#youredustory, Week 15: End of the Year Difficulties for Students

Prompt: Spring can be a tough time for teachers (with a stretch until spring break and then after it before summer). How do you help morale on campus as tiredness sets in and the kids get squirrely?

I think that there are a lot of ways to support students as the year winds down. Though it is true - kids get squirrely - it is also true that kids get stressed out.

As the semester winds down, more and more students get concerned with their grades. This isn’t pressure that I’m applying - I regularly tell kids that grades are dumb and they should focus on learning and enjoying school. That’s a tough message for them to digest though, with outside pressure from friends and parents to ‘do well’.

Because of these pressures, this is a time of year that kids can start to break down.

Autumn Screaming by Melissa Segal from flickr

By this point in the year, you’ve spent a lot of time and energy getting to know your students. This is a time of year when this knowledge of your kids, when the relationships that you’ve developed, can pay dividends.

In this chunk of the year, you should know what your students’ baseline is: what they are like from day to day. You also should then know what days they are off. That’s where leveraging those relationships, that knowledge of your students, comes in.

As a high school teacher, when these pressures become more magnified, it becomes vitally important to listen and hear and see how kids are doing and what they are saying and thinking - or NOT doing and saying and thinking. And more importantly, it becomes vital to act when things aren’t as they normally are.

This might be a conversation with a kid during a prep period. It might be a small group conversation. It might even be a day where you ditch your curriculum and you go outside and have a conversation with all the kids in your class about what they’re stressing about and what you and they need to do to move forward and have a successful end to the year.

It’s this stance of knowing your kids and being willing to put the time and energy into them as some of them start to break down that to me is vitally important this time of year.

One of the best days of class I had last year involved ditching the curriculum for the day and going down to the football field. Kids had come into class that week stressed out, but that day seemed especially bad. We lay on the field and took some deep breaths. We talked about what the kids were stressed about. We troubleshot the most vital steps for kids to take that week and subsequent weekend to feel like they made some progress.

Kids felt heard. Their struggles were acknowledged. And they left class feeling like they could tackle the work that needed doing.

I would make that choice to ditch the curriculum again in a heartbeat.

In the end, education is still all about relationships. But we already knew this.

---

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

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!

EduSlam: How To Get Chromebooks for Your Classroom

I got to film an #EduSlam with Tanya Avrith and Holly Clark about how I went 1:1 Chromebooks in my classroom. The link to their write-up is here.

 Hint: the devices didn't come from my district. Through my awesome friends, family, former students, and parents of students and former students I was able to raise about $8000 through Donors Choose to get every student in my class a Chromebook.



The moral of the story: go out and do it. There is money out there. People want to support education. And those devices? They've changed what a history class can be in my room!

Thanks for having me on, Tanya and Holly!

#edcampSac: An edcamp Done Right

I attended my eleventh edcamp (I think) today. And it was awesome. Why?

Nicol, Colin, and Peter building the #edcampSac session board.

It was smoothly run. The organizers - Colin O’Connor, Peter Strawn, Trisha Sanchez, Cynthia Cost, and Danielle Lemke did their homework. Signs getting us in. Copious amounts of coffee, apple juice, and donuts. A wifi network without a ton - or anything that I found - blocked. (It sucks to have Twitter blocked at an edcamp…) This team did the little things that you need to do to run a successful edcamp. Props!

There were - as always - a ton of awesome people there. I got to connect with an old friend from #merit11. I saw folks from the GAFE Summit earlier this week. I got to meet people I had only interacted with on the Twitterz. I met a bunch of new people.

There were a lot of new edcampers - this is the first edcamp in Sacramento. The newbies brought a ton of positive energy. Which is, you know, always awesome.

The carpool to and from Sacramento was nothing short of epic. Thanks Greg and Kristen! The funniest share on the ride home? This.

The sessions were small. There weren’t monster thirty person sessions. People had the space to talk. To think. To share.

