our esSAy

Several weeks ago, I got a very welcome email from Perry Goldsbury, 7th grade science teacher.  In it, he wrote:

I wanted to share a quick story of student innovation with you . . . Currently in 7th grade science, the students are working on a presentation related to a nervous system disorder. One of my students, William Burrow, whose presentation is on Epilepsy, reached out to a pediatric neurologist named Dr. Brad Ingram at UMMC who is the director of the Pediatric Comprehensive Epilepsy Program at the hospital. William spent his own time interviewing and meeting with Dr. Ingram yesterday and has 14 minutes of information to breakdown and share with the class. He will be sending me the whole 14 minute interview, and he was extremely excited and passionate about the subject since speaking with Dr. Ingram.  Hope you can use this in some way. It wasn’t quite teacher innovation but student innovation is just as important right!?

Perry’s email really got me thinking.  We in i2 have been doing all this talking about faculty innovation and inspiration.  But in the end, our creative pedagogical design is not an end unto itself; if it doesn’t make space for student innovation or inspiration, what’s the point?  I needed to learn more, so I decided to talk to Perry.

Perry, typically when people think about science class they picture labs and lots of content to learn.  What made you build a project that involved a presentation into your course?

Perry: I built it into the course just mainly because I hated speaking in school. I was a shy kid and when I got to college it was really hard [because of] that. I did a speech class in college and all we did was present. I felt like it totally changed how I was in classes . . . So it is a skill that is really important and students need to practice more. In this society, [presenting] is something that people do less of. So [practicing it in school] helps.

Perry. The shy guy, I can’t believe it. No, that’s so true about speech. So true. And so often kids see it as a, you’re either good at it or you’re not, or you’re brave or you’re not. And it really does impact everything.  I mean, there are so few jobs or like lives in which the ability to formulate words, communicate even like interviews and that type of stuff. . . even like at family outing, finding a partner, you know, it’s everywhere! So how exactly do you build it into your class?

Perry: Each quarter I try and have them present something and it’s ramped up every time. First quarter was like a minute individual presentation, the second quarter we went into groups and presented about climate change. This past presentation was 8-10 minutes and required much more in depth research and then in the fourth quarter they do a research study that they design themselves and present their findings to the group.

So how did the 8-10 minute project turn into interviewing rather than just a traditional set of google slides and Internet research?

Perry: Well last year I did this assignment and it was my first year; it started off as just classic research, using the internet and books . . . It was actually a group of students that had the idea of also doing interviews. One of the students had a family friend that was a neurologist so they went themselves and they brought it up and presented it. I didn’t know anything about it until they did their presentation! So that obviously triggered my mind, so this year I announced it to the class as a possibility: “If you know someone and you want to ask someone [interview questions] you can set that up and that would be a great thing.”   I said to them, “ if you want help in setting up a meeting I’d be happy to do that.” [On presentation day] students think it is cool just seeing their classmate be the one in the interview with questions and interaction.

Do you have a list of topics they could choose from?

Perry: Yes, I give them a list of seven different topics, so, and I said to them it doesn’t matter what other classmates pick; multiple people can do one, whatever you want to pick.  So I like to give them that choice where they can maybe relate to it a little more than just me telling them you’ve got to go study there. It was also a group project.

A lot of times teachers don’t know how to address assessment in these more open assignments.  How did you grade their presentations?

Perry: Yeah, I have a rubric. I focus on five five key areas: presenting, the slides themselves, quality of research, information, and use of time.  They didn’t necessarily get extra credit for going out and doing interviews, but the way it tied in is they were just so engaged that it helped the information, helped them present. Because what I found is those groups [that did interviews] didn’t need notecards, didn’t look at their slides.  They were able to just talk about what they’ve gathered. So it was a major marked difference between them that went out because everyone else off the internet were staring at notecards and you could see them looking in their brain trying to get out, but with these three [that did interviews] they were just able to speak. So it was very cool seeing them presenting. So naturally that increased their grade as well. 

Any tensions or challenges you encountered?

So my challenge with group work would always be [knowing] how much someone did.  Google slides does enable me to see who’s editing but it’s still, you never really know. So that’s one and I probably don’t really know how I could ever manage that. I’ve tried last year doing partner reflections, but some people just maybe didn’t like their partner that day, graded them down and then some are best friends with them so they give them more. Generally the presentation does show who put in more work; you can see who knows it more than others, and I ask questions at the end to each person as another [measure]. But really I think it was a great experience; it went really well this year. They all enjoyed it.

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So Perry said they enjoyed it, but I didn’t want to take his word for it.  I decided to reach out to three seventh graders that did pursue an interview for their project: Holden Caraway and Austin Morgan (who produced this interview) and William Burrow (who produced this interview) to get the real story.

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So I heard you all chose to do an outside interview for the project Mr. Goldsbury assigned on a neurological nervous system disorder.  How did you find someone to interview?

Austin: So I know my mom knows a lot of people at the Mind Center, so when we got assigned this project I was like, “Holden, we should totally do Alzheimer’s Disease.”  So I asked her if we could get an interview with somebody from the Mind Center . . . and it was about 2 weeks later when she told me we had an interview with Dr. Tom Mosely who is the head researcher at the Mind Center.

William: I, over a period of two days dropped hints to my mom that I wanted an interview. The way we knew we could integrate in an interview was Mr. Goldsbury told us and I was specifically, my group was doing epilepsy and I got an interview with a children’s epilepsy specialist, Dr. Brad Engram.  Actually how I got it was my mom was close friends with him in high school. We took a video. I had 15 minutes of video overall. One was him showing me a model of the brain and one was me asking questions such as “how do you help someone in a seizure”

How interesting that both of you had natural connections through your parents!  Tell me something difficult about this process . . or something that was really fun.

Holden: Difficult . . there was a really bright light on the camera and it kinda got distracting. Mr. Jim Albriten is a photographer and videographer, and it was a perfect day because they were already filming something.  He had this big tripod and big microphone and big light panel and about half way through the video he took it off and held it on his shoulder, and it was really really cool.

William: I just did a video on the phone!

So what do you think you got out of this whole experience that you wouldn’t have if you hadn’t done an interview?   You could’ve just gone on the Internet to look up epilepsy!

Holden: For me it was probably the grade.  Our grade was high!

William: The thing that was interesting to me is I learned so much about epilepsy, like I learned there’s this type of seizure that can last through the night and you don’t get sleep.  One thing that he also mentioned was the recommended medicine for it. [The safe one for like us] is 2 mg. They have to give these kids 30 mg  just to let them sleep, so the brain will relax. But I also know how to keep someone from ruining their lungs in a seizure, just flip them on their side and clean their drool because no one wants to see that.

Austin: So my grandmother has Alzheimer’s and I figured if I did this I would have a better understanding.  Miss Kerri Jones at St. Katherine’s, she told us something they do is therapeutic lying. So if the patient has really bad Alzheimer’s and their mother died 15 years ago, but they’re asking “Have you seen my mom?  Is she coming today” don’t tell them “No, your mother passed away 50 years ago,” because they get mad. You tell them “Yeah, she went to the jewelry store across the street and will be right back.” Because [otherwise] they will get angry and violent and you don’t want them to get violent . . . 

What advice do you have for teachers who want to try this kind of thing in their classes?

Austin: Definitely tell students that they have the option to be interactive, like have an interview, because you could just look stuff up on the internet and write it down and it goes in one ear and out the other and no one understands it. But having an interactive slide where there is a video of somebody talking to somebody else, it explains it a lot better.  

William: The doctor I interviewed, he was very entertaining, and he kept it funny. He kept describing the brain and certain parts of the brain and their functions.  He basically summarized a whole med school class in a joke. It was hilarious. He’d say “the cerebral cortex is the Kardashian of the brain . . it does nothing except spread the gossip” and that’s how I understood what the part of the brain did, it just sorts stuff and spreads it through the brain.

