Forcing the Learning

 I love to share.

If I hear about an idea, a concept, a strategy - I try it. I love 'new', I thrive on experimenting.  Let's give it a shot - after all, you learn whether or not things go well - I would even posit that I have learned more from mistakes and awkward moments than I ever have from smooth sailing.  There's nothing quite like that moment where you look at the kids, they look at you, and we all decide, "Well, that didn't work!", we decide why, we find a better solution, and the learning is stronger than ever.

I thrive on discovery

I just wrote my mid-year reflection for our professional learning goal at school. I was feeling a bit guilty this year - national pandemics and political upheaval have meant that my goals haven't had the laser focus they normally do, the team goal we developed in those heady first days of school never really connected with my on-going personal learning goals...and with 170 students during those first couple of months, who had time to focus on professional learning, literature to support a goal, finding new podcasts or webinars to support learning...and all that jazz.  Not me!  The good news for my conscience was that I have actually done quite a lot of professional learning this year.  Well, it's really my hobby - so it might not have been as purposeful as I would like, might not get me those Brownie points since the learning doesn't really connect with our team goal, but there's a lot of reading, watching, and listening going on in Bridget's world.  

Forced Learning?

Two of the items on my list of 'personal professional learning' are the endorsements that I am in the midst of.  One is my Online Teaching Endorsement. A last-minute addition, I only just made it into the course.  I did 3 different courses over the summer, anticipating a virtual class-load this fall, and I loved every moment of the learning.  The endorsement is a logical step to produce the best teaching I can for my online students.  I had no idea how different the teaching needed to be, and everything I learn is instantly integrated into the classes I lead. That's the best kind of learning.  My other endorsement is Coaching and Support Endorsement, and ... well, sometimes having the opportunity to find that something is not for you, is as powerful as finding the right fit. How much of it is because of the year it is, I don't know - but making time for something that feels like a burden and that keeps you up at night, is not something that fits well with 2020-21 teaching. But funnily enough, it's helping my teaching...immensely.  Focusing on something you don't want to do and can't escape - it's not engaging. It's frustrating. You seek help that might not be there. You aren't available when others are there to help you. You feel alone. The instructions don't make sense.  

Wow. Makes you think, doesn't it? 

We need to remember, our students haven't chosen our courses. They aren't there because they want the learning. They aren't excited to see what the new lesson is. They aren't leaping to the computer for team meetings...unless we make it that way.  

My experiences right now are reminnders every day.  Make my course the one that the kids are interested to visit, the one they want to find out what's next. the meeting that they set the timer for.  That's a good lesson.  I don't want my students to feel the struggle the way I do.

So, instead of 'encouraging' work submission by penalizing grades, I'd rather add opportunities for choice and conversations about what we 'want to do'.  Instead of mandating and threatening calls home, I'd rather find out what they want to do and what would make meetings fun.  Breakouts for social time as well as collaborative work. Singing happy birthday and creating birthday message Jam Boards. A joke committee to find corny jokes and annoying riddles. Wearing silly hats, having pet day, hosting a lesson at a local barn. After soul searching about those students who struggled virtually last fall and what opportunities for success I truly gave them, I've added a special live meeting - "Let's Get Started." Every Monday, the group of 12 or so students is invited to work with me to start the work together.  Let's get stuff done.  Let's get started together.  My strugglers seem excited. They were delighted to get personal invites in the mail. We will see how it goes.  

Ever since reading Shift This by Joy Kirr, I have sought ways to give students ownership over their learning. Slowly, gradually, I am finding ways to do this virtually - and it feels good.

So every time I sigh and open up my course to stare blankly at the screen and try to figure out what to do, I purposefully flash a mental picture of my students and think, "What can I do to make sure that this doesn't happen to them?

Less Support? Working at Need Level? Thinking About Next Year

So I read this article. As somebody who used to ride her bike a lot, and whose husband still rides, the analog really held true. In fact, I really didn’t need to read the article – the title says it all.  The Training Wheel Fallacy for Teaching Writing

The article grows the analogy and made me think about a variety of experiences on my road bike. From that time I couldn’t unclip to save myself (in front of a filled restaurant beer garden), to the time some friendly redneck through a full cup of water at me - I guess he didn’t approve of cyclists! It made me compare those memories to my students’ experiences, just as this writer wanted me to do.  

What was particularly great about this article was the timing.. It came at the very moment that I had been thinking about just how to really use what I have learned this spring, during distance learning, in my teaching next year. The thinking continued.

