On the ConnectED Conference

I am freshly back from Niagara Falls.  (I know-and in the middle of the school year no less!)  I had a very spontaneous opportunity to go there for what I thought was your basic conference about using technology in the classroom.  Don't get me wrong, I was very excited to go, especially because I received a division grant that allowed me to turn my classroom into a 1-to-1 environment with iPads. However, to say I was out of my depth is an understatement.  I have an understanding of what I want to do with technology in the classroom, but the overall affect I know it could have for student learning seems overwhelming.  I just don't know enough, and don't know enough about how to get there!  So I really looked at going to this conference as an opportunity to learn.

When the invitation was sent out and the ball started rolling, I have to admit that I didn't know what I was in for.  I knew there was going to be talk about technology in the classroom.  I knew that the conference was in Ontario.  I knew I was going with a handful of others.  What I didn't know is how dynamic this conference was going to be.  This morning as I was reviewing the notes I took over the last several days, it hit me how valuable going to the ConnectED conference was, and I discovered that my take-away was very different from what I thought it was going to be.

Truth be told, I think I came back with more questions than answers, but I don't look at that like it's a bad thing.  At least now I feel like I have direction.  This might not seem like such a big deal, but it's the one thing I really needed.  I had an understanding of what I wanted to achieve in my classroom in general, but now I feel focused.  I learned about tools, coding, tech toys, maker spaces and maker thinking, redefining the classroom with Google Apps for Education, implementing Genius Hour and digitizing lesson planning and gamification...in 3 days.  My brain was exploding.  I was excited and overwhelmed, and the day before the last day of the conference I was scared that I wasn't going to be able to figure out a way to put it all together.  And then it was Friday.

Thankfully, a light bulb went off in my head within moments of attending the first session of the last day.  The session was called The Connected Classroom.  It was delivered by teacher Peter Cameron, and he spoke about technology in a way that surprised me.  I don't know what I was expecting when I attended his session, but it wasn't what I got.

The session was about using technology to make human connections.  Of course there have been many conversations about how technology is preventing people from making valuable connections with each other.  Texting and "saying" something on Facebook is easier (especially if it's something negative) than it is to speak to someone face to face.  As Cameron's session went along he shared how he began the year with compliment booklets students make for each other to set the tone for the year, he showed how he connected students with experts and "adventerures" around the world using technology, and he made sure that he worked volunteer time into his class, all in an attempt to cultivate community and make human connections.  It was also apparent that the students interest was the driving force behind so much of what was done in class.  The whole time I was thinking, "That's how I want to teach."  I highly recommend checking out his website here to get a better idea of all the wonderful experiences his students are engaged in.

From there, everything just sort of snowballed and culminated in a session that focused on the importance of having a growth mindset, and how that affects a classroom.  Having this type of mindset forces us to look at the process rather than the product.  These presenters shared how they posted student work on bulletin boards highlighting the mistakes the students made with a positive message like "My brain grew!" on sticky notes.  The teachers that spoke at this time also acknowledged how adopting a growth mindset was an uncomfortable one at first because teaching in this way completely changed how they looked at curriculum, planned units, assessed students and collaborated with each other and the community (local and global).  They also went on to say how their students are better, more critical learners because of it.  This session was headed by principal Gianna Helling.  She documents her school's journey here.

When it was all said and done, I realized that a major change in the classroom comes with letting go and giving students autonomy.  And lots of it.  The great part is that I don't have to become an expert in all the areas that students find interesting.  There is a global community of experts, educators and professors, university students, athletes, explorers, "adventurers", authors (and any one else you can think of!) that are literally only an e-mail or Skype session or Tweet away.

In this post I've really only begun to scratch the surface with all of the information that I received over the past week.  Below are some of the comments that were made in the sessions I attended by the presenters I saw.  These statements from presenters made me reflect on what I was doing in the classroom, and challenge me to view teaching, planning, assessing and collaborating in a different way:

1. What should we do and why?  When we figure out the "why", it gives our "what" purpose.  (I strongly suggest watching this video to better understand what the "why" can do!)

