From the mouths of babes!

Fourth week into the school year and that little voice in my head has kicked into overdrive.  The newness of the year has worn off, students’ true colors are quickly coming into focus, and that voice is chanting, “are you sure about this?  They aren’t learning?  What were you thinking? Abort before it is too late?  In the midst of internal panic and frantic searching for a smidge of affirmative feedback in a sea of student faces… out of nowhere, BAM!,  that little voice got a slugged in the chords by a student's courage to self advocate.  As soon as the student started talking...I knew!  I grabbed a pencil…sat down in the middle of the room with the student and wrote what he said. (After asking him if it was okay to quote him.)

 

As I am walking around collecting the self-assessment rubrics this student looked at me with dread and serious concern.  He locked eyes with me, but would not hand over the self-assessment.  Then he says, “Is this all this class is going to be?”

I replied, “what do you mean?”  

He says, “Well, I like history.  It’s like my favorite, but this is different.”  

So I said “what do you think you should be doing?”  

He say, “writing on paper.  I am used to that.  I mean I was in Pre AP in middle school and elementary.  You know, we didn’t do this {and that was more advanced}.  We did normal stuff like take notes from the Activboard, watch movies, handouts, and, you know regular work, textbook stuff ya.  I am not used to this.”  

So I said, “so you are feeling like you don’t have control?” He replied, “yes, and I feel frustrated and rushed”. I mean, I am failing this class, ya.

A bit of context, before I share what happened next.  These first 4 weeks of school I have thrown them in in the pool without a physical life preserver, and only rescue (on the DL) those who are actually drowning academically; which has only been some with identified learning disabilities and beginner level ESL students.  I have not provided any verbal content instruction, i.e. no lecture or presentations.  The decision to do this was fueled by a lot of formative assessment and data review.  Will spare you all the specifics, but day 1 every student took the released STAAR for the class and every student got at least 3/17 correct.  2 students scored within passing range….passing range...day 1.  I’ll just leave that last statement right there.

So back to the self-advocating student. I inquired about his previous experience in history classes and suggested that his previous experiences entailed the teacher doing a lot of the doing and him doing a lot of receiving.  To which, he nodded (with a sheepish smile).  To which I replied, “well what is happening here is we are flipping that situation and balancing the doing a bit so that in every situation in your life moving forward this self doubt and panic that is happening to you in this moment will not happen without you being equipped to handle it powerfully and positively .”  I reassured him that what he was feeling was part of the plan, and that I appreciated him self-advocating and gave him extra points for his impromptu self-reflection and expression of self-awareness.  I also reassured him that I would not let him fail the class as long as he does not quit.  

This work we do is like no other…so little authentic feedback.  Hope this gives you a bit of encouragement to stay the course!

"This is the most magnificent life has ever been. Here is heaven and earth and the brilliant sky in between"

The school year has been off to a great start with regards to my classroom.  I'm doing flexible seating this year, and I have gone completely desk-less. My parents came to meet the teacher and walked into the room speechless.  The looks on their faces and the questions in their eyes said it all, "Have you lost your flipping mind? You must be bananas, and I can't believe administration actually put my child in your class." They questioned my sanity, and I admit, I questioned it too at first, but they realized that I had approached this new idea with gusto and armed with research.  It has been completely amazing and full of failures.

Nerd House Coffee is Born!
During the Age of Enlightenment, coffeehouses became the hub of innovation.  In the spirit of enlightenment and district of innovation, my classroom has become a coffeehouse; 21st century as opposed to 18th.  My amazing students have even named it; Nerd House Coffee.  We are a place where ideas are freely shared with respect to our differences.  Voices are heard in an environment free of ridicule but packed with constructive criticism.  Questions are asked and the "what if" spirit is celebrated.  It is amazing to think that these kids are only nine and ten.  Very wise beyond their years, but kind as only kids with free spirits can be.  It is the most magnificent my school life has ever been.

