A Mathematical Conundrum

It’s Wednesday.  I’m sitting in my office with two students waiting for a third to arrive when one of them shares this epiphany.

“I couldn’t stop Dr. Podraza.  I worked on this problem the entire weekend.  I looked up articles.  I had my parents Google stuff.  I got everyone involved.”

“And I don’t think the math is actually right.  After all, it doesn’t make sense that my answer was in the billions.”He then went on to explain why he thought his answer was implausible citing relevant facts.  

There it was.  The thing educators all dream of.  A student who was so engaged in learning that he pursued it for the pure joy of it as opposed to turning it in for a good grade.  

So what caused all of this determination and excitement? 

Right before Winter Break, I was talking with these same students about how they hated the current way they had to learn math because they were given problems that were either out of context, completely fake, or that they were being forced to solve them in a way that was inefficient. 

“So what do you think we could do about it?  How would you like to learn math?”  

“We think math should be connected to the real world.  We should be able to solve problems about things that we can connect to, not some weird story about a monster at the bottom of a made-up lake or worse, Felicia’s cookies (this is an inside joke).  We get that we have to solve problems and learn the math behind it, but it’s frustrating when we are told we have to use a specific way of doing it.”

“Ok, so what might that look like?”

“Well, there’s stuff going on in the world.  Like global warming.  Stuff that’s actually a problem and math is probably related to it.  We want to solve problems like that.”

This was how the Top Secret “Tangerine” project began.  We decided at that meeting that the three of them would create their own YouTube Channel (real name forthcoming) based on real-world math problems.  It would be a weekly show where they presented a math conundrum to their viewers based on something happening in the news.  There would be opportunities for viewers to suggest problems or topics as well, but the work would always be done by the students.  They’ve even tossed around the idea of writing their own curriculum one day.  

I’ve seen this type of enthusiasm in students hundreds of times throughout my career and it’s always related to the same type of work.  Ryan & Deci would attribute it to something called, “Self-Determination Theory” which hypothesizes that any human needs competence, relatedness, and autonomy to be intrinsically motivated.  In non-theoretical terms, it’s really just offering students relevant and meaningful work that they can connect to.  Genius Hour, Passion Projects, Project-Based Learning, Inquiry-Based Learning, & Service Learning are all examples of how educators are currently harnessing the power of relevance in their classrooms.

So here’s what I’m currently grappling with.  Students would love to pursue this type of work all day every day if we let them.  The group of kids in the Tangerine project has requested to come to school as early as 7:00 a.m. to work on it and would stay until five or later if I had the time.  It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that school should be a place where everyone pursues projects all day long, but in reality, that may not be the case.  It’s made me wonder…

• What would school look like if we gave kids longer periods of time to work on big projects instead of the way we currently teach?  What are the opportunity costs of this approach?
• How do we balance teaching students’ skills with working on the projects themselves so that they can handle the cognitive load required?  What types of teaching structures might work best for this? 
• Do we teach the skills in isolation first and then give students time to explore projects or do we have them work on projects first and teach the skills as they come up? (the chicken or the egg question)
• What professional learning would educators need to successfully approach the classroom this way?  Are there any mindsets shifts that need to occur (within myself and others) related to this?

I wish I could tell you I had an even semi definitive answer to these questions, but unfortunately, I don’t.  I keep hearing that we live in a VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous), so it makes sense that we should give students experiences where the answer is not immediately obvious.  However, within this world of unpredictability, there are also constraints that we all must adhere to so it also seems relevant to provide students with structured learning experiences as well.   The only way to really know how much of each is to continually experiment in the classroom and see what works best with our students. 

