KARCHER STAFF BLOG
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Kudos
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- Kudos to our special education department (teachers and aides) as there as been some adjustments to schedules, etc as we continue to look to fill needed positions. Thank you all for your flexibility and understanding!
- Kudos to Brad Ferstenou and Stephanie Rummler for your work Friday afternoon with the freezie pops for students and KCB rewards! On such a HOT day it was a GREAT idea! Thank you staff for allowing for the slight interruption to your classes in order to pull this off!
- And... thank you to ALL staff for your patience and positive attitudes this past week! It can be taxing to be in a building that was almost 100 degrees and with students who, at times, did not like the heat but you did a great job staying positive! Thank you! And... the temperature is supposed to come down here in a few days!!!
- And last but not least... great job to those that participated in the luncheon this past week! What a spread! Nice work!
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Information/Reminders...
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- September 25 - Bell Schedule...
- Staff please note the bell schedule for the STAR Monday schedule has been adjusted. It was noted that 7th hour was shorter than the other hours... the bell schedule on the first page of the Karcher Calendar is accurate. Please make sure the copy you are following aligns with the one noted on the calendar.
- September 25 week - Math MAP testing
- Math teachers this is your week to have your students take the math portion of the MAP test. Remember... the test to have them take has a different name now and is noted below:
- Growth: Math 6+ CCSS 2010 V2
- Growth: Language Arts 2-12 CCSS 2010 V2
- Growth: Reading 6+ CCSS 2010 V2
- September 25 week - Science email week.
- Science teachers please make sure you have students email their parents/guardians/teacher some time this week focusing on what they have been working on in science class.
- September 25 - Special Education Aide Meeting
- 2:40 - 3:00 in the conference room.
- September 25 - District Secondary Curriculum Committee
- Those on this committee (you know who you are) we will be meeting from 3:30 - 5:00 in the Karcher library.
- September 27 and 28 - Steve and Jodi will be pulling students from PE to discuss social media concerns. Again this will just be taking place during their PE periods.
- September 27 - Essential Skill PLC
- Remember... we will be in the library to assist groups that may want some assistance. Otherwise you can work in your classrooms. If you ever feel like you need something from us the come back to the library as we will assist!
- September 28 - Danish Invasion (7th grade only)
- The Danish students will be coming during iTime on Thursday to talk with our 7th grade students about life in Denmark. The advisory team will let you know where to report as advisories will be combining for this.
- 8th grade advisory teachers... you will continue with an iTime day!
- September 29 - 7th grade School Forest field trip!
- September 29 - First FNL (Friday Night Live) from 6:00pm - 8:00pm.
- If you are able and willing to volunteer please email Mike Jones and/or Donna Sturdevant. This is a great event where we get a HUGE turn out so support on supervision is appreciated!
- Shoparoo App.
- Click HERE to see the website about Shoparoo.
- By adding this app and then scanning your receipts Karcher Middle School would gain some funds to assist with things like FNL and Character Education.
Reminders...
- Bloodborne Pathogen training.
- Everyone has to complete the 20 minute training found HERE. Once you complete the training please email your completion confirmation to Amanda Wilks (our health aide).
- Fragrance Concerns...
- Please make sure you have read THIS document about fragrances at school. We need to ensure we are cognizant of the strength of the fragrances we wear to school and what those fragrances are... so please make sure you have read through the document.
- Immunity Proof...
- All staff members need to submit proof on immunities for MMR, Tdap, and Hepatitis B. If you have not done so please do so ASAP.
- If you have any questions about this please contact Jessica Polcyn (Director of Health Services) @ jpolcyn@basd.k12.wi.us
- Note: For all three items above if you want to reference the email Jessica Polcyn sent about this the email was sent on August 23, 2017.
- 4 Mandatory Trainings for ONLY the individuals on the document below.
Pictures from this past week!
Here is a great example of a well written lesson target! Describes what the students will be able to do within the specific class period. Well done Kurt Rummler!
Here is a nice example of an assistive way to utilize notes for students. Nicely done Stacey Stoughton!
Students in Mr. Schmidt's class having a friendly debate!
Varsity boys volleyball with head coach Mr. Jones. Great win! The first game was a close one but the Demons pulled through!
Here is a great example of a well written lesson target! Describes what the students will be able to do within the specific class period. Well done Kurt Rummler!
Students in Ms. Rummler's and Mr. Jones's/Ms. Thate's classes taking advantage of the ULab and Conference Room! Ms. Rummler's students were collaborating on their roles within their states for their whole group activity. Students in math class were collaborating with their peers to solve solutions related to slope.
Students in Mr. Schmidt's class having a friendly debate!
