Category Archives: Uncategorized

While cleaning my classroom, I got thinking about my goals for next year. What do I want as my underlying focus? I realized that what I wanted most was to teach each student the value of hard work. When I say that I don’t mean how to do mountains of homework, read hundreds of pages and churn out lots of worksheets. It is more that I want to teach them to set academic and personal goals for themselves, ones that they care about and then help them learn how to do the necessary brain work to achieve them. It is only through identifying a goal and committing to the hard work that is necessary that each of them will succeed. Most of my students know that it takes “hard work,” but they often have no idea how to go about it successfully.

That is not all their fault. Modern life makes many of the answers to their questions or attainment of their desires instantaneous. It is not simply because of Google, though it starts there. If they are confused or want some information, they can simply “google” it. There is no need to bike to the library, search in a card catalogue, find the book, look through the index and then search for the word on the page, in the hopes that this page will cover this topic. Now while I am clearly exaggerating for emphasis, it did used to be harder to gather information. When the answer was not immediately, each student needed to spend more time focused both on the question and on the answer. That recall and pondering was the foundation of critical thinking. It demanded active engagement. “Where can I go to find this information?”

Then there is access to their music, to their friends. through their phones, they can immediately be in contact with whomever they want with a quick text. There is no need to find a pay phone or even walk into another room. They can listen to whatever music they want whenever the mood strikes. Again, no need to wait for the song on the radio or to go to the record player or boom box to make it happen. And there is definitely no need to be tied to one space while they are listening. They can have what they want where they want it at any moment.

So how do we, as educators tackle this. There is no going back, and the ways that we taught them to be dedicated students in the past need to adapt to the current realities. The brain takes repetition and reflection to grow. It needs for the neural pathways to be accessed repeatedly to make a solid memory. So how do we train kids to do that work, to not expect to learn quickly but to tackle the more challenging work of learning?

What are the components of the hard work of learning? The first ingredient is time. To be a hard worker, you must be willing to put in time. It simply takes time to make anything happen. I want to be more deliberate next year in explaining how long each task should take. Perhaps in September, they could each set timers when they are doing an assignment and see how long it takes them. Together, we can then set the time and identify the time and place when the task can be done.

This leads to another aspect of hard work, which is focus. It is difficult to successfully accomplish a task without a focus on that goal. If one is distracted and not attentive to the steps involved, it is not possible for the brain to make the necessary connections. I want to think about lessons that will show the students what they can achieve when really focused, when they can practically feel their brains working. They should be short and interesting, challenges that they want to accomplish.  Then there need to be lessons that have distractions built in them, ones where maintaining their focus on the goal will be difficult. I want to give an assignment where they track their attention spans while working at school and at home. How long could they stay on task without looking up, chatting with a friend, etc.? When do they need a break? The goal is to help them organize their study time, so that they can identify how long they can stay on task, how long they can do the work of being a student.

I would then add determination. Most successes are achieved by powering through the times of discouragement and frustration. A desire to reach the goal is not optional, but is at the heart of the effort. For weaker students, there is often no sense that success is even possible. They know that this task, like the one before it, is one where they will try and fail. By middle school, those students have had enough learning experiences where they were left behind to have lost heart. It is at the heart of our job to give them hope. We must provide enough differentiation that they are able to gain a foothold, no matter how small, so that they can begin to see the possibility of learning. I have said it before, but there is no a student out there who wants to be seen as the stupid one in the class. They would all like to be the “smartest” in the class. We have to provide all students, no matter what their strengths or challenges, with experiences that allow them to feel the joy of learning, because success is addicting. If they can have a few of those times, then they will be willing to take on the hard work of learning. They will strive to have more success, and we have them hooked. They begin to generate their own determination.

I know that a key ingredient in teaching students to be hard workers is to be one myself. If I am a lazy teacher, I can never teach my students to be dedicated to their learning. I must show a passion for my own learning and a commitment to theirs. Lessons must be well-planned; papers must be promptly graded. And I have to show them each day that I am glad to share their journey with them.

So I am thinking about hard work this summer. I would love to know your thoughts!

