Teaching the teacher

In July while hundreds of students were enjoying summer vacation, a dozen Jackson junior and senior high school history and communication arts teachers were in a classroom learning a variety of new teaching techniques.

And only one month after school got back in session, the teachers who attended the weeklong class agreed what they learned during the summer is making an impact on their lives and their students' learning.

"One of the things I learned from the week has changed my life," Sharon Ramdial, communication arts and advanced placement English teacher, said.

Ramdial used to grade papers for hours after school and on the weekends, but now, using a technique called "rehashing" she has significantly cut down the time she spends grading.

In her English classes many of Ramdial's students made the same kinds of errors in their writing, which meant she would spend hours writing and re-writing the same critiques on a number of students' papers. Rehashing allows her to put grades on individual papers without writing any additional comments on them. Instead, she makes one master sheet with all of the mistakes the students made and goes over those in class.

Ramdial collects the students' writings on Friday; on Monday she hands back the students' papers along with the list of mistakes she found, and the class has a mini-lesson going over the list.

She said the process saves her energy and gives her more time to focus on other things besides grading papers for hours.

Reactions to readings

Danna Bruns, who also teaches high school communication arts, said most of her students have done very well since using another technique, dialectical notebooks.

To make a dialectical notebook, students draw a line down the center of their notebook page and put subjects on one side and their comments on the other.

Bruns said when students are assigned a chapter reading they write a summary of the chapter on the one side and their reaction to it on the other.

When it comes time for a test, the student can go back and read the summary, and so far, Bruns said, most of her students have done well on their tests.

History teacher Roy Northern said the notebooks are not only helpful to the students, but to him as well. He collects the notebooks on a regular basis to read the students' reactions to some of the topics he is covering in class.

He said by reading what the student writes he can see if the student is really comprehending the subject.

A lot of times, Northern said, students who are shy or unsure about a subject will not talk in class, even if they do not understand the material. Using the dialectical notebooks, he can communicate with those students by making comments to the side of their writing without calling them out in class.

While the teachers have put some of the techniques they learned into practice in their individual classrooms, there are still some they are working on that will help students understand concepts across the curriculum.

Through a process called linking, history and communication arts teachers correlate lesson plans to focus on the same subject at the same time. During the summer course communication arts teachers were paired with history teachers for a final project that included developing a joint lesson plan on one subject.

One of those projects focused on the Holocaust and will be incorporated into classes next semester. At that time students will learn about the historical aspects of the Holocaust in their history classes while reading novels from the time in their communication arts classes.

"The students see links in the subjects," Joyce Theiss, communication arts teacher, said. "They see that it is not just something taught in English classes."

The teachers said they plan to get together in the future to discuss the possibility of teaching more linked subjects.

hkronmueller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 128