From Students to LEARNERS!

Posted: February 10, 2012 in Out of the box ideas
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So, I asked my students at the beginning of the year and then again after semester 1, to tell me how they learn. Students wrote their own answers to these open ended questions. The trends in their responses are fascinating.

At the beginning of the year, these are ALL of the response topics (from 120 students): pay attention, study, read, games, projects, textbook, homework, I don’t know, write, art, class notes, worksheets, tests, teacher explains things, power point, activities, museum, discussions, class work, read instructions, research, have goals, after school tutor, correct myself, re-read, parents help. Sounds really traditional and, truthfully, not very fun to be a learner.

Now, after one semester where I have tried to show them that learning is an active process (and connected that to Bloom’s taxonomy), these are ALL of their response topics: by following the steps up Blooms, fun, technology tools, projects, connect to things outside class, videos/movies, discover on my own, share with peers, evaluate peer to peer, challenge myself, read, draw, in my own time and way, teacher guides me, group activities, games, study, be responsible, pay attention, review at home, share work outside of school, great class environment. Sounds pretty non-traditional AND FUN.

What REALLY surprised me about these two lists was the utter lack of overlap. Other than pay attention, study, read, games and projects….NONE of the others descriptions overlap. In just one semester, there has been an complete change in how students view the act of learning. I am still sitting here amazed at this outcome. My goal was to make students aware of how they learned so that they would move towards becoming reflective learners. From just these lists, I would say that was a huge success.

In addition to that, I also noticed that the fist list contains a lot of “tasks” such as test, class notes and homework; where as the second list contains a lot of learner ACTIONS such as discover on my own, challenge myself, and connect to things outside class. That is another very cool shift…..from “I learn because I complete this set of tasks” to “I learn because I experience”. The first has very little “ownership” by the learner, and the second is all about the learner being at the center of the process.

Now, my question is this…. why are students still making lists like the first set of responses? Why are we treating them as if they could not possibly know how to learn, so we stuff them full of information and tasks and call them “good” or “bad” students based on how nice they are about letting us do this? Why are we not turning THEIR LEARNING over to THEM?

Breaking the rules….

Posted: February 8, 2012 in Out of the box ideas
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This blog post got me thinking…. What is my response when faced with a decision between “school rules/expectations” and what I think is best for students? If I choose what is best for students, does that make me a bad employee? If I choose to follow the school’s rules/expectations, does that make me a bad teacher?

The “rule” at my school is that students must put their phones in their backpacks during class and I am supposed to “punish” anyone who takes it out OR who uses their phone in class for anything but a school related task. BUT, if my students are ANYTHING like me, they are uber-multi-taskers. When I am in a meeting, or even at a conference, OR in an online class discussion for my master’s program, I am simultaneously checking Twitter, Facebook, Google reader, Pinterest…..all the while, participating and taking in the salient points of whatever is happening in “real time”.  Like it or not, that is reality. Forcing ME to put away my device only annoys me and makes me less likely to respect the person who forced me to do so. That said, I allow my student to have their phones/ipods/ipads/computers in class and, GASP, I do not tightly patrol what they do with those devices. Yes, at times, I have to redirect a student from a game to an in-class assignment. But, overall, I own the burden of providing engaging activities that take the place of students “wandering off, digitally”.  Bad employee, or bad teacher?

Likewise, my school has a strict “late work” policy. According to the policy, if a student does not turn in the work on the date due, then the highest grade he/she can earn (once he/she does the work-which is mandatory and enforced by detentions plus after school help sessions) is a D. Well, I allow my students to re-do or even turn in late work for the entire length of a project (about 5 weeks) WITHOUT PENALTY….I know….no penalties? Yes, it is A LOT of grading for me at the end…BUT, it communicates to students that I believe in the value of EVERY assignment (and I do!). Bad employee, or bad teacher?

