Motivation

10 Reasons To Love Teaching

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Feeling tired and run down? Remind yourself why you came into the job in the first place. Below is an excert from an excellent BLOG http://headguruteacher.com/2013/12/20/10-reasons-to-love-teaching/

1. Doing the things you love while you’re at work

It has always struck me as remarkable and fortuitous that I am paid to do a job where I get to have so much fun. In my lessons, I have the chance to explore my favourite subject – Physics. Today I was talking about space, time and gravity with my Y13s; on Monday I took my Y9s outside to make a scale model of the solar system on the field. I had as much fun as anyone. Earlier, my colleagues were getting excited that our Cosmic Ray Detector, built over several years from scratch, was sparking nicely. Teaching is full of those moments – if you create them.

But it’s not just the joy of teaching your subject specialism – you can do all kinds of other things: play in the orchestra, watch or direct a drama production, go on school trips around the UK and around the world, coach a sports team; get involved in debates; run a Model United Nations; set up a club where students help you do something you want to do – make videos, create a garden, keep chickens, build a go-cart; go on camping expeditions for DofE. And so on. What other job is like that, affording so many opportunities to engage in your passions and to share them with other people.

2. Making a difference: Knowing it’s the most important job

As Chris Husbands, Director of the IoE, said to my students today, education is to the 21st C what oil was to the 20th C and coal was to the industrial revolution. We’re in the business of giving young people the greatest asset in the world economy. We’re doing the thing that transforms lives. It’s a big deal – which is why we spend so much time talking about how to get it right. But, across the wide landscape of careers, this is the ONE. You’re in the right place people. Be happy.

3. Young People are Wonderful

Today, students who finished their A levels in June came back for Prize Giving after a term at university. It was wonderful to talk to them…people I knew as 12-year olds, now adults living their lives, already with many tales to tell. My Year 9s can frustrate me – gosh, they like to talk! But they amaze me in equal measure – so many ideas, so curious about the world and always looking for a channel for their enthusiasm and joie de vivre. These are the people that make it all worthwhile; each one a unique personality with different attitudes and ways of thinking, bursting with possibilities for the future. The relationships you can form with your students as you strive together to maximise their learning are quite wonderful.

We may feel we’re teachers of a subject – but we’re not; we’re teachers of students learning our subject. It’s really all about them – and that’s the joy.

4. Local Community; Global Community

Schools are great places aren’t they? I love that sense of being part of something; belonging to a group of people with a shared sense of purpose; a common identity and common challenges. When you are a teacher, you are part of a much bigger project – there’s a vision for reaching audacious goals where you need to play your part. At their best, schools are giant families, offering that sense of togetherness and mutual support. We’re all in it together.

At the same time, and increasingly as social media links us all up, we’re all part of a much wider community as teachers. I love the idea of being engaged in a global profession. People are doing what I do in every town and village across the world. Even just within the UK, it’s exciting to think of all the connections we can make with other people doing the same job we do…sharing ideas, working together to improve the whole system, not just our tiny patch of it.

5. The rewards of achievement

School life has a routine for sure… but then it is punctuated with moments of pure joy. These are often when a student makes a break-through. “John, YES – that’s it – brilliant! Say that again…” “You see.. you CAN do it. That’s a really good answer; great piece of drawing; excellent analysis; well crafted paragraph; insightful essay”. These are the great moments…watching a student struggle and then to emerge with a clear grasp of an idea. At Prize Giving today, this struck me. It wasn’t the book; or the cup, medal or certificate – it was just the reward of having achieved that meant the most to them. Not many jobs give you the opportunity so witness achievement on a daily basis in that way.

6. Every Day is Different

There is never a dull moment in teaching …something is always going on. Of course, there are tough days…it’s a challenging job, just as any worthwhile job should be. But no two days are the same – especially if you teach so that every lesson is a bit of a journey into the unknown. The lessons, events, incidents and interactions with colleagues, students and parents that make up the week demand such a wide range of skills, engaging different modes of thinking: being strategic and planning ahead, analysing problems and finding solutions, being agile and responsive to questions and situations; and, very often, running through a range of emotions, from laughing to crying…it’s all in a day’s work.