Holden: You could do basic research, but if you go over and beyond even without the choice, one that can help develop traits later on in your life, and also, it could get you a better grade, possibly and show your teacher that you are actually trying yourself. . .

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For me, there is much to celebrate in this story.  Holden celebrated his higher grade, but for me, the real kicker is Perry’s observation that the kids that did the interviewing retained the information so much better and were thus able to more clearly present it to their peers.  Isn’t it funny how the best project-based-learning opportunities can support (rather than detract from) the traditional content-driven goals of any classroom?

In that email I am so glad he sent me many weeks ago, Perry put in the disclaimer that his story was about student innovation, not teacher innovation.  But the more I think about it, the more I can’t untangle the two. His pedagogical plans to incorporate student-choice driven presentations invited in the spirit of exploration that pushed Holden, Austin, and William to connect what they were studying in school to real-life careers and professionals.  Perry’s mere mention of the possibility of interviewing experts nudged these seventh graders into a wide world of potential mentors and connections, proving to them that learning is an enterprise that is so much bigger than the four walls of the schoolhouse. In this way, their innovation and his innovation proved inextricable and, together, led to the production of some pretty inspiring stuff.

I first ran across the concept of “Vintage Innovation” in an email promoting John Spencer’s new book on the subject:

The idea is simple and yet, at the same time, counter-cultural. Vintage innovation rejects simple binaries and the notion that innovation always looks shiny and digital and instead asserts that “sometimes the best way to move forward is to look backward.”

Vintage Innovation is a both/and mindset. It’s the overlap of the “tried and true” and the “never tried.” It’s a mash-up of cutting edge tech and old school tools. It’s the overlap of timeless skills in new contexts.

John Spencer, Vintage Innovation (http://www.spencerauthor.com/vintage/)

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It wasn’t so much that John Spencer rocked our world with a new idea; his argument instead resonated as familiar, echoing (and perhaps more clearly articulating) the song we’ve been singing all along. None of us have ever been interested in a monolithic vision of what an innovative class might look like. None of us have ever been interested in overthrowing effective pedagogical practices that happen to also be traditional and deeply-steeped. Instead all of us are interested in what happens when teachers have the resources, community, and time to step back and think honestly about the purpose and impact of the pedagogical choices that we make . . . and how much these choices make space for students to forge connections between school and the life they live today and will live tomorrow.

[Vintage Innovation] is a reminder that innovation isn’t about creating something new so much as relevant — and that relevance is often something disruptive. 

John Spencer, Vintage Innovation (http://www.spencerauthor.com/vintage/)

For me, the most effective part of that three minute video is when they cite specific teacher examples of innovation (e.g. “it’s what happens when you do sketch-note videos mashing up hand-drawn sketches with digital tools or blend Socratic discussions with podcasting.”) So when upper administration asked the i2 team to come up with some PD to launch Vintage Innovation during our PD on Tuesday 2/18, we quickly determined there was no need for a lengthy lecture presentation on vintage innovation. We wanted to show it rather than tell about it. Hence, we went to what we always go to: teachers sharing with teachers. One i2 team member, though, had an idea for a slight twist: “What if we asked for active demos rather than traditional breakout sessions? That way participants could actually try out these projects and ideas and really experience for themselves what it feels like to be a student in these classrooms!”

What resulted was the Innovation Exhibition, a packed afternoon featuring over 25 separate (very active) faculty-led demos (see above). All divisions of the school were well represented, and as I rushed from room to room to grab some pictures, I saw the many, many forms that innovation takes: from an academy-award-winning acting rendition of Goldilocks & the Three Bears (“Children’s Theater” led by Janie Bowen and the PK4 team) to faculty crammed in the i2 lab writing on the walls, trying out new apps, and sharing others they had encountered (“Wheel of Apps,” Lynda Morse).

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In sum, I learned that innovation at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School takes on the shape of various forms of discussions, theater/drama, the incorporation of the arts, interdisciplinary STEM projects, immersive space adventures, mindfulness, project-based-learning & collaboration, movement, different forms of visual brainstorming, hands-on exploration, gamification, and so much more. This exhibition proved that faculty don’t need a lecture on Vintage Innovation. . . we are living into it each and every day.

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Didn’t get to hit all of the sessions you wanted? (Neither did I!) Luckily, many facilitators uploaded resources and slides from their demos on the agenda. Innovation is, after all, ongoing. And as we continue to live into purposeful pedagogy of all shapes and sizes, one thing is certain: we innovate better when we innovate together.

Learning Colors in Spanish

Throughout my Spanish classes, I have been using TPR (Total Physical Response) – a method that combines visual, kinesthetic, and auditory learning techniques. For example, we start learning colores with a song. I introduce colors one at the time, with a movement motion attached to each color. This movement helps students memorize the colors and stay engaged. Then I add music, doing the song in four different parts. This helps provide a lot of repetition, while also keeping it active! Once we learn the whole song, we will continue to practice for several weeks. Additionally, we do several activities and games with hand-made materials to reinforce the vocabulary.

Vocabulary: Colores, amarillo, azul, rojo, blanco, negro, café, anaranjado, rosado, morado, verde, gris.

¿Qué color es? What color is it? Students take turns saying the color I show them. Then, I spread color bean bags and say “rojo.” I name a student and ask him/her to pick the color, say it, and bring it to me. Students hear, speak, and move all with one color!

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Colors soft dice: Students will take turns rolling the dice and saying the color on the top. I will give instructions each time we play. If they can say the color on their own, that’s great! If they need help, they will give me “Big Eyes.” When this happens, I first show them the motion of that color, and many times that is sufficient to remind them of the word in Spanish. If they still need help, I say the color, and they repeat after me. 

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Colores Memory Game: Using only construction paper and markers, I made a color memory game. I made two sets of cards with the colors on one side and the word in English and Spanish on the other. Kindergarten will take turns; each student gets to turn out two cards. As the student turns the card, I read the words on the front, for example: “verde” and the other side the card has the color. Then the student will try to find the match and turn the second card “green.” The goal is to find a color match. If the student doesn’t find a match, they will turn the card back showing the words and let another student have a turn.

Mi Libro de Colores: I have also created a coloring book to further expand our coloring lesson. PK3 and PK4 only color in the book, while Kindergarten will write the color and word of the animal or fruit in Spanish on their color sheet.

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Emily Philpott, Associate Director of Global Studies, Upper School Science & History Faculty

I have realized this year just how much I use stations as an instructional practice in all of my classes. While the implementation and structure depend on the desired learning outcomes and course discipline (I teach both history and science), the general premise remains the same: divide up the lesson or task into smaller parts which students complete one at a time. How this looks in practice, varies immensely. It can be collaborative, with students working in groups and moving together through each part, or it can be an individual assignment.

The station model can be self-paced, allowing students to move freely on their own schedule through the stations, or the pace can be set by the teacher, with defined time limits at each location. Gallery walks are a great way to get students up and moving if you have a lot of information to share. Post information (such as pictures, charts, or documents) and allow students to move around the room at their own pace.

If I want to help students budget their time and especially if it is not possible for more than one student or group to be at a station at a time, I will serve as timekeeper and set an alarm to keep everyone on track.

Additionally, stations can have a physical space in the room or the task may work best if students can choose their location. Some stations were set up in the room, but for other stations, students could choose to work outside or another part of campus.

Finally, stations can be used as a quick 10-minute bell ringer, a full class period activity, or a longer assignment that students have multiple days to work on.

I have seen many benefits from incorporating this type of model in my classes, and I enjoy the flexibility it gives me to move around the room providing feedback and answering questions. However, I think the main benefits to students are that they gain practice with collaboration, gain some autonomy over the learning process, and participate in experiential learning.  

