IBL

#DBCBookBlogs: Drawn to Teach

/ Alicia Ray / Leave a comment

When I’m reading a book, I take it everywhere I go. Several folks have asked how I read books so quickly (especially during #DBC50Summer). This is how. The book is always with me, so if I have a spare moment or two, I grab it and read another page. Naturally, I kept Drawn to Teach by Josh Stumpenhorst with me and it got quite a bit of attention everywhere I went! I noticed that the reactions ranged widely based on the age of those giving the reaction. Students were pumped to see me reading it while adults gave me odd looks. Curious about why? Check out the cover!

drawntoteach

Check out the inside of the book in this Twitter post from Dave Burgess.

Isn’t it incredible? Trevor Guthke, the artist who created the amazing graphic novel illustrations knocked it out of the water! This awesome book is brought to readers from the IMpress label of Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc.

What Dave doesn’t tell you is the graphic novel portion is hilarious! Josh’s humor is infused throughout and I laughed out loud more than once while reading this book!

 

What’s more: the messages contained within the book are spot on! Josh shares his heart when talking about relationships, what really matters in education (hint: it’s not the test scores), motivation, innovation, technology, and reflection.

Some of my favorite quotes include:

  • “If you are going to ask for feedback, you must act on it.”
  • “…Gold stars and candy will only get us so far.”
  • “If the kids have a positive learning experience, the data will take care of itself.”
  • “Joy has value and we should encourage more of it”
  • “Learning is not a competition with others, but with yourself.”
  • “Students are motivated when they have some level of choice and agency over their learning.”

I believe my absolute favorite quote from the entire book comes from the section that allowed me to relive my time in #DBC50Summer with The Innovator’s Mindset by George Couros. Within the “Innovation” chapter, you’ll find this gem!

“Students who are not allowed to fail at an early age don’t develop the coping skills needed to navigate the bigger and more consequential failures inevitable later in life.” ~Josh Stumpenhorst

Mic. Drop.

Implementation

So… if you’ve been with me for long in these blogs, you know that many times my implementations are not as obvious as trying an idea straight from suggestions in the book. That’s the case here, as well. I already have a rather large collection of graphic novels in our media center, and students check them out all the time! Their understanding of the nuances of reading graphic novels is impressive, and I want to give them the opportunity to take their ability to read a graphic novel a step further. We’re talking consumption to creation!

Here are some awesome graphic novel/comic creators available for free (or with limited features for free) online!

You can also use sites like Canva, Google Drawings, and even use Google Slides in tile view.

I can’t wait to see what my students will create to show their mastery throughout the year using these sites. I’m so pumped to share these with the teachers I serve so they can use them as another option for students! I’m excited to see how my students will react after seeing their reactions to this book. I think they’re going to love it!

Be sure to connect with Josh on Twitter and check out his website here. You can join the conversation using #Drawn2Teach on Twitter! Get a free preview of Drawn to Teach by scrolling to the bottom of this page! You’ll see where you can purchase the book there as well! Because you’re going to want to do just that after you see for yourself how cool this book is! Enjoy!

Innovation Engineers

/ Alicia Ray / Leave a comment

As part of #DBC50Summer journey, I chose to implement at least one thing from each of the first 50 books in the Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc line of professional development books for teachers. When I read the second book, Pure Genius by Don Wettrick, I was blown away by the Innovation Course he taught at the high school level and I wanted to replicate something similar in the middle school I serve. I just wasn’t exactly sure how to make that happen. You can read more about his book in my #DBC50Summer blog post here!

By the time I reached book 35, The Wild Card by Hope and Wade King, I knew I had to create an opportunity for any student to dive into their interests at school, outside of the curriculum they were learning in the classroom. With our tight schedule and limited availability, I was unsure about how I was going to make this implementation work, but I knew that I had to work within the hand I was dealt to still be the wild card! Check out the #DBC50Summer blog post for The Kings’ book here.

