Month: April 2015

This is a follow up to yesterday’s post: Doors.  Look down the school hallway, and you’ll see door after door. But are the doors where we need them? Are the doors performing the correct function?

Last week, we were discussing a possible move to the third floor next year. As we looked at the map of the third floor, we realized that there were no connecting doors between the classrooms there.

My classroom has three doors. One door opens into the hallway, one door connects to a computer lab, and the other door connects to an adjoining classroom.

I have come to rely on doors connecting me to these rooms, to connect me to teammates, to connect me to my students. We have connecting doors between two of our computers lab, too. We have doors everywhere it seems. Doors that are almost always open as students flow between classrooms, work spaces, and computer labs. I can easily hear what is going on in other rooms or stand in a doorway to watch two rooms. We (teachers) often flow in and out of rooms during work times. Students do, too. The doors keep us and our students connected to each other.

If we moved to a different floor, we would need more doors. Apparently, it costs a lot of money to put in doors.

And it got me thinking. Why do we isolate ourselves within four walls and only one door? Why do high school classrooms not have connecting doors? I know our middle and elementary school classrooms have doors that connect to at least one other classroom. It seems strange that high schools would not have them.

Doors can keep people – and experiences – safe and sound inside the walls, but doors can also open us to people and experiences not available inside the confines of our classrooms. I think the trouble of missing doors on the third floor is a metaphor for missing doors to the outside world that rob our students of the connections they desperately need. Students need to see the relevance of what they are learning in the classroom. The best way to find relevance – to show our students the opportunities available in the world around us?

Open the door!

And if you need to, knock down a wall and make more doors.

It is interesting that today’s topic is about building a more powerful classroom by letting go as I was just having this conversation with my teammate at lunch today. We are finishing our first year as a fully PBL school. However, I teach in a program that has been PBL since the school opened five years ago. For us, stepping back and letting go is second nature, but for many teachers it is a scary proposition.

If you let go of full control of your classroom and let students have autonomy, what will happen to your classroom management and discipline? How will you make sure that students are on task 100% of the time? Can students really learn if you are not feeding them information at the front of the room day in and day out? It sounds like chaos. Chaos can’t be good, can it?

As a science teacher, I have always lived by the rule that science is loud and messy. I am sure that helped set the stage for me moving more and more to full PBL over the past few years. I also don’t like giving answers. It is so much more beautiful when students discover concepts on their own. To me, it is the only way to teach science. Inquiry and discovery is the nature of science.

Stepping back and letting students take control of the their learning does not mean that all of your classroom procedures go out the window. It just means you develop a new set of procedures for the environment. Organized chaos can be a really good thing because it really isn’t chaotic. I think sometimes in education we have been fed the lie that noise equals chaos. That’s simply not true. However, as students work and learn together, your classroom will not be completely silent, and that is completely okay!

I have been talking about our upcoming STEM Maker Fest in several of my recent posts. I want to tell you the story of one of our groups . Three of my freshmen boys weren’t initially sure what they wanted to do for their project, so they were brainstorming with one of my teammates for ideas. They decided to make a Power Wheels style car initially, and over time it has morphed into a robot. At first, they wanted it to be a tank, but I suggested it did something more positive. Our robotics team already has a t-shirt cannon, so they are integrating the t-shirt canon into the robot design. They also called local businesses to donate t-shirts to be shot out of the canon during the event. The robot is almost finished, and on the day of the Maker Fest, they will be driving it via remote control around the event space and shooting t-shirts to the crowds.

What does this have to do with letting go in the classroom? A whole lot. (That’s a completely scientific term.) These three students are in my chemistry class. What does this project have to do with chemistry? Not much – especially not the concepts we are currently studying. It’s really more of an engineering/robotics project. Do you know how much robot building experience these kids had prior to the project? Basically none. By stepping back and allowing these students to discover on their own, they have created something way beyond what I could have taught them in my chemistry classroom. They have been working on the build during our project time, at lunch, and after school almost every day. They were there this afternoon working for a couple of hours. Do you want students to have powerful learning experiences in your classroom that revolve around things they really want to know?

Step back.

Let go.

See what happens.

Oh – you’re worried about the students performing on the tests they have to take and the standards that you cover? Don’t be! Our students routinely outperform the other students in our school. Why? They are motivated to get the required work done in an efficient manner (and we are consistently checking for mastery via formative assessments) so that they can work on what interests them.

Do you know what happens when you allow students to follow their passions? They have time to do amazing things. Two years ago, a small group of sophomore students pitched their 3D animation modeling skills to a local firm to create something to be part of a PBS documentary. They ended up creating a 90-second segment for the documentary and won a student level Emmy award. Here is an article about the project if you would like to know more. You can also watch the documentary, or just their animation, on Hulu. The animation is just after the 7:55 minute mark. This project took the majority of the year, so while other students were working on more traditional projects, they took advantage of the efficiency model to get their needed assignments done and then work on the animation. (I can’t take credit for any of this, as this year is my first year with CDAT.) This is another example of what happens when you step back and let kids do what they love.

