Thoughts from #Miched Chat 9/24/14

If you're reading this blog post, you probably saw it on Twitter and are likely someone who participates in chats like #miched, #edchat, or any one of the various education-themed chats that happen regularly on Twitter.  If you don't know what those are yet, I very strongly encourage you to check it out.  I've only recently started participating in the #miched chats from 8-9pm on Wednesday nights, but it's already radically changing the way I go about learning and improving as an educator.

Last night's #miched chat (9/23/14) was about personalized learning, and it really got me thinking about a few of the questions and responses.  One of the questions asked during the chat was "share a time when YOU benefited from having your learning personalized."  Many of the participants responded that the #miched chats and their Twitter PLNs were helping them to become better teachers.  It was great to see how many educators feel that they've benefited so much from just communicating with each other.  Every person in the #miched chat was there because they wanted to be - because they care about their students and they care about becoming better educators.

However, this got me thinking about how many teachers there are who are not yet participating in #miched or any other online sharing between teachers.  They are either unaware of or choosing not to participate in such a great opportunity for learning and professional development.  For some teachers, it seems that they equate professional development with boring lectures about things that don't have a direct connection to the classroom.  It's like professional development is just something to suffer through to check a requirement off a list.  There is a gap between what some schools are using for professional development and what teachers need and could really use to become better.

I find it kind of sad that this gap and attitude toward professional development exists at all, and it makes me want to go out and change people's minds.  I know of some people who don't think that teachers should have to do any professional development - that teachers have too much going on as it is already.  To me, that sounds like there are teachers who don't want to learn.

However, if we expect our students to always strive to become better and to become lifelong learners, shouldn't we teachers have the same expectation for ourselves?  How can we prepare our students for the world when we're not keeping up with how the world is changing?

I've learned a lot regarding this issue from #miched and other Twitter chats.  It is now easier than ever to do your own, personalized professional development, thanks to the Twitterverse full of teachers who are willing to answer questions and share ideas.  Also, by sharing my own ideas on Twitter and from the responses I've gotten, I feel very empowered and like I have something of value to share with my fellow educators, even if I'm only in my 3rd year of teaching.

Professional development isn't just lectures provided a few times a year by our school districts.  Professional development as I think of it (as teachers learning to be better teachers) is so much more than that.  It's a Twitter chat between educators on a Wednesday evening.  It's a discussion with a coworker in the hall about a new tool you're trying out in class.  Maybe it's even a reflective blog post that you're not sure anyone will ever see.

My point is that we need to get the word out about how valuable some "non-traditional" forms of professional development can be, and we need to be willing to try new things and to share our own experiences and ideas.  If we get more educators sharing and learning, we can all get better together.



If you would like to check out all of the tweets from #miched chat on personalized learning from 9/24/14, click here.  Thanks @ToddBloch for tweeting out the Storify story of the chat!

School is Fun!

I love those days when, at the end of the school day,  I think to myself: Today was so fun!  I actually get paid to teach and have fun with kids all day!  Awesome!  Granted, not every day is like that, but I've been having a lot of those fun days recently. I love it when my students are having fun and learning at the same time.  I think it's so important to provide students with experiences where they can see that learning can be fun.  If students have fun learning, hopefully they'll come love learning and become lifelong learners.

I have heard comments from others about how learning can't always and shouldn't always be fun.  One of the reasons I've heard for this is that "Most jobs aren't all about fun and games."  I get that, but I have a super fun job, and I know a lot of people who have fun at their jobs too.  I also don't think that just because some people's jobs are boring doesn't mean that we teachers shouldn't have fun with our students wherever we can.  Maybe if we have more fun in school, we'll create people who will have more fun in their jobs and lives in the future.

This post is pretty much an example of stream of conciousness, but I guess, as I'm thinking about this issue of fun in school, my thoughts are mostly summed up by: Why wouldn't you want to have fun in school whenever you can?

SCHOOL IS FUN!

Teach Like a Pirate: First Reflections

One of my wonderful colleagues, Jim Ekdahl (@EkdahlJames), recommended and let me borrow the book Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess.  Admittedly, it's been taking me a while to actually start reading it - things have been so crazy with the first couple weeks of school.  I have, however, been able to read the first few sections - one on passion and one on immersion - and I'm really enjoying the book.  Here are my thoughts so far:

Passion:

Basically, Mr. Burgess says that teachers tend to have two kinds of passion that get them excited about their jobs: content passion and professional passion.  I am very passionate about the subjects I teach.  I find the German language and culture fascinating, and I have always loved all aspects of English.  While I do get excited about the content that I teach, I think I get even more excited about what Burgess calls professional passion.  

I feel very strongly that I am called to be a teacher.  I remember when I was in first grade, we had to come to school one day dressed up as what we wanted to be when we grew up.  I wore a skirt and a pink cardigan, and when my teacher asked me what I was, I told her I was a teacher (how did the cardigan not give that away immediately?).  That is my first memory of thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up.  Then, late in high school, I decided to study engineering because there was a part of me that thought, for some reason, I couldn't be just a teacher.  I had to do something more, something better, something important.  After some stressful, not-so-happy semesters, I eventually switched my major in college from engineering to about five other things before finally realizing and accepting that nothing made me as happy as when I was working with kids.  Once I finally got to be in the classroom more while student teaching during my masters program, I knew that I had made the right decision.  Now, I wish I could go back and tell my high school self that teaching, for me, is the best and most important job.

