Relationships matter

I think you all know how much I value relationships in the classroom. I’m a firm believer in the idea that no significant learning can happen without a meaningful relationship. Earlier this week, I was listening to one of the episodes of the podcast “We’re Doing It Wrong”, and it was a reaffirmation of that belief.

In the podcast, the host Joseph Pazar (a middle school math teacher) was interviewing the authors of Angels and Superheroes, Jack Jose and Krista Taylor. The conversation covered a wide variety of topics including relationships, behavior, and student misbehavior (I included a link to the podcast below).

I’m guessing that you’ve all heard the great TED Talk from Rita Pierson, “Every kid needs a champion” (if you haven’t, take 8 minutes right now and watch!), and in that talk, she shares the wisdom that kids don’t learn from people they don’t like. Krista Taylor takes it a bit further. She says:

Students need to like you,

I heard that quote and then rewound to relisten to that section of the podcast. Leading up to this comment, Taylor shared that most teachers don’t go into teaching because they want their students to get a good test score. More likely, they go into teaching because they want to:

Work with students
Build the whole child
Have social emotional learning happening
Raise responsible citizens
Raise students who care about each other and their community.

To accomplish any of these goals, and so many others that might come to mind for you when you pause to think about why you became a teacher, it takes meaningful relationships! Meaningful relationships aren’t built just because you make class fun, they don’t happen naturally for most kids. True relationships take work! So, how can we go about building those real relationships with our kids? Here are a few ideas for ways to build relationships:

Get curious and ask questions – Find out what they like to do when they aren’t at school. Engage with them on their interests, even if it isn’t an interest of yours!
Take your students outside of the classroom – I loved my 6^th grade class and teachers. I remember doing a camping trip on the property behind our school one night. I remember walking from school into the neighborhood next door where one of my teachers lived to have a picnic. Those were powerful events to build relationships with my teachers and with my classmates! I can’t tell you much about what we did during class time, but I definitely remember those fun moments outside of the classroom. And I still think fondly of both of those teachers.
Listen to your students concerns and pause to re-examine ourselves – the reality is that implicit biases creep into all of us! And the more tense a situation may be, the worse our decision making process becomes. When students share concerns about something you are doing in the room, hear them out and reflect. It’s tempting to defend our actions, but if it’s bothering one brave soul enough that they tell you, there may be a few more who feel the same, but aren’t brave enough to share!

As the conversation in the “We’re Doing It Wrong” podcast went on, Jack Jose shared that when we work to build relationships, we also have to:

“Trust that the child in front of you wants to behave, wants to succeed, wants to do well… then, work with that child to get past those gaps so that they can be successful”

If we think back to what we’ve learned from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, misbehavior from a student is a form of communication. It lets us know that some need is not being met. Most likely, the missing need is a feeling of belongingness. When we don’t fulfill that need, they continue to misbehave. Our punishments might redirect that need in the short term, but it will not solve the overarching need that is creating the misbehavior.

Let’s think about a typical situation, and how we might respond:

A student in your class is often off task. He talks to his neighbors and generally goofs around. Occasionally, that student will raise his hand to answer the question, so we call on him, excited that he wants to participate. We praise his answer to the question hopeful that it will instill a greater desire for participation. The next day, he comes in, goofs around, and causes a disruption. You schedule a conference with his parents. On the day of the conference, you and the parents gather with the child around the table and share that the student is “so bright” and capable of so much more. In the meeting the student commits to doing better. The next day in class, you see a little improvement, but later that week the behavior returns to what you were seeing prior to the conference.

Now, let’s look at this from the perspective of the student who is misbehaving:

The student has a need for the feeling of belonging. During class he gets to talk with the friends he likes, they laugh at him and make him feel good.
He cherry picks the questions that you ask to only respond to the ones he feels confident in because he knows that he will get it right, then he gets your praise for being bright, fulfilling yet another need. And do we really know that he’s that smart if the child is cherry picking the questions he wants to answer?
He creates a situation where there are several adults (most of whom he likes and trusts) around a table telling him how bright he is.
He returns to class and goofs around again because that fulfills his need to belong with the other kids.

Our traditional methods do not fulfill the needs that this child has – only a true and meaningful relationship will allow that child to have the sense of belonging he needs to help stop the misbehavior. Keeping that kid in the room, making them do the work, holding them to a high standard is not “letting them off.” In actuality, kicking them out of class or sending them to the office is letting them off because now they don’t have to do the work, they will get one on one attention – the secretary will talk to them about what happened, maybe the counselor will too, another teacher might talk to them, and they get one on one attention from the principal or assistant principal. These all give the student attention, and may allow him a sense of belonging with those people, but it doesn’t lead to that sense of belonging in the classroom where he needs it most!

A more powerful method – have the student complete a reflection form on what they’ve done and have them return to class when they are finished. Maybe that’s done in the back of the classroom, maybe it’s done in another teacher’s classroom, or maybe it’s done in the hallway. By sending them out we all get a break from one another which allows us to re-regulate, the kids reflect on the situation and process that, and then when they walk back into the classroom, they will most likely be ready to learn. The child sees that misbehavior isn’t going to lead to his needs being met, and they will trust that you will treat them fairly, and that trust helps give a sense of belonging.

