"What I've learned about great teachers"

Recently I read a short interview with Bill Gates titled, "What I've learned about great teachers". The thought that this profound statement could be covered in just one page, including a large caricature of Gates, intrigued me; however, my intrigue quickly diminished by the third question.

When asked why experts claim there are so many bad teachers in America, Gates answered, "Very little is invested in understanding great teaching... the Gates Foundation has learned that two questions can predict how much kids learn, 'does your teacher use class time well?' and 'when you're confused, does your teacher help you get straightened out?'" (Tough, 2010, p.8).

As a pre-service teacher, I would have to disagree when Gates says, "very little is invested in understanding great teaching". I spend hours every week reading articles and book by people who have dedicated their careers to understanding great teaching, and in my placements and the schools that I worked in, I see first hand the great teaching that I read about. These teachers understand how to be great educators and they are putting it into practice everyday.

As for the two questions that can predict how much a student learns in class, I wonder to myself, how can a student answer the question, "does your teacher use class time well", without being given an example of what is the correct way of using time. And if the Gates Foundation is implement their own skewed definition, are they asking the same questions to each student?For it doesn't take a great teacher to know what is an efficient use of time for one person could be completely different for the next.

I do think Gates' second questions does have some merit, it's important for a teacher to take the time to work with a student and straighten him or her out when s/he is confused. As a young student, I know my best teachers were the ones who took the time to work with me and help me understand. But I was never in class size larger than 24, and Gates wasn't asked the question, how does a teacher with limited resources and 32 students straighten out each one every time s/he is confused? I observe teachers, who despite their best efforts of working with students at lunch and before and after school, there are still the occasional student who is still "confused", but this confusion isn't just based on this one teacher, it's also from past experiences and an often stressful home-life. After everything this teacher has done, would the Gates Foundation still consider her a bad teacher?

One of the final questions of the interview asked what he learned from home-schooling his kids while he and Melinda traveled for three month? Gates answered, "Teaching's hard! You need different skills: positive reinforcement, keeping students from getting bored, [and] commanding their attention in a certain way" (Tough, 2010, p.8).

How could such a short interview go from, very little being invested in good teaching, to him describing what teachers do everyday?

Bird By Bird

This week we started reading Bird by bird by Anne Lamott. At first I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not, but as I started to get into it I began to enjoy the book. I felt like she was talking to me and I enjoy books where I feel the author is interacting with me. It’s a nice change from our traditional textbooks.

On the first day of fall quarter, we read a quote on blogging. To paraphrase, the quote said blogging gives a person the opportunity to reflect and then write in a cohesive way for a reader. Lamott says to write about yourself, “remember that you own what happened to you” (1994, p.6), but many people sit down to write and begin to feel anxiety, that they have a whole autobiography ahead of them.

Lamott, says to begin with “small assignments…write down as much as…[you] can see through a one-inch picture frame” (p.17). In my dyad placement, my third-grade class is learning to write five-paragraph essays. My master teacher had the student bring in three items that are special to them, and is having the students write one paragraph at time about one object. This keeps the assignment small and the students only have to focus on writing one paragraph about something they’re experts on and not an entire essay.

One thing I’ve noticed while watching the students write their paragraphs is that many struggle with perfection. They want their first draft to be their final draft. One student asked for a new piece of paper because she didn’t want to have any mistakes. I explained to her the concept of a messy-first-draft, that this is where we get our ideas down on paper and that first-drafts are jumping off places for future drafts. She said, “OK”, but I know she still has her need for perfection.

I remember when free writing was first introduced to me a student. I had to write for five-minutes straight. I wasn’t allowed to erase or cross out anything, it was just a constant flow of ideas from my brain to my finger. This is a great exercise that writers of all ages can benefit from, and one that can help writers get past the block of perfection.

Stretching Words

With my main-place being in all-day kindergarten, I’m seeing similarities between the phonemic work my buddy uses with what I used in my September Experience. The most prominent similarity is “stretching words”. This process of segmenting sounds, gives students the opportunity to pronounce each phoneme in the same order in which it occurs (p.43).

In our “getting to know you” activity, as a group we worked together to stretch out the word monkey. Our buddy used his letter-sound relationship (p.10) to stretch the word and spelled it MKE. From the activity, I could see that he has a strong understanding of consonants and is still developing vowels, which is typical for his developmental level.

As a buddy-team we also utilized other ways of spelling and writing words. When asked his favorite animal, our buddy said “cheetah”, but after stretching the word he still struggled with determining the letters. As a group we talked about other ways of writing cheetah other than with letters. He drew an excellent picture of a cheetah and when he didn’t have a black crayon, he said he could use brown, “because some cheetah’s have brown spots”. He knew a lot about cheetahs and was able to convey his knowledge through his drawing.

One strategy used at my main-placement and I just started to talk to my buddy about is, “being a letter and word detective”. Each kindergarteners have a fabulous placemat that includes colors and shapes, as well as, how to spell them. My buddy’s favorite color is blue. He stretched the word out and came up with BL, but I noticed he had BLUE on his placemat and we started the conversation about using the classroom and his placemat to find words, just like a detective. I’m going to talk about this again in future activities because it’ll help him become aware of the words he knows around him.

Reader’s workshop in kindergarten

“Literacy should be an integral part of the overall curriculum” (Teale & Sulzby, 1987). This is evident in my main-placement, all-day kindergarten. The day begins with the schedule, where the students “read” aloud along with the teacher. Some schedule items have words, some are missing letter and other’s are just pictures. As a class they work together to read the words, fill in the blanks, or write the first letter of the word that corresponds with the picture.

The morning routine leads the class into reader’s workshop, which begins with the class gathered together on the carpet for a read aloud, followed by five minutes of independent reading. This model provides two dimensions for the storybook reading program. The read aloud teaches the students how to be readers (Teale & Sulzby, 1987). The teacher stops to point out keep concepts, asks the students to make predications, both to themselves and to the class and encourages them to look closely and “read the pictures”, for there are many ways to read, and reading the pictures is one way.

After reading silently for about five minutes (the length grows as their reading strengthens) the children put their books back into their book bags and set them in their cubbies, ready for “choice time” later or reader’s workshop the next day. Through daily interactions with the same books, the students gain deeper exploration of the books and “they become independent emergent readers of those books” (Teale & Sulzby, 1987).

Resource

Strickland, D. & Morrow, L.M. (Eds.). (1987). Emergent Literacy: Young children learn to read and write. Newark, DE. International Reading Association.