One last example is tardies. I am supposed to record every student who is late for class and then punish those who are late on a regular basis. Instead, I have set up my room in a way that encourages students to arrive early to “get the best seats” (see “my classroom rocks” post below- I have no seating chart!). I have bean bag poofs, couches, love seats, cushioned lounge chairs, tables with chairs, and a few desks. The “late arrivers” GET THE DESKS. They do not like this option…at.all. SO…they arrive EARLY (and I mean EARLY, I have kids knocking at the door before the bell rings for class change in order to get the “choice seats”!). The ones who arrive last are stuck at a table with random peers OR at a desk in very remote areas of the room. Yeah, I still have tardies…BUT, they are VERY limited and the students regret them VERY much. tee hee…. Bad employee, or bad teacher?

And what about you? What have YOU done that makes you a “bad employee” but a GREAT TEACHER? I want to know….

MY CLASSROOM ROCKS!

Posted: February 8, 2012 in Out of the box ideas
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MY CLASSROOM ROCKS!

You can only take a test sitting in a desk, right?

Posted: February 2, 2012 in Out of the box ideas
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My classroom is cozy; a space filled with bright colored wall hangings and curtains, bean bag poofs, rugs, lamps, love seats, and sofas. Students sit in seating groups of 2-3, scattered around the room, facing each other, rather than facing a common direction. Plus, there are clear christmas lights strung across the ceiling to add to the ambiance of a peaceful, warm atmosphere. Students even have hard topped lap desks that they use as a workspace as needed. I tell you this so you have a picture in your head for the next part of my story.

Last week was final exam week (don’t get me started on that one…). For each exam period, the students were divided up into groups as they simultaneously took the same subject area exams. Every classroom became an exam proctoring room for the week. Well, the day before exams started, 25 student desks were delivered to my room and were crammed in around the couches and poofs I already had in there. I tried to decline the desks, pointing out that I had plenty of seating already….but, apparently, even though my students can work in a comfortable classroom every day of the year without a problem, they could not possibly take an exam without desks. Thus, the room was transformed into a cold, institutional space for the sake of “testing”.

I am baffled! Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Hard Fun at CNG (thanks to Peter Pappas for this term)

Posted: October 2, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Hippie Paradise, room  F15, is not your traditional classroom. Instead of desks in rows, we have poofs and couches scattered around the room in small groups lit by lamps and Christmas lights draped across the ceiling.  Yet, no matter how “cool” those are, the real magic is not in the lighting or the seating arrangement, it is in the learning. In room F15, the “hard fun” of learning 8th grade English and Language Arts takes place.

If you were to stop in to see this in action, you would find students using mobile tools and laptops to record their learning on blogs, create online study tools, and research new ideas. Students work on individual and collaborative projects simultaneously, building knowledge on a personal level and then sharing that knowledge to build up the whole group’s knowledge as well. Every student is working to build their understanding of each concept, on their own time frame, aided by specially designed classroom activities and projects where students have a lot of choice in how they display their learning and share it with others (two mandatory components of all projects).

Last month students wrote and produced movie trailers to represent their summer reading. This week the push is on to finish editing their middle school myths, addressing problems kids typically face during the middle school years, so that the stories can be illustrated and made into online narrated picture books. Amidst all of this, students even found the time to produce “one minute grammar” videos on common grammar errors to share with the 5th graders. These contained everything from skits to raps to dances to original musical compositions. Hard fun!

How does all of this relate to “real” learning for each student? Well, when you are having “hard fun” you don’t want to quit. Students work on their projects until they are done and done well. They want to have something of quality to share with others. Engagement is the key to getting them here and keeping them learning.  On any given day at any given moment you will find students engaged in skits, independent reading, editing a peer’s work and giving feedback, creating games, writing commercials, analyzing videos, writing blog posts, and, most of all, building knowledge.

If you have never experienced “hard fun” ….stop by and join us. You just might not want to leave either.

Hippie Paradise!

What if we invented “education” as if it had never existed?

Posted: August 31, 2011 in 21st Century Leaning Theory, Out of the box ideas
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This is what I think education and school SHOULD look like…..click here...

So you want to teach in international schools overseas…?

Posted: August 7, 2011 in Uncategorized
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Some cool co-workers from my time in Venezuela!

