Gratitude at the End of the Semester

I have written less this semester than any time since I started this blog.

In 2012, when I began teaching in higher education full-time, I started this blog. At that time--foolishly--I thought that people would suddenly care what I had to say. I was a professor, after all!

Very quickly I realized that very few people much cared about what I had to say. My early pontifications are pretty funny to read from this vantage point, seven and a half years later. This blog quickly pivoted to my personal reflection space, a place to think out loud about what I am reading, what I am exploring, what I am trying in my classroom, what I am researching.

And it's funny...when I made that switch, a few more people started reading along, and sharing their stories with me as well.

So I'm actually feeling a little sad that I haven't had much time to write this semester. I've just been playing keep-up all the time. And I've had to carve off some of the non-essentials to keep on keeping-on, and the blogging was often a casualty.

But here I am, at the end of my 15th semester of full-time teaching in higher education. I recently shared with a colleague just how much I enjoy everything I get to do serving here. It's the truth too: I am reaching a point where I'm spread too thin, and I'm going to have to give some things up, and that's really hard for me to do...because I just love it all so much.

So I'm left with a sense of deep gratitude--gratitude born out of real joy in the work I get to do.

Gratitude toward my undergrad students, the amazing future teachers I get to serve as they prepare to join this demanding profession.

Gratitude toward my grad students, the incredible practicing educators I get to walk beside as they continue to grow and learn and develop their own teaching practices.

Gratitude toward the high-functioning team I am a part of in the Education department, for colleagues who challenge me to keep getting better, and who are also encouraging me to right-size my work and not bite off more than I can chew.

Gratitude toward the administration, staff, faculty from across the institution, and the broader community of support that makes Dordt University such an incredible place to serve.

Gratitude that I feel like I have truly found my calling.

Here's hoping that I will have a little more margin and a little more time to keep writing here in the new semester!

Image via Pixabay

The Evolution of an Undergraduate Research Project

Many of you regular readers will know that I am constantly playing with my teaching practice--experimenting, exploring, trying to improve things. Maybe this says something about my inner state; maybe this means I'm never quite satisfied that it's "good enough." Honestly, that's probably true. I'm a work in progress, and I hope that I'm continuing to get better all the time.

I've taught Introduction to Education 15 times over the past 8 years, and it's one of my favorite courses to teach. It's also the course I teach that literally anyone in my department could teach...but I love it, and I like to think I'm a good fit for it. For the most part, I feel like I've got this course dialed in to where I want it to be: it's a pretty tightly aligned course, with clear learning targets, reasonable assessments, and instructional activities designed to ensure students will come away from the course with a strong foundation for the rest of their learning in our Teacher Preparation Program.

But...it's not perfect. (Obviously, since I am not perfect!) And so, I continue tinkering with the course, tweaking it, trying to find ways to make it a more engaging learning experience for students, one that will help them discern whether becoming a teacher is their calling, and helping them develop a beginning level of the knowledge and skills they will need as professional educators, should they decide to continue in the program.

As long as I've taught the course, I've had a research project as a key assignment. I assign students to research an education reform initiative, and share what they learn with their classmates. The goals for the project are threefold:

Economics and Grading

So I saw a tweet yesterday that included the following graphic from my long-time Twitterfriend, Paul Munshower.

My first reaction was to laugh, and I did chuckle.

But, almost immediately, I stopped and checked that reaction. Oh, not because this is untrue...it probably is a really accurate way of framing that feeling. (And, yes...as a professional educator, I have had that feeling checking my balance with my bank...which is a comment on the state of compensation for teachers...but not the real point of this post.)

The main reason I checked myself is the idea that this comment conveys: that grades are like money in the bank, deposits from your earnings.

Now I know there are plenty of people who would equate grades as "earnings," as in, "Students earn their grades."

But I do wonder a bit about this metaphor. Are we really comfortable with thinking about grades as compensation? I'm not loving this idea, honestly. I know, I know...we use this language all the time. But what is a grade, really? Is it payment for the work students do? Or...is it meant to be communication about their learning?

