Tinkerings

We are three days into the new school year (well, we will be when this day officially starts), and so far with the exception of not having any working computers in my computer labs the year is going great.  I know, I know, that sounds like a sarcastic statement, but….well…ok, there’s a little sarcasm there, but honestly, the year is going great.

This semester I have four 7th grade classes and two 6th grade classes.  I’ve been checking around.  I don’t have any real trouble makers in my classes.  Oh, I have a few that want to act like they are all that, but inside they are really good kids.  I can handle that.  I can work with that.  I can play that game and give them a little of the attention they crave and still steer them back on track to learn something in spite of their own efforts to the contrary.

While I am running behind on creating lesson plans (I’m only a couple of weeks ahead), things are falling together pretty well.  I am utilizing a “paper slide” video technique taught to us at the DEN LC Symposium by Dr. Lodge McCammon for the starters in my 6th grade class.  My goal is to have the kids make their own before the semester is over.  I haven’t written those lesson plans yet, and I have trained the other teachers on my team how to do it, and I don’t have enough flip cameras, and…well, I still plan to do it before the semester is over.  That’s the power of positive thinking!

So today, at 8 AM, I need the collective will of everyone who reads this blog to concentrate on the 27 computers in my room and will them to re-image properly.  Can you do it?  Will you help me?  We’re three days in.  But if I can’t get these computers working its gonna feel like forever….

It just hit me that the long, leisurely mornings at Starbucks are coming to a close.  This past summer I have spent an average of 2 or 3 hours at Starbucks just sipping coffee, surfing the web, writing blogs, listening to music, and people watching.  It has been an escape from an empty house, but it has also been a reflection of where my heart and mind has been these past couple of months: downtime.

(I’ll let you in on a little secret here: I don’t even like Starbucks coffee.  I like the thought of Starbucks coffee….and wifi).

Next week kids come back to our classes.  I have two classrooms with sixth graders and four with seventh graders.  They will be bubbling over with excitement.  They had a much different summer than my own.  Theirs has been spent running and jumping and playing and being loud and crazy.  (Ah, I vaguely remember those days).  They will be adjusting to the need for sitting and order and sitting and quiet and sitting….

I am going to try my hand at the Y at 5 AM again starting on Monday.  An hour of sweat and work and heart rate elevations before the caffeine rush I’ve become used to each day may help me.  Thank God for my Keurig coffee maker.  Maybe I can hit the classroom awake and full of energy.

After all, it will be much easier to raise my own energy level than it will be to calm those of my students.  That’s classroom management rule #1.

We have had a full week of professional development so far in Bradley County, and the rest of the week is looking very similar.  A lot has been put before us.  But so far, the teachers at our school really haven’t spent any time there.  Today is our first full day on campus.  And a full day it will be.

We have a trainer coming to work with our teachers on Promethean software.  This is really important training for us.  We just installed an Interactive White Board in every classroom last year.  Teachers spent the year just sort of playing around and trying to get comfortable with it in their classroom.  Now it is time to crank it up a notch and begin to use it the way it was intended: interactively with students.

I worked with nearly 200 teachers this week myself going over the basics of DE Streaming and how it can be integrated into other sites like Wordle, Voicethread, Glogster, and more.  We touched on editable clips and the possibility of using green screen or recording a new narrative to replace the original.  I discovered at least 30 teachers that had never created a log-in.  Some of those are new to the system, of course.  Others work in our system, but had not been told they were able to use the program.  I think we changed that perception.  And many teachers want even more training later.

For me, today will be spent getting the rest of my 150 computers set up, re-imaged, replaced if necessary, and dusted.  I am expecting a great day of exercise climbing over tables, crawling under them, and engaging my core as I lean way over them to get the backs of computers.

We will top off the day with 6th grade orientation this evening from 5:30 to 7:30.

All in all this has been really good week.  Naturally, not every professional development session hit a home run.  But the effort put forth by our district team was monumental.  This was a first for our schools.  And, at the end of the day, I think the week has been hugely successful.

