We Day Alberta 2013 - October 4, 2013 @ Calgary Saddledome There are a MANY words that I would use to describe WeDay 2013 - bright, emotional, loud, life-changing, inspiring. Just to name a few. This event, I have to admit, has been on my calendar for over a year. I was really really looking forward to attending (I mean, have you seen the promotional videos?! Who wouldn't want to go?). The morning of WeDay, I could barely eat I was so excited. The chance to hear speakers like Martin Luther King Jr. III, Spencer West, and Amanda Lindhout got my inner Social Studies and social justice nerd pumped up to change the world. What I didn't anticipate was how deeply motivated and invigorated I would be after a whole day in the Saddledome with 18, 000 youth screaming and jumping around. As well, I had multiple "Thank You's" from students, coordinators and parents over the course of the day (thank you Free the Children! Made my teacher heart swell with love!). I realized early on in the day, that the hours of work needed to organize attendance at We Day has immeasurable value. To me. To kids. To the world. I realized days like WeDay are necessary, and seeing how much the students got out of the day, made me happy I worked extra hours, made those extra phone calls and had those parent meetings. It was all worth it. Everything was worth it. My favourite moment of the day was when a young environmentalist-blogger, Hannah, got on stage and talked about her hero Malala. I was blown away with her passion and message. She was up on that stage, pumping her fist and speaking so articulately that before I realized it, tears were rolling down my cheeks. I had a huge smile on my face. A 9-year old with so much passion she was almost leaping out of her body to shout out to 18, 000 young adults. YOU ARE THE CHANGE. I was mesmerized. I looked over at my students, they too were under her spell. This year, Free the Children has a HUGE and AWESOME goal. They want to raise the money for 200 new schools in their partner countries. This is the Year of Education. Pretty cool considering I am also highly invested in Education. Why, you may ask, is Free the Children dedicating this year to building schools? Because as Nikkole Heavy-Shields, FNMI activist and speaker, told us "...education is our liberation". If we truly want change in our world, we need to educate our world. It is a basic right to attend school, yet so much of the world is denied access to this right (especially girls). The more schools we build, the more people have access. It is a vital first step. More schools - More access. Simple hey? Our social justice club at St. Mary's also has a HUGE and AWESOME goal. We want to build a school in one year. We have a plan, Sexsmith style, to make this happen. It involves farming. That's all I will tell you. I'm sure I'll be posting about it later. One brick costs $20. It takes 500 bricks to build one school. $10 000. Yup. That's a lot of bake sales. But one thing I know for sure after attending We Day in Calgary, is that without a doubt, IT IS WORTH IT. “Spread the word! Have you heard? Our nation is going to be a great generation!”
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AudioBoo is a great app that is not only free (YAY!) but has a wide variety of applications in education. Audioboo is a podcasting app that allows you to record your voice and then post a link to it (or embed it) for others to listen to. They do not need to log into listen to your podcast if you have it posted as a link on edmodo or on your website (same goes for embedding it). A new feature of audioboo, is that you can create a pin-style board for audioboo's for the same topic/class. I have created a BooBoard for all of my social studies classes. I then embed that board into my website, and when I create a new audioboo, I can tag it to whatever board I want and it automatically updates wherever the booboard is embedded. PRETTY AWESOME!
I have used audioboo's to do podcasting for flipped classroom special projects in Social Studies 7. I have also had students create podcasts as a way to respond to various questions in social, religion and even PE class! If you think of an application in which you could use podcasting to enrich student learning, it will likely work! Check out my social 7 boo board: Social 7 Flipped Classroom The possibilities are pretty endless for audioboo. The iPad app is great for finding podcasts on various subjects, and the iPhone app is what you would use for recording your own podcasts. Make the most of whatever it is that floats your boat. Teaching floats my boat. Laminating gives me goosebumps. I love being a teacher. I will tell anyone I meet how amazing of a profession it is and likely won't stop talking about education until they change the subject. Don't even get me started on iPads! I wanted my first post of this year to be about all the wisdom (haha) I have gained over the last two years. Maybe because everyone kept changing the subject on me...so here we go!
