Category: Uncategorized

By Meghan Belnap

Whether you are a teacher, a parent, or a tutor, it is difficult to watch a student struggle to grasp the same concepts as other children. Each child learns differently depending on his or her personality. Reaching these kids means developing new tactics for learning. Here are four ways parents and educators can address learning complications. 

Use hands-on projects to supplement learning

Some children need to interact physically with new concepts. Taking time to work on a science project that teaches gravity, or using real-world objects during math lessons can help. History maps, graphs, videos, and other items can help these students connect the terminology in the brain. 

Provide a quiet space to learn where there are fewer distractions

Some children just need a quieter space to work. Providing a desk or table away from the main area can be helpful. The key is to make sure these students do not feel alienated from the rest of the class. Giving the child a time limit or allowing a few students to take part in the side activity may help. 

Suggest tutoring sessions for one-on-one activities

Many children need specific guidance to overcome learning problems. Regular visits with a tutor can give a child a platform to ask questions. Some children are shy in front of others, and a smaller group setting can help. Tutors can determine the type of learning personality for each child and develop a plan to give these children the best chance for success. High performance tutoring determines the child’s strengths and weaknesses allowing them to learn at their pace. 

Offer recap homework

Sometimes, all a child needs to grasp a difficult concept is a little reiteration. Giving homework that goes over the primary lessons for the day can help hard lessons stick. Children need regular exposure to the same lessons to help them learn them for life. For example, a difficult math concept like factoring can take more than one day or lesson to grasp. For many students, a week-long course is necessary to get all the fine points of this lesson down pat. Giving homework that covers the major concepts each day is important for memory retention. 

Helping your students do better in class takes a little extra work. The effort is usually well-rewarded with better grades, a more positive attitude, and improved performance in class. Teachers can also point out other ways to help students get involved in the class.

Education has always been a controversial topic. Parents want the best for their children and teachers try their best at the same time. A problem arises when kids don’t accomplish what their parents expect of them.

Their struggle leads parents to misunderstand what’s happening and approaching the problem from the wrong direction. Instead of working things out as a family, they sometimes blame the teacher.

Even when they have a chance to converse normally, they ask uncomfortable questions. Amongst them is an accusation that teachers don’t “challenge” their child. This elephant in the room causes rifts in parent-teacher relationships.

The parents’ perspective

When they raise their children, parents get to know them and learn their habits perfectly. However, this is in a limited environment, without too much proof of the child’s character. The moment school starts, parents expect more from their kids, but from the education system as well.

Expectations are the wrong way to look at their child’s intellectual growth. Instead of bringing joy and success, parents tend to get mad or disappointed when their expectations aren’t met.

Jeremiah Matters, a pedagogy and psychology specialist at CareersBooster, says, “Parents go through a lot of pressure because they want the absolute best for their child. They try so hard that they sometimes end up venting their frustrations the wrong way. Unfortunately, teachers are the ones who suffer because of their children’s shortcomings. The most uncomfortable thing they do is question the work ethic of teachers.”

During parent-teacher conferences, some parents want to know if the teacher is doing everything he or she can to educate their child. All they think about is results, instead of looking at the whole picture.

The parents think the problem is because the teacher doesn’t challenge their child enough. Even posing this question is insulting. As a teacher, I will give you an analysis of the educator’s perspective.

Unnecessary questions

We teachers take our job very seriously and work on even the most basic things. Amongst these facets is the best possible teaching method – posing a challenge to students. A class is structured precisely this way. I teach math to high school students, and I follow one of the most efficient teaching methods. Here’s how it goes:

• I explain the lesson and everything connected to it.
• In between different explanations, I pose questions to cause students to become more curious.
• As they become more curious, they become more involved as I explain the rest of the lesson.
• Once the lesson is done, I explain problems.
• Simple problems give children confidence.
• After we’re done with simple problems, I give them the opportunity to solve the harder ones.
• As they solve the harder ones, I ask them additional questions and challenge them to give their best.

Education in itself is a challenge. We give our students the tools to solve seemingly difficult tasks. When they feel challenged, they are motivated to give their best and succeed.

In the classroom, we only want the very best for them. So yes, your child is being challenged, and not a single lesson is an exception to this way of approaching students. What’s the problem, then?

Where the problem appears

Some might not realize, but we further deepen the challenging part of our classes. Every day, I do all the following things to help your child become better:

• Give them a challenging task and allow them to engage
• Encourage them to solve the problem by establishing a healthy and competitive environment
• Give them the opportunity to think deeply about the crux of the problem
• Offer the students an opportunity to teach each other through group assignments and working in pairs
• Stimulate their love for the topic

Not only do I teach your child everything they need to have an A+ in math, but also everything they need in life. A problem appears when the child doesn’t have good enough marks or if he isn’t motivated.

At this precise time, you should talk to your child before you talk to me. No matter how much I challenge my students, there will still be factors I cannot influence. Through talks with your child, you can learn so much.

Understand your child

Childhood is the most difficult period in everyone’s life. In a little more than one decade, children have to learn so much, about a variety of topics. Even if your child is incredibly intelligent, he can still feel fatigue.

Sit down with them and talk. Don’t be afraid to come over and have a talk with me together. My job isn’t done after the bell rings. Your child is a person, and I want them to grow into the best person they can be.

As a teacher, I encourage all of my students to tell me if I’m making a mistake or if I can do something better. However, you cannot say I am not challenging them enough. That is the basis of my entire profession, and I dedicate every moment of my work to bringing out the best of my students.

