Innovation in Education

Several weeks ago, I posted about traditions in education and promised a future post on innovation.  Since this exam week (and I didn't really want to post about that), I thought this might be a good time to discuss innovation in the classroom.

First, let's address this.  Innovation in the classroom is not new.  It just happens at a faster rate now than ever before, so it looks different.  When teachers started using paper instead of slates in their classrooms, they were trying something new.  When slide rules were replaced with calculators, it was innovative and scary, and there were people who thought it would be the downfall of math.

This brings me to the second point I want to address.  Innovation is, has been, and always will be - scary.  Think about the last time you did something you had never done before (cooking class, new job, new exercise program).  It is always off putting at best.  This is because of an educational concept I teach the kids.  It is called mental disequilibrium.  Most of the time, you walk around with a brain that is in reasonable balance.  When you encounter something new (or upsetting, like a fight with a friend), the balance is thrown off a bit.  After you have had time to practice with the new thing or adjust to the upsetting thing, your brain returns to a state of balance with the new information or skill.  That is what learning is - throwing off and then restoring the balance.   The statement I make to my kids is, "If you are never confused, you are never learning."


Guess what, folks.  This isn't just for the kids.   We also need to learn new things, change old habits, and try something scary.  For some reason, we expect to never be confused again after we have a diploma in our hands.  Maybe, that is because we only ever viewed education as a way to get a job and think once we have that job, we no longer need to learn anything.  That is just stupid, but I'll save that for another post.

Innovation - trying new things - even when we are afraid to fail - letting things be confusing until they aren't any more - These are the things that make us human.  We are made in the image of a God who creates.  What makes us think we wouldn't create as well?  There isn't a special class of creative people because we are all made in the image of a creative God.  We must model this for our students by trying new things in our classrooms.

Traditions are important.  I posted about that weeks ago, but innovation is what keeps the human race moving forward.  We harnessed the power of fire, invented the wheel, invented the telephone, invented the airplane, went to the moon, invented the internet, and whatever comes next because that is what God has put within us all.

As teachers, we must teach innovation by modeling innovation.  We all had a teacher who had taught for 25 years but really had just taught one year 25 times.  That person was NOT our favorite teacher.  He or she did what was easiest, not necessarily what was best.  We must show them how to overcome the fear of failure by trying something new, even if it flops.

I am in a school that encourages this.  We have the freedom to try something new and then mop it up if it makes a mess.  Our IT department gives us missions to try new technological tools, and we get badges (and sometimes prizes) when we do.  If I need to talk over a new idea, they are there for that.  If I ask them to come to my room while we try it the first time, they are there for that too.  They are super helpful.  Our administration supports us when we try new things and helps us figure out how to clean it up if it doesn't work.  They also know that sometimes it may not work the first time but will work next year because we learn from our mistakes.  Our principal, Mandy Gill, in particular, is one of the best problem solvers I have ever known.  If we run into a problem with something we are trying, she doesn't just have us drop it; she helps us figure out how to fix it.  Other teachers are helpful as well.  There is absolutely new competition between our teachers; so if you need a sounding board or a partner on something new, they are are all totally up for it.

Because of this atmosphere, I think we are school of creativity; and I believe our students have absorbed that spirit as well.  They have learned to overcome the fear of new things, and I can't think of anything that will help them more in the post school world than that.

The Game is Not Over

Monday afternoon I went to photograph our middle school basketball teams at a home game.  I did what I often do when there are back to back games.  I got there for the second half of the girls game and stayed through the first half of the boys game.  At half time of the boys game, I often decide whether or not I will stay based on the score.  If we are really far ahead or behind, I usually make the decision to go home and eat dinner.  When I left this game, we were far enough behind that I believed I wouldn't miss any dramatic moments.

I was wrong.

The next morning, I see a video posted on Twitter from the last seconds of the game.  During the last few minutes, our boys had mounted a comeback and achieved a 42-42 tie.  In the last second, this seventh grader, figuring there was nothing to lose by shooting chucked the ball from almost half a court away.  In the video, it doesn't even look like the ball is heading in the right direction until - swish - it dropped right in the basket.  The place went nuts.  Our varsity team was there to see it.  The kid was a hero.  It was simply an amazing moment.  I missed it because I thought I knew what was going to happen.

We all experience situations in our lives in which we believe we know what is going to happen. If we envision a negative result, we sometimes give up.  It is certainly easier to quit a job that stick with one through a difficult time.  It seems easier to quit a relationship that is going through a difficult time than it would be to see it through.  The problem with that logic is that when you bail out, you never experience the comeback.

