Sparked and Idea for Teaching and Learning in a Pandemic

 I saw the image below in my news feed this morning and it made me pause.  This is truly what life for many of us looks like right now.  It is definitely they way my teaching and learning experience is going. I work at my computer, participate in virtual meetings, collaborate one-to-one with teachers virtually to do some troubleshooting or planning or lesson creating, visit with my extended family virtually, and check in with my friends that way as well. 

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Ever the ELA teacher, I immediately thought about how it would make a great writing prompt for my students! I could ask them to identify which person represented them most, or of who does one of the images remind you most, or give three people a name and describe what they do each day, or describe the facial expression/features that you envision on one of these people, or so many other out-of-the-box ideas for students to pause, think, imagine, and write.  

Since I have made it a goal to create most of my own graphics for projects I create this year, I also took a moment to think about how I would create something similar and the time it might take to create such a large, in-depth graphic.

I also sent a challenge to one of my grands who is learning remote this week due to quarantining and being in contact with a fellow student who tested COVID positive.  I would love to have seen her face when I challenged her!  Unlike the folks pictured, I'm sure her eyes would be LARGE!  

Sometimes it is off-the-wall sorts of things that make the best lessons. I think this is one of those things that could make a good lesson.  I also think we have lots of people who are scrambling to come up with good virtual lessons using off-the-wall ideas like this that are tied to their own curriculum.  I wonder what other folks have paused in their scroll to think about ways to use something they see in a lesson?

What day is it, anyway?

I have been so busy and the days seem to run one into another.  I often lose track of what day of the week it is and I almost never know what date of the year it is.  Is anybody else so muddled?  

I thought today might be a rather light one since it is Friday and Mother's Day is this weekend.  I thought folks might be easing up and laying back a little bit.  Nope.  That's not the case.  I started off shortly after seven this morning and wound things up when the sky was beginning to darken.

I wonder what those folks who think testing holds teachers accountable are thinking now?  Do they realize what kind of dedication this group of people have to learning and children?

I have never been more pleased to be a part of the education world than I am right now.  The days might be hard but they are certainly more interesting than they have ever been!

Good Friday!

Ah!  Good Friday morning to you on this Good Friday!  No expectations of working from home for me today but I probably will do a bit anyway.  Only today I will probably work from my front porch.  It is a little cooler than the past couple of days but I can put on a sweatshirt and sit out there and do a little summer professional development workshop prep, I think.

I checked in with my grandchildren at various times this week to find out if they were still participating in their online learning.  Most of them are doing a bit on some level.  Some of their learning has been expanded a bit.  Lydia was learning about sewing, health care, and benevolence a couple of days this week.  She was helping her mother to make cloth masks for local medical facilities.  That is certainly something she wouldn't have learned in middle school in the past!

They've also had a bit of social time in a distancing sort of way.  Harris had Facetime with one of his dear friends.  Lillie and Lydia had Google Hangouts with some of their friends.  Luci had a Hangout with me.  I watched her jump on the trampoline, ride on a turtle racer, climb on their home playground, hide in the little plastic playhouse, and numerous other adventures.  She chatted the entire time filling me full of valuable informational tidbits!

We saw Levi, Easton, Abby Lee and their mother getting a little exercise one day this week.  They walked down the driveway in their colorful boots.  One fellow had on a left green boot and a right blue one and the other had on a left blue boot and a right green one.  They were cute bee-bopping down the hill and back up.  I'm sure mom was grateful for the energy that was spent up doing that1

We've seen photos of Cassie and Evie pulling weeds as they tag along with their parents doing landscaping jobs.  They are smiling and enjoying the sunshine and the finished products their mother posts really look nice!

I've seen Twitter and Facebook posts where local schools are highlighting senior students and turning on the athletic field lights to honor 2020 graduates.  I saw a video post of a couple of school choir collaborations where students each sang his/her part and all of the recordings were mixed together to make a performance and I was amazed at the beauty of the voices and the talent involved.  Small gestures like that have got to make a difference in times like these.  My heart goes out to them at what experiences they are giving up in order to preserve health and well-being of themselves and others!

I've interacted with teachers all week who have been learning something new and taking risks to try new things in order to step up and try to meet the needs of their students.  Distance learning is definitely not as easy as one might think and distance teaching is a whole different animal than classroom teaching.  I applaud those who are taking those risks and reaching out to students and working to try to help educate those who will be our future leaders, caregivers, service providers, and fellow citizens!

