The Schoenblog

On March 15, my English 10 students had a rare opportunity to share our classroom with the world when CNN reporter Clare Sebastian and her team filmed and interviewed my class. She reached out to discuss the role of Twitter and social media in education to tie into coverage on Twitter’s tenth anniversary. I wrote about the day, documenting my challenges and lesson redesign recently, in When the Lesson Fails. Now I want to share the segment and the lesson plan that worked.

Find the full CNN segment, titled “Teacher Encourages Twitter Chat in Class” below.

Teacher encourages Twitter chat in class - CNN Video

Twitter has made its way to the classroom and CNN's Clare Sebastian went back to school to see how one teacher is using it as an educational tool.

I started this week with a challenge to myself: I needed to do more to help my students practice close reading and make progress in argumentative writing. A few months ago, my students were producing interesting and often insightful paragraphs, essays, and projects--and most were well written. I was happy with the growth and journey.

Now, in the slump of spring beginnings and after the dark days of winter, it’s time to tighten up. My kids are great and are more than capable, but I needed them to review the fundamentals and practice the writing and analysis skills, which were getting a little lax of late.

I was looking for resources to help my students achieve two main goals:

This was an exciting week. Last Thursday, I received an e-mail from a CNN International reporter asking some questions about Twitter in education. We talked on the phone the next day and had a good conversation. I explained how my students are using social media and Twitter in class and told her about my plans for this week. Her response left me flabbergasted: “Do you think we can come film that?”

After a few seconds of stunned silence and a few days of prep, CNN reporter Clare Sebastian was in my classroom, along with a cameraman and microphone operator. They filmed a full class period and then interviewed three students and me.

It was such a cool experience and my students truly stepped up and really displayed their enthusiasm, insights, and engagement for the world to see. The students’ responses during the interviews had me silently cheering from behind the camera; when asked about the dangers of social media, my student Helen replied, “With great power, comes great responsibility.”

As a teacher and nerd, I’ve never been prouder. But it’s not the responsibility of social media I want to write about today. Below, I’ll share a slideshow of pictures from the day, and next week after it airs, I’ll blog about the lesson and the segment more, and will definitely link to it.

Instead, today I want to discuss what happened before the CNN lesson, when I taught it earlier in the day. I have two chances to practice the lesson with other classes, and to put it simply, it bombed. Badly. The lesson that excited me just did not work. And I panicked a little.

When the Lesson Fails

No matter how hard we teachers work, not every lesson is a winner. Most of the time, my students meet the objective and accomplish the learning goals. Sometimes it only works in part, and it requires some reteaching or clarification. Other times, it just doesn’t work. Some days, you just need to throw in the towel and realize that it’s just not working. But then you need to try again.

It can be hard to admit defeat. But it can be even harder to figure out what didn’t work and to make it right. It can be humbling, embarrassing, and frustrating to have to admit to students--and to yourself--that you didn’t get right and need to do better. But I think it also makes us human. For my two morning classes today, that’s exactly what I did.

I today started by explaining how I realized what was wrong yesterday and what we needed to fix. We adapted, gave it another shot, and things went better, thankfully. But in the high stakes world of testing, Common Core, and the rare TV interview, you don’t always have that next day. What do we do when the camera’s about to roll or the time just isn’t there?

Rethinking Lesson Design

This experience reminded me of the fundamentals of good lesson design: know what students need to learn or do, and then find the best learning activities to get them there. With clear, student centered, achievable objectives, all students should have an understanding of what’s expected. And you can’t forget who your students are, where they are, and what they need.

And here is where I faltered. Interestingly, it wasn’t about the technology or social media at all--that worked just fine. The lesson modified the fishbowl discussion format, in which groups of students rotated in and out of an inner circle to discuss a text, and an outer circle listened in and backchanneled in a Twitter chat. The problem was twofold:

• My discussion questions did not lead to good arguments. They were about the text, but too broad to require the students to really take a side and back it up.
• I counted on students being able to activate prior knowledge without enough time for it in class. Students needed time to review the questions beforehand so that they were ready with contributions.

I knew where I wanted students to go, but they didn’t. Without time to prep, process, and make textual connections, they just couldn’t get the job done. And they shouldn’t have had to. I planned the lesson for a class that typically won’t shut up--focusing their conversation was so rarely an issue. Instead, I needed to plan with all of my students in mind, and provide the time, scaffolding, and support to help them all achieve.