Outsourcing Your Thinking

Whoever came up with the idea that there is no such thing as a stupid question never taught middle school.

Before you decide I am a horrible person for squelching a child's curiosity, those aren't the kinds of questions I'm talking about.  Asking how many times Texas would fit on the moon is not a stupid question (57 times if you are interested) because it is an attempt to relate something you do know to something you do not.  These questions, while sometimes odd, are not stupid.

I'm talking about questions like:
- Can we use a pen on this?
- When I get to number 50, do I go on to number 51?
- Does this problem take place on earth?
- Does it matter what order these are in?
- The calendar says this is due tomorrow.  Is it?
- Can I have a book on my desk to read when the test is finished?
- When you say, "will dissolve," do you mean after you stir it?
- Does my name need to be on this?
- And of course thousands of questions that you just answered when you were giving the instructions.

The reason that these are stupid questions is that the student could have answered it without asking if they had taken about three seconds to think.
- They have taken dozens of scantron tests in their lives.  They know the scantron requires pencil.  Three seconds of thinking avoids this question.
- Where else would I go after number 50?  I really wanted to ask what numbering system was used
  on his home planet.  Three seconds of thinking avoids this question.
- If this problem didn't take place on earth, wouldn't I have told you?  I don't expect them to just
   figure out it was Jupiter.  They had to think for way longer than three seconds to come up with the
   question when three seconds of logic would have kept them from asking it.
- If the order mattered, I would have told them in class, during a review, and in the instructions.
   Three seconds of thinking could have avoided this question.
- I get a lot of e-mail questions about when things are due.  We have an online academic calendar for
   every class, so that should be the answer to due date questions.  Three seconds of thinking would
   tell you that the question has already been answered.
- The book question would be perfectly polite and good if this had not been written on the board:  
  "On your desk, have out pencils and calculator as well as any reading material or studying material
   you plan to use after the test."  Three seconds of looking at the board will answer this question.
- Kids read into test questions so much, I have come up with the line, "Stop writing your own
  questions."  This is just one example.  I get so many, "what did you mean by . . ." questions that I
  have them read the question to me and say, "I mean that."
- If your name isn't on it, how will I know who to give your grade to?  Three seconds of thinking
  would avoid this question as well.

You may get the impression from this that I am super sarcastic, but let me assure you that if you had to field these questions from 120 students a day, you would lean toward sarcastic as well.  Students want to outsource their thinking.  Sometimes, they outsource it to me.  Sometimes, they outsource it to their parents or their e-mail.  My job is more than teaching them facts.  It also involves teaching them to think.  So, if I give what seems like a curt answer, it is only because I want them to experience a little negative consequence for not thinking for themselves while they are in middle school.  The consequences they will experience for it in college or a career will be far worse than my facial expressions or silly replies.  I don't want a world in which adults have never been required to pause for three seconds to think for themselves.

You Can't Save Them (at) All

I entered teaching at the age of 23 as an idealist, believing that if I did it right, every student would love learning, have enthusiasm about my class, and behave perfectly.  The education system eats people like that alive.  Go into a classroom with that expectation, and you will be shot down.  Get shot down too many times, and you will become jaded and cynical.  If that happens, leave the teaching profession immediately.  Go work in a bank, a factory, or a radio station.  Become a postal worker if you have to, but don't keep teaching.  Much damage is done by the cynical.

Fortunately, I had a great group of people around me, from fellow teachers to administrators.  They didn't dash my hopes and dreams, but they did teach me to have realistic expectations.  I'll never forget the time my principal, Mr. Matthews, sat down in my room on a teacher work day just to check in (this is the sign of a great administrator, by the way).  We chatted a little, and at some point in the conversation, he said, "You know you can't save them all.  I can see that in you."  Between those two sentences, I had already burst into tears.  I didn't know I had strong feelings about my ability to save every student from their drug use, abusive home, learning disability, or their own apathy.  He had seen this in me when I was too busy to see it in myself.  He reminded me that while it is great to have compassion for students, I could not take on all of their problems.  Other teachers set my perspective as well because even the best ones have some difficulties with classroom management or lack of student performance at some point.

Going into the classroom with a realistic expectation rather than an idealistic one is the reason I can still enjoy my job 17 years later.  If I had insisted on keeping my Mary Poppins view that my classes would be "practically perfect in every way," I would have quickly become disillusioned.  Having a realistic expectation means you can enjoy the positives and deal with the negatives without going on an emotional roller coaster.

I have been fortunate in my career that I have only had one year in which I couldn't have that kind of honesty with my superiors.  Mr. Matthews couldn't have been a better first principal for me to have.  No matter what happened in my classroom, he had a story about how the same things (or worse) had happened in his career.  I also had a great principal whose office I felt comfortable walking into and saying, "I have a question, but it may sound kind of rude."  to which she said, "Well, sometimes, you have to ask a rude question."  Last week, I cried through the end-of-year meetings with both of my administrators, was encouraged by both of them, and then went to lunch with them and a few other teachers.  Administrators who can make you better teachers while recognizing your growth are worth their weight in diamonds.  If you are lucky enough to work for one, don't give that job up for any amount of salary.

I have digressed from my original point.  Teachers face 25-125 students each day, depending on the grade level they teach.  Each of those students has something from which they would like to be saved.  For some it is trivial; they would like to be saved from the kid sitting next to them or their lunch that they don't like.  Others have truly serious problems which they have absolutely no power to solve.  If you take on your own shoulders the problems of even half of your students, trying to save them from everything they bring to school with them, it will cripple you.  You should pray for them (and with them, if you are able).  You should give them a safe place in your classroom.  You should get help for those in serious need, of course.  But do not fall into the trap of trying to "save them all."

Now that I work in a Christian school, I have yet another perspective on the conversation I had with Mr. Matthews.  Not only can I not save them all, I can not save any of them at all.  I am tasked by my calling to do my personal and professional best.  I am tasked by my school's mission statement to spiritually and academically equip, challenge, and inspire.  I am tasked by God to obey His Word and present the gospel to my students.  I am not tasked with saving them.  Only the blood of Christ can do that.  It is my honor to walk with some of my students on their redemption journey, but I cannot save them at all.

I'm Glad I Don't Have to Grow Up Now

I live in the state of North Carolina.  Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that NC is ground zero for the current battle of the culture war.  People I respect fall into very different places on this issue, mostly falling along generational lines.  Both sides want to say that the other side is about hate; but the world isn't that simple, even when we would like for it to be.

This post is not about HB2 or my feelings about why women's restrooms and locker rooms should be free from male genitalia.  This post is about how glad I am that I am forty years old.  It is about how glad I am that I don't have to grow up right now.

I don't believe there were ever good old days.  I grew up in the 80's, and it would be easy for me to think of that as the good old days until I remember the AIDS epidemic and all that came with it.  Our  parents like to think that the fifties were the good old days, but then they remember segregation the cold war.  Think back further, and you have The Great Depression.  Go back farther, and you have the Civil War to deal with.  Even going way, way back, you will find crucifixion, gladiators, and the entire male population of Sodom wanting to "have their way with" visiting angels.  All of that came AFTER the world got so bad that God sent the flood, so imagine what it must have been like before.  Have I made my point?  There is no time we can point back to and say, "That was the way it was meant to be."  Adam and Eve are the only humans who ever had it right, and they blew it.  We are all living in the result of their fall.

