Fall 2010 Reflections

In August I started two classes for my UNI Instructional Technology Masters Program: Instructional Development and Technology in Education. Both sounded like very interesting classes, but I had no idea what I was getting into. I have grown so much as a student and as a teacher from these classes and the experiences they gave me.

Instructional Development led us through an analysis of instructional strategies and then through a process of developing our own instructional course through the Dick and Carey instructional design model. This process was by far the toughest part of the quarter for me, but only because of all the intricate details involved. I have to admit that I have never thought about classroom instruction in this way, but definitely will from now on. I developed a training module for the staff at WCC to support the integration of a projector and document camera into their curriculum. I have developed and taught training sessions in technology for the staff at WCC before, but never to this level of quality. I am very excited to hold the training session and see the results of all my hard work and planning. I actually feel ready and able to complete the training module.

In our Technology in Education course, we analyzed the impact that technology has made on education throughout the past 100 years of innovations by reading two books, Failure to Connect (1986) by Jane Healy and Teachers and Machines (1986) by Larry Cuban. Being a history buff it was very interesting to read the words and predictions of authors from a specific time period and then to see if their predictions became true in our lives. Our final project for this class was to pick a new instructional technology that has yet to have widespread use in the United States and plan a proposal for integrating it into education. I chose social networking; this topic is one that I am personally passionate about and use in my classroom on a daily basis. In my research I found a report of a 2007 survey of 9-17 year olds that showed 50% of students used social networking sites to talk about school, homework, etc. (Gewertz, C. 2007, Education Week). Yet, schools are blocking these sites at school and ignoring the wonderful possibilities they offer both the student and the teacher.

With Thanksgiving quickly approaching, I like to remind my students that not all the information they learn in the history textbooks is factual. Americans, and especially historians that write American history textbooks, have taken the myths of their history and turned it around into facts that we force upon our children every year in an attempt to make them proud of their country. One of my favorite authors, James Loewen, has written a series of history books: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, and Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong, that I use in my classroom instead of the traditional textbook. Both books debunk those myths that are perpetually taught year after year in our classrooms.

One of these myths is the popular idea of Thanksgiving. Every November, elementary school kids make their black and white Pilgrim hats or their Indian headband with feathers, all out of construction paper and reenact the “first” Thanksgiving that happened many, many years ago at Plymouth Harbor. The settlers unfortunately arrived in the early winter months and were unequipped to survive the harsh New England winter. Luckily, friendly Native Americans recognized their hardships and sent aid to the colony supporting them through the winter months and teaching them how to grow their own food. Then when spring came those brave colonists worked their land, planting fields and fishing and hunting, storing for next winter. To celebrate their abundance they invited their Native American friends to a feast, thanking them for their support and teachings, thus celebrating the first Thanksgiving. Truly heartwarming and inspirational, isn’t it.

However, historical evidence shows us that by the time the Pilgrims arrived to stake their claim in the New England colony, most native people had already been killed by a well-known disease in Europe that most Europeans easily survived, but that Native Americans had never been exposed to; small pox. It is believed that this plague wiped out much of the native population in the northeastern United States. It could be possible that the Wampanoag leader allied with the Plymouth settlers because his villages were so weak and they needed protection from their enemies. Very quickly after this thanksgiving celebration, land disputes erupted in New England and the friendly relations between the settlers and native people was forgotten. It is also believed that the Pilgrims were not as unprepared for the “new world” as the story claims. The Spanish had been traveling back and forth for almost 150 years and England had already attempted a colony at Roanoke and established a colony in Virginia. It is doubtful that the Pilgrims had no idea what they were getting into. They established their town right in the middle of the Native American’s village, next to their cleared, planted fields. Historians have also found written accounts of the Pilgrims breaking into native lodges, stealing goods, even grave-robbing as early as three days from landing in the area.

The actual Thanksgiving holiday, as we know it, did not start until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday. The Native Americans had been celebrating autumn harvest ceremonies for centuries. It was not until 1890 that Pilgrims were even included into the tradition. There are many other details in the story of Thanksgiving that have been completely lost with our idealized version; I could go on forever. I recommend picking up a copy of Loewen’s book and reading them for yourself. Please don't think that I am saying to not celebrate Thanksgiving, if anything, I believe Thanksgiving is one of our most important holidays, if we celebrate it as it was truly meant to be celebrated a time to give thanks to the Earth for a plentiful harvest and a time to be thankful for the prosperity of our family and friends.

Why do we do what we have always done?

