Nov25

New Teacher Faces a Dilemma

I am a new teacher, and my supervisor asked me to write a letter recommending a student for an award. I don't think he is qualified. What should I do?
Nancy, No City Please

Teachers are often asked to recommend students for awards, scholarships, or job applications. Sometimes we know the student well, and our remarks could span several pages detailing accomplishments and credentials. Other times, we don't know the student well enough to write an enthusiastic recommendation. Finally, we may have very compelling reasons, based on our experiences, not to recommend a student at all. Without knowing the requirements of the award or the details of your relationship with the student or your supervisor, I've compiled some suggestions to help you think through this.

First, there are some general factors you should consider:
  • What is the relative value of this award?
  • Is student being judged on his potential for future achievement or on his past
  • performance?
  • How well and under what circumstances do you know the student?
  • Is the student a protégé of your supervisor?
  • What happens if the student is denied the award?
  • What happens if the student wins the award?
  • Are other nominees more deserving?
  • Do you have a student you would rather recommend?
One option is brutal honesty. You could tell your supervisor you decline to write the letter and specify the reasons. Do this respectfully and professionally, and you would most likely leave the meeting feeling positive about your personal integrity. However, I can't guess how your supervisor would react;,the fact you are writing for advice suggests that as a new teacher you might be a little nervous about this. Of course, if there are compelling reasons for not recommending the student (e.g., dishonesty, bullying) this is your only choice.

Another option would be to meet with your supervisor and tactfully mention that you are having some difficulty organizing your thoughts. Ask for some help to think through the particular qualities or potential of this student so that you can choose which to emphasize. Be sure to ask questions for clarification. Perhaps your supervisor knows this student from other contexts beyond your class and can help you to develop different perspectives on the student's qualifications, at least enough to craft a letter.

There is also the time-honored tradition of damning with faint praise. You could choose to write the letter with well-worded honesty. Keep it brief, emphasize the positives of this student from your experiences, and avoid any direct negatives. Provide contact information if the award committee requires further (verbal only) information. Savvy members of the award committee will see through this and base their decision as much on what you don’t say as on what you actually say.

Then there is the "oops" approach. As a new teacher you are surely busy beyond belief. Some things naturally slip off the table for all of us. No one will ever know that the delay in completing your letter was intentional. There are some potential negatives for this approach, especially in that you may seem disorganized or undependable.

In the end, only you can decide how much emotional and intellectual energy to invest in this situation, and only you can make the final decision as to what to do.
Published: Nov-25-08 | 0 Comments | 207 Links to this post

Nov13

Finding Extra Funds

Do you have any suggestions for grantwriting? I've just been told that the budget may be very lean next year, and I'd like to try to get additional funding for the science department.
Shug, Stillwater, OK

External funds can be very helpful in supplementing school district budgets, and competition for these funds is getting more intense. Are you looking for grants or donations/gifts? Grants from foundations or government agencies are usually focused on projects for a particular purpose or audience and come with strings attached in the form of a contract. There may be requirements for progress reports, a formal evaluation component, student achievement results, and an itemized budget. As a grantwriter, I found that the more funds you ask for, the more hoops there are to jump through! Donations or gifts usually do not have such requirements.

If you decide to seek grant funding, you'll have to define and refine your goals and needs. Few grants will fund "brick and mortar" projects (construction or remodeling) or items that schools/districts should provide: textbooks, classroom furniture, or consumables such as workbooks or markers (unless these supplies are part of a more comprehensive project). Few grants will provide funds for resources not directly related to student learning (e.g., faculty room microwaves or water coolers).

One problem in grantwriting is looking too narrowly at a need and not seeing the big picture. I had this conversation with a teacher as we worked on a proposal (my questions are in italics):
“I need more microscopes.” Why?
“Because I don’t have enough.” What do you mean?
“I have 4 microscopes and 24 students in a class.” So what?
“It takes forever for the students to share them.” And so…?
“ If I had additional microscopes I could do more hands-on investigations.” So your point is..?
“We want to include more hands-on learning in science to help students achieve the standards.” Bingo!

