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Let me first start with a disclaimer! There are LOTS of other challenging jobs out there. I truly appreciate that, and  if I did one of those, I could write about it; but I am a teacher, so this is what I know about. If you are a stock broker, a brick-layer or a personal trainer, feel free to leave me a comment about the challenges of your work, and I will publish it here! I totally respect how hard most of us work to earn our paycheck.

I am always amazed at how ready for every Break I am when it finally rolls around. I love the work that I do. It energizes me  to create and teach lessons that will meet the needs of my students and help them learn the content of history. But, it is also a job that drains me to my core. To be a good teacher is to be on a daily vigil. Teachers must keep so many balls in the air all day long – weekdays and weekends – when they are in school. To drop one ball means that some student is not getting the best from me. While I am realistic enough to know that I drop balls all the time, my goal every morning is to be flawless, to keep my eyes on all the separate parts and make them work together as a whole.

The first focus is  the class as a whole. How do I gather and hold the attention of the group? I need to very quickly assess where they are as a class when they come into the room. Have they gotten enough sleep? Are they arriving bored from a day that has already been too long? Are they dividing into groups that leave other students out? How do I direct their attention and generate some enthusiasm for what I want them to learn during my class? I always have the agenda on the board, so they know what to expect, even before I tell them, which helps for some of them. I greet them by name, so they know that I see them as an individual coming into my classroom. In the first moments, I try to find a source of humor to make the group share in a funny moment, as a means of creating class unity, usually at the expense of myself. And when desperate, I have been known to revert to a session of calisthenics – “Touch your nose; touch your toes, turn around three times” – to get some energy in the room. By the time I start the lesson, I have already used up my Wheeties from breakfast.

The next focus has to be on the lesson for that day. What are the skills the students need to learn in this 40/60/90 minutes today? How can I connect this lesson with yesterday’s? How much review is necessary to remind them of where we have been and to explain where we are going? On a good day, when they are awake and “with me,” all those are quickly dealt with, and we can move on. On a bad day, the lesson plan goes out the window, because they left any memory of the past lesson on the floor of the room before they left last time and have only open stares when it is referred to.

Therein lies one of the most draining times for a decent teacher, the “Dear God, they have no idea what I am saying!” or “This is not connecting, and they are not interested.” Or “I have no idea why, but this wonderful idea I had is NOT working!” At those moments, my brain goes into hyper-drive. Because I have done this long enough, my heart no longer starts to pound like a Conga drum, but it did that for years. The adrenalin starts to flow, and it is a “Man the Battle Stations” time. While all learning is not going to be “fun,” it must engage the students, otherwise they leave without learning. Their brains must turn on, and when I notice that they aren’t, I have to change the lesson on the spot. When you have taught a lesson more than once, it helps, but there is always the internal pressure to change it, and to change it fast. Do that a few times a day or a week, and the end result is a need to regenerate.

The greatest challenge, however, is in remembering all of the individuals in the class. While the first two areas, the class as a whole and the lesson that I want them to learn are like two big balls that are revolving in the air, the particular students are like 18 different colored, smaller balls  racing among the larger ones. Keeping track of their movements strains all of the senses. Who forgot their homework last class? Who has the difficult home situation? Who failed the last test and is very discouraged about learning? Who wants to take a nap, no matter what the activity? Who did I establish a “special routine” with – a tap on the shoulder or a special look – that I now need to remember, while doing the other tasks? It is my job to maintain the swirling rainbow!

These are the tasks for when there are students in the room. There are all of the other jobs that come with being a teacher: preparation for the class, reading, making up worksheets, grading the papers, collaborating with other teachers. Then there is the work of being an active member of a school community – committees to serve on and meetings to attend. Sometimes, I fantasize about a job where the work stays in the office, but I know that I would never love that as much as I love what I do now. So I juggle on while in school, and rest and rejuvenate while out!

(Of course, it is Spring Break now, and I have spent hours on a new curriculum – because there is room and energy to do it!)

