One long Sunday night...

It's that time of year when bathing suits and flotation devices are being moved to the sale rack, while back to school items take their place at the front of every store. I have always been a summer girl. As a kid, I spent hours upon hours at the pool and on the beach. As an adult, I've chosen to live at the beach for most of the summer. I love the salt air and sand. Maybe I'm a summer girl because we get extended hours of sunlight. Maybe it's the warmer temperatures. Maybe it's the hours of exercise I get to do. Maybe it's the beach friends I get to see. Maybe it's the fresh seafood I eat. Maybe it's being able to stay up late and sleep in. Maybe it's the long days spent on the boat. Maybe it's the smell that my West Coast brother and Midwestern cousin claim that the East Coast beaches have. 

Just the other day, while sitting on the beach, I overheard a father say to his two sons, "Are you ready to be done with the ocean for the year?" I wanted to scream. Summer, and the freedom I get, cannot possibly be gone already. Didn't it just start? Why don't February and March go by this quickly?

When the calendar turns to August, suddenly a pit forms in my stomach. All those things I love will soon be taken away. Suddenly, people keep asking, "When does school start?" I'm going to admit something here, something that most teachers think, but will never articulate: I hate going back to school. August is one, long Sunday night. 

In the Northeast United States, we love summer because it's magical. It's the reason we suffer through things like the Snowpocalypse. Waiting for these three months of magic has also made me wonder why I don't move down South, but that's a whole other blog post. 

All of this thinking always leads me to the same two questions:

1. Why am I still a teacher?

2. How can we make school a place kids (and teachers) want to be? 

Once again, unlike most other teachers, I will freely discuss that I have thought about leaving the profession. I dream of a job that doesn't require my bladder to sync up with a bell schedule (block schedule, by the way), force me to be surrounded by cinder block walls, or allows me to take a vacation when I deem it necessary for my own mental health.

The answers I find are almost always the same:

1. I am passionate about the role that education plays in the future of our democracy.

2. I am passionate about watching students become independent learners.

3. I am passionate about using my gifts in the best possible way. 

The answers to the second question are always much more complicated. I know I can't bring sun, sand and salt water to class every day--or can I? Here's where I start dreaming about the changes we need in education. We need student-centered classrooms that promote critical thinking. I dream of an education system that promotes more student empowerment and independence. How might we tailor core classes to match student interests? How might we implement more flexible class schedules? How might we encourage students to be more involved in the community? How might we rid the system of numerical grades and focus on competencies? How might we create inviting, colorful learning spaces? How might we repaint the cinder block walls? How might we create outdoor learning spaces? How might we make school more like a day at the beach in the middle of July? 

Students need to be empowered to find their passions, so that much like me in August, they can return to the thing they must do because of the drive they have. 

Thanks to this scene, and the ocean breeze, for being the backdrop to my writing. How might I do this more often? 

Guiding Students to ask the "Right" Questions

Formal observations and walk-throughs, key components of Charlotte Danielson's Framework, can be scary, humbling experiences for any teacher. A teacher can feel like a master of her domain until the dreaded administrative visit. Having a third party in the classroom can be a distraction--for teacher and students alike. My previous school was a large, underperforming urban high school. Our classrooms were frequently visited--announced and unannounced. The walk-throughs and formal observations were so frequent that we joked that we should have coffee and donuts on hand for visitors. While we often felt like we under a microscope, we learned to take advantage of these visits. Why not take advantage of it?

How can I leverage this visit to improve the experience of my students?

It is that mentality I carry with me as I continue to grow as a teacher of English and Social Studies. If I must have this observation, how can I leverage it for my students? After the observation, I debriefed with my observer. The focus of our post-observation debrief was student questions and the formulation of them, most particularly during a discussion. The lesson was a fishbowl discussion, so questioning peers was integral to the activity. Not only were students interacting inside the fishbowl, but those in the outside circle were backchanneling on Today's Meet. Both forums showed evidence of lower level, closed questions. My immediate thought:

How can I propel my students to think critically about the content and formulate higher level questions?

Research 

Through independent research, I discovered the The Question Formulation Technique through these articles: 

Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana

The Right Questions by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana.

