my version of transparent, collaborative leadership...with a Teamann twist

Window of Opportunity

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This is cross posted from Connected Principals.

It’s always interesting to me how worlds can collide.

We had a guest speaker at church tonight, Dr. Tim Kimmel. His sermon was on grace based parenting, particularly, how to get through the sensitive tween years.  While I don’t quite have a tween, (gulp.) I was still struck by a story that I think relates to what we do as educators. trampoline

While in the 9th grade, Kimmel arrived at gym class one day to see a trampoline in the middle of their gym floor. This being a novelty, before the time when trampolines were a commonplace backyard item, he was pretty excited. Being in a large class, he waited near the front, hoping to get a chance to jump, his eyes locked in on his PE teacher. He couldn’t believe it when his coach asked HIM to take off his shoes and join him on the trampoline. Kimmel ripped off his shoes and climbed up. His classmates, however, were distracted by the fact that Tim had holes in not one, but both, of his socks. In typical 9th grade fashion, the teasing began.

“Do we need to take up a collection? Poor Tim can’t afford new socks…” “Cold up there, Tim?”

He couldn’t even concentrate on what he was getting to do, or what his coach was saying, because his ears were ringing with the sounds of his classmates. He was from a middle class family, they paid their bills on time. He had never given his socks much thought…until now. When the class finally ended, Tim jumped down and escaped quickly. He looked for his gym teacher, but he too, had disappeared. Thinking that he would run home and darn everysinglepair of socks that he had, Tim snuck out a side door and headed downstairs.

“Hey, Tim….wait up”…there was his coach heading his way. Taking off his shoe, showing Tim the big hole in HIS sock, the coach said, “We agile guys, we’re pretty hard on socks aren’t we?” He patted Tim on the back, put his shoe back on, and walked away.  Kimmel, having no clue what agile meant, went to his next class, English, because there were dictionaries there. He learned that agile meant:

1. Characterized by quickness, lightness, and ease of movement; nimble.
2. Mentally quick or alert: an agile mind.
He had no idea he was those things, but from that moment on? He was. It redefined his life and how he saw himself. In that one conversation, he went from being traumatized by his peers to seeing himself as capable. As more than capable…he was agile. Kimmel went on to give several examples of things he then accomplished, purely based on that one fact, he was agile.
Later in life, he said he realized why his coach had disappeared. In those few minutes he was missing, he had gone to his office, found his scissors, and cut a hole in his socks.

Our window of opportunity to touch our students’ lives closes faster than we realize. Never let an opportunity to change a child’s life pass you by. I hope that we wind summer down we all start looking for those windows and can be that change for some student…socks be darned.

 

sock sacrificingly,

Amber

Classroom Champions

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How many of your students get to meet a  Paralympic or Olympian? they’re not just hanging around the mall these days, are they?

Coincidentally enough on today’s jog (and by jog, I totally mean walk) I listened to my second Edu All-Stars podcast with Todd Nesloney, Stacey Huffine, and Chris Kesler and heard about this program called Classroom Champions.

 

How it works

Targeting grades Kindergarten through 8, Classroom Champions brings Olympians, Paralympians and Olympic/Paralympic games hopefuls (Athlete Mentors) into the classroom using videos and live chats.
A kind of 21st century pen-pal, each athlete mentor adopts 1-4 classrooms per year. Focusing on their own personal journey, athletes teach about the hard work of training, goal setting, competition and perseverance. Using video  lessons and live video chats, students are engaged with their athlete mentor several times per month. Our program supports teachers by helping them incorporate these activities into their curricula, focusing on letter writing, reading, geography, math, technology, goal setting and leadership.

