After almost 18 years of teaching with the past four as a middle school vice-principal, I have recently been appointed as an elementary school principal for the next school year! I am thrilled, humbled and admittedly, a bit terrified at this honour which has been bestowed on me. I have known for the past couple of years that I have wanted to become a school principal but it’s always felt like, “one day”. Well, that “one day” is (almost) here (cue stomach butterflies).
I know that I will not be alone in this. I know I have the skills needed and that my mentors and colleagues have helped me prepare. I can and will handle all that a principal needs to be able to do, manage and deal with in the day-to-day. And I know that this will not happen overnight, that there most certainly will be moments where it will be hard, and that it will be challenging. I expect this and welcome it. My growth mindset, willingness to take risks, relationship-building skills and support from my mentor and district office will all be factors in my success as a principal.
When I told my friends and family about my new role, someone said, “hey, movin’ on up!”...just like the Jeffersons theme song (dating myself just a little). But the thing is, I don’t see this as an entirely vertical move. Yes, I will be the head of a school but I really want to build the type of learning community where I am a part of something, as a partner and as a learner, with the staff at my school. I have a view of the future where relationships and trust are built to the point where collaboration is the norm and we create change, take risks, improve and learn together. I definitely have a lot to learn and I certainly don’t have all the answers!
So I intend to be “movin’ on over” which is not to be confused with George Thorogood’s “move it on over” where a “mean old dog’s movin’ in”...mainly because I’m fairly young and I don’t think I have a propensity for meanness, but I digress. I see my move into the role of principal as more of a lateral move really, where I intend to learn all I can about my new school community while I get to know everyone and they get to know me. This relationship and trust building will be the basis of everything that evolves from there. Then, when we are ready as a staff to ponder change or to face new initiatives (curriculum redesign, anyone?), my vision is that we will do so together.
I have more I want to delve into in this blog about communities of practice and professional capital but I will leave that for another post! Considering that I am still about three months away from my vertical-lateral move, I will remind myself to take things one day at a time now as I finish up my current assignment as vice-principal and say goodbye to my current school, students and colleagues. My “one day” will be here soon enough (with butterflies, right on cue).
Last June, as we were finalizing our timetable for this coming year, a twist of fate saw me headed back into the classroom to teach two sections of Mathematiques 8 (French Immersion Math) after 2 years as a Learning Assistance Teacher (in addition to my administrator duties). As much as I loved my role as LAT, I had missed the classroom and working with a class full of students. I also missed teaching Math but at first I was a bit panicked. I had taught it for 10 years but wondered if I could get back into the swing of things with the subject matter? Also, since my past teaching in the Math classroom was what I consider my "pre-Twitter" days, I knew that I had discovered so many new and different technologies and teaching methods that I just couldn't go back to some of my old ways. My head was swimming with possible ideas for how I could fuse some of the great things I was doing before (Kagan cooperative structures, project-based assessments) with all of these new ideas while dropping some of the more antiquated methods (worksheets, lecture-style teaching). Wow!
I decided to try not to think about school for the month of July which I mostly did. I ordered a couple of books which I had heard about on Twitter such as Dave Burgess' Teach Like A Pirate
and Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day by Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams, and Total Participation Techniques by Persida and William Himmele. Once August hit, I was reading these books and searching for articles related to these topics and mathematics instruction. I didn't just want to teach Math, I wanted to inspire my students to see Math as something fun, engaging, useful and relevant.
One place I really hooked into was Todd Nesloney's Flipped Classroom website: http://www.toddnesloney.com/ This guy is a veritable wealth of information and experience about how to go about flipping your classroom and using video lessons with your students. I decided I would like to try some flipped lessons and see what happens.
I did my usual course outline and also added a letter to parents and students (based on Nesloney's which you can find HERE) which explains what a flipped lesson looks like, what I would be expecting of students and also included a short survey to gather information on students' computer access at home. It is important to know what level of internet access your students have in order to make this work.
So far, I have flipped one lesson on square numbers and square roots. Here is my very first video lesson:
It is, of course, in French but you get the idea. It is also funny how you don't realize what your voice sounds like until you record it!
