3 Things That Scare Me in Education--(Halloween Edition)

Education is shifting--but that's not scary to me. Schools are embracing changes and looking ahead to the future. That's exciting!  Infusing inquiry and hands-on learning into classroom--that's the good stuff, but there's some scary stuff out there that is more a trick than a treat.  Here are three things that we need to reconsider in education.

1.  Homework

As an educator and a parent, I am scared about the mounds of homework I see.  Matt Miller and Alice Keeler preach about this in their book Ditch That Homework  and I couldn't agree
more.  Why are we inundated our young people with meaningless assignments and piles of paperwork?  Let's give them valuable tasks to do at home, like reading together or taking a walk as a family.  Homework is scary, mostly because there's just so much of it but also because research doesn't support it.  Research shows that less is more.  So, let's stop this terrifying trend and reconsider the type of work that our students should do at home. 

2.  Desks in rows

When I see sterile classrooms with desks in neatly formed rows, I just want to scream!  AAAHHH! Who wants to learn in a space like this?  With the recent flexible seating trend, more classrooms are shifting away from this frightening set-up and moving towards seating options that meet the needs of our students.  Student-centered classrooms should fit the learning needs of the kids.  My NAESP article Learning Space Transformation talks about why this is so critical for our students.  Let's create classrooms that support creativity and collaboration, because the only other place I know of that is set up in rows is here!

3.  BOOOOOO worksheets!

I know some classrooms, who alone, may send the school copier to a cemetery from the amount of papers they copy each day.  In one day, I know a kindergarten student who brought home 15 papers.  Yes, FIFTEEN! That is an awful lot of trees killed--and that is pretty scary.  Can't we move away from the worksheet mindset and look to more authentic types of learning?  I know that some people will never give up their paper and pencil tests on Fridays, but we owe it to our students to provide meaningful learning opportunities that engage and excite them.

I know the thought of moving away from homework, desks, and assignments may be just as scary to some.  Maybe what I am suggesting sounds like a horror movie to you. I challenge you all to ditch the homework, change up the rows, and give up the worksheets--- just for a week.  I wonder what will change for your students if you do????

6 Tips For STEAM Maker Success

Chances are your school is moving forward with some type of STEMish program.  STEM or STEAM or STREAM or whatever you may title it--this integrated approach to learning in the content areas is taking hold in many schools. 

Personally, I favor the term STEAM, because I believe the A is an integral part of learning.  Makers are artists, thus bridging the connection between STEAM and Making.  Many schools are pushing their thinking ahead and pairing his hands-on approach with makerspace learning. 

Just as every makerspace looks different from the next, every program will also look different.  Here are 6 tips that will help as you develop any of these learning experiences in your school.

1. Empower

Why are you embracing STEAM and Making?  What types of opportunities will you provide?  Let your student decide!  Empower them to make decisions.  Can they design the learning space?  Can they select the materials to buy?  How might they learn the learning for others?  Include your students early and often when planning any STEAM Maker initiatives. Empower them to drive the learning.

2.  Invite

Reach out to parents and community members and invite them in.  If they aren't familiar with STEAM or Making, here's your chance to share the joy.  Plan a parent maker night.  Not only can an event like this engage parents, it's always a great way to restock your space.  Ask each family to donate a clean recyclable item like paper towel rolls, water bottles, or even a dollar store item.  The important part is to share the experience with those who are outside of the school by extending the invitation and the learning.

3.  Connect

Explore the potential partners you may have right in your backyard.  Community partners like local businesses, universities, or corporations can add value to your program in a number of ways.  Can the community partner support your students through mentoring?  Can students design and create for an authentic business audience? Maybe they can support you with funding or support with materials.  Establishing relationships with communities partners can have both long and short term benefits for your students.

4.  Ask

Don't be afraid to ask . . . for anything.  There are lots of organizations supporting STEAM and Maker learning.  Ask them for stuff!  Materials, time, support, tools.  We beg, borrow, and steal in education, right?

Bird Brain Technologies, a Pittsburgh company, has a loan program for their educational robotics materials.  So instead of struggling to figure out how to fit this into your budget, you can borrow items for a month or two and then pass them on to another educator.  Last year, I reached out to a local company who sold used furniture and other recycled items and asked for some flexible seating for my school.  They generously donated twice what I requested.  You'll never know unless you ask!

5.  Visit

In education, we can become isolated.  We stay in our classrooms and teach our students, and that's it.  Now with social media like Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook more teachers are sharing questions, ideas, and practices but we still stay isolated in our physical spaces.  Get out!  Visit other schools.  Check out other makerspaces or innovative STEAM programs near you. Talk to other educators engaging in this work. Expanding your horizons and visiting other schools can be both validating and refreshing!