2. Let's fail spectacularly.  Failure is a great teacher.

3. If you're not reflecting on a daily basis, you're not learning.  (Applicable, I think, to both my students and myself.)

4. It's important to allow yourself and your students time to PLAY with technology.

5. Create a school-wide model to teach students how to organize their digital work.

6. Teach students how to use technology and then create a school environment that supports using it.

7.  It's not about finding the perfect answer because there may be many.  It's about bringing the thinking to light.

8. Students need to see teachers using technology for learning, and moving through the the learning process with them.  We don't have to be the experts all the time.

9. Inquiry is where inspiration and perspiration intersect to create genius.

10.  Share.  Share everything.

11.  Remember that learning is messy.

12. When we post the product, we are saying we focus on the perfected end result of learning.  Creating a bulletin board to post evidence of the process says we are focused on how we got to the product.

13.  I spend the first two months of school allowing students to engage in tasks that I know they will fail in.  Then we learn how to deal with failure.  We talk about the process of learning.  We talk about how to think when we fail, what we should do, who we can talk to and we train our brains to look positively at failure.

The Hamster Wheel

You spend quite a bit of time at the beginning of the year preparing yourself and your students for the routines that you will expect to be practiced and mastered. Let's face it, it takes a LOT of mental and physical energy to get students used to procedures that need to be followed for a class to run smoothly. But, it's the beginning of the year, and they're fresh, you're fresh, and after a few weeks, you start to see that well-oiled machine working. You look around your class with a sense of pride and think, this is going to be a great year.  Then Christmas break happens. 

Goodness knows you and your students are well deserving of some time apart, and of some R&R, and even though you're leaving the school with a smile on your face in the back of your head is the first day you'll be back. Inevitably, that first day back arrives and you realize that even though your students "know better", you may have to spend a week or two getting them back on track. The silver lining is that you're not totally exhausted, so reviewing and re-practicing these ever important procedures isn't the worst thing you've ever done.  As expected, the students seem to pick up where they left off, and you're all off and running....until the Spring Break. 

This break happens after a lengthy (and in Saskatchewan, generally frigid) January.  Now, I try to be patient after this break and be fair about re-establishing routines, but it's soooo HARD!! I quickly begin to feel like this IS the worst thing I've ever done. I know it's necessary-the routines have to be in place, but I just don't always want to!  We've got stuff to do people!!

Definitely after the Easter Break, I'm really digging deep. I find I talk to myself more; "Why do I have to keep going over this?! It's not like they don't know the expectations!".  And it's at this time of the year when I wish that I could flip that elusive magical switch for students that controls "following procedures" and keep. It. On.  (I hear the Beach Boys in my head right now.  "Wouldn't it be nice...").

So I'm already trying to mentally prepare myself. I might come back to a class that just gets down to business like we never left. But they're 9, so the chances of that are highly unlikely. The good news is that I have a wonderful class, and they don't disappoint me, so I shouldn't feel too sorry for myself, and I guess when I think about it, I'm reinforcing the expectations all the time in one way or another anyway. So I suppose I'll just pull up my socks (like I tell my students to do), and re-establish those routines. Because it really IS easier with them than it is without them. 

Red Flagging Ourselves

I was talking with a colleague today recently after school and we got onto the topic of "red flags". Usually, as teachers, we look for red flags in our students. We think about what the grade-level expectations are and we diligently follow our students' progress.  

But what about finding our own "red flags"?  How do we know when we have become complacent?  How do we know if we are using best practice?  How do we know if our management strategies are efficient?  

I think our best compass is our internal compass. 

I know when I've wandered off the path, so to speak, I can feel it in my gut. And when I think closely about the times when my compass is off is because I know that what I'm doing is not in sync with what I believe teaching should be. 

For example, In the past I've had a slotted time in my day for independent reading for my students. But it wasn't long before I started to get this feeling in the pit of my stomach that this reading time was missing something.  I was giving them 15 minutes of extra time to read for fun, which is good, but I couldn't drop the feeling that I was not taking advantage of this instructional opportunity.  I could just feel it. 

Even though structures are in place to help, our best guide is ourselves. We just have to pay attention. 