In Between Heaven and Earth
I know I make it sound like everything was perfect, and most of it has been, but we have had our stumbling blocks.  Bean Bags deflating, back rest pillows popping and oozing their stuffing around the room, and not-so-innovative friends trying to crush my Vanguard dreams.  It is interesting to me that people in education have such a fixed mindset on what should happen in a classroom and what a classroom should look like.  How are we supposed to set our students up for the future if we can't have a growth mindset that allows us to dream of what the future may hold.  How do we keep ourselves in line with district expectations of #limitlesscuriosity #collaborativespirit if we can't even act on our curiosities without fear of ridicule?  I have made the executive decision, as CEO of NerdHouseCoffee, that our classroom will be a place full of limitless curiosity regardless of how the haters react.  We are only limited by our imaginations, right?

All Subjects 
I have given Math tests in Butterfly chairs, yoga balls, and on the classroom floor.  I've seen the anxieties of my GT kids drift away as they cover with blankets and settle in to just another day in the coffee house.  I've watched their active discussions grow like those of our "Friends" at Central Perk, and I know I've made the right decision for my kids and those that will come after them.  My only regret....I didn't do it sooner.

May we all embrace this most magnificent educational life...and in the daily grind of the in between.

Pinkies Up,
Anne

Moving Ahead....

....so what week is this already???  The year is flying by and it's been a whirlwind of new implementations, new directions, new ideas added to the challenge of what "old" ideas to maintain.  

Here's our year so far:

• Students have been actively involved in sharing and collaborating online with classmates and teachers.  For many of my students, this experience is new to them which has made the journey very enjoyable for me.  Seeing their excitement and their desire to complete what really is a hidden "assignment" has been the most fun.  I am looking forward to watching their academic growth along with their personal growth within this new arena.
• We have created students accounts within a variety of applications where students access work, complete research, share ideas.....again, just another way of doing the same old thing but in a new way, while allowing them to see what their peers think and to self-monitor what they are learning along the way. This has created some feelings of competition between a few students while providing an outlet for some of those more reserved students to share what they really know.  
• On the planning side, our campus planning initiatives have created some restraints, but nothing we can't work around.  The planning time within our team is very directed and the curriculum dashboard is very traditional.  In our "mingle,mingle,mingle" game today I came to realize this year's biggest challenge for me may be time. . . time to plan for a more blended classroom, additional time to revamp an activity that does not meet the goals I have set for myself and my students.

Five week Celebration checkpoint.....NO classroom discipline issues, many days of students asking to stay (for no reason that is academically necessary other than wanting to be there and wanting to keep working), frequently adding new applications & having students keep up with the challenge, LEARNING about new applications all the time and not reaching the point of "it's too much", and learning that if I set the alarm for 4:00 I can build in an extra hour each day ;o)

Three Things

Some thoughts on the nascent 2016-17 school year. Cross posted: Infinite Sums

Biggest Success

I entered the year with some plans for Pre-Cal. Initially I had some grand ideas, but the result on paper was a little reordering and some and a more intensive Algebra unit. In practice, the move has been to focus on explanations with a mix of mechanics. The first round has proven to be very fruitful. Recently we had a fantastic moment where students were given a triangle like this:

In my approach to trig I'm trying not to explicitly teach methods as much as possible, instead seeing if students can piece together ideas from what we have talked about and what they've seen before. In this case, we never explicitly discussed finding two missing sides. Two students cracked the puzzle (that sin 42 is a known quantity that can be exploited), but the methods were very different. One determined it through algebra (setting sin 42 = y/37 and solving). Another went through elaborate guessing using his trig table, using the approximate value of sin 42 and then fiddling with numerators until that numerator divided by 37 came close to the same decimal value.

This "figure it out" method is slowly creeping into Calculus, but it's harder.

Biggest Challenge

Time. I mentioned it a while ago. I'm at school like 65 hours a week, plus however many to play catch up and do minor things like, you know, plan.

Summer Learning

Let's do a break down of #1TMCThings, shall we? That's where all the summer learning comes from.

TMC13 - Wide-eyed, the community is every bit as energetic and passionate as I had hoped

TMC14 - Presenting, having people confirm curriculum ideas I had and provide feedback

TMC15 - Collaborating with Michael Fenton, sharing the Varsity Math love, getting input from Lisa and Dan on how to improve my Calculus teaching

TMC16 - Bruce Cohen's great Calculus problems, helping Lisa rebuild Algebra II, remembering Julie Reulbach should be pronounced JULIE REULBACH!!!!

