Skip to main content

Let Flexibility Lead To Alignment

By
  In my previous school district, I was the only teacher teaching a physics course with set, district-wide learning outcomes. These same outcomes were also taught in physics classrooms at the other high school in our district. But at our school, I was one of the 2 physics teachers. The other teacher taught the AP-level physics courses. So, in many ways, I had opportunities to incorporate strategies I believed were best for learners and that I found worked best for them without being seen as out of alignment with anyone in our building. My amazing friend and one of my teaching philosophy goddesses, Katie Novak, stated the following misconception about alignment: All teachers must deliver instruction in the exact same way. True alignment, she says, is about shared goals, rigor, and outcomes. Thank you, Katie! Katie has taught me to truly believe that learner variability is the rule, not the exception. I encourage you to take 10 minutes to listen to Katie Novak explain it in the ...
Post a Comment

Do Collaborate

Image
By

Yesterday, I saw two of my favorite people move on to new chapters in their educational journey. Angela Patterson and Kate Sommerville exemplify what it means to be a change agent in education. Their work has inspired my efforts to transform my classroom.  So, what is so special about them? They “do”. They had an idea and they did it.  Their idea was to build a learning community in which each learner's individuality was recognized and celebrated as a source of strength for all. They changed the physical, academic, and emotional space of their learning environment. But, they did it in only a few months’ time. They understood that the perfect moment will never come along and the plan will never be perfect.  It’s the goal that matters. They helped show me that planning is important but the journey doesn’t really begin until you are doing it.

Don’t get me wrong, you need a plan before you do.  Kate and Angela are meticulous planners. But, they move quickly.  If you don’t plan well you end up wasting precious resources.  But waiting wastes your most precious resource, time.

They have taught me that the biggest risks are the most rewarding. They also taught me that the bigger the risk the more you need to collaborate. As a person who is very much a loner, this is a tough one.  It’s not easy for me to ask for help from others. I’ve learned, though, that by inviting the right people on your journey will make it the results exponentially better.

My collaborations allowed me to do great things this year.






My professional collaboration with Kate and Angela allowed us to present on Pear Deck at SLATE conference.













This year has been "The Year of Do” but it couldn’t have been done if it also wasn’t "The Year of Collaborate”.  





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Twitter Cards for Blogger

By
So, I’ve been seeing people with beautiful Twitter Cards in my Twitter Stream. They make it clear that there is a web page to visit and give a quick preview of what would be found. Something like the one below: I’ve been wondering how to get one of the cards to appear when I tweet out a link to my latest blog post.  Since I use Blogger, there is not a simple button to click to turn this on.  I had to find a way to paste new code into the HTML code of my blog.  It took some searching from multiple sites to get a completely functional.   This site though was quite helpful.  But, I’d like to walk you through my process and hopefully it helps a few out. There are a few types of Twitter Cards.  Two that at most frequently see are the basic summary card and the summary card with large image.  Below you can see the layout of each, but realize that they both have the same content pieces. This is going to look like a lot ...
13 comments
Read more

Pear Deck, Quizlet, GimKit Appsmash

By
As a part of March Madness, my students did a EdTech Tournament bracket. The finals were between Gimkit and Pear Deck. Pear Deck won, but my students love both tools.  So when someone asked me if I ever thought of an appsmash between the two, I had to try something out. This is a triple app smash that links Pear Deck to Gimkit using Quizlet. The appsmash uses student generated explanations, definitions, and visuals to create a GimKit. If you are not familiar with Pear Deck Vocabulary it allows students collaborate in the creation of flashcards from a list of predetermined terms or concepts. These flashcards are have both a written and visual component. For all the details on Pear Deck Vocabulary, I’d recommend heading over to Getting Started with Flashcard Factory. If you are not familiar with Gimkit . It is a formative quiz game that allows students to work at questions at their own pace while competing against their classmates. In addition, participants can go to an in ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Personalized Learning Tasks and Roles

By
Yesterday, I read a great post by Jim Rickabaugh dealing with the roles of learner and teacher in a personalized learning environment by looking at tasks . The roles were set up on a continuum. This article timed perfectly with a reflection on part of Students at the Center by Allison Zmuda and Bena Kallick on idea generation and task development I had in mind. These two works are the focus of my reflection here. I think a key misunderstand teachers have when it comes to digging into personalizing learning is that for planning purposes, we no longer begin with standards but with student desires.  I believe like all good instruction, we need to start with the standards.  Think about it, standards are what we want all learners to know and be able to do as a result of passing through our educational system. That is why it is essential that we make sure that standards are representative of what we believe is important for learners to be informed and productive in th...
1 comment
Read more