So today they opened the educational fire hose and left it on full blast all day…but man, was it worth it. I couldn’t get enough of what they were telling me! I had notes in my notebook, on my computer, on sticky notes, where ever I could put them. I am so excited about all of the new ideas that I have, but I know I will need some help refining them and focusing in on one or two so I can really make the most of it. My natural tendency is to try it all at once, and I found out this year that that doesn’t usually work so well.
Here is a list of the things that I learned today:
- A brand is best when it has an emotional modifier, a descriptive modifier, and a function. My brand for my classroom, and honestly most of what I do in life, is positive, engaging, learning experience. After interacting with me, I want people to feel positively about themselves, what they’ve done, and what they will be doing moving forward. I work hard to provide a positive spin to my students’ lives and help them to reframe their view into a more positive one whenever possible. I want people to feel as if I have engaged with them, which encompasses challenging lessons, dynamic conversations, and passion. I also want them to feel as if they have engaged in the learning, and had an opportunity to engage in the thrill of mathematics. Finally, I want them to feel as if they have engaged in a learning experience: one in which they can confidently say that they built onto their body of knowledge because of the experience that they had with the mathematics. I would like to eventually get to a place where my students are able to also articulate what that learning experience looked like.
- I learned tools for how to help them articulate their learning: the design thinking process and computational thinking. Design thinking is interesting because it starts with empathy. The basis of creation focuses on the needs of another person or group of people, and then stems into a problem solving experience. I thought that was really powerful for students to experience. Computational thinking is a process of understanding and investigating complex systems, creating algorithms that define an abstraction, and evaluating the algorithms/solutions for effectiveness and efficiency. Even though I have heard about these ideas in many different forms and fashions, and I’ve even done a lot of it in my classroom, I noticed instantaneously that having the language to articulate the processes greatly increased the potential and power in the learning. I hope to find a way to effectively create space for this language in my classroom next year, maybe through an infographic that students can reference by their tables or other ways that I incorporate it into the daily language that I use.
- I learned about multiple different ways to give quick, formative feedback to my students that allows them to adjust their work as they go along, since they are more likely to refine and tweak their work from low-stakes, informative feedback than high stakes grades that show up in PowerSchools that their parents can see. I also learned that if I want to go “gradeless” in a traditional classroom, I can use these formative assessments in a way to help students engage in self-reflection and self understanding of their learning (he gave us a template for that called “Unit Overview Sheets”) and then students can advocate for their grade at the end of the quarter based on the evidence that they have gathered that they have learned the material.
- Finally, I learned that I can get my own feedback on how well I’m doing with my PBL units or other things I’m trying to implement in the classroom by videotaping myself and sending it to my mentors and colleagues who are experts in that certain area. I have been so frustrated with the inability to get any feedback on whether or not I’m doing it well, and how I could change to improve my practice, and here was a tool that I hadn’t thought of that is right at my finger tips. I look forward to utilizing the many resources that I have gained from the Kenan program in order to better my teaching:)
Overall, it was a very successful day of learning. I feel blessed and honored to be here, and exhilarated by the many conversations that I have had today with all of these fabulous educators. I have found my people and feel a thrill every time I realize how I am surrounded by people who are smarter and more experienced than I am, and yet are also welcoming and willing to listen to my ideas as we journey together. I’m excited for what is left to come!