Written Narrative

I think is important to remain a life-long learner so I am taking you along on this journey with me as I explore a problem I saw in my teaching and try to do something to change it for the better

When I first started teaching, I taught first grade.  I LOVE first  graders.  I love their excitement each day, I love their stories and I love how they are open books.  I knew EVERYTHING about them.  The community we had in the classroom was powerful.  I taught first grade for ten years before taking a new position as a math interventionist / coach.  I also love teaching math.  It  is my favorite subject to teach. I tell my students that teaching them helped me better understand math.  I would use my struggles with math to help them see why it is so important to truly understand mathematics at a foundational level, so that new knowledge has a place to build upon. So, I was leaving something I loved to do something else I loved. 

I learned very quickly that my new position could not be more different than the  one I just left.  I didn’t have one large group of kids.  Instead I had 8 small groups of kids from different grades and classrooms.  We did not spend all day everyday together.  And I did not know ANYTHING about them.  When people would ask me how the new job was, I would smile and say “great, I LOVE teaching math”.  Inside, I was screaming… I MISS MY CLASSROOM! 

As the first few weeks went by, I learned a little about the kids I worked with.  As the first month went by I found a majority of the students to be “less than thrilled” to be doing math.  I attributed it to math being a subject they struggled with. So I worked harder to ensure I was doing everything I could to fill in the gaps and misunderstandings they had around the grade level content.  They made some progress, which is good, but it did not feel great. 

I really dove  in and created games, researched online tools, followed blogs, and joined twitter.  I was going to light a fire under these kiddos and inspire them to LOVE math and help them to  see the importance of their hard work.  I bought Growth Mindset books like Your Fantastic Elastic Brain and planned Mindset Monday activities as a way to start each week, we redefined failure and the whole school started to refer to FAIL as First Attempt In Learning.  I won’t say it did nothing…. But it did not have the effect I was looking for. 

This was not a problem with my first graders.  Maybe I am not cut out to do this job.  A lot of self doubt entered the equation.  And I didn't really have anyone to talk to about it.  I was the only math interventionist in my school.  Who could understand what I was going through?  And then the real panic set in.  How am I supposed to fix this by myself?  There was no one there who understood what I was going through.    I started thinking… I know that there were things I struggled with as a first grade teacher.  Of course there were!  And when I was stuck, I would turn to my wonderful colleagues.  They would help me brainstorm ideas and  offer their expertise and experiences and I would go to them because I trusted their opinions but also because I knew they wanted to see me succeed, they cared about me and my success just as much as their own. 

Then it hit me…. As Michael Wesch tells us, the environment you create is more important than the content you teach.  The struggles I was having here were because I had not worked to establish the core values and beliefs I had as a teacher in my new position.  And I believe that is why I was not getting as much from my students as well. They didn’t know my WHY.  They didn’t know enough about me, nor I about them, to inspire them and make them believe they could be risk takers in my classroom.  As Simon Sinek says, “people don’t buy what you do they buy why you do it”.  I had started with the what… there are the concepts you need to learn and here is how we are going to do it.  I had worked from the outside in, rather than the inside out, and the kids weren’t buying it.   

I believe students learn best when meaning is constructed by students taking risks with their learning.  This only happens when students feel they are part of a community that supports them, includes them and values them as an integral part of the group.  This was a missing piece - it was a difference between my first grade classroom and my current classroom; and so I looked for ways to connect with my IB students the way I connected with  my first graders.  I needed to build the classroom community.

At first I did not know how to do this because they were all separated each  day.  Each grade had a different  IB block.  Within each grade the individual children’s schedules were different.  But then I realized we all eat.  So I started a lunch bunch- how very technocrat of me, right?!   Although I could not get all students K-4 at the same time, I could get K-2 students and 3-4 students together, and I figured that was a good place to start.  So we had  lunch together.  We got to know each other and spent the time talking about life inside and outside of school.  Students began to open up.  They smiled more.  We all began to feel like a part of something, and it improved moral and attitudes in the group.

For this upcoming year, I will be back in the classroom.  Not first grade, but third.  And I started thinking about building that classroom community that is so important for student success.  I realized that a couple of things have changed since first grade.  The most impactful change is that our district has gone google, giving us access to a lot of online tools I did not have when I taught first grade. Scott Noon would say this is my chance to become more techno-constructivist.