That is the question, especially in Philadelphia where a teacher lost her job because of what she wrote on her blog. I don’t want to write about her but about what it means to be writing about education in a 2.0 world. The Philadelphia Inquirer quoted Chris Lehmann, who it turns out was quoting Christian Long, in saying that if you don’t want to shout it in a crowded hallway for all to hear, you should not be including it on your blog. Every word that we publish goes out to the world, and when we, as educators, write our thoughts, the audience is not anonymous. The audience has the potential to be full of other educators, parents and as well as the general public. The ability in today’s world for teachers to learn from each other is so significant. We do not need to master it all; we can join together to develop the best for our students. We need to share our successes and our failures, so that we will all become stronger in our practice.

While it can be tricky to write about school and students, it is possible if you are alert. The issue from an earlier post of “First Do No Harm” applies equally here. We must only speak about students in ways that build them up. We must be as fiercely protective of each student as a mother bear is of her cubs. If there is a discussion about fault or something that went wrong in the classroom, it needs to be the teacher who is accepting responsibility. There is plenty to write about how a lesson could have been taught in a better way or what a teacher learned from a mistake.

Sitting in front of a computer makes writing feel very private, almost like writing in a diary. And it can be that, as long as the Publish button is not pushed. It is only the author’s at those times. But the moment that the decision is made to present your ideas to the world, to push the Publish button, the distance and anonymity evaporate. Your thoughts are there for all of the world to read and respond to. That is the wonder and the possible horror of blogging. We each explore and then expose our thinking for all to see. It becomes part of the public record, gone from the safety of our private world.

Unlike in daily conversation, however, as a blogger, I am not there when my words are read. They have to stand alone and explain my thinking. If I rush to send my words out, or if I respond too quickly to an event in my life, I run the risk of speaking without clarity or without wisdom. We need to read and review each post to make sure we are attaining the highest possible standards when speaking about students.

Blogging is a wonderful way for educators to share their insights and frustrations with teaching in the 21st century. We can grow together and adapt to the changing world as we support each other. We just need to remember that our audience has the potential to be vast. If you don’t want your principal, your parent body, your friends to be reading your entries, do not write them, or write them and do not publish them. It is critical as educators that we model the best uses of the internet. We do not want a backlash from administrators, worried that they can not trust their teachers. We want to demonstrate the benefits to our practice and those of other teachers when we listen and learn from each other.

Homeroom this morning started with two students talking about the Acceptable Use policy at school. It was their “punishment” for being caught watching a fun and catchy YouTube video during a study hall. It was one of those videos with fun music and lots of words that simply are not allowed in school. The students knew right away when they were discovered that they were on an inappropriate site, even if it was a fairly tame infraction.

After the students led a brief discussion about Acceptable Use, I asked the class if they had heard the term “a slippery slope.” Much to my surprise, it was not a familiar one to them, so I created a bit of a mind picture for you. “You are standing at the top of a hill. Imagine that the hill has been greased with oil. You take a small step onto it. Where do you end up?”

There was no hesitation. “At the bottom.”

We all nodded together. “To stay within the Acceptable Use policy, you have to be able to know when you are stepping on oil and when you are not. That is the whole point of the document, to help you know how to stay on solid ground. So, tell me, where are the Slippery Slopes that you know of on the internet?” I really wanted them to identify them, so that they could take ownership of the fact that they truly knew where to go and what to stay away from.

“Bubble game.”

“Hulu”

“Stores that let you design clothes”

“YouTube.”

At that, I stopped the conversation. “So is YouTube bad? Should you stay away from it?”

Luckily they quickly described the difference. “There are ways to use it for school and ways to use it that aren’t.” Lots of smiles!

“When you are there to find documentaries to support research, that is awesome. But what else can you do there that would send you sliding?”

“Watch TV shows.”

“Look at music videos”

“Check up on movie stars.”

“Exactly! And while it is possible for the Tech Department to take the laptops and find out what you have done on it, that is not the kind of community that we want to be.” It was time to set the bar high! Time to push the responsibility onto them, the users. “We could turn school into a police state, constantly monitoring every move you make on the computers, or we can build a community of learners that work together for the good of the school. That is the goal for you. Are you willing to be part of building a strong community, based on rules but not dominated by them? It really is up to you!”

Now we will see!

Philip Cummings, in his blog A Retrospective Saunter, added my blog to his list of “Blogs to Watch.” First of all, thank you, Philip! I am flattered to be part of this wonderful idea of sharing our favorite blogs. As Philip did, I will not share from his list. Go back and look at his and at Jason Bedell’s, where Philip got his mention. This is a “Pay It Forward” kind of award, so the mention on a list passes on the task of making your own list to share.

