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.

How Edcamp Changed My Career

Edcamp logo from Wikimedia
by the Edcamp Foundation

** Full disclosure: I serve on the Edcamp Foundation board. I don’t come at this without bias. However, I strongly believe what I am writing is true regardless of this bias. Now, to the story :)

In late July, 2011 Diane Main told me, “Hey. There’s a thing going on in the East Bay in early August. You should totally go.” Being new to the edtech world - and trusting Diane’s opinion - I signed up to attend the first edcampSFBay.

I remember it being a great day. I remember great conversations. I remember great energy. I remember seeing people I looked up to on Twitter there - a lot of them. I have no idea what sessions I attended. Or even if I said anything at those sessions. But at the end of the day, I filled out the evaluation form and checked the “I’m willing to help organize next year’s edcampSFBay” box.

Fast forward a year: the second edcampSFBay was at my school. Where I taught! I was nervously excited. We set up everything the night before. Signs. Session board area. Wifi information.

Then came Saturday morning. And naturally there was no wifi when we got to school. In upgrading a cable somewhere in the IT maze on Friday night, something had fried. It was unclear when wifi was coming back. I was crestfallen - how was edcamp going to run without wifi? How embarrassing!!

You know where this is going: people had a great day. Talking. Engaging in conversations. Sharing hard problems. Did we tweet much? Nope. Was the edcamp a success? Yup.

But this isn’t a story about a near-miss disaster. It’s a story about validation. See, when you help throw a party - and it is successful - you get excited. You feel brave. Ready to take risks. Your realm of the possible expands from that confidence - things that seemed hard or far-fetched before all of a sudden seem attainable. And my realm of the possible expanded because of organizing edcamp.

When it came time to rethink my classroom, I was ready to take big swings not little steps: I was CONFIDENT. When there were other edcamps in California, I hopped on a plane and flew to LA - or Orange County, or Palm Springs - and attended. #caedchat was born at edcampLA! When a couple friends started talking about running an online edcamp, I was all in and edcampHome happened. (Three times, in fact.)

The confidence from helping organize an edcamp transferred to my classroom, to my students.  The confidence I gained from helping to organize an edcamp helped me rethink my classroom: my role in that classroom, my students’ role in the classroom - things happened there because I believed in myself. I was confident - confident enough to take a risk.

That confidence came from helping to organize edcamp. From helping throw a party - or an edcamp :) - that people came to, and wifi or not had a good time. That confidence has meant and continues to mean the world to me.

Hopefully that confidence meant something to a bunch of students that passed through my classroom as well.

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.

Pivoting on This Week's #caedchat Topic

I really can’t say, I guess I laugh to keep from cryin

So much goin on, people killin people dyin

But I won’t dwell on that, I think I’ll elevate my mental

Q-Tip on Steve Biko from Midnight Marauders, released November 1993

For me, there’s A Tribe Called Quest, then everyone else. There isn’t a conversation about my favorite rap group. It’s them. There isn’t a close second.

As a white male who was fourteen and living in Wisconsin when Midnight Marauders came out, there is a lot I can’t understand about what it was like to be a young black man in New York City in the early 1990s. I can only listen. And appreciate.

I certainly don’t begrudge Q-Tip his choice to elevate his mental and focus on his music and positive things going on around him.

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I am hosting #caedchat this week. A long time ago - January? Late 2015? - I came across a really interesting article on the importance of open networks for success in life and work. It’s good. Thought provoking. The questions are ready to go - I wrote them already. It’d be a good conversation. We’ll have it. At some point. Not this week.

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Alton Sterling.

Philando Castile.

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Earlier this week, we lost a great humanitarian in Elie Wiesel. As I was going through my timeline late last night, I came across a quote of his that someone (sorry, I don’t remember who) tweeted in the aftermath of the second videotaped shooting of a black man by police officers in as many days: "We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

And as I read that quote, I knew that we can’t talk about open networks on #caedchat this week. As my mind churned, my thoughts turned to Q-Tip’s verse. It was written in a completely different context - a young black man in New York City in the 1990s can be completely right to choose focus on the positive. This week though I can’t ‘not dwell on that and elevate my mental.’

Educators - disproportionately white - often choose not to dwell on the negative, including (and importantly) the systematic oppression that impacts so many of our students. We choose to elevate our mind by focusing on the happy things. And while there is a time and a place for that, at some point that neutrality has to end. For all our students’ sake.

I don’t know what we’re talking about on #caedchat this week. But it won’t be open networks.

Student Designed Units

Brief digression: I haven’t blogged in months. Since July actually. As one who talks about the importance of blogging as a reflective tool, that smacks a bit of hypocrisy.

There are several reasons why. One, I’m in kind of a weird transition year, firmly planted in the now but looking forward as well. Two, I just haven’t felt like what I’m doing with my kids is that amazing, and it isn’t something I haven’t written about before. It just seems like it isn’t anything amazing.

