Let’s say a school let you teach a class the way you felt it should be. I know this is a fantastic notion, given the state of American education but stay with me here. You gave your own style of opening, you taught the concepts that you felt necessary and gave them a chance to practice the new concepts. What then? How do you know that they learned what you tried to teach them? Some mainstreamers would probably say, “I’ll check their homework the next day?” What if they don’t do the homework? What if they ignored you and just watched some YouTube videos and/or some Khan Academy videos? Yeah, it’s great that they learned, no matter how they learned. But what about your teaching? How do you know your methods were effective? And, oh yeah, what if they had their girlfriend/boyfriend/friend/sibling do the homework for them? How does this inform your teaching?

Standard application of the 4-part lesson plan (opening-instruction-practice-closing) gives that needed feedback. However, the standard closing of unsolved problems has its issues. First, it tests where the teacher feels the student should be, not where the student actually is in its knowledge base. Second, the same problem for everyone leads to an opportunity for kids to copy each others’ answers and thereby gives a false impression of knowledge. Third, the uninitiated will become bored with it and claim that they cannot do anything because they don’t understand it.

In my estimation, the solution to this issue lies in having choices. In response to that, I developed a “closing protocol” outlining 10 choices of ways to give feedback to the teacher about the students’ depth of knowledge. Of these ten, several are straightforward and logical and the rest are pretty creative. Among the creative are drawing a cartoon, creating poetry or a rhyme, telling an applicable joke, etc. The idea of these closings is to tap into what the student enjoys while giving feedback of knowledge.

These are quite useful but an idea I used for my dissertation goes a bit deeper. At the time I was choosing a topic, I was interested in bringing psychology ideas to education. One idea I was greatly impressed with was something Active Imagination (AI). AI is taking an abstract idea and having a conversation with it. The study took the step by step approach analyzing dreams (Robert Johnson’s Inner Work) and taught it to classes. One of the steps of this work is doing an AI with a character of one’s own dreams. Once the student understood AI, the student was given the option of doing an AI with a mathematical concept. The study shone a very positive light on these type of closings.

Given these positive results, the reader may be asking whether I use this idea or not. The answer is yes and no. Yes, I use the closing protocol on a daily basis. However, AI is offered in the protocol but I no longer encourage its use through dream analysis. Why not? Because it requires taking up to week of teaching dream analysis and I am afraid of being accused of “not teaching math.” (One school suspended me for several days on that charge. The school district’s decision was actually political but it hid behind that charge, in my opinion. The same school eventually allowed me to run a monthly “Dream Club,” where I taught the dream analysis steps and students analyzed each others’ dreams.)

If you would like access to any of these documents of this dissertation, please ask in the comments section.

In the early months of my very first teaching job, I learned my first valuable lesson for the profession of teaching. The lesson was that every success in education is about making connection. This lesson wasn’t from a depth of understanding but out of fear. (When I say “very early,” I mean before I entered the classroom.) When I talked to my first contact of my first school district, I told an HR person that I was a little scared about the physical size of high school students, even though I weighed over 200 pounds. She told me that, when I make a connection with a class, the larger kids usually became protectors rather than assailants. I took this information as an understanding that “it was all about connection.”

I have tested this hypothesis many times over in my 20 years in classrooms. In my experience, it has always been true in every classroom. It has also been true in social situations and work situations. In general, it is an excellent lesson in my Life. Fast-forward to Fall 2013. I am teaching high school math in a 99% African American high school. (It was also a low-achieving school as far as academics.) I am also PhD candidate in Psychology, with an emphasis on its applications to high school education. And I need an idea for pilot study for my degree.

I decided to look how I started classes. For that matter, how any math teacher starts a class. (This probably can extend to other subject areas but I have never looked at that.) As you may or may not know, math classes in high school usually start with a few math problems to solve. I have heard called a warm-up or a sponge. For motivated students, it reminds them of the stuff they learned the previous day and primes them for the new information. It works great for, as I said, motivated students.

However, it doesn’t take much observation of the high school math classes I have taught that 80% of my mathematics students are not very motivated to learn mathematics. So, the question is, how does this kind of opening affect the uninitiated? From my observations, I realized that these kind of openings remind the uninitiated that they are in a place that they don’t really want to be. As a result, I thought, “How can I flip that script and make this a place where they want to be and, at the same time, be a warm up to thinking?

What I came up with was a pretty simple idea. On the board, I would write a quote or some poetry. I would then ask students to respond to the quote or poetry. They could respond verbally or written on a piece of paper. The greatest part of this assignment was that there were no incorrect answers; just inadequate attempts. How did I decide on inadequate? First of all, “what he/she said.” Also, written responses were a minimum of 50 words. As for verbal responses, I asked for more if I wasn’t clear about any “surface” responses. My pilot study used several of my colleagues to use this exercise for their classes.

The results were very good. Participating teachers extended the idea to use videos. They reported better grades. They reported higher grades. They reported more consistent participation in class. One teacher even witnessed students looking new terminologies from the opening exercises.

There were complaints that breaking down a quote was not “mathematics.” I would argue that this breaking down was based in logic and logic is taught in our geometry classes. Besides, the process got more students thinking that the standard warm up.

Why did stop using it? Because it helped me get suspended once and was partially responsible for irate parents, which probably led to my forced resignation. (I would like to point out that the suspension and the resignation were also about me getting sloppy in my methods. I cannot blame these actions solely on this practice.) Despite its effectiveness, I made a vow to go mainstream and not take too many chances. If I could get assurance of my professional safety, I might try it.