The following are the rules of this award:

• Copy and display the picture of the award given to you;
• Link back to the blog that nominated you;
• Nominate 10 different blogs yourself;
• Inform the people you nominated, so they can in turn, continue the chain and spread the word about other great blogs out there.

So here is mine. It is clear that I am a total nerd for learning, so those are the kinds of blogs that I look for.

My Island View by Tom Whitby. Tom has a commitment to education that is founded on years of thoughtful consideration. He is tends to cut through the “easy answer” and pose thoughtful questions that need to be considered.

Teacher Reboot Camp by Shelly Terrell. Shelly just has her finger on so many wonderful things going on in the world of EdTech. There is always something to learn from reading what she has shared.

For the Love of Learning by Joe Bower. I find the ideas in this blog challenge my thinking and make me rethink my practice, always a good activity.

Copy Paste by Peter Pappas. Peter’s thinking about self-reflection changed the way that I conduct my lessons. He has many good ideas for enriching and deepening what goes on in the classroom.

Philly Teacher by Mary Beth Hertz. Mary Beth is an articulate and dedicated teacher who is committed to incorporating technology into the classroom in ways that best benefit the students.

Synthesizing Education by Aaron Eyler. I just discovered this one after listening to a presentation that Aaron gave at edcamp philly. Well-worth the read!

Nebraska Change Agent by Beth Still. Since Beth and I connected on Twitter, she is someone I respect. She is committed to making learning accessible to all students and to helping teachers use technology as effectively as possible.

iTEACH by Andy Marcinek. Andy writes a wonderful blog about the this journey so many of us are on of learning and growing day to day in a 2.0 world.

Sing Imagination by Yoon Soo Lim. This blog is a celebration of life, full of thinking about education, food and living. It is full of Yoon’s wonderful love of life.

Websites of the Day by Larry Ferlazzo. Larry maintains the most amazing collection of “Best of” lists that can be found anywhere. It is specifically dedicated to ESL, ELL and EFL, but I always find new resources. He searches the internet for resources that are reliable.

Last weekend at edcamp philly, a wonderful unconference in Philadelphia, I went to a session that was led by Aaron Eyler.  Aaron was talking about engaging students in tackling the problems of the world. It was a fascinating conversation, but at the end, he made a comment that stopped me in my tracks. He said that one significant problem for students today is that they are very poor at dealing with personal conflict. They live in a world where if they are angry with someone or their feelings have been hurt, all they need to do is unfriend that person. They do not live in a world that forces them to have face-to-face conflict resolution. They can send the message and walk away from the relationship.

We are constantly hearing about bullying in schools these days. Aaron’s comment made me wonder if some of what is going on might be connected to a desire to be friends with everyone, a desire that we all have. Facebook and social media lets you feel like you are friends with hundreds. You can build up your Friend list far beyond the number of people that you actually know and share friendship with, as many middle school students have. They get to feel connected with lots of people, far more than they ever talk to in a day at school. These lists give them a sense of significance and validation, but it is one that is not based on the real give and take of a relationship. It is simply based on a click of a button to accept a Friend Request. But that click and many others provide a sense of connection and worth.

Then, when someone in school, someone who is your Facebook Friend, is unkind to you, or Unfriends you after an argument, the power is amplified. It becomes more than what has gone on on playyards for generations. Kids have always argued and said unkind things to each other, but rather than being forced, often by an adult, to wrestle with the problem and learn strategies to manage conflict, that tension can now go underground. It leaves the realm where an adult is monitoring and supervising and goes to a Lord of the Flies world. Power is in the hands of the student with the most power and social influence.  A student can strike back without having to look in the eyes of their classmate. It is no longer necessary to watch the pain as you cause it. The person you want to harm is no longer present, and the power of past friendship that can heal hurts is muted. Social networks have given an amazing amount of power into the hands of children whose impulses are quick.

How do we help students to learn empathy in this environment? I am not convinced that there are more active bullies in classrooms and schools than there ever were, but students may now have tools that turn what used to be normal adolescent behavior into a new form of harassment.

