Confessions and getting moving

I have a confession to make...this is 16 year in the making. When I was 24 and teaching down in Bloomington, Illinois, I had a bout of food poisoning. It was 4 days of agony and I was stuck and home and missing work. One morning at 6 a.m., after I dropped off my lesson plans, I wandered into a store quickly and was looking for a small diversion from my gastronomical torture. I saw the blue Pokemon game for Gameboy. I knew that I still had my Gameboy and it was in working order. After getting over my initial embarrassment of being 24 years old, I figured no one else was around, either in the store or my apartment, and I purchased a child's game.

It only took a few ticks of the clock and I was hooked playing it. I enjoyed the questing nature of the game and being able to wander around digitally and encounter all kinds of new beasts and watching them grow, battle, and evolve. At the time, I was wondering if I could use Pokemon as method of helping students understand evolution in my biology class. (I subsequently decided against that instructional strategy because it was a poor illustration at best as an attempt to get students to let go of their preconceived notions of evolution already).

Well, I feel better getting that off my chest. Why, now, do I choose to confess my embarrassment from 16 years ago? You guessed it, because of the week long buzz on the newest app to go viral, Pokemon Go.

I have recently changed schools and districts. In my previous district, I had a great cohort of people and we would walk on the track together to get moving and to get healthier. We were able to do this for about 5 weeks, between the time the students were let out of school and when I moved to my new district. Now that I am in my new position, it is a little harder to find time and a group to walk and get moving again. Plus, I am learning a new staff, schedule, and working on a ton of things at once. It is a great opportunity, but I did want to keep up my moving and not being in a seated position so much.

So, I did what 10 million other people did and downloaded the app. My wife ridiculed me and said, you are going to let the kids play that, right? I replied, sure...sure I would. Here is what I have noticed in my short time with the game:

• I have actually had a desire to get up, even when tired, to walk around the neighborhood. Granted, it is with my phone in my hand, but it would be anyway to listen to music or look at other things if I am walking alone.
• I have noticed groups of children, young adults, and full grown adults, walking around in groups, outside. And yes, there are times when faces are buried in phones, but most of the people written in groups are running/walking together, talking, sharing their experiences, smiling, and laughing.
• I can understand how people might get hurt playing this game, because I walked into a low hanging branch, so watch out... :)
• Kids have their faces glued to their screens and we, as educators, should help use this fact to engage students in all forms of learning.

Based on the above observations, schools need to find a way to incorporate this crazed idea into the physical education programs. I had this thought when I downloaded the app and started playing, and then I looked for other people who had the same idea. In the past 4 days, there  have been almost 20 tweets using #physed and #PokemonGo in the tweet. (See them for yourself) This is a growing idea and we should be capitalizing on it.

Some thoughts I have on this and how to use it:

• If there is a PokeStop close to your school, have PE teachers purchase a lure and activate it and tell the kids to catch as many Pokemon as they can. Students need to run to the stop and then run back after catching a Pokemon. Make it like s shuttle run. Students can collect data on their run and earn "points" for Pokemon caught and bonus points for new Pokemon caught. Students would need to record their data and try to improve their results day-to-day.
• Have students run/walk around the track/football or soccer field/campus to search for Pokemon. Based on the Pokemon they catch, they must do the following:
• Grass-type = 10 jumping jacks
• Water-type = 10 sit-ups
• Electric-type = 10 push-ups
• Bug-type = 10 squats
• Flying-type = 30 second high knee run in place
• Fire-type = 5 burpees
• Any other = 10 leg lifts
• While I have not looked at it yet, there is even someone who wrote something else to engage the students in their physical activity. 

We have a nation of children who are dangerously sedentary. We need to engage students in life-long physical activities. Ones that will help students, and even adults like me, find enjoyment in just getting out and going for a walk. To quote Rob Goodman, "Any game that gets people off their bums and into the real world for physical activity is a success in my eyes." (Posted by @rob_goodman on Twitter, 7/14/2016)

Do you have other ideas? Share them in the comments!

A needed change of perspective

I was digging through the piles on my desk (aka my filing system) and came across resources that I received when I went to a training with the PBIS network on working out a Functional Behavior Analysis. The basis of the FBA is founded in understanding the ABC of the student behavior that we would like to see corrected.

• A = Antecedent. This is what happens before the behavior occurs.
• B = Behavior. This is the "problem" behavior that we would like to eventually see changed.
• C = Consequence. This is what happens as a result of the behavior.

