Teacher to Teacher

If people cannot write well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.

–George Orwell

We are more than a decade into the 21^st Century and Orwell’s quote is as relevant as ever.  Information and misinformation travel at the speed of megabytes per second via text messages, Facebook status updates, blogs, tweets, etc. In addition to these online sources, we have television and radio news networks trying to fill up much of their 24 hour schedules with speculation masquerading as news.  When it comes to the clutter and clamor of the omnipresent media, our students need to be able to separate that which is reasonable and true from all that is questionable and maybe even preposterous.  Helping our students further develop their critical thinking skills is one way to help them deal with the multitude of messages coming their way.

When students become better writers, they also become better at examining how others develop and defend ideas.  They become better critical thinkers.  I didn’t fully appreciate this concept until I went back to school to work on an administrative endorsement.  Every course involved a lot of writing.  Some of the courses were online, and because of the nature of online courses, a great amount of writing was required.  The more I wrote for my classes, the more I began to realize that becoming a better writer was also making me a better thinker.  Writing forced me to have a good understanding of my subject in order to effectively communicate my thoughts,  research, and conclusions to my teachers and classmates. I also had to be able to defend my ideas, because writing also exposed me to scrutiny and challenge.  I came to appreciate the importance of being my own devil’s advocate.

It is possible for people to be good writers, and their messages turn out to be intellectually bankrupt.  Political speeches and propaganda are possible examples of this type of writing.  The writing sounds reasonable and maybe even inspiring, but turns out to be as substantial as a soap bubble when pricked by the slightest scrutiny.  It is important that we challenge the thinking behind our students’ writing.  We need them to be able to defend their positions and cite their sources of information.  We also need to teach them to establish the validity of their sources.  In addition, students need to critique the writing of others in order to discover how the writers develop their arguments, and to discover the writers’ biases, assumptions, or examples of lazy thinking.  These challenges will take them beyond just writing and on to deeper thinking.

This type of writing requires students to take big risks.  In order to prepare students for the challenges that will be directed at their ideas, they need to be able to trust their teachers and their classmates.  Teachers need to develop a safe and trusting environment in which discussion of multiple viewpoints is encouraged and no one feels personally attacked when asked to defend his or her position.

Orwell’s statement, found at the beginning of this blog entry, provides direction in helping our students become the critical thinkers they need to be.  In order to help our students think for themselves, and keep others from thinking for them, we need to have them write often in every subject while also challenging their assumptions, arguments, and conclusions in a safe and supportive environment that allows for risk-taking.

For additional information, see the links below.

Foundation for Critical Thinking

http://www.criticalthinking.org/

What is Writing?

http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/pdf/writing.pdf

An excerpt from the book How to Write a Paragraph

http://www.criticalthinking.org/files/SAM-HowtoWrite.pdf

It took me awhile to become a Twitter user.  I had heard a lot about Twitter, but I was never sure why I would use it.  Then, about two years ago during a meeting with several techies, Twitter was mentioned several times.   I finally turned to someone near me and asked, “Why would I ever want to use Twitter?”  She answered, “It’s a great resource for personal professional development.”  That answer was good enough for me to decide to check into it.

I signed up for a Twitter account and started following a few of the people who were at that meeting.  They tweeted many useful resources and ideas on a variety of educational subjects.  I began to see the power of Twitter as a personal professional development tool.  I began to follow other educators, and my personal professional development community began to widen.

After about a year, I discovered Tweetdeck and hashtags.  Tweetdeck is an application that not only displays tweets from the people I follow, but also shows me updates from my LinkedIn account, Facebook page and any hashtags I want to follow.  I can also tweet from Tweetdeck and have those tweets also go to my Facebook page.

I still feel like a novice.  Other people have written excellent articles about Twitter and teachers, so I will refer you to their writings.  To learn more about using Twitter as an educator, visit Justin Tarte’s blog at http://justintarte.blogspot.com/2011/01/10-steps-for-educators-new-to-twitter.html .  To learn more about hashtags, visit Chris Messina’s blog at http://twitter.pbworks.com/w/page/1779812/Hashtags .  You can follow me at http://twitter.com/mpruter.

There are several benefits to parent-teacher conferences.  Parent-teacher conferences help build relationships, making it easier for parents and teachers to initiate contact.  Conferences provide parents with ideas to help their children.  Conferences help teachers to better understand their students.  All of these benefits are realized through effective communication.

Sean Covey, in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens (1999), reminds us that communication involves much more than what we say.  As the saying goes, “Actions speak louder than words.”  Only 7% of what is communicated is in words. 53% of the communication comes from body language and about 40% comes from the tone and feeling reflected in our voices.  These statistics remind us to be aware of the messages we may be communicating beyond our words.

These statistics also remind us of why email is not always the best choice for communicating.  Email messages are easily misconstrued because recipients are missing the supporting information that our facial expressions, body language, and voice inflections provide.  Email should only be used to communicate information with no emotion.  Whenever there is the potential for emotion to become a player in the communication, pick up the phone or schedule a face-to-face conference.

Stever Robbins, the Get-It-Done Guy, provides a sample list of messages best delivered face-to-face:

• Any judgment about a person or the quality of their work.
• Any topic where you think the other person might lie.
• Any message that manages the relationship itself.  In business, this would be layoffs, demotions, promotions, or hiring offers.  In school this would be student behavior issues.  In personal life, breakups, proposals, making up, etc.
• Positive evaluations and “Thank you”s.
• Politics, religion, or other issues where people have few facts but lots of opinions.

The flip side of talking during a face-to-face or phone conversation is listening.  Covey (1999) identifies five types of listening:

• Pretend listening—We aren’t really listening to what the person is saying, but we act like we are by making comments at critical junctures and by nodding as if we are listening.
• Spaced out listening—Someone is talking to us, but we don’t hear because we are caught up in our own thoughts.
• Selective listening—We only pay attention to the parts of the conversation that interest us.
• Word listening–We are actually hearing what the other person is saying, but ignore their body language and the tone of their voice.
• Self-centered listening—We listen to what the other person is saying, but from our point of view.  We wait for a break in the conversation to tell our story.

It is important that the listener hold up his part of the conversation by truly listening to the other person and trying to understand his point of view.  Covey (1999), suggests:

• Listen with your eyes and your ears. Listen to the person’s words, but also to what they are not saying.  Pay attention to the other person’s body language and tone of voice.
• Stand in their shoes.  Effective listening also includes trying to see the situation from the other person’s point of view.
• Practice mirroring.  A mirror reflects.  Repeat back in your own words what the other person is saying and feeling.  A few sentence stems to help you mirror are:

• As I get it, ….
• So, as I see it,….
• I can see that you are feeling….
• So, what you’re saying is….

When you understand where the other person in the conversation is coming from, then you can try to make yourself understood.

A key to successful home/school relations is regular, two-way communication.  As a teacher, what can you do to make sure this happens?

References

Covey, S. (1999). The seven habits of highly effective teens.  New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

Robbins, S. (2009, December 1). Which form of communication should you use in the workplace?  Retrieved from http://getitdone.quickanddirtytips.com/communication-skills-in-the-workplace.aspx.