Troublemakers

Labels irk the heck out of me.

The fact that we label students as "troublemakers" really irritates me, even though I've done it myself.

I've been waiting (why have I been waiting?) to read this one for a bit, and it did not disappoint, as I read it in two days...

The canary and cage on the front have two meanings. The most obvious is from Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," and the less obvious is the one that distressed me the most. Miners used to take canaries down in the mines with them, as they served as warnings about the air quality. If a canary were to die, the miners had to get out. When a child is singing loudly, we need to heed that as a warning that something is wrong in this classroom. Most likely, it's the imbalance of power.

Most of what Carla Shalaby shares is about a child's need to feel free - to feel as if they're in some sort of control - to feel HUMAN.

The four students the author chose to focus on were in what seemed to me GREAT schools. She asked the principal to share two teachers of high caliber. And to those teachers, she asked, "Who of your students is the most troublesome?" These are the four she shadowed for a bit - at school, and when possible, at home. What I found kind of amusing and kind of sad is that the behaviors these four first graders exhibited were some of the very same behaviors I see in some seventh graders.

I can see and understand the messages she shares about the young black students not having any adults at school to look to for models. I can see how schools are conforming students to ... basically act white. When I think of my own students, the ones that I lose sleep over happen to be white. My school has a high white population (and I, too, am white). The author is upset about students' exclusion to a different part of the room or a different room altogether. I do not worry about physically excluding students, but I may exclude them unintentionally if I call them out on something in front of the entire class.

What I was really struck by was the conformity we expect of our students.

The author points out that educators want compliance because that's what's expected in schools. That's how we can get our lessons across, and that's how the school culture simply IS.

While she was sharing the stories of the four seven-year-olds, I couldn't help but think of my own students, and I was reminded of a few things:

• Students really don't have much control at school, especially compared to at home. No matter how much we think we have student-directed learning or choice or voice, this book forced me to consider how much I actually control, and how much the school culture actually dictates.
• Many students learn that the culture of school is to listen and obey.
• Some students are simply just being themselves. Their personalities may differ from those of the majority of the class, or else the majority has figured out it's safer to hide or squash their true personalities at school.
• "Different" is often perceived as causing trouble.
• Many (most?) children have a natural tendency to want to learn. What do we do at school that dissolves that initiative? We have a curriculum to teach. I wonder how many times our curriculum is not something each child would choose to learn each day...
• Teachers often pigeonhole children into doing what we do, and doing it how we do it.
• We may have 25 students in class. We don't always make the time to help answer questions from inquisitive minds, and yet we encourage them to be inquisitive. We want them to think for themselves, and when they do, it can cause a disturbance. We want them to be independent, but only under our parameters.
• We need to listen to individual students.
• We need to get to know our students even more.
• We need to let them know when we are proud of them.
• We need to notice and name the good they do.
• We need to see them (or imagine them) outside of school - how does what they're doing in school look like outside of school? Might what they're doing actually help them somehow outside of the school setting?
• Stop labeling students! Making trouble is a verb - not a noun. It's not something to fix. It's something to explore.
• Just because a student is a "good student" does not mean that he or she will succeed outside of school. Compliance does not always equal success. We put so many limits on students in school - how will they succeed when they're left on their own? We want children to find their identities, to figure out their strengths, to be confident, to have a voice in decisions... We need to give them the room to do so - without fear of punishment, or worse, exclusion.

At the end of the book, I still wanted MORE. I wish I could copy the entire conclusion and her note to teachers here. Instead, this will be your advertisement to read this book if you have not yet. The author does not solve our problems with these so-called "troublemakers." She leaves it to us and our students. I have a tiny idea of what I can do when I return to school after this two-week break, and yet I know my students will have to help me figure it out. They have many more ideas than I ever will, and maybe we can get to the root of what they need from me.

My favorite quote: 

How stressful it must be to be a young person in our schools! How unsafe and frightening it must be to wonder - as you witness the next punishment and rejection of one of your peers - if you will be next. That kind of conditional acceptance, subjective belonging, contingent care, must feel terribly threatening to children, whom we know are biologically wired to make illogical choices as their brains continue to develop. They make mistakes and they make bad decisions - don't we all? Especially when we are stressed, feeling unsafe, and suffering?

Fire Drill Frustration

It was time to exit. Didn't matter where you were or what you were doing, it was time to leave the building. The fire alarms were singing their song...