Parents and teachers aren’t enemies. We have to work together, and I am always available for cooperation.

Your child may not like math, and that’s okay. Encourage him to speak to me, but please don’t think he or she is not challenged enough. Instead, let us work as a team to make them the best person possible.

Concluding thoughts

A child is going through a turbulent period in their life, and we’re here to help them. Talking resolves all problems, and I’m sure we can come to a solution. Teachers are human too, and we would love if you stopped thinking we’re not challenging your child. Every day, we give our best to provide challenges for the entire class, and we’re never going to give up. Instead of accusing us, talk to us and allow us to get to know your child. Let’s build a relationship.

I’ll be giving my third-graders the state test in another week, which means I had to read this year’s testing manual and something called an “Assessment Integrity Guide.” That’s the one that explains how vital it is that the contents of the tests are kept secret. It’s 44 pages of rules, justifications, warnings, and procedures, all with the aim of helping to “establish, develop, and implement a state assessment system that fairly, accurately, and with validity measures Michigan’s content standards.”

Which, as someone who’s given the test many times and knows the reality, is kind of funny, but I’ll get to that later.

Because states want to ensure the validity of the results (or at least, that’s what they claim), they go to great lengths to keep test items from escaping the classroom walls. Ideally, the items are known only to those who designed them and the students who are subjected to them.

That’s a problem.

Right now, the Texas legislature is considering a flurry of legislation introduced in the wake of a Texas Monthly article that reported on a study that found wild inconsistencies in readability levels on STAAR tests, with some passages at least one grade level higher than the grade they were meant to assess. The report echoes findings done by the same researchers in 2012. It’s led to a backlash against the test and questions about its validity, with defenders claiming there’s more to reading than Lexile levels and detractors pointing to the tests’ use in high-stakes decisions such as teacher evaluations and student retention.

There was an easy way to prevent the controversy: release the entire test to the public every year once testing had been completed. Let parents, education officials, and legislators see exactly what we’re asking students to know and be able to do. You can bet it would not have taken seven years to come to a head had the tests been available all along. As it stands in Texas right now, the debate is centered around an analysis done by a couple of researchers rather than the contents of the actual tests. Those remain a secret.

So why don’t states simply release the tests each year? Why not get everything out in the open?

According to the Michigan Assessment Integrity Guide,

“The primary goal of assessment security is to protect the integrity of the assessment and to assure that results are accurate and meaningful. To ensure that trends in achievement results can be calculated across years in order to provide longitudinal data, a certain number of test questions must be repeated from year to year. If any of these questions are made public, the validity of the test may be compromised.”

Color me skeptical.

First, let’s use simple language: States don’t want items out in the public because students, parents, and teachers could cheat, which would artificially inflate test scores. False positives, they might be called.

But states seem far less concerned about false negatives. There are few directives in the Assessment Integrity Guide regarding what must be done if a student decides to distract his entire class during testing (he’s supposed to be redirected and then removed, but there are no consequences for administrators who don’t do so).

There is nothing built into the testing system to prevent students from blazing through the tests as fast as they want by just clicking stuff. If a student’s father died the week before testing, she will not receive an exemption from that year’s test because the state is concerned about the integrity of the results. Technology issues are embarrassing, but no state has ever invalidated its results over them, even when they’re widespread. You can be sure their response would be different if those irregularities resulted in potentially higher scores instead of lower ones.

It’s hard to take validity claims seriously when states seem far more concerned with artificially inflated scores but not at all worried about artificially deflated ones. 

Second, the claim that test items can’t be released so longitudinal data can be compared is specious. If you want the most valid longitudinal data, you’d use the exact same test every year, but states don’t do that because they’re afraid of cheating. Also, state tests change with the political winds; in my state, the M-STEP replaced the MEAP and now the M-STEP is on its last legs. There’s also the issue of changing cut scores, which makes it challenging to accurately compare year-to-year data.

If you’re going to keep tests secret, it’s nice to have what seems like a legitimate reason to keep people in the dark, and test validity fits that bill. But since that reason is less than convincing, it’s possible there are other reasons states want the tests shielded from public view. Here are three possibilities.

Money

It costs money to create tests, so one way to spend less is to reuse reading passages and test items. Once items are released, they can’t be used again, so one reason to keep them a secret is to save time and money, something Michigan at least admits (in one sentence) in their lengthy Integrity Assessment Guide (page 5).

But is that a good enough reason? Given how much the results impact students, teachers, schools, and the public’s perception of the education system, it seems legislators should be eager to commit the money necessary to develop a high-quality test each year, while also promoting transparency with the aim of assuring the public that the tests are what they’re purported to be (a valid measure of student learning). The only way to do both is to release the tests in their entirety and create new ones each year.

When states claim they have to keep the tests secret because of validity, what they’re really saying is that they’re keeping the tests secret because they’re cheap.

Or maybe it’s because they’re afraid of what the public will think of their tests.

To Perpetuate the Failure Narrative

Every year around test time, someone calls for legislators to take the test. And they should. So should every parent. If states are going to require schools to rate teachers, and if they’re going to release “report cards” for schools, all with the idea that parents should be informed about their child’s education, then why shouldn’t they also release the tests so that parents can see the tool used to determine the other ratings?

Perhaps it’s because states fear that adults might look at the tests and wonder, “What the hell?”