The people. Greg mentioned this in the SLAM at the end of the day, and it really resonated with me. Greg had attended a couple SoCal edcamps, but this was his first NorCal edcamp. He was impressed by how laid back the people were. Not pretentious. There to learn. All of us. Couldn’t agree more about the crowd at #edcampSac. People had open minds. They shared ideas. Insecurities. Confessions. Shortcomings. With, in some cases, complete strangers! Loved the attitude folks had.

Really, though, what made this a great edcamp was the sessions. Because today, I had the absolute joy of attending four edcamp sessions. Not edcamp presentations. Not straight-up presentations. EDCAMP SESSIONS. Discussions. I’m not even sure who pitched the three sessions that I was in that I didn’t facilitate. Awesome, awesome, awesome. I was a part of four sessions today that all edcamp sessions should be like.

For real: this is what an edcamp is supposed to be all about. Dedicated, awesome educators. The little things were taken care of. Sessions that were conversations, not presentations.

Props, #edcampSac team. I’ve been on the organizer side of a couple edcamps: they’re not easy to pull off. I hope some day I help run an edcamp that goes as smoothly as #edcampSac.

Things That Suck

***

Okay. I have to include this picture that Rae Fearing took at the beginning of Things That Suck.

I tried to kick Kristen out of edcampSac. It didn’t work.

Socratic Seminar Reflections

I've already written about my decision to have my kids do a Socratic seminar for their final as well as the trainwreck that one of the Socratics was. If you're interested in running Socratic seminars in your room they might be worth your time, but I'll spare you the rehash of either of those things. The troublesome Socratic was a difficult thing to be a part of. However, that struggle didn't - to me - overshadow how well these Socratics went.

That Class did a great job with their Socratic. Students carried the conversation for about 100 minutes. The kids in That Class who had struggled with positive engagement and focus in my class generally rocked their Socratic. Which was clearly rewarding to see. Now, to figure out how to channel that positive energy from the Socratic for second semester.

And the other two classes? Well, they were as engaging as any Socratic I had ever been a part of. Both classes talked up to the bell - and would have talked far longer! Remember, this is over 110 minutes into the conversation. Both had 100% verbal participation from participants. Both dripped with good ideas and deep thoughts. Both allowed me to sit back and watch - and not say a word! - for over an hour and a half. Most importantly, both were a blast to watch because kids got a chance to be smart. I love it when my kids give me an excuse to write some positive emails home.

So in the end, was one sour experience enough to dissuade me from doing Socratic seminars as final exams in the future? Heck no! They're way too much fun. Plus, the grading is way easier. (Which doesn't hurt.)

Give Socratic seminars a try. Several times. Stick with them. After a year of doing them, man are they fun to watch!

My 'score sheet' after another spectacular Socratic seminar

Socratic Seminars: A Better Final Exam

So what do you give for a final exam when you've gotten rid of tests and quizzes completely? When your goal in class is to get out of kids' way and let them shine? When the best part of your day is when students get a chance to show how smart they are?

What about a Socratic seminar? Give students a week to prep - all in class - and get ready.  Then kids get two hours to bat around big ideas? Yes please!

A little context: we are finishing up the World War II and the Holocaust unit in my class. In English the kids are reading Lord of the Flies (LOTF). This unit houses the last of the epic Humanities experiences that my kids will have: we do a mock trial of William Golding for libel for the beliefs that he expresses in LOTF that humans are born innately evil and this innate evil is the cause of violence and evil in our society.

This trial is a spectacular thing. Kids play all the roles: witnesses, attorneys, the judge - you name it they do it. The jury is made up of former students who come watch the trial for a day and provide the verdict and choices for the 'best of' awards for the participants.

At the heart of the trial is the following false dichotomy that arises out of the question why does violence and evil occur in our world? Are violence and evil innate in all of us or are these behaviors learned from our surroundings? To boil it down further, are violence and evil a result of nature or nurture?

