Category: Classroom

Why Maps?

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We all know about maps, right? You know, Google Maps. We all use Maps to figure out how to get somewhere, what’s the best route, or how long it will take. I remember that first time, at a Cue Conference, when a collegue showed me that if you type “nearby pizza” into Google on a phone, you would get a map to a nearby pizza place! I have been hooked ever since. But do you use Google Maps in the classroom?

Last week I was working with some high school Social Science teachers in a professional development session on integrating technology into the classroom. The subject of Maps came up. “Why would you use Google Maps in the classroom? Where is the curricular standard in finding the quickest route to San Jose?” The teacher raised a legitimate question.

I had a simple answer. Social Science teachers are concerned with events that happened in the past. Every event that ever occurred, since the beginning of time, happened someplace. Every event had a location, and that location can be displayed on a map. And maps that show where events occurred tell stories. Why not have kids write these stories, collaboratively? Why not have kids share these maps with each other and the world? When kids make their own maps of events they can then see trends and relationships between the events, acquiring a deeper understanding of the events, and having an opportunity to write also!

We then spent some time collaboratively building some maps. We started with a Google sheet. Whoa there Mr. Hall you may say, I thought you said maps, now you are talking about spreadsheets! Yeah, we built a spreadsheet, one column was the name of a WWI event, the next column had the coordinates of that event, and the third contained a description of the event. This is where the students do their writing. Directly in the spreadsheet. All of the teachers were writing in the spreadsheet at the same time. It worked wonderfully. Then I imported the spreadsheet into Maps, and boom, we had a map!

I can’t wait to see the maps these teachers students create!

My Edu-Hero

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This last week I was invited to attend some presentations in one of our elementary schools. The invitation was an opportunity to go and see how technology is being used in schools. On Tuesday morning I made my way over to the Primary Years Academy, pushed my way through a crowd of proud parents outside Ms. Matty’s first grade class, and was amazed. Kids were grouped around their little tables, in teams of two or three. Each table had a bunch of props representing aspects of the country the kids had researched. The kids were in costumes, respectfully representing the traditional clothing of that culture. Each team had a Chromebook the kids were going to use for their presentations. They were getting ready.

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As the kids were getting logged in to the Chromebooks, the problems started. Something had changed on the network the night before, and kids were presented with a screen they had never seen before. They didn’t know what to do. With a crowd of parents outside the room waiting to get in, and Ms. Matty busy with all the details involved in a day like this,  I watched a boy and girl interact:

“Hmmm, That’s not right” the boy said.

“Try clicking here.” said the little girl.

“That didn’t work. I’m going to log out and try again.”

This went on for a few minutes before word spread among the kids on how to solve the problem. It was really impressive. Remember, these were first graders! Six year old kids!  They had run into an unexpected problem, and were doing a fantastic job of problem solving. The kids solved the problem, and went on and gave their presentations to a room full of parents, and then repeated the performance for classes of older kids.

The kids did a great job. I saw really wonderful presentations. Kids were using technology in an authentic way, blended with realia to make a meaningful learning experience. I just wish everyone could see what is happening in Ms. Matty’s room. Great things are happening in that class.  Ms. Matty is my Edu-hero.

 

 

Passion

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Now that I have been in my new job for a half of a year, it is time to start getting back to the blog. One of the things that bothered me about being a classroom teacher was the isolation. A teacher never gets to go out and see what other teachers are doing. Sure you can go to conferences – I did that often- but that is not the same as going to other schools and seeing what is actually happening, what are teachers doing, and what are kids doing. So it is really difficult to have a sense of where you are at in the bigger picture. I thought I was a rather innovative teacher, but really, I had no idea. I had nothing to compare what I was doing with.

Now that I am out of the classroom I have the opportunity to go and see what is happening in the schools throughout the district. With some 2,000 teachers spread out over 53 schools I have some opportunities in front of me.  I  have seen some cool stuff so far. I loved seeing some second graders using Google Slides to give a career awareness presentation.  It was a blast watching some 8th grade kids work on building a prosthetic arm. I got to see a bunch of high school kids pound on the door to get back into school – on a Friday afternoon, on a holiday weekend! They had work they wanted to get done. It wasn’t “due.” They just wanted to work. They didn’t see how school being over had anything to do with it. They wanted the dang door unlocked.