 

Listening to to Steve Mesler, Founder and 3-time Olympian, who was their the guest star on the podcast, I got SO excited about what opportunities this could provide to a classroom full of students who want to grow up and be athletes. Every year we have some sort of college & career readiness focus and encourage classrooms to Skype with college students. I usually drag my brother, Randy, into it because of his collegiate sports experience.  He was also drafted by the Yankees, so students usually think that is pretty cool, 🙂 (Not me, I’m a Rangers girl, ;))

 

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I also plan on figuring out a way next year to get my cousin to do this…you may have heard of him? El Oso Blanco! AKA Evan Gattis who is playing for the Atlanta Braves right now, 🙂 We’ll see how far that cousin connection can get me…I know I have some old photos around here somewhere…

 

 

Regardless, I definitely plan on involving classrooms next year with Classroom Champions. One of the goals Steve mentioned was showing kids that being a successful athlete takes more than just a couple of weeks of hard work. There’s exhaustion, failure, and commitment required. That’s not what they see when they watch Kobe…and I think this program is amazing because of it! He also spoke about how eye opening it was for a kindergarten class to see a  Paralympic and think that their disability was what MADE them successful, vs being successful in spite of  it. How inspirational!

K-8 teachers can apply in the spring, but Steve encouraged teachers to pick an athlete to follow along with in the fall to get a feel for how it all works.

Thank you, Tech Ninja Todd and team for introducing me on my jog (cough, cough) to another great resource for our students!

 

sports fan,

Amber

 

 

 

An easy way to grow & learn…

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jogging1

Maybe you have a long commute…or have background music while you cook dinner…or a husband who thinks you need to lose weight and so you think jogging is better with a soundtrack… whatever the reason, those moments become easy peasy ways to add some quality content and PD to your world with a podcast!

 

A podcast is free, original, and interesting content to listen to whenever you have time. There are podcasts available on just about anything you can think of, except maybe Troy, sigh. I love to learn and am always short on time so I think educational podcasts are the perfect answer.

 

I’ve found several that I now subscribe too, which is great b/c that means the content comes to me! Not sure how to subscribe? Try here or here to get ya started! There is the obvious Podcasting app on the iPhone or you can use Podomatic.

 

My current two faves are:

Techlandia Podcast 

TPFollow @ipadsammy (Jon Samuelson) and @tedrosececi (Alison Anderson)  &  @CurtRees (Curt Rees) as they take you through the world of educational technology. Listen and get professional development on your commute to school. Things you can use immediately in your classroom, by teachers, for teachers.

Faved because: Easy to listen too, practical integration ideas, varied guests…they follow a three apps to learn from, three people to follow format, interspersed with humor and relevant information…

 

 

EdAdminMinute

edadmin min

The EdAdmin Show highlights the ideas and insights from the innovative school administrator’s point of view. Hosted by Chris Atkinson and featuring a roundtable of education’s brightest. Posts Fridays! (@ChrisLAtkinson)

Faved because: It’s a minute! Reviews great books directly related to being an instructional leader, not hawking a product or brand, just real application to what I do…plus, who doesn’t have a MINUTE?? 🙂

 

Have also added Shifted Learning and EduAllstars to my playlist and both seem to be worth my playlist time so far!

SL

eduallstar

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

exerciseNly,

Amber

 

PS: Please know that when I say jog, I totally mean walk really fast. 🙂

A One Rule Classroom

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first five daysI love the fact that my grown up profession revolves around a calendar that includes back to school clothes and school supplies. As a teacher, I always needed a “new” start the school year off fabulously outfit. It was just part of the deal! Now as an admin, I get two. One for teachers first day back, and then another one for when the kids come. (what?)

I also had a pink file folder, labeled first day of school in cute letters with lil’circles on the end, that I pulled out every year. It was full of articles, ideas, and fun “get to know you” activities that I had found throughout the years and stuck in this file. It always carried over into the first couple of days, much to my team’s consternation. They wanted to start switching classes and get to their teaching as quickly as possible. I never felt that sense of urgency.

Alan November shared a story where a physics teacher spent the first five days of his class teaching his students how to solve the problems they would be facing. He showed them Wolfram Alpha, how and where to find quality research, how to cite sources, and how to collaborate with their peers. He spent five days teaching the students how to be successful in his classroom. Five whole days. Can you imagine teachers NOT teaching their curriculum for five days? But instead built a foundation that ensured success? Love.

