The Innvolutionary Insights Newsletter, September 2017

_____________________________________________________________

Fall has always been my favorite time of the year. It has always been a time for reflection for me as a teacher and as an administrator going back to school. There is something about the comfort of fall, and the way that we are almost required to gather closer around to each other. It is probably the most beautiful time of the year, and watching the leaves change color and feeling the crisp air take hold never gets old. I just love the way autumn smells. It is earthy and primitive, a great reminder of the vastness of this universe and the power of the seasons. This fall also marks my Getting Back in the Game. Recently, I went back to working as an Assistant Principal at the high school I left 2 years ago to work in the district's  Office of Professional Learning.  Though I learned so much during my time there, I had an itch to get back to working with students and teachers.  This monthly newsletter is an attempt to bridge those two worlds in my ongoing quest to support effective teaching and learning.

_____________________________________________________________

The beginning of school is always about getting to know people, so here are a couple of teaching strategies that I like to share at the beginning of the year.

Simple Partner Activity: (Template)

1. Create a sheet that has 4-5 thematic pictures on them (For fall, I might use a leaf, a pumpkin, a scarecrow, etc.)
2. Have students in the classroom find someone to be a like partner with. For example, two students might be the leaf partner; others, the scarecrow, etc.
3. Students should find a different partner for each of their pictures.
4. Use these partners when doing class activities where students might need to process information with someone else or work for a period of time with someone else.

_____________________________________________________________

Take One of My On-Line Courses:

I have customized several online courses for professional learning for teachers, coaches and administrators. These courses are open to WCPSS staff.  Let me know if you are interested in one of the courses below:

- Coaching Skills for Leaders
- Using Video for Coaching Teachers
- Leading Effective Professional Learning Teams

_____________________________________________________________

One of the topics that I have become very interested in lately is how people learn and how they can become self-directed learners. One of the areas of research that fascinates me is the work of David Rock. His work on the SCARF Model is key to helping people understand how we function within environments. The domains of the model, Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness, are all at work in the neuro-makeup of our brains. According to Rock, these domains can activate a "primary reward" or primary threat" reaction in individuals. If for example, someone feels a lack of certainty in an environment, he or she will likely have a feeling of threat. A person who feels that the environment is structured with a sense of fairness will likely function at a higher level as the "reward" reaction is in play. This research can be significant to the classroom environment as teachers think about the systems they set up in their classrooms. If students feel a lack of relatedness within the classroom, they may often retreat into a threat mode. How might teachers reduce this threat? Simple activities like having students develop a class code of conduct together, or giving students an opportunity to relate stories about themselves, or intentionally building class community can diminish this feeling in students. For a deeper look read SCARF: a brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others.

Digital Learning for the Ages

I have been thinking a lot about digital learning lately, and have gone back in time to think about how I would revise and revisit some of my lessons I created as a high school English teacher to integrate technology to facilitate learning.  I got scared for a minute because so much talk is around digital learning that is on-line learning, and saw the shadow of my teacher self becoming irrelevant.  I panicked. Then recovered.  Right at that moment, I saw a quote by Bill Gates that said, "Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important."  Now this is not extraordinarily profound to me, maybe to some, but I have always seen the role as my teacher-self as a facilitator.  As I revisited some of the lessons that I did, I realized because I had begun with strong content and standards and thought about pedagogy as I designed the lessons that I could merely find digital tools that accomplished the same outcomes.

At the same time I have been watching my own kids and thinking about how we approach life in the digital age. I have come to realize that we are beginning to think in terms of life in the digital world. For example, over the holidays, I was thinking about how I would capture the moments on Instagram and Facebook.  When I took a picture or a video, my first thought was how I would put these pics together and caption it to capture the story of the moment.  My 14 year old daughter also thinks in terms of digital tools. When we were out playing the other day, I decided that I would indeed take a spin on a sled.  Her first reaction , "Stop.  I have to video this." Technology does not have to be the latest or greatest app.  My  11 year old son adores cooking.  One day when we were cooking.  He admonished me and showed me how to cut up an onion.  He proudly claimed, "I saw that on the Food Network."  The point here is that learning is in perpetual motion.  What did I do today when I needed to know how to curve text in GIMP?  I searched it on Youtube! Even my wife has begun to catalog her story on Facebook with digital images.  Recently being diagnosed with breast cancer, you can see her feed and the story unfolds... the chemotherapy, the quotes, the thank-yous, the highs and the lows.