So are you ready to let go – even just a little? Trust me; it’s worth it, and the results will be beyond amazing!

19 Days!

Nineteen days of school (not including weekends) s all that is left with my students this year. Nineteen days! Where did the year go? As the year winds down, students tend to get a bit restless. Can you blame them? They have worked hard all year, and what is the reward? Day after day of high stakes testing!

Obviously, this is not a great way to end the year. I wrote the other day about activities to use in middle school science (or engineering classes) that we had a lot of success with at my former school. So, what am I doing this year to end the year in a positive manner? Well, there are a lot exciting things in store over the last few weeks.

• STEM Maker Fest: Our students have been working hard for months on their STEM Maker Fest projects. May 16th is the big day, and we are hoping we have a huge turnout of families from our community. I can’t think of a better way to end the year than celebrating all of the major accomplishments of our students with the community. We hope to make this an annual event, and next year we hope to become an official Maker Faire affiliate.
• Bottle Rockets: I just can’t give up this activity. It is so much fun! My engineering students will be building and launching bottle rockets for our last project. I am revising the criteria and constraints since I am working with high school students now. This time, we’ll use two bottles per rocket, include a parachute, and hopefully launch and recover a payload.
• Exploration Journals: I am beginning my sketchnotes/doodling/exploration journal experiment this week. I passed out the sketchbooks to my students on Friday and asked them to decorate the cover with anything that represented what they learned in chemistry this year. I also asked them to write “Chemistry” on the  front cover and their names on the inside cover. On Thursday, we’ll start this journey, and I hope it is successful!

I am finding that the end of the year in high school is more stressful than middle school. In middle school, we had a week of testing at the end of April, and it was pretty much time to be creative and exploratory the final weeks of school. In high school, testing started last week and will continue until the last day of school. During this high stress time, I want to provide experiences for my students that are still valuable and fun. Hopefully, the ideas I am working on will help my students to find a little bit of enjoyment in the end of the school year.

I work at an amazing school with amazing colleagues and amazing kids. Although I am just finishing up my first year teaching here, there are many reasons why I love my school.

• I have the privilege of teaching kids I taught as middle school students. I cannot stress enough how awesome this is. I think one of the biggest reasons transitioning to high school was so easy for me was because of all of the familiar faces. There is something really special about teaching kids for more than one year. I think this is something that we should encourage more in education.
• I am given the freedom to be innovative. As teachers, we are often encouraged to try new things, but we aren’t often given complete freedom to do so. My school and program allows us to do just that. One of the innovations we are trying next year is teaching chemistry to all of our freshmen (usually biology freshmen year and chemistry sophomore year). We think the flip will lead to higher student gains. We also have a block of time with our kids next year where we can make our own daily schedule based on student needs.
• Our students are given freedom to be innovative. Because we have a project based program, students have a lot of freedom with the projects they pursue. Sometimes we give them guidelines attached very closely to standards, but sometimes the projects are very open. Our students are continuing to prepare for our STEM Maker Fest next month. The caliber of work and what the kids are doing is amazing. I know it’s going to be an incredible event. This project isn’t tied to specific content standards, and I am not even grading them on the project. It just goes to show that learning doesn’t need to be graded for validation!
• Our students are given incredible opportunities. I wrote a post a last month about one of my students who has filed for a copyright on the product her group created as a result of project. They are now almost ready to file for a patent. Because we have a great community of partners willing to work with our students, we are able to provide them with great experiences like this. I still can’t get over how cool it is to be filing for copyrights and patents as a student!
• Students want to stay after school to work! If you make the space available, kids will stay long after school is over to study, work with groups, or do other related activities. Even today we had several students staying after school to work on projects. One  group is making a robot for their STEM Maker Fest activity. Prior to having this idea, no members of the group had ever done anything like this. They are building it from parts the robotics team had left over and almost have it ready to go. Plus, the robotics team members have been providing these students with assistance and mentoring. Is there anything cooler than kids mentoring each other?
• I have the best colleagues. For the first time in a long time, I can say that may colleagues are friends and like a family to me. I think it is so important to have people in your building who you can bounce ideas of off, share frustrations, and find solutions. I love that even though we teach all different subject areas we work together to make the best learning experiences for our students.
• We have incredible students. We have the best students. They do the most amazing things. They work hard and are innovative. I wrote just the other day about one example of how awesome our students are. They constantly amaze me. On Monday right after the last bell rang to end the day, the intercom buzzed with an announcement that there was a tornado warning. So instead of leaving, all of our students had to head to our shelter location. Since we are on the second floor, we moved to our safe hallway downstairs. We waited for nearly and hour, and although the kids wanted to go home, they were so good waiting. I could tell story after story about how incredible our kids are.
• We are making school different. Because we are free to be innovative, we are changing the traditional school setting. We are providing students with authentic experiences. We encourage our students to be creative. We work with our kids to help them work efficiently in the classroom which gives us time to work with struggling students and frees up time for them to work on projects. We’re still improving, but it looks a whole lot different from the traditional classroom.

