Teacher Report Card Part 2 - Results

Earlier this year I blogged about the Teacher Report Card I gave my students and some of the preliminary feedback.  Here are the final results from my eighth grade math students.  I did not use the teacher report card with my functional math students.

Participation:

This survey was sent to students as a Google form.  Students were told that the survey was anonymous (unless of course they wrote their name in one of the responses - I was surprised that several students did that).  I knew how many students in each class period took the survey, but not which students.  About half of all my students participated.

Period C: 16/28 students

Period FG: 16/29 students

Period J: 12/28 students 

The first part of the report card survey asked students to rate the truth about statements related to my teaching.  Students used ratings from 1 to 5: 1 being Not At All True and 5 being Definitely True.  Statements included things like, "I think Ms. Ess encourages questions" or "I think Ms. Ess gives quizzes/tests that reflect the material in the unit" or "I think Ms. Ess cares about me."  I used and modified the Teacher Report Card that Mr. Vaudrey tweeted about here.  For the full list of statements I used, keep scrolling to the table below.

Overall, about 75% of each class gave me 4s and 5s (those are the good ones!).  The next graph breaks down student responses by statement, rather than overall class summaries.

The table below shows the ratings as percentages.  Now these are a tiny bit inflated because I can't actually earn 0% with this scale (5/5 is 100% and 1/5 is 20%).  Nevertheless, it is fairly representative of the actual results and much easier than trying to modify the scale now that responses are in.  In the future, I might change the rating scale to 0 to 4.  Or maybe even use the SBG scale we use for grading quizzes...!  In which case I probably would not display the results as percentages.  I'm turning into my students who desperately want the percentage written at the top of their quiz!  Old habits die hard, right?  I digress...

Ms. Ess...	Period C	Period FG	Period J	Average
... dresses professionally.	94.67%	95.00%	86.67%	92.11%
...respects each student.	91.25%	95.00%	86.67%	90.97%
...gives quizzes/tests that reflect the material in the unit.	90.67%	90.00%	91.67%	90.78%
...encourages questions.	85.33%	88.75%	90.00%	88.03%
...listens to our ideas.	85.33%	87.50%	90.00%	87.61%
... seems to enjoy teaching.	92.00%	88.00%	81.67%	87.22%
... uses language that we can understand.	81.25%	84.00%	91.67%	85.64%
...praises good behavior.	78.75%	82.67%	95.00%	85.47%
... provides time for review of material.	86.67%	81.25%	88.33%	85.42%
... tries to see the student's point of view.	87.50%	87.50%	78.33%	84.44%
...praises good work.	82.67%	81.25%	86.67%	83.53%
... treats me as an individual.	82.50%	83.75%	81.67%	82.64%
...says her words clearly.	76.25%	80.00%	91.67%	82.64%
...grades fairly.	85.33%	73.75%	88.33%	82.47%
... gives good, fair assignments.	81.43%	76.25%	89.09%	82.26%
...leads good class discussions.	81.33%	85.33%	80.00%	82.22%
...encourages me to be responsible.	76.25%	85.00%	83.33%	81.53%
... tries new teaching methods.	86.67%	73.75%	81.67%	80.70%
...gives enough time for assignments.	81.33%	76.25%	83.33%	80.30%
...answers questions completely.	82.50%	80.00%	76.67%	79.72%
... makes me feel important.	75.00%	83.75%	80.00%	79.58%
...encourages different opinions.	81.33%	76.25%	78.33%	78.64%
... does a good job of treating all students the same.	86.25%	72.50%	75.00%	77.92%
...has interesting lessons.	76.00%	72.50%	81.67%	76.72%
... has a great sense of humor.	66.25%	85.00%	78.33%	76.53%
... cares about me.	76.25%	80.00%	73.33%	76.53%
...has a good pace (not too fast or too slow).	78.67%	68.75%	81.67%	76.36%
... explains topics clearly.	73.75%	77.50%	76.67%	75.97%
... gives fair punishments.	73.33%	75.00%	76.67%	75%
... tells us our learning goals.	77.33%	75.00%	71.67%	74.67%
... keeps the class under control without being too tough.	69.33%	53.75%	72.73%	65.27%

The second part of the report card survey was open response.  Here are the questions.  Again, I added to Mr. Vaudrey's original Teacher Report Card and included the Keep, Change, Start, Stop reflection questions from Sarah Carter.

