Host = Kristy Duggan
Guest = Robert Fenster
Host- The Teachers College at Emporia State University presents How We Teach This. Welcome to How We Teach This. I have a guest speaker who's back for a second episode, Rob Fenster is a teacher and an inductee in the National Teacher's Hall of Fame. What class were you in?
Fenster- Class of 2022.
Host- All right, he's here today to talk about the teaching strategies that he uses in his classroom to help his students think more critically. So would you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your teaching background?
Fenster- Sure. Again, Rob Fenster, I teach in Hillsboro, New Jersey, where I have been for 30 years. The only school that I taught at and probably the only school I ever will teach at. So I've been I started in the classroom back in 1993 with little to no training. When I went to I went to Rutgers University and decided late as an undergraduate that I wanted to be a teacher. And I had two options. I could stay for an extra year and a half as an undergraduate, take a bunch of science and math classes, which was a nonstarter for me. Or I could just go to graduate on time taking one or two classes. Like human sexuality, I think, was the one that I had to take. And then I could just get my my master's degree at the Rutgers grad School of Education in three semesters. It was a no brainer, so to speak. But at that time, I didn't learn much in grad school, and so I was more or less thrown into the classroom and had to the into the deep end and had to figure things out for myself. Kind of grateful for that. I mean, I tried I made all sorts of mistakes and had a patient administration that recognized that I was willing to take chances and was energetic and like the kids and probably the most important part of it, and that I was willing to learn in the position. So in terms of actually I forgot the question was just introduce yourself, right? I was jumped right into the heart of the interview and there was no question. Ask a question, please.
Host- No, you're good. You're good. I'm glad to hear that you learned a lot. And there are many teachers that have come into this profession that have not had a traditional teaching education preparation. So that's good to hear as well. What do you think are the most significant changes that you've made over the years and how you teach?
Fenster- There have been so many. I mean, when I started teaching, I did a lot more lecturing than I do now. That being said, I better before I before I get back to the answer. A good lecture is great. And in fact, when I ask my students every year to evaluate what they liked and didn't like about the class, there is always a almost a nearly unanimous response from them asking for more lectures. But I do my best to limit it to once a week and do a variety of other activities for the rest of the week. Because, of course, I mean, my favorite teachers were incredible lecturers, particularly in college, but but in some of them in high school as well, being captivated by a story that that is well told is is as old as time. But there are questions, legitimate questions about whether or not students will be able to learn to think for themselves other than in that one particular approach. So for me, the biggest change has been over the last seven or eight years where I have instituted aspects of a program by Dr. Nancy Sella called the Learner Accessible Technology Infuse Classroom. I'm not a fan of the name, but the main thrust of it is giving students lots of choices over how to reach particular learning goals. My variants and my significant variant on what she has presented is I call them labs. Whether it's my history class, where it's a history lab or my government class or its gov. lab, where we have blocks of 2 to 4 weeks, a unit essentially of study. And I give students 3 to 5 assignments that they have to complete on their own and 3 to 5 assignments that they have to complete in a group. And depending on where we are at in the year, I may assign the groups or I may let students choose what groups they're in. And during that 2 to 4 week period, there's going to be lectures is going to be other class wide activities that are outside of the lab. But on lab days, it's you never know what's going to be happening in the classroom because the students are usually seated in the groups together doing a variety of different activities by choice. And it makes for an incredibly lively environment and it really never a dull moment in that classroom.
Host- Could you describe a little bit more what it looks like, with that typical day of a lab in your class?
