This brings me to what I expect to gain from my fellowship: 1. a wealth of resources that I can share through Home Base with the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade Social Studies teachers at my school, in my district, and across the state and 2. a deeper and more intimate knowledge of America’s pastime on her language. -“I Hate Baseball” May 2013

My principal likes to call the month of May, the month of May-hem because of everything we squeeze into the last full month of the school year. Taking time to be reflective in midst of all this mayhem is a challenge. So I fear this post will not do justice to the impact my summer externship and participation in the Kenan Fellows Program had on me. The prompt question of if I grew as I hoped makes me smile because I have had opportunities through this experience I couldn’t have imagined a year ago. 

My connection with my mentors has allowed me to extend those opportunities to teachers I work with as well. A science teacher in my school and I, as her instructional coach, had the opportunity to be featured in the updated NC Falcon videos because of these connections. When asked to participate in a workshop for the NC Legislators on Home Base, another teacher from my school gave the teacher’s perspective and led the legislators through a demo of the site. I’m so proud that teachers from western North Carolina were able to have these experiences.

Thinking back on what I wrote in May of last year, the two ideas I listed as what I expected to gain seem so trivial in comparison to all that transpired over the last year.

To say that the road to Home Base has been bumpy is either a cliche or a gross understatement and maybe even both. The process of creating a resource for teachers forced me to explore the applications in Home Base. Home Base, for all its promise and potential, is not an intuitive system. So if a teacher wants to learn how to do something in this system, they have to be taught or they have to invest time into teaching themselves. That’s where the Teacher’s Toolbox for Schoolnet comes in – to save teachers time when learning the features of Schoolnet. It my hope that teachers will be able to use the livebinder as a quick resource on how to use Schoolnet.  It will continue to grow as long as my district continues to use Schoolnet.

Which brings me to the latest bump in this road. Will districts decide to go with Schoolnet or not? $4 a student for a system that isn’t intuitive and has only been working for the second half of this year. Not an easy sale and for many districts Home Base may be out.

@JoniAllison23 thank you for that AMAZING livebinder of Homebase

— Kevin Combs (@SciTechEdu) March 19, 2014

photo credit: Keith Allison via photopin cc

The Lenovo tablet is nice third option to have.  At the beginning of the fellowship, I used it significantly while I was tagging resources along with my iPad.  Tagging took two devices. I also tended to do most of my blogging on the tablet as well.  Currently, I more often use my tablet when I travel to workshops or conferences because it is so much lighter and faster to log on than my laptap and it runs Microsoft Office.  I also tend to use it home for the same reason.

Annotating a Word Document

One of my favorite features is the ability to write on Powerpoints and Word documents. I tend to do my best brainstorming with a pen in my hand. With the tablet, I can do that and still have an electronic version.

Not counting my iPhone, I have three devices that I use professionally.  I have an iPad with bluetooth keyboard, a Dell laptop, and the Lenovo tablet.  At work, I use my district-assigned laptop and iPad because they work on our network and with our firewalls.  But I like having the Lenovo tablet when I’m away from school.

“This will be really cool when it works.”

Ask me about Schoolnet the first semester of the 2013-2014 school year and I would have said it was consistently inconsistent, so much so that when presenting, even our mentors advised us to prepare for Schoolnet not to work with screenshots and screencasts.

Initially, teachers were excited about the new site, but with the inconsistencies soon became frustrated. Each school sent two teachers to learn some of the basics of Schoolnet and prepare to take this training back to their schools. The school district set aside several hours for teachers to learn the system and nobody could get into the system. It was a frustratingly complete waste of time, and an embarrassment for the teacher leaders trying to share the system. Needless to say, Schoolnet did not win any fans that day and may have even lost a few.

We need this to work.  We have teachers being held accountable for standards for which they don’t have resources to teach.  DPI and the State School Board hoped that Home Base would fill that void.  But it’s March, and we are just recently getting to the point where teachers can get into Schoolnet consisitently.  This year has been so disappointing in that regard.

