Tag Archives: learning

Conferences 2020-21

I love going to conferences, but I end up valuing the time between sessions, when I talk or interview smart – people I know, or reflect on what I saw with friends and colleagues. Essentially, I try to tap into the wisdom of the room, and not just at the front of the room presenting.

As conferences move online, I’m not interested in hopping into a virtual room to watch a presentation, and then repeat this again and again… I want time to debrief, to connect and have conversations, to discuss ideas in pairs and small groups. I’m not just talking about a 5-10 minute breakout session in an hour long presentation, I’m talking about scheduled time to ponder, discuss, and apply what I’m learning to my context, with people I work with.

The way I see it, digital conferences need dedicated collaboration, discussion, and reflection time built right into the schedule… Digital meeting spaces scheduled into the day. There needs to be opportunities for conversation, serendipity, and reflection.

The spaces between the sessions needs to be recreated in digital conferences so that conference goers can connect and share their thoughts and ideas outside of presentation sessions. We need public learning spaces, recreated hallways, coffee shops, and courtyards.

Do you know of any online conferences trying to do this?

Whose problem is it?

A couple thoughts about assessment:

1. I taught Grade 9 Math for a year then after a year of only Humanities I went back to teaching Math, but for Grade 8’s. After about 5 years of teaching Math 8 I caught myself saying something as I started my unit on Exponents. I said to the class, “Every year this is the hardest unit and the hardest test that I give you.” I had to say it out loud to realize what I was really saying.

What I was really saying was one of two things, either I wasn’t doing a good enough job teaching this unit, or I was giving students much too hard of a test. Looking carefully at the test, I realized it was a bit of both. Because I had taught Grade 9 and new what was coming, when I looked at the test I realized that I was expecting students to know the content at a Grade 9 level… I was ‘preparing them’ for what’s to come. In every section of the test I had questions that started out with basic Grade 8 outcomes, but questions got gradually harder and always ended up with a couple (or more) questions that expected them to exceed what was required in the curriculum.

It was my problem, not theirs, that they struggled. I was pushing them to learn hard concepts at a very high level and testing them so that they all had to be competent at a higher grade level just to get a decent mark. My intentions were good. The outcome and experience for students who were not strong in math were not so good. I reworked my test that year, and some of my teaching as well.

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2. This isn’t one I’ve done, but my daughter has faced this. Last year in her university French course, the professor said, “Nobody gets an ‘A’ unless they are native speakers”. He then proceeded to give my daughter ‘B’s in every assignment, no matter what she did, and what feedback she used to improver her next assignment… that is, until her final exam. In her final exam, the marking was blind (the teaching only saw a number, and not the students’ names). On that exam, my daughter got an ‘A’.

If our job is to teach students, and improve their work, then what are we telling them if our message is, “You aren’t good enough to get an ‘A’.” … Is this not also saying, “I’m not a good enough teacher to help you improve.”? What message does this give to a student who is always striving to do her best and is a high achiever? What message does this give to a student who is struggling? Whose problem is it when every student that comes to your class isn’t good enough for an ‘A’ both before they arrive in class, and also after you have been their teacher for a semester?

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Assessment isn’t just measuring progress, it’s also measuring teacher expectations, and it’s up to us to make sure those expectations are realistic and fair.

The power of a good teacher

Last night I asked this question onTwitter:

I didn’t know that I would become a teacher until I was almost 30, so I can’t say that any teachers influenced me to become a teacher, but I had many that inspired the kind of teacher I wanted to be.

Mr. Lapoint taught me not to be a marshmallow in class, and I started my career telling kids to speak up, go beyond the expected answers, and to not be marshmallows. That said, this motorcycle loving hippie was tough as nails and had high expectations… and scared me a little.

Mrs. Lane taught me to love fiction and helped me find my writing voice. She was one of my favourites and I think of her as inspiring me to be the kind of teacher I want to be.

Mrs. Forster made me appreciate social studies. She also stepped up to coach a sport she knew nothing about, and encouraged me to become a player coach… in a way this was inspiration to becoming a teacher since continuing on as a coach is where my passion for working with kids came from.

Mr. Towe taught me that I have a creative side.

Mr. Harrison made learning fun.

I had other teachers that influenced me and helped me know what kind of teacher I wouldn’t want to be, but that’s not the spirit with which I started this post and I won’t mention any names.

Mr. Greven was never my teacher, but he taught in the high school where I worked as a lifeguard and coach, and he came to work every day whistling with joy. And when a kid was late with an assignment, he would tap me and ask me to nudge the kid, because he knew I had a good relationship with them as their coach.

Overall, I had many good and great teachers, and while they may not be the reason I became a teacher, they gave me respect for the profession, and left me with positive learning experiences.

Teachers make a difference!

What’s that one thing?

I know that a lot of educators feel a bit overwhelmed right now. I know that others have started to strike a balance, they are figuring out what they can and can’t do in a day. For many, the current mode is: what can I do to sustain this crazy pace? What can I do to maintain my current levels of energy and output?

And yet, I’m going to ask a bit more of you… what’s that one thing you really want to try this year? What is it that you want to do to challenge the status quo, or rather challenge your status quo? Maybe it’s too early to act on this, but it’s not too early to start thinking about it.

We do not thrive when we are thinking about survival or even maintenance. We do not thrive when our minds are only on what’s next on our agenda, or our ‘to do’ list. We excel when we let our imaginations soar, and when we dream up how we can make a difference. We get excited when we push our own frontiers, and when we enter uncharted territories in new directions that we’ve chosen for ourselves.

Maybe it’s not the time to flip your whole world upside down or to take on a big project, but it is always time to ask yourself small, incremental questions that steer you in a new and exciting direction.

