Ramblings: How I Got Here

I had a really neat conversation with a former student over email over the last couple days. She emailed me to talk about how her year had gone and catch up a bit. She talked a little about her experience in AP US History - it was a positive one, and she felt like all the writing she had to do to prep for the AP test made her a better writer.

I always wondered what I would have done if I had had to teach APUSH. The sheer amount of content you have to plow through, so little room for choice for students over learning things they are interested in: teaching a class within a box like that would have been a challenge, for sure. I’m not sure what I would have done.

But back to the story. I was glad to hear that my former student enjoyed the class. It made me reflect a little bit on my time in APUSH. My APUSH teacher was an incredible man. First and foremost, his class was the second really good history class I had in a row. (Unfortunately, this was my grade 11 and 12 years…) Had I not had those two great experiences in history class, I doubt I would have taken a couple history classes in early college, fallen in love with the subject, and subsequently ended up teaching it.

Second, we kept in touch for a while after I graduated from high school and college. After a couple years in the Peace Corps and a couple of years doing environmental ed, I knew education was for me but I needed to my teacher certification. As I sat down to have lunch with him, we talked about my plan to get my certification and masters. I told him where I was applying. I mentioned I was on the fence about Stanford’s teacher prep program: how would someone with a 3.3 GPA in undergrad get into Stanford? Seemed like a waste of time. In short, he channeled my current favorite writer Shea Serrano and said, “Shoot your shot.” He talked me into applying to Stanford - what was the worst thing that could happen? Well, I got in and spent an amazing decade in the Bay Area because of it.

But the third reflection I had was an interesting one. As I was emailing my student, I recounted why I loved APUSH and this teacher’s strengths: great sense of humor, incredible content knowledge, and

(wait for it)

(drumroll…)

"Curtis Lecture Hall" by Theonlysilentbob from wikimedia

he was a brilliant lecturer. I remember reading ahead in our textbook to prep for his lectures. I wanted to know the outline of the content of the lecture so I could catch all the little nuggets and salacious information he always peppered his lectures with.

I fell in love with history, thanks in part to a brilliant APUSH teacher. Who lectured. Lectured really well. I don’t really know what any of that means; I do know I wasn’t the only person that really enjoyed his class. It was an interesting realization though: as someone who pushed to have his class as student-centered as possible, it was definitely an interesting memory to have float up to the surface. But without this brilliant teacher - whose class I read ahead in the textbook for to prep for his lectures - none of this (being a history teacher) may have happened.

What You Look For Matters

As I apply for jobs for the first time in a decade, some interesting thoughts swirl through my head. Having spent almost a decade at my last job, searching for a school that wants to add me is a different feeling. As I think about myself and what I bring to a job, the way I look at who I am and what I can add to whatever school I end up at matters.

I’m a new educator in a new system: going from a place and education system I knew well - California - to a new education system in British Columbia. Not just a new state, but a new country! On top of that, British Columbia has just instituted a new set of education standards, further complicating the transition. That’s a big hurdle for someone to overlook when they’re looking to hire me.

OR…

I could look at the things I was able to do in my almost decade at Hillsdale. What I did in my classroom. What my students did in my classroom. Committees I was a part of. Professional development opportunities I helped organize and facilitate.

It’s a very different way of looking at yourself: what can you do, what do you know versus what can’t you do, what don’t you know? That deficit model - looking at weaknesses - can be really toxic. If I spend too much time thinking about what I don’t know, about what I can’t do, I get doubtful. I’m a risk - someone needs to overlook that big gap in knowledge that I have to hire me. But if I look at what I can do, what I do know, what is transferable between contexts, it feels very different.

I’ll own it: I’ve looked at other educators and focused on what they can’t do in the past. I don’t feel good saying that, but it is true. By doing that, I’ve missed strengths people have. Things they can teach me. The amazing things their kids are doing in their classrooms. Thankfully, I’ve had to eat some humble pie in those areas, as my perceptions of what people can’t do has been impacted by what I’ve seen them actually DO. The outlook - what could this educator do better - was wrong. Should we work on weaknesses? Sure. But focusing on weaknesses and ignoring strengths - as I have done about myself in my job search - is toxic.

How many times have I focused on weaknesses with students? How often did they feel like their areas for growth were being hammered on and their strengths ignored? That’s not a question I can answer, but it something I can take forward: look for strengths in students. Look for what fellow educators are great at. Focus on building on those things people do well, not on things people could get better at.

