The Success Inquiry Experiment

Last week, coupled with my rant about Bill 115, I shared my attempt to create a "road-map" type of long-range plans. I thought I'd mention how things have progressed with my intermediate division lessons that were inspired by @gcouros on his blog that suggested we begin the year focusing on success instead of rules, giving students the opportunity to share what they want to learn and how the education team can help. I PDF'd the lessons I've taught so far with this inquiry in mind and posted them on my education wiki. I have two Grade 7-8 classes I see for library and ICT (a fixed collaborative time with their classroom teachers), so my reflections will revolve around both classes.

1) Week 1 - I seem to plan more than I'm able to cover in a single lesson. I had to interrupt both groups as they were working on their Success 3T charts because we ran out of time. I was pleased by the differentiation options I made available to the students (they could work in groups of any size, using any means, such as SMART Boards, chalk boards, chart paper or scrap paper, to record their thoughts on what success looks, sounds, and feels like). One student asked if they could just talk. I asked to have some physical evidence to show they were on task - they could've used the school library computers to record their oral discussion, but neither of us thought of this option at the time. The students summarized Mr. Couros' blog post well but were very cautious about expressing any opinion about which approach (rules first or success first) was better.

2) Week 2 - As I wandered the library listening in as the groups discussed success, I was surprised to witness how much trouble they were having defining it. The students were able to articulate how success feels (satisfaction, accomplishment, etc.) but struggled to explain success in other ways. If I engaged in discussion with small groups, that seemed to help a bit. For instance, one group had a good talk about whether success always equals wealth. Another group got excited about considering the relation between collaboration and success and how successful individuals are treated by their peers or society (the notetaker wrote "jealousy" on their chart with glee). The other fascinating observeration was the results of the SMART Board anonymous clicker survey on what I could do as the teacher-librarian to help them be successful. I posted the results of the survey charts on my wiki for people to examine. For instance, the majority of both groups stated that they wanted 50% of the period to be devoted to book exchange and 50% to lesson/instruction. The funny thing about this request is that very few students use this time to actually borrow books - they'll say "I already have a book I'm reading" or they'll share books among themselves and take out the middle man (me), which is why I take my circulation statistics with a grain of salt. How much of their decision for 20 minutes of book exchange was inspired by their quest for success or their desire for free time?

3) Week 3 - Making our discussion of success more concrete by using real-life examples helped a lot. My "5 minute Research Task" was willingly undertaken by the students, especially because they could work in groups of 1, 2 or 3, and they could simply type their findings in the chart on the SMART board. I was pleased to hear comments by the students as we created a list of people they considered to be successful:

 "Hey, there aren't any female names on there!", stated a female Grade 7 student.
(Awesome observation!)

"Do you think Albert Einstein would count? He's dead."
(I said Harry Potter's Voldemort would be the only one to consider death to be a lack of success.)

"Can it be someone Chinese? Like the only female King of China?"
(This was asked by two of my ELL students. Absolutely, was my reply.)

My mini-lesson on using Boolean operators while using search engines went well. I think every group used "and success" as part of their search terms to narrow their results. One of my students wanted to know why these words were called Boolean, and I didn't know the answer. I better look that up in time for our next class. I expected that every group would race to the computers and I was right. For the one or two teams that didn't get a computer right away, I took the opportunity to remind them about using our print encyclopedias. Several teams searched YouTube rather than the Internet as a whole (as a chance to watch videos of their favourite athletes or musicians, I suspect). Some spots in the chart weren't filled in, so we may need extra time to give the slower groups time to finish. I've ordered a copy of The Seven Habits of Highly Successful Kids to read to the students and let you know how it progresses, as well as my junior and primary inquiry paths.

