Month: March 2018

Exhibition, Mindset

12 Ways to Practice

Sonya terBorg

Today on Twitter, I came across a tweet from @growthmindset1 with a link to an article: Wynton’s Twelve Ways to Practice.

This caught my eye because the tweet said the rules applied to “anything”.

Today, our kids in G4 were scheduled for Creative New Undertakings – an NIS remix of the popular “iTime” or “Genius Hour”. A couple of kids I am working with had pitched an idea in the previous session, spent one CNU day on it, and then gave that idea up because it was “too hard”. They were preparing a new pitch and I could see that “lack of a teacher” (which was their reason for their previous idea being too hard) was also going to apply to their new idea. And, the idea of them giving up didn’t sit well with me.

With me. 

Yes, I am aware that this is not all about me, but there was something in the ease of giving up that I didn’t want to encourage. The students had spent a lot of effort thinking about their idea, researching it, pitching it to a mentor teacher, getting their idea approved, and now dismissing it. They probably spent more time preparing than they did in actually trying the idea out.

But why did it bother me so much? Cue the article about practicing. A lot of what is mentioned in this article are the very reasons we take on ideas like CNU. We want our kids to choose something and practice it, play with it, solve problems, create products, and make connections. We want them to learn more about themselves as a learner and what it means to persevere and have grit within a context of their own choosing.

I haven’t shared this with my students, yet. They spent the last part of their day pitching their new idea to our Pitch Leader and have decided to split their time between the two ideas between now and the end of the year. I am really happy with this outcome and really appreciate the collaborative approach we have taken as teachers when working with our students. Today, as a teacher, I felt supported and validated, and I felt that we did something good for these two students. Whether or not they become experts is not the point. For me the point is that they learn a little bit more about the type of learner they can be.

How would you have handled this? Did we deny their voice and limit their agency or have we listened and guided them? Is there value in letting them choose to give up so quickly into a project?

Here is a graphic of the 12 Ways of Practicing. I love to draw but I was drawn to playing with the shapes options in Keynote so have done this one digitally. If your students have Keynote, the built-in icon library can be customized really easily – a short cut version to using the Noun Project for icons. For more ideas on Keynote take a look at this amazing post from Tricia Friedman at UWCSEA,

12 Ways to Practice.001

 

PDF Download: 12 Ways to Practice

Diversity, Equality

International Women’s Day

Sonya terBorg

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

“Why isn’t there an International Men’s Day?”

I hope you don’t hear this question today. But, if you do, here is what I would say in reply:

When women (and girls) have the same access as men (and boys) to

health care

education

positions of leadership

economic freedom

speaking roles in films and plays

seats on boards

jobs in tech

paid parental leave

When there are only leaders, executives, bus drivers, fire fighters, pilots, electricians, and scientists.

NOT women leaders, female executives, lady bus drivers, women fire fighters, female pilots, female electricians, and women scientists.

When we have pay parity.

When we have protection against sexual discrimination.

When we stop calling girls “bossy” and boys “leaders”.

When this list

of things to say

is considered ridiculous because

“of course” is the standard response.

THEN we can have a day in which we celebrate humanity and hu(wo)manity in equal partnership with each other.

Until then, let’s use today to #pressforprogress and to keep moving forward to #makewomenvisible

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced $170 million in funding for women. It will be used over the next four years to help women exercise their economic power through managing their own businesses and bank accounts. As Melinda Gates writes for Quartz:

“When money flows into the hands of women, everything changes.”

Melinda Gates

Please support women globally.

Click here to loan $25 to a woman seeking financial independence and a better way of life for her and her family, through KIVA. 

Please support women locally.

Look for opportunities to support entrepreneurs, business owners, and people seeking money to make a life-changing difference in their lives, right in your own community.

Please support young women in education.

Young women and girls need to be visible in education. How are you ensuring gender parity in the way we represent women in sciences, math, economics, design, computing, sports, and the arts? We need to make it easy for all kids to see that things are man-made and WOman-made.

#pressforprogress

I am grateful to work in a school that values inclusion and enjoyed the opportunity this morning to share breakfast and think together about the role of women in our curriculum and the importance of ensuring equal voice in decision making and ideation.

IWD.016

 

Agency

Be Like A Tour Guide

Sonya terBorg

My fifth graders are currently knee deep in their projects of their own choosing. As we started today, I reminded the class to write a goal for today’s session (small, achievable, focused). There was a bit of murmuring and we started to chat.

“I don’t like it when the teacher doesn’t tell us what to do.”

“Yeah!”

“Me too.”

“Same!”

I asked the students to tell me more about that.

“I like the teacher to be like a tour guide. Someone who shows you all the places to go. Tells you what you are going to do that day. Stuff like that.”

Me: “But what if the tour guide says you are visiting Paris and you get excited because you really want to go to the Eiffel Tower, but the tour guide walks right past the Eiffel Tower without stopping and you don’t get to go there?”

Student: “If the tour guide was a good tour guide, they would know that I wanted to stop there and they would find out where other people wanted to stop too.”

Student: “The Eiffel Tower is famous so it would be worth stopping there. We should stop there.”

Then there was some whispering. And so I asked the student to speak up.

“Well, you could just be letting us choose our own projects because it is easier for you. You get to tell us to come up with the ideas and then you can sit back and get on with your own work.”

The discussion continued and ultimately, we talked about TRUST. I explained that I was taking a risk in letting the kids choose their own path. That I had to trust that they would use the time wisely. That they would choose to do things they were interested in. That they would ask for help. I reminded them that in every lesson, I asked each student, “How can I help you?” and that I trusted them to answer me in a way that would help us both know what to do next.

There was still somewhat of an underlying grumble about “not knowing” and “it’s really hard” – there were definitely kids in their stretch zones, bordering on panic.

I don’t see this in my four year old when I tell her to play. When I tell her she can make something. In fact, I barely ever tell her that she CAN play or make something – she just does. At what point did we make kids such passive participants in their own education?

When I was a Learning Technology teacher (similar role to a tech coach) in Germany, I was working with a 5/6 year old class who were doing an investigation into work and jobs. As we were sitting together, about to go interview various people in the school about their jobs, I asked the students “Do you have a job?”. Super quick, one student responded, “Our job is to sit quietly and wait for the teacher to tell us what to do.”

Sit quietly.

Wait for the teacher.

To tell us what to do.

5 years old. And that is what they think their JOB is?

 

What are we doing to change the way we structure our classrooms so this is not the first thing that pops out of a child’s mouth when asked what their job is? I have shared this graphic before, but it has a lot of reflective questions that every teacher could ask themselves in relation to voice, choice, ownership, and agency.

IMG_0821

And what about the second comment about the Eiffel Tower:

“The Eiffel Tower is famous so it would be worth stopping there. We should stop there.”

How do we decide what is ‘worth knowing’ or ‘worth stopping at’? What role does knowledge play in the quest for student agency? (starts digging through Wiggins and McTigue and Erickson and Wagner to revisit previous understandings about knowledge and learning). (Thanks, Simon, for bringing this up on the weekend! Good to talk about the place of knowledge in an agency-centered learning environment).

Where are you at in your quest for student agency?