Tuesday night, the moderators of #caedchat had a hangout to talk about year 4 of #caedchat. We talked about blogging briefly, and I mentioned my blogging hiatus. My buddy David said that he enjoyed when I blogged about what we did in the classroom. Thanks for the nudge, David.

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History teachers live in a blessed time right now - THERE ARE NO CONTENT STANDARDS. We can literally teach whatever we want! (Untrue if you teach an AP class, but you most likely signed up for that deal with the devil…)

As I was planning my second semester, I realized that there was some content that was going to be new, and some I should cover a bit of - yeah, the Cold War probably merits mentioning in a two year world history class...

Anyways, I saw this hole at the end of the year - about a four to five week chunk of time that could be filled with literally anything that I could justify teaching in a history class. Why not get my students - who are now in their second year with me - to figure out what THEY wanted to do in our last unit of our two years together?

And thus was born this and this. Kids got about 75 minutes to work through this process. After that, they will look through the other unit proposals from their period and choose the two they are most interested in. I’ll combine these choices across classes and students will then get to vote on the peer-created unit they are most excited about and that’s what we’ll cover in April and May.

Want a student-centered classroom? Why not use ‘I’ve got no content standards’ to your advantage and let students choose what to study?

I’m excited to see how this goes!

#youredustory, Week 29: Summer Reading Recommendations

Prompt: What are the best educational books for summer reading?

Ooh. I'll emerge from my not-blogging summer vacation for this one!

One of the best books I've read this far this summer is How We Learn. Benedict Carey, a New York Times science writer, looks at studies of how people learn and retain information. This book has broad implications across education: whether you want your students to memorize their times tables or get a creative insight into a problem, Carey has looked at the relevant research and pulled it together in an easy to read format. What really stuck with me from this book was the idea of percolation: once we seed a problem in our brains, it will continue to subconsciously work on the problem after we have moved on to other tasks. I need to rethink how and when I give my students time to work through more complex work that might benefit from this percolation. Kudos to Greg Garner for this sterling recommendation!

Another book I read recently that came highly recommended - this time by Matt Vaudrey and John Stevens - that I really enjoyed was How Google Works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg. The glimpse into Google - and the emphasis the authors put on managing smart creatives - was insightful. Though they didn't acknowledge his work, I was reminded often of the ideas Dan Pink lays out in Drive. This book is probably most directly relevant to administrators and district level employees, but as a teacher I really enjoyed it. There were definite crossovers to the classroom for me.

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#youredustory, Week 24: Pedagogical Innovation

Prompt: What is pedagogical innovation?

Hmm. Can there be real pedagogical innovation? Legit ‘this has never been done in a classroom before’ things still in education?

Or are there so many ideas within education - ideas that have come in and out of vogue, then back into fashion again - that we’re just recycling? Can we really innovate? Are we really “making changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, and products” within education? (Thanks, Google, for that definition.) I’m not sure there is a lot of pedagogical innovation that is available if that is your definition - it is a pretty high bar.

Part of the design thinking task on
South Africa

Unsurprisingly, I think we need to look at pedagogical innovation a bit more loosely. When I did a weeklong design thinking task in my history class this past semester, was it pedagogically innovative? No. I’m sure that there are plenty of other history teachers who have not only integrated design thinking into their classrooms, but done a much better job at it than I have.

However, for me, this was a pedagogical innovation. It was new. It was something I hadn’t done before with students. I had no idea how long aspects of the task would take. I had no idea where kids might get stuck. Or where they might make incredible progress, or show great depth of thought.

To me, then, pedagogical innovation is intensely personal. What is innovative to me may be second nature to others. Something they could do in their sleep. And vice versa - what is boring to me may be incredibly innovative to others.

The important thing here is to not lose patience with people who are taking risks in their classroom. Even if the risk is, in your mind, small or nonexistent, we MUST celebrate those risks. Shine a light on them. Recognize the attempt, the outcome that was in doubt, and the learning that happened from the risk.

Because my risk is someone else’s second nature.

And education isn’t going to change the way we want it to unless we can have teachers - and students - feeling comfortable and supported taking risks, innovating on their terms.

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#youredustory, Week 23: Are Ceremonies Important?

Prompt: Why are, or aren't, graduation and promotion ceremonies important?

Ceremonies that honor the strengths of ALL students are important. ALL students need to have their accomplishments honored. Not JUST the valedictorians. Not JUST the kids with with perfect attendance. Not JUST the kids winning big scholarships.

ALL students.

Thanks to Chris Wejr, Ian Landy, and Scott Bedley for pushing my thinking on the topic of awards and ceremonies.

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#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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#youredustory, Week 21: My Creative Council

Prompt: Who would be in your creative council?

This sounds like another question that I sometimes ask edtech friends when we congregate: who is in your edupantheon? I think I'll answer that question - the answers are essentially the same.

In no particular order...