Well, after the trial, we jump into prep for the Socratic seminar. Taking the thinking the students have done in the trial - why violence and evil occur - we take the Socratic a step further: what can we do to prevent or minimize acts of violence and evil in society? We look at what we can learn from the Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. We take a deep dive into Philip Zimbardo's ideas of all humans being situationally capable of committing horrifying acts of violence and evil.

Next, we look at the rates of crime within different countries. These rates are then compared across other statistics in these more violent and evil - and less violent and evil - countries. Gun ownership. Rates of happiness. Wealth distribution. Basically, what characteristics of countries lead to more violence and evil? What characteristics lead to less violence and evil?

Finally, we jump into prison systems. After looking at rates of recidivism, the kids take a look at the different mindsets and practices of prisons in the US, Sweden, and Japan. Then, they get a chance to see and prepare responses to the questions that are the backbone of the Socratic. Student-generated questions are obviously welcomed in the Socratic but there are questions that are central to the discussion that I generate and give kids time to prep responses and evidence to.

So what's going to go down next week? I have no idea. Some class will talk for two straight hours and it will be glorious because I'll ask the first question then say nothing for two hours. When I did this Socratic two years ago (I teach a two year curricular loop and keep the same students for two years), one class riffed on ideas for 90 straight minutes and I didn't have to say anything. Which was absolute teacher heaven!

Regardless of how the Socratic goes down - and it'll go well in all classes I think - it's a great final exam. Definitely way more in line with my classroom philosophy than a test!

Interested? Want to see the prep documents we used? The backbone questions of the Socratic? They're all linked in this shared folder here. The folder has subfolders that are divided generally by the day things occurred in my class. In each subfolder there is a brief description of what the general outline looked like each day.

Please use the heck out of this stuff: it's a great way to end the semester, and a spectacular way to watch kids think and say wildly intelligent things!

Friday's #EduWin

It's 3:40 on Friday afternoon. The halls are quiet. Seventh period ended 25 minutes ago. And Daniel looks up from his chemistry.

"Yo LS. How long are you staying today?"

"Until you're done with your chem, man."

"Oh." He stretches and pauses to think for a second. "It's hard to attain these chemistry bars, LS."

And with that, easily the line of the day in room 219, I almost fell out of my chair laughing. "Truth Daniel. Truth."

Daniel attaining those chemistry bars

Here's the thing: yeah, school has been out for 25 minutes. But Daniel actually doesn't have a seventh period. He could have taken off when sixth period was over at 2:20. But here he is, 80 minutes later. Grinding.

I get to loop with my kids for two years: I had Daniel as a freshman last year. First semester was a struggle for him. He started to come on second semester though. He started showing up to our office hours. His confidence in class increased. Daniel started to think he had things to say - things worth saying - in class.

Fast forward to this fall. Daniel is on the frosh/soph football team. He didn't quite have the grades to play at the beginning of the year. But six weeks in - at the first grade check - he was easily eligible. And then he was on the field.

And quietly sharing with me some of his successes. "LS - I had two sacks and a forced fumble last night."

"Nice! Did it feel good to be out there Daniel?"

"Yeah man - it was hella fun!"

I don't teach chemistry. I taught it for a couple years in the Peace Corps though and I can tutor the heck out of it. And to have Daniel come in on Wednesday and make an appointment to do chem Friday seventh? Yeah, it's on: let's do this, Daniel.

I'm lucky to get to be both Daniel's history teacher and advisor. I see him twice a day. I wish I could say I had something to do with the development of his academic identity. But I haven't. This has all come from him. And it's been a joy to watch. An absolute joy. That growth over the two year arc - ninth and tenth grades - is one of my favorite things about looping with students.

Now it's 4:30. The chem is done. There were a couple little stumbles along the way, but Daniel is leaving my class feeling good. He leaves me with, "Have a good weekend LS. I appreciate the help. I got this benchmark on Monday."

Yeah he does.

So. Freaking. Proud.

And an epic Friday #EduWin.

Go Out and See Them!

