Innovating inside the box (but maybe pushing out the walls just a little bit) #IMMOOC Week 3

“What if we recognized and built on learners’ strengths?”

It’s a simple question, and it seems easy enough to do, but it forces me to think about this box within which we are innovating. I can’t help but feel like it’s a bit crowded in here. Do you feel it? Maybe we should push those walls out just a little bit; what do you think?

I absolutely understand that we can’t overhaul the system, but we also can’t afford to use that system as the excuse to shy away from new and better ways of educating.

This MOOC is all about communicating, sharing ideas, and learning from one another so that we can all be better learners, and in turn, guide our students to more meaningful learning as well. If I innovate over here, and you innovate over there, and someone else innovates between us, we’re bound to create enough energy and excitement and possibility that the box will be forced to open.

George’s comment about grading and reporting in chapter 7 struck me as a box-opening type of statement:

“I think we spend too much time documenting what students know and not enough time empowering them to invest in their own learning and helping them understand their strengths and areas of growth.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways in which we communicate progress to students, and I can’t help but think that grades are an outdated mode of reporting. When I think about grades, I think about one of my favorite TED talks. Chimamanda Adichie discusses the danger of a single story and the ways that limited exposure can be detrimental to our understanding of ourselves and our world.

As a child, Adichie mostly read British stories even though she grew up in Nigeria, and so when she wrote, her characters were more like the characters she read about rather than the people living around her. “What this demonstrates, I think,” she explains, “is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children.”

When she was finally able to read books by African writers, her thinking shifted: “I realized that people like me…could also exist in literature.”

I worry that sometimes our “underperforming” students feel that already their identities have been set for them. They feel that school is not a place “for” them because their interests and passions or ways of learning might not be represented there, so they get by without getting excited. They’ve been given access to resources that might only elicit mediocre responses from them, and so, they are awarded with mediocre marks.

“So that is how to create a single story,” Adichie explains. “Show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.”

Do we want to create mediocre people who see themselves, sadly, in a single percentage? Or do we want students to know deeply that there is not just this one, single story of who they are in their learning — that they are, in fact, multifaceted and multi-talented in ways different from the student sitting next to them?

As Adichie points out, children are impressionable. It’s important that we take seriously the ways in which they develop their identities, and while  I think that sometimes grades can certainly boost a student’s confidence, there are also often times that grades don’t accurately reflect what a student can do. Grades can tear a student down and damage him or her in ways that can have lasting negative impacts.

I don’t think we want to tell our students a single story of themselves. Instead, “what if we recognized and built on learners’ strengths?” Let’s push a little on the walls of this box.

 

 

 

 

Getting (un)comfortable with innovation: Week 2 of #IMMOOC

Control is comfort. Think about it: When we are in control, we feel comfortable because the path is directed by us. After all, what can go wrong when I am steering the ship? Of course, I’ve made a bullet-proof travel plan, I’ve got an average of 1.5 life vests per passenger (because safety), and lots of extra supplies in case we have to divert around a storm. It will be the perfect trip because I am perfectly planned. Right?

Wrong.

Let me tell you who feels good about this trip: me. The captain. I am steering the wheel and staying the course no matter what comes our way. But my passengers? They’re not having fun. They’re seasick and tired and are kind of thinking about jumping ship and taking those life vests with them. They haven’t given any input into the plan. Maybe they felt we needed to stop at an island along the way? Maybe the supplies I brought are bland and they know a fun little stop where the supplies are bold and diverse. Maybe they know a faster route, or maybe they all want to take different ships to get there? Why won’t I let them?

We have lots of reasons why we say we shouldn’t let our students take their own wheels and steer their own ships. We think they aren’t ready, or they seem unmotivated, or (insert any number of excuses here). More and more, though, I realize that it isn’t that they CAN’T take control; it’s more that I can’t seem to let them.

As a teacher who desperately wants my students to love learning and grow academically, socially, and emotionally, I feel better when I have a perfect plan, but what I learned in the #IMMOOC reading this week is that rather than having the perfect plan, I need to ask the perfect questions. And then, I need to let each student come to the answer in his/her own way while I help them all get there in whatever ways I can.

Innovation might feel uncomfortable at first. After all, if we are thinking and working in NEW and BETTER ways, that means we are constantly changing, and we’re told that change is often difficult. But what if change was the norm rather than the occasional occurrence? Life would be so much better if uncomfortable could be comfortable.

Maybe I’m ready to take off my captain’s hat after all.

 

 

 

Raising chickens taught me more about education than my schooling ever did.

Three years in the past my husband got here residence at some point and mentioned, “We should always elevate chickens.” It was a random remark that someway picked up steam within the weeks that adopted, and a month and a half later, we had constructed a coop and our toddler was selecting out child chicks to take residence.

