One Schools Journey to Becoming Apple Teacher Certified

Earlier this year, our Director of Modern Learning pondered the idea of challenging our middle school teachers with becoming Apple Teacher certified since all students in grades 5 - 8 have iPad Pros. When we began this journey we started out by walking through the certification process as a tech and administration team to see if the journey and time put into becoming certified would be worth it for our teachers. After earning our certification it became apparent that yes, it was definitely worth the effort to become certified and that we saw great value in becoming Apple Teacher certified. In order to become certified, one must earn eight badges throughout the process. The badges are: iPad overview, Pages, Keynote, iMovie, Garageband, Numbers, Productivity and Creativity. The best part? In order to earn your badge, you must answer four of the five questions correctly per badge, BUT if you fail, you can retake each quiz as many times as necessary. Apple provides starter guide iBooks for each topic that include great graphics, tutorials, step-by-step directions, and my favorite part - suggestions on how to use the app/topic within a classroom. When we launched the idea to the teachers, our idea was that the teachers would read the starter guide that correlates with each badge, then earn their badge by taking the five question quiz, and repeat until all eight badges were earned resulting in becoming Apple Teacher certified.

What did we consider before we launched the process?

• Time
• A reward
• Education/training
• Support

We knew that this was a reachable goal for our teachers, but we also knew that this process would be tedious and we wanted a way to "reward" or "thank" them for their hard-work. We also quickly realized that this is an incredibly beneficial professional development opportunity that is completely free. Because the certification is completely free, but our teachers will be spending a good amount of their own time walking through the process, we came up with two ways to reward them. We concluded that if we were to send them to a day of training it would cost us around $250 or so for the workshop itself and then the cost of a substitute teacher. Therefore, we came up with what we thought was a great reward. Once a teacher becomes officially Apple Teacher certified, he/she will earn an extra personal day off work along with $100 gift card as long as the certification was earned before the end of April. When we launched the program to the teachers, they were pumped to find out the reward for earning their certification. Our hope was that at least half of the teachers would take us up on this offer and I am ecstatic to say that every single middle school teacher has joined the journey. Thus far, and it's only January, 16 out of 26 teachers are officially certified and the others are well on their way.

We quickly realized that we needed to offer support for the teachers as they walk through the training process which is where I came in. Every other week I offer Tech Talks that pertain to one of the eight badges that are earned throughout the certification process. During that 20-30 minute Tech Talk, we focus on one of the badges and quickly skim through the starter guide associated with each badge. We practice skills, answer questions, and discuss how we could see this particular app/skill being utilized within their classroom or someone else's classroom. I offer a before school time and a during lunch time in order to hopefully be able to meet with as many teachers as possible. Of course if that time doesn't work, I will meet with them individually during their planning periods. 

We also created a board in the teacher's workroom. Here is a picture of the board at the beginning of the process: 

When you earn a badge, Apple gives you a gold star so we decided that we would mimic that on our board and each time a teacher would earn a badge, they would earn their star on the board. The purpose of the board is not only to act as a scoreboard (a little healthy competition never killed anyone, right?), but more importantly to serve as a resource. Our mindset was that if you were about to use Pages in your classroom with your students, but you hadn't yet earned your badge nor did you feel comfortable with the app, the board would lead you to somehow who has earned their badge and you could seek them out for advice. Or, if you were struggling to learn/earn a certain badge, you could turn to the board to find someone who has mastered that skill.

Favorite outcomes:

Hearing teachers say, "Man! I wish I would have known that this app functioned that way last semester! It would have been perfect for a project I was working on!" Or getting an email that says, "Would you mind looking over this project I came up with? I am planning to use the knowledge that I gathered after earning two different badges." Or, watching teachers feel the frustration of learning something new. That sounds mean, doesn't it? I don't mean that I enjoy watching them struggle, or that I enjoy struggling myself, but that very struggle puts us in the seat of being a student and reminds us the challenges, frustrations and fears our students face on a daily basis. A great way to connect with that kid who is struggling with doing something new down the road. 