Normalized Exclusion

I was talking with a friend of mine who is an elementary teacher from southern Saskatchewan. One of her favourite things to do is put together and organize fun, celebratory days focused around holidays and birthdays.  When I think about my own time in school, I have to admit that I also consider those class parties some of the best memories I have as a child. But as she went on I started to feel a little bit sad.  She shared how she had a couple of students in her class that had to remove themselves from each celebration because their religions forbade them taking part.

To be clear, I wasn't sad because I thought it was unfair that the students had to sit out in the hall or miss an entire day of school because of an unfair set of religious guidelines and expectations.  Quite the opposite-I was sad because of how normal my friend thought the whole situation was.  What ensued was a lengthy conversation about why she decided to go through with it all in the end even though some students could not be included.  

I was surprised to find she didn't really bat an eye at the fact that these students were being excluded.  Actually she didn't even really consider looking at the situation in that way at all. One of the first statements she made was that she figured the rest of her students shouldn't miss out because only a couple of them weren't allowed to take part. 

I have to admit I don't understand that argument. I always thought that a big part of teaching was focusing on those pieces of the world that were not represented in the dominant culture. But when we selectively exclude students based in any number of things, including religion, we are not only reinforcing the dominant culture, but we are telling our students that some voices are more important than others; that some ways of life are "normal" and "acceptable" and some are not. 

How can we teach empathy when we deliberately exclude? How can we teach compassion or equity, or kindness when we establish hierarchies in the classroom? 

These are hard questions and require a lot of self-reflection, and can even cause feelings of anger, frustration and resentment. I feel like some days I do a pretty bang up job when it comes to inclusion. Most days I have that nagging feeling that I am just not doing enough.  Plus I always find it harder to reflect on what I'm not including and WHY I'm not including it, than reflecting on what I've included and ways I can improve. 

At the end of our conversation, we politely agreed to disagree, and moved on to talking about when we would catch up the next time she was home for a visit.  Even though we've been friends for years, I can't help feel like the conversation has changed our relationship in a very profound way.  I never meant to make her feel bad or like she had to defend herself to me, but I definitely wanted to shed a different light on the situaion. I hoped she could understand a different point of view, if not agree with it.   

