My presentation this year was a joint presentation with awesome English teacher, Marcia Wingerd, on cross-curricular blogging. If you follow my blog, you know that we have been in a public experiment on 8th graders publicly reflecting on their learning experiences (See this post and this post for background). We feel that it has been successful (See this page for links to the student's blogs) enough to keep doing it and suggest that other teachers be part of it on across many grade levels.
One of my goals for next year is to develop depth in the four C's, which are critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration. The best ways to develop those are project based learning (PBL) and challenge based learning (CBL). While I have been doing a CBL for two years (see this post if you are interested), I haven't gotten where I want to be with it yet. I want students to really develop in these four areas through all my projects, especially that one. Therefore, I chose my other topics accordingly.
One workshop I attended was on a project one of our incredible history teachers, Nate Dewey, presented. He has his freshman create a Manor Faire, based on the serf system they learn in history. They create maps, food, costumes, explanations of the role of all types of people, explanations of daily life, and they incorporate technology, interact with all attendees (probably 150 of them). It is a great project, but I only knew it as an interested visitor. I wanted to learn about his end of it. What is he communicating to his students to get the great outcome he is getting? How does he turn everyone's observations into a grade? The majority of his focus was on creating projects that require kids to be interdependent in group work. While it was great that they learn the history, he talked about the life skills students learn - teamwork, conflict resolution, debriefing, managing time, and problem-solving. These skills are as imporant (perhaps evenmore important) than the content. The hardest part is figuring out how to create the time in your classroom to make sure you are still addressing the content you would have covered in that work time. He used flipped class videos with occassional checkpoints, using games. His other main point was that you need to be comfortable with the chaos that large group project create.
Our amazing calculus teacher, Cheryl Herrington, was my choice for the second session I attended. She presented on teaching creativity. Yes, that's right - our math teacher talked about teaching creativity. I have been interested in this topic for - well, forever. Learning HOW to do it is something that is harder to grasp. I have read and listened to everything Sir Ken Robinson has ever done (See his TED talks here and here and here). Because I know Cheryl well and have taught next door to her for the last eight years, I know that she is a very creative teacher. I was excited about what she would have to say about teaching kids to be creative. She talked about the difference between imagination, creativity, and innovation. She talked about how everyone can be creative because we are made in the image of a creative God; it isn't just for a special subset of people. It also doesn't just mean making a project pretty. She used the book Imagine to talk about three different types of creativity - the Aha! Moment (Sudden Insight), Incremental Creativity (more of a step by step process), and Getting in the Flow. Sometimes, you need to practice all three. Your sudden moment of insight might be good, but if you spend time in incremental creativity, you can trade in good for better. Getting into a creative flow might require imagining how a child would do it. Creativity can only thrive in a safe space, where you don't believe you will be penalized for a dumb idea. She mostly encouraged us to practice creative process in our own lives so that we could then model it for our students.My choice of the next session was on Inquiry Drien Projects presented by the wonderful Kristen Foxworth-O'Brien. This was our second year doing 20% Time projects at GRACE, and it was this teacher's first year. I only got to attend three of her presentations this year, and all of those three said they had failed to achieve their goal. This was not representative of all her groups because she tweeted some absolutely amazing presentations (e.g. a sophomore who built his own computer), but it made me wonder how many had reported that they didn't get what they wanted to out of this time. She gives them 20% of her class time, so she obviously wants them to grow in something they are passionate about. I was interested in finding out how she checks in with them during the project so that she isn't surprised by their outcome (and again, how she grades it). She talked about buy-in from students when they are choosing their own topics and getting to higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy because of the depth of research. She spent a lot of time talking about how to help students refine their topics to things worthy of giving up 20% of your class time. Setting goals throughout the year is important for keeping students on track and accountable. First quarter, they had mentor meetings. Second quarter, they held pitch sessions to people who would ask them guiding questions. Third quarter, they had to submit an annotated research document. Fourth quarter was their final presentation. Throughout the process, they blogged about their topic. Blogs can be
1. Resource recommendations
2. Reflections on your own journey
3. A topic talk post, which could be used as a resource for someone else.
Homework grades are given for blog posts, and each quarter's major goals are test grades.
This has become one of my favorite days of the year, and I have thought a lot about why that is a case. I believe it is because I am learning from people that I know and trust as educators. I have attended many good and many bad workshops over the years. Even in the best ones, it takes time to decide how credible this stranger is. I don't have to spend that time deciding when the presenter is the teacher down the hall, whose class and teaching I know well. I can just jump in and start learning.
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