So I asked myself, what can I do to build a strong supportive classroom community that really gets to my WHY?  I realized.  I can create a classroom community that exists even when we are not sitting in room 23!  Google classroom will be a tool I can use to build classroom community and provide students and families with connections to me, classmates and resources, even when they are at home.  This will also help me to stay organized and consistent, something I feel is important for students to see in their teachers.

Who?
Myself and students will have direct access to our classroom on google.  Parents will have access to class information through Google Guardian, which sends reminders, summaries and reports via e mail.  This can provide parents conversation starters for home. Sherry Turkle challenges us to demonstrate the value of conversation with our children and create device free zones.  The parent e mails could provide parents with a starting point for conversations with their child.

What?
I will post assignments, homework and resources such as links to videos I have that can help with the concept being practiced.  For example, we use Eureka math and there are videos and parent resources that could be linked to the page as well as EMBARCC which has activities, games and tools for Eureka as well. A school and classroom calendar will be available on the site as well so students and parents can see what is coming up for our classroom as well as our school  I will also use the site to connect with my students’ interests.  I can use google classroom to start conversations with my students regarding their interest, questions and curiosities.  Incorporating more choice will spark more curiosity and engagement, as Wesch and Sugata Mitra feel is imperative to creating classrooms that work for children; it will be social and collaborative. 

When?
At the beginning of the school year the site will be up and running and parents and students will be added to google guardian after receiving a welcome letter and providing the e mail they would like to add.  Digital citizenship will be discussed in class and a parent letter will be sent home.  The letter will need to be signed by the student and the parent in order to be added to the classroom. 

I am what Prensky calls a Digital Immigrant, so this project, although exciting, will take a lot of…

Collaboration 

Thinking, Working, Creating 

And … Risk taking,

But, I will do  it because of…my why.  Kids need a powerful classroom community behind them to take the risks needed to push their learning to the next level. 

Pecha Kucha

Pecha Kucha

Here is the link to my self assessment

Presentation link

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vSHmrGUTehpH2IHPoQrjdTUKHjQueMVUOnHeK4soGhqA6vVI173jY_-PN8Z2PTekFLN_hNSt8yZZ2Sb/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=20000

Collaboration and Questions are Key

Sherry Turkle and Michael Wesch seem to be allies to me.  Sherry sends  the  majority, if not all, of her article speaking about the detrimental effects of our technology obsessed culture.  She highlights how we are consumed by a world of perfection, control, connected-ness (but not really) and loneliness.  She states "we cannot get enough of each other if we can use technology to keep one another at distances we can control".  We are expecting less and less of each other as technology fills in the gaps.   The article left me wondering, where does collaboration fit in?  Are we really in touch?  Where do we end up at the end of all of this?  She clearly values the power of conversation and worries we are headed in a direction that does away with it entirely.

Michael Wesch claims today's students are struggling to find significance in their education and are becoming less and less invested in school.  He charges teachers to do less teaching!  He wants students asking good, no GREAT questions.  He wants students to be invested, he wants them to care, and he wants them equipped to take this world in a positive direction for the next generation.  He claims the environment is more important that the content, which I feel places him and Turkle as allies, fighting for the same cause.

Wesch thinks an inspiring environment, where there is choice and investment on the part of the students, will inspire dialogue and therefore collaboration (link here for more on collaborative classrooms).  This reminds me of Turkle's challenge for parents to demonstrate the value of conversation by creating device free zones  around the house.  If you build it, they will come.  Both authors challenge those of us with the platform for our young generations to build something meaningful for the kids, so they not only see, but experience its value.   While Turkle wants a low tech life, Wesch seems to have found a way to marry technology, conversations and relationships in a healthy way for today's students.

Text Overviews

 Text Overview

Maker Challenge

Welcome to BullsEye... where gender is BULL 

Typical toy stores, or stores with toy aisles, separate their toys based on gender stereotypes.  While most stores no longer label the  aisle "Boy" or Girl" they do still separate the stereotypical "girls" toys and stereotypical "boys" toys.  

As an example, there may be a heading of Characters.  But that heading will exist in two places, with male characters in one aisle and then female characters in a separate aisle.  Bullseye's would have just ONE aisle titled Characters and ALL characters would be housed there, from Hello Kitty to Optimus Prime.  Hula Hoops and nerf guns would be in the Activities aisle, together.  