And if they question the tests, then they might question the results of the tests. If they question the results, then they may start to question the rankings of schools and the ratings of teachers that are based on those results. They might even be skeptical about the whole “American education sucks” thing. And if they question that, well… there are a lot of people who have a lot of power and make a lot of money off the “American education sucks” thing.

In fact, we know this is exactly what happens when adults take the tests, or at least the test items that states do release. From just one of many articles written on the subject:

“The first argument arose over a question about how the first paragraph of the reading selection affected “the plot.” The directions said to choose two answers from six choices. We all agreed on one, but three panelists selected three different choices as the second answer.

All were surprised when others didn’t pick the same response, so they advocated for their answers – attempting to sway consensus to their side. A similar scenario played out in two questions that asked test takers to identify the “best” supporting evidence for a conclusion.

In one case only four choices were given, and we picked three different answers. Then we explained and argued and maybe even raised our voices – it got animated a couple of times – and no one changed answers, though we could see the legitimacy of each other’s reasoning.”

For now, this happens in small pockets with people who have a vested interest in how the state uses the results. Were entire tests released to the public en masse, you’d soon have Facebook challenges called “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grade Texan?” that would result in widespread ridicule of the exams. 

If these tests could be googled, or if they showed up on your timeline, there is a real risk that the failure narrative would fall apart. Every time a journalist lazily wrote that “45% of third-graders can’t read,” she’d be met by an avalanche of online editors who would correctly point out that not reaching an arbitrary cut score on a test designed to separate students into four bands of performance is not the same as saying someone can’t read, especially when the things they’re being asked to read are on esoteric topics or written at an inappropriately high grade level.

You’d have English teachers with Master’s degrees explaining how many questions they missed, how the test determined they were “partially proficient”, and how the tests we’re using to determine students’ language skills don’t themselves use proper grammar.

You’d have mathematicians pointing out mistakes on math tests.

You’d have successful people who do poorly realizing that maybe the tests aren’t predictive of life outcomes.

If the general public could actually see the exams, they might realize that the reading tests aren’t actually testing whether students can read at all. Even assuming the tests are on grade-level and the questions are age- appropriate and not deliberately confusing, the tests actually assess whether or not students: 

1. Care enough to carefully read the texts and try their best to answer the questions.
2. Know enough about test-taking to successfully navigate the many twists, turns, and traps test makers lay for them.
3. Have the stamina to try just as hard at the end of the test as at the beginning.
4. Have background knowledge on the topic they’re reading about.
5. Can answer complicated questions about what they’ve read.
6. Whether they’ve had the opportunity to learn the skills being tested, since tests are usually taken before the conclusion of the school year and students may have missed instruction due to attendance.
7. Can focus in a potentially less-than-ideal testing environment.

I try not to be being conspiratorial, but when there is big money on the side of school choice and those with that money are using it to buy politicians and write legislation that harms public schools, it’s hard not to consider the idea that many in state government have a personal interest in perpetuating the failure narrative and that they see test results as the surest way to do it.

But that only works if the tests yield results that portray schools negatively. And those portrayals only stick if the general public accepts the results as valid.

And that only happens as long as the tests remain locked away and kept from prying eyes. Because as someone who sees these tests every year, I can tell you that you would be appalled. You would question the very thing states claim they’re trying to preserve. And some of you would not surpass the cut score.

I sat in a meeting recently where an administrator reiterated the importance of having a “guaranteed and viable curriculum.” He shared this quote:

It’s one of those things teachers have heard a thousand times, and we all just nod our heads and say to ourselves that of course schools should know what students ought to learn and kids growing up in Minnesota should know some of the same, big, basic things as kids in Georgia. It’s uncontroversial to say that kids will learn more when they’re given the time and opportunity to do so.

But a question that isn’t asked is how our desire to provide students with a guaranteed and viable curriculum affects teachers, and whether or not we should care.

First, let’s define some terms. Kathleen Dempsey at McREL writes:

A “guaranteed’ curriculum is often defined as a mechanism through which all students have an equal opportunity (time and access) to learn rigorous content. This requires a school-wide (or district-wide) agreement and common understanding of the essential content that all students need to know, understand, and be able to do.

So far, so good. But the devil is in the implementation. Dempsey continues:

The word “all’ needs emphasis; a guaranteed curriculum promotes equity, giving all children equal opportunity to learn essential content, and to provide this opportunity, curricular materials and instructional approaches must be grounded in research, implemented with fidelity, and must include vertical as well as horizontal alignment.

Ah, there’s that damn word, fidelity. As a teacher, fidelity means my district leaders trust a program more than they trust me, and it means I should suppress whatever creative instincts I might have and just open the program they’ve purchased and teach the way it says to.

Dempsey adds:

However, schools (through teachers) implement the curriculum, and, if implementation varies significantly from teacher to teacher, then student outcomes will also likely vary significantly from classroom to classroom.

Translation: If we could just get all teachers to teach the same stuff in exactly the same ways, then all kids would learn the same things at the same level. And if you believe that, well, there’s this bridge I know of…

Finally, Dempsey warns us about the dangers of teachers having choices:

These days, teachers have access to a variety of curriculum resources, such as open educational resources, playlists, digital textbooks, and teacher-developed curriculum. Having access to options is a good thing, but having many choices does not ensure all choices are well aligned to the school’s GVC.