I wish that I believed that there was a quick solution to this, but I don’t. I do believe, though, that as educators, we need to be aware of the dangers of these tools that we encourage students to use. The ability to Unfriend is a powerful weapon in the hands of an upset middle school student. How can we empower students and also teach them to use their power with respect for others?

A colleague told me the other day that throughout her years in teaching, this had been her motto: First do no harm. It has been resonating deeply with me. While I want to challenge the students and lead them deeper into understanding themselves and the topics, it all has to start with doing no harm. The children who walk into our classrooms must be met with acceptance and patience. We simply can not take out our own needs and frustrations on them. There are always issues in our lives that push us away from our best selves, but we have to find the way to leave those at the door when we walk into our classrooms. In teaching, we have to deal with parents, administrators and colleagues, all of whom can wear us down or plain and simply irritate us. We can not redirect those emotions at our students. They are vulnerable when in our care. We are the ones with the power to create or to tear down.

This week in class, one girl was following her standard practice. Before I finished asking a question, her hand had shot into the air, waving wildly in spite of the fact that her seat was in the front row, directly in front of me. I let her answer a few questions but found myself getting frustrated with the constant need for attention. It is May, and I am tired of what feels like a constant assault. I finally said, “Suzie Sunshine (Not really, I called her by name), please let others have a chance to answer the question.”

Her face fell, and she slumped back in her seat. I had not bothered to think about strategies that would support her. I had simply reacted. There had been nothing private and sensitive about my behavior. As I watched her, I was aware of two things. First, that I had not handled the situation with any skill. I had simply reacted without first planning how to get the best result for her and for me. I used my power to publicly draw attention to her. There are strategies to use that avoid that, but I had not taken the time to think them through.

Secondly, she knew that this was behavior that she was supposed to work on, but was clearly finding it a challenge. I needed to think through what was going on with her. What made her act this way, in ways that she knew were outside my expectations for her? When I stop to ask those questions, then I step away from my quick response and see the student more clearly. Then it is possible to do no harm or at least do less harm.

When I am caught up in my lesson or my set of tasks that I want the students to complete, I often find the individual students blurring before me. Each of them is not as important as my precious lesson plan. Those are the days with the potential for harm. It must always be about the students, trying to see them as clearly as possible and meet each one where they are. That has to be our job!

“Suzie Sunshine” saved herself, and me, that day. She started to listen carefully to the conversation, and when she saw an interesting point, she slowly raised her hand, clearly seeking my approval, afraid that she was not allowed to participate. When I called on her, she gave a completely unique interpretation to what the author was saying, one it was easy to praise.

So for the teaching moment, to highlight her successes and hopefully mend any damage, I called her over after class. I explained how much I wanted her best thinking, not simply the thoughts that popped into her head, that the goal was not to silence her, but to deepen her thinking. The quick responses were fine, but they often distracted her from the richer contemplation of the topic. She seemed to understand that. We shall see. In any case, I will continue to watch my tongue and aim for “Doing No Harm.”

Friday was the culmination of a unit on women’s suffrage. The goal of the unit was to show the students what women, and some men, went through to win the right to vote, a right that most of the girls take for granted. The girls studied primary source documents from the scrapbooks of Emily Smith Miller and her daughter, Ann Fitzhugh Miller, that are part of the Library of Congress’ online library of documents. There are seven scrapbooks that chronicle the actions of suffragists in New York from 1897-1911. They include everything from early photographs of the New York Women’s Suffrage Convention to invitations to concert to raise money to letters to the editor. They shared what they learned from their investigations online on a ning on Women’s Suffrage. (See previous blog post about using online tools for collaborating.)

I also showed them the movie, Iron Jawed Angels, with Hilary Swank, to help them get a better feel for the time period and for the limitations on women at the time. The combination of the film and the primary sources brought the women to life. As the students read the words from letters and newspaper articles, they began to grasp the contrasts between their lives and those of women in 1918.

Using the information that they gained from the Library of Congress documents, they had to build their own campaign, one that had a signature slogan, a stump speech as well as a button or sash. They worked hard to craft their campaigns in ways that avoided slipping into modern ways of thinking and expressing themselves. They had to return to the original documents to verify that their ideas fit with the thinking of the suffragists. One main struggle was to keep the focus on the Right to Vote, rather than expanding it into all sorts of other areas and general complaints.

