The Handbook for Poor Students, Rich Teaching. Eric Jensen
| Goal: Participating in community projects | Goal: Starting healthier eating and exercise habits | Goal: Completing a teaching improvement list |
| Milestones: • Identify a project. • Sign up to help. • Complete the project. | Milestones: • Identify a healthy eating and exercise routine. • Maintain the routine for four weeks. • Maintain the routine for three months. | Milestones: • Identify three habits for improvement. • Maintain these habits for three weeks. • Maintain these habits for three months. |
| Goal: Running a 10k | Goal: Mentoring someone | Goal: Growing a garden |
| Milestones: • Identify and download apps to improve from 0 to 5k and from 5k to 10k. • Complete the 0 to 5k app. • Complete the 5k to 10k app. | Milestones: • Identify a person who wants and will benefit from mentoring. • Maintain mentorship for four weeks. • Maintain mentorship for three months. | Milestones: • Plan a garden space and the plants that will go in it. • Create the garden space and plant the plants. • Nurture the plants to full growth. |
| Goal: Learning a skill or sport | Goal: Helping change the culture at your school | Goal: Helping your parents with a goal |
| Milestones: • Identify a skill to learn and a pathway to attaining it. • Complete the learning pathway that attains the skill. • Demonstrate mastery of the new skill by completing a related project. | Milestones: • Identify an aspect of school culture that could improve and three ways to improve it. • Achieve buy-in from relevant stakeholders for three months for improvement. • Cite evidence of the improvement’s success or a new action plan to try again. | Milestones: • Talk to your parents and identify a goal they want to achieve and micro goals to achieve it. • Complete half the micro goals. • Complete all goals or reset and try again. |
After selecting, displaying, and making progress toward applicable goals, begin routinely sharing and celebrating all your key milestones and how you overcame them. When you share all the micro steps forward and the nearly predictable setbacks you experience, students will see that mistakes are OK and make way for improvement.
Quick Consolidation: Personalize the Learning
This chapter was about a powerful path in your classroom—personalizing learning. The tools I present in this chapter are no secret. I’m just inviting you to choose one or two of them and make it a habit, but all of them are important assets in your relational toolbox. As you share part of your life with students, you allow them to understand your journey. Plus, they learn about the process you used, your values, and your choices. Answer the following reflection questions as you consider your next steps on the journey to making learning more personal in your classroom.
1. What did you learn about the importance of making the learning in your classroom personal that you didn’t know when you started this chapter? How is your outlook changing?
2. What strategy from this chapter will you use to ensure you learn every student’s name? How will you deploy this strategy in your classroom?
3. To better connect with your students, what are some items you could put in your Me Bag? How will you explain them?
4. What are some everyday problems you’ve experienced that you could share with your students? How might these change how your students perceive you?
5. What are some goals you have in your personal life that might humanize you in the eyes of your students and help them connect with you?
The Handbook for Poor Students, Rich Teaching © 2019 Solution Tree Press • SolutionTree.com
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CHAPTER 2
CONNECT EVERYONE FOR SUCCESS
In this second of three powerful chapters on the relational mindset, we’ll strengthen our skills in connecting everyone. Before we get started, use the survey in figure 2.1 to think about the connections you foster in your life and work and what they mean to you.
Figure 2.1: Assess the connections in your life and teaching.
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Every connection you have in your life influences you in some way, so it’s important to bring awareness of that into your classroom where you have a connection that affects every single one of your students, whether you are aware of its effects or not. To help foster these connections into something that builds up your students from poverty, this chapter establishes the fifty-fifty rule for in-class interaction and supports that with five collaborative strategies that are sure to make your classroom a richer learning environment.
The Fifty-Fifty Rule
During a typical school week, how much time do you have students devote to individual studies (including lecture time), and how much do you devote to collaborative learning between students?
Two key social elements have a strong effect on academic success: (1) belonging and (2) cooperative learning (Adelabu, 2007). In fact, a strong feeling of acceptance in class and school helps protect minority students from damaging, environmental, and social threats (Cook, Purdie-Vaughns, Garcia, & Cohen, 2012). The effect size of cooperative versus individual learning is 0.59 (Hattie, 2009). This gain is solid; over a year’s worth of difference.
To effectively impact academic achievement, teachers should split class time equally between social time and individual time—that’s the fifty-fifty rule. Most high-performing teachers use one or more of the strategies in table 2.1 to create social time for students and balance it with individual learning time.
Table 2.1: The Fifty-Fifty Rule
| Social Time | Individual Time |
| Cooperative groups and teams | Solo time for journaling and mind mapping |
| Study buddies or partners to quiz each other | Students practice self-testing |
| Temporary partners for summarizing time | Goal setting and self-assessment |
| Learning stations for social data gathering | Reading, reflection, and writing |
| Group projects for brainstorming and discussion |
Seatwork for problem solving
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