Tag Archives: students

Passion Project Presentations

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I’ve had the privilege of watching a few final presentations for our IDS courses – Independent Directed Studies – at Inquiry Hub. Our students choose a topic and put 100-120 hours of work into research, design, and creation of their own courses. The topics vary considerably from making a movie to learning to suture stitches, to designing a facial recognition doorbell, to creating a tabletop role playing game based on the student’s heritage.

I love seeing the diversity of the presentations, and the passion and enthusiasm students have sharing their work. I’m so impressed by both their presentation skills and so their slides. These students could teach a thing or two about how to create a slideshow to many professional presenters I’ve seen.

That’s because they get a lot of practice designing presentations and presenting. They have to do so in groups and on their own many times a year… more than in any typical school. And they get feedback, lots and lots of feedback, from peers as well as teachers.

For these final presentations parents are also invited, and even if parents can’t make it, students still have an audience beyond just the teacher. Students can invite anyone they want to watch, and we’ve even had two of our secretaries invited because they have similar interests in the topics, one on hairdressing and another on embroidery. The community aspect of these with parents, mentors, and community members joining in is absolutely wonderful. Our assistant superintendent also joined for a couple presentations.

It’s pretty special watching these final presentations. I think that every student should get a chance to delve into an area of interest that they choose. Learning shouldn’t just be about transmitting knowledge but about knowledge construction, and what better way to do this than to have students design their own learning experience?

Don’t let the rain stop you

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I’m writing this at the edge of Allouette lake in Golden Ears Provincial Park, 8:30 PM Tuesday. I’m here with three teachers and 18 students who will be spending the night in the campground nearby. It’s pouring rain. Actually right now it’s a little on the light side, but it has been continuous and at times quite heavy since we arrived, five hours ago.

It’s starting to get dark and we will be walking back in just a few minutes, but I’ve got a little window of time to dictate this while I stand near the steepest part of the path leading to the lake. Three students didn’t want to come down this section I didn’t want to leave them behind so I’m hovering back as the other students return this way from walking along the shore.

On a miserable day like this it would’ve been easy to cancel the camping trip. The rain has been relentless, but in all honesty it hasn’t dampened spirits. When we get back to the campsite we will roast some marshmallows either on the propane fire or on the open fire pit if we can get one started there.

The message is simple, too often we cancel things because conditions aren’t perfect. We look for excuses when in actual fact it’s just laziness or thinking that because conditions aren’t perfect, the trip might be ruined. In reality, we can make many more opportunities work than we actually take. It just takes a little effort and a small shift in attitude. There were a couple cancellations made by students and/or their parents over the last couple days, and the forecast might have been one of the reasons. Those are the students that lost out. Not a single student here is losing out.

We live on the edge of a rainforest. If we think that rain is a reason to cancel something then we are really missing out on a significant part of the year when we can find joy in the simplest of things.

Camping in the rain might not be as good as camping on a warm, beautiful day, but that doesn’t take away from the opportunity we have regardless of the weather.

Kids are heading back this way now, and so I think I’ll end this right here. I need to be present and enjoy their presence… no matter what the weather looks like.

Boxes Made to Fit

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William (Bill) Ferriter shared a post on LinkedIn about the struggles his daughter is having at school. While I will share a key quote from his post, I encourage you to read the full post here. Bill said,

Should we be failing students who pass unit tests and quizzes but don’t turn in practice tasks? Were those practice tasks essential as a vehicle for preparing students or assessing learning if a student can demonstrate mastery on the unit test without them? How many assignments do we really need to determine if a student is working at or above grade level? Could we use something other than zeros — think codes like INC or placeholder grades like 50s — to report on missing work? Does every student have to do every assignment?

On a more philosophical level, are we cheapening our professional credibility when we report that a student who passes most/all of our quizzes and tests has failed our class? Are grading policies with rigid consequences for missing work effective for encouraging learning? For changing behavior? Is the purpose of grades to report on student mastery of essential outcomes or to report on the ability (or lack thereof) to keep up with schoolwork?

