Re-inventing myself, once again
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In my district, teachers go back to work on July 27, with students starting a week later. I’ll be teaching something new, which gives me the opportunity to create, a prospect that is both invigorating and terrifying. Which one I’m feeling depends on the day. Last spring, I was completed panicked, my go-to response to change of any kind. The official name of the course is Study Skills, but I prefer to call it Enrichment because I want to move kids beyond where they are, and not have them assume that I have the answers as to how to study in the 21st century. In the past, teachers have taught this course as an add-on to their regular assignment, but it will be my full assignment, another push to design something fabulous.
Last spring, the only things I was sure of were that I wanted to include a “genius hour” component and increase personalized learning the other days. I wasn't completely sure what either meant. I was part of an interdisciplinary inquiry and project-based team about four years ago, in which we teachers intentionally made connections across disciplines and challenged our students to complete group projects to showcase their learning. As I thought about this new class, I realized that releasing students’ voices to set their own goals and find their own paths were the next step for me. With that in mind, I started my learning journey in May with a visit to a teacher in another school on the next-to-the-last day of the year. It was incredible of her to welcome me at that chaotic time, and she shared lots of ideas of what they were doing. I began reading online and ordering books - and devouring everything! It was as if I were in a graduate class again, except that it was one of my own making.
I reread Berger’s A More Beautiful Question (change begins with asking Why? then What if? and finally, How?, see http://amorebeautifulquestion.com/), Rothstein and Santana’s Make Just One Change (http://rightquestion.org/make-just-one-change/), Pink's Drive, and Wettrick’s Pure Genius , each of which had triggered my thinking a few years ago. I followed up with Juliani’s Inquiry and Innovation in the Classroom, and then discovered Krebs and Zvi’s Genius Hour Guidebook. Each of these helped me to determine my first steps. Then I read about Kirr’s Shift This, with all of her small, yet powerful, doable shifts to move my class from student choice to greater student voice. I became really excited about the possibilities for this coming year! (Incidentally, I also decided to keep the course non-graded because of this book, when I initially wanted the force of a grade attached to it!) Around this same time I signed up for Twitter and wow! I had no idea I would love it so much. All of a sudden, the people whose work I admired were real people, willing to share and chat about ideas. In the busy-ness of the school year, I hadn’t felt that I had the time to read Twitter. Now, I feel as though I don’t have time NOT to! My other professional books were Spencer and Juliani’s Empower, Solarz’s Learn Like a Pirate, Currie, Krakower, and Rocco's Hacking Google for Education, and Bird's Google Classroom.
I want my class to start where kids are, and middle schoolers are all about themselves. They are in the process of becoming the person they will be, with all the false starts and tentative identities that the process entails. That self-interest, along with my background in language acquisition and culture studies gave me the idea of revamping a “Cultural DNA” unit as our starting point. Unlike an earlier culture unit, I won’t identify FOR students what I want them to accomplish. Instead, we’ll start with a statement about culture for them to develop questions, research the components of culture, and then decide what to explore so that they can learn about their personal culture and figure out how they would like to share it. I learned about the “question formulation technique,” developed by the Right Question Institute, in Make Just One Change. In that technique, students generate lots of questions from a statement or picture, identify their questions as closed (google-able) or open (not google-able), and learn to switch them from one to the other kind. During the unit, they will blog about their progress and stumbling blocks, and I’ll blog along with them about mine, so that they can see me as a learner as well as a guide.
I’m excited to be re-inventing my teaching practice this year. It will be scary and I’m sure I’ll mess up. A lot. But I want my students to become my partners in driving this process and not mere riders in my car. Now the hard part begins for me. I want to map out my plan for the first months in my pretty new planner. I’m the sort of person who keeps ideas in my head and not as much on paper, but with so much of this year new for me, I’m afraid I’ll forget some of it if I don’t get it all down. Here I go!