When trying to share the features in Schoolnet with teachers, I grew so tired of hearing myself say, “This will be really cool when it works.”

Then in late early February, things were improved and it started working consistently. So a few brave teachers opened their classrooms to me to try out a few things in Schoolnet. And it really was pretty cool. So I’m tentatively hopeful that this system our State is hanging its hat on might actually be a benefit to teachers. Maybe Schoolnet will start living up to the promises as advertised.

The video below is a 6th grade social studies class, in which the students are studying the Barbarian Invasions preceding the Middle Ages in Europe. They had spent three days reading about innovations that the invaders brought to Europe and creating an infomercial for the innovation. Once the infomercials were completed, we had each group submit their videos to Schoolnet for grading.

Home Base Student Portal from Joni Allison on Vimeo.

photo credit: Sybren A. Stüvel via photopin cc

While the metaphor of the door of opportunity has become cliche, it is the image that comes to mind when I think of the Kenan Fellow/Mentor partnership.  I have had the opportunity to work with three tremendous mentors during my Kenan Fellowship journey: LaVerne Weldon, Carmella Fair, and Sarah McManus.   Despite having tremendously full plates of their own, these ladies have not only made themselves available for support, but have also opened the  door to new opportunities. Throughout our project, our mentors have invited us to different opportunities to share what we were learning.  Last summer, our mentors invited each of the Home Base Kenan Fellows to take part in DPI’s presentation in our Regional Summer Institute.

Sarah McManus, LaVerne Weldon and June Atkinson

In August, our mentors arranged for the Home Base Kenan Fellows to be recognized at the State School Board, and in September, two of us were honored to address the board. In March, we are invited again to share our experiences at the Collaborative Conference for Student Achievement in Greensboro.

Addressing the SBE

The above opportunities have been amazing learning experiences, but personally, I am most proud of the opportunity to invite two of our mentors to my school.  Being in Region 8, visitors from Raleigh tend to be the exception, not the rule.  Through the Kenan Fellow/Mentor partnership, we were able to build a bridge between DPI and an award-winning school in Region 8, at least for a day.

“…one opportunity leads directly to another, just as risk leads to more risk, life to more life, and death to more death.” ― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

photo credit: heticobai via photopin cc

Pisgah National Forest

October, by far one of the best months to call the mountains home, has been insanely busy; not that I really care, but I had to google who won the World Series. And thank heavens, the peak was late this year or I would have completely missed it. I regret that the last pd institute occurred in a month that made it hard for me to stay present and savor the last big hurrah of my Kenan Fellowship experience.  So as I try to reflect, I find myself struggling to articulate what this experience has meant to me. 

But last night I found myself looking for my next fellowship.  When I applied for this fellowship, I loved my job as an ESL teacher.  The relationships you form when working with English Learners are long-term and lasting even after the students have graduated and moved onto new phases of their lives. Maybe it’s short-sighted of me, but I cannot envision replacing those connections in my new job as an instructional coach.  

By the time I was selected as Kenan Fellow, I’d made the decision to step out of the classroom. I was thinking that maybe it was time to explore a doctorate degree in either educational leadership or curriculum and instruction.  I figured I use this year to learn the ropes of the new job , complete the Kenan Fellowship, and research doctoral programs.

Then came the third and final professional development institute with its focus on educational policy and I was captivated.  So much so, that to my own surprise,  it’s causing me to pause and rethink my next steps. I think I will explore the concept of educational policy a little more before I make a commitment to a doctoral program.

Which brings me back to the original question – what has this experience meant to me?  I continue to share all the amazing ideas, resources, and strategies I gather from my fellowship with other teachers.  And I’m recruiting teachers I encounter in my district and region that have that drive, that creativity, that je ne sais quoi …  to explore the Kenan Fellowship.  Vamanos, Region 8.

But with regards to how this experience will impact my future, I’ll defer to Mr. Frost to articulate so much more eloquently than I could hope to.  

