tweenteacher.com » collaboration

How “Lost” is like Education

heather — Mon, 24 May 2010 03:48:36 +0000

So here I am watching “Lost: The Final Journey,” and I heard the following exchange between the producers and cast that (as does much these days) got me thinking about education:

Carlton Cruse (Producer): The first really profound moment on the show was at the end of the first season when we had the raft launch.

Daniel Dae Kim (Jin): I thought it was pretty great. Pretty seaworthy, I mean it looked… it was a raft. Those guys made it out of materials that they found that could have been on the island.

Cruse: You know this raft was a real measure of hope for show….the idea that they could actually get off the island.

Kim: I felt it was a culmination of all the work that people had put in for a very difficult year, and I felt that it was a celebration of where the show started from and where it had come.

Cruse: It’s one of those moments when you realize that making a television series is an incredibly collaborative effort. It’s about literally 300 people doing something in unison. You know, we had written the scene, but then you see the film and you see the way Jack Bender executed the scene, you then you see the emotion that all the actors brought. Then on top of that we went to the scoring stage with Michael Giacchino and the cue was so beautiful that when it was over everyone was crying because it was playing and the images of the raft launch was going on, and they all started tapping their bows against their instruments and clapping. It was just this profound, emotional moment.

Kim: To see the magic of television make that into a scene that became as epic as it was…it’s almost mythological…it’s almost like Homer taking off on his odyssey. It’s a heroic journey. It was awe-inspiring…

And so should it be for education. So should it feel for every moment a light bulb goes off over a student’s head or a student receives a hard-earned grade, certificate, or diploma.

For education is a collaborative effort as well. To see a student toward success takes effort from thousands more than just 300 people. It takes members from families, it takes teachers, peers, administrators, members of the school Boards, support from the neighborhood and community, and funding from the government.

If only Michael Giacchino could score each of our hopeful moments and our successes as well. For there are many.

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Post tags: collaboration, education, lost

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“Podcasting with 70 Middle Schoolers”: CUE 2010

heather — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:53:25 +0000

Thank you to everyone who attended my session today at CUE on “Podcasting with 70 Middle Schoolers.” As promised, here is the keynote itself to peruse at your leisure. As with everything on my site, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License .

Bottom line: please feel free to use it in the classroom and for educational purposes. It’s my pleasure to share.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4234943/CUE%20podcasting%20FINAL.key.zip

-Heather WG

aka Tweenteacher

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Post tags: collaboration, education, k-12, podcasting

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When the Aliens Attack, Will Education Unite?

heather — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 04:53:00 +0000

I just took a look at the recently released Metlife Survey of the American Teacher, and its section on “Effective Teaching and Leadership.” This section of the survey reported much about the opinions of teachers and administrators, focusing much of its findings on the role of collaboration on school sites.

And it kind of got me thinking about alien attacks. I mean, if an alien were to attack our planet, would all of our disputes stop? Would countries drop their feuds, cease their fighting, and unite against a common enemy?

And in education, who exactly, is the enemy?

Well, according to the Metlife Survey, teachers and administrators might just find that they see more eye to eye then they thought. According to the survey, most teachers (67%) and most administrators (78%) agree that “greater collaboration among teachers and school leaders would have a major impact on improving student achievement.” In addition, both teachers (80%) and principals (89%) “believe that a school culture where students feel responsible and accountable for their own education would have a major impact on improving student achievement.”

Perhaps it seems obvious. After all, doesn’t everybody feel this way? But in the face of issues like student achievement and accountability, it can be confusing to know where anyone stands. I mean there are those outside of education that actually believe it is all the fault of the teachers. Others believe it is all the fault of the administrators. But, it’s almost a relief to see a study that at least reports that perhaps for those of us within education’s walls there is more unity than we thought.

Sometimes school sites can take on an “us vs. them” mentality. Collaboration time may be cut, common preps may be difficult to schedule in the master calendar, but clearly according to the survey, it is not because of philosophical differences between factions.

These days, I find myself on my own school site, united with my principal in grief. So it is a time in education to leave behind the “us vs. them” mentality, to unite behind the shields of our own commonalities against the sadness that can plague a school site and against the sadness of the possibly darker times to come.

So in today’s climate of budget cuts, who exactly are the enemy?

I don’t have a clear answer. But I do know that, as Shakespeare’s King Henry said, “For he who stands with me today shall be my brother.” And be it teacher or administrator, I will fight by their side.