What are your thoughts? How does relationship building help you? What are some of the ways you build relationships? Share out your best strategies so that we all can have some new ideas!

We’re Doing It Wrong Podcast: http://www.weredoingitwrong.com/podcast/6-angels-and-superheroes

Teaching in the technology age

Out of curiosity, how many of you remember when the first iPhone came out? Did any of you have one? In case you have forgotten, that first iPhone looked like this:

iPhone 10th anniversary

In case you have also forgotten, that beauty of a phone was released to the public in 2007. Now I must admit, I did not have the original iPhone. If you recall, when the iPhone first came out it was only available on AT&T, and I still had a contract with Verizon – that meant I had to wait. But I remember friends who rushed out to get that first iPhone. And they were blown away by how amazing it was.

So why am I bringing up the release of the iPhone? If you haven’t been paying attention to the birthdates of your students, you may not have noticed it, but most of our 5^th and 6^th graders here at RSI were born in 2007 or later. Think about that. Most of our students have never lived in a world that didn’t have an iPhone! The kids we are teaching truly are digital natives. They have had the entire world at their fingertips their entire lifetime.

We are born without knowledge Let’s contrast that just a bit with human history. I’ve recently been reading Walter Isaacson’s fascinating biography Benjamin Franklin. There were a lot of things that I knew about Franklin, his role as an inventor/scientist, his time as a member of the Continental Congress, and that he’s a writer and printer. I don’t know that I fully realized what a world traveler he was. I also did not quite realize just how curious he was – throughout his life he found wonder in the world around him, and spent time trying to learn more.

One of the things that being alive in the 1700s allowed Franklin, and his contemporaries, was time alone with their thoughts. There weren’t distractions like television, radio, podcasts, phones. I mean, when he wanted guidance from back home while working on the treaty for the Revolutionary War, he had to hand write a letter, sometimes multiple drafts, send it on a ship back to America, and wait, typically for several months, for a response. Think about how much time he had to just wait and think!

Now, when do your best ideas strike you? If you’re anything like me (and brain research says that most humans probably are), it happens in your moments of rest and solitude. I can’t tell you how many times a great idea comes to me in the shower, only to be lost by the time I get out and have a way to write it down. The truth is, there is constant thinking happening in our minds. Sometimes it’s self-talk, sometimes it’s planning, but other times it’s when we get our best ideas. How often do you spend hours laboring over something, not quite sure how to make it perfect, only to become frustrated and walk away? Then, in a free moment, it suddenly clicks and the solution you’ve been looking for is right there.

Our students don’t have enough opportunities to just wonder, to think, to get bored and then allow creativity to get them out of their boredom. Most digital natives are not used to that feeling. They are used to getting what they want when they want it. And as such, they need to be better trained to find their creativity and curiosity.

What does that mean for us in the classrooms? Sometimes we as educators get caught up in the idea of “I have to cover…” so we rush in, we swoop them up when they might get a little stuck, we solve the problem for them instead of allowing them the time and space to solve the problem on their own.

Our students, in their long term though, need to be able to work through problems and solve them. The reality is that there are a lot of things that the devices they have grown up with can do for them, but there are also things that those devices can’t do. In his book What School Could Be, Ted Dintersmith spends time in the first chapter talking about the digital revolution and the rapid growth in computing power. While computers are getting exponentially faster every year, and at some point, computers most likely will surpass the average speed of the human brain, they haven’t yet been able to do the creative problem solving that humans can do. Computers can only solve problems that they have the information and programming for. Dintersmith shares that “Children need to learn how to leverage machine intelligence, not replicate its capacity to perform low-level tasks!” The ideas that allow them to learn this skill only comes from time spent wondering or practicing creativity.

When you try to think about ways to integrate curiosity and wonder, take the topics you are learning about in your classroom. Create provocations for students to wonder about that tie to what you are learning about. Allow the learning in your classroom go sideways just a little bit because of the “What if…” questions that students ask. When we feed into their wonder, we tell them it’s ok to be curious.

Then, provide them with opportunities to be creative! On Wednesdays, our media center has become the hub of creative activity with makerspace activities going on. This feeds the creative mind and soul! It helps our kids to understand that technology is not always the answer! Allow every child to see themselves as creative in some way! Not only does it turn on that part of the brain, it’s a lot of fun for you too!

What are your thoughts? How have you integrated creativity and curiosity in your classroom? What have you learned from your students when you take that time to dive into their wonders? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

Change requires connectivity

Last summer, I read the book The Innovators by Walter Isaacson. As a brief description, the book was about the work of the many different people who played a role in the development of the computer and internet. For most of us, when we think of innovation, we think of people like Franklin, Edison, Bell, Morse, Jobs, or Gates, but in the case of the digital revolution, most of the work was not the creation of any one person. Instead it was the work of many who connected, collaborated, and iterated. Someone like Steve Jobs is seen as the creator of the iPhone, but really he took several technologies that already existed and combined them into a form factor that connected with a market.