My class had an amazing experience this morning, one that grew out of the earlier contact that I had with @barbsaka. My 6th grade is studying feudal Japan, and as though of you who read this blog know, I put out a call on Twitter for help with the unit. We had been doing a wide variety of activities to help them understand the complexity of the culture. They had learned about the social stuctures, who had power and how was it enforced, and they learned about Shintoism and Buddhism. They had read stories and created posters, feeling increasingly in control of the culture. They love using a website that Barb had recommended, http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/ to learn about everything from games to history to schooling.

Barb put me in touch with a British woman, Victoria Yoshimura, who moved to Japan, married and became a Buddhist priest. I emailed Victoria to ask if she would be willing to have a Skype conversation with the class. Victoria was more than willing to rearrange her schedule to make it happen, even though, in our initial conversations, it meant we would be talking at 8:00 am. in Philadelphia and 10:00 pm. in Japan. Luckily, with change to Daylight Savings, the conversation was able to start at 9:00 pm. Either way, though, Victoria was incredibly flexible.

To get the girls ready, we had the three 6th grade classes read an article on Victoria from the Japan Times, and we watched a trailer to a movie about her. After watching, the students wrote up a list of questions. There was a wide range of issues that they were interested in, but they mostly dealt with two aspects of her life. The first was her life as a priest: How did she become a priest? What was her daily life like? Did she wear any special clothes? What were the rituals? The second was her daily life in Japan: What was her house like? Was it hard to learn Japanese? Did she miss living in England? Did she have any pets?

Victoria and I touched base last night, just to make sure that the Skype connection worked and to say “Hi” in person, rather than simply by email. This morning, I got to school extra early, mostly due to my own case of nerves. I was so excited to be able to make a connection in Japan for the girls. I had never done this before  and wasn’t sure how it would go. I had emailed Victoria a list of the students’ questions. The girls came in, and it was clear that they were not taking this lightly. They might live in a digital world, but they don’t communicate with people on the other side of the world every day. They were fairly awed by someone taking time to talk to them about her life.  And then suddenly, it was time to connect.

Victoria was amazingly generous with her time, spending an hour with the class. She was also amazingly honest. The girls were impressed with her sense of humor and her willingness to share the challenges in her life as well as the successes. After a half hour, I was aware of how much of her time we were using, and offered to stop, but she wanted to answer each and every question. She is a wonderful teacher, affirming each girl and making them a part of the conversation as she answered their specific questions and then tied it in with other answers she had given.

At the end of the hour, all of the students and all of the adults in the room felt like they had made a genuine connection with someone in Japan, someone that we all want to visit in person as well as through the internet. As one student said, “You can read about it in books and watch movies, but there is nothing like talking to a real person and learning about their experience.”

For these students, meeting Victoria via Skype was as real as having her here in the room. She welcomed us into her house and my students will never think of Japan or Buddhism in the same way. Both are no longer a topic in a textbook; they are the way a new friend leads her life. By listening and learning from Victoria, it all came alive and became so much more grounded.

Thank you to Victoria and to Barb for the willingness to share your world with us! It truly made a difference!

Every morning this week has been devoted to administering our standardized tests. Proctoring them has given me another moment to watch students work. The interesting part about testing is that it takes most students out of their comfort zone. There is no preparation that will support them. They simply have to come in and face the test. For some of them, it is like one long puzzle that they want to put together, and for others, it is one ongoing experience of confusion and failure.

Watching them respond, over the course of two hours, shows a lot about them. There are the Diligent ones, whose focus never leaves the desk. Their eyes shift back and forth between the reading, the questions, the answer sheet, and back again. The test is their next challenge, and they are going to master it. It doesn’t concern them that they don’t know the topic of the passage or that the wording of the math problem is awkward. It is their job to get the answer, and they set about it with determination. They exude a confidence in themselves and their ability to master this challenge. It carries them past the moments when they are unsure of an answer and allows them to make best guesses, rather than panicked choices. They are able to sit through the days with total calm.