I went down a different exit this time. I'd never been out this side of the building during a fire drill. I followed the swell of students down the hall, down the stairs, and we got jammed up a little heading out the double doors. No shoving at all - the students were calm, quiet, and orderly. Suddenly a coworker was just to the front left of me, yelling "GET MOVING!" turning her head (and voice) - right - in - my - face.

I didn't hesitate. I yelled back, "WE ARE!" and kept moving forward.

I could feel the smoke coming out of my ears. I was furious. Furious with her yelling in the midst of the calm, with the message of her words (we were moving just fine - we're not supposed to run, correct?), with the irony of making sure kids are calm and quiet, and with myself.

I yelled back at a coworker. What is WRONG with me?! I hadn't been emotional lately. I hadn't been stressed out. I hadn't been under the gun when the alarm went off. I wasn't worried that it was a real fire. I was just... royally ticked off.

I tell my team that I may be in trouble (or at least get some flack) from this coworker. I relayed the story. I guess I was preparing them for if they heard otherwise. I went home. I processed with Hubby. I fell asleep. (I'm a very good sleeper!) I woke up. And I felt guilty.

I tweeted this out to my PLN:

I went to school, hoping I wouldn't see her, even though I hardly ever do. I forgot about it for most of the day. Then, I received an email from an educator (I've never met in person) from my online PLN. She sent me a sweet message that included this video from Brené Brown:


I teared up when I watched it (no, I have NOT been emotional lately!) at school, then shared it with  my husband at home. This is how I'm trying to live my life. I've got a HOST of "permission slips" in my pockets. I am uncool. And I am okay with it.

When that teacher wants to chat about it, I'll be able to chat calmly.

Coping with Curmudgeonliness

You've received an attack from a parent or another teacher.

My husband says, "I'll bet no teacher goes unscathed." Even the teacher that is at school, available to students from 7:00-7:45am, lunch, and then again from 2:45-4:00pm - every day - has been chastised by a parent for "not being available for my child." Consider the teacher that has never once stepped foot in your classroom and yet has told other teachers that kids in your classroom "just have fun," and "there's no real learning happening." There may even be rumors about you that you hear through someone else. Teachers are not immune to attack. We have 60 or up to 300 or so parents who might not read what we send home, or might not talk with their children before they chat with us. We are in a culture where it seems people complain more publicly than they compliment. There are many variables that make people say what they do. We cannot control what happens in these people's lives. We cannot control what they say to or about us. We need to control our own thoughts about it, however, or our mental stress will manifest itself into physical stress. This physical pain or sickness can keep us out of school.

Here's what we CAN do:

Find someone at your school you can chat with on a regular basis. Be supportive for them, and they'll be there for you. No need to spend hours commiserating... just enough to know that you've both got some struggles in life. You're not alone, and you have many blessings for which to be grateful.

Turn to words. The red words in the Bible, the quotes from books you're (hopefully still) reading, your favorite bloggers, or just find inspiration online. Heck, I've even had a "quotes" column open on my Tweetdeck. You never know what you'll find there!

Go outside. Go for that walk, that bike ride, that lunch on a picnic table. In the winter, get out and get your cheeks and ears red. Get outside with the goal of getting some fresh air and sun.

Collect all the positive vibes you get - emails from parents, cards from students, quotes from great times in your classroom. Collect them so you can look through them when that one voice of many keeps crawling around trying to infect your thoughts.

And what else can we do? Ask other teachers! It's what I did!

Here are ideas curated from a session at EdCamp lake County on December 9, 2017 from about 40 or so teachers!

Our mental health is oh, so very important. Don't let a curmudgeon make you lose sight of what you're doing and why. Sure, we should re-evaluate what we're doing all the time, but once we regroup, we need to find ways to let it go...

Challenge Your Own Ideas

I just finished reading The Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening true story of a whiz kid and his homemade nuclear reactor, by Ken Silverstein, from 2004.

David Hahn lived in Commerce Township, MI (a suburb of Detroit), and loved science. He wanted to collect each element on the periodic table. He wanted to... well, you can tell by the title of the story. Feel free to read it for details, but this is not a book review.

This is what caught my eye, from my teaching viewpoint:

If he'd been interested, David would have found it a simple matter to learn about the cons as well as the pros of the atomic age. But as with newfound converts to any cause, David wanted his ideas reinforced, not challenged. Certainly, the Curies and some of the other nuclear pioneers had suffered as a result of their labors, but that hadn't kept them out of the laboratory. For David, as for his heroes, the thrill of discovery made worthwhile any risks. (p 56)

Myriad stories of nuclear disasters and failed breeder reactors later...