Creativity Inc This past spring, I read the book Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull. Catmull is the co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios, and wrote a book about the steps that they take in order to build a highly functioning, creative environment that is able to churn out movies that people love (think Toy Story, Monsters, Inc. Finding Nemo, and more). One of my big takeaways from this book is that the amazing work that occurs at Pixar happens because of 2 things: teamwork; and a willingness to accept feedback from those around you, whether positive or negative, and understand that it’s being shared in the hopes of creating something better.

Now, as many of you know, this blog is geared toward education. You may be wondering what the creation of the digital revolution or the work that occurs at Pixar have to do with what happens in our schools on a daily basis. I’m hoping to make that connection here today!

The connection that I can make between The Innovators and Creativity, Inc. has to do with the collaborative networks that existed between the creators. As an educator, each of you is a creator EVERY DAY. You create the experiences that happen in your classroom. You decide on what the room looks like, you decide if the lights are on or off, you decide if there is music or not, you decide how the desks are arranged when kids walk in. Each of these little decisions plays a role on the learning environment, and those are just the decisions you make BEFORE the students walk in. Think about all the decisions you make during the lesson! None of you are ever allowed to tell me that you “aren’t creative” because you create EVERY SINGLE DAY!!!

Think for a moment about your existence as an educator. You work close to several other amazing teachers every day, but there’s one thing I know about teaching because sometimes I did it when I was still in my classroom: it’s easy to shut the door, do your own thing, and not worry about what’s happening around you. Education is one of the careers where we often live in silos – our classrooms, our content area, our team, our grade level, or our campus.

But there’s one thing that books like The Innovators and Creativity, Inc. hopefully remind us: innovation doesn’t happen inside of a vacuum, it happens with collaboration, teamwork, and connections. With all the amazing educators and schools, we still at times fail to create those critical connections for collaboration that lead to real innovation in education.

This is why I see such value in what happens during our Professional Learning Community (PLC) time. It’s an opportunity for you to come together with your colleagues, to analyze the data your seeing, to talk about what’s working in classrooms, and then to be able to test out whether or not that works in your own room. It’s a chance for you as a team to take risks, to walk out on a ledge as a team, and try something new because as a team you feel it will benefit the students in your room. We all know there’s safety in numbers! We need to see PLC time not as something that’s done to us, but as a form of self and team-directed professional development with regular opportunities to collaborate and communicate.

But if we want to create the amazing innovative environments that our students need in order to learn and grow, we have to be ready and willing to connect on an even grander scale. If you are looking for other ways to learn and grow, there are lots of informal options out there. Things like Twitter chats, EdCamps, and blogs are free and easy way to seek out like-minded educators who are doing amazing things in their classroom. Or there are more formal ways to learn about innovation in the classroom. I recently learned of the Deeper Learning Network (click here to check out their website) that shares tons of resources for innovative ideas in you classroom. Some of the things you can find information about include: Project-Based Learning, Blended Learning, Inquiry-Based Learning, Authentic Assessment, and so much more!

Now, some of you may be wondering why we need to change. Well, the reality is that thanks to the work of the innovative people that are discussed in Isaacson’s book, many of our students are used to on demand learning, are used to making choices in what they want to learn, and how they learn. The digital revolution has changed the game for learners, which means we have to find ways to change the game as teachers to meet their needs. I think we all would agree that our students today are different than the students that were in our schools just 5 years ago. They are digital natives, and many know how to find what they want to know when they want to know it.

If we as educators don’t adapt to the new style of learning, our learners are going to leave us behind. If they don’t see the relevance of what they are doing, if they don’t get choice and voice in their learning, they will not engage. I continue to believe that the HSE²¹ Best Practice Model is our North Star that gets us to the learning environments that will work for our students. And the best way for each of us to learn and grow towards those best practices is through meaningful collaboration. As one of my favorite professors at IU repeated almost every day “Learning is social” and we are all learners too!

BestPracticesModel_HSE21_standalonegraphic_2017_05_24

Continue to seek out ways to collaborate. Take a moment to be vulnerable and ask a PLC team member to come observe one of your lessons to give you feedback. If someone asks you for feedback, be willing to give it. We ask our students to be vulnerable and a little uncomfortable every day because that’s where the learning and growth takes place. Why can’t we expect the same of ourselves?

What are some of the things you do to continue to grow? Is there a preferred method for learning from others that works best for you? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

#RSIpln – The Riverside Intermediate Personal Learning Network

I know that around our school, or any school, there are a variety of ways that members of the staff go about expanding their knowledge base. For some it may be through conversations with colleagues within the building, some might go beyond the building and reach out to friends around their school district, others may be less social and look for ideas on their own with tools like Google, Pinterest, Teachers Pay Teachers, or other similar resources, and some might just look towards books as resources. Each of these methods have their benefits, but there are also drawbacks – the biggest of which is that we are limited to a relatively small number of resources.

Almost nine years ago, I joined Twitter. At that time, I mostly followed my favorite athletes, some actors, tv personalities, authors, and other pop-culture icons. It wasn’t until quite some time later that I realized that Twitter could be a learning tool that could help me grow as an educator. At that time, I began to see that I could follow other educators, learn from them about what they were doing in their classrooms, and schools, and grow in my own craft. Hence, the PLN – Professional/Personal Learning Network.