I am so proud of the fact that all of our teachers have agreed to take this risk and join our journey, and I can't wait to see how the knowledge they acquire through this process shows through within their classrooms.

Learning How to Unlearn

What does it mean to unlearn how to learn? Seyi Fabode on The Huffington Post explains the following:

So what is unlearning? It is to let go of the things which you have learned. A visual works here. Take a cup, learning represents filling up the cup and unlearning would represent emptying the cup. You empty the cup and fill it up again. You might empty the cup of water and fill it up with a nice nutrient laden smoothie. Same cup, different drink. Continue the loop.

www.quotesgram.com

Our students truly have answers at their fingertips whenever they need them. Problem solving, thinking, learning, looks very different today than it did a decade or two ago. With that in mind, teaching must look differently today. Students must learn how to "empty their cups and fill them up again" with different knowledge. 

Close your eyes and invasion a typical, traditional history classroom setting. Do you picture students in rows "listening" to the teacher as he/she lectures? Do you picture students with their textbooks open, mouths closed waiting to here, "This will be on your test"? 

Many students have become masters at school. What do I mean by that? Many students have learned how to learn; they've learned how to play the game. "Let me wait until I get the study guide, memorize the heck out of the study guide, take the test, repeat." Those very same students are the ones that need to truly learn, unlearn and relearn. They need to be the ones that are pushed outside of their comfort zones, given a chance to curate their knowledge and lead discussions. This is what led to our amazing journey on recreating the Decision Points Theater. There is this wonderful, simulated theater at the George W. Bush library on the SMU campus.

• Critical Decisions - Play the role of President and dive into the decision-making process in our interactive Decision Points Theater. Hear from presidential advisers and voice how you would act as President when faced with major crises such as Hurricane Katrina or the troop surge in Iraq.

Click here to view one of the Decision Points in order to better understand what took place.

After visiting the theater, a few teachers and I had the idea to recreate the same idea with our students. Students were learning about the American Revolution and Patriots and Loyalists. Instead of simply having the students read the textbook, complete a few small activities, and take a test, we decided to create our own Decision Points Theater first, which would then lead to the students creating their own Decision Points Theater in the spring. We pulled in 5 teachers for help: a newscaster, a patriot, a loyalist, and two reporters. We used Touchcast to put our video together which argued why someone should be a patriot/loyalist. The students got a big kick out of the experience because they saw their teachers acting (insert: making fools of themselves). After they watched the 6 minute Decision Points video, the students were asked to vote using Socrative on whether they would have been a Patriot/Loyalist. Our intended outcome was to discuss Patriots/Loyalists and the pros and cons to both sides. Our true outcome was just that, plus discussing the fact that the president must make decisions on a regular basis. We discussed that he doesn't simply make a decision alone. He uses his own judgement along with many many other advisors facts and opinions. Stay tuned in the spring when we have the students creating the Decision Points Theater. I am certain their creations will be tenfold better than our creation. 

Cited sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seyi-fabode/you-must-learn-how-to-unl_b_8617796.html
http://georgewbushlibrary.smu.edu/en/Visit/Exhibits.aspx

Dialogue Journals Deepen Student-Teacher Relationships

In August, I challenged myself with finding more and more ways to encourage my students to find their voices as they develop and share their passions. I came across a Cult of Pedagogy podcast titled, "How Dialogue Journals Build Teacher-Student Relationships." You can read the article and listen to Jennifer Gonzalez's podcast here. Gonzalez interviews Liz Galarza who uses dialogue journals in her classroom.

We spend 5 days per week with our students, but how well do we know them and how well do they know us?

What are dialogue journals according to Liz Galarza?