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The Senior Staff speaking at the New Teacher meeting this year made social media a point of emphasis. As I sat and listened to them address the beginning teachers before school started, I found myself rolling my eyes as they droned on about facebook and texting.  We have policies in our district strictly prohibiting teachers “friending” students on facebook, and if they text students they must copy an administrator.  I remember thinking how archaic this must sound to these new teachers because surely this conversation isn’t necessary.

Fast forward a few weeks into the semester to when I learned about a teacher new to our school district who accepted students as friends on facebook and who also has tweets about drinking. This teacher is UNC grad and is not a first year teacher. In an effort to be accessible to his students, he has given his phone number to students so they can text him their questions.  He felt like he was covered because he sent home a permission slip for parents to sign.

But then parents complaints started.  As you can imagine, a couple of parents were uncomfortable with their daughters texting a young, male teacher as late as 10 or 11 at night.

Learning this story made me frustrated because I know my district, in a conservative county, will establish policies for all teachers if a few teachers don’t show the ability to make appropriate decisions.

I do feel that my district recognizes the power of social media, and they are trying to harness that power while ensuring that they don’t expose the district to any liability.  Last year, the district they enrolled all the students in Gaggle, which gave the students an email address, access to a social wall, an online course platform, blogs, and filtered You Tube.

It is a secure platform with some of the best that social media has to offer.  But it feels contrived and isn’t as intuitive as Twitter, WordPress, Moodle, or even Edmodo.  So I can’t help wondering if we aren’t better off teaching staff and students how to be digital citizens by using social media tools appropriately rather than investing our time and money into a secure substitute?

photo credit: mkhmarketing via photopin cc

Edited with Skitch

According to dummies.com, it does make sense to steal third with two outs if you are a proficient base thief because it offers you nine more opportunities to score.

Some might suggest that great teachers are also great thieves. We’re always looking for new ideas and thinking how can we incorporate them into our own classrooms. I had a principal once who said that if you could take one new idea away from a professional development session, then it was worth attending. When I attend a PD session, I’m not only thinking about how I can use the topics presented in my classroom, but I’m also looking for ideas to borrow in how the presentation was delivered.

Below are some bases that I’ve stolen from my Kenan Fellowship experience and incorporated into my teaching.

Blogging

http://www.flickr.com/photos/darrendraper/3199912709/

I had a blog before my Kenan Fellowship, but after the first PD Institute I knew it needed a major renovation. Before the blog felt more like an electronic journal, now I’m working on making it more visually appealing and more like a dialogue.  I have teachers in my school who are interested in getting their students blogging, and I’m sharing these tips with them as well.  I’ve also started a blog as a way to recognize teacher leaders in our school.  The hope is that these teachers will also write a guest post, and we can share all the posts on the school twitter account that our assistant principal set up.

Blendspace (formally known as Edcanvas)

I love web-based tools that I can use to organize my classroom. When I had to teach at two different schools each day, I would have to plan at one school and then drive to other school to teach that lesson. Web-based tools made that so much easier. So, when Patricia Coldren presented her “Kenan Talk” on Edcanvas, I was super excited to try it out. The company has since changed their name to Blendspace. I have used Blendspace to organize and deliver two different staff development sessions. Very cool. Thanks, Patricia.

Problem-based Learning

During this session, the presenter kept changing the rules of the activity, which of course made the task harder to complete, but it also sharpened the focus of the participants. Recently, I was leading a cooperative learning training with elementary teachers. I was presenting at the end of the day after two other presenters. By the time it was my turn, the teachers were losing focus and I was running out of time. So in the middle of a jigsaw activity, I changed the rules on the participants and took time off their clock because of an “unannounced fire drill”.  They refocused and got the activity done in the allotted time.  I’m now sharing this little trick with the beginning teachers I mentor who want to incorporate cooperative learning in their classrooms.