I used the Educreations app on the iPad to create the scenes and narrate the exciting "action". After I finished the video I discovered that this app does not allow you to download or share the video to You Tube. You can give your viewers the video link where it lives on the Educreations website but I was worried that this would not play properly on my students' mobile devices so I made a screencast of the video, capturing it on the web-based, Screencast-O-Matic. It worked pretty well but was an extra step. I am looking for other apps which have Educreations ease of use but which allow downloads or YouTube publishing.
I taught my students how to view a flipped video by doing a practice video in class the day prior to assigning my acutal video. Based on Nesloney's WSQ (Watch, Summarize, Question), I am having my students do an ERQ (Écoutez,
Résumez, Questionnez for each video. For practice, I had them watch a video with a simple message and a couple of key points which I found on the Alberta Education website. Here is the English version of Math: It's everywhere. I was happy they also produced a French version.
Then, I assigned my square numbers/square roots video which is about 4 minutes long. I asked students to spend about that same amount of time doing the ERQ.
The next day, we began the class by a quick turn-and-talk to share ERQ's and then a whole class discussion, supplemented with some notes I had made on a Notebook slide (not for them to copy but to verify that the notes they had taken had enough detail). I collected their notebooks to read and give some written feedback. The next day, I highlighted a couple of student examples of well-done ERQ's on the Smart Board, pointing out what to do to create quality summaries and questions.
Sample Student ERQ
Following this, I asked students for their honest opinions of what they thought of this learning experience. I was surprised and not surprised at their various, insightful answers, some of which included:
I like how I can watch and re-watch the lesson without having to ask the teacher to repeat something, which I am sometimes embarrassed to do in front of the class.
I like that I can pause the video for as long as I want to make notes.
I can watch the lesson free of distractions from other students because I am at home with my headphones on.
Being able to re-watch the video helps me to better understand what is being said in French.
I like the face-to-face part of being in the classroom.
Sometimes I wanted to know the answer to my questions right away but I had to write them down and wait for the next day in class.
What I learned from their feedback, their work on this lesson and their learning is that this sort of instruction really demands students to personally take charge of their learning. A large percentage of the students really did a great job of writing a summary of the lesson content in their own words and they came up with some great questions. A few students will need a push to become more independent learners but this is the case in most classrooms, I think.
Another benefit which I hope to gain from this model of instruction is increased classroom time for problem-solving and more time for me to spend with each student. Spending less time on direct teaching and note-writing should leave more time for hands-on activities, inquiry and projects. I will let you know if this pans out.
Moving forward, I would like to keep making videos and perhaps have students create video-lessons too as unit projects or performance assessments. I think they will have even better ideas which they will more creatively present than I ever would. Also, as teachers, they would really be absorbing and learning the content, they would have to collaborate to create these videos and I think they would really be engaged in the use of technology to show what they know.
To be continued...but in the meantime, I would love to hear about your flipped class experiences. The more I can learn, the more I can improve. Merci!
Redcamp13...born out of a conversation about edcamps... “Have you heard about the unconference, participant-driven idea for professional development called edcamp?” “Yeah, intriguing idea.” “We should plan one!” “Ok!”
There really wasn’t any hesitation after that. If you build it, they will camp. That was our hope in planning Central Alberta’s first edcamp which was dubbed Redcamp (a play on words for our city of Red Deer from the creative mind of @EbertsR). So we did build it, and on May 11, 2013 Redcamp13 happened! People interested in conversations and learning about education came to Glendale Sciences & Technology School in Red Deer, Alberta. Teachers, educational assistants, principals and vice-principals along with central office administrators were there. Pre-service teachers and their professors from university were there. But that was not all, no that was not all. There were speech/language pathologists, city counsellors and school board trustees too! Wow! The depth and breadth of knowledge and experience really did justice to the saying, “the expert is the room”.
The buzz in the gym just prior to the opening remarks by the Redcamp team was palpable. People were excited to be there even on a beautiful Saturday morning in May when they could easily have been doing other things. I know I wasn’t the only one wondering how this would turn out but we were all eager to try it. Sessions were added to the board, coffee was poured, conversations started over Twitter handles on nametags..."Hey! So nice to meet someone from my Twitter PLN face to face!"
Things got started with a short introduction by @EbertsR, @joe_bower and @graingered and then we were off to hour-long sessions which for some discussions could have been longer but there is only so much time in the day and so many topics to learn and talk about!
