No One Should Feel Alone

I'm a twenty-four year old, straight, white, male teacher. I was raised in a middle class family who lived in a small, rural suburban town with one traffic light that was almost always green. I have a twin sister who I basically always got along with other than typical sibling things, and two loving parents who aren't divorced. Growing up, people joked about making my family's life into a sitcom. I could go on about my life during college and after college, but I want to stay focused on when I was younger.

I write this because I have no experience with my parents getting divorced, or drug addiction within my family, coming out of the closet, or suicidal thoughts. My life has been, for lack of better words, utterly plain and free of emotionally trying events (well, except for one thing I won't mention). Things have always seemed to work out for me in basically every area of my life, and if they haven't worked out the way they were "expected" to work out, they ended up working out better for me in the long run.

So, how the heck can I help a student who is going through something completely different than what I went through growing up? The student who takes care of their younger siblings because mom or dad is working all the time, or because their parents are suffering from addiction...the closeted gay teenager who is trying to find a balance between fitting into the socially accepted mold of heterosexuality while staying true to themselves...the young girl trying to measure up to the expectations of her parents that she act just like her sister...a student who has lost a parent or sibling...

This is a question I often wrestle with. But ultimately, when students approach me to talk, they don't care about my past or what I have or have not been through. They simply want someone to listen with a set of ears and with an open heart. Providing those two things is the first step. I am by no means an expert or a counselor, and refer students appropriately as needed to other resources. While I've never had to deal with anything that is threatening, I think every issue a teenager wants to talk about is of the utmost importance and should be treated as such.

Recently the media has focused on the suicides of gay teenagers over the last week or so. The suicide of Tyler Clementi has brought at least four other suicides, all of gay young people in the last three weeks, to the attention of the major news media. A few years ago, there was a media blitz about shark attacks, even when statistically, the number of attacks was about the same (or less, if I recall) as usually reported. Columbine, 9/11, the Gloucester "Pregnancy Pact"...major events that brought something specific into our consciousness. In this situation, the event happens to be bullying of gay teenagers. I don't know the statistics, but if this event hadn't captured the event of the national media, there will still be teenagers struggling with thoughts of suicide every single day across the country.

It shouldn't take events like this to make us, as a nation, to address issues that affect thousands of people every single day. As a health teacher, I am all about prevention and not reaction. Bullying is already a hot topic in Massachusetts, and after the events of the last few weeks I'm sure there will be a focus on helping teenagers in need. Hopefully, this is not short lived. While I am happy that issues are being addressed, I'm still perplexed that it takes something major to happen for a dialogue to begin.

This week, I'm going to focus on identifying resources teenagers can use to get help with any sort of problem they might be dealing with. As educators, it is our responsibility to take care of our students. Many students come to us because they don't feel comfortable going to anyone else.

The posts that you will see published this week have been written on Sunday, and will be published automatically as the week progresses. Please forward any information as you see appropriate, and pass it along to your students. I may only get approximately fifty views a week, but if anyone of those fifty people can spread along information that can help someone else then I will have considered these posts successful.

Carry on, friends. No one needs to feel alone.

Back in The Swing of Things...

The school year is finally in full swing and I'm beginning to adapt to our new schedule with relative ease. I'm very excited for this school year and the changes I'm hoping to bring to how I've taught in the past. My graduate course at Boston University has also started and it might be the single most beneficial course I could take up to this point in my young career. We're going to be focusing a lot on skills based health education, and it appears that we'll be looking at things from the administrative perspective a lot; this is something I'm really looking forward to. Because I am already licensed and teaching (as is one other person in the class) my coursework will be slightly different, but not by much. It's going to be exciting to look at what we can do to improve health education and make sure that we are all advocates for our profession.

I have many posts in draft mode with what I'm doing in my classroom for the first weeks of school. Once assignments get turned in and as we go through units, there will be more posts geared towards activities and ideas other health teachers can use in their classroom. There will probably be a lot of commentary by me throughout the first semester as I dig into skills based health education as well. Stay tuned!

Thinking About Next Year

With my second year of teaching now over, I've made a list of things I want to work on before the start of next school year. Teaching is an ever evolving process, with no lesson ever going exactly the same way as before. I have the luxury of teaching each unit twice (for seventh and eighth grade) and three times (during sixth grade) during the school year due to our trimester schedule. So, I essentially have a "first day of school" multiple times during the school year, a luxury not afforded to my colleagues teaching year-long courses.

