Don’t reinvent the wheel

-Every veteran teacher ever

I have been teaching for seven years.  I’ve heard the phrase ”Don’t reinvent the wheel” more than I can count.  But as a Spanish teacher who has taught in a socioeconomically low school and then a charter school, I’m used to cobbling together my own resources.  For better or worse (although I’m pleased to say, usually better), I have created the vast majority of my teaching resources.  I don’t have textbooks at my current school and we didn’t have enough textbooks even for a class set at my previous school, so I’ve had to adapt.  Also, being a world language or fine arts teacher presents another challenge.  Often, at the middle or elementary school level, you are the only teacher from your subject in your school.  Depending on your district, you may or may not be allowed to leave your school to join teachers of your subject in a different school on PLC or other professional development days (I was never allowed to leave, but was encouraged to work with the ESL teacher).

The good news is that I am now very skilled in creating objective driven lesson plans that are scaffolded for multiple learners.  The bad news is, I am deep in the habit of creating things entirely on my own.  I have become extremely self-reliant.  Formative assessments, lesson plans, dictations, summative assessments–they all come from me, from scratch or heavily modified.

In my fellowship of tagging quality resources for Home Base, I have come to the humbling conclusion that there are world language teachers from all walks of life doing what I do better than I do it.  Something in me initially rebelled against Open Educational Resources (lesson plans, units, and other items that anyone is free to take and use) in the first place–years of carefully citing my work in scholarly work makes me feel somehow that it’s plagiarizing.  But in coming across so many websites and databases of Open Educational Resources, I’ve realized it makes perfect sense to collaborate across the web, especially in areas such as elementary fine arts that may be isolated in their own schools.  My biggest ‘aha’ moment in this fellowship has been the recognition that there is a wealth of resources on the internet that is not only free and accessible to teachers on the internet but that contain quality, innovative teaching strategies that you might never think of yourself until you come across them in someone else’s work.

From what I understand as a Spanish teacher, the overhaul to Common Core has been an intimidating one for some teachers and schools.  Change is always a little tough– documents have to be edited, exams have to be revamped, even links in PowerPoint presentations for the parent community have to be redone in the name of the new thing.  Topics of study have moved up and down the ladder of grades.  Some teachers have to give up their favorite unit; some only have a week to teach what they view as an in-depth topic.  It must be frustrating.

I say ”it must be” and not ”it is” because I’m not sure what the Common Core rollover feels like.  The evolution from the NCSCOS into the World Language Essential Standards has been a less jarring one.  World Language standards are very broad.  The plus is that this allows a good deal of freedom.  The downside is that something vague is a bit difficult to assess and thereby to teach effectively.  Take my favorite, NL.CLL.1.3:

Use a variety of verbal and non-verbal communication strategies to ask memorized questions and express ideas or thoughts with prompting and modeling

Although the whole point of World Language classes is indeed to get students to be able to ”say words about stuff”, it’s a bit daunting to look that standard in the eye and dare to say you’ve assessed it accurately.

The only standard on the Novice Low spectrum (where students should be in the presentational speaking communication mode after a Level I course) to mention technology directly is this:

NL.COD.3.3 Use readily available technology tools and digital literacy skills to present in the target language

It gives you a great deal of freedom, yes.  And I love autonomy as a teacher.  I think Voki is an awesome tool, for instance, but if there was a district mandate that said I had to use it once a quarter, I’d find a reason to hate it.  So if I don’t want things prescribed to me, what do I want?

Guidance.  Perhaps I want guidance.  Guidance for the beginning teachers who have enough on their plate, for teachers who feel technologically inept, for teachers who want to stay on par with their peers.  So, I look to the posted Assessment Examples.  Curiously, there is no AE posted for this standard, so I roll up to its Novice Mid equivalent, ”Use readily available technology tools and digital literacy skills to present academic information in the target language”.  There is an AE for this:

Create a multi-media presentation about the culture of a target country.  Use two photographs from the target culture and say one sentence in the target language about each.

Again, freedom, which is great.  Multimedia can be anything, and a teacher that doesn’t have enough exposure to the great wealth of tools out there in the world may default to PowerPoint.  PowerPoint pictures and oral presentation in the target language are completely appropriate.  It’s a rigorous task in your second language, and it is technology.

But PowerPoint isn’t everything.  Quite frankly, it’s not worth battling the wonky laptop cart, the fickle machines within it, and the internet connection just to let the kids look up some authentic pictures in class.  They could bring in pictures on flash drives.  They could flip through magazines.  They could draw them, honestly.  It’s the same, communication-wise.

