April 2018 – Unlearn With Us

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Unlearning.

Posted on April 26, 2018April 27, 2018 by Rebecca Chambers

learning from failure
At the end of last semester, we tried something new out in our classroom. I wanted to give the students the opportunity to really own their learning. I asked them, what do you want to learn, how do you want to learn it and once you have acquired the knowledge what will you do with it? We sat down, created action plans and wrote them up on the wall. They were given two weeks to work on it and I checked in with them every few days to see where they were at and helped coach them if they needed it. During the process, I was convinced that they were doing absolutely NOTHING and I was very uncomfortable. BUT to my surprise on the show and tell day they amazed me with what they had done. We had a workshop on the stock market, a TED Talk comedy routine and some really great discussions. As a result, I was super excited for what this meant for my next semester class. I decided that my new class would look like this…

Grade 12 University World Issues

GOALS – Over the semester I hope that they will learn – self regulation, self-motivation, time management, empathy, resilience, perseverance, communication skills, self-advocacy, project management, social media skills, exposure to Sustainable Development Goal’s, doing things with purpose, passion.

Over the entire semester, they are to work on six things in total. Some of them were non-negotiable but 4 / 6 of them were up to them. The goal would be that we would have one – two days a week for students who wanted to lead discussions or debates. The other days would be work periods or field trips and/or activities. The expectation was that they would work on all of their chosen individual/group projects over the semester. They were expected to tweet about what they were doing on a regular basis so that I can see what they were working on and reflect on their connections to the SDG’s via a google form. Below was the initial layout for the course.

Bring in as many guests as possible to expose students to issues related to the SDG’s
Watch documentaries to fill in the gaps
Create Action plans that would evolve over the semester
Create a project list that included 6 projects:
1. Action Plan
2. Twitter
3. Genius Hour
4. Social Science Fair
5. Other
6. Other

At the beginning of the semester, I was super pumped and ready to try this out. I was feeling confident and was ready. We started out by bringing all sorts of guests in, watching documentaries and learning all about World Issues…# 1 on my list was checked off = success. Then it was time to get going on the next part of my plan. I sat with each student and we created an action plan for them using the same questions as above: What do you want to learn, how are you going to learn it and once you have learned it what will you do with the information. Once again success and check……So then it was time to let go and let them learn…..this is when it got really uncomfortable for me as a teacher. Here are some of the issues and concerns that we are working on as we make our way through the semester

1. Students are lacking in their ability to self-regulate, can be unmotivated and are doing nothing.

This one is the toughest one yet. There are days where students are doing nothing because they have so much freedom or are not quite sure what their next steps are. There are very few students that have the confidence or ability to do stuff on their own. I have an amazing class and have got to know my students really well – each one of them is capable of amazing things, but why can’t they do it without the constant support of the teacher? Even though I am always on edge and struggle with the fact they are not doing anything, I think they need to be given the opportunity to fail and recognize what and how they can do better. In my opinion, once they achieve success on their own this will build their confidence and hopefully inspire them to take more initiative the next time.

2. There is only one of me and 24 of them – how do I support each of them?

In my student’s defence, I totally get that sometimes they do need me. This is also another huge struggle that I have. If we are to allow for personalized learning, it is so important that we have enough coaches and mentors in the room for students to bounce their ideas off of and give them the permission that they need to move forward. My goal for next year is to open up my classroom to as many student teachers as possible and volunteers and assign mentors and coaches to each student.

3. How am I going to keep track of all of them?

This is by far the area that I have failed the most at. This continues to be a work in progress. First and foremost I use Twitter, it has been a great way for me to see what they are doing as well as engage them in discussion related to the curriculum. This has been my most successful way of tracking each of them but still has its limits. I have also tried putting them into groups so that we can chat about all of their projects and work on giving each other advice, this worked well for many of them. For some reason, I have stopped doing this and am realizing that I should continue this. I have had students fill out reflections twice in the first half of the semester and have realized that they need to be doing this more often so that they can really look at what they have or haven’t done. And finally, I try to have meetings with students as much as I can to help keep them on track and give suggestions on what they are doing. This part of the unlearning process is very messy and I am often extremely frustrated. Today we started a new form of tracking in journals, they are going to answer weekly questions that look at what they did the past week and what they are going to do the next week…fingers crossed this one works out!!