6.  Build

STEAM and Maker learning is only as good as the facilitators leading it.  Building capacity among the educators in your school by providing innovative PD that includes hands-on learning and skills in Making are critical to the sustainability of a program.  During our recent professional development day, we offered an "innovation lounge" where teachers could tinker with educational technology tools and collaborate with colleagues in an informal setting.  This summer, we offered teacher workshops on sewing, circuitry, and soldering for those who wanted to plan ways to incorporate hands-on learning into their language arts classrooms.  How do you build capacity for STEAM Maker learning in your school or district? 

STEAM and Maker Education provide a hands-on pathway to learning that is growing in schools across the country.  These six tips can provide some guidance for those just getting started or for those well on their way.  What other tips would you share?

Connected Learning: 3 Summer Experiences That Pushed Me Forward

I love summer!  But not because of the reasons people probably think.  It's not that students and teachers are not in the buildings.  It's not because administrators sit around with their feet up all summer. NOT!!! It's because this is my prime time for learning!

The summer affords me the opportunity to do 3 things that I love to do: read books, connect with other educators, and attend conferences.  Sure, I can do these things during the school year, but this is the time that I refocus myself and re-energize my brain for the new school year. 

This summer was no different.  I have been reading lots of great books, both educational books and children's books.  I read Matt Miller's Ditch That Textbook and found myself wanting to tweet from the rooftops. We must, must, must move away from this textbook-drive system and provide more authentic learning opportunities to our students.  I also read Tribes by Seth Godin.  Not necessarily intended as an educational book but this had profound implications on school leadership and helped me to rethink some of my practices. 

Since I have two young boys at home, I also dedicated some of my reading time to checking out cool children's books.  Most of the books fed my interest in STEAM and Maker Education.  Most notably, I read Emmet's Storm by Ann Rubino. It won a Best STEM Book for 2017 and was well-deserved.  An intermediate level chapter book, it focuses on the innovative spirit of the main character who isn't always supported in his tinkering and inventing.  His inquisitive mind serves his community well in the end.   Set in the late 1800s it is a great book to read aloud to students of many ages as it highlights many of the dispositions that we want to see in our students.

In July, I participated in EdCamp Voice.  If you aren't on Voxer, you are missing a great opportunity to connect with inspiring educators across the country!  While the Compelled Tribe has been my primary Voxer group, I loved adding new groups to my queue.  EdCamp Voice provided me with new connections through an "Authors and Aspiring Authors" group, as well as a STEAM/Makerspace group.  The conversations with others who want to learn and grow has helped me to refresh this summer.

I was fortunate to attend the International Literacy Association's annual conference in July.  What a great experience!  Not only did I enjoy presenting but I also attended sessions with major ELA "educelebrities"--Pernille Ripp, Ralph Fletcher, Kylene Beers, Jan Richardson.  Need I go on ?!?! 

I also had the chance to meet some of my PLN face-to-face for the first time.  Jennifer Williams and Sean Farnum (aka Magic Pants Jones) are just as friendly and inspiring in person as they are on Twitter.  During the conference, I also participated in EdCamp Literacy (so much fun!) and attended a panel session with editors from ILA. 

While my summer was busy, I was able to refuel my educational engine and get focused on a new school year.  Can't wait to get started!

Professional Learning--Eye Opening Experience or Energy Draining In-Service?

Professional development, in-service days, educational training.  Whatever you may call it--does it invoke excitement or dread?  If your PD days are mandatory "sit and get" sessions that don't appeal to you (and how could they?!?!) what if professional learning was more like a curated experience?  What if it was a well-planned excursion that allowed for personal choices, casual conversations and unique perspectives? 

Our district recently had an administrative professional learning day that included principals and central office leaders.  Instead of sitting in the board room for a meeting or learning through a webinar, we had a day-long experience that would help to guide our thinking as we planned for the next school year. 

There were no sessions.  No scheduled agenda.  No Power Point.  Instead, it was a series of experiences that promoted team collaboration and personal reflection with a small community flair.

Prior to this day, our team read The Starbucks Experience. (If you haven't read this one, I highly recommend it.  There are so many educational connections and insight into how we serve our students, teachers, and communities.) The book focuses on the 5 Principles that guide the company through their successful domination of the coffee industry.  The principles don't really have much to do with coffee and are applicable to any field. 

To explore these principles in more depth, we visited a local main street with neighborhood shops and restaurants.  We met that morning at (who guessed it?) Starbucks where we talked with a manager as she told us about her experience with the company.  She shared small ways that Starbucks pays attention to its customers and builds on relationships with one another.

