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Thank You for 20 Years.

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After 20 years of teaching at Brookfield Central, I am saying goodbye. Although I spent the majority of that time in the physics classroom alongside my learners. That changed for my last 18 weeks. I ended up in a place similar to where I started, teaching chemistry and biology. So, rather than dealing with juniors and seniors at the end of their high school careers, I was in classrooms with freshmen and sophomores still trying to find their place. At the same time, I was learning and teaching a set curriculum I hadn't taught in over a decade. So, we were learning. But, of course, I already knew the content.  The point of this post is to take a step back, take in, and share the gratitude from the last students I had in my 20 years at Brookfield Central High School through the cards and notes they made for me on my last day with them.  I don't take many yay me moments. But after 20 years, I think I'll soak this one in.
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Summer Spark Day 1

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It takes a special type of educator to attend a conference in June. Many teachers have only been out of school for a couple of days. These are professionals who thrive on reflecting on their practice and gaining new ideas to improve their practice. These are the teachers who look at the world and see ideas that they can bring into the classroom tomorrow. These are the type of educators who attend University School of Milwaukee Summer Spark.

This is my second year attending USM Summer Spark and I am amazed at the talent that they bring in to share out at sessions. With such an engaged groups of educators, I imagine it is one hell of a draw.

Angela Maiers gave a rousing keynote focusing on the connections we make with learners and making them realize they matter. While there were many takeaways, one that stuck with me was setting up a structure to make every student in the classroom feel awesome at least once a week. The idea of recognizing 5 students from my classes a day in a personal way is something which I need to do a better job of doing. It’s easy for me to be drawn by students who need that attention at the detriment of recognizing those students who aren’t being vocal. This is a must for me next year!

Jeff Gargas and Rae Hughart introduced me to how simple it is for students to create podcasts in the classroom. The idea of a podcast as a form of goal setting & reflection is an amazing idea. I have also thought of it as a means of expressing understanding. The power of it being a podcast is that it could be shared to a targeted audience of teacher and parent. Or, it could be shared with a global audience. Seeing how simple it was to create with Anchor on smartphones or Chromebooks was very exciting. I plan on playing around with the app this summer and ideating on different ways to infuse this as an expression option for learners.

Tisha Richmond is a transformational educator I have been following for a while. It was amazing to hear her tell her story. It’s an amazing story of an educator who lost her passion for education and regained it through finding ways to make learning magical for her learners.
Memorable Beginnings
Authenticity and Agency
Gamified Experiences
Innovation
Creativity, Collaboration, and Curiosity
Authentic Audience
Legacy
It’s one thing to read her framework in her book or in a blog post. But it was even more powerful to hear Tisha speak in her own words! To see her share examples of how she transformed her classroom with images and videos from her students was amazing. Seeing the joy on their faces and the community she created made the power of her work resonate in the auditorium.

Finally, Chris Hesselbein walked us through Google Tour Creator. I have been using Google Expeditions in my classroom on occasion for a year now and they are highly engaging. Chris introduced us to the power of Google Tour Builder to allow learners to make their own expeditions using images from Google Streetview or 360 images students upload. Learners can then add hotspots to each image and annotate with text, image, or audio overlays. Like podcasts, this opens a new door for student creation and expression. I’m excited to learn more about how students can document experiences or even create their own virtual environments to document phenomenon that we may not be able to see due to travel, time, or size constraints at a macro or micro level. Here’s a link to the great resources Chris provided.

Well, that was day 1. I also presented out on Pear Deck. If you'd like to learn more about that reach out to me or check out the FREE guide I co-author.

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