Dialogue #2: Unit Planning Cont'd - Assessment

How would I build a progression towards a culminating project/assessment?

Invariably, I want two types of physical assignments out of students: annotated, analyzed, and well-understood core texts, and a coherent, complete, well-structured essay (hopefully, with some individual insight or thought, depending on the student).  Rhetorical analysis begins with structured questions that guide students through the process explicitly, then gradually involves new concepts, and finally slowly removes supports.  

Since this post is already a bit huge, please feel free to ask if you'd like me to go into detail about each of the skills I list below.  Ultimately, I think core skills for any course should be able to be broken down to a list of around 10~15 foundational procedures kids need to be able to perform reliably ON THEIR OWN.  Content is all well and good, but practicing academic skills until they're intuitive will allow students to access content on their own, ultimately, and in 9th grade, there is nothing more crucial than close-reading, structured writing, discussion, and note-taking skills.

Dialogue #2: Unit Planning

While reflecting on that lesson, I asked myself a series of questions: How would I develop a unit of study? How do I even begin to think about what lesson to start with? How would I build a progression towards a culminating project/assessment? What would prove to me that my students have learned what they needed to learn? How do I assess whether I’ve done my job? Despite having designed lessons for my program, I still struggle with these questions. Then I began to think about the obesity unit. How did you decide on that unit? How did you introduce it? How do you facilitate discussion so that students are engaged and really thinking? I love the idea of an obesity unit as well as a narcissism unit because I think it’s accessible for students, but I don’t really know how I would even begin to design such units.

Wow - you're tackling quite a lot there.  I'll try to parse that out and handle each question.

How would I develop a unit of study? How do I even begin to think about what lesson to start with?

I think the best advice for planning lessons is the same advice I was always given when writing: “write what you know.”  I tend to plan lessons around concepts, ideas, debates, and issues that I’ve heard or read something about, seem relevant and interesting to students, and have related materials I think students could access.  I read a lot of news articles and listen to radio material regularly, and so things that could potentially work in class come to my attention without having to stumble out of my regular routine.

Start from what interests YOU.  I’m able to lead discussions and explain examples about the topics we’ve handled in class because I’m interested in and passionate about them – I wouldn’t TRY if I weren’t!  Also, my lessons may seem polished and well-planned (or at least well-executed, as I would NEVER identify planning as one of my strengths!), but that mostly comes from having played with the various topics, materials, strategies, and structures I now use in class regularly for a number of years.

I’ll try to address your question about approaching planning for you by walking through my process. 

Dialogue #2: Accountability and Mastery-Based Grading

These past few weeks have been extremely eye opening, especially after teaching my first lesson. I struggled a lot this week in terms of planning and implementation of lessons. A couple of weeks ago, we talked a lot about teaching students life skills. Mainly, holding students accountable for their actions.

“If you're not teaching them that they need to be aware of their own actions, responsible for them, and trying - they don't have to be succeeding, mind you, but just TRYING - to fix what they're doing wrong, then NOBODY WILL CARE OR HELP THEM. That's the truth” (Low). 

My experience with this age group is that they’re transitioning from child to adolescent; they have yet to realize that their actions have consequences. I have always cut the students some slack because in my mind, they are still learning to be adults, which takes time. I do a lot of handholding and our conversations have made me realize that I’m just enabling them, and that enabling ultimately hinders their development. Because of this, I really wanted to emphasize a strict deadline for assignments while creating lesson plans. I had to set aside my desire to be liked by students and consider what they needed; regardless of whether it was something they wanted. But how do I hold students accountable for basic, life skills such as labeling assignments correctly and turning them in on time without giving them constant failing grades? Should content understanding outweigh the ability to follow directions? Obviously not, but how do you make it count?

It’s fine to be a bit lenient in your first year – it’s hard not to be.  Everyone who commits to the profession, with few exceptions, tends to do so because they’re fond of kids; otherwise, there are few reasons to pursue the career.  I find the mastery-based grading strategy of separating assignments into “practice” and “performance” assignments a useful strategy.  Our school mandates a 70/30 percentage point weight category for practice and performance assignments, and for me, that’s a perfect split for 9^th grade. 

Dialogue #1: The Work-Life Divide and Classroom Realities vs. Ideology

However, I think the biggest take-home message has been your distinction between work and home life. I have always struggled with how I can cater to my students’ needs without sacrificing my own. I think your advice and encouragement to take time when I need it has been the biggest lesson this week. But where do you draw that line? When do you decide that you need to shut your phone off, or leave the classroom for the day? How do you tell a student that you need to leave and take care of yourself when they are asking for more help?

One of my greatest frustrations with the ideological mindset in education is something I would, for lack of a more politic name, describe as "the calling."  

Teachers are, in effect, given the responsibilities of a CEO: we have 120~300 employees whom we are responsible for directly managing, both professionally and personally.  We must create a mission and vision for our company, and a culture that will drive us towards those goals.  We must personally create all of the strategies and systems that make business possible, and are responsible for monitoring their success.

We can not fire our employees, many of whom do not even want the job - or to do the work, since the currency we pay in is not of value to them, currently.

But regardless, we are treated as, at best, middle-management.  Oversight is critical, intense, and demands demonstrable top-performers - in both numbers and employee satisfaction.  Pay is little better than for a line worker, though the hours usually run from a minimum of 50 to upwards of 90 a week.