The Process of finding connection

Action Research led me to an awareness of myself through my interactions with students. The course of study has been an inward journey. Looking for the mechanics of a job found the underpinnings of personality.

But not knowing what I was looking for led me around until I finally turned around and saw the true source of my problems

I resisted modifying how I ran my classroom at every turn. How I perceived my classrooms was incomplete and how I should to fix my problems didn’t make sense. Even though evidence suggested that the advice I had was good with useful and doable ideas, changes did not come. What I was resisting were perceived changes I sought in myself.

A classroom surrounded with cabinets filled with the life’s collection of rocks and junk of a retired science teacher. Shelves with hundreds of copies of stained mimeograph handouts and boxes of slide strips on identifying rocks or the formation of fossils. Some of the desks are loose; the gas spigots are off and all the sink faucets have been removed. This room was slated to be refurbished last month but the longer it's delayed the longer I won’t have to live out of boxes. It took the community many years to come up with the money but the school is being expanded.

These are suburban eighth graders, mostly civilized and well mannered. The parents are a mix of hard working Polish and Portuguese with no more than one black or Asian student per class. MCAS score sit right on average.

I am a newer teacher, into my second year. I try hard to make science interesting, presenting what needs to be learned as puzzles with tricks to show, share and talk about. I am trying to develop a rapport with my students, but I have many unanswered questions about my job.

The origin of my Research Focus:

Before I started on this journey, I knew a bit about my weaknesses: I have trouble with organizing groups of adolescents and assessing what they are doing; how to engage students without feeling time is being wasted and trouble deciding whether an activity has all the steps needed to be done.

Students should be responsible for their behavior but it is up to me to keep them responsible. My disciplining a student feels like I am excusing them from their behavior. Other problems I had: How do I get them to express what they have learned? How hard can I push them? How do I know when most of them already understand what we are doing but just play along? How do I challenge them? How do I overcome my disorganized methods to keep things on track?

The observations I did have gave me a goal to attack one the problems using a number of situational experiments. These were to test the effects of changing my responses to non-productive student behavior with the goal of improving the student on to off task ratio. Cooperative and constructivist learning got noisy, but not just with learning noise. Off task chatting, unsupervised time spent not working on problems and inattention to experiment monitoring, happened frequently.

After some weeding, I decided to focus on effects of changing my methods with the goal of improving the on to off task ratio. I decided to try modifying my teaching in response to different aspects of the problem. This included modifying my lesson delivery, monitoring of the activity and my interactions with the students during activities. I knew that I had an attention problem that arose whenever students were using multiple laboratory materials, vying for space and attempting to get me to tell them how to do the problem. I came up with a list of possible method changes designed to address the problem. Here is that list minus the discussion and possible side-effects:

A. Using strict guidelines:

B. Separate talkers:

C. Circulate with warnings of consequences for lack of product:

D. Assign Expectations:

E Observe other teachers:

When I found I wasn’t successfully instigating appropriate reforms, I abandoned my tack and headed off in a new direction. However, having not identified the root of a problem, I was not actually doing anything new. I identified that I was struggling with bad habits as I attempt to use a discussion technique in the classroom. In Chapter 4 of Altrichter text, I was struck by bad examples of things I have done. I was guilty of questioning to start a "discussion" and acceptance of a few answers to justify moving on. This was the lesson failure from my M2. There was disappointment at having "done" an activity, to find some students got nothing out of it.

Initial Methods:

My first attempt at documentation involved making observations of my classroom using a tape recorder. This was my data collection plan. Still this limited me to my own perceptions of the students, our interactions, and not to any important perspective of myself. I did uncovered valuable misconceptions I had about the dynamics of my classroom, but these did not go to the heart of my ineffectiveness with the students. The tape player was to compare a change in student behavior in response to mine.

First Results: Observations gleaned from using the tape recorder were these:

1. Students are not as noisy as I had remembered while instructing the class.

2. While I am instructing, most students are quiet, but it is the usually the names of the noisy students not making sounds that I am calling to get involved.

3. My voice is not always audible over the students talking when I am on the other side of the room.

4. Listening to tapes of classes takes up a lot of time.

5. When the students noticed I was taping and asked about it, I explained it was for me to listen to myself. It was then very quiet until the recorder was forgotten. (about 15 seconds).

6. Noise Levels escalated sharply with about five to ten minutes left to class when, I presume, students are also tired. It was this noise that I remembered when judging how well the lesson went.

