Module 3: II.) Reconceiving the Role of the Teacher

As we think about reconceptualizing the role of the teacher for blended learning, we're thinking about five key shifts. In particular, the first one is from lecturer to facilitator.

Next, it's the difference from fixed groupings of students to more dynamic grouping strategies.

The third shift is moving away from being the explainer of all concepts and to the intervener with the student at the right time for their needs.

And then from thinking about the job being teaching content to thinking about teaching content, skills and even mindsets to our students.

And the last shift that we're thinking a lot about is one that happens in several of the models we profile, which is from generalist to specialist. The idea that teachers can start specializing on those skills that they're most passionate about or where their strengths are.

So to make this new vision for school a reality, we as teachers have to go after one fundamental assumption of how we think of our job as teachers. And that's like our core instructional delivery model and letting go of the idea that we always have to teach something in order for students to have learned it.

When the kids are learning on the computers during personalized learning time, it's my job to just facilitate. And it's not my job to like, answer their questions, but it's my job to proctor content assessments. So all I'm doing is like, making sure they're on task and like being like, facilitating their learning. And that's kind of like my entire role. And it's not to, like, teach them in that time. It's for them to learn and like, learn from their mistakes or learn from their successes.

Yeah. And so lectures, though, still going to be part of the learning process. We don't want you to be under the wrong impression, but if you look at the blended learning schools that we're profiling, you see that it's actually for two reasons that the lecture remains relevant. The first one is that in small group settings, the teacher is still clearly leading a class through a series of concepts and exercises. And the second reason is, if we're being honest, in college, students still learn through lecture. And so mastering those note taking skills and being able to absorb a lecture.

Is important, but it's all about being deliberate. So here's the question for you. Think about your own kids, your own teaching. What's the ideal percent of time that we should actually be imparting knowledge through lecture? 10%? 20%? 50%. Give us your feedback. We'd be curious to hear what you think. So in education, we've known for A long time. The power of getting students into the right group at the right time. Now, what it usually looks like though is maybe the class is divided into three groups and we'll call them the Cardinals and the Blue jays and the Sparrows. But a kid figures out pretty quickly I'm a smart kid or I'm not a smart kid. And that's because the groups are fixed, those things are set in stone and the kids don't change. It doesn't respond to a kid's proficiency level, which we know can change on a daily or hourly basis. So the big idea here is what we call dynamic grouping. The groups exist on a concept by concept level and respond to kids changing. So they can go from a high to a medium to a low group, even within a single week.

So this points to one of the big shifts that a teacher will make as they move into blended learning, which is that you're really going to be using data to, to drive this idea of dynamic grouping or these changing groups. And we would argue that you should be using this data on at least a weekly basis, maybe even a daily basis, so that you're constantly sorting students to get them the right thing at the right time.

I'll give you a concrete example. There's a school here in the Bay Area that uses a school created data tool called Exit Ticket. The teacher stands up to teach a concept, but right away gives the students a few choices questions to see what they know. Kids do, their responder and the students who get it right are peeled away. That onion gets peeled. The first level of kids go and they work on something more challenging. Then the teacher begins to do some instruction and pretty quickly pauses again, offers a few more questions. See what kids do or don't know. Peels the onion further until they get down to the core of the students who really need the most magical intervention we have, which is more small group time with that teacher.

We reteach as soon as possible. And that's one of the really powerful things about small group instruction, is that I teach the lesson in a small group format. Then I may discover that two students from this from group one and two students from group two are missing the same areas. They both have the misconception of lining up the ruler the wrong way. So I can pull those four students again and reteach them just on that specific area. And I know what area they're missing because of the data that I'm able to get so, so quickly from programs like Edmodo.

If you go into a full blended Learning environment. It's very easy to imagine that the amount of data you have is going to get overwhelming very fast. Don't get overwhelmed by it. Pick the one source that's really, really good for giving you great data that's actionable, or pick the two or three metrics that you think really helps you drive that grouping and what students need instruction wise.