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Collaboration

Stations can give students a space to practice true collaboration. Often what we think is a collaborative assignment turns out to be a group of students who divide up the work and then complete their assigned part individually. With stations, groups can only work on one task at a time, forcing them to work on that one thing together before moving on to the next part. For example, in my AP World History class, I often turn a document-based essay question into a station activity. I use the magnetic walls to place the documents around the room (or you could put the desks into groups and put one document at each grouping) and then have students move in groups around the room. At each document, they read it and then work together to answer a set of discussion questions before moving to the next one. Once students have had a turn at each document we come back together as a class for a culminating activity. It could be a discussion, student presentations, or an individual writing assignment. With this method, I can be fairly confident that students have read, analyzed, and discussed each source. If I divide students into groups and give them a packet of documents and questions with the instructions to “work together”, likely students will each take a document and answer those questions on their own, eventually sharing their answers with the group. The station set-up helps to model what collaboration should look like and gives students the space to practice this important skill.

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Autonomy

In Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, he argues that autonomy is one of the key ingredients for engagement and motivation. He says the research indicates that traditional management (like a teacher directing class from the front of the room) works great for compliance; however, if you want engagement, self-direction works better. While self-direction would not work for everything, at times allowing students the choice of time, place, and/or learning task can improve buy-in and performance. For example, during my unit on sensation and perception in psychology, I have designed a “Sensations Stations” lesson that spans an entire week. It allows students some choice within tasks, lets them complete each task in the order that they would like, and for the most part, when and where they want to. While I monitor progress and answer questions as students use class time to work, this entire assignment is very much self-directed and gives students the opportunity to practice time-management and decision-making.

Experiential Learning

Experiential learning can have important cognitive benefits for students. While participating in an experience can be powerful in and of itself, a key component is the reflection piece: doing something and then thinking about what happened and why? Stations are a great way to involve everyone in the action with time also built in for analysis. If you typically do a demonstration in class, include it as a station so students can participate. If you don’t have enough equipment for all students in a whole class setting (the case with many of my psychology experiments), create a station so that every student gets a chance to be part of the experience. I have built a stations lesson that I use during our cognition unit. I could spend a class lecturing about cognitive skills or I can let my students experience them first-hand. The lesson takes one class period, and students move around the room in groups of 3 or 4 to complete problem-solving tasks that illustrate cognitive principles. Each task includes time set aside for application and reflection, the most important component.

While the concept of stations is a teaching strategy that is often used in elementary classrooms, I find that my high school students love the structure and guidance that this practice provides. They thrive when they are allowed to collaborate, have some choice in their activities, experience content first-hand, and perhaps most importantly, move around the classroom.

Last week I had the opportunity to listen to Jonathan Mooney, award winning author, entrepreneur, and activist, speak at the Mississippi Dyslexia Conference. Jonathan didn’t learn to read until he was twelve years old, yet he graduated from Brown University with an honors degree in English Literature. He mentioned one of his reasons for success was learning how to advocate for himself. When relating this to the students we teach, I questioned my own practices and wondered, “Why haven’t I taught my first graders to be their own advocates?” Immediately I was excited to brainstorm ways to implement this practice into every day teaching.

In my prep for the lesson I learned self-advocacy can be broken down into three elements: 

• Understanding specific needs 
• Knowing what help or support will address those needs
• Communicating those needs to teachers and others

Another thing I kept in mind was something Jonathan Mooney said in his presentation regarding diagnoses such as ADD:

“More often than not we call the kid with a difference, a problem, and more often than not we turn that difference into a deficiency. The problem is the way the difference is treated within an institution’s design in the myth that we should all be the same.”

This really made me think. YES, we all know the importance of learning styles and try to incorporate brain breaks and various activities to increase engagement, but it’s not very often I provide an individualized channel to a child to help them better understand or explore a concept or task. With self-advocacy in mind, teaching a child to identify a specific need and providing materials and opportunities to ask for help, I can set a foundation for all future learning.

Isn’t that POWERFUL!?

My thoughts were to start small. Take a consistent portion of my every day, such as literacy centers, and brainstorm what my students may need during that time. Things such as noise-cancelling headphones and music came to mind first, followed by updated/sturdier cushions and chair bands for students’ wiggles. Additionally, sand timers in each station area to aid with time management, a tough one for our younger population. Each timer is half of the amount of time needed to complete a center, so when the sand makes one pass through, students should be half-way finished with work.

The day came to implement these changes and Morning Meeting was where they were introduced. We began by discussing our strengths and how we learn best. Jonathan made a point to say,

“Don’t try to fix what’s wrong or different with a kid. Instead, identify their strengths, ASK them, ‘What are you good at?’ and teach in a way that works for them.”

Because of this, our class made a long list of strengths. Each student couldn’t claim all of them as strength, but each student could identify with many, creating a unifying experience that even our differences can unite us. Students took turns using each tool. Much like flexible seating, we discussed how some tools may be a great fit for one person, and the opposite for another. Tying it back to the list we made allowed us to justify not having a “class set” of each item. We continued the discussion the following day, making a visual for being “An Advocate for Ourselves and Others.” We were able to navigate through how these things look like, sound like, and feel like. I was moved by the empathy this discussion brought out of my students and couldn’t wait to see how these talks would be applied during centers. Talking about it also allowed us to create procedures around how to best take care of each item.

Over the course of the week, students experimented with what worked well for them as individuals. Naturally, the first couple of days, there was a good bit of hype, especially around the noise cancelling headphones. We discussed how sometimes we need them to help us get started on work and then, once we’ve found our focus, we can return them so someone else can have an opportunity. They understood this and respected the unwritten rule. Additionally, as a compromise, we reserved a few iPads that are designated to playing calming music. Students “check out” these with me and promise to uphold the Honor Code while using this tool, as many distractions are tempting with an iPad. The sand timers were an (almost) instant fix for those students who, in the past, had a difficult time completing work in a timely manner. 

By the end of the week, everyone had a good grasp of tools needed to help them succeed. An unexpected surprise was how this self-advocating filtered into other parts of our scheduled routine. Students felt comfortable asking for focus tools and even suggested these techniques for friends who appeared to need redirection in other subject areas and routines.

For future implementation, I plan to add “advocating” to our list of rotating topics to discuss in Morning Meetings, to reinforce the importance of caring for yourself and others. In one week’s time, my first graders identified strengths in themselves, and classmates, and learned in order to be as strong as they can as a student, they must find tools that work for them and enhance learning. By moderating certain materials with a “check out” system, students practiced using their voices. Communicating with peers and teachers, my students developed language that will hopefully translate into lifelong habits. I encourage everyone to try it! 

-Mary McCall McArthur

It’s 2:25pm Friday afternoon.  You are twelve years old. You’ve spent the week running from class to class, trying to bring the right supplies to each place, going to sports practices, doing the homework, engaging in whatever it is the teacher has dreamed up.  You breathe a sigh of relief. TGIFCF (Thank God it’s Free Choice Friday.) You run off to the free choice you got assigned to, one of several options that you listed as an interest on a survey earlier the past week. 

As education-related buzzwords go, choice and student ownership are pretty frequent flyers.  They show up when we talk about giving students options in the literature they read.  They manifest in conversations about allowing electives in high school curricula. They might impact how we write/design our assessments, projects, and papers assignments.  In fact, the two words (and the spirit behind them) has surfaced again and again in this i2 blog during its six months of existence. But let’s address the elephant in the room. . . . a particularly large, intimidating elephant named “Rigor.”  Often more project-based or student-interest-driven pursuits are relegated to the corner of our curriculum. They are for “the fun days,” when kids need a break and we’ve already done the hard part of learning. They help lift the grade curve, undoubtedly, because, after all, how can one grade creativity, projects, or students actually doing something?   Isn’t that subjective, anyway?

These ideas aren’t lies.  They develop from real experiences with projects-gone-wrong, with approaches that weren’t organized well or with teachers who didn’t have training for how to develop long-term, student-led learning experiences.  But they also come from, what I think, is a fundamental misunderstanding of the definition of “rigor” and a simultaneous devaluing of what actually makes learning experiences persistent, powerful, and long-lasting.  I believe this viscerally because in my 17 years of teaching various levels of students, I have noticed again and again that students are often most challenged, enriched, and inspired by tasks that aren’t even figured into their grade.