1. Adjust to the new rotating schedule. My school is switching to a rotating schedule next year, which will increase the amount of time in each class, but will drop a period everyday. This is something that I'm looking forward to but that will initially cause a substantial amount of confusion. For the first two trimesters, I see classes every other day; during trimester three I see them every day. I'm going to have to be on the ball so I can know which classes I have on what days in advance. My plan book is probably going to be color coded next year!
2. Make my classroom operate more smoothly. By this, I mean minimize interruptions to learning time. Generally, my students know the routine: they walk in, read the Smartboard and complete an activator while I silently take attendance. But, there are other things I'd like to work on. I have a few ideas floating around in my head that I plan to try out next year. I'm also going to consult some resources online and in some books I have for other ideas that could be useful.
3. Activators & Summarizers. If these are to be used correctly, these could take quite some time. Currently, I use activators on a regular basis, but not summarizers. I'm hoping to utilize the extra ten minutes in each class afforded by the new schedule to really focus on how I begin and end my classes. Ideally, I also have a full, class-length activator for each unit as well. This might be more time consuming initially, but could save time in future classes do to not repeating information.
4. Involvement in Professional Organizations. I will hopefully be presenting with a classmate of mine from Springfield at the MAHPERD conference in November, if our presentation is accepted. I'd like to try to take a more active role in MAHPERD and eventually AAHPERD. I have no intention of serving on any committees or anything at this point in my life, but simply becoming more of an advocate through means offered by both organizations is something I'd like to take on.
5. Virtual Classroom? I'm trying to work my way through Moodle and different wiki sites in order to add an online component to my classes. I would post handouts, homework, and additional resources for my students here, and maybe put up discussion questions. I've also considered Google Sites, but Moodle is more along the lines of what I'm looking for.

This list is not set in stone and I'm not setting any due dates for accomplishing what's on this list. As I mentioned earlier, teaching is about evolving, and this list itself will evolve. As I work on the different items on this list, I'll post about what I'm learning and how I'm planning on using that in my classroom. I am still working on a post about condoms in Provincetown, but it's summer, so...check back soon!

Technicolor Feedback

My school is experiencing a paper shortage. We ran out of paper last year with a few weeks left, which wasn't that big of a deal. However, this year we ran our pretty early, and the paper has been pretty low around here, despite ordering more. I'm waiting for some black market type activity to pop up... :)

This has affected how I teach and made me think about the role of paper in a classroom. Obviously, in a perfect world, everything would be electronic. We're not there (yet), so we have to adapt. When I assign projects, I pass out rubrics to each student so they can see what they're be graded on. I state the objectives and assign point values based on how well the students accomplished those objectives. Standard operating procedure for any teacher.

Well, one paper per student quickly adds up over the course of three grade levels, three trimesters, and many projects. I do double side the papers (the assignment sheet is usually on the back), but now I have stopped doing that.

I'm trying something new.

Instead, whenever a project is assigned, I'm going to have the rubric zoomed in on my Smartboard. I also will have three or four copies hanging up around the room for the students to view. These rubrics are comprehensive in nature and look like your typical rubric: set up in chart form, differing point values explained, etc. I'm not going to give each student a copy of the full rubric: we will go over it in class, and it is then their responsibility to know the rubric and consult the copies hanging up around the room if they have questions. I'll probably upload a copy to the homework calendar, too.

Now, I'm going to try something called technicolor feedback. I learned about this from the wonderful teacher who taught the course, The Skillful Teacher for my district (FYI, if you get to take this course...take it!). We had completed a paper assignment, and as we got the assignments back we noticed they were very colorful. Our teacher had used colored highlighters to highlight parts of our paper based on how well we accomplished the objectives. She gave us a reference sheet so we could decode the meanings of the colors and determine what our strengths and weaknesses were for the assignment.

The order of the color scheme could be whatever, from low to high: blue, green, orange, yellow, pink. Each color would represent how well a student completed each objective.

