{"id":48692,"date":"2022-06-15T02:17:06","date_gmt":"2022-06-15T02:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/questions-to-clarify-your-teaching-for-2023"},"modified":"2022-06-15T02:17:06","modified_gmt":"2022-06-15T02:17:06","slug":"questions-to-clarify-your-teaching-for-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/2022\/06\/questions-to-clarify-your-teaching-for-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Questions To Clarify Your Teaching For 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div itemprop=\"text\">\n<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\">\n<\/aside>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"750\" alt=\"Questions To Clarify Modern Teaching\" class=\"wp-image-62983 perfmatters-lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.teachthought.com\/storage\/2020\/06\/Start-Teaching-Children.png\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"750\" src=\"https:\/\/www.teachthought.com\/storage\/2020\/06\/Start-Teaching-Children.png\" alt=\"Questions To Clarify Modern Teaching\" class=\"wp-image-62983\"\/><\/noscript><\/figure>\n<p><em>Ed note: I wrote this in 2014 and have updated it several times since then, most recently in the summer of 2022.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Who knows where education is going, but it\u2019s not impossible to come up with some questions to clarify your teaching and promote your evolution.<\/p>\n<p>The following, then, are a collection of entirely subjective observations\u2013well, not entirely subjective I guess. Or not any more than anyone else. We all see what we choose to see and interpret it how we will. What we choose to \u2018watch\u2019 is as subjective as any takeaway from that observation. But we have to pause the machine long enough to stop and reflect, so here we are.<\/p>\n<p>At TeachThought, I see a lot of \u2018data.\u2019 Scores of daily emails. Press releases. Tweets. \u2018Social engagement.\u2019 Newsletters. Books, blog posts, headlines, pins, traffic numbers and clicks (more on that part later), conferences, keynotes, RSS feeds, social readers, subreddits, and more. There really is\u00a0<em>a <\/em>lot<em>\u00a0<\/em>to this <em>edificio<\/em> called public education.<\/p>\n<p>Traditional questions that teachers and administrators face exist\u2013and will for the foreseeable future: How can we \u2018move students\u2019 from this performance level to that? How can we get every student to read on grade level? What can we do to improve parental communication? How can we motivate students? How should I manage my classroom?<\/p>\n<p>But\u2013fingers crossed\u2013this is the kind of training you get in your school staff meeting, district-mandated PD, and Monday morning emails.<\/p>\n<p>I thought then it\u2019d make sense to look at the new kinds of questions education faces\u2013questions that can either underscore or erode the function of a school in a given community. So here is one person\u2019s take\u00a0(mine). As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.teachthought.com\/the-future-of-learning\/trends-education\/\"><strong>learning trends<\/strong><\/a> indicate a kind of temporary pattern, we may be able to trace the arc of what was to wonder what might be in the immediate future.<\/p>\n<p id=\"h-1-what-is-the-relationship-between-school-and-social-justice\"><strong>1. What is the relationship between school and a better world?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Put another way, how can I help students develop their own questions to make their part of the world\u2013and their life\u2013better in and of itself, regardless of academic \u2018achievement.\u2019 How can I get students to ask better questions\u2013on their own, outside of my classroom?<\/p>\n<p>The fact some may consider this a \u2018trend\u2019 is probably more relevant than talking about it <em>as\u00a0<\/em>a trend, but education has newfound relevance as ideas on literacy, equity, race, sexuality, gender, and more change faster than they have at any time in recent history.<\/p>\n<p>Just as profession, race, and income are at the core of \u2018racial issues\u2019 (that really aren\u2019t racial issues, but human issues which is why it\u2019s impossible to segment them out that way), education has seen its untouchable image as savior, for some, erode. (See <a title=\"theatlantic.com\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/national\/archive\/2013\/08\/when-class-became-more-important-to-a-childs-education-than-race\/279064\/\">When Class Became More Important Than Race<\/a>, for example.)<\/p>\n<p>Instead of simply calling on schools to provide social justice, it is becoming clearer to the non-Paulo Freires of the world that education is also implicit in this cultural malaise.