 

 

 

Empowered Learning Experiences

I recently finished, Innovate Inside the Box: Empowering Learners through UDL by George Couros and Kative Novak.  Full of inspiring anecdotes as well as thought-provoking ideas, the book is split into three sections:  

1. The Core of Innovative Teaching & Learning
2. Characteristics of the Innovator’s Mindset
3. You are the Change You Seek

One of my favorite things about the book is the reflective questions that come at the end of each chapter.   Every chapter was meaningful, but the one that has felt most meaningful for me to reflect on today is Creating Empowering Learning Experiences from the Core of Innovative Teaching & Learning section.  When I was in the classroom as both a teacher and instructional coach, my main focus was how to best engage learners.  I thought that if I could plan highly engaging lessons then I would be fully meeting the needs of my learners.  

Previous work of George’s as well as this chapter has helped me to realize, if I am not providing empowering learning experiences, I am not adequately preparing them for the world outside of school.  When we engage students we are the ones who make learning meaningful and interesting to students, but when we empower them, they get to “develop the skills and motivation to solve meaningful problems.”  They are learning as a result of an internal drive which creates a cycle of perpetual learning, a skill that is incredibly important in the quickly changing world we live in.

Empowered Learning involves choice, developing better questions, as well as finding & solving meaningful problems with the opportunity to create.  At the end of this chapter, the following questions is asked, 

What are some examples of “empowered learning” in your classrooms for students and in your school/organization as professionals?  How are you empowered as an educator, and how does that empower students in learning?

It got me thinking about how I was empowering learners when I was in the classroom as well as steps I would take if I were still in the classroom to create more empowered learning experiences.

Previous Classroom Literacy Practice:  When I was in the classroom I tried to offer as much choice as possible to students.  In literacy, they received a weekly schedule with options that they could choose from to plan out their time that included things like read to self, blog post, meet with the teacher, responding to reading, or talk with a partner about their book.   They got to choose the books they were reading as well as the order they wanted to accomplish the tasks.  When we met 1:1 or in a small group, I would give them positive feedback as well as goals for their next steps in learning.

Empowered Learning Upgrade:  Although I offered a lot of choice to students, the activities were dictated by me.  Empowered learning involves giving students opportunities to create learning experiences that are meaningful to them.  If I were in the classroom, I would also include an option for them to choose what they wanted to explore in literacy.  I would also try to balance the amount of feedback I was giving to the students with the number of questions I was asking them about how they felt about their progress in literacy and the new goals they wanted to set.  I would give them more opportunities to set goals for themselves as opposed to their goals being dictated by me.  In elementary this would involve giving students a choice board of goals and letting them pick so that I could support them in becoming independent in goal selection.

Previous Classroom Research Practice:  I used to give students a broader topic to study and let them pick which aspect they wanted to research.  The students learned how to ask questions, take notes, and write a research paper with headings for each section.  Usually, these research papers would involve some sort of creative expression at the end that they could choose from that ranged from making a diorama to creating some sort of video.  

Empowered Learning Upgrade:  Although I taught students to ask deep questions during the research process, it was limited to when we were doing research.  If I went back into the classroom I would include asking questions as a part of daily practice woven throughout the day.  I might start a lesson showing a picture or with a short passage or even just projecting the learning target and have students ask questions that they are curious about.  We would have a Wonder Wall and I would give students opportunities to explore these wonderings.  Another problem with the research I was having students do was that the end product was solely connected to me, the final product reader.  If I was having students research now, I would want them to look for problems in the community, school or world around them and come up with solutions.  The end product that they create would be related to solving that problem.  I would provide opportunities and encourage students to connect with “experts in the field” to get more ideas.  We would share our ideas beyond our classroom by putting them in a blog, inviting the community in or asking meaningful stakeholders for feedback on our ideas.  I could still evaluate all the standards I was covering in this process, it would just take a different process on my part.