As we are capturing our lives in digital soundbites, often our classrooms I have discovered are not harnessing this extraordinary moment in education. Some are caught in the past big time.  Recently, my son brought home an assignment.  This assignment I talk about a lot in workshops.  It was a word puzzle that had the students locate key literary terms like alliteration (Could never find it in the puzzle), clarity, simile, etc..  We spent about 25 or 30 minutes looking for these  words, and lingered on alliteration, which was backwards in the puzzle. Now, I am all for looking to find things in a puzzle, but I was thinking, well we could have spent 30 minutes doing something on-line to give us greater insight into these words-- their meaning, examples or even writing examples. Likewise my 8th grade daughter has brought home similar assignments.  I am not bashing the teacher or the school.  I use this as an example because my daughter connects more with people via her Musicaly account than anywhere else.  She staged, narrated and shot a video montage of her Christmas goodies to show others and asked them to share their Christmas thoughts and posted it via musically.  She got over 200 hits from all over the country.  In that moment, she harnessed the power of technology to plan and create and publish a video. This was not just some random teenage video.  It was highly planned and highly orchestrated. Now, I support responsible technology with my kids, so I follow them on all social media at this point.  My point is she was connected to people both here in her town, but to people all over the world. In that moment, there was a shared understanding of being a teenager!

My son, likewise, understands the power of technology-- pushed on by me somewhat I am sure.  He demands engagement at all levels. He sees no value in being compliant with work that he deems not useful in school. Now, he is a compliant student, so he does the work without causing a scene, but he knows there are better ways of doing his work.  He loathes annotation; my English teacher self just shrivels when I hear him complaining about having to annotate.  My hobby was annotating and writing thoughts in  the margin and underling.  I was in high cotton when I could annotate a text. What I realized recently that annotating was a way that I processed (and it is an important skill), but isn't the purpose of annotating to become connected with the text? to relate to it? to understand it? I realized that he could read and understand what was happening in the story.  Comprehension is not his problem (just watch him devour a SI Kids Magazine) and tell you all the stats!  Connection is his problem.  We were reading a story one night by Ray Bradbury, "One Summer in a Day."  The story is about a group of children who have not seen the sun in 7 years. A young student who came from Earth explains that the sun is a miraculous thing.  The other students bully her and lock her away and the one day when the sun comes, she misses it all because of this terrible act by a group of others. My son read it and was immediately turned off because he understood what happened in the story, for he had to underline stuff and draw pictures in the margin (the teacher had sent home a detailed graphic of what annotating looks like after all).  He also had to find examples of figurative language.  I was in heaven, of course.

What I realized in that moment is that he just wanted to get it done, and I did not pass this off as a petulant kid just wanting to get to his XBox, though I was thinking that XBox was better than this. He didn't even get to the point of the story that the impact of bullying on others can cause one serious emotional harm and others' viewpoints are important (maybe this would be good to hear in our political climate!)  What he saw was a story that he had to dissect with a certain numbers of circles and lines and pictures and then find all of the similes, metaphors, and personification.  However, he did not have to explain why the imagery in the story was related to him and how the imagery of the sun the little girl described made it more heart-breaking at the end when she was denied that splendor because someone else made a decision for her. How cool would it have been to have students think about the impact of bullying in schools and write a blog or make a vlog or have a collaborative on-line discussion and then bring it back to the story?

I am again not bashing the teacher at all.  I am thinking that we do not harness the natural inclination for storying that kids have today.  This story is relevant to kids in middle school particularly, and I agree that the story has two levels, a literary level and a humanistic level.  A middle schooler is likely not to get too enthusiastic about the literary level, so getting him or her engaged on the human level could open the door for the other.

Merely, what I am saying is that kids today have an inclination to tell personal stories and they have the tools to share those beyond anything that I had when I was younger. We do not want to discount the impact that digital learning has on kids.  General Eric Shinseki once said, "If you do not like change you will like irrelevance less."  My hope and desire is for teachers and students to find their relevance and to uncover their stories and pass them on...

Reflection Strategies for Adult Learners

It has been a great week in the world of Professional Learning.  I have had the opportunity this week to work with 2 groups of great educators.  One group was a group of Instructional Resource Teachers and the other was with Middle Grades teachers from our K-8 Academy in our district.  With the Instructional Resource Teachers we were learning about coaching strategies and with the Middle Grades teachers we were learning about engagement strategies for students.  A big thing for me is that adult learners extend their learning and reflect on their learning.  Often, I am asked to come in for a one and done style workshop, so reflection is extremely important.  I will share two I used here:

March Moments 

March Moments is based on March Madness: This idea was born out my need to be topical and change themes in my workshops to reflect the season.  Well, we are getting ready to head into the thick of March Madness, so I decided that I would try some on-going reflection.  I created a bracket style reflection card, and introduced it at the beginning of the session.  I asked participants to reflect as we were going through the day.  The idea is that they will gather four ideas on the left they will start doing and 4 ideas on the right they will stop doing.  Then at the end, the participants will narrow down until they reach the final two-- one action they will stop and one they will start.  I tell the participants on the front end to think about two final ones they may be able to do before the end of the year in this case

Block Reflection:

This idea was born out of the fact that the purpose of my being with the middle grades teachers was to help with transitioning to  the 90 minute block schedule, hence the block.  The purpose of the block is to have participants at  the end think about 6 domains of their own practice and reflect on each side of the block.  When they are done, they cut out the block pattern, put it together and keep it with them for on-going reflection.

