5 cool tools I discovered without going to NECC

I normally don’t cross post on my blogs, but I wanted this article to be both places, so what I’ll do is link to the original post here. Please visit my site and see what I learned at the Discovery Educator Network Leadership Council Symposium and NECC pre-conference.

Thoughts at the Start of Summer

Vicki Davis, who writes the Cool Cat Teacher blog, has some really good points in her recent article entitled “School Daze – Recovering Teacher Within”. I recommend reading it as one of your first steps in becoming focused this summer.

The article brought to mind my own feelings during the last summer I had after my last year of teaching in a classroom. Vicki hits the nail on the head when she talks about that 4-6 week daze. It was a time when I needed to just vegetate and let everything from the last year diffuse from my brain and into the past.

I also started thinking about how excited I would be by the time the end of the summer came along – excited about new ideas I had for my classroom, excited about seeing my teacher friends and hearing about all that they had done over the summer.

Whether you are the adventuring type or the stay-at-home-reading-books type, be true to yourself this summer. Take Vicki’s advice and LIVE!

Show Me the Money!

So you’ve gotten through your first year or two of teaching and found that, although you still have a strong desire to implement exciting and innovative activities in your classroom, you may not have the funding for the technology and/or equipment to do it? Well, to quote Colonel Klink “Ve haf vays” to get the money! Read on . . .

Although many of the big-money grants want to give money to more seasoned teachers, there are several ways that you can get some funding. One way, if you are determined to go for those big grants, is to get a veteran teacher to co-write the grant for you (or at least allow his/her name to be on the paperwork). This makes the big-money companies feel more comfortable about doling out their dollars. We know that you are quite capable of administering a grant on your own, but the experience of a veteran teacher makes the donors think their money is more likely to be spent wisely.

There are several smaller grants out there year after year that you should definitely try for. How do you find them? In response to one of my tweets, Jen Wagner gave me a good place to start. Grant Wrangler is sort of a one-stop-shop for you to find grants to apply for. You can search the site for grants and you can also subscribe to their bi-weekly email. Grant Wrangler also has a Ning you can join which will immerse you in a community of educators that can answer your questions.

You can also join state, regional, or national Listservs for email updates on grants. Often, you can join one that is specific to your content area or age range of students. There are too many of them for me to start listing them. Google “grant listservs” and you’ll begin to find the ones you need. Visiting your state education agency will likely put you in contact with relevant Listservs as well.

When applying for a grant like the ones you’ll find on Grant Wrangler and other grant-finding websites and Listservs, be sure to read everything about the grant first. Then take a look at past awards. Getting an idea of the type of projects that grant funds will help you to write your grant in a manner that will appeal to the folks who decide your monetary fate. Being sure to fill in all the blanks, provide all the requested information, and wording your request in a professional, technical, and clear manner will ensure that your application doesn’t get cut before it is even looked at.

Attending grant-writing workshops is a good idea. Ask veteran teachers who you know have received grants for suggestions on the best ones to go to. Your district grant coordinator, if your district has one, can be a good source of information as well.

Two websites that allow you to put your requests out there for the world to see, instead of focusing on a particular grant, are worth mentioning. DonorsChoose is a great source for obtaining funds for equipment that doesn’t cost a lot of money. DonorsChoose is specifically for public schools. It gives philanthropic individuals an opportunity to look through requests from teachers and decide where they want their money to go. Several people may donate small amounts to add up to the total (see this project that has had several donors and is close to being funded), or one person may decide to fund the entire thing. This is why smaller dollar amounts are better on this site. Your chances of being funded is also greater if you work in a Title I school and you write your grant to spotlight the demographics of your school.

If you teach in a private school, or if you are needing funds for something that you think parents of your students would be interested in funding, you can use ChipIn. In just a few minutes, you can set up a website that allows people to donate money to your cause through PayPal. I set one up every year for my children’s mission trips. Visit the site and you can see that it has a blog sort of feel and you can add entries to update people on how much has been collected through the site and in person. One note about ChipIn – there are still a lot of people who are uncomfortable paying through the web. Be sure to give them an option for sending a check.

Spend some time this summer checking out these grant opportunities. When you return to school in the fall, you just might have the equipment you need!

It’s All About the Relationship

I’ve been asked several times in the last few weeks about the value of building relationships with students. For some people, the words “relationships with students” bring to mind other words like Letourneau, but what I’m talking about are the appropriate relationships that must be built in order to instill trust, respect, and safety in the classroom.