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I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Chris Wejr’s TED talk on strengths-based education at the end of this post. Chris is brilliant, and his talk is everything you’d hope it would be.

Stay Out There

Long before I was a history teacher with a blog (that I even posted to sometimes), I was a history major. In order to graduate with a history degree, I had to write a thesis. My work for my thesis focused on the Vietnam War protests, specifically in Madison, WI where I grew up. My thesis looked at the impact of the bombing of the Army Math Research Center (AMRC) in Madison in  early 1970 on the anti-war movement.

As I was out for a walk this past week, I started thinking about my thesis. Particularly, I was thinking about the widespread protest that characterized the 1960s, from the Civil Rights Movement to the Vietnam War protests, and the number of people in the streets today protesting all manner of acts by President Agent Orange (thanks Busta Rhymes for that moniker).

It is always imperfect to draw comparisons across historical eras. However…

As the protests around the Vietnam War drew on, protesters became frustrated: their huge numbers and vocal dissent seemed to be doing nothing. The Vietnam War expanded into Cambodia and Laos while protests were widespread. President Nixon even said that he knew nothing about a quarter million person march in Washington DC because he was too busy watching football.

This frustration manifested itself in more aggressive and confrontational tactics by protesters. Whether it was the sporadic violence of the Weathercells or an enormous bombing like the explosion at the Army Math Research Center, protesters were upping the ante in their level of confrontation with the government. The AMRC bombing ended up killing a researcher, ruining the research of many, and crippling the anti-war movement in Madison and beyond as the public rejected the violence of the movement.

I am not here to cast judgment about whether protests that cross the line from nonviolent to violent are just. Others have written about this, and made me think deeply about systems of oppression and who is requesting protesters only exercise their rights nonviolently and in ways that aren’t inconvenient to the dominant groups in society.

My point is, though, that had protesters in the late 1960s knew the impact they were having, they would have been heartened. Nixon, despite his public lack of concern about the protesters, received multiple updates per day about protests. He made sure the FBI was using COINTELPRO to target anti-war groups. Protesters had an impact: the devastation that the Vietnam War had on American soldiers and families - to say nothing of the Vietnamese people - was muted by the protesters speaking their truth to the people in power. They just didn’t know that.

So stay active. Keep marching. Keep calling. The fight will be long. There will be losses - Sessions, DeVos, etc have already shown this. But the 2018 elections will be here soon. Keep the pressure on. Your actions have impacts on policy makers, whether they want to admit it or not.

Some Takeaways From #edcampsummitSD

I was lucky enough to attend my first Edcamp Leadership Summit this past weekend down in San Diego. It was a great weekend - get a bunch of edcamp peeps together and of course we'll have fun! Plus, sun and weather in the 60s and 70s was a welcome break from high 30s and rain in the Vancouver area :)

I learned a lot this weekend. In no particular order:
Meeting Eric Cross - an amazing science teacher in San Diego - and hearing him talk about how he structured the units in his middle school science class made me want to be a student in his class. It also made me want to talk to a bunch of different teachers about unit design cross-curricularly. We've got a lot we could learn from each other.

From a session on school climate

Hearing Jen Roberts talk about how her work teaching preservice teachers pushes her pedagogy was interesting. Jen talked about how working with these teachers keeps her trying new things she steals from them in her own class was a benefit that I hadn't thought about.
In a session about how to get a more diverse set of educational stakeholders at edcamps, Dena Glynn had some cool ideas about having student presentations during edcamps. In addition to showing off the host school and district it would bring more parents in as well - to see their kids present. Hopefully this would allow those parents to stay and participate in the edcamp. Really good idea, and we need more parent voices at edcamps!
I only overlapped briefly as a moderator of #caedchat with Kriscia Cabral and I had never gotten a chance to meet her. Her positivity and excitement throughout the weekend were amazing, and a great reminder that if you're excited about what you're doing that enthusiasm rubs off on the people around you.
Improv in the classroom? Need to start doing some learning here. Anthony Veneziale led a two hour improv session for attendees that was excellent: high energy, fun, and backed by the brain science showing the importance of improv. Anthony recommended Impro by Keith Johnstone as a good read with crossovers to improv in the classroom. Definitely adding that to my To Read list on Goodreads!
Scott Bedley shared how he is using sound prompts to get his class writing. Not photo prompts, which I had heard about, but sound clips he records while out living his life. These sound prompts force his elementary student to imagine then describe the scene that sound conjures for them. Super rad!