4. How am I going to mark this?

As mentioned the most successful thing that I use for tracking is Twitter. At the beginning of the course, I showed them the Twitter expectations (rubric) and we created a Twitter checklist for them. I try to give them feedback on their Twitter feed weekly – biweekly and give them a mark according to the rubric. I have also started assessing their reflections. The most important part of all of this for me is the process. I want to see that they are setting goals, following through and reflecting on the successes and failures. We have a reflection rubric that I used for the first part of the semester and I will continue to use it more frequently for the second half of the semester when looking through their journals.

On the flip side here are the amazing things that are happening as a result of letting them do what they want to do.

Two students are arranging to get people to the blood bank to donate blood.

One student visited and participated in a community cooking session. Inspired by this he raised over $200 for the Parkdale Food Centre and we are headed there next week to cook together and package the food to stock their freezers.

Five students have paired up with Blue Sky School to work with students who are middle school age on their projects.

Two students are leading monthly debates about different world issues.

About half the class has signed up to lead discussions related to the SDG’s.

Two students are figuring out how to start a podcast and have recorded their first episode on gender inequality in sport.

We have a yoga instructor coming in to lead our class as a result of one the students looking at Mental Health.

We have started a weekly podcast which has really made them step up and has given me another place to hear about what they are working on.

So there are nights that I question what I am doing, there are days where I lose my cool in class and there are many times I want to give up. But I am dedicated and passionate about making this change so I will do as I preach, I will fail, learn and get better.

Thanks for reading 🙂

Cheers, R

Creating an Authentic Audience, using Social Media in the Classroom

Posted on April 19, 2018October 17, 2019 by Rebecca Chambers

If students had the ability to connect and share with real live people around the world on a daily basis what might they think? We tried it out and this what they had to say about it.

“I like how it helps me learn/acquire information in an interesting way. For once I look forward to class!”

“Using Twitter in the classroom unlocks a whole new way of interacting with your peers, sharing what you’re learning instead of summarizing it in a report, and using this platform to make and inspire change in the world, big or small.”

“Gives us the chance to showcase our learning and connect with real people in our field of study.”

“What I like about using Twitter in the classroom is I get to connect with people I otherwise would not get to. I also enjoy being globally aware and using Twitter gives me that opportunity.”

Read below to see how over the years I have incorporated Social Media into my classroom.

Twitter used to replace paper…

I started using Twitter in my classroom in about 2011. I had my students create accounts and pretend that they were historical characters. They had to tweet as if they were living in the time period. I wanted my students to learn how to use a 21st-century tool all the while covering the history curriculum. I would say that it was successful and the students did a good job getting into character and tweeting out interesting stuff as their historical character. This was great, but it wasn’t real or authentic. It was a great starting point for my students and me to learn about Twitter, but what I didn’t realize at the time was that I was just replacing paper or a discussion rather than really teaching my students how to use Twitter properly.

Twitter as a platform to act in place of paper, but starting to evolve into collaboration, becoming globally aware and connecting to the outside world.

Skip ahead a couple of years, between 2013 – 2016 I came across two different blog articles and heard a keynote speaker that inspired me to change what we were doing with Twitter. I realized that we needed to learn how to use Twitter to achieve an authentic audience, rather than just use it to replace the way we used to do things.

Any Miah – Social Media as a Research Tool

Early on, Andy inspired me to use Twitter with my students to connect with the world and get up to date research right from the horse’s mouth. To this day I still use the quote from this 2013 article on Social Media to show how we can use it.

“These days, I receive more invitations to speak and collaborate via Facebook & LinkedIn today than I do by email. I’d even go as far as to say that email is moribund. I mean, really, who has time to read all the emails they receive, let alone reply to them? I find more resources through Pinterest and Google Scholar than I do via my library. I meet more people with whom I share common research interests through Twitter than I ever did at academic conferences. I co-author and edit university documents in Google Drive saving hours of time spent sharing versions of drafts, sometimes working in real time on one document with over 10 people. I am also one of those people who has switched from Endnote to Mendeley, preferring the convenience of a multi-platform application, which I can install onto my home machines as well, without having to go through university IT.