\u00a0<span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">And it\u2019s no longer just about race, or slapping a \u2018socioeconomic\u2019 label on things, but rather about seeing relationships and connecting\u00a0a chaotic spread pattern of\u00a0dots. The purpose of K-12 can\u2019t be \u2018college and career readiness\u2019 any more than the purpose of literacy can be \u2018word and sentence readiness.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<p>How should your classroom speak to or connect with current events? It should, right? Should education not inform massive social change? Illuminate it? Contextualize it? Equip us with strategies? Prevent suffering? Help people understand how to live better lives? Promote strong communities?<\/p>\n<p><strong>2. How might the tenets and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.teachthought.com\/learning\/benefits-of-social-emotional-learning\/\">Benefits Of Social Emotional Learning<\/a> inform my curriculum, assessment, and instruction?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If we don\u2019t have a clear and clearly communicated purpose of education, it\u2019s difficult to know what to \u2018add in\u2019 and what to \u2018take out\u2019 because there are only so many hours in the school day. And more humanly, there\u2019s only so much a teacher and school can do and I\u2019ve written over and over again that one of the biggest challenges of public education is that it over-promises\u2013makes claims through problematic school mission statements, for example, that it can\u2019t possibly consistently achieve.<\/p>\n<p id=\"h-2-what-role-does-blended-learning-and-elearning-play-in-the-learning-of-my-students\"><strong>3. How can I do less, better? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p id=\"h-2-what-role-does-blended-learning-and-elearning-play-in-the-learning-of-my-students\">For example, what role do blended learning and eLearning play in the learning of my students? How can I use the strengths of synchronous and asynchronous learning to reduce my workload while supporting student growth? <\/p>\n<p id=\"h-2-what-role-does-blended-learning-and-elearning-play-in-the-learning-of-my-students\">This leads us to\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">See also <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.teachthought.com\/education\/school-mission-statement\/\">The Problem With Most School Mission Statements<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p id=\"h-3-how-can-i-use-non-threatening-assessment-and-data-and-data-visualization-tools-to-improve-as-a-teacher\"><strong>4. How can I make my teaching more sustainable for me personally?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Getting \u2018bad teachers out of the classroom\u2019 is old and wrong-headed, but taking a second to wonder why a good teacher might quit is a fresher take. There is a cost to the push for teachers to innovate their curriculum, assessment practices, use of technology, etc., especially as that push is often at odds with local expectations, and one of the most visible effects is teacher fatigue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">See also <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.teachthought.com\/pedagogy\/why-good-teachers-quit\/\">Why Good Teachers Quit<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p id=\"h-4-how-can-i-use-inquiry-to-promote-critical-literacy\"><strong>5. What is the purpose of education?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p id=\"h-4-how-can-i-use-inquiry-to-promote-critical-literacy\">What role should cultural issues play in \u2018the classroom\u2019? This issue has been around for millennia\u2013the idea of an \u2018elite\u2019 education haunts us as a society. Content-based curriculum has a conditioning effect. It assimilates knowledge, language, image\u2013so many strands of how we think of ourselves and the world around us (something Jamelle Bouie <a title=\"slate.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/politics\/2014\/10\/talking_white_black_people_s_disdain_for_proper_english_and_academic_achievement.2.html\">hints at here<\/a>):<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[C]ontrary to the implications of the burden of acting white and oppositional peer culture hypotheses\u2014that white students generally have superior standards for academic achievement and are embedded in peer groups that support and encourage academic striving\u2014the experiences described by some of our white [student] informants indicate the presence of a much less achievement-oriented academic culture. In interviews, white students describe ostracism from peers and apprehension from parents who want to avoid the perception of \u201celitism\u201d that comes with children in gifted programs\u2026.