December 3, 2011 · 8:45 pm

Snowy Day

The snow cancelled basketball.  The girls stayed in pajamas.  I shoveled the driveway.  It was one of those relaxing snowy Saturdays when you eat too much, we made sugar cookies, and you get the chance to spend serious family time.  We had a great moment at the dinner table where we all were laughing so hard we were crying.

We read stories; a few of us took naps (yes, I was one of them).  But technology allowed us to do some creative things.

My oldest son wrote a song, “There ain’t room for both of us” as a Christmas gift for his grandparents.

He is learning to play the clarinet.  If you remember a past blog (“Miles Davis: So What”) you will recognize the similarities of the beginning of his song.

This day gave my other son the chance to make his first Lego movie, “ARC Troopers: Ambushed”

I helped with technical parts, but he was the director and producer.  He had the script done, a staging map for the Lego men, and ideas for the sound effects.

These projects are not earth shattering, but allowed my sons to pursue things they are interested in or working on.  This day gave us the opportunity to build memories that we can experience for along time.

I can’t wait for the next snow day…

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November 29, 2011 · 10:06 am

Where does the Learning go?

Photo courtesy of Centura student Angelica

What do your students do with their homework once you have handed it back?

Photo courtesy of Centura student Angelica

I battle with this issue even today, in some ways even more now that I do not have a classroom to even display some of the work my students would do.  What do my students do with their homework?  There are times that a worksheet is a great tool for a lesson, and I expect those worksheets to end up in the recycle box.  I might have used them as a note taking activity. Then using the worksheets, have a class discussion.  As a teacher I try to build assignments that intertwine or build on each other.  In the English Composition class, the students wrote two speed essays that are to be building blocks for their persuasive essay.  But are my students already condition to see their school work as disposable, and worse, unimportant?

Photo courtesy of Centura student Angelica

This morning I checked my kids’ homework, the same worksheets they have been doing all year.  My second son has a 100-math problem worksheet; he gets it right every day.  When can he do something else?  My second son also gets a ring of flash cards to study every couple of weeks.  When the unit is over, he hands that ring of cards back in.  Supposedly, never to interact with those words again (there is an app for that).

My second son has been participating in gymnastics this year.  We started him with the beginners, a 45-minute session.  He is a typical boy, knees and elbows always bruised or healing from a scrape.  He jumps, he tumbles, he would live in a jungle gym if he could.  Halfway through the first six-week session the gymnastics teachers asked us if they could move him to the next level.  He had progressed quickly through the basics.  If you have ever coached a sport, this is how it works.

Start with the basics; build on the basics to improve performance and expectations.  The basics are never forgotten; they are reinforced in different ways throughout a practice. Both the coach and the athletes also develop their expectations of performance as skills improve. Then comes game time, the reason for the basics.  The time to express the skills and expectations.  The really interesting part is that no matter if the game was a victory or loss, there will be a practice.  There will be adjustments, basics will be reinforced, and expectations set for the next game.

This morning I checked my second son’s 100-math problem worksheet.  He got it right again…

Photo courtesy of Centura student Angelica

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November 20, 2011 · 11:00 pm

Miles Davis: So What

My oldest son is learning to play the clarinet, and seems to be doing well.  He makes sure he practices every day.  Of course he learned to play a part of the Star Wars theme, which he likes to share every day.

So, I thought I would introduce him to Miles Davis.  To expand his musical interest.  To reveal to him some of the great artists, to show him how incredible music can be.  To show him the deeper part of music.

It didn’t go well.  Not that he didn’t listen with me, but he wasn’t much interested.  I tried to get him to let the music speak to him, to feel the emotion behind it.  He just wanted to be somewhere else.

I was disappointed.  Over the last month I have been sharing movies with the boys that I watched when I was growing up.  Both boys like some of my 80s music.  I thought exposing him to Miles Davis was going to be a great moment.  Why wasn’t it?

I started to wonder about all the times I tried something like this in the classroom.  Sometimes it worked, other lessons failed.  Why?  I just assumed my son would like Miles Davis because he was learning to play an instrument.  My son has no background knowledge about Miles Davis, hasn’t even heard him before.  What did I expect?  That he would just understand how great Miles Davis was.

As an English teacher I have fallen into that same trap, especially with literature.  That my students will just get how awesome a book or poem is.  I don’t want them to miss the opportunity to be moved by the literature, just like I wanted my son to feel the beauty behind Miles Davis’ music.  Ironically, I become the barrier of that moment.  Not in sharing the music, but by being the source of the selection.  And worse, like with my son, not creating an opportunity to spark their interest, or to provide a real foundation to what they will be reading or listening to.