A very different year - Plan with questions

This is going to be a very different school year. If you read my blog post from last week, you'll remember that many of my students are looking forward to the many clubs and teams I run. Unfortunately, it won't be possible to run things status-quot like previous years. My fellow teachers and I gathered late last week after the provincial government worked on Bill 115 (the "Putting Students First" bill) and after our unions met to decide on a response. We want to be consistent in our school with the actions we take - in situations such as this, it can be very divisive if some teachers choose to use certain tactics and others do not. It was a respectful but solemn conversation. We voted as a group to "take a pause" on running any clubs, teams or programs that do not directly deal with our core teaching assignments. We had serious discussions about what we felt were required tasks and made some decent compromises. No one came out of this dialogue bubbly or happy. The teachers at my school LIKE running clubs and teams. We like helping with fundraisers so that our classes can have things we would usually have to do without. When faced with very limited ways we can indicate our displeasure with the lack of negotiations, we must turn to methods we don't enjoy, in the hope that decision-makers may reconsider.

One of the items our staff felt was a requirement of the job = long range plans. The form these long range plans take are now up to the discretion of the individual teacher, be they lists of expectations and topics we plan to cover or "road maps". I decided to experiment with the Big Ideas Road Map. I read the ministry documents on inquiry and crafted my question and the pathway based on a planning template supplied by our superintendent. I found the process a bit challenging because:
a) as a specialist teacher, not a classroom teacher, I have less subjects to teach but more groups
b) based on my courses on inquiry from my Masters of Education program with the University of Alberta, my understand is that the inquiry questions should come from the students, not from me
I ended up modifying the template and creating three "road maps", one for each division. I'll post them here and see what you think.

"Hurry up and start ..."

We survived the first week! A mere four days of schooling has passed, and what I find fascinating is what my students have already started to ask for (and in some cases, demand). In order of frequency and urgency, here is a list of things my students have requested:

1) Book Exchange

"When does book exchange begin?"
"Can I come after school to get a book?"
"Can you save me THAT one?"
"Why can't book exchange start sooner?"

Actually, I'm not 100% sure why we can't start borrowing books right away - I suspect it has something to do with settling the class lists and including the new students. I'm bending to popular demand and starting book exchange this week, at least for my students in Grades 1-8. (Each kindergarten class has 30+ kids, with many new to the school with no English speaking skills. We're going to take it a bit slower so we instill some firm rules and good habits.) When the new students heard about our credit system and how they can earn the privilege of borrowing large numbers of materials on the same day, their eyes gleamed and I swear some started to salivate.

2) Just Dance Club

Just Dance Club began last year and is a simple club to run. Every Friday at noon, my colleague and I would gather by the back doors and if anyone in the junior grades was interested, they'd follow us in. We'd go to the Dance-Drama Room, where a TV with a Wii was already set up, and we'd all play Just Dance together. It was a drop-in club and we didn't take attendance. It was meant for us to have fun and get a bit of exercise. When kids became too busy and the teachers were too inundated with meetings, we ended the club. Kids want us to expand it to Grade 3s; we'll see if this is doable based on some of the songs we use.

3) Library Club

 My school library is clean right now. Really clean. Of course, this is because we haven't begun book exchange and I spent the week before school started cleaning it up. My dedicated high school volunteer came in this week and was so desperate to work that we began tackling the Scrapbook Club supply bins and the file cabinets in my office - so now at least my office looks like it usually does.  He's not the only one keen to shelve books. Several students have asked me when I'll make the application forms available. It's a pretty rigorous process and not all applicants are accepted but many people, especially Grade 4s who are in their first year of eligibility, are eager to try their chances.

4) Minecraft Club

Intermediate students don't gush and they don't beg, so when they make a request, even if it's half-whispered and as an aside as they're leaving the library, I need to pay attention. I've had a couple of these "so, uh, when's Minecraft Club startin' Miss?" queries already. Combined with the "We get to be in it again next year, right?" and "WHAAAT? Whaddaya mean we might not be in it?" comments from the late spring, I know that there will be a large list of interested players for this popular club. I hope the TDSB Minecraft server will be ready for us to use soon.

Do you notice a pattern to these requests? No one is asking me when I'll start giving homework. These are the activities that mean the most to the students. The specter of "work to rule" may be on the horizon and I hope things settle down before it reaches that point, because in a work-to-rule scenario, clubs and teams are not supposed to be available (am I right?) and this will disappoint both me and the kids. Hurry up and start the good stuff, Mz. Molly!

What did YOU do this summer?

