Month: August 2018

Matching Their Pace

 

We anticipated having to make pacing changes when we detracked Algebra 2 this year. Planned for it as a team all throughout last year, in fact.

But knowing it’s coming, and adjusting pace to match my students is two different things. My track 2 friends are grating at having to slow down and re-teach more often than they are used to. Meanwhile, I’ve been able to hit the throttle and open up the engines already, coming from a track 3 background.

Everyone on my team is veteran though. We’re staying on our toes, ready to call an audible in class based on our students’ needs.

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Source

This week we wrapped up our foundations module with a day of solving word problems with algebra. I use the flipped class model, and as we reviewed notes at the start of class,  my students let me know right from the jump they did not feel real confident in their abilities: “How did you do that? Like, I don’t even know where to start!”

So we took a minute. Walked through an example from the notes, decoding the text, marking important information. But what my students really wanted to know was, how do you write an equation from all that mess?

My online PLN pretty much lives in my head these days. Now it’s time to lean on my people, in class, on the fly. I brought a little Jon Corippo (and his nachos analogy) with me as we talked making dinner. The Protein – Veggie – Starch framework that we all follow when plating up dinner. Could we look for a model that fits the information in the word problem?

confused will smith GIF

So lets break it down. I showed how we went from concrete to abstract with a verbal model template and an algebraic model over the top.

Then I offered a choice – we could do some pencil/paper math (I had a short practice set ready to go), or we could try… something different. I had tipped them to three-act math in the video notes for the section. What if we did that for real, in class, right now?

Let’s roll. Let’s do Social Math.

So on to the Taco Cart.

Taco Cart Snip

I knew we were on to something when they called out pythagorean theorem unprompted to calculate Ben’s walking distance. And then started doing the math. We compared methods as students determined walking time (some were very formal, writing out d = rt, showing work, doing dimensional analysis (!) and canceling units. Others were a little more back-of-the-envelope, insisting they could just divide (Why?).

We had math fights and we had people working together and we had people laying math on top of their common sense and we had a big reveal.

‘Cuz, you know, students cheer while watching a video in class, like, every day, right?

And: we had students leaving my classroom that day feeling like they were pretty good at math.

So that was cool.

In my first five years of teaching, I’d have never done that. I wouldn’t have known enough to change gears completely. I didn’t have the tools, or the experience. We’d have done more stand & deliver examples (Including me asking them afterwards “Does that make sense?”, and them nodding back at me, lying), more review pages, more me talking.

I’m glad somewhere along the line I learned a better way. The experience to recognize my students need and to recognize the right tool at the right time, its just priceless. They did all the work to figure out if Ben or Dan would get tacos first. I just sat back and watched the magic happen. OK, I asked a question or two along the way, but you know what I’m saying.

We talked recognizing patterns today during the notes review. I told them once you crack the code, algebra is pretty much all angel choirs singing and duckies and bunnies and rainbows and unicorns.

Image result for angel choirs singing gif

OK, maybe not really.

But It’s pretty damn sweet when you get to watch students realize they can do things they didn’t think they could do.

 

Three years ago I followed through on a commitment to begin blogging as a way to reflect on my practice. I’m not really even sure that blogs are a thing anymore, but I’ve got a handful that I read on the regular (Blogroll is over there to the right).

My online PLN is blogging their way thru August in the #MTBoS Blaugust2018 challenge. Check out the complete list here. While you are there, sign up to join in the fun. I’m waiting to read, learn, and grow with my Teacher Twitter people.

MTBoS Blaugust2018

You’d Be Surprised

IMG_0626
Every teacher I know has this drawer. And one filled with fun size candy bars.

I feel sometimes like I keep the Halls people in business.

First Week  of School, every year. First day my voice is gone by the end of the day because I read the syllabus out loud 6 times. It’s predictable, and it’s not good.

Maybe there’s a better way? Like, maybe I could pre-heat the grill a little?