I've also seen folks making an effort to learn new things like gardening.  Many questions and responding suggestions have been popping up about growing vegetables in a back yard.  I also saw a teacher post a math problem that involved four cracked eggs.  One had a dark yellow yolk and the others had a lighter yellow yolk,  The teacher was asking students things like:

• Identify which came from the farm and which from the store and explain why you think that
• Express that as a fraction
• Express that as a decimal
• How many ways can you represent this relationship?
• Research to find out why the eggs might look different
• Create a graphic of the life-cycle of an egg
• Use 3-4 adjectives to describe each egg
• What is the ratio of yolk to white?
• If you double the number of farm eggs, how many eggs would there be altogether?
• If a chicken lays one egg per day, how many eggs would you have in two weeks?
• What is your best recipe using eggs?
• Is there a line of symmetry in this picture?

This certainly has been a different week!  It has been a good one, though.  Still, I'm glad it is Friday.  And, even better, it is Good Friday!

Wanting a Drink of Water

You know, we never appreciated meeting together as a team so much as we do right now!  At one time we all shared a classroom as an office.  Each person had a desk and they were scattered round the room.  Then, we were moved out to a school building that was in a remote area and shared a classroom as an office there.  The drive was a killer but when we all were there together, we could collaborate face-to-face and quickly make plans.

Now, we are are all working from home and we exchange group emails and text messages and hold Zoom meetings.  Then, it seems that only a few minutes after these meetings are closed out I have questions or good ideas that I wish I had shared. 

My grandmother used to say, "You never appreciate a drink of water till the well goes dry."

Isn't that what we all are living right now?

Looking at the Basics

When I started this aspect of my blogging life, I decided that I wanted to post images that were of my own creation.  At work I feel obligated to cite image resources because, well, it is the right thing to do.  I've always done that on my personal blog as well.  If I borrow an image, I cite it's origin.  So, that led me to creating my own simple graphics. 

This has certainly made me look at the basics of how things are made.  I look at shapes.  I look at colors.  I look at layers.  When Tony Vincent first started with Shapegrams, I thought it was a wonderful idea and that sort of spurred me to create my own graphics for my work icons and graphic needs.  Google Drawings is probably my favorite app anyway, well, at least for creating things for teachers and students.  So, one thing kind of led to another.

I use Google Drawings to create the clip art type graphics.  I just add shapes and manipulate them and layer them to get the general concept of what I want.  A simple example is the wrench and screwdriver that I used in a recent post:

When that drawing is deconstructed, it is just a bunch of shapes like this:

The shapes forming the screwdriver are on the right of the canvas and the shapes for the wrench are on the left. 

I think that is what teachers are wanting in our district right now.  Nothing complex - just the basics.  So, we are trying to provide basic support for them and their students.  We have offered Zoom sessions that last an hour on Tuesday and Wednesday for the past couple of weeks.  We show some basics, share basic, introductory information, and field questions related to what we are sharing in a Chat window. 

There is nothing exciting and extraordinary about what we are doing to help teachers but many of them are grateful for what we are sharing.  There is also nothing exciting and extraordinary about creating your own graphics either it but it is a fun adventure to see what I can create.  I would encourage you to do some creating yourself!

Good Teachers!

Everywhere I look educators are sharing ideas for ways to communicate clearly, visually, and digitally.  They are reaching out to their peers.  They are reaching out to their students.  They are seeking support and they are providing support. 

Times like these just prove that good teachers are the key to learning.  Good teachers are going to do what it takes no matter what obstacle comes their way. Good teachers get the job done.

I was so grateful to get a message from a young woman who I consider to be one of those Good Teachers.  She and I have worked collaboratively for several years and she said:

"No help needed at the moment, but just wanted to say thank you.  Your guidance and help over the last few years has given me the confidence to easily tackle all the new things coming my way these days."

I think the 'good' teachers are rising to the top right now more than ever before.  I see those who are strong, well prepared, versatile, risk-takers excelling even in this unusual situation of distance learning and staying at home.

I am really interested to see how this time impacts the future of teaching and learning!

Grasping the Tools

We got responses from folks who participated in our Zoom sessions last week.  For the most part they are positive.  There were also quite a few requests from folks who needed a bit of clarification or needed a bit more support.  Because we had 'sold-out' crowds last week, we decided to offer the exact same thing this week.  So, tomorrow we will be hosting another Zoom session for teachers in the district.

One of the responses sort of set me back. 