For example, here's how I could use it in my 8th grade health class; these objectives are currently being tweaked for a project relating to melanoma/sun exposure (which I plan to post about this week). The objectives could be:

• Identify at least seven facts about sun exposure, tanning, and/or melanoma
• Describe at least three ways a student can protect themselves from the sun
• Create an action plan utilizing the three ways described above

Or, whatever the objectives are for the project. I'd print them as written on a piece of paper (leaving space for teacher comments!), and it's incredible how much paper you save. As I'm grading the project, I'll mark each objective with the appropriate color highlighter. When the students get their grades back, they'll know how they performed for each objective/part of the rubric. The students can look at the rubric and color keys around the room, and I'll have the color code on the Smartboard as I hand back their grades, too. The rubric takes up far less paper space (I'm working to get four on one page), and it's visual. Initially, the students might be confused, but by being consistent with coloring, they can eventually catch on; e.g. yellow always being the highest score possible. Then, they can see what they did or didn't do well.

This requires multiple highlighters. I bought a box of highlighters (24 total; 12 yellow, 6 pink, and 2 each of blue, green, and orange) at Costco for less than ten dollars, even though I don't need 24! I could have the students do a peer-evaluation or self-assessment using the same method, too. Of course, a self-reflection after the assignment on what they can improve in is always a good idea!

I'll post back once I've used this a few times between now and the end of the school year, explaining how things went. As always, please feel free to e-mail me with any questions, comments, or concerns.

Moving Forward

I was having a discussion with a colleague of mine about teaching, and how in an ideal world we would be able to teach everything until the students master whatever objectives we're trying to teach. Then, we would move on. Everything would be differentiated and specific to each child's unique learning abilities. Ah, in a perfect world!

But, why can't we make this happen? We can, of course. The initial ground work is substantial, but after that it can be very worthwhile. My current goal for the summer is to figure out how to provide such an experience for my students. Some of my students are capable of going so much deeper into topics and aren't able to because of different limitations, mostly due to time and other parts of the curriculum to cover. Another challenge for me is to not step on the toes of the high school teachers, whose curriculum does go into more detail, expanding upon the knowledge students gain in middle school. I also don't want to take away from the objectives of our curriculum.

As I was going over some student work this week, a thought occurred to me. The assignment was a list of divergent questions relating to sexual harassment. These types of questions have no specific answer; they're open ended. Instead of trying to find the answer that may be deemed correct, the students are asked to think critically about the content. I read about these types of questions specifically for health topics in the American Journal of Health Education, and adapted them for use during our sexual harassment unit in eighth grade. I viewed it as an opportunity to hopefully allow students to think about sexual harassment in different ways, as well as to think on a higher level.

A lot of the answers were great! However, some of the students didn't quite make the connections I wanted them to. Others had some great points, but I wanted clarification on their answers. When I was writing comments (a whole other post in itself...comments, their effectiveness, and if they influence student involvement/accountability) I thought, "I wish this was an ongoing conversation between the students and myself." Ideally, I would hand the papers back and have the students answer my questions. I would merely be guiding them. Then I would make comments, and the process would repeat itself. I'm not sure why I don't do this, to be honest. It makes perfect sense.

If a class is really getting into a unit (or even a lesson, or series of lessons within that unit), then why can't I spend more time on it? I'm lucky enough that my middle school has three years of health education classes, and we do cover a lot. But, I still wish I could take more time to cover the topics when the kids really show passion about what we're doing, instead of moving on because I have to cover x,y, and z. I don't want to come off like I'm complaining (I'm just stating facts), but with education today there's so much to cover.

In times like these I find myself craving the opportunity to be teaching language arts, or freshman writing lab. Then, I would be able to work with students as they write and revise, refocusing their efforts and honing their words, and I'd be able to take part in this continuous dialogue of learning.

So, I'm going to try this with my assignments. I'm not really sure how it will work out, or how I will do it with three different grade levels. Because it's currently the third trimester, I see kids every day and only have 125ish students. For trimesters one and two, when I see them every-other-day, I'll have about 220 students. This could prove to be very time consuming!

There is a way to get it done. I just need to find out how I can to fit my teaching situation. In my view, it's using Google Docs, or Moodle, or something to do with technology. I think I've found something to do this summer after I get home from working the summer recreation program.

I know students get a solid health class experience in my classroom, and the other health classroom in my building. To me, there's still a lot to do, but I'm on my way.