7. I rarely call the names of most of the students, while the minority that I do call on, I do so in an attempt to replace them as the center of a groups attention.

8. Most of my requests for behavior changes (pencil tapping, tipped chair) are done silently with hand signals or looks.

9. Some students say hardly a word even during labs and when I visit them, they either tell me they are doing fine or only then admit they are lost. These are the ones who don’t participate in anything.

10. I only do two or three "labs" a week, the other days taken up with other types of interaction: subject introduction, demonstrations, worksheets, discussion and assessment. Most students have trouble finishing a lab in one period. A second day is usually needed for writing a report and graph.

11. To increase the time students have for labs, I try to do homework collection, corrected paper pass back etc. while labs are progressing, but this does not work well and I get little response from my written corrections.

12. Students appear to enjoy the lecture/ discussion part of each day but I suspect this is because it requires involves no work or assessment.

13. Work with out deadlines was completed slowly or not completed at all.

With these results I had monitored my teaching and come up with a list of observations that would allow me to adjust my methods. What I didn’t have was a satisfactory explanation about why my labs were noisy or if learning was happening in them.

New methods: Through out this search the readings spoke of a better way. There were methods to search, finding root causes of problems, data collection, responsibilities to share, biases to avoid. I struggled on with this method until realizing that my data was just from my head. I needed a new collection plan to get hard data from the students. Late in the game I switched to a survey to gain access to the secret world of the eighth grader.

Questions on the survey asked about how the students were doing and how they perceived their learning. Without outside assistance, triangulation of information about the students had to come from the students themselves.

The survey allowed me to put down every fear I had and ask if it was justified. The questions that would give surprising answers I could survey again, thus allowing me to focus in on a problem that was real. Initially the survey was shorter but grew as I imagined possible feelings my students could have.

Secondary Findings: The results were fascinating and singled out that, while some problems differed from class to class, there was a clear consistency of responses. The survey is attached with the results of each class listed under each response.

The results were both heartening and depressing. Some students felt all was great. However, some students, for a variety of reasons, were demoralized. My strengths lie in creative dynamics. My weaknesses lie in organization and keeping track of details. I have secretly worried from the start of this endeavor that my inabilities would be found out and prove I was a failure as a teacher. I knew I could engage most of the students, but couldn’t keep track of the individual problems. In reality, I suspect the students are doing fine, as they say, and so am I. Of course, I know I can do better and I have observed that with practice I am able to devote more of my attention to those I loose.

The results of the survey also allowed me to compare classes and students. It allowed that individual comments about boredom could quickly reference to how lost or unchallenged the student was. This is a tool I will mine in the future for additional insight. The totals of over a hundred students were consistent across periods with rarely deviated far from the norm on any given question.

The comment section at the end was not very different from what I read in the first part. Despite a list of over twenty comments per class, these too were consistent. There were four comments that repeated more than ten times total or three times in any class:

1. Talk less. (This is one I had told them I was trying to do)

2. More activities/experiments hands on.

3. Announce the Homework better

4. The teacher is doing well

5. Explain better or explain more

Dozens of other comments not as often mentioned included going outside, work with friends, tell jokes, be interesting, go slower, etc.

The consequence of the survey appeared to be interest only. The students heard when I told them that their responses where aligned with most others in the class and the ones who had expressed differently knew what they had said. When I asked my sister to look the survey over before I administered it, she said only one teacher ever surveyed how she was doing in a class and she appreciated being asked.

Insight: Data from the recordings and survey are valuable insight into my teaching that I will reference as I gain experience. The progression from recordings to survey led me to finally a closer look at myself. From the start I had an idea that my approach was wrong and exercises we did almost opened my eyes. The M11 exercise showed how I knew I was looking backwards but failed to turn me around:

My Starting point speech concentrated on the off task group work problem that plagues my lab work. But this subject is too broad offering too many solutions to too many problems. Key categories words still fit my new ideas such as "fooling around". While I was looking for methods of controlling a situation, I failed to observe a possible cause of the problem.

Tarin wrote good suggestions on how to focus on aspects of the problems I had identified and define them better. This was the assignment that I was struggling with. But she then went on to express for me how she saw my situation, offering support and advice about how in a classroom the teacher has to be the leader and expect respect. Here was my problem with the power and responsibility of my position as teacher. She correctly understood my problem but didn’t realize how it was the problem I needed to work on.

Further on in my M11 I posed a question:

The effect on the students may well maintain order but I fear may cause damage to the relationship. Does lowering of my expectations to a point of my disciplining them causes the whole class to regress to a standard teacher control? I do verbally survey my students a lot, and I could ask them if discipline works. But how do I test this question?