That said, I am still glad I don't have to grow up today.  The world may not have been better 30 years ago, but it was simpler.  I didn't have to deal with the anxiety of everyone every day, coming through my computer screen because I didn't have a computer screen.  If there was a bully at school, she was only at school.  Her bullying couldn't follow me home.  If there was a controversial issue in the media, it would likely be addressed on the six o'clock news, which I sometimes watched and sometimes didn't.  I wasn't expected to write a succinct but passionate message about it 30 seconds after hearing about it for the first time and then hold to that view forever because it was public record.  A guy in my class may have found a magazine somewhere and therefore have been exposed to sexual activity; but there wasn't free access to deviance of every kind all day and all night, rewiring his brain to view me as an object.   I didn't have to wonder whether every bite I ate was organic, free trade, ethically sourced, chemically sound, free from bias, or boycotted by some specialized group.  If I mouthed off to some friends, it was two or three people who were mad at me.  If I had been able to mouth off on social media to everyone I knew, I'm not sure I would have had any friends.

A lot of kids have anxiety disorders, and we act like that is surprising.  As an adult, the amount of input I take in during the day can be overwhelming, but I have an adult brain to process it, years of background to have a foundation of evaluation, and adult judgement to know when to turn it all off.  Imagine having to process all of that information using only a 13-year-old brain, flooded with hormones, and unsupported by years of background.  Imagine believing that you MUST respond to all of it and never turn it off.

Since the onslaught of information isn't going away, we must help kids deal with all of this.  We must help them control the amount of input they have to process each day, but it is about more than limiting screen time.  We must also have conversations with them to help them process the input.  We must ask them reflective questions that guide their thinking about the latest social issue, most recent drama with a friend, and newest reality whatever.  We can't hope they will deal with all of those things properly unless we provide them with an intense amount of training.  We all got this training; we just got it more slowly.  We got it spread out over longer periods of time because our problems were spaced out; they didn't come to us literally at the speed of light.  Our lives have gotten busier, and their lives have gotten more complicated.  We cannot be too busy to have these conversations.

Look for every teachable moment you can find, and jump on it as quickly as possible.

Stop Blaming Millennials for Being What You Made Them

Baby Boomers and Generation X'ers have been bemoaning the current generation for a while now.  The common complaints are that Millennials are:
- Lazy
- Entitled and Ungrateful
- Narcissistic
- Disrespectful to Authority
- Never Paying Attention

Disclosure Statement:  I was born in 1976, which makes me a full member of Generation X.  Since I have taught high school for the past 17 years, I have taught the youngest of Generation X as well as all of the Millennial range.

Here's the deal.  Generation X was lazy when compared to Baby Boomers who were massively lazy compared to those who survived the Great Depression.  Generation X was far less grateful for our Sony Walkmen than we would have the Millennials believe we were, and I am betting that Baby Boomers weren't as grateful for their 8-tracks as their parents would have liked either.  Disrespect for authority has been getting progressively worse throughout American history.  There are some great things about the Millennial generation, but that is for next week's post.

The two labels I believe are uniquely accurate are the low attention span and the narcissism.

Before we jump on our kids for these attributes, let's take an honest look at the cause.  With the exception of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, every children's show since the beginning of Sesame Street has been fast moving, loud, and colorful.  No image stays on the screen for longer than twelve seconds.  The child's developing brain becomes neurologically wired to seek new stimulation every twelve seconds.  Who makes children's programming.  Hint: It's not children.  Who lets a Millennial sit with a screen for ten hours a day, making their attention span short.  Hint: The kid isn't tall enough to get at the screen for himself.

As for Narcissism, I think even Narcissus would think we have gone to far.  He only looked at himself; he didn't insist that others do so as well.  What has made the Millennials so self focused?  Could it be that they have been told since they were conceived (through headphones attached to the mother's abdomen) that they are the most wonderful, amazing, and unique snowflake God ever dropped on this earth?  Could it be that every time an authority figure has dared to point out a flaw, they were told that they were in the wrong for not understanding the child's uniqueness?  Could it be that we have been video taping, photographing, and posting about their every move and word since they came into the world?  Then we bought them selfie sticks.  Were we thinking it wouldn't make them believe they should take pictures of themselves all the time?



When you paint a picture, you can't blame the picture for having the colors you used.  When you cook a meal, it is useless to blame the taste on the ingredients you chose.  When you tell a child they are perfect every day for years, you can't be upset that they believe you.  If you are a Baby Boomer or a Generation X'er (like me), you will find yourself tempted to complain about the qualities you see in the current generation.  Before you make those complaints out loud, keep this in mind:  WE MADE THEM THIS WAY.

As Dr. Phil says, "You can't change what you don't acknowledge."  The brain can be changed, but it requires intense, focused work.  That can't happen until we acknowledge the source of the problem.  If we don't recognize that our words are part of the problem, we will continue to send mixed messages.  Nothing could ever prevent growth more than that.

Exams Teach More Than You Know

Disclaimer:  I am a middle and high school science teacher, not a neurobiologist.  I am well aware that the learning process in the brain is far more complex than I am portraying.  This is painted with very broad strokes because this is, after all, an educational blog and not a neurology text.

"It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Exam Week" really should be a song because, for middle and high school teachers and students, it can't be Christmas until midterm exams are over.  To see some of my students blogs on the issue, click here.

It happens every year.  A middle school student tells me that exams are unnecessary and don't tell you anything because they can't study for all their subjects at once.  They are always very proud of their amazing argument, backed up with something their mom said about how they shouldn't be under so much pressure at their age.  Much like the "When am I ever going to use this is life?" question, it doesn't actually matter what my answer is.  They came in knowing that they were right and nothing will convince them otherwise.  Since you read this blog, I will assume that you care what the answer is.  Exams are about the pressure.

The initial learning process is a long and complicated brain experience.  It involves categorizing new knowledge into categories you established from prior knowledge, blending the old information with the new to give it meaning, and recording that meaning in a biochemical process in your brain.  Because the brain's real estate is limited, there is competition for what will remain and what gets tossed.  Your brain simply must throw out some things, or you would waste valuable space on remembering what the people in your line at the grocery store last week were wearing.  In the simplest of terms, your brain decides to keep the things you revisit and dump the things you don't.  That's why songs stay in your mind.  That's why review matters.  It has even been theorized that one of the purposes of sleep is to give your brain time to decide what it should forget from that day without taking in new input in the process.

What does this have to do with pressure and exams?

First, you are obviously revisiting information that you learned earlier in the semester.  This tells your brain that it should hold onto this information next time it is sorting out what you should forget.  It tells your brain that this information is more important than the tweet your read yesterday and never looked at again.  Second, the pressure of the exam schedule tells your brain that this matters enough to stress over.  The brain isn't likely to drop those things you are stressed about when it goes through information triage.  It is why you remember the fight you had with your friend long after you forgot the color of the carpet in the conference room.  Emotion (even stress) causes your brain to record more permanently.  The pressure increases the learning.

Another thing that exams teach you is the ability to plan for the long term and short term simultaneously.  This is an important adult life skill.  Your parents prepare for the short term (packing lunches for tomorrow) and the medium term (what groceries to buy for this week) and the long term (how much money to budget for food).  They do it all the time.  They didn't develop the ability to do this the day they turned 21.  It is a skill that is built.  One of the ways you build this skill is to balance studying for exams (a couple of weeks away) with doing the homework that is due tomorrow.  This will keep you from living your life by the "tyranny of the urgent" principle.  Many adults live anxious lives because they are only doing what has to be done RIGHT NOW.  If you have developed the skill of planning ahead, your life will be less stressful.

As I began writing this, I had a strange memory of an episode of Boy Meets World.  I know that's weird, but stick with me.  Mr. Feeny had made a very difficult exam schedule (because, in TV world, the history teacher is apparently able to make the exam schedule).   Anyway, the students revolted against this unfair schedule.  They vandalized his house, etc.  In the scene below, Corey goes to talk to him about the vandalism and to request that he make things easier.  As always, Mr. Feeny's wisdom came through, so I will end with it.