Previous Math Practice:  I love math and have always loved teaching it.  One of my frustrations as a kid was that I always had to go at the same pace as everyone else when I was ready to move on so I wanted to make sure that my students never had that frustration.  When I first started teaching this looked like me assigning all of the same problems to the students after I had taught a lesson and then students could come up and check their work with myself or my assistant when they were ready and could then move on to choice activities like games or projects.   In my last years of teaching, I would pretest the students on the upcoming standards on Friday.  On Monday they would get a sheet with the list of standards that they had already mastered and a schedule for the week that included activities like meet with the teacher, a web-based self-paced program or more problems in our workbook.  There was also a column for how they would know they had mastered the standards they hadn’t yet by the end of the week.

Empowered Learning Upgrade:  Although I provided choice for my students and gave them feedback on their progress as well as expected them to monitor their understanding, a lot of the math was dictated by me or the program my district had provided for enrichment.  To improve on this process I would provide students time to explore questions they have related to math.  In my last years of coaching we had students explore questions like, “How is math related to gymnastics?” or “How is math related to animals?”  It would be anything that students were interested in.  They would have time to research and then present their findings.  To make this even better I would stop teaching math as a subject on its own and look for ways to incorporate it into the questions that students were asking in class.  I would give them time to explore these ideas and create meaningful products. (like mentioned above) 

Instead of putting students on a web-based program, I would give them opportunities to create videos to help other students in math using applications like WeVideo or Explain Everything or Seesaw.   They could create games based on the standards or I would give them opportunities to work on math projects that solved problems connected to meaningful topics.  They could create problems or projects for other students to solve as well.  I would give them time to explore math-related problems and see what math they could use to solve these problems.

Final Thoughts

I am in no way criticizing the teaching that I did in the past.  I provided my students with many engaging as well as empowering (and even compliant) learning experiences.  I am proud of the work I did and loved every minute I got to spend in the classroom with my amazing students.  I am also not saying that it is possible to empower learners every minute of the day in the classroom.  As discussed in this chapter, there is a time for every type of learning in the classroom: compliant, engaged or empowered.  

The purpose of this reflection was to help me to be a better leader as we move to give students more empowered learning experiences in the classroom.   By reflecting on what my next steps would be, I can further clarify what types of learning experiences I am looking for as I go into classrooms.  This will enhance my ability to have a deep discussion and mentor anyone who is looking to empower learners.  My next steps will be working on my own practice as a leader who empowers her staff.  I am looking forward to talking to my teachers about their thoughts on empowered learning and to co-create our idea of best practice in learning experiences at Jefferson School.   

“Empowered learning experiences should be something that we, as educators, create with our students for our schools and classrooms.” – Innovate Inside the Box, Chapter 3

Goals Groupies: Synergizing the Passions of Staff

Last year, I read this post by John Spencer about the importance of being in a “Mastermind Group” with other educators.   It’s basically a group of teachers that meet regularly to explore and share ideas and also give one another feedback.  Because the members get to know each other well they can push one another in ways that would not be possible with other groups.

This idea has always stuck with me as something that would be great to implement with staff.  So when we started exploring options for our monthly staff meetings as an instructional leadership team, I brought this up as a possibility for a way to structure our time.  After talking through a variety of options, including a focus on the 6C’s or differentiated choices aligned to our School Improvement Plan, we ultimately decided on having staff finding a group of people who had written similar personal goals for the year.

The purpose behind this was twofold:

1.  It gave people time to delve more deeply into something they were already personally invested in.
2. It made our goal writing process more meaningful because staff would have dedicated time to continually work on them.  This is in contrast to past practice, where many educators (myself included) would wait until it was time to have a follow-up conference on their goals later in the year.  

At our first meeting in September, we had staff members do a “speed date” activity where they moved around the room talking about their goals for the year with different people.  Their goal was to find others who had similar interests or their “Goals Groupies.”  When they found a “match,” they would write that person’s name down on an index card.  At the end of the meeting, they met up with the people on their card and came up with an official focus for their group.  

