Teacher in a Lab Coat - Richard Porr, Ph.D.

Scenarios:

Kim is in her second year of teaching but it feels like the first year all over again. “I haven’t learned anything,” she often laments to herself as she plods toward her car at the end of days that seem endless and fruitless. She knows what is not working but can’t figure out how to get a handle on how to make things better for her and her students. She can’t see how to apply the strategies and theories she learned in her degree work to these kids right before her every day.

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Jason—Coach Lunden to his PE classes—gets thrown off balance every day. Not by any lack of physical prowess on his part but because his students always seem to know how to take advantage of every unanticipated situation in order to take away his control of the class or to make him look like an idiot. Just today, as he was going over the rules of a new game that he thought the students would love, a senior boy turned his words against him and made them into an off-color joke. Jason was afraid to open his email for fear he might find a message from one of the girls’ parents. Teaching is just not as easy as he thought it would be.

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Do you ever think of yourself as a scientist? That’s what every good teacher is. First, you are expected to be an intellectual worker. Don’t agree? Look at the standardized test results your students are expected to get and to which you are held accountable.

If you can believe the reports concerning our students’ academic progress as compared to those of other countries, we are losing ground and are in danger of losing our lead as an economic power. “But I teach Physical Education,” you say. How about the problem of obesity in children and the rising cost of health care that is reaching down into very early ages? Better don the lab coat and begin to figure this out.

Many situations that can occur in the classroom can be thought through ahead of time and avoided or turned to your advantage.

A TEACHER SCIENTIST
In both examples above, our teachers have not been able to figure out what is going on or how to fix it. They have tools at their disposal—standards, strategies, curriculum resources, and theories—but they have not learned a process for analyzing what is happening and for making improvements. Fortunately for Kim and Jason, there is already a well-honed way of proceeding when we are faced with the unknown. It’s called the scientific method and it has been a part of Western thinking for so long we are in danger of taking it for granted and not embracing its power. The simple process of Observing, Hypothesizing, Experimenting, Verifying and Adjusting is exactly what our teachers need to help them make a difference in their students’ learning and behavior.

OBSERVING
Because you care about your students and their learning, you are a self-taught observer. You study students. You listen to what they say. You eavesdrop on their conversations and read body language. You look for the effect you and the curriculum is having on their learning.

HYPOTHESIZING
When you see something you think could be better—like daily—you develop a hypothesis about what is happening. In fact, those thoughts ride you throughout your drive home and throughout the evening, pursing you on into the time you should be sleeping and resting up for the next day. Finally, you devise an experiment. What if I . . . ? What would happen if . . . ?

EXPERIMENTING
And the next class period, you run your little experiment. It’s something we don’t talk about, but we experiment on people, little people and teenage-type people. And we do it every day. We have to if we are going to help them succeed and have a positive impact upon student learning.

VERIFYING AND ADJUSTING
So, we run our experiment and again observe the results. We measure those results, even if informally. Did students stay on task better? Were they more connected to the learning (I could say excited for elementary and middle school but perhaps just less bored for secondary). Did they ask relevant questions and follow up questions? Did they smile more? Did they get along with each other better? Oh, we have an entire toolbox of measurement instruments for we measure all the different parameters of being human and alive. Based upon our analysis, we adjust our hypothesis and our experiment (our teaching) and run through the process again.

THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS
So what I’m suggesting is kind of like Einstein’s thought experiments. Some cause and effect experiments can be run in your mind without having to risk possible unintended consequences in the classrooms. I remember the first time I thought this way. As I reviewed the next day’s geometry lesson, I noticed that one of the similarity theorems was Angle-Side-Side. As I made my abbreviated teacher notes for the class, I jotted down SSS for Side-Side-Side and then started to abbreviate Angle-Side-Side. It was apparent that I would be making an ASS of myself the next day in class if I abbreviated the theorem in the order it was written out in the book. When I got to that part in class, I PRECLUDED the off color comments by stating, “And in this class, we will call the next theorem Side-Side-Angle and abbreviate it SSA. Is that clear? (with a big smile)” They laughed, I kept control and moved on.

I remember another time when I had trouble remembering how to spell parallelogram. I don’t know why but I would get confused every time I tried to write it on the board. I knew the next day would be no different so I planned for it. Although I often asked students to help me with the spelling, I felt I needed to do something different this time. When I got to the point in my lesson when I needed to write “parallelogram,” I write the P and stopped. I turned to the class and said, “As you know, I’ve had a lot of trouble spelling parallelogram correctly. I think I’ll abbreviate.” That said, I turned and boldly slapped down a period after the P and kept on teaching. I’m sure this looked extemporaneous—but it was planned.

A GOOD TOOL

One terrific thinking tool you can use to better understand a problem you are wrestling with is the SEE-I tool from the work of Richard Paul. You probably understand the problem well enough to proceed with more observations and with an experiment if you can do the following:

S - State the problem. If you can't put the problem in to word, you don't understand it well enough to proceed toward a solution.

E - Elaborate. Attempt to talk or write more about the problem. Begin your sentence with, "In other words . . . "

E - Example. Come up with an example of the problem (or of the solution). Begin your sentence with, "For example . . ."

I - Illustrate. Come up with a metaphor that captures the essence of the problem. Begin this sentence with "It's like . . . "

HOW ALL OF THIS RELATES TO THE SCENARIO
Teaching is complex work. Kim and Jason need a plan, a way of figuring out what is going on, ways to proceed that stand a good chance of solving the problems, and ways to analyze whether or not their ideas worked. It is the scientific method and it works.