Half-Baked

This is the time of year when everyone gets tired.  The weather has changed, and the days are getting shorter.  The students are no longer in the honeymoon period of behaving well in class.  They have gotten to know their teachers well enough to really start pushing the line on what they can get away with.  We start seeing what they are like under pressure.  It is the time of year when teachers start worrying about some character traits they may or may not be seeing in their students.

Because teachers love their students, we stress over them.  If they are making poor decisions in their personal lives, cheating on our tests, or just plain acting foolish, we are concerned about their future.  In Christian schools, like the one I teach in, we are concerned about what those behaviors reflect regarding the condition of their hearts.  Cheating on a test isn't just a behavior; it is a reflection of something much deeper, self-worship.  Bad choices in their personal lives may do damage to their reputation, but we are more concerned about the damage it does to their character.  Because of these concerns, teachers do a fair amount of hand-wringing and fretting.  We talk a lot about what their issues mean for their future.

Then I remember that my students are eighteen when they graduate.  We don't send them out into the world as finished products, and we aren't the last influences they will have in their lives.  There will be professors and ministers and friends and mentors after us who will continue the process of maturing them into the adults they will one day be.

I remind myself that no one eats a half-baked cake.  I love to eat cake batter.  I may like it even more than I like the final cake.  As much as I like them both, I would never put a cake in the oven for half the time and then complain when I took it out of the oven that it wasn't cake yet and wasn't batter anymore.  I would recognize that the oven was only half way through the process of turning batter into cake.  This is where my students are.  They aren't the squishy little sweet babies they once were, but they aren't fully formed adults yet either.  They are in the weird place that cake would be, half-baked.  We can't complain that they aren't babies anymore, and we can't complain that they aren't adults yet.  They aren't supposed to be.  They are in the middle of the process we call growing up.

Teachers will always worry.  We know that there are mistakes they can make that will impact the adult they become.  Just like a cake would be ruined if we opened the oven door and threw in a handful of dirt, a person can be negatively impacted by what happens in high school.  However, we need to keep this time in proper perspective and recognized.  They are not yet who they will be.

The Week of Too Much

We've all had the week of too much.  We have too much to do and not enough time.  We have to much stress and not enough sleep.  We do a lot of complaining about the week of too much, but we get through it.  We don't die.  The world doesn't stop spinning on its axis, and we realize that we are not as weak as we thought.  That lesson then must be learned again by having another week of too much.

The week before Thanksgiving break is often the week of too much for our students at GRACE.  No teacher wants to ask them to hold information in their heads while their brains turn to mashed potatoes and they slip into a tryptophan coma, so we mostly plan their tests during the week before Thanksgiving.  They worry and complain.  They stress themselves, their teachers, and their parents out.  They feel like they are going to die.   But you know what?  They don't.

Just like we don't die when we have a week of too much, middle and high school students also don't die.  They come out on the other end, realizing that they are stronger than they thought they were.  This is a valuable and important lesson, and it would be wrong for us to rob them of it by giving them what they say they want.  It is important to go through stressful times because they train us for more stressful times down the road.

Last week, my students got to hear a veteran from Iwo Jima speak the day before Veteran's Day.  One of the things he said that stuck out to me was about a time near the end of his training.  He was dropped at an unknown location and given the address of a different location.  He had to get there.  They provided no help and no rescue.  This probably sounded mean to the students who were listening, but I thought about how prepared he was for the same scenario should he encounter it in Japan.  It seems mean that me give our students a lot of tests / projects in one week, but the reality is that they will be better prepared for those times inevitable to adulthood than they would be if we didn't.

No one likes to see their kids stressed, but a certain amount of stress is needed.  It is needed to prepare their brains, their stamina, and their energies for the future.  Chronic stress is bad, but brief periods of acute stress are actually necessary for building strength.  Support your students through the week of too much.  Listen to their complaints and empathize with them; but do not take away the valuable stress they are experiencing.  If you do, they will fail during their adult weeks of too much.

Going Forward

No matter how nice teachers are to the senior class, they leave every year.  Well, of course they do.  This is what is supposed to happen.  The GRACE graduation is this Friday, and it always brings with it a sense of excitement, nostalgia, and nervousness.  If that is what I am experiencing as a teacher, imagine what it must be like for the graduates.

Excitement is always part of these last weeks of school.  After all, these are people we have watched grow.  I personally start teaching them in 8th grade, but our chorus and band teachers have had some of them since 3rd or 4th grade.  To watch kids turn from snotty nosed 3rd graders or hormonal middle schoolers in to adults is one of the best things about teaching in a school like this.  (Some day I should do a post about writing recommendation letters because it allows the same kind of feelings.)  When I taught in public school, I had kids for one year and sometimes never saw them again.  I only truly got to keep longer relationships with a few.  At GRACE, there are kids that I have taught in 8th grade science, 10th grade chemistry, and 11th or 12th grade if they took physics.  Some I have had on my yearbook staff for four years.  I hope to watch my 8th grade "knitting" club grow and mature over the years as well.  Sending them out to see what God does with them always brings a sense of excitement.

According to dictionary.com, nostalgia is a noun meaning "a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time."  Nostalgia seems to be wired into the human brain.  Whether it is 13 years of schooling or a week of camp, there is something about revisiting memories that makes us happy and sad at the same time. 

Photographs have always been a great way of preserving memories (which is why yearbooks are so important), but the proliferation of cameras on phones have made it even easier to capture lots of moments very quickly.  Our staff and students robe up together before the graduation ceremony, and it is always really funny to watch people taking selfies with their teachers.  It also shows the relationship that our teachers and students have.  The fact that they WANT to have selfies with their teachers is pretty awesome.  It is also funny to watch students help their teachers get ready.  They make sure our hair is okay and straighten or hoods because no one ever knows the right way to hang those things.  We are all fully aware that these are some of our last real moments with each other (even though our students are good about coming back to visit), so we try to make the most of it.

One of the most challenging things about graduation is that there is also some fear.  Maybe fear isn't the right word, but it does make us nervous to know that they are going out into a world that is far different from the one they are leaving.  We won't be there to protect them from some of their choices or comfort them when they have to suffer the consequences of those choices.  Most of them are going into a world that is hostile to the faith we have tried our best to nurture in them.  The most important thing we can do is pray for them, so we always have a tradition of circling up for a great last time of prayer with them.  This picture doesn't do it justice, but it is what I have.  Teachers and students all pray together, and some pray aloud. Teacher pray for students, and students pray for each other.  We all express our gratitude to God for the time He has allowed us to spend together for the months and years we have had.  This happens just before we line up to march down the aisle.  It is just us and them.  Their parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends can have them in a minute; but for one last moment, they are ours as we give their futures to God.  

Yearbook Dedication Day - Post 1 - Anticipation

I am going to post twice this week - once in anticipation of the yearbook dedication and one after.  The after one may not happen until the day after because I usually go home and collapse into a puddle of incoherent jelly on the day of the dedication.

The feeling of this time is hard to describe.  It is both thrilling and terrifying at the same time.  I know there are mistakes because the job is too big for there not to be.  I don't know, however, how serious some of them are.  One year, there was a fifth grader left entirely out of the yearbook.  I didn't know it until her very upset mother called the day after her daughter brought it home.  That was six years ago, and I still can't figure out how it happened.  We do things differently now, so it shouldn't happen again; but I didn't expect it the first time.  Did I order enough yearbooks or way too many?  I won't know until next week.