My third year of teaching is upon me. It is both amazing and boggling to me that I was able to get through these past two years in one piece and with my sanity in check. I even managed to get married, buy a house and keep my dog happy (so I think anyways). When I was supposed to be resting and recouperating over the summer, I kept reading over some of my records and notes from the past two years. I have compiled a list of ideas and points about being a first year teacher that may be useful for those just beginning their teaching careers. This year, I get to be a mentor to a 'newer' teacher and a new addition to our district. I am very excited to offer up what I have learned and in turn, learn from my protege. Even thought I am beginning my third year of teaching, and finally in a position where I can 'repeat' a few courses, I am still humbled by how much I have yet to learn in this amazing profession and how 'new' I still feel. Lesson 1: Organize Yourself Make lists, color code things, find shelves, boxes and binders. Keep up on lesson plans and do not fall behind on grading or entering marks. It is not an easy hole to crawl out of. If you can organize yourself from day 1, you will keep your head above water. For staff meetings, have a specific binder that you collect notes, handouts and important documents. Take this with you to every staff meeting. Simple but effective. I think the most useful strategy for me was developing a system for marking and reporting was by using a system of bind and folders. When students hand something in, they put in in a green bin labled with their grade/subject on it. I then take it and file it in an accordion notebook at the end of every day that is divided by grade/subject. I make 2 times a week and 1 time on weekends. This system helped me stay on top of heaps of marking. ALSO, do not forget that not everything has to be marked. Formative assment is often a more useful tool to inform students (and yourself) of their progress and areas for improvement. Summative assments need to have value: DO NOT overload your students (and ultimately yourself) with repetetive and meaningless projects. Organize yourself digitally. Do not let your files go all willy-nilly. Just like a filing cabnet, make it a goal to put documents where they belong. If you being this right away, it is an easier process than having to go back through and sort everything. On googledocs, make your separate folders for each course you teach and save your docs and forms in their respective folders. It will make your life easier and also your days more streamlined. Get a photocopying folder going. When you have to go to the staff room for lunch, or on a prep take your folder with you. Then you are running to the copier less, and you have what you need when you get there. Laminate 2-3 file folders and label them either missing students/away student(s) and stuff things in there for those students who missed things (quizzes/tests, projects, articles, etc.) Lesson 2: Get a Support Group (aka - cheerleading squad) They say it takes a village to raise a child. The same idea applies to successful teachers. Especially beginning teachers. Find support networks within your school, but also tap those supports outside of the school. I can't believe that at 10 pm on school nights, my aunt or mom would come and help me photocopy or staple things. Have people in your corner so that when you feel like there is nothing left in the tank you can keep pushing on. Lesson 3: Avoid surviving and seek striving Surviving does not equate to amazing work. I know it is hard and exhausting, but ask yourself what is worth your time - somewhat okay work that took 10 minutes or great work that took 20 minutes? Best Practices are 'best' for a reason. Use them. Do not sell yourself short. That being said, you do not have to reinvent the wheel. Research and collaborate on projects with others in your subject area when possible. Lesson 4: Let Go of Pride - ask for as much help as you can! Teacher love coffee. You need help. Buy teachers coffee. I am not promoting bribery but I am suggesting that you go out there and find who you need to to get what you need. I bought multiple Starbucks and Tim Horton's gift cards for those in our district that offered up units, collaborative planning days, final exam help and long range plans to look at. Help is everywhere, you just have to go find it (and take coffee with you!) Lesson 5: Take Care of #1 This is something I completely failed at. At least in my first year. I was a teacher. That was it. I did not do the things I loved to do - running, yoga, reading, cooking - and sacrificed my life for my first year of teaching. Let me tell you that it was not worth it or even necessary. The work will get done. Be efficient and try to eliminate as much 'make work' stuff as you can. Take care of yourself and your work will be better in the end. Set a goal for yourself that you will do 1-2 things a week that you love to do. I used this tactic in my second year of teaching and it was directly reflected in my relationships and my quality of life improving. My creativity improved in my lessons and project ideas, I was motivated to work more and I just plain felt better. Do it. No excuses. So, that is the 'coles-notes' version of my first two years. It seems like only yesterday I was getting my first classroom ready and wondering if I would enjoy teaching or want to do it all. With the statistics out there about burnout for new teachers, a person can get pretty discouraged. The reality is that you will be tired, likely have a period of burnout and develop a caffeine dependancy. Enjoy what you have worked so hard to do. Find what floats that boat and make the most of it. B I recall a time when the song "9-5" by Dolly Parton was my favourite tune to sing as a young girl. I dreamed of an awesome job where I could use office supplies to my heart's content and staple things on a regular basis. I even, at one point, set up my own classroom at home and made both my parents "go" to school; they both had to attend parent teachers' for one another. It was a beautiful dream.
