See you in September....

"Do you care to be the layer of the bricks that seal your fate?
Or would you rather be the architect of what we might create?"
- "Architects" by Rise Against

These song lyrics means a lot to me right about now. In my second post on this blog (which was over a year ago) I referenced them in the context of how the year didn't turn out like I had originally planned. This time around it's a little different. I've been teaching for 6 years now and for the first time in forever (yes, that's a Frozen reference) I am excited about what I will be doing in September.

This fall, I will be moving to a new school for the first time in 5 years - Hill Freedman World Academy. I'm joining an grades 6-9 IB school that is expanding to 6-12 over the next 3 years. I'm looking forward to being a part of the team that completes the expansion and make big things happen. This summer I'm going to start getting ready for a new challenge and hopefully that will lead to some blog posts. If not, I'll (hopefully) be back in the fall with some great stories and ideas.

Have a Great Summer!!!

Gamification: How to Start

This week I spent some time going through the first archived and the most recent chats for #levelupED. I went in to this with a list of questions in my head and came out with some answers and the basis for a plan to get my classes gamified. Both chats that I reviewed were about getting started with Gamification. What was interesting was how some of the comments made by the participants changed since September. It was refreshing to see people using this in their classes and still having the system evolve over the course of a school year.

There were very good questions asked in both chats I reviewed and I think the best way for me to get the ball rolling is to use those questions to develop my plan for the rest of the year.

Here is my version of a "How to Start a Gamified Classroom Questionnaire." (These questions are taken directly from the chats. I thought they were all great starting points so I combined them into one list.) I need to spend time thinking about my answers to all of these questions, but the tweets I've attached are helpful hints that I feel will guide me in the right direction.

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How to Start a Gamified Classroom Questionnaire

1. How do you define gamification in your classroom? What classifies a class as being gamified?

A1: Using gaming elements within instruction to enhance student motivation/involvement in their learning. #levelupED
— Jessica Anderson (@TriSciCurious) February 14, 2014

2. Do you think gamification is more using games to teach content or designing game elements in your instruction?

Gamification: A Preview

Although I have only been able to attend one explanation of Gamification and it's use in a classroom, I'm convinced it is something that would help my classroom. The first reason for that is because it looks like it would be fun - for the students and for me. The second reason is that I like to think my students will take to it with excitement and a desire to achieve something. I know that there is no way for me to know if the second reason is a definite until I try it but there have been moments this year that led me to my conclusion.

In order for me to start gamifying my classes I know that there is a bunch of prep work involved but I'm just not sure where to start. There are elements of the gaming structure that I want to have and I'm planning on joining the #leveluped chat tonight (it's on Thursdays at 10pm ET) to get some ideas and guidance.

One aspect of Philip Vinogradov's (@pvinogradov) presentation at EduCon that has been difficult for me to implement is the Flipped Classroom. I've tried to use a few online resources as homework in the past and the percentage of students completing it was very low. I also have a handful of students with little or no Internet connectivity.

My attempts at Gamification are not going to be perfect the first time. The plan is to use this blog and Twitter-found resources to make it work. In order to keep track of what I'm doing and share it with the world, there is a new page on this blog. The Journey to Gamification will be my continuing journal of what is going on in my world of game-based learning. Stay tuned for the fun!

It's Never Too Late to Make Changes

I started posting on this blog again around the time of EduCon 2.6 this year. I was able to meet some great people over that weekend and had my first opportunity to talk with someone in person about one of my posts. The information I took out of the conversation sessions is priceless and I still have a list of people I want to follow on Twitter and communicate with about ideas that were shared.

The biggest takeaway I had from EduCon and the weeks that have followed is that it is never too late to make changes. I've been very set in the ways of what I do, even though it never has the results I'm looking for. Making changes has either been "too much work" or "too much of a risk" for me. Once I started really thinking about what I needed to do, I started to realize that "too much work" is a sorry excuse for just saying "I don't feel like it right now." As for "too much of a risk," since I haven't been getting the results I was hoping to get, I figured what do I have to lose.

