Inquiry Questions
What happens when students develop autonomy and use choice to drive their learning?What happens to student behavior when students take control of their own education?What happens to the student-teacher relationship as conferencing becomes a norm?
As I played with the idea of stations and student choice I began diving into the way this type of learning changes students’ experiences in my classroom. I am interested in this topic to help shift the classrooms norms that are seen in my school building and develop a new idea of my role as a facilitator of learning over a focal point of the classroom.
The Parlor
“The Effects of Student Choices on Academic Performance.”
Briana von Mizener and Robert Williams capture, through a number of studies, how choice based structures benefit many students including general education students, behavioral concerns, and special needs students. Mizener and Williams stated that “Experiments with students with significant cognitive or behavioral problems
(approximately 17% of the experiments) yielded better performance under student choices than external choices in 80% of those experiments.” The ability to help behavioral and cognitive problems when students have choice over their learning is tremendous. They go on to explain that general education students do not yield the same performance shift as those of behavioral and cognitive problems. I would push back on this idea a bit by stating that when behaviorally challenging students are given the opportunity to become more focused (or less of a behavioral problem) then the rest of the class will benefit.
One of the main reason why I chose to start this experiment was tackle behavior in an integrated co-taught class that was being crippled with behavioral power struggles. This struggle made the entire class suffer as “fires” were being put out all over the class, leaving EVERYONE at a halt. If we help students with behavioral and cognitive problems, specifically in integrated classes, than how do the general education students not benefit?
“Supporting Autonomy in the Classroom: Ways Teachers Encourage Decision Making and Ownership”
Candice Stefanou, Kathleen Perencevich, Matthew DiCintio, and Julianne Turner help showcase the roles of a teacher who supports autonomy in their classrooms in their article. One of the largest incites that the article brings forth is the shift form authoritative control to supportive facilitator of the education. They state a “democratic leadership style influenced student motivation, participation, and completion of work by creating and atmosphere in which students persisted and were productive in the absence of the leader.” The possibilities of this type of classroom that I notice to be most positive are the ways in which students are productive “in the absence of the leader” which is most striking to me. I would argue that this behavior takes a lot of time and development of cognitive learning behaviors for students to begin driving the vehicle that is their education. This engagement considerably decreases behavioral issues that arise in the class and continue to foster a culture of learning while in the classroom.
Philosophy
I learned quickly that the traditional mode of teaching, that I regretfully began to fall into, would not work with my new cohort of students. September proved to be a stressful time that forced me to reflect on my practice and how I must adjust and adapt for my students. At this point I began putting together a philosophy for my students to address their needs in a way that might be new to them. I wanted my students to begin caring about their learning. I wanted them to start thinking about themselves as learners and not just go through the motions of school.
I believe that teaching students to be proactive and reflective in their learning will help them comprehend what they are doing on a daily basis in the school building. I am aware that this will not happen for all of my students. As eighth graders, the responsibility and drive for school are still developing. But, I also believe that when students have autonomy and choice over their learning, these skills will begin developing earlier in their educational career.
Context for Inquiry
In 2017 Newburgh Enlarged City School District had 28% of middle school students proficient on the NYS ELA assessment. Our school district is very diverse in ethnicity and socio-economic status. These aspects of NECSD have heavily contributed to my philosophy on autonomy and choice in the classroom. My classes are almost all co-taught with an open-minded individual who both leads and supports our classroom structure. As a school, we also have a high rate of removals for the 8th grade which played a role in the creation of the classroom structure. The culture created at our school seems to lend itself to a power struggle between teacher and student. As I have gotten to understand my students more I have realized that this shift is not common across the board with all of my students. The students that seem to have the most behavioral issues, and subsequently the ones who tend to butt heads with the teachers most, tend to have the most responsibility outside of the school day. These students often feel the pressures of adulthood in their home life as they have responsibilities that “typical” middle school students do not have. They have jobs, take care of siblings, cook, and clean their homes. They then wake up at six o’clock the next day and go to school where they are being told not asked. The difference is at home, they make the calls, but in school, they are forced to be subservient. I decided that I would not be one that forces my students to mold into something they’re not. I decided I would let them, and teach them, how to become more autonomous and the responsibility of choice.