As one of the organizers of Redcamp, my intent was to pop into many sessions to get a flavour for what was going on and maybe snap a few photos for Twitter. I started out this way but many of the sessions I intended to only pop in on, drew me in and I stayed. Conversations around inclusion lead by @BeyondTheCrayon, engaging all students led by @JasTravers and whether math should be graded led by @d_martin05 were fascinating and inspiring. Conversation and sharing about turning your classroom into a creativity lab and starting a creativity revolution led by @twnpenner got my brain jazzed UP! I learned about purposeful questions and collaboration by actively participating in the process with businessman/city counsellor @harris4rd. Every session I went to gave me something which either changed, deepened, challenged or furthered my thinking. And there were many other sessions that I didn't get a chance to go to but wish I would have had the time for as well.
There were quite a few steps involved in planning our first Redcamp (which I will leave for another post in case anyone is thinking of planning one of their own) and with our busy professional and personal lives, at times I wondered if it was all going to be worth it. All I can now say is YES, YES, YES! It was worth it! Will there be a Redcamp14? Absolutely! Will there be other edcamps because those who came to ours are inspired to host one of their own? I don’t doubt it at all. The feedback we have had from Redcamp has been fantastic and very positive. I’m looking forward not only to planning Redcamp14 but also to attending edcamps elsewhere. If they build it, I will camp!
Thinking
outside the box. This expression with
the commonly understood meaning of thinking
creatively to solve a problem actually has its origin with the 9-dots puzzle
which asks that you draw 4 straight lines to cross all of the 9 dots without
lifting your pencil:
There are
various solutions to this problem which involve having to extend the line (s)
outside of the box, thus “think outside of the box” to find the answer.
In terms of
paradigms, sometimes you do not even realize you are inside of a particular box
and then something twigs a creative thought which blooms into something great. In the case of the story I am about to share,
collaboration with parents, colleagues and the student led to a creative solution
to a seemingly difficult problem.
At my
school we have many students who are very new to Canada and are learning
English as a Second Language.
Wait…second language? Not
always. Sometimes we assume that the
students coming to us are learning English as their second language but in many
cases, English is their third or fourth language. Thus, the term English Language Learner (ELL)
is far more à propos.
When we
register new ELL students, we automatically put them in our English program in
a regular classroom with ELL supports such as:
the teacher providing adapted learning materials
in their subject area for the ELL student, focusing on vocabulary
having students take an ELL option class with
other ELL students and a teacher who works with them on English language skills
an ELL pull-out during English Language Arts
class to work with an Educational Assistant on English language skills, particularly
if the student is level 1 or 2 ELL.
additional ELL time during our Literacy period
to work on English language skills on a computer program such as Rosetta Stone
A few
months ago when we registered a student whom I will call Bea (not her real
name), we set her up with exactly these types of supports. We also put her in a class with another
female student who speaks her first language of Arabic so that they could
support each other while learning English.
Fast-forward a couple of weeks to parent conferences and Bea’s parents
came in, very concerned about Bea. We
called a meeting which included our LAT/ELL specialist, the school counselor,
an Arabic interpreter, the parents, Bea, and myself as the grade administrator
for Bea’s grade. It turned out that the
interpreter was not really necessary as Bea’s parents spoke quite fluently in
English but the interpreter, as an agent of CARE (an organization which helps
new Canadians with settlement and adjustment to Canadian life) did act as a
form of support for the family and helped them feel more comfortable
approaching the school for help. Bea’s
parents were concerned because Bea was coming home from school crying and had
reached the point of saying that she didn’t want to go to school anymore. They told us she was frustrated at how slowly
she was learning English and that she was very worried about falling behind
academically in school. Her parents
related to us that Bea had been in the top of her class in Tunisia, the country
where they had been living before coming to Canada. Bea’s father was a doctor and her mother was
a lawyer in their homeland and they are currently trying to have their
education acknowledged in Canada. So,
it became clear to us that academics are important to Bea and her parents and
it was easier to understand why she was so frustrated and worried about
school.
As we
continued to discuss how things were going for Bea in her classes at our
school, I mentioned that I had observed Bea in her French as a Second Language
(FSL) option class and that I noticed how strong her French language skills
were and that she seemed to enjoy this class.