Although I had met with staff members on their goals for the year prior to this meeting, it was fun to see how groupies ended up evolving and what they ultimately chose to focus on.  We had 5th-grade teachers working with first-grade and even kindergarten teachers.  There were groups of specials teachers mixed with grade-level teachers.  The goals chosen were just as diverse and included:  SEL, critical thinking, parent communication, inquiry-based and real-world projects, reading fluency and accuracy, and facilitated IEP and collaboration.  

This past Thursday was our second meeting.  Our Goals Groupies were given time to explore their work more fully setting specific outcomes for their impact on students, creating a plan of action and agreeing on what they would bring to share at the next meeting.  We gave them this template with guiding questions to help them to further think through their ideas.  As I walked around the room, I listened to rich conversations and genuine enthusiasm for the work they were doing.  It was a Thursday after school, but everyone was just as energized as if we were starting a fresh day.  

This process has only reinforced my belief that when we empower staff to take the lead, we embolden change that impacts students far greater than any mandated initiative ever will.  When staff is given dedicated time to collaborate with colleagues who have a common passion, we capitalize on our strengths as a school as well as build capacity in multiple grade levels. The goals the groups have chosen to work on have far surpassed my wildest dreams of what we could work on this year as a staff.   I am beyond excited to see the impact on students as the year unfolds.

 

A Culture of Inquiry Vs. A Culture of Learning

We were discussing data at an EC-12 meeting this week when one of my colleagues posed a question I had never really considered before:

Would you rather have a culture of learning or a culture of inquiry in your building?

He had recently gone to a training for a grant he was a part of and the trainer had focused part of the day on this question.  The discussion that evolved from this question ended up being the most meaningful part of the day.

This got me thinking about how I might answer that question and its implications for education.  I’d say traditionally most schools have focused on the former. Mission statements of educational institutions across the country frequently include phrases like, “to create lifelong learners” or “develop a love of learning.”  Since we want learning to continue way past students’ school days this focus makes sense to me.

But what if we instead focused on building a culture of inquiry in both our staff and students?  What might that look like?  What would the benefits be?

In their new book, Inquiry Illuminated, Goodvis, Harvey & Buhrow spend their first chapter making a case for an inquiry-based culture in classrooms.  They postulate that students who are supported by teachers in inquiry:

• Live a life full of wonder and curiosity
• Explore ideas and topics and issues that are central to their interests and concerns, linking these to the wider world
• Read and respond inquisitively with an inquisitive mind and a skeptical stance
• Think creatively to express and share new learning

To me, this means that in an inquiry-based culture, learners (both staff and students) are encouraged to ponder & discover problems or issues, ask deep questions about their cause, and spend time researching and exploring a variety of possible solutions.

From an educator stance, an inquiry-based culture would mean that we would take the time to ponder the why first before jumping into solutions.  For example, my kindergarten team was recently meeting in a PLC discussing how many of their students have been struggling to formulate questions about basically anything in class.  Instead of jumping right to, “let’s give them questions stems and organizers to help them to better formulate questions,” they spent the first part of the meeting talking about the root causes of the issue.  A variety of ideas were offered, but what they realized was that students were lacking in curiosity, not the ability to produce questions themselves.

From this realization, they designed a variety of activities to be done at home and at school including a Wonder Wall, “See, Think, Wonder, Talk” activity with pictures, question cards and more.  After the meeting one of the teachers even sent out a link to this article from ASCD about cultivating curiosity in students to further spark ideas.

Professional learning opportunities for staff could also look different from a culture of inquiry stance.  Instead of starting with outcomes for the day, participants might be asked to first think about a problem of practice.  They would then be given time to talk about its root causes with peers and finally have time to develop solutions to be implemented in the school or classroom.  At the next professional learning opportunity, staff members could talk about the results of their work in teams and then either problem-solve another issue they were pondering or go more deeply into the first issue.

In education, many times we are quick to jump to solutions before thinking about what might actually be causing the issue in the first place. Sometimes this fixes the problem, but other times it makes us appear like we are a “squirrel-based” culture, jumping from one new best practice to another.  This results in frustration from many parties, and in many cases does not actually fix the issue.