Schoolnet in Home Base

Home Base has been great for some districts and their teachers, and not so great for others for a variety of reasons.  I’m not going to get into that, but I will say that I have spent hours creating lessons and units in Schoolnet trying to find the best way to marry my district’s lesson plan template with Schoolnet.  After some trial and error, I have found a few features that I think teachers are going to love.  I can’t wait to share these tips with other teachers.

Photo Credits:

darrendraper via photopin cc

Summer 2013

I have spent a ridiculous amount of time (to the detriment of my hamstrings) sitting at my computer this summer. But when I find myself staring out of my window wishing I were somewhere that doesn’t have internet or phone service, I remind myself about who I’m working for this summer – my students.

Last June, I watched my “muchachos” graduate from high school. When I moved back to Henderson County 7 years ago and took a job at a middle school, these boys were 6th graders at varying stages of English Language proficiency. One of them had just moved to the United States from Mexico and he did not want to be here. He loved his life on his abuelo’s farm in Mexico; he was happy there. Here he didn’t speak the language– and he didn’t want to. He was either sick or sobbing several days a week those first few weeks. But he was lucky. He landed in a school with a group of Spanish-speaking peers who watched out for him. Some of these boys remembered what is was like adjusting to a new life in a new country. Others had been born in our county and knew the ropes. Plus he had teachers who not only were passionate about helping him adjust, but also passionate about helping him learn despite his language limitations. He had teachers who recognized that limited language is not a learning disability and did not set their expectations too low.

© Alliance for Excellent Education

But this August, I’ll no longer be in the classroom with these students, somebody else will. For seven years, I’ve collaborated, co-planned, and co-taught with many of the teachers who will continue to teach these students, and I know I’m leaving them in great hands. But as explained in the brilliant 2006 publication from Alliance for Excellent Education, English Language Learners have to do double the work of their native-English speaking peers. They have to meet the same content standards while simultaneously learning academic English. In my experience, social studies classes have been an untapped resource for supporting language and literacy learning.

So I’ve been scouring the world wide web this summer looking for resources – learning activities, lesson plans, interactive websites, etc – that will align to the NC Essential Standards for Social Studies as well as support the English language development of ELLs. So when I start staring out the window again, I envision a social studies class where all students are thinking critically, reading and writing like historians, and analyzing primary sources.  I hope that my seat time this summer will benefit the teachers of my former students.

www.twainquotes.com © Barbara Schmidt

For some reason, this quote attributed to Mark Twain always crosses my mind when I think about data.  This past year especially, with the simultaneous implementation of new standards and my district’s push for data teams, data have felt like weapons used on teachers. Data were either something done to teachers or one more thing for teachers to put on our ever-growing to-do list.

My dat-a-ha moment occurred listening to Paul and Justin talk about data literacy when I realized that by seizing the data teachers have the power to gather and interpret our own data. The more I learn about this process, the more excited I became to share this information with other teachers in my school. I want to help teachers to see how data is actually worth our time and energy because it gives them a way to communicate our effectiveness.  And right now in NC, teachers need some positive PR more than ever, and I think data could play a role in this endeavor.

I had a glimpse of the power of data for students this past spring as I was preparing my students for the ACCESS (the state standardized assessment for English proficiency).  I get reports on each student’s performance each year the child takes the test.  With my middle school students this year, I gave them all their reports and showed them how to type the scores into Excel.  Then we turned those data into a line graph.  The students who were most impacted were the ones who would exit from ESL just by raising their writing scores a few tenths of a point. With the help of a simple spreadsheet and a graph, these students could see this for themselves and were motivated – driven even – to put in some extra practice the weeks before the test on their writing practice.

photo credit: giulia.forsythe via photopin cc

I remember thinking why I hadn’t done this activity at the beginning of the year.  But through the data process shared by Seize the Data, I realize that having students look at their own data should happen throughout the year.  I wonder what impact these type of data analysis activities might have on students who are motivated less and less by arbitrary grades on a report card.

Could having students look at their own data help those darling apathetic students who don’t see the point in so much of what they are asked to do in school?  Would data literacy help teachers eliminate those pointless activities in the first place?