Let’s hope our first week with kids goes as well starting on Monday…

Teachers get a bum rap in a lot of ways.  Low pay.  Blamed for all low performance results on standardized tests.  Caught between parents and students.  The list is long.  But, we do get summers off.  Believe me, that’s huge.

But there’s one other way teachers get a bum rap.  We get to make two sets of resolutions each year: One on January 1st and another sometime in August or September depending on what state in which one teaches.

Of course, not wanting to be an underachiever, I also set myself up for resolutions at the end of the last school year.

Like all good resolutions, we mean well.  We honestly intent to do things differently.  Sometimes we even succeed.  Other times we learn to tweak the resolutions so they are easy to complete.  Like this one from last New Year’s for me:

I will begin the process of losing 40 pounds.

And I did.  Several times.  In fact, I’m beginning that process again next week.  (Hey, we’re teachers.  We’re smart).

Here are just a few of the resolutions I’ve set for myself this school year.

1. Delegate more of my work among my team members.  I am one of those people that like to do my work and the work of thirteen other people.  It is time to give it up.
2. Learn all of my students’ names in the first three weeks of school.  I am horrible with names.  I think the only way I learned mine was from my mom writing it on the inside labels of my clothes when I went to church camp.
3. Find a working phone number for every student before the semester is over.  I’m giving myself a little more time here, but those of you who don’t teach would be surprised at the number of kids who don’t know a phone number for their parents.  Or a street address for their house.  Or what a pencil looks like.
4. Only grade what matters.  No more extra credit for bringing hand sanitizer.  Or getting a form signed.  Or staying awake in class.  (You can’t make this stuff up).
5. Refuse to allow a single student to leave my class without learning the things I intended for them to learn.

OK, I really only wrote all those to get to that last one.  It is this dogged determination to see kids learn that keeps us coming back to the classroom every year.

I will let the teachers, admins, school board members, and other members of PLN that read this blog hold me accountable to these resolutions.  Feel free to ask anytime how I’m doing.  If my answer starts with, “Ummmmm….” just shake your head and walk away.  Ask again on a good day.

What resolutions have you made this year?

A lot has been said, argued over, and voted on in recent years concerning funding for schools.  Our own school system has cut about everything they can without having to cut personnel.  However, at one of their recent meetings it was made clear that if the economy doesn’t improve, personnel cuts are inevitable.

And yet, there is money on the table.  We just overlook it way too often.  And by “we” I mean “me.”

Our local paper recently published a story that one and only mall in our town was sold in a foreclosure.  It seems we can never keep stores solvent in that place.  I rarely go there.  Even the stores I like don’t carry things I want.

Yesterday I discovered an article where a local restaurant had closed its doors on Wednesday.  Oliver’s hadn’t been in business that long, but the Shoney’s that closed up shop a few months ago was the place to eat when I got here in 1976.  A landmark is gone.

We passed a referendum last year increasing our county tax in order to fund schools at a higher rate.  It costs me $.01 more to buy a tall Pike Place from Starbucks locally than it does to purchase it in Hamilton County.  Everything is now a little more expensive in our town.  But people were flocking to our neighboring county even for all those years when it cost more to do so.

Why?  The easy answer is that its the economy.  Businesses are hurting everywhere.  And yet there is a more difficult answer we often don’t want to hear.

We don’t shop or eat in Bradley County.

For years, I have made the trek to Hamilton Place Mall 20 miles down the road to go shopping.  I’ve even started getting my haircut there.  And while you’re shopping, it is just easier to eat there, too.  And the movie theater is more comfortable.  Even the popcorn sometimes tastes better in Hamilton County.

We had a long fight over liquor by the drink in our county.  The biggest argument for approving the change was that it would bring in more businesses.  And it did.  Chili’s is now here.  The Outback showed up.  And yet people are still heard complaining because we don’t have a Red Lobster.  Hamilton County does, of course.

Here’s the bottom line: Every dollar we spend outside of Bradley County reduces the funding we provide our local schools.