I left Bill the following comment:

In my first year teaching a colleague (also in his first year) was experimenting with grading and asked a simple question that has stuck with me:
“Are we counting marks or marking what counts.”
(See the first half of this old post – if you go past the first half, sorry that the image links seem to be broken.)

My daughter was training 24-26 hours a week in Synchronized Swimming and missed some gym classes going to Provincials and Nationals. Despite consistently being the second fastest girl doing their weekly runs (behind a Provincial level soccer player), she was told at the end of the year she would only get a ‘B’ unless she made up a run and did a volleyball rules quiz she missed.

I share this because it exemplifies the idea of just counting marks.

To me this undermines the professionalism of teaching. It says, ‘We only care about the numbers’, and that my friend is exactly what AI can do better than us. I hope to see educators around the world thinking more deeply about what really matters to students in school. We need to stop building schools and courses like boxes students need to fit into and more like boxes made to fit students!

Being tough vs having high expectations

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In your schooling you’ve probably had some really tough teachers that gave you no slack or leeway, and some of them you might have liked and others you didn’t. What made them tough and likeable versus tough and unlikable?

I think it comes down to high expectations, consistency, and connection.

• When a teacher has high, but realistic expectations the message is that they believe in you and your capabilities. But this is individualized, not every student can achieve the same thing, but every student knows the difference between a teacher wanting them to do better rather than just expecting results they know they can’t achieve.

• When a teacher is fair and shows consistency, students feel respected. Favouritism undermines morale, and invalidates the integrity of the classroom. High expectations can’t be mixed with greater strictness for some students without them feeling picked on.

• When a teacher connects with students and shows genuine interest in them high expectations becomes an honour not a challenge. Students recognize that the teacher wants them, expects them, to be successful… and believes in them.

Having high expectations, being fair and consistent, and genuinely caring and connecting with students can build a classroom environment where a teacher being strict comes across to students as wanting to get the best out of them, and believing in them. But take any one of these three things away and being strict can seem mean, unfair, or even vindictive.

It’s a pretty special classroom where students are all held to a high standard and they feel like their teacher sincerely wants the best out of all of them… and believes in them.

It Works The Other Way Too

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Yesterday I had a great conversation with the teachers from a nearby Grade K-8 home learner’s school in a neighbouring school district. Out high school usually gets 1-3 students from this school a year and these have been some exceptional students.

At one point we reminisced fondly about some of the really special kids they sent our way, and one of the teachers said, “You know, you always hear about how much a teacher matters to a student and how thankful students are for the influence of a teacher, but you don’t hear enough about how a teacher can learn from and be grateful to a student.”

We all agreed.

There are some kids that make teaching special. They are gems. They stand out and they leave a lasting, positive memory. They enrich our lives as educators and remind us why we love to teach. This isn’t just about a teacher’s pet. It’s not necessarily the kid with the best grades, it might even be a kid that’s a bit challenging to teach… but these one-of-a-kind kids inspire us, delight us, humour us, teach us, and/or influence the way we think about teaching, learning, and building community.

So this is a ‘Thank You’ to those kids. It’s a message to say that while we can inspire you and leave you with fond memories of a great teacher, it works the other way too, and you can be a positive influence, admired by your teachers. Thanks to those special students that don’t just go through our classes but also send positive ripples through our lives and the lives of students around them.

One-of-a-kind kids whom we will always remember and be grateful to have taught.

Empowering students

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There is an element of control that needs to be given up by teachers if they are truly empowering students. There has to be a willingness to accept a potential outcome that is less than ideal… An understanding that students won’t always hit the high standard you expect.

This isn’t about lowering standards or expectations, in fact, if you are empowering students you need to make your high expectations clear. Rather, this is the realization that students bite off more than they can chew (or rather can do), and then they end up scrambling to do less and still produce a good product or presentation. It’s an acceptance that a student’s vision doesn’t match yours but their outcome is still good, or (and this is the tough part for teachers) good enough. It’s about mistakes being honoured as learning opportunities rather than as something to penalize.

Empowering students doesn’t happen with outcomes that are exactlywhat the teacher envisioned and expected. Outcomes will vary. Results will be less predictable. But the learning will be rich, authentic, and far more meaningful and memorable for the students… As long as they feel empowered, and are given the space to have autonomy, lead, and learn in ways that they choose.