• Dialogue journals are ongoing written conversations between a teacher and a student in the form of a letter
• a written conversation as opposed to an oral conversation
• usually finds complaints and questions in dialogue journals which are missing in normal classroom discourse and conversation
• students choose the topics of conversations which allows them to share their passions or questions
• teacher writes the first entry in every journal that is personalized to each student and then asks them to respond
• teacher models the length, tone, format...

What happens if the conversation falls flat or students haven't bought in to the journals?

• she usually responds with, "This is a place where you can talk about anything. What do you want to talk about? Teach me something." 
• tends to empower students
• goes back to original "all about me" sheet and starts to ask questions about information on all about me sheet
• accepts one sentence and she responds in a small amount; realized through research that if she responds with too many sentences, student feels overwhelmed and thinks either, "I can't write that much or I don't want to"
• realized not to ask too many questions because it puts teacher in authoritative role so tries to get them to ask the questions 
• by disclosing information about her own life (not in question form) she realizes that it opens the door for them to feel comfortable and share
• the more real the kids see her, the better the relationship will be and the more they see themselves as important people

Where do you store the journals?

• trays in classroom labeled with periods
• turn in on rotating basis so she doesn't get all in one day

What happens if they write about something that needs to be discussed with an administrator or counselor?

• she explains at beginning of process that she will come to student first before going to admin
• explains that many students are writing it for that reason - a cry for help

How do you grade the journals?

• no grade for content, grammatical errors...
• journal is for relationship purposes
• if they spell a word wrong/write something grammatically incorrect, she will respond with the same word or grammar to model how to use it correctly and hope they see her usage
• only grade = them handing it in (completion grade)
• the more you put a grade on something, the less empowered the student feels (very interesting comment and point she makes here)
• the more a teacher requires something, the less empowered a student feels so next year she is thinking of not grading at all and not making it mandatory 

What benefits/affects/impacts has Mrs. Galarza experienced due to dialogue journals? Why should teachers try this?

• become better writers overtime by writing in these journals
• students are looking for an authentic adult to hear them and converse with them
• mentor text 
• closer to speech than other writing styles which is easier for lower leveled students
• teach a skill within journal (Example- highlighting a sentence and saying, "You could use a semi colon here instead of a period.) as long as they are going to be receptive
• leads to a class grammar mini lesson if notices many students are misspelling or misusing same thing over and over
• a way to collect data from students 
• gain insight into their thinking and feelings (for example- a grandmother just passed away)
• journal is all about dialogue and differentiation 

What if I am a non-English teacher? Are journals worth incorporating?

• math teacher- base on math questions; a little more prompted
• example) write in journal something you liked, understood, didn't understand, want to review with you
• believes it could work in any classroom/discipline

Who remembers the movie, "Dangerous Minds?" After listening to the podcast and reflecting upon what Mrs. Galarza discussed, I immediately thought of the movie "Dangerous Minds" in which the teacher asks the students to write in journals. At first, the students are incredibly apprehensive and have not bought in to the idea of the journals. However, their mood and mindset quickly shifts and her unsuccessful classroom quickly becomes a learner-centered classroom with student buy in. I attribute much of her success as a teacher on the investment she made to get to know her students. 

Upon reflecting, what did I take away from this podcast?

• Do I spend my time checking in with my students? Do I need to invest more time on the relationship aspect? More time on giving them an empowered voice? 
• kids move from elementary to middle school and philosophy changes; middle school teachers are teachers of content, of transmission
• elementary teacher's philosophy is that you are teaching a child over teaching content
• could these lead to connections? (If a student shows interest in geography, could you connect them with an expert to deepen learning?)
• Galarza explained, the way in which we empower our students or give up our own control, is by giving them the power to have valuable things to say 