One more important piece is the Function, which is the "why" the student might exhibit this behavior. Most likely the function is avoidance/escape of something in the class. For more information on an FBA you can look here.

One of the things I remember most vividly from the training is that while we will have a desired behavior in mind, it will be a long time before we can get the student to modify their problem behavior to the desired behavior. The fact is that we need to help the student modify the problem behavior to an alternate behavior that still accomplishes their function. Over time, and a lot of patience, we can work with the classroom settings and the student to attempt to change the antecedent to make the problem behavior irrelevant and make the consequences change to make the problem behavior ineffective. Throughout this entire process, we work with the student to come to their own realization that the desired behavior is more favorable than the problem behavior.

As I stumbled across this resource again, it got me thinking. Throughout the FBA process, we are attempting to modify behavior, but supporting the student throughout the entire process. When we make attempts to change behavior, we might tend to focus on increasing the consequences and making them increasingly dire in an attempt to "threaten" the student into compliance. A traditional approach does not take into account the function or why the student is performing this behavior. The traditional approach tends to focus on trying to move a student to a desired behavior by focusing on the student's deficit.

What struck me with this newer (at least to me) approach to helping student arrive at a desired behavior is that this approach actually focuses on potential student strengths. If we want students to be successful, we need to help them see how they are growing and changing in positive ways. We need to have these check-in conversations with students to help them recognize that they are making progress on their long journey in education. It is often difficult to for students to see the finish line, but teachers and students might be ignoring the distance from the starting line that students have traveled.

What we do in a day

Today was quite a day for a friend of mine.

Before I get into the events of the day, I think that the general public needs to understand that students are dealing with far more emotional issues than ever before. With the advent of social media, there is no break from potential torment from bullies, online trolls, or even an escape from the minor things that bother us from day to day. Looking at the recent leaked photos of certain female celebrities, parents, students, and educators will hopefully begin to learn that the Internet is not anonymous, and to quote The Social Network, "The Internet is written in ink".

In the past, if a mean, nasty note was written about you, you could grab the note and physically destroy it in a cathartic purge. The emotional injury was still there, but at least the note could not be shared anymore. Today with shares, likes, re tweets, etc. there is practically no escape. This should lead us to teach more about about digital citizenship and how to leverage social media and digital communication as a tool for personal and professional growth, but as educators, we are getting bogged down in the muck of new standards, new assessments that are high stakes for educators, but no one else, and the barrage of comments from a part of the public that think because they went to school, they know how schools should run.

If it were as simple as closing the door, discussing the content to which the educator felt a strong enough connection to earn a degree, and even being entertaining while doing it, many of the perceived issues of what is wrong with school would be finished. But it is never that easy and his day may illustrate why.

The day started as any other, greeting students, trying to make sure that IDs are worn, pants are pulled up (no sagging), and that students got to class on time. My friend began looking at his schedule for classroom observations, excitedly got to poke his head in some classrooms to see what teachers and kids were doing, and then he got a call from the nurse.

They had a student go into labor here at school. The student's mother did not have working transportation and was doing her best to get to the school ASAP. In speaking with the nurse and the student, they were able to arrange a local police officer to pick the mother up and bring her to school. From there, the ambulance was called and both mother and mother-to-be went to the hospital in a safe and cared for manner.

From there, he went to the Principal's office to discuss students with known gang affiliations, pictures of them with weapons, and trying to figure out how to keep the school safe and still find a way for these students to earn credits in classes when as a 3rd year high school student, some of them only had 1 credit to their transcript.

After some planning, he did some follow up on a student who received a txt on Friday that her mother was in danger of doing harm to herself. Checking in on the student while still trying provide her and her siblings at the school support without stirring the pot when things, thankfully, had calmed down.

In the middle of this, he ran into a student who has sought some extra support to help him make better choices from previous school years. My friend ran into him as he was being escorted out of a class by the police liaison for a repeat of the poor choices he has been known to make.

He then got a call from a teacher that she needed to speak with him about a student who told her some alarming things, which necessitated a call to DCFS and the support of the guidance counselor and social worker to ensure a safe environment for that night for this student. While they were working he did some follow-up from Friday about a student who was being bullied and ensuring that the appropriate steps were being taken.

After all of that, he got another phone call to go back to the nurse's office. A student had received a txt that there was a family emergency. This student's mother had known cardiac issues and thought that the emergency dealt with her. Instead, the student was able to speak with his mother, but was told that his uncle, with whom he was very close, had passed away this morning. The student was distraught and sought the support of the nurse and his football coach.