Then there are the Yawners. They read; they yawn; they jot a note on their scratch paper; they stretch; they read; they yawn. Whether they forgot to eat their breakfast or stayed up watching TV long into the night, they are clearly still finding their mental way to school. Often though, the yawns and stretches are less connected to a lack of sleep and are an effective coping mechanism, one that allows them to cover their lack of control over the test. They observe the students around them with their pencils moving, and they have no idea what is their next answer. What better tool to hold off the need to write something than a physical need to yawn? No one will fault you for having to pause in your testing to yawn and to perhaps follow that yawn with a stretch. A good 30 seconds of rest from the concentration and confusion of the test could be gained.

Next are the Hair Testers. They are the ones for whom every movement of the eye or the hand on the test must be accompanied by the twist or twirl of their hair. Some wrap a strand around a finger, over and over. Some are creating tiny braids as they read. Some are flippers, tossing their head from side to side before filling in any box. And some simply need to redo their ponytail again and again, while others create a wall of hair around their face, hiding their expressions and their work behind it.

Then there is the body language that accompanies the stress of testing. Some slouch; some sit upright. There are sleepers, with their heads resting on one arm while they write with the other. There are the head proppers, whose elbow rests on the desk for the entire test. There are the ones who need to rest a foot on the desk crossbar, and those who need to endlessly bounce their leg. And then there is the need to get up to get a tissue to blow one’s nose. Another great method to give oneself a break in the midst of the test.

It is a stressful experience, whether they feel comfortable or not, and their coping mechanisms are fascinating to watch!

One of the greatest challenges in my job is writing comments three times a year. Each one has to be about a half of a page and is supposed to capture that student in my class. What was it like to teach her? How did she respond to the variety of activities that we did? Was she helped or bored by them? Was she willing to tackle the tasks before her or did she shun the work? And the most important part of all, what did I learn about that girl that is different from all of my other students? How is she unique?

Every trimester, I work on new strategies to record the events to the day, so that I have an effective record of what actually went on. I have done everything from writing extensive notes after each class and assignment to copying every piece of paper each girl produces. I’ve had charts and grids, folders and files. And while all of that is important and a good jog for my memory, it is really not what I focus on when I sit down to write.

At those times, I simply close my eyes and remember. I try to picture that specific student in front of me. When I can see her, then I can write. In truth, most parents are less interested in whether or not their child can organize information to build an argument – a skill that I teach them – and are more focused on whether or not I know their unique and individual child. It is capturing that special spark that is always my goal. Sometimes I can get it, finding the phrase that freezes an instant that somehow epitomizes that student. Those are the comments that make me smile.

This year, to help me understand them better, I added a Reflection piece at the end of the term. As part of each students reflection on the term, I had them tell me what they wanted and  did not want to hear in their reports. It was so interesting, because they could so clearly identify the areas where they heard the same comment over and over.

“I know that I need to speak up in class, but everyone says it, and I am trying. If you would not say it, I would be really grateful.” It was easy to write for her, “Annie is working hard on sharing her ideas in class and should be proud of her efforts.” By asking for each student to help in the process of showing their parents who they are, I learned so much more about each individual. It made it possible for me to avoid areas that would have led to increasing frustration and negativity, and it allowed me to communicate that I wanted to hear them and to partner with them on this learning journey. The process became more about affirming their actions, small and large, and letting them identify what they had accomplished and what they needed to make as their goals.

For those of you who read the post about the students giving me a grade, I took one more step and told them that I was going to let them grade me again at the end of the year. They get told that they have to grow and change every trimester, so I am holding myself to the same standard and am going to try to change along with them. I am reviewing their comments to me and starting to adapt what goes on in my class. More on that later!

Today, I decided to try an experiment, one that sort of scared me to death. I asked my students to reflect on my teaching and to give me a grade this trimester. It was part of a larger reflection in which they thought about what they had learned this trimester – what had they worked on; what had been challenging; what had been too easy. I had them list some goals that they had for themselves for the rest of the year. In talking about why I wanted their feedback, I told them that they know how I teach far better than any administrator or head of a department. They laughed when I asked them, “Who knows the best when I teach a boring class or forget to collect the homework?” They clearly loved the sense of power that it gave them, knowing I knew they knew me better than those who have real power in the school.