If our boys had gone into the locker room at half time and taken a vote to go home because they were losing, it certainly would have been easier.  They would have gone home, had dinner, listened to their moms tell them that they were special anyway.  It would have been easier, but it would not have been better.  There would be no video on Twitter.  There would been no crowd cheering.  There would have been no hero moment.  There isn't a hero until a situation arises that requires a hero.

Instead, those boys went into the locker room and decided to turn things around.  This wasn't easy.  They had to overcome the momentum already established by the other team.  They had to increase their defense and their offense at the same time.  They had to overcome their own psychology from being behind the first half.  The kid who made that last shot knew it might not go in, and he had to be okay with that.  None of this was easy.  

Recognizing that the game is not over is an important life skill.  Starting the year with a bad grade doesn't mean you will end the year with one.  Starting the year with a badly behaved class doesn't mean you have give up and keep it that way.  Turning it around isn't easy, but it is the only way to win.  Nothing worth having is easy.

Too Much but Not Enough

The three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas break are just a little strange.  The kids just a got a taste of the coming break, and they are counting down the days until Christmas.  Even though we should be well rested from having the Thanksgiving holidays, we aren't.  Thanksgiving is not super restful even if you do slip into a tryptophan coma after lunch.  It's too hectic to be restful.

I am in a school that is committed to having first semester exams before Christmas break, and I am glad for that.  I have experienced both before and after Christmas exams both as a teacher and as a student, and it is immeasurably better to have them before the holidays.  However, it creates a  predicament in these weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We have too much time and not enough time.

We left for thanksgiving with two chapters left in my 8th grade curriculum.  There is not enough time to do those two chapters justice.  They are on solutions and on acids and bases.  However, there is too much time to just stop here and start reviewing for exams.  That would be waaaaaaay to much reviewing.  You may be thinking teach one of the chapters and save the other one for after Christmas, but these two chapters are extremely connected.  It would also create a situation in May where I would have to eliminate the teaching of magnets (and if there were any snow days in second semester, eliminate the teaching of electricity as well).  This is not desirable; I would much rather teach electricity than solutions.   I am pretty sure the kids wouldn't want to give up electricity either.

I am not in a unique position here.  Every teacher is making choices right now.  What do I include?  What do I exclude?  How fast can I teach it and not kill the kids?  It feels strange, but this is actually something we do every day all year long.  We just don't feel it at the other times because an approaching deadline has special psychological powers. 

Leonard Bernstein is credited with saying, "To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time."  I think it ties in with the English proverb, "Necessity is the mother of invention."  We, as human beings, rarely do anything until we have to - until there is something pushing us to do it - until we think it may not be possible. 

Deadlines are amazing.  They are when we figure out how to do too much with too little.  They are when we figure out what is essential. 

Thanksgiving for Educators

In honor of Thanksgiving week, I thought I would take some time on this blog to thank many of the people who have shaped my educational journey.  Whatever I am as teacher, I owe to these people.  I feel certain I will forget some, so please charge that to my head and not my heart as it is 7AM on a Monday morning.

Mrs. Doane 1st grade) - Even though I was almost as tall as you were, I looked up to you because you showed me that you not only loved us, but loved teaching us.

Mr. Tom Dorrin (6th grade) - You taught me that I didn't have to take myself so seriously.  I know other people thought your teasing me was terrible, but I loved every minute it of it.

Mr. Jim Freeman (8th grade science and PE) - You taught me that you can be serious about important  things and silly about others.  My favorite memory of you was this conversation:
"Beth, you throw like a girl."
"But Mr. Freeman, I am a girl."
"Well, that's just something you're going to have to overcome, now isn't it."
I still can't throw, but my memory of this conversation teaches me that I don't have to use something as an excuse just because it is true.

Mr. Danny Watkins (7th and 8th grade history - homeroom for many years) - You taught me that if you teach what you love and show how much you love it, others will love it too.  As an adult, I stood in a museum with tears running down my face as I looked at the crown of Empress Alexandra because of what I learned from you.  You are the reason I look forward to convention every year.

Mr. Don Sandberg (9th grade science) - You taught me the power of curiosity (mostly by putting up with all of my questions).  You weren't afraid to treat a freshman like they were capable of deep thought.  As a result, I wanted to think more deeply just to impress you.  I now teach the same subject you taught me, and I think of you often.  Sometimes, I ask myself, "How would Mr. Sandberg teach this?"

Mr. Jim Barbara (physics)  - I teach with a photo of you hanging over my desk.  When I hear people say they don't like physics, I know it is because they didn't have someone like you for it.  You taught me that this very difficult subject was also really interesting and fun.  You made me look forward to last period every day.

Mrs. Catherine Klehm (college chemistry professor and science education adviser) - You taught me the structure of teaching, without which I would just be flying by the seat of my pants.  Thanks for teaching me how to evaluate textbooks, how to plan a lesson, and how to convey bigger issues than just the factual information.