Around the 300^th person I began to follow is a guy named Brad Currie, who along with Scott Rocco founded #SatChat as a way to connect with other emerging school leaders. By hearing about his journey on Twitter, I realized that my phone could connect me with educators all over the world. Many of my best ideas have been based on things that I have learned while on Twitter.

Today in our building, we are rolling out a way for all the teachers in our school to expand their own PLN, and find ways to grow as an educator, and as an added benefit, share the amazing things that are happening within our building. We can share with one another, with our local community, and ultimately with the world!

The plan, that I must admit I got from a conversation with John Hochstetler (Teacher Librarian at Sand Creek Intermediate), is to play a massive game of bingo, built around the idea of growing the PLN of each and every person who participates!

Why Twitter? Well, as Matt Miller has shared:

Congrats!

In the keynote at #DitchCon2017, Miller shared that as the lone Spanish teacher in a small rural school in western Indiana, he was struggling with whether or not he was actually able to create meaningful learning opportunities for his students. He then found a PLN through Twitter, and realized there were so many more possibilities for his students. His learning on Twitter led him to begin presenting to countless educators, and eventually writing 2 books for educators. Without the connections he created through Twitter, he feels he would have burnt out, and eventually left education.

It is my hope that through our game of bingo all the people who participate will have an opportunity to expand their own learning, and see that there are ways to get awesome ideas from others (and also have a little fun!). And the best part? By working with my PTO, I was able to get some prizes donated for those who are able to earn bingos! Each Friday of our Twitter Bingo we will do a drawing for a gift card to local restaurants for the teachers who have reached a bingo. At the end of October, we will do a Grand Prize drawing for a really spectacular prize (the details are yet to come, but it’s going to be HUGE!).

So without further ado, check out our Twitter Bingo board! Follow along with the hashtags #RSIpln and #RSIbingo. That way, you’ll see the awesome learning happening at Riverside Intermediate, and hopefully be able to further grow your PLN.

And – for those of you who are already on Twitter, share in the comments below about your own experiences! I know that we have some pretty prolific Tweeters in our building already. Why do you choose to use this as a tool in your classroom? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Maybe you’ll convince a colleague that they should join in!

If you’re interested in seeing the actual bingo board, and the directions on page 2, check it out here: #RSIpln School Year Twitter Bingo

Running through the sprinkler

As I sit writing this, it’s Sunday afternoon. Sunday’s in my family are often about getting work done – chores around the house, prepping for school, groceries, etc. To fit with that norm for our family, today was no different. This morning my wife Diane, an amazing kindergarten teacher, needed to go over to school to do some prep for her week. I needed to mow the lawn and then get to the grocery store. The kids had no real responsibilities, so they were going to stay home with me. I knew that if I left them inside, even though they said they were going to read, it would turn into a Netflix binge of Dinotrux, or Glitter Force, or something of that nature. I wanted them to be active, so I convinced them to come outside and play while I was mowing.

As I did the front yard, they had out their big wheels, their stilts, and their pogo stick. They were working on creating an obstacle course in the driveway when I finished the front lawn and grabbed the sprinkler to try to deal with a couple of brown spots. As I starting working on the side yard, Lainey came running up to me and asked “Can we run through the sprinkler?”

I started to say no, I mean they had just gotten dressed, we had to run to the grocery store after I mowed, and Lainey was going to a birthday party for the afternoon. But then I looked at the excitement in her face – how could I say no?

For the next thirty minutes, while I mowed the rest of the lawn, Lainey and Brody were in heaven with that childhood joy that goes with running through a sprinkler. I may have even let myself get sprayed because I was jealous of the obvious fun they were having.

Seeing the joy on their faces as they played in the sprinkler got me thinking about classroom conditions. How often, when you scan your room, do you see the look of joy that would accompany a kid running through the sprinkler? When I reflect on my own teaching practices, it probably happened far less than I would have wanted it to.

Last week I participated in an online, free, open to anyone PD called Hive Summit. It was put on by Michael Matera, the author of Explore Like a Pirate, and the front man for the #XPlap community. The gist of the Hive Summit was to bring together amazing educators to share little tidbits of knowledge in short, easily digestible conversations between Michael and various guests to provide ideas to help us start the school year off with a bang!

The last session of the Hive Summit brought in Dave Burgess, author of Teach Like a Pirate, and easily one of the most engaging presenters I have ever seen. Towards the end of the conversation, Michael asked Dave for some practical things that we can do right away. Dave started talking about the beginning of the school year. He suggested that we should “Invest time in the front end to build a community, to build rapport, and to create a place that kids are desperate to come back to the next day.” We don’t accomplish what Dave is suggesting by spending lots of time on procedures. Those can come later. We need to hook them, get them excited, get them wanting to be in your classroom, get them banging down the doors to come to school!

