High school English teacher and lover of learning.
Canada
Joined January 2015
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Room 213 retweeted
‘Autopilot Is the Enemy’: Why You Should Shake Up Your Stale Classroom Script edweek.org/teaching-learning…
Room 213 retweeted
Most people who don’t work in schools can’t fully understand why teachers sometimes restrict bathroom use.
From the outside, it gets framed as a “bathroom rights” issue, as if teachers are simply being unreasonable or dismissive of students’ needs.
Here’s the reality:
There are schools where students can use the bathroom freely with no problems.
And there are schools where, if you allow unrestricted access, mayhem ensues.
-Students leave for 40-minute stretches.
-Student wander into other classrooms and throw water balloons.
-Students vape.
-Students meet each other and box in the bathroom (with gloves).
-Students scream through the halls as they run past rooms.
-I can go on with another 2,000 issues.
What looks like a simple policy decision (from an adult's perspective) is actually quite complicated.
Once again, if you are not working in a school--you probably don't get it, bruh.
Room 213 retweeted
Student turns in a paper. Send it to AI, generate a 5 question quiz on the content. Student takes the quiz next day on their own paper. If they wrote it, easy. If they didn't, obvious. No detection software. No accusations. Just quiet accountability.
Room 213 retweeted
Adults have needs too. They are not immune to stress, anxiety, burnout, or overwhelm. Yet in schools, we often expect them to pour from empty cups and still perform at a high level.
If we truly believe in Maslow Before Bloom, then it applies to everyone in the building.
When we take care of the adults first, we do not lower expectations. We create the conditions where people can actually meet them.
Here are 10 simple ways to start tomorrow:
1.Start with adult well being
2.Create psychological safety
3.Assume positive intent
4.Connection before correction
5.Reduce unnecessary stress
6.Normalize mental health
7.Celebrate effort
8.Give autonomy
9.Model calm
10.People first, academics second
You cannot Bloom without Maslow.
Take care of your people… and everything else gets better.
#MaslowBeforeBloom #EducationLeadership #SchoolLeaders #TeacherLife #TeacherWellbeing #EducatorWellness #MentalHealthInSchools #SchoolCulture #LeadWithHeart #TraumaInformed #WholeChild #WholeEducator #PrincipalLife #AssistantPrincipal #TeacherSupport #BurnoutRecovery #MindsetMatters #SocialEmotionalLearning #SEL #EducationMatters #TeachersOfInstagram #AdminLife #SupportTeachers #WellbeingFirst #PeopleFirst
Room 213 retweeted
We talk about student engagement a lot—& rightly so.
But did you know that teacher engagement is just as important?
In fact, when teacher engagement dips, it has a negative effect on student engagement. When teacher engagement is high, it positively impacts both student engagement and achievement.
Get an overview of the 4️⃣ dimensions of teacher engagement now: bit.ly/4dUBZHm
Room 213 retweeted
If a teacher is just checking a box, kids will check the box.
But if we're about learning and teaching, it's an entirely different experience.
AI in the world makes me a better teacher. I wish AI made teaching easier — it doesn't. But it sure makes it more important. -- RANT OVER.
Room 213 retweeted
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.
Room 213 retweeted
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.
Ezra Klein: "Having AI summarize a book or paper for me is a disaster.
It has no idea what I really wanted to know and wouldn't have made the connections I would've made. I'm interested in the thing I will see that other people wouldn't have seen, and I think AI typically sees what everybody else would see.
I'm not saying that AI can't be useful, but I'm pretty against shortcuts.
And obviously, you have to limit the amount of work you're doing. You can't read literally everything. But in some ways, I think it's more dangerous to think you've read something that you haven't than to not read it at all.
I think the time you spend with things is pretty important."
@ezraklein
Room 213 retweeted
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
Room 213 retweeted
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.
Room 213 retweeted
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
👇👇👇
Room 213 retweeted
These sentence stems, from T @213Room, can bear fruitful literary discussions! 🍎
More here: learninginroom213.com/2021/1…
ALT "Sentence Patterns for Discussing Literature" resource includes sentence stems like "The character's reaction illustrates ..." and "This image suggests/captures/evokes ..."
Room 213 retweeted
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.
Room 213 retweeted
Take it easy on the kids and yourself today.
It’s the Monday after break.
Simply settle back in to what you love.
Room 213 retweeted
Whether you think it's going to be a bad day or a good day, you're probably right. The day itself won't change, but how you choose to see it will determine your experience. Your mindset shapes your reality.
Love these and all of them often - except the quiz. I rarely had quizzes in my classroom.
Sometimes, the teaching approaches that feel a little unconventional are the most successful! These strategies are effective, research-backed, and outside-the-box. 📦 edut.to/3U7BFua
