Teaching Content is Teaching Reading

Part of my Summer Institute training for TNTP includes a Literacy Course.  Not for me to become literate, but to teach me how to include and promote literacy skills in my classroom.  Perhaps the first reaction I, and many others, had is "But I'm a math teacher...".  As I have learned, literacy is something that cuts across all content areas.  You can't succeed in life without strong literacy skills and you can't succeed in math without them either. 

The video above, Teaching Content is Teaching Reading, comes from Dr. Daniel Willingham, Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia who studies the application of psychology to education.  The video makes a good argument for the importance of learning about the world and learning in many different content areas in order to improve reading comprehension. 

Research has found it is critical to attain decoding and fluency skills (being able to pronounce and read the letters of words without hesitation) by the third grade. Once those skills are in place, kids can begin to focus more on building vocabulary and improving comprehension skills.  It is very hard to work on vocabulary or comprehension when a student is still unable to read and decode the letters.  For a lot of young readers, or struggling readers, too much focus is put on improving reading skills alone, without focusing on improving overall background knowledge.  This is why it is important to teach literacy skills across all content areas.  In order to improve reading comprehension, it is vital to just know lots of things.  Knowing about history, science, math, sports, culture, religion, social studies, literature... all of these things that make up our world, is a key to greater understanding. 

In my next post, I will further explore the importance of literacy in the content areas by looking at a tools that helps you find reading materials appropriate to a student's reading level.

Teaching to the Standard

This week our TNTP training sessions have focused on how to make sure everything we teach is aligned to the state educational standards for curriculum.  In today's educational climate, a great emphasis is put on assessments and a common objection people will voice is that because of the high-stakes nature of NCLB, teachers are only 'teaching to the test'.  But the proper way to ensure student achievement on assessment exams and in school as a whole is not teaching to the test, but rather teaching to the standard.  If students know the ciriculum material in the state standards, then they will be prepared to pass the assessments as well.  The standards documents, which are publicly available for each state, include the material that will be tested and beyond, giving students a much fuller breadth of knowledge than is even being tested.

It is such a logical way to teach and design instruction, you have to wonder why aren't all teachers doing this?  Well, as I have learned the past few days, it is possible to do this but you need someone to show you how.  Looking at a copy of a state standard is confusing.  The standards themselves contain broad, over-arching ideas that are what should be covered over the course of the entire school year.  The supporting topics themselves can be hard to translate into workable units and lesson plans.  Going into my TNTP training this summer, I was pleased to learn that my school district provides a lot of guidance to teachers in terms of curriculum framwork guides that ensure all the teachers in the district who teach a particular subject (Algebra for instance) will be teaching the same topics in the same order at around the same time of the year.  This provides much needed continuity in a large school district.  The guides help with the order and pacing of the units, but do not dictate to teachers HOW they must teach, just what they must teach and when.  I know that there is often some debate about wanting to standardize curriculum while still maintaining teacher freedom to choose the teaching activities that they feel are best. As a new teacher, I am very glad that my school district does provide this level of structure and guidance.  Not all schools or school systems do so.


After two days spent wrestling with designing my own standards based unit plan as an assignment, I can see what a large undertaking this really is.  I'll end this post today with the related topic of the National 'Common Core' Standards that were developed earlier this year.  I saw an article today in Education Week that details the conclusions of a study in which each state's individual standards are compared to the Common Core.  The majority of the states were deemed to be inferior, and I was surprised that my state scored very low. Of course, the details of how the standards were judged were not given in the article.  I know that my state is one of the 33 that has agreed to adopt the new Common Core and that these changes will begin appearing over the next few years.  I will be very interested to see how those changes will appear at the district level, and what changes individual schools and teachers will see to the curriculum.

Testing your Authority on Random Students

OK, so something a little amusing...

One aspect of our framework sessions in Summer Institute is all about classroom management.  So, things like developing and enforcing rules and procedures, creating a "No Excuses" environment, having a positive culture of respect and achievement.  We spent a good amount of time last Friday talking about how to develop and use authority in the classroom.  Working on our "Teacher Looks", that wonky evil-eye you give a student to make them stop talking, and how to give commands, rather than requests (such as, "Open your books to p. 55", rather than "OK, class, can you please go ahead and just open up your books for me to p. 55").

One thing that our Fellow Advisor (FA) told us just had us cracking-up.  She talked about how when she was a new teacher, she worked to develop her authority, her own teacher look and voice, etc.  She said that even still, she will just practice asserting her authority on random students in the hall way, sometimes just to see if it works.  If she sees some student she doesn't know in the hall, she might tell him or her to "Pick up that piece of paper on the floor" and then see if the student does it, and most of the time they do! I just thought this was hilarious, and this is a woman who is also very polite and respectful so I did not take it as her just being on a crazy power trip. 