Tomorrow is the first day of school for the 2012-2013 school year and the typical question will be asked many times: what did you do this summer? I'm a mother as well as a teacher-librarian, so I know that sometimes when I hear that question, my mind can draw a blank (just like my own kids). What DID I do with all that time? That's why in the last couple of weeks of August, I make my own children create a summer scrapbook. (I'm a pretty laid-back parent, in my opinion, and I don't force my children to do many things, but creating this scrapbook is one of the few tasks I insist they attempt.) We develop photos, choose the paper that fits the topic, and write little journal entries. I find this a good way of easing their way into a routine of writing and seat work, and for my poor memory, it's a great way to actually recall what we did.

As they compiled these photo journals this year, I started to question the practice of spending so much time on the first day of school sharing the events of the summer. I can see both sides of this issue.

Share the summer - yes

• Acknowledges the students' most recent & past experience
• Gives class time / opportunity for them to share (because they'll chat about it anyway)
• Helps to transition people from what they were doing to what they are doing now

Share the summer - no

•  Classism and economic disparity highlighted (e.g. kid X went traveling out of the country)
• Pressure to "have a good story", even if their summer was boring
• Judgements made on summer activities (e.g. you wasted your summer just playing video games?)

I'm seeing a grade 4-5 class (with 33 students, but that's another story) on the first day of school, because our prep rotation begins on the very first day, and I think and hope that the lesson I have planned will help address the concerns in the second list while reaping the benefits of the first list. I'll post the lesson plan on the MzMollyTL Share Space so that anyone can use the lesson. I hope everyone enjoyed their summer vacation and that this school year will be fruitful and fun.

Plan, Prep & Read What You Want

Here it is.
The home stretch.
The dying days of summer vacation.

I love my job. I really do. I have to confess, however, that I find it difficult to transition from the leisurely pace of July and August to the structure of September and beyond. My school's caretakers are kind enough to allow teaching staff to come in during most of the summer; I did it quite a bit in the beginning of July but haven't darkened the door much since. Now that it's the last week before school, it's time to seriously contemplate what and how I'm going to teach this coming year.

Here's a dilemma - I want to take a more authentic approach to student-led inquiry this year, so how can I plan when my main teaching partners (also known as the students) aren't around to help? I guess this is something I should discuss with our kindergarten and grade 1 teachers, who are quite devoted to inquiry learning. I'll start by developing the class culture/community (gotta love Tribes) and discovering what excites them.

People I follow online have also thought long and hard about their intentions for the upcoming year. Cale Birk, a great principal in British Columbia, wrote about his plans here and the first line of his blog reads:

As we are getting ramped up for the start of another school year in British Columbia, I have now shelved my John Grisham novels and Sports Illustrated magazines until next July. 

I asked myself why this reading material had to be temporarily discarded. His next line explains it succinctly:

Like many educators at this time of year, I have re-engaged in professional reading to get myself amped up for Day 1. 

Being my perverse self, I wondered why we "force" ourselves to read things we wouldn't always be drawn to consuming. I'm not saying that Cale is reluctantly reading education-related material; he was pretty enthusiastic in the rest of the post about Five Disciplines of PLC Leaders. I like to be contrary. Why should I stop reading things I enjoy just because school is starting? I guess it boils down to our reasons for reading - reading for pleasure vs reading for information. I'm just trying to figure out how I can have my cake and still eat it. I just finished reading Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. In some parts, I had to put down the book because I was so frightened. I would never dream of using it as a read-aloud, but maybe I could consider how social issues from the book or genres can be incorporated into my library lessons.

Before you get the idea that it's a simple fiction vs non-fiction thing, I'm actually dying to read some gaming studies. I attended a session at The Academy of The Impossible recently and got to mingle with some pretty fascinating individuals.  I talked with someone who told of an interpretation of Club Penguin as a place where you can learn to be revolutionary - a complete 180 from the usual description I hear of Club Penguin as a place to train capitalists and consumerists. I want to read a study like this for personal interest!

If we are allowed to choose what we read, we'll be more eager, regardless of the reason. I still intend on reading The Choreography of Presenting both for interest and for professional enrichment. We'll see how much planning, preparing, or reading I get done in this last week.