Hence, despite coming of age at a time in which all the assorted screwups and accidents of the atomic age had generated a powerful antinuclear movement, David remained comfortably cocooned within the confident optimism of the 1950s and 1960s. His passion for the atom was fueled by the conservative family and community environment in which he was raised, as well as a natural aversion to intellectual challenge (which does not bode well for a career in science). "I tried not to read anything that would disappoint me or make me negative," he said candidly of his research strategy. "If I knew it had a critical perspective, I wouldn't even pick it up." (p 133)

YES. I remember when I first started learning about Genius Hour, I would NOT look at any blog posts or articles that went against what I wanted to hear. After awhile, however, words written against this type of learning really stuck in my head. I started to leave comments on their blog posts, sharing my thoughts. I really didn't want to see what they wrote back, but gradually I became interested more in the conversation than the one-sided "echo chamber" that I had fallen into. I created a new tab on the LiveBinder for opposing views.

My seventh graders experienced something similar this week. No matter how much we stress that we discuss ideas so that we may LEARN from others, I have a few who believe in one way or the other and will NOT budge during a fishbowl discussion... yet. They do NOT want to hear the other side... yet. They say they are listening, and yet they keep going back to what they'd already said before, or they share more of their own ideas, not even taking time to acknowledge that someone else spoke. They wanted to continue the discussion in the next period because, "I just have one more thing I need to say."

My last class, however, came to find peace in their fishbowl discussion on Friday. They admitted that there are different perspectives, from different times in the story. I happened to catch it on camera.
After this was said, their discussion petered out, and they agreed to disagree, without any animosity afterwards. They're learning to accept different opinions - so difficult at this age. I have a plan to help my other two classes see different perspectives the next time we conduct a fishbowl discussion... I'll let you know how it goes in a future post!

As teachers, we NEED to research. It's our duty to seek the opposition. Seek out other educators who have tried what we want to try in the classroom. Read or hear their stories of triumph, and of failure. Read about successes they celebrated and pitfalls they endured.

I believe it's also our duty to share what we're trying, so we can INVITE opposition. I share with parents every two weeks (our class updates are here). When parents express that they are not happy about something I'm doing (or not doing) in the classroom and my ideas are challenged, I become more reflective. I see through another lens and question the ideas once again. I conduct more research. I ask more questions. When educators challenge my ideas on Twitter or on this blog, I can now see it as an opportunity to GROW.

Here's my challenge for you: Start a blog if you haven't already. Write about what's important to you. Share your ideas. Watch your reflection become more useful, and watch your ideas develop and change. Do not become like David Hahn - in jeopardy of hurting yourself or those around you. Share, and seek responses - positive or negative.

Ready to start your blog? Here are seven tools compared by Richard Byrne!

Rules

I've taken the liberty of capitalizing beginnings of tweets, completing words, and adding ending punctuation on this conversation via Twitter four days ago...

"Not a fan of genius hour or other schemes to justify rest of the school day being laborious or irrelevant" -Gary Stager, Ph.D.
"The word 'scheme' hit me hard. #Geniushour affects 100% of the week" sent with an attachment to the link to a blog post where I defend Genius Hour. -me
"Why call it an hour then?" -Stager
"Don't think the name matters. Isn't it about kids thinking and building a passion for learning?" -Kathy Turley
"Of course the name matters. Words matter." -Stager
"Words DO matter. I'm fortunate I have 1hr/wk that changes the other 4hrs students & I have together." -me
"Don't care about Dan Pink. Why not read Dewey, Hawkins, Kohl, Meier, Littky, a Papert, Malaguzzi?" -Steger
"They all have something to offer. Everyone has their favorites doesn't mean 'Pink* is wrong.'" -Ihor Charischak
"Pink makes up stuff and spreads junk science. He's wrong." -Steger
"Have read most of those but why not package it for people. G.H. is one way to use what they say." -Jarrod Lamshed
"The challenge with packaging GH = it becomes consumable & discarded and when the package is discarded, the underlying principles often go along with it." -Dave Quinn
     * Pink = Daniel Pink, author of Drive (one book some teachers link to Genius Hour)

And I'm in a sour mood for the next two days...
I don't get it. Why not support something that COULD POSSIBLY BE one way teachers can BEGIN the process of letting students take over their own learning? Does it matter what you read that gives you idea of letting students ENJOY school while taking ownership of their learning? Does it matter that people may be "packaging" it, but they like at least a portion of what they're seeing from students - and it's more choice than their students have ever had? Heaven forbid it changes the rest of their week with students, or maybe their outlook during future years! Harrumph.