I want the kids to be able to truly create with technology.  If you’re assessing digital literacy skills, say exactly what those are.  Do you want them to use Audacity to record their sentences, convert them to MP3 format and embed them in their presentation?  Would you rather them interact with each other and bring the communication up to interpersonal as well?  Create a Voicethread and comment on three of their classmates’ presentations?  Set up a class-collaborative blog post?  There are so many places to go with technology, but we all need a little incentive.  If I am going to ask every teacher to teach technology, I want them to have the tools to teach it well: to know what specific skills are appropriate within their curriculum, and to know software and apps that not only fit the bill but engage students in creating.

I don’t think the Essential Standards are a hindrance to using technology at all.  I just think they could reach a little more.

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As I mentioned in my very first blog post, my job description has changed from middle school Spanish (where I’ve been happily teaching the Spanish I curriculum in NC for 6 years) to K-8 Spanish.  There is no provided curriculum.  No textbooks.  No end of year assessment.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the freedom.  I don’t do well with someone else scripting me, and I have strong opinions about what’s important for language learners.  I took a careers survey a few months ago that ranked your values in the workplace.  I had assumed my #1 would be working for social justice and equality, but was surprised that there was a first-place tie between autonomy and creativity.  So, survey says I should be thrilled about such an open-ended challenge.  But it’s sort of scary, too.  I have very little experience with small children.  What experience I do have with them is not positive.  I am at a loss as to how to teach them.

I won’t use every resource I tag over the summer in my classrooms next year, but it’s been wonderful to be awarded some time to really sit down and look at what’s on the web, what other teachers in other states are doing, and decide what’s best to incorporate for my students.

Luckily, my Kenan fellowship consists of perusing the web for quality resources for elementary Spanish.  To be honest, I am a huge procrastinator (just like a middle school kid) and would not have spent so much time looking at lessons over the summer if I weren’t doing so through this fellowship.  So, for me, it’s forced planning, which is great.  Also, the resources (plans, assessments, web activities) that I’m choosing are out of my comfort zone.

I’m a no-nonsense gal in class.  I have great faith in my students’ abilities and require much from them, including several rigorous projects, but I don’t have a lot of frills.  So, when I see lesson plans that have singing or puppets, I cringe.  But in using the Open Educational Resource rubric that I’ve been trained on through DPI, I have to view resources more objectively.  I might cringe at the puppets, but for a young language learner with little to go on, the puppets are what makes the lesson able to hit so many standards and allow those students to think through more varied scenarios (for example, third person language as opposed to just first person) than a lesson without them.

People get excited about technology.  They always have.

Parents realize their children are completely engaged by blue-glowing screens at every spare moment, and so they suggest that their child would do more assignments and pay more attention if more technology were used.  Anyone who’s ever seen a two-year old pick up a new smart device and navigate to Angry Birds in 30 seconds will tell you that technology is intuitive and kids adapt to it so quickly, so you should leverage that in the classroom.  Politicians of all parties build platforms based on expanding technology in our classrooms so that we can meet the demands of our global community.  Technology clearly seems to be the answer to a lot of our educational problems.

I use technology often in my everyday life.  I’m fairly young, so having it ever-present in my life is natural to me.  In fact, there are six internet ready devices in the room I’m sitting in right now in my house–six, I tell you!  And trying new things in the classroom doesn’t daunt me.  I trust my students and have great classroom culture.  I want them to be engaged.  I watched this video at a staff meeting in every school I’ve ever taught at.  I get it.  So why is it rare to see the children using technology (watching my cast-ups on an LCD projector doesn’t count) when you walk by my classroom, then?

1. Availability

Baffling though it may be in this day and age, not every child has access to a computer at home.  Or the computer may be there, but it’s offline.  The kids may have a smart phone, so might their parents, but no functional computer.  Solution: Bridge that gap through schools.  But even that’s not so easy.  Not every district has or has allocated the funds for a 1-to-1 initiative.  In my school, we share one laptop cart of 18 computers across two grade levels.  Every class wants them.  Our class sizes are larger than 18.  No promises that all 18 machines will function at once.  And this is a big step up above my last school.  My previous middle school had only one computer lab and it was usually occupied by Reading Academy, a mandatory elective for students with low EOG reading scores.  And inexplicably, in every school I’ve ever studied or taught in, almost every class has one or two computers, there gathering dust, that just ”don’t work”.

Bottom line: It’s hard to use technology when it’s not there.

2. Accessibility

So we can dream of a day when there’s an iPad cart for every two classes, or when there’s a clicker for every kid.  Bright, shiny new machines for everyone.  But the challenge of the internet connection reigns.  Internet in educational buildings works in a way I have never understood.  Bizarre things happen.  Certain rooms are black holes of internet connectivity (mine is).  Sometimes the internet goes out after 1:00pm exactly.  It seems to vary with the weather.  Or if someone laughs too loudly.  And when too much activity is going on at once, nothing will work.  The kids have their own ways of trouble shooting:

”There’s a switch on the side, did you bump it?”

”Open the connections and disconnect and reconnect.  Make sure you’re not on the guest network”

”You have too many tabs open, man.  Just close them all except one”

”Use Google Chrome! It doesn’t like Internet Explorer!”