And while that won’t always end with results that the teacher envisioned or expected, it will always end with learners feeling like they owned their own learning. Shouldn’t that be the essence of a great learning experience?

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Related: Teacher as Compass

Do not go quietly

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16 years ago, January 28, 2008, I shared a presentation I did in with some SFU student teachers. Here is a clunky version on Slideshare. Here is the post I wrote about it. And here is the video I made out of it for a presentation at BLC 08 in Boston.

Do not go quietly into your classroom! 

The video had close to 100,000 views on BlipTV, which died in 2011… like many of the place I shared that you could find me online at the start of the video. A lot of those links are dead now. But this slideshow and video were pivotal in sharing my transformation as an educator who empowered students with technology. I remember the hours I put into timing the slides with the music, and the the relief of finally thinking it was good enough to share.

A day or two before the original presentation to student teachers, I found out I was going to become a Vice Principal. I was inspired to share the things I’d learned and started another blog, “Practic-All – Pragmatic tools and ideas for the classroom.” Where I shared a weekly series called Dave’s Digital Magic. It only lasted for 19 posts, but it was my way to stay plugged into what was going on in classrooms and to have good learning conversations with some of my staff.

So hard to believe this was 16 years ago… And I’m still exploring the Brave New World Wide Web and sharing what I learn along the way.

More bubble wrap

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Back in 2009, while living in Dalian, China, I wrote ‘Bubble Wrap‘ about how overly protected we are in the West compared to other places in the world. Here is the first half of the post:

“After a month in China, I’ve come to realize that North Americans live in a bubble wrapped world.
In the ‘Western’ world we walk around oblivious to our surroundings, going about our business feeling safe and secure. I don’t mean safe in the sense of being cautious of others, since in actual fact, I have always felt safe in China (other than in the occasional taxi), and in fact Dalian feels safer than downtown Vancouver or Toronto when I’m out late at night.  I mean safe, in the West, in the sense that there are laws and bylaws and rules in place to make sure that we are ‘protected’ from unexpected harm: Guardrails and warning sign and lit-up crosswalks with pedestrian controlled lighting abound.
In the bubble wrap West we occasionally read or hear about someone who slips right next to a ‘wet floor’ sign or trips on an uneven curb and they end up blaming and suing others: “It wasn’t safe”, “It was faulty”, “The step was too high” or “The railing was too low”. Our day-to-day environment is safe, secure, sheltered… and sterile.
In China, things are different. Pedestrian walkways are a suggested crossing location and give no rights to the pedestrian. White and yellow lines on the roads are mere suggestions for where a pedestrian should stand as cars zip by at speeds up to 60km/hr, the occasional horn blast reminds you not to make any unexpected moves.
Here, doorways have immediate steps going up or down as you cross the threshold. You must walk with your eyes on the curb as a missing tile, or a sudden step may appear, unexpected by Western terms but fully expected here.”

Since then, I think things have gotten worse rather than better when it comes to safety. Case in point, the ban on cell phones in schools that has happened in other provinces and is about to happen in British Columbia. I can understand that they are a distraction, and I have no problem with schools or teachers having policies about using them appropriately and at appropriate times. But when one of the issues being discussed is student protection, a ban is not the answer.

As quoted in the Premier’s announcement:

“Today, kids live with different challenges than they did a generation ago, and they face them all in the palm of their hand,” said Premier David Eby. “While cellphones, the internet and social media help us connect with each other, they also present risks that can harm kids. The impact and influence of these tools is so great, and the corporations so powerful, it can be overwhelming for parents. That’s why we are taking action to protect kids from the threats posed by online predators and the impacts of social media companies.”

This reminds me of the filtering of websites, which I also was quite opposed to, (beyond porn and gambling as easy examples of things that should not be in schools, as compared to social media and web tools that were being blocked at the time). How do we help teach things like appropriate use when use isn’t allowed? Both my posts that I link to relate to issues at school, but here is another, totally unrelated and quite humorous example:

Last night I went to a washroom in a hotel in downtown Vancouver and saw this sign above a urinal.

