Let's Focus on Thinking Instead

After returning from a long, relaxing and thoughtful winter break, our staff spent a lively hour discussing our school wide goal for this year.  I know, a little late, but we’ve been waiting on PARCC data.  For the last three years, our building focus has been writing.   

 

The challenge has been how to address and assess this goal across all of the different contents that are represented in our middle school.  We have tried using  a common acronym, RAP - Rephrase, Answer, Provide Support, but this acronym didn’t necessarily fit well with all content areas, sometimes felt contrived and overall, did not significantly impact on our student’s standardized test scores.  We also tried using common, school wide short constructed response assessments.  These assessments were cumbersome to score and due to the scoring time commitment, we were only able to give 2 or 3 over the course of the year.  Again, no one, teachers or students, were getting 
the bang for their buck.  
So what to do?

My personal philosophy on education has undergone radical changes over the last few years.  For many years of my career, I relied on traditional, summative assessments to determine what students knew.  Over the last five years, I realized that these traditional assessments more often than not gave an incomplete, and in many cases, an inaccurate, picture of student understandings.  They rewarded students who figured out what the teacher wanted and went about providing that answer and penalized students who thought outside the box.  

What is the purpose of education?  I grapple with this question frequently.   

 

My current belief, influenced greatly by my experiences raising 2 children and following their school experiences, is that at the end of the day, I want my own children as well as my students to be able to think.  I want them to be able to express their thoughts and opinions and support these ideas with credible, relevant and timely information.  How they express their ideas should be up to each individual.  The communication and presentation of ideas should be based on each individual child’s strengths and should involve thoughtful consideration of both audience and purpose.  For years, the primary mode of communication, at least in the formal education setting, has been text based with a heavy emphasis on formal writing.  I strongly believe we need to move away from this long-held assumption that all students must use formal writing as their primary mode of expression.  

So back to our school wide goal.  It’s so easy to default to writing - it’s what we’ve looked at for years, but is it really the most effective way to assess student growth?  Don’t get me wrong, I think being able to write is important and my students often communicate their understandings through writing.  But, I don’t think it is the only way, and certainly not always the best way, for students to demonstrate understanding and the ability to think deeply.  And I certainly don’t think it is the best way to quickly assess understanding in order to provide timely and productive feedback.  It is well past time to acknowledge that there are many ways to demonstrate the ability to think critically.  This acknowledgment is scary though.  How do you systematically assess deep thinking?  How do you standardize both assessments and assessment feedback so you can track growth? I wonder, what happens if you focus on the actual thinking, rather than the fallback measurement tool - more often than not, formal writing.  What if we acknowledge that there are many ways to show deep, complex thinking; for example, an intricate piece of art, a short video or audio recording, a bulleted list of words, a music composition, a sports formation. 

 

Formal writing does not need to be the end-all-be-all.  The world needs individuals who can express their ideas and thoughts, who can learn from their mistakes and move forward and who can think outside the box and confidently communicate their ideas.  Our staff began to consider this today.  
It was refreshing.  
It was exciting.  
It creates lots of unknowns.  
I’m looking forward to seeing where we end up.    

Sundays Are Hard

Transitions - for our most impacted students, and many others, transitions are hard.  Transition from elementary school to middle school, from 5th period to 6th period, from science to social studies, from Sunday to Monday. I get it; sometime during the last two years of high school, Sunday’s suddenly got hard for me. Thinking back, I’m pretty sure I was worried about my

impending “adulthood” and the soon to arrive transition to college. At the time, Sunday’s were just hard. I don’t think I ever told my parents about this. My worries came out on Sunday nights. After everyone was asleep, I’d wander from bedroom to bedroom, peeking in to make sure all was well. I often invited my youngest sister, just 10 years old, to sleep in my room pretending that I was doing her the favor not the other way around.