I Remember - Thanks Mr. Sturm

I have a very poor memory, especially of my childhood and teen years. These gaps concern my parents but I have come to accept the huge holes in my memory. This is why, when I remember something, it is pretty significant and surprising.

In June, as I was co-teaching a media literacy lesson in the computer lab to some intermediate division students, I quoted my Grade 12 English teacher. It turns out that it’s a small world, because the Grade 7-8 teacher with me that day recognized the name of my former teacher and my school – he even claims that he remembers being in my class back in high school. (I searched my yearbook for proof but couldn’t find my colleague’s picture.) He had very vivid recollections of this particular teacher and, to my surprise, despite my faulty memory, so did I. What I cannot recall is whether or not I actually told him what an impact he made. Heck, I just quoted him last week in this very blog! I’ve hunted him down, found a contact email, and I hope he takes the opportunity to read this open letter.

BPCI Writers' Club: Winnie, Sean, Brian, Mike, Mr. Sturm, ZsaZsa, Kiran, Gita, Diana

Dear Mr. Joel Sturm,

My name is Diana Maliszewski (nee Diana DeFreitas) and from 1985-1990, I attended Birchmount Park Collegiate Institute in Scarborough. You were my Grade 12 and OAC English teacher. I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for teaching me and to tell you that I remember.

I remember the inventive strategies and methods you used to motivate and instruct the class. I probably still have a “Sturm Buck” somewhere around, with your daughter’s photo on it instead of Queen Elizabeth, which we were able to earn if we participated in class. We used to have to compile portfolios, which might be commonplace nowadays but was quite avant-garde in the 1980s. I worked really hard to develop items for that portfolio and reflect on what they signified. I can still recite part of the best poem I ever wrote (for your class), a response to Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress”. Mine went like this …

Have we but world enough and time

Each man would give a dame this line …

[I forget the next few lines but it ends like this]

Words are wind, though you protest

Your vow can’t be put to the test

So woo away, I’ll stay as chaste

And worms can have what you would waste

I remember the little nuggets of wisdom about life and literature that you’d impart.

• Having a humorous scene in the middle of a tragedy is like eating lemon and chocolate ice cream together. The chocolate makes the lemon so much more tart; the lemon makes the chocolate sweeter.
• The sounds words make and the feeling they invoke when you say them are significant. That’s why you named your daughter Jessica Sturm – Ursula Sturm would be too heavy on the tongue and in the mouth.
• Writers must personalize large-scale tragedies. Saying six million people died during the Holocaust shows it is a horrible thing, but hearing about one family’s horrific treatment gives those hollow numbers more of an impact (and you’d tell the story of a pregnant woman bound and thrown into a cold puddle, going into labor and dying as the baby ripped her apart from the inside as her family watched helplessly and the guards at the concentration camp laughed).

 I remember that you were a witty speaker and had a way of lifting one eyebrow. I practiced until I, too, was able to raise a solitary eyebrow on command. You didn’t suffer fools lightly and had high standards and expectations. During our conference on my English Independent Study Project, you remarked, “Guilt, Jansenism and Fifth Business – what an appropriate topic for a good Catholic girl to study”.

I remember that you ran a Writers’ Club, which we called the Quisquiliae Society – quisquiliae being a Latin term that meant garbage. You encouraged us to carry a notebook around to write down ideas as they came to us. You even popped by the yearbook office when we held a surprise birthday party for the assistant editor, Kiran.

I remember what you wrote in my yearbook when I graduated – not the usual platitudes, but this: “Isn’t it wonderful to be unique – to be gifted with ability, compassion, wit, good humor and selfless generosity. It’s a gift and a burden. Be careful. People will be jealous of you and will come gunning for you just because that’s what they’re good at. Use every defensive tactic you ever learned in Phys Ed and use your blessings. You’ll have lots.”

