Collaboration - An Evolving Process

I know I already posted a blog this week, but I am currently in our library watching Mrs. Wingerd, our wonderful librarian as she guides my students through research for their NASA papers.  I've written about the NASA paper a million times before, but I am thinking today about how the collaboration I have had on this paper has changed over the years.  I've worked with five different people (three English teachers and two librarians) on this project over the years.

One of the things that made me think about this was the instruction I was giving the kids about writing from a Biblical worldview (In case you didn't know, I teach in a Christian school).  I was pointing out that this did not mean they had to include a specific Bible verse.  The first time I partnered with an English teacher on this paper (when it was still about whether or not we should go to Mars), she insisted that they quote a verse in their writing.  Since there is no verse specifically about space exploration, you can imagine the myriad of misinterpretations (bordering on heresy) I got from this requirement.  There is a verse in Psalms, for example, that says "the earth belongs to man and the heavens belong to the Lord."  Since 8th-grade students have little nuance, they said, "This means that we should not go to space."  That is not, of course, remotely close to what David had in mind when he wrote these words because that would have been rather confusing to an ancient audience.  When she left and I started partnering with a different teacher, I asked her if we could find a different way to ask kids to write from a Biblical worldview than insisting on a verse, and I have gotten much deeper and more interesting results.

A few years ago, the 8th-grade English teacher I conspired with suggested changing the paper from "Should NASA put a crew on Mars?" to "What should NASA prioritize spending its budget on."  She said to me, "Ten years ago, the Mars paper made sense, but we're going to Mars.  Now it's not an issue of if but when."  She was right, and I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to change it if she had not made that point.  It also resulted in MUCH more interesting papers.  When it was the Mars paper, there were only two options - Yes and No - so I was reading the same basic paper over and over again.  When I ask students what the top three priorities should be for NASA spending, they have a wide variety of thoughts.  Many still making putting a crew on Mars one of their points, but others talk about cleaning up orbital debris, space telescopes, planetary probes, studying black holes, the DART program, returning to an American rocket for sending humans into space, etc.  It's far deeper thinking and much nicer to grade."

One of my best collaborators on any project is our librarian, which is why we are here today.  She has already talked to them about databases and resources other than Google.  She has shown them how to sign up for an appointment with a writing mentor (high school students who are strong writers).  She has created a pathfinder of links to good credible sources that are places to start.  She has pulled some books for them.  In a couple of weeks, she will come to my classroom and talk to them about parenthetical citations and works cited pages.  She can do that in a way this science teacher can't, so it allows them to be trained in better work than if I were the only one showing them things.

I collaborate with Mrs. Wingerd on a number of things, from a speech my 8th graders do about elements to my physics students' 3D printed spinning tops.  We are able to do more for our students as a result of this collaboration.

Surprised? Completely!

There's a saying used by doctors and crime scene investigators (if television is to be believed).  It says, "When you hear hoofbeats, you should think horses and not zebras."  It's a good way of narrowing your vision to the most likely cause of a problem, but because zebras do exist, occasionally something unlikely does occur.  If I hear hoofbeats, I never think unicorns because that's impossible.  Those do not exist.  This week, however, a unicorn knocked on my front door.

No, the isolation isn't getting to me.  Keep reading. 

I've been teaching yearbook for fifteen years, and every year, when we discuss who we should dedicate it to, my staff members joke, "One of these days, we should dedicate it to you."  I laugh and scoff, "Good luck surprising me.  That's pretty much impossible."  Apparently, this year, my editors decided that was a challenge they should accept.  They found a way to do what I thought was impossible.

While I was busy getting together pictures and information for the person I thought we were dedicating the yearbook to, they were twice as busy, making that page as a decoy and the real page on a system that our yearbook rep set up for them to work on separately.  They asked my art teacher friend how to contact my mom, who sent them information and brought them photos, not only from her house but from mine (she came to my house and took photos from my albums). 

The editors were frequently asking if they could go ask someone in the office questions for the page I thought we were making, and while I thought it was a little odd that they were going together when only one of them was assigned to the page, it didn't strike me as too odd because they were also working on senior pages together and enjoying their collaboration. 