I love my school. It is a great place to grow and learn – both for students and teachers. I feel very lucky to work here with my colleagues and students.

Pretending is a lot like dreaming. It allows us to make the world a better place in our imagination. However, sometimes we pretend in order to cope. I think as educators we often pretend in order to help us manage a system we think we can’t change and to help us keep some “control” over our classrooms.

So what are five things it’s time to stop pretending about in education?

• All the focus on standardized testing is okay. Well, I think we’re done pretending this is okay. Now we need to find a way to  change the testing culture. What logic makes us think the results of one test on one day can give us a clear view of a child as a whole?
• We as individuals can’t change the world of education. I know it is easy within the isolated walls of our classrooms for us to feel that one teacher cannot make a difference. We need to stop pretending that this is true. We can make a difference, especially as we connect with like-minded peers. It starts with one, but as we find kindred spirits, we can make a world of difference.
• It’s okay to teach subjects in isolation. A high school is very departmentalized. Traditionally, teachers from the science, math, language arts, fine arts, health and PE, social studies, and other areas rarely communicate or work together. This is a problem for many reasons. It places a strain on our students with testing schedules when we don’t communicate. Plus, we are decreasing the efficiency of opportunities for students when we don’t work together. It is possible to create a team environment in high school, and I highly encourage you to try it. For instance, today I gave my students a performance final that will be scored by me for the chemistry and by my teammate for language arts. We are looking for different things, and students will receive two separate grades for one assignment. Plus, the world around us not departmentalized, so why are our high schools?
• We don’t care if our students like us. I used to pretend this all of the time. In fact, I have even told students that I don’t care if they like me. I was pretending. This is a lie. I think establishing relationships with students is important. I care deeply for each of my students, and I really do want them to like me. If they like me as a person or as a teacher, it will help develop the relationship between us and ultimately help engagement in the classroom.
• High school students don’t need recess. I read an article on Edutopia a couple months ago about a school in Vermont that has instituted recess everyday for their students. For some reason, we have traded sunshine, wind on our faces, and running for more desk time and tests. Magically, older students no longer need to move and run. That’s what we pretend anyway. We’ve even started pretending that elementary students don’t need recess either, and then we wonder when our kids can’t sit still. Instead of prescribing some time outside in the fresh air, we prescribe pills for hyperactivity. I would love to see a minimum of 20 minutes of recess instituted for all students everyday. Maybe it’s not all outside, but it can allow students to pursue a passion project. It gives students a break and will help them focus when they return to class. We need to stop pretending that moving around periodically is not important. We need to stop pretending that our class time is too precious for us to take a little break for fun and play.

What do you think we need to stop pretending? Here’s the post that inspired today’s blogging topic for #AprilBlogADay.

When I was a child, we visited Kennedy Space Center in Florida many times. One of the attractions was (and still is) the IMAX theater. One of the movies I saw there sticks with me even know. “The Boy from Mars” was the story of the first child born on Mars visiting the Earth for the first time. I think he was 12, and he was filled with anxiety for many reasons. One of the ones I can remember is the difference in gravity. (Martian gravity is about 1/3 of Earth’s gravity.)

Teaching in 100 years will be like on Mars. It will be a new and possibly unimaginable world. There may even be educators actually teaching on Mars (or at least the moon). Is it really that unlikely to consider? The world of 100 years ago looked much different from the world of idea. Taking a plane to go somewhere was just becoming a reality and space flight was just a dream. Who could have imagined that 100 years later man would have stepped foot on the moon, established a permanently manned outpost in orbit, and sent unmanned craft exploring the outermost reaches of the solar system? How would a teacher 100 years ago possibly prepare students for today’s world?

Ultimately, it is not so much about the information and facts that we teach students that is important in the classroom. The chemistry course of 100 years ago would look much different from the course of today. For one, it would not have been required for all students like it is today. Also, even our basic understanding of the structure of an atom has evolved significantly in the past 100 years.

The most important things we can teach or model to our students are skills like critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration, persistence, work ethic, and problem solving. We can only imagine what the world 100 years in the future will look like, and that is why memorizing facts and information that can be easily referenced is not a reasonable use of our teaching time. Science is changing all the time! First Ceres was a planet, then an asteroid, and now it’s a dwarf planet. (Pluto is a similar camp.) And things we once thought impossible are now in the realm of reality. Facts do not matter as much as thinking.

It is hard to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow. Robert Goddard

The biggest thing we can do to prepare for the world of tomorrow is to teach our students to be independent thinkers who can solve problems creatively. If we do that, perhaps in 100 years we really will be teaching on Mars!