Inspiration
The inspiration for the shift in classroom structure came at the end of a few frustrating weeks in September. We faced countless behavioral issues and instructional disruptions that made us feel like we were pushing a boulder up a steep hill, without any shoes, in the snow. I had reached a point that I hit multiple times last year where I found myself yelling; which is something that I desperately try not to do. I found myself not connecting with my students which I did in previous years, and didn’t directly know why this was going on. Last year I didn’t feel this defeated or ineffective. But that mode of thinking was one of my key downfalls. These students were not the same as last year’s students. I was doing them a disservice expecting to be able to teach these students the same. These students needed more. They needed more direct one-on-one instruction to help guide them as they refined their skills as learners. They needed a change, something other than what I was trying to force them into.
As my co-teacher and I pondered over the possible ways to shift the trajectory for our classes, we met with our instructional coach who helped us develop a system of autonomy and choice for our students.
What I Tried
I decided to create stations in my class that allowed students to work at their own pace, foster their understanding of themselves as learners, and take control of their behavior through one-on-one guidance.
The students were briefed on the experiment that we were going to try out, as well as the reason we were going to try it. They were now in charge of scheduling their own “work week.” Students began our week by getting an empty weekly schedule in front of them on Monday morning where they observed all of the features of the schedule. On their sheet they had:
- Weekly learning targets
- A list (and description) of each task that must be completed.
- Empty weekly schedule (with predetermined lessons/mini lessons pre-scheduled)
- Expectations and behavior guidelines
The students are given this schedule to complete and follow throughout the week. They take into consideration what they enjoy doing first, what needs to be completed before other assignments, what takes the longest, etc. They are then responsible for completing the tasks in the best environment that fits them. For example, while reading, students have the ability to read independently (with or without audio books depending on availability), work in small groups, or read with one of the teachers.
Students can choose the materials that they work best with, whether it is a Chromebook or on paper. They are given diverse types of assignments to complete from week to week to avoid a monotonous feel to the class flow. There was often a skill being practiced in multiple types of assignments such as vocabulary building (context clues/synonym antonym), comprehension, deep reading, formal writing (evidence based claims), creative writing (perspective/POV), and inference making (many different styles. As the students continued to foster their skills in this nature, they had different types of assignments to practice and nurture these skills.
What Happened In the Class
Procedure:
Students took a bit of time getting used to the procedure of the class. We purposefully left some topics unaddressed to allow students to struggle with juggling this loosened classroom structure with the intention that they will learn from these mishaps and grow as learners. Through these mishaps they will become more aware of what works and what doesn’t. These topics, such as time management and quality of work, were addressed in conferences with students individually and as a whole class at appropriate times to ease the students into this new format.
Procedure was not broken, no matter what the week looked like. If there were weeks with days off, the students still received a schedule, and they wrote in what we would be working on. Some students needed help making these choices, which we gladly gave suggestions. But we kept our procedure the same and students took some time getting used to not listening to a teacher for the majority of a class period.
When asked about the style and procedures set in class some students revealed the following statements in an online Google Form about the structure:
“I like the kind of work where we work on Chromebooks and have a schedule to finish. I don’t like the stations that go around the room because I move at a different pace than others.” -E.M.
“I am most proud of how we are able to do work faster at our own pace.” -G.D.
“I like it because you get to do your work and pick what ever assignment you want to do” -M.R.
“it’s great but there is a of responsibilities.” -A.L.