Prior to the 2018-19 school year, I “hired” Makerspace Managers to lead the way in our school makerspace. These students filled out an application and Makerspace Mentors, students who had served as previous managers, selected the best from the applicant pool. (Names were hidden on the form responses.) I had also worked in the opportunity for future Makerspace Advisors who had served as managers and mentors, and wanted more responsibility. For the past two years, I had a ton of responses, but in the 18-19 school year, I only had 9 students respond. Each of them appeared to be great candidates, so we selected all nine to join our team. Then… school happened. There was too much going on and the meetings of Makerspace Managers just got lost in the shuffle. What ended up happening was so much cooler than I imagined though!

It’s funny how unintended success can arise from what others might consider to be an epic failure.

Upon seeing that the Makerspace Managers weren’t going to serve in the same capacity as they had in the past, I recalled my implementation plans for Pure Genius and The Wild Card. Talking with the students, I found that their schedules were so packed, they didn’t feel as though they could commit to a year-long once-per-week meeting and they wanted more flexibility.

Thus… Innovation Engineers. This group, which was not a “group” at all, would meet whenever students needed to meet. It could be a small group of students, a partnership, or an individual who wanted to learn more about something they were passionate about. They might stick with I.E. the entire year, or maybe just long enough to complete a project and move on. Some took time off during athletic seasons. Some were there every morning, while others were there every other afternoon. Some stopped by during their lunch, and some popped in during class change to check on their creations. There was a constant flow of students learning about things that they were interested in!  My only requirements…

  1. You must check with me before coming before school or after school to be sure the space is available.
  2. You must have something to show what you’ve done with your time.

It was incredible! In a given week, I’d have a variety of students come by at various times to work on projects. I just opened the space and was the adult in the room. They didn’t need me to do anything but be a listening ear & provider of materials (and in some cases, they didn’t even need that). Here’s some of the projects that came from the Innovation Engineers:

  • A sister duo (6th grader & 8th grader) authored and illustrated a children’s book about fish that blew bubbles of various shapes.
  • Two 8th grade girls wanted to do more about preventing and reporting bullying in our school so they created Safe Haven, a google form created by students for other students to report bullying anonymously. The responses were to go to our principal and school counselor.
  • A 6th grade partnership created an Animation Club. They developed their plan, pitched it to our administration by requesting a formal meeting with a prepared presentation, and successfully held 4 or 5 meetings throughout the spring semester, teaching students how to create animations on iPads, iPhones, and Chromebooks.
  • A 7th grade boy created stop-motion animation videos with Lego bricks.
  • A group of students created YouTube playlists sharing what we have available in the makerspace and how to use it (still working to get these edited and put on the school YouTube channel).
  • A group of students met in the mornings to play chess and discuss the Hamilton musical, learning the words to every song (yes, even the rap in Guns and Ships!!!)
  • A quiet 6th grade girl worked outside of school to create an amazing graphic novel called Wolf Stone!

Check out some of the pictures I was able to grab of students learning more about their own interests or click the links for examples and more information!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

There were many projects that blew me away, but one student in particular worked at least three mornings per week learning a new skill! He spent hours upon hours measuring, cutting, and sewing together fabric for a quilt! His mom’s favorite holiday is Halloween and he wanted to surprise her with a Halloween-themed lap quilt. He worked from October until March proudly showing me when he had another row done each time! He learned the ins-and-outs of our sewing machine in the makerspace. When he realized that our little sewing machine would not be powerful enough to stitch through two layers of fabric and the batting that was placed between it, we were both a bit heartbroken that he likely would not be able to finish it at school. I contacted a community member (my mother) who brought her heavy-duty Husqvarna sewing machine to the school! The student’s teachers allowed him to miss a day of class to work with the seamstress as he finished the quilt! He did every single stitch on his own, learning how to center a quilt and how to finish with the details around the edges! I am so proud of him and can’t wait to see what he does next year! He started knitting at the end of the year and suggested that a friend of his created sketches of clothing design and he’d like to make those designs come to life! It’s going to be so exciting to see what comes next for this amazing young man!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

What I learned through this implementation of Pure Genius and The Wild Card was so much more than I ever dreamed. I knew that the interests of our students are wide and varied, however this experience showed me exactly what our students are capable of when we get out of their way and allow them to dig into their passions!

These students learned so much more than curriculum; they went above and beyond and each student created something they are so proud of! Not a single grade was given. With the exception of the one day with the seamstress, very little was done during the instructional day.

