AHA…or Duh??

Posted on July 24, 2008 by Mrs.V

I love learning! It energizes me, it makes me happy, it puts me in the shoes of my students, it keeps me humble. I like knowing that there is always something bigger and better out there to be looking for as far as my teaching is concerned. I think that if I ever felt like not learning, it would be time for me to hang up my recess whistle and step out of the game. So this week, I was in HEAVEN!!

Those of you who follow me on twitter have probably heard that I have been at a week long Kagan conference. One thing that makes it great is that I am attending with two of my best teacher buddies, who are also geeks. We spend our days soaking up all the great Kagan structures, and our nights soaking up the free wi-fi at the hotel! Doesn’t get much better…(especially when you have some perfect margarita’s within walking distance..yummy.) But I digress….

If you are like me, you hear Kagan, and you think “oh yeah, that cooperative learning stuff, from the 70’s, I do that” . So my friends and I came into it expecting to gain more tools for our already fairly well stocked bag of tricks. We are all eMINTS teachers, we all stray from direct instruction, and we all work to make our classroom a collaborative learning adventure for our kids. We were ready to improve on a good thing. Here is what we learned in a nutshell:

Day 1- if you do cooperative learning without structure, research says that your students will perform lower than a teacher who does direct instruction all day long. WHAT!!!?? Yes, it’s true! If we put kids in groups, give them a task, then don’t ensure that they all equally participate in the learning during that task, we are doing harm. We left day one with a big AHA moment, that was more of a DUH..we should have realized that!

Day 2- Now we know that our kind of classroom needs some specific tweaking to get the most out of the cooperative learning we are doing. We realize that we are so engaged in learning that none of us has even thought about checking to see if the building has free wifi. We haven’t even texted each other! Wow!

Day 3- Thinking that today will be the day we top out, overload, and start checking email. Didn’t happen. We are too busy taking every structure he dishes out, and plugging it into our own classroom situation. We are staring to realize that we do have a bit of an advantage over others in the room, because we are used to having students in small groups, managing a classroom where kids are talking and moving. We start thinking about how cool it would be if our whole district knew Kagan structures!

Day 4- Still the amazing workshop leader manages to keep our attention, and the day flies by! We start looking at how the lessons we already do can be tweaked to ensure that students are active participants in learning. It’s not rocket science for sure. In fact, it’s common sense.

Example: Many times to check for understanding during a mini-lesson or mentor text reading, I tell the students to pair and share the answer to question, or an idea that we have discussed. Good idea, bad structure, because it does not ensure that every kid participates. All I have to do is set a timer, tell each kid they have 30 seconds to share, then switch- suddenly it’s equal. Well, DUH!! why didn’t I think of that myself???

Day 5- yet to come…

I guess my point in all this rambling is that as I start my 17th year of teaching, I am having an AHA moment…again! You could say I am having a DUH moment I suppose. I mean, wouldn’t you think that by now I would know what I am doing?? Lord, I sure didn’t think when I started this career that I would be re-inventing myself and my classroom on such a regular basis!! So I can look at it two ways- and I am choosing the AHA path. AHA!! This is going to benefit my kids so much! AHA! I don’t have to stop doing what I am already doing well! AHA! This is what my kids feel like when I ask them to remember things the first time I teach it! AHA! My students will love this almost as much as they love blogging! AHA! This is why I became a teacher! I love learning!

Professional Development Meme

Posted on June 18, 2008 by Mrs.V

My friend Jen Wagner tagged me, and since I have really been taking a mental break since school ended, I thought my brain might need a wake up call, and this is just the ticket!

So — first, here are the rules:

1. Pick 3 professional development goals and commit to achieving them this summer.
2. For the purposes of this activity the end of summer will be Labor Day (09/01/08).
3. Post the above directions along with your 3 goals on your blog.
4. Title your post Professional Development Meme and link back/trackback to http://clifmims.com/blog/archives/353.
5. Use the following tag/ keyword/ category on your post: pdmeme.
6. Tag 8 others to participate in the meme.
7. Achieve your goals and “develop professionally.”
8. Commit to sharing your results on your blog during early or mid-September.

I have a lot of things rolling around in my head this summer, which is not unusual for me. I tend to bite off more than I can chew, and then never really get where I want to be by the end of the summer, so I am hoping this meme will also help me prioritize my ideas, decide what is reasonable, and accomplish those high priority items. As you can see, I have managed to narrow it down to 5 things, so if you have any thoughts about priority…bring it!

