Give Me Something To Do

When learners are engaged - when they are doing something with their hands that engages their brains at the same time, they learn and learn deeply.

Check out this article "How Do We Get Middle School Students Excited About Science? Make it Hands On" by Katrina Schwartz.  In is she describes how experiential learning leads to deep conceptual understanding.

This is not new.  Kids love to touch stuff and work with actual things in their hands.  When I first began teaching middle school science nearly two decades ago, we used the FOSS kits.  FOSS stands for "Full Option Science Systems". The kits and lesson guidelines fostered collaborative group work and learning activities based on building conceptual knowledge as well as an understanding of experimental design.  While they were not as inquiry-based as I would have liked, they engaged students and got them DOING science.

Schwartz profiles the Alternative School for Math and Science in Corning, New York.  The school was started when data showed that only half of the area's eighth grade students were meeting standards in math and English.  The school partners with Corning which provides free facility space and funding for financial aid.

Not every school can partner with a big name private sector business.  But every student can benefit from the kind of hands-on, authentic learning experiences, the kind that has brought success for students at ASMS.  

Turning traditional learning on its head, providing experiences that don't lead to a single answer, understanding failure as an expected (and necessary) component of learning and purposefully teaching 21st century skills like collaboration, creativity, communication and critical thinking all blend into an educational experience that sets kids up for success in the real world as well as in school.

Our Wired Children

In the post "Forget Screen Time - Lean In To Parenting Your Wired Child" Jordan Shapiro "came to realize that part of his job as a parent was to help his children make sense of their online experiences and teach them how to uphold enduring values in the new world they are living in."

Teachers are doing this every day.  Rather than fight the losing battle of "no cell phones" in class, many teachers I work with use instructional strategies that encourage students to access Google, YouTube, online texts, or interactive lessons and quiz sites through their phones.  They encourage learners to use the device glued to the end of their arms as a tool for learning as well as for entertainment and social interaction.

Now, do all students have access to smartphones that allow them to use these tools?  How can we educators ensure equitable access?  That's another topic for another day!

Back in the day, we used to pass notes in class hand to hand.  Now students text each other, faces focused on the screen.  Back in the day we stood around in groups and chat, now they follow each other on Instagram and Twitter.  Facebook?  More for the older generation, like me at this point!

A while back (three years ago!) I wrote a post about teaching active learners, those digital natives who were entering our classrooms at a rapid rate.   I wondered what a future world - a world without face-to-face, interpersonal communication would be like.  If you've never watched Wall-E, check it out for it's spot-on social commentary.  

I think a main call to action from Shapiro's post is to encourage adults to model effective communication whether it is face-to-face or through a device, and to teach young people how to learn and interact in an online world with a sense of their own personal integrity.  How are we helping them apply the morals and values we are trying to instill in them to what they see, hear and read online?

We have a responsibility to help our kids become critical users and producers of online content.

  

If our own kids and our own students are able to view a YouTube video or Instragram post through the lens of "who paid for it, and what are they trying to sell me?", then we are well on our way to helping them develop those critical thinking skills we keep saying they need. When they are the ones posting original content, is it representative of their learning or their values?  I love to think that it is!

Say My Name

It seems so simple.  Get to know your students and pronounce their names correctly.  

As a child, I had an unusual last name: Montenegro.  Maybe not so unusual anymore since it is a country and once in a while I hear its name mentioned on the news.  My youngest daughter even traveled to Montenegro while in Croatia, just to be able to say she'd been there, and found herself delighted by the countryside.  But for me, as a child, no one else had such a weird name in the affluent, mostly white suburb where my family lived, and many teachers could not pronounce it correctly.  Expect my Spanish teacher, but that figured.

As a teacher I made it a point to learn how to pronounce my students' names correctly, and to ask them what they preferred to be called by me in class.  

It's just respectful, right?

But there are too many stories of children whose beautiful names, lovingly chosen for them by their parents, often imbued with meaning or heritage, are shortened into pronounceable nicknames by teachers whose hearts may be in the right place, but who are actually doing damage.

When I worked at a middle school we had an attendance secretary who was the face of the school for families.  She often had to page students between classes, and she never mispronounced a name twice.  She kept a small spiral notebook at her desk where she wrote out challenging names phonetically: Siobhann = "Shih-vonn", or Mahmoud = "Mach-mood".  What a difference she made to those kids!

By pronouncing their names correctly she showed them respect and honored them.

Cultural competence or culturally and linguistically relevant educational experiences are at the forefront of current educational best practices.  I hope it's not just current, because it should be the standard if we ever hope to achieve equity.  To my mind, one easy way to set the stage for a positive educational experience for students is to learn how to pronounce their names correctly.