Can we purchase everything we need locally?  Maybe. Can we purchase everything we want locally? No.  We will spend money elsewhere.  I will spend money elsewhere.

But I promise you this.  I will think long and hard about whether I really need to drive the 40 mile round trip to get a steak that is available to me within five miles of my house.

So, in my new found patriotic fervor, I had breakfast at the Rebel this morning.  And I’m writing this post while enjoying my tall Pike Place at Starbucks.  Our school district’s CFO can thank me later.  In the meantime, I’ll hold my head a little higher when I walk into my classroom this year.

I’m learning to support myself.

I received a round of interview questions recently with regard to an assistant principal opening in another district.  While most of the questions were pretty straightforward with regard to my opinions about the role of APs, discipline, management style, and such, the first question was extremely interesting.  It was much more philosophical (the kinds of questions I love to grapple with for days, weeks, or even years….don’t get me started on Walter Brueggemann’s Israel’s Praise again).

The question asked for my ideas regarding the purpose of a public school education in the life of a middle school student.  After writing my answer, I posed that question on my Facebook wall and asked my friends to give me their ideas.  Their responses were somewhat close to my own in some ways.

Here is what I wrote:

Middle school is the most interesting part of education.  Our school is grades 6 to 8, and it is really more three schools than just one.  Students change so much in each year, so middle school has to take on several roles as well.

First, middle school is a time of exploration.  Middle school students are exploring relationships, extra-curricular interests, academic strengths, boundaries put in place by anyone in authority, and a lot about themselves.  Middle school should be a place where the exploration has meaning.  Students learn how to act in society, how to be kind and giving (sometimes they learn this by experiencing the opposite), how to organize, study, and a host of other lessons aimed at making them more productive students and citizens.

Second, middle school is a time of preparation.  The changes from self-contained classrooms to changing teachers every period, from cubbies to lockers, from no dress code to some form of dress code, and more, help students create a slow, deliberate readiness to life in high school and beyond.  Middle school is a place that helps foster this readiness for life.

Third, middle school is a time of decision-making.  Students begin to decide who they are in the world.  They also decide if they like school or not or if they are good at it or not.  Some research indicates many decide in middle school whether or not to even stay in school.  As such, middle school takes on an even greater role in engaging students in academics (learning in general), exploring career choices (discovering what they like and what they are good at), socialization (how to treat others as well as deciding how they want to be treated), and aiding in the formulation of a beneficial world view (citizenship, family, friends, etc).

I would love for you to leave me some comments as to your own thoughts.  What did I get wrong?  What did I leave out?  Or better yet, what did I get right?

I have a YouTube account.  When I go there, the nice people at YouTube have provided a list of videos they think I will like based on the videos I’ve watched.  There is usually a video by Brian Regan or Taylor Mali mixed in the bunch.  Sometimes Tim Hawkins.  Maybe another Axe commercial.  And almost always a Gaither Homecoming song or two that I haven’t seen yet.

This morning it was the Gaither video that caught my eye.  I knew it would be good because it was David Phelps singing.  He has one of the most beautiful and articulate tenor voices of any genre.  His classical training shines through in everything he does.  But it was the title that got me first.

“Oh Love That Will Not Let Me Go.”

Something about that sentence clicked in my head today.  My mind went back to a talk I’ve had many times with others who seemed to need it in that moment.  A talk about I Peter and the totally unmerited favor of God.  Peter tells us two things in his opening epistle.  First, he tells us that there is a reward for us in heaven that cannot be taken away because it is being held by God.  Second, he tells us that we cannot fail to reach the reward because we are held by that same God.

Think about that for a moment.

When I was walking last week through one of the many beautiful parks surrounding Boston last week, my friends and I came upon a fundamentalist preacher standing in a crossroads of paths with his Bible held like a weapon and shouting, “If you don’t repent you will fall into the hands of an angry God and spend eternity in hell!” at the top of his lungs.  Some made fun of him as they walked by.  Others ignored him.  It just reminded me of all those times, week after week, Sunday night after Sunday night, I found myself in an altar at the end of a church service praying and crying and begging God to forgive for not wanting to go to church that day.  I had not yet matured enough to understand God’s Grace.