Don’t tell the others, but you were my favourite high school teacher. I’m a teacher myself now. I’ll be entering my sixteenth year in the profession and I’m amused to see how much of an influence you’ve had on me. One of my favourite lessons uses currency with a teacher’s face on it for students to earn (not for participation in this case, but for collaboration while researching) – reminiscent of your Sturmies from long ago. My students tell me that I’m pretty funny and I still use that eyebrow lift to express surprise or disbelief. I run clubs too, and let my students take the lead, like you did long ago with the Writers’ Club. I believe in letting people know when they’ve done something wonderful and sir, when you taught me, you made magic. I appreciated it all and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Sincerely,

Diana Maliszewski

Furry Findings - Knowing What You Don't Know

Last Friday, Laura the "bunny whisperer" came to my house. Laura is a volunteer with Toronto Animal Services, South Division, and has a great deal of knowledge about rabbits. We invited her to come to our house to help us with our pet rabbit, Dolly. We had our previous bunny, Nibbles, from 2001-2009 and have not shared our house with a rabbit since then (Fudge the school rabbit being the only exception). All the bunny know-how we thought we possessed thanks to Nibbles and Fudge didn't seem to work with Dolly. Unlike the others, Dolly is often a grumpy bunny. She hates being picked up and I was at a loss on how to get her to the groomer's to have her nails trimmed. Laura kindly offered to come to my home to cut her nails and observe her in her natural habitat to offer some advice on how to "friendly her up".

Dolly, our independent little bun-bun!

Thankfully, Dolly's improved quite a bit from when I first emailed Laura asking for help to when we were able to coordinate schedules and get Laura to come. At first, we couldn't even put our hands in the cage to fill her food bowl; now, she lets us open the top and allows us to stroke and pet her. I credit my mother-in-law and her "treat therapy" during the three weeks she stayed with us in the summer for that success.

Laura was absolutely wonderful. She clipped Dolly's nails like a pro and gave lots of valuable tips. Through our conversation over the two hours she spent with us, I heard that Laura gets many emails from rabbit adopters asking questions. Dogs and cats have plenty of vets and experts that can help owners but there aren't that many small animal experts, be they either medical or behavioural. I don't know what I would have done if Laura had not consented to a home visit. Laura has a blog - http://friendlyfeathers.blogspot.com - and as we drove her home, we discussed the possibility of Laura creating some videos on YouTube to answer some of the most common questions she fields. We both got very excited about the possibilities.

Freedom, sweet freedom!

Now, there are many ways I can bring this blog post back to the topic of education ... how to handle creatures under your care (students / bunnies) that react differently than your usual expectations, the value of personal instruction, the ways technology can help teaching and learning ... but the big "aha" I wanted to reflect upon was about realizing what you don't know and need to know vs discovering what you didn't know you didn't know. Does that make sense? Let me give you some examples. I knew that I needed to learn (or access someone who already knew) how to clip bunny nails. My mom used to do it for me for Nibbles. I realized that I had no clue how to do this but that this was an important thing to know if I was to properly care for a pet bunny. I didn't know that there are significant differences in brands of bunny food and that I need to be choosy when it comes to Dolly's diet. I'm not sure why this didn't dawn on me previously - I knew that my beloved skinny pigs Max and Wilbur need their pellets to have Vitamin C added; I knew that our mischievous chinchillas are supposed to eat only the blandest type of pellets because "gourmet mixes" are bad for their digestive systems. I knew that when rabbits make a funny little twisting jump, they are "binkying" and are very happy. I didn't know that head-butting is a request for personal grooming, that rabbits don't like to be stroked under the chin but that if they rub their chins on people and things, they are marking them using scent glands, or that thumping back at rabbits to show displeasure is a controversial move within rabbit-raising circles.

Chita plays with my camera cord - no greens for her!

Max poses for a brief second - plenty of greens for him!

How do we (and I mean teachers AND students) discover what we don't know? I have a t-shirt my husband gave me long ago that quotes Socrates: "I know nothing except the fact of my own ignorance". If we don't realize we are ignorant of some/many things, we are in trouble. Realizing we don't know is a good first step. Becoming less ignorant is the next step. There are many other steps that follow that, and even though it may feel circular (my grade 12 English teacher used to say that some people got increasingly smarter about decidedly narrower topics until they were experts in something of no use), it's the great paradox of learning. I look forward to learning more about all sorts of things, and vow not to let my ignorance discourage me from seeking more information.