Dr. Stephen M. King (college government professor and briefly my pastor) - You let me enroll in your class even though you weren't sure why a science education major was taking a higher level government class.  I think of you often (particularly when the Supreme Court issues any kind of opinion).

Mr. Stephen Matthews (my first principal) - I wouldn't have survived my first two years without your grace, humor, and humility.  No matter how badly I had blown it, you always had a story about a time when you had done the same thing.  You made me feel like I could always be a better teacher than I was.  I'm glad I didn't throw up on your shows at our interview because I couldn't have asked for a better first principal.

Mrs. Teresa Alsbrook (my first principal at GRACE) - Thanks for taking a chance on hiring me when you had no reason to (other than thinking I would be a good fit).

Mrs. Kathie Thompson (the elementary principal at GRACE) - Thank you for assigning the yearbook to me when I had no idea what I was doing.  My life changed that day in ways I would have never dreamed.  Thanks also for bringing me to camp every year and showing what love of children really looks like.

All my school friends (teachers, librarian, IT people, administrators, etc.)  - You inspire me every day with your energy, imagination, love, passion, and willingness to try new things.  Harry Wong said, "Great teachers aren't born.  They are made by the teacher next door."  To all of you, thanks for everything you have taught me about teaching.

Traditions in Education

Most of the talk at education conferences, TED talks, education blogs, and curriculum planning meetings is about innovation.  How are we using 21st century tools in education?  What are we doing that is different from the way we did it.  All of that is good and right and valuable and will be the topic of a different post.

This post is about traditions.

I am a physics teacher, and today is Egg Drop Day.  If you teach physics, took physics, or know a physics teacher, you do not have to ask what I am talking about.  Egg Drop is so much a part of
physics classes that it borders on cliche (okay, it is well across the border).  Despite the fact that it is  freezing on the roof, it is one of my favorite days of the year.  Have we innovated in this assignment?  Sure.   I now require video evidence of their building the project themselves.  Will I ever change it to a different project - absolutely not.  I would never cancel or eliminate this project from the curriculum.  The only way I wouldn't go on the roof is if I were physically unable to climb the ladder (even though I am terrified of the ladder).  There are certain staples in certain classes without which you cannot claim to have taken that class.  For physics, this is the one.  Pick a class, and you can think of them as well.

- Earth Science has volcanoes and solar system models (now sans Pluto). 
- Everyone in Physical Science builds a model of the atom.  
- Art has self portraits.- Who goes through Biology without making a cell model?  That would be nobody.
- English has Shakespeare and the five paragraph essay.  - Everyone who got through fifth grade has done a state history project.
- What school wouldn't take their kids to see the dinosaurs at the natural history museum?  
- You probably grew a sunflower in second grade science.

You did these.  I did these.  Your grandchildren will do these.  Why do teachers assign the same projects year after year?  And not just one teacher, all the teachers in that subject area round the country?  Students probably think it is because teachers are lazy, not wanting to think of new ideas.  I assure you that it is not that.  We actually love coming up with new things.  We live to innovate (later - I promise).  There is a reason that we read the same papers and grade the same models year after year.

Tradition matters.

As we learned from Fiddler on the Roof, tradition matters.  It gives us landmarks.  It gives us shared stories.  Traditions connect people.  If you and I both memorized the Marc Anthony speech from Julius Caesar, we have a shared memory - even if we recited them twenty years and a thousand miles apart from each other.  As soon as someone mentions "Train A and Train B" and the speed they are traveling, all adults conjure up memories of algebra.  What my kids got from today (aside from a knowledge of impulse and wind burn) was a connection.  They are now connected to generations of physics students past and future. 

Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance is just a fun term to say.  Try it.  Say it out loud right now.  What does it mean?

According to Wikipedia, it is "the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values."

According to Dictionary.com, it is "anxiety that results from simultaneously holding contradictory or otherwise incompatible attitudes, beliefs, or the like."

To teach is to live your life filled with contradiction.  Each and every day, you are given confusing and contradictory messages by students, parents, administrations, brain research, and the community.  Some examples:

- Research shows homework to be either critical, damaging, or irrelevant - depending on which study you read.
- Adolescents should sleep later, but high schools start earlier than elementary schools.  - Students want hands on learning, but they want you to tell them what they should have learned from their lab so they can write the report.  
- Parents want their child to have hands on learning but then complain when their kids have projects.
- Parents complain if their child has too many assignments.  If their average is too low, however, they will request extra work.
- A parent who was also a board member once told me that I was keeping his son/daughter off the honor roll.  In the next sentence, he told me that we weren't challenging our students enough.
- We keep adding to the curriculum because of new skills that need to be learned.  We don't want to take the old things out of the curriculum.  No one wants to add days to the school year or hours to the day.
- I teach 8th grade.  Several years ago, a parent who called a meeting about their child's grade told me that 8th grade "doesn't matter anyway."  
- When one student makes an 85 on a test, I jump up and down and e-mail them to celebrate.  When a different student makes the same grade, I brace myself for the tears that will surely be cried at my desk.   
- I am in a one to one laptop school, but the research says we should limit our screen time.
- Don't make your classes to hard, but make sure they are fully prepared for college. 
- Every study of learning says that you should connect all new knowledge to previous knowledge, but Common Core says that is unfair to those who haven't had the opportunity to experience things that would give them prior knowledge.
- We are told daily to differentiate instruction, but we assess them with standardized tests. 

There are more examples.  If you are a teacher, you can think of more.  There are probably some that are specific to your grade or subject.  They actually come up every single day.  For sixteen years, I have held multiple contradictory ideas in my head as I teach.  No wonder I am so tired at the end of the day.  According to the definitions above, I should be suffering from an anxiety disorder.   

Now, I am going to go observe another teacher in order to tell them what they are doing well but not to evaluate their performance.

The Poster By My Desk

Next to my desk, I have a sign that the school gave to me. If you can't read it, in this picture, it says,
"Rethink Teaching"
1.  Share everything (or at least something)
2.  Discover, don't deliver, the curriculum.
3.  Talk to strangers.
4.  Be a master learner.
5.  Real work for real audiences.
6.  Transfer the power.

After I got past laughing at the lines Share Everything and Talk to Strangers (because we were hanging this in classrooms where students would read them), I started trying to implement these ideas.

It is impossible for someone who has been teaching for a while to change their entire approach to pedagogy at once.  Thankfully, I am in a school that recognizes that.  They encourages us to add to our repertoire and make some changes each quarter or alter existing assignments to reflect what we are learning about pedagogy.  This blog has been an attempt at achieving number 1 - Share everything (or at least something).  It is my attempt to let others in on my reflections as a teacher or share a great new project or idea.  According to blogger's analytics, I have had almost five hundred page views, some of them in Europe.  I don't know how someone in France or Russia or Germany finds my blog (if you are reading this, comment because I really am interested).  But I am happy if it is helping any of you.

A few years ago, at the NC Technology in Education conferences, someone finally convinced me that Twitter had value as an educational tool.  I've been following CERN, FermiLab, NASA, Scientific American, etc.  It has been fun sharing current science news with my students.  I am now encouraging them to follow Reid Wiseman, an astronaut who posts phenomenal pictures from the International Space Station.  Number 3 - Talking to strangers - Check.

I've always been a learner.  All the courses you hated in college because they were general ed - I LOVED them!  I like knowing things.  Whether it is how microphones and speakers work to why the Mary in Michelangelo's Pieta is so large, I love knowing things.  Number 4 - Be a master learner - This wasn't a shift I had to make.

Recently, I started my first REAL attempt at #5 - Real work for real audiences.  I have been a yearbook teacher for 10 years, so that class has always produced real work for a real audience.  I don't count that because it is inherent in the class and not something I have to try to do.

This year, I decided I wanted us to contribute to the internet, not just consume from it.  To that end, my eighth grade classes are producing a website.  We've only just begun it, so I don't know yet how it is working.  It was great to listen to them working on it.  Each student had the job of either writing or proofing or searching for media.  Some will be editors, and others are managing the work flow of their classmates.  Listening to a girl who rarely speaks set goals and deadlines and deliver that information to each of the other teams was a revelation.  I never dreamed she would be a great manager, but she was.  Listening to the writing team plan across three sections what each person would do was quite interesting as each class had different ideas of what method should be used.  They had to work it out amongst themselves on a shared Google Doc and then live with the result - just like working with a group in the work world.  That week, I got to know my students better than I had in the first quarter of the year.

Tomorrow, I am going to do something else I have never done before.  This is also an attempt at number 5 but also at number 6 - Transfer the power.  I am giving my physics students author authority on a blog, which means they can post without my having to read it first.   When we have long term projects, I have always done weekly "Project checkpoints."  They were checks of their progress that only came to me to grade.  This year, I am changing that to a weekly blog about their project.  Of course, I am still the blog administrator (I'm not crazy enough to hand over ALL of the power), but they will have the authority to post without prior approval for the world to see.  I believe they will rise to the occasion, write better because others will see it, and represent themselves well.