Over the past few months, I have had at least a dozen people ask me how to “get into international teaching”. Thus, I have written many emails describing the process in detail. After three more people asked me this question in the past month, I thought I should make the process “public”. So, here are my two cents….

First, it is important to keep in mind that the process usually takes about a year from “idea” (hey I think I might want to get an international teaching job) to “reality” (look at me, I just moved into my apartment in Bogota and start orientation at school tomorrow). So, do not push the “snooze” button on this project.

Second, I am going to give you the tools here, and you will have to decide for yourself which tools you want to use. Most often, you will use a combination of 3, 4 or more of these. Be resourceful!

1. www.joyjobs.com is a website which acts as a clearing house of information about international schools worldwide, teaching jobs both in K-12 schools and in English institutes, and information on how-to navigate the process. For $40 you can “join” the site to have access to ALL this material for a year, as well as have the ability to create an online resume on their data base with a public link which you can send to prospective schools. The thing I found the MOST useful here is their how-to guide. Read it; print it; use it….it is pretty comprehensive and it walks you through that “year” I spoke of above. This is money WELL SPENT…and should be step #1 of you process.

2. There is another database at www.tieonline.com. This is a service that most international schools use. Both the schools and the teachers subscribe. Your cost is $40 for a year. For that, you get to post your resume online, see jobs that are open (posted daily with contact info., application instructions and salary package description), send your resume to any job posting that interests you, and research schools by country. This is also money well spent, and after reading the guide in #1, you should subscribe to Tieonline.

3. Now, just because you know about jobs that are out there AND you have contacted those schools in some way, that is not the end of the hiring process. Most schools require a face-to-face interview (although a very few will do an interview via SKYPE.) These interviews take place in basically three ways. Keep in mind, when signing up for any of the following, you will need reference letters, resume’, copy of your teaching certification, and other documents so give yourself plenty of time in advance to gather the required items. Look at each site so you know what you need.

3A-The University of Northern Iowa has a international recruiting fair at the end of January each year in NE Iowa. Schools from all over the world come there, interview, and hire many teachers. Sign up for this fair by November so that your resume’ is in their database for schools to access and in order to see the schools who will be attending along with the jobs they will be looking to fill. The cost to sign up for the fair is $150.

3B-AASSA, the Association of American Schools in South/Latin America holds a recruiting conference in early December every year in Atlanta. It is the same concept as the UNI one above, only that just South and Latin American schools are represented. The cost to sign up is $110. NOTE: some schools attend this fair looking to hire only couples or the “cream of the crop” teachers….and will put off offering a contract to some candidates until after the fairs listed in 3A and 3C/D.

3C-There are two major recruiting firms which act as representatives for schools AND teachers, as well as hold recruiting fairs for their member teachers and schools. One is ISS and the other is Search Associates. ISS costs $180 just to create a file with them and has a $290 fee to sign up for as many of their recruiting conferences as you wish (the list is on their website). Search has a fee of $200 which includes the registration at one of their recruiting fairs. If you attend more than one fair, there is a fee of $50 for each additional one. Please note that you must be “accepted” by these firms as a candidate and that process can take a couple months so plan in advance. Their fairs are held worldwide-including in many cities across the USA from Jan-June.

3D-There are a few minor recruiting firms who are worth noting. One is Carney-Sandoe and Associates. They place teachers both in the US (esp. in charter and private schools) as well as internationally. If they accept your application, there is no fee. The drawback is that they are a new player in international placements and so you will be very limited. The other is CIS, which works most widely with British International Schools as well as IB schools.

OK…best of luck! Feel free to contact me with questions. I can say that deciding to teach internationally has been the best professional decision of my life!! So, GO FOR IT! You will not regret it. You will see the world, teach great kids, be professionally challenged, and be able to save a little money to boot. =)

Disruptive Ideas…out of Harvard…

Posted: May 17, 2011 in Out of the box ideas
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This was on one of my favorite blogs today-

http://bigthink.com/blogs/dangerously-irrelevant

From What would happen if we let them go? (Elmore):

what would happen if we simply opened the doors and let the students go; if we let them walk out of the dim light of the overhead projector into the sunlight; if we let them decide how, or whether, to engage this monolith? Would it be so terrible? Could it be worse than what they are currently experiencing? Would adults look at young people differently if they had to confront their children on the street, rather than locking them away in institutions? Would it force us to say more explicitly what a humane and healthy learning environment might look like? Should discussions of the future of school reform be less about the pet ideas of professional reformers and more about what we’re doing to young people in the institution called school?