Left unsaid: We probably shouldn’t allow teachers to decide what to use because they might choose unaligned resources. The logical solution then is for district leaders to choose so every teacher uses the same stuff, which allows the district to claim they have a guaranteed curriculum.

None of this sounds great from the perspective of a teacher. We’re going to be told what to teach. Because we can’t be trusted, we’re going to be told what to use to teach those things. Dempsey, no dummy, anticipates teachers’ objections:

Does this mean that a GVC is a scripted, rigid curriculum? No! Does this mean that students and teachers are confined to a lockstep process of teaching and learning? Absolutely not! Teachers must have the flexibility to meet student needs through different methods of content delivery, helping students dive deeper into their passions.

Which is a load of bull.

In practice, GVC all too often does mean a scripted, rigid curriculum. In fact, guaranteeing a curriculum all but demands a scripted, rigid curriculum. If your primary goal is for all students to have the opportunity to learn the same things, then you’re going to control to the greatest extent possible how instruction is delivered. You’re going to choose the curriculum teachers are to use and you’re going to demand they teach it with fidelity. You are going to confine your teachers to a lockstep process of teaching. And you most certainly will not encourage flexibility because as soon as teachers start deviating from your chosen curriculum, you open the door to the very thing you were trying to avoid in the first place, different teachers doing different things. The idea that teachers who work in a district that stresses a GVC are going to “help students dive deeper into their passions” is ludicrous unless those passions happen to align with the guaranteed curriculum.

Should We Care?

We know that students learn more by having guaranteed and viable curriculums in their schools, at least theoretically. But what do we lose? We pretend, as we so often do in education, that there are no trade-offs. We should at least ask if what we gain is worth more than what we lose. And what we lose is teachers’ motivation for the job, which is no small thing.

Make no mistake, guaranteed and viable curriculums have led to the standardization of classrooms. That is, in fact, their aim. While in a perfect world, our guarantees would be limited and teachers would retain autonomy around the delivery of the content, in the real world, school districts, in their desire for guaranteed curriculums, have stripped away teacher autonomy. They’ve taken teacher creativity out of the classroom, and by doing so, they’ve destroyed teachers’ motivation.

No teacher signed up to be a worker drone. When the curriculum tells them, “Teach this stuff,” and their employers tell them, “Teach it just like this,” then it’s small wonder lots and lots of teachers show up to school with declining enthusiasm for the work.

Once upon a time, teachers were more restauranteurs than delivery drivers. At the very least, they were chefs. Classrooms, like pizza parlors, were different, not just in how the content was delivered, but sometimes in the content itself. Teachers would invest more time, energy, and passion into topics they found interesting. I still remember a fair amount about the Alaskan dogsled race, the Itidarod, because I had a fifth-grade teacher who created a multidisciplinary unit on it. I doubt much of it was aligned to the standards.

Guaranteed and viable curriculums ruined that. Common Core amplified the effect because now we’ve got thousands of teachers across the country teaching the same exact stuff from a handful of uninspiring programs. The sheer number of standards guarantees that teachers will never have time to go off script and indulge their passions or follow their students down a bird walk, or six.

School leaders took it a step further when they demanded fidelity to the standards-aligned programs their boards adopted in their quest to offer a guaranteed curriculum. They didn’t want to leave their districts’ reputations in the hands of teachers! Better to trust the so-called research-based programs. At least then, when things fell apart, they could blame some faceless publishing company, pick a new program by a different faceless publishing company, explain away their error by uttering some tripe like, “When we know better, we do better,” make new promises, and start the cycle over again.

In the meantime, teachers, no longer trusted to decide what or how to teach, stripped of their autonomy and bereft of motivation, keep walking out the door. Some of them stay away for good. Others return week after week, serving up uninspired instruction that they have no say in.

A guaranteed and viable curriculum guarantees that students will have a better chance of passing a standards-aligned test, but it also guarantees that teachers will continue to be disillusioned with what has become of their job.

The following is a guest post by Peter Hill, a famous writer that can involve in every sphere and professionally write about any topic. He has been working in California SMM agency as a journalist for more than 6 years. Contact him on Google+, Facebook and Twitter.

On average, teachers work 54 hours per week. They spend 43 hours at school, but they usually have 11 more hours of work to do at home. This job brings administrative responsibilities that are being covered outside working hours.

But there’s a problem: these extra hours of work are not being paid. In April 2018, thousands of U.S. teachers protested, demanding higher wages for themselves and more resources for the students. They are not addressing that overtime work because it’s hard to get it measured, but it’s no wonder why they require fair payment. The average annual salary for teachers in the U.S. is $45,890. The median wage for all U.S. workers is $44,564, but we’re talking about a 40-hour workweek in that case.

The conclusion is clear: teachers are not making enough money.

But they absolutely love what they do. So instead of quitting their jobs, they could use some tips on how to earn additional money while they keep doing what they love. For example, some teachers start blogs to offer their best essay tips, and eventually start generating income that way. Others work as guest bloggers for an academic essay writing service.

So where will you start? We’ll list 6 ways for teachers to make extra income without investing too much time in those activities.

• Sell Your Lesson Plans

Teachers are so busy that they would gladly get part of their work done by someone else. And if you already have great lesson plans, teachers will be willing to pay for them. How can you make this happen? Easy: register at TeachersPayTeachers.com and start selling your original educational resources.

