Month: June 2021

Conference SZN

It’s June. It’s officially summer (one day of summer school remains, then it’ll be “officially official”, but still). And in an ordinary year I’d be meeting with and learning with friends at the IDOE Summer Of E-learning conferences. (SSeLearn 2016 2017 2018 2019, eVillageNWI 2018 2019)

But it clearly is not a normal year. Even if we are on the downside of the pandemic (fingers crossed) these events that require months of planning and up-front spending were postponed. The South Shore Conference and eVillageNWI will have to wait for another year. And may look a little different when they return.

I’m going to have to make my own strawberry water and get my own Strack’s chicken.

I honestly don’t even know what I would present about even if there was a conference to go to.

So it seems like a good summer to rest up (16 months of remote teaching behind me, new school assignment & consolidation coming up), but there’s time for learning too. Just not in all the ways I’ve grown accustomed to.

So how am I learning these days?

  • My online PLN. I took a glance at my Blogroll the other day and wondered: How many are no longer active? Teachers have moved on, and their new path doesn’t lend itself to daily or weekly sharing. The world has moved on and so much sharing happens on Twitter and other social media platforms. I definitely miss all the powerhouse stuff from Meyer & Nowak & Cornally & Claydon. But the positive is, most of what I’ve learned from them I have integrated into my practice so I don’t necessarily have to run back and look up a post to see what to do. I can take what I learned from them and synthesize it for my own purposes now.

But I’m also still connected with my online PLN and I am already picking up some usable things this summer.

  • Reading. A given. A couple of reads for pleasure & one professional book. What’s on my list?

Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics. This one is super-popular amongst my teacher connects and if they are finding things in it they want to integrate into their classrooms this fall, that’s a good enough endorsement for me.

Lucky Bastard. Joe Buck’s memoir. Gary Post-Tribune columnist Jerry Davich wrote about it and hooked me in. One of my former play-by-play colleagues has a hilarious story about meeting Buck when they were both students at Indiana University. I don’t think that made the book though.

Authentic: A Memoir By The Founder of Vans. There’s always a low-key SoCal vibe under the umbrella in my backyard in the summer. Music and watermelon & Tajín and a cold drink. This will be a perfect fit.

And a couple re-reads:

Perfect Blend. Michele Eaton literally wrote the book on blended learning. It’s one of the aspects of remote learning that I want to bring with me into the face-to-face classroom.

Powerful Teaching. I started using the retrieval practice concepts in class a couple of years ago and just want to touch up my understanding a little bit.

  • And one of my instructional coaches just pointed us to a free online math teaching workshop that I think will be super-beneficial. On-demand, too, so I can make the sessions fit my schedule. Just like an in-person session, I’ll be looking for one takeaway I can use in August.

All told, it’s what we hope our students do when they leave our class – use what they’ve learned to solve unique, real problems. So here I am with my own little personalized, slow-chat edition, one-man ed conference.

That’s summer learning during Covidtide. If I can’t go to the knowledge, I’ll seek the knowledge out on my own. There’s no PGPs, or door prizes, or chance meet-ups with colleagues, or socials afterwards, which I’ll miss a little bit. Maybe I’ll go to someplace that hosted a social and pretend.

Maybe I do have a title for a session: How An Introvert Does Summer Learning.

P.S. There is kind of a roadmap tho:

One of my geometry team members at my new school reached out to us before the end of the school year to start thinking about summer meet-ups and collaboration. We’ve got a group text and a shared planning doc set up. Once summer school is done we can start to think about a face-to-face, maybe a lunch.

“Dope Educators Of The Region”. For real. There should be a t-shirt. It would be outstanding on Spirit Days. Or for the next time we get to go to a real live in-person conference.

Make The World Better. Somebody’s Got To.

I’ve got a whole spiel I give my students before they take a test or quiz. In addition to the usual encouragement and Xs and Os test strategy reminders, I slip in: “Don’t cheat. It makes you a horrible person and the world has too many of those already.”

I don’t know if cuts down on cheating at all but I’m always encouraged to see a glimmer of recognition in their eyes. “Yeah. he’s right. I want to be a good person. I don’t want to do things that are bad.”