I suppose if you're viewing grades as pay for the work students do, there isn't any problem here. Students put in their time, do what they are asked to do, and get their paycheck. Worked hard? You get an A! Not working quite as hard? B+ for you, kiddo. Just coasting and not really doing the work? D- for you. And I guess the idea here is that compensation matches the effort; kids who are really working hard are going to get better "pay," while the kids who are coasting are going to get worse "pay." That's how the "real world" works, after all, right? People who work hard get raises, and lazy people never get ahead...and might even lose their jobs, yeah? Grades viewed this way are really an economic proposition.

But here's what makes me uncomfortable with this: I don't think grades are actually pay. Grades should be communication about what kids have learned, ideally. I don't think they are actually all that great for this purpose, because you lose all the nuance by trying to collapse a whole term's learning into one letter or number. Regardless...if we start trying to turn this communication into payment...are we really communicating learning anymore?

And I don't think that kids who just "work hard" are going to get high marks while lazy students are going to get low scores. I'm not arguing against developing a work ethic; I think everyone agrees that we want kids to learn how to work. But I'm standing here in opposition to the idea that kids who work hard deserve good grades just because they have worked hard. I mean, you can "work really hard" at doing the wrong thing and not end up making any progress. If we're basing kids' grades on whether or not they worked hard, what are we actually assessing? Their work habits? Or their learning?

Grading is not--or at least should not--be an economic transaction. The teacher is not the boss on the jobsite doling out dollars for the day's work to the laborers. If we're serious about grades actually reporting learning, we have to work to purge our vocabulary of this language about "earning."

Geographic Literacy

I don't usually post a lot of political stuff on the blog. But today I'm going to get a little political, in the interest of promoting geographic literacy.

Today our President tweeted the following map:

Screenshot from Twitter.com

Boy oh boy, there is a lot of conversation on Twitter about this. And it's spilled over to other platforms as well--I saw at least two of my Facebook friends share a post that included an image of this tweet, and one of my favorite Instagram accounts, TerribleMaps shared it with a caption that I found pretty funny.

There has been a lot of commentary on Twitter about just what this map illustrates, both by supporters and detractors of the President. I find it interesting because this map is potentially misleading, particularly with the "Try to impeach this" text overlaid. This map is assumed to be an election results map from the 2016 Presidential election. (Though even that seems to be in dispute, if you do the slightest digging on Twitter.) The idea here being that the red on the map represents counties that voted for Trump, and the blue the counties that voted for Clinton.

The implication is that far more of the country voted for Trump than for Clinton. The further implication being that impeachment flies in the face of the voters' wishes. And, if one doesn't pause to think about what is actually being communicated in this map, that might be the quick take away. Cynically, I wonder if that is what Trump expects from his supporters: to not pause and think about what is actually being communicated in this map.

The problem with this map as a proxy for voters' wishes is, as someone said on Twitter (and I wish I could find the tweet now, but it's lost to me, unfortunately)...

dirt can't vote.

The point being, in an election results map, the number of counties in a particular color does not matter...the population of those counties matters. An awful lot of those counties in red have relatively small populations. And an awful lot of those counties in blue have relatively humongous populations. (Seriously...basically every large city in the U.S. is in one of the blue areas on the map.) "Dirt can't vote" means just because there is a large geographic area that happens to be "for" a particular candidate doesn't mean that there is a larger number of people there (or even an equivalent number of people there) who would support a particular candidate.

So what I'm really thinking about is how people don't often slow down enough and think about maps. As a geography teacher, of course I'm concerned about this. I would love it if people were more geographically literate in general.

How Are You Feeling?

I gave the first test of the semester in my World Regional Geography course this week. I've started marking them, but I'm not done yet. So far, so good, overall.

For many of the students taking the course, this is the first time they are taking a test with me. And there is a little bit of a learning curve there, I think. This is something we talk about quite a bit in the Education courses I teach: every teacher has his/her own preferences, quirks, and foibles that come out in a myriad of ways in our teaching practices. But one place this happens specifically is in the assessment vehicles we develop.

Students have agreed with me when I have asked them about this. Different instructors have different ways of putting tests together, for good or ill. And until you've taken a test with a particular instructor? You just can't be 100% of their assessment style.

I've said before that I take my work very seriously, though I try not to take myself too seriously as a teacher. Perhaps this is one way this shows up in my teaching practice in the assessments I write: I often ask my students how they are feeling at the beginning of a test. Here's what the top of the test paper looked like for this first exam of the semester in World Regional Geography:

Mythical Multiple Intelligences?

