My 20time Project

This year is my second year doing 20% time. I did a version of 20time two years ago, but I made so many mistakes we’re not going to count it…

Last year, I didn’t do a 20time project. This may or may not have been a mistake - I’m not sure. I was concerned with overseeing student what my students were working on and helping them when they needed it. However, this year I’m in.

Thanks to a great Voxer conversation, Ashley, Amy, and John helped spawn this idea.

It started with this tweet from John a couple weeks ago:

As I discussed asking my kids these questions and prepping a video of their responses, Ashley and Amy started talking about interviewing some of the students in their district as they prep a 1:1 rollout. And then it hit me: why am I not interviewing my students this year about various aspects of school and splicing them together?

As educators, we say we care about what our kids have to say. Well, how careful are we about making sure we know their opinions? I hope that by doing this project, and sharing it with teachers in my PLN, that we become more aware of what our kids want from and think about school.

The first video - which answered John’s questions - is done, and embedded below.

This leaves me here: what questions should I ask my students this year? Got ideas? Things you’d like to hear some ninth graders in the Bay Area talk about? Toss them in the comments!

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Tangentially related: Kevin Brookhouser's 20time book showed up in my mailbox yesterday. I'm looking forward to reading it. Check it out here.

From My Students: What Teacher PD Should Focus On

A couple weeks ago, my buddy John Stevens asked this on Twitter:

Great question. I decided I'd actually ask my students what they thought teachers should focus on during our professional development. Here's what they had to say:

A Late Start to 20time

Yes, yesterday was Halloween. Yes, I just started 20time. No judgment, right? I didn't want to start 20time until really solid norms were in place with my freshmen. I also missed a couple of Fridays in October and wanted to make sure we had a few Fridays in a row to get the 20time momentum rolling.

Last year I started 20time with some brainstorming and the Bad Idea Factory (all blatantly stolen from Kevin Brookhouser). I liked how it went. However, a few tweaks happens this year.

I started the class talking about how my kids have the content of their thoughts controlled - to a certain extent - at school. "Think about this. Write this. Now do this." What did they think about when their brain had free roam of any topic? What did they WONDER about?

I shared that I wondered while hiking. Walking. Doing dishes. In the shower. Places my brain didn't have assigned tasks. NOT at school. I shared that I wondered about why we were murdering the environment. About why people did bad things. About how to run the best history class in possible.

Then kids started writing about what they wondered. If anyone ever tells you that American teenagers don't think, have them do this. Holy cow. The depth and thoughtfulness of their questions was amazing.

After that, we watched one of my favorite videos on all of the internetz: Google X's moonshot thinking video. I framed this video by asking them to think about what happened when people chose to pursue their wonder.



Needless to say, my kids seemed to understand pretty quickly the power of choosing to pursue their wonder.

Next, I briefly talked about how we had virtually eliminated choice and passion from school. How kids often didn't have the space at school to pursue the things they are interested in. About how I struggled with making kids do things that they might not be interested in in my class when I'd rather teach "find your passions and learn about and pursue them" as a class. And most importantly, I told them that I was giving them every Friday back until April to pursue something they were excited about.

Next, they brainstormed things they wished they could do: mental activities, physical activities, hobbies, things to help the school and community, and their own moonshots.

"Woah. LS.  This is hella hard. And really deep." Hearing that every period of the day? On Halloween? On the day they could have skipped school to go the Giants victory parade? That's an #EduWin for sure.

Finally, we got into the Bad Idea Factory. I shared a couple of my ideas from the brainstorm they had done on the board and asked my kids to do the same. Momentum was built. Kids riffed off of each other's ideas. And then the bell rang and they were excited about next Friday. The four panoramic shots of the board are embedded below - there are some spectacular ideas up there. Some great idea. Some intensely personal ones. And some bad ones.

I like the tweaks I made this year. Grounding 20time more concretely in wonder, in moonshots, and in a place to explore and be excited about school really seemed to resonate. I'm excited for next Friday!

Bad Idea Factory: 2nd period

Bad Idea Factory: 3rd period

Bad Idea Factory: 5th period

Bad Idea Factory: 7th period

#20time Year End Shareout

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time this year to have my students do the TED-style shareouts about their #20time projects that I hoped at the end of this school year: other curricular demands at the end of the year made me second guess asking my students to put together a big presentation at the end of the year.

As I finished my two year loop with my students this year, they were working on a major presentation and paper that traced a theme through the units we had worked through in English and history class for the last two year. It was the right choice to not have another presentation on top of this, so there needed to be a way to share out the awesome that kids had created for their #20time projects.

We did a science fair-style shareout of projects: kids rotated sharing and informally describing and answering questions about their projects. The listeners provided warm feedback to the folks they were listening to.