In The Classroom

I’m not in the classroom this year. An American can’t just show up and teach in Canada: you need a work permit. You can’t get a work permit until you submit your permanent residence application. You can’t submit your permanent residence application until you get your official marriage certificate. Which doesn’t show up until a month after a wedding. But I digress…

There have been times I’ve really missed being in the classroom this year. It was weird to watch all my old friends post about going back to school in mid-August. Hearing from old students - now juniors - made me miss getting to talk to kids. Getting to show up to my old school’s fall play - I was in town for 30 hours and the schedules fit JUST RIGHT - and getting to see kids I knew and loved do amazing things, and getting to talk to them? That made me miss it.

Nothing like today though.

I turned 37 yesterday. All in all, it was a pretty cruddy birthday. But at some point last night, after I heard that Ron Johnson beat Russ Feingold in my old home state and that Trump was going to win Wisconsin and the presidency, I wanted to be able to be in a classroom today. My classroom. With my kids.

To listen. To hear. To make sure kids felt heard. Loved. That despite what was said publicly about them - immigrants, Muslim, female, LGBT, Latino, … - that kids could feel safe. Today was the day that I missed that.

Teachers I talked to today weren’t sure they were ready, but put on a brave face. They were there for their students, whether they felt ready internally or not.

Today, more than any other day this fall, I wished I had that opportunity.

#youredustory, Week 22: Year End Reflection

Prompt: Most of us are somewhere near the end point of the school year. Reflect on the 2014-15 school year. What went well? What didn't go as well? What changes are you going to make for the 2015-16 school year?

The start of summer looked pretty tasty from the John Muir
Trail in Yosemite!

Given that my last day with students was last Thursday, this is a timely prompt. I've been turning these questions over in my head for a while - it'll be good to get something coherent out.

Also, this turned into kind of a mammoth post.  #SorryNotSorry

What Went Well

A couple things come immediately to mind. First, I spent the last two years really banging around trying to figure out how to do history class better. Two years ago I ran a self-paced, mastery based class. While some good things came out of this, I felt like my class lost the richness of common experiences around rich document sets and big ideas. So, out with that.

Last year I was 1:1 for the first time and tried to create time and space for kids to work on areas of history they were interested in. Aspects of this went well, but I often sent kids out to do the thinking in areas of history that interested them without enough context to really understand what they were looking into.

So, the circuitous answer that I'll finally arrive at: I think that my students were more prepared this year to look into areas of history that interested them. They had the context they needed to make meaning of their individual or small group explorations that they did together.

Additionally, I added a section to the end of these individual or small group explorations where we came back together as a class and looked at the work of our peers and answered some synthesis questions to try to tie the disparate content they had learned back up. The peer audience helped, and the synthesis part got kids to make connections between very different content.

Other things that went well, but more briefly:

- Socratic seminars continue to rock my world. I love getting to sit back and listen to kids play with ideas and hear them think, build on the ideas of others, and disagree in an academic way.

- The emphasis on social justice and issues of inequality in America was good. I'm glad I'm not scared to teach hard topics anymore. I'm glad we spent three weeks early in the year talk in about Ferguson - it was a touchstone that my kids came back to often throughout the year.

- 20time continued to be fun. It was neat to watch kids work on things they were passionate about. And kids made some mind-blowingly cool things.

- The 'final exam' my kids do at the end of their freshman year is a mock trial of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission cases from post-apartheid South Africa. This is the fifth time I've done these trials and both the content kids mastered and their oral presentation skills were on the whole better than what I've seen from students in the past.

- I finally integrated some design thinking into my classroom! And while there were a things I need to tweak, the thinking and quality of conversation I saw from students was exceptional. Additionally, they listened to peer feedback and acted on it in a way I've not ever seen kids do before.

- Without being all "look at me", I was honored to be a part of the Google Teacher Academy in Austin in December and was humbled to get to do a TEDx talk in January as well. Both of those were neat experiences, but for very different reasons.