• Join a Team of Professional Essay Writers

Did you know you could monetize your skills as a college essay writer, too? Of course you don’t support your students when they want to hire professional essay writers and present the work as their own. But that’s not what really happens on these platforms. When you become part of the best writing service, you’ll connect with students who really struggle with academic writing.

You’ll act as their tutor, providing tips as you help them complete the paper. It’s exactly what you do for your students. But when you work for a paper writing service, you’ll be able to expand your reach and earn actual money.

Don’t underestimate this industry; it has a lot to offer.

• Sell Photos Online

This tip works only for teachers with great photography skills and decent equipment. If you belong to that category, you can start earning passive income if you start selling your photos online. Here are few of the platforms you can explore:

• Shutterstock
• Alamy
• Adobe Stock
• Bluemelon
• Envira Gallery

• Start Your Own Blog

You have lots of knowledge and experience to share. Your personal blog doesn’t have to be about teaching or education. That’s a great niche, but it’s okay to focus on something else if you don’t want your entire life to be related to it. You can start a blog about parenting, beauty, fitness, cars, history, or whatever else you’re really interested in.

A successful blog can be another great source of passive income. It will require a lot of work for you to make it good and popular. But, when you choose a niche you’re passionate about, you won’t feel like working when blogging. It will be a relaxing activity for you.

• Get a Summer Job

You get a couple of months off in summer, right? You don’t have any teaching obligations during that period, so it’s the perfect opportunity for you to get a part-time job. You can work as an insurance agent, for example. You can also start freelancing. Platforms like Freelancer offer tons of opportunities for people with different skills.

Tutoring can also be a great summer job. If there are students in your area who could use extra classes during the summer, they can turn to you.

• Pursue a Graduate Degree

If you want to start making more money as a teacher, you should encourage yourself to pursue your MA degree. Teaching is a career that offers opportunities for progress. You shouldn’t neglect them. If you gain a graduate degree, you’ll be able to teach at higher grades or move into administration.

Staff members, principals, and superintendents earn higher salaries than the average teacher. And if you earn a PhD and become a college professor, you can hit the $100K.

Don’t be overwhelmed by that goal. Believe in yourself! When you work hard to make progress in this career, it will happen.

It’s Okay to Have Bigger Goals!

Some people judge teachers for not being happy with the average salary. They say that you should teach because you love teaching; not because you want to earn money. They are very, very wrong! You love teaching, so that’s exactly why you want to make more money. You love this profession and in order to do it, you have to be able to make ends meet.

There’s nothing wrong with your aspirations. Fortunately, you have options.   

A guest post by Frankie Wallace

For kids, today, living in the digital age might seem like a lot of fun with the endless learning opportunities technology provides them with. Devices like cell phones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers all give students the ability to access an endless amount of information on the web. Even though the digital age gives students the ability to learn new things, kids are still missing out on a wide range of sources of learning, social interactions, physical activities, and most importantly, emotional intelligence.

Since technology has taken over, the question of whether or not libraries are dying in the world — a common misconception — has been a hot topic. While technology is an amazing tool to have, even the best devices are afflicted with fake news, spam, and other dangers of online life.

It’s true: School libraries aren’t what they use to be. But they still help provide education to students about what’s going on and what’s worth reading and knowing. In theory, libraries help bridge the digital divide by providing students with the same access to different books and databases. Despite what students might hear about the death of print and the lack of interest in libraries, they’re still important. Here’s how:

Libraries Get Students College and Career Ready: K-12 students today will one day compete for future jobs in our growing global economy. The most interesting part, however, is that most of the jobs students will one day compete for haven’t even been conceived of yet. In order for students to have a fighting chance in the job market, they’ll need to be good readers and lifelong learners as well. They’ll need to gather, analyze, evaluate, and find ways to use new information to their advantage, which can be taught to students through the use of school libraries.

School librarians can use set standards and educational tools to help students learn these valuable lessons. They can also design programs to educate students on the importance of growth, research, and proper use of resources. Libraries located on K-12 campuses can also provide students with critical information about colleges, universities, and career opportunities. For instance, most librarians are familiar with their school’s layout and can find useful information to help students locate what they’re interested in and help them determine what career might be best for them.

Helps Students Become Lifelong Learners: Picture a place where all students feel the desire to learn and feel welcome when they come to school. Well, that place actually exists — it’s in the school library. For most instructors, trying to teach students how to improve their working memory can be a difficult process, especially if students aren’t cooperating.

Luckily, school libraries can help by providing students with more than just books, computers, and internet access. They also provide students with safety, security, and opportunities to think, create, explore, and grow to new heights. This means that libraries, like classrooms, can turn out to be students’ favorite spot and expose them to an endless amount of knowledge. In order for this to happen, students need to be willing to practice.

What do students need to be willing to practice? The fundamentals of learning — things like reading and writing. Simply put: Reading is the window to the world. Students who want to improve their education can benefit from reading about communities like the ones they live in or read about people like them. They can even seek information about people who aren’t like them, exposing them to new perspectives.

For some educators, the hard part is motivating students to read. Social media could be to blame for children not wanting to read books as much as they used to. Even though social media use among teens is a controversial issue, it’s being used in positive ways by student athletes and coaches in schools. Students, for example, can write collaboratively and get feedback from their classmates just as fast. In other words, if used correctly, social media platforms can be used to help improve students knowledge rather than minimize it. This means that the media can be a useful reading source for students and help them learn the core values needed to improve their reading and understanding.