What about journals or conferences, I hear you ask? Are these not still primary vehicles of research development? Certainly, they remain important, but the point is that they are each increasingly being delivered by social media as well. Furthermore, we can digest a lot more content because of these platforms, if we use them well. I no longer visit journal websites or bother with email alerts about new issues. Instead, the RSS feeds of journals go straight into my social media environments, as soon as they are published. The content comes to me, saving hours of search time.” Andy Miah

Adam Schoenbart – How to Use Social Media in the Classroom

I came across Adam’s blog The Schoenblog via Edutopia when I was trying to figure out how to use Social Media in the classroom. His post “WHY I WANT MY STUDENTS USING SOCIAL MEDIA: REASON #1 – COMMUNITY”, really helped me figure out how I would implement the use of Twitter in my classroom. On another note, Adam’s blog inspired me to write my blog, I really liked that he showcased his successes and failures when trying out new things. You should really check it out if you are looking for some inspiration.

Kevin Honeycutt – Authentic Audience

In 2016 I went to a conference held by our board and Kevin Honeycutt was the keynote speaker. I loved everything about his presentation, he was engaging, entertaining and more importantly had a super important message – we need to make things authentic for our students. He stood up at the front of the room using his Godium that was created for him by students. He gave students a real problem and they came up with a solution, built it and now he uses it everywhere he goes. Listening to and meeting Kevin has changed my teaching practice and has inspired me to try so many different things. In relation to social media, it really made me think about how we could use it to really find a voice for students and how they could complete things that had purpose.

Community Connections – Michaela Milligan and Elle Mills

So I did some research on my own to figure out how we could use Twitter in a more authentic way. As a result, Twitter in our classroom evolved into: students following each other, following organizations that related to the courses that they were taking, tweeting about everything that they were learning and reaching out and trying to get their message out there (but I really didn’t know how to do this – it was all trial and error). My students and I have worked together on trying to figure a lot of this out. On the recommendation of my students, we even invited Youtuber Elle of the Mills into the classroom to tell us about how she was able to jump from 10,000 subscribers to 30,000 in less than a month (She has 1.2 million subscribers now). While I don’t necessarily agree with some of the content that she posts, she was very professional and helped us out a ton. We also reached out to a former student who is taking a degree in Fine Arts with a minor in Social Media at Ryerson University (Yes this degree exists and it is SO cool). Michaela Milligan has come in twice now to share everything that she has learned in her program about Social Media and took the time to critique what we were doing. I am forever grateful for coming into my class when she comes home to visit her family.

Skyfall Blue – Fadi Ghaby, Social Media expert

Halfway through last semester, I felt like we were still not using Twitter in our classroom to its full capacity. I contemplated taking a course on Social Media from our local community college to learn more, but I just didn’t have the time. So instead I emailed about 30 different social media marketing companies in Ottawa and asked if anyone was up for giving us some free advice on how we could use Social Media to its full potential. I had one response Fadi Ghabi from Skyfall Blue who came to our rescue. Fadi came in and analyzed what we were doing, gave us some suggestions on how we could maximize our Twitter usage and explained to us the who, what, where, why and how of Social Media. We have been so very fortunate to have had him back a second time this year and his continued support via Twitter. Fadi even had us trending in Ottawa on the day that he came to visit and introduced us to local influencers Twenty York Street and Canadian Blog House who have been graciously supporting my students throughout the year.

Now in our classroom we use Twitter to create networks, to find up to date research, to connect with professionals, to publish work, to advocate on behalf of different organizations, to share information about the course, to follow the news and accounts that relate to our curriculum, to show our audience that we are real people, to fundraise and most importantly to have an authentic audience.

You can follow our class hashtags to see what the students are up to at Grade 10 Canadian History #jmsshpa10, The Introduction to Anthropology, Psychology and Sociology #jmsshpa11 and World Issues #jmsshpa12.

If you have any questions about what or how we are using Twitter please do not hesitate to contact me!

Thanks for reading 🙂

Classroom Examples, Why Unlearn?

The art of letting go…how I transitioned to a Student Centred Classroom

Posted on April 13, 2018 by Rebecca Chambers

letting-go

We have all heard the latest buzzwords in education: differentiation, inquiry, innovation and creation and more recently student centred. In discussion with colleagues it is evident that many teachers would like to try a more student centred classroom, but feel that there are many barriers in the way and just not quite sure how to go about doing it. Over the past five years, I have been on a journey of figuring out how to let go. These are some of the frequently asked questions and concerns that I get when talking to other teachers about moving toward a student centred classroom.

