#MarburnCon21

This week got to experience the wonder of #MarburnCon21.  This virtual conference hosted by my school, Marburn Academy, focused on the theme of "Closing the Gap."  It brought together researchers from across the country as well as England and Australia to share the most recent best practices, techniques, and strategies to help students that learn differently or in non-traditional ways. 

What I really love about conferences is being able to take information from these experts and filter them into two buckets - what can I do to change my own classroom in the long term and what can I get from these presentations that I can bring back to the classroom on Monday.  MarburnCon21 gave me a good opportunity to reflect on my current teachings.

Day One

The Keynote speaker, Dr. Carl Hendrick, shared so many good thoughts. He reminded us that memories are built around schema - that words in context could have different meaning and memory depending on this schema. Vocabulary is built based on this schema and novices need lots of practice as well as explicit practice to build memories - much more so than people that have previous connections. 

Dr. Hendrick also talked about authenticity in four parts: Expertise in the subject, passion, unicity (the purposeful linking of the teacher's experience with students), and building rapport. 

One takeaway from Dr. Hendrick for Monday connected to feedback. The purpose of feedback is to improve the student, not the assignment. Improving the one assignment will not transfer, but improving the student has a stronger chance of transferring to the next activity. 

Another speaker that left an imprint on me was Dr. Sarah Powell. Dr. Powell spoke on helping students with word problems - a very important part of my everyday teaching world. She opened up with ineffective word problem practice.  When I say ineffective, I mean based on long term studies, not based in opinion. 

Dr. Powell shared that attaching keywords to operations in word problems is not an effective practice. For instance, teaching students if they see "all together" they should always add. What research has shown is that students will scan for numbers, key words, and then use the clues to solve the problem without reading the context.  She shared that in norm-referenced tests, key words led to correct answers between 25 and 50 percent of the time. With multi-step word problems (the type seen in late elementary to middle school) this accuracy dropped to less than 10%.  

Instead, we have to teach our students attack strategies and help build their schema to recognize how problems should be solved. Dr. Powell also shared a great visual for students in a round table discussion after her presentation.  

Day Two

Day two continued first with Dr. Erica Lembke sharing her knowledge of data based learning decisions. Much of her presentation fell into the bucket of long-term thoughts and how I could revise my progress monitoring on various skills and, more importantly, have students track their own growth over time. 

Her presentation was followed by an amazing language acquisition presentation by Dr. Pamela Snow. First, her dedication to helping educators was shown off by the fact she is located in Victoria, Australia, meaning she was presenting to us at 2:00 am local time.  Amazing.

Dr. Snow led us down a conversation of components of language including form, use, and content. She went into biological vs. non-biological forms of language, the explosion of vocabulary between ages five and eight, and the different tiers of vocabulary from everyday oral vocabulary (expression of feelings or needs) to general contextual reading (knowing words for comprehension), to lexicon in specific classes (hypotenuse, quotient.)  

I finished my MarburnCon21 experience with information from Dr. Amber Ray as well as Dr. Elizabeth Hughes. Both of them shared many ideas that I plan to incorporate into my lessons over the next few weeks. Dr. Ray spoke on SRSD as an approach to writing, while Dr. Hughes talked about the importance of precision of vocabulary in the classroom. Dr. Hughes had many connections back to Dr. Snow as well as Dr. Hendrick, and I reflected on how as a math department we have spent the past couple of years focusing on our vertical alignment of vocabulary.  It is a great feeling now when students join us in seventh grade and say, "I'm going to plus 5 and 9" and I hear a cry of "You don't plus numbers, you ADD them!"

Thank you to all of the organizers, presenters, and behind-the-scenes members that made this event possible! 

Year Twenty-Two... AND GO!

Twenty-plus years ago I was finishing my first month of my first year of teaching.  I was working in an elementary classroom in Cathedral City, California (in the Palm Springs area.) This school ran a year-round schedule with four tracks of classrooms.  Each track followed a 3-month-on 1-month-off rotation, so at any given time 75% of the school was in session while 25% of the school was on break. 

I can remember so much of those first couple of years. I remember my very first day with my very first class. Well. I remember going over the roster, introducing myself and glancing at the door, waiting for a supervising teacher or administrator to come through it. 

I realized that nobody was coming. This was my first class. These students were mine. Their education was literally in my control. I remember the long silence that followed as the class stared at me for direction. 

The emotions I felt at that moment were strong, the memory of them etched deeply.  I was so thankful for two veteran teachers that reached out and helped me through that first year: Mrs. Rouse and Mrs. McClintock. Two decades later I remember their names, their faces, and their kind acts.  I remember all the time they gave to me asking them what felt like the most basic of questions. They answered my questions, gave me sage advice, and let me cry in their room during prep time. 

I have lost touch with them over the years, but the two of them are forever etched in that same first-year memory.

Here I am over two decades later and now working with amazing teachers that weren’t even born when I started my teaching path.  I’ve become the veteran, getting asked questions and pretending I know the answers.  I’ve been asked to help design programs and schedules, representing our math division as the math chair, and still I am actively seeking more leadership and presenter opportunities. 

Dave Burgess of Teach Like A Pirate and Dave Burgess Consulting asked an amazing question to the twitterverse this week: What are you most excited about for the upcoming school year?

My answer is simple: I'm excited to continue to find that first-year-teacher-fear. I'm excited to continue to do things both in and out of the classroom that scare me.  I'm excited to stay outside of my comfort zone and provide support for others so they have the confidence to do the same. 

After all, as educators we are CONSTANTLY asking our students to challenge themselves. We owe it to them to show that we live that same path.