What can I do to help my students own more of their learning? What guiding questions do I want to ask? What can my students teach me? What new assessment strategy can I try? What can I do to connect to the parent community? What new project am I excited to introduce? What extensions can I offer my students who are ahead of the class? How can I embed some more formative assessment? How can I get my students to share their work with another class, or with the world?

What’s one thing that I’m passionate to try, that will charge my batteries far more than drain them… because doing this will make me excited about being a learner, and in control of my experience?

A day of learning

Today is the first Professional Development Day of the school year. It is an opportunity for educators to pause and reflect on their own learning journey.

When I started my career, I got to work at a school where 14 of the 30 teachers were teaching for their first year, another 2 had only a partial year under their belt, and still 2 more were in their second year of teaching. We were both struggling and thriving as we muddled through our early years of teaching. We had a handful of teachers that, with just a few tears under their belt, we brilliant and very supportive. We had a leader who encouraged us to focus on students and gave us opportunities to lead. But more than anything, we had each other.

Our school based pro-d days were so special. One of my favourites was the October retreat we would go on. It was always themed and we would arrive at the retreat all dressed up the night before our day of learning. We were grouped into sitcom characters from tv shows, we were dressed for the 80’s, we we rock stars. The night would be filled with activities and games that made us feel like kids.

Then the next day we would come together and co-run the day’s events, filled with ideas to engage our minds and the minds of our students when we went back to school.

Those early experiences helped me realize that people need to be part of their own learning journey. Learning is most enriching when participants help create the journey. When we realize who owns the learning, that’s when learning really happens.

A chance to teach

Our grade 10’s are working on resumes and yesterday I got to work with them on a lesson about job interviews. Their pre-lesson homework is to fill out an application form, I use an old one from Subway. I start by sharing some of my experience hiring as a Starbucks manager, then we discuss what makes a good application form, resume, and interview.

Then students take turns in groups of three, being interviewer, interviewee, and observer. They are given a 10 question interview, but the second and third person to go get 3 new questions each turn… this adds a bit of variety to those that have watched the other students go before them.

This is a lesson I’ve done many times before, and one that I enjoy sharing. It is practical and useful, and I share some personal, funny, and even embarrassing stories that help students get to know me a bit better.

In the craziness of school startup, it’s just wonderful to spend a bit of time teaching, to remember why I do the things I do. I have not had a lot of teaching time the past few years, and spending a bit of time with students like this really charges my batteries!

Sorry, my brain is full

Since March there have been so many new demands on educators. The path has not been easy. And the new school year has added many more expectations compared to having 70% of the year already completed, when Covid-19 brought with it the new phrase, ‘remote learning’.

How do I do effective group work with students one or two meters apart? How do I do collaborative projects and minimize the sharing of resources? How do I facilitate student-to-student communication when some students are in class and the rest are learning from home? How do I effectively engage students working from home on web conferencing tools. These and many more questions combine to overwhelm educators who are coping with learning on the fly as they navigate a new frontier.

It really isn’t easy.

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Let’s pause here and think about our students:

How does it feel to be new to a country, not know the language, and have to learn, when everything said needs to be translated and most words are not understood?

How does it feel to be introduced to y=mx+b when you struggle with Math, and never really understood how ‘x‘ was a number, and fractions confuse you?

How does it feel to have to learn the krebs cycle when the chemistry and vocabulary is all totally new to you?

How are you supposed to interpret the meaning of a story when every 5th word is either new to you or seems out of context related to the words around it?

How are you supposed to work from home when the home environment is filled with distractions and interruptions that don’t happen at school?

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While educators struggle to learn in new environments and with new tools, let’s pause and think about how hard learning is for some of our kids, who are also learning in new environments and with new tools… and new content they have never seen before.

What’s on the test?

With students across the world doing schooling from home, teachers are finding it challenging to get authentic assessment. One of the more difficult issues is trying to administer formal testing.

Have a look at this TikTok by @tamarciment:

If you can Google the answer, students will find a way.

If you can Google the answer, is that a question we need to ask questions on a test?

Is a test the best form of assessment over a Zoom call? What are some better options?

It’s tough to navigate this new environment, and we aren’t going to do it perfectly, but these are questions that we should be asking… and our answers won’t just aid us during this pandemic, our answers will also help us when we have all students back in school too!

How long does this need to be?

As a teacher, this was always a tough thing to hear. You pour yourself into a lesson and then get to the assignment and a kid asks, “How long does this need to be?”

I hear this and in my mind I hear an underlying second question, “What’s the least amount I need to do to get this done.”

My response wasn’t really liked, but it was honest:

“It needs to be as long as it needs to be. I’ve read 3 brilliant sentences that said all that was needed to be said. I’ve read three sentences that told me nothing. I’ve read paragraphs that are eloquent and beautifully written, which cover everything needed. I’ve read entire essays that are crap. The length isn’t important, the quality and thoroughness of the writing is.”

If what’s being assessed is an essay, a response should be essay length in an essay format. Beyond that, does length of a response really matter? Does the format make a difference if the message is well conveyed? Does your next assignment require a minimum length, or does it require a response that clearly demonstrates understanding?

How long before ‘Un’school is the kind of school most kids choose?

This Hyderabad-based edtech startup aims to help students ‘un’school themselves

This is an example of disrupting higher education that I wrote about recently.

An affordable online learning ecosystem which provides a course, mentorship, projects, and guaranteed internship opportunities.

I’ve wanted to see opportunities like this at Inquiry Hub (at high school). Not for every kid, for kids that want it. But I also think that as we create these opportunities, more students will want it… if not in high school, certainly instead of an overpriced college education.

How is ‘un’schooling going to change the look of schools and universities in the future?