In reflecting back on these experiences, there was a common element in all of these, and it was the teacher. In all of these experiences, the responsible teacher was visibly passionate about what his or her students were doing. In thinking back on what I know about learning, what we know about high performing- high poverty schools, it is the role of the teacher that is most important. The teacher must believe in the kids; they must be passionate about the kids and learning. They must do whatever it takes to bring an interesting and engaging lesson to the kids. When this is done, the kids respond. They pound on the doors to get them open.

I am looking forward to seeing more passionate teachers, and helping others to rekindle their passion.

Do

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This year I am taking on the #youredustory blogging challenge. The short version is one blog posting a week about a suggested topic. Or you can use your own topic, just share once a week. Oh, and comment on other peoples’ posts. Sounds like something I can handle, so here goes!

The topic this week is “What is your “one word” that will inspire you in your classroom or school in 2015?.” That for me is easy. My one word is “Do.” As in do something. Just do it. Or, as Yoda said, “Do or do not, there is no try.” (I think that is what Yoda said, I am not a sci-fi kind of guy at all.)

Too often I find I think about the thngs I might try, or I should try, or I am going to think about. I find my to-do list getting longer and longer. I find I am always encouraging my students to do something, or make something, but that advise does not always come back to me. I need to change that.

Recently I came across a blog posting where it was argued if someone is going to teach a subject they need to be a practitioner of that subject. (Sorry, I can’t remember whose blog it was- I am sure I will be reminded shortly!) If someone teaches English, they should be a writer; if they teach welding they should be a welder. I think that is true. So this year, when I give an assignment, I am going to do it too. With the students, in front of the students.  I am going to do.

Learning is not quiet. 

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“It should be quiet in here. You should be studying for the quiz!”

“Sit down and do your work, I want it quiet in here!”

I have heard these directions, and others like them many, many times through the years, and I just do not get it. When I am trying to learn something, especially something difficult to understand, I need to talk to people. I need to compare my understanding with another’s understanding. I think we all do. That’s why we have meetings! Can you imagine a staff meeting where the trainer said “I want you all to read this article, and study it. Tomorrow you are going to implement this new procedure, so study! Quiet!”

It doesn’t work like that. When we teachers are learning something new, we talk about it. A lot. We compare understandings. We argue about understandings. We challenge each other. We draw diagrams. We discuss. We get excited! So why don’t we let kids do that? It seems to me when kids are studying for a test the room should be noisy. Kids should be talking about the topic. They should be challenging each others understandings. They should be helping each other with clues. They should be giving high fives to each other. The room should not be quiet. Quiet is not the same as engaged. Quiet does not mean on task, and quite does not mean learning is happening.

 

Why Can’t They Start Now?

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It was one of the last days of the school year and Alex, one of our seniors, said it: “I just can’t wait to graduate high school, go to college and finally work on what I want to be in life.” He was so excited. As he talked to his friends it became apparent that he viewed high school graduation as the end of learning the things he was told  to know, the end of jumping through pointless hoops, and college was where he could take control and do the things he felt relevant.

While I was happy for him and the rest of the graduates, I felt like a failure. Why can’t we have a school where kids can work on their passions? Where kids know the connections between their courses and the rest of their lives? Sure the state dictates what courses students need to take. But there is really no reason school can’t be a place where kids are preparing for their future, the future they see for themselves.

It has been done before, we have examples of how to do it.  There are schools where kids are excited to go to school, where kids are in control of there learning, and it works. It is hard to break the paradigm, but it is not impossible- it’s just difficult. We have the chance for a new beginning with the transition to CCSS. So lets make it so. This year.

Showing Student Work in Public

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I have long been a believer in students making their work public. When I started teaching my school was working with some of Ted Sizer’s ideas, and “public exhibition of mastery” was an important one of those ideas. I came to believe that when students control their learning and  are expected to show the results of their learning in public they do amazing things. So I have tried over the years to create just such an environment. I have learned that it isn’t an easy environment to create. Sure we can have students write blogs or create web sites. These are not too difficult to create, assuming the web filters aren’t overly restrictive. But my experience is these digital public venues, for all their strengths, just don’t pack the same punch as a student standing in front of a perfect stranger, looking them in the eye, and explaining some piece of work the student has done. Something really magical happens when these are the expectations.