*Josh (pseudonym) , a sixth grader I had in English class in 2004,  taught me this. I couldn’t get the kid to study for a spelling test, and I most certainly couldn’t inspire him to proofread his essays for me.  But the minute he was assigned a college student pen pal buddy to exchange notes back and forth with, he became obsessed with spelling and grammar.  The same kid who barely ever muttered a word in writing conferences suddenly ran to my desk again and again with questions . . . “Does this sound right?” “Does this make sense to you?” “Did I write that correctly?”  This same thing happened last Spring with my teacher education course when my teacher candidates and I spent an entire weekend together in the Mac Lab editing a video we had made alongside youth at Barr Elementary. There was no way I was going to grade the quality of the iMovie . . . after all, the course was all about learning how to teach, not how to create a movie.   But these future teachers, one of whom had failed to turn in about half of the graded assignments for the class, were motivated by something far more intrinsic than a grade; they had developed real relationships with the fifth graders they had worked with throughout the semester and they wanted them to feel pride and ownership about the movie they had co-written and acted in when we screened it to parents and community members.  

I think Free Choice Fridays are revolutionary because they remind us of how education and schooling can look when it is untethered from traditional trappings. Here’s what I’ve learned from Free Choice Fridays that I think might inform what we do every day in every class.  

• It’s not just about student interest; it’s about faculty interest. The crux of Free Choice Fridays is that faculty decide what to offer based on THEIR passions.  The best teaching/learning experiences I’ve seen offer students choice within choices. Parents of toddlers are taught that you shouldn’t ask a three year old what she wants to wear.  A more developmentally appropriate way is to pick out two choices and let her choose from those. Young children and adolescents often are in the midst of learning what they love, uncovering what the world has to offer. This is what we do in world history, in choir, in biology: we invite youth into an entire community that is our particular discipline and set of discourses.  They may not fall in love, we understand. But they have the best chance of doing so if the thing we teach is the thing that we also happen to love.  
• Sometimes grades motivate; sometimes they paralyze.: Research shows that grades can be incredibly motivating for more rote tasks, such as holding students accountable for reading and comprehending a particular text before a class.  But it gets more complicated as tasks become more nuanced and risk-taking and/or creativity is actually desired.  
• Slowing down doesn’t always mean that we learn less.: Teaching a free choice is super low pressure, and I think some faculty find that really freeing.  Not feeling urgency to get to every single aspect of a particular curriculum enables a real responsiveness to what youth need in the moment.  Depth over breadth. Besides, sometimes you can’t control how many fish you catch in a lake in a given hour. Maybe realizing our limitations as we engage with an interconnected world is the point after all.  
• Mixing up age levels can shift the feel of a class.:  In slam poetry club last quarter I was struck at the incredible range of writing levels represented in my 5th-8th graders in the room.  This kind of fusion of abilities proved to be generative; sometimes a fifth grader’s line of spoken word would take our collective breath away while other times an eighth grader’s interpretation of a slam poetry performance would push us all to a deeper level.  I think being less concerned that the playing field is equal might make us all more cognizant of the many flavors of difference that are in each classroom as well as the many ways that we can all, from PK3 on, serve as mentors and guides to each other. 
• Co-teaching is magical: This quarter I’m co-teaching my podcast club with the help of several future teachers enrolled in a night class I’m teaching at Millsaps.  Many other faculty commonly teach Free Choice with a friend of theirs in the community. Having more adults in the room (and in the planning stage) shifts the feel of a room from us versus them to “we are all sense-making together.” Teaching can, at its worst, feel pretty isolating. Teaching together is a powerful antidote.

I don’t mean to suggest that we tear down the system and replace our entire day with Free Choice Friday. The system is here for a reason, and much of the joy of Free Choice Friday would be eliminated if it happened all the time. Nevertheless, I think there are nuggets of gold here that apply to all of us, whether we teach three year olds or eighteen year olds on the cusp of the wide, wide world.

What have you learned from teaching Free Choice Friday? How do you define rigor? How do you weave student interests and your interests into the curriculum? What are grades, in the end, for? We don’t need to agree on one answer. After all, any kid who has experienced Ann Marshall’s “Talkie Walkies” could tell you: it’s in the asking of the questions that a conversation starts. And it’s in the midst of that conversation that we are all enriched.

This post was contributed by Dr. Matt Luter.

At our first faculty idea-share of the year in August, I shared with some of you how much I have been influenced recently by the writing of John Warner. His two recent books, Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities and The Writer’s Practice, have shifted my thinking a great deal when it come to my general approaches to teaching writing.

Warner encourages teachers to build for students “writing experiences”—not just assignments—that result in student work that is less standardized than that produced in many contemporary educational settings (like high-stakes tests). Such innovative writing tasks require students to work with more flexibility and originality than some formulaic assignments might allow. (Ahem, see Warner’s title above, or in this citation coming up?) The best writing experiences, he argues, also grant students “room to exercise choice and engage their intrinsic motivation”—powerful experiences both (Why They Can’t Write 153).

For the last several years, I’ve gradually been moving away from having the traditional argumentative essay be at the center of my class’s written work. Sure, I still assign such tasks on occasion, but I’ve been working on innovating through hybrid “creative-critical” writing experiences too.  One that I assigned in November drove home to me all that is positive about the approach.

It seems like nearly everyone who’s been to high school in the U.S. has written an essay about Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, right? On symbolism, or guilt, or hypocrisy, or redemption. Something along those lines. Instead, as a writing experience culminating my classes’ study of that novel, I had students assume the persona of a 17th-century Boston resident of their choice and write Hester Prynne’s eulogy. It’s still an argumentative assignment: students had to build a claim regarding how we ought to think of this woman’s life (a cautionary tale? a mistreated saint? someone who got what she deserved? or a prophet?), and the speaker they chose had to support that claim with evidence taken from the novel, cited properly.

The resulting essays (can I call them that?) were among the most successful and surprising writing about literature I’ve seen from high school students. I’m convinced that’s because the task required them to position themselves as writers with real rhetorical situations: people speaking to people for a defined purpose in a specific context—even if a fictional one—as opposed to apprentice writers trying to “sound academic” for a nebulously-defined audience (often a teacher and no one else).

And I saw progress in some nuts-and-bolts writing skills too. Since it wouldn’t make sense for a 17th-century speaker to introduce a quotation by saying “Hawthorne writes,” students had to find more creative and elegant ways to incorporate evidence. One more bonus: at least for now, I’d admit, this assignment is basically unplagiarizable.

I value traditional academic writing to be sure: I aim to produce new literary knowledge via my own scholarship, after all.  And I know that my students need awareness of many conventions of the academic writing they will experience in college. But I’m increasingly certain that I do my students a disservice if I don’t also ask them to exercise more flexibility and creativity as they hone those foundational skills. As Warner puts it, “every piece of writing is a custom job” (Why They Can’t Write 29)—I’m beginning to see that every writing experience I construct for my classes can benefit from being made a custom job too.

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My love affair with NaNoWriMo started long before I ever stepped into the classroom. While in graduate school, I was introduced to this crazy endeavor called National Novel Writing Month. The premise is simple- every day of November a writer pens 1,667 words adding up to 50,000 words total. At the end of the 30 days, a first draft of a novel rests in your hands or at least a majority of a novel rests in your hands.

Thanks to the encouragement of my bosses and mentors at Ole Miss, I decided to give it a shot. The skills, confidence, frustrations, and joys of writing I experienced during those 30 days shaped me as an educator, writer, and procrastinator. 

Obviously, my 5th graders do not write 50,000 over the course of the month but I do believe that they take the same lessons with them from the project. 

How does it work in the classroom? 