Girls basketball! 8th grade won at the last second! What a great game!
Varsity boys volleyball with head coach Mr. Jones. Great win! The first game was a close one but the Demons pulled through!
Article this week: Continuation of last week's article...
Train teachers to call only on students who raise their hands and to build on correct responses to maintain a brisk classroom pace. This would enhance the self-confidence of already proficient students and minimize class participation and engagement among those who enter with lower proficiency.
Kim Marshall, "A How-to Plan for Widening the Gap"
Disengaging and Dropping Out
Every nine seconds, a student drops out of school (Lehr, Johnson, Bremer, Cosio, & Thompson, 2004). Although recent indicators point to progress within overall graduation rates, even the encouraging reports still indicate that a fifth of our students drop out (DePaoli et al., 2016; Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy, 2012). The picture is bleakest for African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans, whose dropout percentages are more than twice that of their white peers (Balfanz, Bridgeland, Moore, & Hornig Fox, 2010). Because much of our experience is with students in urban schools, we have a very real understanding that effective teaching can have a direct influence on a student's life choices.
For six years we both volunteered in California's Chino State Prisons (Bill in the men's, Pérsida in the women's). If you don't yet understand the effect that your teaching can have on students, consider volunteering in a prison. The experience will make you an instant believer in the power of your teaching. In prisons, illiteracy is rampant. Dropping out of high school is not the exception—it is the norm. In fact, three-quarters of state prison inmates are dropouts (Martin & Halperin, 2006). And academic self-confidence is close to nonexistent among prisoners. As soon as inmates discovered we were teachers, many would freely tell us about their academic inadequacies and failures. Many were quick to place the full extent of the blame on themselves.
The cost of school failure doesn't end with the incarcerated. Think about the toll incarceration takes on the children of inmates, including the vicious circle of incarceration. We have both met mothers and fathers whose daughters and sons were serving a prison sentence at the same time as the parents. What kinds of educational experiences did these men and women participate in? Did they become "listening objects"? Would a better education have made a difference?
Boredom and Engagement
The reasons for dropping out vary depending on the students, but among the top reasons—cited by the dropouts themselves—are boredom and the irrelevance of school (America's Promise Alliance, 2014; Bridgeland, DiIulio, & Morison, 2006). For most dropouts, becoming listening objects didn't work. When high school students talked about the types of teaching they wanted, they "described their preferred instructional strategies as ones that were hands-on, and that contained opportunities for debate and discussion" (Certo, Cauley, Moxley, & Chafin, 2008, p. 32). In other words, they preferred engagement, or just the opposite of boredom. These same researchers found that one of the negative consequences of a heavy emphasis on broad curricular coverage aimed at meeting academic standards was that "the quality of instruction is less engaging to students" (p. 26). A 2015 Gallup poll, surveying close to a million students, found that 50 percent of 5th through 12th graders reported being "not engaged" or "actively disengaged" in school. The more students advanced in grade levels, the less likely they were to agree with the statement "In the last seven days, I have learned something interesting at school."
Several studies and high school reform initiatives cite student engagement as a key ingredient in helping students stay in school and be successful (ASCD, 2010; Bridgeland et al., 2006; Lehr et al., 2004; Ream & Rumberger, 2008; Voke, 2002). According to a student respondent in the 2009 High School Survey of Student Engagement, "I think that the teachers have a lot to do with how you feel about school. Some teachers do well in engaging you and others never engage anyone" (Yazzie-Mintz, 2010, p. 20). Though failure to engage students would certainly not be intentional, it may in large part be owed to the prevalence of lesson delivery methods based primarily on lecture. David Sousa (2006) reports 4 to 10 times more retention when students are involved in verbal and visual processing (audiovisual, demonstration, and discussion groups) than when they are exposed to verbal processing alone (lecture and reading). After 24 hours, average students retain an average of 5 percent of what was lectured, 10 percent of what was read, 50 percent of what was learned as a result of being involved in a discussion group, and 90 percent of what they immediately used or taught to others. Teaching others, and immediately using what is learned, results in 19 times the retention as what is learned in lecture format. However, Sousa also states that "despite the impressive amount of evidence about how little students retain from lecture, it continues to be the most prevalent method of teaching, especially in secondary and higher education" (p. 94).