Teaching isn’t just about delivering instruction. It is about providing students with an opportunity to learn more about themselves and the world around them. Developing an atmosphere conducive to this type of exploration requires that the teacher establish relationships with his/her students. We cannot simply be dictators or king/queen of our little 15-40 seat kingdom. We must be facilitators of learning. We must give students a reason to WANT to succeed and that is where the relationships come in.

As I’m wrapping up my first year teaching online, I”m reflecting on the differences between my online and face-to-face classrooms. I’m asking myself – are my online students ending their school year knowing that I truly cared about their successes and failures? Did they feel respected? Did they respect me? These are things that are a little tough to gauge in an online setting, although it can be done. However, in the face-to-face classroom, it should be easy to see whether you’ve effectively built relationships with your students.

If you constantly struggle with classroom chatter, disrespectful behavior, and downright rebellion against class rules, then you probably haven’t established the right kind of relationships. If you realize that you never really sat down and talked about anything besides the content of your course with your students, then you probably didn’t establish good relationships. If the first thing you did at the start of the year is have the students complete form after form and sit through long lectures telling them the procedures and expectations for the year, then you probably started off on the wrong foot.

Don’t get me wrong – there is definitely a need for procedures, guidelines (I dislike calling them rules), and perhaps even forms if your district or school requires them, but there are better ways to get all of the above working in your classroom than packing it all in on the first day of school. What if, on the first day of school, you sat down on your desk and just had a chat with your students? Waste of a class period? No. What you’ve accomplished after that class period is not only the start of an appropriate relationship with your students, but you’ve also begun to get  a feel for the interests, learning styles, and personalities in your class. Now you can meaningfully assign groups for that first project of the year. From the students’ perspectives, you’ve begun to show them that you aren’t just about the teaching, you have a genuine interest in them. Sadly, you may be one of the only adults in their lives not related to them who has shown that interest.

One of the 40 developmental assets for children is having adults in their lives who are not related to them, but still care about them. Is it appropriate for a teacher to be the “other adult”? I think so. As you reflect on this year, think about the relationships. Did you have students who excitedly told you about things they noticed on television that was relevant to something they learned in your classroom? Did they proudly tell you about their successes in sports, band, or other extracurricular activities? Do you have students who return to your classroom or contact you in other ways after they’ve grown up to let you know how they are doing? All of these are indicators that you did what you probably became a teacher for – you made a difference in someone’s life.

To borrow and mangle a line from an old movie – If they get the message that you care about them, they will learn. Caring about them doesn’t mean that you are a pushover and will let them get away with anything and do nothing. Caring about them means a relationship of trust, responsibility, and meaningful, realistic expectations.

It’s That Time of Year . . .

This is the time of year when everyone has either signed a contract for the coming year or let their principal know they will not be coming back. This means the opportunities for moving into a teaching job that is a better fit for you are most abundant.

New teachers often find themselves “settling” for a job that hasn’t quite been what they had hoped for because they are afraid they won’t be able to find anything better. They sign their contract in April and think they are locked in for another year. The fact is, most districts have cut-off dates up to which you can still get out of that contract without penalties. If you are not feeling quite right about the teaching job you have, be aware of that date and do something about it!

The most important factor you should consider as you are thinking about your teaching gig is “does this job make me happy?” If there are things your school/district asks you to do that go against your fundamental beliefs, you may need to look elsewhere. If there are elements of the school experience that are missing and that you feel passionately should be there for your students, you may need to look elsewhere (and/or try to convince administration to facilitate the inclusion of those things). If the administration at your school or district doesn’t seem to back you up with regards to discipline, you may want to look elsewhere.

You will definitely want to look elsewhere if your administration is asking you to do something that you believe compromises teacher ethics. I have a teacher friend who had to leave his school for that specific reason. Don’t fall into that slippery slope. If the administration is asking you to do something that you believe is wrong, it’s time to move on.

The bottom line is, don’t settle. Young/new teachers often don’t realize that not all schools are created equal. If you have considered leaving teaching altogether, but haven’t given other learning environments a try, you are not only cheating yourself, you are cheating the students whose lives you would have impacted had you stayed in the profession.

Edutopia has a good article with tips for finding your dream teaching job. Another great resource is other teachers. Try to establish a good network of teachers from other schools. Talk to them about what they like or don’t like about their school or district. Look into teaching at an academy or magnet school, which are often more cutting-edge than traditional schools. Some teachers find their niche in private schools. Others may find that virtual teaching is the thing for them.

Give it a shot – you deserve to be happy.

What Are We Afraid Of?

I started off my morning reading an article about a really cool new school in Coppell, Texas, in the Dallas Morning News. This school calls itself a project-based school. Students are given freedom to explore and create their own learning opportunities. The school is 1:1 and students are free to use portable electronic devices in their learning.