I immediately tweeted “What you do in the first five days shows what you value in your classroom.” I was surprised by the reaction…many wrote back saying that yes, they focused on expectations, on setting rules, on establishing parameters.

We had one rule in my class. Make me look good. That was it. It didn’t take me all day to teach that. Every question they had directly came back to that one statement.

“Do you have an extra pencil?”

“So & so said such and such.”

“I forgot my homework.”

My reaction was always the same. Does that make me look good? How can you fix it? They learned very quickly to be problem solvers and to adjust their train of thought to what was most appropriate. We spent the rest of the time making sure we KNEW each other, on a level to where they WANTED to make me look good. I learned their likes, their dislikes, their strengths and their weaknesses.  My job was to prepare them for life in the fourth grade, and theirs was to make me look good. I had a 100% passing rate on our state tests for the 6 years I taught and  relationships I still maintain with so many of them…I think we both were successful.

Plus, too many rules? Meant I had to have too many consequences, and who has time for that.

 

easy to please,

Amber

 

 

 

 

Tweet-tastic from #ISTE13, part 2

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cc licensed by Flikr Tomas Hellberg

cc licensed by Flikr Tomas Hellberg

Continuing on with my tweets from sessions I attended at ISTE…this will be MUCH easier for me to reference back too, reflectively, once we go back to school. 🙂

Cool Google Tools for the BYOD Classroom, w/Tammy Worcester Cool collaborative tools for any device

  • Simple but basic, use google forms to aggregate answers from Ss, copy/paste into wordle…see what concept jumps out Use for everything from a get to know you to a review lesson
  • Don’t stiffle students’ creativity, give them options
  • The best way to get teachers to try new tech is by focusing on the “value”  the verbs, not nouns!
  • Ss asked to pick smewhere else 2 live on google forms, gve reason, copy places, paste, and create a class where we could live map! Batchgeo.com  lots of great social studies/community potential!
  • Google drive creates QR codes automatically for a link.

 

Who owns the learning? w/ Alan November I’ve heard this talk before but there are always gems to be found!

  • The very basic structures of our schools don’t allow Ss to own their learning.
  • Teachers shld do more listenN than talking. Some kids have the right answer but the wrong logic, allow group tests. Loves this idea. Allow for 20 min of individual work, 20 min of group work, and 20 min to create their OWN questions over the content. Adam Bellow said, “Cheating in the real world is called collaboration.” and I think this in the classroom would be an excellent gauge in students ability to both collaborate and rationalize their answers.
  • why teach digital citizenship – we have a moral and legal obligation to do so that impacts far greater than classroom mgmt.
  • What if kids checked their answers on tests by consensus with access to resources and then debate answers?
  • Schools don’t have technology problems,have a work ethic problem. We’re not creating passionate life long learners
  • Research shows adolescents prefer to learn frm a peer, not an adult. Every S shld be a teacher.
  • What if kids were so passionate about learning that we had to scramble to get out of their way?
  • Club academia: look it up… 🙂 a resource of student made videos
  • I did it the assignment b/c the teacher was checking it off as completed, but if I create a tutorial, I HAVE to learn it and learn it well.
  • Most kids only have one person as their audience – @globalearner says give the kids a voice in their learning and take it GLOBAL!
  • One day we schools will get over the fear of posting S vids & pics, like the rest of the world, and let kids inspire kids. 
  • Most difficult thing to do in @globalearner ‘s job? Getting people to unlearn & shift control…making the adults in the room understand it’s ok to not have control.
  • Its not about technology, it’s shifting about control, relationships, and who owns the learning.
  • What you do in the first five days shows what you value in your classroom.
  • Teachers are needing to teach S to be able to ask the most interesting, sophisticated questions
  • The more you know about your content, the less you’re able to understand a first time learners struggle.

 

Compilingly,

Amber