While Rothstein, Santana and other colleagues created this protocol 20 years ago, it is still relevant today, if not more so than ever before. As the push for inquiry-based classrooms continues to spread, we need to teach students how to ask questions. I have long been a proponent and practitioner of turning the traditional classroom dynamic on its head. Education is not about my learning, it is about the learning of the students in the classroom. They should be asking the questions, not me. If they are asking the questions, they are engaged and learning. 

The QFT is simple to understand. There are four steps (slide 15) that are brief and can easily be applied to most anything. In order to organically implement into instruction, I decided that the students would follow this process as a means to review for the midterm exam. 

Day One

After completing the initial introduction to the QFT, students broke into groups of four to try it out. I created a Question Focus (slide 14) and let them loose! They wrote questions on post-it notes (my favorite ed tech tool!) and sorted them into "open questions" and "closed questions."

Day Two

On day two, the students moved back into the same groups and touched upon Step #3 of the QFT: Improve Questions. Then, using a Google Form (my true love in life!) students submitted all questions which filtered into a Google Sheet. I reviewed the Sheet and pushed out the link, so each student could make a copy. For the next 30 minutes, students reflected upon the questions (135 total!) and gauged their own understanding of the content via the questions. Individually, students sorted the questions into three categories: novice, intermediate and master by numbering and color coding each cell. At the conclusion of class, we discussed what the purpose of the spreadsheet was. Students understood that they should use it as a means to prioritize and plan their studying.

Day Three

Then, on day three, we revisited Step #3 by converting questions into the opposite type. For example, students turned an open question into a closed question. The objective of this activity was for students to understand the difference of the two types. We discussed that while both types have a place in the classroom, we need to formulate more open questions.

Students again dove into their individual spreadsheets to identify the questions (Step #4) with which they did not feel confident in their understanding. They extracted the key words from the questions and jotted them down on post-it notes, which were then placed on the board. We used the post-its to play a classroom version of "Hedbandz." The objective of the game is guess the term on a card, which is attached to a headband on Player A's head. In pursuit of an answer, Player A asks Player B closed questions. Here's a slight twist that I threw in: Player B had to choose post-its of topics they felt they had mastered.

After 15-20 minutes, the game came to an end and we moved into a full group discussion for further clarification of the content. It is this part of the lesson that I would change next time. Next time, I will divide the classroom space into two sections: group discussion and quiet review. In order to accommodate all learners, I want to create safe spaces for studying, whether a student wants to speak to others or independently review.

Reflection and Vision

Pushing students to ask the right questions and reflect upon their learning are my two goals for this last quarter of the year. I will continue to spiral the QFT into instruction. For example, students were given 5 minutes today to work with this Question Focus (based on our essential question for this portion of the unit): Judaism, Christianity and Islam are connected. In the coming weeks, I am going to "bump" up the expectations of the questions. Now, I am pleased that they are asking more open questions, but the goal is for them to differentiate between low-level and high-level questions.

I am also starting to notice more attempts by students to ask thoughtful questions on our weekly discussion boards. I joke that discussion boards are not named "response boards" for a reason. The boards are a place for intellectual dialogue. Students may not understand how to have intellectual dialogue, which goes above and beyond simply listening and agreeing. Through the explicit infusion of these skills into instructional practice, it is my hope that students will be able to engage more deeply with the content.

Below are the slides that I created to walk the students through the QFT. We will continue to refer back to them throughout the year.

Using Passions to Reconcile Changes in the Educational Landscape

About an hour until game for the NCAA National Championship, and here I am feverishly attempting to finish another post. It might come as no surprise that the concepts of team and common goal have been on my mind recently.

I cannot remember my life without basketball. My dad taught me how to play on our backyard court. In third grade, I started playing basketball for the HGA Cougars. During elementary school, my family traveled to watch my future high school's teams play. Then, in ninth grade, I joined the CCHS Cardinals, the team I'd been studying for at least six years. My college alma mater, Saint Joseph's University, has its own storied basketball team. My first teaching job came with a junior varsity coaching job, which eventually turned into a varsity coaching job. One of my teams even made our mark on school history by qualifying for state playoffs for the first time ever!