Taught by educators who have been teaching in “traditional” settings for years, these students are guided and their efforts are facilitated, but they are not lectured. Gone are worksheets and “filler” assignments. I read this article and was so happy to hear that a local school district had taken that deep of a plunge and I’m excited to see how things turn out. But then I saw a sentence that really caught my eye:

“Still, some educators are wary of anything trendy and fear giving kids so much freedom to learn on their own. “

I kept reading that sentence and wondering about the word fear. Have we really come to a place where educators have such a need for control that they fear giving students an opportunity to educate themselves? I found it ironic that this article came across my desk this morning because just yesterday I began formulating an idea for a presentation about educational reform and it involved this very thing.

My idea is this – if we make two mind trips – one back in time and one into nature, we will discover the key to the way learning should be.

1. The time mind trip. I’m taking you back to early Greece. Socrates is sitting with his students. What is he doing? Is he lecturing to them? No. He is only asking them questions. He is so firmly set on asking questions, rather than answering them, that it gets almost frustrating to his students. Guiding questions, however, lead some of his students into discoveries that earn themselves their own places in history. Have you ever heard of a guy named Plato?

2. The nature mind trip. I’m seeing a lioness with her cubs. She’s allowing them to follow her on a mildly dangerous hunt. They watch her as she stalks the prey and skillfully attacks. To the side, the cubs mimic this behavior in their own play. Mother hasn’t said a word. Cubs get it.

What does all this mean? I believe in a world where students can learn for themselves. A world where teachers model the behaviors they wish for students to mimic. A world where science teachers put the equipment and the supplies out on the table and watch students create their own experiments to answer questions (yes, I understand the teacher has to monitor this for safety – that’s the real reason the teacher is there). A world where, at the beginning of a grading period, the teacher hands the students a list of the content that needs to be covered and asks “where do YOU want to start” and “how will YOU learn this?”

What are we afraid of?

Students are lacking in one thing as a result of our need to control their learning – critical and analytical thinking skills. That one thing is crippling them and is what has put us in the position we are today in education. Let’s stop holding them hostage and start giving them their minds back.

Burnout: Trickle or Flood?

A colleague of mine recently visited a school in a nearby school district. As she walked through the halls, during a class period, she heard a woman’s voice coming from several doors down. The voice, which was at the level of a scream, said, “You are all so stupid!”.

When she told me about her experience, my first knee-jerk thought was “bad teacher!”. I also immediately imagined what the room of students must have looked like and I mourned for the kids who are subjected to that kind of treatment – not only at school, but many of them at home, most likely. Very quickly, though, I began to think about how that teacher got to where she was and began to feel compassion for this woman. She probably started off being a good teacher and the behaviors she expressed that day didn’t happen overnight. She let them trickle in.

What starts as mild frustration with students can grow into an us vs. them mentality. Once it gets there, the classroom becomes combatant, with students trying to get their teachers to the point of “blowing” and teachers  . . . well . . . blowing.

I talked about this to a group that included seasoned educators over this weekend. After the session, one of them came to me and thanked me for the lesson. He has taught for 32 years in higher ed, and he said that as he listened to me, he was reflecting on his own classroom and realized he was letting it trickle in. He hasn’t gotten to where the woman described above has, but he can see that he does get frustrated with his students more often and that sometimes that frustration results in slightly derogatory behaviors towards them.

Don’t let it trickle in.

How do we be sure we are not quietly heading toward burnout and completely inappropriate behaviors? Reflection. We learn about reflection in our teacher education. It isn’t just an exercise for student teachers – it should be a career-long practice (it helps a lot outside the classroom, as well). Each day, we need to reflect not only on each lesson plan, but on how we performed in the classroom. How did I feel today? How did I interact with my kids today? How did they look as they sat listening to me? If you reflect each day, you’ll catch the leak that becomes a trickle. You’ll be able to keep the burnout from breaking the line and causing a flood of bad, bad teaching.

How do we turn it around? One of my favorite sayings is “A problem well- stated is a problem half-solved.” Once you’ve recognized the burnout, you can take steps toward halting it.

Step One: Take a break. I don’t mean quit your job or even take several weeks of leave. I mean a mental break. Give yourself a few minutes each day to have a rest from the job. During this time, focus on something that is not school-related. Read a book. Listen to music. Sit in your room with the door locked, the lights off, and in silence.