Neither my husband nor I had any experiences elevating chickens. He grew up in Milwaukee, and although I grew up in cornfields, my grandfather had given up cows, pigs, and chickens earlier than I joined the world. On high of that, we lived in a newly developed neighborhood in suburban San Antonio — not precisely rural dwelling.

There have been a number of causes we shouldn’t have taken on our hens: we had by no means accomplished it earlier than, we knew nothing about their wants, we had a small yard, and our home-owner’s affiliation strictly forbade livestock. Nonetheless, we spoke with our neighbors (who agreed to maintain mum if they may have recent eggs), discovered plans for a coop, learn blogs and watched movies, and out of the blue turned the neighborhood specialists on elevating wholesome egg-layers. And we liked it.

When individuals discovered that we raised chickens, I can’t let you know what number of instances they mentioned, “You don’t appear like a rooster particular person.” At first (and surprisingly), I took this as a praise. Their faces and tone appeared to say that rising chickens was a lower than fascinating option to spend one’s time. However after concerning the twentieth time of listening to that, I began pondering: What does it imply to “appear like a rooster particular person?”

I started to surprise if that very same pondering was occurring within the minds of the kids in my very own classroom, however in a distinct context. Studying the primary chapter of The Innovator’s Mindset by George Couros solely solidified my concern: What if I've created an atmosphere the place college students really feel they don’t match the outline of pupil? What if the methods they crave to study aren't the methods I'm permitting them to study?

On the primary day of college this yr, fairly than go over insurance policies, procedures, and the syllabus as I've up to now, I wrote a query on the board: What does it imply to coach? The category brainstormed concepts largely consisting of the notion that schooling is centered round an individual delivering the schooling. They talked rather a lot about lecturers in class and studying from speaking to their associates. After we created a listing, the scholars had free reign to make use of any sources the varsity offered them to be able to develop their understanding of what it means to coach; they may use Chromebooks, different college students, lecturers, directors, custodians, librarians, books, and many others.

Each pupil practically jumped out of his/her seat after I mentioned it was time to go examine and interview their sources. When it was time to return to class and share their favourite definitions, they shared issues like “to supply a possibility for one more particular person to study,” “to broaden your worldview,” and “utilizing instruments to enhance abilities.” All of their favorites had been centered across the pupil now as a substitute of some supposedly all-knowing schooling deliverer. Once they synthesized their favorites and wrote their group definition of schooling on the board, all of us realized that being pupil shouldn’t look the way in which we’ve all the time allowed and inspired it to look — a pupil, in a desk, hand raised, ready to see if what they assume is right. Being a pupil, because it end up, can look nevertheless every youngster desires/wants it to look, and in that method, no pupil ought to ever must really feel that they don’t match the invoice of pupil.

I'm so grateful my husband adopted his curiosity three years in the past. We purchased three hens in Texas, after which 25 chickens after we moved to Illinois. We went from one small coop to a few coops and an enormous free-range pasture. And now, we breed our personal chickens. I by no means imagined our curiosity may take us this far, and I’m excited to know that we nonetheless have a lot extra to find.

Because it seems, I suppose we do appear like rooster individuals. And for the remainder of my life, my purpose as an educator is to not uphold the age-old definition of pupil. As a substitute, I would like my college students to put in writing themselves in as new and completely different entries to an previous, previous phrase.

Innovating Together: My First Lesson in Co-Teaching #IMMOOC

“My mother always said, ‘If you’re not striving for the ideal, you’re not working hard enough.’”  – Roni Riordan

Image from pixabay

This week in the #IMMOOC, there was a lot of mention of designing the ideal. This fall, I will have the opportunity to move toward my ideal for school. A colleague and I will be teaching a combined English III/American History course that allows students to take control of their learning and choose the way in which they are assessed. When the course was approved, I was ecstatic, but that enthusiasm quickly transformed to panic when I realized I would truly be working with another teacher. Another teacher. In MY classroom. Ehem, I mean, OUR classroom.

At the ICE Conference this morning, Adam Welcome said, “Teaching really isn’t that collaborative.” We ask our kids to collaborate effectively and we preach that this working together is the way of the future. But we don’t do it very well in schools. I realized this myself when my panic set in about sharing the room with another adult — even when it was a colleague I admire.

Chris and I (my future partner in co-teaching) had our first planning meeting last week. There were two main takeaways that I wanted to share this week that might help others take the jump from innovating in a bubble to innovating together.

