Day Off

It's parent conferences today, and some genius planning landed this in the middle of the week; I'm easing into the Los Angeles morning--sunny (of course) and birds busy composing lyrics in our bugambilia bushes.

Reporting from yesterday and technique 2: RIGHT IS RIGHT

Setting a high standard of correctness in the classroom

While I am busy having pedagogical epiphanies with these simple but structurally profound techniques, some of my students are getting down right annoyed. Apparently accountability is boring and tedious to a select few 15 year olds. I think many many students are used to giving fragmented, surface level answers because teachers are so good at finishing and extrapolating to make their answers fully correct. I've definitely been guilty of this, and in lunchtime conversations with other teachers, most of us have been there. Big realization that I have often settled for ho-hum answers rather than pressing students to be fully right.

It's powerful to see how many more voices are heard by using NO OPT OUT in tandem with RIGHT IS RIGHT. I hear from pretty darn close to every student every day and can really see who knows and who doesn't. We are getting at more specific, complex answers as a class that use vocabulary and larger understandings. I can see light bulbs turning on in most kids, and listening behind the occasional complaining I hear a hunger for real understanding. Maybe learning will be its own reward (dare I dream?).