SUM2015: Taking Time to Learn

This weekend I attended the SUM Conference in Saskatoon, focusing all of my attention on ways to become a better math teacher.  As a student in elementary and high school, I would have been considered an average math student.  I wasn't blowing anybody's mind with my mathematical genius, but I wasn't giving my teachers any headaches because I didn't know what I was doing.  Average.   
Turns out, the joke is on all my past math teachers.  I didn't know what I was doing.  I had no number sense.  I didn't understand place value.  I had no skills in applying math.  I don't even want to talk about word problems and solving for x.  Truth be told, as an adult, I have a limited (one might say basic) understanding of math. 
When I was told about the conference, I was initially very excited to go.  But after a few days to think about it, I became really nervous about it.  I began to think about the situation I was potentially walking in to.  I decided that I was probably going to be in a room, filled with people who, more than likely, were enthusiastic about math, considered themselves "good" at math, and who had mostly positive personal experiences in math.  This is not me.  Sure I memorized the formula, rules or steps to get the job done, but it was hard for me.  I remember pre-reinforcing my paper to protect those ever-important notes that contained every step I needed to complete questions that would fill my entire page.  I almost always had to turn around in my desk to ask a friend for help; a sure sign that I was wasting time, therefore not putting in enough effort, subsequently loosing precious marks that would have otherwise boosted my final grade.  On the rare occasion I did muster up the courage to get up and walk over to my teacher who was sitting at his desk watching us and listening to the sound of pencils scratching over paper, the events looked something like this:  He would stretch out his hand to take my paper, but never look at me.  His eyes focused on the class in front of him.  He never asked what my question was.  He found the question I was having trouble with, crossed out my work, and did the question for me, nary an explanation in sight.  Then he stretched out his arm again, without looking at me, and gave my paper back to me. 
All of these (and other) experiences came pouring over me and I began to develop anxiety about it.  I didn't want to be the only person in the room who didn't get math.  I didn't want to be the only person in the room having to work hard.  I didn't want to be the only person in the room who couldn't share, didn't have the right answer or had nothing to offer.  And when I was done going through all the possible horrible scenarios I could think of, I gave my head a shake and went anyway.
I am so glad I did.  I was still massively out of my comfort zone, but I couldn't believe all I was learning about math, how I understood it, and how to teach it to my students, or rather, how to have my students teach it to me.
I took away a general message of "Play, talk, stay out of the way!".  Play is an essential part of student learning.  While this message is not unfamiliar to me, I think it's safe to say that, in general, we teach the "play" out of students.  Over the course of the weekend I have learned that I teach the play out of my students when I show them that there is only one way to solve an equation, and then step in every time they require assistance.  I also do this when I don't validate their ideas, and even when I give them praise.  I do this, still, when I simply don't give them time to play. 
In all fairness, I don't exactly know what math play looks like.  I don't remember playing in math myself as a student, so I don't even have anything to lean on so I can "fake it 'til I make it".  I think that it looks like me giving students a problem, then allowing them to access a variety of learning tools to help them show their understanding , and giving them time to solve that problem in multiply ways.  That's what it's going to look like for our class right now, anyway.  (Suggestions welcome!)
As they play, they have to have a chance to talk.  This is vital.  It's vital because in doing this, they justify their thinking to one another, and to me.  They learn what respectful listening is, and how to respectfully respond to an idea.  They learn patience, how to ask questions, how to trust their own thinking, and how to deal with mistakes. 
Writing it this way seems a little rosy, I know.  The truth is that students will need many opportunities to practice these skills, and infinitely more reminders about the expectations, but I know from past experiences with students that they can do it!  It's not fair of us to assume our students know how to do these things when they come to us.  Neither is it fair for us to show them once, and expect they "get it".   What is fair is laying out very specific guidelines for expectations, and giving students chances to show us they can do what is expected.  Fair is also being patient as they learn, and being even more patient when they forget themselves.
The importance of "talking" was driven home by Dr. Ruth Parker, who shared her invaluable knowledge of Number Talks.  She modeled for us the teacher role, and we were her students, engaging in discussion and sharing our thinking and understanding of the problems put before us.  What I found most interesting is that, in general, we (the adults) had very complex ways of solving problems.  Once we shared our thinking, she would say, "Want to see what my 5th graders did?".  And without fail, every time, they showed a deep(er) understanding of math, and solved the problem more practically and in less steps than us.  It.  Was.  Awesome. 
I quickly understood the value of number talks, and realized that I am doing them (to a small degree) by accident in my classroom.  I'm also doing them incorrectly.  The biggest mistake that I'm making is that I'm acknowledging the students thinking, instead of simply recording it.  While I mean to praise students as a way to encourage them, I'm ultimately having the opposite effect.  I'm creating an environment that is unsafe for students who might be timid to share, lest their idea not be worthy of "oh, interesting!", "did you notice what she did?!" or "great idea!".  I am not encouraging independent thinking with those comments either.  I'm encouraging everyone to think like the students I'm praising.  I'm certainly not helping students discover intrinsic motivation.  I guess the silver lining in all this is that I realize what I am doing.  And when I know better, I do better. 
Learning to "stay out of the way" is another vital piece to student learning.  During her presentation, Dr. Parker emphasized the importance of letting the students take the reigns when using number talks.  This is student time.  It's a time for them to share their own thinking-correct or not.  It's not a time for me as a teacher, to interject, make suggestions, point out mistakes, or even use a "teachable moment".  There is a time and a place for all those things, but number talks are very strictly opportunities for students to talk.
As she modeled the role of the teacher for us, she would record our thinking, never once assuming that she knew what we were saying.  We were always asked to explain what we did, how we grouped images, and ultimately, how we added or subtracted numbers.  For me, this is a vital piece, because, in assuming I know what a student is thinking/saying, I might be leading them away from their true thought, and stifling their math creativity. 
The conference is over and I am mentally exhausted and completely satisfied, committed to making changes to my teaching and our daily math routines immediately.  I'm so excited to go to work on Monday and have our first number talk, and I look forward to playing in our classroom-even though I don't know what that means exactly, and expect that will be my next uncomfortably steep learning curve.  The good news about uncomfortable learning is that your brain literally grows as you make mistakes.  I have to remember to share that with my students... 