I've made my first boneheaded mistake of the week.  On Sunday, I sent e-mails to everyone who has not yet ordered.  At least, that's what I thought I did.  It turns out I sent e-mails to the ENTIRE sophomore class, informing them that they had not ordered.  Of course, that was not true, so I spent a good part of Sunday evening replying to frantic e-mails from people who had indeed ordered.  There's no better start to your week than one big incompetent move.  Fortunately, I'm not also in charge of the education of kids this week. (Oh, wait - exams are next week, so . . . I am - Yikes!)

We dedicate our yearbook and keep it a secret until the day of distribution.  Somehow, we have managed to keep it a secret every year (at least, as far as I know).  This is not easy when you consider there are 15-20 teenagers every year who know the secret, and I have to enlist the help of the spouse or children or siblings of this person to get the pictures and information I need.  I get it from them during first semester.  With the dedication in May, that is a long time for that person to keep a secret.  I hope this year's dedicatee doesn't know, but he or she probably won't tell me if they do.  It is a big moment for me because our entire school is on its feet to honor one deserving person.  It is one of my favorite moments of the year, reminding me every time that one of the purposes of this book is to unify the student body, faculty, and staff.  There are very few things that do that, and I am happy to be part of one of them.

I have great student staffers, who are incredibly helpful on the day of distribution.  They make sure everyone receives their book before enjoying the signing time for themselves.  It keeps me from having to be in the room at the beginning, but it also makes me nervous because I am not in the room at the beginning.  (I apparently have some control issues.)  My school is called GRACE, and because of that, we often don't get people's yearbook orders until the last possible moment.  Yes, I do blame it on the name of the school; I really believe this would not happen if we were called JUSTICE Christian School or Get Your Paperwork In On Time Christian School.  This was made even more evident today when I went to the office to pick up the orders that came in Friday and Monday morning and was given an envelope that weighs 2 pounds.

My science students are taking a test right now.  I'm actually giving tests all day today.  It is their last one of the year other than their exam, so that gives me time to deal with the orders as I sit at my desk today.  It does mean I will have to grade them, but thank the Lord for Scantron.  I also have door duty this week as well as teacher devotions on Wednesday (oh, I need to get someone to cover the door that day).  We have a town  hall meeting tonight and field day on Friday.  Fortunately, I will be doing exam review with all of my students the rest of this week, so that will take on thing off the list. 

Believe it or not, I love this insane time.  It's when I know I am in an active, vibrant, place of learning and not a stodgy, dry institution.  I wouldn't trade it.

Reflections on Four Years of Teaching With Technology - Lessons

This is the last post of a four part series on the one to one MacBook program my school has.  This post can stand alone, but if you are interested in more detail, read my other posts.

After four years of doing this, I do feel that there are some pieces of advice I could offer and lessons I've learned.  This is purely from a classroom teacher's point of view.  I'm sure administrators and tech people could offer different perspective, and I hope they will comment.

Don't Try to Learn Everything at Once - If you try to make every lesson filled with nothing but technology, you will lose your mind.  Sit down with your objectives and pick the ones that are either the easiest or the most important to incorporate your technology.  We committed to have one "golden nugget" per quarter.  That could be a project the kids could do or a lesson that we would have them collaborate with or a lesson we could flip.  If you do that each year (and it gets easier to think of them, so you increase your pace), you build your tech repertoire.

Don't Try to Reinvent the Wheel - Google is your friend.  If you search for lesson plans using technology on any topic, you will find many tools or kernels of ideas to use.  YouTube is your best friend.  Pick a topic - any topic - and you will find animations, dramatizations, examples.  There is a ton in science, but there are plenty for every other topic as well - even Latin.  I have been amazed by the clarity a video provides.  It takes me 15 minutes to explain the Doppler Effect, but when I show a 20 second video of stick figures and waves, I hear half the class go "Ohhhh."

Get an LMS - If there was one thing we were missing in our first year, it was a learning management system.  Not having a consistent way for students to turn in digital assignments leads to chaos.  Some students want to e-mail it to you (That'll fill your inbox) while others want to put it on a jump drive.  Some want to share it with you in a google doc.  This is a sure way to lose your mind.  We found drop box, hoping that would be a good method, but it is a mess when students forget to include their name (It's not like you can tell from their handwriting), or you have 45 assignments titled "science homework."  The first couple of months with an LMS are difficult because it adds to the learning curve, but it is worth it.  After the first year, every student knows exactly what to do when we say "Go to the Talon discussion board."

Cheer Each Other On - This was the best part of our endeavor.  Every teacher was in the same boat, all trying to row in the same direction.  We shared ideas, successes, failures, suggestions, encouragements, and prayers.  If you have some cynical people, share your successes with them.  Show them one super easy tool that you found.  Most people will come around with just a little encouragement.  If you are trying to do this on your own and it isn't a school wide thing, find another teacher that you can try it with.  If you can't even find that, go online.  There are twitter groups and teacher websites completely devoted to cheering you on in this adventure.  This is worth it.

Be Flexible and Have Backup Plans - The first time you use a new tool, something will happen.  You will have at least one kid who can't log on no matter what they do.  The video might not play on someone's computer even though it does on everyone else's.  There may be a student who tried to submit their assignment and it didn't go through for whatever reason.  You CANNOT anticipate all these problems, so be flexible.  For those issues you can anticipate, have a backup plan.  I have ended my instructions many times with "If that doesn't work, do this."  You will teach a little less content your first year because you will spend a fair amount of time troubleshooting.  That's okay; it gets better.  Trust me that you will never stop needing backup plans.

Keep the Reasons in Mind - You have decided to do this for a reason.  When things get a little nutty, remind yourself that this is important.  You are investing in your students' future.  You are teaching them life skills and modeling life long learning.  You are going to have some tough days, and the kids will see how you respond to them.

Reflections on Four Years of Teaching With Technology - Plateau and Progress

This is part three of a series on my school's one to one MacBook program.  It can be read on its own, but if you want to know the history, read the other two.

As always happens, the first year of a program is when people are the most excited and, therefore, the most invested in doing new things.  The increase you see from year zero to year one cannot be the level of increase you expect every year.  In order to keep increasing at all, there must be continued cheerleading, support, and training to keep the ideas new.  Most of us were really happy with how the first year went, but we didn't bring that same level of enthusiasm to the second year (maybe because we were just tired).  We also implemented a much needed Learning Management System that year, which was frustrating at first because there were some glitches in it.  Because of these issues, the second year was a plateau for us as far as using the technology as more than a replacement for what we had done previously.

Our wonderful tech team had read articles about schools that gave up on one to one programs after one or two years due to lack of real growth and were determined not to let that happen here.  Around the same time, we also hired a new media specialist, Laura (the wonderful) Warmke.  She is not only highly versed in what seems like every book ever written; she is also super with technology tools and driven to help you find out how to use them in your class.

Laura and Diane developed a great program for teacher to use as professional development.  It is called Level Up, and it is awesome.  Diane and Laura write "missions" for us to accomplish.  Some of them are as simple as watch a TED talk about education and comment on it in our discussion board.  Others are as complex as classroom flipping, instituting a badge system in your class, or having a skype session.  All the missions are counted as done when you have responded on a discussion board. 