The world needs leaders. The world needs good people. And as my son’s football coach said when he made a similar statement at the parent night last month, this is not a political statement. The world has big problems that need to be fixed.

As who’s going to fix them? Old guys like me? Nope.

As Dean Kamen told the FIRST Robotics competition reveal many years ago:

“Why do we do FIRST? Because the world’s a mess. Read the news. Look around you. We got lights, clean water, ways to get around. We have hospitals, schools, safe malls. But two-thirds of all people alive today, 4 billion people, live on less than $2 a day. Half of them live on $1 a day. That’s their whole life. We’re the richest in the world, by far. And the world’s a mess. Somebody’s got to fix it. Do you think the people living on a buck a day, who don’t have clean water, schools, technology, education, do you think those people can fix it? No. You have to fix it.” (Via The Big Think).

I believe I saw the next generation of leaders Saturday. If you attended a high school graduation this month you probably feel the same way.

I spent part of my Saturday afternoon at Wolf Lake Park in Hammond for the 60th and final Commencement Ceremony for Gavit High School. Uncertainty over distancing and capacity requirements due to the Covid-19 pandemic prompted a move to an outdoor facility for all four schools in my district.

From the jump it was a celebration of our kids and all they’ve overcome the last year and a half or so.

The Senior Class President concluded her remarks with: “If no one has told you yet today, I’m proud of you. Go out into the world and do incredible things. I love you.” And it only got better from there.

Superintendent Scott Miller spoke on the difference between Goals and Purpose. He told the graduates, “You all have goals, things you want to accomplish the next couple of years. And I hope you achieve them. But in the course of pursuing your goals you need to find your purpose. The thing you were created to do. And it ideally should be something that serves the good of the world around you.”

And then: “You persisted through maybe the most challenging two-year period in the history of the School City Of Hammond. So when you face setbacks in your life, and you will, because everyone does, you will know that you are up to the challenge.”

“Perhaps some of you will enter the military. Some of you will start your careers. Others will attend college. Perhaps you will choose a career that serves others: a doctor, a nurse, a carpenter, maybe a teacher in the School City Of Hammond.”

And then principal Michelle Ondas: “You are the youngest generation of leaders, the youngest generation of change-makers, the youngest generation of do-gooders. You are the ones who are going to solve the world’s big problems. In the midst of all the challenges of the last year and a half, of everything you accomplished, the greatest achievement is how you were there for each other. Now you are not only going out to make your way in the world, you are going out to make the world better.” 

And I have no doubt that they will.

Three things that stand out to me from the day:

1) We spent most of the year teaching remotely, no cameras on. I doubt many of my students would recognize me. And I had very few seniors this year. But I was sure to watch the faces of those I did have this year, to see their smiles as they walked across the stage to get their diploma. It was just as awesome as if we had been together in class for 180 days. Remote or in-person, the diploma counts the same.

2) There was an atmosphere of celebration that felt different from your average graduation. Maybe being the last Gavit ceremony had something to do with it. But so many of the kids danced, or strutted, or shuffled their way across the stage, pointing out friends and family, parents and family members calling them out by nickname, kids pounding their heart. It was gloriously joyful. Every single kid had their moment in the spotlight.

3) We totally dispensed with “hold your applause until all students have received their diplomas”. We cheered for every damn one of them. As we should have. Our students achieved something incredible and big this year. They deserved to live it up. Let them.

My principal caught up with me just as I was saying some final goodbyes to colleagues under the pavilion.”Thanks for being here today. It was bittersweet, wasn’t it?” And that was true. But I’ve done my share of walking down memory lane these last couple of weeks. Saturday was for the students, and for their families. I wanted to be there for them. Bittersweet, yeah, as all graduations are, but for me, focusing on the kids made it just sweet.

And I feel fortunate that I’ll live in the world they will be in charge of. Because somebody’s got to make this place better.

Congratulations, Gavit High School Class of 2021.

And: Go do awesome things.