I want to share the great works of this life with my students, with my sons.  But more importantly, I want them to decide what is great on their terms. To search out their own deeper moments.  That is when real learning happens.  And I want to be there, as a dad and as a teacher.

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November 15, 2011 · 9:02 am

Connections

The picture is my youngest daughter with an iPad.  She will turn two in late December.  I recently made folders on the iPad, and with out any instruction, she figured out where her favorite apps were.  She enjoys drawing and animal apps, the ones that make the animal noises.  And yes, we have set her down in front of the iPad when we need a minute or two to finish dinner.  But as soon as I grab a book, or flop down on the floor, she will ignore the iPad to interact with me.  But will that always be the case?

A few weeks ago the boys had their first basketball practice. The whole elementary basketball league met at the high school for this practice.  There were some high school boys helping, and a few other boys that may have been there to help but were goofing around at an open basket.

Two of the boys were on the basketball team and were dressed in practice gear.  The third boy was dressed in jeans and a too-large polo shirt.  They were shooting crazy shots, doing alley-oops, just being teenagers.  Burning off energy and having a fun time.  Honestly, I was watching them with a touch of jealousy as they jumped to see if they could touch the rim.  I remembered those younger days when my friends and I would do the same thing.  Some milestones of adolescence do not change; other aspects seem to be changing.

The three of them were lost in the moment, simply being friends, simply having fun.  Then a cell phone went off.  The boy in the jeans immediately grabbed his phone to send a quick text.  That changed everything, the simplest yet powerful connection of that moment was gone.  One of the boys went off to help a group, the boy in the jeans and the other boy tried to continue to play, but the cell phone was now the most important thing.

Technology had become the focus.  At one point the boy in the jeans was throwing an alley-oop passes to the other one.  The boy had the ball in his hands when his phone went off again.  Ball in one hand, he pulls out the phone to check the text message.  Without even looking at his friend, he simply rolls the basketball toward the basket.  His attention now fully on the phone.  His friend grabbed the ball and walked off.  It saddened me.

I love technology, but this life is about people, about relationships.  Technology allows us even greater opportunities to connect with friends and family.  It gives us a chance to make connects with people we normally would never had been able to before.  But at this time when the definition of Friend is “click accept.”  That a text message on the phone has to be answered right now, no matter what is happening. We need to make the focus on the connection to people, not on the means of making the connection.

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November 1, 2011 · 9:43 am

First Year, Again

The only time I totally lost my cool with a class was my first year of teaching.  I threatened them all with detention.  I even slammed my hand down on my desk.  That first year of teaching is such an eye opening experience.  All theory seems to evaporate in the controlled chaos of everyday life of school.  That year challenges you, makes you dig deep into your creativity, resolve, and meaning of it all.  Thirteen years later I am experience that again.

Instead of standing in front of a class of new students, a clean marker board behind me, walls decorated with motivational posters and first day jitters; I sit at a desk in front of a HD camera, 50 inch TV and students who are attending schools miles away.  I have taught distance-learning classes for the last nine years, but have always had a room full of my own students.  It is not the system that is challenging; it is the loss of any person-to-person contact.  I am purely a teacher on the TV to them.  All theory seems to have disappeared with that little red light on the front of the TV.

This year has challenged me in ways I wasn’t expecting.  In so many ways I am again a first year teacher.  My creativity is challenged in creating lessons that can bridge the technological divide between the students and me.  I am challenged to work through all the bumps in the road, from technology issues, to student apathy. To be honest, some days I feel like a total failure at this and wonder if I am even doing anything worthwhile for the students and my own life.

My own personal struggles got me thinking about the other aspect of my job, working with teachers on integrating technology into their curriculum.  I have had the privilege of already doing a school wide workshop, presenting at Nebraska Distance Learning Association’s conference and helping ESU 10 colleagues with their workshops.  Through all these events, I realized that sometimes when we talk about getting technology into the classrooms and getting teachers to use technology more, we forget that in a small way we are asking them to go back to being a first year teacher.  Obviously it isn’t as extreme as a true first day of school, but it has some of the same challenges.

We are asking them to stand in front of their class as a new teacher.  That is exciting, but it is scary.  Teachers take pride in their lessons, they teach to see their students grow and learn.  Nothing makes a teacher smile more then when a student’s face lights up with understanding.  Even though we know not to take it personally, it hurts when a student says a lesson is stupid, or walks into the class announcing they hate English (the class I teach).