Skip two more days...

Holland Michigan - where my love and I would rendezvous and eventually get married! We visited on our three-year anniversary this year to unplug, relax, and enjoy the water. One of our stops: Kirk Park

Here - they have rules, warnings, and guidelines... .......All    the    way    to    the    beach.

Some people can look at them and think... this park will be no fun. I won't be able to do ANYthing. And then... they get to the beach...see and hear the waves...feel the sand between their toes...

It got me thinking about all the rules teachers and students have. A quick overview of a student's morning at my middle school:
     Rule 1: No biking or skateboarding on school property.
     Rule 2: No throwing snow on school property.
     Rule 3: When you walk in the door, no hats allowed.
     Rule 4: Turn off any devices and leave them (and your jacket) in your locker; get to homeroom.
     Rule 5: Sit in your seat and be quiet while we listen to announcements.
     Rule 6: Stand for the pledge of allegiance.

Phew! And that's all in the first ten minutes of a student's day!

What about teachers? I have at least two rules imposed on me:
     Rule 1: Create and maintain a safe environment where children can learn.
     Rule 2: Cover curriculum.

Some people will look at student and teacher rules and think... this is so hard on the students... no BYOT... maybe scripted curriculum... how can they cover all that curriculum in one year... students won't be able to do ANYthing fun. And then... they visit the classrooms... see and hear student engagement in various ways... see curriculum being covered and (GASP!) students smiling...

What are school rules for?
     SAFETY
     RESPECT for learning

Would anyone doubt this? If I don't like the rules I have to teach by, I could leave. The facts are, however, the reason for the rules makes sense. I like my school. I even like to follow rules. I don't like to make waves. I will work my hardest at covering the curriculum in the few hours I have with my seventh graders. I will work with other teachers as to how this can best be accomplished. I will try to keep my students having FUN while learning the curriculum. AND... I will also have one hour of my five hours with children where they can pursue their own learning.

I am currently not in a position to change my entire school or my entire district. Nor do I have the drive or energy to do so. I do not even pretend to have the knowledge of HOW to do so. How many teachers are like me? How many want to begin to change students' lives by making a difference in his or her own class? If so, it cannot hurt to try something similar to Genius Hour. And if you don't like the name, by all means - change it. Here is a list of some other names, or create your own. I've defended the name I use here. The whole point of this type of learning --> to engage students, to help them imagine and then express their creativity, to help them discover their passions, and to encourage them to use their own genius to make a difference in their world. I just cannot sit back and watch as some teachers trash good ideas - just because it may not be possible for some 100% of the time.

Compare class to the beach. Even with all these rules, I found time to swim in the water, play frisbee, build a sand castle, splash around, and even read my "assigned" summer reading book...

If you want to work in a building or district in which the "genius hour" or "20 percent time" philosophy IS truly 100% of the time, try one of these schools. If you want to stay where you are and make a difference in your own classroom, try - at every opportunity - to give your students choice in HOW they learn your curriculum, and choice in WHAT they learn. Then please share with the world what you are doing in your classroom that is making a difference. It doesn't have to be ALL or NOTHING. Some people have a hard time starting small. I won't be knocking them for trying - I'll be supporting them all I can.

I Don't Do Countdowns

"Five more days!"
"This is the last Tuesday until break!"
"Remember, only three days left!"
"One more wake up!"

I don't do countdowns.
In fact, I can't stand them.
I can't believe I used to join in countdowns with my students.. or worse yet - LEAD them.

Don't get me wrong - At times, I countdown - IN MY HEAD. I do not celebrate countdowns in front of students. If I'm having a particularly tough week, I may get excited that Friday is coming. I also get excited when there's a great professional development in sight (see the countdown calendar to the right of this blog). However, you won't find me making a calendar, crossing off dates, taking numbers down, or saying anything to students about the end of a school week, quarter, or year.

