Security Breach: Testing and Cell Phones

Summative Assessments are an essential part of education.  Standardized testing is the wave of the future.  Testing is not going away.

Cell phones are another thing not going away.  Most students I teach have smartphones.  In an unofficial survey of my class more than 68% of the students had a smart phone.  Students are tied to their phones for social reasons and parents are adamant about maintaining constant contact with their students (not to mention protecting their students' expensive cell phone).

There is a great deal of turbulence where testing and cell phone use overlap.  In a recent staff meeting one of the APs showed us a screenshot of last year's STAR Results.  Under the heading, in bright red letters reads the following:

A security breach involving social media exposure of 2013 STAR test material has been confirmed at this school site. This school is not eligible for state or federal award recognition during the 2013–14 school year.

Apparently a student took a selfie with the cover of the STAR booklet.  It may seem petty, but under no circumstances is any part of the test allowed to be reproduced; the integrity of the test depends on it.

Now the school is trying to figure out how to prevent this from happening again.  One of the big hurdles will be establishing and enforcing rules that run contrary to school culture.  Teachers seldom have established procedures for preventing students from using cell phones during quizzes and exams.  Most of the time it's a verbal warning: "Don't use your cell phone during the exam."  Students and parents push back when cell phone use is infringed.

The ideas for preventing a "security breach" ranged from a school-wide ban on cell phones to buying a cell phone pouch grid that can be mounted to the wall.  I don't know what the official position of the school will end up being, but the whole topic highlighted the benefit of matching my classroom cell phone policy with that of standardized testing.

Folks get riled up when expectations are tightened unexpectedly.  Setting expectations from the beginning of the school year seems to be the best way to prevent a tornado of angry emails.  Once the standard is established students and parents will feel more at-ease when it comes to standardized testing time.

In Mr. Davis' Science Classroom, cell phones will be welcome tools for research and analysis, but unwelcome for classic quizzes and exams in accordance with standardized test rules.

Can We Have Class Outside Today?

Can we have class outside today?  Yes!  Yes we can!  And, there was much rejoicing!

We began a unit on Ecology and it seemed fitting that we actually go outside.  After all, we're all very much a part of the local environment and getting into the environment seems like a good first step.

During the beginning of class students wrote down as many observations about the local environment as they could.  Before going out we had a discussion about some of the things that make up environments.  Then, students were asked to be silent, observe, and write things down.

Students responded well.  They were very funny too.  One student 4th period wrote down "Mr. Davis," much to the enjoyment of his buddies.  It was a good jumping-off point to discuss human impact on the local environment; one of the major parts of our study of ecology is recognizing that we all have an impact on the environment.

When I discussed my plan with my wife, she offered some suggestions:

1. One, the time outside needs to be finite.  Too long and the students will get bored.
2. The students need to have a goal to work towards.  I asked each student to come up with at least 20 observations in the 10 minutes we were outside.
3. The students need to be spread out from one another; too close and they chat.

The 10 minutes flew by!  The students came up with great observations that we were able to incorporate into the following lecture and discussion.  This is a lesson plan I'll definitely use in the future.

Here's a shot of the local environment from the classroom door.

Fights: Several Thoughts

Yesterday, between sixth and seventh period, I broke up a pretty brutal fight.  During the 20 seconds or so for the whole situation to play out, I noticed three groups of people: the fighters, the bystanders, and the entertained.

There is all kinds of gossip going around about the causes of the fight.  The common denominator seems to be a scorned lover; I don't know who or what to believe, so I'll just leave that one alone.  Either way, I was sad to know that the students felt the need to punch it out, make threats, and cause all sorts of havoc for purposes that will seem petty to them in a year or two.

I suppose that as long as we view the world differently, there will be conflict.  Heated conflict, even.  Conflict so blinding that you make rash decisions to assault another person.

During the brawl, there was a great deal of ooh-ing and ah-ing as punches were thrown.  There was even fighting advice amid laughter as these two beat on each other.  Plus, there's a video of the brawl circulating the campus.  Encouraging violence between two people is completely inexcusable, and on a larger scale, that shows a greater evil than the fighters themselves.

The bystanders had mixed reactions; some simply watched and some responded quickly by informing teachers.  I am aware of the Bystander Effect; it's hard to know how to react in a situation in which you are completely unprepared.

I hope the fighters learn their lessons as they're under some pretty stiff suspension rules.  The bystanders are still talking among themselves.  The entertained...yeah, I don't know.  It seems like a good opportunity for all of us to push against the seemingly growing desire to be entertained at almost any cost.

On Cell Phones and Making Excuses

After yesterday's quiz, a student was simply sitting at his desk and staring out the window.  I asked him if he had a book to read.  Many of the students are studying The Odyssey in honors English, so I thought he might better use the time.

