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Let Flexibility Lead To Alignment

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  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 ...
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Three Days in the Valley

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This past week, I spent three days in Napa California attending PBL World which was run by the Buck Institute for Education ( bie.org ).  A colleague from my school and I were enrolled in PBL 101 an intensive course for those new to Project Based Learning. To say the experience was transformative, would be to sell it short. Simply put, everything I thought I knew about PBL was renovated.  I learned that what I thought I was practicing was not Project Based Learning as it should be done. I learned so much that I need to write about it in order to process it all. I plan on posting about each of the days individually over the next couple of weeks.  So without further ado, let me talk about day 1. This was written on the plane ride back, so please forgive any glaring proofreading errors. Day 1 Keynote The first part of the keynote was by John Mergendoller of the Buck Institute and his focus was on Gold Standard PBL. It was a very interesting time to att...
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Back to the Future

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I love the idea of time travel. In the fantastic motion picture Looper, a young man has to confront his older self. In the film the older wiser man, must convince his younger brash self to not - well I don't want to spoil this great sci-fi thriller. We never get the opportunity in life to teach our younger self a lesson. To find our younger self and impart some wisdom into that naive inexperienced being.  If we could tell that younger self what is important and what no to stress over, well how could we resist.  But, by doing so, would we deprive ourselves of those experiences.  I love time paradoxes - I am a physics teacher. As a culture there have been great movements of adults reaching out to the younger generations to provide that support.  I can't help but point to the It Gets Better Project . How can we as teachers not see ourselves as time travelers talking to our younger selves.  Yes, we can load them up with content, but why not...
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In Bloom

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My classroom does not have windows. So on weekends, I like to get outside. About three years ago, we began planting tulip bulbs in our yard. Usually it occurs over a couple of days in October after the initial upheaval of a new school year has passed. They bloom right around the time we are entering the final stretch of the school year.  So as we approach the final weeks of school, what are you doing in your classroom? Are you frantically trying to plant more seeds of content? Or are you enriching what you've planted and letting it grow and blossom.  This metaphor may feel like a bit of a stretch, but I couldn't resist. (Maybe I'm just trying to save flower pics because I'm not on Facebook.) I've got some activities planned the next couple of weeks that I'm trying for the first time.  I am quite scared to try these new things.  But, I trust my students will enjoy the opportunity to bloom. I would love to hear what you are up to as this year comes to a close.
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CCI:BCHS

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I like to get my students perspective on how our class in terms of how class is going in terms of the process of learning and assessment.  Informal interviews provide that opportunity.  I'm always afraid it will turn into an interrogation. I never want students to feel like Dustin Hoffman in this intense scene from Marathon Man.   Not for the Squeamish. I've written up a few blogs from my perspective of the Continuous Classroom Improvement Cycle as I begin to get my feet wet in the process.  I wanted to get the student's perspective of the process, though.  Last week I asked my students to give informal presentations on each stage of the cycle as it is run in our class. I put these interviews together into a rough video. The major document that drives this process from class centered to student centered is described in a previous post . The students have been through several cycles so far and are very accustomed to the rhythms of the cycle.  I...
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What I learned at Camp

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Today I am attending EdCamp Milwaukee .  EdCamp is an unconference where educators pitch ideas for sessions the morning of and attendees go to sessions of choice and "vote with their feet" This is my 3rd year attending edCamp MKE.  It is hosted by Tammy Lind , Chad Kafka , and Beth Lisowski . 1st session I was in dealt with Standards based grading. My biggest takeaways were What grade is a 3? Should it be an A? Sorry, I can't get away from grades.  We're not there yet. Why as a teacher should I be defining what "exceeds" mastery looks like?  Shouldn't students show me what it looks like for them to exceed?  I'm going to be scratching my rubric for our next summative assessment based on this concept. Can I create skills rubrics that might have long term measurement while having content rubrics that have short term measurement? If we're going to do this, it has to be clear to both teacher, parents, and students what all these numbers an...
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The 4 C's Collaborate to Enhance PBL

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It's been awhile since I last posted.  I feel like I've got lots of lost time to make up.  Well, my co-teaching partner and I put together our first full blown PBL unit with the help of the Buck Institute's fantastic book PBL for 21st Century Success .   What I found most useful was the ability to align the process in term of the 4 C's.  The table below is simply a reorganization of the work presented in the book. If we were going to go full on PBL, we decided not to go with a project I had created from scratch.  Using the resource bank at bie.org , I found a project called Blocking Sound I had actually encountered before while taking a course via PBLU.org .  The project involved students designing materials to soundproof walls. I slightly modified the driving question to focus on the needs of my classroom. Modifying the table above, we designed a plan specific to our unit.   My first big mistake was not presenting the driv...
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Your Personal Canvas

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As a part of a recent professional development day at Brookfield Central, I gave a presentation covering how I have used the learning management system Canvas to add personalization to my assessments.  Even more than what I currently do, I higlighted how Canvas can be used to align formative and summative assessments to the same learning outcomes.  Once this is done, students and teachers can track progress towards mastery of learning outcomes.   The personalized learning model our district is guided by was designed by Cooperative Educational Service Agency 1 http://www.cesa1.k12.wi.us .  The image below is a guide to the essentials of personalized learning.  For more information about CESA 1 and their model of personalized learning, follow this link http://www.cesa1.k12.wi.us/programs/pers_learning_pd.cfm . This presentation was not designed as a stand alone. So forgive me if there seems to be any gaps.  I would love ...
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