I graduated from University excited to go out into the world and spread my love of education. I received my first assignment and went office supply shopping the same day. It was a good feeling. Then September hit and there was not enough office supplies in the world to eliminate the exhaustion that I felt. New pens make me happy, don't get me wrong, but there was no "happy" to be felt. This was my first inkling that Dolly had been lying to me. The fully realization came to me this weekend; the teaching profession is NOT what Dolly was singing about. I decided, in all my second year teacher wisdom, that in the same week as Parent Teacher Interviews that I would organize a basketball tournament for our "A" Basketball teams. Not my best idea. Friday was a long day: 15 hours in total. I taught, officiated 6 basketball games, organized a tournament, kicked out a coach, and dealt with abuse from all fronts. It was more along the lines of "Gangster's Paradise" than the sweet ballads of Dolly's "9-5". I went home, exhausted and depleted of all the things that made me "love" my job had 4 hours of sleep and was back at the school by 8 am the next morning. Then something miraculous happened. Everything started to fall into place, exactly as it had planned. I had laminated, stapled and hole punched my way to getting through this tournament. I looked up and suddenly this event I had organized was carrying along without much effort on the second day. I couldn't believe it. Had I not been so tired, I may have relished in this moment a little more deeply. Teaching is NEVER going to be a 9-5. By nature, education does not lend itself to the confines of time. Education can and does happen at all times of the day. Before school, after school, weekends....it is unrelenting. It is disturbing to me as a second year teacher to hear that some in our society believe teachers are not working hard enough or long enough to receive the wages we do from our government. I urge anyone with that notion to step into the shoes of a teacher for a while and see what the demands are like. Dolly was not singing about being an educator. This I now know to be true. Teachers are not 9-5ers but we are hard workers. Most teachers do not enter into education because of pay or working hours. We teach because there is something more we desire from our work and no 9-5 job would give us that satisfaction (or access to a stockpile of office supplies). I am a tech junkie. Isn't admission the first step to recovery? Well, I'm not looking to recover. Quite the opposite. As a second year teacher, I have has so many wonderful opportunities available to me to integrate technology into my classroom. The arguments as to the place of technology in schools is so repetitive and redundant that I will spare you the recitation. No matter if you have been in the business of Education for 1 year or 30, technology is not a "phase" and it will not "pass". I know this because, well.... I teach. All you have to do is look around you and you will see how immersed the students are in technology. It is not going away. To some, that is an unfortunate downgrade in "quality" education. To others, like me, it is an opportunity to engage students and meet them "where they are at". I'm not into the flashy-dazzly technology. I'm into the full-meal deal technology. I want to take my classroom and completely flip it. Hold on...someone already thought of that. Hence, we come to the Flipped Classroom.
I came upon this idea a few times last year in my first year of teaching. Many of you educators will agree with me when I say I don't remember much of my first year of teacher. It is all a wild blur of rubrics, lesson plans and coffee. Needless to say, I didn't pay much attention to it. Fast forward one year. I was in my nerd glory at the ATLE conference in Edmonton and decided I would now have the time to figure out what all this flipped classroom business was about. The presentation left a lot to be desired, but I saw a diamond in the rough. I could use this! The thick framed, suspender-wearing inner nerd began to happy dance in my brain as I began jotting notes about how I could use this next week in my Social Studies 7 class. I got my hands on the leading educational book on Flipped Classrooms from ISTE and began furiously reading. I have to say, I do not agree with all things Flipped Classroom. I think many get it confused with the reversal of drill-skill style classroom teaching. Instead of lecture in class and then give a worksheet for homework, you change it up....no. Wrong. Way wrong. It needs to be more than the antiquated reversal. It has to be more. So here is what I did. Every Thursday evening, my grade 7 students will find an Audioboo podcast posted on the website and on our Edmodo page. They listen to it. There may be a few things they need to do to prepare for class the next day such as brain mapping, comparison charts, interviewing their parents for opinion, finding a newspaper article,etc. On Friday, they arrive to class and begin on the assignment that was explained the night before in the podcast. This usually takes the form of a critical challenge. They need to make a judgement call on whatever topic we are discussing. This has also taken the form a debate for the entire class. They have the opportunity and advantage of knowing about the project ahead of time so they can get right down to the nitty gritty in class. So far, this has been a terrific project for my social 7 group. They are knowledge-cravers. They love the podcasts and have started requesting more. I feel that this style of flipped classroom does not take more of my time as a new teacher, but makes the time I am spending creating these lessons more valuable to me and to my students. So I don't mind doing it. I would loathe myself for spending 2 hours after school creating worksheets that I would bore my students with and then bore myself with marking on the weekend. My recommendation: Start slow. Find one part of the Flipped Classroom that you can try. Maybe it's a podcast/month. Maybe you do one podcast project a semester. Ensure you are not just flipping the script on an outdated method, but creating a truly meaningful and engaging experience for you students. As a whole, teachers tend to take on more than they can manage at all possible times. At least new teachers. I know personally, my obsessive nature to conquer as many mountains as I can manage has lead to both success and failures in my life. Smultaneously climbing mountains of work and running out of energy and time is literally the story of my life. From a small age, I remember trying to squeeze out the most of my days. Some would say I'm an over achiever. I would say that isn't a bad thing. However, I had an epiphany tonight as I attempted to cap off a 12 hour workday with cooking 9 packages of bacon for a fundraiser tomorrow. I am nearing my fifth year of vegetarianism and have never been more certain that I wish to keep it that way. Whist fanning the smoke detector after package three was cooking so close to a mental breakdown, it hit me: I don't HAVE to do this. I CAN do it tomorrow. There are no efficiency police coming to arrest me if I don't cook all this bacon. So, after getting multiple burns and getting bacon grease in my hair, I turned off the stove and began to triumphantly clean up. Tomorrow. I can do all of this tomorrow.