I’m taking my cues from the EduProtocol Field Guide this year – taking time at the outset for building culture and workflow. I want my students to summarize, and collaborate, and create, and communicate. I also want them to know how class is gonna work and what we can expect of each other. That way when I build all those skills into math, I’m not asking them to do something they’ve never done before. It’s not a new idea, obviously, just me trying to get better every year.

Plus: open house is early this year. Day Three, in fact.

Taken as a whole, this seemed like a good opportunity to use the Iron Chef model to dive into the syllabus. The first day homeroom session featured a 30-minute recorded presentation of the student handbook. I for sure didn’t want to use my 30 minutes with my algebra kids reading them the same rules they heard from all the rest of their teachers that day. Not that the rules and procedures aren’t important, just: maybe there’s a better way.

So I had them take 5 minutes to read it in groups. We crowdsourced the big ideas and wrote them on the side board. Then I revealed a starter slide deck with a rudimentary title slide (which they could customize) and had a team lead for each group do a file – make a copy and share the copy with me and with their other group members. (Snuck in a quick refresher on Canvas and GSuite there, too!)

I introduced the group roles, students selected a job and away we go.

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Day Two – I intro’d the “secret ingredient”, kids finished their presos, and then they presented their slide deck. Students got to show off their work and polish their presentation skills. And we were able to do some quality control for spelling and grammar. We caught a doozy of a misspelling, BTW. Like, the “a” and the “u” aren’t even close to each other on the keyboard, right?

I steered students away from the cookie-cutter PowerPoints they are used to making. The secret ingredient was a word limit of 40 per slide (still too many but it’s a start, right?). And they rose to the occasion. My second hour in particular absolutely crushed it. Like, I’m not sure I would done a better job making the slide deck myself.

And as you might have guessed, the parents were suitably impressed by the work of their kids when I ran the slides by them at the Open House. Not just the presentation, but their kids’ ability to take a document and boil it down to its essence, and especially in thinking, “OK, what in this page are my parents gonna want to know about?” They nailed it.

So we got them working together, creating things, thinking about communicating to an authentic audience, and they dug deep into the course expectations. Not a bad couple days’ work. So in case you were wondering if your students will rise to the occasion, well, you’d be surprised.

In a good way.

 

Three years ago I followed through on a commitment to begin blogging as a way to reflect on my practice. I’m not really even sure that blogs are a thing anymore, but I’ve got a handful that I read on the regular (Blogroll is over there to the right).

My online PLN is blogging their way thru August in the #MTBoS Blaugust2018 challenge. Check out the complete list here. While you are there, sign up to join in the fun. I’m waiting to read, learn, and grow with my Teacher Twitter people.

MTBoS Blaugust2018

Happy New Year!

My last full day of summer broke humid, rainy, and with a to-do list as long as my arm.

To Do

Our ongoing construction work kept us out of the building all summer, but here in modern-day times, let’s face it, wouldn’t you rather do curriculum mapping and lesson planning from the outdoor office? Plus, that gave our IT guys time to upgrade the furniture and electronics in BL122:

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I’ll have students sitting at those workstations in 90 hours or so.

Fortunately I’ve been doing my prep in bits and pieces the last few weeks, so it’s mostly just (literal) housekeeping stuff, and pushing the ball a few more yards down the field in regards to matching activities to my Algebra Lab (freshman support) class.

But my First Week is planned out.

Looking back on my Day One plans from last year, the goal is the same, just with the activities stretched out over a week. Gonna build the culture, meet some people, and (oh yeah) sneak a little math in there too.

We’re in our second year of a 1:1 environment in my building. And for the first time in a while I’m teaching freshmen. I want to establish some classroom norms right from the jump: collaboration and discovery.

The activities are sourced from The EduProtocol Field Guide and my online PLN. Fifteen years ago this would have taken all summer. Here in the future, well, let’s just say it’s good to have people, you guys.

The first half of EduProtocol is devoted to what the authors, Marlena Hebern and Jon Corippo, call Smart Start activities. They are designed to establish culture and get students hands-on with the tools they will be using throughout the school year. Honestly, it is The First Days of School for the 21st century.