Reach in your pocket and take out a quarter.  No, go ahead.  I’ll wait.

Got it?  Good.  Place it in the palm of your right hand.  Now close your hand around it.  The quarter is you.  Your hand is the grace of God.  Do you think anyone or anything can rip you out of that hand?  Not even your own sin can remove you from that hand.  (We can discuss the whole issue of backsliding at a later date, ok?  For now, just follow this train of thought with me.)

I’ve lost a lot of confidence in things at times.  I’ve lost confidence in friends.  I’ve lost confidence in the church.  I’ve lost confidence in family.  I’ve even lost confidence in myself.  But there is a sentence that keeps me grounded.  Keeps me strong.  Keeps me at peace.

Oh Love That Will Not Let Me Go.

That is nothing less than the grace of God.  A love that won’t let go of me even when I struggle and wrestle and try to break free.  His love will not let me go.  And I am at peace in the midst of life’s strongest storms.

I went hiking yesterday.  I don’t hike.  But yesterday, with the invitation of a good friend from Florida, I wound up driving 90 minutes to Pigeon Forge, TN, and taking a 6 hour hike over a total of 8 grueling miles.  I really didn’t think that much about it…until about hour 4.  That was when I started to hit “the wall.”  It was really only through shear determination (and the refusal to be the only one in our group to say, “I don’t want to walk anymore”) that I made it back to the car.

The walk was beautiful.  And hard.  I got to see some gorgeous mountains to the right and left of me as I trekked up the hill.  None of us really knew what the trail was like since we had never been there before.  Oh sure, one of us had looked at it on a map, but that really didn’t do it justice.  Each of us had a pre-conceived idea of the hike ahead and each of us, it turned out, were wrong.

You see, I thought starting at out 5,050 feet was pretty high.  I sort of envisioned a trail meandering around the tip of the mountain tops with a few uphill and a few downhill slopes.  I thought the entire trail would be like the beginning: flat and wide with steps braced by fallen logs.  Someone had gone to great lengths to make the beginning of my journey as easy as possible.

As we went along the trail, rising to over 6,100 feet, the trail began to change.  Suddenly it was more wild with rocks and water and foliage hanging over the sides.  It was more narrow and much more difficult to maneuver.  I had strategically placed myself 3rd in a line of 3.  At first that was so I didn’t have to set the pace.  But later I realized it was better to follow someone along the trail and watch how they proceed.  I could see steps that were difficult and make minor changes in direction from the leader so that my walk was somehow easier than his.

When we hit 6,100 feet we thought we were fairly near our goal, which was a large outcrop of rock on the knob of a mountain top called Charlie’s Bunion.  We were wrong.  We began a fairly fast descent back down to 5,500 feet over another 1.5 miles.  I realized that going downhill so fast was just as difficult as the climb, but for different reasons.  On the climb my legs were tired from stepping up and up and up.  My calves and quads were feeling the burn.  On the downward slope my legs felt better, but not my feet and knees hurt.  The angle of the slope made my feet slide into the front end of the inside of my tennis shoes.  My toes were hurting and that caused my entire foot to ache.  The change in the angle of my ankles caused extra pressure on my knees.  I was reminded of a talk I had with a runner a week earlier and how people who train for marathons find that training to run downhill is just as important and training to climb hills.  More injuries occur on the downward slopes where we think the hike or run is easier.  In reality, it is equally hard to climb the hill as it is to go down the hill.  But hard in different ways.

We enjoyed Charlie’s Bunion for about 30 minutes.  The views were spectacular.  We met a few other hikers there.  Everyone was resting and eating something.  It was a welcome break.

Most people on this trail never make it to Charlie’s Bunion.  For many it wasn’t their goal in the first place.  They walk in enough to get some beautiful views and walk back out again.  How did I know this?  Because the last mile toward our destination was the roughest, most underused portion of the trail.  It was very narrow and wet and covered over with brush.  I suddenly began quoting “The Road Less Traveled” in my head.  Going all the way to this small bald rock really was making all the difference for me.

