Name Changing

I have always said that if I was ever going to write a book about education, it would be called "On the Rabbit Trail."  I believe and have always believed that is where the real learning happens no matter what our curriculum is.  I was doing a professional development thing a few days ago when the question was asked, "How do you feel about rabbit trails in your classroom?" While thinking about that, I decided that my blog title didn't reflect my philosophy of education the way I wanted it to.

Like a middle school girl, I've decided to change the name of this blog to better represent what it is  becoming.  When I first started, I thought I might post about non-school things as well; but this has really become more about my teaching experiences than anything else.  I also don't feel like my ramblings are as random as I thought they might be when I started blogging.

The address will remain the same because I thought changing it might delete my previous posts, but the title is now "On the Rabbit Trail."  I hope my thoughts will help you catch some rabbits in your own classes.

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.

What We Learned From "The Dress" - A Yearbook Teacher's Point of View

"The Dress" has had its fifteen minutes of fame (extended a bit by the snow day effect) and is about to go away.  Before it does, I would like to take a minute to reflect on what it can teach us about pictures.

There are ubiquitous phrases in the world that are wrong despite their massive use.  "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" might make you feel better when you are going through a hard time, but it just isn't true.  One of the most meaningless phrases is "Pictures Don't Lie."  I can tell you a a person who takes 20 thousand pictures a year that pictures lie all the time.  I'm not even talking about photoshopped, airbrushed, intentionally manipulate pictures; I'm talking about the pictures you snap and post to instragram without touching them.

The picture of the cute bird sitting in a tree in your yard makes it seem like you live in a Disney movie (or at least in a country chalet somewhere).  You don't.  What is out of frame in that shot?  Is it the trash can or the car?  I have students who will tell me that I shouldn't come and take pictures at a certain game because they are going to lose that one.  Are the shots I take of the batter at the plate really going to look different if they are winning?  Not unless I include the scoreboard in the shot, which is hard to do with it being on the other side of the field.  When I take yearbook pictures, I don't include the onfield injury, the student who is crying, or the mom who just had to dress up like a princess too because she made the kindergarten event about her.  Therefore, what you choose to include or exclude from a picture can make the picture lie.  Despite this, I still here "Pictures don't lie" about twenty times a year.

Enter "The Dress."  Everyone who viewed this picture was looking at the same thing.  They were perceiving it differently, but they were all looking at the same thing.  If you want to know the science of why different people saw different colors, click this link (http://www.livescience.com/49980-dress-color-explainer.html).  My point is this.  If people looking at the same photo can't agree on what they are seeing, how can we expect to believe all pictures?  The next time there is a tabloid photo, a picture on the evening news, or a photo that went viral, remember The Dress.  Ask yourself if you are absolutely sure that picture is telling you the entire story before you snap to an instant opinion.

The Right Number of Snow Days

I have taught in both Tulsa, Oklahoma and Raleigh, NC.  Neither of these areas gets a lot of snow.  That means things pretty much shut down whenever it does snow.

I'm going to tell you a secret.  Teachers love the first snow day more than the students do.  We do a little dance when the call comes in.  We also really like the second snow day.

After that - not so much.  Then, we start worrying about getting behind and make up days.  Don't fall for the line "built into the calendar" as that is a phrase without meaning.  We start thinking about when we will move tests to and what can be reasonably skipped.  When we come back, we move really quickly through the material.

Students probably like as many snow days as possible, but there does reach a point where it is going to be more difficult for them than it would have been.  My school assigns things to AP students digitally on snow days, and they tell me it is more work than what they get at school.  Last year, we had a total of 7 snow days.  That was bonkers.  There were entire chapters we didn't get to in all of my classes.  This year, we are coming off of three in a row (on a Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday).  I'm good now.  I don't need any more.  I know I don't have any control over it; but if I did, I'd say let's go ahead and have spring now.

The perfect number of snow days is 2 - in a row if possible.  If there must be a third, it should be a couple of weeks later.

Let Them See You Sweat

I know I am showing my age here, but remember the old Arid deodorant ad, whose tag line was "Never let 'em see you sweat"?  This is certainly good advertising for antiperspirant, but it is terrible advice for effective teaching.

When we first go into the classroom, we all want the kids to think we know everything.  We want them to believe we are never wrong, never make a mistake, and never don't know the answer to a question.  This is nothing but an ego trip, and the sooner you drop it, the more enjoyable your classroom experience will be.  Of course you get answers wrong and make typos on tests.  You are a person, not a programmable teaching robot.