You may have noticed that I skipped #2.  That's because it is the one I am having the most trouble with.  Inquiry advocates, forgive me, but not everything is learned well from labs.  Not everything can be a fun activity that somehow reveals the secrets of the universe.  Not every student is Isaac Newton; some of them do have to be told things.  That doesn't mean I'm not trying, but it is the most difficult one of the list.  One of the phrases we have used as we try to shift our thinking is "get off the stage."  Here's the problem - I have spent the last 16 year perfecting my act.  It is finely honed, every story in place, every joke timed as if I were a stand up comic.  It's the thing I know I have down.  How do I get off the stage?  I don't know.  I know I have reduced my stage time as we make room for sharing and talking to strangers and blogging and all the other good things, but I don't know that I can ever completely give it up.  I'm not fully sold on the idea that I should - after all, I do actually know more than they do, and I do know how to explain it well.

I may never feel completely smooth with all six of these ideas or spend all my time above the line on the SAMR model.  I may never spend all my time in the high end of Bloom's taxonomy or use the Socratic method in a way that would make Socrates proud.  I do know that if students see me remain a life long learner, they will be more likely to become lifelong learners as well.

Community Service Day

Today is Community Service Day at GRACE.  That means every student in our high school was somewhere sharing the love of Jesus by serving our community, and our middle school students packed meals for Stop Hunger Now.  Since I am the yearbook adviser, I spent the day driving from place to place, photographing our kids and teachers as they served.   This is one of my favorite parts of being a yearbook teacher. 

One of the reasons I love this part of my job is the timing.  Ask any teacher, and they might tell you (if they are brave) that there reaches a point in the year when they begin to wonder what else they might have been good at or that they sometimes ask the question, "Why do we have students at this school?"  That part of the year comes at a different time for everyone, but for me, it is usually early October.  First quarter is drawing to a close, and I start feeling like Charlie Brown's teacher.  Getting this day at this time reminds me that we really do have great kids at this school.


The other reason I love this is because this generation that is often entitled serves well.  They don't choose this, but they do it cheerfully.  They have fun with each other and with the people they serve.  We usually get very positive feedback from the organizations we serve about how nice our kids are and how they would love to have them again.

I also love that kids get to know about some of these charities they would otherwise not have known about.  It shows them that there are people out there serving all the time.  It shows them that there are people who make service their lives.  The last time I got to serve with them, I discovered something about one of our organizations that I did not know - that they go through several thousand plastic bags a week.   When we returned home, we started collecting them to deliver to this ministry.  We have all learned about charities we never knew before.


Perhaps my most favorite part of the day is watching the kids interact with their teachers.  They have fun serving together and really enjoy each other.  This is always one of the hallmarks of GRACE, but it is even more fun to see in situations outside the classroom.  It happens at other times too, but there is something exceptionally special about seeing it in the context of service. 

Being a yearbook teacher means I get to see our teachers and kids on their best days.  I get to be there for the things they are proud of.  On days like today, they give me hope.


Please support any of the great charities we served today.
- Stop Hunger Now
- Thrift N Gift
- With Love From Jesus
- Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC
- Threshold Club House
- Reality Ministries
- Guardian Angel Thrift
- Mabopane Foundation
- Christian Life Home
- Lanier Home for Ladies
- Mercer Home for Men
- Habitat for Humanity
- Interfaith Food Shuttle

The New Professional Development

I feel like this blog is becoming entirely about how much things have changed in education during my 16 years.  So be it.  This post is about how much professional development has changed.

I started teaching in Oklahoma in 1998.  At that time, you had one day each semester, called Professional Development Day.  I was in a large and well funded district, so our development days happened on campus.  You picked a topic or speaker you wanted to see.  I think there were four sessions per day.  If you found out there was a seminar you might like to attend, that could happen; but that was all the development you were going to get.  I'm not criticizing this.  It was the only way to do it.  The internet hadn't blown up yet into what it is today.

When I started teaching at GRACE, one of the negatives on my end of year evaluation was that I didn't seek out professional development.  I couldn't disagree.  It never occurred to me to seek it out.  Both schools I had taught in before said, "It is professional development day.  Go over there and learn."

Now, there is development opportunity EVERYWHERE!  As I write this, I am listening to a podcast about teaching.  I subscribe to TED talks.  Many of our teachers follow the blogs of other teachers.  My Twitter account doesn't follow the posts of friends.  It follows Fermilab and CERN, Scientific American and Stephen Hawking (He doesn't post much), even astronauts currently on the Space Station.  Our amazing IT people have created professional development for the use of technology tools by giving us missions to fulfill (for which we earn badges) and meeting with every teacher once per quarter to talk about goals.  Even the writing of this blog is part of my professional development because we were encouraged to share as much as possible and talk to strangers.  Some of our teachers follow the blogs of teachers around the world or subscribe to educational hashtags.  Professional development is now a 24/7 experience.