Birth, gangs, attempted suicide, bullying, abuse, and death. And these are the instances that became somewhat public and sought the assistance of professionals in the building. What about those who remained silent?

It was a tough day, but reminded him that we are here to support the students and to help them make their goals into reality. Relationships matter and we, as educators, need to know that there are many things going on in the lives of our students that might prevent them from completing that homework assignment. Sometimes a re-focus of perspective is needed from time to time.

What do I wish that I had known?

The counseling office is one of the departments I have the honor of overseeing. I am willing to admin that, when I was in the classroom as a teach, I did not really understand what the counselors did. I did not utilize my guidance counselor much when I was in high school, so I did not realize the resource that was available to me. Counselors are educators who go through extensive training to do exactly what their name says: counsel. Whether it is about the courses to take for the next school year, where to apply to college, dealing with difficult emotional issues, bullying, troubles at home, teen pregnancy, eating disorders...pretty much anything there has been an after school special about, counselors are on the front line. They are a wonderful resource and connecting point to a multitude of additional resources. That is one thing I wish I had know when I was in high school, or as a teacher.

We have had college nights in the past, but typically it was in January and for seniors in high school. By that point, college applications and financial aid forms should have already been completed and it makes the usefulness of the evening moot for most parents and students. The counselors came to me with an idea...have a college night much earlier in the year...and invite parents of juniors to attend as well. I told them to run with it. They came up with the sessions, the speakers, the plan, and the logistics for the entire evening. In fact, I am writing this post as the parents and students are in one of the sessions. To improve things, we have an evaluation form for the parents and students to complete so we can make sure that future nights will be designed to better fit the needs and desires of the our families.

I thought it was fantastic that the counselors wanted to get families involved earlier in the process and not wait until the student was in 12th grade to begin thinking about college. I want to take it a step further.When is the time that students should being thinking about their post-high school plans? As a parent, I think that it should begin before the child is conceived, but if we start them thinking about specifics when they are freshman, that can be very useful. There is a slogan being kicked around the have a College 101 night. I say make it College and Career 101and let's go with it.

College and Career 101 can be for the 9th grade students and parents. Further events in the year can be named College and Career 102, 103, etc. For our 10th grade students and parents, we advance to College and Career 201; 11th graders will get College and Career 301; 12th graders get College and Career 401. Which brings me to the title of the post...What do I wish that I had known?

This is the question I want to pose to our parents and our students who have gone through this series of events this year. Their wishes for information will help us design the 9-12 College and Career preparation curriculum. I want to include the student voices to help guide our underclassmen through this high school process to help them be the best prepared for whatever their post-secondary plans may hold.

What do you wish you had known?

Don't live in the 10 seconds

Welcome back to another school year. I am sure that there have been changes all over the place. Change can be a wonderful thing, but very difficult to accept and deal with in the moment. We become very comfortable with the status quo, sometimes even when we know there are things that can be improved.

For students, change occurs all of the time causing them to have to continually adapt to new situations. Over the summer, when discussing how to help students express themselves better, about their academic, emotion, physical, psychological, etc. needs, a teacher told me that kids today tend to "live in the 10 seconds". They react before they think about the larger picture, understand the root of the issue, what is the real cause, and what some of the effective solutions could be. When this happens, sometimes students will yell and scream, hit, withdraw from communicating, and other non-effective actions to help remedy the issue. If we, as educators, accept that we must educate the whole child, then we must educate them on social emotional needs, conflict resolution, goal setting and achieving, in addition to their academic needs. But we know this...

As we open the school year, we, the adults, need to keep the big picture in perspective. Teachers might not like having to switch classrooms, when their planning period is, classes are full, teaching assignments change, etc. With the excitement and hiccups that always accompany the opening of school, we need to NOT live in the 10 seconds. We need to look at the larger picture to solve the immediate issues and once things have settled down and reached equilibrium, then we need to reflect on the system and look for improvement. Changes that happen will disrupt equilibrium and that is uncomfortable. Adults need to discern the difference between the discomfort of change and an actual problem. If it is discomfort, give it a chance to work and know that reflection and evaluation will occur to make improvements. If it is an actual problem, we need to develop a solution and then monitor if that is the best scenario for the big picture.