Our learning experience continued as we strolled down the street and visited a family-owned bakery, chatting with the owner and his son about the connections they have with their customers and the importance of knowing what matters to them.  They shared stories of how they have maintained tradition while also moving forward with the changes times, adding new technologies to a 50-year old neighborhood favorite.


Next we visited a newer restaurant where the chef/owner talked about the ways his business has overcome challenges in the last year.  He recognized obstacles in his way, but worked to find creative solutions to them.  He urged us to take time to listen to get to the heart of any problems.


Our last stop was at a long-standing restaurant where we dined with a 40-year veteran of public education.  She shared the history of the community with us and talked about ways that she moved up through the ranks to become one of the first female superintendents in the area.  She pointed out the importance of knowing your community and looking for ways to partner with them to embrace new ideas during times of change.


Here we also talked with the restaurant manager about the idea of being in the business of serving people--which we often forget in education. She made connections with the way that her work aligns with the work of our school system. We have many visitors come through our doors each day (parents, grandparents, students, teachers, paraprofessionals, therapists, community leaders) just as she has diverse customers who come to her restaurant.  Each one may be seeking something different, but it is our responsibility to greet them all, welcome them in, and give them what they need. 


Much like Starbucks, we need to make personal connections with our customers.  In our ongoing efforts to move forward and be future-ready, we must remember to honor traditions, as the bakery owners have done.  We will face obstacles as the chef/owner of the new restaurant, but by listening and understanding the issues we can find success as he has.  Reflecting with our veteran educator, we have to remind ourselves that we are in the business of teaching. Teaching students.  We have to make learning personal for them, developing sincere connections, and helping them to overcome obstacles.


While our day of learning could've been spent in a workshop being lectured on leadership skills or listening to an educational speaker, instead we built connections among our team in an unexpected way-- eating, talking, and hearing the experiences of different people, which ultimately allowed us to reflect on our ability to be better school leaders. 


Things to Consider:
How might this learning experience change the way we plan professional learning for teachers?
How can we rethink what learning looks like? for teachers and students?
What opportunities to we have to reflect on education as a service and make changes to ensure that we are serving those that enter our schools?

5 Phrases We Must Ban in Education

A couple weeks ago, I tweeted out this picture.  It's is a phrase that I feel represents a huge barrier to positive educational change.  Apparently, it really resonated with people, as I received hundreds of likes, re-tweets, and comments.  This got me thinking about other phrases that get in the way of our progress in schools.  Many phrases damage the culture in ways that are challenging to repair.


So, here are the 5 phrases that I believe we must ban in education if we are going to provide positive, future-ready schools for our students.

1. "My kids can't do that."

A group of teachers are learning about a new initiative that requires student independence and a well-managed classroom when I overheard one teacher blurt out this negative phrase--"Oh, my kids can't do that.  They're just not ready."  Her attitude pained me as I thought about the students in her class that probably missed out on so many opportunities.  As school leaders, we need to fill our schools with educators that have a Can-Do attitude while also finding ways to support those who don't hold positive beliefs about young learners.


(And I'm pretty sure we should just get rid of the word "can't" altogether.)

2.  "If I wait long enough this (Fill in the blank---trend, administrator, parent) will go away."
When we wait for something uncomfortable to go away, we are wasting valuable time--time that we could be devoting to our students.  You know the type I'm talking about.  The educator who balks at a faculty meeting because he thinks "Eh, in a year or two this principal will be gone.  I'll just wait him out."


Ugh!  I hope you don't have many of these individuals in your schools, as they can put a real damper on things.  Make the positive so loud that they just can't stand it.  Once they see how an optimistic outlook can impact a school, perhaps they will reconsider.

3.  "He's way too far behind to ever catch up with the others."
We've all encountered struggling learners.  We worry about them when we aren't at school.  In class, we give them all we've got to ensure they their needs are being met, but some teachers see the impossible rather than the possible.  Yes, there are students who are far behind, but it is our responsibility to help them "catch up" in any way we can. You never know what small nudge a student may need that will allow them to have an educational breakthrough. 

 

4.  "I don't know why they didn't get it.  I covered it!"

How many times have you heard this one?  A teacher gives a mid-term and half of the students bombed it--but they assure you that they covered all the material. 

Our students learn in different ways and at different rates.  Are we designing instruction that will allow them to access the content?  Are we providing engaging opportunities to learn the concepts?  Allocating time for practice and feedback?  If a student didn't learn it the way we taught it, then we need to be self-reflective enough to recognize that we may need to go back to the drawing board. 

5.  "We've always done it this way."

