Visiting a "Combustible Classroom"

Today, I had the pleasure of visiting a colleague in a far-far-away land's classroom. And by far-far-away, I really mean it was about an hour drive. Easily chalking this up to the most worthwhile hour-long commute in a long time!

(re)Igniting passion in teaching

My principal had visited Jed Stefanowitz's third grade classroom earlier in the year through the MAPLE initiative with participating districts in Massachusetts. She was so ignited (this is a precursor to some really bad puns) by the work going on in his room, she texted me while sitting in it and told me to follow him on Twitter immediately. Luckily I heeded her advice and instantly started to see the magic he and his classroom had. His classroom was piloting being a 1-to-1 classroom as well as a really STEAM infused classroom. He is a Google certified educator and an ambassador for Osmo, Plickers, Makey-Makey, BrainPop and Prodigy to name a few. In summary, follow this guy on Twitter and definitely follow his blog!

What is a makerspace? 
This was displayed on one of Jed's Apple TVs during STEAM Block

One of Jed's many classroom makerspaces

Our visit today was to focus on the makerspaces he had set up in his room because we are thinking of adding spaces to our classrooms in our building. We saw some incredible use of makerspaces, but we also saw some incredible engagement, blended learning, and passion for third grade learning (from the students, Jed, and his principal!)

In our debrief portion of the day, Jed talked about his recent blog post on "Creating a Combustible Classroom". He explained that a classroom is like a fire; you need air, fuel and a heat. The air is the environment we give students for them to learn, grow and problem solve. The fuel is the curriculum and instruction, and the heat is that excitement that sparks students' ideas. It makes a lot of sense and the fire was burning bright in his classroom today.

My biggest takeaway from visiting his room was that this can be done, and we don't need to have all the snazzy technology that he had either. There are pieces we can adapt into our building immediately. For example, we could offer 6 stations for the week, and students would visit one station a day. One of the days we would have to do 2 rotations, but that can be done on the days when we don't have any preps. I love the idea of more choices and smaller groups, as well as longer station time so students really have a chance to dive deep into that work. Every one of his stations offered the 4 C's: collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and communication.

We can offer a variety of tech options with the tech we have, and we can give more igniting choices during those stations. Bottom line: We don't need to be afraid and sit in a conference room to analyze everything to death, we just need to run into that burning building and see what works and what doesn't. (I do not recommend running into a burning building unless you are a trained fireman, I'm just using that analogy to stick with the combustion theme) One of the other teachers that came along for the visit was texting me all night with ideas on how to incorporate some of these elements in her class, starting tomorrow! She is running right into the building, and I'm right behind her.

I know offering these high-interest station rotations and embedded use of technology into learning is a way to ensure class-wide engagement, which consequently would reduce any behavior concerns, as we witnessed today. Just making a few tweaks to what we are doing now will re-ignite teachers' passion for teaching, and ultimately, students' passion for learning. 

Something striking on Jed's agenda today was this image:

I can safely say, after visiting his school and room, that I am fired up to teach for our students' futures! The fire has been lit inside, not only in me, but my other colleagues who visited, and I know our students are in for some exciting learning ahead!

DITLife Sunday, March 12, 2017

Sundays are the best days! (even when I lose an hour of sleep to daylight savings)

My body has not adjusted to the time change overnight, so I was wide awake and ready to go at 6am. I decided to drag my butt out of bed and go grocery shopping then since it's always packed on Sundays, and I knew this Sunday would be especially packed because we will be getting a blizzard later this week! As suspected, at 7am the grocery store was pretty tolerable and I was in and out with a week's worth of food in about a half hour!

Came home and sorted out a few work emails, including sending my weekly math notes to the principal to be emailed to all the teachers. I'm supposed to have math learning walks on Wednesday, but the blizzard is coming in on Tuesday, so I'm not sure we'll even have school.

The rest of the day was extremely lazy for me. I cuddled up on the couch with the dogs and husband and watched a marathon of Impractical Jokers on TruTV. These 4 guys are my spirit animals; I wish I could run around doing all these pranks all day long!

Also snuck in an hour playdate with the nephew/godson which always lifts my heart! He's 2 now and is such a sports fanatic that we spent most of the time jumping away from a swinging hockey stick!

I attempted to go to bed early, but with the change in time and my nervous excitement for the upcoming snowstorm, I only managed about 2 net hours of sleep. It's going to be a long Monday, but it was a wonderful Sunday!

Reflection Questions

1) Teachers make a lot of decisions throughout the day.  Sometimes we make so many it feels overwhelming.  When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher move you made that you are proud of?  What is one you are worried wasn’t ideal?

I feel like there's a recurring theme with my blogs, but I'm genuinely happy I took the time to just relax and do nothing work related today. I've got so much going on at work that it's nice to unplug from all of it on the weekends.

2) Every person’s life is full of highs and lows.  Share with us some of what that is like for a teacher.  What are you looking forward to?  What has been a challenge for you lately?

I'm in a high right now. I've been getting into many more classrooms than usual and really working with students and teachers to do some pretty amazing work. I'm very proud of the relationships I'm continuing to build and the shift in focus of the whole building to put math instruction as a priority. Literacy has always been the focus, but it's so nice to see math coming up!

3) We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is.  As teachers we work to build relationships with our coworkers and students.  Describe a relational moment you had with someone recently.

I finally was able to admit my faults in not visiting one of our new teachers in the building. She is a veteran teacher but new to our school and district. I've been meaning to go in and visit her more frequently but always get pulled away in a million different directions. I finally stopped into her room 2 days in a row and absolutely loved it! I had a great time with the kids, and she was overly appreciative of me being there. That morphed into her and I chatting about starting a coaching cycle together and I couldn't be more thrilled! Sometimes all it takes is showing up!

4) Teachers are always working on improving, and often have specific goals for things to work on throughout a year.  What have you been doing to work toward your goal?  How do you feel you are doing?

My professional learning goal at school was to help teachers make thinking visible, and it's really coming along nicely. Walking around the building today I noticed so many students explaining their math to me, their teachers and their peers. On a personal front, I said I would participate in at least one Twitter chat a month and I have totally failed that goal! Uggh, it's such a lame excuse but they really start too late in the night for me. My brain is fried and I'm in bed by the time they're starting. I'll try to end this school year with a bang!

5) What else happened this month that you would like to share?

I passed my Google certified educator level 1 exam! I took it the first day of our February vacation and passed. Pretty proud accomplishment. I'm very eager to take the level 2 exam soon!