As leaders, we need to exercise our listening abilities to help teachers discern those differences and identify them ourselves. We need to effectively communicate with teachers about the big picture and prioritizing how issues will be handled.

Change is never easy. But when the need for change is communicated, team members listen to one another, and the change is understood to help the system improve, it can be an easier pill to swallow and might allow people to see the 11th second and beyond.

Have a great start to the year!

Change your perspective

I just got back from a training seminar on how to be a support coach for the Rising Star program. For those unaware, Rising Star is the new school improvement accountability system for the state of Illinois. The whole point of the Rising Star system is for schools and districts to look at the past and current conditions of their systems in order to make appropriate changes (backed by research) to positively impact student achievement. During this training, we discussed monitoring and sustainability of programs.

Part of the emphasis of the training is to look at the programs and steps of implementation and ask the harder questions about what is not working and why. Part of the challenge to making these changes is the dreaded phrase of "we have always done it this way". My quick response would be "Look where that got you", but that is not supportive to the change process. The entire point of Rising Star is to make changes in our past practices to make vast improvements in our schools.

Whenever we are looking to do something different, why do we often start at what we currently do. We must have made the choices to our current location because they seemed to be the best option at the time. (Sometimes it is a best option for a teacher and not necessarily the students, but that is a different conversation). If that is the case, when we look at the choices to do something different, how would we ever arrive at a different conclusion?

Sometimes it takes standing on your head or flipping your frame of reference. Case in point can be seen here:

Deeper thinking can happen when the status quo is challenged and we look for new perspectives. How's this for a change in perspective: If we want students to be more engaged in the learning process, ask them about their passions! Students can provide the adults with all sorts of ways they want to learn and it will be authentic for them. (And, teachers will get more engaged because they won't be able to pass out the same worksheet they have done for the past umpteen years...)

Deeper thinking can be activated and even framed with aspects of the common core and the next generation science standards. We learn science by doing, not by memorizing! We need to have the credo in our classes and schools that FAIL means First Attempt In Learning!

Go back to basics and when you look at the path you used to take, when you took that right before, this time, jump off of the path and go exploring!

Here are some other ways to consider flipping: http://misterabrams.blogspot.com/2012/10/flip-ordinary.html

Tweet Chats

Last night was the first Illinois Ed Chat. If you are interested, they are scheduled to be Monday nights at 8 pm CST. You can see the Storify transcript below.

The topic of the chat was the 5Essentials survey that is being given to schools in Illinois for teachers, students, and parents to provide feedback on their preceptions and experiences of their school. The survey is meant to be anonymous in order to get more honest and open feedback. While there was much discussion about the reporting of the data, what is will be used for, etc, there were two things that kept me thinking about this ed chat.

First was a comment by Ryan Bretag that questioned how an instrument designed for urban school settings would be appropriately applied to schools not in an urban setting. This is a question that never occurred to me because, although my school is technically in a suburb, we can easily be considered an urban setting. Ryan's school district is in one of the most affluent areas in the Northern Suburbs and, while there can be commonalities, have some very different issues than a school in an urban setting. His question is a valid one because of the original design of this instrument. He was not indicating that the instrument would be ineffective. The parts of the survey relating to rigorous curriculum, teacher collaboration, parent involvement, etc. are applicable to all schools.

The other thing that kept me thinking was from someone new to tweetchats. Rob Raphael is a teacher in Southern Illinois and wanted to learn more about the survey and how it will be used to help students. (For this reason alone, he is someone that should be followed on Twitter.) Unfortunately for Rob, this was not the main focus of the chat and he wrote a blog that described his disappointment. He then followed up that post with another indicating what he was looking for and what he wanted the chat to be. He provided some interesting points from a classroom perspective in his blog post that administrators can easily lose sight of. Hopefully, with reminders like his, I will not lose that classroom focus.

Long story short, continue to participate and communicate. As I told Rob, we can learn more from people with whom we disagree than a room full of "yes"-ers.

Learning from tragedy

Friday, December 14th is now added to a growing list of atrocities that have occurred in schools due to gross acts of violence. Unfortunately, I cannot categories this as a random act of violence because as more details come out, the more it is discovered that there were big flashing neon signs pointing to help that was needed by the person who committed this heinous act.

Patrick Larkin posted "Back to School With New Worries, But the Same Plan" with a link to his blog post on this tragedy. It is a very thoughtful post about how he is dealing with this event, both with his children and the students in his care. He provides two key quotes about how parents and educators deal can help young people deal with the aftermath of this event. I will not provide spoilers, you will just have to read his post.