I love being around my students.  I love teaching them about things I think are awesome.  I love learning from them - learning about other people, learning about how to be a better teacher, learning about myself.  I love those moments that Burgess calls "LCLs" or life-changing lessons.  While I love teaching German and English, what I am more passionate about is teaching kids.

Immersion:

The second section of TLAP that I've read so far is about immersion - jumping into the lesson with the kids and participating in it with them.  I think that I do this a lot already in my teaching.  I like to join in on the vocabulary games that we play in class.  While teaching, I prefer to sit in a student desk or walk around the room instead of sit at my own desk.  Sometimes, when I assign a project for my students, I make my own along with them.  I find myself doing more standing, walking around, and kneeling next to student desks rather than sitting while they are working on something in class.  Not only does that make teaching more interesting and fun for me, I think it does for the kids too.  

I know I still need to work on being really immersed in the lesson with my students ALL the time instead of just some of the time, but while I was reading this section of TLAP, I found myself realizing that I'm already more of a "pirate" than I had previously thought.

Stay tuned for more reflections on Teach Like a Pirate!

Experimenting with Student Freedom

I had a mini epiphany over the summer while I was brainstorming for some fun projects to do in my German 3 class this year.  While I was wondering to myself if a certain project would be better done as a video or a live presentation, I thought to myself: Why not both?  Or why not something else entirely?  What if there's a better way to do it that I haven't even thought of yet?

I really started thinking about what knowledge I wanted my students to have at the end of a unit and how I wanted them to demonstrate that knowledge.  That's backward planning - which seems like such an easy concept, but I still find myself struggling to remember to use it, as well as pleasantly surprise at how smoothly everything goes when I do use it.  Anyway, it got me thinking.  If every student is unique in their strengths and the way they learn, why don't I allow my assessments to be as unique as my students?  Why ask every student to make a video when some of them would prefer to do a live presentation?  Or make an infographic?  Or create a website?  Or do something that I haven't thought of yet?

I know it's not realistic for me right now to abandon every single assessment I have and allow the students to choose their own thing for every assessment, and I do think there is merit to having each student use a variety of methods to show their learning.  However, sometimes - a lot of the time, I think I should be allowing my students to have more of a say in how they show me what they've learned.  Our students can be so creative when they're motivated and excited by what they're doing in school.  Why not let them use their strengths and be creative in the ways they are assessed?

So, I'm officially experimenting on my German 3 class this week.  I've assigned them a project on the states of Germany, and I told them that they can present the information in any way they choose to do so (as long as they run it by me first).  Some students are making posters on Glogster, some are making websites with Weebly, some are making videos with WeVideo, some are making a Powerpoint presentation, and one was even thinking about incorporating interpretive dance (that last one may have been jokingly suggested, but still - you never know what they'll come up with!).  Their projects are due next week - we'll see how it goes!

Return to Blogsics

It's been over a year since I last posted on this blog.  Going back and reading some of my reflections from my first few weeks of teaching was interesting - a lot has changed since then, and a lot is still the same.  I feel like I want to say "OMG DUH" to my first-year-teacher self in response to some of the seemingly ground-breaking revelations I was having.  But this blog is supposed to be about self-reflection, so I guess that's kind of the point - to see how I've changed over time, and hopefully, to see how I've gotten better.

There are some fun things to read about in those old posts though.  I recently went to the graduation party for the difficult student, "Frank", I blogged about in my third week of my first year.  He ended up being one of the kids I connected with the most during my first two years.  It's funny how things work out sometimes.

Anyway, I've decided to revive this blog in an effort to be an even better "21st Century Teacher."  It can be kind of easy for me to get down about things I'm not happy about in my job or in education, but I've learned a lot recently about what kind of teacher I want to be moving forward, thanks to my adventures at MACUL, edcamps, on Twitter, and in my general interactions with other teachers.  I tend to be more positive and happy in my job when I can share with people what I'm doing with my students and when people are willing to share with me all the awesome things they're doing.  So beside the fact that I find writing to be rather therapeutic and that it helps me organize my thoughts into somewhat coherent sentences, hopefully this blog will encourage me to share what's great about teaching and encourage others to share with me.

So....here's what I'm super excited about for this school year:

• My weebly site is working out wonderfully so far this year.  I think it looks pretty great, and all of my students have used it successfully so far.  Check it out at naglelcn.weebly.com!
• I used a Kahoot on the first day of class, and it was awesome.  My English students even requested that we play the Kahoot I made for my German class because they were having so much fun.
• My goal this year is to use technology to enhance learning and make class fun and the best it can be for my students - and that goal seems to be going pretty well already.
• I will be presenting with my awesome colleague Elaine Mantinan (@ElaineMantinan) at the Michigan World Language Conference in October.
• I have a lot of new students this year, and they are all wonderful.  Every. Single. One.

What are you excited about this year???

Follow me on Twitter @NagleCaroline!