7. Strategic challenges and leadership opportunities

Schools are fabulously complicated and challenging organisations. I’ve always found the intellectual and personal challenge of running a great lesson, a year group, a department or a school, incredibly rewarding. There are so many opportunities to lead people, organise events or projects and to put ideas into action. Given the complexity and importance of learning, I can’t think of a profession where strategic analysis and interpersonal dynamics mix in such a fascinating way. Teaching should be the No1 graduate profession; this is where the action is.

8. Being your own boss; creating your own space

Of course we all have things we have to do that we’d rather not. But teaching affords a fantastic degree of autonomy. If you choose, teaching can have an strong element of performance about it…you’re on stage, live and in the room with 9M; you can express yourself in a way that you never do around adults. Or, you can be quietly cerebral, wildly eccentric or straightforward and dignified. The classroom is your domain…your space to make things happen the way you want them to. Every lesson is yours to craft, the way you want it…testing out ideas, exploring off at tangents or just keeping it simple. I love that.

9. Learning, always learning

A teaching career is a never-ending learning journey. You learn more and more about your subject, you learn new skills continually as you engage in new ideas about pedagogy; you develop a broad perspective on social issues and the range of personal challenges people face…the learning goes on and on. You learn a lot about yourself and how your ethical and political dispositions fit with real-life challenges. You learn how to deal with people in every conceivable emotional state; you learn how to communicate a message and how to turn ideas into action.
Teaching IS learning.

10. The Holidays

I’m not being facetious. Teaching is incredibly rewarding but also incredibly demanding. But then the holidays come and we deserve them. Generally, teaching is a great job to be in to have a family, to have time for yourself and to have blocks of time to go travelling and to do other interesting things. I never take the bait when my non-teaching friends have a dig because they’re working during half-term or just get a few days at Christmas.  Not everyone wants to teach; not everybody could. But those who do, deserve every minute of the holidays.

Teaching and Learning

Professional learning that makes a difference to students

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Helen Timperley, Professor of Education at The University of Auckland, talks about professional development that makes a difference to student learning. Helen talks about the importance of combining careful assessment and analysis with pedagogical content knowledge, and ways teachers can gain this knowledge through cycles of inquiry into their practice.

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Professional Enquiry

Professional Enquiry – The Process

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Step 1 – Problem Identification
Why do you want to do study this topic?
Is the problem broad enough to allow for a range of insights and findings? Is it narrow enough to be manageable?

Step 2 – Plan of Action
Will you develop and implement a new strategy or approach to address your question?
What data do you need to learn about your question?

Step 3 – Data Collection
What, why, when, where, and how will you collect your data?
How will you ensure that you have multiple perspectives?

Step 4 – Analysis of Data
What can you learn from the data?
What patterns, insights, and new understandings can you find?

Step 5 – Plan for Future Action
What will you do differently in your classroom as a result of this study?
How will you write about what you have learned so that the findings will be useful to you and to others?

Step 1: Problem Identification

To begin the action research process, identify the focus.

Determine the area of teaching and learning that you want to explore. The focus should be on an area over which you have some control and you would like to change or improve.
Describe the situation you want to change.

Why do you want to change it?
What specifically would you like to try?
Identify the questions that need to be answered.

Starting points-

I would really like to improve…
I am perplexed by…
Some people are unhappy about…
I’m curious about…
I want to learn more about…
An idea I would like to try out in my class is…
Something I think would really make a difference is…
Something I would like to do to change is…
Some areas I am particularly interested in are…

Guidelines for Developing a Question-

One that hasn’t already been answered
Higher level questions which get at explanations, reasons, relationships
Not yes-no
Everyday language, avoid jargon
Not too lengthy, concise
Manageable, doable in the context of your work
Follow your passion, meaningful
Keep close to your practice and provides opportunity to stretch
Question leads to other questions

Example:

Area of Focus: Reading

Question: How will using technology improve student’s reading vocabulary?