I've been wrestling with the idea of multiple intelligences for some time now.

In a nutshell, the idea behind multiple intelligence theory (first proposed by Howard Gardner in the early 1990s) is that intelligence is not a unitary trait that you either have or do not have. Rather, there are multiple ways of being "smart"--multiple intelligences. Gardner originally suggested seven types of intelligence, and later expanded the list by adding an eighth:

• Linguistic intelligence - "word smart"
• Logical-mathematical intelligence - "math smart"
• Visual-spatial intelligence - "design smart"
• Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence - "body smart"
• Musical intelligence - "music smart"
• Interpersonal intelligence - "people smart"
• Intrapersonal intelligence - "self smart"
• Naturalist intelligence - "nature smart"

These descriptors above are my own, not Gardner's. This theory is appealing to me for several reasons. It does seem that there are different ways to make sense of the world, and people do seem to have various strengths and relative weaknesses in these different ways of being "smart." Used car salesman? Definitely "people smart." Nuclear physicist? Probably has "math smart" in spades. Concert violinist? I'm thinking "music smart" is an apt description. Add to this fact, my students have always had preferences for the kinds of assignments I asked them to do. And further, I like to think of myself as a unique individual with my own areas of strength to celebrate, so it's probably no wonder that parents see their kids that way, and teachers too, and likely even the kids themselves!

Early in my teaching career, I put a lot of stock into giving my middle school students self-assessments related to these multiple intelligences, with the intent of helping them understand their own gifts and talents, and helping me as their teacher to understand more about how they see the world. But more recently, I've wondered about whether this was worthwhile. Did I really use enough different teaching methods to help my "body smart" students learn science? Was I tapping into the strengths of "self smart" students in the learning opportunities they had?

And now, thinking about those quick self-checking surveys I had my students complete...how well did they actually indicate students' actual intelligence? Were they "good enough?" Or did they misdiagnose students' intelligences? Or worse, does this just give one more label to use--or an opportunity for excuses, because "I'm just not that 'word smart,' but I am 'people smart,' so if you would just teach me that way..."???

And then, I come across things like this tweet from Dr. Daniel Willingham...

Grading and Feedback

Yesterday, I received an email from one of my amazing and thoughtful students. She is currently in a field experience placement where she is practicing the "real work" of teaching, including providing feedback to her students. The subject of her email was "Grading and Feedback," and I'm sharing it here with her permission (edited slightly for confidentiality):

Hello Dr. Mulder,  

I have been doing my field experience practicum in a sixth grade class and have been learning so much. One thing that I have been recently faced with is grading and giving feedback and you came to mind. I gave the students a summary exercise in which they had to write a summary paragraph. I am now reviewing these and am realizing my inexperience with grading REAL kids’ work! 

I don’t want to kill their joy for learning, but I also want to give the valuable feedback that will help them grow. How do you strike this balance (especially in middle school)? 

Thank you for your time in considering this.  

First off, how great is this? A pre-service teacher who is in transition to the work of a professional teacher, and she is beginning to realize the challenging nature of our work as educators. But rather than just foundering, she is soliciting input! I'm honored that she reached out to me--not that I have this all figured out, of course--but the key thing I'm thinking about here is the importance of mentorship and support for novice professional teachers.

Here is what I shared with her in response:

Developing Your Teacher Voice

One of the things I love that I get to do in my role as a teacher educator is coaching student teachers. It's just such a pleasure to see students at the end of their studies in our program pulling together all of the things they have learned and putting into practice! That's not to say that they all have it all figured out. Most have growth areas--which is normal, when you are just starting out in a profession. Often I've given them specific coaching on particular aspects of their teaching: using their physical presence as part of their classroom management, strategies for making groups, tips for facilitating discussions, and the like.

Sometimes we have to work on their "teacher voice." My fellow educators probably know what I'm talking about here: there is a way of using your voice as a teacher that we don't use in many other settings. It's not just about being the loudest person in the room, it's more a quality of how we use our voice to command authority, to facilitate the discussion, to draw students in to the learning.