<\/p>\n<p>None of this is to deny the reality of racialized ridiculing. It happens\u2014I\u2019ve experienced it\u2014and it\u2019s painful. But it isn\u2019t a feature of black <em>culture<\/em>. Rather, it arises from a mix of factors, from social status to the composition of the school itself. As the sociologists note in their conclusion, stigmatization for whites and blacks seemed to come from the \u201cperception that the low-status student was attempting to assume the character of the \u2018other,\u2019 especially an air of superiority or arrogance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The question could then be framed as, what is the relationship between what goes on inside the classroom and what goes on outside the classroom\u2014on a curriculum-level, but also in terms of transfer from that curriculum to \u2018real-world\u2019 human and social issues?<\/p>\n<p><strong>6. How can I best use parents and community members to support my students\u2013and my effort to help them learn?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Or better yet, how can I help students do so themselves? Place-based education? Project-based learning?<\/p>\n<p>And this is beautiful\u2013this trend of educators as enablers and students as makers and classrooms as creative spaces where human beings actually produce something. Maybe most wonderfully, this trend reflects a subtle realization by education that perhaps proficiency in academic content isn\u2019t as cutting-edge as it sounds. In merely allowing \u2018making\u2019 in classrooms, there is a kind of resignation that producing and creating and design are as valuable as listening, reading, and reflecting the priorities set by the teacher.<\/p>\n<p>In a maker space, the maker is empowered and everyone else becomes an audience. This is not a small shift.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.teachthought.com\/technology\/how-to-youtube-your-classroom\/%22%3E\">Questions From 2012-2021<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>1. How can I use non-threatening assessment and data and data visualization tools to improve as a teacher?<\/p>\n<p>2. How can I use cloud-based learning tools like Google Classroom to support my students?<\/p>\n<p>3. How and when and why should we use video streaming, podcasting, and\/or related digital media technology?<\/p>\n<p>4. What role can video play in my curriculum?<\/p>\n<p>5. How do I know if a student \u2018understands\u2019?<\/p>\n<p>6. How do we know if I\u2019m doing a \u2018good job\u2019? If this lesson\/unit\/curriculum\/school\/idea is working?<\/p>\n<p>For example, is coding a critical literacy? Is coding the new writing? Should we think of coding as making? There is at least an undercurrent of folks who see coding as not just tech-savvy, but a core digital literacy.<\/p>\n<p>7. What would maker ed look like in my classroom? What is maker education? What would it look like in my classroom? Judging by traffic, clicks, and social media responses, a lot of you have this question.<\/p>\n<p>8. What is a \u2018growth mindset\u2019 and how can it help me teach and my students learn?It\u2019s no longer about phone calls or emails\u2013there are new(ish) tools that are being adopted by a wider audience.<\/p>\n<p>9. How can I teach with video and streaming\u2013or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.teachthought.com\/technology\/how-to-youtube-your-classroom\/\"><strong>teach with YouTube<\/strong><\/a>?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>10. <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.teachthought.com\/learning\/what-is-genius-hour\/\">What Is Genius Hour<\/a><\/strong> and is it something I can use in my standards-based classroom?<\/p>\n<p>11. How can I use curriculum mapping strategies to improve my teaching?<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">See also <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.teachthought.com\/learning\/curriculum-planning-tips-that-honors-change\/\">Curriculum Mapping Strategies For Any Grade Level<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>12. How should we as an industry, update teacher training, and ongoing professional development?<\/p>\n<p>13. How can we \u2018teach globally\u2019 while acting locally?<\/p>\n<p>14. What should social media \u2018do\u2019 in education?<\/p>\n<p>What about digital footprints? Social media, mainly. Does tweeting matter? How can a hashtag make a difference? The convergence of tool (the hashtag) and opportunity (increase in the visibility, if not the quantity, of digital and social media-based activism) made the last few years underscore both hashtags and social media at large to draw attention to pressing social issues. #blacklivesmatter, #crimingwhilewhite, #yesallwomen, and dozens of non-ironic, run-on appends aggregated social media chatter to something closer to the permanence such activism deserves.