I do not think that we should go full forward into developing a “Culture of Inquiry” over a “Culture of Learning,” but rather the two seem to be intertwined and necessary for success in our schools.  If educators and students are going to be able to come up with plausible viable solutions for the problems they find then they have to be skilled at learning.   Having a voracious desire for knowledge can only lead to curiosity and asking questions.

I am definitely interested in exploring this topic further.  I plan on creating a bulletin board in the staff lounge or by the copy machine with the questions,

“What does a culture of inquiry mean to you?”

“What does a culture of learning mean to you?”

“Which do you think is more important in our school? Why?”

Their answers will determine the next steps we take as a staff, but at a bare minimum, I hope to spark the curiosity that these questions evoked in me.

If you are interested in developing more inquiry in your classroom or school I highly recommend reading Inquiry Illuminated by Anne Goudvis, Stephanie Harvey & Brad Buhrow or Comprehension & Collaboration by Stephanie Harvey & Harvey “Smokey” Daniels.  They give a great framework as well as a multitude of examples and strategies that can be applied to any grade.  I have to give a huge shout out to my EL teacher, Kory Curcio for recommending the latter.

I would love to hear any other ideas or resources you have enjoyed related to this topic! Christina

 

 

When You’ve Had One Too Many Google Slides

Audio version of this post.

Email at 9:30 p.m. Sunday night.  Tomorrow school is cancelled due to inclement weather.  (Cue the cheering)

Email at 9:45 p.m.  All admin must still report to fulfill their contractual obligation. (Cue the booing)

Not gonna lie.  That last email didn’t exactly make my night, BUT it did lead to an amazing meeting Monday.  So, one might argue that the 9:45 email was actually better than the 9:30 one.  Let me explain.

When I got to school I sent an email to my staff saying I was available if anyone needed anything.  About 20 minutes later I received a response from a teacher asking if I would like to meet.  We had been trying to officially talk for weeks about an idea she had, but up until this point it was all hallway conversations here and there.  Turns out her power was out so this was a great opportunity for us to actually create a plan as well as a warm place to be.  Win. Win.

The teacher was planning out a social science inquiry unit about the Age of Exploration.  Her problem was twofold:

1.  She frequently offered her students choice in how they would demonstrate their learning, but they ALWAYS seemed to use Google slides.
2. Finding good resources for the students to explore in the Hyperdoc she was creating was super time consuming.

Enter two of my favorite things:  Curation & Meaningful Content.   I learned about curation when listening to a podcast from Jennifer Gonzalez’ Cult of Pedagogy website when I was an instructional coach.  (Sidenote: If you do not listen to her podcasts or at least check out her website periodically you are missing out on a WEALTH of tools, strategies, and just plain good stuff.)

There are many different ways to approach it, but basically curation is taking the concept of a museum curator and giving it a classroom context.   Students might create a playlist of videos that are all relevant to a topic they are studying, make a list of articles, images, and videos that answer a question or even a create Top 10 list.  The idea is that they are sifting through a wide range of information and choosing the best items to fit.  In addition to giving them a purpose for watching and reading numerous content, it also causes them to have to apply critical thinking skills such as determining importance and synthesis.  Check out her post for many more ideas for curation applications.

Curation fit perfectly into the explorer unit.  Students are first going to create their own question under the larger umbrella question of, “Is exploration always a good thing?”  After reading and watching a few common texts and videos, the students will next be tasked with curating their own list of videos, texts and images that answer their personal question.  The only requirement is that each resource on the list must be summarized with reasons for why it is included.  These curations will then be reviewed by their peers (creating even more shared ideas) and inevitably be used in future years as well.  Genius.

