with a pretty solid plan for the next week, I've typed up and printed the lessons, and we've assigned our jobs for the week. Mrs. Eagle usually does the vocabulary tests and study guides, I do the unit tests and rubrics, and Mrs. Hummingbird does the guided outlines. It works well. We even get together and copy all the stuff we need at the same time.

Why more people don't do this - and apparently a lot don't - is beyond me. Mrs. Eagle thinks it's a power and control thing and she may be right. All I know is it works for us.

Last year the Guidance Goober gave me the head's up on a great website that allows you to share documents with others. Even better, every time one of these documents is updated, it updates on all the other computers it is located on. It's called Dropbox. We've set one up for 7th grade science and we store all our documents there. So, when I'm doing lessons, or the test, and Mrs. Eagle is doing her tests and study guides, and Mrs. Hummingbird is doing the outlines, we can all see the documents, modify them, and access them without having to constantly email copies back and forth.

So yesterday, Mrs. Eagle and I spent the morning collaborating on a new unit we're going to do if we can ever get back to school to finish the one we're currently working on. (Mrs. Hummingbird, bless her, has three kids of her own and can't find a second to even think since they're all home from school today, and besides, she's been working ahead on the outlines...so she's off the hook today).

I spent a few hours on the test, saved it to the Dropbox and while I was looking in the folder noticed that Mrs. Eagle had done the vocabulary quizzes and study guide. I printed them out, noticed a couple of typos, fixed them on the computer, saved them again, and gave Mrs. Eagle a call.

"Hey, I've dropped the test and want you to take a second to go over it when you get a chance," I told her.

"No problem. Did you see the study guide and quiz? Let me know if you find any mistakes," she said.

"Already fixed them," I responded.

"Great! I'll check over the test then for you," she said.

And so forth. We discussed what we've done - whined about the snow day for a bit - and then finished our call.

Today I'm going to do our lessons (which basically consists of moving everything up ahead) and I'll drop them in the box for Mrs. Eagle and Mrs. Hummingbird to look at. We're losing our lesson planning time (every Wednesday) so we might as well do it this way so we're up and running when we get back to school.

Pretty cool.

And They Thought We Were Kidding....

Once every nine week grading period we have to assign a writing prompt related to our academic content area. We collect it, grade it for content, then pass it along to the language arts teachers who grade it for all that language artsy stuff like grammar, spelling, and so forth. These then go into the students portfolios which follow them from grade to grade to grade.

(Can you just see some high school senior going through his or her portfolio and coming across some of the absolute garbage they churned out in middle school and asking themselves, "What was I thinking?")

This is a district-wide requirement. So, it was a tad disheartening to see that we had, maybe, about a 50% turn in rate on our first writing prompt this year. These are not difficult at all. We have a rubric, we have fairly easy prompts, we include a graphic organizer so students can organize what few thoughts they have, and we give them time in class to work on these. Apparently, churning out a decent paragraph for some of these kids is like pulling teeth. And what was infuriating was that we knew that they could do better. A hell of a lot better.

Mrs. Eagle and I were not happy with this at all. Some of these kids, if we let them, would have nothing but empty portfolios at the end of the year. This wasn't going to cut it.

So, based on Mrs. Eagle's brilliant idea, we asked The Principal if we could hold an after school detention for the kids who didn't turn in their assignment. She loved the idea and said, "Go with it." So we did.

When we assigned the prompt we told them this was a district requirement, they were going to turn an assignment in, and if not, they'd have to stay after school to complete it. One way or another, they'd get something in that portfolio. It may be crap, but it would be completed crap.

A few of the kids took us seriously and by the due date (Tuesday before Thanksgiving break) I had about 75% of the papers turned in. This was a big improvement over the last prompt, but I still needed 24 more papers to get my full 100% turn in.

On Monday the students who still owed the writing prompt had a letter stapled into their agendas informing the parents that their child still owed us an assignment that not only was a district requirement, but that was Actually Worked On In Class, and that if we didn't have a completed assignment in our hot little hands by the this morning, they'd be staying after school this afternoon. Parents were asked to sign the letter confirming that they'd pick their little darlings up at 4:00 pm should they fail to complete the assignment before detention. I also emailed a copy of the letter to the parents in question.

You should have seen the papers come flying into my in box the next day. I've never seen kids so eager to turn in an assignment and to make sure their name was crossed off the detention list. It was apparent, from the urgency of these kids, that not only did they not want to stay after school and write for over an hour, but Mom and Dad were Not In The Mood to have to take time out of their day to come pick them up from detention because they didn't do an assignment.