The Value of Focusing on the Process Rather than the Product

"Is this for a grade?" Does that question make anyone else's skin crawl like it does mine? I tend to respond with, "Well, does it matter? Shouldn't we put the same amount of effort and time into everything we do no matter if it is for a grade or not?" I realized why our student's ask that question CONSTANTLY. To put it simply, we, as a society, focus on product over process. We focus on the grade and how to earn that grade as opposed to focusing on the learning that occurs throughout the process. We should be focusing on things like, "Did we allow room for failure and resolution to occur? Did we allow time to test out their presentation in order to allow room for editing and growth? Did we provide time for teaching the soft skills?" We should be asking ourselves, "Did my students realize the importance of being a part of a team and sharing roles equally?" Now, don't get me wrong, the product is an important piece of the puzzle and usually what the rest of the world sees. But, sometimes I focus so much on the product, that I miss the small learning moments that are occurring right in front of my eyes.

I was asked by one of our amazing 5th grade English teachers at our school to partner with her and create a cross-divisional project between our lower school and 5th grade students. Last week, our 6th-8th grade students were gone most of the week on overnight class trips which left our 5th graders at school, all alone. Womp womp! The 5th grade teacher wanted to expose her students to a project that would not only help tie two of our divisions together, but also put the 5th graders in the driver seat of their learning and truly hit on a lot of those soft skills that are sometimes, unfortunately, missed. Her idea was to ask the lower school teacher's for a topic that our 5th graders could teach to their 1st-4th grade students. The 5th graders would spend 2 days creating the lesson and the 3rd day presenting the lesson to the lower school students. Man were we exhausted after those 3 days! What most people saw was the end product - the 5th graders' messy presentations that were delivered to the lower school students. What they missed was seeing the learning and failure that took place in the classrooms over those 2 days as they prepared to be the teachers. The presentations were truly just that - messy. There were many hiccups during the actual presentations themselves- technology wasn't working in some cases, teammates weren't getting along during the presentation, the facts were missing, grammatical errors... After having the students reflect on the process daily, the other teacher and I quickly started to see the huge benefits of the project. Students were having to deal with conflict resolution, choosing roles, finding a way to successfully collaborate, create and execute.

One of my favorite outcomes of this process was the growth that I saw from a former student, let's call him Joe, whom I taught the previous year in 4th grade. Joe was diagnosed with ADHD, has a very difficult time collaborating with others, and even has some anger challenges. As Joe and I entered the 2nd grade art classroom in preparation for him and his group to present, I was not expecting to see and experience what occurred. Joe, a normally hyperactive, challenging student, was exceptional. Joe was helping a 2nd grader draw a sketch of a horse.
Joe: "Now, what color are the horse's legs towards the top?"
Student: "Umm looks like a dark brown."
Joe: "Great! Now pick up the color brown and lightly shade the horse's leg. Now, what color do the horse's legs become as they get closer to the hooves?"
Student: "Kinda a light brown color?"
Joe: "Yes, and how are we going to make his legs lighter brown if we only have one color brown?"
Student: "Hmm maybe we could lightly shade with the brown and then lightly color over the brown with the white?"
Joe: "Yes! You're doing a great job. I can tell that your horse is going to be great because you are putting a lot of effort into it!"

A normally unfocused, challenging student acted as the perfect, encouraging mentor to a younger student all because of this project.

Other outcomes of this project:

• failure (Student's realized by testing out their original plans that certain plans were not going to work and failure was okay. They had to figure out a plan b since plan a didn't work. For example, one group created a quizlet that they planned to use with the lower school students and when they were teaching, the quizlet live feature, which is what they wanted to use, would not work. They realized quizlet live is only a feature that teachers can use and spur of the moment had to create a plan.) Too often we don't see the value in allowing our students to fail and want to save them every chance we get.
• the power of reflection (I learned by observing the 5th grade teacher guide the student's through a series of reflection that I must pencil in time throughout a project, not just at the end, for my students to reflect. Reflection allows for growth.)
• collaboration (The 5th grade teacher did an amazing job of not simply telling them the outcome of the project. She started out explaining the project as a whole, but then placed mini lessons every hour or so to teach specific skills. For example, they had to take part in brain teasers and riddles in order to learn how to work together as a group. Too often teachers say, "I want you to create a presentation to teach your audience about Veteran's Day. Go!" But they don't take the time to explicitly teach creativity, teamwork, leadership, listening, reflection, affective communication skills...) 