For those of you who don’t know Dr. Elmore, he’s the Gregory R. Anrig Professor of Educational Leadership at Harvard University. As you might imagine, he is quite smart and is widely recognized as one of America’s leading thinkers about classroom instruction and school curriculum. If you haven’t read School Reform from the Inside Out or Instructional Rounds in Education, it’s probably time that you did.

Unpacking student “I” statements-I figure it out and show others my discovery.

Posted: May 10, 2011 in 21st Century Leaning Theory, 21st Century Learning, Iquiry/project based learning, Out of the box ideas
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6th graders sharing their medieval model with Kinder

Students in my class are given various inquiry-based challenges (I.E.-projects/assignments) during the year that incorporate goals for mastering specific standards as well as guidelines that motivate students to pursue deeper learning  connected to their own interests. The goal of the challenges is not just the accumulation of a discrete set of facts and information. Instead, students are challenged to create their own body of knowledge– to “write the story of their topic” as evidence of deep learning and inquiry. Also, these challenges do not culminate merely in a “paper” or a “poster”. Instead, they all include a public audience where the students must communicate the story of their topic in a meaningful way to people not related to the class. Finally, each challenge ends with the students having to answer the question–”why does this MATTER?” Ultimately, if learning does not “matter” to students and they see no reason why this information is critical to their world, then truly deep learning and understanding with meaningful connections will always elude them.

Students have a double challenge on each project. First, they are to do a survey of the broad topic (I.E. ancient Rome or historical fiction or important events in history or a certain book they read or fractions…). Then they narrow the broad topic to something that interests them about the topic and that “matters”. They have to define their narrowed topic and defend it’s importance/relevance before continuing. Then, they have to research that topic in depth, discovering multiple perspectives, asking people around them for input, and developing the “story” of their topic. About halfway through this process, they have to choose a tool for communicating the “story of the topic” and an audience other than me.

Sometimes I give boundaries such as

-create a museum exhibit and be ready to present your story appropriately to adults, middle schoolers, 3rd graders, and pre-schoolers who visit your exhibit;

-use an online tool, incorporating multiple forms of media, and tell the story of your topic to complete strangers who will visit your online tool (on this one, I sent out a rubric to other students and teachers not at the school who then visited the sites the students created and evaluated the effectiveness and thoroughness of each “story”);

-create a billboard advertising your topic in a way that makes people both curious enough about it to look into it themselves and communicates to them why your topic is relevant to life today-IE it “matters”;

-build a model to display at school, complete with a detailed legend, that “shows” the story of your topic including at least 40 facts about your topic “shown” on the model in some way;

-teach a lesson about your topic and put it on Youtube, making sure that you are interesting, explain it thoroughly, and connect your lesson to real world examples (graded again by strangers,  on originality, entertainment value, clarity, and thoroughness).

Students know that my typical response to them when they run into difficulties at any time during the project is, “figure it out”. Also, rubrics are intentionally open-ended in order allow students to chart their journey as they do “figure it out” rather than locking them into a pre-set list of knowledge they “must cover”.

Lastly, we have started using QR codes on posters around campus to create “links” to work published on online tools such as Glogster, Toondoos, Facebook, and other places (see comments for a list of links to many of these). Anyone can scan these codes with the camera on their laptop or phone, go directly to the online project and see the “story” for themselves. This invites further input on the project and “ups the anti” for students to produce high quality work that they are proud to ask their peers and family to visit.

How do you create projects that “matter” to students?

How do you make the outcome more about sharing the discoveries they made than about creating a “product for a grade”?

Unpacking Student “I Statements” #1–I am not allowed to fail

Posted: April 19, 2011 in 21st Century Leaning Theory, Out of the box ideas
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How can I assure that students in my classroom feel this way?