As of this afternoon I am only missing four assignments. One is from a girl who has been out sick and I haven't seen since before break. Another is from a girl who was also out sick and just came back today - her language arts teacher is going to work with her to get it done. Another is from a boy who's already staying after for tutoring and who was working on it this afternoon. The last was from a boy who was supposed to stay after, forgot, and who royally ticked off mom when he got off the bus this afternoon. She called me and asked if she could bring him back. I suggested she save the time and gas (they live on the edge of our zone) and I'd just email her the prompt. She loved the idea and he was going to spend the afternoon writing at the kitchen table.

Amazing. I may just make a 100% turn in on this. And what's even more astounding. Most of these writing prompts were, from a science standpoint, pretty darn good.

A Tale of Two Plannings

I've had some comments from some regular readers (the number of which never ceases to amaze me), about the fact that we have two - count 'em - two planning periods at the school.

Yes, I know. It's wonderful.

How and why we got two planning periods is worth sharing, in the hopes that perhaps there are other enlightened administrators out there who see the benefit.

By the end of my first year at The School, Mrs. Eagle and I were getting together to make our lesson plans. It made sense, after all. We teach the same grade and subject. We have the same standards to cover. So, why should we reinvent the wheel when we could collaborate and come up with the same plans?

The only problem with this was that we didn't have the same planning period.

So, once a week we would get together and meet in the morning before school to come up with our lesson plans.

At six in the morning to be precise.

This wasn't fun. However, we did it, and pretty soon Mrs. Robin (who had little ones at that time and couldn't meet before school) started giving us some input as well, although she never could attend the planning get together. So three of us were collaborating on our lessons and activities we were doing with our kids.

Our test scores rocked. In fact, in terms of growth in student achievement, they were the best in the school. The Principal wanted to know what it was that we were doing that the others weren't. The only thing we could come up with was collaboration.

A few years later The Principal took about a dozen of us to the National Middle School Association conference which had lots and lots and lots of sessions all about collaboration. I remember sitting in with The Principal and Mrs. Eagle for one of the big keynote speakers - who talked all about collaboration - and having Mrs. Eagle lean over and whisper to both us of, "We're already doing this."

Well, we were. However, it wasn't really easy and it wasn't really convenient.

So The Principal decided that all the grade levels would have the same planning. And that we'd have not one, but two plannings. This gave us slightly shorter class periods (we went from six periods a day to seven), but it also gave the kids an extra related arts class (art, music, computers, etc.), and it gave us a chance to work with the other teachers on our team and the other teachers in our subject area. In fact, The Principal put in a requirement that teachers would plan together, just like we'd already been doing.

And our entire school's scores went up. A lot.

So we have the first planning for individual planning - this is also the period where we meet with parents. The second planning is for team meetings, data chats about benchmarks, and collaboration. We also give up one planning per week to work with our remediation students.

I don't know why or how, but this collaboration thing just works.

And I'm glad it isn't at 6:00 am anymore!

The First Seventh Grade After School Science Lab

For those of you who cruise regularly through my rants, raves and whines, you've obviously realized that this year's crop of seventh graders is - to put it mildly - a challenge.

Actually they're a freaking nightmare, but I'm trying to put a Pollyanna spin on it.

Anyway, the three of us who teach seventh grade science (and yes, we are the Queens of Collaboration), just couldn't put up with the bad behaviors anymore and have had to eliminate labs and go to demonstrations in our classrooms. Thus, the birth of the Seventh Grade After School Science Lab.

This Wednesday was our first meeting and it was - can you believe it! - a pretty amazing success.

We handed out about 60 permission slips (we only had space for 32 and that was pushing it) and had 16 kids get them signed and in by the deadline. On that day only 13 showed, and it was wonderful. Two teachers, thirteen kids, one great big awesome lab. (Mrs. Robin isn't able to do the labs with us yet as her hubby is deployed and she has two kids of her own to deal with.)

We are finishing up our unit on elements, compounds and mixtures and we decided to have them work with a mixture called a colloid. Colloids are mixtures where the particles are so small that they don't settle out.

Like butter, for example.

Yup, we had them making butter. It's really a pretty fun lab that we haven't done for a few years due to time constraints. It's pretty easy. You get some little plastic containers that are somewhat clear (Gladware works well), some marbles, and some cream. Basically, you fill the container with cream, plop in a marble, and give to a kid to shake. They had to shake their cream for ten minutes, stopping every minute to observe any changes in their mixture, and to make notations on their lab sheet.

(BTW, if you ever plan to do this do NOT ever use baby jars. Marbles can crash through a baby jar to create a mess like you wouldn't believe, not to mention glass everywhere!)