About mid October, I hand out my travel guide or road map for the project. In the two weeks leading up to November we start to build our story or several stories to see which one sticks. We talk over plot ideas, pick apart our favorite books to see what we like, read picture books, and declare our goals. For my students, everyone’s word count goal is individualized for them. To figure out the goals, my kiddos write for 10 minutes, I take their word count, multiply it by the number of class times we’ll meet in November, times the minutes we’ll spend writing. Simply- Words x Classes x Minutes in class= word count goal.  

Every year, I have students freak out when I write numbers like 3,500, 5,000, or 7,000 on their desks. Every year, I have students begging me to lower their word count. Every year, I have students ask to raise their word count. Every year, I have students who blow me away with their imagination, perseverance, and grit.      

The Aftermath- 

Over the last 3 years, Saint Andrew’s 5th grade students have written over 1.11 million words over the November school days! That means that the average student writes over 4,500 words!

I told my students that I was going to be writing about NaNo and asked if they had anything they wanted to share, here are a few of my favorite responses: 

“Nanowrimo may be like climbing Mount everest but it all is worth it in the end and if you ever are stuck take a minute to be thankful that you have enough stamina to even think about doing it”

“NaNoWriMo is the best! Why can’t they make on for every month. I was almost always on top of my word count goal!”

“NaNoWriMo is a great experience for kids. This project gets children into the habit of creativity and curiosity. Many children after this project, have been inspired to write when older. Kids are now willing to work more on the things that inspire them. It boosts their creativity and it teaches them valuable thoughts.”

“NaNoWriMo helped me grow as a writer and many ways and was a very fun way to write constantly in the month of November.”

“It was stressful at times but fun most of the time.”

“It was a very fun experience writing a story with characters that you made up. The more you write your story, the more you get to know and like your characters and the world you created. It is a way to get away from life and to be able to do whatever you want to do. It feels like freedom.”

“Don’t make the article boring” (I’m trying my best anonymous student, I’m trying my best) 

What did I learn? 

• I need to be in the trenches with my students 
  • I get more grey hair in the month of November than all of the others combined. Writing 50,000 words during the school year while pushing 80 kiddos to push themselves in the same manner is hard. 
  • It’s hard, but we are doing it together. It gives me a way to relate and talk with students about projects and the writing process because we are all in the same boat. 
  • My high flyers loved that they were beating me in the percentage rate and other students took comfort in knowing I was bringing up the rear with them.
  • Give yourself a similar challenge when you hand out your next paper or project, it will change how your students see the project and you as their teacher.   

• Gripe sessions have a time and place 
  • During NaNo, the students had a weekly assignment to post on FlipGrid about how the project was going. 
  • This activity gave the students a way to vent, communicate, commiserate and share victories without taking any class time. Win-Win!
  • Although it turned into a reality show-esque confessional booth it was so much fun to watch and react. As a fellow NaNo writer, I posted weekly too.     

•    Non content area victories in a content area project need to be celebrated
  • It’s always great when an entire class “gets” your material, it’s a completely different and wonderful experience to just celebrate all that went into the parts that made up the grade. 
  • Hard work, determination, and patience these are skills and traits that students take to every class and should be celebrated and pointed out in every class. 

Further Reading:

NaNoWriMo (For adults)

Young Writers site (Classroom version)

Books:

Motivating young writers

For any writer

I know I don’t represent everyone on this, but I have always found teaching conferences, gatherings populated with and led by feet-on-the-ground practitioners, life-changing. I’ll never forget my first NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) Conference. I was 21 years old, in the midst of that most difficult first year of teaching, and I happened to be teaching English at a private school so small I was the only middle school English teacher. I had six preps that year, including 8th grade history which I was in no way qualified to teach, and I was so exhausted and overwhelmed by the time November hit that I wasn’t sure which way was up. My professional network at that time was non-existent, except for my subscriptions to two NCTE-based journals (Voices from the Middle and English Journal), and I soaked up each print copy I received in the mail as if it was manna from heaven. When I heard that NCTE was just one hour away (Indianapolis, 2004), I marched to my principal’s office and begged for support to go. She gave it.

As I walked into the Indianapolis conference center, I felt swarmed by my people. We all looked vaguely similar, earnest and bookish, large name tag waving in the wind. I ran from session to session, increasingly exhilarated. I became an expert at hunting down sessions in which I would get a coveted “handout” . . . A practical worksheet or idea I could apply when I returned to the daily onslaught. I spoke to everyone I could. After all, I was a relative hermit on an island by myself and a brand new teacher. Every word, idea was like a revelation. Literally everyone I met had more experience than me. I could not write fast enough, talk enough, walk fast enough. I had found my people. It turned out, all along, I was not alone.

Fast forward fifteen years in my career, and conferences like NCTE have a very different, but still exhilarating function. But I was not the only faculty member representing St. Andrew’s in Baltimore at NCTE 2019 this November. Read on to see how a pro like Harriet Whitehouse, 6th grade English Language Arts, makes the most of conferencing:

The following is my report on the NCTE in Baltimore. I very much appreciated the opportunity to be there.  Attending the sessions restored my joy in my profession, especially after this fall of doggedly putting one foot in front of the other.  More so than other NCTE conventions I have attended, the 2019 NCTE stressed openness, modern voices,  global literature, and diversity. There was also more about heart and aesthetics than incorporation of technology, which is a change from previous years. In the following report, I will cite each session and provide one key item that informed my thoughts, outlook, and inspiration.

THE OPENING KEYNOTE ADDRESS: George Takei, alias Hikaru Sulu of the Starship Enterprise, spoke about his years in a Japanese internment camp during WWII.  His theme was inclusiveness, celebration of diversity, and the requirement of social justice throughout our society and the world. 

I spent considerable time in the Exhibit Hall looking at the new books coming out.  I also talked with several publishers’ reps, and I have arranged for examination copies of grammar and writing materials for grades 5-8 to be sent directly to us in the coming weeks.

Sessions attended: 

COMPOSING WITH THE EYES OF ARTISTS: CRAFTING MULTIMODAL WRITING PROJECTS ACROSS GRADE LEVELS.  The term “existing literacies” was used as a springboard to enter literature and writing projects when one finds the students’ existing literacies.

CENTERING A DIVERSITY OF LGBTQ VOICES IN EDUCATION:  As we experience an increasing number of LGBTQ students, there is a growing body of literature that gives these students a greater chance to join the mainstream in education and school life.

STORIES FROM THE STICKS: REVERSING NATURE DEFICIT DISORDER AND RAISING ENVIRONMENTALISTS VIA LITERARY INQUIRY INTO THE NATURAL WORLD. This session provided profound information on how to use literature to raise environmentally aware activists for the well-being of the planet. 

INQUIRY IN THE OUTDOORS: PLACE-BASED WRITING AS AN AVENUE FOR AUTHENTIC RESEARCH. “Thick descriptors” was the keyword in this session, using one’s civic and natural environment to survey, make field notes, and interview as the precursors to each major writing piece.

POEMS AS PORTALS FOR INQUIRY.  I had the joy of hearing Georgia Heard present, and she led us to Joy Harjo, Native American poet whose poem “Remember” resonated with me.  I will be using “Remember”  in my classes when I teach Escape from Aleppo.

BLACK, QUEER, AND HERE:  INTERSECTIONALITY AND INVISIBILITY IN BLACK QUEER YA. I know at SA that we are often perceived as landing on the wrong side of being open and celebrating diversity, especially among the families of our African-American boys.  The LGBTQ issue will also increasingly come into play at SA, as will the intersection of the two.  Knowing the literature available seems really important.

TEACH GRAMMAR AND CONVENTIONS THROUGH SPIRITED INQUIRY: BUILDING A CULTURE OF CURIOSITY AND POSSIBILITY. I loved the premise presented in this workshop of teaching grammar through “the patterns of power.” Meaning and effect are much more important than grammatical rules, and the rules are presented as a way to enhance the meaning and effect.