If students are interested and passionate about their learning, they will knock down doors to get in to learn more!

I will definitely be continuing Innovation Engineers in the 2019-2020 school year; it required very little planning on my part & minimal time commitment as I was already at the school for the majority of the time students spent working.

All I did was open the space, gave them ‘supervision’ (as if they needed it, they were engaged and excited the entire time), and got out of their way.

And look what they created! Wow!

Definitely check out the books Pure Genius and The Wild Card and see how you can implement something from each in your own environment!

*It also should be mentioned that every student in our school participated in a Passion Project during their media time with me during this school year, so the opportunity to explore their passions was open to every student. The blog about the Passion Projects will be linked here when it is published!

#DBCBookBlogs: Learner Centered Innovation

/ Alicia Ray / 1 Comment

Back in 2017, George & Paige Couros teamed up with Dave & Shelley Burgess to create a division of Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc. IMPress introduces us to books that dive deeper into the message of The Innovator’s Mindset & continue to showcase what George first brought us in DBC’s ninth book. (See the big announcement on a blog by Dave here.) As of this blog, there are seven books published under the IMPress label.

I am breaking a rule of mine by reading Learner Centered Innovation by Katie Martin first. I have typically read the books in order of their release (this is the second release from IMPress), but I had an amazing opportunity to meet Katie Martin at a What Great Educators Do Differently conference a few weeks ago in Houston, TX. (Blog about this experience is here.) Because I was meeting her, I wanted to dive into her book. I never expected it to take weeks to read it, but more about that in a moment.

LCinnovation

To discover what this book is about, simply read this quote from Katie:

“Many of today’s kids will have to create their jobs and forge a new path. The world has changed so dramatically and will continue to do so at an exponential rate, and, to best serve our students, educators and institutions must evolve with it, or we will leave our students behind.”

-Katie Martin

Katie begins by sharing the beauty of two words: “What if”

She immediately pulled me in by pointing out the traditions in education (as related to the industrial age model) and how that is preventing innovation from taking root in more than just pockets around our schools, district, state, and world.

Evolution of the Teacher’s Role

She shares that our role as educators has evolved. It made me stop and consider if I have evolved with the times. Do I teach like my teachers taught me? Some of my very favorite teachers did the “traditional” courses… desks in rows and columns, the teacher at the front of the room using the whiteboard or overhead to display information, and the students taking all the information in from that teacher. Perhaps their classes weren’t edge-of-your-seat excitement, but I knew those teachers cared about me.

Early in my career, I definitely taught as I’d been taught. I still use storytelling (like my amazing 4th grade teacher), humor (like my 7th grade social studies teacher), and student choice (like my 8th grade ELA teacher).

Katie shares that one of our most prominent roles should be that of an activator. Here are some of the definitions I found for activate:

  • to encourage development or induce increased activity; to stimulate
  • to trigger, to actuate, to set off, to enable
  • to excite
  • to remove the limitations of by providing a license; to unlock
  • to bring a player back after an injury

Even down to the sports definition, I want to be an activator for students! I want to encourage them, stimulate them, enable them to do more than they ever thought they could and then get them excited about doing it. I want to remove their limitations by unlocking endless potential in their minds and hearts. I want to make school fun again, bringing them back to the place of creativity and imagination that so many of our “traditions” in education squash like a bug on a windshield. I want to be an activator.

Testing or Learning?

Katie says, “We will never achieve the results we want by focusing on performing well on a test.” Let me repeat that for those in the back…

“We will NEVER achieve the results we want by focusing on performing well on a test.”

-Katie Martin

Guess what that means? All that time spent painstakingly going over released test items… better spent doing Project-Based Learning where those same problems are relevant to students. All the time spent reading and highlighting short passages using question stems from “the test”… our time is better spent allowing students to select their own reading material & having (wait for it) conversations with them about what they’re reading. You want to use question stems? Ask the questions and don’t expect an A, B, C, or D response.

I’m preaching to me right now, too. Do you have any idea how much time I spent reviewing at the end of each year I was in the classroom?! I flew through curriculum so I could be sure to have enough review time before the standardized test. What if I’d just ensured that students learned the content (and so much more) thoroughly the first time? Imagine the possibilities.