What's wrong with a little "celebration?"
     Some students actually look forward to school. YES. Hooray for them!
     Some students would rather be at school than at home, for various reasons.
     I'd like students to think that I actually LIKE being there with them. (Of course - I DO!)

I'm tired of countdowns that signal the end of a school week.

That being said, there are nine more days until I get to see my students once more!

I am excited to come back to school refreshed, and ready to make our days COUNT.

5/2019 addition- Angela Watson's thoughts...

#EdCampHOME Experience

I've been to four EdCamps in one year. I LOVE edcamps!

So when I saw tweets about an idea of an online edcamp, I was intrigued. Online would mean I could attend in my pajamas! Well, the dream of four pioneers - David Theriault (@davidtedu), Karl Lindgren-Streicher (@LS_Karl), Kelly Kermode (@coachk) and Shawn White (@swpax) - was realized today, with #EdCampHOME.

How many behind-the-scenes conversations were there between these four? Well, I follow each of them, so I see plenty of their conversations in my Twitter feed. They bounced ideas off of each other very often, and were in many Google Hangouts prior to today. Only they can tell you how many hours of planning and family time was sacrificed for this endeavor!

They only asked a few things of us beforehand - Register, sign in to the Google+ community, change our Google+ name to be an actual name, and if I remember correctly, fill in some quick form. Check, check, check, check. I thought I was ready for today.

Hah! Didn't everybody?!

The build up on the #edcampHome hash tag was tremendous - everybody was geeked! My husband said something I had to tweet out:

It got many retweets - teachers are so geeky at heart - myself included!

Finally, it was time...

What was next? We went to edcamphome.org and watched the livestream of David, Karl, Kelly, & Shawn. (If you ever think you'd like to try something like this, watch all three hours of this video - you'll learn of many obstacles they had to overcome!) They seemed excited and nervous, and ready to go! Of course Kelly had to start with technical difficulties, and we couldn't see her "live," but that was fixed by the end of the three hours. Who knew what other difficulties would arise? They showed their tenacity and their passion to make this work shone through!

Participants next put ideas on a LinoIt board:

Ideas started rolling in faster than the organizers could distribute and organize them. Kelly actually had to ask us to hold off on adding any more ideas, they were appearing so fast! She then (amazingly) took these ideas and had participants fill out a Google form. We chose three sessions we'd most like to see.

As they were discussing these items live, tweets were still flying - everybody was ready to jump in - even people who were not registered. They discussed having two sessions for (can you believe it?) Genius Hour, two for inquiry-based learning, and two for augmented reality. Now they just needed more moderators and they had to rope in some facilitators.

I thought this would be an easy day for me. I'd already declined an offer from Shawn and then an offer from David to moderate a session (I'm not THAT techie!). I'd told them a week or two ago that I was scared of messing it up. And today I was going to learn something NEW! I was going to get in on that augmented reality chat to see what that was all about. Alas, it was not meant to be. David asked if I'd facilitate a Genius Hour chat. How could I say no this time?!?! I promised to ask more questions than talk...

Then they opened the document where you put your Google+ name if you want to be invited - so chaotic, as so many people were trying to access it at once. It got sorted out (again - amazing!), and sessions got under way. I was not comfortable facilitating a discussion, but I knew I would get through it, and I knew I'd be better off for it... somehow! Little did I know what I'd read in Angela Maiers (@AngelaMaiers) book, Classroom Habitudes, later that afternoon!

My computer started "ringing," and I answered the invite to my first EdCampHome Google Hang Out. 

This. Was. AWESOME.

Here is a recording of our discussion - Robyn (@RobynThiessen) and I were the only ones in ours who have tried Genius Hour, so I did talk more than I planned, but our group asked some stellar questions. I felt very fortunate. Thank you to Kevin Fairchild (@kfairchild6) from California for being our fearless moderator! (Note: This recording is not yet on the edcamphome.org site, but when it is, I'll put that link here, too.) Kind of crazy that I "met" two other Illinois teachers in this discussion, we had Robyn from British Columbia, Canada, and Sean Cole (@SeanHCole) from South Africa!

And here is the second session:

I really feel like I was part of history. 

Thus, the reason for this blog post!

I did my small portion to help the day along, but the four exceptional educators - 

David, Karl, Kelly and Shawn 

- they really hit it out of the park...

On this day in 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. 

On this day in 2013, hundreds of educators from around the world came to discuss ways of teaching...

It's as if you were there... Recorded discussions archived here:

     Session #1

     Session #2