The changes the cream goes through is pretty cool if you're a kid and haven't ever made whipped cream with a mixer (these kids think whipped cream comes in a can or a plastic container in the freezer section of the grocery store). When it finally turns to butter it happens in a flash and all of a sudden you have a sloshing milky liquid and a yellow blob of butter in the container. The kids were a hoot - shaking their jars, and hopping up and down and trying to get their butter made the fastest.

The hardest part for them was the part of the lab where they had to let it sit for ten minutes and make more observations (the clear liquid settles out and the butter gets a bit firmer). After that we gave them crackers and they ate their butter and crackers.

They were ecstatic. They loved the big lab. They loved the fact that they got a lot of attention as there were only 13 of them in there. They cleaned up without complaint (and did a good job of it too). They filled out their lab sheets in detail and never once whined. No one asked if it was for a grade, which surprised me as these kids usually won't lift a pencil without asking if they get credit for it. They even worked together on a puzzler that we had to kill the last few minutes of class since we weren't too sure how long they'd take.

We walked them out to the parent pick up area, with their little containers of butter (if they hadn't already snarfed it all down), and they couldn't wait to show their parents what they'd made in science lab. A lot of the parents took the time to roll down the car windows and thank us for doing the lab, and off they went.

Mrs. Eagle looked at me and said, "This was the most fun I've had in a long time."

She's right. It was a lot of fun. It was nice to do a lab with kids who wanted to be there and who listened.

And we're already planning our next one.

The Weird Homework Thing We Do...

I've alluded to this in some previous posts, and finally have time to sit down and share what Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Robin and I do to encourage homework turn in. (Well, actually I need to fold laundry and clean up the kitchen, but this is more fun.)

First the background. Nearly two years ago The Principal took nine of us to the National Middle School Association national convention. This was an awesome experience as it gave us a chance to meet with other middle school teachers from all over the country, attend workshops, and get some great ideas. The District is in the process of looking at, and reforming, middle schools, and those of us that went were part of The Principal's Breaking Ranks team.

One of the workshops that Mrs. Eagle and I attended was on increasing student motivation. As anyone who has ever taught middle school knows, these kids can be slugs. We had a lot of problems with kids turning in work, especially homework, and were looking at some innovative ways to motivate them. (I wish I could remember who the presenter was, but alas, I don't.) The presenter put forth a lot of good ideas, but the one that resonated with us was something we call the Homework Helper. He said that the number one reason kids don't do homework is because they don't understand it.

His solution is to give the kids the answers to the homework.

Okay, I know what you're thinking because you could have heard a pin drop in that room as we all looked at each other and went, "What????" Homework is, after all, practice. If a kid doesn't get it, and does the homework wrong (if he does it at all), then he's repeating the wrong thing. He's learning and remembering something that is wrong. However, if you give the kid a key to check the work, then they're doing it correctly, and learning it correctly.

So Mrs. Eagle and I kicked this idea around for a while. Many of our kids don't do homework for reasons that have a lot to do with the poverty they live in. Every year we do this neat parent letter about giving your child a place to study that's quiet, well lit, and all that, but in reality a lot of our students are sleeping on the sofa in Mom's Boyfriend of the Week's apartment, living in homes without electricity because it got cut off for non payment, or go home to households where the yelling and screaming is paramount. Some just wander the streets until it's dark because it beats being home. And some are responsible for baby sitting hordes of little siblings and cousins and whatnot when they get home so homework is the last thing on their minds.

So....what to do?

We did several things.

The first involves choice. Middle Schoolers often feel that they don't have many choices in their lives so we decided to give them some. On Monday, we assign four homework assignments. We mix them up a bit. We'll have a more math-oriented assignment that appeals to the kids that like math, an assignment that's more reading and answering for kids that do better there, and sometimes a drawing/labeling exercise for the more artistic. The kids get to choose which two they want to do and then have all week to do it. Homework is due on Friday.

The second thing we do is provide the Homework Helper. The Homework Helper is the answer key to that week's homework. We put it out on Tuesday, and only make ten copies which are numbered and put in sheet protectors. I have them in a rack on the supply and materials table. The students are welcome to use them during homeroom, or any time we have a few minutes in class, or they can check them out for one night, to be returned during homeroom.

As we explain to the students, there's three types of students. First you have the kids who are going to do their homework anyway and who won't even bother to look at a Homework Helper. Second, you have the kids who will do most of their homework but struggle with a few questions and will use the Homework Helper to check his or her work. And lastly, you have the kid who has never turned in any homework - ever - and who will simply copy it and turn it in. The way we look at it, at least they're copying the right information, they're writing it down, they're looking at it, they're being exposed to it. And they'll get the points for turning in their homework. (For the record, homework isn't a huge point-earner in our gradebooks...only about 10 points a week.) This is also a big help for my special education kids.