Class size

When you have a class of 25 – 30 students how do you track what they are doing if they are all doing different things?

How do you cover all of the curriculum?

If I don’t have every student cover all of the curriculum I am not doing my job.

Don’t you feel out of control?

I struggle with this one all the time, I think it is in every teacher’s nature to want to be in control. If I give up control of my classroom what is going to happen in my classroom? If I don’t tell them what to do they, they won’t do anything! How do you get them to work, how do you keep them on track?

Grades

If I have to put marks on a report card I have to have a way to gather a grade, how do I mark 30 different things?

Permission

Do I have the permission of my administrator and parents to try this out? What will be the backlash if it doesn’t work?
All of the above are legitimate concerns and I struggle with most of them daily. In this post, I would like to share with you how I have worked with and against a lot of these concerns to create a student centred classroom.

We need to get over our fears and jump in!

As you may have noticed in my previous posts, I am on a mission to change the way we do things in education. I have gone to many workshops, heard people speak, watched TED Talks, read articles, joined twitter chat groups and come to the conclusion that I just have to do it. While the above barriers exist I have decided that I need to get over my fears and just try some stuff out.

I often have discussions with colleagues about what a student centred classroom looks like. A lot of them want to try it but are concerned that nothing will get done. I have to agree with them when they say this. By the time students are in grade 12, they have spent 14 years being told to sit down, be quiet and wait for instructions. If all of a sudden you ask them the questions, what do you want to learn, how do you want to learn it and what will you do once you have gathered your information, they will not know how to answer this and when given time to do this they will do nothing, mostly because they are lost not because they don’t want to do things. Self-regulation needs to be scaffolded and introduced at a young age. A perfect example of where this is happening is at Blue Sky School in Kanata, ON. At BSS they are completely student centred and are teaching students as young as ten years old to drive their own learning.

I recently came across this sketchnote by Trevor Mackenzie entitled Types of Student Inquiry from his book Inquiry Mindset. It is a great representation of what I have been doing in my classes, as I have gradually let go of control and put into the student’s hands.

inquiry steps

What I have found is that the gradual steps to independence and autonomy in the classroom are necessary. What I am doing is by no means perfect but this is what I have found works.

In grade 10 and 11 I follow the outline that I posted in How do I incorporate inquiry, innovation and all that other stuff they want me to bring into my classroom? Students have the freedom to choose issues that they are passionate about and then they follow our Inquiry steps outlined below.

Grade 10 & 11 syllabus for this semester:

Inquiry # 1 – Goal Create awareness
Inquiry # 2 – Goal same as above + create a Solution
Action Plan – What do you want to learn, how would you like to learn it, what will you do with the information once you have learned it? (NEW THIS SEMESTER FOR GR 10s)
Twitter
Genius Hour
Social Science Fair

Inquiry Steps:

Choose a current issue – something that you are passionate about, could be passionate about, that you are already involved in, etc.
Learn about the current issue and become an advocate for it.
Create a media piece to gain attention, followers etc. post it – over and over and over to get traction
Use the Social Scientific Method to research your issue in relation to your course material.
Campaign: As you research tweet out, and at people who care about your issue – connect with organizations and classmates. Try to get on the twitter pyramid.
Ultimate Goal – get noticed, get your message out there, create a solution – do something that matters.
Assessment – students are assessed on a biweekly basis via Twitter, each student reflects at the end of each inquiry and gives themselves next steps for their next one.

After my grade 10s and 11s go through the inquiry process twice we are going try out something that has very few rules to test out their ability to go solo with me as their support. They will be asked the question what do you want to learn, how do you want to go about learning it and once you’ve learned it what will you DO with the information. From there they sit with a mentor and map out an action plan that we write on the walls. I tried this out with my grade 11s and 12s last semester and the things that came from it were amazing!! I have to admit that while this was happening last semester I felt totally out of control and really felt that nothing was happening, but when the students shared what they had done I was blown away.