Be open minded:

In our first meeting, Chris said, “I want to share with you what I already do, but I need you to know that that doesn’t mean I expect to do things the way I have been doing them.” Wow. I consider myself pretty open-minded, but what that did for me was help realign my expectations for myself — that I should expect to change because he was expecting to change and grow, too. Eric Sheninger reminded us in his keynote this morning that “change is the only constant.” I am thrilled to be working with someone whose mindset is focused on being better.

Choose to work with those who challenge you:

I’ve long believed that the most important assessment is a project or product, not a standardized test. Yet, I have still given standardized assessments as part of how I assess students and “prepare them” for the inevitability of “the system.” In our meeting last week, I said that to Chris. His response: “Why?”

I had to think about that. And all my answers were about me. I want my students to score well. I need my kids to be familiar with the types of tests that schools require of them. Did you catch that? I want. I need. It’s about me. Because really, my kids don’t care much about the tests. They care about learning. In the words of Adam Welcome, “The kids should BE the conversation.” My dialogue was focused on the wrong stakeholder, because in the end, the stakeholder that really matters is the child.

“The kids should BE the conversation” – Adam Welcome, #KidsDeserveIt

Co-teaching, interdisciplinary learning, and student-led learning are huge aspects of my ideal, and even though I feel strongly about that, it’s still hard for me to take the leap. But how can I ask my kids to take risks if I’m not willing or enthusiastic to model that for them? It’s about the kids, yes, but it starts with me. And that’s a huge but really important responsibility to follow through on.

My students wanted to make their own final. When I let them, they did more than “exceed standards.”

In late November, my Mass Comm students and I were reviewing the finals schedule. One student asked, “What will our final be in here?” Every kid in the room had a puzzled (and somewhat concerned) face as they waited for me to answer.

I had to admit pretty quickly that I wasn’t sure. The previous year, the students in that class had written a blog post for their final. They had a detailed rubric with lots of writing and tech requirements, and they enjoyed it, but my class this year had already started blogs, and I wasn’t excited about just doing something similar because while we do blog in class, we do a lot more than that. They write the school newspaper, plan professional development on apps for teachers, sell advertising to area businesses, create digital stories, and pretty much take on any project they can find. How could I possibly assess their learning on all of those things in one traditional final?

The truth was that I couldn’t. And the kids knew that just as well (if not better) than I did. One girl raised her hand and asked, “Can we make our own finals and just show you what we’ve learned?” Each student nodded hopefully in agreement.

Absolutely.

But we had to do some brainstorming first. I gave the kids five minutes at the end of class to do a group quick list of the things they thought they’d learned in the semester. This is what they came up with together.

These were great ideas but big ideas. I wanted to make sure they could narrow this down to specific things and also be able to show their progress in those areas. We sat together and came up with some requirements, and everyone had a voice in deciding what was important to show, including me. We all agreed that all things informative writing, multimedia, and presentation were important. Creativity was a must.

I wrote up the assignment and shared it with them to make sure I hadn’t missed or misunderstood anything. In it, I also included some hyperlinks so that they would feel challenged to really be creative and try producing something completely new for them.

After we went over the assignment, the kids only had one question: “Can we start now?” They spent the next two class periods (and time at home and in homeroom) working on these projects. I couldn’t believe their enthusiasm, and I got to spend all of my time during class checking in with them, giving feedback on their scripts, helping them self-assess progress with their rubrics, trouble-shooting equipment problems, and learning new apps they planned to use to present. My teaching was truly based on their group or individual needs, and most importantly, I saw their critical thinking in progress, and got to provide feedback on those skills as well as their writing and technology content skills.

The day of the final, there were no nervous faces, and there was no last minute cramming. The kids were so excited to share what they had produced. They supported each other like no other group of kids I’ve seen before, and they gave honest, constructive feedback (based on standards from the rubric) after each presentation. They evaluated themselves using the rubric as well, and their assessments were shockingly accurate. I had never felt more effective as a teacher, and all I had really done was give them the opportunity to choose their own path. They felt empowered to do more, so they did; it’s amazing what can happen when we hear and trust our students.

To my Mass Communications class: Thank you for pushing me to give you more opportunities and for your drive and commitment to make your world a better place. I’ve learned just as much (if not more) from you than you have from me, and your influence will stick with me long after you’ve left this class.

An open letter to my seventh graders after their standardized tests

My wonderful, unique, 7th grade humans:

Today you finished up your winter MAP test. It’s results are supposed to show your areas of strength and weakness, providing you and your teachers with valuable feedback regarding your instruction. Some of you were jubilant about meeting your goal and showing how much you have learned since September. Others of you made growth but felt self-conscious that you didn’t hit the goal you set for yourself, or worried that your score was “still too low.” And some of you didn’t “make growth” this time around. I watched your disappointed faces as you finished your tests, and I watched the confidence you’d built all year slowly dissipate because of this one number.