To this, her parents replied that Bea’s second language is actually
French and that she had studied enough French in Tunisia that she is actually
quite fluent in French…and so are both of her parents! As a former French Immersion teacher and
current FI administrator in my school, I immediately began a short conversation
with Bea and her parents in French and was fairly convinced that we could be
meeting Bea’s academic needs in a completely different way than we usually do
for ELL students. My ELL “box” basically
ripped open and an idea began to form about what to do to help Bea. It broke my heart that she was disliking
school so much that she didn’t want to come.
So, why couldn’t she become a French Immersion student? If she took her core classes in French and we
maintained all of the ELL supports that we already had in place to help her
learn English, then maybe she would enjoy school again! I mentioned this possibility to her parents
who were very intrigued by the idea because they felt they could easily help
her with her school work if it were in French.
They asked Bea what she thought about this and she looked at me and
asked if it would be possible because she would like that very much. I told them that we could do some testing and
determine her level of French and then see what we could do.
Over the
course of the next week, I tested Bea’s reading, writing and listening
comprehension and I thought she was pretty fluent but I wanted a second
option. I asked a French Immersion
colleague of mine to test her with the DELF materials and he felt that she
could definitely handle being a French Immersion student, particularly because
of her strong work ethic, desire to do well in school, and parental
support.
In our
school we have two types of French Immersion classes: early immersion (students
who have taken FI since kindergarten) and late immersion (students who began FI
in grade 6). Bea is in grade 8 so the
decision we had to make was whether to put her in the late immersion class with
students who have been learning French for only 3 years or early immersion with
students who have been learning French
for 9 years. It was an interesting
conversation with my colleagues about where she would fit best, with her French
being not quite as accomplished as the early FI students but probably a little
more advanced than the late FI students.
Some other considerations included the fact that the late class was
sitting at 29 students and the early classes were 24 and 25 students. Also, the teachers felt that the late class
tended to help themselves understand French by switching over to English a lot
more than the early students and this would not be advantageous to a level 1
ELL student. We decided
to put Bea in an early immersion class and it has been wonderful to see her
transformation. Bea tells me that she
loves it and is very happy with her new classes. Her parents came in the other day to say
thank you for seeing a way to help Bea to have academic success and that she
enjoys coming to school and is happy again.
I know that
the expression “thinking outside the box” is probably overused and the meaning over generalized but in this case it was an apt metaphor for the process of collaborating
which led to a change in thinking about
how we meet the needs of certain ELL students.
As a Canadian woman, living in a medium-sized city I could easily ignore
the recent news coverage on the One Billion Rising movement. They say that 1 in 3 women in the world will be raped or beaten in her lifetime. There is a global movement to end violence
against women which gained a lot of press this past week on Valentine’s Day as
groups of women and men all over the world gathered in public places to
peacefully and joyfully protest this violence through dance and song. I
could easily brush off this movement thinking that the women rising up together
are fighting a problem in India or Somalia or Afghanistan or some other
place very far away. Sure, there is violence against women in my
country, in my city. As a school administrator in a school
situated across the street from a women's shelter, I know that this violence
exists. We often take in students temporarily who are staying in the women's shelter with their mothers. But again, this violence doesn't
directly touch me so why would I rise up to fight violence against women?
Here is one reason why...
I like to run. I am currently training for half-marathons in March
and May. I run with a group of ladies who have become good friends.
As we run we chat about our lives and I have come to regard these runs as
my time just for me, a break from work and family commitments where I
can bond with my girlfriends, get fit and de-stress while working toward
various running goals.
Yesterday, as I was running a 20 km training run with two of my friends
along the trails in the river valley of our city, at about kilometre 15, we
were spread out slightly with the faster lady of our group of three about 50
meters ahead of us. Suddenly, she turned
around and was running back to us and when we joined up again, she said that up
ahead on the trail was a man walking alone and she didn't feel comfortable
passing him alone. Several seconds later, running all together, we passed
this man and could see he was just a man out for a walk on a Sunday afternoon.