Rushton Hurley: I got to know Rushton before I realized how mind-blowingly cool he was: Rushton ran the MERIT program when I did the program in the summer of 2011. He was there every day, helping us along and pushing us. It wasn't until I started to hang out in a wider circle of edtech folks that I realized how amazing Rushton was. I appreciate his ever-present positivity and nerdy sense of humor. Most importantly though, after hanging out with Rushton, I always feel energized and ready to go do the work that needs to be done. I want Rushton on my creative council not only for his knowledge, but for that 'we're going to do it' feeling I always leave conversations with him with.

Kristen Swanson: As I got to know the edcamp movement, I always looked up to Kristen and the rest of the edcamp founders. It wasn't until I attended edcampSac with Kristen that I realized that not only had she helped found this movement I love, but she is ridiculously intelligent. I had the privilege of sitting in several sessions with her that day and left kind of stunned with what I had heard that day. Her selfless dedication to the edcamp movement and ridiculous work ethic are both humbling and laudable. I want Kristen on my creative council because the work gets done - and done well - when Kristen is involved.

Jennie Magiera: I first got to chat with Jennie as I was trying to plan the first PLAYDATE in the Bay Area. I say the following with the greatest love and admiration: Jennie is CRAZY. She is one of the most energetic and just flat out fun people I've gotten to meet in education. However, she also is whip smart and all about doing what is best for kids. Her CUE conference keynote was great this year, and I loved it because she talked about real issues real kids faced in a real way, F bombs included. I want Jennie on my creative council because I feel like her energy would be a huge asset and I think she and the next person on the list would come up with crazy-brilliant ideas that would actually work.

Jon Corippo: Jon and Jennie are listed back to back for a reason: I feel know both of them would have no problem with running full steam ahead with what they weren't supposed to do - they'd do whatever it was, and make it an amazing experience for kids. Both Jon and Jennie are the right kind of crazy, the kind of crazy I'd want pushing me on a day to day basis. I got to visit Minarets, the high school that Jon started, a few years ago to check out their 1:1 program. And while I came away impressed with what Minarets was doing in this area, I went away floored by the culture and sense of community on that campus. I want Jon on my creativity council because of his ability create that sense of community and for his 'we're gonna make this happen' attitude.

Ramsey Musallam: Ramsey is brilliant. Period. The incredibly thorough way he thinks about education is nothing short of incredible. If I could be in any teacher in my PLN's class, it'd probably be Ramsey's chemistry class. I've also had the privilege of being around Ramsey as he has learned things. This is something everyone should experience: his unbridled enthusiasm is unlike anything I've seen in adults or kids. It's amazing. I want Ramsey on my creativity council for his thoughtful approach to education and for that enthusiasm.

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#youredustory, Week 20: Engagement in Reading Tasks

Prompt: Student Engagement in Reading Class

Sweet annotations by Ryan M, photo by me

So I don't teach a reading class, but info teach a literacy-rich history class. And yes, kids need to encounter text in every class. Every teacher is a reading teacher.

A second preface: if you read this blog occasionally, you know I'm not a huge fan of engagement. Points can make kids engage. What makes kids curious? What makes them want to read more?

For me, there are a couple things at work here. One is material that is interesting. Yes, obvious and vague. Readings we do to prepare for Socratic seminars are usually discussion-inducing in the prep stages. So there's a clue there: giving kids the time and space to make meaning to talk about what they've read is important. I've seen kids really dig in when the readings are followed by a Socratic seminar - there's an aspect to the public performance that I think helps kids dig into a text.

Additionally, texts that speak to larger human issues - inequality, evil, issues of race and class - seem to generate interest in the topic at hand. The more readings stray from a clear, 'correct' answer seems to help too. As a history teacher, I watch kids engage in a task when they're trying to figure out what happened in the past, however recent that past may be.

Finally, if my kids have a purpose for reading they know what they're looking for. They know what they might see. They're readier to do the intellectual work of making meaning of a text.

So there's a scattered answer about curiosity and reading. Give them time and space to talk, get texts with big issues and without right answers, and give kids a purpose for reading. Not a magic bullet but a start.

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#youredustory, Week 19: Anti-Bullying Message From My School

Prompt: What strategies does your school use to send an anti-bullying message to students?

Wikibully by TheCuriousGnome
from Wikimedia

Explicitly, schoolwide? Not a ton. All freshman go to a cyberbullying presentation by our counseling department, who are joined by our dean and school resource officer from the local police department. And while I’m glad this is presented to all freshmen, it is a bit heavy on scare tactics of online activity. There is nothing said about creating a positive digital identity.

Within class, there is a lot of behavior regulation that can be done. We loop with our students for two years, and as we get to know kids more - and kids get to know each other more - there is much less nastiness said between students.

However, the transferring these actions to the public sphere - when kids know they are out of earshot of adults - continues to be an issue.

We all need to do more in this area, I think.

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