We tried to think of a way to organize the toys that did not feed into any stereotypes, not just gender.  At first, we were thinking of organizing them by age.  However, the more we thought of it, that has potential for sending the message that an older child shouldn't be playing with a toy he or she enjoys just because he or she is out of the "designated age range".  We thought just characterizing it by what its purpose is was they most objective way to organize the toys.  

Kahoot

Kahoot is a learning platform that is game based.

Teachers and students can create games and chose the number of questions. You can also add images and videos to build student engagement.

There are also a ton of kahoots that are already created that you can just search for and use in your classroom!

Players answer the questions on their own devices, while games are displayed on a shared screen to unite the lesson.

Teachers can use it as an exit slip, as a pre / post assessment task, as a way to check in with your students to ensure they understood the big idea from a lesson, homework assignment or rotation during your workshop.  

Students can also use it...  

"Social learning promotes discussion and pedagogical impact, whether players are in the same room or on the other side of the globe. After a game, encourage players to create and share their own kahoots to deepen understanding, mastery and purpose, as well as engage in peer-led discussions. When a learner becomes a leader, that’s a true magic moment!" (Kahoot.com).  

Pricing

Kahoot is free for educators but some of the features are only included in the paid memberships.  

Why We Banned Legos

Why We Banned Legos, by Ann Pelo and Kendra Pelojoaquin, explains the process an after school center went through in order to encourage its students to be critical thinkers about society; specifically the social power of ownership.  A group of students were building a Lego community at this after school program and the teachers noticed it was becoming an unintended way the children were playing the part of a capitalist society with "special" features and rules regarding who could use certain blocks in the set.  The pieces that were more highly sought after were  going to the houses in Legotown with the big ticket features, such as the airplane landing strip.  The teachers were concerned and one day, tragedy struck for the children when Legotown was unintentionally destroyed by a church group one weekend.  The teachers decided they would bring Lego town back in a more democratic way, where resources were  shared, and students worked collectively and collaboratively on structures within the town, rather than building their own structure and trying to build the biggest and the best in the town. Their hope was to help students develop a contrasting  set of values to the ones that previously existed in  Legotown so that all children in the class, even those on "the fringe" had access to the legos in the same way as those who were on the inside track.

The planning was inspired by schools in Italy where teachers "offer a provocation and listen carefully to the children's responses" described here.  Teachers then use responses to develop the next provocation or to challenge or expand the current beliefs.  They viewed children as political beings who shape their views based upon what they see and experience in their daily lives, so they took the legos out of the classroom and  posed the question..

"How  might  we create a community of fairness about Legos?"

Through discussions that dissected the power and communication that existed in the previous Legotown.  They talked with the children about equity and equality, explored power and discussed what power looks like.  They posed questions such as:

• Does fairness mean that everyone has the same number of pieces?
• What about special rights: Who might deserve extra resources, and how are those extra resources allotted?
• What do you think power means?
• What does power look like?

Through the work of exploring power, what it looks like, and the effects  it can have, the students developed a set of rules for the new Legotown.  This new set of rules took into account what they had learned about peoples' perspectives and experiences and how those things shape the rules they make.  The children also learned that rules should and can be questioned when they do not work for everyone, but that this needs to be done in a respectful and productive way.  

"Children absorb political, social and economic worldviews from an early age.  Those worldviews show up in their play, which  is the terrain that young children use to make meaning about their world and to test and solidify their understandings" (Pelo & Pelojoaquin, 62).  

 

Dissecting my childhood dreams, one Disney movie at a time..

We had EVERY SINGLE Disney movie when I was growing up.  We traveled to Disney to see the characters and I had the dolls, dress up costumes and books.  I remember aspiring to be numerous Disney princesses growing up... unfortunately.  I watch my daughter now and although she has better options than I did, the underlying problems still exist. I have to admit that when I saw Frozen for the first time, I was so happy to see a message about unconditional love between sisters.  I felt that was a step in the right direction, but the problems that have plagued Disney movies for generations still exist.  The Prince is still pompous and the princess (Anna) is still swooning over a guy.  Both princesses are tall, thin and always wearing dresses.    Everyone is white.  And yes, while you can find positive messages (here)  in every single movie, there is still so far to go in my opinion.

The problem is, if you do not experience the inequities and situations that are most problematic with the typical Disney narrative, it is very difficult to even recognize they exist.  I didn't know domestic violence, or violence at all.   I did not have any friends with two moms.  I had no experience with anything other than what was very similar to my life with my mom, dad and sister in our house that we owned. For this reason, I was blind to the underlying issues that were right in front of my face.