For your enjoyment (mostly mine, but you are welcome to enjoy them too) here are four major changes that are taking place with me right now.

• Change 1: Classwork System
• Change 2: Gamification
• Change 3: CrossFit/Whole30/Paleo
• Change 4: Making and Tracking Goals

EduCon and a New Outlook

Day One of EduCon 2.6 at Science Leadership Academy is in the books and to say it was informative and amazing would be an understatement of epic proportions. I enjoyed meeting a bunch of people who have great ideas and sound advice and was fortunate enough to add to my own little network of connected educators. I could spend a lot of time going over everything I took out of the first day (and maybe it will become a post of its own after Day Two) but I want to just write about my biggest takeaway.

Since I started this blog last year, I've posted questions to myself and tried my best to come up with answers. At times I wrote reactively and sometimes wonder if I still feel the same way about my initial thoughts. The beauty of all of this is that meeting up with other people can give me a new perspective on what I originally thought and allow me to change how I view those original posts (which could make for an interesting new post). After today, I'm starting to get a better sense of what I can do about whatever situation I am facing. Being able to spend the day with a school full of thinkers, innovators, high-achievers, and whatever other descriptor you can think of shows me that it is possible to make this whole teaching thing work. If all I am going to do is ask myself questions about why or how things are the way they are, I'm not going to get anything done. Update: I'm not against questions as a way to start a conversation, but I have a nasty habit of trying to find questions that are irrelevant or have no answer and use them as excuses. 

In the grand scheme of things, I'm still a relatively new teacher and I know I haven't mastered everything I want to master yet (and really, what teacher ever will?). What I need to do is to remind myself to look for the answers to the relevant questions in my world. There are thousands of people out there blogging and on Twitter that can help me. If I can stick to that, it might not be smooth sailing, but at least I'll have an idea of where I want to go and the support to get me there.

Why has it been 6 months since my last blog post?

Your guess is as good as mine. 

I started this blog last year with the thought of getting better at teaching and sharing that journey with whoever felt the need to read about it. I said at the beginning that I would post when I could and put out a good amount of thoughts in a short time. Since school ended last year, I just stopped blogging. Completely. 

I'm not happy about that. I'm not happy that I set out to do something last year and just didn't follow through. I'm having some of the same classroom and overall issues this year that I have had in the past and I don't think I'm doing everything I can about it. There are tremendous people on Twitter that really know what they're doing. Many of these people are a DM or mention away and I'm not taking advantage of that. 

What are my excuses? I don't have one. In May I wrote about my goals for this year. SBG, PBL, 20time, etc, etc. ice tried some of them out. I've had a little success and a little notsomuch. What I haven't done is write about it. I haven't reached out for assistance or advice. I haven't taken the time to self-evaluate. In short, I've done everything that I don't want my students to do. 

This is my 6th year of teaching. I was thinking today about how I want to want to come to school each day. Right now, there are days that are tough and days that are great. There are a myriad of reasons for that but in the end, most of them are just excuses. 

I want to use this post as my starting over point. Maybe I won't post all the time but I need to get my thoughts out of my head and into the world. Hopefully someone can see one or two of them and point them in the right direction for me.

See you soon. (Not sure when, but definitely not 6 months from now.)

Do teachers really get the summer off?

One of the most well-known benefits of being a teacher is that we "get the summer off." Before becoming a teacher I thought the same thing. Work for 10 months, take 2 months to do whatever I want. It's funny, those 2 months seem to fly by and are usually not filled with "whatever I want." In reality, many teachers most likely experience the same thing and don't stop working during the summer. Even if we don't actively plan, prep, or organize something for next year, we are constantly thinking about what just happened and where we want to go next.