While I know that many of my students like my class, it was definitely intimidating to leave the security of my position as the authority and ask them, the students who must be in my class each day, to speak and have a voice. I asked them about activities that they enjoyed and ones that they found boring; the ones that were too easy or just seemed irrelevant. I wanted to know if there were times when I lost their attention or when they were confused and didn’t speak up to let me know. Then I asked for a grade. I told them that they could make the grade anonymous if they liked, but that since they always are graded by me, now was their chance. I also made it clear that giving me a bad grade would not affect their grade in the class in any way, but that they would help me to be a better teacher.

The range in grades was from C+ to A+, but I learned the most from the low grades, especially from the C+. It was from a student who suffers her confusion in silence, always doing her work, though often without understanding its meaning or its connection to other work that we have done. My teaching was not meeting her needs in many ways, and she had the courage to say so. She wanted more structure and fewer activities (things others love), because she struggled to understand what each piece had to do with the others. This was amazing information for me to have! I now understand this particular student in a way that I hadn’t before. Because she was willing to take a risk and share what class was really like for her, I can now figure out the scaffolding that will make it easier for her to have success.

Part of the wonder of asking my students to evaluate me was in learning that for each part of class that some students love, there are often as many students who find it challenging or boring. By giving me their responses to different tasks, I can be that much more aware of who to support and who to push further. It was just great information about how they are experiencing their learning. There was not one of them who wanted to fail, and it is now my job to use this information to to make sure that they have more success than failure . My job now is to learn from them and change, so that in June, when I ask them again, they can see that I took the time to listen to them and honor their honesty. It is sort of scary to hold myself accountable in the same way that I hold them. Can I change and grow between now and the next time someone writes a comment about me? We shall see!

This has been an amazing week for me to solidify contacts that I began on Twitter through building a PLN. The week started with the arrival of a package from Japan. After posting a call to my PLN for help with a unit on Japan, Barb Sakamoto quickly responded from Japan. To quote my posting on her blog, “Barb responded in less than 12 hours, incredibly quickly given the time difference. She offered to help and sent me her email to communicate more directly. After receiving my description of what we were studying, she sent me a response with websites to visit, ideas for online research, and a connection with a female Buddhist priest, Victoria Yoshimura. Suddenly the world of Japan, not as a subject in a textbook, but as people on the other side of the world who want to help my students, came alive. Barb and Victoria both reached out with eagerness and thoughtfulness, considering what would support my class and offering wonderful suggestions.”

It was during these conversations about culture that Barb offered to send rice crackers and candy to my students to help them personally experience some Japanese food, sent directly to them from around the world. The arrival of a special package for them not only increased my students engagement with the material, but led to the creation of a new, interdisciplinary project, Japan Day, in which teachers from English, History, Art, Music, Math and Science are all engaged. Online collaboration has led to new collaborations within the school. Very exciting for the teachers and wonderful for our students!

My next moment of PLN fun was a day later when a member of my school’s wonderful EdTech team was asking me how I would describe Blended Learning and wondering if there was a way to create an illustration of what it looks like. I fumbled around and tried to think of the best way to describe my understanding. Then I shrugged my shoulders and opened my laptop. “I’ll just send a tweet and see what I get.” She smiled and shook her head. Out my tweet went, and over the course of that day, as we all have experienced, people responded, sending me links and ideas for areas to explore. Each one made me smile at the generosity of the people who connect through my PLN.

But last night was a new highlight! A totally unexpected, international connection around education that was filled with laughter. I had responded to a tweet a few months ago about helping to build a ning that would facilitate ESL students to practice their language skills by sharing with other students around the world. I thought that some of my students might enjoy being part of it, modeling language skills and learning about other cultures at the same time. A group of us have been working collaboratively to think about the ning and slowly build it. (My part is far less than that of @bealup and @hoprea).