If you're interested, you can view a table of all student responses here.

This post has been rather long and it took a lot of formatting for me to show responses here.  With that said, I'll save my analysis and interpretation of these results for another day when my mind is fresher.  Stay tuned!

Good Intentions

Exactly two months ago, I started writing this blog post.  Here's what I wrote.

At what point are good intentions not enough?  I've had this conversation with several students as of late.  You can be apologetic and have all the good intentions in the world, but at some point, the behavior needs to change.

What about me?  Classroom management is a huge struggle for me, but I always look for the positives.  I'm doing better this year than my first, second, and third years of teaching.  I had a really serious last-chance conversation with a student this year that I would never have had the guts or the words to have before this year.  I've been way better about enforcing assigned seats.  I don't make a lot of threats regarding consequences or punishments for poor behavior, but when I do, I always follow through.

I fully intend to be stricter when it comes to encouraging and demanding good behavior, but at what point are my good intentions not enough?  My classes are still super chatty.  I still have kids who are rude and disrespectful - towards me and their classmates.  I still give kids too many chances.  The "good kids" are still frustrated by the interruptions from their classmates and my apparent inability to stop them, and I'd venture a guess that the disruptive classmates are also frustrated.

I do everything I can to keep kids in class even when they're misbehaving.  But why?  I could say that it's because it only makes it harder for the kid when they miss instruction.  Or that it's because I want to be understanding when a kid's having a bad day...or week...or...  And while there's probably some truth to all that, I think the real reason I keep kids in class even when they're misbehaving is that I'm afraid of how it will look if I keep sending kids to the office.  As if keeping kids in class is a sign that the problems must not be that bad.

And that's not fair to anyone.  It's not fair to the misbehaving students who need those boundaries.  It's not fair to the rest of the class whose learning is interrupted.  It's not fair to me and my sanity.  I need to hold my students to higher standards behaviorally.  I need to have higher expectations for them because I know they will meet them.  The average middle schooler is probably not looking to go above and beyond, but most kids will do at least enough to get by.  So I better make the qualifications for "getting by" a lot more rigorous.

It felt negative and pessimistic and I didn't want to publish it.  To me, it felt more like complaining than a reflection where I was seeking a better solution.  Around the same time I wrote the original post here, I gave my students a Teacher Report Card and blogged about the early results.  I gave students until the end of the quarter to respond, so it was only a couple of weeks ago that I got some of their final responses.  I've been using our vacation week this week to really dig into their feedback and make a plan for when we return to school.  Although Christmas break was only two months ago, and we've had snow days and holidays in between, I could not be more grateful for the time this week to refresh and reset!

Strimko Puzzle Review

Right around Christmastime I was contacted on Twitter with the opportunity to review Strimko Book 1.  After hearing about many other people using these puzzles, I was very excited to try them out myself!  Disclaimer: I received a free copy of Strimko Book 1 in exchange for my unbiased review.

At first glance, Strimko appears to be similar to other number puzzles like Sudoku.  As you fill in the missing numbers, you must not repeat numbers in any row or column.  While Sudoku then has 3x3 grids where numbers cannot repeat, Strimko has streams.  Numbers connected by lines to form a stream cannot repeat within the stream.  For a 4x4 Strimko puzzle, you use the numbers 1-4.  For a 5x5 puzzles, you use the numbers 1-5, etc.  The simplicity of this puzzle made it quite easy for me to explain to my students.  Let me repeat that.  This puzzle's rules are simple enough to explain just once to my students!  That means the challenge was really in solving the puzzle, not in understanding the rules of how to solve the puzzle.