Not long after reading this article, I had a student submit some work. The task was the final project of the year, quite simple – and very much reduced from expectations had we been at school. They had to take a god who was Greek as well as Roman and create a small presentation, including some specific criteria. They then had to create a virtual presentation of the findings. Most students created a slideshow, and then made a Screencastify. One student made a beautiful poster and videoed her presentation. A couple of students made videos of themselves presenting the slideshow using a cell phone and laptop. Two students made really good PowToons, and a couple of students used applications that I’ve never seen before. One student, had a Greek god talking to the Roman god, comparing each other. That was pretty creative. 

But then there was this one student, who has been a frustration all year. A nice boy, respectful, always does his work, but you always got the feeling that he did ‘just’ enough. You knew that there was more in there, but it just wasn’t coming out. I would conference with him, and my frustration always came out despite myself. He would always smile politely at me, and say that he was happy with his grade. Since I rarely talk about grades, that added to my frustration! I would say to him, “Yes, your grade is fine, but what about the learning – what about the creativity – don’t you want to do a little bit more?” He would smile politely and said he was quite happy. During our virtual learning, nothing has really changed there, he’s done most of the assignments, he’s done enough to fulfill a rubric or the criteria, and he’s just steadily gone along. But then we came to this final project. 

He blew me away. 

Now cynics in the room might say his parents probably did it for him. But I know the student’s situation, they did not. Was it as well 'finished' as some of the other work? No! He doesn’t have that habit of editing and polishing. But it was creative. It was unexpected.

He made Flipgrid do things I didn’t know Flipgrid was capable of doing! He had slides popping up in his presentation and transitions. He obviously spent some time creating this video. It was amazing! I told him so too. I even asked him if he can create a Screencastify showing us how to do that. He sort of mumbled at me on Google Meet, and I don’t think the task made the top of his to-do list.  But I do believe that he was delighted to be asked.

So what does this all boil down to? 

I think that although we know there are students who lost support that they needed or students who just never came and asked for help. Some didn’t know how to struggle and gave up immediately.  Next year, we will talk about struggle.

We know that there were students lost because of equity issues, lots of young children in the house, children left alone without supervision, and not ideal work situations – where schoolwork was the least important thing on the table. We know that. And if we have to continue virtual learning in any shape or form, we need to work through concerns and issues. 

I also know that there were teachers who did not offer learning opportunities on a consistent basis.  My kids thanked me profusely for offering the same class twice a day, they said it made a huge difference to have that option that could change with their schedule. They loved the fact that I kept going with the read alouds. 

This is not a pat on the back for Bridget, because I actually feel guilty for not having done more. I look around the country, or I participate in my club RCA webinars, and I realize there is so much more I could’ve done. And that in a future situation, I will be doing. It’s more of a statement that this has not been perfect.

But for some kids, this has been eye-opening. I have had students produce some of the best work that I’ve ever seen from sixth graders. And I know it’s because they’ve had the time to do it. There hasn’t been the pressure of ‘grades matter’ and there hasn’t been a state test out there, lurking in the future. It’s just been about being creative and producing the best work you can possibly do. 

Did some have help from the parents? Well sure! But they could’ve had that help in past years too, it’s rare that I’ve had anything that has not been allowed to be worked on at home! Typically I don’t assign much homework, but they would’ve had the choice to ask for help on on-going projects.  In some ways, it has been great to see non-involved parents stop in and take time to help their students. I’ve done these wonderful one-on-one sessions with students who have been struggling, and have seen them sore to heights that are not achieved at school. Because at school, I can’t give them more than two or three minutes in the class. At school others need attention. At school there are multiple distractions for both teacher and student.  

So what will change?

1. I am going to look at each unit of study, and really think about what the end goal is – I mean I already did that to an extent, but I want to think about doing this in a different way. What is it that we want them to be able to do, and create? What is it we want them to be able to explain? What is it they just need to understand? Last year, I would have said that we did this - and we did. But having gone to ‘bare bones’ with virtual learning, it has shown me how important it is to REALLY did down and say, “What matters. What is ESSENTIAL?”
2. As I look at what matters, how am I going to have them show me their knowledge? How can I find ways for the students to choose how to show me what they know?
3. Now that I consider number one and two, I want to see how I can create that in a self-paced fashion. How can we make the learning possible for those independent learners, while still making sure that each goal has been achieved, and that every student has the support they need. Another thing I have learned from distance learning is how many students just rush through to get the job done, without paying attention to what COULD be done. I mean, that’s nothing new right? However, there are kids that have slipped by me in the past because the support was too great. I need to be able to let them fail a little more, and determine what needs fixing themselves. To me, this means more reflection during the learning and more self-checks, and perhaps peer checks.
4. Conferring. Conferring. Conferring.
5. Talk about struggle. How that's where the learning happens.
6. Online conversations, evening help sessions, one-on-one support could be virtual to give me more time. Why not have a once a month conference? I don’t really give homework, so why not create a conference homework time? Depending on the number of kids and need, conferences could be more or less frequent. Personal. Individual.
7. I definitely need to extend the belief and creativity through more open-ended concepts, with students having the opportunity to determine how they show their learning. I discovered that by being more experimental, we achieved more. So although we have to determine mastery of certain elements, why not allow the students to find ways to prove their mastery to me.  Choice is fun.  Choice is interesting.
8. This year, I went to feedback instead of grades for formatives. My kids have been very very supportive of this. Interestingly, it is the highest achievers who have enjoyed the most. Taking away the fear of getting poor grades gave them the freedom to perform.  Now I’m looking at how to create that feeling in the summative aspect of things. I know that I will not be able to go gradeless for summatives, although there might be some potential there for conferring to adjust grades. However, I am thinking of working with my team to have more frequent and focused summatives. Enough of these awful, long tests. To me, they create a lot of failures and not a lot of success. It’s been something I’ve been playing with for a while, and have had some success, but I think this year will be the year to get serious.