Technology integration asks teachers to go back to that first year, but now they have tools and lessons that have worked for them.  Lessons that have brought their students to that light bulb moment.  We cannot ignore that we ask them to be a first year teacher.  We need to address their fears… but also tap back into that other feeling which all teachers had that very first day as they stood in front of that class, took a deep breath and thought, “I’m ready to make difference in these students’ lives.”

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October 11, 2011 · 9:09 am

Are You Ready?

For all the hours I’ve spent on the road, all the years living in Nebraska and Wyoming, I have never hit a deer or an antelope.  I have had a number of other car accidents, but I’ve always spotted the deer while driving before anything bad could happen. Until this morning…

Right now, it is completely dark for most of my commute.  This morning the moon accompanied me on my drive. I was in between Doniphan and the interstate (as the picture below shows).  Things were going fine, music on, cruise set, and I was checking traffic to decide when to go into the left lane so I could merge onto the interstate.  I just crossed the bridge when the deer appeared.

Image from Google Maps

I was still in the right lane when the deer appeared on the passenger side, just in the fading part of the headlights. Both of us were caught in that eternal second. Because of the light the deer looked like a ghost, faded, almost transparent.  I could see his head snap back and his black eyes widen.  I swear his expression was, “What the….”

I did nothing. Which was the best thing. The deer and I caught up with time. It seemed my car lurched forward to do it, getting ahead of the deer to miss him.  I looked into my review mirror but could not see if he crossed the road or not.

No matter how much we try, we cannot control Life.  We have control of our attitude, or work ethic, and our smile.  But Life, it is like a box of Ping-Pong balls dumped out on a concrete floor.  We will get knocked around, sometimes drastically.  This got me thinking about dictionaries…

As an English teacher I forever get the question, “How do you spell that?”  I would always respond with directions to the bookshelf where the dictionaries sat waiting to be opened.  Even when my students had computers I would get that question.  At a time when answers are sometimes just a click away, why did my students still ask that question?

I think part of the shift we are experiencing, in school and our own lives, must include the ability to react (or know when not to in my case) to Life.  That is a grand statement, but I’m not sure I have had a whole day where something didn’t go wrong.  Where a Ping-Pong ball didn’t knock something off track.  Or a deer run out in front of you.  Are you prepared to react, to adapt?  Are students prepared?

Courtesy of Flickr user Lester Public Library

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September 30, 2011 · 8:39 am

Turning 40 “Life”

Designed with PicLit.com

This morning was a reminder of one of the aspects of life I’ve learned.  It started as one of those mornings. Trash and recycling need to be put out on the curb. Lunches needed to be made.  Diapers to daycare.  Movies to return. My oldest son overslept.  My youngest daughter didn’t want to be put down. It was time for me to start my commute and I was nowhere close to pouring my coffee into my travel mug.

I multi-task, carrying the last of the recycling, diapers under on arm, movies clutched in a few fingers to put in my wife’s car.  Both garage doors opening is an appropriate sound track to the morning, arrrrgrarrrarrr, clunk-clunk.

It is about 6:20 in the morning, dark, and my breath can be seen as the cold tickles my forearms.  It takes three trips to get the trash and recycling to the curb. The constellation Orion is above the southern horizon.  Mars is shining bright toward the east.  Beautiful. I take a few minutes to star gaze (I don’t know why, but stargazing is special for me).

In those few minutes the stars reminded me that life is beautiful.  No matter what is going on in life, “nothing dims these stars.”  I know that life can be hard. I know even in good times there can be a grimy feeling to life. Diamonds can collect filth on them.  But the shine is still there; the diamond will sparkle (like a star) with a little cleaning.

Minutes later as I was getting into my car, my sons came out to get into the minivan.  “Did you guys see the stars?” I asked.  We go out to the drive way and we stargaze together for a minute.  For a moment life hits me, in a single moment I feel the beauty of life so true that it almost crushes my heart.  There I stood with my two sons, in front of our new home, on the driveway that we play basketball.  Life can be hard. I know this. There is pain and disappointment, tragedy that can also crush a heart.

It takes work, it takes time, but no matter how filthy a diamond becomes, it still has its shine. “Nothing dims these stars.”

“Dad, there is a new Clone Wars on tonight!” Both boys head to the minivan chatting excitedly about the show tonight. I smile. Everyone has their own set of stars.  What allows you to know that life is beautiful?

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September 29, 2011 · 11:49 am

Turning 40 “Love”

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The most important lesson I’ve learned was best said in the above quote, “Love is the only rational act.”  At first it seems like a basic feel good quote, but it is deeper than that. Love is the only RATIONAL act. Love has a strong image link to the heart and emotions, but Morrie connected it to our head and thinking.  Put simply Love produces positive results, it works. It makes sense as a founding principal for our lives.