Pictures and some small descriptions are below. Below that are a few thoughts I have on what #20time will hold next year.

Aiden wrote to sick children

Trey blogged about drawing

Mady, Kelly, and Shayna sharing about the run
they organized to raise money for breast cancer 

Jacob's refinished skateboard project

Ezra's DIY 3D printer

Eli's T-shirt creations

Emily raised awareness about marginalized students at our school

Tony sharing his snowboard project

A couple groups sharing their blogs

Jasa, a new sport, being shared out

So. Was it worth it, spending every Friday on not history? Absolutely! What changes for next year then? Glad you asked.  In no particular order:

• I want to start with the month-to-month goal setting much earlier – like from day one of #20time. I will have ninth graders next year. I think that the accountability will help some groups – it definitely helped my tenth graders this past year.
• We will be doing the TED style shareout at the end of #20time next year. There is no huge paper/presentation combination at the end of the ninth grade like there is at tenth grade. I am looking forward to emphasizing this presentation from day one: hopefully it will get kids to take pictures and collect artifacts along the way to share out at the end of the year.
• I think I will be instituting a critical friends type of grouping that will meet either every other Monday or the first Monday of every month. These critical friend groups will have two complete #20time groups in each set. A #20time group will share out – in two to three minutes – the work they completed on their #20time project the previous months and then will chart what they believe their next month’s work will hold. Then, the listeners will ask clarifying and probing questions about what the presenting group completed and then provide feedback and ideas for a path forward for the next group. I am hoping that this shareout will help keep groups focused but also let fresh but familiar eyes to see the projects and provide feedback.

I think that might be about it.  I enjoyed the year of #20time. I’m looking forward to more #20time awesomeness next year!

The Do-Nothings in #20time

Let me clarify first: I don’t have many of these. One for sure, a couple of maybes. Out of 110 kids doing the project, that ain’t bad. Now that that clarification is out of the way…

What about that kid who is blatantly doing nothing during #20time? What do you do? Cancel the project? Get into them to try to get them going?

These are second semester sophomores were talking about. Kids who I have taught for four straight semesters. We know each other. We’ve got a relationship.

I talked to the most prominent of the do nothing kids yesterday.

“I’ve watched you this semester in #20time. I don’t think you’re doing anything.”

“No, I’m not, really.”

“Here’s the deal: not gonna lie, that bugs me a little bit. But I appreciate your honesty.”

“Okayyyyy.”

“I’m not going to yell at you. Or even make you do anything. If you want to fill out the weekly reflections and not do anything, to get the grade, I guess I’m going to let you do that. If you feel okay about doing that, if you want the grade that way, I’m not going to stop you.”

(Note: my students reflect on their progress weekly and create monthly rubrics to self-assess their progress. I grade these weekly reflections and their monthly reflection for completeness. More on this here.)

“Hmm. Okayyyyy. (pause) Is the final product graded?”

“No.”

I don’t know how I should have handled this student and their choice. A part of me is really bothered that they are choosing to waste 20% of their time in my class this year. I look around at what other kids are doing and think about the kids who are so excited for history every Friday. Kids who code like mad for 45 straight minutes. Or are pulling together a sports camp for middle schoolers. Doing neat stuff, and stuff they are genuinely interested in.

But I can’t force that interest either. I had a lot of discussions with this student about their project. Clearly nothing came of these talks. Still, though, I’m left wondering about the best way to have handled this.

20Time and The Suck

I wrote earlier about how The Suck started to descend on my class’s 20% time projects at the end of last semester: the far off deadline for the projects - April - had allowed some groups to settle into some complacency. And not-productivity.

While I was a little bothered by this, I also understood how it could happen: the deadline for these projects was so far off there wasn’t the time pressure to produce immediately.

So. Enter Doctopus! I used my favorite script to push a document to my kids that asked them to create a rubric for their productivity for the month of January. They had to reflect at the end of each Friday on what they had gotten done that day and what they needed to get done before next week.

And? What happened?

Kids were generally more productive with their time. And their reflections were honest. Painfully honest in parts.

“We weren’t as productive as we needed to be. I need to do a better job of facilitating in my group to make sure we stay on task and focused during class.” Wow. Okay. Looking forward to watching that.

“I set my goals too high for this month.” That’s a problem I’m happy to deal with.

“We got stuck in The Suck in the middle of the month.” Word: need to be able to diagnose it to be able to fix it!

Did this totally solve the problem of The Suck? No. Did things get better? Yes. In fact, I’m pushing this document out to my kids tomorrow to keep track of their productivity for the month of February.