Sometimes there are gifts in this world. Tonight, I had one of those gifts. A friend. To laugh and get through some work done. Life is a conundrum of pleasantries and distresses. It is our trial in life to find pleasantries in time of tribulation.
Sitting here this evening, I am one proud coach. I now need to come up with a new goal for my team. They have met and surpassed my goal for the season...and we still have 5 weeks to go. Totally a #firstworldproblem right? I wasn't sure how this season would go, but I am so blown away by their determination, struggle and positivity in the face of adversity. I gave a small analogy to my girls today: I am the den mother and you girls are my cubs. Wolves always seems to be good for team building metaphors for some reason (pack mentality I think). Anyways, I told them that I can't do the work for them. But I am here to guide and mentor each one of them as they become strong as powerful. As a coach, I find this to be the hardest aspect of my coaching duties. I can not make the decisions for them, but can only guide them. On a side note, I think that I could put on a jersey and still look like a player if need be. Only when times get really desperate. Just kidding. But in all seriousness, I couldn't be more proud. Not only are they making the right decisions, but they are executing those decisions as a TEAM. Today, I saw a group of girls become a competitive volleyball team. I was more nervous today for our games than I ever have been. That's because the emotion and the competitiveness was palpable. I WANTED them to control the game and to go for it. I was more invested today than I ever have been as a coach.
Now the problem still remains of finding a new goal. What are the bounds of this team? What are we truly capable of? What is within our reach this season? I am reeling with the possibilities that I wouldn't even allow myself to consider two months ago. This is something that I will need to consider throughout the next week. For now, I want to thank some very important people: - My assistant coaches - The dedicated parents who drove players and provided us with food and sugary beverages between games Back to the drawing board I go. But this time, I get to set my sights a little higher So, it's been a while since my last post. Today I am pondering (no pun intended in reference to title) the toxicity of learning environments. Schools are interesting microcosms of our larger society. It is both fascinating and disturbing to me the issues that pop up in school throughout the year. How and when does a school environment go from safe and comforting to toxic? Who is responsible? Is it one persons' fault or the collective? Attempting to get to the bottom of these questions will be the focus of this post.
Growing up, I often was embroiled in some jr. high girl plot to take down my fellow female counterparts in the social arena. I am not proud of this fact, but I truly believe it has made me who I am today. I made a wonderful friend in grade six that changed my thought process about how I treated others. I owe her a lot for snapping me out of it. Now, looking back I feel that my actions were directly connected with the toxic environment that was my jr. high school. But what it just me? After I started removing myself from that environment, the toxic pit still existed. Why? The ideals of the collective perpetuated it. That "mob" mentality is what creates that environment. More accurately, what RUINS and environment. Unfortunately, gossip is not only confined to jr. high or high school. It perpetuates the adult workplace all too frequently. Whether you are the person spreading the gossip or the person of interest in staff room conversations, it needs to stop immediately. I am ashamed to say that some people I have worked with in the many jobs I have had throughout my youth and now adult life participate in this activity. So how does a toxic environment get healed? Well....it needs to start with the people in that environment. If only ONE person changes, it will start, but it won't be enough. It needs to be a shift in perspective. What type of environment do you want to work/live in? Personally, I'd like to come to a place where comfort and emotional/physical/psychological safety are of the highest importance. As Jack Layton so aptly stated..."Let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic and we will change the world." Today, 9 St. Mary's players felt what it meant to truly be a team. Working through successes and failures they learned the most important team lesson: No matter what, we do it together. As a coach, I couldn't be happier. I feel nostalgic recalling my own volleyball days and feel a bit sad because most of the time I did not feel supported by my team mates. Sad, but true. I was blown away with the spirit of my players. This week at school, I've seen that it's not just my players, but my students and the teachers at St. Mary's that have this positive fever. It's a beautiful thing. I feel lucky to coach such a young and vibrant team and as a coach, I will make it part of the cul
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