The plan was a modification of my teaching centered on increasing my use of discipline. As it turned out little modification was going to take place anyway on my part. The main problem was not with the students, but with a remarkable recalcitrance of my habitual behavior. Modifying my lesson delivery was not difficult and indeed produced good results, but changing my interactions with the students was difficult. I found myself fighting with myself to respond differently than I always have. It was very difficult for me to change my responses to students or my relationship with them. I knew that something was wrong and that until I had a completely belief in a new method, no method would be the right thing to do.

Adopting new teaching methods require only practice to achieve change, not an internalized change of philosophy. Yet I feared it not doable. Writing further:

"I fear the methods of teaching require too many changes of habit without the experience to implement. I think most teachers work using a basic philosophy and ‘seat of the pants’ (impulsive) reactions to situations".

Tarin also wrote a response to my need to internalize change by suggesting that perhaps with small steps towards change would yield the confidence I needed to continue. She then offered a helpful method to develop a hierarchy of discipline. Allen also sensed the lack of confidence I had and asked if I felt my classes were out of control.

The Metaphor exercise was the turning point for my journey. Here I turned the camera around for the first time and it filmed a surprising bleakness that masqueraded as humor. Allen’s comments about this allowed me to realize how I was feeling, that I was struggling with myself, teaching and how I wished to be as a teacher. I felt tired and alone. Here was my epiphany; here was the source of my problems that could not be found in tape recordings or surveys.

This was why the questions I had tried to focus my metaphorical reflex camera on were unable to get a clear picture. My camera couldn’t focus on my problem because I was pointing it at my students and not on myself. By concentrating on a management problem, I stumbled through a process that was not getting me to the problem I needed to address. I progressed through a search for answers to classroom management problems to find that, in doing so, I was looking away from my problems. I found out that who I believe I am is somehow tied up with my relationship with my students.

In 1999 a friend/ acquaintance committed suicide. Everyone was shocked how this loving, caring father could have left his beautiful children behind. People knew work was stressful and going poorly, most didn’t know his marriage was rocky, but no one knew the depths of his depression. He functioned well, externally. Peter was the director of a school for disturbed and depressed children; he was surrounded by people schooled in treating depression and yet he could not see it in himself. I don’t identify with Peter or feel suicidal, but can understand how difficult it can be to recognize depression in oneself.

Awareness must precede change. For me, awareness needed to proceed looking for change. My process of attempting change didn’t come from deep beliefs of convictions. Change on the surface led to methods without philosophy or conviction. Methods formed for expedience of solving a problem are methods only, lacking the convictions of a concerned teacher. They also may be generating other problems that have no check, no apparatus for determining if the method is fair, appropriate or not actually a bad habit that takes one farther from oneself. They take some away from a satisfying realization of oneself as a teacher.

Implications:

Action Research gave me tools that did eventually decipher a problem I had no perspective on. As I approach my classroom as a social interactive situation, I am trying to interact with the use of discussion and remain a roll model. Part of my problem was that social situations are complex beyond casual analysis or modifications with methods. My mood is not a parameter that I can easily keep track of.

My lessons from this are the need to monitor how I feel, take care of myself and keep myself rested. But here also is an opportunity to assist other teachers who maybe become discouraged, worn out with self-doubt. There are many reasons new teachers quit. I have both a brother and a sister, thoughtful, bright, friendly people, who became certified only to quit after a year sighting the strain of classroom discipline. While I don’t know if feelings of depression effected them, I’m sure their confidence as competent teachers were eroded to the point they felt it wasn't worth pursues as a career.

The problems I encountered may be common in new classroom situations. Perhaps observations of master teachers should be required part of any teachers education. Along with studying Action Research, the sharing of Action Research outcomes with other teachers maybe needs to be formalized into the professional development process.

Recognition of the dynamics of a situation comes first with observations and then recognition of my responsibility for the situation. It isn’t easy to objectively see a situation when in the midst of it. This is my problem also: I must work through my problems of teaching to the point I can verbalize them in order to progress. This also could be a part of Action Research.

It will gratify me if others are spared some of my difficulties. What I need is help with my teaching. What I want is: A person with the insights I have discovered to sit down with me and be a friend. The longer I am alone, the more entrenched my maladaptive habits will become and the more ways I will develop to hide what is wrong from myself. What I need is what I try to give my students: a role model.