Teacher Report Card – Hybrid Learning Edition

The most common educational advice in my timeline the last 16 months has been “give grace” – to our kids, and to ourselves as we navigated the heretofore uncharted waters of teaching and learning during a pandemic.

We didn’t get trained for this in Teacher School. (Although for veterans we’ve had plenty of tech integration opportunities over the last handful of years – I’m thankful for that and for my online PLN who got me ready to face this moment).

I have a tendency to be my own harshest critic, so it helps to get another set of eyes on my work. I got valuable help from my instructional coaches and feedback from my evaluators, but I waver back and forth in my own mind between “I was actually not that bad, all things considered” and “OMG I was awful”.

Want a reality check? Ask the kids. Like they said in the book Relentless Pursuit, they are “raw and real”. No sugar-coating.

So during our short week following final exams, I rolled out Mr. Vaudrey‘s Teacher Report Card. (Link to make your own copy here). Time for my students to grade me, anonymously.

I’ve been using the TRC for a few years now. Finally wrote about it after our fully remote first semester. For our second semester we were fully remote for the third quarter, then hybrid the rest of the way with about 20% of my students in person. So I didn’t really know what to expect in terms of student feedback. About 75 of my 125 or so completed the form. Of that group about a dozen were in-person learners.

And we saw what anecdotally was happening with a lot of my online teacher connects. By late April everyone was baked. Many of my students had kind of checked out. And I think that is kind of reflected in the responses.

So what do the numbers tell me? On a scale of 1 (not at all) to 5 (oh definitely) my students told me I’m strong in:

  • “respects each student” (4.83)
  • “does a good job of treating all students the same” (4.75)
  • “keeps the class under control without being too tough” (4.72)
  • “seems to enjoy teaching” (4.70)
  • “says his words clearly” (4.70)
  • “dresses professionally (4.64)
  • “provides time for review of material” (4.63)
  • “gives tests that reflect the material in the unit” (4.61)
  • “grades fairly” (4.59)
  • “pays the same amount of attention to remote learners as in-person learners” (4.57)

So I felt pretty good about those categories. And they were pretty consistent with the marks in those categories during first semester. I tried really hard to make sure I was giving the same instruction and the same support to my in-person students and to my kids on the Google Meet. To the point where one student’s reply to an open-ended question on the TRC “sometimes the teacher _____, but not always” was “leaves“. As in, I stepped away from my chromebook to assist students at their desks in my class.

OK, now the bad news:

  • “has interesting lessons” (3.84)
  • “has a great sense of humor” (4.05)
  • “makes me feel important” (4.16)
  • “encourages different opinions” (4.17)
  • “tries new teaching methods” (4.22)
  • “has a good pace (not too fast or too slow)” (4.29)

Those were also pretty consistent with my first semester feedback, although “has interesting lessons” was down by almost a quarter point (-0.22).

So what do I take away? The bar is set pretty high for “interesting lessons” during the second semester of Algebra II. It’s super-abstract and theoretical, and many of my students don’t see the real-life connection for say, graphing polynomial functions. But it’s my job to hook them in. My last few years of in-person Algebra II I’ve replaced many of the traditional tests with activities or projects, which was mostly pretty well received. I tried to use some of the same tools during remote learning, with wildly mixed results. Without the ability to sit down face-to-face with students, many found the projects too confusing to try. The NCAA bracket probability activity and an exponential growth/decay project was also a dud.

I wish I could have found a way to build in more support, especially for my remote learners, during those projects.

One of my online connects asked a very valid question: how do these results compare to results from a semester of in-person teaching? And unfortunately that was at a different district and I didn’t have the foresight to send a copy of the result to my personal Drive. So I don’t have a good baseline to work off of.

Part of the beauty of the Teacher Report Card is it is customizeable. When you click the link it is set up as a “force copy” then you can add or delete any questions you like. I added:

  • “What is one thing from remote learning during the pandemic that you want teachers and schools to keep doing once we are back in person?”
  • “What is one thing from remote learning during the pandemic that you hope we never do ever again once we are back in person?”