So, here we go:

In Algebra 1 Lab 

  • Frayer a Friend (Hebern & Corippo)
    • As long as we’re playing “Getting To Know You”, let’s get to know everybody.
  • Iron Chef-style Student-Built Open House Slide Deck (Hebern & Corippo)
    • I feel like this is a way better use of our time than me reading the syllabus to them. Plus, the parents will probably dig that their kids made the Open House preso instead of me.
  • 100 Numbers task (via Sara Van Der Werf)
    • “Modeling Group Work” & “Getting Students Talking”. That’s my plan.
  • Mullet Ratio (Via Matt Vaudrey)
    • If I do this right, I’ll have students talking about math before they do any actual math. Wish me luck.

The Algebra Lab course is designed to be hands-on, activity-based, a support for our struggling freshmen. But you know what? My juniors can use the same support. They are going to get the same opportunities as the 9th graders the first week in my class.

The big thing here is, I don’t want to give lip service to collaboration and the activities we do in a 1:1 environment and then be (as Corippo calls it) a worksheet machine.

Worse, I don’t want to drop some of this stuff on them three weeks into the year, and expect them to be experts at navigating online (or offline, for that matter) experiences without guidance and practice. I found last year that taking a few minutes to walk thru finding buttons and functions on Desmos or any of the GSuite tools was a wise investment of class time. And the whole point of EduProtocols is that the activities are just a shell that can hold any content for any grade level. They are designed to be repeated. So let’s start now, huh?

This plan for week one should get them collaborating and working with the tools we’ll use all year. Most of our teachers are relative newbies to a 1:1 environment. We’ve got a year under our belt, and I imagine we’ll be learning throughout this year, trading tips with each other and getting better.

So here I am: about to start Year 16, and still learning. It’s a good place to be. And as ugly and frustrating as Twitter can be many days, I’m thankful for my online PLN that has pointed me towards tools and resources I can use to craft learning experiences for my students. I’m working on that (imaginary) Classroom Chef certification, still. Or at least trying to figure out how to put together a decent platter of nachos.

Royko One More Time
The epigraph from One More Time, a collection of Mike Royko columns.

It’s a little odd… I don’t have the usual melancholy end of summer feel right now. It’s a little more like New Year’s Eve. Planning a meal, reflecting on the year gone by, and anticipating what is to come. A little nervous, as always, but: it’s a good nervous.

So, to my teacher friends: Happy New Year!

 

 

Three years ago I followed through on a commitment to begin blogging as a way to reflect on my practice. I’m not really even sure that blogs are a thing anymore, but I’ve got a handful that I read on the regular (Blogroll is over there to the right).

My online PLN is blogging their way thru August in the #MTBoS Blaugust2018 challenge. Check out the complete list here. While you are there, sign up to join in the fun. I’m waiting to read, learn, and grow with my Teacher Twitter people.

MTBoS Blaugust2018

I Hope So, Kid

I’ve been fortunate to have really strong leadership throughout my teaching career. If you are keeping tabs, 7 principals in 3 buildings across 15 years of teaching. Each had unique strengths suited to the particular school setting, and all had a commitment that kids are the reason we get out of bed in the morning.

Gavit Aftershow
Hammond sunset.

My previous assignment, in an urban district just outside Chicago, we had two guiding principles:

  • We do what’s good for kids, not what is easy or convenient for adults
  • Would what you’re doing be “good enough” for your kids at their school? If not, why are you doing it?

That’s a tough standard. I know we say we love all our students like our own kids, but let’s be honest. Blood is thicker than everything else.

The second half of summer I’ve been preparing myself for back to school, not only in the Xs & Os of planning and setting up Canvas and such, but in learning from teacher leaders online through a couple of pop-up digital summits. First was the CUE Craft #DitchSummit, hosted by Matt Miller. Next: #HiveSummit, in which Michael Matera picks the brains of some brilliant folks. (Conference closes on August 14, and all the materials go dark).

