It's a marathon.

Hello teachers. Whether you are new or seasoned, being a teacher is a marathon. The first few weeks of September can seem overwhelming when the finish line is horizons away. If you're feeling that way, remember Terry Fox. He was only 22 years old.

A Compassionate Stance

Is compassion a matter of reacting to situations or is it about how intentional you are? This short video may make you rethink your definition of compassion and how to apply it to your life, or teach it to your students.

What's similar about bowling & inclusive ed?

Classroom composition and diversity is a given. But how do we reach more students? Shelly Moore, from the University of British Columbia, has a clever idea.

What does school "feel" like for some kids?

 

The "cumulative" weight of school interactions can feel quite heavy for some students by the end of the day. Is there a way to lighten the load? Use your language to elevate, not to shame because the words we use on our students become the words they use on themselves. 

What exactly do teachers do?

Educational researcher Dr. David Sousa answers this question succinctly: we teachers are "brain changers." 

Learning more about the brain can boost your teaching productivity and efficiency, plus it can be inspiring. Edutopia has a 5 minute film festival page on a variety of subjects that pertain to teachers, including learning about the brain, like this one, How Youth Learn: 

Write to be Right?

We teachers may not realize it but for students, their school writing is typically scrutinized. Summative writing tasks are more high-stakes, focused on learning to write. So students tend to write to be right.

Yet creating product is only one purpose for writing. Students also need time to write to explore, to think, to test and try ideas. Writing to learn is valuable too because it helps students activate their own thinking, generate their own ideas, and reflect on their own learning. Not only does it provide much-needed time to practice writing without heavy scrutiny, the generated content can be used for other writing purposes and for small and whole group discussions. So where might low-stakes writing fit into your lessons, and how might it improve student engagement toward writing?

How to Find your Voice

As Grand Snider's most excellent cartoon reveals, finding your voice requires many attempts, some successful, some not so much. Like the cartoon suggests, we educators find our voices in the voices of others: great thinkers, administrators, colleagues, favourite authors, scientists, engineers, mathematicians, our own favourite teachers and so on, but we must always remember that it is by listening to our students that we will find many of the answers we're seeking to empower ourselves.

Think Left & Think Right

Dr. Seuss taught many of us as children to "think left and think right, think low and think high, oh the things you can think, if you only try."

Teaching students to think means teaching them to self-assess. This requires a clearly defined process that can be repeated to mastery. No matter the grade, the process is essentially the same. This Arts example provides some great direction regarding that process.

For more information and resources, click here.

What IS confidence?

Who doesn't need a confidence boost every now and again? Sometimes risks lack the expected rewards. Sometimes we can't help but compare ourselves to others seemingly more successful. Sometimes we experience a string of failures. No one can be confident all the time. But we teachers are very skilled at solving problems. Like this short video suggests, to boost our confidence we should start with this question: what exactly is confidence?

Time to think?

Renowned speaker Zig Ziglar said, "lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem; we all have 24 hour days." We've all heard people say, I don't even have time to think! Yet it's true--we all get the same 24 hours. Perhaps that thinking time is what's truly missing?

What if we stopped managing time and made time? Be makers people, be makers.

Here's to wishing you some much needed think-time!

Creating Learners

Recently, we coaches spent a day with all the Junior High teachers in our school division. We enjoyed the opportunity to talk to them about building a collaborative culture and we feel immense gratitude for their insights and ideas. They have such an important job!

One of our activities was to define the ideal skills and attributes of a student. Using a bit of backwards design, we hoped to encourage teachers to visualize the type of learner they, through their influence, want to create. The wordle says it all.

What kind of students do you want to create?

Chicken or Egg? Egg or Chicken?

John Antonetti's Engagement Cube

We've all been asked which came first: the chicken or the egg? One of the reasons this question engages us is because it provokes debate. It challenges and exposes our thinking about a variety of things, and everyone seems to have a different theory. 

Speaking of engagement, Dr. Douglas Willms asks a great chicken-egg type question for us educators. In the great debate about how to best engage our disengaged youth, he poses this: does engagement increase achievement OR does achievement increase engagement? 

Dr. Willms' research reveals that "achievement begets engagement." What do you think? 

What do you love about teaching?

Recently we coaches spent a day with our new staff (a wonderful combination of both beginning teachers and teachers new to our school division) at our orientation call-back day. We asked them: what do you love about teaching? We think what they said is good inspiration for all teachers. 

• I love the dynamic atmosphere of the classroom, things aren’t the same from one class to another or even one day to another in the same class.
• The student process from “I have no idea what I am doing” to “I got it!”
• Building relationships with students.
• I learn a lot in the process of teaching.
• I love meeting new people.
• I love creating relationships and seeing the light in a student’s eyes when they come to an understanding!  (epiphany)
• Seeing “the lightbulb” come on for students.  This moment is WHY I teach.
• The moment when everything clicks!
• I love smiling faces you encounter every day :)
• I love being creative - I get paid to be creative!
• AHA moment, I get it, Yes!
• I love interacting with the students; being able to hear and respond to what gets the students questioning.
• I love seeing the students learn and apply what they have learned outside the class.
• I love meeting students years later and they have a “remember when we…” story.
• The contact with the students.
• Having an impact on children’s lives and having connections with students.
• I love the schedule, always doing something new, working indoors during winter, the amount of resources for professional development.
• The enthusiasm some kids have for the material.
• Being able to share my faith everyday and celebrating our “God moments” together as a class.
• Being with children.
• I love going to work each day and finding I learn something new.

What's neuroplasticity and how do I get some?