This year we decided to create a new public exhibition event at our school. We participate in SkillsUSA, and we decided that students who go to the state competition would participate in our own event before the state event. Our local Chamber of Commerce recruited a couple dozen volunteers who have some expertise in the projects the students are doing. We bought the volunteers breakfast, invited the school board and top administrators, and suddenly we had our first annual Merlo Expo! Our school secretary said it went from a backyard bbq to a full blown Quencieta! It got complicated quickly. But our school community stepped up and made it a really special event. Our leadership class and their teacher really did an outstanding job with the details. The whole office staff did a great job with the logistics. The support from the whole school really made it a fantastic event.

The results were simply amazing. We have a couple dozen new industry supporters who think highly of the school. We heard nothing but fantastic comments about our students and their work. Our students were really excited about the feedback they were getting on their projects. Many of the students have already begun adjusting their projects in preparation for next weeks SkillsUSA event. That is something that has never happened before; in the past the state event was the first, and often last, public viewing of the projects. The students are considering feedback from a variety of real people, and making adjustments based on that feedback. One student called me over in the afternoon and told me one of the industry people told him his project would be better if there was an app for it. So he started sketching out plans for an app. That is simply awesome.

I think of equal importance is that the district administrators were able to come and interact with the students and see what the students are actually doing and learning. I don’t think we let them do that enough. We like to complain that district admins only care about the numbers. But when do we give them something else to consider? They see the numbers; they see the test scores and graduation rates and attendance and all the rest of the data. We complain that there is more to learning than that, and there really is. But when do we invite them to come and see the learning? I, for one, intend to invite them more often.

3rd Quarter is a Wrap

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The third quarter is in the books. I tried a lot of new things this quarter and I have say, by and large, I am glad of it. The biggest changes started as a result of a conversation I had earlier in the year about why I didn’t have standards of the day posted. My principal was showing a new district admin around the campus and they stopped in my room. I answered that standards of the day don’t work really well when the students are all over the place in terms of what they are doing and learning. Some have been in my class for a week and others for a year or more. So he asked if that meant they all had individual daily standards of the day because “that would be pretty cool.”

Yea, it would. 

I have long wanted to be able to work with each student to create an individual learning plan. Instead of me telling them each day what to do, why can’t we – the student and I- create a plan for where the student wants to go in the year? Its a pretty daunting task when you really think about it, sitting down with each student, each day, and talk about what they are doing and what they need to keep going. But I realized it is not too tremendously different than what I was already doing. Some kids were working on self designed projects, some were working on basic projects I had given them, and still others were working on special projects for other people, like what happens in a job. So I thought, what the heck, go for it.

I decided that I would, as much as possible, talk with each student each day about what they were working on, and develop a plan for what is next. Sometimes that would mean what they were doing today, but other times the talk was what was going to happen tomorrow. So far it is working pretty well. It is shifting responsibility for what is happening in the room from me to the students. They don’t come in and wait for me to tell them what to do, they already know what they need to do. They may not know how- that might be their daily goal, figure out how to accomplish something- but they know what they need to do.

The grade book was the scary part for me. How could I keep a grade book if everyone was truly doing something different? The answer was simple; don’t keep the grade book.  As Alice Keeler would say, let it go! The final assignment for the quarter was for students to tell me what they learned, and provide evidence. If I was going to see it all in one sitting, and I was going to sit down with each student each day, why did I need to keep entering numbers in a spreadsheet? I didn’t need to. I was giving them verbal feedback each day, that was better than a number or a grade. What really surprised me was not only did very few students seem to notice the grade book was empty  but many students asked if it would be OK if they could redo this or that and show it to me tomorrow when it was better.

Um, yea, that would be good.

What Are We Doing Today?