After spending an hour and a half with Alfie Kohn at the Risky Business Conference in Des Moines, Iowa, I am questioning why do teachers continue to reinvent the wheel? Don't we all know that students learn differently today? Why do some teachers still try to teach like they taught in the 80's? Are we truly preparing students for the future if we are living in the past?

I love the radical ideas of Alfie Kohn! I met him during the first year of my career at another at-risk conference and bought every book he was offering. I have poured over the books: The School Our Children Deserve, Punished by Rewards, and Beyond Discipline; relishing the idea of no more grades, no more punitive consequences for my students, students guiding their own learning and making it relevant towards their life. I was not taught any of these ideas in any of my teacher preparation classes. They focused more on behaviorism, requiring homework, classroom management techniques, etc. never fully understanding why I needed all that "stuff" and especially with no plans to use much of it in my classroom.

It was refreshing to see Alfie Kohn again, now that I have some classroom experience under my belt and can speak more from experience than ideals. I still do not use behaviorism in my classroom, unless required to from district or building expectation. I still struggle with having to give my students a numeric grade that tells them how much or how well they learned. I continue to teach in a very constructive manner, letting my students guide their own learning and setting up my classroom so that students are in charge of almost all aspects of it. This works for me and the type of student that I am teaching. Having only taught in an alternative setting, I wonder if it would work in a traditional setting. I can easily accommodate 12 learning styles into a block schedule, but can a traditional teacher incorporate 30 learning styles into a 40 minute class time? I agree with Alfie Kohn's vision of where education needs to go, but wonder what has to change first, the teacher or the system? If the teachers want to change, but are not supported by the system, can they change? If the system, or the district, wants to change, but the teachers are unwilling to change from something they are comfortable doing and refuse to change, can anything change??

Still, I don't believe Alfie Kohn's advice is the only answer, I do believe he is radical enough to make us all think about what we are doing in the classroom and try to make some changes to help our students realize their full potential. The most important thing to remember is that they are a human being with emotions, dreams, heartaches, trials and tribulations. They deserve to be recognized, respected and loved for who they are and what they can offer.

Picture retrieved from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ecastro/4547759314/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Where's the time?????

Dear Teachers,

Don't you wish there were more hours in the day or that you could go days without sleep? I know I do, especially at the beginning of the school year. I have social studies classes to plan, a room to get ready, clubs to form, committees to join, relationships to build, names to learn, etc. and that is just my teacher role. I am also the tech specialist in our building which adds trainings, work orders, quick-fixes, questions, technology classes to plan, etc. There just isn't enough time in the day to get this all done...I am only contracted for 8 hours a day!! I believe that I have learned something that is going to help me to make this a little easier.

I started a training wiki for Walnut Creek Campus that will hopefully be used by the teachers, considering all the work I have put into it. In my perfect world, all the teachers in my building will turn to this wiki to give them ideas of ways to integrate technology into their already existing lessons and to help each other with questions, rather than just come find me on an as needed basis, as well as eliminating me answering the same question 12 times to 12 different teachers. The next step, getting the staff to use it.

Finally, what have other tech specialist done to get teachers to integrate technology? Is there any advice out their for a newbie that is willing to try anything? Please check out the wiki and offer any suggestions for change.

Now the bargaining begins.

I just spent the most amazing week with a group of awesome teachers and professionals. It gives me hope for traditional schools when I meet teachers like this. I always hear the horror stories from my students about teachers calling them failures or even worse names. I could never imagine any of the people in our group giving up on a child. There was so much passion and concern for the students in each of our classrooms that I left feeling more inspired to become an even better teacher than ever before.

The Emerging Instructional Technologies class at UNI with Dr. Z has been by far the hardest class I have ever taken in my college career. It wasn't hard because I was learning all new material or had a lot of reading or writing to do; it was hard because it stretched me as a teacher and gave me a plethora of new and exciting ideas for may classroom that I want to implement right now. A part of me wishes that school was beginning so I could just start and the other part is relieved that I have summer to do all the preparing and planning for the next school year. This is where the bargaining begins. Now that I know all this cool stuff we can do in the classroom and am part of some exciting global organizations I want time to train all the WCC staff on the awesome things they can do in their classroom and I want them to leave this training confident that they can do it. That is going to take "TIME," something that I do not get a lot of when it comes to staff development.

I have decided to ask my principal for a full day of training during one of the teacher work days before the start of school. It is my goal to get a half day, but since I am bargaining, I am going to start with the dream. How cool would it be to get a full day for 12 teachers to sit in a room and learn all the technologies that I learned this week? I hope that with this training I can help them to feel comfortable with the new technology they will be using as well as leave with goals and ideas for the school year.