I do not know what life is or feels like without this game. 

When March rolls around, I finally get to share my passion with so many others. For a short three week period, we, as a country, pause and give credit to college athletes. We begin to feel like we intimately know them. We love to hear stories about who played together in high school or on AAU teams. We try to pick out the tournament's Cinderella team. We hear phrases like "the best player in the country you've never heard of" (more on him later). We learn about the everlasting effects of a strong coach. The NCAA tournament is a vivid component of our national consciousness.

What is it about this game? Why did it steal my heart? Why is it one of my passions? What has it taught me? How can I use to empower others?

Team. Common goal.

I no longer spend every day after school in the gym, and while I miss those times, I use them to fuel my instruction. As the influx of technology and changing educational philosophies bombard educators, I rely upon my love of basketball to guide me.

Implementing cooperative learning experiences in the classroom is my everyday equivalent of basketball. Most often students will find the desks arranged in groups of four in my classroom. When assigning a new task, I'll direct students to work together. My students practice skills, like writing claims or drafting questions, over and over, much like the 20 foul shots we had to do every day at practice. Consider the Jigsaw method or Novel in an Hour strategy. Students break apart the whole, then must come back together to make sense of that whole piece. The team has to achieve the common goal.

The 21st century classroom looks more and more like a basketball team's practice than it does the classrooms of the past. Some students have to watch tape. Others are going through drills at one end of the court, while some others are playing 3-on-3 at the opposite end. The American education system, also part of our national identity, is under attack. Teachers are consistently being pressured to innovate, create, and whatever else any other buzzword dictates at the moment. Many experts may be able to suggest different strategies, tools and techniques to implement into the classroom. What experts are not able to tell us is exactly what the school experience is going to look like in 5, 10, 15 or 20 years.

Will school still be held from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm? Will we still have four core content areas? Will students still need to physically attend school every day? Will teachers hold office hours? Will teachers deliver lessons online or in person? Will teachers be able to work from Starbucks (yes, please!)? Will sick days be a thing of the past? Will students be assigned to study hall? Will students still need hall passes? What will assessments look like?

The world is changing, and along with it, our job responsibilities and our daily workflow. We, as the select group who gets to teach America's next generation, must change with the rest of the world. There are many what ifs floating around nowadays. We must take the reins and steer the American education system in the best direction for students. Their stories, much like DeAndre Bembry's or as the rest of America knows him "the best player you've never heard of," must be shared. In order to flourish, students deserve to have networks, like playing for AAU, outside of their school building. Seek out the Jim Boeheims, Roy Williams, Pat Summits, Shaka Smarts, Phil Martellis, Geno Auriemmas and Jay Wrights of the teaching sphere. Learn from them. Celebrate them. Emulate them. We owe that to our students.

In this historic period of transition and transformation in the American education system, we need to rediscover our own passions and allow them to guide us, so we can lead our students towards the common goal.

Student Portfolios, 20% Time and the Power of the PLN

In my current Invitation to Psychology classes, students are being pushed to make meaning of this new content area and, furthermore, apply individual understanding of the content to pursue independent curiosities and interests. It was during July 2015, when I attended the Inquiry Schools' Summer Teaching Institute at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, that this idea started brewing. I left the Institute with a clear long-term picture: Psych students were going to blog about their learning, while also questioning the content and curating artifacts on social media (and begin to build a PLN), in order to independently pursue an area of interest in Psychology. 

 

Background

As an institute attendee, I was immersed in SLA-style teaching and learning, meaning specifically "inquiry-driven, project-based, technology-enriched learning." The most beneficial activity was speaking with current SLA students. They hosted a "Project Fair," during which we rotated around the hall and they explained their projects. What was most fascinating was the manner in which these students spoke about their learning, thus showing how much they own their learning. What is even more impressive is that the students ranged anywhere from an "A" average to a "C" average, and some hailed from the city's failing middle schools. It was in hearing their voices that I was reminded of how powerful active learning is. The week's activities served as a great reminder that all learning is inquiry-based, and as teachers we must pique all students' curiosity so they, too, formulate questions and learn. 