Things got a little meta last night when Miller was Matera’s guest, talking tech & pedagogy. Miller is a highly-sought-after presenter, a veteran teacher, and author of two books, Ditch That Textbook and Ditch That Homework. As of late he is focusing on helping teachers pivot from the “wow factor” of tech toys to a stronger focus on how they fit within good pedagogy. His books have always emphasized that tech use in school should exist to serve learning goals, but pedagogy was the theme of the #DitchSummit.

In a bit of a switch, my freshman-to-be son was watching over my shoulder. He heard Miller expound on all the ways teachers can use, say, Google Slides in class beyond their value as a presentation tool. Then, the nuclear weapon dropped:

Mystery Skype.

If you know Miller’s background, he was the World Language department at his rural Indiana school. One guy. Which is both frightening and thrilling. It forced him to seek new ways to engage his kids. His #DitchBook stuff isn’t theory. It was his reality. He was an early adopter of Skype in the classroom, matching his emerging Spanish learners in Indiana with English learners in Spain. They’d Skype and speak the language to each other. So cool.

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Image via giphy.

And that’s just the beginning of tech’s ability to serve kids and break down barriers. Miller related a story of doing a mystery Skype with a class in Belgium where kids in both countries starting Flossing on camera.

 

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You know the dance. Via mlb.com.

While it was intended as a cautionary tale, my son was hooked by the concept of a classroom without worksheets, where teachers crafted engaging lessons using the tools we ask our kids to lug around in their backpack: 

“Are my Valpo teachers gonna do stuff like that?”

Record Scratch Freeze Frame. 

I hope so, kid. I really do. That crinkly sound you hear is my heart breaking in a million pieces. He didn’t have a great middle school experience. For all his teachers’ efforts, they were never really able to hook him in. He wants school to mean something, it just… hasn’t yet.

Now, keep in mind: It’s one kid in one town. Generalize at your own risk.

But still. He is not your traditional student. “Sit still” and “take notes” and “do this worksheet” is not his thing.

He needs teachers to teach different to teach him. And: There are teachers out there doing just that.

Matt Miller calls them “Maverick Teachers” – teachers who are willing to take risks to engage their students.

And now that my son knows those teachers exist, he’s not going to settle for anything less.

How many more Sams are out there? How many are on my roster this year?

How about my teacher friends rosters?

And what happens when we ignore their needs and teach them the same old traditional way?

source

Guess what: Now that we know they’re out there, we don’t have any excuse for not doing what we need to do to reach them.

Sam was born in 2004. For our incoming freshmen, there aren’t “21st Century Skills”. There’s just “Skills”. By the end of next school year, the 21st century will be 20% over. As my bishop Donald Hying told the St. Paul confirmandi last year, their class will live long enough to ring in the 22nd century, in all likelihood.

Here’s the good news though: With my online PLN (#MTBoS) and at #sselearn and #eVillageNWI and Canvas Camp, I was surrounded by teachers putting in the time over the summer to work on their craft, to stretch themselves and learn new tools and tactics. They know they need to take risks to engage their kids, on the daily. The same-old, same-old, is not going to do it. I hope my kid ends up in their class this year.

I really hope so.

 

Three years ago I followed through on a commitment to begin blogging as a way to reflect on my practice. I’m not really even sure that blogs are a thing anymore, but I’ve got a handful that I read on the regular (Blogroll is over there to the right).

My online PLN is blogging their way thru August in the #MTBoS Blaugust2018 challenge. Check out the complete list here. While you are there, sign up to join in the fun. I’m waiting to read, learn, and grow with my Teacher Twitter people.

MTBoS Blaugust2018

One-Man Book Club: The EduProtocol Field Guide

I hang around online with a group of runners who call themselves the Sub-30 Club. It’s a group started by University of Florida professor and Runner’s World writer Ted Spiker. Every now and then he’ll throw out a new challenge to himself and invite group members to join in. A couple of years ago it was the 100-day Burpee Challenge. Insanity.

I completed it, by the way.

Sub 30 Burpee props

So the other day, looking to make a breakthrough in his training, Ted was curious about a set number of burpees for time. Like, say, 25. And the race was on.