Fenster- Yeah, for the most part, students are going to be doing the group work during the lab days. I kind of secretly, not so secretly have it designed that they're going to need to use all of that time to get the group assignments done, meaning the individual work will tend to be completed outside of class. One of the most important things that I'll get back to the description in the second, but one of the most important things here, of course, is that they're doing all of this work. They could get easily lost. It requires students to be to take on a certain element of self-discipline here and organization. And, of course, there's always going to be students who struggle with that. And so I have certain supports to help them to help them with that. And check in with the students who I'm aware are going to struggle with it, of course. But it's. My courses are both essentially AP classes and they're going to be getting college credit for it. So I work in elements of college where that was how my history classes were. Read these this thousand pages from these eight different books by the midterm and there was nobody telling you what you had to read in what order. Here they have choices of what to do. So I have a learning goal. I want them to understand the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, for example, so I can give them what I used to do for everybody was make a chart and tell me what the weaknesses. Tell me where it is in the articles. Tell me how that weakness manifested itself and how could it be fixed? Or if you prefer, how did the Constitution fix it? And that's a perfectly legitimate assignment. And every US one teacher has some version of that, or I decided to try something a little bit more fun and creative, at least for some kids, not all of them, which is why some of them still do the chart, a music based one where they have to design an album cover. Pretty soon I have to describe what albums are to my students, but an album cover, artwork and so forth on that on the one side and on the other side is a track listing of five songs, and each of those five songs they get to choose and they have to describe why that song represents one of the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation. So at the end of the day, students should be able to rattle off some, if not all five of the five of their identified for the chart or the music album. What the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation were for the kids who are either artistic with the ones are drawing the album cover or picking the songs. It's a fun activity for those who are more linear in their thinking and traditional or can't draw. Like me, I would have eaten up the music selection, but would have absolutely needed somebody else to design the album cover. They work on those kinds of assignments. Over the course of that time period. They take the order of which one they're going to work on first. They create a schedule about how they're going to do this, and they also have to track exactly who did what. For grading purposes down the road.
Host- Awesome. How do you ensure that when you're giving those kinds of choices that it's just as rigorous or just as challenging for critical thinking as it would be if they didn't do something more creative?
Fenster- It's challenging. I mean, there are times where I honestly, if looking at it, I can see one assignment is either easier to do, will take less time to do, or might be less or more or more rigorous. At the end of the day, though, I think that you have students who are going to be motivated by something that will be more enjoyable for them to do. I regularly have students pick activities that are more time consuming or perhaps more challenging because they think they'll have fun doing them. The motivational aspect is huge here. I mean, this all started for me when I was thinking I was showing a video in class one day and I turned the lights off while kids were watching the video. And there's a couple of kids who were having trouble staying awake and there's the angel and devil on my shoulder. The angels telling me, Hey, go whisper in that kid's ear and nudge them, you know, get them to wake up. And the devil is saying, drop a textbook right behind them on the floor to startle them awake. And I was in a better frame of mind where I thought to myself, maybe today would be a day that I would fall asleep if the lights were off and a kind of droning video was playing. And even though the video was important, I thought the thing that popped into my head was why? Especially in a district where we are 1 to 1 with computers, why do they all need to watch the video at the same time, Why do that? And so the first step that I took was to just put these things in a pot and say, Do these when you feel like it. And obviously they have to do work every day that they're in the class. They're not allowed to goof off, but they also have to evaluate their own productivity. And it's amazing how honest they are. I say one, two or three. One is like I was barely there three as I kicked butt, the number of ones and 1.5 to 2 is that kids will put down. It has nothing to do with their grade. It's just kind of that that reflective activity. And they and we can have a conversation after the fact, especially if they didn't get all full credit, like, well, maybe we need to focus a little bit more. Maybe we need to be tougher with ourselves and say, Nope, today I am going to work hard. And I lost track of the question, sorry. Host- What we were talking about. You mentioned the video and the student falling asleep. I love that realization. So instead of whole class watching a video, how do you structure letting them do what they're doing? Do you use a learning management system or. Well, okay. I mean, I do use the learning, I use canvas, but not really in the way that I think you're you're you're specifying. I think your previous question I remember now is about rigor. And I think I am constantly making changes. Every single year I come back and I look and I see in recent years I haven't thrown out too many of my assignments. It's been mainly adding a new one, adding a new option to to the assignments that are there. And for some things, for example, for my students in my government class read and now pretty it's getting pretty old like a 2010 article that was published in time about whether or not the United States is a meritocracy. And I used to just have them read it and we'd have a class discussion about it. But what I decided to work it into into the group work assignment. And so now there are there are now four different options for the students to do. One is I'll see if I can remember them. One is an artistic rendering of what their thoughts are, based on a set of questions that I provided for them. And I have some amazing work that students have done about the messaging of of their their response. The second one is to take the Emma Lazarus poem and revise it in a satirical way. To the, basically updated it to what they really think about whether or not America is the the beacon of hope for for immigrants. The third was they are to take the data from the article and up and find updated relevant data from 2020 or beyond. Fourth one is an essay in response to a promise, and I always joke with them that nobody ever does the essay. And I kind of say it in such a way where I'm into indicating I don't want them to do the essay and then somebody will always then do the essay just to be difficult. But I'm fine with them doing whichever one they want. Some kids are really good writers and want to take on that particular task. So again, I have dodged the question. I think.