USING PLAYFUL INQUIRY TO REDISCOVER THE POWER AND JOY OF WORD STUDY AND GRAMMAR. My second grammar workshop also emphasized student-inquiry driven grammar instruction by allowing the students to ask the questions that would inform their writing.

WORLDS WORTH FIGHTING FOR: THE WONDER AND AWE OF SPECULATIVE FICTION. Author Holly Black was the presenter of this session about world-building in literature and writing.  I have students who love to read about world-building, and some who are even playing with writing their own world-building stories.  The role of social justice in world-building was one focus of this session.  One other item of importance that really does influence my teaching at this point is the prevalence of the “imagination gap,” and the word from the presenters was that a significant way of overcoming the imagination gap is to move stories out of “fairyland” and into contemporary settings.

SAY YES TO PEARS.  This was my closing workshop, one that I picked for pure fun on the final Sunday morning of the convention.  I left this session in a glow because I see “Food Literature” as an immediate source of capturing the attention of the students.  One moves from creating a food map of significant family foods to food narratives that involve extended family and their stories.  After that, it is an easy extension to teach a piece of literature by tracking the food references and their role in telling the story.  I have ordered the book and will use it when I teach my winter and spring novels.

Inspiration and innovation can come in all sorts of forms: a quick google search, a conversation with a colleague, a tweet. But it can also come when we think big. Harriet’s words above pay testimony to the regeneration that is possible when we invest the time to request conference support, write sub plans, and hop on a plane. Perhaps the session sampling above will whet your appetite to find a conference of your own to apply to attend in the coming months. Need ideas? Reach out!

In October and November during Library, second graders had an opportunity to participate in the Global Read Aloud, an initiative to promote diverse literature and voices to students. This year’s picture books were all by author and illustrator Yuyi Morales. Students learned about the author and analyzed inspirations for her stories and art. One book, Viva Frida, pays homage to Mrs. Morales greatest inspiration, Frida Kahlo.

After listening to Viva Frida and discussing Kahlo’s work and influence on Mrs. Morales, second graders headed to the makerspace to create their own original works. Kahlo is well-known for her unique self-portraits, glimpses of everyday life, and her imaginative scenes, and students were offered those three options to come up with their own piece using objects available in the makerspace. The following week, students typed up their inspiration for their art during Tech Lab.

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The Library/Tech block allows for collaboration between the two spaces, whether to support a topic or information skill we are working on, or by supporting activities in the classroom. Teachers can schedule a time to come use the makerspaces with Lillian, and grade levels can work with both Kate and Lillian on bigger projects. 

Recently, first grade completed a project on biomes. Students learned about five biomes in class, and then broke off into groups based on their favorite. During Library, students learned about using the online encyclopedia PebbleGo to find facts and information about their biomes. Each student found one unique fact and typed it in Tech Lab. Teachers also scheduled time in the makerspace for students to come and design their biome using shoeboxes and what was available in the makerspace. Groups had to create their biomes based on the information they had learned through classwork and their online research. The unique facts were then cut out and taped to the outside of their biome box. 

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Sometimes I just wake up uninspired.  I might not have slept well the night before.  I might have had a weird conversation in which I felt misunderstood, underappreciated.  Often I’m just overwhelmed with a million different things pulling on my minutes and hours, things that even though I know aren’t my priority just have to be done.  And sometimes, perhaps the weirdest times, I just can’t put my finger on the why. I just know that today I’m not going to reinvent, reimagine, or think big picture, because all of my band width is stuck with sludging through the muck of the everyday.  

Interestingly, in schools, such states of mind are often contagious.  And they spin up in relation to particular times in the school year. When I taught college, I could guarantee that both faculty and students would reach a boiling point of stress right before all major breaks: Fall Break, Thanksgiving Break, and of course, final exam season.  These were not the times of momentum, of big picture thinking, experimentation. These were the times of survival. For all of us.

Type A self that I am, I used to try to resist the pull back to boring, grounded, “put one foot in front of the other” mentality.  I felt huge amounts of guilt for not “doing things to the very very best of my ability” 24/7. I might have planned on submitting five publications by November, but I only got out one! I might have planned on doing an incredible community partnership with a school, but it totally flopped.  I thought goal-setting with concrete, time-bound tasks might save me from these perceived times of regression. It did not. I thought surrounding myself with other positive, heroic types might save me. But more often than not, they too were pulled into the slog.  

But now as I peer into middle age, I feel quite differently. Namely, I rest assured that states of mind, styles of productivity, priorities, and levels of enthusiasm change.  Or, as good old Ecclesiastes reminds us: “to everything there is a season . . . .” And I’ve begun to identify the times of year and the times of day and even the days of each week that are most likely to fuel a creative, thoughtful spark.  Even more than this, I am beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that my seasons of relative “boring survival mode” actually help generate my seasons of big picture reinvention. After all, if slow and steady wins the race, who is to say that my moments of creative inspiration and risky innovation represent my best hour? What inspiration might be growing, unobtrusive and unnoticed, under the surface of the every day?  

So no matter what season you find yourself in, ultra inspired or totally exhausted, know that the only thing that is certain is that this too shall pass.  You might find yourself a week or a month or two months from now in an entirely different work and energy flow. Learn to appreciate the season you are in, and to milk it for all that its worth.  And, perhaps even wiser, try to deliberately infuse a spark of balance into whichever season you are in. If you find yourself caught up with mundane planning for final exams and study guides, take a moment to remind yourself of the big picture goals you had when you first started this semester;  then make a small tweak in your culminating assessment that will better measure that larger vision. And next Fall, when we could potentially feel all sorts of momentum and energy, we all would do well to remember this particular late November state of mind in order to build in a dose of reality into our year’s plans.

Oh and one more thing: you are educating tomorrow’s leaders.  You are magical wranglers of adolescents navigating a very tricky world.  You are content area experts and you are pedagogical unicorns that make what is arguably the best school in our state, the best school in our state.  By virtue of showing up and doing what you do, whether it is study guide day or a lesson plan so impressive that marketing folks want to take pictures and post them on the website, you are inspiring.  And by coming back and trying to do a better job the next day, you are innovating.  

In this season of gratitude, I am thankful for this.

As many of you know, I’ve been exploring the idea of “backchannel chat” in my senior English class.  A backchannel is a conversation that happens concurrently with whatever is going on in the class but is not officially part of the lesson – much like passing notes in elementary school.  I’ve implemented it as part of my ongoing quest to find new ways to engage introverted students in the class conversation.  At first, I marketed it to the students as an add-on – totally optional with no teacher guidance.  Nobody took the bait.  Oh, sure, they all posted “hi’s” and “yo dawg’s” but nothing of substance.  Then I began posting focus questions that pertained to the lesson.  For example, when discussing Japanese internment, one backchannel chat question was “What is it that enables one group of human beings to treat another group as though they were subhuman creatures?”; for the conflict in Kashmir, “How does cuisine reflect culture? Give a specific example.”; for South African Apartheid, “Why do you think music and art have such a powerful effect on people’s attitudes about injustice and discrimination?”  Suddenly, the kids began having really substantive discussions with each other – often disagreeing and then finding common ground.  I love that they’re exploring and creating avenues of knowledge that are of their own making.  Of course, it means that I’m not necessarily the star of the show in my class, which is a really different teaching mindset.  “Guide on the side” rather than “sage on the stage,” right?  But empowering the kids to be creators of content has given even my most reticent students the opportunity to lift their “barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.” (Walt Whitman)

During the month of November, our lower school community is practicing “30 Days of Gratitude”.  This 30 day focus is an intentional way for us to dive deeper into our gratitude practices as we’ve set gratitude as the theme for the complete school year.  A recent email from our wonderful school counselor, Chelsea Freeman, to our faculty about gratitude has inspired me to brainstorm 30 things I’ve seen in classrooms and around the school that stir gratitude within me; gratitude for this place, the students and families we serve, and the amazing teachers who are doing amazing things “in the trenches” each day.  Typically, brainstorming 30 items of any topic would be a challenge for me, but not when you have the job I have. It’s been truly humbling this year to visit classrooms, watch our lower school teachers in their craft, and coach a group of educators who honestly teach me more than I could ever teach them. Here are 30 snippets of awesomeness at the lower school that fill my heart with gratitude.