Now, this year I have been working as a support for a school which was piloting a rather in-depth 1:1 initiative.  It involved the introduction to the use of a learning management system, integrating new touch-screen Chromebooks, etc.  So, there was a LOT of new for this school this year.  The administration has been quite flexible and allowed teachers to keep doing what was working for them without trying to embrace too much newness and we just nudged them ever so slightly week-by-week to integrate something new.  Then, suddenly, school was dismissed and we are staying at home.

My concerns for those teachers at 'my' school were great but I was pretty confident that they were going to be alright and could continue using the tools and materials they had been using.  After all, we started with a small core team in training back last May.  Then, in July we did a bit of training with all of the faculty.  Then, we have provided ongoing training and support daily at the school.  We had plan and learn sessions where teachers could work with me in small groups to learn new things, build on what they already knew and were using, and get tips to make things simpler for them and their students.  We had a couple of faculty meeting sessions where we worked as a whole group and I followed up with visits to teachers' classrooms as requested.  I shared step-by-step tutorials, videos, and did a few co-teaches to support them and their students.  I even made little newsletters with QR codes and short URLs that I posted as bathroom graffiti.  Plus, I was always there every single day to answer questions, share tips and ideas, and work elbow-to-elbow with teachers and students. 

So, when the one response came in, I paused and did some thinking.  The response was this: "I would like to request that at least one Zoom session be paced so that I can follow along with my laptop and set it up for Screencastify."  There was more in the response but this was the key statement. 

At first, I rolled my eyes.  Did this teacher not realize that we had 300 people following along in that Zoom session?  Did this teacher not realize that we only had an hour to share info about using this tool?  Did this teacher not listen when we said we could not do an actual step-by-step modeling session because our computer's system was already using the camera and microphone for the Zoom application and could not also be used for Screencastify?

Next, I laughed.  To me this was the perfect example of how each of us will personalize something instead of recognizing that our personal need is not what is most important.  The needs of the group as a whole are what is being targeted.  I get it.  I sometimes do that, too.

Then, I got angry.  How dare this teacher make such a request.  Where had this teacher been all year long?  All.  Year.  Long.  Why hadn't this teacher requested a one-to-one with me back last October when this tool was first introduced to the staff?  Why hadn't this teacher sought me out in November when I set up plan and learn sessions?  Why hadn't this teacher requested a follow-up after I posted the February newsletter with a big ole blurb about this tool on it?

Finally, it hit me and I just sighed.  I think I talked about it HERE.  This teacher has finally begun to feel it. 

Maybe.

BTW: Screencastify is one of my most favorite tech tools!  It is a Chrome Extension that anybody and everybody can use to make short videos.  If you cannot have a live face-to-face moment with others, make a quick video and share it.  Check it out! Screencastify in the Chrome Web Store

What Kind of Amazing?

I think this experience of staying home is sort of like a roller coaster ride.  In my profession we often experience elation of learners reaching a new level of understanding.  We also sometimes feel frustration that learning and understanding were not achieved.  Every single day is something new and amazing in this profession of education.

I thought about the distance learning experience I had with my mother yesterday.  She was a willing and eager pupil because she needed to know and needed to advance beyond where she was.  That is just like how some students in the classroom are everyday.  Then, there are some students who are not so eager and really don't value what we are trying to teach and that is where the educator's frustration sets in most of the time.  Then, sometimes, though, there are students who start out eager and feeling the need and desire to know but get bogged down because learning is not easy. 

When you know your students well and recognize how they learn best, teaching becomes easier and learning for them becomes easier.  Even when you have a classroom full of learners who have different needs, teaching can sometimes be easy.  As educators, we just adapt and offer options and teach the same thing in different ways.  We will set up stations where students can perform a hands-on learning activity or we will have something for auditory learners or have a visual for those who need to see something to understand it better.  I maintain that all learners are smart, we just have to find their strengths and build upon them.

Maybe my experience as being a part of a school's special education department helped me to develop that mindset.  I know that it helped me to better understand that we need to meet students where they are and that sometimes some students need something more or something different than what the majority needs in order to move from where they are closer to where they will find more success.

I pondered the situation with my mother and wondered how many folks are out there who don't have a daughter who is an educator to do a little distance learning via text message.  I wonder how many folks don't understand all of what is going on in our society today and don't have a close, trusted person they can call on to help them better navigate this journey.  I went to sleep thinking about that.

Then, as I always do, I looked at the headlines and caught up on what the news blurbs for the morning were before I ever really started my day.  The first headline that seemed to hit me in the gut was this one: Coronavirus Bill allows DeVos to waive parts of special education law.  Then, another source reported the same thing.  Then, I saw this: Toward a New and Better Normal. 