Let me tell you some of the reasons this program is awesome:
1.  You can choose your own professional development.   We aren't all sitting in the same room learning the same tool.  We look at the available missions and choose the ones that will work best for our style and our classroom.  It enables people to be developed at their point of comfort with where they currently are.
2.  You are being cheered on rather than put upon.  The tech team gives you a badge in the teacher's lounge for every mission you complete.  They love talking to you about your missions.  You get great ideas from reading other people's uses on the discussion board, which allows you to incorporate the same tools in your class in more than one way.
3.  It is modeling.  They aren't just telling us to use something.  They are using it to deliver the message.  It makes me want to have missions in my own classes (next year perhaps).
4.  There are prizes.  Prizes are always motivating, no matter how old you get.  At the end of the quarter, we have drawing for gift cards.  The more missions you have done, the more times you name is in the hat.
5.  It introduces you to tools you had never heard of before.  One mission we had this year was to use a tool called Canva - a very cool graphic design tool.  I've had kids use it for projects, and I will never make another bulletin board without it.  I would never have heard of it without this program.
6.  It encourages teacher input.  Many times during the year, a teacher will stumble upon a new tool and say, "Hey, you should have a mission for that.

This program has gotten us off our year two flatline graph and put us back on the upward slope.  Another thing Laura does is meet with every teacher every quarter to discuss how she can help you take your tech integration to the next level.  Because of these discussions, my 8th graders have begun creating a website (which future 8th graders will finish), and next year, my 8th graders will be blogging for the world to see.

I've said it before.  I couldn't go back to teaching the old way.  Now that I see what kids are capable of doing with the world of knowledge at their fingertips, I would never again feel like I was doing my job as a teacher if I didn't give them that opportunity.  Every new tool we teach them i just another way they can be academically and spiritually equipped, challenged, and inspired to impact their world for Christ (which is our school's mission statement).

There will be one more post in this series - what I wish I had known when this all started.

Reflections on Four Years of Teaching With Technology - The First Year

My last post was about the lead up to GRACE Christian School's implementation of E4 - our one to on MacBook program.  Now, I want to tell you about our first year with it because that is obviously where our learning curve was the steepest.

Our tech team and administrators were the most amazing cheerleaders through this process.  When we originally talked about accountability in the committee, it had been suggested that we require a certain percentage of the lesson be tech related.  I am SOOOOO glad we did not go that route.  Instead of presenting this as a required duty, it was presented as an exciting opportunity.  Sean, Diane, Mandy, and Kathie (our principals) were so ready to help in any way you needed that it was unbelievable.  If you had an idea, you could go to one of them, and they would help you figure it out.  We were trained in big groups about some things, but if there were things that only applied to one department or teacher or lesson, one of them stopped by our room to chat about the tool or e-mailed us a link.

In some ways it was like being a first year teacher all over again.  We weren't exactly relearning how to teach, but in some ways we were.  When writing lesson plans, we were constantly thinking of ways we could do the same differently with technology. (Keep in mind, this was our first year; so we were on level one of the SAMR model.  We are reaching for higher levels now).  One of the best things we did was have story time at faculty meetings.  We shared projects the kids had done and tools we had found.  We shared frustrations as well and tried to problem solve together.  I'll post more about that later.

Our students immediately took on a new paradigm.  They began e-mailing teachers all the time.  They could have sent us e-mail from home before, but they hadn't very much.  Suddenly, we were getting e-mail from them at all times of day.  I got e-mail questions from shy kids who would never ask them in class.  I got kids sharing links with me if there was something they thought would be cool class.  I had kids sending science memes.  Our volleyball team went to the state finals that year.  A small group of kids, our basketball game announcer, and Sean traveled down with them and streamed the game with commentary.  We got to watch it during lunch and had a watch party for the final game in the evening.  Our students began making videos for chapel.  All of this was in addition to the "on purpose" things we were giving them to do for class.  On Grandparents' Day, we had a family skype their Grandparents into class from England.  We stream the Grandparents' Day performance as well.

I think my favorite story from that year was the streaming of the conference basketball tournament.  Whenever we stream a game, we send the link to the athletic director of the opposing team, so their families can watch too.  For one game of this tournament, we were playing a team out of Fayetteville, a school with a large number of military families.  Because of the stream, some of their dads were able to watch them play even though those dads were in Iraq and Afghanistan.   I didn't even mind that we lost that game because those dads got to watch their boys win.

We all learned a lot that year.  We learned from each other.  We learned from every resource we could find.  It was difficult and crazy and amazing all at the same time.

In my next post, I will talk about the three years since.  We hit a plateau, which our awesome tech team helped us overcome.  More on that in a few days.

Reflections on Four Years of Teaching With Technology - The History

GRACE Christian School is wrapping up its fourth year in a one to one laptop program, so I thought it was time for a bit of reflection. 

It all about this time started five years ago.  At that point, we had a lot of teachers who were incorporating technology with their own devices and buying projectors as we could.  We had about twelve SMART boards in our school, which we were using to the best of our ability (although we didn’t really know the best way to use them). 

I was asked to serve on a technology planning committee, where I found out that we were seriously considering changing everything.  We discussed device options, budgeting, vision statements for the program, and what kind of accountability should be involved.  My role was mostly to insist on training.  The board members on our committee rightly felt that the SMART boards had not been used as well as they could have been in the classroom and didn’t want to make this investment to have it fail.  I reminded them that the teachers who had SMART boards had been given one day of training on the function of the boards and none on how to incorporate them into our lesson plans.  When we talked about devices, I said, “Without training, it might as well be a stone and chisel.”  When we discussed the budget, I said, “There has to be budget set aside for training.”  When we talked about the vision statement, I reminded them that none of that vision could be accomplished if teachers were told HOW to carry it out.  When we discussed accountability, I reminded them that they couldn’t be expected to use it well without training.  I’m sure they got tired of hearing the word training from me, but I felt it was my role as the representative of the teachers. 

The members of the committee were sworn to silence until the plan was unveiled.  In the mean time, projectors and MacBook Pros were purchased for every teacher.  They were made ready by our wonderful tech team (which at that time only consisted of Sean and Diane) in an empty classroom that had new locks and paper over the windows.  You practically needed a secret password to enter that room.  As the day of the unveiling approached, we all got a little excited and nervous.  Diane was going to be chaperoning our 8th grade DC field trip, so Sean would be on his own that day for training.  He was nervous about whether or not people would like the idea.  Including myself, there were about three faculty meetings that were long term Mac users; so we were asked to help people during the training.  All the teachers knew when they came in that morning was that the day would be about technology and that Sean would be leading it.  Sean talked about the importance of increasing our technology usage in 21st century education, showed a prezi about the importance of changing education from the industrial model, and talked about how critical it was that we lead in this area.  Then, I was scripted to ask, “So, how do we do this if we don’t all have the tools?”  Sean announced that everyone would be getting a projector, which was met with minor enthusiasm.  Then, he said, “You may be asking what good a projector will do if you don’t have your own laptop.  Well . . .”  The laptops were hidden in a closet, and I got to help roll them out.  It was super exciting.

We spent that entire day of training, learning how the Mac works, looking at each type of application, and brainstorming ideas.  We got a video message from Diane since she couldn’t get to us from DC.  We obviously had teachers with a wide range of experience and comfort with the tool (one person asked me what it meant to click), but everyone was super on board and willing to learn.  At the end of the day, I hugged Sean and told him how well he did and how excited everyone was.  We knew we were at the beginning of something awesome.

Since that day, we have learned so much.  Our kids have done so much.  Our tech team has supported us so much.  It is too much to put in this post, which is already long.  Read all about our first year with tech in my next post.

Not Helping is Often Helpful

I am writing this blog post specifically to avoid helping students.  I know that sounds horrible, but it serves a critical purpose.  When adults jump in to help students all the time, they never learn to problem solve for themselves.  This produces adults who don't know how to trouble shoot, think critically, or problem solve bigger issues.