Increases Student Success: According to the American Library Association, research suggests that school library programs staffed with qualified faculty members have a positive impact on students’ academic success. This research shows education officials that librarians can, in fact, help students do better academically. English as a Second Language students can perhaps benefit the most, since books and other resources can be used for them to get familiar with the American English language.

That being said, qualified school librarians can impact their schools in a number of ways that normally includes the following:

• They’re essential partners for teachers and can help students discover topics that interest them.
• They can help faculty members find current trends and resources to bring to their classrooms.
• Librarians can provide students with the information needed to improve their reading, writing, and academic growth as well.

Districts of all sizes have reached a crisis point. In cities like Los Angeles, for example, over 600 elementary and middle schools are currently without librarians. To make matters worse, budget cuts are making it even more difficult to hire qualified faculty members to help students improve their skills and have a chance to land jobs.

Libraries have always played an essential role in our society, especially when it comes to preserving important information. Because of this, it’s our duty as educators, leaders, and parents to teach children the value of knowledge. What better place is there to start than the library?

I’ve had two recent experiences that put into perspective just how absurdly high we set the bar for teachers. That bar is set by many people, from legislators to parents to administrators to fellow educators. Those who study teaching tell us what we need to do to be effective. School districts turn those suggestions into elements on our formal evaluations. Thought leaders take the ball and run with it,  penning pen books on how to be better in the classroom. They then take to Twitter to spread their message further.

Dave Burgess (he’s the pirate guy) tells teachers to preheat the grill, by which he means to light a fire under your students at the start of your lessons to get them interested.

Matt Miller wants us to ditch textbooks. Textbooks are boring!

Alice Keeler despises worksheets.

George Couros wants teachers constantly innovating.

Teachers should strive to improve, and it’s often too easy to do what we’ve always done. We should look at our practices introspectively, read others’ ideas, watch others in action, and see if there might be better ways to reach students.

But we should also recognize that we have limitations, and those limitations mean that sometimes our lessons are lame.

A few weeks ago I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. I saw Michael Jackson’s glove, Jimi Hendrix’s couch, an Elvis jumpsuit, and many more rock artifacts. What interested me the most, however, were the sheets of paper displayed throughout the museum on which artists had scribbled some of the most recognizable lyrics of our time. Joe Walsh’s “Life’s Been Good,” Jon Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” and Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold,” to name a few.

Songs we’ve heard hundreds of times, jotted down on hotel stationery or in spiral notebooks no different than the kind my third-graders doodle in. It got me thinking about the work musicians do and how it compares to what we ask of teachers. Both are performers. Both stand in front of a group of people and communicate. Today, both are expected to entertain. The musician, before going on tour, will rehearse. He’ll perform the same songs over and over again until he can play them without thinking. Then he’ll spend any number of months moving from city to city singing the same old songs, the ones he wrote on napkins and notebook paper years ago.

A teacher will probably not rehearse. There’s no time to, really. Unlike the rock star, a teacher has to compose different lessons for every day. While the musician’s audience changes nightly, the teacher’s remains the same. So no matter how good that lesson on photosynthesis is (and it’s a chart topper, baby!), you only get to roll it out once per year. The artist can spend 30 minutes jotting down some lyrics that might be played for 30 years.

A teacher is expected to carefully plan lessons that are done in 30 minutes and might never be played again. The musician, if he’s giving the crowd a great show, might play for three hours. Teachers work seven. A rock star who spends 25 years singing the same songs over and over again to different groups of people, only introducing a new hit every few years for the first ten, is considered a legend. A teacher who spends 25 years teaching different lessons every day, coming up with new material for 180 days each year, won’t ever be known outside a small circle of people.

And what about each of those lessons? We’re told they’re supposed to be good. All of them. No textbooks. No worksheets. No filler. No crappy B-sides.

Last week I read the book Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo. Gallo studied the most popular TED Talks, interviewed many of the lecturers, and came up with sound advice for delivering a memorable speech. Teachers who lecture can learn a lot from it. Unfortunately, one thing they will learn is that giving a great talk is time-consuming. Really time-consuming.

Gallo shares this story:

I received a call from a business leader who is recognized as a pioneer in her industry. She had been invited to give a TED talk and asked if I could give her some tips. “Well, you have plenty of time to practice,’ I said after giving her some suggestions on how to craft a compelling story. “Spend the next two months working on the story and the slide design and then three months rehearsing.’

“Three months?’ she asked after a long pause.

“Yes. Three months. You’ll be giving the presentation every day. Ninety times sounds about right,’ I said. “It’s a short presentation. Just get up about 15 minutes earlier and practice.’

“Ninety? Isn’t that a lot?’

“Well, Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor rehearsed her TED talk 200 times. It’s been viewed 15 million times and Oprah invited her to be a guest on her show. Dr. Jill’s TED talk transformed her career.’

Amanda Palmer worked on her talk, “The Art of Asking,” for thousands of hours over four months. She wrote on her blog, “I slaved over the talk, writing and writing and re-writing and timing and re-timing and tweaking and trying to fit the perfect sets of information into 12 short minutes.”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xMj_P_6H69g%3Ffeature%3Doembed

Teachers give multiple 12-minute talks (and longer) each day, and unlike rock stars, they don’t get to reuse them very often. Expecting them all to be excellent is unrealistic. So is expecting them all to be good.

Or even average.