Making a Difference
Why would we, as authors of a book dedicated to infusing your classrooms with fun, interactive, participatory, and cognitively engaging strategies, dwell on something as depressing as the dropout problem? We do so because we know that for some students, cognitively engaging experiences can literally mean the difference between life and death. In case you think we are exaggerating, think about how dropping out is connected to crime and incarceration. Moretti (2005) estimates, through his meta-analysis, that "a one-year increase in average years of schooling reduces murder and assault by almost 30%,?motor vehicle theft by 20%, arson by 13%,?and burglary and larceny by about 6%"?(p. 6). Bridgeland, DiIulio, and Morison (2006) calculate that a dropout is more than eight times as likely to be in jail or prison as a person with at least a high school diploma. The less education that inmates have, the more likely they are to return to prison (Harlow, 2003).
We know that effective teaching makes a difference (Black, 2016; Tucker & Stronge, 2005). In fact, an analysis of student academic growth over time suggests that teacher effectiveness has a greater influence on student performance than race, socioeconomic status, or class size (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Sanders & Horn, 1998). The cumulative residual effects of ineffective teaching last for years, even after exposure to ineffective teaching has been followed by exposure to effective teaching (Jordan, Mendro, & Weerasinghe, 1997; Sanders & Rivers, 1996). In sum, the quality of education a child receives is highly dependent on the effectiveness of that child's teachers.
Whether you work in suburban or urban schools, teaching average performers, gifted high achievers and underachievers, children of immigrants, students with special needs, students who repeatedly experience school failure, or simply your average passive performer teetering between staying in and dropping out, your excellence in effective teaching could be the answer to parents' prayers and the vehicle by which they see their dreams for their son or daughter realized. One teacher can make such a difference.
Evidence of Active Participation
In 2014, a blog post by Alexis Wiggins, 15-year teaching veteran and daughter of the late education guru Grant Wiggins, went viral. It was picked up by several major news outlets, including Valerie Strauss's column in the Washington Post. Wiggins had spent two days shadowing two students before she took on a new role as a high school learning coach.
These were her key takeaways (Wiggins, in Strauss, 2014):
- Key Takeaway #1: Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting.
- Key Takeaway #2: High school students are sitting passively and listening during approximately 90 percent of their classes.
- Key Takeaway #3: Students feel a little bit like a nuisance all day long. ("I lost count of how many times we were told to be quiet and pay attention.")
Wiggins's discoveries are so important to the process of becoming an effective teacher that we've made her blog post required reading for our student teacher candidates. It contains essential reminders that we all need to hear periodically that can help to place us in the shoes of our students.
The use of Total Participation Techniques provides teachers with evidence of active participation and cognitive engagement. They can have a direct effect on the reasons most students drop out or fail to meet their academic potential. For one thing, in a TPT-conducive classroom, students are not allowed to be passive and hide behind the others who are always raising their hands. All students are demonstrating that they are learning and interacting and—believe it or not—doing so while they're having a great time. You will notice that all the techniques we present require active processing at deep levels of thinking, and all but a few use interaction.
Manheim Central Middle School
Let's look at the socially tenuous and risk-conscious environment that is often present in a typical middle school classroom. According to Keely Potter, a reading specialist at Manheim Central Middle School in south-central Pennsylvania, "By the time many students hit middle school, disengagement has become a learned behavior—not for all, but for some, especially those that hold little social capital among their peers. Too many are either resistant to engagement, afraid to engage, or afraid to appear too engaged. So that's one of the most important things that we can try to undo as effective middle school teachers."
Keely and several other teachers at the middle school made it their priority to infuse TPTs into their daily curriculum. They graciously invited us into their classrooms and are the source of many of the examples we use throughout this book. The best teaching that we have observed involves teachers setting the stage for students to demonstrate cognitive engagement in activities that require time to process, to make connections, and to interact with peers as well as their teachers. We are convinced that the accountability and cognitive engagement that result from TPTs can make a difference between mediocrity and excellence in teaching—and between student failure and student success.
When asked about the role of Total Participation Techniques in teaching, 8th grade English teacher Matt Baker said, "I've completely bought into it." He went on to talk about how he arrived at this acceptance. And he shared his thoughts about his earlier eight years of teaching experience in a high school:
Student interaction was rare. The idea of kids sharing something with one another, and the idea of kids sitting next to one another, was a foreign concept. The mentality was, you can't ever let them work in groups because then one person does all the work and everybody gets a good grade, and it's not fair. Everybody was in rows; if they were sharing something, it meant they were cheating. But that type of teaching doesn't work. Kids need to talk to one another. They cannot sit in a classroom for a whole period and not process what they are learning with one another.
In contrast, Baker's classroom at Manheim Central Middle School was characterized by a consistent give-and-take among students, and among students and the teacher. Students were constantly stopping, pairing up, and then joining other pairs to form small groups in order to process meaningful and complex concepts being presented through articles and literary works that were relevant to their own lives. Even if students wanted to sleep in Baker's class, they wouldn't be able to. Once a brief reading or content presentation had ended, students were out of their seats demonstrating that they could connect these concepts to their lives and to the effect that these issues have on society. In Baker's classroom, standards were met under the cover of relevance. And students were anxious to share their own take on the issues presented.