This year I have more plans for next year than I have in the past and I will have to devote some of my time to that soon - just not for a few more days. When school ended for me on June 24th, I made a decision to not worry about anything for the rest of the month. This idea turned out to be a success! I thought about some things, but did not act on anything specific and with a little more than one day of forced rest left, I spent a little time tonight building a summer reading list and writing this post.

In the week since school ended, I was able to go to CrossFit 4 times, ran once, had 3 Daddy-Baby days, spent a day at the pool, went to Sesame Place twice and just enjoyed the company of my wife and daughter without distractions. This past week has reminded me all of the things I want to be able to do during the school year and not just during the summer. I have to get better at planning and organizing and grading and contacting parents so that I can experience this past week all year long.

Although July is right around the corner and we still have two more trips planned for the near future, taking the rest of June off was definitely what I needed and leaves me ready to go on Monday. Bring it on!!

What happens when a Math, Art and Barbering Teacher find time to exchange ideas?

As this school year draws to a close, I finally have some time to sit down and do some blogging. June has been a whirlwind for me and today was the last teacher day at my school. I finished collecting the laptops for the year, signed out some for the summer, locked up my storage room, forgot my phone, unlocked my storage room to get my phone, locked it up again, hopped in my car and am now ready to start the summer.

This summer will be the first one for me where I have specific goals that I need to focus on completing before September. I always have ideas about what I want to accomplish but this year is different. For school, this summer is about planning for standards based grading, 20% time and project-based learning. For family, it's about spending inordinate amounts of time with my Little Princess and her Mommy at Sesame Place, the Philadelphia Zoo, Cape Cod, Williamsburg and any place else we feel the need to visit. For me, it's all about work on the house, CrossFit and Paleo.

Back to the question that leads of this post.

What happens when a Math, Art and Barbering Teacher find time to exchange ideas?

Only good things!!

Quick reflection on last period....

Have to get this out before I forget. Just spent a good half-hour talking with my students. It was an enjoyable back-and-forth that touched on issues in the district and our school. It's so refreshing to see these students as citizens that want to make changes. We shared ideas on how to make the school better and talked about why it was important to us. It amazes me that they see so much going on that they disagree with but don't realize how much change they can create if they tried. 

When I asked some students if they told any administrators about something that they felt was wrong, one girl replied, "They wouldn't believe us anyway, we're just students. The principal would only listen to a teacher telling them that."

That is exactly what has to change.

Our students need to feel empowered to control their own destiny and to try make a difference. They need to be able to create an environment that they are proud of. My job as a teacher is to show them that it is possible and then get out of their way.

Compliance or Learning?

What do we want from our students? 

It's obvious that we want them to learn. That we want them to WANT to learn. For themselves and not just for a grade. But we also want them to do more. We want them to be on time and be in uniform and be prepared and do homework and study and on and on and on. When does this list of demands get too long and start to take away from the most important part?

There has to be a time where we sit back and start asking the same question that the students are always asking us: Why?

And follow it up with this question: How will that affect learning?

My school's uniform policy prompted me to start thinking about this issue. The uniform is pretty simple: black pants and gray school polo shirt. Seems easy enough but there are students who don't wear it everyday. There could be a good reason for the wardrobe malfunction, but most of the time, they are choosing to be non-compliant.

Once that happens, the administrators and teachers have to make a decision about how to handle it. Call home? Suspend? Let it slide for a day? What happens the next time the student is out of uniform?

Where do I go from here?

Wow, it's almost June. It seems like it was September the other day and here I am getting ready for the last 2-3 weeks of school. I constantly try to reflect on what I do and how the year has been going but June always seems to be when I really think about it. Questions abound in my head, like:

• Why did this work?
• Why didn't that work?
• What was I thinking when I tried that?
• Will it get easier next year?
• What can I change for next year?
• Where do I go from here?

Most of these questions are for internal reflection that I can hopefully use to get better. The last two are the ones that take up most of my thoughts.

What can I change for next year?