After building their individual campaigns, I put them into groups of 4 to collaborate on a group campaign, one that used the thinking of each girl. They could decide to use one girl’s initial ideas, but they had to all work to develop them further to be even more effective. Or they could blend together the different ideas to generate a new single direction. Once they had a central theme and strategy, then they were ready to prepare for the parade, one that was going to go all through the school and then down the street and around the campus of the boys school next door.

Throughout the process, I kept sending them back to the sources. Was their thinking in line with the times? What could they wear or create that would present a sense of the late 1910’s? How were they going to present their message? As they went back and forth between their own thinking and the documents, their thinking developed and they became eager to craft the most effective campaign possible. There was an amazing energy that was created by using the papers and photographs of history to capture their imaginations and minds.

The day of the parade was sparkling and bright! The girls dressed in their campaign outfits and hoisted their banners, ready to change the world. And off they marched, aware that they could walk right into a voting booth when they turned 18 because women before them had fought and sacrificed to give them the power to do it. As they carried their placards through the halls and down the sidewalks, my hope was that somewhere deep inside them, they were mkaing a memory, one that will lead to a commitment to be full citizens, remembering this march whenever they don’t feel like making the effort to get out of the house and to the polling place. May the voices of women long gone call out to them to make their voices heard!

In truth, it isn’t mine. It belongs to the school, and I have it for 3 days to play with. It has really impressed me in ways that I didn’t expect. It is like my phone, which I love, only easier to use. The colors and sounds are fabulous. I am not an artist, but it is great fun to play around with the art program, ArtStudio. I can almost type on the touch screen, and with a little bit of practice, I am sure I could master it. I am already a fan of Mac’s Pages as a word processing tool, so that is an added advantage. Plus, the internet connection is smooth and easy. It allows me to have all that I want from the Web, without any feeling of intensity or distraction.

For my classroom, I would love to have a set to use with the students. It totally dissolves the distance that occurs as soon as students all open their laptops and create a visual barrier between me and them. If I stand in the front of the room, then I am projecting over the 18 laptops to reach them, with no real control over what is on their screens. If I stand in the back of the room, with a full vision of their screens, I have lost the easier eye-to-eye contact that connects me to them and helps direct the conversation. If their tool was an iPad, I could see them and see what is going on on their screens.

There are advantages and disadvantages around its size. Because it is smaller than a laptop, it would be much easier for a student to have a textbook and an iPad on their desk, able to reference both during an assignment. With laptops, it is usually too tight a space for working with the textbook. The challenge with its size, however, is that it might well be dropped or banged up more easily. There may be some sort of device necessary to hold the iPad on a desk while it is being used in the classroom.

Touch screen creates a really different experience for me of using technology. It is so much less “separate.” The tool feels like a simple extension of my hand and thinking. Because the students use this technology with ease, the iPad seems like it would be a great, new tool.  How do they see them? Do touch screen have the potential to allow them to feel closer to their work and self-expression or is it not that big a deal for them? I need to work with it more myself to figure out how this technology is shifting the ways that students might express themselves and connect with each other.

My class started working this week on a research project. I set up a ning for them to access the documents that I wanted them to investigate. I love using nings for this kind of work. It is a tool that is easily accessible for middle school students. As an educator, I simply email to ning and they will remove the ads from the pages. It is a tool that I use for research and for online collaboration. It is a great first step in helping students to develop an online presence, while still giving them the protection of a closed site. I have to invite them to the site. I can make the site open to the public or simply by invitation.

One aspect that the students really like, and one that I think is important for them to experiment with, is that on Ning, each student has a “My Page.” On that page, they can post a photo, update what they are doing and share aspects about themselves. It is very much like a Facebook page, but it is not open to the public. I encourage them to set up their Page in a school-appropriate way. They are so used to posting whatever pops into their heads on their Facebook status, often without thinking about who can see it and what it is telling the world about them. As they interact on a school site, they can begin to learn some of the ways to project positive messages about themselves, while protecting themselves and their reputations.

After each student has set up a basic “My Page,” she turns to the research of the project.  For the current project, their research involves primary source documents. After studying the document, they record their observations in the Discussion section. This way, each student can learn for herself and benefit from the ideas of her classmates. Or they can comment on the observations of others. This collaboration allows each one to stretch her own understanding, but to also see how others have learned. They each bring their own unique mastery to the sources and their reflections capture that.