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You would think that after eighteen years in the classroom I would really be zeroed in on what my curriculum is going to be one year to the next. You might think I have this big file cabinet full of project outlines, or binders full of project ideas. When I started teaching all those years ago I thought that was where I was going.  I bought binders, lots of them, so I could save student projects one year to the next so students would have exemplars; students could see what a good project looks like. I was told a good teacher knows where the class is going, and has a clear roadmap, or curricular plan, on how to get there. A good teacher has a binder with all of the assignments for the year. Students will do this, then that, then the next. A good teacher plans each detail of the year. Thats what I was taught.

So what happened? Where’s the binder?

Well, technology happened. It would be absurd for me to ask my students to do the same things I was asking them to do just 5 years ago. The things they were doing  and spending a week on can now be done in five minutes with any number of apps on their cell phones. What was impressive and engaging for students a couple years ago is old hat now. So I have to take risks. I have to try this, and try that. Some things just don’t work either technologically, or I can’t capture kids interest. Other things work. They engage kids. I don’t know from one week to the next what is going to really click, or from one kid to the next. The heck with two or three years down the road!

A tweet caught my eye the other day-

I usually do not know where my students are going with their work in class. I have no idea what form their “projects” are going to take a month from now. I will show them a tool, suggest some kind of topic, provide an example, and challenge them to use the tool. Yes it is a standards based class, but that doesn’t mean everyone is doing the same, preplanned thing at the same time. They aren’t. We are figuring it out together as we go. Some times it works, and sometimes it doesn’t work so well. But I am really glad I don’t have those binders that used to seem so important.

Vocabulary

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The topic of teaching vocabulary has been coming up a lot in my circles lately. The conversation goes like this:

Teacher: “These kids need to get motivated. If they don’t want to try I can’t do it for them.”

Me: “Well, what are you asking them to do that they aren’t doing?”

Teacher: “Like vocabulary. We have to do vocabulary, they can’t learn the concept if they don’t know the terms. But they aren’t learning the words. I just don’t know what else to do.”

There are some assumptions in this dialog, and I suggest they are  false assumptions. The first assumption is that we have to “do vocabulary.” I don’t think I know a single teacher or student who enjoys the activity of writing a word, looking up the definition, putting it in a sentence and whatever else ritual is tacked on to this exercise. Nor can I find many people who can honestly claim that is a particularly effective  exercise. Yes, students do it, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of evidence that any real learning is taking place. But so many continue to inflict this exercise on their students, because, well, we have to. Why do we have to? Because thats the way our teachers did it way back in the day? I sure didn’t get a lot out of it in those days, did you? Maybe we do it because the textbook or pacing guide says we should. Or because that is the way it is done in the department/grade level/school district. I suppose that may be the issue in some cases, but if it is, it should be questioned.

The second assumption is that they can’t learn the concept if they don’t know the terms. Really? I understood the basics of fire behavior long before I understood that fire is rapid oxidation generating light, heat, and smoke. I learned a long time ago that fire is hot, and it burns. I didn’t have to write a synonym, or use it in a sentence a single time. I learned by experience that if you take away the heat by putting water on the fire it will go out. I learned that if you take away the oxygen it will go out. I learned these things long before I heard of the fire tetrahedron.

I guess what I want to say to these folks who are recognizing that what they are doing  isn’t working is that maybe they should try something different. You can’t wait for “the kids to get motivated.” Maybe one day all of the  students in your room will magically be highly motivated, but probably not. Maybe there will be this mysterious shift and your school will be full of  academic high achievers, but probably not. Most likely, if there is going to be a change, the change will come from the teacher, not the students.

So if you are one of those teachers struggling with things not working, change something. Learn how to do it differently. Don’t know how? There are lots of places to learn. Twitter is full of awesome teachers who are full of ideas, and there are lots of web sites out there to teach you how to use Twitter. Google  “Twitter for Teachers.”

Social Media is not your thing you say? Buy a book. There are many, many great books out there to help you look at things differently. My recent favorite is Teach Like A Pirate by Dave Burgess. But thats just me. Amazon is full of great titles. Get some and read them. And then implement some of the things you read.

There are lots of conferences and workshops out there as well. Yea some of them are expensive and require a huge time commitment, but many are just a weekend morning, or are a single afternoon and don’t cost much.

My bottom line is if things are not working well, try doing it differently. Take a risk and admit it could be better. That is the first step to doing it better. If what you are doing isn’t working well, don’t keep doing it. Do something different.