Ten days ago, our new school year began. I don’t know my 151 students very well yet but I do know that each one of them enters our classroom every day with their own strengths and worries and fears. I know that for many, Sundays are hard. I know that for many, transitioning from 1st period to 2nd period is hard. I know that for many, switching from subject to subject every 49 minutes is hard. I know that for many, transitioning from one activity to the next within a class period is hard. One of my goals this year is to focus on relationships. I only have 49 minutes every day with most of my

students but I plan to take advantage of this short period of time. Every Monday, we will begin class with a community building activity. I’ve also implemented a leader-board challenge for my students.  Participation is voluntary but all activities are focused on building both community and relationships, between the students and between the students and myself. I hope that when things get harder and when struggles become more apparent that I will be able to fall back on these relationships and use them to help kids and maybe help Sundays become easier.

Photo Credits
Handshake:   http://mrg.bz/8JrQuM

One Meaningful Adult

This morning, I had the privilege of hearing Jonathan Mooney speak at Arvada West High School.  Jonathan painted a poignant picture of his experience as a dyslexic, ADHD student and the role that pivotal adults in his life played as he navigated our education system.   Through a series of personal stories, Jonathan challenged our traditional educational practices, arguing that “we confuse the global faculty of intelligence with the skill of reading” and “when all we do is “fix” kids, the message they get is that they are broken”.  His message resonated strongly with me from both a personal perspective as a mom of a nontraditional student and from a professional perspective as a teacher who works with nontraditional and traditional students alike every day.

I wrote about my own son in a recent post.  I could see my son in Jonathan Mooney as he stood before us on the Arvada West HS stage.  My son is a creative, inquisitive, inventive learner outside of school.  At school, he doesn't fit into the traditional definition of what constitutes a “good” student, which in his case primarily means that he is not a “good” reader.  He doesn't like school and I can understand why.  Jonathan challenged the 150 plus educators in the room to “build school experiences that ask how is this student smart, not how smart is this student” and that “we have the opportunity to help kids understand that intelligence isn't determined by 1 skill”.  I would love to watch my son and his teachers acknowledge and develop his strengths rather than always focusing on what he, and the traditional school system, call his deficits.

I also saw so many of the students I have had the opportunity to work with over the years in Jonathan.  Kids who walk into my science classroom with 7 years experience of being “fixed”.  Kids who think they have nothing to offer except trouble.  Kids with a fixed mindset who believe they aren't smart.  It is heartbreaking.  Jonathan reminded me of one student in particular that I had the privilege of working with last year.  This student was tough.  There were plenty of nights when I couldn't sleep trying to figure out how to reach him.  There were plenty of days when I had to take a deep breath after he said something rude or mean to myself or his classmates.  He hated school and who could blame him.  Four of his seven periods in the day were focused on “fixing” his deficits.  I don’t think he had any electives in his day because of all of the intervention classes.   Jonathan reminded us that “there is a strength in every student that is a pathway to success; our job as educators is to find it”.  It took months to develop a relationship with this particular student and then, just as we were finally figuring it out, the school year ended.  I hope that the tiny bit of success we had, the identification and development of his strengths which, yes, he has, carry forward this year for him and change his path.  

As I get ready to begin a new year of teaching with new students that each bring their own individual strengths, challenges and passions into the classroom, Jonathan reminded me that connections and relationships matter.  I need to remember this when the going gets tough.  I need to “define kids by what they can do, not what they can’t do”.  I need to ask “what are you good at” and not accept “nothing” for an answer.  I need to remember that every student has something to bring to the table and that it is my job to help them find and develop this nugget.  And I definitely need to remain an advocate for that student that I worked so hard with last year.  After all, one meaningful adult can put a child on a different path.

mrg.bz/lzAz6e

Scrum: Let's See Where This Take Us

I recently finished reading Scrum by Dave Sutherland. Although scrum was created with businesses in mind, many of scrum’s core ideas can be translated into an education setting.  I am fortunate to work with an amazing core team of teachers at Oberon Middle School.  The 2015-2016 school year will be our second year working together as a core team and we have decided to use scrum this year in two ways. First, we will use scrum to help us address kids who are struggling for any myriad of reasons (more to come on this once the school year starts).  Second, we had already decided as a team last spring to do our best to implement problem and project based learning in our classrooms whenever we could this year and I am thrilled to write that last week we started using scrum to help us initiate our PBL focused year!  