Host- No, I love the example of the different choices and how you've changed that when you were teaching it originally, you had just one thing everyone did and now you open up choice. So how do you ensure that each of the choices are just as challenging for students as the others? Fenster- Again, they may or may not be, and there are some that I feel like I could write an essay in my sleep and it wouldn't it wouldn't be terribly challenging for me, but I would be able to demonstrate that I was had mastered the particular thing that the teacher was looking for. And I think certainly it is motivating to students who have particular skills to be able to implement them in a class where they're not expecting to. So the artists that I have had, the graphic artists that I have had, have a field day with whatever I give them. One of these assignments, they're so thrilled to be able to, one show off how good they are, but also because they genuinely enjoy doing it and they will learn what ultimately needs to and needs to be learned. Whatever my learning goals happen to be and in terms of ultimately I don't care that much about how rigorous one is versus the other. If they think one is easier to do and it gets them to arrive in the same place in terms of their ability to answer questions on the AP exam. Cool. That works for me.
Host- You've shared how you've changed your teaching strategies over the years to include more choice and more discussion with your students. What strategies do you use to actually improve that discussion and to get the students thinking critically?
Fenster- Discussions can be very difficult, especially with when you're dealing with potentially controversial issues. And in both of my classes, history and government, they are born for for those controversial issues. So a lot of it for me is playing it by ear, by seeing what kind of relationships the kids have in the class in the first place. And I do a few things that I wouldn't even recommend to people like. I will sometimes have an early open discussion and just see what happens. That is not a strategy I would give certainly to a younger teacher, but I feel confident and comfortable enough to intervene where I would have to when I get to a topic that is really controversial, like an affirmative action subject or abortion or something like that, that's where I will put in some some protocol of some sort to make sure that I don't have the kids talking over each other and whatnot. I do have a set of guidelines that I share with my students very early on, like the second or third day of school, about what expectations we have for for classroom discussion. That includes things like not assuming the worst about someone, someone's intent that that we will give enough grace to people that if they say something that's a little bit questionable or awkwardly phrase, that we're not going to immediately jump to the assumption that they are racist and sexist and homophobic and so forth. That will give them the chance to kind of recalibrate with a skillful redirect. See I heard what you said. You said this, which made me think about this. Is that really what you meant to imply? You know, gives, give students another opportunity to to kind of correct the record, as it were. There's also one of the biggest ones is the we've all had classes where you have the dominant talkers and you have the mute talkers. And this, by the way, the list. I'll share the guidelines with you to post. I didn't come up with them. These come from, of all places, a list serve way back when. That. But the whole thing with the with participation is that we all owe each other, not equal participation, but we need to reflect on. Am I the kind of person who never shuts up and just waits to talk and get and has an opinion on every single thing and isn't really listening to other people? That's that's me, actually. So I need to like to pull it back sometimes and be cognizant of that. And I'll by the way, I'll stop in the middle class. I'll try to do it at a time where it's not obvious that I'm talking to one kid. And I'll remind them of that particular guideline. And the other the converse of that is if you're just sitting, you're not talking, you're not. You're also not being respectful of the group. You need to participate. I will. I have tried over the years a few different methods to grade discussions. I will never do that again. It's just not worth it. And it's incredibly difficult to do and fraught with probably legitimate objections to what people were graded on that. I do believe that the extrinsic motivation of grades is important. I still believe in that. But I think that we also need to simultaneously absolutely do a better job promoting intrinsic motivation about we want to have good conversations because they are rewarding in and of themselves. And let's take the pressure off by removing grading from that and just do the right thing and participate. If you're a quiet kid and if you're a dominant kid, then just learn when to back off and actually try to understand other people's perspectives. So I'm sorry. The last part would be there's various protocols that I've used that include things like giving somebody the floor and letting letting them say their piece and then having either one person or a set of people ask them questions, not combative questions, but questions to get them to to explain something a little bit better and then moving moving the conch shell to somebody else. And you can do that literally and around the horn sort of situation where the person who was doing the questioning now gets to speak and maybe they make a reference to the previous speaker, or maybe they take it in a different direction. When students are less focused on debate and scoring points, the conversations can go much better on those topics. That being said, I like a good debate. I'm a debate coach. So I also I don't shy away from those. And I think a lot of the kids signed up for my AP gov. class because they want to argue. And so we have to find the right balance between those two extremes.