<\/p>\n<p>There is an irony here that those on twitter\u2013using hashtags\u2013likely on an expensive mobile device\u2013to discuss edgy cultural issues has a preaching-to-the-choir effect\u2013lots of digital noise for, perhaps, little physical action or substantive change. Social media is ready-made for moral and intellectual posturing which often does little to invite common-ground dialogue.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That said, social change is a multidimensional thing. Who knows what impact X has on Y? That\u2019s a good question to start asking alongside your students.<\/p>\n<p>15. Why should we teach with technology? (2014)<\/p>\n<p>In other words, tech as a tool versus tech-for-the-sake-of-tech. This isn\u2019t necessarily a 2014-only theme, but it seemed to have a different tone recently\u2013not \u2018hate edtech\u2019 but \u2018why edtech?\u2019 Ask on twitter and you might get a lot of salty educators who make it their life\u2019s work to stuff as much technology into a classroom as possible, but more and more, teachers want to know why.<\/p>\n<p>Some of these questions to clarify your teaching are get-off-my-lawn pushback, but some questions are entirely reasonable, including: \u201cHow can we best use technology? How does it work? What does it allow, promote, and produce?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>16. How can I best use homework in a modern classroom? (2015)<\/p>\n<p>Along with letter grades, and \u2018college,\u2019 homework is an icon for traditional education. Developing <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.teachthought.com\/pedagogy\/alternatives-to-homework-a-chart-for-teachers\/\">alternatives to homework<\/a><\/strong> continues to be a popular idea for teachers. The flipped model of teaching is itself a way of reconsidering what students \u2018do\u2019 and where they do it, i.e., the work&amp;; students do<\/p>\n<p>17. Google or Apple or Microsoft\u2014or does it matter? (2015)<\/p>\n<p>Ah. More questions regarding iPads, 1:1, and the like.<\/p>\n<p>When the iPad rollout in Los Angeles fell on its face years ago, the utility of $30 million in hardware was put into question\u2013and that\u2019s a problem. The popularity of the iPad in education has always been catalyzed by more than a little consumerism, so we might\u2019ve expected some kind of correction.<\/p>\n<p>iPads are expensive mobile devices designed to play apps while glorifying Apple\u2019s ecology. That doesn\u2019t make them evil, but the idea that they were plug-n-play designed for classrooms may be naive.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ll talk more about this soon, but Google\u2013and specifically Google Classroom\u2013continues to gain momentum on the ground, in classrooms. In lieu of janky aesthetics and unpolished interfaces, Google\u2019s focus on utility, productivity, and low-cost Chromebooks, in addition to the critical universal sign-in for all Google products, can make management for schools and districts simpler\u2013and schools like simple.<\/p>\n<p>18. How can I use digital media\u2013and actually use the strength of each? (2016)<\/p>\n<p>Old media are new again.<\/p>\n<p>Podcasting feels 2006ish, but it\u2019s actually quite edgy. The podcast has neither died nor exploded, but the quality\u2013and legacy\u2013of podcasting in education certainly seems on the uptick, no?<\/p>\n<p>And video as well\u2013YouTubers, for example. My children prefer them to actors and musicians, to the point where social media isn\u2019t merely a launching pad into the mainstream, but is a stream of its own. Blogging, twitter chats, and other heavy-on-the-reading content (books, and to a degree, magazines) are increasingly supplemented with podcasts, video, and other content that\u2019s easy to absorb on mobile devices.<\/p>\n<p>There are only so many modalities\u2013text, images, video; mixing and remixing them while adding and twisting social dynamics is all part of the evolution.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.teachthought.com\/the-future-of-learning\/questions-to-improve-as-a-teacher\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ed note: I wrote this in 2014 and have updated it several times since then, most recently in the summer of 2022. Who knows where education is going, but it\u2019s not impossible to come up with some questions to clarify your teaching and promote your evolution. The following, then, are a collection of entirely subjective [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":48693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48692"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}