That’s why some lessons are lame. To avoid lameness takes considerable time and effort and those things are in short supply for everyone, but especially for teachers. In 2013, the Teaching and Learning International Survey found that while Norwegian teachers spend 15 hours per week in front of their students, U.S. teachers spend 27 hours each week on instructional time, giving American teachers far fewer hours for planning and rehearsing.  [Source]

So if you want to know why I gave your kid a worksheet, this is why. If you wonder why textbook companies still sell a lot of textbooks and teachers still actually use them in spite of being told how lame they are, this is why. If you’re annoyed that your kid watched a Magic School Bus video for science class today, this is why.

Lame lessons are a reflection of reality. They are nothing more than the result of a teacher committing time and energy to develop good lessons in some other subject or for some other day. Lame lessons are what you get when teachers have to churn out hundreds of different lesson plans each year with little time to prepare them.

Let’s stop expecting our teachers to be better than people who can carve out the time they need to be great. Let’s stop expecting the impossible. After all, the Beatles had a lot of hits, but they also had a lot of duds. Even the best teachers are occasionally lame.

A guest post by Danish Wadhwa

Does your kid face any difficulty remembering a topic while he is doing something else?

For example, if he is helping you make soup and suddenly the doorbell rings, does he forget to go back and stir the soup? There is no problem if he forgets sometimes, but if these incidences happen on a daily basis, then he might have a working memory problem.

The term ”working memory” is utilized conversely with short-term memory. In other words the manipulation of information which the short-term memory stores is called working memory. It is a skill that is used by kids to solve mathematical problems or with the tasks following multi-step directions.

Here are the five tips to boost your child’s working memory”

Encourage active reading

Have you ever wondered why sticky notes and highlighters are so important?

Well, one of the reasons is that highlighting, underlining the text, or writing brief notes will help your kid keep relevant information in his mind long enough to answer questions about it. In addition to this, asking questions aloud about the reading material can benefit your kid. Active reading helps improve long-term memory.

Make it multisensory

To help your kid with both his working memory as well as long-term memory, processing the information in as many ways as possible is the key. Try to write down each and every task so your kid can have a look at it. You can also help your kid with tasks that are needed to be completed by tossing a ball back and forth while discussing. Implementing these multisensory strategies can help your kid keep information in mind long enough to use it.

Use visual charts and graphic organizers

One way to encourage your kid is by using visuals at the beginning of assignments. You can either make your own or get help from the internet. Visual supports can help kids reach their goals. Teachers provide successive levels of temporary support to students so they reach high levels of skill acquisition and comprehension that otherwise can’t be achieved without assistance. As soon as those strategies are no longer needed, they are discontinued.

It should be kept in mind that the more your kid practices, the better the results for him. It should also be understood that the working memory is a skill used throughout life and not only when we are children. In simple words, you should let your kid have fun while studying. Even if you think your kid is receiving the Best Tuition Assignments, if it is overburdening, then it they should be reduced. 

Play cards

Playing simple card games such as go fish,  crazy eights, war, Uno, and Old Maid can help kids improve their working memories.  If they are new to the game, then start by playing open-handed, where everyone shows all their cards. To make it more complicated, prompt them by saying, “Use the eye in your mind to take a pretend image of the card and remember it.”

Let your kid teach you

It can be fun to reverse roles and let the kid teach you a skill. Kids love to play the role of a teacher or elder. You should further encourage them to draw pictures, write on boards, and demonstrate concepts to you. Teaching something is often the best way to learn it. 

Final thoughts

The best method is to take a metacognitive approach in which considering how best to remember something is the first step. Apply any of the above techniques to get your kid to improve his or her working memory. 

It’s bad enough that part of teachers’ evaluations are based on student growth. This growth, usually based on just a few poorly designed assessments and for which students are not personally held accountable, can be affected by a number of factors completely outside the control of the teacher, such as student attendance, motivation, technical issues, and whether or not a kid remembered his glasses or whether or not mom remembered his medication on the critical day.

But even more egregious is that a large percentage of a teacher’s evaluation comes from administrator observations.

A principal is given a huge checklist of “best practices,” and is supposed to assess the teacher in real-time on each of them. They might do this a couple of times each year. Of the more than 1,000 hours that teachers do their jobs in a year, their evaluation may rest on just 80 minutes of observed teaching. In other words, a teacher’s entire year is judged on about one-tenth of one percent of her efforts.

That’s not the worst of it. Because in the case of observations, it’s not what districts are doing that proves teacher evaluations are meaningless. It’s what districts are not doing.

What Districts Won’t and Never Will Do

See if you can imagine your district doing the following:

On a day in May, say a week or two before you are to receive your end-of-year evaluation, the entire staff is invited to a one-hour professional development session. The topic is “Why Your Teacher Evaluation is Credible.” You all gather inside the high school auditorium. A huge screen is hung over the stage. In the front row sits every administrator the district employs.

The Superintendent walks to the microphone and says, “Valued educators, we know that many teachers feel stress over their evaluations. Today, we are going to alleviate some of that stress. We want you to know that the tool we use to evaluate you produces consistent results, no matter who uses it.

To prove it to you, we are all going to watch a 40-minute video of a lesson. In this case, you’ll be seeing a sixth grade social studies class. Each administrator will complete an observation–just like they do for all of you–while they watch the video. When the lesson ends, I will collect each principal’s observation and I will show them to you. That way, you will see that no matter who uses the tool it produces very similar results. You’ll know that your teacher evaluation is a true reflection of your abilities as an educator, and not the subjective result of an unproven process that encourages you to employ different strategies based solely on the whims and preferences of the person who happens to be your supervisor this year.”