Language Arts, Math, Science and Social Studies are all represented on our core team.  We all bring very different backgrounds, experiences and ideas to the table.  The first thing scrum reminded us was that for us to work together as a truly effective team we need to understand is what is happening in each of our classrooms.  We spent some time giving each other a brief synopsis of our curriculum and then we pulled out the sticky notes!  

Our first goal was to begin discovering the natural connections that occur throughout our curricula.  We don't want to force connections but we definitely want to acknowledge that there are connections and start to highlight them, thus the sticky notes.  Just to get an idea of where our units would fall, we set up a rough map of the year, month by month, keeping in mind that "the map is not the terrain".  Math and Social Studies curriculum had to be in a specific order but there was some flexibility in science and language arts. We took advantage of this flexibility to highlight some natural connections.  The first unit in my science class will focus on biological adaptations and natural selection.  In social studies, the kids will be learning about ancient civilizations including the implications of artificial selection on human society.  Awesome, our first significant connection!  We are in the process of taking advantage of this nature connection to develop our first PBL event of the year.     

You might be saying to yourself right now “Well duh, this isn’t rocket science, why didn’t you do this before?”.   To be honest though, I have worked with some amazing educators and teams over the last 15 years but I have never been on a team that has started off a school year like this.  Despite best intentions and common sense, it has just never happened.  So what’s different this year?  I’m not sure, but to start, we have all made the commitment to be deliberate and intentional and we have found a framework, scrum, that we believe will help us make learning better for our students and for us. I don't think I'm alone when I say that I can't wait to see where we end up!

Photo Credits

• Scrum: goo.gl/OMtnYR
• Puzzle Pieces:  http://mrg.bz/WDwow4

Summer "Learning"

My son (let’s call him T) does not like school. He is a pretty good student overall, he does his homework without prompting from me, he behaves in class for the most part, he excels in some areas (math) and struggles in others (reading) but, with the exception of recess, he has never been interested in school. He, like all of us, is a learner at his core, he just doesn't like the way “learning” goes down at school.

During T’s first couple of summers in elementary school, I did what I thought parents were supposed to do to make sure their kids didn't have “learning loss” over the summer - I purchased summer bridge books. I had him work on the bridge book for about 30 minutes every day in addition to reading 30 minutes every day. He hated those daily 60 minutes. He thought the bridge books were boring and he is dyslexic so reading is really tough. Last summer, the summer before 5th grade, I decided to forgo the bridge books and, without telling him, let T take control of his learning. (Amazingly, he never even questioned the lack of bridge books.) T ended up working on two projects last summer; developing a working pair of human wings and building and sailing a homemade boat.

T tackled the wings first; I tried not to interfere. He started with some research on YouTube (it’s fairly amazing what you can find when you Google human wings). He drew out some plans, made his list of supplies and asked for me to take him to the local hardware store. At the hardware store, he sought the advice of an employee about what materials were the most lightweight but durable and therefore excellent wing material. The employee also gave him some unsolicited advice; “Be careful where you take off from, I don’t want to see you on the nightly news.”. He purchased his supplies using his allowance money, went home and started building. T created about 6 different versions of his wings, testing and tweaking as he went. Ultimately, he only made it a couple of inches off of the ground but he didn't care, he was thrilled by his success. My only contribution throughout his project was to tell him that he couldn't jump off of anything higher than 12 inches as he attempted to take flight. As it turned out, I didn't even need to enforce this rule because he decided a running start down a steep hill would be a better method to achieve lift off. Based on my observations from the side, T dabbled in economics, design thinking, physics, geometry, communications and effective research just to name a few but if you ask him, he’ll just say it was really fun to make human wings and try to fly.