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Post tags: accoutability, assessment, collaboration, metlife, student achievement, survey

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Why I’m Jealous of Teach For America or Collaboration on the Can

heather — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:29:21 +0000

I don’t mean to whine, but I’m feeling neglected. For all my questions about the eventual impact on education with TFA, I find myself a little pouty that they get all this professional development and I don’t.(...)
Read the rest of Why I’m Jealous of Teach For America or Collaboration on the Can (709 words)

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What Every 5th Grader REALLY Needs to Know

heather — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:15:37 +0000

So I’ve become a Guy Kawasaki fan. It all started when I was searching for commencement day speeches for my Speech and Debate team to compete with. I found his “Hindsight”. (...)
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Post tags: assessments, collaboration, education, guy kawasaki, k12, middle school, testing, twitter

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Student-Designed Schools

heather — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:47:19 +0000

This year, my 8th graders all produced a multi-genre project during 4th Quarter that focused on possible careers of their choice. But I went a step further with my 8th grade Honors class. They not only had to research a possible career, but they then had to each relate it to educational reform and school design.(...)
Read the rest of Student-Designed Schools (680 words)

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Marzano con’t & Corporate Sponsorship in Education

heather — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:00:53 +0000

There’s a really interesting discussion thread going on at the Interactive Whiteboard Revolution ning. It all began with my post recapping Robert Marzano’s position on the influence of IWB technology when he presented at the CUE conference this year. You can read the thread here.

One of the most interesting arguments going on is in the importance of whether or not Marzano is sponsored by Promethean (he is) and whether or not this somehow corrupts his findings (it shouldn’t). As Peter Kent points out, “Corporate sponsorship is common practice. The MIT Media Lab (created by Papet and highly reputable) and currently including Mitch Resnik of Scratch fame has over 60 corporate sponsors including the possibility to having an employee of a sponsor work in the Media Lab. There is also the opportunity for a sponsor to work closely with a principal investigator and a graduate student in a specific area. My point is that corporate sponsorship of educational research is both common and necessary.”

I’ve written on this topic before when I’ve said that I think there is a future in education as a privately sponsored entity. In my earlier post, “Walmart Presents: (insert some president’s name) Middle School,” I previously wrote, (...)
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Teaching Secrets: Finding a Job That You Love

heather — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 01:33:00 +0000

Know a teacher who got a pink slip? Maybe my newest post at Teacher Magazine can help. Click here for the article.

It’s Step 1 of my Top Secret New Teacher Handbook. Hope it creates some shortcuts, a machete even, through the education jungle.

-Tweenteacher

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A teacher’s duty?

heather — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:05:18 +0000

So by now I assume we’ve all heard of the sanctioned “cage fighting” in a Dallas, TX school. As AP reports, school officials apparently condoned the use of a steel cage in which students could bare-knuckle fight their way towards agreement. Great peer mediation program, right?

But why is it that only the worst of the worst appears in the news, as if this level of inappropriateness was a common disease facing education today?

I was corresponding with Teacher Leader Network all-around-awesome-guy John Norton, and we stumbled on an interesting point which relates to this issue of highly publicized educational indecency. And it kinda got me thinking.

Sure, I’m frustrated by the ease in which the news reports the horrible, inbred cousins of education. Sure I tire of the publicity behind those YouTube worthy rants, those rare abuses in schools made seemingly frequent, as if they were a chronic problem along with the achievement gap and childhood obesity.

But I feel that we as teachers in the trenches have a duty to battle this poor publicity.

Teachers of yore were quite isolated, closing their door and teaching in their solitary rooms. Some still do, but the job has changed. Collaboration has become a key to our survival. Teaching with transparency and an open-door policy has become necessity, evidence of our ability. Some of why this is necessary is because test scores and observations have become the go-to way to evaluate a teacher (but that’s for another post). Another reason is that our challenges and our horrors have become far more public than our glories.

Whose fault is that? I blame us.(...)
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Top 10: How to Take Control of Your Teaching

heather — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:00:00 +0000

Occasionally, I repost this article so that new readers can find it more easily. Based on some very enthusiastic feedback, it has since morphed into a book proposal called The Top Secret New Teachers Handbook. I’ll share more as it evolves…

I’ve been developing this Top 10 list of ways to take control of your teaching even in the face of, well, teaching. It’s an advice list on how to encourage respect, and, if necessary, how to demand it as a means to make sure you aren’t being taken for granted.