Some teachers seem to learn this very naturally, while others need to practice it, but most highly effective teachers have a very real sense of "voice" that they use as a key part of their teaching practice.

And today, I'm made acutely aware of this fact, because I've lost my voice. I have a cold, and with it, my larynx is failing me. I can whisper, but with some difficulty, and that only seems to make things worse, honestly. I'm struggling and straining, and it's making me realize just how much my voice is part of my teaching practice overall.

At the moment, I'm wondering how tomorrow's classes are going to go, and the meetings I have scheduled with students as well. It's difficult to communicate in the classroom when one of my most important tools is inaccessible! Can I plan other ways to communicate? Certainly. But will they be as effective? Well...maybe...but I feel like I'm going to be struggling to do my best teaching if I have to rely on body language, facial expression, writing on the board, and strained whispers to get the point across. Particularly because we're in the first days of the new school year, and I'm still doing so much relationship-building with students...and I am finding just how much I depend on my voice to do this work. This is requiring me to think creatively about what I can and should be doing to connect well with my students!

The real lesson for me is this: the teacher voice, once developed, is an effective means of keeping students "with you" in class. And now that I've come to rely on it so strongly, I'm really struggling without it!

Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

Beginning Again

Man, you guys...I just love to teach!

I mean, it's terrifying, you know? Stepping into the classroom at the beginning of the year, ready to meet new students, and sort of hoping that everything doesn't come crashing apart in the first 10 minutes, but then you meet the students and find out how great they really are, and find your groove, and launch in to the new school year...

I love this work so much.

It's the first day of the new semester, the new academic year. This is my 22nd year as a professional educator, and my 8th year teaching in higher edu. That's crazy to me! It went so fast.

Right before Intro to Ed this morning, I tweeted...

First day of my 22nd year of teaching. Let’s see if I remember how to do this...bring on the learning! 😃 pic.twitter.com/QmsJDfclbz

— Dave Mulder (@d_mulder) August 27, 2019

I remembered how to do this. It was a good first day of class.

I love beginnings. I love the rhythm of the school year. I love that we get to start fresh every year. I love the newness of it all: new students, new schedules, new takes on the things I've done before.

Here's to beginning again!

Image via Pixabay [used with permission]

Overcoming Writer's Block

I have written so very little this summer, and that pains me in some ways.

Writing is so often cathartic, and a key part of my reflective practice as an educator.

I enjoy writing, most of the time.

But this summer has been...well, my life is rich and full.

And my rich, full life means I have not been able to prioritize some things that I really enjoy, including writing.

I have had some great adventures this summer, things that I've been mulling over how they might become blog posts: the story of getting stung by a stingray, the things I learned as a 40-something on a high ropes course, my typical post-Royal Family Kids Camp reflections, how my dog and I are both turning into curmudgeonly old grumps on our morning walks, how my faith-life continues to develop, my son and I enjoying a sushi lunch, new approaches I've been trying for live meetings in online courses, a hilarious Bob Ross themed gift from a dear colleague...I have a lot I'm thinking about writing.

But, somehow, I haven't been able to prioritize the writing.

Sure, it has something to do with the preparations for the new academic year, which starts next Tuesday for me.

And it definitely has something to do with a very busy (joyful!) summer of teaching.

And I'm sure part of it is is that I'm having a hard time with a writing project I have to do, and despite my generally-positive disposition, I haven't been able to make the turn yet into making this a "get too" instead of "have to" proposition.

But I'm wondering right now if the underlying thing is actually that I got out of the habit this summer, and I'm just struggling to get the writing wheels turning again?

All of this to say, I'm hopeful that this post will help me overcome my writer's block, and get back at it!

Image via pixabay

Moving and Change

We moved to a new home last week. It was an adventure, and still is, I guess, since all our stuff is in the new house but we are still figuring out where it is, and where it should be. When one of the kids unloads the dishwasher, it takes three times longer than it used to, because for almost every item they have to bring it to Mom with a, "And where does this go?" And it's not just the kids, it's me too: "Honey, have you seen the box with extension cords in it?" and "Where did we put the blender now? I thought it was in this cupboard..."

New house: Brick! Walking distance from campus! 