I also plan on buying at least a class set of web cams so students can make 1:1 Skype calls. We are already very fortunate to have Lumens document cameras in our classroom that also work as web cameras so we can Skype as a class, but this is connected to my teacher computer and not accessible to students on an individual basis.

My Life's Purpose

I feel very fortunate to have found my life's calling at a very young age. My preschool teacher pulled my mother aside at my preschool graduation and told her that she knew I was going to be a teacher. How preschool teachers can see those things, I will never know. They have a true gift when it comes to working with a group of young children. When all I hear is whiny voices and see snotty noses, they see teachers, firemen, presidents, and doctors. As I grew up, I practiced teaching without realizing I even wanted to teach. I was a Sunday School and Vacation Bible School teacher in my church. My high school even voted me most likely to become a teacher out of our whole senior class. At Central College, I played around with becoming an anthropologist, but always came back to teaching. I had some amazing experiences in college that I believe deeply affected the kind of teacher I am today. One of those happened my sophomore year; I was offered a job at a youth shelter as a youth worker. I supervised a 15 bed residential facility for an 8 hour shift 4-5 days a week. I worked with some of the most difficult children in my life, but loved every minute of it. I was making a difference in their lives. When I graduated from Central, I made the difficult decision to leave the facility and pursue my teaching career.

I started my teaching career determined to work in an alternative school setting. I did not have the most successful experience in my student teaching position. The teacher negatively judged my "unorthodox" teaching styles, like project-based learning, constructivism, and choice theory. He wanted me to teach the class his way, using all his curriculum. When I refused to lecture and test he told me I was not accepting of his guidance. I also hated going into the teacher's lounge. The whole lunch time the teacher would sit there and complain about their students. I quit going to the teacher's lounge for lunch and was docked points for not being welcoming and open with my co-workers. Needless to say, this did not put a good taste in my mouth for traditional schools.

Of course, there were no postings in the paper for an opening in an alternative school the summer I graduated. So, I sent my resume to all 99 alternative schools in the state begging for a job, any job. I called all the local alternative schools and that is where I found Walnut Creek. To make a long story short, I was hired on the spot for their one opening: a special education associate, not teaching, but I was thrilled to be in the door!! This led to a night school teaching position and a home bound teaching assignment. I was hired the next year as a full-time BD Self-Contained Teacher. Two years later, I transferred to the General Education Social Studies position and three years after that transferred to the position I currently hold, half-time social studies and half time tech. Every job I have been in, I believed at the time was my dream job and it just kept getting better.

This leads to my life's purpose.....I grew up in south central Iowa, on a farm outside of Lacona; a small town full of farmers and commuters and a couple small businesses. Needless to say, I was not exposed to many different cultures in this little town, but I loved every minute of it and still live outside of Lacona today. However, I had amazing parents that took me all over the United States as well as to Canada and Mexico each summer. I saw and experienced things my class mates only saw on TV or in books.

As a social studies teacher I knew I wanted to give my students the same experiences that my parents gave me and more, I wanted to make them become international students of the world. I started small, attending a few conferences, making connections and gathering materials. Along the way, I met my heroes: Jane Elliott, Michele Soria, and Sherry Gupta. These women guided me along the way and helped me to create the educational experiences I wanted for my children, including field trips, summer camps and new classes. Through the UNI cohort, I have met two more people that have joined my list of heroes: Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay, co-founders of the Flat Classroom. I had already been following Vicki's blog for a couple weeks, but had not idea the impact she and Julie would make on my life. They have given me my new path, another fork in my road along my journey of preparing my students for the global world they are going to be living in when they graduate from high school. I have already joined the Flat Classroom wiki and am so excited for my future and the future of my students. It is so amazing to be living my life's dream and meeting such inspiring people!

image acquired from : http://www.northernsun.com/n/s/Tolerance-T-Shirt-%288178%29.html

When did I become a geek??!!

Walk into a low lighted bar and there is a group of four sitting at a bar with the music blaring, eating pizza, drinking beer and talking about music, life, family, and college memories. A typical night at the bar with friends.......except for one thing, there are four laptops on the table among the beer bottles, pizza and dirty plates and all of us are blogging, discussing class and technology. When did my life become this?!?!?

I swear I am not a geek, however when I look at my life right now I would completely call myself a geek. I am so enthralled with all the technology that I am using and the ideas that are running around in my head for next year. I have already created a wiki for next year for the WCC staff to use in our technology training and two of my co-workers have already joined!!!!! I am also LOVING the group of teachers that I am working with!! Each of them offer so much to class and I am learning just as much from them as I am from Dr. Z.

So, I guess I am a geek and I am actually loving it!!