I asked Jeff for a bio to go with his pitch on badges. We haven’t done bios in a while, for years now, like we used to. I think we’ve just been too busy. But I’m sure others would appreciate it if some of the newer group members sent one in (consult the Bios category here for guidelines) if you haven’t done so already. For those newer people, know that you can find lots of bios about people who post here in the category:
Also if you ever want to privately send an email anyone in the group, we have this category called PLC Members – Alphabetized with Emails”:
https://benslavic.com/blog/category/group-members-alphabetized-with-emails/
Here’s Jeff’s bio:
Hi Ben:
I teach at Minooka Community High School, in Illinois. We teach with the textbook Expresate. I went to a Blaine Ray conference a few years back, and immediately started storytelling in my classes. The truth is that I only teach about 50% TPRS and maybe 60% CI/TPRS total, while I have to commit a great deal of my class time to the textbook because I have to have my kids do as well or better than my colleagues on the Expresate tests for chapters 1-9. Even though this is clear to my kids (that I do two totally separate curricula), they don’t bitch about it. And they do just as well on those tests, in about 1/3 the time my colleagues spend on the BS book work.
Next year, I plan to go even further with the CI, aiming to pack the chapter tests into the last month of each semester. I honestly want to be the best CI teacher in my area. I gave my kids an end of year survey on what they liked/didn’t like, on what worked, didn’t work, and the only two items that they ALL liked were stories and MovieTalk. I got less great scores on vPQA(I didn’t call it that), but that is going to be my focus this year, and all the rest of the techniques of course. They hated grammar anything – except for like 1 girl.
While I would love to use the rubric jGR in my classes, I’d get smacked down if I tried it immediately. The thing is, students love my class, because I don’t make them do stupid worthless worksheets all day. And I’m ridiculously animated and I try so hard to show how much I love each kid.
However, I do get some kids that aren’t all in. This is why I believe that badges will be so powerful.
Jeff