20Time Video

I went around and interviewed my students last Friday - our dedicated 20time day - and asked them about their 20% time projects. The results are below. This is only a small sample of what they are working on though - I only interviewed a couple of the classes about their projects.

I love the variety of projects they are working on!

20Time and Real World Problem Solving

I tweeted this earlier this week, but the back story bears more mentioning:

I had a student come busting into my seventh period prep a couple days ago.

“LS!!! We figured out how we can make our breast cancer run work!”

Umm, yes - I can work with this excitement!

This is a student who has not always been sold on the 20Time projects we are doing this year. Or on the changes I have made to my class this year. But man, was she excited in this moment.

What she’s dealing with is something I’ve started to see with other groups: as more and more kids are seeing the end of their projects in sight, the groups that need a place to hold their 20Time project have started to need to get facilities organized to hold these events. And then they run into roadblocks.

And I’m not helping them. At all.

It has been really rewarding to watch them start to deal with those hurdles. All proposals to use school space are getting rejected (the out of hand rejecting of student requests is another issue altogether). But then the kids have to go out and advocate for themselves, to make their ideas work within the larger schedule of the school. They go out and talk to the athletic director to organize using the gym for a three on three tournament. They talk to an administrator about using the little theater for their benefit concert.

You know: deal with the logistical red tape (for lack of a better word) that they need to do in order to hold their event. It’s this problem solving that has been rewarding to watch.

At times, the kids find it frustrating. Really frustrating. But to see breakthroughs happen? And legitimate excitement about solving these issues that have troubled them for a couple months? Yeah, that’s a 20Time #EduWin!

The Suck and #20time in My Class

I absolutely stole the concept of The Suck from Jon Corippo. Essentially, The Suck talks about productivity on longer term projects. When group projects start, productivity is high. Planning and delegation happens. And then productivity decreases. The deadline is far off and the urgency to get work done - no matter the size of the task - drops. That’s The Suck: this drop in productivity.

#ObiWanCorippo has a couple solutions to The Suck. First, you’ve got to label it. Kids need to know what The Suck is. The need to be able to recognize when they get stuck in The Suck. I’ve seen the power in labeling The Suck this year: students use it in class to call themselves or their groups out for unproductive times.

Another tack that Jon suggests is creating a deadline that doesn’t allow for The Suck. Give kids big tasks with quick deadlines and give them lots of repetitions on the task. They get better at the task and they don’t have time to waste because of the imminent deadline.

I’ve messed with both of these and seen success. As always, Corippo knows things…

So. #20time. True to the nature of The Suck, my kids were super productive at the beginning of their work on their year-long #20time projects, which we work on every Friday in my class. However, as last semester wore on - and the project wasn’t due to be completed until the end of the school year - groups started to fall into The Suck. The deadline was too far away. Daily reflections about what students accomplished in class weren’t defeating The Suck.

Just to be clear, there were significant portions of all my classes that had been very productive with their #20time. But this wasn’t the case with all students.

I needed to intervene.

Time to think. And regroup. That’s what winter break is for, right?

Doctopus: The Document Octopus!

So today, the battle against The Suck commenced in earnest. I used Doctopus to push this document to all my students. After consulting their year long #20time schedules that students created in September and reflecting on where they were and what they needed to accomplish by the end of April (when this project concludes), students created their own rubric to assess themselves on what they could accomplish in January. They will reflect at the end of each Friday #20time period on what they got done, then assess themselves on the rubric that they created at the end of the month.

(No, I’m not grading them based on where they place themselves on the rubric. Just on if they complete the reflection.)

I am hopeful that by making students divide up their remaining #20time into four month-long sections and by having them name what they will accomplish in each month, a sense of urgency will be created. And The Suck will die.

Time will tell. The battle against The Suck in #20time has begun though!

End of Semester Reflection: Thoughts on Semester One in a 1:1 Class

So this will probably be a lengthy post. To go all teenager hashtag on you #SorryNotSorry. Please feel free to read on, but do so at your own risk.

I feel like I learned more this semester - my first in a 1:1 classroom - than I did my first year teaching. Granted I see more now than I did in year one, but there were just crazy amounts of learning that went down this semester.

So what went down this semester? I thought you'd never ask.

Some Positives

(In no particular order. And these paragraphs don't flow together. They're like bullet point paragraphs. Whoops.)

My class this semester

Students had a lot of choice in the content of their projects this semester. In the two big content-related projects from the semester, kids had huge amounts of choice around the content of their learning: the content of these projects were bound only by the unit we were studying. Kids could go out and learn something of their choice about World War II and the Holocaust - 1:1 allowed that kind of freedom. It allowed students to ask - and answer - their own questions within units. It gave them the opportunity to pursue their passions within a given unit. HOWEVER, this freedom came at a cost: there were big content holes that my kids had. More on this later.