So Tuesday, during Practice Teaching, I had my own opportunity to practice asserting authority on a random student. And it worked!  There was a student in the hall, slowly coming back from a bathroom break.  He was busy looking in the windows of another classroom, waving at his friends in there.  So I went up to him and asked him, politely but firmly, "Where are you supposed to be?" He said, "my class".  So I told him to get there, now.  And he did it!  I was so proud of myself, and I also proved to myself that I really can be firm and commanding without raising my voice, or having to be overly aggressive, which would not suite my personality.

So anyway, it was a little victory I had and it gave me more confidence in my role as the authority figure in the classroom.

Challenges of ELL students

I mentioned previously that during Summer Institute, I am spending half of my day doing Practice Teaching (PT) with a summer school program.  This is intended to give Teaching Fellows a brief, but intensive, introduction to the classroom.  I work with a Cooperating Teacher (CT), a veteran teacher who acts as a mentor as well as an evaluator of my progress, much as education majors spend a semester or more doing their student teaching rotations.  I was expecting to be teaching students who are in summer school for credit recovery (i.e. they failed the course during the regular year).  Instead, I am working with a summer enrichment program for students who are going into 9th grade.  We have mix of students who like school, and don't mind being there, as well as students who's parents are making them go because it is free and keeps them out of trouble.  Overall, even the students who would rather not  be there are still actively participating in the lessons, and so far things are going well. 

One aspect of PT that was totally unexpected to me is that out of our two different classes, one class is entirely ESL (English Second Language, also called ELL, English Language Learners). 

First week of Summer Institute Complete!

Just when I thought it would never get here, the Teaching Fellows Summer Institute has finally begun!  And, the first week of training has already come and gone in a flash!  Summer institute for a general education fellow, such as myself, consists of 3 parts.  Framework session, Practice Teaching, and Literacy Class.  Special Education Fellows have an additional course they take on top of all this.

The Framework sessions are workshop-type courses developed by The New Teacher Project (TNTP) to prepare us for the classroom.  They cover Instructional Design and Deliver, and Classroom Management and Culture.  So, everything from lesson planning, to maintaining order.  The sessions are led by experienced teachers who work in the district in which we have been hired.  The Practice Teaching is like our version of student teaching, and we do it during summer school under the supervision of a Cooperating Teacher (CT).  The last element is our Literacy Class, which is not to teach us how to read, but rather how to incorporate and promote literacy while still teaching our subject specific courses.  Your first thought might be, "How can a math teacher promote literacy?"  Well, that is what I am going to find out.

So far, I am having a fantastic time at summer institute.  It feels a little like going back to college, but combined with the camaraderie of summer camp, and the emotional support of group therapy.  Everyone is there for the same reason - we want to become teachers.  We want to inspire and engage and reach out to those students who are not being reached in our nation's most struggling public schools.  We are there to close the Achievement Gap and at the same time increase the Achievement for all.  We have noble, if perhaps terribly naive, dreams and we are all part of TNTP to make a difference.  We are full of hopes and fears and so many questions and ideas.  We are so hungry to learn every little thing we can before we find ourselves see loose to fend for ourselves out there, lost in a vast sea of public school bureaucracy and mediocrity.  I can feel myself practically bubbling over with the energy and anticipation and fear of it all.  While I am still full of questions and fears, I feel even more confident that I am making the correct career choice, and I am so excited.  I have never felt this way about anything.

What I have been doing while I wait

Right now, I am in the in-between time of getting accepted into The New Teacher's Project (TNTP), and actually beginning the program.  It is a limbo period full of waiting and anticipation and everyone I know always asking me what is the status of my new teaching career.  And the answer is always, the status is the same as the last time we spoke, I am waiting for the program to officially begin... sometime in June... I don't know yet the exact date.... or the exact school... or what grade level I will actually be teaching.  Stop asking, I will tell you when something happens. 

So, I have been trying to prepare by working on the recommended reading list, and I have been working on my Independent Study requirements.  The summer training program (called Summer Institute) is where you get your crash course in teaching before the full school year begins in the fall.  The basic schedule has you attending summer school classes in the mornings, and teaching seminars in the afternoons and evenings.  We have been warned that during institute, the days are long (12 hours) and intense.   Prior to beginning institute, fellows are expected to complete their independent study guides and assignments.  The assignments include a lot of reading and a handful of short writing assignments, as well as observing a classroom for a minimum of 4 hours.  So, this has been keeping me busy already.


An interesting note about the text book we are using, which has been produced by The New Teacher Project, is that everyone is using the book for Special Education teachers, whereas in previous years there were different books for General and Special Ed.  The thinking behind this move is that everyone should be familiar with the specific rules and laws of teaching special ed anyway, and a the teaching methods are valid regardless of whether you are General or Special Ed.