Room 213

Spring break isn’t just a vacation for educators. It’s recovery. Teaching is one of the few professions where you give your mind, your heart, your patience, and your energy to dozens or hundreds of young people every single day. After months of pouring out support, encouragement, and stability for others, it’s essential to pause and refill your own tank. Rest. Sleep. Laugh. Spend time with the people who refill you. Because when educators take time to reset, they return not just rested, but renewed. And that renewed energy becomes one of the greatest gifts they can give their students.

I just gave a closed-book, pen-and-paper midterm exam in my 300-level course at UBC with 100 students. All exams were graded by an experienced graduate-level TA according to a rubric. *** The average was 64/100.*** My class averages at UBC are usually 80-85. Context: • This was the first midterm, covering ONLY 4 weeks of material. • Students had a list of possible questions in advance: no surprise questions. • Questions included (a) 3 concept definitions, (b) 3 paragraph-long questions, and (c) a 1.5-page essay. • I have taught this class multiple times. Nothing in my teaching style changed this semester. • We read entire paragraphs of text in class, so students don't have to do something on their own that wasn't covered during the lecture. • Students take a 10-question multiple-choice quiz at the end of every class (30% of the final grade). • Attendance is 95-99% every class. Attention during lectures and participation in pair-work activities are very high → anticipating the end-of-class quiz. *** But unfortunately, I suspect many students are not reading the material on the syllabus. They are asking LLMs to summarize it instead.*** After the midterm, students reported: • They thought they knew concept definitions but couldn't produce them on paper. • They thought they understood the arguments but struggled to connect them or identify points of agreement and disagreement. My view: It might be “cool” or “innovative” to teach students to summarize readings with ChatGPT or write essays with Claude. But we may be doing them a disservice: reducing their ability to retain material, think creatively, and reason from what they know. If you only read what AI has summarized for you, you don’t truly "know" the material. Moving forward: We have a second midterm coming up. I don't know how to convey to students that the best way to do better on the exam is to rely on and improve their own reading skills.

Now that Gemini can create slide presentations, it's time to shift our focus. Students can generate a beautiful slide deck in seconds...but do they know the content. We need to focus on the PROCESS and the ARGUMENT instead of grading the product. #GoogleEDU #GeminiEDU

For a long time I thought “engaging lessons” meant being entertaining. Now I realize the most engaging moments happen when students feel ownership. When they’re creators, not consumers. Problem is many kids feel like this changes the game of school. And they get upset when you ask them to create instead of just follow the instructions. Many adults feel this way as well. I know I've sat in a professional learning session before a bit upset when I had to actually do something and not hang in the back minding my own business. My expectations were that I could just follow the instructions, not play a new game so to speak. So, what do we do? Well, first we need to change the expectations a bit. Right from the start. Then we have to scaffold the process. Asking kids to learn via lecture, textbook, and tests...and then jump into an authentic performance task...is a huge leap. Instead, give ownership in pieces and parts, ultimately working up to a larger task that requires all of that creativity and critical thinking we want to see.

@trickytreeneil @MarcusLuther6 Same in Canada

@MarcusLuther6 Is this an American thing? You’d be absolutely expected to do this in the UK. We call it teaching

T: "I'm the Math teacher. Not the Reading teacher." M: "That's fantastic! But we all teach literacy. Tell me about your vocabulary instruction." #intentional #contentareas 👇👇👇

@MarcusLuther6 This! I did independent reading and Macbeth - and most loved Shakespeare by the time we were done. Both/and 🩷

@Beanie0597 What's in your comment and on the image is not mutually exclusive

@MarcusLuther6 Great idea but I would reword: doing your best means… put the focus on effort not grade

I decided not to use Chromebooks during the first few days of school. Instructed my students to keep it in their backpacks. Only pencil and paper. How did it turn out? ⬇️

@MarcusLuther6 I think we need to teach the things we are passionate about. That's a good thing

@MarcusLuther6 learninginroom213.com/2024/09/preven…

@MarcusLuther6 Totally agree. It’s the only way to know students are learning.

These sentence stems, from T @213Room, can bear fruitful literary discussions! 🍎 More here: learninginroom213.com/2021/11/teachi…

@heymrsbond @TheReelRandom No doubt they did! I teach preservice teachers and they love that I’m showing them HOW to teach

@Larryferlazzo All the best! I know how bitter sweet it is. I've enjoyed following you and look forward to what comes next! I'm teaching B.Ed students now and sharing some of your wisdom with them.

I say goodbye to my classroom today as I retire after 23 years as a teacher. It’s been a great run!

@SustainTeaching Once Again, a broad, sweeping statement. It’s getting taught here

The silent truth: Many teachers dread teaching writing because they were never truly taught how to teach it effectively. And by many, I mean almost all.

Misinformation is perhaps our worst universal enemy right now. If you are sharing information without verifying it, you are perpetuating the problem. And, it seems, too many of us are indeed the problem, for we are too comfortable in our echo chambers and too lazy in our humanness to check ourselves, so inevitably we wreck ourselves. We’re wrecking ourselves. Many of us, under the pretense of self-imagined righteousness, abandon rationality and humanity in a game of “told ya so” and “gotcha” social media madness. Stop it. Stop the madness. Please. Please don’t share information that is not (vigorously) verified. Please don’t share information with malicious intent. This is not the time to abandon our rationality and humanity. We can do better.

@SustainTeaching It’s not the sheet itself that is bad. It’s the task that’s on it. learninginroom213.com/2018/01/are-wo…

Why are you moving away from worksheets? What are you moving towards? #MakeTeachingSustainable

@SustainTeaching I'll add that I just read your post - such a generalization that all TpT resources are mindless activities that don't focus on learning. Mine are all evidence-based activities that came from 30+ years of devotion to helping students learn.

@SustainTeaching 100% agree that planning is crucial, and I have been pounding that drum with my current education students. However, some TpT resources are carefully scaffolded & can provide help to busy teachers. I think they should plan first and look for quality help when they need it.

Head to the link in my bio (or the link below) for more thoughts on this topic. buff.ly/42DnzWd #MakeTeachingSustainable