I received a tweet last night that Bea and Henrick were having a skype conversation, asking if I like to join. I accepted and within moments was talking to these two people, one in Argentina and one in Brazil, whose work I knew but whose voices and faces were almost totally new to me. Twitter photos that suddenly began to move and take on personalities! We were very focused on our task, trying to develop a series of topics for the students to address and some questions to guide their investigation. Then @briandowd came online and the conversation continued with another American voice in the mix.

And then came a moment of global magic! We suddenly transformed from 4 people, working to help our students, into four friends. There was laughter, sometimes verging on hilarity as we tried to reconcile our different ideas and interpretations, and as the time passed, partnerships were being forged that were more than simply professional. We were laughing at each other’s jokes and sharing each other’s joy at being together in this digital, “living room” space where we all existed together.

The week was reinforced for me that we are building a new world of connections, one that is based on our own generosity and the generosity of people who once were strangers. That I have never stood in the same room with Barb, Victoria, Bea, Henrick or Brain does not detract from the level of growing friendship that I feel towards them. They are people who have touched my life and I hope will continue to do so. To them, and to all of the others that I share thoughts with here and through Twitter, thank you! For smiles and laughter!

With my 8th grade class, I recently started including some form of reflection on their work as part of my major projects. I read a blog post by Peter Pappas about the importance of teaching students to think about their work and the process of learning when they complete a task. It seemed like a great step to include, especially at the end of larger projects. I wanted them to identify what they had done by looking critically at their final product. Then, the next step was to look at why the process and the learning were important. Where can these skills and ideas be used again? One of the joys of teaching 8th grade is that they love to think about themselves, and they are willing to share what they discover.

My class has been studying the Industrial Revolution in America, looking especially at the mill girls in Lowell. For their final project, after doing some extensive primary source work and roleplaying of the assembly line work, they worked in groups of four to create their own Lowell Offering. The Lowell Offering was the magazine that the mill girls wrote, containing editorials, poetry, sheet music and more. Each girl was to create two pages for the magazine, each one reflecting some aspect of the life at the mills. They could create more than that if they wanted. They had one 90 minute class for studying the documents; another for writing; and a final one for finishing their writing and creating the magazine.

I left 30 minutes at the end of the final class for them to do a reflection. I had them spread themselves out around the room, sitting away from friends and partners. I told them that this was about them and to pause before they wrote to think about the questions. After the hours of whispering, sharing and laughing, the classroom suddenly became completely quiet. Not a single student even looked around the room. Each was focused on how to talk about her learning. What had she done, and why was it significant or not? They took the task completely seriously.

After I collected the papers, I asked them about the process. What was it like for them? One of my quieter students immediately spoke up and said, “It’s good.” When I asked her why, she shrugged. I waited, and she then added, “Because it makes it feel really finished. Like a period at the end of a sentence.”

To which another student chimed it, “It helped me think about what I did well and what I would change, if I had to do it again.”

“I will know how to do something like this differently in the future. I like having time to think about that,” said another.

“It gives me time to appreciate the work that I did. I get a chance to enjoy it!”

And I knew that the reflection, even more than the project itself, accomplished what I want for my students. I want them engaged and involved with their learning. I want them to feel a sense of accomplishment when they finish their work or, at least as importantly, I want them to know how to change the outcome in the future.

Here is my response to @jasontbedell‘s request for help with his book. He was looking for stories of when teachers used a tech tool in their classroom, and it didn’t work.

My worst moments with technology have come when I found a great tool that I thought supported what I was doing in the class, only to find, as I employed it, that the time required for the students to use the tool was far beyond the time I wanted to spend on the topic. The worst example of this was when I thought it would be fun for the class to create movies showing the causes of the Revolutionary War. It seemed like a great way to highlight cause and effect, as the Americans and the English acted and reacted to each other, an important lesson in history.

I divided the class into groups and had each group choose 4 key events that led to the war. They then wrote a script and planned for making their movies. At this point, it seemed like a brilliant plan. They were talking about all sorts of history ideas, debating significance and making clear choices about what to include and what to leave out.