Next, it's really all about making the data actionable and finding a pathway for you that gets you the information you need to make your classroom work. We're going to spend a little more time in the next section with Navigator Schools and hearing how they built their whole schedule around this idea of dynamic grouping to get the right students in front of the right teacher at the right time.

If teachers are doing a lot less of the explaining up front because of the software, that frees them up to spend a lot more time intervening with students one on one and at the right time for each individual student.

It's really exciting to see schools thinking not just about the content that they need to teach, but also about the skills and the way that students apply knowledge as well as even the mindsets they want their students to have. And the hope is that some of these blended learning techniques can actually free up times for teachers so they can actually spend more of their time on these mindsets and skills for students. And it actually aligns perfectly with the Common Core coming as well that's going to ask students to do more cognitively demanding work on their assessments. Now, the teachers and staff at the schools we've been showing you think a lot about this role and how they get students to develop the content they need, the mindsets to be good learners and the skills that they need to succeed.

I come from a family of teachers, so I talk about teaching a lot in schools, a lot with people. And so I think there's two things about this system that have excited me the most and that I like talking about the most. The first is the way that we've really clearly identified those three big categories of things we want kids to learn. Content knowledge, the cognitive skills, and the non cognitive skills. I mean, any teacher could tell you like, yeah, absolutely, those things are important. I teach all those things in my class, but I love the fact that we have distinctly identified those and we've explicitly set aside time within the day for kids to work on those things so they know exactly what they're working on. One isn't getting lost in the other. Kids are getting really clear feedback on either their content knowledge or their cognitive skills. Or their non cognitive skills. And each of them gets that one on one time for a check in so they know exactly what they're doing well and what they need to be.

Working on under the optimized model. It's been really interesting lesson planning. It has not at all been the same because it's not like I'm going to teach this content today, it's like I'm going to teach this skill today. And it's like what information am I going to use to teach this skill that maybe doesn't have anything to do with math?

Thinking about how my role is kind of the same and how it's different, I think in terms of the differences, one big difference obviously is I'm not talking to kids right now as much about specific content as I used to and I'm not constantly worrying. Every single day is this one activity I did helping them learn the content. I'm creating playlists. So I'm definitely doing a lot of work to help kids learn content. But a lot of the onus of that has been put onto the kids.

We see a trend in a lot of schools, not all schools, but a lot of schools doing blended learning, of teachers shifting from being generalists of all elements of teaching toward actually specializing on their strengths and the things that really excite them about getting into this profession in the first place. Now, many of you may remember the documentary Waiting for Superman and the big Problem Brian that I had with that movie was actually its title. The implication of it was that the only way to save our schools was to have a superhuman teacher inside of every single classroom that was doing lots and lots of different jobs that no human being could do within the constraints of a 45 minute period.

Well, and you think instead, what if teachers could go after what they were best at? The person who just loves to lesson plan will use their great lessons all across the grade level and save every teacher from having to recreate the same lesson plan over and over and over again. The teacher who is that actor and loves the rapt attention of students can do more lecture, maybe have more students at a time and free up other teachers to do different tasks. The teacher who's that data wonk who just loves assessment, let them go. Create the statistically reliable and valid assessment, but then use it across the school or even across a district. Play the teacher's strengths and let them specialize to the extent that they're comfortable or what's possible.

Once you decide that every teacher doesn't have to have the same job once you decide that every teacher doesn't have to pretend to be the master of 100,000 different things, which, as humans, we know is not possible. It's really exciting. And what we see with a lot of teachers is some teachers really thrive in classroom culture and classroom management, and other teachers really thrive in getting kids to love writing. And other teachers really thrive in leading kids through a song about mathematics and really teaching them different ways about thinking about math. And one of the fun parts is let teachers play to their strengths.

Another great part about our school is that while I'm their English language arts teacher, they go to another teacher for the math. So I'm only having to focus on the English language arts standards, which allows me to go deeper into them, understand them more myself, so that I can present it better to my class.

So that wraps up the five big shifts that Brian and I see happening as teachers move into these blended learning environments. And we hope this list has been provocative and spurred your thinking. Some next, we're actually going to dive into how our protagonist schools are implementing a lot of these shifts as the teachers make the journey toward high quality blended learning.