He could have been one of our brothers or husbands. Up close he was
not threatening at all, but this is what I was thinking as the three of us ran
past him together. I know that if I had been running alone, I would not
have felt so brave. I have run alone before and I have to admit that I
never feel completely safe when doing so. I realized that I do not just
run with friends for camaraderie. I run with my friends to feel
safe. Here I am, living in a city and country with
solid, uncorrupted police and justice systems (unlike many of the
countries I have read about such as India and Mexico for example) and yet I am
afraid of any situation where I may be isolated with a man I do not know.
If that man walking on the trail ahead of my friend had been a woman
instead, I know that she would not have felt the need to turn around.
One Billion Rising is not just about the third world. It is not
just about war-torn countries and buses in India. It is about women feeling safe wherever they are. It is
for women working a late shift at the hospital who need a security escort to
their cars. It is for women alone at a bus stop. It is for women
who feel they need to lock their car door when driving. It is for women
walking or running alone. And it is also about the bad image that all men
get because of violence against women by the few. Obviously not all men are violent
and not all men are to be feared.
This is why I do need to rise up to fight violence against women. This
is why we ALL need to rise up, women and men together, to say that violence
against women is not acceptable and we will not continue to ignore it or think
that it is someone else's problem.
There is an active hashtag on Twitter: #1BillionRising and many regions, cities and countries are creating their own Twitter accounts to let us know when and where Rising events are taking place.
A very good place to start is by following One Billion Rising founder, Eve Ensler.
Here is a short film about One Billion Rising by EveEnsler and Tony Stroebel
Redcamp13…Red Deer’s first #edcamp is set to happen on May 11, 2013 at Glendale Sciences and Technology School. We are excited to see a number of people
signed up and as we’ve been chatting with people about it, it is very clear the
buzz is growing, kind of like that flashmob thing.
We know that there are more people out there who have never experienced
an edcamp and are on the fence about registering. This has inspired the
following list of reasons why YOU should come to Redcamp13:
I am currently working on planning Red Deer's first edcamp, dubbed REdcamp13 (pretty cool play on words thanks to @EbertsR and since I love flash mobs, I was struck by the similarities. I have to admit that I have never been to an edcamp but am so impressed with #edcamp talk on Twitter that I was inspired to help bring one to my city. Here, in my humble opinion, is how edcamp is like a flash mob. Feel free to agree or disagree, particularly if you have edcamp experience! :)
How Edcamp is like a Flash Mob:
1. Flashmobs, like edcamps start with one or two people, moving to a beat, dancing to what appears to be their own drummer…at first. The moves soon catch on and others are joining in the fun. Edcamp, a relatively new concept in professional development for educators where the participants guide the learning, is gaining momentum. My REdcamp13 colleagues and I know that the edcamp idea is little known or understood around these parts but we intend to shake it, boogie, learn some new moves and have fun in hopes that it will catch on with our fellow Albertans (Saskatchewanites? British Columbians?) who dare to come to our first edcamp in May, 2013.
2. Flashmobs, like edcamps start with a little preparation by a core group of interested individuals who have a desire to share their passion (a song, a dance, a happy feeling) with the world and then amazing, spontaneous things happen. One of the original flashmobs in a train station in Belgium which was choreographed to the Sound of Music’s Do-Re-Mi held only two practice sessions before taking it live. The result was inspiring.
Edcamp Philly started very small, as described by Kristen Swanson and the concept has spread all over North America and even Europe.
3. Flashmobs, like edcamps, are done because people WANT to. They are not driven by money or celebrity. People do flash mobs, like Mila Kunis’ character says in the film Friends with Benefits, because it’s fun!
Educators do edcamps because…well, maybe those who have attended edcamps in the past can comment on why they attend edcamps?? I’m sure fun has something to do with it but I’m guessing the deep learning and meaningful conversations that encourage professional growth also are driving factors.
In Drive, Daniel Pink writes about the importance of autonomy as a factor in what motivates people. He says that people want autonomy over task, time, team and technique. Edcamps provide learners with plenty of autonomy over what you learn, when you learn it, with whom you are learning and how you are learning. If this is something that also motivates you, perhaps you should attend REdcamp13 in Red Deer, Alberta on May 11, 2013. We would LOVE to have you! And who knows, maybe we’ll break into a flashmob at lunchtime! ;)
(couldn't resist adding in just one more flash mob - Bazinga!)
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