A friend of mine on Facebook posted that no child should have to worry if their school is safe or not...we need safe schools. While I understand his intent, the implications of his post may go off course. Our schools are safe.

Reactionaries over the weekend were stating that we need more armed security in schools to even the extreme that teachers should be carrying weapons. I have worked in schools with armed security forces (off-duty police) who assist the school as a part of a police liaison program. The goal of the police liaison is not to have a cop on duty with a gun, but to provide a positive interaction between students, community members, and the police to help build relationships. We had questioned whether we should install metal detectors at the entrances and use them at all home sporting events. We have, thankfully, not installed them because of the potential change in climate that it would create. As a school and district, we wanted to focus on creating a culture and climate of learning and safety. Added to that, we have spent a large amount of time and effort in developing policies and procedures to follow in the event of a crisis.

I want to comment on the title of his blog post: New worries, but the same plan. When we examine the events and our own crisis plans and drills, we find that the school did what they could to protect their staff and students. After this event, another plan goes into effect to help counsel the students and staff and provide grief support. The plan is to provide a quality educational environment that supports the academic and Social/Emotional learning for students. His title is accurate, the same plan in in place because it was not the plan that failed.

As an Associate Principal, I had the opportunity to attend an administrator academy on security and loss prevention that was put on by Paul Timm from Reta Security. Paul discussed how most people think of loss prevention as insurance and recovering tangible items that might be stolen. The most important items found in schools are the students. The crisis plan that goes into effect now for the students and staff for Newtown will help protect those students from the emotional damage.

Using Google Forms to provide quick student feedback

What is one of the biggest challenges in teaching today? I would argue that student engagement could be on possible answer to this question. Possible reason for this is that when we provide students the chance to demonstrate what they know/have learned, the feedback that they receive is slow and does not provide the opportunity to learn from their mistakes.

Regardless of students being able to define RPG, LARP, or MMORPG, this is a generation of gamers. Being a gamer today does not mean that you are put on a costume or carry a 20-sided die in your pocket to assist in your daily decision making. With the advent of social networks, there are multiple opportunities for students, both young and old, to participate in a form of learning or entertainment that provides the user with immediate feedback, progress check points, and chances to experiment with choices and then deal with the consequences.

There have been a flurry of articles discussing if homework has outgrown is usefulness. Recently, there was even an article in the Des Moines Register about a teacher providing her students with quests to complete.

Students want to demonstrate what they have learned and how they can improve if they have made some mistakes. Students also want rapid, if not immediate feedback so they can accomplish the former.

To assist with this challenge, you can use a feature of Google Docs to bring a traditional assessment measure closer to the 21st century. I am assuming that you are familiar with Google Forms. If not, you can view the video from Google here:

 

 

While google forms can help with the data collection for an assessment, there is the still the issue of how to provide feedback quickly.

 

Here is one option: (This is strictly a self-grader)

 

 

 

By utilizing some relatively simple spreadsheet formulas, you can have the Google Form grade the answers once they have been submitted.

 

The grading formula is seen below.

=(IF(B2=$B$2,1,0)+IF(C2=$C$2,1,0)+IF(D2=$D$2,1,0)+IF(E2=$E$2,1,0))

 

What you will need to do is to develop your quiz in the Google docs and then enter the answer key as the first entry in the spreadsheet. When you look at the spreadsheet you will see the the questions/column headers are in the first row. Essentially, what the formula is telling the spreadsheet to do is if the entry in cell B2 is the same as $B$2, then give it a score of 1, if not, a score of 0. Now, the difference between B2 and $B$2 is that when you drag this formula down the spreadsheet for every entry, the B2 will change to B3, B4, B5, etc for each subsequent entry; the $ in front of the cell letter and number makes it static, and will not change with a dragging of the formula. (The same is try for C, D, and E). If you have more than 4 items, just extend the formula accordingly

 

Here is another option: (Self-grader with the ability to send results to the student)

 

 

The key to this method is a script that was originally written by Romain Vialard and modified by Dr. Henry Theile. The script can be found here.

 

In the above link, you can see the instructions on how to apply the script to your form and even make modifications to alter how the report is sent (i.e. correct answers only vs hints to improve). You do NOT have to be a programmer to apply these and begin providing students with faster feedback as we transition to more authentic assessments. Those will be discussed in later posts.