Dave went on to share a couple of his favorite activities to accomplish those goals. The first is the Play-Doh lesson. Students walk in to a container of Play-Doh on a paper plate in the center of their desk, and when ready, they are asked to create something out of the Play-Doh. The goal is to create something that is in some way representative of them. Let them know up front that when time is up, you are going to come around, show the class their object, ask a couple of questions about it, and then have them share their name. Let them know in advance that they will not have to stand up or come to the front of the room, and the process will take less than 30 seconds. Letting kids know what to expect will alleviate some stress that comes with any type of getting to know you activity. Give students 10 minutes of work time, and while they are working, walk around and chat with them in an informal way.

This is great because it gets your students creating right away. We live in a world where information is at our fingertips, and knowing things doesn’t make you successful. In today’s world, it’s about what people can do or make. When we show kids that’s what we value right off the bat, they will be more likely to continue to do and make things when asked.

Another activity that Dave loves is the plane crash on a deserted island lesson. 10 people are stranded on an island, and when a rescue helicopter shows up, it only has room for 5 people. Students are given a list of the different people, split into small groups, and asked to work together to come to a consensus on who should be rescued, and who has to be left behind (click here for a shared google doc with the instructions and list of people). Again, this activity immediately gets kids to collaborate, connect, and create to solve the problem.

Activities like this allow kids to engage right away, and think about how much more excited your kids will be about tasks like this instead of a more traditional lesson. All of us bring our own special skill set to the classroom, and we all have the ability to create learning environments that kids will be excited to return to day after day. You get to decide if the lights are on or off when students enter. You get to decide what shows up on your screen or board. You get to decide what is sitting on your students’ desks when they come in. When we pause in our lesson planning to think about those hooks at the start of our lesson, we’re able to create more of those “Running Through Sprinkler” kind of moments for our kids.

If you are looking for more ideas for amazing engagement strategies, check out Teach Like a Pirate (I linked to it on Amazon above), or if you’d like, I’ll loan you my copy (as long as you don’t mind my highlights and notes in the margins). If you feel overwhelmed by a book, look for Dave Burgess on YouTube or Twitter, or check out the #tlap Twitter chat on Mondays at 9:00 pm eastern. There are lots of small resources that will help you create lessons that engage students on the sprinkler level!

Let me know if you’re planning to try something new to create a sprinkler moment in your class! I’d love to see it, or talk to your students about it. I think we all want joyful classrooms! How will you bring that joy to your room?

The Global Read Aloud

This summer, my Twitter feed was blowing up with pictures and quotes from a couple of books that sounded really interesting – Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed and Refugee by Alan Gratz. Each post also had the hashtag #GRA18. For me, when the same hashtag or same topic keeps showing up in my Twitter feed, it’s time to do some research. I quickly learned that #GRA18 was the hashtag for the 2018 version of the Global Read Aloud.

I recall hearing something about the Global Read Aloud in the past, but I always thought it was based on picture books and related more to younger students. However this year I noticed that the titles I was seeing were books that I knew our students would be interested in.

Basically, the Global Read Aloud was a project created by Pernille Ripp, a 7^th grade teacher and author who lives in Wisconsin. On the Global Read Aloud website, she explains why she started a project like this:

Global collaboration is necessary to show students that they are part of something bigger than them. That the world needs to be protected and that we need to care for all people. You can show them pictures of kids in other countries but why not have them speak to each other? Then the caring can begin.

I’m assuming we have all participated in a book study of some sort or another. You might have read a professional book with some colleagues, you might have a neighborhood reading group, or connect in some other way. What I love about reading a book as part of a group is the opportunity to hear the perspective of people with a wide variety of experiences. Each person’s perspective may allow them to connect to the story in a different way. Through learning about their impressions from the story, we learn about how others may be similar, or different than us. In a recent interview of Matt Miller, he shared that he feels part of the power of global conversations is that “we want our students to understand that though it may seem like we don’t have a lot in common with people across the world, we actually do.”

Hopefully, some of you are interested in participating in this great experience, and you might be wondering how you go about getting started. First, you have to sign up. You can do that at the Global Read Aloud website – you can sign up by clicking here!

Amal Unbound

Next, you have to choose your book. There are two books that I think would be age appropriate for our students. The first book, Amal Unbound, is the story of a girl named Amal, a typical Pakistani girl pursuing her dream of becoming a teacher one day. The other book that some of you might consider is Refugee, a story of three children – Josef is a Jewish boy living in 1930s Nazi Germany, Isabel is a Cuban girl in 1994, and Mahmoud is a Syrian boy in 2015. All three go through amazing journeys in search of refuge from their homeland. Refugee Both of these books are available on Amazon, although you can probably find them at any bookstore!

Once you have chosen your novel, you would then decide what level of connection you’d like to have. On the most basic level, you might choose to connect with another class in our school that is participating. If you’d like to connect with classes outside of our school, there are lots of ways you could do that. Searching the hashtag #GRA18 on Twitter will connect you with tons of others who are participating. If you’d prefer, there is also a Facebook connection through The Global Read Aloud Main Group, as well as groups that are specific to each of the books. Here I’ve seen posts of people seeking connections, sharing resources they have created, and communicating about their ideas.

If you are considering participating, and would like a ton of information about the Global Read Aloud, click here.