Human Wings "In-Development"

About 3 weeks into the human wing endeavor, T decided to change gears and focus on making a working sailboat. Once again, I stood back and watched my 10 year old direct his own learning. Over the course of the next 4 weeks, he designed, built and successfully launched his boat in not 1, but 2 different Colorado lakes. From the side, I watched him dabble in budgeting, discount shopping, characteristic properties, weather and construction just to name a few, but again, if you ask him, he’ll just say it was awesome to be able to sail his own boat for an afternoon.

Sailboat Trial #1

This summer, T has decided to create an online store and sell some mini crossbows and arrows that he has designed and successfully tested. He continues to tweak his designs and he is currently 1 week into the website design process. I have no doubt that soon I will be able to list off a slew of things this project allowed him to dabble in and again, I’m sure if you ask him, he’ll say it is super fun to be the owner of a store and sell stuff that he made for money.

As I've watched my son over the last 2 summers, I've realized that something important is often missing in our schools and classrooms (including my own 7th grade science classroom); the opportunity for kids to discover, develop and follow their own passions and interests. Why is it always the teacher and/or the curriculum that dictates what will be learned and how it will be learned? It seems like we have this entirely backwards. Although he would never call what he is doing learning, T loves “learning” over the summer because he is in charge, he is deciding where he wants to go and he is figuring out how to get there. What would happen if we consciously began to create opportunities in our schools for this type of learning to take place? Where would our students go if we focused on becoming their learning coaches rather than their teachers? What would our students walk away with by the end of every year if they were in charge of their own learning path? I want my own children and my students to love to learn all of the time, not just during the summer break from school. Maybe passion based learning is a great place to start.

Moving Forward With Purpose

My classroom is ready to go and the kids have arrived!

As I begin my 14th year of teaching, I am excited, energized, full of ideas and ready and willing to step outside of my comfort zone and try some new things that will help me grow as a learner and allow me to help my students recognize and tap into their passions, interests and potential as they also grow as learners.  

Participating in the “Cowboy Ethics” workshop last week, reminded me that it is important for me to get my goals out of my head and onto “paper”.  So here goes: Teaching Goals Take a stab at gamifying my science classes (thank you  @techedupteacher for inspiring a non-gamer to give this a go) Incorporate the concept of the “genius hour” into my science classes (many thanks to @JoyKirr for sharing her awesome resources) Continue to use technology as a powerful tool to personalize my student’s learning Personal Learning Goals Apply, apply, apply to the Google Teacher Academy (and hopefully get accepted) Write at least 2 posts/month to my blog “Reinventing Class” Become an active Twitter participant rather than a silent observer

Photo Credit
venspired via photopin cc

The Cowboy Code of Ethics

Today was my first day back at school.  To kickstart our school year, my principal brought in Kent Noble from the Center for Cowboy Ethics and Leadership.  Kent facilitated a half-day workshop called “Standing Tall:  What’s Your Code”.   

This workshop is based on James P. Owen’s, 2005 book, “Cowboy Ethics:  What Wall Street Can Learn from the Code of the West”.  

                Source:  amazon.com

Kent began his workshop by introducing us to the Cowboy “Code of the West”.  

After reviewing the “Code of the West”, Kent turned our focus to the “11th Principle”.  In essence, over the following three hours, he led each of us through the creation of our own Code of Ethics. While our immediate goal was to create our own personal Code of Ethics, in order to help every staff member stand behind their code, Kent encouraged us to publicize our personal Code.  So, here goes…

My Code of Ethics Find balance by focusing on the big picture. Happiness is a decision. Only I control my attitude Stand up and speak up for what you believe in. Always look for the gold nuggets. Make an impact. Success doesn't happen without failure. Never doubt that one person can make a difference.