So, for this semester I decided that we would run the entire grade 12 World Issues course by giving students choice in everything that they do. At the beginning of the course I brought in about 10 – 15 different people from different organizations to tell us about issues that are faced worldwide. We watched documentaries and had discussions. They followed organizations and people that related to the course and built a network on Twitter. Then they were asked what they wanted to learn, how they wanted to learn it and what will they do with the information once they have learned about it. It has taken almost 1.5 months to sort out what everyone was doing, but I think we are on track now. Each student in my class has filled out a project sheet that has at least 6 items on it which are the things that they will complete by the end of the semester. Some examples include, two students have chosen to lead things that they like doing in other classes such as debates or watching documentaries that relate to the course curriculum, we sit down with a calendar and map out what days those will happen, the other students in the class can participate in them if they want to but can choose to opt out of them if they wish. Another student would like us to do yoga as a class (she is researching mental health), and has asked her yoga instructor to come in and lead a class, again this gets put on the class calendar. Other examples are visiting and working with the elderly in a retirement home, organizing a day for some of us to go to a food centre to cook and freeze meals for their clients, rallying and organizing students and teachers to give blood, bringing in dogs to class for some pet therapy, starting a #nostraw movement, leading discussions, working with Blue Sky School students and so many other things! What I struggle with and have been working on is how to keep everyone organized and on track. One of the things that the students are expected to do each day when they come to class is to look at the calendar and see what is happening. If there is a group activity, as mentioned before they can opt in or out, they then have to use a sheet that we adapted from Blue Sky School and they have to map out their route for the class. They have to indicate specifically what they will work on and check it off as they go. We keep track of their project list, a calendar for each of them and their daily route maps in a binder for both of us to access. The hope is that when it comes time to reflect on their progress they can refer back to what they said they were going to do and see if they actually did it.

Sorry for the uber long paragraph, I am taking a breath now. This is just a snip-it of what I am trying out and it is ever evolving. I am happy to share anything that I have mentioned above. I apologize if it is hard to follow, my description is exactly like my classroom, controlled chaos. Let me know if you want to know more and we can connect!!

If you are interested, I plan to outline in more detail how we use Social Media, how we cover curriculum and how we come up with grades in future posts.

Thanks for reading!!

Student Perspective, Why Unlearn?

Students are suffocating and we need to do something about it.

Posted on April 6, 2018April 6, 2018 by Rebecca Chambers

help

About 3 months ago I came across Don Wetterick’s podcast called StartedUp on Twitter. He had on a teacher from Virginia named Nate Green who was talking about using social media in his classroom. I instantly connected with Don’s message as well as Nate’s. That day I listened to the podcast a second time and decided to contact Nate to see if we could chat about what he was doing in his classroom. Nate was amazing and offered to chat via google hangout. It was amazing to connect with someone so like minded. You should check out him out on Twitter and take a look at his blog Social Media in Education.

Over the past few months, I have listened to Don’s podcast religiously and when new podcasts were not released I went back and listened to ones from the previous year. One message that was consistent with Don and all of his guests was that education needs to change. I have learned and continue to learn so much from his guests. One guest in particular really got my attention. Dave Burgess, author of Teach Like a Pirate was interviewed by Don in I believe December of 2017. He talked about his book and publishing company, which I found fascinating you should listen to it here. BUT, what Dave said that really stuck with me was this….there are kids in our classes that are suffocating and they need help. If you are a teacher who believes that you are doing something to save these students it is your duty and obligation to share it. I was one of those students in high school, I am fighting for those students and I got into teaching to save them, therefore I think I have some suggestions and I want to share it!!

Inspired by listening to Dave Burgess’s interview with Don Wettrick I decided to email / DM Don and tell him all about all of the amazing things that my students were doing. Within twenty minutes he messaged me back and asked if I wanted to be on his podcast….I was thrilled and obviously jumped at the chance. I have been reluctant to share this podcast with others, but have just recently finished the book Poke the Box by Seth Godin (recommended to me by Cameron author of A Students Perspective on Why we need to Unlearn) and have decided to listen to his manifesto. In it, Godin suggests that those who want to be initiators need to have a pick me mentality. You can no longer wait for others to promote your ideas, you need to make it happen yourself. So, please listen to the podcast below, I am pretty proud of my students and the message that we are trying to spread. Thank you Don Wettrick for inviting me and my students to be a part of your podcast, it was an honour.

Thanks for reading and listening!