And my students told me what they wanted to keep:

  • “Keep the break time”
  • “No uniforms”
  • “Keep Advisory period”
  • “Give us the option to learn from home instead of in person”
  • “Friday e-learning days”
  • “Let us learn at our own pace”
  • “Makeup work for full credit”
  • “Being patient with assignments”

A lot of kids appreciated the ability to get caught up on work, they appreciated asynchronous Fridays when they could roll out of bed whenever and do work. They appreciated the district built in SEL content during Advisory and that many teachers built in check-in questions for their students at least once a week.

The e-learning Fridays are off the table. The district is going away from uniforms this year to study the results of the program which lasted for about 15 years. But Advisory and SEL will return in August. And I’m interested to see how many teachers are going to be willing to make “amnesty days” or give students an opportunity to make up work from previous weeks.

But what do they want to go away?

  • “Online assignments”
  • “Google Meets”
  • “Being stuck in the house 24/7”
  • “Remote learning”
  • “Tests with cameras on”
  • “I never want to log on to a Google Meet ever again”
  • “300 hundred assignments per week”
  • “Breakout rooms”
  • “Desmos assignments”

That last one breaks my heart. I was a little afraid of that. I’ve always made sure to mix up my tools in the classroom because even the great stuff gets old if you use it too much. Desmos activities are a fabulous tool for online learning, and I used them for all my assessments, but I could tell by the end that students were weary of “click the link for your class period and sign in with Google.”

I’m hopeful we are back fully in person in August. I’ll still lean pretty heavily on Desmos. My new school is moving to a New Tech model and critical thinking is baked in the cake. Desmos is one way for me to ask questions and create tasks that have my students thinking critically on the daily. Breakout rooms were a poor substitute for group work but it was the best we could do during remote/hybrid. Assuming physical distancing requirements are relaxed, I expect to be having kids seated in pods just like in the Before Times. (Collaboration is also a hallmark of New Tech learning).

Some of the other things on the students’ wish list are above my pay grade to determine. But it’s worth taking some time this summer to think about what my class, and my classes, will look like in August.

I loved the five-minute break. I loved having many of my lesson presentaions built in Quizizz so we did notes and guided practice all rolled into one. I love my hyperdoc/slide activities. One of my colleagues lent me the latest EduProtocols book (devoted exclusively to math) and that will continue to be a staple. I love Desmos activities (I already floated a trial balloon with the department chair at my new school to see who the Desmos people are over there, and if anybody would be interested in collaborating on building activities. And maybe, just maybe, finally learning CL). The retreival practice/summary/exit ticket in a Google Form is here to stay too I think. My students did ask for a little more time to complete that activity tho. I can do that.

One of my new colleagues has already reached out to the Geometry team to think about planning together for the summer. We’ve got a group text set up and are talking about a Google Doc that we can use to brainstorm together.

I have a list of my own questions that I’m rolling around in my head that I dumped into the planning doc for us all to knock around:

  • How do we approach “learning loss” from 15 months of pandemic teaching? Do we feel like that’s even a thing? Should we start by creating a list of topics that we could not address due to time constraints? Do we build in a “jump start” day to every unit to spiral back to those skills as they are needed? Make every bellringer a spiral review for that day’s topic? Lots of ways I’m hearing my online teacher connects suggesting they might use.
  • How do we use our 80 minute blocks? At the combined department meeting in May (our principal) indicated there would be days we would have to plan to cover two topics in the same block. Blended learning? An in-class flip? Stations? Flexible grouping based on student need for that day? Paper or MathXL?
  • However we split up the 80, we’re still at a deficit in terms of time – 200 minutes of classtime per week under the 4×4 block vs. 250 minutes in a traditional schedule. What is the most efficient use of that time so that we cover our standards and have time for Exact Path/ISTEP/PSAT/finals review/final exams?
  • From talking with (Morton’s DC), Morton was already on 4×4 block so that’s mostly a learning curve for teachers coming from Gavit.
  • New Tech will work its way up to us, but do we want to start creating some type of project-based or cross-curricular component to each unit? How do we create those and who do we collaborate with?
  • What kind of tools is everyone using for notes presentation and in-class activities and formative assessments? Desmos, Geogebra, Pear Deck, EdPuzzle, hyperdocs, EduProtocols, GSlides, Quizizz, GoFormative, Socrative, mini whiteboards, 360 math, 3-Act math, anything I’m missing?
  • Common assessments or no?