Last spring, the only things I was sure of were that I wanted to include a “genius hour” component and increase personalized learning the other days. I wasn't completely sure what either meant. I was part of an interdisciplinary inquiry and project-based team about four years ago, in which we teachers intentionally made connections across disciplines and challenged our students to complete group projects to showcase their learning. As I thought about this new class, I realized that releasing students’ voices to set their own goals and find their own paths were the next step for me. With that in mind, I started my learning journey in May with a visit to a teacher in another school on the next-to-the-last day of the year. It was incredible of her to welcome me at that chaotic time, and she shared lots of ideas of what they were doing. I began reading online and ordering books - and devouring everything! It was as if I were in a graduate class again, except that it was one of my own making.
I reread Berger’s A More Beautiful Question (change begins with asking Why? then What if? and finally, How?, see http://amorebeautifulquestion.com/), Rothstein and Santana’s Make Just One Change (http://rightquestion.org/make-just-one-change/), Pink's Drive, and Wettrick’s Pure Genius , each of which had triggered my thinking a few years ago. I followed up with Juliani’s Inquiry and Innovation in the Classroom, and then discovered Krebs and Zvi’s Genius Hour Guidebook. Each of these helped me to determine my first steps. Then I read about Kirr’s Shift This, with all of her small, yet powerful, doable shifts to move my class from student choice to greater student voice. I became really excited about the possibilities for this coming year! (Incidentally, I also decided to keep the course non-graded because of this book, when I initially wanted the force of a grade attached to it!) Around this same time I signed up for Twitter and wow! I had no idea I would love it so much. All of a sudden, the people whose work I admired were real people, willing to share and chat about ideas. In the busy-ness of the school year, I hadn’t felt that I had the time to read Twitter. Now, I feel as though I don’t have time NOT to! My other professional books were Spencer and Juliani’s Empower, Solarz’s Learn Like a Pirate, Currie, Krakower, and Rocco's Hacking Google for Education, and Bird's Google Classroom.
I want my class to start where kids are, and middle schoolers are all about themselves. They are in the process of becoming the person they will be, with all the false starts and tentative identities that the process entails. That self-interest, along with my background in language acquisition and culture studies gave me the idea of revamping a “Cultural DNA” unit as our starting point. Unlike an earlier culture unit, I won’t identify FOR students what I want them to accomplish. Instead, we’ll start with a statement about culture for them to develop questions, research the components of culture, and then decide what to explore so that they can learn about their personal culture and figure out how they would like to share it. I learned about the “question formulation technique,” developed by the Right Question Institute, in Make Just One Change. In that technique, students generate lots of questions from a statement or picture, identify their questions as closed (google-able) or open (not google-able), and learn to switch them from one to the other kind. During the unit, they will blog about their progress and stumbling blocks, and I’ll blog along with them about mine, so that they can see me as a learner as well as a guide.
I’m excited to be re-inventing my teaching practice this year. It will be scary and I’m sure I’ll mess up. A lot. But I want my students to become my partners in driving this process and not mere riders in my car. Now the hard part begins for me. I want to map out my plan for the first months in my pretty new planner. I’m the sort of person who keeps ideas in my head and not as much on paper, but with so much of this year new for me, I’m afraid I’ll forget some of it if I don’t get it all down. Here I go!
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Jeanne, what a great blog post. Welcome to the world of blogging and Twitter. I'm also a product of constant re-inventions in my teaching life! My go-to mentor quote is "the teacher is the chief learner in the classroom." (Donald Graves)
ReplyDeleteI love this quote about middle schoolers "with all the false starts and tentative identities that the process entails." Your being with them in the process of their becoming is beautiful.
Congratulations on your new class. I know it will be amazing. Even as you mess up a lot, you will be fixing it because that's how you roll.
Blessings,
Denise Krebs
Hi Jeanne!
ReplyDeleteI am so glad that Joy pointed me in the direction of your blog. It is so great to read about a fellow teacher thinking about a new assignment. I am also teaching a new class this year and am trying to wrap my head around it all, so I totally related.
I loved when you said, "I began reading online and ordering books - and devouring everything! It was as if I were in a graduate class again, except that it was one of my own making." I could feel your enthusiasm and this is exactly what we want for our kids, right? And I don't think it is an accident that it was due to the fact that, like you said, it was one of your own making! That is why Genius Hour works. I am excited to hear about how your year goes! Good luck!