Moving means recalibrating. We get to find new "normal" places for our stuff. We get to figure out traffic patterns for how we function together in this space. We get to (try to) figure out which switches control which lights. We get to settle in to new routines.

Wisdom? Or Common Sense?

A friend of mine recently posted a photo of me on Facebook. It's actually a photo of a page in the most recent issue of our University magazine for alumni, and supporters, and friends of the institution. It was in a piece entitled, "On Civil Discourse," and I was grateful to be interviewed for this important article. (Not that my contributions were so amazing, or anything.) I encourage you to read it; you can find it online here: On Civil Discourse.

My friend shared the photo with a post, "Check out my smart friend Dave speaking wisdom." I'm grateful that she thought this was wise! Here's the photo, grabbed from her Facebook post:

Thank You!: An End of the Year Boost

I'm a techie, for sure. I love all things digital. But you know what? You just can't beat a hand-written note. There is something about it that says, "I care so much, I'm going to take the time to get out a piece of paper and a pen and devote a few minutes to creating a tangible record of my thoughts about you."

I've been teaching for over 20 years now, and I have a whole file of cards and notes that I've received from parents, students, administrators, and colleagues over the years. These are precious! The work of teaching is demanding in ways that I'm not sure non-teachers fully comprehend. Tangible expressions of gratitude, even in small ways like a card or note, are treasures that give a boost.

In the past month or so, I've received several notes of thanks from students or schools that I've worked with this year.

Getting cards like these never gets old!

Theses are going into the file. These are treasures--tangible ways of recognizing that in some way, the work I did this year with these folks made a difference for them.

School is wrapping up for this academic year. If there is an educator that made a difference in your life, in your kid's life, in your community's life...I encourage you to take a few minutes and let them know. It might seem trivial to you, but this gesture will be appreciated!

Learning Styles (Again?)

I often get requests through the professional organizations of which I am a member to participate in research studies being conducted by colleagues and graduate students. I'm happy to do this, if the topic of the study is germane to my experience, education, or context. It's interesting to see what other people in my field (EdTech) are working on, the kinds of questions they are asking, and the connections they are making. It's also a good way to keep up with developments in the field.

Today I participated in a study about preparation for online teaching. I've been part of several studies in this area in the past; with the continuing growth of online education, there is a lot of ongoing research here. What caught my eye was this item on the survey:

A screen-grab from the survey I was taking...

I was not sure how to respond to this one. Here's why:

Flourishing and Encouragement

At the risk of sounding like I'm patting myself on the back, I'll share this story:

A student emailed me this meme, with a word of gratitude and encouragement for the way I've led class this semester...

I'm so grateful for this. I have a reputation for being passionate and energetic in the classroom, and I try to capitalize on these attributes. And usually, I think I do; I'm able to leverage these to create an atmosphere where learning can happen.

But it's not perfect, you know?

Teaching Controversy

It's that time of the semester in science methods...the time when we are wading back into talking about how to approach teaching (potentially) controversial topics for Christians who teach science. Talking about how to teach topics like the age of the Earth, Darwinian evolution, human sexuality, climate change...it's an adventure, for sure.

I have included some version of this series of lessons as long as I've taught Elementary Science Methods, which goes back to 2006 now...this is my 20th time teaching the course! As I shared with my students in class today, it never gets "easier" for me to teach this content...but it does get "better." What I mean by that is, I recognize that there are a wide variety of viewpoints held by Christians on these topics, and it's always challenging to balance grace and truth. That part just doesn't get easier, and that was true when I was teaching middle school science, and it's definitely still true now that I'm teaching future teachers.

In our last class meeting, I advertised the topic of the day as teaching the age of the Earth, and we did talk about that. But, as I pointed out to my students, we actually spent more time talking about the Bible, than about scientific evidence. I wanted to name this specifically for my students, because I think that so often when (some) Christians ask the question, "So...just how old is the Earth?" the real question they are asking is, "Do you believe that the Bible is literally true, or not?" And I think that's an entirely reasonable question to ask, but it's not the same thing as thinking about the scientific evidence for the age of the Earth.