Conferencing
The new structure of our classroom allowed for individual and private student-teacher conferences. These meetings always have purpose and allow students to address any issues with the weekly schedule and their prediction of how complete their work will be by Friday. As the classes are co-taught, we have the ability to address what we call “now problems” in the moment and “later problems” during our conferences. For example, a “now problem” is something that will be addressed in terms of content and understanding that are holding the student back from successfully completing their assignments. A “later problem” could be about organization and fundamental skills needed to be successful in this structure. We are able to help our students schedule themselves, provide insight on performance, and give advice on why students scored the way they did on past assignments.
The conferencing allowed us to not only discuss issues with the class/content, but it allowed us to build relationships with our students in a much more in depth way. We discuss educational issues, but if students would like to begin discussing personal issues, we are always willing to support our students emotionally. The conferences allowed us to deal with issues of drama, stress, anger, happiness, and confusion in personal, one-on-one levels. This took away the abilities for students to “derail” a lesson in a way that they could have done previously.
The conferences also allowed us to differentiate assignments on a student to student basis depending on how the students are doing with their task at hand. We have recommended that students do alternative assignments to build a skill without the student worrying about falling behind from the rest of the class. The students began advocating for themselves and making it clear about what they need as learners (and individuals).
Next Steps:
The rest of the school year will run in some form of structure similar to this. I will be adapting our schedules for MORE reflective practice for my students in our next unit and asking my students to dive deeper into their scheduling sheets. As of right now, the students do not turn in their schedules, they use them as tracking tools for their weekly goals and tasks, but if we can make them a place of reflection and record keeping, then students would take ownership over their grades and work in a deeper way.
It was about the 3rd week in November when a student (E.R.) and I had the following conversation:
E.R.: “Are we going to do this all year?”
Me: “Do what?”
E.R.: “Do our weekly schedules and choose when we do stuff”
Me: “That depends, do you like it and are you learning”
E.R.: “Yeah, it’s different from the other classes, I like it”
This conversation seems so bland, just like most teacher stories when you aren’t the one actually experiencing the look on a student’s face and the confidence in their voices.
The conversation continued days later with a guidance counselor when he came up to me and asked why the students loved me so much. I was taken off guard. “O.D. says your his favorite teacher because you aren’t on him all the time.” When I heard this I laughed. O.D. was failing my class with about a 60. I responded to the counselor with the discussion about the grade to which he replied “You are about the only person he doesn’t have a referral from, or gets kicked out of class on a daily basis. That’s huge. Last year, he spent more time removed from ELA than he did in class.”
I didn’t think much about this conversation until later on. The structure of the class and the relationship I was able to build had totally changed this student’s outlook on ELA. It went from a place where he was totally unaccepted and acted out in, to a place where he wanted to be. No, he was not perfect in class, and he struggled to get his work done; but the structure of our class gave him more time spent in class and more time reading than he had in previous years.
This is not to say that all students felt this way, as evident in this schedule:
As it is evident, not all students had the drive to schedule their own work. This student in particular had a difficult time getting on board with the process/procedures that we developed in the class. Eventually, she found that her lack of interest in scheduling made it difficult to keep up with the amount of work that was being done in the class and had to find through experiences that her choices mattered. In this case, her choice to not care led her to fall behind. This behavior eventually shifted as the time went on and her grade was effected. As a result of this, my next steps are to continue to teach these skills of time management and organization in order for my students to be successful in high school and their careers.
It seems overwhelmingly clear that this structure works for my students. I will continue using the inquiry process to help this structure and my instruction. I believe the inquiry process has benefited my practice and is something that I would like to teach as a skill for my students to understand for themselves.
Works Cited:
Stefanou, Candice R., et al. “Supporting Autonomy in the Classroom: Ways TeachersEncourage Student Decision Making and Ownership.” Educational Psychologist, vol. 39, no. 2, June 2004, pp. 97–110. EBSCOhost, libdatabase.newpaltz.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,url,uid,cookie&db=eric&AN=EJ682815.
von Mizener, Briana H., and Robert L. Williams. “The Effects of Student Choices on Academic Performance.” Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, vol. 11, no. 2, Apr. 2009, pp. 110–128. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1177/1098300708323372.
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