That should be enough to keep me busy for the next 8 weeks or so. And I’m hopeful that my students’ input makes me better at what I do every day. I’m thankful that they took the time to make their voices heard.

P.S. Another beautiful side effect of the Teacher Report Card is you get a handful of entries for your “I Had A Bad Day” file. So when I’m sure I suck at this job I can open up this post and remind myself of a time when I didn’t suck:

  • “You’ve been an amazing teacher, I appreciate you so much, you really made me enjoy math.”
  • “Ill miss this class even though i hate math lol”
  • “I want to say thank you for helping me understand math a lot this year, especially since we were online the whole year. I now get some math terms a little more, and understand some equations better.”
  • “Nothing else, you did a great job teaching me and my peers this semester. Thanks!”
  • “I think you’re a great teacher, you explain the topic well and get your point across.”
  • “I appreciate all that you have done to teach us Algebra 2, I am sure I will use some of the math I learned here in my future job. Thank you for being patient with all of us! You are definitely one of my better teachers that I’ve had in a while. Have a great summer!”
  • “I really enjoyed this class. I appreciate how you tried to interact with us either with jokes or class discussions.”
  • “Thank you for trying your best with me. I hope you have a good summer.”
  • “I like how much effort is put in from the teacher into the lessons even if we don’t say much.”
  • “I really liked the quizzes notes because they were really helpful.”
  • “He teaches at my pace I never had a math teacher where my grade stayed the same throughout the year”
  • “For this class I have cool teacher who helps in the best way possible.”

So I’m gonna sit with those for a while over the summertime too.

The Year. The Very Long Year.

The longest school year in the history of school might have started on August 17. (Your mileage may vary based on your school calendar). Or it might have started on March 13 of last year, when schools closed for in-person learning and in some cases didn’t re-open for over a year.

I’m going to date mine a little further back. There was news from Hammond, which I observed from a distance. And joined in a show of solidarity the next morning.

It’s very possible some cosmic tumblers were set in motion that day. They snapped into place over the summer.

I traded in that green lanyard for a purple one this year. Actually the purple one had been in my work bag all along. We just made it official, I guess.

There’s a million ways to try to summarize this year. And maybe someday soon I’ll write a “What I Learned In A Year of Pandemic Teaching” post. But for now I’m going to play along with one of my district instructional coaches who recommended making a Top Ten List. In a year filled with emotions, and moments, these stand above the rest.

I’m not sure I can rank them (cop-out, I know), so I’ll offer mine in chronological order.

  • Making it “Facebook Official”. It’s good to know you can go home again. The comments kind of made my day. And week, and month, and summer.
  • First time back in Room 341. Oh man, memories came flooding back.

Honestly, I was only in that room for a year before moving down to the first floor and joining the inaugural Freshmen Academy team. I bounced around a lot after that too. But you never forget the first classroom, right?

  • The Brain Break/Three Little Birds. Borrowed an idea from one of my online math teacher connects, as a way to break up 80-minute blocks during remote learning. Because that is a very long time to stare at a computer screen. My two favorite moments: 1) My son was on remote learning from his school for a while during football season so we were both doing school stuff from home. He heard me intro the break to my kids in the Google Meet, then said “where’s the song, dad?” LOL. There’s always an audience, right? 2) When we returned to in-person/remote hybrid, we were in the break and one of my kids told a friend “I know all the words to that song now thanks to Mr. Dull.”
  • Five minutes in the morning. I found that just a couple of moments outside in the backyard with a third cup of coffee before I started Advisory set the table just right. Regardless of temperature.
  • Daily Teacher Challenge. One of my (not on Twitter anymore) district instructional coaches not only recognized the need for teachers to take care of themselves, she took action in support of that goal, creating a “Daily Teacher Challenge” that she pushed out to all of us each morning. Take time on lunch to read, or get out and move, or share the music you jam to after class, each prompt reminded us to be human so we could be there for our students.
  • The Draft. My district closed three high schools (including two 6-12 schools) at the end of the school year, building one new facility, and thus consolidating down to two high schools and two middle schools. Grade 6 would be housed in elementary buildings. How do you shuffle a thousand teachers? You don’t. You let them pick. In my house it became known as “The Draft”. Because we watch a little too much sketch comedy around here.

