Evolution of a Desk-Sitter

One big way my teaching style has changed is that I have become a much more relaxed classroom manager. The style I brought from my experience in Namibia was a very strict, shut-up-and-listen sort of approach born largely out of the fact that there, my students were speaking in their mother tongue, which made it difficult to impossible for me to judge the appropriateness of their talking. I am now willing to tolerate a fair bit of talking, as long as it remains appropriate and at a somewhat reasonable volume level, and the students listen while I am talking to them. Both ends of the spectrum have their advantages and their disadvantages, and the trick is to find the happy medium that is most comfortable and useful. I find that the stricter approach is easier to enforce consistently, while the less strict approach is easier to maintain participation and enthusiasm.

I was about to say I have allowed the classroom management pendulum to swing too far in the other direction this year, but that's not really it. Truth be told, my classroom management is none too good right now, not so much because of a stylistic shift, but because I am just barely hanging on in every aspect of my life. The depression mentioned in earlier posts is still very much in force, and it affects my productivity profoundly. It is all I can do most days just to show up, so the legwork (i.e. paperwork, follow-through, and phone calls) necessary to be a really good classroom manager are just not getting done. I think my style would be sound enough if I were more productive on the back end.

My teaching style has also changed in how I choose to spend class time. Basically, I spend a lot more time waiting for students to do something, and less time telling them how. I often alternate between an example that I work out on the board and a "try now" example, for instance.

Recently, my school purchased several Texas Instruments Navigator systems. The Navigator is basically a semi-wireless network for the TI-8x graphing calculators. My favorite feature of the Navigator system is the ability to do "quick polls," which are basically instantaneous question-and-response's you can send and collect at any time. All I have to do is point to a problem, press quick poll, and tell the class to type on their calculators what they think the answer is. Their responses show up instantly on my computer. It is sort of like using the individual white board panels to have students respond and hold up their answers, but with several significant advantages. On the Navigator, you have a way to mark the correct answer and get an instant count of how many got it right. Another huge advantage is that the responses are permanent, and you can see them all from one place. You can save the results to use as a participation grade. You can give very immediate, individual feedback without having to walk around the room all the time. In the time it takes to walk over and look at one student's paper, I can tell at least four different people exactly what they did right or wrong without even leaving my computer screen. It even helps me to distribute meaningful praise! Indeed, the Navigator system has changed the way I teach, as I now spend more productive class time actually sitting down, waiting for students to respond and giving them feedback! When combined with specific praise (writing names on the board as "stars" of the day works for me), this style seems to help the middle "third" of my students stay more engaged and more motivated during the lesson itself. And I stay more in touch with exactly how many students are "getting it."

Unfortunately, many of my TI classroom calculators were stolen while I was absent the other day, but I still have the Navigator system itself. Lots of theft and stuff has happened at the school lately. Other teachers had a laptop and a desktop computer stolen, and the library was broken into just yesterday. Frustrating!