This is a great thing.  The world is changing too fast to expect that you can implement something you learned at a conference without need for constant modification.  The world is changing too fast to only develop two days a year.  The conferences still exist; our faculty will all be attending one this Thursday and Friday.  I was kind of dreading that one until I learned that Harry Wong would be speaking!  For those who don't know, he is Awesome Sauce.  That's not a term I use often, but it just applies to him better than any other word.  The conferences are fine, but they just kind of get me thinking.  The real development happens when I come home from the conference, have a stray thought, and go to Google or YouTube or Free Tech for Teachers or some other great resource.

Develop professionally all the time, every day.  Let your kids develop you.  I have learned about more great tools from them than any workshop.  

Let Them Stress

We are almost at the end of first quarter.  This inevitably leads to one really stressful week for everyone.  Many teachers are trying to get in one last test or one project so that students who haven't done so well on the others can have another grade to provide balance.  It also means that the fall play is this week (and, at GRACE, it means Granparents' Day).  This is the first time in years that I haven't gotten an e-mail of complaint about the stress of this week, so I feel pretty safe posting this blog without anyone thinking I am directing it at them.

Without stress, you die.  Seriously - stress is an important part of being alive.  Response to stressors is one of the criteria that must be met to know if something is alive.  The definition of stress is actually pretty neutral.  It is

"Physiological or biological stress is an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition or a stimulus. Stress is a body's method of reacting to a challenge. According to the stressful event, the body's way to respond to stress is by sympathetic nervous system activation which results in the fight-or-flight response. In humans, stress typically describes a negative condition or a positive condition that can have an impact on a person's mental and physical well-being."

When you are born, light is a stress.  Your eyes haven't adapted to it yet because they haven't needed to.  Yet, no one says, "That poor baby, let's keep it in darkness."  When you first learn to walk, you fall - a lot.  When they cry, we comfort them; but exactly no one says, "My Lord, keep that child sitting.  They shouldn't have the stress of falling down."  Somehow, we get that small people have to experience challenges in order to grow and learn.  Somewhere along the way, however, a lot of people start thinking their children should never be uncomfortable.  While I know that no one wants to see their child upset or in pain or stressed or sad or challenged, I also know that without those things, people do not grow.  No parent sits at home hoping that their child will not grow at all, but they do hope their child never experiences stress.  These are contradictory.

I promise that we, as teachers, do not wish to put excessive stress (which is unhealthy) on your children.  I promise that we are for them and not against them.  I promise that no teacher I have ever worked with has gleefully responded to students being overwhelmed.  I also promise that there is no death certificate anywhere that lists cause of death as "one week of stress" or "too many tests."

Stress is in all our lives and preventing students from experiencing it will not help them as they prepare for adult life.  What will help them is reflection.  Have this conversation with your child next week.  "Wow, last week was really crazy hard, huh?  Look, you are still here.  You made it, and now you have more skills than you had before.  I'm so happy you are growing."

Stepping Up!

About five minutes ago, I was reminded of something I already knew.   It was well worth being reminded of.  This is it.

No matter how well you think you know someone, they can surprise you.

I was sitting in our school's weekly chapel service, and nothing unusual was really happening.  Our speaker was a bit unusual just because he came over from Kenya, but that's not totally weird.  Near the end, our theater teacher got up to announce that tickets for the fall play were on sale.  That's totally normal this time of year.  Part of the cast was going to perform a small selection as advertisement.  We do that every time we have a play, so nothing strange there - until it started.  Then, I was stunned.

Our IT director ran out with two of the cast members, firing a NERF dart gun at imaginary birds.  No, he hadn't lost his mind from students telling him "my internet is broken."  He is a cast member!!!  This man with a reputation for being a lovable curmudgeon is in the play!  You could have knocked me over with a feather.

When I asked him about this later, his response was, "I'm an enigma wrapped in a riddle."  After asking around, I got more of the story.  What made this man agree to do this?  He was needed.  The person who was originally cast in this part was unable to participate, and he agreed to help.

As I sit here thinking about this, it occurs to me - This is what teachers do.  Good teachers do their job.  Great teachers step up.  They do things they would never have imagined doing because it is needed.  In my sixteen years of teaching, I have seen examples of this - not just in the school in am in now - but in every school.

Some examples:
- A teacher who learned a sport she didn't yet know how to play because the middle school team needed a coach.
- A teacher who agreed to take kids on an overnight field trip because the person who usually did it was sick.
- An IT professional who installed all the network cables in the school building in order to save the school some money.
- Teachers who buy hundreds of dollars in supplies each year out of their own pocket.
- A teacher who take on student council because there wouldn't be a student council if he didn't.
- Administrators who put out chairs and set tables for banquets because there won't be chairs and tables if someone doesn't do it.
- Librarians who take on additional clubs because a student asked for it.
- Teachers who stayed at school overnight during an ice storm because busses couldn't get the kids home.
- A math teacher who decided dance was worth teaching.
- Teachers who give up their lunch time to tutor or fill in for other teachers.
- A history teacher who started an AP program and a theater program at the same time.