If you are looking for the schedule for the Global Read Aloud, you can click here.

If you do choose to participate, let me know! I read both of the books, and would love to talk with your students about their thoughts!

Innovation Exchange 2018

This past week I had the opportunity to participate in an awesome professional development experience put on by 2 amazing school districts – Hamilton Southeastern Schools (my home district) and Noblesville Schools. Each day was filled with a morning keynote, followed by tons of choices in concurrent sessions. Anytime I attend something of this nature, I feel it’s successful if I can take at least one idea from each session that I can implement into my practices. As I look at my own notes today, I have so many more ideas than that, but I want to share a few of my key takeaways.

Our opening keynote came from Mark Wagner, President & CEO of EdTech Team. During his keynote he asked us the question “What do you want to learn?” and then challenged us to think about whether or not we were spending time asking our kids this same question. While we have standards to meet, that doesn’t have to be done always based on our expert decisions as the teacher. Wagner argued quite convincingly that learning will be more meaningful for our students if we share with them our goals, what we need them to learn, and then ask them how they want to learn those skills. Wagner encouraged us to think of the changing role of educators, and rather than seeing ourselves as the keepers of knowledge, who then dispense that knowledge to our students, we should start thinking of our role as that of a connector.

Within our own community, there are people who have skills and experiences that are much greater than any of us could ever hope to be able to share with our students. Our job, in part, is to connect our students to the experts they need in order to learn the skills they want to learn.

During the second day I had the privilege to listen to Luke Reks, a recent graduate of Noblesville High School. Luke shared with us his experiences in the Innovations class he participated in during his sophomore through senior years of high school. In that time, Luke connected with filmmakers, CEOs, and philanthropists. As part of his learning, he interned on the set of a low budget film starring James Franco and was able to network with Hollywood producers and directors. In a partnership with one of his classmates, Luke is now working to build a school in Africa that will serve youth, bringing them access to learning, and including the Innovations model of learning within its curriculum. Luke reminded me that opportunities are everywhere for our students. As teachers, sometimes we just have to get out of the way of the passions of our learners, and they will take their learning much further than anywhere we can hope to take them.

In August of 2017 @Luke_Johnstonn and I said “Let’s build this school” and today… it’s happening.

Thank you to all donors! You guys made this happen! You are the reason students will now have access to a school.

Join us as we fight illiteracy with Innovation and Ambition! pic.twitter.com/q7qlT9ev9M

— Luke Reks (@Luke__Reks) March 13, 2018

Also on the second day of the conference, Kerry Gallagher was the keynote speaker. After listening to her keynote, I made it a point to attend one of her concurrent sessions as well. Her keynote was on the effects of technology on our brain, while her concurrent session talked about best practices related to screen time. The information shared in both was based on research from sources that I know and trust – Common Sense Media and the American Association of Pediatrics to name just a couple. There are many people who spend time talking about the bad aspects of screens, and there’s plenty of research and opinion that support the drawbacks of screen time, but as educators, we have to also remember a couple of important things about technology. First, technology is an opportunity that provides our students access to resources, tools, and experts that would never be available to them without the use of technology. Along with that, Gallagher reminded us that increasingly our students will need to be able to interact with people through the screens in front of them. Google, Airbnb, Uber, and other transformative companies require their employees to be able to interact with customers through screens. How are we teaching our students to interact appropriately?

If a student’s first time to interact with a screen is as a preteen using an iPhone with unlimited access to the rest of the world, they won’t have the tools to be able to use that power responsibly. This has me thinking about the importance of digital citizenship lessons for even our earliest learners. As a district that is 1:1 in all grades, kindergarten – 12th grade, we can’t wait until kids are in the middle grades to begin talking about appropriate ways to interact through screens. We can use developmentally appropriate apps to help our students learn those skills beginning at the earliest levels.

Overall, there were so many great takeaways from the 2 days, these are just a few of the highlights for me. Did you attend? What were your main takeaways? Do the thoughts above have you reflecting on your own practices? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Lost at school

I have recently been reading the book Lost at School by Ross Greene and wanted to share some of my thoughts with all of you as I wrap up the book. For a while now I have wondered if a traditional school discipline system was capable of reaching some of the students that I see who have the most behavioral challenges. I have been an assistant principal for 6 years now, and one thing has remained consistent throughout those years – on average, about 30% of the referrals that are written for students in our school go to the same 10 to 15 students. This small group of kids can take up huge chunks of time for teachers in the classroom. These students also spend huge chunks of time outside of the classroom, which means that they aren’t receiving the access to learning that we want all our students to receive.

One of the main ideas of Greene’s writing is that “kids do well if they can.” My experiences when I was a classroom teacher would have wanted to tweak that statement a bit and say “kids do well if they want to”, but the problem with that version is most kids know exactly how we want them to behave (just ask them what they did wrong), and most of them even want to behave the right way. The reason they don’t is not a question of whether or not they want to behave, rather it’s a question of whether or not they have the tools to be able to behave.