We spend so much time in school telling kids what to do and when to do it. The classes students spend time in each day allow for varying degrees of choice: some classes are very structured with very little student voice or choice. Others have more.

Regardless, we DO a lot of things to our students at school. Kids are at school in many cases because they have to be. Some are passionate about school or a subject area, but some kids are just there. They are told to do things that in many cases just don’t resonate with who they are or what they are interested in.

But getting to see kids to things that THEY choose to do? That THEY are passionate about? Oh man. So magical. And that’s why I go to so much stuff (for lack of a better word) that my kids do. I got to go check out about a dozen of my tenth graders in our fall play In The Heights this past Thursday. And got to see kids do awesome, creative, talented things that THEY chose to do. And it was so much fun.

I spent the afternoon today with my work wife at one of my advisee’s choir concerts. And it was a blast. So much talent!

The jazz band - our jazz band is really good and I’m their groupie that wanders down zero period to listen to them - has a concert on Thursday. Can’t wait to go to that either.

Getting to watch kids do things that they are passionate about is just too much fun not to do. Take the time. Go to the play. Stop by the soccer game. Make time to go to the concert. It means so much to them.

Added bonus: this then makes your job easier in the classroom.

Florence 10th graders from In The Heights

Sarah (my work wife), Livvy, and I after a spectacular choir concert

A Day of #20time

I've been meaning to write more about how 20% time has unfolded over the last month or so in my room, but have gotten crazy busy. Whoops...

After losing some momentum because of missed work days - my fault for not budgeting time well - we are back on a #20time roll. My fifth period class today was a joy. Projects are approved and kids are rolling. I wandered around and took pictures - they are below.

So much fun to watch kids go out and just do. Create. Help others.

A couple groups are going to be using on-campus facilities for their projects and had to submit facilities use forms to get the space they needed. These requests got turned down, so a couple groups spent time today with one of our principals talking about their projects and facilities needs. Both are moving forward with the blessing of the principal. She bumped into me today and mentioned how cool it was that the projects were happening, but also how neat it was that kids were being forced to deal with the red tape of securing facilities use as sophomores. Clearly, I agree!

Matt, Tara, and Karen editing one of their how-to videos

Natalie working on her gluten-free cooking website

Ana, Mari, and Lauren making blankets for needy families

Jacob and Sophia making fliers for their coat drive

Aidan and Andrew working on their Minecraft how-to video series

Zach creating a video game and William learning about special effects in zombie movies

Sanchit building his website for his computer company

#brewcue: How (and Why) to Make It Happen

Before we get into the how to make a brewcue happen, let’s talk about the why. Why should you bother to organize a brewcue? Thanks for asking.

Photo courtesy of @pronovost

Do you like hanging out with dedicated educators who want to make school better? Brewcue will help with that.

Do you like informal conversations about education? PD that you choose, at your own pace? Brewcue is for you.

Do you like connecting pictures on Twitter handles with actual faces? Brewcue is the place to do that.

Do you relish extended conversation, not 140-character-at-a-time conversations? Or conversations that can flow, but face to face - not in a Google hangout? Yes. Brewcue for that too.

Do you like an excuse to hang out with friends, but call it professionally developing? Yup. Brewcue. Make it happen. Now.

Now, the harder part: the how to make a brewcue happen. Okay. It’s not really that hard - it’s actually pretty easy. Another reason to organize one! Okay, on to it.