The reason this project was so successful, even though the products were messy, was because of the organization, time, and reflection that the 5th grade teacher implemented. She took the time to explicitly teach the soft skills, allow room for failure, problem solving and reflection time.  The students have already begged for another project similar to this one. 

Canva in a Writing Class

A colleague of mine came to me seeking ideas. She teaches our 5th graders Fundamental Writing and in the past had her students come up with a list of life lessons that they have learned thus far, create a presentation, and present their life lessons to their classmates. However, this year she didn't see time in her schedule to complete this entire project, but still wanted the students to create something on a smaller scale. When she came to me, our original plan was to use Adobe Spark Post, but the age restrictions would not allow our students to use the app. Instead, we chose to use an app called Canva.

Step 1: Students chose a topic that taught them multiple life lessons. For example, "Life Lessons Learned from Dance."

Step 2: Students wrote down 7-8 life lessons that they learned from the chosen topic.

Step 3: Students chose at least 4 of the life lessons to illustrate using Canva.

Step 4: Students were asked to create a title poster and then at least 4 other posters. Each poster had to have a sentence that describes the life lesson that was learned along with a picture to illustrate the lesson learned.

Step 5: Students were asked to save the design to their google drive folder.

Step 6: The teacher created a google doc with each student's name listed. Students were asked to get the link from their google drive folder that would take you directly to their canva design and paste it in the cell next to their name.

Step 7: Students were asked to open and view other classmates' designs. 

Other ideas on how to use Canva in a classroom setting?

• Social Studies/History: pretend to be a marketer and design a flyer on Canva persuading people to travel to your colony/state
• click here for a historical infographic idea
• Back to school: create a design for "all about me"
• Language Arts: click here to read about a visual poetry idea

A Reflection on the Lifelong Learner Mindset

As the Edudemic Staff stated, "Doctors, lawyers, and other professionals never stop learning new techniques and strategies to hone their craft and remain on the cutting edge in their field- and so, too, do teachers," ("Lifelong Learning is a Crucial Educational Mindset"). Recently, I challenged myself with continuing to have a lifelong learner mindset in order to continue to build a network with other likeminded educators.

After reading "Lifelong Learning is a Crucial Educational Mindset," an article published by Edudemic, a few comments truly made me ponder:

• lifelong learning is an essential challenge for inventing the future of our societies 
• a lifelong learning mindset creates the challenge to understand, explore, and support new essential dimensions of learning such as: 
• self-directed learning
• learning on demand
• informal learning
• collaborative and organizational learning 
• lifelong learning fosters creativity in the information age

This article brought to the forefront of my mind the true importance of educators taking on the role of being lifelong learning, as well as the importance of teaching our students to have a lifelong learner mindset. This mindset creates the stamina to self-direct their own learning, to learn on demand, to learn in groups, to start a conversation- all things that lead to successful business owners, employees, and community contributors. The lifelong learner mindset helps us to overcome obstacles and know what to do in the hands of failure. 

This article also left me pondering a few questions myself:

• How do lifelong learners encourage other people that do not have a lifelong learner mindset to self-direct their learning?
• How can the world of education grow and become better if we do not all have a lifelong learner mindset?
• If you are at a school where the lifelong learner mindset is rare, how can one help the teachers to see the benefits that a lifelong learner mindset has on their career?

The article stated, "The best teachers are willing to learn from their students," (LLCEM). We as educators must allow learning to come from outside resources (books, blogs, websites...) as well as inside resources (students, other teachers, parents, administrators...).

Who are lifelong learners?