Another good part of class was the choice students had in the way that they could demonstrate their knowledge - yay to all of the free internet tools out there! Or they could use good old pencil and paper. Or Minecraft. Or build a diorama. Or just about anything else that they wanted to build.

Self-directed learning generally goes well with my kids. They have now spent a year and a half in the weird that is my classroom. Students have gotten use to less structure. They have gotten comfortable (or more comfortable) making choices about the content of their learning and following through with a deliverable.

After a year and a half together, my kids collaborate online like woah: they have done a lot of this and they do it well. It's fun to watch!

20time has been a lot of fun. After an epic failure last year, students have taken to the format I'm using this year well. (Thanks Kevin and Kate!) Most importantly, my students are doing meaningful work that will impact others in a positive direction. I can't wait to see these projects come together second semester!

20time has made Friday - always a fun day to teach - an absolute dream to be at school! (We do our 20time projects every Friday.) I get to walk around and troubleshoot with groups. Kids are on task and excited to get this opportunity and freedom in class.

Despite the emphasis on choice impacting other aspects of my class (mentioned briefly above and also discussed below), this semester has been SAMR-friendly. I think I'm working to modify and redefine what a history classroom can be. It's exciting! Lots of bumps are happening along the way, but it's exciting. Students are creating. A lot. That's a good thing.

Being 1:1 means that new collaborative inquiry structures are needed. I've worked to redefine what historical inquiry can be in 1:1 classroom. In short, ask a big question, provide a few sample resources, and give kids not enough time to fully wrap their heads around the question you ask. No one can do all the work - there isn't time - and if you ask the right question kids are engaged. More on this new inquiry structure can be found here.

I think I've got a dream class: I almost don't need to be there to teach it. And it's my last class of the day. I just got lucky, but it is most certainly a positive.

For the first time ever, I might have zero kids fail. Which is always the goal, but not something I've ever been able to do.

If you push hard enough for things - repeatedly, to lots of people - often times the things you want will show up. After running my Chromebooks on the student BYOD network, and complaining to a lot of people about how slow it was, I was able to get my own private wifi network that runs only my Chromebooks. Huge win!

The "ask forgiveness not permission" maxim went well. Because of it, I made big steps toward making my class line up more completely with what I think my ideal classroom is. Thanks to not asking permission, I eliminated tests and added 20time this semester. This mindset worked out well - I'd strongly recommend it to anyone.

No homework. That's still a positive.

I got to hang out with tons of awesome peeps: Robert Pronovost and I organized a #brewcue every month this semester. Edcamps were plentiful: edcampSFBay and two SoCal edcamps happened this semester. Yes, edcamps are awesome. Yes, these three helped prove this rule. CUE conferences and events - the fall CUE conference and the North Bay CUE event - continued to drive me to be better. Hanging out and talking to awesome people helps me to create higher expectations for me and my classroom than my administrator could ever have. Love my PLN!

Some Negatives

The unit structure I chose to use allowed for my student to have a lot of choice. However, this choice came at the expense of content knowledge: there are definitely huge gaps in the content knowledge of my students. And while big picture I'm okay with this (you're going to make mistakes whenever you try to innovate in your classroom) it's something I need to clean up.

There was entirely too much writing clumped into about six weeks at the end of October and November and not enough earlier in the semester. Another drawback of student creation: probably not enough writing tasks.

I am abjectly failing in one class: resentment towards tasks - even tasks that allow for significant student voice and choice - dominates that class. It is far and away my biggest failure from this semester. It is also going to be my biggest victory second semester. More on That Class here.

All of the online collaboration and creation that my students have done has come at the expense of class discussions around document work and other big ideas that we've covered. I need to do a better job finding this balance to get my kids the space to process ideas together.

My assessment structure isn't what I want it to be. While trying to give kids space to take risks in the classroom, it has morphed into something I don't love. Can we just get rid of grades? Great.

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Overall, the semester was a positive one. Probably the most fun semester I've ever had in the classroom. I'm blessed so be working with a group of awesome kids who will roll with me and try things and then provide good actionable feedback that helps make my class better.

That's probably the biggest positive of the semester: a spectacular group of kids.

And learning. By me in particular. If my kids learned 20% as much as I did this semester, they learned a ton.

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I'm excited for what second semester has in store. We've got a fascinating three or four weeks to spend on Afghanistan. We're going to spend a couple weeks on Syria. There's an awesome counterfactual history project that we'll do. And May? I've got no idea. My kids might run class in May.

And this the fourth - and last - semester with these students. It's gonna be a blast.

We're gonna crush it. I can already tell.