Area of Focus: Parental Involvement

Question: What strategies will result in more parents attending parent-teacher conferences?

Step 2: Organizing a Plan of Action / Step 3: Collect the Data

* Will you develop and implement a new strategy or approach to address your question? Is there a new curriculum , instructional strategy you are interested in? Have you implemented a change and you want to document results?

* What data do you need to learn about your question? Data collection is the gathering of information to answer the research question. Data may be collected from a variety of sources. Using more than one source will increase the credibility of any conclusions.

Triangulation-

Just as a stool is most solid sitting on a foundation of 3 legs, your data will be more solid if you collect it from more than one source, at more than one
point in time. Any combination of the below:

3 Different Methods: breadth, depth, corroboration

Breadth; questionnaire, survey
Depth: interview
Corroboration: observations, checklists, artifacts, videotapes

3 Different Perspectives: you, students, other staff, parents

3 Different Time Periods: autumn, winter, spring

Data sources may include:

Test results
Observations
Surveys
Interview
Student records
Portfolios
Videos
Artifacts
Journals
Shadowing
Checklists

Step 4: Organize and Analyze the Data

Make sense of the drawer full of data to answer the question “so what?”.

1. Organize using webs, graphs, charts, numbers etc.

*Sort
*Sift
*Discard
*Catalogue

2. Make observations about the data. Non-judgmental statements of facts.

*Search for themes and patterns
*Ask questions
*Look for gaps
*Display the data

3. Interpret and summarize and describe the findings.

4. Share the results.

Step 5: Plan for Future Action

Now that you have analyzed your data…

* What have you learned?
* How do you feel about what you have learned?
* How do your conclusions differ from what you thought you would learn?
* Do the conclusions seem believable?
* What actions might you take based on your conclusions?
* What new questions emerge for you from the data?
* Who else might be interested in these conclusions?
* What are strategies to share your conclusions with others?

For more information from the GTCS

Feedback

Dylan Wiliam on Feedback

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The feedback was why we started really, because a lot of the research on formative assessment was about different kinds of feedback… and what we found was that most of the feedback that’s come in schools is the least helpful in terms of what psychologists have found. There’s lots of different ways of looking at feedback, but a very important way of looking at feedback is whether its ego involving or task involving.

So if you say to students that they did very well that they did one of the best pieces of work in the class, that’s ego involving because it focuses on that person’s position in the class. Whereas, if you get feedback that’s says things like, well this is what you need to do to improve… then that focuses on the task. And what the research shows very clearly is that ego involving feedback is rarely effective and, in fact, can lower achievement. So when students get grades and they can compare themselves with each other, where they get praise…the effects are usually or often zero and, sometimes, negative. In other words, in many cases rather than giving that kind of praise you would have been better off shutting up and giving no feedback at all! Students given that kind of praise do less well than students given no feedback at all.

But what the research also shows very clearly is the conditions under which feedback is successful. The research shows, for example, that when the feedback focuses on what students need to do to improve, and, in particular, how to go about it… then you get very large impacts on student achievement. So the challenge for teachers is to take these very broad principals that I’ve outlined and work out what it means to their own classroom.

The way I summarise all of this is to say that I think that good feedback causes thinking. The really important thing is that when a student gets a piece of feedback, the first thing they do is think, not react emotionally, not disengage but think. That’s very important because what the research on student motivation shows is that when they’re faced with a task or a response to a piece of work, students, basically, make a choice between deciding either to protect their wellbeing or to engage in activities that will actually help them grow as individuals and in their achievement. And if the first reaction of a student is to protect themselves and to restore their sense of well-being, what you will find is that students will focus on the things that will do that for them and they won’t focus on the learning.

So what we need to do is to give students feedback that helps them move forward. Give them feedback that makes it clear that ability is incremental rather than fixed, because if we send the message to students that ability is fixed then if you are confident that you can engage in the task you will go for it, for the brownie points. But if you’re not confident or think that you might actually fail when other people will succeed, you will disengage and basically, you will decide that you would rather be thought lazy than stupid.

Dylan Wiliam Feedback Video

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