I utilized my time at the Institute to plan a semester-long inquiry-driven, project-based, technology-enriched learning experience for my own students. After brainstorming with an old college friend, Amanda Neuber, who has taught Psych at the college level for years, and with the guidance and assistance of Josh Block and Tim Best, SLA teachers, I constructed a framework for an independent (digital) portfolio project, which will later serve as the foundation for selecting a topic or area of interest for independent research. 

At the mid-term point of the semester, the students will reflect upon their website and provide feedback to one other student. Then, each student will independently plan a project to investigate a topic in psychology more closely. The research project is being constructed in alignment with the ideology of 20% Time Projects, or passion-driven work. Students will pick the topic they want to know more about or a problem they want to solve, all within the context of Psychology. They will propose a project, plan it out, implement it and publicly present it. 

The Power of the PLN 

What role has my professional earning network played in this project? Not only did I have the opportunity to bounce ideas off the other Institute attendees during the week, I have been driven, since July 2015, by my own inquiry-based learning. 

Remember--all learning is inquiry-based.  

During EdCamp New Jersey in November 2015, I sought out sessions that mentioned digital portfolios, inquiry, projects or genius hour. I stumbled upon priceless information about integrating Google Apps into portfolios from Sean Hackbarth (@s_hckbrth). 

Then, Chris Aviles (@TechedUpTeacher), who I cannot stop thanking enough, told us about siteMaestro, a Google Sheets add-on, which makes pushing out the portfolio template and "filing" the digital portfolios a breeze. SiteMaestro has been key in keeping the focus on the content of the student portfolios, not the design of the website. 

Afterwards, I also consulted AJ Juliani's (@ajjuliani) The Complete Guide to 20% Time (and Genius Hour) in the Classroom, which is composed of four independent learning modules and oodles of helpful resources. I checked out Joy Kirr's (@JoyKirr) Genius Hour materials. I looked through Adam Schoenbart's Developing Genius Reflecting on Choice blog post, which includes materials that he used with his students. I am planning to introduce the last portion of the project during our unit of study on Motivation and include Daniel Pink's The Puzzle of Motivation, a TED talked recorded in July 2009. Schoenbart's slideshow explaining Genius Hour to his students includes some very powerful images of schools of the past, and of the present. (HINT: they look the same!). I love the power of including students into my rationale. 

To my PLN, thank you. 

So what?

Traditional grading is often a task that docks students on what they don't know, but the digital portfolios are a means of assessing what students do know. What they care about. What they wonder about. What they find interesting. No test could have ever given me this much "data" about my 99 Invite to Psychology students in this short time frame--4 weeks. Thus far, we've covered the story of Psychology, Psychology as a Science and just started into Memory. Students are engaging with the content. They are making connections with the content and their own lives. They are asking powerful questions about complex psychological concepts. I am excited to "grade" their projects. The portfolios have transformed my attitude towards grading, which is often very stressful for me. I have a good routine that includes reading and conferencing with each student one to two times every week or two. This cycle of feedback and conferencing, though still being developed, has already positively influenced student work. Moving forward, I am planning to study Starr Sackstein's (@mssackstein) Teaching Students to Self-Assess: How do I help students reflect and grow as learners?

Where do we go from here?

This is what I really want from students. I want them to be in an environment that fosters their own curiosity and motivations, so they feel empowered and supported enough to take a risk in learning. I want them, much like myself, to be led to uncharted territory, so they can learn and do more than ever thought possible. I want them to make a public declaration about what they have learned and what drove them to learn it. I want them to have a clear understanding of how to reach out and find supports to further their own learning. 

I want them to see that learning is a part of every day life, not just an activity that is constructed inside of four walls from 8 am to 3 pm Monday through Friday.  

Learning is our lifeline. Without the ability to learn, we lose the ability to breathe, and to live. 

How much impact can your safety net have?

If you have been following my blog, you know that I just celebrated my 10th anniversary of entering the classroom. What you might not know is that I am teaching Social Studies classes, by myself, for the first time. And, guess what? The content areas are not even my specialties in Social Studies! 