”Use Internet Explorer! It doesn’t like Google Chrome!”

”Ctrl-Alt-Del, dude”

”Mine’s stuck, can I share with Daniel?”

”Ms. Bolton, can I just use your computer?”

But there’s very little on their part that can fix a weak connection. Bottom line: It’s hard to connect with the world when everyone can’t connect.

3. Buy-in

So, we wait for every politician’s platform promise and every district initiative to come to fruition, and someday along with all our shiny tablets, we’ll have excellent connectivity and limitless bandwidths in every school.  We’d still have a battle to fight, and this battle for me is the hardest to address.  Putting the whole internet, with all human knowledge and art, at a kid’s fingertips gives kids a great deal of power.  But schools don’t always trust their kids to use that power wisely.  And then come the blocks.  It starts with social media, which makes sense.  I understand the reasoning behind blocking social media, but it evolves so quickly that administration may block something that kids have abandoned (Facebook) but ignore something the kids are all into (AskFM).

Then it snowballs….”youtube” is inevitably next, which is heartbreaking.  Youtube is a great tool when used correctly–with previewing by teachers.  Sure, there’s Schooltube and Teachertube, but they’re not the same.  Administrations fear the comments section most, but you can use web clipping tools like Splicd, or just scroll the comments out of frame.

Search blocks can also get out of control.  I know of one school where in an attempt to block all internet radio stations, they have a web filter that doesn’t allow you to do a web search for anything with the word ”music”.  You can imagine the trouble this may cause.

My school has on average a fairly affluent population, all things considered, which lends itself well to a Bring Your Own Device policy.  But I fear we’ll never get it instated because our middle schoolers have made some poor decisions with instant share apps like Vine and Snapchat.   I’ve had extensive consequences with my students about this, and about monitoring your own online presence.  I understand wanting to keep children socially safe and limiting distractions during instructional time.  But ultimately I stand with giving freedoms. Ignoring the technology that kids do have and keeping smart devices out of classrooms is a little like an art teacher planning on sticking to pencils today because he’s afraid students will make a mess with paint or create anatomically accurate sculptures with clay. Technology can be a creative medium if we let it.

We’re educators.  We have been for years.  I believe we should do with technology what we’ve done with everything in classrooms: introduce it proactively.  Establish clear procedures and communicate them.  Provide positive and negative consequences for whether those procedures are followed.  And adapt.

What do you think?  Do the possibilities and potential behind technology and using smart devices in the classroom outweigh the hazards that come with them (inappropriate usage, cyber bullying, and accidental exposure to mature information/images, etc)?

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Although I learned how to use a lot of great new technology at NCCAT and I’m very excited to try to plan a few lessons that incorporate augmented reality when school starts up, I think the most memorable  event was the whitewater rafting trip.

My best friend growing up was a raft guide during her summers on the Nantahala (with the NOC, actually), so rafting down this river wasn’t new to me.  But on our trip, I learned a lot of great new things.  I know the gorge is beautiful, but I never really took the time to notice it and think about it like we did on Wednesday.  Peter talked to us about the diversity of the life around the river and what causes it.  I had honestly not thought of the natural history of NC, and it feel privileged to live in a state with such variety from the mountains to the beach.

The river was freezing, but clean (I ingested several mouthfuls accidently as we plowed through rapids.  We managed to stay upright and not lose any passengers, so we had an easier time than some rafts on the trip.  The people in our raft took on different roles–Angel was our guard, alerting us to the rapids ahead.  Michael provided entertaining commentary while Patricia was our resident photographer.  Jayne and Joni were our naturalists–Jayne can tell you all about  fish while Joni points out all the plants on the riverbank and how to tell them apart.

What were the roles in your raft?

My fellowship is with DPI.  This summer, our student informational system called NCWISE is being replaced by Home Base.  Home Base has three pieces to it:

1. PowerSchools: This is where grades and student information is housed.  Parents can also access grades from here
2. Truenorthlogic: This houses the McREL Teacher Evalluation that we have been using.  The process and rubric are the same, just in a different place.
3. SchoolNet: a collaborative piece that allows teachers to keep all their lessons and documents in one place and allows teachers to search for vetted resources that were freely available online

Our fellowship group consists of 8 teachers in non-core subjects: music, art, world languages, agriculture, CTE and ESL.  We have the very important job of making SchoolNet a useful resource for more than just core teachers.  I’m very glad that DPI has chosen to seek the expertise of teachers that are usually underrepresented in state-wide initiatives.

Our mentors from DPI, LaVerne Weldon and Carmela Fair, along with the content management team from CUACS (the Center for Urban Affairs and Community Services), Phyllis Laughlin, Lessie Anderson and Renee Duckenfield, have trained us on how to evaluate and upload resources into Home Base for teachers to use in the coming year.