Then it was time for the return.

The 2nd half of a long hike can be brutal.  Your body is already tired.  Your muscles are calling you a wimp.  And you know they are right.  And then it hit us.  That fast downward slope that felt so good on some of our leg muscles had just done an about face and was now the steepest part of the mountain to climb.  Our tired legs, breathless lungs, and weary minds stopped often. Yet on we trudged.  This was no place to stop and quit.

After reaching the 6,100 feet level again, we started the 2.5 mile decline into hell.  One thing I learned about hiking started to really become a concrete reality in my head: Take care of your feet.  My feet hurt.  And now my toes were forced back into the front of my shoes.  My knees hated every time we met a stair step that had to be traversed in reverse.

It was on this leg of the journey that I hit “the wall.”  I realized then and there that most of my life can be summed up as a quitter.  If I hit the wall on a treadmill, I just hit stop and go do something else.  I even joked that it might be worth it to fall down and break my leg and just wait to get airlifted to a hospital.  But I kept most of my thoughts of quitting to myself.  I wondered if I was the only one feeling this way.

It was about 1.5 miles away from our car that I realized part of my problem.  I had established the wrong goal from the beginning.  My goal was to get to Charlie’s Bunion.  In reality, my goal should have been to get back to the car.  This became crystal clear as a young man in his early twenties came running down the trail behind us.  Yes, I said running.  He was skipping from rock to rock and jumping over things that jutted out in his way.  We gladly stopped to let him by, but he stopped for a minute with us and asked if any of us had a map of the trail.  You see, he knew there was one particular trail that went off from ours, but he couldn’t remember the name of it.  He wanted to add about 5 miles to his hike that day, and thought that would be a good plan.  Luckily, he wasn’t standing close enough to me to deck him.  But then, I was probably too tired to take the swing anyway.

I love metaphors.  And this hike has given me many to ponder.  Here are a few:

• Make sure you are headed toward the right goal in life.  If you are, the entire journey will be enjoyable.  If not, the journey will hurt every step of the way.
• There is no map that can accurately prepare you for the journey.  Watch those in front of you.  Do what works.  Change what doesn’t.
• Hike your own Hike.  OK, this is not original to me.  One of the guys we met that has hiked for 25 years gave us this quote.  He meant every hiker should wear what they want, hike where they want, carry what they want, and don’t be conformed to what they think a hiker should do.  I translate to be “Live your own life and not someone else’s.”
• It really is all about your mindset.  Your mind is more powerful than your body.  It can sit your body down, or it can pick your body up.  Be determined.  Don’t quit.  Its just pain.
• Travel with a buddy or two.  The Bible makes this point in a couple of ways.  First, if one falls down and he has a partner there is someone to help pick him back up (words of wisdom on a long hike).  Second, anyone can break a cord of just one string.  Some can even break a cord of 2 strings.  But a cord made out of 3 strings is not easily broken.  We all agreed that if we had been alone, we would have turned around before we got to Charlie’s Bunion.
• When you think the journey is over…its not.  Charlie’s Bunion wasn’t the end.  Even making it back to the car wasn’t the end.  I’ve still got more journey today.

What about you?  Do you have a metaphor you would like to share?  Or is there a life lesson from this post that you found and I didn’t mention?  Leave me and the rest of the world a comment!

I read this blog from Cool Cat Teacher with great interest this morning.  She makes valid points about both the upside and the downside to using an e-reader in school.  I suggest you take a look at (but wait until you’re done here please).

Personally, I think the Kindle is a step in the right direction, but will ultimately turn out to be an expensive step that can be avoided.  I understand why the Kindle would sound so good today.  Amazon just announced that for the first time ever e-books outsold hardcover books on their website.

While there will always be a demand for books, there won’t always be a demand for $100 textbooks that wear out or become obsolete faster than districts can cycle back around to get more.  In fact, with Amazon’s newer lower pricing, the Kindle is not cheaper than most textbooks.