My kids respond to Love better than to me yelling.  The waitress who is having a rough day responds better to an understanding comment from me.  A smile trumps a frown in the classroom.  I feel energized when I am involved in activities I love. Love works.

Living out this idea is not easy with the everyday stress we experience.  But I’ve noticed that a negative reaction may solve a problem right then, but causes more issues later.  While living out Love takes patience and even at times makes the current issue tough to get through, the long-term benefits are positive. It takes real strength, an intentional spirit, and an open heart, but living out the idea of Love makes all the difference. It is the rational thing to do that leads to an emotional filled life.

Bonus, because I love music I made a small playlist of songs that reveal an aspect of this idea. Enjoy.

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September 26, 2011 · 3:51 pm

Collaboration

collaboration |kəˌlabəˈrā sh ən|
noun
1 the action of working with someone to produce or create something

As a distance learning teacher I have had classes from different schools collaborate during a class period.  I’ve used a number of different tools, Scribblar, Today’s Meet, and others. This semester I took an opportunity to see how well students could collaborate, not just across geographical barriers, but also across time barriers.

I teach ESU 10’s TECHS course. I have four class periods for the online sections. Using digital music downloading as a support issue, I divided the whole class into two groups.  Group one’s stance was that digital music should be free.  Group two’s stance was that there should be a price for music.  Side note: whether good or bad, sometimes I throw the students in the deep end to see if they can swim.  The guidelines were simple, as a group you need to produce a Google doc and Google presentation concerning your side of the issue.  Each group had a Scribblar white board to do work on, a Google doc, and presentation that I hosted for them.  They had a total of 5 days to work on it (including the weekend).  Below are the presentations.

Some observations:

1. Group work.  Just like a regular classroom, some students did more work than others (8 out 49 students reported that they barely worked on the document or presentation).  Just like a regular classroom, I had to refocus the groups at times. The interesting point was that working this way was seen as a positive and a negative.  Some quotes from the students.

“We could chat to other people in your group and talk about the assignment.”

“Well, it was hard for everyone in the groups to get on the right page. They were kind of all over the place, but in the end we did good.”

2. Quality: I feel for the open-ended way that I handled the assignment the students did a solid job.  I understand that the class is in a unique situation, a teacher they see only on the TV.  My first year teaching only from the TV, combined with my somewhat nontraditional way of teaching, probably made the students frustrated.  A student response, “It really didn’t have anything to do with what I thought this class was about.”

3. The Power of Technology.  From a student, “It’s cool how we could all work together as a group and share our ideas and opinions with each other.”  During class I would be having discussions with the students on the whiteboard (they talk more to me in text form then verbally). I remember one discussion that centered around the cost of a song verses the cost of a bottle of pop.  When on task, the students did a great job researching and holding interesting discussions with each other and me during the class period.  But there is always the negative side of this type of communication, “While working on the website with other schools it was hard to add info because so many people tried adding something to it at once.”  And the personal differences; a response from one student to the question about what negative aspect of the assignment they noticed, “the fighting.”

Final thoughts: As in any classroom, some students jumped into the assignment, others complained, some worked through the frustration, others just gave up.  The funny thing about the assignment was how much it felt just like a regular classroom.  I had the same frustrations as a teacher.  Student apathy, “why do we have to do this” attitude, and honestly, in this case, the technology only seemed to enhance the negative for me.  But I think showing how technology can connect us to opportunities to collaborate was worth the time.  When we truly connect who knows what we can create…

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September 21, 2011 · 11:10 am

Turning 40 “The Past”

“Today is the moment when your past and future meet.”

I have been struggling with how to articulate this idea with out writing some deep philosophy book.  Simply stated, what I’ve learned is that our past is important, but we don’t handle its power well.

On the extreme edges we either ignore it or let it cripple us.  Somewhere in the middle is where we can use it to improve today and build for tomorrow.  Our past affects us, even if we don’t always recognize it.

The crazy part is it doesn’t matter if the past was 10 years or 10 minutes ago.  Over the years I’ve seen how the past affects my students.  I’ve seen how the drama of the last class took 10 minutes for them to get focused, to the way a movie we watched in class brought back the pain of the loss of a parent.

I have been guilty of not seeing my students fully. Wondering why they just did that?  Or frustrated with their work ethic.  I am guilty of not considering their past and how it might play a role in their behavior.  To use my English teacher vocabulary, we all are round dynamic characters in this life.  We all have a past, we all have dreams and goals we want to achieve. And today is the moment when our past and future meet. If we are aware of this I think we can tackle issues with a clearer objective.  If we can help our students see that, maybe we can help them build a better future.

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