This is about more, however, than just admitting you are human.  There are pedagogical reasons for letting the kids see you make mistakes.  They also get to see you fix them.  If all we ever present to them is perfect pre-solved problems, they never see the thought process behind solving the problems.  My weakest area in physics has always been electricity.  I have such a tenuous grasp on voltage that it can be completely undone by a question.  I have to review Kirchoff's Rules for circuits every year before I teach it.  Last year, because of our seven stinkin' snow days, I forgot to review it.  In the middle of the first example of a combination circuit, I realized I was doing it wrong.  I had to stop and ask the kids to let me think for a minute.  I talked through the problem out loud, reminded myself of the rules, undid what I did wrong, and confessed to the kids that this had always been difficult for me.  This threw them for a minute, but I said, "Let's do another one, so you can actually see one worked correctly from beginning to end."  I think it was important for them to see this thought process happening in front of them.  When they went home to work similar problems, they probably got stuck along the way too.  They won't feel dumb if they know that the teacher also gets stuck in the same spot.

This is not to say you should intentionally mess things up just so kids can see it.  They know an act when they see one.  This just means that when the inevitable happens, the way you react to it will have an impact on them.  If you try to fake it, they will not respect that.  If you get upset that you were wrong, you teach them to fear being wrong (which, in turn, teaches them not to learn anything new).  If you take the time to solve the problem, you teach them to solve problems.

SAMR 2 - Website Boogaloo

Last week, I explained the SAMR model.  It is a method of approaching use of technology in the classroom.  If you are just substituting tech for something you already do and it doesn't significantly change what the student is doing, you aren't getting the most of your technology.

My tech goal for the year is to get to the R at least one time per class this year.  One time in a year doesn't seem like a big goal, but R means Redefinition.  It means fundamentally changing the instruction to something that could not have been done before the technology existed.

In physics, we will be doing this in the form of a challenged based learning activity on electricity.  They will have to figure out how to provide consistent electricity if they lived in Haiti or somewhere else where municipal electricity is not reliably consistent.  Sean, our technology specialist lived in Haiti, so he will come and speak to them to present "the problem."  Students will then have to research available resources and figure out on their own how to solve the problem.  They can contact experts to answer questions using social media or skype.  Some elements of this could not have been done by students in a classroom before technology existed.

In 8th grade, we already started this year's project.  My students are making their own website about the periodic table elements.  Some of them are designers.  Others are proof readers.  Some are seeking media to show chemical reactions for the elements.  One group of students is even managing the work flow of the others by setting goals.  While this project is not even close to being finished, I have already been happily surprised by some of the results.

1.  Using Weebly, the students were able to do some great designing really easily.  Recently, a student opened it and said, "It doesn't look like a bunch of 8th graders did it."
2.  When students tell you what job they would be interested in doing, they take more ownership of it and do a much better job.
3.  You might be surprised at the job they want.  I have a student who speaks very little in class.  She isn't exactly shy, just not overly extroverted.  I was surprised when she told me she would want to be on the team that manages work flow.  It turns out that she is great at it.  She has set goals for when things would be due, sent e-mails to other members of the team, and then communicated those goals to the teams to which they apply.
4.  Knowing something will be public makes them do a much better job.  We've been talking about this since the beginning of our program - that real work for real audiences will make them care more than assigned work for only their teacher.  Knowing it and experiencing it are two very different things.  They are much more likely to fix an error because they know this will be public.
5.  When the teacher doesn't know the answer to something, kids do better problem solving.  Kids always want me to lead them to the "right answer" on a lot of things.  Some of that is laziness, and some of it is the belief that the teacher knows everything.  I've never made a website before, so it was easy to say "I don't know" to a lot of their questions.  When is the design due?  I don't know how long it takes to design.  When will we finish the site?  I don't know how long it takes to make a site.  The design kids, in particular, worked quite diligently because they knew that no one else could add to the site until they were finished.  If I had given them a month, they would have taken it.  My not knowing how long it should take made them do it as quickly as they could.

This website will not be finished at the end of this school year.  I had only 44 8th grade students at the time we started, so there will only be 44 elements on the site.  Next year's 8th grade will have different elements assigned to them.  Since there are currently 114 known elements, we may not actually finish with this website for three years.  The 8th graders who started this will be sophomores in chemistry at that time.  They will be able to use their own site to help them in their high school class.  There will be some connection between three years of my students.  This is all pretty cool to me whether or not it ends up meaning anything to them.