Note: This is an unpublished study. If you want more information, contact me and ask.

In yesterday’s blog, I updated the reader on the “job sampling” I have been doing since December 2020. As part of that journey, I have returned to teaching math in a small public school. I am doing the job I have been doing, for the most part, since 1999. But my approach is different now.

Since being released from my last teaching job, my wife became fed up with the fragility of my working life. I have been suspended from teaching once and then I was told not to return on the other occasion. She also believes that I didn’t taking responsibility for those actions and I “always blamed it on someone else.” Maybe she’s right but I’m not sure.

Before May of 2022, I saw myself as a rebel against the current system of education in America. This stance was applauded by my PhD professors but got me in trouble with educators and parents. I thought of myself as an advocate for my students. I thought, “Sure, I make administrators uncomfortable but I was never denied employment.” Until May 2020.

So when I returned to teaching in August, I decided to take another approach. This time, I decided that I would take the mainstream approach. I would follow the rules as they were placed in front of me. I would be very liberal with writing behavior referrals. I would contact parents early and often. I would teach with a very standard approach; opening problems, teach by example, assign work, closing assignment. Very boring but the letter. Treat my assignment as a job, not a calling. Keep my nose clean and stay out of trouble.

How has it been? Well, it is almost January and I have yet to experience an deep problems from administration. On the other hand, student compliance is very low. Test scores are very low. Off-task behavior is very high. But, in my opinion, that’s what you get when you play the mainstream rules.

Could it be better? Absolutely! Some of the ideas I have tried could minimize (and have minimized) most of these issues. Are they worth trying? Absolutely not! It just doesn’t feel safe to attempt anymore. (I sometimes fantasize about winning the lottery and using these methods on my way out the door.)

Please wish me luck for the rest of the year. As these patterns continue towards the Spring, I will very tempted to try my old methods to boost better results. Please give me strength to stay the non-productive course.

In upcoming posts, I will discuss some of these ideas I am too scared to try. I will share how effective I have seen them to be and risks they have caused.

I recently celebrated my 6th year with WordPress. However, I haven’t written a blog in two years. I guess I have some explaining to do.

Well, let’s pick up from the time of my last post. It was a post about comments that my principal made after observing my teaching the first time. As you can see from the post, I was not in agreement with his comments. This was not a good start. And it got worse. Every time he observed me, I thought that the class went well. When I received his comments, there were nothing positive said and more negative things said. This continued until April 2022, when he was removed as principal of our school. Good news, right? Well, yes, but not for long. Not for long because, in May 2022, the new regime let me know that they were not renewing my contract. Ironically, I was informed of this during Teacher Appreciation Week. The message to me was loud and clear.

When I took this news in, I took it as an opportunity to try something different as a profession. (My wife didn’t take this as lightly as I did.) In a way, I had anticipated this scenario; I worked many evenings preparing to take the Virginia Real Estate Exam. After two attempts, I passed the exam. (The average pass rate of the test is around 50%.) A week before Teacher Appreciation Week, I received my new license. My first thought was that I would just smoothly move into real estate.

Since real estate income is pure on commission, I need to find a way to earn benefits. I figured I would need to supplement the real estate job with a benefits-offered job. So I started applying to jobs. But where should I apply? I quickly decided that I should focus on jobs I had done before. Within a few weeks, I was hired as a bartender at a chain restaurant. It seemed perfect; I could bartend a few nights a week and focus on real estate during the day. I quickly learned that reality and theory live in different houses. After four days of training, I decided that this was definitely not going to turn out the way I had envisioned. I quit the job and the management seemed as relieved as I felt.

Not long after leaving that job, another profession from my past came a-calling. I was called in for an interview with an engineering services company. Before I knew it, I was hired a Construction Materials Technician. It paid less than teaching but overtime could take care of the difference. On top of that, like the bartending job, they offered full benefits. I was nervous at first but I soon settled into the job and rather enjoyed it. It required me to be on rooftops of tall buildings. It also was in the middle of the summer so the job was incredibly hot. Despite all of this, I enjoyed the job. On top of that, my wife said that I seemed happier.

Then I got distracted and made a pretty poor decision. One of the jobs I applied for was a substitute teacher at a psychological rehab facility. When I met the man in charge of the school, I liked him very much. The job was challenging but the manager gave me flexibility in my teaching methods. He said, as demand increased, he wanted to hire me as a full-time teacher. It made me reconsider teaching as a full-time profession. It was not August and school would be starting soon. I applied to a high school in a very small and rural county. They hired me very quickly and paid me a little more than the construction job. I told myself, “Take the job. The construction job is friggin’ hot as hell and our 63-year-old knees hurt when I have to climb those ladders.” I now have second thoughts about that move. Not only that but the conflict with school hours prevented me from being trained for the part-time teaching job.

Looking ahead to the summer, I plan to throw 110% into the real estate gig and see what happens. If I don’t sell enough real estate, I will return to teaching another year. Or maybe I will go back construction.

Then came the holidays. Several events have shown me that my social skills are quite poor. This mostly due to a poor social upbringing. I came to realize that I need to work in an area that requires very few social skills. I know what you might be thinking; “Why the hell did you choose to teach teenagers and sell real estate if your social skills suck so much?!” Okay, maybe you didn’t think that…but I did! That is the reason I have returned to blogging and looking at books about freelance writing. I guess only time will tell where all of this takes me.

In the mean time, I will continue to teach, while putting out Google ads for math tutoring (drboguynn.com) and real estate sales (boguynn@abbitt.com).