Apollo 17 [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

Making Connections: Thinking and Learning

This morning, when I was about to get into the shower, I was taking off my watch and I noticed that I'm starting to get get my typical biking-glove-tan-lines. That gave me a bit of joy, actually, because it means the weather has warmed up enough for me to be biking regularly again, and it's sunny enough that my arms are starting to brown (slightly) compared to my hands, which stay covered up by my palm-padded biking gloves.

Noticing this, reminded me of an Encyclopedia Brown story I read (probably around age 10? I was obsessed!) that revolved around the culprit being left-handed, and one of the clues was that a suspect had different colored hands--because he was a golfer, and only wore a glove on one hand.

The concept of only wearing one glove made me think of Michael Jackson, who used to famously wear only one glove, and I briefly wondered if his hands were different colors in the 1980s too.

And that idea of only wearing one glove in the 80s reminded me of a memory from when I was in the third grade, and a friend had gone to a Dodgers game on "batting glove night," and she gave me the glove she got--not because either of us were big baseball fans, but because we were friends, and she thought I would like it. She was right, I did. Because it was the 80s, and people could wear just one glove and be cool. (If we were pretending to be Michael Jackson, I guess.)

And that reminded me of an episode of 99% Invisible I just listened to on a bike ride this week that was all about the history of how the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, and how the city displaced a Mexican-American community from the area that would become Dodger Stadium. Listening to this podcast has helped me to make all sorts of interesting and strange connections between so many aspects of contemporary life and good design (that's where the title comes from: if it's good design, it is "99% invisible"--you only notice it if the design is bad.)

I suddenly realized this weird cognitive loop, and it made me smile

And all of this happened in about 30 seconds, as I got into the shower, closed the curtain, and turned the water on.

Okay Facebook, It's Getting Creepy

Some of you may be familiar with Clifton StrengthsFinder? I like this tool--and the whole psychology behind it--quite a lot. (I've written about it here on the blog in the past too...check out this, and this, and this for a look into the past.)

My wife works in the Career Development Center here on our campus, and they use StrengthsFinder as one tool to support discerning students trying to figure out "What should I do with my life??" It's helpful for that sort of thing. And, like many couples, we sometimes wind up talking about work at home. And so it happened that last night, we had a conversation about Strengths, which isn't wildly out of the ordinary, but it also isn't something that we talk about all that often.

And I know I haven't looked up the StrengthsFinder website on my computer or phone anytime recently--probably for a couple of years, actually, until today when I searched it up as was writing this post.

But here's why I'm thinking about this right now. Earlier today I had this ad show up in my Facebook feed:

Hmmm...this feels a little (lot) bit creepy, Facebook.

Classroom Atmosphere: Music Matters

Any of you educators out there play music before class? This has become a norm for me since teaching in higher ed; I always put something on at the beginning of class. In my former life as a middle school teacher I used to play music in class from time to time, but this is different. This is just about creating a particular classroom atmosphere.

Sometimes it's music connected to the lesson for the day. In my World Regional Geography class, I often use radiooooo.com to play music from the region we are considering. In my science methods class, I often put on Here Comes Science by They Might Be Giants. Occasionally, I'll choose a particular song that connects strongly to the lesson for the day, such as when I play "Cool Kids" by Echosmith to introduce a lesson on social and emotional learning in my middle school curriculum and instruction course. Or it might be a commentary on the fact that many students submitted an assignment late at night by playing "Who Needs Sleep?" by Barenaked Ladies. (They don't always appreciate that sort of humor...)

Often, it's just music that I happen to enjoy, or something new that I encountered recently. My students are quick to learn that I have eclectic taste; one day might be pop/folk/hiphop from Judah and the Lion, the next class meeting is ambient rock from Explosions in the Sky or Balmorhea, and the next time they come to class it could be Rend Collective, or Paper Route, or Josh Garrels, or Modest Mussorgsky, or Jars of Clay's old stuff from the 90s, or Adam Young's scores project. Or it might just be my feel-good Spotify playlist that I call "Just for Fun" that has a weird combination of Blue Swede, DNCE, Bobby McFerrin, Sonny & Cher, Kelly Clarkson, Pharrell Williams, the BeeGees, Katy Perry, and more. (Can't miss with that one--something in there that will get your body moving a bit no matter your decade or genre preference.) It's a running joke for some students that I listen to music that they don't listen to...because I'm so hipster. (Note: sarcasm here.)