One of the most difficult things we teachers face every day in the classroom is a fixed mindset and some of the byproducts of that thinking: anxiety, low motivation, attendance issues, apathy,  powerlessness, avoidance, negativity, and so on. But where does this mindset come from because we certainly don't start out that way, do we...?




Students need to understand that the goal is not to be the so-called best; the goal is to grow. Their mistakes are simply learning opportunities. Researchers like Carol Dweck have proven that the brain is like a muscle: the more you use it, the more it grows. In other words, it does us better to focus more on the growth necessary to achieve rather than the achievement itself. Why? A technical term for this is neuroplasticity:


Our intelligence is not fixed. Neural connections form and deepen most when we make mistakes doing difficult tasks rather than repeatedly having success with easy ones.  Science has proven we can grow the brains we need to accomplish the tasks we hope to accomplish if we are willing to face our challenges with an open mind. Challenges like learning guitar, or Shakespeare, or dance, or tennis, or economics, or math problem-solving or even relearning how to walk. Maybe we just can't do those things YET.

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That kind of thinking inspires, that kind of thinking empowers. So maybe it's time to talk to your students about this? Maybe it's time to share stories with them about people with growth mindsets? Maybe it's time to model how we do it. 

A Terrific New Word for Learning!

BIG IDEA: Iteration is the act of repeating a process with the aim of approaching a desired goal, target or result. Each repetition of the process is also called an "iteration," and the results of one iteration are used as the starting point for the next iteration.

Think about that: what a great to summarize teaching and learning. Wouldn't this be a better way to shift student mindsets about the concept of failure? It certainly underlines the notion that "a mistake is an opportunity to learn." Plus, if you consider fractals, it's a rather beautiful thought too:

 What role might iteration play in your classroom this year? 

How do I know I'm making a difference?

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Every day, thousands and thousands of teachers influence students. Yet because we teachers are in the midst of the busy day-to-day aspects of learning, we sometimes don't recognize or even realize the signs that show we are truly making a difference in the education and lives of our students. Stop and think about that. It's true, isn't it? This idea inspired our list of 15 ways to know YOU ARE making a difference: 


1. Students talk to you umprompted (or give you a fist bump or a high five).
2. You’ve tried new things (and some even worked!)
3. People directly tell you. (Don't dismiss it; let those compliments soak in!)
4. You are less nervous when your admin or colleagues visit your room.
5. You mentor other teachers. People want your opinion.
6. Students raise their hands to share rather than always to ask for help.
7. Your students miss you after a day with a sub.
8. Your students can verbalize what they’re learning.
9. You notice students using words like "criteria" and other vocabulary you've taught them.
10. A student models your thinking or behaviour to other students.
11. You're tired but energized too. You smile at the beginning of the day (not just the end).
12. You are marking less but assessing more.
13. Your staffroom conversations are more about sharing strategies and collaborating.
14. A parent or guardian or former student or adminstrator takes a moment to thank you.
15. Students are reading and writing and creating and thinking and questioning and laughing and learning!

Got Test Anxiety?

Many of our students experience test-anxiety or lack confidence when faced with any type of assessment. These issues speak to the need for students to learn about perseverance and problem-solving and develop personal strategies around them. One such strategy might be a brain purge (sometimes called a brain dump) Despite the odd name, it could really be quite helpful.

 

So how does it work?

After learning new material over a period of time, have students do a "brain purge" on a blank page. Essentially, they dump everything they know about what they've learned. This has many uses:
1. It helps students articulate their learning.
2. It allows teachers to see "gaps" in learning.
3. It allows for teacher/peer feedback.
4. It creates a study guide before tests.
5. If done for a few minutes immediately before a test, it becomes the study guide during the test.

All of these approaches may be quite useful in removing anxiety and developing confidence in learning and assessment. What do you think?

Find out more information here at Edutopia.

Who's Yours?

You are pretty special. Believe it.

Every kid has a champion right? A vigorous supporter? Someone in their corner, cheering? We certainly hope so. On his blog, Stony Plain Alberta principal George Couros posed these thoughts...

"Doesn’t every adult need a champion as well? I guess they don’t need a champion, but wouldn’t it make what we do that much better? Does it not make a difference when you know that the people you work with value and promote the great work that you do?"

We totally agree; all adults should have champions too. That's why we think you should consider these two essential questions:
1. Who are you a champion for?
2. Who's your champion?

10000 Ways that Don't Work?

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Formative assessment provides time for trial and error and thus encourages students to takes risks to achieve more. Even though it's time consuming in our classrooms, just imagine what the world would be like without it. Think about Thomas Edison. What if he hadn't been allowed to redo, rethink, and revise his work. What if he hadn't persevered? It's a "dark" thought, isn't it?

Scientists estimate that Edison's light bulb wastes 95% of the energy it creates. If so, I guess one could say his bulb still doesn't work perfectly and yet look at how it has dramatically changed our lives and the world.

Maybe there's another Thomas Edison in your classroom right now. Hmmm. Maybe finding 10,000 ways that don't work is actually pretty darn good work.

Austin's Butterfly-The Power of Feedback

The video about Austin's Butterfly made us wonder about each student's potential when given feedback. What can a kid actually do if we don't accept his first try?

Consider using these questions to reflect on how you might use feedback in your classroom:

• How do we know, and when do we decide, what is a student's best work? 
• What role does feedback play in offering students the opportunity to achieve mastery?
• How can we use feedback to push students beyond their perceived ability level? 
• What role do peers offer in providing quality feedback?
• Are we born talented or do we develop our talents?