This sharing holds their attention far more than when they are working independently. While some students can maintain their momentum throughout a long project, far more become distracted and lose interest. When they are sharing their ideas and commenting on each others, the energy for the project stays active. They want to learn something themselves, so that they can make a contribution. For reasons that I don’t fully understand, they are much more willing to share new ideas and test out ones that they are not sure of in this format. There seems to be a sense of anonymity, that what they write there is less personal, than when they make a comment in a class discussion. That makes the ning a powerful tool for more hesitant students.

It is always an adventure when I try a new roleplay activity with my class. I am a great believer in the power of acting out to help students make connections. Roleplaying is a fabulous tool to communicate main ideas. I try to create a challenge for the students, one that usually involves a fair degree of whimsy. Through laughter and some invented obstacles to conquer,  I try to build a path for understanding larger ideas that might otherwise be confusing for them. If I can create an emotional response, then I have got them. When they join the game, they forget that I am actually teaching them history.

Here is the one that I created for this week. It could easily be adapted to a lot of different lessons. The main idea has to do with power and how far one group will go to control another. We are studying the end of the Civil War, but as one of my students pointed out, it could be applied to Iraq today. When I am using a roleplay, the goal is not to have them hold onto all of the historical details. In this case, I want them to grasp why the North invested in the South after the War, during Reconstruction, and then why they stopped. I want them to experience the feelings and challenges that the North faced.

So here is where the whimsy comes in. For the initial set-up, each girl was told that she had a Home Planet, one that had been attacked by aliens. She also had control over a new planet, that was inhabited by Weegits. For the first 60 seconds, their task was, in silence, to name their new planet and draw a picture of the Weegits, the creatures who live on the planet. The purpose of this was simply to get them invested in what happened to their Home Planet and their new one. They fairly quietly drew what their Weegits looked like, adding antennae, large stomaches and budging eyes. Whatever their imagination came up with!

I then gave them a few seconds to share with the people around them what their Weegit looked like. This is a critical steop, one that it took me awhile to recognize. I often want to move right on, excited to get the actual game aspect started. I have found, however, that if I don’t allow them to share their new creations as part of the lesson, they are going to do it anyway. And that just gets me frustrated that they aren’t playing the game MY way. Ah, games!  When I set up time for sharing, it connects them to their roles, and the room fills with laughter and excited chatter. Then I have exactly what I want as a foundation!

Each student had a worksheet to keep track of their finances: their income, expenses and total for each round. They started with 50 coins. For each round of the game, they had to spend 5 coins for the upkeep of their Home Planet. They also had to pay for any transportation to the new planet: 2 coins for a person and 3 coins for any goods. When they started, it seemed like a lot of coins to all of them, and they were sure that they could maintain their Home Planet and colonize the new one with no trouble.

Then came the four rounds. Each girl chose a card that told her about the expenses for that round. “Build a school for your Weegits. Pay for transportation of lumber and 2 coins.” “Your great-grandmother leaves you 3 coins in her will.” “The Weegits rebel. Send 4 police to the new planet. Pay transportation and 2 coins.” I created the cards so that the majority of them had to do with expenses of settling a new planet. They had to build schools, hospitals, housing. There were cards where they made a profit: the mine strikes gold, you collect taxes, you win the lottery. Those cards were far fewer than the expenses.

For the first two rounds, each girl read her card aloud, so the whole class could share in the successes and expenses of the class. This led to lots of groans and some envy. For the last two rounds, I simply handed out the cards and reminded them of the expenses of maintaining the home planet and of transportation. After the four rounds, I had them raise their hands if they wanted to move back to their home planet and abandon the new one or if they wanted to continue to develop the new planet. All but two of the girls raised their hands for abandoning the new one! Success!

We then had a conversation about why. What was it about securing, maintaining, and upgrading a new planet that made them want to abandon it? This conversation had been the goal of the roleplay. As they talked about their Home Planet and their Weegits, I used the vocabulary of the history lesson. What did the North want in the South initially? Why would the North leave the South? What would happen when they did that? The girls hardly noticed the shift. Some of them talked about Weegits and some of them talked about Southerners, but they all understood the challenges of keeping control over a territory that is not close by.

Laughter and invention are wonderful tools for making kids leave behind their apathy and embrace the fun of learning!