If a student in your class is struggling academically, it’s most likely that they are lacking some skill to be able to perform successfully on the tasks that you are asking them to complete. What do we do when this happens? We take time to work with the student, we figure out where their gaps in learning are, and we try to reinforce those weaknesses. It can be time consuming, but it is what we are charged to do.

Behaviorally, students who struggle the most are not acting out in an effort to make things more difficult for us. They aren’t acting out because they don’t have support at home, and it’s not about the kids that they are around. What it’s really about is that kids with behavioral challenges lack important thinking skills. I believe we need to start thinking of these behaviors as something of a developmental delay.

The most important thing to remember

If we begin to think of behavior as a developmental delay, what does this do for our typical methods of handling student discipline? It definitely has me thinking about things differently.

The facts are that those 10-15 students that I was referencing earlier have received all kinds of different disciplinary actions and interventions throughout their school careers: detentions, in-school suspensions; out-of-school suspensions; conferences with administrators, parents, and teachers; and a variety of other strategies. Even with all these forms of discipline, many times those students are referred to the office again just a day or week after serving a consequence. What this tells me is that traditional discipline simply doesn’t work for some of our kids, and if it doesn’t work for some of our kids, is it truly beneficial for any of our kids?

Greene describes the issues that our struggling students have as lagging skills. Those lagging skills sometimes lead to unsolved problems, which in turn can lead to a behavioral outburst.

As an example, one of the lagging skills that Greene talks about is “Difficulty handling transitions, shifting from one mindset or task to another.” We might see this lagging skill manifest as an unsolved problem of having trouble transitioning from recess where we are running around, making noise, and socializing to the classroom where we need to be quiet and sitting in our seat working independently. When we can identify a lagging skill, and then label an unsolved problem, it becomes much easier to support students in solving this problem.

By shifting to Collaborative and Proactive Solutions (CPS), we might be able to better help our students who struggle most learn coping skills for how to deal with their unsolved problems in more appropriate ways. While it can take time to work through this process with students, the reality is that those students are already taking lots of our time, and most of the time we are working in a reactive mode where we simply respond to the behaviors after they have occurred. The CPS process will allow us to have proactive strategies to support our kids.

In next week’s post, I’m going to go a little deeper in the strategies of CPS, and what it looks/sounds like in a classroom setting.

Lost at School has me completely rethinking the way that we look at student discipline. If you are curious to know more, or like me are feeling that the current student discipline methods are not working for some of our kids, I highly recommend the book as a way to learn more. Add it to your summer reading list!

I know that there are some of you reading this who have probably read Lost at School as well. If you have, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Steele - behavior (2)

These kids are changing

“These kids are so different from…”

I can’t tell you the number of conversations that I have had that included some version of that quote above. If we pause and watch the students who walk into our classroom, I’m pretty sure that we would all agree that they are different than our past students. I know they’re different than when I was in school, they’re definitely different than the students I had in my first fifth grade class, they’re even different than the students that were in my building when I made the shift from classroom teacher to assistant principal.

In my conversations with teachers, parents, and others about why students are different, there are a few reasons that seem to come up quite often (this list is not intended to be all inclusive, but does highlight some of the most common opinions I hear):

Parenting – In conversations about kids being different, this one comes up a lot. I’ve heard statements from adults in our building that say “I never would have gotten away with that with my parents” or “When my kids were this age, they never would have done that.”
The last school (or grade) – This one’s tough for me to even put in writing, but I’ve heard people telling me that the expectations for students at earlier levels have fallen off, and as a result, kids are different. I’ve heard this from teachers I know at all levels – elementary through high school.
Technology – When every student has a device of some kind in their hand, and they use it to communicate, to access information and videos they are interested in, and to create things of their own, it seems to lead to an expectation of immediacy that doesn’t always square with what we’re doing in our typical classroom.
Availability of stuff – This one ties into technology, but that’s not all there is to it. We live in a culture of YouTube, Google, Netflix, and Instagram just for a few examples. Whatever you want to see or know, you can find with your laptop, iPad, or phone. But it’s more than just that… As a kid for me, there were just a few options for extra-curriculars before you got to high school. The big one’s were baseball, basketball, and soccer, and each one had a specific season. A few kids in my elementary school played hockey or football, but that was about it until you hit junior high school. Kids in my school now are playing all the ones I remember, but now there’s also lacrosse, track/cross country, rugby, and volleyball just to name a few. And then we add in other extra-curriculars such as drama, music, art, etc. There are so many options available to draw our students interests and attention. Many of these activities can happen year-round for the kids who want to participate.

Ok, so we agree that kids are changing, we have a few answers to the question of why, but as educators who work with these students every day, how do we meet their needs, and help them to be successful?

If we all agree that kids are changing, the only answer that I can see is that we have to change with them.

Today I had a student walk up to me to tell me about her experience last night on the iNaturalist app. It’s an app that her class has been using to document various living things they find on the property of our school. Last night at home she found some prints in the mud next to the river behind her house. She took a picture, uploaded it to iNaturalist, and labeled it as racoon prints, because that is what it appeared to be to her. Later, she received a response in the app. Someone looked at the picture she posted and let her know that the tracks were not actually from a racoon, but rather from a river otter. On Google images, the student pulled up a picture of river otter tracks and realized that she was incorrect in her initial assessment, and that there had been a river otter in her backyard.