Imagine what it would mean for a student to have all of his or her books in one, small, lightweight, easy to carry e-book reader.  The savings in chiropractic care alone should make parents do the dance of joy!

For me, I’m skipping over the Kindle and other e-book readers for a shot at using an iPad or a future, as-yet-unseen competitor that allows kids to do so much more.

Simply putting text in an electronic format is not the answer.  Putting text, images, videos, games, assessments, word processing, spreadsheets, picture and video editing tools, and more into the hands of kids is the answer.  At least for now.  Who knows what it will look like in 5 years.  Or 10. (View a video of how the iPad works here)

What is the drawback to the iPad in education?  Cost.  And Apple does not have a history of lowering costs just to get into the education market.  Why should they?  People are falling all over themselves to get an iPad, an iPhone 4, a Mac Pro, an iPod, and any other device Steve Jobs and company can think up.

What are your thoughts about the future of textbooks?

In an answer to the age-old problem of “Which came first, the chicken or the egg,” I read this week that scientists have finally decided the chicken had to come first.  The chicken creates some type of protein necessary for the egg shell to harden.  So, they concluded, the egg would not have had this protein without first being inside the chicken.  Wow.  Thanks for that.

A larger question, for me at least, emerged this week at our DEN LC Symposium.  I was leading a group discussion on the power and pitfalls of allowing students the unique privilege of using their cell phones in class.  Our group was sharing best practice ideas of how cell phones could be used to create podcasts, produce videos, snap pictures for assignments, respond to questions using text, view video tutorials hosted at iTunes and much more.  It was a great discussion.

Then one of our many STAR educators hit me upside the head with the reality stick.  Lisa Parisi said something to the effect that it sounded like we had discovered this great tool and we were trying to find creative ways to use it.  Instead, she continued, we should be looking at curriculum and standards and developing lesson plans and only then deciding which piece of technology (if any) would best help us and the students in the learning process.

That was a light-bulb-over-the-head moment for me.

This article from the Washington Post helps demonstrate her point.  It discusses the boom in sales for Interactive Whiteboards such as SMART and Promethean.  Our school just purchased a Promethean board and short throw projectors for every classroom.  The article talks of teachers who are using the product with minimal results.

DISCLAIMER: To be fair, those teachers frustrated with the lack of gains using an IWB seem to be those that are just using them as a glorified way to lecture; a new PowerPoint if you will.  Reading the article you will find few who are actually engaging students with the boards.  But I think Lisa’s point is still valid: design the lesson first and choose the technology second.

Teachers are under pressure now to “use those boards” every day in their classes.  This seems reasonable.  After all, schools just spent tens of thousands of dollars purchasing them, installing them, and training teachers to use them.  But what if it isn’t the best tool for the job?  What if you don’t need technology at all?

I teach in a computer lab.  My kids get hands-on computer experience nearly everyday.  Yet, even in that environment there are days when our kids won’t touch a computer.  We want them in circles talking.  We want them manipulating things together on a table top.  Could I put them in a chat room for the discussion?  Sure!  Will I? Well….it depends.

If the goal of the lesson is to get kids to work collaboratively to discuss a particular aspect of a story, or design a math lesson for their peers, or talk about their summer vacation, then no, they don’t need a computer for that.  If, however, the goal is to demonstrate for them the power of collaboration in a Web 2.0 environment where they learn how to discuss these things together at home outside of class, then yes, a chat room or a Google Doc would be perfect.

We are pushed so hard to earn the title of a 21st Century Classroom.  But whether we like it or not, this is the 21st Century.  Every classroom is now a 21st Century Classroom with or without technology.

So. back to my question.

I have to change my paradigm a bit.  The lesson has to come first.  It contains the “protein” that solidifies the reason to use the technology.  Not just any old technology.  The right technology.  Sometimes that’s a computer. Sometimes a phone. Sometimes an iPod. Sometimes an IWB.  And sometimes it is something just as revolutionary in its day: a pencil, a crayon, or a foldable.