Books Make a Great Foundation, But…

Which led us to our our next dilemma.  What kinds of resources did we really want students going through?  Where would we start?  When we first started chatting it was suggested that we take the students to the public library to find texts to use as their primary sources.  Although I am a super fan of the library and will always believe in the power of a physical book, I thought we should also ponder digital content like YouTube, Blogs, and websites.  This would give them an opportunity to explore media resources that they were already regularly consuming outside of school, but with a critical lens.

As I brought this idea up to the teacher she said she loved it, but wasn’t sure where to find blogs that would be useful.  She had a few websites that she liked and a couple of videos, but hadn’t seen much else.  I did a quick search of, “Social Studies Blogs” and found a treasure of resources created by history teachers for other teachers to use with students.  (#sschat on Twitter is also a great place to look) I assured her that the beauty of curation was that we didn’t have to be the sole experts finding resources, it was up to the students.  My guess was that they would surprise us with what they knew or were able to find.  Just in case though we planned to make a list of a few good blogs and websites as well as some YouTube channels. (Crash Course Kids is one of my fave’s.)

Slide to the Left…Slide to the Right…

All of this curation led us back to problem number one:  What were the students going to do with all of this knowledge that they had curated and synthesized?  Although this teacher had offered choice in a variety of other units most students defaulted to the ever popular Google slides presentation.  It’s not that Google slides aren’t a good way to present information, but if students are always demonstrating their learning in the exact same way are we really helping them to be prepared to contribute to the world outside of school?

Knowing that with their friends they spend a lot of time on YouTube we decided to start there.  Students would come to class prepared to talk about their favorite YouTube videos that they have learned something from.  They would present their videos in small groups and work to answer the question, “What makes a good presentation?” From this small group discussion the students will create a list as a class of qualities that make a presentation engaging as well as informational.  These qualities will become what the students use to assess themselves on their work.

After this class collaboration the students would then get to work in stations to learn about some other options they could use to answer their individual questions including:

• Adobe Spark – Students can use this to create videos with narration, creative graphics or scrolling webpages.  It’s a pretty intuitive site if you have not used it previously.  
• WeVideo – This is an online platform for creating videos.  I have to give a huge shout out to Jennifer Leban (@mrsleban), our creative technology teacher at one of our middle schools for teaching me how to use this super fun tool! (I have a future post dedicated to my learning with this one coming soon!)
• Seesaw – This is a great tool for student creation, reflection, and collaboration.  It can be used in so many different ways.  One of the best parts is that it is easy to share with parents.  

Students still have the option to use Google slides for their presentations. They just need to make sure that they meet the requirements that the class had come up with together.  By doing this it will hopefully shift their presentations into more complex and engaging content as opposed to just bullet points and fun transitions with a few graphics.  Or, they don’t have to use technology at all if they don’t want to.  They have the option to create their own idea or use one from their teacher’s list like creating a book or a live interview.  

This entire plan is designed to spark not only curiosity, but to also develop four of the six C’s of creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking. The teacher plans on using reading, writing, science and social studies as part of the interdisciplinary unit giving students an opportunity to see education as a connected process as opposed to independent ideas.  After the students learn about historical exploration they are also going to be learning about space exploration to ponder how we can use the past to help us to understand or better create the future.

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The two problems discussed in this post are not unique to the teacher I was speaking with.  As a teacher and a coach I would sometimes spend hours on end looking for the best resources to use with students.  This process would many times leave me frustrated blaming “the district” for not providing me with everything I need.   However, when I reflect on what skills students truly need to be successful in school and beyond I think we are doing a disservice to students if we are always the ones providing them with the content they should be reading.  We need to teach them not only how to find information that answers their bigger questions, but also how to evaluate the quality and validity of the information they find. 

I truly applaud this teacher for reflecting on the needs of her students and taking the risk of trying something new with a unit that could easily be taught in a very traditional way.  Moving forward she will be working mostly with our instructional coach, but it was such a treat to have time to talk this out with her on Monday.  I cannot wait to see the creative ideas and projects that evolve as a result!  #greatfulforasnowday