Here are a few links to articles on this subject that I've found compelling:

What's in a Name? Minnesota schools strive to say students' names correctly. Minneapolis Star Tribune
Name That Baby! mothering.com
Making name pronunciation a propriety in K12 education. Trumbull, CT
Names Do Matter from Teaching Tolerance

Reading is Good for us!

Of course it is!  

We've known that all along.  Below is a link to  an article I came across that offers even more reasons to read and promote a lifelong love of reading.  I appreciate that they are science-backed!

The 7 Interesting Ways that Reading Makes You Healthier

It pains me to see that the United States ranks 23rd of 30 on the chart of hours spent reading per person per week. We need to change that.

I love to read and although I have an electronic reader (great when traveling), I really enjoy the feel of a book in my hands  I'm more of a savor-er when it comes to reading.  While I can read quickly when I have to, when I'm reading for pleasure I don't read particularly fast.  I pause and imagine, reflect and predict, often getting lost in the descriptions of places and people.

When my daughters were young our house was FULL of books.  Our favorite field trips were to the local library where Miss Chris would lead story time with books, songs, and puppets. Afterward we would pick out books, often audiobooks (cassette tapes!), picture books and eventually beginning readers.  We read together every night for years. I love to remember the sound of their young voices reading.

Before they could read on their own I would tell my girls that being able to read was WONDERFUL.  That when you were able to read you could get lost on your own in a whole new world.  Once when my youngest was about eight or nine years old she was laying on her bed reading quietly.  I came in and sat down and started to talk to her.  

She asked me, "Mom, do you remember when you used to tell us that when we learned to read we could get lost in our own world?  Well, I'm there right now and you're interrupting me!"
Now I have the pleasure of reading to my granddaughters and watching their love of books grow.  I look forward to the time when they can read to me too.

It's all about Relationships!

As teachers, we instinctively know this.  We understand that learning takes place best in an environment that is emotionally and physically safe.  One of the best ways to ensure a positive classroom environment is to develop healthy relationships with students and then help them build healthy relationships with each other.  

Although it sounds simple, this can be hard to do when the pressure to get kids to perform well on high stakes tests is so great and teachers are reluctant to take time away from curriculum to facilitate the community building activities that foster positive relationships.

But the quote above says it all.  Not matter how engaging the lessons are, or how hard teachers try to push students to achieve at high levels, if the relationships that form the foundation for a healthy and positive classroom environment are not established and nurtured, the likelihood of academic success is diminished.

Check out the article below about the Madison School district in Wisconsin.  This district is asking teachers to build deeper relationships not only between themselves and their students, but between students as well using strategies they call trust generators:  

• Selective vulnerability
• Familiarity
• Similarity of interests
• Concern
• Competence

Teachers focus on building better relationships with and between students.

Kindness Matters

It all comes down to this.  

The impact we have on others is what is important to them.  It makes a difference.  And it is what feeds our own souls.

As parents we try to model kindness and encourage our children to be kind to others.  But the world often works against us, and at this moment in time many of our political leaders and POTUS 45 are anything but models of kindness; they often behave in ways we teach our children not to behave by name-calling and bullying.

That doesn't mean we stop!  That doesn't mean we let their actions be the model for our own children and the children entrusted to our care in classrooms.  No - we work harder to embrace and spread kindness because  with kindness we make the world better!

Check out this article by Linda Flanagan: How Making Kindness a Priority Benefits Students.  How do you help children develop a kindness habit?  How do you help your students or our own children realize that we all do better when WE ALL do better? 

I love this verse from Micah (6:8):

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you?  But to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God.

No matter what faith tradition you follow, who could argue with the encouragement to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly?  I couldn't.  

Imagine if everyone lived life that way!  I'm proud of my own children for being kind and caring human beings.  I'm happy indeed to think that children I've taught over the years have grown up to be kind people too.

Kindness matters.

UPDATE (1/3/17):

Here is a link to another article: 3 Ways Practicing Kindness Enhances the Learning Process.  In it you will find out how engaging in acts of kindness will improve concentration, alleviate stress and encourage collaboration.

What Do Grades Really Mean Anyway?

How often have we given a grade (or gotten) one and wondered if it accurately represented learning?  

I can't remember when it happened exactly, but I totally stopped using the term "give" when it came to grades because I wanted to be sure that my students understood that they earned their grades, these letters were not magically or randomly bestowed on them.

Matt Weyers, in his article Going Gradeless: Student Self-Assessment in PBL offers insights about how he partners with students and transformed the way he and they understand grading.  Relationships, conferencing, and a purposeful approach to the metacognitive process are critical components of a growth mindset-based system that has shown positive results.  

What is stopping more teachers and schools from going gradeless?  In what ways could you integrate some of Weyers' methods into your own instruction and assessment?