There’s always so much to do and so much to think about as summer approaches. I always feel like it’s important not to just say, “We’re done”, and then revisit at the beginning of the year - because of the beginning of the year, it’s honestly too late. Now is when you reflect. Now is when you make decisions.

We don’t know what next year will look like, but we do know is, this will be our go-to in similar situations. We need to be able to manage our online learning, we need to manage to coach, engage, and support in a virtual capacity. I feel like I’ve made some great strides, and I have a vision for what could be achieved. I believe that in future situations, we will go into this with a little bit more structure and that will help immensely. Parents frequently told me how grateful they were – actually the students more than the parents – for teachers with set class times. They wanted to know, on a consistent basis, exactly what was going to be taught when, rather than the occasional ‘hit and miss’ of some offerings.

We all need a little bit of structure, and we all need a little bit of freedom. We all need support, but we all need to be allowed to fly. Some students need more help than others, others need more options. The bottom line is, I can do this, I just need to plan and think about it.

What Happened?

It's been a strange year.  I mean, REALLY strange.

You think that I'm referring to the extended online learning, COVID 19 and all of that?

Nope.  It was weird long before that!

• I found it much harder to build the kinds of relationships with kids that I am used to - parents too. 
• I felt much more of an island in my teaching, but at the same time more accepted by our faculty (she's weird, but she's one of our own?!).
• Our administrative team remains awesome, but I haven't had that person to sit and share with the same way that I had in past iterations of a leadership team. Is that a criticism?  Not at all, more to do with personalities.

You can tell it was different. I haven't blogged. I haven't found the same sort of excitement in sharing my learning. 

So, that's the negative (heck of a way to lead off, huh?).

Now to the positives!

I adapted my schedule, my hours, my intensity to allow myself more me-time.  I focused on being with Paul and my football (soccer) family.  I decided to ride my horse for the joy of it, rather than continually setting goals that were beyond us both (as a relatively aged pair!). We created a date night that both of us adhered to until the restaurants closed...but have ordered in food ever since. I've allowed myself to create and enjoy, but have focused on finding ways to think about which feedback matters the most, ways to give feedback in class, creating student reflections to allow THEM to make comparisons between exemplars and their own work.

Honestly, its been kind of awesome.

So, as I said - a weird year!

And now we are teaching from home, and a new challenge arises.  And you know what, guilt fills me as I type this, but I am enjoying it. A lot.

Oh yes, it was horrific at first.  All my work time rules went to heck in a hand-basket as kids were reaching out 24-7. Desperate to support them in whatever way I could, I spent hour making videos for kids, videos for parents...anything I could do. It was exhausting.  But then things began to find their rhythm. Then I realized that I was sleeping at night. Next thing that happened was that I could come off my prescription medicine for GI issues.

I discovered just how much stress I layer on myself - What do other people think? How can I fit in? Why do they laugh at my ideas?  All gone. One fell swoop. Just left with me and my (virtual) classroom.

Am I worried about the 2-3 kids who have gone missing? Yes.  Am I frustrated by the kids who have apparently forgotten how to access work and apparently have told parents that we never did it this way? You bet I am!  Do I get bothered by the students who do as little as possible, but then turn in their work to avoid that MISSING notification? Of course I do!  Am I super proud of my kids who are THRIVING with independent learning and far more time for one-on-one supports?  Yes I am.

Every day I am learning about things that will change in either my virtual or real classroom.  That's exciting, invigorating, and just plain good learning.

So, strange year indeed.  I last blogged in the fall, Now it's April and we are teaching from home.