Rabbi Maccabee Avishur served as the Dean of Judaics at the Frankel Jewish Academy. Azaryah Cohen teaches at the Frankel Jewish Academy and serves as Induction Leader in charge of the mentoring and peer coaching program. Debbie Wrotslavsky is the Director of Professional Development at the Frankel Jewish Academy.
The authors describe how their school embarked on a project to include teaching for independence throughout the curriculum.
When it is time for our children to learn to tie their shoes, we teach them how it’s done. We show them the steps and watch as they master the challenge at hand. When they falter, we help them master the difficult steps. Once they have it, they are off and running.
The process is the same with fostering independence. If we want our students to graduate from our schools capable of self-assessment and grounded in their own intellectual independence, we have to show them how it’s done. Once they master these crucial skills, like the toddler in her newly tied shoelaces, they are off and running.
At a staff meeting we held last spring discussing the qualities of a good teacher, a theme emerged from our small-group brainstorming. Present on every list in some form was this: a good teacher fosters student independence, creates independent learners, and develops original thinking skills in his students. We realized we were onto something, and began examining what it means for a teacher to create a learning environment in which students not only master the material at hand, but become masters at furthering their own intellectual experiences.
What is independence?
Independence is not synonymous with unilateralism. An independent student is not independent because he acts alone. Rather, an independent student thinks original thoughts, discusses big ideas, tests out ideas on others, and contributes to cooperative outcomes. Our job as teachers is to strive to engender internal change in students and foster a culture of independence. In our school, Teaching Standards and ongoing teacher professional development, which pairs new teachers with seasoned mentors and other veterans with peer mentors, help facilitate and develop student independence. We set for ourselves the standard of learning how it’s done. How do we guide our students toward independence?
Creating a culture of independence
We believe that creating a culture in which independence thrives relies on several factors, the first of which is trust. Trust must exist between the teachers and their students, the teachers and the administration, and between teachers. When teachers trust students, they allow students the freedom to personalize their learning. When students trust their teachers, they feel comfortable experimenting with independence, even if their initial attempts fail. When teachers and administrators trust each other, teachers feel comfortable and are encouraged to try new things in the classroom, even if those attempts might not meet the intended marks. When teachers trust each other, they openly share their successes and failures so that each can learn from the other. When the goal is cultivating a culture of student independence, providing a structure is just as important for staff as it is with students. Structure allows teachers to be deliberate in how they train students to be independent.
How teachers teach independence
Because we are an institution of learning, it is a community norm at our school that teaching and learning take place among student and teacher populations. Through a partnership with the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, partially funded by the Covenant Foundation, we have established a robust system of teacher education. As part of this system, each new teacher is paired with a mentor teacher; more experienced teachers are paired with peers. They work together at frequent intervals to improve their teaching craft.
To help guide teachers’ growth as they work with their mentors or peers, we have adopted the six Teaching Standards created by The Jewish New Teacher Project. Teaching Standards establish objective guidelines for best practices for classroom teaching. While these six Teaching Standards have provided an excellent structure for professional growth, there are absent elements that reflect our individual institution’s values. We therefore set out to do just that: develop standards that embodied the qualities and goals valued by our teachers and institution. This effort led to the creation of a seventh Standard, born out of a transparent, grassroots process that involved the whole faculty. A team of faculty members volunteered to craft a Teaching Standard of Independence based on feedback we received from the entire faculty (see sidebar).
The Independence Standard maps out a continuum in four major areas of teaching practice. These areas are: 1) engaging students in self-assessment, 2) facilitating student initiative in learning, 3) developing challenging and independence-focused learning experiences, and 4) fostering an environment that emphasizes the value of knowledge and promotes independent, life-long learning.
Using our Teaching Standard of Independence, teachers can assess to what degree they foster independence in their classrooms. The standard allows them to set goals and strategies for how to further promote independence in their teaching practice. As with any Teaching Standard, thinking about existing classroom practices within the rubric of independence helps to reframe what the goals of classroom activities are and how the teacher can refine them to better foster student independence and empowerment.
Though not all teachers chose to focus their work with their mentors or peers specifically on the Independence Standard, all teachers are acutely aware of the significant role this standard plays in the culture of the teaching and learning in our school. Presentations made during staff meetings showcase how teachers are fostering independence in their classrooms.