Host- Awesome. Do you use the popular protocol of Socratic seminar?
Fenster- I sometimes do, although I still don't understand why they call it a Socratic seminar. Because it's not a It's not Socratic at all. It's just. It's maybe I misread something somewhere, but my interpretation of what the Socratic seminar is, basically, the teacher doesn't talk. And I thought Socrates asked a lot of questions of his students. And anyway, to me, it can be an effective approach. I think that also needs to be developed in the classroom. And one thing that I would suggest for teachers who haven't tried it would be to have it be limited in length at first do a 15 minute seminar rather than a 45 or 55 minute one and then see how they go. And it's also critically important for any conversation, but especially ones that are going to be controversial, that there be a certain amount of scaffolding at the outset might just be a common reading that they've all done or even I sometimes give them starter questions, let them go from there, and then as we develop it over the course of the year, they become easier and easier to do.
Host- Awesome. So do you have any strategies that you particularly avoid?
Fenster- When it comes to classroom discussions I think I'm kind of using the kitchen sink and every once in a while I, I search for some other protocol or method that I decide to try. But I'm going to use this opportunity to slag my least favorite classroom method, pedagogical tool, which is the jigsaw. I've never understood why any teacher thinks that a jigsaw is good for teaching content, and I've been the victim of it many a time, whether that was as a as a high school student or in professional development. The moment that you divide the class up into four or five, six groups and everybody becomes an expert on their subject, and then they're supposed to teach everyone else, things fall apart. It is true that students learn really well when they have to teach something to someone else. That in and of itself is an important tool and it is something that one can use. But the typical jigsaw that I've seen in other classrooms and I even tried to do it for a number of years, was the expert group. Then you you shuffle the deck and you've got five different experts in the group and they teach everybody else. And it ends up just being, tell me what to write in the chart so I can get a good grade on this. And they learn nothing. They don't learn. They barely learn their own subject, and they certainly remember nothing else. It's an inherent problem in all group work when it comes down to it is that when you let when students divide up the work, they're not all learning the same things. It can really the whole thing can be useless. Group work is challenging. It's really important, of course, because so many of the things that we do in our in our work lives are our group oriented. But it is certainly challenging, least of all, the challenge of trying to grade that stuff.
Host- Sadly, we are out of time for today, but Rob Fenster has more great strategies to share in part two of this interview. He explains an effective way that he grades student group work. I hope you will subscribe and follow our podcast so you will get notified when it airs. If you missed the previous episode, when Rob shared about his experience ensuring all students are represented in the history curriculum, be sure to check it out. Season six Episode one. Thanks for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this episode and we'll subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. This podcast has been brought to you by the Teachers College at Emporia State University, featuring talks with experts and educators, addressing topics that can help you as an educator, a parent and a person. We release new episodes every other Wednesday. You can get more information provided by our guests on our website. www.emporia.edu/hwtt. We would appreciate it if you could help us spread the word about the podcast. You can follow us and share on Twitter with @hwtt_ESU. You can find us on Facebook, just search for How We Teach This. If you would like to be a guest on our show or are willing to give us some feedback, please send us an email @hwtt@emporia.edu. I'm Kristy Duggan, the Executive Producer. You've been listening to How We Teach This. Thank you.