There are many times that I find myself asking this question. At this point, the list of answers is probably endless. Obviously, there is no perfect environment or school or classroom or teacher but there are some that are close. Each year I try to fix what didn't work in the past. Some changes have worked, others notsomuch. I think my biggest problem has been to pick and choose small changes on top of some aspects that haven't been working. A few weeks ago, I wrote about what I wanted to do next year (after some more reading, standards-based grading is getting added to that list) and now I'm starting to think more and more about how to do it. Using Twitter has opened up my eyes to all of the possibilities for my classroom and has made this year the best for me in terms of my own professional development. 

Where do I go from here?

This is more figurative question than a literal one. I'm not leaving my school and I'm still going to be teaching math next year, but I'm at a fork in terms of my philosophy and practice. I believe that my school and district focus too much on the grade and not enough on the process. Too many of my students worry about what they need to do to get an A, B or C and not enough about how much further to take their understanding. Before the end of this year, I hope to have a clear idea of what I will be specifically teaching next year and a plan on what to do. I'm actually looking forward to the idea of rebranding my teaching style for next year. 

At times I feel like the picture-perfect world of students engaged and wanting to learn is unattainable. Then, I read a blog or follow a link and see examples of it happening everyday. In the end my personal goals as a teacher are to look forward to every day of the year and to be disappointed that the year is ending because I will have to wait 2 whole months to get started again. If I have to change almost everything to get there, I'm willing to take that chance.

What did I take home from EdCampPhilly?

Quick answer: A couple of stickers, a list of smart, resourceful people to follow on Twitter, and inspiration.

This past Saturday, I attended my first unconference at EdCamp Philly. It was amazing! There was so much going through my head that it has taken me until now to finally take everything in and process it. The aspect of EdCamp that stood out the most to me was seeing so many educators learners willing to take their day off to collaborate and discuss ideas and topics relating to our students and careers. That alone was inspiring and refreshing.

Once the schedule filled up, there were so many possibilities about where the day would lead. Because of other plans, I was able to catch half of the first session, half of the third and all of the fourth. My goal for the day was to get as much out of each session that I was able to catch.

What exactly is EdCamp Philly?

I can't wait for tomorrow morning. Not because it's going to be Saturday, but because I'm going to EdCamp Philly - my first "unconference." I'm excited to get a chance to meet a bunch of new people and to hear and see all sorts of ideas about 21st Century Education. Anyone that I know that has gone to an unconference always tells me it's a great experience and that I should get to one as soon as I can. Last year I missed the signup deadline, but this year - IT'S ON!

So, what exactly is EdCamp Philly? To be honest, I'm not sure. 

Here's what I do know. It's about educators and learners getting together to share ideas. It's a place to meet scores of passionate people who want the best for their students and want to help others find that same passion. It's going to be a day of new experiences, inspirations, motivation and ideas for me. 

Finally, and most importantly, I have a good feeling it's going to be fun!

What are my plans for next year?

As June gets closer and closer, I start to think about what I've done this year (and the previous four) and what I want to do next year. Every year I know there are lessons and topics that I've covered that have gone well and others I'd just as soon pretend never even happened. In five years of teaching, I know that I've definitely improved on some of my practices but I feel that parts of what I do are stuck in a rut. We live in an age where the power of technology is everywhere yet I still have not completely harnessed that power for good.

In five years, I've given lectures on topics and asked students to take notes and complete classwork and homework. I've followed the curriculum that my district has set and used that as my gauge of student progress. There have also been times where I've created projects that require the students to do some research or figure main points out on their own. At times, I've turned some classes loose with a basic concept and watched them take it to places that they didn't think they could. I've had boring classes and exciting classes, great ideas and cover-your-eyes-awful ideas. On my own time, I've spent hours reading and thinking about what I want to try in my classroom (20% time, flipped classroom, social media, project based learning, and more) and never completely convincing myself that I can do it. In short, I have been conducting my classes in a 20th Century Classroom and not the 21st Century Classroom I believe I should have. As I look through the list of qualities of 20th and 21st Century Classrooms that Dr. Z has posted, I realize that there are so many opportunities that my students and I are missing out on experiencing.

