Teaching Diary 27: Tips from Social Media

One of the things I really dislike about my career over the last few years is how little on-site collaboration I get. Mostly, it's been because the school is so small that I haven't had a grade-level teaching partner. Or the one school where I didn't have a grade-level partner AND the other English teacher was introverted to the point of almost rudeness? Like I know she wasn't actually rude, but if I didn't go talk to her, we never spoke, and since I was overwhelmed teaching 5 different classes (as was she), we almost never spoke even though our classrooms were right next door. Last year, even though I was the only one teaching my particular courses, my cross-hall neighbor was this amazing teacher, Johan. We clicked so well, and every week, one of us would cross the hall to talk shop. Sadly (for me), he left after last year (to a better job, yay him!) and has been so busy that we don't even text much.

Like a lot of people, I turn to social media for ideas. There's a pretty bustling "teacher-gram" community. It's a mixed bag of quality, of course. There are comedians and Pinterest-worthy classrooms. There's a LOT of commiseration, with an emphasis on MISERY that I have to be careful not to look at too much because it's easy to fall into a spiral of despair. I do, on occasion, find useful tips.

I did not save the reel, alas, but a teacher mentioned something she learned from a college professor at a conference. When she administers a quiz, she tells the students to put their pens away, gives the quiz papers out, and then tells them they have a set time to read over the test questions and talk to their peers about it. I think she said she gives them 3-4 minutes. It's not enough to go over everything, but she said it alleviated a lot of anxiety in her students when she started this.

I don't give a ton of in-class tests. I think the lady who made the post is an elementary teacher or a math teacher because she mentioned math in her post. But I do give grammar quizzes. This week, I decided to try this technique out. I set a timer for 3 minutes and told the kiddos to look at the quiz and talk about the questions. I let them ask me questions, but I only gave them a hot/cold response ("You're getting warmer," etc). The quiz was over compound-complex sentences, so if they asked me, "Do we put commas before a FANBOYS conjunction?" I said, "Oh, that's a burning hot idea!" After 3 minutes, they had to stop talking, pick up their pens, and get to work. I also asked them to give me feedback on the technique before they turned their quiz in.

One kiddo wrote "GOOD" in huge letters on the back of her quiz. Another said it was a waste of time -- he did not do as well as his peers on the quiz, but he's a bit of a know-it-all who rushes through his work and doesn't, in fact, know it all. 😆 I noticed the overall grades were much better for this quiz than they were for the previous grammar quiz. The two kiddos who've struggled with the practice work got C/D, but on the last quiz, they both got low Fs, so this is a huge improvement.

Like life in general, social media isn't a full replacement for in-person relationships and conversations, but this tip, at least, is a keeper.

Teaching Diary 27.5: Downside of Teachers on Social Media

One of the downsides I mentioned about teachers and social media is how easy it is to get sucked into a narrative that is really fucking depressing. I mean, we all know education, particularly in American or American-style schools, is really hard for a lot of reasons. The one thing truly American about Clown School is that we are so understaffed and so pressured to do everything and given so little grace by the parents and the people in charge. And seeing the sentiment repeated over and over, and memes about how teachers need wine for Christmas, and wishing for death but we can't even die without being bothered for sub plans. I mean, there's dark humor, and then there's just dark.

Anyway, scrolling through Insta for a bit just made me tired. And then we get a weekend message saying to give a bunch of kids extensions because they had a robotics competition. Nevermind that this is the last week of the quarter. Nevermind that the teachers don't have any of the same grace for deadlines. Nevermind that our admin sends us emails telling us to submit our finals before we leave on Friday and "thank you for complying." Nevermind that our schedule will change on us this week, despite being told to "plan our lessons well" so students don't waste any class time, but then losing time because of schedule changes, thank you for understanding. Nevermind that we're not actually given any advanced notice. We have to be rigorous and give then homework to prepare them for college, but we have to be forgiving and extend grace and deadlines which we are then called out for as not following the student handbook.

ANYWAY, by this time next week, I'll be home for a bit, and my niblings will be excited and maybe I will get them to sing "Feliz Lavida" at two different keys for me.