Let’s face it, if you are feeling appreciated, you will be happier in this difficult job. Consequently, your students will be happier, and quite frankly, if they are happier, they will be more successful. After all, an unhappy teacher’s room has the smog of misery in it, and for a student, it hovers like a stench that affects their own victories. And while it benefits a school to keep its teachers happy, it is a teacher’s responsibility to demand those things that make this challenging job better than tolerable.

I think that finding those tricks or strategies to keep in your pocket is important in any career; but in education you need them even more so. Otherwise, the day-to-day duties of the job will eventually grind your enthusiasm to a halt and it won’t just be you who is affected, your students will be affected as well.

I will be expanding on each of these over time, but in a nutshell, here’s my TOP 10:

(...)
Read the rest of Top 10: How to Take Control of Your Teaching (1,396 words)

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The Death of Teacher Conferences or I Can’t Believe I Miss My Canvas Bag

heather — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:43:59 +0000

So, CATE (the California Association of Teachers of English) just came to an end. The hotel was lovely. All ran smoothly. We were greeted with smiles aplenty, and everything ran on time. Sheridan Blau, Kelly Gallagher, Carol Booth Olson, Taylor Mali, Jim Burke. They all presented there.

But despite it all, CATE is clearly a conference (along with others) that is struggling for breath amidst budget cuts.(...)
Read the rest of The Death of Teacher Conferences or I Can’t Believe I Miss My Canvas Bag (479 words)

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Starting from scratch in teacher training

heather — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:49:36 +0000

I recently heard Judy Willis (of “syn-naps” fame) speak at a conference. In her pre-teaching life, she was a neurologist and she brings her knowledge to the classroom and to her lectures. (See my recently published article in Teacher Magazine, “My Brilliant Second-Career”). Willis mentioned that she had just gotten back from Dubai where her charge was to teach new teaching program students about brain development and how it relates to education.

Questions she tackled with these candidates were:

How do children and adolescents learn?

What actually happens in the brain in order to hear and retain information?

What are proven strategies that help information to become embedded into long-term memory?

(...)
Read the rest of Starting from scratch in teacher training (169 words)

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Here’s why test scores shouldn’t be the only criteria…

heather — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:10:37 +0000

OK, so my first period’s “Advanced” group went up 40% between their 1st district assessment and their 2nd. Another period went up 37%. Even my Honors class went from 81% Advanced to 97% Advanced, with only 1 student found in the Proficient category. So why don’t I believe that my metal should be judged on test scores? Because I have one class, my 7th Grade ELA class that went down; and through careful reflection I’ve been analyzing why.

And these whys are the elements of teaching that are beyond my control. (...)
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Is EdTech changing how students think or is it addressing the changes in student thinking?

heather — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 04:13:02 +0000

Science Daily is reporting that there has been a shift in how students are thinking as a result of their use of technology. They believe it possibly lowers critical thinking skills and analysis. Additionally, they wonder just how much schools should be catering to this change.

The important thing to remember is that when we talk about differentiation, we have to include all forms of teaching, from traditional pencil and paper to the use of technology. But if we were to ignore the evolution that is occurring, that of the transition our brains our making as a result of society’s onslaught of daily technology, we would not be doing our job.

(...)
Read the rest of Is EdTech changing how students think or is it addressing the changes in student thinking? (437 words)

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My New Interactive Whiteboard…an update

heather — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:17:02 +0000

OK, you know when you get a new puppy and you love it and you couldn’t live without it and then you find out it has hip dysplasia?

That’s a little of what my relationship is like with my new Interactive Whiteboard.

I wouldn’t give it up for the world. I have come to depend on the tools it provides me. I love it.

But I am consistently re-calibrating, re-starting, re-booting, and it so far won’t read the kids remotes. I have come to intimately know the board representative. We have each other’s cell phone numbers and my husband is starting to raise an eyebrow. I have also had tremendous support from our Director of Technology and the few other district pilot teachers.

But the bottom line is that the board has become a daily joy even while I have daily frustrations. And like that puppy that you automatically fall in love with because of the joy it brings you the minute it comes into your room, I am going to do everything I can to make it work.

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Post tags: blog, collaboration, computers, critical thinking, curriculum design, curriculum development, data, Ed Tech, education, ELA, integration, interactive whiteboards, internet literacy, k-12, k12, Title I, TLN, Writers Project, writing

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Marketing Metacognition

heather — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:42:02 +0000

So I just got the January MindWare catalogue and I realize that here we have a toy catalogue that is solely for metacognitive purchases. So this got me thinking: how can schools market metacognition? I realized, of course, that until our standardized tests become a more critical-thinking assessment, however, is there a point in doing so?(...)
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Asking for Student Opinions Isn’t Risky, It’s Rewarding

heather — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:47:49 +0000

I was reading this great article from Slate Magazine about the cheese that is Billy Joel. And I thought back to many a car trip singing his “Themes from an Italian Restaurant.” I also remembered just how many times I’d fast-forwarded through some of his more heavy-handed, political-themed songs set to rapid rhyme scheme.

