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.