A Book-A-Day...

During the summer holiday I was roaming through Twitter when I came across an image of one of the coolest bulletin boards I had ever seen. A teacher, (Jillian Heise-@heisereads) had made a giant grid on the school wall and filled the grid with book cover images of picture books she read to her class over the year.  One book for every day of school. Below her very amazing image was the hashtag, #bookaday. I knew immediately this was something I wanted to do, so I committed right then and there to creating a similar board. 

You'd think reading one book a day to students would be easy, but in actuality, a fair bit of thought has to go into it. Where do I start?  What do I focus on for those very crazy first few weeks?  What are the messages I hope to share?  What are "good books" I could use. 

I was lucky in the sense that I started the year by introducing Daily 5. I knew it was possible for our class to take up to nearly a whole month to become comfortable with the processes and follow expectations, so we spent a significant chunk of September learning the CAFE Menu, and practicing a small handful of reading strategies. Luckily, there are many suggested books on the Daily Cafe website for teaching reading strategies, so that was a great place to start. I also had a good look through our school and public libraries, I read "Writing Power" by Adrienne Gear which had great suggestions for anchor books for writing, and, as is often the case, the Internet was a great source. I used Twitter and simply followed the hashtags. I mentioned #bookaday, but I also stumbled across #classroombookaday and #nerdybookclub, which are all really good sources for finding books. I also simply went on Amazon and let my mouse take me away!  

So far, our Book-A-Day board has been a success. My students are looking forward to seeing the board fill up over the year, and are quick to remind me when I haven't put up the image of "yesterday's book". 

On the book cover images I have added the strategy or lesson the book is related to. 

We began the year with letter writing and I used several books to anchor the format for writing letters, and to provide students with lots of examples. The books we used for this were "Dear Mrs. LaRue: Letters From Obedience School", 

"I Wanna Iguana", and "Dear Mr. Blueberry". 

I'm also looking forward to having our Book-A-Day Board fill up as the year progresses.  If you have any suggestions for anchor books that can be used for reading or writing, I'd be happy to have them!!

It's Only September...

The month is almost up and the honeymoon is definitely over. Our students' true colours are shining through, and ours are too. And an all-too-familiar feeling is starting to settle into the pits of educator stomachs. If left unchecked, this feeling can cause some serious problems. This feeling's name...is panic. Well, it's actually that nagging feeling you get before panic. Pre-panic.

 

You might be thinking the following:

"Where are all those papers with that important information I need that I got with all those other papers at the beginning of the year?"

"We still haven't mastered the routines in our classroom!" 

"I have assessments that have to be finished in 1/2/3 weeks!"

"The other class is so much farther ahead than I am!"  

"I should really be organizing that."

"Are my pants seriously on backwards right now...?"

Well that last one might be a bit far-fetched, but you get the idea. 

When I touch base with other teachers, one of their (and mine) concerns is how long it seems to take for students to follow classroom procedures. It's difficult to ignore because we need those procedures in place to help us as we teach for the rest of the year. It's so easy to become frustrated, especially when you think you sound like a broken record and, saying the same thing over and over and over and over and over....

Here's what I try to ask and remind myself of when I'm starting to feel overwhelmed in September:

1.  They're kids. All of them. From 5 to 18.  And they just came back from a two month vacation, and if I'm tired, they probably are too. 

2.  Am I just expecting too much?  There's a lot for students to adjust to this time of year. It's important for me to remind myself that I'm not the only one with a full plate. 

4. Did I explain procedures well, or did I assume they're mind readers?   Sometimes, I think they're mind readers. But they aren't. Two words. Exlpicit. Teaching.

5. Get a grip. It's only September. 

And really, that's what it comes down to for me. I can be really hard on myself because the pieces of the puzzle have not all perfectly fallen into place.  But that's not fair to me or my students. I am trying to be consistent, fair, kind, and patient because it will all work out in the end. And after all, it's only September.