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My baseline. For comparison, one of my local Sub-30 runner friends knocked his out in like 70 seconds, and he’s trying to get under a minute.

Ugh. I’m not good. How did that happen? I mean, I know how that happened, but, damn.

Numbers Never Lie.

It’s good to get a check on yourself from time to time. But then, what do you do with that? I know where I want to go. How do I get there?

Let’s make a plan.

 

Sixteen years. You’d think I’d have this “Start of the School Year” thing nailed by now. But every year I want to get better.

Just like going sub-3:00 for 25 burpees, “Wanting to get better” and “the concrete steps to getting better” are two different things.

That’s where EduProtocols come in.

I first heard the term when Jon Corippo guested with Matt Miller on the 2017 Ditch That Textbook Virtual summit. He was talking “The Fast and the Curious” and “Iron Chef” and definitely got my attention.

I got the gist of it. It sounded like a routine, or a habit of quality lesson design. Eventually, after hearing Corippo again and reading a variety of stuff and checking out some slide decks inspired by his work, I got the implementation piece: “EduProtocols” is how Corippo and Marlena Hebern refer to the idea of a “shell” activity that is student-centered and can hold any content.

It sounds right up my alley. So I stuck the book in my Amazon cart, waited for payday to hit, and pushed “buy”. (Full disclosure: I don’t have any affiliate links. When I link a book on here it goes to Goodreads. I’m not trying to sell anything and I don’t make a cent. Just sharing my thoughts on stuff I read. So click away.)

EduProtocols
The EduProtocol Field Guide by Marlena Hebern and Jon Corippo.

The authors are up-front right from the jump: It’s not a “read cover-to-cover” kind of book. Unless you want it to be. Then you do you. Otherwise, take what you need now, come back for more later. Good strategy. But I had like two weeks till the start of school when the book hit my mailbox and I definitely wanted to wedge some of my plans into the EduProtocol shell.

The book starts with about a dozen “Smart Start” protocols that are designed as ways to start the year (or a new semester). Some are familiar such as the Frayer framework, or a paper airplane design challenge. All are designed to create a culture in your class, and offer tweaks for younger grades. As far as I’m concerned, it’s “The First Days Of School” for the 21st century.

(The interview embedded above is part of the CUE Craft Ditch Summit and goes away after August 10. Sorry.)

The following chapters outline EduProtocols that have a familiar design such as the Great American Race or Cyber Sandwich. My math people who are familiar with the Three-Act Task will find a chapter contributed by John Stevens, co-author of The Classroom Chef. The common thread in all of them is the 4 Cs and the use of technology in service of learning. Many of the ideas themselves are not new (go google “Iron Chef” and “jigsaw”) but in particular for teachers in a 1:1 classroom who are trying to get more student-centered, these protocols will bring about that “lightbulb” moment when pondering your lesson designs.

4Cs Throwdown
Hey, adults can have that “ah-hah” moment too. Corippo and Hebern drop the 4 Cs on a group of principals in the book. Hilarity ensues.

As an added guide, each section includes a list of Academic Goals and Teacher Big Ideas to help match up activities with learning outcomes. And Marlena Hebern has helpfully loaded some templates onto her website. It’s a gold mine. Your kids can be Iron Chef-ing or Cyber Sandwich-ing tomorrow.

I know for me, it always helps to have a planning partner, a sherpa who has been up the mountain to help me find my pathway to accomplish the goals I have for a class or a year.

Over the summer, one of my go-to members of my PLN tweeted at me that the book was definitely worth the money. She wasn’t lying. These EduProtocols will be part of my lesson design toolbox for a long time.

Three years ago I followed through on a commitment to begin blogging as a way to reflect on my practice. I’m not really even sure that blogs are a thing anymore, but I’ve got a handful that I read on the regular (Blogroll is over there to the right).

My online PLN is blogging their way thru August in the #MTBoS Blaugust2018 challenge. Check out the complete list here. While you are there, sign up to join in the fun. I’m waiting to read, learn, and grow with my Teacher Twitter people.

MTBoS Blaugust2018