What we've seen is that kids who have never turned in homework are now turning in homework. And when they get their progress reports and see the lack of zeros and see the fact that they are actually, most likely, passing, they begin to realize that doing homework does pay off. We started this program last year, mid-year, and saw our homework turn in increase to about 95%. Previously we were at about 50%.

My favorite part, however, is how this plays in parent conferences. I always take a copy of a homework helper to a parent conference, especially if the kid is still one of the few who won't be bothered (and they are still out there). I will point out the lack of homework on the progress report, and explain as I hand the parent the Homework Helper that there's really no excuse for that as the Homework Helper is available in class, and can also be checked out overnight. It's pretty powerful when the parents realize that there really is no excuse for not having the work done and turned in.

So that's what we do. It seems weird, it's definitely not for everyone, but it's working for us. I can't tell you if it's improved comprehension or retention of the material as we've been doing this all year with this group of students. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that, at the least, it's helping some of them develop some work ethic. A lot of my students at the beginning of the year weren't turning in much work at all, but once they got the hang of the Homework Helper, they started to turn in work. Many of these same kids aren't relying on the Homework Helper any more, but are attempting to do the work on their own. I consider that somewhat of a victory.

Down for the Count

On Wednesday night Mr. Bluebird and I had tickets to a show and made it our Valentines Date Night. All went well until about 10:30, on our way home, when it became quite apparent to both of us that I was the victim of the stomach flu that has been going around.

By 11:00 pm I could barely lift my head up off the bathroom floor long enough to get on line to request a sub and to send Mrs. Eagle a note asking her to help the sub with lesson plans.

I'll save you all the gory details, but suffice it to say that I couldn't even keep Sprite down. Mr. Bluebird was about ready to toss me back in the car and take me to the ER, but I talked him out of it. Instead, I went to bed in the guest room with a bowl of ice chips to suck on as I was so dehydrated and I could actually keep those down.

This bug has knocked me flat. So flat that I ended up getting a sub for today as well, especially as I still was running a temp last night. I feel like death warmed over, have a headache, and seem to fall asleep every two hours or so. I feel so bad I don't even feel like knitting (and that's rare).

However, one of the joys of one, getting all your copies done the week before, and two, collaborating with other teachers, is that I don't need to worry too much about having lessons for my sub. Mrs. Eagle was able to show her all the materials and explain the lessons to her so all, from what I've heard, went well. Bless her heart. Where would we be without friends.

In the meantime, I'm going back to bed.

It's over

As of 8 o'clock this morning, Christmas break was over.

Because we had to go in for an in-service.

You can only imagine the whining, complaining, and groaning that this caused. The kids come back on Monday, after having two full weeks off, but we had to go in today.

However...it wasn't all that bad. We had a presentation on rigor and relevance, new initiatives by The District, and some other stuff that was actually worth the time. Thank goodness because if it had been one of those workshops that we've all sat through where you think a needle in the eye would be an improvement, the staff may have actually revolted.

The best part, however, was that Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Robin and I did not have to attend the afternoon sessions because we had made other plans, with the full blessing and approval of The Prinicpal, of course.

A month or so ago, Mrs. Eagle and I were at one of the monthly science teacher gatherings at the local university, something Mrs. Standard puts on so we can all get together and talk about fun new things like our standards changing, when we met up with some of our friends who also teach seventh grade science at two other middle schools in The District. We all began commiserating about how much we hate in-services and how much we'd rather just have time to meet and brainstorm and share good ideas. You know, collaborate? Not one of those forced collaboration meetings that they've tried before which end up being a complete waste of time because everyone has to be there and some people, no matter how much you push them, just will not work well with others. You can't force people to collaborate. Part of the secret to good collaboration is having people who trust each other enough to share ideas and who actually enjoy each other.

And we got to thinking. And Mrs. Eagle and I went to The Principal and asked her if we could have our other seventh grade science friends come over and we'd do some top-notch collaboration - sharing our Big Deal State Test review activities, share some of our good labs and activities that work, and so forth and so on.

And, because The Principal is a visionary and actually believes in the whole idea of collaboration, she said, "go for it".

So while everyone else was doing who knows what, we had three other teachers in my room and we worked together to come up with some good ideas for the next semester. It was awesome. We all walked away with great ideas that are proven in the classroom and that we can use to help our kids.

And we all agreed that we'd like to get together at least once again this semester to touch base and share any new information that we've picked up.

Now that, my friends, is a good in-service!