I never walk away from conferences with a mountain of ideas, it's more about being around energetic people who will spitball about math notebooks with you at 11pm on the floor of a dorm.

Life in PreK

With all the changes in PreK this year, life has been a little stressful. We have a completely new assessment system as well as the introduction of I-station (which I am completely excited about!). Even with testing going on, I really wanted to focus from the get-go on the driving goal at our campus this year, which is "Are our students doing all they can do independently?" Many times, people see 4-year-olds and think that they need help with everything. Their ability to learn and understand complex ideas are often times underestimated.

With this in mind, I think my biggest challenge this school year so far has been time. There is just not enough time... CIRCLE testing has taken 5 weeks to complete, and I am just now beginning a full day teaching cycle. There are so many ideas that I learned about in the summer that I want to try out this year, but right now I am just focusing on trying to get Seesaw up and running by mid-semester. I currently have my students inputted and am working on adding their pictures as icons. I have started working with them on documenting their learning with pictures and videos, which they have been practicing during centers.

One of my biggest successes so far this year has been with letting go the reigns a bit sooner and allowing students to take control of the technology in the classroom. At the beginning of the year, we learned about school and the people who worked there. People came to talk to our class about their jobs (principal, assistant principal, nurse, counselor, speech teacher, etc). As a conclusion to the project, students collectively wrote a thank you letter to each person. They also made a video (which I added captioning to in Camtasia) in which they talked about what they had learned about that person. We turned that into a QR code. 

  

I also enlisted the help of a "QR code expert", who taught the recipient of the letter what a QR code was and how it worked. 

Now my students have taken to finding whatever QR codes they can around the room and scanning them. They also make their own video about their name that I attach to a QR code for them. They love it. 

My next challenge is to get Seesaw up and running and start exploring some of the other apps, like Book Creator, which students can eventually use and submit to Seesaw. I have a feeling that this year is just going to fly right by!

Don't Believe Me ...Just WATCH!

I wanted to be innovative with my classroom room this year. I wanted to be different. I want to make people pause and take a look. Make people think...I can do this too. So I believed it needed to start with the classroom set-up. I was so grateful when Mr. Moore gave me his red couch for my classroom.  I was ready to put in the front of the room as I saw in this photo below. My VANtasy classroom.

When I was in my classroom moving desks out and furniture out. I stared at the couch. I stood there for a good ten minutes battling in my head-"put it to the side of the ACTIVboard" and "No, put it front in center." I then I realized why worry, jump in, do it and I did!

Students will want to learn, want to read, want to be in the couch for learning (and mucking about). Look how the couch is such a magnet for learning. 

We also were able to jump right into doing tech projects with ease. I was thrilled to know that most of my students knew their username, password, and were able to independently log into a Google Chromebook. This is all thanks to the great work of Ms. Marshall!

The students created trading cards about themselves from BigHugeLabs as a way to introduce themselves to each other. The students also created face mapping projects about historical people who influence the common good with Morfo app. We also used an augmentative reality app for International Dot Day called Quiver app. 

Ready to learn

This year I am teaching eight graders and is different... 

I have been teaching sixth grade for so long I forgot that I need to work for their trust and appreciation. The students are normal teenagers, just like most, friends are the most important thing, learning comes second to being cool and respect is earned not blindly given to anyone. This has been a great learning experience. Teaching is all about learning, stretching and growing. I love the challenges that life have given me so far and appreciate the opportunity to fail and try again. This year in particular I want to fall and get up quicker than ever. I want to fail and learn faster than ever. This year I want my brain to tickle everyday!! 

How can I get my students to learn? Showing then how learning looks like. The struggle and the satisfaction of learning, they need to see the process and I am willing to model it. I will try new things. I will empower them to find their passion. I will help them focus on getting to a successful place academically and in life. I will guide them to see the world as their canvas and show them that they don’t have to think outside the box because for them THERE IS NO BOX. We worked on building a culture of collaboration and respect, now is time to launch. I am looking forward to incorporate these amazing tools into the classroom and see them strive.