A lot has happened this year, so the yearbook has covered a variety of stuff.  Thankfully, our final deadline was completed two weeks before we went into virtual learning.  (I even like that the Coronavirus won't be reflected in this year's book.  It's a nice way to focus on the positives of the year.)  I knew the stay-at-home order would change our book delivery and distribution.  I even found out recently that Jostens found a way to make virtual signing possible.  What I still did not know was that there would be a spread in the yearbook that I had never seen before. 

Every day since going into the virtual learning environment, we have had a morning faculty meeting.  We share devotions and prayer and make any announcements that need to be made.  On Tuesdays, it includes the faculty and staff from both of our campuses, and our head of school does the devotion.  This week, he asked me if there was a noise at my house because he thought he heard a knocking sound.  He told me that I should go answer my door because he thought someone was knocking on it.  At that point, I obviously knew something was going on, but I couldn't have been more shocked when I opened the door to see my yearbook editors standing on my porch.  In the yard were my mom, my principal and her daughter, our dean of women, and the mom of one of the editors with balloons and a yard sign that said 2020 Yearbook Dedication. 

It was only then that I found out all of this had been going on behind my back since August.  The editors read the lovely text of the page to me while I stood on my front porch.  We took some socially distanced photos (They are standing uphill from me).  They gave me a printout of the page given to them by our Jostens rep.  I struggled with my inability to hug them (just wait until I am allowed to).  And, all of this was being live-streamed to the faculty and staff who were still in the meeting I thought we were having.

After fourteen dedications of the yearbook, I've never been on this end of the sneakiness before.  It's amazing how many people can work behind your back and keep secrets from you.  People keep asking if I knew.  I totally did not.  They have asked if there as anything that I could have tipped me off in hindsight.  There really is not because when you don't believe in Bigfoot, you don't think a person walking down in the street in a furry coat might be him. 

Personifying the Elements

There are a lot of ways to teach the elements.  If you type chemical elements into youtube, there are over 641 thousand results.  Google shows 102 thousand news stories, almost 1.5 million books, and countless images.  As I have mentioned in this blog before, I did the same element project for years.  Each student built a model of the atom for a certain element and then wrote a paper (or podcast or webpage, depending on the year) about that element.  Last year, I tried replacing it with a nuclear energy project, but it didn't have the effect I had hoped for.  I was ready to do it again with some tweaks, but my co-conspirator, Kellie, had a better idea.

I was skeptical at first.  She came to me after last year's collaboration on the Mars paper and said, "I have an idea for another paper your kids can write."  My half-joking response was that I only grade one paper per year.  Then she said, "What if they have to make a case for an element as "the best element?"  Oh, that's interesting.  I may have to grade a second paper.  When talking about it with our tech coach, she said, "How is anyone going to make a case for anything besides carbon or oxygen?"  Hmm, that's a thought.  How were we going to do that?  Kellie said, "What if it is running for President, and they have to talk about the strengths that would make it a good candidate?  There are a lot of qualities that might make a good candidate."  Now, we were really onto something.  There's a lot of talk in education right now about doing things that cannot be googled, and both we and our principal agreed this was a way to do that.

I don't teach English, but I assume there are a lot of ways to teach personification.  If I remember correctly, I learned it in a poetry unit.  I think a tree was talking or something.  I never thought about it existing outside a poetic context, but this collaboration allowed kids to apply personification to science, especially when we decided it should be a speech instead of a paper.  Students actually spoke AS the element (or a spokesperson for the element).  The described its strengths (noble gasses have stability, bonding means working well with others, etc.) and accomplishments (hydrogen being the fuel of stars, sodium keeping you hydrated).  I even had someone make a case that radon could be a means of population control.  We gave our students the option of doing their speech on video if doing it live was too intimidating.  If you would like to see the results of that work, here's the playlist of their work.

I have enjoyed a lot of collaborations, but this one may be my favorite.  Kids learned the properties of elements in an interesting way.  They learned personification.  They overcame their fear of public speaking.  We have management tweaks to make for future years, but this was a great project.

Next week, I start a new collaboration, this time with history, a video project about inventions and their impact on culture.