Schools could educate without this type of drive, but they couldn't mentor.  They couldn't inspire.  They couldn't motivate students to innovate.  Great schools are only great because great teachers, great administrators, great librarians, and great IT people step up in ways even they would never have imagined.

I have left off the names of these people because I think most of them would prefer it that way, but I am inspired by these people.  If you attend the GRACE fall production, you should be inspired as well - by the man who stepped up because something needed to be done.

Teaching - It's Not Just for the Classroom Anymore

One of the hats I wear at GRACE is yearbook advisor.  This means I show up in a lot of places.  In addition to taking photos in classes, I have been to games, matches, meets, club meetings, pep rallies, dances, NHS and Beta Inductions, art events, theater dress rehearsals, chapels, dance recitals, fundraisers, choral and band concerts.  You name it, I've photographed it.

I was at one of these events this weekend.  The City of Raleigh puts on an awesome artistic event each fall called ArtSpark.  Artists from all over town and students from various schools buy a square of space on a street in the heart of downtown Raleigh.  From Friday night to Sunday afternoon, people use pastels to make amazing designs and pictures in these squares.  There are fashion shows and concerts and a variety of other artistic activities.  Our students look forward to this event every year, and they have a ball crawling around on the street, bringing their creations to life.

It occurs to me that students learn more about art at this event than they possibly could in the art room.  Our art teacher, Elizabeth Walters, is amazing and brings out artistic abilities in our students they didn't know they had, but the most impressive thing she does is arrange actual experiences for them.  ArtSpark isn't easy for her to arrange.  Neither is entering them in competitions, arranging for field trips to art museums or ArtSpace, another great downtown Raleigh location.  Her life would be much easier if she only taught in the classroom, but she knows the value of an experience like ArtSpark.  The kids get to see actual artists produce things they haven't even imagined.  They get to see that there are other people interested in the same things they are.  The four hours they spend on the street is worth weeks of classroom experience, which is why they are terrified any year rain threatens to cancel this event.

Of course, Mrs. Walters is not the only teacher providing students with learning outside of classroom hours.  Our school is filled with opportunities for students to find, develop, and use their gifts.  Trust me.  I've photographed most of them.  We have a student council, a real one, not just one that looks good on your transcript.  Our student council leaders, Mr. Whelply and Mrs. Gill, care deeply about teaching these students to find and use their leadership skills.  Our students plan their own dances (with guidance, of course - We're not crazy.) and our chapel services.  The public speaking class speaks publicly, not just in their safe little classroom.  Our AP Biology teacher, Mr. Smitley, actually takes students to the beach to test the water, the organisms, and the environment because he wants them to get their hands dirty.  Our physics students build crazy things, like hover crafts.  Our English students tweet about what they are reading and participate in online forums.  Today, they have traveled out of town to see a play because they are reading it in class, and it will be more meaningful if they see it acted out.

All of these wonderful and enriching things mean lots of time from teachers.  One of our math teachers was at school helping students until 5:30 last night.  I haven't even mentioned our elementary school teachers.  Imagine what it must be like to wrangle a million second graders (okay, it probably just feels like a million) at the zoo!  Above and beyond is not even a phrase we use here because it is the norm.

What teachers do inside the classroom is important, but what they do outside the classroom is meaningful.

Teachers Never Stop Learning

My last post was about how great it is that teaching is new every year.  As I sit here, typing on a computer, I'm reminded about just how new.

I began teaching 16 years ago.  E-mail had been around for only about five years and was just increasing in popularity as a way for teachers to contact parents.  I was practically considered a rock star because I sent out a weekly e-mail to parents, letting them know what we would be up to the following week.

Google had been invented just that year, so looking something up when a student had a question wasn't really something teachers thought of yet.  YouTube was still a long way off, and no one had heard the terms social media, Google doc, meme, or selfie.  The school I was teaching in at that time (Jenks Freshman Academy - go Trojans!) was at the height of tech because they had a computer lab with desktop iMacs.  We could sign up and take our students to do research for papers.  The library even had three of them!  This was huge.  A student taught me how to use iMovie (thanks, Rick - I still use it), and he was considered incredibly tech savvy..