This block model asks participants to focus n 6 areas:

1. One idea you want to find out more about
2. One takeaway that will change your practice
3. One  thing that you will have to stop doing
4. Something you will start doing
5. One idea that you will collaborate with others on
6. One new strategy that you will incorporate into a plan.

Reflection is a key part of learning for adults, so these are just two ways that I have incorporated reflection for groups I have worked with this week.  Try to keep it fun and topical!

Collaboration on a Pre-Snow Day

My kids always teach me a lot about thinking and learning.  Today, we were home because my wife had to have a surgical procedure on her foot.  While she was resting, my kids came to me and said they wanted to make chocolate eclairs.  Chocolate eclairs.  They have been watching the Food Network and have seen the Kids Baking Challenge, Chopped Junior and Cake Wars.  This was all they needed to see: young people making eclairs and other fun stuff!  So, they started on the eclairs.  I have never made eclairs, but they are a determined group!

What I learned about learning today.  One, children are still natural inquisitors. They watched the show, rewatched the show, wrote down directions, and found the recipe on foodnetwork.com. After our inspiration and entry activity (We had to go to the store!) and research, we were ready to begin.

We went through trial and error to determine if we were on the right track! We had a visual exemplar, directions and a model.  Well, they did.  They went through the recipe like troopers, collaborating all along the way.  They took turns mixing, stirring, reading, and because they were engaged, there was no arguing.  They had a problem to solve and were on a mission, and that engagement made them motivated.  I have talked about identity on this blog before. Today, my kids identified themselves as bakers; therefore, they pressed on.  As the facilitator of their learning, I asked questions, answered questions and sometimes demonstrated.

In the end, they made perfect pastries-- they even added in cinnamon and maple syrup to give distinctive flavor to the filling and decided that instead of chocolate, they used caramel and created a bacon, pecan, and brown sugar topping to top it all off.

Here are the eclairs after baking.  Nice and flaky

Here they are with the caramel bacon topping!

 The 4 C's were alive and well in our house today, so here are my takeaways:

1. Children need the time and space to delve into curiosity: When my children came to me, my first inclination was, "Can we just relax and watch the Disney Channel"-- that translates into them watching the Disney Channel and me playing a game on my phone.  They needed the time to satisfy their curiosity, and I was able to give them that space and time.
2. The end result is sometimes satisfaction in completing the project and not a test; the reward is an eclair: In our testing society, the sense of accomplishment and figuring out something is the better reward than a test score.  My kids learned about tempering an egg mixture with warm milk, mixing a batter for the right consistency, and knowing when the pasteries were done!
3. When kids are engaged, collaboration comes naturally. My kids get along OK, but they do fight like siblings, and they do often.  However, with a common identity and common mission, collaboration became a necessity to complete the task.  They naturally figured out what parts they could do and set out to collaborate and communicate to make  this happen.
4. When faced with a challenge, kids need the time for innovation and problem-solving: My kids had never made eclairs before.  Mostly what they have done is made a sandwich or microwaved some macaroni and cheese, so to take on this challenge was quite the task.  Once they felt comfortable with the process, they were able to innovate. They added maple syrup and a pinch of cinnamon to the filling.  Instead of chocolate covering, they covered with caramel and made pecan maple covered bacon to sprinkle on the top.  This was similar to what the kid on  the baking show did, but they were creating and felt confident to add this or that. When things weren't going exactly the way they thought, they had to figure it out so that the filling wasn't soupy or the fact that they did not have heavy cream for the caramel topping, so they improvised.
5. As a facilitator, I must know my role:  I have always seen myself as a facilitator in the classroom when I was an English teacher.  I would strive to design experiences for students, and that is where I need to know my role.  When we were making  the eclairs, I had to allow for failure and I had to design the space for problem-solving.  At times I was the guide, modeling.  In the end my power is giving them the power, skill and knowledge to do this again without my help.  I am confident that they could go in and replicate this recipe or find another one and apply their learning to the new one.

This experience on a day when I would have probably checked emails, played a couple of rounds of a virtual trivia game or watched television was the most powerful example of the work we are doing in our schools--or should be doing in our schools--We need to work on the identities of children, of teachers, of administrators to take us to that level where we need to be.   I have used the iceberg image in a previous post and the one below is more linear.  

Here, as we often do in schools, we work on changing the environment-- add technology or make collaborative spaces. Or, we focus on changing the behaviors of teachers or students, or we focus on skills development and drill skills or develop professionals professionally.  When we get to values and beliefs is when we start seeing the change.  When students believe in their work, they invest in in more.  When they identify as critical thinkers or collaborative learners, they think critically and collaborate.  This state does not just happen, but it is a process, and that is why teachers need the skills to help students reflect on values and beliefs.  That is why administrators need to be able to help teachers uncover their values and beliefs.  When we identify as learners, innovators, collaborators, chefs, or thinkers, our behaviors display this identity!