What Didn't Go Well

- The short answer? I'm proud to say there is no achievement gap by race in my classroom. However, there is a huge achievement gap by gender. Guys do worse in my classroom than females do: 11% of males in my class got a D, 4% got an F. By comparison, only 2% of females got a D and none failed my class. And while I know that this generally reflects realities in education across schools and ages, it is something that definitely I need to think on and try to solve next year.

- Third period didn't go well. Too much not caring about producing quality work. Too much caring about what other people thought of you and saw you doing. Ugh. There will be some cleanup that needs to be done around classroom culture there next year.

- To be honest, I need to look at the student feedback I got as well. I'm going to let the school year breathe before I take a look at that. Ask me at the end of June :)

Changes For 2016-17

Honestly, I don't know that I have wholesale changes that I plan on making. I need to take a look at the student feedback and see what my kids had to say. I need to decide if I am going to do 20time in the second year of a loop with students or if I'll have them do passion-based blogging on Fridays. I've got student feedback to look on that topic as well.

I've mentioned a couple times already in this post that I teach a two year loop with kids. This means that I'll be tweaking material from two years ago for next year. I'm looking forward to the changes that I'll make around curriculum: more North Korea, less totalitarian USSR; less Cold War and a genocide unit in its place; who the heck knows what I'll be teaching at the end of next year (we've got a lot of choice in what we cover second semester sophomore year).

So there you have it. Year 7 (or 8, or 12 depending on if you count student teaching and teaching in the Peace Corps and environmental education) is in the books.

Onward and upward. But first, breathe this summer.

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More information on #youredustory can be found here. Consider joining in the fun!

We Need to Teach Hard Things

Students need to be able to recognize this in the media.

As I watch racist media coverage float out of Baltimore...

On the heels of talking about creating safe spaces for LGBTQ youth last night on #caedchat...

There are a lot of things that we - the adults in this world - have effed up pretty good. There are a lot of problems - heavy, difficult problems around race, class, gender, culture, and numerous other things - that we are leaving for the next generation to solve.

Given this, I believe we as educators have a moral imperative to have hard conversations, to raise awareness, to increase knowledge around race, class, gender, culture, and any other areas where systems of oppression and inequality exist with our students. (And yes - there are many adults who are scared to talk about these things.)

We must start developing our students’ critical lenses for viewing society. For consuming media that is all around them. For creating media that challenges assumptions and stereotypes.

So they can make the world a better place in the areas we have failed.

“But this makes some students uncomfortable.”

GOOD. I remember my initial grapplings with my extreme privilege in this world. I was uncomfortable with my whiteness. This wasn’t something I had chosen. For me, that discomfort with my privilege was an important first step towards starting to come to terms with my privileged place in the world.

As we kicked off this school year with a three week unit on Ferguson, I watched some students be uncomfortable with the death of an unarmed young black man. (The most uncomfortable group? White males.)

Students need this discomfort! Critical lenses don’t just appear out of the blue, especially for the privileged members of our society. All students need the time to talk and learn about systems of oppression in our country. They need to be exposed to the hard conversations. Students need the language to talk about this.

Some things are more important than the curriculum your state/district/school tells you to teach. This, I believe, is the most important of those things.

#youredustory, Week 13: PLNs and Echo Chambers

Prompt: The world of connected educators can be an echo chamber at times, how WILL you grow the conversation so that we bring more people and perspectives along the journey?

I’m going to Andrew Thomasson this prompt for #youredustory and disagree with the premise of the prompt. Andrew pushed back - very eloquently - on a couple of the prompts so far. Let the Thomasson channeling begin…

My people: edcamp organizers at #cue14, photo by me

Before I start, by no means am I implying that a group of connected educators needs to be an echo chamber. If you're not following people who think differently about education than you do, by all means start doing that. Divergent voices are absolutely necessary for progress to be made in education, for progress to be made in your classroom or at your site.

But...

As I engage with more and more groups of edufriends, many of whom seem to be a single person at their school really pushing hard on making school different and better for our students, I know that these educators' PLNs provide a place of support and comfort for them.

Weird look or snarky comment from a staff member? No worries. Get called in to talk to your principal or superintendent? Hey, we've been there. Let's troubleshoot this together. Got an angry email from a parent because you're doing school differently? Because your class isn't what they experienced in school? Yup. We're that shoulder to cry on.