Five years as a teacher is a big deal to me. I've had multiple careers (not just jobs) and the longest amount of time I have spent in any one of them is about four years. Teaching is what I plan to do for the rest of my working life. I know that I want to be in this field for the next 30 years, but I also know that I need to make it more enjoyable and effective for me and my students.

So, in no particular order, I give you my list of Things to Do Next Year...

How do you learn to accentuate the positive?

This is one of those questions that I've been trying to answer for a long time. I try to think of myself as an optimist. I like to think that I can find the good in most people and situations. Unfortunately, I find myself dwelling (obsessing?) on the negative more often that I should. The worst feeling is that I know I should focus more on the successes of my students than on my failures as a teacher. There is so much more value in watching a student go through the process of learning and striving to reach their potential than overanalyzing something that didn't turn out the way I planned (wanted? hoped?).

I'm not naive enough to think that I will ever completely master the idea of being a teacher. There are too many variables and changes in education for that to happen. I know that I will get better at what I do. I know that I'm better (at least a little) now than I was 5 years ago. The problem is that I don't tell myself that enough and I let the negative energy take control every now and then. At the risk of sounding cliche, all I want to do is be happy and enjoy getting up for school every day. 

What I really need to do is to find ways to remind myself daily that some of my current students will be following in the footsteps of my former students.

There will be more of: 

• The quiet and determined Valedictorian/Runner/Head of Everything who focused on her work and making herself better while some of her classmates played around.
• The goofy and focused Barber/All-Star Running Back/Sprinter who did what was asked of him for his teams to win and never complained when others received recognition.
• The middle-of-the-pack, good-at-math student who wanted to be an architect but ended up becoming a teacher by way of Drexel, Holland Architects, CGinteractive, NAPCO, NESN, Sports Authority, Finish Line and Drexel again.

Those first two hopefully know who they are and how much of an inspiration they are to me. That last guy, hopefully he finds a way to look in the mirror in the morning and realize that this will work out. The success stories are out there and are being rewritten. Every. Single. Day. I guess I just have to make more of an effort to find them.

Why are you answering all of these questions?

Plain and simple - to get ideas out of my head and into the world. Sometimes my questions will be ones that I'm trying to find the answers to. At other times, my questions will be ones I ask myself or that I think would be interesting to babble on about. I don't know how often I'm going to do this but my goal is to put up some thoughts a few times a week. Maybe once, maybe more, only time will tell.

One aspect of this blog that I'm looking forward to is to use it as a roadmap of my journey as a teacher. I've been teaching for almost five years now and still feel like I'm just getting started. There are many strategies and techniques that I want to try in my classroom but I haven't attempted many of them for some reason (could be time management, fear, uncertainty, or a million others). I hope that I can use this platform as a way to find help and receive feedback on what I'm trying to do and improve my classroom and teaching in the process. I have been casually following some great educators on Twitter for the last year or so and it's finally time for me to jump in and take some chances at making what I do more enjoyable, engaging and rewarding.

Why did you become a teacher?

As I sit down to finally start to take my thoughts out of my head and put them out into the world, this is the first question that comes to mind. Before I can answer that, I need to give you an idea of what this blog is going to be about. Anyone who knows me, knows that I can ramble on and on about different topics and that I try to see both sides of every story. I will never be a person to say that I know it all and that everything I feel is right. In the end, what I say is what I think and feel based on what I know or think I know.

My goal with this blog is just to answer questions. I'm not sure how often I will post and I'm definitely not sure if anyone will find any of this interesting. If it happens that you like something, AWESOME! If not, sorry for wasting your time.

Now, where was I? That's right....."Why did you become a teacher?"