I am experimenting with a CBL (Challenge Based Learning) assignment.  Here's the gist.  The students are supposed to imagine that we live in a place with inconsistent access to electricity and figure out what they would do at their home to keep refrigerators and small electrical appliances going.  I brought in a guest speaker who lived in Haiti for several years to discuss the problem and some of what they did to solve it.  I thought the problem was clearly presented until they started giving their solutions.  They included going to war with Cuba to steal their electricity, using an electric eel tank, and using a local volcano.  Then another teacher told me that a student had said I was trying to get them to solve the energy crises. 

We re-booted.  I presented the problem all over again.  I made it clear that we were only talking about something that we (the ten of us in this room) could do.  We have had several work days since then, and they are still having some difficulty being on the same page.  There are nine students, and there has still been so little communication that one students had potatoes, lemons, and pennies while other students were talking about lawn mower motors and solar panels.  I have had to sit here biting my tongue because it is important for them to have this conversation themselves and make a plan. 

It is a tough thing as a teacher to NOT help.  We so often want to teach them what to do.  We so often want to rescue them from themselves.  I actually had to focus on this blog post to keep myself from doing that.

You Are Going to Use This in Life - Just Not the Way You Think You Are

If I had to choose the number one, big daddy, most annoying question any teacher ever gets asked, it is the following:  "When am I ever going to use this in life?"

Insert B-movie scream here!

I hate this question.  Hate it.  Hate. It.  It's not for the reason you think. 

It isn't because I don't have an answer.  I have one - a long, well thought out, complex and beautiful answer you never listen to.  It isn't because you are insulting my curriculum; I totally know you don't all fall down with joy, hoping I'll talk more about the periodic table today.  It isn't because I'm part of a vast conspiracy to fill your head with knowledge you will never, ever need (and I know some of you believe that).  The reason I hate this question is because it reflects a fundamentally flawed belief about why you learn.  You think it is about getting a job.

You think elementary school is about middle school, and middle school is about high school, and high school is about college, and college is about the job you will have for forty years, (and then you will play golf or knit or something for a couple of decades).  If you unpack this thinking, it means that you think kindergarten is about the job you will have in your forties.  Do you see now how absurd your teachers find this thinking?

You learn because you were created to learn.  God put curiosity in the heart of every human being.  From the moment you are born, you look as far as you can look (which at that time is 18" - about the distance to from your eyes to the eyes of the person holding you).  You study that face and learn what a face is.  Eventually, you find your own hands and feet and start learning about those.  When you begin to crawl, you become a Magellan level explorer, and you never once ask how that thing on the other side of the room is going to influence your career.  You just want to learn about it.  You learn color theory by experimentation (mixing crayons).  By the time you are four years old, you are asking why or how something works an average of 400 times per day.  At no point in those 400 questions do you think about the utility of that information.  When you ask your dad why the sky is blue, it is absolutely not because you think one day you will have a job in which that information might be useful.  You ask because you want to know.

Then, you go to school.  The minute you put your butt in a desk, your parents start thinking of everything you learn as a career related.  Worse, they start talking to you that way.  They start using phrases like "use this is the real world" and "use this in life."  I have heard parents of fifth graders ask how the project their child just did will affect college acceptance.  No wonder we have so many kids with anxiety issues.  If I really believed one project would fundamentally change the course of my life, I would be stressed too.

Before I address teacher responsibility in this problem, allow me to rabbit trail for a second on "the real world."  There is no part of the world that is imaginary!  Life does not start at 22.  School is just as real a part of the world as any other part.  It is the part where your child spends many hours of his day and puts a lot of his energy.  Stop making it sound like it doesn't matter at all because it isn't real.

Teachers a part of the problem.  We use the idea of career as motivation to make students learn, and then we are confused when it backfires on us while we teach music to a kid who is going to be an engineer or science to a kid who is going to be a musician.  Teachers, let's model curiosity for our students.  Let's not blow off spelling words correctly because we aren't English teachers.  Let's not make kids think that only math teachers need to know math or that art only matters to artists.

One of my favorite things at GRACE is that our teachers are incredibly well rounded.  We have had teachers who taught math and dance in the same day.  We have a history/science teacher.  I teach both science and yearbook.  One of our English teachers decided on her own to read The Disappearing Spoon, a book about the periodic table of elements.  Our Latin teacher is reading a book about the mathematical history of tracking time.  Our students see teachers across every discipline asking each other questions, not because we have to use it in our job, but because it is interesting. 

Learning is about worship.  It brings us closer to God when we learn about the world and how he created it.  That's kind of standard science teacher answer because it is clear we study creation, but math, art, music, and language are also creations of God.  Let's glorify Him better by learning about His work.

When Things Don't Work

I have been sitting in on another teacher's classes for the past week.  She is doing a pretty new thing in our school, and I wanted to see how it went.  Since we are a school that encourages innovative ideas in teaching, it is fun to go see when a teacher has done something new.  She took on the idea of 20% time projects, inspired by Google.  You may or may not know this, but Google gives its employees the freedom to use 20% of their work time on personal projects.  To see how this has gone at Google, click here.  http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/googles-20-percent-time-in-action.html

This innovative Google idea has spurred on a lot of talk in education.  What if we gave students one day a week to work on their own passion projects?  What would we have to give up teaching, and what parts of our curriculum would be covered by a project like this?  Since the kids end up writing a lot in this project and present them to an audience, one of our English teachers decided it was right for her 10th grade class.  For the first three quarters of the year, they have spent their class time on Fridays working on a project of their own making.  They are now in presentation time, and teachers and parents have been invited to see the presentations.  I've gone to as many as I can and have live tweeted them as they go.  One of the most important things that the students are required to address in their presentation is what they have learned about themselves and what their greatest challenges were.

Most students have said something along the lines of,  "I failed to accomplish my goal because . . . "  Fill in the blank with "poor time management, procrastinating, being used to being told what to do, not having a specific enough goal, etc."  Those who have failed to accomplish have been encouraged to own it and explain what went wrong for the benefit of the listeners. 

As I listen to these presentations, one thing has stood out to me.  I have spent a lot of time in my career batting clean up.  Every teacher (except for those who never try anything new) spends time analyzing what went wrong and how to do it better next time.  What we have not traditionally done is allow the students to see that process.  Much like the post where I encouraged you to let them see you sweat, I think it is just as important to let them see you fix things.  When a project fails, own it - in front of your students.  Send an e-mail explaining what part of the mess was on you and thank them for allowing you to try new things with them (after all, it isn't like you can try them with an experimental group before presenting it to your class).  This will encourage them to self analyze as well.

I am currently in the middle of a challenge based learning project that appears to be failing.  I don't know if it will fail in the end, but the beginning is rough.  I called the beginning a false start, posed the question again with more clarity, and we started over.  We aren't where I want to be, but we are definitely better than we started.  Don't be afraid reflect and repeat.

This is, by the way, the reason we beat the Soviets to the moon.  All of our mistakes were addressed in front of the world, open to public scrutiny, and able to be solved.  The Soviets never announced anything until AFTER it had been successful.  No one knew of their failures until decades later.  Even within their space program, mistakes were not allowed to be spoken of.  How can improvements be made if there is no acknowledgement of failure?  They cannot.

One of the things that is squeezed out of education when we run short on time is reflection.  Our class time is precious, so we fill it with all the activity and teaching we can.  However, as John Dewey said, "Learning does not come from experience.  It comes from reflecting on experience."  Thanks to technology, students can reflect outside the classroom.  You can have them reflect on a project using a Google form.  You can ask them a reflective question and have them e-mail you the answer.  If you want them to reflect together, you can have them use a discussion board or wiki.  There are many ways to give time for reflection without using your class time.  Don't be afraid to assign it for homework because it is critical to learning.