Agreed, this takes effort. Yet, in my experience, a little effort along the way, saves great effort in the end. It is important to note that I do not make any assignments due the next class day. This is for two reasons. One; if it is that inconsequential, why assign it? Two; I want students to have time to review the assignment and to make sure they fully understand what was assigned so that they can turn in their best work.

That said, I do ask one thing of my students before they involve me in any request to help them with their work. I have the “ask 3″ rule. When students email/message/ask me for help, they must FIRST tell me THREE places they looked for the answer before asking me (and this can include their peers). Additionally, students know that I may very well merely send them a link or tell them where to look in a resource they already have (like the rubric or a certain page on the class website) rather than tell them the answer. Students initially balk at this and will “test” me to make sure I am serious. I have found that it is worthwhile to stick to my guns on this.

So, what support do I give to students in order to ensure that they succeed? (stick with me here…)

1. I give students my personal email (GASP!) and I check it at least three times each evening, as well as on weekends, answering properly phrased questions about the assignment(IE they have stated their “ask 3″ before their request-this applies to #2, 3, 5, 7 below, as well).

2. I log onto g-chat for one hour each night. Students are encouraged to get a Gmail account so that they have access to g-chat and can ask questions that way.

3. I have an Edmodo account and all my students are members on there. Edmodo is like Facebook for classrooms. Students post questions on the “wall” for the class and I answer them. In this format, all students can see each others’ questions as well as my answers.

4. I encourage students to turn in work well before the deadline ( especially via email). This way, I can skim their work and point out any glaring issues I see. Then they have time to make corrections in order to turn in an improved product by the due date.

5. I provide regular face-to-face access times to me during the school day when students are free (such as lunch, break, before or after school). During these times, I encourage students to come to me to show me progress on  their work and to ask for clarification on the assignment.

6. I publicly praise students who ask peers to review their work or who approach other experts on or off campus for input on any work. This encourages others to seek out “expert advice” outside of me.

7. I have a Facebook page just for my students. I register it under my school email and use my “teacher name”-IE Mz. Allen. Students can ask questions on there and their classmates can see both the questions and my responses.

8. I maintain a class webpage where I post what we did in class each day, attach rubrics, provide links to helpful information and keep a calendar of due dates and assignment descriptions.

This is a long term, classroom culture building process. For example, I told a fellow teacher friend that I get on g-chat at night to answer student questions and so she tried it with her students. She had one student send her a message at the time my friend said she would be online. The girl merely said “wow, you are really there!”, once my friend responded to that student’s initial greeting. Getting students to “trust” that I will really be there, online/on chat/in my classroom, takes awhile.

Also, at the beginning of the process, I have grace. Students are not going to initially trust that I really do not want them to fail. I prove it to them. During the first few weeks, I usually give an extended deadline to everyone IF they use one of the above methods to improve their work before resubmitting it. This initial extra work for me pays off in the long run after establishing trust with the students and cementing expectations.

I am not crazy.

It may sound like a lot of effort to do any or all of these things. Yet, the effort saved in meetings about failing students and remedial efforts for these failing students is more than worth the effort spent helping students not fail. Plus, the feeling in my classrooms is one of possibility and effort and not one of laziness and failure.

Also, even though I use ALL the above methods (OK, so maybe I am a little crazy), I have friends who have only used one or two methods (I suggest at least two in order to “meet students where they are”), and they have all had great success. For me, even with using every communication method- Edmodo, email, g-chat, Facebook, website, and meetings on campus-I have not felt any great intrusion into my personal time or space. Overall, this accessibility has saved me hours in grading in addition to the saved hours in meetings and remediation mentioned previously.

These methods of communicating with students have decreased questions from parents as well. I can’t remember the last meeting or interaction I have had with a parent who was dissatisfied with something in my classroom. Parents are kept in the loop about what is expected from their student and see the effort I put into making sure every student succeeds. This makes me part of their team and not the “enemy”.

How do you help students succeed in your classroom so that they say to themselves “I am not allowed to fail”? I’d love to hear about it.

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