Here’s what I think (and it appears to align with Katie’s beliefs, too)… standardized testing isn’t the bad guy here. It’s the overemphasis on them that gives them a villainous role in education. Think about it… I’m thankful that my students in rural, high-poverty, small town North Carolina are expected to learn the same content and perform at the same level as rich, suburban kiddos. It wouldn’t be fair for the standards to be different for those groups of students; set the bar high, I’m okay with that! However, when we focus so much on the outcome of those tests rather than the process and growth, I have a problem.

This test season take the time to have fun! Play games, make learning authentic, give students an audience like never before… I truly believe that “the test” will take care of itself if students are having a good time while learning the content.

Professional Learning Communities

I remember hearing about PLCs for the first time many years ago. The idea that teachers were to work together to create lessons with common assessments and “share” students was insane to us. Until that point, we were in competition due to the aforementioned test scores. Several teachers didn’t want other teachers to know what they were doing successfully because that teacher might use it and (God forbid) the students down the hall might perform better than their own. If you’ve been in education long enough, you remember this and you know I am speaking truth.

Our PLCs turned into exactly what Katie talk about in her book. It was a checklist. The questions she shares… the exact questions we had to answer each week. It became a running joke because we knew those questions by heart the same way we knew the script for the end-of-grade testing by heart.

Thankfully, I was part of a PLC that was exceptional. We worked together, co-planned lessons, shared everything, switched up students for flexible grouping as needed, and when one teacher’s students performed better on a given objective, that teacher taught our students, too! I knew every student in 5th grade’s name and to be honest, I see some of those students now (many are high school/college age) and I honestly can’t remember if they were on my roster or not because I taught them as much as those in my class. It took a lot of time to get to that place; we had arguments, petty things mostly. We got on one another’s nerves. It wasn’t all rainbows and roses, but we were a rocking PLC. We celebrated birthdays together; our kids played together; we laughed together and cried together. We even did graduate school at the same time. The three of us left the school one after the other. I truly believe it’s because we didn’t want to do the job without the others; we had experienced a true PLC and struggled to replicate it. One became an administrator and moved to a high school during the summer months, I left halfway through the year to begin my journey as a media coordinator, and the third left at the end of that year to move to a middle school library position.

Katie’s book reminds us that the same things we know that are true about building relationships with our students is true of our colleagues. “We are more willing and able to hear critical feedback when it is coming from someone who we perceive cares about us as individuals, sees our strengths, and is willing to invest the time to help us grow.”

««»»

It took me over three weeks to finish this book. If you’ve been around for any of #DBC50Summer, you know that means something. Katie’s book covers so much ground. It’s all interwoven and connected to everything that has the potential to make education what it should be for children (and adults). In many ways, after reading this, I don’t even know that we need to do anything but submit this book to Congress and tell them that THIS is how we should be doing school and begin implementing it nationwide. I have to tell you… when you get your own copy of this one, carve out time to really read it. It’s not a “light” read; you need your brain fully activated (see what I did there) while you’re reading it. I have notes all over the margins of this book and didn’t even use a highlighter because I knew I’d need three or four of them as I read.

««»»

Implementation

This implementation will begin next year. I still have several implementations of #DBC50Summer and previous #DBCBookBlogs to do and only a few weeks left to do them. In the implementation post Creating a Stronger Foundation, I shared that I created a template for 6th grade students to tell me about themselves. In Learner Center Innovation, Katie shares about a teacher who stopped asking students about their favorite color, etc and instead asked for an open-ended list – “The Top Ten Things I Need to Know About You”. I’m 100% doing this! I can keep the template I had created, but add ten slides at the end with students putting one thing I need to know about them on each slide. They can add pictures, videos, etc to that slide if they’d like. I love the open-ended nature of this as it will allow me to get to know them better and deeper much faster!

Remember to get your own copy of Learner Centered Innovation by Katie Martin! It’s the second book in the IMPress line, a division of DBC, Inc. You won’t regret it! And if you have the chance to see Katie in action, I highly recommend going! She is also an amazing presenter! Follow along with the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #LCinnovation!