Now, I don’t know everything, but there are two things I do know for sure: 1) You are not defined by a number determined by the answers you select on a multiple choice test, and 2) You have made more growth these last few months than a test could ever begin to show you.

Let me start by explaining that you came to my classroom this year already wonderful. Your parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and family friends and previous teachers who all play a role in making you the people that you are have done an outstanding job. You are kind, thoughtful, enthusiastic individuals. You have empathy, and when someone else is hurting, you do whatever it takes to help alleviate their pain. Do you know how incredible that is? So many adults struggle to be compassionate when someone else’s experience or background has been different from their own, but it seems to come so naturally to you. The resilience you show when something doesn’t go quite right the first time is so admirable, and you’ve taught me that — to never give up and to always come back stronger and with a new plan after a day that tests me.

 

And throughout this year, you have only become even more impressive learners and people. You’ve kept the empathy, generosity, and kindness you brought with you, but you’ve also become some of the greatest critical thinkers I’ve ever had the pleasure of teaching. When you write, you write about things that matter, not just to you, but also to your classmates and to me. You see the heart of a story, and you understand that writing isn’t meant to be formed from a prompt — it’s meant to deliver a message others need to hear: of hope, of change, of pain, of resilience, of love. All of you recognize that reading is a vehicle for exploring your passion, not a task of which the purpose is to determine your supposed ability.

You are not 210, 237, 205, 223, or 214. You are so much more than a score, and you are anything but average. You exceed my standards for what students should be every day. You take charge of your learning, inside the classroom and outside, and that motivation is the true determiner of success in life.

Keep striving to do well on these tests. Knowing how to survive or thrive in tasks that feel overwhelming is such an important life skill to master. More importantly, though, continue mastering these most important traits: caring for others, loving yourself, engaging in respectful debate and discourse, and reading and writing to learn. Aristotle said that we are more than the sum of our parts. What you do with the skills you learn will always be more important than having the skills themselves.

Keep doing. Keep creating. Keep changing your world. And know that I am proud of you — each one of you.

Image from flickr

Why blog?

This fall, I joined the Innovator’s Mindset MOOC after some serious urging by our district’s Instructional Tech Director. The facilitators of the MOOC encouraged participants to blog about their learning as they read and then share their posts and comment on others’. Even though I write constantly for myself and coach kids in writing every day, I was skeptical about taking the time to set up a blog and put my writing out there for others to read, use, and maybe even criticize. Wouldn’t writing in my notebook have the same reflective value? What could I have to say that someone else wasn’t already thinking?

Two weeks into the course, I had a little chuckle to myself when I realized that I had gone against everything I knew about education when I doubted what blogging could do for me. I preach that learning is doing, and yet, I was hesitant to “do” blogging and see what I was capable of producing.

When I started reading others’ posts and receiving comments on mine, I realized that blogging isn’t about saying something that no one else had ever said or thought before; it is about connecting, relating, sharing, and growing. I think the whole point is to say what other people are feeling — to give voice to a common thought, issue, or concern — and then come together to share ways of improving.

This is why blogging is good for any subject, but especially education.

I have always felt that teaching can be isolating, which is ironic because I’m surrounded by people all day, and by nature, my job is pretty transparent. My administrators are in and out of my room all the time, and the kids share what is happening in all their classrooms. But there are not many opportunities for me to bounce my ideas off of other professionals and have a lengthy troubleshooting session during the school day.

It’s tough to match the quality of face time with a trusted colleague, but to be able to come home and fully process my thoughts, write them out, and then share with a wide audience of people as passionate about their work as I am is as close as I’ll probably ever get. Blogging is limitless. I can connect with any person who happens across my little corner of the internet, and if they share it online or even with a colleague, my corner gets a little bigger. Suddenly, my community isn’t just the people I try to squeeze in conversations with during the day; my community is a web of people that read what I share and share their thoughts for me to read, too.

In that way, blogging completely changes the way I reflect on my teaching. I teach my kids that writing is a way of learning, and again, it’s important for me to practice what I preach. In class, my students self-evaluate and peer-evaluate. They often say that hearing from other students helps them recognize things they wouldn’t have noticed before. Blogging does that for me, too. Reflective writing for myself is still really important, but like my students, I’m noticing that sharing it increases the benefits tenfold.  In the words of AJ Juliani, “When you write what your heart tells you it will always have a dual impact. The reflection impacts us personally, and also those who read it.”

 

A few months ago, I had countless reasons why I couldn’t blog. Now that it’s part of my practice, I can’t think of one.