Step Two: Change your thinking. Remember when you were a student teacher and everyone told you not to hang out in the teacher lounge? Stop hanging out in the teacher lounge. There can be a lot of burned out teachers in there, talking negatively about the job and the kids. Anytime you find thoughts creeping into your head that are negative about the job and the kids, recognize it. Turn it around – try to focus on the positives. If you can’t find positives, try to figure out why you feel the way you do. What one thing made that thought come into your head? Is it something that can be fixed/changed?

Step Three: Never stop. The teaching profession demands that reflection and renewal be continuous. It’s a tough job. There isn’t any way to gloss over that particular fact. Nobody can do it “on the fly” every day, year after year. Yes, we have to be able to do it that way and be flexible, but preparation is still one of the most important parts of the job.

Don’t let leaky thinking ruin your plumbing.

What’s It All About?

I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus lately. It wasn’t an intentional one. It was one of those periods of time where things get so busy and hectic that one by one, things seem to drop off the wagon and I neglect to pick them up. Unfortunately, this blog was one of the things that fell off quite early in the journey that has been this semester and I’ve just know had a moment to pull over to the side of the road and pick up what’s left!

I have been giving the teaching profession a great deal of thought lately. As some of you know (if you have read other posts of mine), I have partially exited the profession, choosing to be a part of the curriculum side of education rather than the student interaction side.

In January, I took on the role of virtual teacher to around 25 high school Chemistry students. I did this because I needed to earn a few bucks and I was also intrigued by the whole idea of online education.

I have to say, I am hooked! If my first experiences with teaching had been through this venue, I believe I would still be a teacher. I’ll list the reasons why I think this is so:

1. I work in my pajamas. Okay, this is a well-worn phrase used by anyone who works primarily online — but it’s true.

2. I am able to give my students one-on-one attention. They are more likely to ask me questions that they would have been embarrassed to ask in front of their peers. They don’t mind communicating back and forth with me via email about things they need help with. In my face-to-face classroom, I never would have had the luxury of the time spent one-on-one with students who need additional instruction.

3. I am able to clearly differentiate for my students. In the classroom, I always had to be aware of the stigmas associated with giving alternative assignments to some of my students. Trying to give them different versions of assignments without everyone else in the classroom giving them (or me) a hard time about it was difficult. In the online classroom, it is a matter of sending them an email with the differentiated assignment.

4. All the interaction with half the classroom management. You might think, if you’ve never taught in an online setting, that virtual classroom management is nonexistent. The truth is, there is still a lot of classroom management, but it is very different. Gone are the days that I was made to feel compelled to take away those cell phones, or continually tell excited students to stop talking while I’m talking, etc. The management tasks that remain involve keeping students current with their work, contacting parents when students are falling behind or absent from class, and, oddly enough, I still have to address issues that come up in my students’ face-to-face classroom. (my students are sitting together in a classroom during one period of their school day – I’m the one who isn’t there).

5. I still get to see the wonderful personalities and creativity that reside in my students. I get to witness their interactions with each other and delight in their excitement at understanding a concept or winning a volleyball game.

6. I finally get to use all the cool tech tools I know about! The first day of class, my students all made Animoto videos to introduce themselve to me and the rest of the class. I make assignments in the Assignment Builder portion of Discovery streaming to help reinforce concepts they need to know. I make use of web-based virtual labs and other interactive activities. Yes, I used these in my face-to-face classroom as well, but I find it much easier to integrate them on a regular basis in my virtual classroom.

The thing is, as I read through this list of reasons, I see that they are all the reasons (except maybe the pajamas!) that I became a teacher in the first place.

Why is it that I couldn’t find these reasons fulfilled in a face-to-face classroom?

Was it because I sometimes had more than 30 students in a science lab? Or maybe it was because the district had a different agenda for my classroom than I did – putting the emphasis on a test rather than on the quality and depth of content acquisition? Could it be because I was so busy trying to tread water while grading too many worksheets, quizzes, etc., that I couldn’t find time to teach the way I wanted to teach?

Whatever the reason, I have found being an online teacher to be very fulfilling. I made a comment once on Twitter that if I could get a job doing it full-time I would. Jeff Utecht replied “Soon…very soon I think you’ll be able to.”

I certainly hope he’s right.

I’m It! The 7 Things Meme

I watched the 7 things meme running about the eduverse and wondered if I would get tagged. I wondered if I wanted to get tagged. I wondered what I’d say if I were tagged. Well, thanks to Jen Dorman (cliotech), I’m it, so here goes. First, I’ll add the obligatory explanation for those of you who have never heard of the 7 things meme, then I’ll blurt as is often my practice, seven things about myself. Because I am writing this as fast as possible without thinking, I am likely to learn something about myself in the process.