Then it was time for the filming, and each group had 4 major events to portray. The back of the classroom was piled high with costumes and props that they had created. The filming began. Each group disappeared off, around the school, to get the best backdrops for their scenes. After the first day, a slight portion of one scene had been finished. After the second day, a bit more. So it went for over a week, by which point, I was beginning to wonder if there was any history being learned in the midst of the mad dashes for costume changes and grabbing of props.

They were having a great time, one that I let go on for almost two weeks, when I finally pulled the plug. At that point, the students didn’t even protest, a sure sign that the activity had gone past its time of value. It was a good idea, but one that needed to be focused better. I had given each group far more than they could accomplish while still learning history.  The technology no longer supported the growth of the students’ understanding of the topic, but instead became a distraction.

When I do it again, I will still have them make a movie, but I will have them choose one event per each group to script and film. Then from whose scenes, they can create a class movie. The same enthusiasm will be generated by creating a movie, but it will make the task one that can be done in an appropriate amount of time.

I watched Digital Nation on PBS last night and found it troubling and enlightening. One of the key points was that we are not as good at multi-tasking as we think we are. We feel that we are in control of all of the information that is flowing over us, but  a study done with MIT students showed that while they believed that they worked as well when doing multiple tasks – reading, answering their phone, sending a Tweet – they really weren’t. There was a measurable difference in their ability to perform the tasks they were given.

After having spent the weekend at Educon, where everyone had a phone or computer in their hand at all times, it made me wonder. Did we each take away as much from this fabulous conference as we could have? Did our gadgets get in the way of our learning without our knowing it? We were working on the presumption that the tools were adding to our experience, when in fact they may not have been.

I went to a workshop on Back-Channeling, the practice of carrying on conversations on Twitter or through other tools, while listening to a lecture. There are clearly some uses that  totally support a student’s learning, such as using Edmodo to have students post their reactions to a movie as it is showing or providing a means for the shyer students to express an opinion. I wonder though if carrying on multiple conversations actually adds to the learning.

Just because we can have multiple conversations, does that mean that we should? Should we be encouraging our students to multi-task? Or should we be training them to focus their brains in a single direction?

Given how devoted to multi-tasking all of us are, the task of maintaining focus may be the next great challenge for our students, both in their work and in their social lives. There is no benefit in supporting them being like hummingbirds who flit from one flower to the next. They need to develop the tools to be creative and to think deeply.

Reflections on Day 1 of Educon, a weekend conference for educators to talk about 2.0 learning

“I thought you were shorter.” I am 5’8″

“I thought you were petite.” Not for a single day of my life!

“I thought….” Today we began to put together our ideas about someone in our PLNs and the actual person, and at times the images didn’t match. It was a new and unusual experience. It was the first moment I have had to meet people that I communicate with all the time, people I feel like I know so well. Twitter is my place to test my thinking and have people respond. It is a primary place where I learn and grow with people I trust…but have no idea what they actually look or sound like.

It was quite an experience to walk into the breakfast this morning where about 30-40 fellow Twitter people were eating. Some of them I immediately recognized them their Twitter photo, like @aleaness, @mbteach, @bethstill. There were others, however, that I wondered about. “Is that @__________?”  It made me feel a combination of shy and slightly worried. I didn’t want to seem rude by not speaking to them, but I felt like I should know them, that I was at fault for not being able to put their photo or avatar together with the real person.  They are my PLN; they are part of my life…but I can’t pick them out in a crowded room. It was a new experience for me, one that takes a little getting used to. I have never had people who know me so well and yet don’t know me. Or who connect all of my thinking to a single photo of me, as I do with them.

I want to meet all of my PLN who have come, and that may mean a lot of asking “What is your Twitter ID?” as the badges don’t have it. While I look at a person’s home page before I follow them, I rarely remember their “real” name, as they become their Twitter name to me. Having met Yoon today, she will no longer simply be @doremigirl to me, but she will never simply be Yoon. It is an interesting blending of the layers of personal interaction that goes on in a 2.0 world.

Thank you to Science Leadership Academy and @chrislehmann for putting it Educon together.