Talk about a transfer of learning. Because of an innovative activity that happened in this student’s classroom, she took the activity home with her, put her thoughts out to the world, and then learned from someone with more experience than her. I bet she will be able to identify river otter tracks in her back yard for the rest of her life!

If we continue to teach students in the ways that may have worked for students when we were still in school, or in ways that mirror what was successful in our first year of teaching, we are going to miss the needs of today’s students. They are changing. We have to change with them.

I say that knowing that change can be hard. But for many teachers, the place to look for ideas may be as close as the teacher down the hall that’s “always trying something new” or a colleague who works in a different grade level or subject area in your building that you’re always hearing cool stuff about. And if you don’t have innovative people near you that you can learn from, Twitter is one of the great equalizers for us all. Search the hashtag of the topic you are interested in. You’ll be amazed at the things you will find!

In my district, last night was the first ever HSEvening of Innovation. I was only able to attend for a short period of time, but the excitement in learning that I saw from the students and families that were there was spectacular (if you want to see some highlights, follow this link to go to a Twitter search of the event’s hashtag: #HSEveningOfInnovation). Seeing the excitement from students, teachers, and families that were there last night gives me hope that even though today’s students are changing, we can find a way to reach them all!

Education is not

What are your thoughts? What successes have you had in reaching kids in new and innovative ways? What are some of your old practices that you are choosing to eliminate to meet the needs of the kids in your class? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Creativity

Over spring break, I had the opportunity to do some reading, and finished 3 different books that were awesome. One of those books was Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull (the president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios). Primarily, the book is about creativity, but Catmull also describes it as “an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible.”

I have been reading a lot about creativity recently. I’ll be honest, I sometimes struggle to describe myself at a “creative” person. I always felt that I struggled in the related arts classes – while I enjoyed going to art class in elementary school, my work was never the type of thing that would have been chosen to hang in the display case outside of the art room. Even today I sometimes doodle in my notes and have been playing with the idea of sketchnoting as a way to increase learning and memory on certain tasks, but those sketches aren’t something that I feel very comfortable to share publicly. While I learned to play several different instruments in elementary, middle, and high school, I have not stuck with any of them beyond my school career. I have a guitar that spends more time in my closet than anywhere else in my house.

6 Cs of Learning But here’s the thing, if I just accept that creativity isn’t my thing, then I feel like I’m doing a disservice to the students whose life I impact. In previous posts, I have shared the graphic to the right. One of the keys to developing kids who are ready for their unknown future is developing creativity, and if we just throw our hands up and say “But I’m not that creative, so I can’t teach others to be creative” then we are not helping them be ready for whatever their future may hold.

One of the first books that I read that really got me thinking about the importance of creativity in teaching and learning was the book Ditch that Textbook by Matt Miller (also the book that got me thinking about starting this blog – one of the ways that I express my own creativity). If you haven’t read DITCH That Textbook, DITCH is actually an acronym for Matt Miller’s teaching model. DITCH stands for: Different; Innovative; Tech-laden; Creative; and Hands-on.

Creative Genius After reading Miller’s book, I was led to Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess. Burgess spends a huge chunk of time in this book talking about creative ways to hook our students into our lessons. He believes that creativity is something that can be developed in anyone through practice and effort. I have to say that I agree with him on this one – we can help develop creativity in others by giving them the time, space, and opportunity to use their creative ideas in their learning!

I’ve shared before that I often think of teaching as an art. Developing lessons that are interesting, exciting, and engaging takes time and effort. Some days our lessons nail it, and our kids are totally into it. Sometimes the lessons that we think are going to be “so cool” just fall flat.

In Creativity, Inc., Catmull shares that “If we can constantly change and improve our models by using technology in the pursuit of art, we keep ourselves fresh.” For many of our students, they continue to look at their iPad, their phone, or other pieces of technology, as a tool for entertainment purposes. They can play games, watch videos, and consume in so many ways. While there are times that consumption can be necessary for the purpose of learning, we generally retain so much more when we take our knowledge and create something with it. When we use the technology that our students see as a tool for consumption, and help our students see that they can use it for creation, they can go so much further in their learning. I’ve said it before, technology can be an accelerator that pushes our learning to new heights.

With that in mind, here’s the gentle nudge – think about ways that your students can use technology to create something that would never have been possible without the iPad they have in their hands. Help them to think about how they could make something that reminds them of the things they most like to consume. Then, set them free to be creative.

In Ditch that Textbook, Miller encourages us to think about how to integrate more creativity with the following questions:

Creative: What types of products do you and/or your students consume a lot? How can the role of consumer be flipped to creator? How do you or your students demonstrate original ideas? How can those translate to the classroom?

What are some ways that you have integrated creative thinking into learning opportunities successfully? What are some ideas you have to add a creative piece to what you are already doing? I believe that most kids want to be creative, but they don’t often get the opportunity to in service of learning. When we set those creative juices free for our kids, they will be so much more likely to retain the learning that was going on in connection with their creative thinking.

The View from 518