I think that those like-minded people are incredibly crucial for support. For the 'No, you're not crazy' talk. For the ‘No, you’re doing what’s right - keep fighting the good fight’ talk. You NEED like-minded people if you're going to survive while trying to make change in education.

You need some cheerleaders.

You need people who see education the way you do. People who have fought similar battles. People who know and see the value of doing it another way.

Some days, you need a room full of them. (Or at least a Voxer group of them.)

Some days, you need an echo chamber.

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More information on #youredustory can be found here. Consider joining in the fun!

Am I A PD Glutton?

This is a response to a post that Scott Bedley wrote. Go read it here. This won't make any sense without that context.

I love Scott. He's a great guy. Always makes me think. This post was no different.

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So, to start: based on Scott's definition, I'm a PD glutton. I answered yes to a few of those questions. I think I agree with his basic premise: there are people who partake in a lot of PD opportunities in their geographic region and beyond.

The question is why though. Why are people spending so much of their time attending non-mandatory PD events? Are we gluttons? The Google monster tells me that a glutton is an excessive overeater. It makes gluttony sound reckless.

I want to push back on Scott's label of gluttony. I can only speak for myself, but I don't think that I'm excessive in my desires for good PD. If I look at my 2015, I'm not sure about gluttony. I've been to TEDxLangleyED, edcampSV, integratED Portland, the Silicon Valley CUE event (which I helped organize), and annual CUE. Some were amazing events. Others were merely good. All scratched an itch though.

I think that one of the biggest reasons that I spend my time and my money attending events like these is that my school and district PD doesn't work for me. (I'm not trying to throw my district or school under the bus here. I've been very open with them about what could be done to improve PD.) The PD I'm required to attend isn't developing me professionally - it's school work. It isn't helping me critically rethink what my classroom can and should be.

I choose to attend PD events to scratch that itch. That "I know my classroom can be a better place for all my students, I need to keep figuring out how to make that happen" feeling that I have. Does that make me a glutton? Or a teacher with an unfulfilled vision, but a desire to get better? (And the knowledge that I can get better.)

Like Scott, I've had some letdowns at PD opportunities. Sometimes, the focus on the tools of edtech and not on the learning that students should be doing is bothersome. Sometimes, the plethora of sit and get sessions - and the relative paucity of discussion-based or doing sessions - gets to me.

I know good PD when I see it. You can feel it. Like when I walked into Tracy Clarke's session at CUE 10 minutes late and the chairs were all pulled into a circle and it was LOUD. I knew I was in the right place. And we talked, and did, and learned together in her session.

Tracy's CUE15 session, photo by me

Those things CAN happen at traditional conferences. Conferences that might have a lot of sit and get. Conferences that might have a lot of tool-based sessions. (And I get that some people need tool-based sessions. I just don't generally love them.)

I think the onus is on us, the PD gluttons as Scott calls us, to make spaces for sessions that involve conversations. Sessions focused on making and doing, not listening to a sage on the stage. To create opportunities that we find valuable. And to expose folks just used to sit and get to something new. Something better.

We need to work to make PD better everywhere we go.

I recognize that my response to Scott's post had veered into the conversation of how we can make PD better - according to Scott, a sign of a PD glutton. However, Scott also wrote that when you're full, you're full. I'm not sure I'm full yet. I think there's more for my classroom. I think there's a better place for my kids to learn. I want to find that.

I'd argue I'm still hungry.

And, as Scott says, we may need to look elsewhere as well. I've moved away from books about education for pleasure reading. I'm reading about leadership. Change. Thinking. Areas that touch on education, but aren't explicitly about education. Bringing those outside ideas in is necessary too.

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Or.

Or maybe we need to change the conversations about PD. Maybe we need to stop talking about it. Maybe we need to find a way to share the vision that we're working towards in our respective classrooms. Maybe we need to share the risks that we're taking. Maybe we need to start sharing the places we are looking for inspiration from. For new ideas. For new perspectives. For what's next for us and for our students.


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I need to think more about this.

I hope more people join in the conversation. Let's keep this conversation going.

Who is writing the next blog post?

#youredustory, Week 12: School Breaks

Prompt: You're either in, just past or about to get to spring break. What are your thoughts on breaks - is there really a "slide"? How long is too long? How short is just right?

School's out by James 2 from flickr

I’m just about to get to spring break. I’ll be honest: I really need it.