1. Art Science and it’s beautiful blend of creativity and the scientific world

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“This is a beautiful flower!”

-PK4 student as he admired his own work in Art Science

2. The sense of community and belonging fostered in classrooms through daily Responsive Classroom practices

3. Student masterpieces serve as our wallpaper.

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4. Students aren’t afraid to step up to the challenge of leadership.

5. Dedicated staff who pour their time and energy into working with students

6. Student-directed classrooms foster ownership, choice, and responsibility of one’s own learning.

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7. Students think it’s a party when really it’s a wellness lesson!

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8. Intentional lesson and activity planning by expert teachers build skills necessary for our students to succeed.

9. Students collaborate and share ideas to support their friend’s learning.

10. Students having a blast while learning

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“I can’t wait to be in the play!!”

-PK4 student as her teacher tied her scarf as part of her costume for the retelling of La Tortuga

11. Writers’ Workshop provides rich instruction while building confidence as writers.

12. St. Andrew’s teachers motivate students as they demonstrate passion and enthusiasm about their topics.

13. Amazingly beautiful classroom spaces

14. Teamwork: Teachers at St. Andrew’s plan and collaborate together to integrate across subject areas.

15. Watching students journal about math…and LOVE it!

16. Students in some classes learn from other children all over the world.

17. St. Andrew’s teachers are dedicated to meeting students where they are.

18. St. Andrew’s teachers have the courage to try new things.

19. If I’m having a rough day, I can hang out in a PK classroom, and instantly my heart is full.

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20. Daily hugs, high-fives, and handshakes, also known in our community as “H, H, or H”

21. Student support staff who have a dedication and passion for students, faculty, and families like I’ve never witnessed before.

22. Opportunities to lead students in innovative work

23. Teachers who love to get down and have fun with their students

24. Students’ hopes and dreams are considered when creating classroom rules that help everyone achieve their goals for the year.

25. Student talent is showcased on a regular basis.

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26. Weekly time together as a community in Chapel

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27. Outdoor learning spaces

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28. Creative projects in classrooms promote problem solving, critical thinking, and collaboration.

29. Buddy classes build community and lasting bonds across grade levels.

“Hey, I know you! You’re my buddy!”

-Kindergarten student to my 3rd grade child as we all crossed paths in the hallway after school

30. Teachers engaging students daily in rich conversations about their learning

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I’m truly grateful for the whole-school perspective that my role provides. I come to work each day witnessing passionate, dedicated teachers pouring their hearts into their work. I interact with children who are way cooler, smarter, and more creative than I ever was at their age. I partner with families and get to work on support teams that help students progress and reach goals. I bet you’re thinking, “Man, she really loves her job”. You are correct. How could one not love this type of work?! You may also be thinking, “Man, this is a long blog post”. Correct again. I clearly have a lot to be thankful for thanks to all of you.

Let’s face it, the math instruction today is quite different than the way we learned math as kids.  As mathematical instruction shifts, many parents are curious as to how they can help their child at home. Teachers also desire consistent messages for students while they are completing work outside of the classroom. One way I attempt to accomplish this is by creating video tutorials for parents to equip them to support their children with school work at home.

The topics that are covered in the first few weeks of fourth grade are double digit multiplication and division with three and four digit numbers. As a student myself, I remember doing these types of problems on graph paper and making sure my numbers stacked up “just so” and following steps to solve the problem. This definitely contributed to strengthening my “following procedures” skills but left me with little to no problem solving skills or number sense. Don’t get me wrong, traditional algorithms are quite efficient and speedy, but it does not show as much true math understanding. As a teacher, I am trying to create students who are problem-solvers instead of students who can follow the steps. 

To help students recall the different types of strategies taught in class, I decided to videotape myself during introductory lessons. Our school has a GSuite which includes Google Photos and YouTube. After the videos are uploaded to Google Photos, I upload them to a private YouTube account for students to access while they are at home. After uploading the video on YouTube, I select “unlisted”. This is important because now no one can search the video on YouTube; they can only access it via my email with the link. After copying and pasting the link to an email, I send it out for parents to watch. It is also a good, short mini lesson for kids if they need reminding of how it was taught in class! Click here to see an example of one of my videos on division with remainders using a method we refer to as the “break it down” method, which requires number sense while decomposing numbers.

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I have had many parents thank me for this and share with me that they feel more equipped to help their child with their math homework without teaching differently from what their child’s teacher taught. In doing this, I feel like my parental relations are stronger, making me feel more supported in my teaching strategies and strengthening partnerships with families as we work together as a team to meet students’ needs.

This year, teachers in the Early Childhood Center have adopted a new form of documentation of a child’s learning in class. This form of documentation comes through the innovative app called SeeSaw. This app allows teachers to document learning that many times is missed on the youngest learners. Normal documentation is mostly found in the form of worksheets, assessments, illustrations, and writings of children. Children in PK4 classes do not show their best learning through these mediums. They are best able to convey their learning through collaboration with other students, building, role-playing, and creating.  SeeSaw allows a teacher to take photos and videos of children in the process of learning and immediately categorize the learning into areas like mathematical concepts, reading readiness, fine and gross motor skills, social skills, etc. They can then send it to one parent or the whole class depending on whom they choose to send it. Children can also have an active role in the application by providing audio, adding labeling to the picture with their finger, and eventually being responsible for their own documentation. SeeSaw is a game changer in how teachers can document, and parents can receive a constant stream of communication about their child’s learning without adding extra time to a teachers’ workday. It’s a win-win for everyone!

During last week’s Late Wednesday, faculty at the middle school began a conversation about homework, led by our incredible MS Learning Facilitator, Lynda Morse. (Click here for a link to the slideshow.)  Rather than fixate on the question of quantity (a well-worn topic by all accounts) we began with the notion of quality.  How intentional are we about the “so what” for the homework we assign, and, perhaps just as important how do we communicate the often deliberate and multi-faceted purpose(s) of homework assignments to students so that they have a sense of why they are spending time outside of class writing sentences with vocabulary words, interviewing a trusted adult, blogging about a reading, or doing some practice problems on a worksheet? 

In order to begin with some common vocabulary, we used the table below to introduce four possible types/purposes of homework: practice, preparation, extension, and integration (Fairbanks et al., 2005).  Faculty then used post it notes to document sample homework assignments they’ve given that connect to each category and stuck them to the appropriate posters.  

By clicking on the hyperlink of each type of homework below, you can view an image of the poster and the homework ideas that were elicited.  

TYPE OF HOMEWORK	PURPOSE	EXAMPLE
PRACTICE	Reinforces learning and helps the student master specific skills	* Quizlet flashcards to learn vocabulary
PREPARATION	Introduces material that will be presented in future lessons (but does not require mastery of the information)	* Write 2 questions you have concerning the chapter you just read. *Watch a BrainPop video introducing unit measurement to prepare for a lab
EXTENSION	Students apply what they learned in class and connect it new situation (promotes the shift of previous learning to new tasks)	*Create your own Hero’s Journey graphic novel  *Design a game of your choice  on a topic we have covered in history, depicting your voice  as a ______ as the events occurred.
INTEGRATION	Students apply information to an unfamiliar situation by applying many different skills to a single task	*Read the chapter on letter-writing. Then write a letter that breaks every single rule you know. * Write a 30-second radio spot using George Washington to sell deodorant soap. Work in four facts about his role as a general.

I’m a bit biased, but I think our faculty came up with an impressive breadth of potential homework assignments that are more than just “creative” or “fun” . . . they are purposeful and steeped in their distinctive disciplines.  For more ideas for alternative homework assignments, check out this resource. 

