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?

TL;DR? No prob.

SMMRY

Internet slang has a clever word for it: TL;DR (too long; didn't read). We agree. That's why we teachers need options for summarizing digital text. The screen snip explains it all. Check out the link. It's magic!

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? 

After 34 years, what is teaching?

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.

But first, seek strengths.

Surviving the Polar Bear Plunge

As teachers, we all experience students who challenge us: our patience, our thinking, our beliefs, our routines. Buttons DO get pushed.

These sorts of experiences can be very difficult yet also incredibly formative and no matter the outcome, they help prepare us for future challenges. It may seem impossible at the time but sometimes these sorts of conflicts can even result in surprising outcomes where students return one day and say, "Thanks for not giving up on me."

But in the middle of it when it seems like there's simply no patience left, how do we foster positive change? There's a saying: "You don't drown by falling in the water, you drown by staying there." Challenges require action for change to occur especially when we feel overwhelmed. So what next?

Don't face this alone. Seek support. Then seek strategies. But first, seek strengths.

Strengths? Really? In his book Hanging In, veteran educator Jeffrey Benson recommends beginning with a total shift in thinking: identify the student's every possible strength.

Think about that.

It's easy to see what a student can't do but what can a student do? Start there. Start there with any student. When we begin with strengths we can create a relationship and with a relationship we can have influence.

What do learners pay attention to?

source

This past July, SHIFT published their 10 most effective engagement strategies for e-learners. However, they seem quite applicable to any type of classroom.

Based on our teaching experience, our top five favourite go-to engagement strategies were
1. stories
2. visuals
3. emotions
4. controversy
5. contrast

Which ones are your favourites? And to switch things up, what would you like to try next?

For more information and resources linked to each strategy, click here.

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.

source

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. 

Remember books?

Need a laugh? This video might help with that. For junior/senior high teachers this video might also engage your students' critical thinking skills and open a good conversation about technology or literacy. And if you teach irony or satire or debate, this video asks a great question about our modern society: what are we forgetting how to do? Maybe even have your students create a how-to parody video of their own. What would be the topic?

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?