This 11th year all of a sudden feels like my first year, all over again. But now, the stakes are higher. I expect more of myself. Why? I know what it takes to do this job well, because I've been doing it for ten years. And therein lies the problem.

I expect too much of myself. I expect to plan lessons and activities for Sensation and Perception for my Invite to Psych class to the same level of my lessons on Thoreau's Civil Disobedience. It's just not going to happen, at least not now. Not yet. 

When we do a job for too long, we often forget what it takes to do that job. Or what it means to reevaluate and relearn. On the first day of class this semester, I was 100% honest with my students and told them that I had not taught either class (Invite to Psych & Non-Western Cultures) before. I immediately followed up with, "But I'm excited to jump back into the material and learn alongside with you. A bonus is that I can better help you learn, because the learning process will be so fresh in my head." They smiled. Those smiles felt genuine and authentic in that moment. 

Perhaps those simple honest statements I shared built trust from the start. I did not try to pretend that I have all of the material memorized or my lessons until June planned. As much as I wish they were, I am embracing the fact that they aren't. I have spent copious amounts of time sorting through resources from colleagues. It is those resources that have given me a safety net, but also a sense of freedom. I don't need to teach or plan my lessons in the same manner, but those materials are my starting point, From there, I can modify to fit my students' needs and my style. 

This safety net is what was lacking at my last school. Every decision I made was a risk, without a safety net. It was that environment though that transformed my own educational philosophy, which has evolved even more. Here I can take risks. I have a supportive network who encourages and students who motivate me. I can ask my students to connect what we are learning in Psychology with what they stumble across in their internet/social media wanderings and collect artifacts. I can ask them to maintain a digital portfolio. I can ask them to embed a Twitter feed on their webpage, even though it might be a new skill! I can ask them to make their learning real. 

Then, today, the next step was their idea. My students asked if our class time could somehow be more personalized and self-driven. At first, I wanted to ask if they had been reading my Twitter feed recently!! What a moment for me. What a moment for those holding my safety net. What a moment for my students. They asked to own their 80 minutes. Yes. I could not have asked for a better request. 

Before I spend most of the upcoming holiday weekend reorganizing some pieces of class for them, I am going to finally zone out at Bikram Yoga. I've only been waiting for two hours for class to start. That's what happens when you are playing the role of a first year teacher and forget to check the class schedule! 

What have you learned?

Two years ago, I spoke with my grade school English teacher, who told me that at the end of every school year she asks one specific question:

What have you learned?

In hearing the question, I was immediately transported back to my undergraduate years at Saint Joseph's University. Father Nick Rashford, who was president at the time, frequently invited student leaders to his residence for dinner. Of course, any intelligent college student would jump at the chance to get face time with him and a delicious meal. At the end of every dinner, he would pose one question to the group: What have you learned? Each student would contribute a personal answer. 

He never forced our learning to match up with what he wanted us to learn that evening, but rather what we took away from the discussion and experience. That is one of the Jesuit principles of education: cure personalis or "care for the individual person."

My grade school English teacher receives a myriad of response from her students, just like Father Ashford would receive from the student leaders. At the time of the conversation with my former teacher, I had just started at a new school, so I decided to start this new tradition. At the end of every semester since then, I have asked my students, "What have you learned?"

A year ago, I created this Google Form, which is clear evidence of my love for technology tools within the ELA classroom.

Celebration of Learning

Since I am constantly evolving as an educator, this semester I went one step further. After the students completed this activity, I asked them to prepare a brief "presentation" to share with the rest of the class. I put presentation in quotation marks because I did not define what or how they were to present. At my core, I do not believe that I can tell a student what they should have learned or how they should feel comfortable sharing it, much like Father Rashford. I do believe that I can help them discover and utilize the critical thinking skills that should go into these tasks.

I only asked that the "presentation" show evidence of their learning throughout the semester and that they share it with the rest of the class. For many, publicly sharing anything is a daunting task, let alone something so very personal.

In the future, I plan to market the day as our "Celebration of Learning" and will host it on the last day of class before final exams. Not only does CoL give the class a last few moments to connect as lifelong learners, but it builds confidence during a stressful time. It also reminds the students that I truly care about them as human beings.