1. I want to totally re-invent my website because although it is very functional for my students, it is not “teacher friendly” as far as sharing resources is concerned. I always struggle with making this a priority because I don’t think it will have any direct impact on my classroom. I also tend to spend endless hours dinking around with graphics, the ultimate time sucking activity for me. If you have a minute, go and look critically at my site, and let me know how it could be a better resource for you in terms of finding what you might be able to use. Don’t pull any punches, I really want to know what other teachers think.

2. I want to take a critical look at how I use technology with my students. I need to find a balance between “student centering” and “teacher planned. ” I am torn between my own need to be ready for next year, and my evolution in thinking that I should be more reactive to my students, and how they react to the introduction of a topic. I sometimes get these huge pangs of guilt, like I am using “student centered” as a reason to shoot from the hip perhaps more than I should. I sometimes get this funny picture in my head of me sitting at my desk, with a tiny little Karl, Clay, David, (or whoever happens to have my head spinning today) on one shoulder, and a tiny little Madeline on the other. I need to resolve this battle in my own mind, and strike some sort of balance between the many voices in my head! I am not sure exactly how I am going to accomplish this one, so I welcome any suggestions or insight you all might have! FYI- medication is not an option 🙂

3. I want to make information literacy a priority next year. My idea is to make some little commoncraft type videos for younger students, to introduce the basic building blocks of information literacy. In order to do that, I need to better solidify my own understanding, read, research, play with my video camera, and have a plan for how I will integrate this project into my classroom.

4. Decide what I want to do when I grow up: I have 25 graduate hours in several areas, including gifted education, technology, and literacy. I could have my masters in gifted by the end of next year, but have no desire to be a gifted teacher- I tried that, didn’t suit me. I could have my masters in technology by the end of next year, but I dread the thought of drudging my way through outdated material and taking the fun out of what I do with technology right now! BUT, I need to decide, and get on with it…why?..well, because I am getting old…and because my school would pay for it….and because I can’t move any further on the pay scale until I get my masters….and because I would like to do some teaching on the college level, and don’t think I can do that without a masters. So, by Labor Day, I will decide what I want to do when I grow up!

5. I want to submit to present at some conferences, on my own. I have presented on my own before, but this past year I collaborated with some other teachers from my district. I enjoyed that very much, and it was less stressful for sure to have another person standing up there with me, but I feel like it is time to step out on my own again and challenge myself. This goal will require me to give some serious thought to my topics, and get my submissions in before deadline.

OK- help me narrow it down to 3 folks! 🙂

Now to tag 8: (I don’t think any of you have been tagged already)
1. DeAnna Sheets
2. Kim Good
3. Cindy Matzat
4. James Larimore
5. Marianne Malmstrom
6. Julie Fessenden
7. Rob Jacklin
8. Christian Long

Connections

Posted on October 26, 2007 by Mrs.V

Spent some time chatting at K12 Night Falls session tonight, even though I have had very little time to listen to all of the great presentations. I felt a bit of deja vu as the chat rolled by and the conversation suddenly sounded just like the one I had in the Fireside David Warlick chat. Is it me? Yes, principals need to be involved if technology is to work. Yes, students know more than we do about technology. Yes, teachers say they have no time to learn tech. Yes, yes, and yes. Same conversation- why? I am trying to reflect and frame my online experiences, and maybe there were people in that chat room who have never heard that before, and needed to hear it. Maybe those conversations need to happen all the time to keep people aware. Is there this revolving door of educators where the technology doorman must continually repeat the conversation for those who just came in? I think that may be partially true, but I am personally ready to move on to the “how” part of the work. Now if anyone reads this, don’t take it the wrong way. That conversation did occasionally dip in the direction of “how”. Maybe I am just writing this as a personal message to myself to say “get going with it already!”

That said, I can say that I am now officially obsessed with the idea of building bridges. I have decided that the first part of it might have absolutely nothing to do with technology. I have a pretty good rapport with teachers in my building, but if I want them to jump over this gap, and into the unknown, that rapport is not good enough. They have to respect the way I teach, they have to respect the way I professionally interact with peers, they have to trust me. So today, I broke bread (shared sushi actually) with some colleagues that I don’t normally hang out with. The principal and his family went too, and we barely talked about school, and I never once used the words twitter, blog, or wiki. I learned that my principal is left handed, and he did his student teaching in Japan. I learned that someone I thought was a risk-taker will only eat ranch dressing on her salad. We shared wedding plan updates, new house stories, and halloween preparation tips. We connected on a non-school level. Do you see how important this can be? I see….