1. Find a cohost for brewcue. This person will help you publicize the event, and if no one else comes to the brewcue, you’ll get to hang out with your cohost for an hour and talk about education and whatever else comes up. Robert Pronovost is that guy for me.
2. Choose a date. Set a time that both you and your cohost can make - remember, if no one else shows you need someone else there to talk to! But don’t worry - other people always show. Also, Robert and I always try to leave about a week of time to publicize the brewcue. The more time you have to tweet out the location, the more folks will see that it is happening!
3. Choose a location. For Robert and I, as Bay Area residents, we shoot for somewhere about halfway between San Jose and San Francisco: we want as many people as possible to make it to the brewcue.
4. Publicity, publicity, publicity! Tweet out your brewcue. Use your state and/or district hashtag. My favorite? Tweeting the brewcue date and location five minutes before California edchat (#caedchat, the best state edchat) begins: at this point there are a lot of people looking at the hashtag, but there aren’t a ton of tweets going to the hashtag yet. Tweet out reminders as the day of brewcue approaches - you never know who hasn’t seen the tweets publicizing the event yet!
5. On the day of the brewcue, have a way to let the attendees know where you are at at your chosen venue. Robert has created a brewcue sign on his iPad that lets people know which table we are at. In the early days, though, we just wrote “brewcue” on a napkin and hung it on a menu. This totally worked fine.
6. Buy the first pitcher. Then, sit back and enjoy the conversation.

Not into the brew aspect? Or want to do your brewcue in the morning, when a brew is less appropriate? Throw the more staid version of brewcue: have a coffeecue at a local coffee house.

Finally, though, really why do this? Education is all about relationships. Brewcue builds relationships. And hey, usually a whole gang of #eduawesome folks show up!

Over 20 educators deep! Photo courtesy of @pronovost

#fallCUE: All of the #EduAwesome

Oh man. Fall CUE. Yes, it was almost two weeks ago. Yes, I’ve been way too busy to talk about it until now.

Like everything in education - literally everything - fall CUE was all about relationships. The absolute highlight of the conference was getting to see friends from all over California (AND ONE FROM MICHIGAN!!!), folks I don’t get to see more than a couple times a year, and get to spend time talking with them. Not a Twitter discussion. Not a Google hangout. Face to face.

The best part of these: spontaneous gatherings of #eduawesome people that happened on both Friday and Saturday nights. Small gatherings got bigger and all of a sudden, there were groups of awesome people hanging out. Spectacular.

The best sessions I went to - with one exception - were not about tech. Rushton Hurley’s session on inspiring staff and students was tremendous. If you ever have a chance to see Rushton present - even if the session isn’t something at the top of your need-to-learn list - go see it. The man crushes presentations. Roni Habib’s session on creating a culture of creativity was thought-provoking and movement oriented - a great way to end the first day of fall CUE. The tech highlight? Andrew Schwab’s session about living in a post-desktop world was also excellent. I always love Andrew’s unique, thoughtful take on edtech and this session certainly lived up to that standard!

The two keynotes - by Ramsey Musallam and Angela Maiers - were both spectacular and sprinkled with passion. Ramsey’s use of humor and Angela’s message for compassion in the classroom were excellent. A highlight? This happened. Yes, a #brewcue shoutout during Angela Maier’s closing keynote.

BOOM!

National Coming Out Day at Hillsdale

Today was National Coming Out Day. A significant portion of our students - wherever we teach - are part of the LGBT community (hereafter referred to as the queer community - the acronym ends up getting too long). A portion of our students are out, but a larger number are not out but are questioning their sexuality or are in the process of gaining the courage to come out.

Queer youth have some scary statistics attached with them. They are bullied at a disproportionately high rate. Queer youth also self-harm, commit suicide, and drop out of school at disproportionally high rates when compared to their straight peers. We must make our schools safer, happier places for our queer students, whether they are out or not. Period.

Over the last couple years at Hillsdale, the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) has taken on a more visible role on campus. For the second year in a row, the GSA has had a lunchtime celebration for National Coming Out Day. Last year I was on a field trip and missed the celebration.

This year? I was there as a straight ally as students and teachers stepped through the door that had been brought out into out great court to announce to the school that they were out. Seeing these important role models - kids (and teachers) who are out and proud of their sexuality - is such a strong message for students who are struggling with their sexuality. There is a supportive community here. There are people here who are like you. And we love you no matter what.

I left lunch proud of my school - and proud of our GSA (led by a former advisee of mine!) - for doing what is right and making a very important and often marginalized group feel safer on the Hillsdale campus.