Like Linda Christensen states on page 176, I sat on my parents' laps and read the books and watched the movies  over and over  again and they are very happy, loved filled memories for me.  I never questioned the messages, but I also did not really have to  tools to critique the portrayals or the inequality. This chapter has a similar message to the other scholars we have seen throughout this course; having a critical eye.  Not taking things at face value.  Ask why a student is disengaged, and figure out how to engage him or her.  Dive deep into what students know about  technology and what they still need to learn; and also what you can learn from them and what you can both learn together!  We are naturally different and diverse.  If that  is not being represented, we need to question that and ask why.  We need to teach our children to do the same, otherwise we are stuck right where we are, with no opportunity to improve.

Still I Rise

Still I Rise Presentation

Native vs. Immigrant... who is learning from whom?

I find the idea of Digital Native vs Digital Immigrant interesting.  It makes sense to me that children growing up in a world filled with technology would certainly be more “fluent” in  technology, and that it would cause our brains to evolve in order to adapt to the difference between the different speeds and processing skills required for living in the digital age.  However, the article by Boyd made me think more deeply about what it means to have fluency with something. Children growing up today have access to far more technology than those before them, that cannot be disputed.  However, although they are deeply engaged, most are only engaged at a surface level. There is a huge variation in the knowledge, skills and experiences children have, but we tend to think of them all as fluent because they can quickly navigate through an interface on a computer or ipad.  Instead of seeing this surface level of understanding as fluency, we need to do a better job of building tech competencies to insure they are able to be contributors and producers rather than just consumers. I think we often assume children know the tech competencies appropriate for their age because they have so much experience with technology on a daily basis.  However, this can be dangerous because they are so tech savvy but so naive to the bigger picture which Boyd defines as: 

How to look for and interpret information found online

Control personal information

Engage productively in networked situations

The article continues to describe why this is the case, the technologies are designed for ease of use, this way they reach a wide audience. Because of their ease, many do not know much about how they actually work, leaving us with a population that uses something they do not really understand.

Our district worked in grade level teams with the STEM coordinator to develop a list of Tech Competencies for each grade level as a way to start to combat this issue of limited meaning and understanding in order to hopefully build a cohort of students who are informed and educated around the technology powerhouse - good, bad and indifferent. We used the following resource as a framework for our work.

We want knowledgeable, smart consumers who grow into knowledgeable smart producers.  This process helped us to better understand what we wanted each grade level to know and be able to do while also providing us with a scope and sequence to ensure the children were building knowledge on what they had learned in previous years.  It also provided us with an opportunity to have conversations about technology, something we don’t often do. Having these conversations allowed people to share ideas in a comfortable setting, making it a little less intimidating for those “immigrants” who tend to shy away from the topic in their classrooms. Oftentimes, it is less teaching as there is a lot more  value in the doing.  Getting your hands dirty and trying it out is oftentimes the  best way to learn and is such a powerful message to send to children, when they see their teacher as a learner.

Both the native and the immigrant have things to offer and things to learn.  Together, I think they have it all! 

Native, or not?

I do not consider myself a digital native, however I do think I have become pretty fluent in this second language of technology.  At the same time, I recognize I have a lot more to learn.  My family had a typewriter when I was in elementary school, then a word processor when I was in middle school and a desktop computer when I was in high school.  I got my first lap top when I went to college.  I have always felt like I am playing the catch up game with technology because the district I grew up in did not do a lot with technology.  When I went to college I felt very far behind.  In hindsight, having to learn each of these new tools helped me to build my confidence with learning new types of technology tools and is a reason I tend not to shy away from it now. 


Five links

I live in South Kingstown

I work in South Kingstown

I teach at PeaceDale Elementary

We love the Red Sox 

and the Pats.... !

Who Am I?

I am a third grade teacher in South Kingstown who cannot wait to start summer!  We just got out of school on Friday so it doesn't really feel like summer has started yet because I set an alarm to get up this morning!!  Once it does start, I love to spend the days at the beach.  I could stay at the beach ALL DAY... but my kids probably won't allow that to happen!  I have three kids, 11,8 and 5 and cannot wait to spend the summer with them without the hustle and bustle of the school year.  In the summer we like to stay up late, sleep in and see where the day takes us; a reward for a busy year of school, sports and schedules :)