On snow days, this Colorado teacher uses YouTube to keep his class moving forward

How do teachers captivate their students? Here, in a feature we call How I Teach, we ask great educators how they approach their jobs.

How do teachers captivate their students? Here, in a feature we call How I Teach, we ask great educators how they approach their jobs. You can see other pieces in this series here.

Jeremy Beckman uses a combination of high-tech gadgets and old-school face-to-face communication to connect with his students and their families.

A high school math teacher at Discovery Canyon Campus High School, a Pre-K-12 International Baccalaureate school in Colorado Springs, one of Beckman’s tried-and-true methods for connecting with parents is to attend their kids’ basketball games and band concerts. On snow days, he teaches his AP Calculus class from home via YouTube so the students don’t miss any lessons.

Beckman was a finalist for Colorado Teacher of the Year. We asked him to share his wisdom about lesson planning, paper grading and re-engaging students who’ve lost focus.

 

One word or short phrase you use to describe your teaching style: Engaging.

What’s your morning routine like when you first arrive at school?
I’m fortunate that my kindergarten son attends school on the same campus where I teach, so when I get to school, we usually review his vocab lists and get him ready to go for the day before he walks down to his end of campus. After that, I usually do a quick game plan and rundown of what lies ahead for the day and what challenges my students will have with the content we are going to discuss. After that, I check my email just to make sure there are not any changes to the schedule for the day.

What does your classroom look like?
I have 36 desks arranged in pairs, hundreds of senior pictures of former students on the walls, a large drafting table in the front, and numbers on the back board for students to check problems they need help with. I have a plethora of posters from IB, speech and debate, and ones students have made over the years that cover the wall and make the room somewhere kids will want to learn. I use a document cameras on the drafting table to project the lesson while still looking at the students so I can see their reactions and facial expressions while they are going through each lesson.

What apps/software/tools can’t you teach without? Why?
YouTube Live: I record and broadcast class every day on the internet. It has dramatically changed what happens when students miss class or there is a weather day. Students can watch class live, even ask questions, just like they were present. When class is over, it automatically uploads the lesson to YouTube seamlessly. They can watch examples again with explanations at home. For snow days in AP Calculus BC, we have class live from my house to their screen at home, and we don’t lose a precious day before the exam.

How do you plan your lessons?
In reverse. I plan what objective I want students to be able to do by the end of the lesson and make examples and questions to match that objective.tudents have a small quiz every day in class, with work on previous skills embedded in daily activities.

I try to anticipate what the students will struggle with during each lesson and create questions to help them run into more challenging parts before they are working on practice. Lastly, I try to find different levels to help students who already have the concept go deeper, and help students who are struggling break the content down into smaller pieces.

What qualities make an ideal lesson?
Students ask really detailed and engaging questions. I can always tell how the lesson is going based on the quality of questions the students ask. If they are really detailed and make me think, I know the students are engaged and learning. If they are really basic questions, I need to go back and work through the material again.

Other qualities are that student data exceeds my expectations! I give a small, daily assessments about yesterday’s material. It’s always good when every student shows they got it.

How do you respond when a student doesn’t understand your lesson?
Questions, questions, questions. Just like a doctor ask questions until they understand what is wrong, I work to diagnose exactly where the misunderstanding started. It takes time, but once we understand where things went awry, it’s more likely that strategies like different explanations and working another example will be more successful.

The key to this is establishing right from the start of the year that they feel comfortable and safe asking questions. For most of them, asking a question is a risk-taking adventure, and we need them to be responsible risk-takers. I not only encourage students to ask questions, but I expect them to ask questions. I tell them I am in the business of asking questions, and smart people get smarter when they ask what they need help with.

What is your go-to trick to re-engage a student who has lost focus?
I use questions as the key to this one also. Instead of asking the class in general for questions, if I see a student losing focus, I will ask them, “What questions do you have?” It gives lesson feedback and also re-engages them to the learning process.

How do you maintain communication with the parents?
Two ways, in particular. The first is using remind.com. Parents don’t like surprises and love to know what is coming up in a class, and remind.com allows me to send information to their phones without having to give out my personal number. I can send worksheets, test answer keys, test reminders, and let parents know general class announcements.

I also started using the calendar sync feature of smart phones to sync my classroom website calendars with parents’ phones. Most parents use their calendar to keep track of their work lives and this speaks to their language.

The second way is being present at a variety of school functions. I have found that meeting parents at informal situations like basketball games, band concerts and plays is a great way to develop relationships that make communicating with them easier and more productive.

What hacks or tricks do you use to grade papers?
Gradecam. It’s an amazing website that turns a document camera into a multiple-choice and numeric grading device. I don’t love multiple-choice questions, but we live in a multiple-choice world, and this allows the students to bring their answer sheet up to my document camera and get instant feedback on how they did. It’s especially useful in the formative feedback setting because it allows students to see which ones they got wrong and go back and correct them instantly. There is no moment kids are more excited to learn how they did on an assessment then the second they turn it in, and this allows me to take advantage of that excitement in the classroom. Students can be more self-servicing using Gradecam and I can work more on helping them than managing paperwork.

What are you reading for enjoyment?
Tom Clancy’s Full Force and Effect. I love the Jack Ryan novel series and love how he weaves in history into his fictional accounts of a U.S. secret agent. The whole series is a real page-turner, and I really look forward to new ones coming out.

What’s the best advice you ever received?
I was coaching my first basketball game ever and I was sitting on the bench frantically writing out my lineups and plays to call because I was nervous and didn’t want to forget anything. This big guy came up behind the bench and put both hands on my shoulders and said, “Coach, from what I’ve seen in warmups, you want to know the key to your team winning today?” Of course, I nodded. He replied, “Score more points than the other team!” Turned out he was my AD’s dad!

While I laughed it off at the time, during that game I realized I put so much effort into perfecting little details, I had forgotten the big picture goal. This applies daily to teaching. We have so many little details to take care of: grading, entering grades, emails, absent students, meetings, lesson plans. It’s so easy to get caught up in the details that you forget the big picture of why you got into the profession. Teaching can be exhausting, but we can’t forget why we chose it. I chose it to inspire kids to accomplish goals they didn’t even know they could. And it’s great to be reminded on days when the stakes are higher and time is short of what the big picture in education is: our students’ success.