Sixteen years later, I am sitting at the MacBook Pro that every teacher in my current school (GRACE Christian - go Eagles!) issues to every teacher.  I have written on the board that my 8th grade students should go to page 29 in their digital textbook because each of them has a school issued MacBook Air.  I wrote that book using iBooks Author, and it includes videos that will and links to websites, taking advantage of how their brains are wired in a sort of hyperlink way mine never was.  My physics students have just completed making music videos about free fall in which they took YouTube clips of Felix Baumgartner, Star Trek Into Darkness, and disturbing video of gold eagles dropping goats from cliffs.  Their textbook was purchase from iTunes and include interactive illustrations.

All that description is to make these points.

1.  Great teachers never stop learning.  I was a good teacher in the first years of my career.  I'm convinced of that and have students who stay in contact to confirm it.    However, if I still did only the things I did then, I wouldn't even rate as mediocre today.  The methods of sixteen years ago would bore my students and me.  Students, some of you think your learning will be done when you graduate from high school or college.  This is not true.  As long as people keep inventing new things (and that doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon), you will continue to learn.

2.  Great teachers don't learn alone.  My school adopted a one to one MacBook program four academic years ago.  We were all a little nervous and didn't quite know what we were in for, but it was exciting because we did it together.  Yes, we stumbled a bit along the way and plateaued a little in our second year.  It has taken concerted effort to keep improving our use of tech.  We don't just want to use it; we want to use it well.  In that light, there are a few people I would like to thank.

- Sean Blesh and Diane Scro - You started this.  I know there have been times when you wished you hadn't, but it has made us all better.  You have made us better teachers, and I have no higher compliment than that.

- Sean Blesh and Diane Scro - Yes, I'm thanking them twice.  They didn't just start this and walk away.  They have maintained over 100 staff computers and over 500 student computers with very few hiccups.  They have suffered through filter conundrums, black screens of death, password keychain nonsense, wind knocking out servers, the implementation of a new MLS, customizing the filters for different groups, dealing with blackouts at Time Warner, and the cranky-ness of teachers.  They have done all of that in the same 24 hour days the rest of us have.

- Laura Warmke and Diane Scro - Level Up was one of the most important things you have ever implemented.  There are things I would never have even heard of without it.  Making professional development fun is no easy task.  Thanks for continuously introducing us to new tools.

- The GRACE board and administration - If you hadn't risked saying yes to this, we wouldn't be where we are today.  It was a big financial commitment, and we know it wasn't easy.

- My Fellow Teachers - We've been in the trenches of this together.  You are never selfish with your knowledge or skills.  You share with other teachers, and you do it enthusiastically.  It has been fun being on this journey with you, and it won't end.

- My Fellow Students - I call you fellow students because, as I mentioned in point 1, I am still learning.  You have acted as guinea pigs for some crazy things.  Some of it has worked and some of it hasn't.  Some of it only works now because you showed me how to make it work.  Many of you have shared things with me that I now use in my classroom.  Thanks for the memes, the photos, the links, and the youtube channels that have now become part of my curriculum.  They are awesome.  Keep them coming.

Pretend Last Year's Blogging Didn't Happen - Because It Didn't

I'm just going to pretend that last year's blogging fiasco didn't happen.  Feel free to ignore all previous posts because they didn't happen.

We have settled in from the first week of school and are now officially in the swing of things.

It's my 16th year teaching, so you would think that by now, I would have all lesson plans, tests, and homework in a folder just ready to pull out.  You would think that I could operate on some kind of academic auto-pilot since I've been to the same destination so many times.  Somehow, however, lesson planning takes me almost as long as it did a decade ago.  I still find errors in the same slide I've been using for five years, and the physics problem I have assigned before turns out to be so much harder than I thought it was when I assigned it.  Writing a test takes less time because I can recycle some of my questions, but I still find that I have to stop kids in the middle of a test to say, "Wait, the correct answer to number 20 isn't there.  Everybody just put A, and I'll put that on my key."

It occurs to me that my students wouldn't want me to have everything exactly under control, and their parents wouldn't either.  They want me to be a competent professional, and of course I want that too.  That's not what I am talking about.  I mean that they would't want me on academic autopilot.

If I could put on an autopilot, I wouldn't be engaging because I wouldn't be engaged.  It would also mean that I hadn't looked for a better physics problem since the beginning.  It would mean that I hadn't changed that slide in ten years attempted a new way of approaching something in a lesson plan.

One of the best parts of teaching is that you get to try again every year.  You get to say, "That didn't work, so I won't do it again."  You get to adapt to new technology, new resources, and new kids.  You get to start again with people who don't know the mistake you made with it last year (unless their brother told them).  There is no other profession that gets to do that.

I'm sitting in a seminar about blogging and remembered that I WAS going to have a blog this year.  I haven't posted on it since . . . wait for it . . . the first week of school.  I am going to establish some kind of schedule next year to do this better.