Mr. Davis: "Do you have a book to read?"
Student: "I forgot my book at home."
Mr. Davis: "Hmm... Got your cell phone?"
Student: "Um, yeah..."
Mr. Davis: "Good. Download one. You're reading The Odyssey in English right?"
Student: "Yeah..."
Mr. Davis: "It's free online. Google it."

A few minutes later he was reading his assigned reading for his English class.

Boy howdy, I love the age we live in.  There's a plethora of knowledge and art that can be quickly found using a device we carry in our pockets!

Teaching First: The Cheat Sheet

We had a quiz yesterday, and I caught a student cheating.

I normally walk around the room during an exam with two intentions.  First, to make sure the students aren't cheating, and second, to make sure students can ask clarifying questions.

As I went over to address a raised hand, I noticed a student, less than 5 feet away from me, pull something out from under the desk.  After addressing the question, I looked again; the student was looking at a cheat-sheet.

After taking the strip of paper, I handed it to my master teacher and explained what I saw.  So, we followed the classroom policy of giving the student a "0" on the quiz, and the school policy of calling the parent and informing an administrative counselor.

I was sad for the student, who just sat there for the remainder of the quiz.  The 0 would kill the student's 96% in the class, which will almost be impossible to recover from before the end of the quarter.  On the other hand, it wasn't an exam, and the student should be able to recover before the end of the semester.  Honors and AP students are under a lot of pressure from a variety of sources; sadly, cheating is a much larger problem in higher classes than the mainstream classes.

Hopefully, the student will learn his lesson.

Hardy-Weinberg - Math Meets Biology

I heard a science teacher say that all biologists think they're chemists, all chemists think they're mathematicians, and all mathematicians think they're God.  Well, today in Honors Biology, we skipped over the chemists and went straight for math.  Though, after a day of wrestling with their first exposure to solving Hardy-Weinberg equations, only a few students felt like deity.

Here's a shot of the whiteboard.

I also had my first observation by my college supervisor.  He came 4th period, so I had a chance to practice beforehand.  Overall, the observation went well.  There were a few items related to small classroom management strategies that I need to improve.  The timing of handing out worksheets was one of the issues mentioned.  I began the lesson and forgot to hand out the papers during a down period when students were solving a bit of math.  Overall it didn't hurt the entire lesson, but it did create an awkward lag in the lesson as I hurriedly passed out papers.  His second suggestion was that I not turn my back to the class when I write on the board.  This one may take a while to fix; I already have trouble writing on a whiteboard while facing the board directly.  Changing my stance may degrade my whiteboard-manship.  But, it'll be important to learn this skill so I'll work on it.

Tomorrow we'll finish up the Hardy-Weinberg equations and watch a short clip of genetic drift in action.

Handing Back Papers: A Strategy

Before I ever stepped foot into a classroom, I knew that strategy was key and that I'd need to think through everything.  Little did I know how much this "everything" would entail.  Today I learned that, yes, I even needed a strategy for handing back assignments.

I was eager to hand my first batch of graded lab reports back to the students, and I was interested to see how they would react.  As is the custom of the class, I handed the papers back at the beginning of the period.  This may not be the best method.  There was a sense of frustration in the class and we hadn't even started class yet.  Most of the students did well; the bell curve was toward the higher B, low A range.  But, not all of the students performed as they expected.

The next time we have papers to hand back, I think I will wait until the end of class.  Even if the students did well and their grades met their expectation, there's an element of distraction where the students are eager to review and compare results.

I may have found an even better way.  Despite being graded and recorded, the assignment still has instructional value.

Even though I added comments to their papers, there may be an even greater benefit to explaining answers in class once the papers are handed back.

There is a lot of instruction that happens before and during the lab, but simply because the papers are turned in and the students can't update their answers doesn't mean that the assignment has no further instructional value.  Sometimes that "Aha!" moment comes after a failure; it is often here that the student is ready to learn.

For next time, here's the plan:

• Low-Point Assignments - Hand back at the end of the period and be available for questions.
• Mid- to High-Point Assignment - Make the time in my next lesson plan to spend a few minutes reviewing questions, especially the ones that were commonly missed.

An Unexpected Advantage of an Alphabetical Seating Chart

Our seating chart is mostly alphabetical.  A's in the back, Z's in the front.  When students hand in homework, they're mostly in alphabetical order making recording grades a lot easier.

So, I'm still a fan of an alphabetic seating arrangement and then moving students as needed.

Week 1 Review

Here's a shot-gun post about my thoughts over the past week of Student Teaching.