I need a couple days that I sleep in and then lay around and read all day. I need a couple days where I don’t think about school or my classroom. I need a couple days where I can take a deep breath and take my time exhaling.

Is there a slide? I don’t know. After my one week spring break, I don’t notice one. After a two month summer break? That’s harder for me to tell.

What is ideal? I’d definitely prefer a year-round calendar with multiple shorter breaks. Both my students and I hit slumps during the year where we haven’t had a break in over a month and school can become a bit of a grind.

I’m not sure what the research out there says about year-round calendars. And frankly, I’m not sure what that research measures either. Basic factual recall? Ain’t nobody got time for that. Actual skill-based work? I’d be more interested in what research in that area has to say.

But almost regardless of the research - which I’m not going to take the time to look up, so there! - I’d rather have several shorter breaks and year-round school.

I think it would be better for everyone’s sanity.

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More information on #youredustory can be found here. Consider joining in the fun!

#youredustory, Week 11: Student Voice

Joint Attention by Terry Anderson from US Army

So how are we defining student voice? Is about listening to student feedback? Is about integrating student desires into what you do on a day to day basis in the classroom? I don't feel like I have a good definition for what this is. Which might make me a bad person. Or at least a bad teacher.

I feel like my lack of a concrete definition as to what student voice is means it isn't something I do well. Which I knew when I started this blog post.

Okay. So what do I do. I elicit and listen to student feedback. I integrate their feedback and ideas into future units. I give kids the time and the space to learn about the things that they are interested in - history related content on open-ended projects and more wide open exploration and creation with 20% time.

However, I know I can do more. I know I SHOULD do more . I'm looking forward to reading other responses this week and stealing a few ideas!

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More information on #youredustory can be found here. Consider joining in the fun!

#youredustory, Week 10: Passion for Learning

Prompt: How do you infect students with a passion for learning?

I try to get my students curious about what they are learning by getting out of their way and giving them the time and the space to be curious about areas of history - and their life - that interest them (a little more about that here).

For me, in order to create the space for this exploration, I have to teach less content. I’m totally okay with that. I know some aren’t comfortable with that decision, but in the age of near ubiquitous information, we need to dramatically rethink what we are doing in history classes. (That’s a topic for another day though.)

Unit structure

So. The first step is to try to get students intrigued and excited about the ideas in the unit we’re working on. This might be provocative questions that relate to the content, or a simulation of some sort. After this, we head into some shared schema building. This often involves some sort of a model that applies to a given unit (a model for how a revolution happens, for example), then an application of that model to a real situation in the content of the unit (applying that revolutions model to the French Revolution). After that, I turn kids loose. I let them go out and find a part of history that relates - either thematically or chronologically - with the shared schema we just covered. *

My goal is that by giving them enough schematic hooks to be interested then enough choice that they can find something that intrigues them, they’ll connect with something they are passionate about - or at least interested in - learning about.

Additionally, I try to get my students passionate about learning by not doing history in my class on Friday: kids are working each Friday on their 20time projects, which don’t have to have a connections to the content of my class. As I watch kids struggle to learn to code, or research the meaning of dreams, I watch them hit stumbling blocks. I watch them struggle and not give up. I watch them develop perseverance around learning, but around learning on their terms.

Then, I get to watch that passion and perseverance transfer to doing history-related work during the rest of the week. Which is fun :)

*Note: After kids scatter into areas of a unit that interest them, we come back together and look at what kids have created. As students look at their peers’ projects, they answer synthesis questions about what similarities can be drawn across the disparate content that they chose to cover.

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#youredustory, Week 9

Prompt: A big picture exercise - put together a design brief for a new learning space.

This question goes beyond my (limited) areas of expertise. What's a design brief? Yes. I could Google it. Where's the fun in that though? A few loose thoughts, in no particular order:

White board paint on every wall.
Windows and skylights: natural light is important.
Robust wifi.

We can do better than this
final exam by dcJohn from flickr

Moveable furniture that allows for flexible groupings and IS SOMETHING THAT IS ACTUALLY COMFORTABLE TO SIT IN.
Projection systems mounted to illuminate at least two of the four walls.

A glass walled entry room where kids could go to collaborate while others worked quietly.
Good speakers - music can be helpful as kids are working.

I'm sure there is a lot that I'm forgetting. It's an initial offering though.

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