Participants in the online community affectionately known as the “Eduverse” have begun “tagging” fellow members to invite them to post a list of “7 Little-Known Facts” about themselves to their blog. On sites such as Twitter and Plurk, members of the Eduverse PLN (professional learning network or personal learning network) are reaching out to each other to go deeper than the ordinary, professional issues to reveal more personal information.
Here are the rules for this game:
• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Seven Things About Me:

1. I learned to read and do simple addition and subtraction before I started kindergarten. Back then, kindergarten was a half day of coloring and learning how to make X’s and stars. I was dreadfully bored but thankfully there was one other girl like me in the class and my teacher, although she must have been about a hundred years old, was forward-thinking enough to pair us together for some differentiated learning.

2. I was 42 years old before I ever saw an ocean. Some people in the eduverse already know this because they were on the trip with me. I always found it a little ironic when I was teaching Oceanography that I’d never been to the ocean. It was a little sad that I had to have my students tell me what it was like.

3. I was in a high school marching band that played at President Reagan’s first inaugural parade. No matter what your politics, getting to march down Pennsylvania Avenue is quite an experience. The people who get to do so in 2009 have a doubly special experience ahead of them, don’t they?

4.  I met my husband on the internet. Two people who are least likely to be hanging out in chat rooms were hanging out in a chat room one night and figured out they had something in common. Two years of driving 400 miles each way up and down I-35 followed. I moved to Texas in 2004, we got married, and it’s the best decision I ever made!

5. My youngest son is a cancer survivor. I was a single parent with three children when he was diagnosed shortly after his first birthday. The year that followed developed me into the person I am today. It was a life changing experience for all of us who were touched by Nathan’s fight. He’s 8 now, and officially labeled “cancer free.” Hallelujah!

6. I have never decided what I want to be when I grow up. I never stay happy at a job, even when it seems to be well suited to me. My passion is for teaching people, but I don’t like being in a classroom every day. Another passion is for writing, but I just can’t seem to finish any of the books I’ve started. Something in my genes makes me an unfinisher (I have the right to make up words, it’s my 7 things!). If I could do anything in the world for the rest of my life, it would be to take classes in whatever subjects amused me, travel whenever I felt like it, and write when inspired.

7. This one is probably going to be a shocker. I’m to be commissioned as a Stephen Minister on Sunday, January 18. It’s been a wonderful experience, going through the training. I have learned a lot about myself and about how I interact with others. I have become frightened at the prospect of my upcoming ministry and the responsibilities I’ll potentially have for someone else’s well-being. I guess it must be one of those “physician heal thyself” things. I’ve had lots of counseling in my life, now it’s my turn to pay it forward.

Tagging (I’ve had to get creative, as I’m supposed to tag people who haven’t already posted a 7 things article – or at least they haven’t added themselves to the wiki):

Clif Mims: Clif’s Notes

Steve Dembo: Teach42

Fred Delventhal: a/k/a Riptide Furse

Tom Turner: Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages

Howard Martin: Classroom Blogging

Anonymous: It’s Not All Flowers and Sausages

Justin Karkow

Presenting vs. Facilitating

When I was a full-time classroom teacher, I had several opportunities to present at various local conferences. As I’ve expanded my horizons in the education world, so have they expanded in the presentation world. I present for my work at Southern Methodist University and in my capacity as a Discovery Educator Network STAR, at various regional and national conferences.

I have a presentation coming up in South Padre, Texas (TSTEM Best Practices Conference) this month for work, and one in Austin, Texas (TCEA) in February for the DEN. My initial thought was that none of this was anything new and I wouldn’t really need to do all that much prep work for these presentations.

The reason I write this post is that the more I thought that way, the more I wondered why I really thought I could get away with doing the same old same old.

So I’m asking you to answer some questions from the perspective of an audience member, NOT as a presenter (as I’m sure many of you are):

1. What types of things make you want to stand up and walk out of a presentation?

For me, the dreaded “death by PowerPoint” is first on my list. Next is when someone is presenting a topic that was part of teacher training 101.

2. What opening activities or experiences excite you about the rest of the workshop?

As in my classes, I try to start workshops with some kind of a hook – sometimes it is a story that explains the reason we are all there, but more often, it is some kind of an activity or thought exercise.

3. Would you prefer to be presented to or to have a speaker facilitate discussion?

Personally, I prefer to have my audiences be a very active part of my session. I also prefer to be in sessions where I am allowed to share. We can all learn something from each other. Unfortunately, it seems that many audiences don’t really want to do that. What are your thoughts?

I appreciate your time in answering these questions, as I have decided to completely redo my presentations to try to encourage more audience participation so the sessions don’t turn into a 45 minute nap for everyone!