At which point the video starts and the principals start tapping things on their iPads.

The fact that none of the above happens in any district I know of (and never will) tells teachers everything they need to know about the objectivity of the observations they’re forced to endure and are asked to believe in.

If you have a system that relies on the opinions and values of the individuals doing the scoring then you have a system that can’t be trusted.

Treat Teachers Like Gymnasts

Gymnastics recognizes this. Gymnastics, like teaching, is more art than science. Two people watching the same routine can honestly disagree about which was better. That’s why gymnasts are scored by multiple judges who have deep knowledge of the sport and receive rigorous training on how to evaluate routines. They’re given strict guidelines and add points for required elements and difficulty, while deducting for execution and artistry.*

And still they don’t agree. That’s why the high and low scores are thrown out and the rest are averaged. FIG recognizes that relying on the judgment of one person ruins the credibility of their sport. No viewer would trust the results of a gymnastics competition that was judged by a single person. The gymnasts wouldn’t trust those results, either.

Neither should teachers. It says something that we care more about getting it right for gymnasts than for teachers. It says something that school districts will never allow its teachers to see how subjective their administrators’ observations truly are. It says something that American teachers’ jobs are in the hands of one judge, who bases his or her evaluation on one-tenth of one percent of a teachers’ working hours.

One judge.

Better hope you don’t get the Russian.**

____________________________

* I simplified Olympic gymnastics’ scoring for ease of reading.

** I’ve got nothing against Russians, except that they cheat in the Olympics.

____________________________

I wrote more about teacher evaluations here:

Why You Shouldn’t Care About Your Teacher Evaluation

The following is a guest post by Anish Passi, Director at Neostencil, an ed-tech startup funded by the Times Group. He previously founded Testcafe – also in the ed-tech space. He has extensive experience in the education industry, with past exposure to investment banking, technology, real estate, and retail consulting.

Hard work and smart work go hand in hand. There is no denying that people need to work hard to create a foundation for great achievements. However, if students work smart, they can do the same amount of work faster and efficiently. Teachers need to understand the thin line between making students work relentlessly hard and enabling them to learn smart work.

There is a preconceived notion among students that to succeed one must put in effort and work hard for it. Some people also think that one should give up everything else and focus all their energies on the final goal. While this is somewhat true, they can do the same amount of work in a shorter time by simply working smarter.

Merging Hard Work & Smart Work Together

To help students succeed in life, teachers should push students to practice both hard work and smart work simultaneously.  It is essential to work hard first because only then will students understand the depth of exactly what they are doing and then devise a smarter plan accordingly. The unfortunate truth is that in this fast-paced world, people want to switch to smart work but don’t put in any effort first. This could lead to a downfall. Like during preparation for competitive exams such as the UPSC, CAT, GMAT etc. people put in very little time to get the concepts right and jump to problem solving. Instead, they should focus more on concepts which would be hard work at the start but will make the process a lot simpler and easier.

Students must understand the project thoroughly, plan, and build a process around it. When they do this, they’ve framed all the possibilities, and only then can they undertake an easier way of completing the task. With teacher’s input, working smart won’t be much of an issue, and students will be able to work efficiently using fewer resources and time. The trick is to combine hard work and smart work.

Example: Every talented artist trains and gets mentored to perfect their skills. They spend years practicing without taking any breaks or shortcuts to make themselves the best. Once they reach the peak of success, they tend to make fewer errors and are more experienced. This results in better time management and less use of energy and effort. They have now become smart, but they started by working hard. This rule applies to every sphere of life.

Differences Between the Two

Let’s take a look at some of the differences between working hard vs working smart.

Meaning

Hard work means putting in a lot of time and effort doing a certain amount of work. Whereas, smart work means spending less amount of time performing the same amount of work.

Aim

Hard work aims at the quantity and may become monotonous and boring after a certain period. Smart work aims at achieving goals with quality.

Process of Working

Working hard involves a lot of tedious work which is carried out traditionally. But, if people work smartly, they can achieve more output by working in an unconventional and modern way which could include attending webinars, classes, and coaching. Check out https://www.travel-lingual.com to find ways to get the most out of your online study efforts.

Conceptualization

Hard work utilizes the traditional format of working, and there aren’t many changes involved. On the other hand, smart work involves using old ideas and transforming them to yield better results.

End Goal

People who work hard sometimes feel that they weren’t able to achieve their set goal. Smart workers attain their goals faster through proper time management.

A simple way to turn hard work into smart work is by understanding the aftermath of the process. If students keep on working continuously without any reliable results, then they should consider working smartly. Rather than focusing all the attention on just the work, think about all the alternatives that can be undertaken to do the same amount of work in less time. Set deadlines and goals that they should achieve in a set timeframe and prioritize the important tasks first. This way you will not waste a lot of time on unimportant things.

Contrary to this, some people believe that there is no replacement for hard work. Working smart is a shortcut that doesn’t work at all stages of life. Still, smart work has no doubt worked for many. If one can achieve the same quantity of work at the same time, that is not exactly a shortcut; it is just a better alternative.

Conclusion

If you can incorporate working hard and smart together, you will achieve great heights and lead yourself to a better life. One who works hard and smart will in due course of time procure all the benefits and rake in the golden opportunity to probably not work at all.