Surprised by Kids

After 16 years of teaching, one would think a teacher wouldn't be surprised by much that kids do.  After all, by now, I should have seen everything a kid might think of to do.  One would be wrong.  I am constantly surprised by what kids think of. 

This is sometimes, as you might expect, a bad thing.  New and creative ways to cheat and plagiarize happen pretty frequently.  That is not, however, what this post is about.  Sometimes, the surprise is something silly.  For example, a few days ago, one of my students was turned around during a demonstration that required students to do the wave.  I said, "turn around" without saying her name, and everyone turned around.  That was a surprise that made me laugh for a full minute.  That is also not what this post is about.

This post about the surprising generosity of students displayed by a few high school girls.  Every February, our school has a Hoops for Hope event to raise money for the Kay Yow Cancer Research Fund.  It is an amazing event with silent auctions, guest speakers, a ceremony to honor cancer survivors, and (oh yeah) basketball games.  We pink out the gym, and several thousand dollars a year are raised for cancer research.  Occasionally, we have a girl who donates her hair for kids who need wigs, but it has always been an elementary an elementary school student and is usually not more than two kids. 

I will never be a person who can write a thousand dollar check for something.  I give what money I can where I can; but as a teacher, that is never going to be a life changing amount.  For this reason, I look to I Peter 4:10 - "As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace."  Before the context police (of which I am a proud member) come after me, I am well aware that this passage is about spiritual gifts.  I do not think, however, that it is out of line with scripture to use it as inspiration for using any gift you have to help others.  One of the gifts I have is O negative blood.  Having the universal donor blood type, I believe that is a gift that can be used to serve others, so I donate as often as the Red Cross allows. 

One of the other things I have his healthy, thick hair.  For that reason, I grow it out and cut off ten to twelve inches every three years or so.  This summer, I was approaching the right length.  A couple of months before it gets to the right length, it starts driving me crazy.  It is heavy and in the way.  A pony tail all day every day starts to hurt.  I had decided it would be the right length in October, and I couldn't wait for October to arrive.  Then our special needs coordinator said, "You should do it at Hoops for Hope."  Hoops for Hope takes place in February.  I gave her my You-Don't-Know-What-You-Are-Saying look and said, "I don't know about that.  Do you know how long that is?  I'd cut it today if I could." 

Over that weekend, I decided that I would issue a challenge.  The ice bucket thing was finally over, so we needed a new challenge, right?  I e-mailed every middle and high school girl in our school that has really long hair.  I told them that I would wait until February if some of them would do it with me.  Otherwise, I was going to go ahead and do it in October as planned.  I honestly thought I would get no response.  We have a lot of nice kids, but there is a special relationship between high school girls and their hair.  Also, super long and super straight hair is style right now.  I thought I would send this e-mail and then get to cut my hair in October. 

Here's the surprise part.  Less than an hour after hitting send, I got an enthusiastic reply from Grace -   "I'd love to do it. I'm in."  A few hours after that, I got an e-mail from Molly - "I'm super nervous, but sure."  Mary Mac was next.  Then came Kim and Mia, both nervous, but totally on board.  I also had two maybes.  By the time it was done, I had six high school girls.  Adding that to my own donation, we would have about 5 feet of hair to send to an organization called Children With Hair Loss. 

In the months that followed, their excitement grew.  We had to extend Kim because she was playing Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.  Mia had to drop out, but our receptionist jumped in for her on the spot.  We did it together, and it was actually a lot of fun.  We prayed over the cut pony tails together and prayed for the little girls who would get them.  (By the way, it was the girls who suggested the prayer time.)  Kim brought me eleven inches of her hair just two days after the play was over.  On Friday, I packaged it up and sent off almost a pound of hair, amounting to 5ft and 4in to be made into wigs for little kids who have lost their hair for medical reasons.  This doesn't seem like much for those of us who can easily grow our hair back, but for a little kid who must attend school with no hair, this is a blessing.

Thank you lovely ladies for surprising me with your sacrifice.  You've blessed a little girl, used your gifts in service to others, and shown your love for Jesus and for others.


Kim's hair during the play.  It now comes just below her shoulders as she cut off eleven inches!

Teaching Yearbook

I never set out to teach yearbook, but it is now how most students know me.

When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut.  However, 3 inches over the NASA height limit, vision issues, and a complete lack of equilibrium took that off of the list of career options when I was 12.  To be honest, I would still jump on board any time someone would let me. When I took physics my senior year in high school, I discovered that I really wanted to be a physics teacher.  Five years into my career as a science teacher, my hobby of photography became one of the biggest parts of my work life.

For years, our school passed around the role of yearbook adviser from person to person.  This. is. crazy.  The learning curve in your first year of advising is steep.  To have a different person every year experiencing their first year means you never have a yearbook that reflects the lesson learned in the first year.  This was reflected in the quality of the yearbooks as well.  People did the best they could, but not having the benefit of experience definitely showed up in the product.

During the summer, I got a call from our principal, Kathie Thompson.  It began with "Keep an open mind when I tell you this."  This is hardly an encouraging start to a conversation.  She told me that they wanted me to teach yearbook that year.  I asked if it mattered that I didn't know what I was doing, and she said that no one else did either.  Since I believe you can't judge anything on its first year, I agreed to give it two years.  I thought I could re-evaluate at that point whether or not it would be a good idea to continue.

I learned more about the computer that year than I have learned in ANY other year of my life.  Second place would be the year we began our one to one laptop program.  I learned about folders and subfolders and network drives.  I learned about pop up blockers and editing tools and software.  I learned about managing a long term project in a way I had never learned before.  I was still shooting with a film camera back then (and a dinky little 2.0 Megapixel that wasn't good for much), so I would take the film to Eckard Drug and have them make a disc.  At that time, Jostens' online program was in its Beta phase, so we could only upload one photo at a time.  I also had a large number of students who didn't really want to take yearbook; they had turned in their elective forms late and were given their third or fourth choice.  You have no idea how much I cherished the few diligent workers I had that year.  I'm not sure I would have been able to continue if it hadn't been for the Clark girls, Amy Prall, and two of the three Edwards boys.

Here I sit, ten years later, a week after submitting my 10th yearbook.  Things have certainly changed.  1. First, a plug for Jostens.  I'm sure other yearbook companies are fine and dandy, but I wouldn't leave Jostens for all the tea in China.  Every year, they ask what your dream function would be for their system, and they implement most of them, often within the next year.  They are ALL about customer service.  I have gotten calls from the plant where the book is printed because they found an error and want to know how we would like to go about fixing it.  I have great relationships with both our local rep and the plant rep.  If you ever need to make a yearbook, use Jostens!

2.  I now use a digital Nikkon 3500 DSLR.  I have a 18-55mm lens, a 50-200mm lens, and a 70-330mm lens (great for soccer and baseball).  I take about 25000 pictures per year, which would have been very expensive with film.

3.  I have students (mostly) who signed up for yearbook because they want to be part of the excellence of the program.  They like the feeling of producing something.  I can usually tell who is going to be editor their senior year during their freshman year.

4.  The school has grown, grown, grown.  My first yearbook was 88 pages.  We had about 15 athletic teams.  Our middle and high school grades had only one section, and elementary grades had two.  We had fine arts programs, but we covered each of them in about half a page.  We did our best to spread out the coverage, but we had no way of knowing exactly how many times someone was in the book without physically counting them, which we did not do.  The book we just finished had 145 pages, including 24 athletic teams,  three sections of EVERY grade, and double page spreads for EACH fine art.  Due to an upgrade in Jostens system (Have I mentioned how much I love Jostens?), we are able to tag every photo and then run their coverage report.  We KNOW that every student is pictured at least three times in the yearbook.