Image via Pixabay

Why do this?

I'd like to say it's about setting an atmosphere that is warm and welcoming, and I think this is the truth. I like the music, sure. But I think there is something nice about coming into a room that isn't awkwardly quiet with everyone looking at their phones. Students seem more likely to have conversations with each other when the music is just loud enough to provide a background level of noise so it doesn't seem like everyone is listening to them. It means I try to intentionally get to class early enough to put the music on while students are just coming in, and that also encourages me to take a few minutes to connect with the students individually as their classmates are coming in. And having a soundtrack for our beginning of class time loosens me up, and gives me freedom to share a bit about myself, my tastes, my interests...maybe it's a way to show that I'm a real person.

I'm sure some students think it's kind of weird. Some are probably ambivalent about it. But the fact that students regularly--positively--mention the music on end-of-term course feedback makes me think there is something here. It's just something I'm trying to do intentionally to create a classroom atmosphere that reflects my personality, and is inviting for the students as they come in.

What do you think? Crazy? Or is there something to this approach for setting an atmosphere?

Reading for Pleasure and Reading with Purpose

True confession: after finishing my doctorate in 2017, I had a hard time reading anything. (Not unrelated: I also had a hard time writing anything. But that's not really the point of this post...)

Honestly, I have had a hard time getting into reading anything for about 18 months. I'm closing in on two years since my dissertation defense now, and I'm finally getting back into reading.

Oh, it's not that I never read anything, of course. I get four different professional journals, and I always skim through each of them when they arrive, and read an article or two that really catches my attention. I get WIRED magazine, and I eventually always read through each issue--though I still have the December, January, and February issues on my nightstand...and I'm not yet finished with the December issue. I read a few novels in my hammock in the summer. And I still read quite a bit online, usually profession-related things from EdWeek, or things I find on Twitter. And I do read and re-read articles and chapters for writing projects I have ongoing.

But truth be told, until very recently, I haven't found as much joy in reading. I haven't been really reading for pleasure very often since I started my doctoral work in 2013.  Of course, while I was in grad school, so much of my reading time was taken up with reading for class or for my own research. But in the almost two years since defending my dissertation, I haven't gravitated back to reading for pleasure.

Today I'm thinking about why this might be the case.

Licensure, Testing Pressures, and Appropriate Teacher Pay

Oh. My. Word.

I just read this article from Education Week: You're More Likely to Pass the Bar Than an Elementary Teacher Licensing Exam.

There is a LOT in this article worth thinking about...but this jumped out at me: "Just 46 percent of teacher candidates pass the test on their first attempt—that's lower than the first-time pass rates for doctors, nuclear engineers, and lawyers on their licensing exams. In fact, the only lower initial pass rate is the multi-part exam for certified public accountants."

Whoa.

Learning Together: Small Teaching

This semester, I'm part of a faculty reading group studying the book Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning by James Lang.

Most Effective Educational Technologies

A friend of mine is studying to become a teacher. (But she's not one of my students.) :-)

She reached out to me recently, asking a question for an assignment she's working on for class. She was to reach out to practicing educators to get their input on some issues related to student development, and teaching adolescents. Here's one question this assignment raised:

What technologies are most effective to facilitate learning in adolescents?

Great question there, I think! Probably I love this question because it gets at the intersection between several of my loves in the field of education: educational technologies, teaching adolescents, and effective teaching techniques.

After a little thought, here is how I responded:

Flickering Flickr

In my field of Educational Technology, we sometimes talk about what actually makes a particular tech tool an "educational technology." Some tools are deliberately designed for teaching and learning; I'm thinking about educational software packages for example. Those of a certain age will remember games like "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" or "Number Munchers" or "Reader Rabbit"--all games ostensibly developed to help students learn particular educational content.

But what about a game like "SimCity" or "Civilization" or "Rollercoaster Tycoon?" These weren't really developed to be educational games...but as a games, they definitely have some capability for providing interesting learning opportunities for students. And so there is this tension about educational technologies: sometimes technologies developed for other purposes or contexts are co-opted into becoming educational technologies, because educators find interesting ways to use them for teaching and learning.

Because, if nothing else, great teachers are resourceful, and use the tools they have at their disposal...often in creative ways.