Ease of Use
It is not difficult to cognitively engage students, and it doesn't take much work. Sixth grade teacher Meghan Babcock and reading specialist Keely Potter implemented a four-week TPT-infused unit using Kate DiCamillo's book The Tiger Rising (2001). According to Babcock,
Using TPTs, the students were right with us every step of the way. It wasn't a lot of work; it just streamlined my thinking. It put more structures in place. I did the same amount of planning; I just did it in a little bit of a different way … even just taking the questions out of the curriculum [or standards] and doing your own little thing makes a huge difference.
According to two-year veteran Courtney Cislo, implementing TPTs is not dependent on the amount of experience a teacher has. All teachers can improve their teaching through TPT-infused lessons:
I think for teachers that have never taught before, these techniques are so valuable, because you come out of college thinking, "OK, I'm going to do this as my anticipatory set, and then I'll do this, and next I'll read that, and finally I'll close with this." It's all me, me, me, and I, I, I. But the point is not to get your own agenda across; the point is that the students learn. With these techniques, you can gauge, "Oh, they've got it and I can move on," or "I should move more quickly," or "Uh-oh, I need to go back and reteach." It's a critical element for any classroom no matter how much experience a teacher has.
Although implementing TPTs may require that you actively remind yourself to do so, if you stick to it, it becomes a way of thinking. Babcock found that "the more you deliberately implement them, the more they become an expectation." Fifth grade teacher Mike Pyle agrees: "I use them every day throughout every lesson. The more you use them, the more comfortable you become with using them." But he also points out that intentionality is required:
You really have to be intentional in the beginning of the year, because many students are used to traditional classrooms where they sit in rows. But for me, I have to have them in groups. They have to be sitting in clusters, because they do so much discussing of things back and forth, with face partners, shoulder buddies, and as a whole group as well. We do a lot of sharing. For example, in social studies, even when they are reading out of the text, I might have them read a section, and then they have to stop and relay what they learned to their teammates. This back-and-forth helps them remember what they learned.
TPTs work best in classrooms that practice this constant back-and-forth, from the text or teachers to students, from students to students, and from students to teachers. By definition, TPTs require active participation and cognitive engagement by everyone.
Additional Thoughts
Before we move on, we need to make a disclaimer. We are still developing in our own use of TPTs. In many instances we have discovered the importance of TPTs the hard way. And we still have days in our university classes when we simply talk too much. We've come to realize that when we are engaged and passionate about a topic, it's easy to get lost in our own talking—even when no one is listening. The wheels in our minds are turning, and the generation of ideas is refreshing (to us) as we talk and talk and talk, and everyone else is thinking about the many things on their to-do lists. One student is focusing on the phone call she just received, another on the laundry he forgot to take out of the washer three days ago, and yet another on life's important questions, like whether or not that mole on her arm is starting to look like her Aunt Martha. This is why we no longer rely on our own good judgment to inject TPTs in our lessons. We have realized that we need safeguards to ensure against getting lost in the talking. So we now write TPTs into our slides, and we type them into our lesson plan agendas in red so that we don't forget to stop talking. And you just may have to do the same thing in whatever way will help you remember to repeatedly pause for student processing, interaction, and the reciprocity that needs to take place between students and students, as well as between teachers and students. Appendix B contains reminder posters that you can display in your classroom with the goal of helping you remember to use TPTs as often as you can.
Deep cognitive engagement does not emerge from simply being talked at. "Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other" (Freire, 2000, p. 72). We have the ability to make this restless, impatient, continuing, and hopeful inquiry happen in our classrooms. But it will take a deliberate infusion of opportunities to process, reflect, question, and interact with each other. So this is what we aim to do in this text: to provide teachers with simple activities that make it difficult for students to think about the phone call, the laundry, or that mole. Instead, students will be too busy actively processing deep concepts in ways that require that they use higher-order thinking as they actively reflect on, analyze, and defend their judgments in meaningful interactions with their peers.
One student who participated in Potter and Babcock's TPT-infused unit offered this reflection: "I have family problems, and when I come here, it all seems perfect, and it goes away." This is our hope—that through the use of TPTs, students will become so actively engaged and so lost in the learning, they won't have time to be distracted by other things.
The below figure will come up next week with more understanding of TPT... but something to start to think about within your classrooms!
Himmele, P., & Himmele, W. (2017). Total Participation Techniques: Making Every Student an Active Learner, 2nd ed. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