As mentioned above, the Independence Standard is a set of guidelines to help teachers reflect on their practice. The first step in using the standard requires the teacher, in partnership with his mentor or peer-coach, to identify where he falls on the continuum based on his current practice. The teacher supplies evidence for why he feels he falls at that place. Then, the teacher looks at the next step in the continuum and identifies what specifically he wants to learn and do that will move him into the next column of the continuum and strategizes with his mentor or peer-coach how he will achieve and implement that new skill or practice. He also suggests what might serve as evidence that he has, indeed, successfully achieved that goal.
Examples of teaching independence
The four elements of teaching student independence include self-assessment and facilitating student initiative. Self-assessment is an important step in students achieving practical independence. If they can monitor their own progress and performance, they will know where they excel and where they can grow.
An example that illustrates use of the self-assessment continuum comes from Jewish Studies. One teacher in the rabbinics department has relied for years on what he calls Havruta Notebooks. As in many schools, students in his class pair up in havruta to learn a passage of Talmud. As they learn, they record in their notebooks a running translation of the passage and answer comprehension questions. The teacher collects the notebooks, reads through the student answers, occasionally makes a comment in writing on the student work, and hands the notebooks back. Students usually read the comments, but are not required to make any changes to their work. The teacher noticed that student work didn’t always reflect compliance with the written and oral instructions he had given. He wanted the students to do a better job following his instructions.
The teacher, working with a peer coach, looked at the Independence Standard and placed himself at the beginning stage of the continuum since the students are not asked to assess their own havruta work. He then looked at the next stage of the self-assessment continuum and identified that he would like to move to the next stage by designing an opportunity for self-evaluation for the students. He planned to design a rubric that will allow students to check that they have fulfilled all the requirements set out in the teacher’s instructions. They will evaluate their own work against the rubric and assign themselves a grade. If the students assign themselves a grade that is less than full credit, they will have an opportunity to self-edit the work before submitting it.
The novelty of this method is not the use of a rubric; that is a tried and true practice that our teachers use already. Rather, the important factor here is the process. The teacher works with a peer coach and uses the Independence Standard continuum to help him identify what methods he can employ to improve his classroom practice and create a structure for effectuating student independence.
The second element of practical independence is facilitating student initiative. Students who take initiative look at their own areas for growth and pursue that growth. They are self-directed learners who can personalize their learning. An example of facilitating student initiative in our school comes from the Science department. One chemistry teacher worked with his mentor to identify an area of growth that he wanted to focus on. The teacher believed that he relied heavily on lectures to communicate information to his students, especially when it came to solving chemistry equations. In class, he would review problems he had assigned for homework with the whole class. The teacher noticed that while reviewing the solutions or steps, some students became disengaged (his explanation was that they understood the process rather quickly), while other students required several reviews before understanding what to do on their own. The teacher set the goal of using class time for discovery rather than for teacher recitation and repetition.
The teacher focused on providing materials that would enable students to find their own answers. He created short videos demonstrating the solutions to the chemistry equations he had assigned for homework. He informed students that these video demonstrations were posted to his class website as a resource for them. In the videos, this chemistry teacher worked through solutions to problems step by step, narrating his thought process. Students watched the videos on their own time to review the solutions.
As a result of posting these video demonstrations, the teacher now finds that students have stopped using class time to review what has already been taught. Students who feel they need more reinforcement watch the videos, pausing and rewinding as needed until they feel comfortable with the material. Students who don’t need extra review no longer lose class time that could be spent learning new material. Students previously dependent on the teacher for constant review now take the initiative to review the material on their own. This in turn allowed the teacher to use class time to apply what students had mastered to new inquiries and discoveries.
This teacher has successfully moved from the first to the second stage of the Student Initiative continuum of the Independence Standard – from “Assignments are primarily teacher driven…” to “Provides the structure, opportunities and materials for students to find their own answers…” He can now continue to grow by setting and implementing teaching goals until he has fully integrated this area of his instruction into the high end of the continuum. He becomes a more proficient instructor while he sets up the structure that allows his students to become more independent learners who take the initiative for their growth and learning.
Conclusion
As we stated at the outset, student independence is not a function of leaving kids to their own devices. When we do that, we could end up with a box of cake mix when the students are capable of discovering, planning for, and baking homemade focaccia.
Helping our students achieve independence involves providing them a great deal of training. Teachers are the main providers of this training and, therefore, must be engaged themselves in learning how to better train students to become independent. The model we have employed in our school pairs teachers with mentors or peer-coaches to reflect on their practice, identify room for growth, and implement changes in a methodological fashion. The results we’ve experienced have been satisfying, and we encourage other schools to adopt a similar approach.