Paper Bridges and Teaching STEM

I'm teaching a new course this semester: Methods of Teaching STEM in K-12 Schools. This is not just a new course for me, but a new course for our program entirely, which brings some joys and challenges. I have 14 years of experience teaching in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) in K-12 schools, so I have ideas about what this looks like. But the truth is, we're thinking here about the intersections of these disciplines, which is what makes this course both fun and demanding.

I have four students taking the course, and they are all in, which makes it fun. The thing is, they all have different backgrounds and different majors in education (various STEM-field interests) and that makes it a little demanding. But the flipside of that is that we have already had some really rich discussions, as they are bringing the habits and heuristics of their different disciplines to our work. The main thing I'm realizing is that we are all going to be learning together and from each other this semester, including me. I sincerely hope this is a good way of modeling "always learning, never arriving"--which has become one of my mantras for the way I think about my work as an educator.

One thing we're trying this semester: a series of design challenges. This is often where the STEM disciplines will come together in natural ways, I think, and not just for the future teachers I'm serving this semester. In my experience teaching integrative units as a middle school science teacher, I regularly collaborated with my colleague who taught math, and we would come up with projects that would demand students to use science concepts and math reasoning, leveraging technology, as they would engineer a solution to the project we proposed to them. I'm tapping into this spirit for the design challenges we're going to play with this semester.

And so, our first challenge began: the paper bridges.

Beginning Again, with Trembling

I've shared before on this blog how much I love the rhythms of the academic year, with beginnings, middles, and ends. We are at the middle of the 2018-19 academic year right now...which means a new beginning as well. Today is the first day of the Spring semester here at Dordt--the last semester of "Dordt College" as we will become "Dordt University" as of May 13 of this year.

I love new beginnings. They also scare me a bit, as I confessed to my students in Introduction to Education this morning. I'm always anxious about meeting up with new students, but in a positive way--I think--if that makes any sense at all? The newness is so full of possibility, of promise. And I'm anxious that I might screw it up somehow, I guess.

A Few Thoughts on Intentionality

It's been over a month since my last post. I'd like to say that it was an intentional break, but that's not really true--at least not entirely.

I usually try to write at least one post a week, which keeps me actively writing. And, as one of my friends has repeatedly reminded me over the past year, writing is thinking...and a big part of my job as a professor is thinking. So in this sense, blogging is almost a professional responsibility for me, or at least thinking about my teaching, and what I'm reading, and how I'm connecting with my field is, and that's primarily what I try to do here on the blog.

But as the busyness of the end of the semester and the Christmas season swelled, I just didn't make time for writing. And then I was out of town over the holidays and I intentionally left my laptop at home, to have an intentional break from all things work-related. And now that I've been back in the office for the past week or so, I've been preparing syllabi for the new semester, and working on a new course that I'm teaching for the first time, and making plans for some additional courses for the EdTech track in our Master of Education program.

I feel like I'm making excuses for why I haven't been blogging. The reality is that I have not been intentional about creating space for it. I haven't felt inspired to write lately, and even though it gives me a lot of joy, it has felt too much like, well...work.

It's funny: while I was in grad school, I was blogging actively...and I was busy all the time between work and class and homework (and trying to keep up as a husband and father and church member) and yet I kept writing. I think partly it was because I was in the habit of reading and writing ALL THE TIME in grad school, and blogging was writing "just for me," which made it a joyful, life-giving thing. And honestly, I had to be intentional about it, because I had so many other things going on in my life, that if I wanted to keep writing on the blog, I had to carve out 20 minutes here or there to work on a post.

And so I'm thinking now about carving out some intentional time each week just for blogging. If I put it in my calendar, will I be more likely to stick to it? Probably.

I'm a little late for making New Year's resolutions, so we'll just call this an "intention" instead.

So here's my intention for this spring semester: I'm going to intentionally carve out space a couple of afternoons a week for reading and writing, and I'm going to intentionally work on at least one blog post each week.

That's my intention, anyway. We'll see how this goes.

Image from Pixabay. [Public Domain]

You know what? I discovered something I find funny and odd: there's an awful lot of photos of laptops and coffee mugs if you search for "blog" on Pixabay. Seriously...you should check it out for yourself.