When Emmi Sprayberry sits down to plan her classes, she probably does what a lot of us do.  She thinks about her course objectives and maps out a tentative timeline of activities that build toward those objectives.  But for her, that is just the beginning. Her next step involves phone calls, emails, and meetings with potential community partners.  In the case of this semester’s Graphic Design class, Emmi found herself sitting down with (1) the owners of Urban Foxes, a local small batch baking coffee and courtyard known for their pies; (2) Daniel Johnson, the owner of Significant Developments who uses art to connect community and businesses through creative engagement; and finally (3) Lauren Shields (Senior Manager of Advertising and Creative Services ) and Jennifer Hill (Graphic Designer), professionals that work for C Spire, a locally owned large network provider.

Planning a class is hard enough without the headache of all of these phone calls, but for Emmi, it’s worth it: “Teenagers have a negative view of education and don’t understand how, why, when they’ll ever use what they are learning in school,” she explains, “they need skills like independence and taking risks and figuring new things out.” To test her hunch, Emmi spoke to graphic designers in the work field and students at local universities to ask what they wish they had known before college, while in college, or after college.  Overwhelmingly, the answer was that some sort of authentic community partnership would have made a difference in their learning. For Emmi, art is the perfect discipline to incorporate collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and innovation: “Kids want to know exactly what [an assigned art project] is supposed to look like, but in real life this is not how it works . .. they need to know how does brainstorming work, what are the right questions to ask on a project?” Sure this all sounds good in theory, but how does community engagement look in an actual class? Emmi explains more below.

The work for changing the Graphic Design 2 course started last spring, with lots of brainstorming and research. I began with the question: “What do I want them to learn and how do I want them to get engaged with the community?” I then made a list of all the amazing people and community members that might be willing to take a leap of faith and let high school students come in for collaborative work with their brand. The idea was to make sure that throughout the year students had the opportunity to work with multiple levels of businesses: entrepreneurs, small businesses, corporations, non profits, city-centric businesses. I always wanted to make sure that the businesses we partnered with were very Jackson focused – that they were about the community in which they live and wor , and that they give back in some way, enhancing life in Jackson. As I started to reach out and have meetings in the summer with these prospects, I began to map out a timeline to make sure the work flowed well, that there was this balance. Now does that mean it looks like currently what I envisioned? No. I actually think it’s better. I have had to make sure that I stayed flexible and adapted. So for the Fall Course we were able to work with Daniel Johnson, Urban Foxes, and C Spire. Each collaboration has a different focus and need and the students are getting to see commonalities about branding but also experiencing marketing and all the different aspects that go into the user experience with these company brands. They are also getting to see the differences between each company- their unique voice and story.

“Hopefully they all learn through this process and come to grasp and understand problem solving in a deeper way, but also are empowered and encouraged by who they are and that their voice and point of view matters and has worth.“

At this point in this semester, each business has come to the class and pitched to the students to present what their brand is, what they do, how the branding functions in the world, and what their need is.  Once the pitches were completed, instead of the original plan of all the students working on one at a time all together, I decided it would be better to have more focused groups- playing to the the students’ likes and desires. I wanted to make sure that the companies received strong quality work and that it wasn’t watered down by quantity. This gave the students a chance for choice but to also be enthusiastic about their pick and really giving it their all. Hopefully they all learn through this process and come to grasp and understand problem solving in a deeper way, but also are empowered and encouraged by who they are and that their voice and point of view matters and has worth. So now we are in the process of designing for these three brands. Terrifying and exciting all at the same time.

The only thing harder than planning a community engaged learning course is implementing a community engaged learning course.  When youth are tasked to do something authentic and difficult, such as designing a welcoming package for a large company for new customers, they are bound to make some mistakes.  Real life is messy, and it doesn’t always come with clear rubrics or participation trophies. But it’s learning how to manage this mess, to get back up after failure, that makes CEL so generative.  Stay tuned for part two of this story, in which Emmi shares (after the conclusion of the project) the ups and downs of Graphic Design (re)designed.

At the end of quarter one, the 5th graders wrapped up a thrilling final unit in the performing arts quarter rotation! Using primary sources as the entry point for discovery, students learned about the Mississippi Delta Blues and applied their greater understanding through a culminating jam session. 

In small groups, students cycled through centers comprised of ethnomusicologist field notes, old photographs, original audio recordings, and supporting secondary sources to discover major themes, cultural context, instrumentation, and musical form. Using centers allowed me to incorporate primary sources into classroom instruction in a way that preserved the practical aspect of music education and kept students in the driver’s seat as the interpreters, creators, and performers.

Working with the i2 team, each center was outfitted with an iPad for audio access. These held a range of tunes from field hollers collected during a 1939 expedition to a new music video of local bluesman wunderkind, Kingfish, recently highlighted by Rolling Stone magazine. 

I created a packet of multi-modal assessments to guide students in their discovery. Students created mindmaps, drew pictures, crafted color-coded representations of musical form, and filled in thought bubbles to demonstrate their understanding within each center.

As a culminating activity, I invited Scott Albert Johnson, a  jazz and blues harmonica player, to work with the kids. He brought in his collection of instruments and taught us about the history of the harmonica, the influence the blues tradition has had on popular music throughout the western world, and life as a performer. Applying the historical and contextual knowledge in a very practical way, we wrapped up the unit with a jam session. 

I first presented this unit as a final project during a Teacher Institute at the Library of Congress. Through this unit, I was able to make use of a number of sources from their digitized collection. Follow this link to the Library of Congress Teachers Page to find more information about pre-compiled resource sets, primary source classroom activities, and professional development opportunities.

When sitting in Grace Pei’s Mandarin 5, you better be ready for all-Mandarin, all-the-time. Near the end of my observation of her class, students worked collaboratively on a script (in the target language of course), and I just had to ask to be invited to the big performance of a well-known Chinese Valentine’s Day story. After seeing a very animated and Mandarin-filled enactment, I had some questions for Grace.

So I just left the big performance, and I can’t believe how fluent your students were in Chinese!  Did they write the play themselves and, if so, how?

Yes , students write the play themselves. The steps are: Mandarin 5 students learn a Chinese Valentine’s day story called “Niulang he Zhinu 牛郎和织女” in targeted language, then they write the play with guidance from Ms. Pei.

Why did you choose to have the students memorize their lines? 

This is a high level Mandarin class; students have had four years solid language skills. Even though the play was long, I gave them time to learn the story, to learn the culture that is behind the story, to write their own story, and to practice in order to make the performance perfect.

What was the most challenging part of the entire project?

To help students to understand my expectations of them in this particular project.

What was the most rewarding part of the play project?

When my goal was reached, which was students could perform this play in their level.

What advice do you have for teachers interested in similar kinds of performance based assessments?

Set up expectations first, then guide students step by step to reach the goal!

Want to learn more about how Grace scaffolds language instruction? For more ideas and modeling, check out this video and article featuring Ms. Pei, published by the Center for Global Education last September.

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For lesson 2 in French 4, the theme is “downtown” and everything we come across. We talk about the different activities that happen, the different places we can come across and we also make comparisons between living in the city and living outside of the city (albeit in the suburbs or in the country). The activity I have decided for this theme is a skit of a car that breaks down in the city and asking for directions. The students receive a scenario and the characters but they are responsible for coming up with what happens. They decide on who will be who and why the car breaks down. They are asked to not memorize a script but rather just keep in mind who they are and to stick to their goals in the script. For example, the police officer is required to get the car out of the area since it is causing a traffic jam, a pedestrian is supposed to walk by and want to help the visitors with their predicament and make suggestions, etc.

I must say, I thought this activity was successful. They were creative and ready to complete this activity to the best of their ability. I even surprised them by asking the other groups (on the spot) to sit in chairs behind the “car” and pretend to be impatient and angry. This created a certain ambiance of hurriedness and some anxiety. The students still managed to perform the task very well. I was very proud of them.