Since receiving the book two months ago, I have used these puzzles several times with my students as a warm-up or time-filler for students who finish classwork early.  Here are some of the most common comments from my students:

"I like these better than our regular Do Now's."

"I finished the whole page.  Do you have more?"

"Can you check this?  Oh, wait.  It's wrong."

"I like these better than our regular Do Now's."

It's halfway through the year and I still find myself reminding students to get started on the warm-up when they come into class.  Not with Strimko!  Students were much more likely to actually work on the warm-up when I gave them these puzzles to solve instead of the regular Do Now (I blogged about the format I usually use here).


"I finished the whole page.  Do you have more?"

When used as the warm-up, I gave my students a week's worth of puzzles copied onto one page.  I told my students we would be solving two each day in the first 5-10 minutes of class.  Some students really struggled to finish two puzzles, while other students would work ahead and finish the entire page.  Then instead of just sitting and waiting or talking to their neighbor, they would ask for more puzzles!  And these weren't only the typical overachieving students.  Students who were typically less engaged were finding success with these puzzles and were asking for more!


"Can you check this?  Oh, wait.  It's wrong."

This was probably my most favorite comment to hear.  As a teacher, I get asked so many times if an answer is correct, and I usually respond with, "How could you check your answer?" or "That seems reasonable, what did you do to get that answer?" or "You're right, that seems off.  Tell me how you got that answer."  It was a welcome change to see students checking their own work (or a classmate's) without prompting.  Again, I think the simplicity of the Strimko rules led to this kind of independence.


One day instead of solving the puzzles, I asked my students to write about the rules and strategies for solving Strimko puzzles.  Here are some of the things they said:

Overall, these puzzles were definitely a win in my classroom!  And not just my classroom.  I have to stop myself from writing in the book at home before I've made a copy of the page to use with my students!  I am very grateful to the Grabarchuk family for the free copy of this puzzle book.  Definitely recommended!

Do I Have to Assign Seats?

I hate making seating charts.  I hate enforcing assigned seats.  I came to the realization this year that this may be partly because I rely too much on a seating chart to do the classroom management for me.  As in, if I could just come up with the right seating arrangement, I would have so many fewer disruptions and issues in class.

Even after coming to this realization about how I (unrealistically) viewed seating charts, and knowing that a good seating arrangement is not the magic answer to classroom management, I still just don't like making seating charts.

After winter break, I had my students complete an anonymous "teacher report card" which I wrote a little bit about here (I hope to really dig through their responses and write more again soon).  One of the most common responses to what students thought I should change was the seating.

• You should change my seat. And the seating arrangement. It’s hard to see with the sun glare and also from the side it’s hard to see the do nows.  
• The seating chart because we would like to pick our seats.
• Ms Ess should change having assigned seats that she picks, but have us pick our seats and tell her that’s where we want to sit until otherwise based on behavior and work ethic.  
• Ms. Ess should change around the desks.
• Let people sit where ever they want
• you should let the good kids sit in the back where ever they want and have the naughty kids have assigned seats

You get the idea.  And I don't think this is anything we haven't heard from students before.  But what would happen if I actually listened to them here and made this change?

My favorite comment is the one where the student writes, "...have us pick our seats and tell her that's where we want to sit until otherwise based on behavior and work ethic."

What if I offered to let kids pick their seats under the condition that if I ask them to move for any reason, they move immediately and without argument to sit in the seat I assign for the remainder of the class period?  As always, when I have to move a student's seat or ask a student to leave class for disruptive behavior, I would tell the student that they can try again tomorrow in the seat of their choosing.

For the first half of the year, they have been forced to sit and work with people who are not necessarily their friends.  I think this is important so that they learn to work with other people, and they share ideas with people who likely think differently than them.  At this point, is it necessary to keep mixing up the groups and requiring students to sit and work with different people?  Are there major benefits to a seating arrangement that I'm missing?  Is it just laziness on my part if I decide to let students choose their own seats?