Seriously?

We need a sign above a urinal… one that flushes with the water running along the walls of the basin we pee in… to remind us not to drink it. Oh, and not only because that’s not a smart or normal thing to do, but because the water is ‘non potable’?!?

Silly warnings, silly bans, silly attempts to bubble wrap the world.

What are you outsourcing?

Alec Couros recently came to Coquitlam and gave a presentation on “The Promise and Challenges of Generative AI”. In this presentation he had a quote, “Outsource tasks, but not your thinking.”

I just googled it and found this LinkedIn post by Aodan Enright. (Worth reading but not directly connected to the use of AI.)

It’s incredible what is possible with AI… and it’s just getting better. People are starting businesses, writing books, creating new recipes, and in the case of students, writing essays and doing homework. I just saw a TikTok of a student who goes to their lecture and records it, runs it through AI to take out all the salient points, then has the AI tool create cue cards and test questions to help them study for upcoming tests. That’s pretty clever.

What’s also clever, but perhaps now wise, is having an AI tool write an essay for you, then running the essay through a paraphraser that breaks the AI structure of the essay so that it isn’t detectable by AI detectors. If you have the AI use the vocabulary of a high school student, and throw in a couple run-on sentences, then you’ve got an essay which not only AI detectors but teachers too would be hard pressed to accuse you of cheating. However, what have you learned?

This a worthy point to think about, and to discuss with students: How do you use AI to make your tasks easier, but not do the thinking for you? 

Because if you are using AI to do your thinking, you are essentially learning how to make yourself redundant in a world of ever-smarter AI. Don’t outsource your thinking… Keep your thinking cap on!

Imperfectly great

Our open house last night was wonderful! Our students were amazing ambassadors for our school and really did an excellent job with their presentations.

I was discussing it with one of my teachers that did the bulk of the work supporting our students and we reflected on the presentation. My comments were that it was the the worst show we’ve done with respect to the technical side and the best show we’ve done with respect to the messaging.

The technical issues included long(ish) transitions/set up between parts of the show, a live feed failure (beyond our control), a microphone feedback pop right in the middle of a performance, as well as a few mic level issues. The thing is, these weren’t awful, they just weren’t up to our usual high standard.

When speaker Alvin Law came to our school a few years ago at the end of the show he said to me, “What kind of a school is this?” I was a bit confused by the question and he said, “I present all over the place, to big companies with massive budgets, and I’ve never had a sound crew so professional and have the sound work so well as with your kids today.”

I tell sound/tech crews that their job is to be invisible. When a microphone is too quiet, they get noticed, if a microphone pops with feedback or if there is a delay in setup, they get noticed. A good team isn’t noticed because everything works. Last night the tech issues were not awful, they just weren’t perfect. No one in the audience would point it out as disappointing, they would all recognize that this was a student run show and there were a few minor kinks.

That’s the thing about truly letting the students lead, it’s not always going to be perfect, but there is a positive vibe that is given off when students get to run the show, and ‘perfect’ is usually a less than realistic goal.

The overall presentation was really solid, in fact I think the messaging was very focused around student voice and you could hear that throughout the show. It’s funny because I can think back a few years to a show where everything went exactly as planned and the show was pretty much perfect. When I told my teacher that I thought this show was even better than the messaging of that ‘perfect’ show, he agreed and said, that show was too slick. It was polished but student voice didn’t come through.

We’ve gotten pretty good at letting students really lead. We’ve worked with perfectionists who stress about every assignment they hand in and taught them how some things need to be good enough, and helped them rethink the definition of done, while other things they do they should really make as perfect as can be.

While a big presentation to over 160 people should be as perfect as can be, when you are letting students run a show and the students who do so change every year, things won’t go perfectly every time. But the job is done. The presentation is over, and what we saw were some awesome kids, doing their best, and putting on a great show that really showed that they take pride and ownership in our school.

Last night was imperfectly great. The show was not as tight and seamless as we’ve had in the past, but it was authentically a student production. It had student voice, and I thought the messaging was the best we’ve ever shared as a school. Our students were awesome!

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Here’s a short video clip from the event.