"You need evidence!"

Staying aligned with one of my mantras, students (and I!) back channeled to share even more learning during the CoL. Back channeling is new for them (and some keep their Twitter account private), but I LOVE that they took a risk. 

Of course, we had a hashtag: #GVPerEng4. You can discover some of our learning on Twitter. :)

Reflections on EduCon 2.8

Just the other week, I realized that February 2, 2016 is my tenth anniversary of becoming a teacher. A decade. A decade. Humbling. Am I even old enough to have a ten year career? I feel like a new teacher on many days. How have I been doing this job for a decade?  On the eve of my 10 year anniversary, it is only fitting to find myself back on 22nd Street in Philadelphia for EduCon 2.8.

I called 22nd Street my home when I started teaching and stayed there for a long time during my time with the School District of Philadelphia. Being in this city on this weekend has reminded me why I ever started this journey in the first place. The journey of educating. Journey is the only word that can even be used to describe what I have undertaken. What I undertook ten years ago. Teaching has never been, or ever will be, just a job for me. That is not what I was built to do. My perspective shows the undeniable impact of Jesuit education on me.

If I did not view teaching in this way, I would be neglecting the mantras that I repeatedly heard during my four short years on Hawk Hill:

• “Men and women with and for others”
• “The Magis”
• “AMDG” (Ad majorem Dei gloriam)
• “Go out and set the world on fire.”

Teaching is a calling. Teaching is a vocation. Teaching is a passion. Teaching is setting the world on fire every day.

As part of a Service-Learning English class at SJU during the Fall of 1999, I entered West Philadelphia High School. A steep staircase faced me when I opened the heavy old doors. I will never forget those stairs. I did not know then, but climbing them was symbolic. It was that day that I crossed the threshold and entered the unknown.

Seventeen years later, I am still traveling, much like Odysseus in the Mediterranean, around the unknown.

I will never return to the known. I continually choose to tackle challenges, obstacles, rebirths and deaths. It is within each and every challenge, obstacle, rebirth and death that I have found the fire to educate, and transform the ways in which I educate students and myself. We do not choose this vocation without first being enthusiastic learners ourselves, or at least that is what I like to think.

Teaching, in and of itself, is a call to equity and social justice. I am working for something bigger than myself. This call to action is what drives me every day. What will I learn today? How can I share what I have learned? What will someone else teach me? How will it affect others? How can I empower others? How will others empower me?

At EduCon 2.8, those questions were answered from Session 1 to Session 6. Walking into the Science Leadership Academy, I knew that would be my experience, which is why I reserved this weekend months ago. Having lived blocks away for so long, I watched SLA from afar since its inception. I attended the SLA Teaching Institute last summer. I “get” SLA and its core values. I truly believe that SLA, at its core, is about empowerment, of teachers, students and parents, and spreading that feeling throughout the larger education community. That is EduCon.

EduCon gave me the chance to more fully participate in the larger education community that I have observed for so long. The weekend gave me the chance to interact with respected educators, many of whom I follow on Twitter or have read their articles or books. But again, EduCon is about empowerment, so the weekend was not about me just observing or just listening, but about me contributing to the larger education community.

So here I am, 17 years later, back in the city where I entered that world of education, on the eve of my 10th anniversary of teaching...

Thirty days ago, I made a New Year’s resolution to start blogging about my experiences in education. I once thought that blogging was self-indulgent. Hey you, internet, look at how great I am! Look at what I do! Now, I know it is about contributing to the greater good. Remember those Jesuit mantras? I strengthen my teaching by consulting education blogs, like Catlin Tucker’s, Alice Keeler’s or Adam Schoenbart’s, to learn about best practices and their risk-taking. My attendance at EduCon has empowered me to help others, share my best practices, my risk-taking, my best struggles, my best failures, my reflections...my learning. I do not have a defined plan for my blog, just like I did not have a defined plan for my career in education 17 years ago when I left my Ithaca and cross the threshold.

But here it goes...

Side note: The entries from 2014 were part of a graduate course. Does that even count as blogging?