I’ll even one-up Slate’s insolent trashing of the Piano Man. I’ll go so far as to say I’m not an Elton John fan.

Don’t freak. I’m allowed. Remember, this is my website.

But this got me thinking about opinions, criticism, persuasion, and choice, and their place in the classroom.

In a collaborative classroom, students are not only given choice, they are given the ability to disagree with grace, with each other, and even with (dare I say) the teacher.

I’m still getting crazy responses to my Breaking Dawn Book review. I can’t tell you how many comments I’ve deleted with X-rated words or threats. It’s not that I’m looking over my shoulder, but if the majority of these comments are from tweens, there’s clearly a lesson not being taught to these kids. How does one disagree appropriately? Yes, I slammed the book. But the theme of the post is to Discuss over Censor. They just couldn’t see it through our disagreement.

Students should be allowed to choose in a classroom. It’s a true form of differentiation. Choice could be given on reading texts, assessments, projects, partnerships, etc…But with choice, also comes opinion, hand-in-hand. And with opinion comes disagreement.

This shouldn’t be scary; it should be embraced. Choice is empowering for a student. But a teacher must teach how to disagree appropriately, how to criticize appropriately, and how to move on from there.

It is a new form of pre-teaching. There are skills involved in teaching Reaching a Consensus. There are skills involved in Criticism Etiquette. These are worthwhile – arguably more so than the skills involved in How to Bubble Accurately.

These are lessons that would not only be reflected in blog comments, but in how our students, as adults, would make choices, form opinions, and have disagreements in the world.

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Post tags: collaboration, commentary, critical thinking, curriculum design, curriculum development, differentiation, How To, k-12, k12, life long learners, metacognition, technology, Title I, TLN, websites, Writers Project, writing

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Metacognitive Poetry: Writing About Thinking While Writing Lesson

heather — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 06:34:14 +0000

Here’s a great metacognitive lesson that integrates poetry. Or is it a poetry lesson that is metacognitive? (Shrug) I believe that good writing and great structure can be taught through mimicking great authors. Using this philosophy as my guide, my 8th graders mimicked the poetic style of Jay Leeming in “Man Writes Poem,” a piece first introduced to me at the UCI Writing Project this summer.(...)
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XWikiWorkspaces

heather — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:32:54 +0000

I thought I’d share a little of what I’m doing in the classroom with XWikiWorkspaces. So, going off the frustrating fact that my district is blog-o-phobic, I was wracking my brain in how to teach internet literacy while still catering to the fact that I can’t blog beyond the boundaries of the district firewall. (...)
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Should a free education be unconditional?

heather — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 16:25:19 +0000

So you know when you get your group of kids on the first day, there are those who immediately set off your alarms? Well, that definitely happened to me on my first day.

I have a student who clearly needs help. His peers are weary of him already and his confrontational style seems not as intentional as inherent. The startling comments and “seething anger”, as his last year’s teacher put it only three weeks into the school year, seem uncontrollable. This same teacher recorded that he asked if her windows were bullet proof. I wasn’t, of course, given this information up front. I had to seek it out.

His first quickwrite of this year centered on cussing out his last teachers and cranking them nightly on the phone. His pride in his violent video games is apparent.

Like children with Asperger’s (of which he has not been tested to date), he seems unaware of cues or the goings on around him: calling out with inappropriate comments, walking in front of me while I talk to the class, handing me items while I’m in the middle of instruction. Annoying, yes, but harmless.

He also will not make eye contact (could be cultural, but this seems different than others of his ethnicity and nationality) and walks robotically, stiffly, without movement in his shoulders. Strangely enough, and I’m clearly not a diagnostician (though I play one on TV), the few students in my career who have had symptoms like this seem to also come with apparent sinus problems. His eyes are puffy with nasal issues, he is sniffy, and I can’t help but wonder if there is a connection.

So I approached the counselors who know me as a real student advocate and as a teacher with a somewhat effective antenna. I don’t send kids to the office. I handle my own discipline issues, which are few. So when I come in, they listen. The afternoon after the first day of school I walked in and said, “So, what’s up with X?” They pretty much flopped the file onto the desk, a file the size of our Language of Literature book.(...)
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