Teaching is an Art

I’ve now begun the book study I’m doing with my two inductees; The Art and Science of Teaching by Robert J. Marzano. The book study and attendant assignments, reflections, and journal articles are structured to cover some important topics early in the year, like goal-setting, instruction and assessment. However, it leaves some equally or maybe even more important topics for after Christmas, like the bulk of the material on management. I am asking the mentoring coordinator for permission to re-order the assignments so that the management chapters will be studied before the others. We were told we could do almost whatever we wanted with our inductees so long as we consulted the directors of the program and could explain why our plans would be effective. Hopefully I am not being pompous–my intent is to best serve these teachers as quickly as possible.

My rationale for rearranging the units is that in our school we have a plethora
of curriculum maps, curriculum guides, and very specific lesson plans for teachers in Math, Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies. (Thankfully there are nothing but ISTE and Colorado Information Literacy Standards for my subject. But that’s another post.) It doesn’t seem to me that Marzano’s chapters about designing lessons and units will be much good to the inductees in the first semester if they have no choices in that arena anyway because of previously existing scope and sequence(s). We also have a strong culture and a mandate in my school to use CQI (Continuous Quality Improvement) so they have already had some inservice in analyzing data, setting goals with students, tracking progress, and celebrating success. However, that’s Chapter One, which we’ll be studying as assigned anyway ( because we’re already two weeks into the study period). We do have very specific pyramids of intervention for both behavior and academic issues, so they’ve been given a solid guide to deal with some of the management issues. So here’s my plan. Tell me if you think this makes sense:



1. Establishing and communication of goals, tracking progress, celebrating successes. Ch. 1
2. Establishing or maintaining classroom rules and procedures. Ch. 6
3. Recognizing/acknowledging adherence and lack thereof. Ch. 7
4. Establishing and maintaining effective student relationships. Ch. 8
5. Communicating high expectations. Ch. 9
6. Engaging Students. Ch. 5
6. Effectively interacting with new knowledge. Ch. 2
7. Practicing and deepening new knowledge. Ch. 3
8. Testing and stretching new knowledge. Ch. 4
9. Developing lessons and units. Ch. 10

By the way, one of my inductees was allowed to drop out of the program, as she already had a professional license. Another inductee lost his mentor, so now I’ll take over. Now I have an 8th Grade Social Studies teacher and an 8th Grade Math Teacher. I love Social Studies almost as much as ed tech, but I’m pretty weak at math so I hope I won’t disappoint him, but I’ll rely on help from his curriculum chairperson if I need to.

It will be good medicine for me to think through these issues, and to revisit some foundational concepts about teaching. I’m in my thirteenth year and for the past two years it seems like I’ve mainly read, studied, and listened to technology gurus, so I sense that I’m becoming a little unbalanced and it’s time to remedy that. (No comments about my sanity, please!)
I’ll let you know how this comes out.