• self-starters
• innovators
• tech lovers (willing to allow students to learn and teach about tech usage)

My favorite quote from this article came towards the end when the authors inquired, "Can a teacher successfully educate students without becoming a lifelong learner?"(LLCEM). The authors also stated, "...teachers who adopt this mentality are more than excellent educators; they're excellent models for their students," (LLCEM).

Resources: http://www.edudemic.com/lifelong-learning-educational-mindset/

Making Math Lessons Authentic and Hands-On

Each unit in 4th grade math, my teaching partner and I are always looking for a way to make the math lesson meaningful and hands-on to truly take their learning to the next level. Too often a math lesson goes a little something like this:

• teacher teaches lesson to whole group
• students go back to seats and practice the concept
• students go home and work on homework worksheets to prove mastery
• repeat
• review for test
• tes

The problem with this? Student masters that concept for that period of time, learn it for the test, then poof! It leaves their mind until the next school year.

As a math teacher, I know the importance of giving our students time to practice a concept, inquire, grow, and make mistakes. I also know the importance of ensuring that the lesson is connected to real-world learning. The importance of showing our kids that the concept they are learning today, truly is used in the real-world. And of course, the importance of making that lesson fun. 

Last unit the students were exploring multiplication and division arrays and we brainstormed different ways to get our students to create something that would put these skills to work. (And, in all honesty, we needed something to put in the hallway. I know you elementary teachers feel me on this one!) We had also been discussing factors and multiples - a challenging concept for 4th graders to truly master. Our brainstorm went a little something like this:

• have students work in partners to research skyscrapers in our world
• use those skyscraper heights to compare and contrast to one another (For example, students would explain that Skyscraper X is 3 times the height of Skyscraper Y.) 

We quickly realized that this wasn't necessarily going to work for our objectives and altered our thinking:

• students would work in partners to create a skyscraper and name their building
• students would decide how many windows that skyscraper would have and write an array to match the number of windows (For example, 5 X 7 = 35 windows)
• students would then double, triple, quadruple and half that number of windows to practice multiplication and division
• students would choose one of their new arrays and create a new building with that many windows
• students would write a sentence comparing their two buildings and window arrays
• students used black construction paper to create buildings
• students used the Canva App to create their poster to match their building which included the 2 arrays, a picture of their buildings that they created, and a sentence comparing the two buildings

Initially, we intended for this project to take us 2 days in class to complete. We must've been dreaming! It took closer to 5 and part of the 6th day to truly complete the project. At first, we reflected and thought, "Man, that was a fun project but it sure set us back in our lesson planning a few days!" The kids collaborated, inquired, problem-solved, used technology to show their thinking, compared, analyzed, led... because of this one project. Yes, it took more time than we anticipated. Yes, it was a lot of work. But, it was well worth it. We ultimately reflected and discussed the fact that our thinking as teachers must change to allow for more hands-on, authentic moments in our classroom. We have to be willing to let some things go. Why does every unit have to be followed by an exam? Couldn't the project count as the exam? Could we flip our lessons so that they students are still hearing us teach at night by using recordings? 

One of my favorite things that came out of this project was the fact that some of our students truly took the learning and connections above and beyond what I expected. I was anticipating most students to complete projects similar to the ones pictured above. And, in fact, most did look similar to the ones pictured above. But, some students took the liberty to go out on a limb and connect their learning to a lesson we had previously taught. Some students chose not to compare and contrast the window arrays by simply saying, "Building 1 has 3 times the number of windows as Building 2." Instead, they come up with this:

Never was I expecting our students to use factors and multiples to compare their window arrays, but they did! They used what we had taught them previously to create their comparison. What?! 

It's projects like these that truly make me reflect on my goals as a math teacher. Am I trying to get my students to know how to take tests? To complete problems on a worksheet? To learn in the manner that many math classrooms run? Or, am I trying to get them to use soft skills alongside problem-solving, hands-on and authentic learning? We must allow for room in education for our students to take learning into their own hands all while being okay with our lesson plans changing.