Sometimes

Sometimes, when I’m out hiking, the sky is so blue. The trees are so green. The mountains are so brown. And grey. And red. And SO tall. The streams are so clear and the lakes are so turquoise.

And it is SO quiet.

Except for the birds. And the rivers. And that corner you turn and hear the waterfall for real for the first time and it sounds like a train. Then it isn’t quiet.

And I go. Up. Up more. And the views are gorgeous. So pretty that they hurt. And you get to a place and you stop. And feel small. Very small. And a year of worries and concerns melt away in an instant.

And in that instant - an instant I felt numerous times over the last month - I feel so thankful to have lived such an incredible life.

I also feel ready to go back and tackle another school year, to go out and innovate and fail and make my classroom a better place, a place students really want to be in.

I hope you were able to - or will be able to - find that place this summer.

That place, top of Sulphur Skyline. Not posed. Photo by Joe L.

My favorite image from the trip is below.

Innovation and Failure

For four years, I ran a pretty successful world history class. Students had the opportunity to do the work of historians in class. Critical thinking happened. Meaning was made by wrestling through conflicting primary and secondary source documents. And yet. My class wasn’t what I wanted it to be. There was more that was possible. My immersion in the Twitter-sphere had radically shifted what I thought a classroom would and could be. This year was the beginning of that craziness.

And it was hard. I failed. A LOT. And as the end of school wound down, maybe three weeks before we finished, I was in a pretty dark place. I was unhappy that the changes I made were noticeably not creating the changes in student actions that I hoped they would.

But. But.

As the year wound down, I had a couple parents - including one who was an educator - approach me and tell me how much they appreciated what had happened in my class this year because it was so different. That is was innovative and what students needed.

That was good to hear, and was the light at the low point for me. Because - and teachers know this - you don’t see the seventy to ninety percent of students that are doing what you ask and get it: you see that ten to thirty percent that isn’t. And I was seeing only the negative fruits of the changes I made in my classroom, not the changes that were more successful. This was the starting point.

But then, as school wound down and I had more time to exercise (prime reflection time for me), I realized that the bite of the failure that I felt so distinctly at the end of the year was actually okay. Or maybe not okay, but to be expected.

If you are going to try to innovate in your classroom, you must be ready to accept and learn from failure.

Anyone who says they have innovated in their classroom and doesn’t talk about failing is either a liar or not innovating. Period.

So yeah, it - for lack of a better word - sucked to feel that failure at the end of the year. But if you want to change decades of the status quo in education, you better be ready to feel that pain. And then, have a PLN to turn to to make next year better. For me? That’s going to be more project-based learning, an attempt to do away with tests, and figuring out what my classroom looks like when we’re 1:1 with Chromebooks. And that, my friends, is exciting. And makes the sting of the failures of this year lessened.

My classroom will be a better place for all students next year. Promise.

Presenting

Without sounding all high and mighty and ‘he likes to talk about presenting’, I’ve noticed an interesting discomfort in sessions I’ve had a hand in facilitating. I cut my presenting teeth facilitating conversations at edcamps: start a conversation, give some context, then get out of the way and let the knowledge in the room surface and build ideas collaboratively. This is the type of conversation I like to be a part, in part because this is what my classroom looks like. If I spend more than two minutes at the beginning of the class period talking at my students, I have done some serious thinking and determined that this is the best use of our time together that day. This is where I am most comfortable, both in my classroom and when presenting/facilitating conversations with other educators.

This style works well, particularly for edcamps or other conferences where participants haven’t paid their hard-earned money to be at the conference: my expertise (or lack thereof) wasn’t paid for by anyone - I wasn’t chosen to present, so I can move to the side. I don’t feel the need to talk.

However, at conferences that people pay to be at, I feel like it is my duty to give attendees something tangible to make their time with me worth it. This means, for now, I talk more. More than I feel like I should. I always ask for feedback and generally my feeling isn’t borne out by the people I’m presenting to.

However, as I watch presenters I look up to, I know that this is an area that I need to improve in: talk less and let participants do more. I’m hopeful...