So on a Friday morning in January, teachers from across the city gathered at the Board of Ed (or joined via Google Meet) and selected their building and their teaching assignment (in order of seniority). Not gonna lie, it was a little tense. Even with plenty of years to my credit. It was also a great excuse to hang with teacher friends and to patronize my favorite Mexican place for lunch.

  • “Hey Dullguy”. There was a moment many years ago when a lot of teachers in the building were just getting on Twitter. We all got connected obviously, and then as kind of a corny joke started calling each other by our handles when we saw each other in the hallway. “Hey it’s ‘thedullguy'” will never not be hilarious to me. Then as we started up the remote year in August our district instructional coaches started hosting online PDs for us on Friday. I sat in on one led by the driving force behind the South Shore e-Learning Conference, check the chat and see “Hey Dullguy!” Cracked me up.
  • The Pizza Investigation. I spent a lot of the year trying to figure out which of my classroom go-tos I could translate to remote learning. Some successes, some flops, as you can imagine. At the end of the quadratics unit in Algebra II I needed an activity, settled on an investigation into pizza prices, giving them an opportunity to do some research and play around with Desmos a little bit. (Docs here and here and here if you are interested).

I had to point them in the direction of some local pizza places (everyone wanted to search Domino’s and Papa John’s and Pizza Hut) in order to find the sizes I asked for in the project. Once I did, we found out we had a lot in common.

  • “Hey Mr. Dull”. In a related story, building relationships during remote teaching and learning is a definite challenge. But it can be done. I don’t think I saw the fruits until we returned to hybrid. Just like the good old days, greeting kids at the door and in the hall, and by name. Plus, I got good at picking up on clues when we were all wearing masks. She wears a BLM mask, and he’s a wrestler, and so forth. But pretty soon the kids started to reciprocate and I’d hear “hey, Mr. D” one class, or a raucous “Mr. Dull!” with a fist bump from another kid. And the one guy who came by and asked for extra help on math: “I had you first semester, I don’t have you now, but can I still come by and ask questions?” Yes. Yes you can.
  • The Playlist. (deep breath). Covidtide meant rethinking every procedure. Especially the end of the year celebrations. In the Before Times, Senior Honors Day was a school-wide convocation in the auditorium. This year it was held on the football field, on an e-learning Friday, with limited attendance. One of my long-time colleagues, Lunch Bunch member, and all-around good person posted that as she pulled into the parking lot, “Truckin'” was on the Grateful Dead channel, and she heard the lyric “what a long, strange trip it’s been” just as she was pulling into her parking spot. Perfect soundtrack for the moment, right? And I started thinking, I bet a lot of us have songs that sum up our emotions or capture a moment in time with a group of students or a class. What if we made a collaborative playlist that everyone could drop songs in, and then we could share it out? I created the playlist, she shared the link with people, and the next thing you know, we’ve got a list.

Some of the best parts were colleagues who emailed me saying “I can’t find the button to add a song, can you just put this on there for me?” or I don’t have a Spotify, but here’s a couple of songs from the Natural Helpers retreats that need to be on there”.

I heard snippets of it coming from inside of other teachers’ classroom as I walked the hall the last few days, so I knew we were kind of onto something. Then the morning of the work day I finally sat down and listened to it over breakfast, and oh, I don’t know if that was my best plan.

I pulled myself together in time to get myself to school, complete check-out paperwork, make the rounds of well-wish visits to teacher friends, and turn in keys for the final time. Even then I wasn’t done. Made a quick tour for myself to get one last look.

Because even the longest year, sometimes you just don’t want it to end.

It’s been an adventure. And a lot of my team is going to be together next year, just in a different place.

To be honest, I’m ready for some normalcy if 2021-22 is willing to comply.