It is easy to get into a rut--we've all been there.  We keep plugging along doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.  This happens in our classrooms, schools, and districts.  Don't stay stuck!  Sometimes we have to stop, reflect and consider if this way is the best for our students.  If it's not effective, then stop doing it that way.


There are probably more phrases in education that get under your skin.  What are your pet peeves?  How do you counteract them in your school?  How do we rise above these (and other) challenges to create positive schools that support teacher growth and student learning?

Game Hacks for Makers

My son turned five in April.  Among the gifts he received was the card game UNO.  I remember the game from my childhood and thought that would be a good one for him to start to build his strategic thinking.  As we opened it and started to set up the game, I saw a new component.  The new version contains "customizable wild cards" that you can write on.  Players can create a new dimension to the game by having players swap hands or making your opponent give up all their wild cards. 

So I "googled" UNO's new twist and found tons of ideas for how people are customizing the game. Just one small hack by including some blank cards can totally change the game.  It allows players to think creatively and strategically about how to beat their opponents. 

The concept made me wonder if other games have added any new twists.  But then I thought--they don't need to!  Who says we can't create our own hacks to games? 

Surely, we've all considered different twists to Twister or adding a creative rule to Monopoly.  Lots of people have switched up Jenga to make it more unpredictable and interactive by writing different commands on each wooden piece. 

Why couldn't we hack other card games or board games?  How might we transform traditional board games into something new and different?  By changing one component of a game, our approach may be different. Would our strategies need to change?  Could we merge two games into one or take parts from many different games and combine them?  The possibilities are endless!

In education, we are pushing the 4 Cs- fostering creativity, building communication skills, developing critical thinking skills, and pursuing collaboration.  Adding a small hack to an existing childhood game can provide opportunities for all four.

We are in the era of the Makers.  A generation of young people are growing up with a tinkering mindset that gives them the permission to hack, deconstruct, and mess with just about anything in order to create something new and better.  This hack in the UNO game is small step towards innovation. 

What games have you hacked?  Share you ideas on how hacking a board game can be a creative shift for students.

3 Ideas to End the Year Strong

Raise your hand if you've shown your students a movie towards the end of the school year.

I know lots of teachers who have relied on movies because they just didn't have the energy to do much else.  I get it.  The weather is getting warmer--it's hot inside your classroom.

"My kids are done!" ---I have heard teachers say.  But as teachers, we have this awesome responsibility to educate our students the very best we can in the time that has been given to us.  So, let's make it the best experience all the way til the last bell rings.  End the year strong!

Whether you teach first grade, high school chemistry, or somewhere in between, here are 3 ideas you might try to end your school year as strong is you started it.

#1 Engage Them

When you give up, so do your students.  Show them that you will stay engaged even into June. Engage them with hands-on projects, an end of year project-based learning unit, or an engineering design challenge. Engaging students through Making is one way to keep them thinking, collaborating, and creating throughout the school year.  Check out my book STEAM Makers for more ideas to infuse creativity and innovation into your classroom.

https://www.amazon.com/STEAM-Makers-Creativity-Innovation-Elementary/dp/1506311245


#2 Get Moving

Do your students get a little antsy this time of year?  Keep them active!  Plan a scavenger hunt around the school.  Take the class for a walk around the building. Get outside and beautify your school grounds.  Try some action-based learning.


Plan regular brain breaks.  There are lots of benefits to using this strategy in the classroom.  Check out this list of brain breaks from Jill Thompson: https://insidetheclassroomoutsidethebox.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/incorporating-brain-breaks/


#3 Have Fun!

Are students really having fun watching Finding Nemo or some other Disney classic?  Throwing on a movie might make the day seem a little easier to you, but your students would rather learn about a new tool, play a game, use technology, plan a project, or talk about their interests.  What can you do to have fun and keep kids going until the last bell?

Explore Common Sense Media https://www.commonsensemedia.org/ and let students check out new apps or summer movie releases.  They can blog about a new app they've tried or create their own movie trailers for a summer blockbuster.

Start summer vacation early by trying Google Expeditions https://edu.google.com/expeditions/ . Choose exotic locales or historical hot spots that the class may want to visit.  Check out the amazing experience with Google Cardboard or other virtual reality tools.

Look at some DIY projects to end the school year.  https://www.buzzfeed.com/mikespohr/diy-projects-that-will-blow-your-kids-minds?utm_term=.ooVOVylOW#.jiOvebkvq Students will have fun choosing projects that interest them from decorating and building to gardening or hacking.  The end of the year can be filled with engaging, creative, and fun learning opportunities.

So put down that VHS tape that you've shown for the last 10 years.  Make the end of this year memorable.  Use the last few days or weeks left with your students to do something amazing and keep them learning until the last bell.