This statement put the microscopes into a larger picture and was used in other proposals by the science department for professional development in inquiry science, science kits, technology applications, and attending conferences. Too often I've seen schools take a patchwork approach to grants, with no focus or master plan. Their projects may even be at cross-purposes and create extra work for teachers. If you align your goal and proposed activities with the school/district/department strategic plan, you'll have a coordinated rationale for further proposals.

Give yourself enough time to gather data, create a budget, assemble resumes and letters of commitment from other agencies (if required), and get the correct signatures on the forms. Ask someone to proofread the proposal and be sure to follow any guidelines on length, formatting, the submission date, and the inclusion of extra materials.

Attend grant writing seminars sponsored by foundations, county/regional educational service agencies, or a college/university. NSTA conferences usually include sessions on grant writing, too. Check with your state department of education for any opportunities to be a grant reviewer. Training is usually provided (and sometimes a stipend), and this is a great way to see how others write proposals. Some grant projects have summaries of approved proposals and projects on their websites. Some agencies have pre-grant workshops for potential applicants.

Above all, don't be discouraged if some of your proposals are "rejected." (I have a whole collection of unfunded proposals.) You'll have a lot of competition, but when your proposal is funded and your work pays off in good things for students, it's a great feeling!

Good luck!

Published: Nov-13-08 | 0 Comments | 0 Links to this post

Nov04

Overcoming Misconceptions

Every year my students come to class with the idea that it's colder in the winter because the earth is farther away from the sun. Where did they get this idea?
- Lauren, Aurora, Illinois

Along with notebooks and pencils, students bring some common misconceptions to science class. It's hard to tell where students learn these misconceptions: from their friends, parents, television, movies, or other media. (I wonder, could the Flintstones be the source of the misconception that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time?) Perhaps they hear only part of an explanation and invent the rest.

Your students are not unusual -- the misconception about the seasons is pervasive. Years ago, there was a study of college graduates who also could not describe the reasons for the seasons (described in the video A Private Universe).

Many textbooks show the earth's orbit as an exaggerated ellipse, and students know that if they sit closer to a heater they feel warmer. And so, the earth must be closer in its orbit to the sun in the summer when it's warm (or so they think). They may not realize that their ideas are incorrect, and simply telling the students that their ideas are wrong won't help them learn the correct ones. Even if students recognize that the earth's axis is tilted, they may not see the connection between this tilt, the seasons, and the length of daylight time we have. For some additional resources (including visuals) for teaching this concept, go to NSTA's SciLinks and use "season" as a keyword to get a list of related websites.

If learning involves building on our current understanding, then finding out what students know, don't know, or think they know is important at the start of a unit. A written pretest might help, but students may have just memorized some facts or definitions without really understanding a concept. I'd recommend the types of activities in Uncovering Student Ideas in Science, by Page Keeley, Francis Eberle, and Lynn Farrin (published by NSTA Press ). The book has formative assessment "probes" to use prior to and during instruction. They are designed to have students apply what they know (or think they know) to a situation. For each probe there is a summary of the topic, a detailed description of what can be learned from the students' responses, teaching suggestions, and a list of resources on the topic. These probes are in the form of questions or activities that could also serve as engaging activities (or "hooks") at the beginning of a unit. There are three volumes in the series, each with 25 probes covering a wide variety of topics.

Every year that I taught life science, I had to contend with three big misconceptions: insects are not really animals, the blood in our veins is blue, and plants use minerals from the soil as food. Textbooks often show diagrams of the circulatory system with the veins colored blue, and commercials on television talk about fertilizer as "plant food." But I still haven’t figured out the source of the insect misconception.

Published: Nov-04-08 | 2 Comments | 22 Links to this post