In times like these it is so easy to become self-centered and think poor-pitiful-me.  It is easy to get angry because others don't do exactly what we want them to do.  Yet, when we take a moment and pause and think about all we have to be grateful for, things generally seem to feel better.  We seem to feel less pitiful.  We seem to have a better outlook. 

I'm trying so hard to do that right now - that pausing and being grateful. 

I'm also thinking about those who might not be as fortunate as me.  I'm thinking about how distance learning is going for lots of different learners.  I'm trying to think that we are all "growing through this" together as author, Couros, said in his post.  I'm asking myself, "How do we ensure that we honor the different situations of every one of our families?"  I hope that our country's leaders are asking themselves this question as well. 

I think about what might be happening for those who are going through this instead of growing through this.  I'm thinking about those who might be growing through this but it is not a positive kind of growth.  And when I do think about some of those things like I read in the headlines, I break down and cry.  It's an ugly cry like I did this morning.

I'm trying to convince myself that this "change is an opportunity to do something amazing," and we certainly are doing something amazing.  I am just hoping that it is amazingly good!

Distance Learning

We are all coming to know what distance learning looks like in these days of staying home.

Oh, I took online classes way back twenty years ago when I went to graduate school as a 'non-traditional student.'  I would log on to my school course site from my home office and complete my work and submit it to my professor at the university and wait for a response from my professor.

I have facilitated professional development as online courses which last for six weeks and teachers will complete a project each week to earn their professional development credit. They might be at home in their PJs on a Saturday morning and I had posted the instructions and checklist for their project earlier in the week from a district school.

This week, however, distance learning took on a new dimension for me.

I got a text message from my mother who lives across the county.  She asked about logging on to a Facebook Live event that was a virtual tour of a historical spot nearby.  I had been trying to join it myself and was having poor results.

I'd never joined a Facebook Live live.  I mean, I had watched the videos of a broadcast hours after it had taken place but never joined one while it was actually taking place.  I could see what looked like a video but it wasn't playing and no matter how many times I tapped the start arrow, it just sat there or I got the circling wheel of death.  So, I called my daughter to see what I was doing incorrectly.

Do you see the circle of life happening here?  Anyway, she assured me that I was probably doing the right thing but the broadcast was glitchy and not going well.  The broadcast was just jerky, intermittent, and not going well at all. So, I passed this info along to my mother.

Then, she texted me back that she had a problem with her phone.  She was not receiving calls and didn't think she could call out either.  So, began a distance learning experience - all in text messages.

 I probably did a big eye-roll at that point.  So, I told her to go to her computer and was going to do a Google Hangout or Zoom session with her.  She asked if she could use her iPad.  So, I said, sure.  After a few minutes, she lets me know that she needed to add an app but didn't know her Apple password.  I KNOW I did a big eye-roll at that point.  I also know that she has all her passwords written down on some scrap of paper in a higgledy-piggledy fashion and stashed that scrap somewhere.  So, we continued to text message - her via the iPad, I guess, and me on my phone.  I sent her this screeenshot with my drawing atop it:

At this point, I was looking into my phone's settings, making a screenshot and drawing, opening text message stream, and pasting before sending.  So, I was back and forth.  But, mother was just looking at both screens at the same time and not giving me time to send both text and photos.

I thought for a bit and pondered what might be lost if she just reset everything.  Then, decided I'd better go for it because she really needed the phone to communicate with the outside world beyond just text messaging.  So...

I don't know what the semi-colon message was about but I do know there was a l-o-n-g pause.  So, I decided that I'd take a bit of a break and went into another room.

Then, I came back to this:

I gave her a call and could just hear the relief in her voice.  What is so funny to me is that it sounded just like countless teachers and students who I work with every single day.  They encounter a problem that is a pretty simple one but they cannot figure out what on earth they should do.  Sometimes they try several options just like my mother and I did and sometimes they are just crippled and reach out for support.  Sometimes I'm not sure what to do and we just troubleshoot together till we figure it out.  These encounters are just run-of-the-mill happenstances for me and I don't consider them breakthroughs.  I'm going for the big cheese.  I want to see that light switch go on that true learning has taken place.  I want to see a revelation or epiphany that someone has moved to a new place of knowledge.  I want to see an evolution in practice.  I want to see a new level of wisdom.  I want to see dawning of understanding of new and difficult information. I want to see transformation.

However, sometimes it is just the little things like clicking reset that make all the difference.