Lots of other things have changed too, but these are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.  Yearbook has become such a central part of my life that I'm not sure what I would do without it.  What I like most is that it has kept me connected to the entire school.  I am in and out of all  classrooms across all grade levels, so I know what great things are happening in our classes.  I am at least two games/matches of every sport, so I know what is happening in our athletics.  I am at almost every theater, band, and chorus performance, so I can tell you the amazing work they are doing.  Yes, it is more work than I ever knew was possible, but it has embroidered GRACE on my heart as thoroughly as the logo is embroider on my shirts.

Thanks so much to Kathie Thompson for changing my life.  I love it and hope for ten more.

Growing in the SAMR Model

My school has a one to one MacBook program.  Every student that I teach brings a school issued lap top to class, and we do many different kinds of things using technology.  There are good ways to do this, and there are bad ways to do this.

The first year of our program (four years ago) was amazing.  We all learned new tools and how to express the same material in new ways.  Kids were making videos left and right, and it was all new and exciting.  As happens with many projects, we reached a plateau.  In the second year, we reverted into what was comfortable while keeping a sort of veneer of technology over it.  This is the way to fail with technology.  Our awesome technology team recognized this and made sure that we would keep growing.

Enter the SAMR model.  If you are in education, you probably know what the SAMR model is and can skip this paragraph.  For the uninitiated, SAMR stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition.  As you move from one level to another, you increase thinking level, creative skills, 21st century tool usage, etc.  An example of Substitution would be taking notes on the computer.  It is essentially the same as taking notes on paper with some slight improvements (search ability, the ability to input pictures, etc).  Augmentation means that the technology provides a feature that couldn't have been done to the same project (e.g. inputting links to youtube videos to augment written work).  Where you want to be is called "above the line" because the M and R portions of the model bring you into the good pedagogical places.

That first year of the program, we had jumped from nothing to the S and A levels of the scale.  It was exciting because it was new.  Jumping straight to M and R would have been overwhelming for everyone, so it was appropriate that we were at that level in the first year.  After that plateau, our awesome tech team (Can you tell I like them?) encouraged us to LEVEL UP!  They made it fun by inventing "missions" that we could earn badges for completing.  The missions involve using new tools, watching TED talks on education, speaking at a faculty meeting about technology, etc.  We earn the badges by doing discussion board posts.

Another addition was the technology integration meeting.  Each quarter, we meet with the media/tech specialist to discuss how we would like to implement technology and how she can help us do it.  At our first meeting this year, I wanted to hit the R on the SAMR model.  R means Redefinition.  It means accomplishing something that was unthinkable before we began using technology in the classroom.  We decided that we would have my 8th grade make their own website about the chemical elements.

In my next post, I'll tell you how that website is going.

Hyperlinking Brains - Part 2

In my last post, I talked about why I decided to write my own textbook for 8th grade as a way of taking advantage of their hyperlink prone minds.  I have now been using the book for one semester, so I cannot yet fully speak to how it is going but I do have a few observations about it.  I also have some advice for anyone out there who would like to try for themselves.

My Observations
1.  On the first day of school, the kids are super impressed.  When your textbook was written by your teacher, you think that person is an expert whether they are or not.  I have tried to tell them that it isn’t like I had to get it published, but they don’t get that. 
2.  All media is in one place (offline).  Our school as a great LMS where I can put videos and other resources; but you have to be online to get to them.  Having them in the book has been great because they don’t have to be online to use it.  This means they can still do their homework on an athletic bus or if the network goes down.
3.  I was able to use the analogies, mnemonic devices, examples, and stories in the book that I think work well with the material.  If you have been teaching longer than two years, you have a favorite analogy for double replacement reactions, an acronym that you love for helping kids remember a list, a great example of iambic pentameter, or the perfect illustration that helps your kids wrap their minds around the meaning of manifest destiny.  These are rarely things you got from your textbook because they have to use pretty bland or generic examples to avoid problems.  If you write your own, you get to include what works for you.
4.  The kids are more likely to read it because they know (and like, hopefully) you. 
5.  It is editable.  Because I was trying to get this done for this year, I didn’t have time to the proofing I would have liked.  As a result, I have found spelling errors and grammatical issues while using the book this year.  I remind the kids that they are the guinea pig group and encourage them to point them out.  I will be able to fix it for next year.  Better than that, I can edit the content for next year.  If I find a video that better illustrates a point than the one I have, I can replace it.  If I go to a national park and see a good analogy that I never thought of before, I can add it to the book.  I can update the book as often as I want to re-issue it.  For me that will be only once a year, but that is still better than the printed textbooks I was using 6 years in a row before replacing them.
6. 


The hyperlinks.  You may remember that this was the reason I started this to begin with.  I wanted to include links for students so that they could explore something if they found it interesting.  These are screen shots of a couple of pages.  Each red word you see is a link.   They mostly lead to wikipedia pages, although I did include a few for How Stuff Works, WebMD, dictionary.com, and the Physics Classroom as well as some other sites I thought might be of interest.  While writing, I learned some interesting things that I wouldn’t have time or space to include in a book, but including a link allows anyone who finds the thought as interesting as I did to explore it.  For example, when researching about the early days of NASA, I found that we built it from an already existing organization called NACA, which had been the governing body for airplane flight.  I don’t have time to teach them this, but if they find it interesting, they can link to the NACA wikipedia page.  I don’t know how many of those the kids have taken advantage of, but it is an option for them.  When I survey my kids at the end of the year, it is something I intend to ask.

Advice
If you’re a teacher with Mac access, let me recommend that you take advantage of iBooks author to make some content of your own.  You don’t necessarily need to write an entire textbook.  Perhaps, there is one unit in your book that you feel is weak.  You could just make your own chapter for that.  Here’s some advice if you are up for the challenge.

1.  Organize your thoughts first.  Remember making outlines for research papers?  It’s still a good idea, but now you can do it in a way that is a little more helpful.  I dedicated a jump drive to the book.  I made a folder for each chapter.  Within that chapter, I made folders for each section.  I put a document or two in each folder.  If you have videos that you use frequently, you might want to include those too.  I already had those separated by chapter on my Mac, so I didn’t use jump drive space for that.
2.  However long you think it is going to take, it will take longer.  This isn’t a weekend project for the weekend before you start the chapter, at least not if you want to do it well.  I made doing the entire book a summer project and got through about two thirds of it.  If I hadn’t had other goals for the summer, I probably could have finished it; but it was more time consuming than I imagined. 
3.  Let the links come to you as you write.  I started making a list of links before I began writing, but as I wrote, I found that it was really easier to let them lead me.  As I was writing an example, I would want to look it up.  I figured if I wanted to look it up, the kids might too and included it.  If I had limited myself to the planned material, I wouldn’t have as much good stuff.

4.  Don’t feel like you have to write in order.  If you are putting your writing in documents and then copying and pasting them into iBooks Author (which I recommend), you don’t need to write it in order.  Start with what you are most comfortable with writing.  It gives you some momentum.  Write the chapter you taught this week this weekend while it is still fresh in your mind.  When I was trying to start with chapter 1, I made little progress.  It was too daunting.  When I started with my favorite chapter, it was much easier to get going.

If your kids have Macs with Mavericks, they have iBooks to read.  If not, you can export to pdf.  The videos won’t work, but everything else will.  Some of my kids parents have asked for it on pdf because they have windows machines at their home and would like a “printed copy.”  I don’t know if they ever print it, but they can if they want to.

Don’t be afraid of this.  It seems scary, but it is really taking what you already know, teach, and do and putting into a lovely and accessible format.