1. There's a great opportunity to leverage technology.  This one sounds trite and overblown, but the specific win I see is this: Teachers can, and should, post homework, worksheets, notes, lectures, rubrics, and almost anything else to a place where students can access it online.  I see the biggest opportunity with students who need to make up homework.  This type of system also benefits a classroom's transparency. I believe that if the content is posted behind a student login there won't be issues with copyright.
2. Students need to be taught how to take notes.  During the PowerPoint notes, the students wrote every word on every slide.  Not knowing what to write down takes up a lot of class time; quick scribes are left idle while slower scribes take their time.  Teaching note-taking must be added to my literacy planning in the future.
3. Pick Battles. Between activities, I noticed students checking their cell phones.  I don't mind it.  It doesn't distract from anything during class, and cell phones will eventually have a prominent place in education.  For the time being, I'll follow the lead of my master teacher, but in the future I don't think I'll make it an issue.  If handled strategically, the students can begin to use their phones as a tool for in-class learning (spelling, fact checking, quick research, etc.) and should be held to that standard. There are other issues that I have noticed teachers come down hard on that don't seem to be that important.
4. Modeling is Vital - It took about 10 minutes to model how we wanted a particular assignment done.  The students were able to complete the assignment.  Only one student asked "What do you want us to do again?"  10 minutes saved answering questions unrelated to content.
5. Prep Period is Gold - Thou shalt not squander thy prep period.

That's only five things, but there are more I'll write up in more detail later.  I'm having fun, I'm teaching the standards (and then some), and students are making connections.  I am looking forward to getting paid to do this!

Survival of the Sittest

If you ever want to instigate a fight among a flock of teachers, simply ask their thoughts about seating charts.

Should we let the students pick their own seats?  Should we sit them alphabetically?  When should we change the seating chart?  Should we sit them boy/girl?  Oh, the controversy!

Based on a rather unscientific method and unsound statistics, I have stumbled across a solution:

1. At the beginning, sit students alphabetically.  Done!
2. Move talkative students as needed.
3. Move students at their request, if you can.

My master teacher and I were discussing the seating chart.  We have found that there are several knots of students that may benefit from a seat rearrangement.  This led us to a bigger question of moving all of the students.  I asked whether the students even wanted to move.  Neither of us had ever considered this at all.  So, in each class, we put it to a vote.  

The overwhelming majority of students wanted to keep their seats.  Only two or three in each class said they wanted to change.  I was surprised at this response, but when I thought about my own preferences, it made sense.

So, we saved a great deal of time and headache by moving only a few students around.  The students are happy, we're happy, and classroom homeostasis was achieved.  

Small Rudders Turn Big Ships

My master teacher was out again today and will probably be out tomorrow, too.  As I muddle through, I am having a great time and learning a lot.  Today, I learned a valuable lesson about being strategic with everything I say.

Continuing from our discussion on the historical context of Charles Darwin, we jumped into more detail about the famous 5 year voyage on the HMS Beagle and the observations he made on that trip.  After the lecture, we watched the first part of an old VHS video titled The Evidence for Evolution.  The plan was to watch half of the film today today and the other half tomorrow.  To help students pay attention and get value from the video, my master teacher developed a 30 question fill-in-the-blank worksheet to be filled out during the video.

First period was the test run.  We got through question 15 of the worksheet, which ended up being a good place to stop.  So, 15 questions became the benchmark.  Second period confirmed that we could do the lecture and get through question 15 of the worksheet.  All was well.

Third period is where I made my mistake.  In preparing the students for the video, I added that we'd probably get through question 15 on the worksheet and then watch the remainder during tomorrow's class. Well, after the students get the answer for question 15, they began to pack up and talk to one another.  There was still about 2-3 minutes of film before the stopping point!  These three minutes had good explanations and helpful graphics that helped explain the content!  Despite not having a blank to fill in, the content was still valuable.

When I noticed the students packing up, these thoughts ran through my head in about 2 seconds:

1. I shouldn't have told them that we'd only get through question 15.
2. I most definitely will -not- do that next period.
3. It's not on the worksheet and the information in the video won't be on a quiz or test; it's more for enrichment.
4. I can force them to sit down and watch it, but that would only build resentment of being forced to do something with little value.  

I don't know if I made the right choice, but I let it go.  The students continued to pack up and the bell rang soon afterwards.  We got through the lesson and I think they're understanding and comprehending the content.  In my questions I have been able to ask some higher level questions.  I don't think the situation will hurt the students' comprehension.

So, today's lesson: Be strategic in -all- communications.  Even little statements you think are helpful at the time can come back to bite you in the tail later if you're not careful.

PS:  

On the topic of questioning, I was rather proud of myself.  I asked a simple question.  "What is an example of an adaptation?"  Then I waited.  The wait seemed like it would go on forever.  This class, in particular, is a quiet class so I didn't know what to expect.  When I thought the students would stare back at me forever, one girl piped up with an example.  Then, another student piped up with another example of an adaptation.  Increasing wait time works!