30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 30

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

And this is the last day!

Day 30
What would you do (as a teacher) if you weren’t afraid?

Wow, this question seems to directly respond to my last post, where I explain how I've changed in the last 7 years of teaching: 

How comfortable am I in sharing who I really am?  Being a teacher is a weird thing.  In grad school they told us that one teacher got fired because she was tagged on facebook drinking a glass of red wine in a photo from her trip to France.

What?

I know a few teachers who divide themselves between their school personae and their personal lives.  I did that for awhile when I was singing in a band.  Is this the real life?  Is this just fantasy?

My biggest change was overcoming this fear.  How did I know I'd beat it?  Suddenly I felt free to teach what really mattered to me, and I stepped back one day and thought, "Whoa, where'd all this curriculum come from?  Why wasn't I doing this earlier?"

I was afraid to do something that hadn't been done in the middle school before, and I was mostly afraid of the parents' reactions.  I found out all I had to do was communicate it ahead of time.

• I led the school in a 360 degree assessment of diversity and inclusivity.  The school cannot grow unless it is always reflecting on the strength of its own community.

• My childhood fascination with designing my own video games, which was hardly possible for a 12 year old in 1991, is now not only possible, but immediately gratifying!  GameSalad, Gamemaker Lite, Pixel Press Floors, Unity, Source Filmmaker, and more.  This is an excellent way for students to learn computer programming and digital storytelling.  I unpacked one of my storage boxes from childhood and brought it to one of my classroom cabinets:

• Several education futurists praise Minecraft's educational potential.  I took the risk last week and offered a project to a couple students to create a scale model of the school campus in Minecraft, which will be linked via Aurasma's GPS functionality to offer the option of jumping between the real world and the 8th-grade-student-generated minecraft world with a few swipes of a mobile device's touchscreen.  I wasn't quite sure about it - I didn't trust the students fully - but I saw the progress yesterday, and OMG.  The creative ways they built the soccer field goals!!  The mathematical ratios they used to determine scale!  When I saw the gym, I got a little vertigo walking down the hall and into the locker room of an incredibly accurate architectural rendering.  At the time, they were building a machine that allowed the bleachers to open and collapse at the push of a button.  Engineering!

• I'm leading a social media safety class that asks the question, "How can social media be used safely to help me reach my goals and dreams?" I was inspired by my friends who have successfully used crowd sourcing sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo to do amazing things like record an album or invent a 3D printer that prints in metal.  I'm able to present this to 11-year old kids, who aren't even supposed to be using social media yet.  They can be guided by trusted adults on safe usage BEFORE THEY EVEN SIGN UP!  Imagine that! (And many are already using it anyway - social apps are kind of the biggest deal right now)

• Projection mapping for the school plays?  Didn't know how to do it but there's FREE SOFTWARE to make it happen!  And tutorials on youtube!

We live in a beautiful world, and I am no longer afraid to share it in my classroom.

Also: 30 DAY BLOGGING CHALLENGE COMPLETED!  Achievement get!

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 29

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 29
How have you changed as an educator since you first started?

This is a great question!

With teaching, I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that there are a lot of "starts" - 

• I started teaching when I taught evening technical classes at an arts organization in Seattle.
• I started teaching when I began to substitute teach.
• I started teaching when I began to tutor in high school.
• I started teaching when my student teaching began.
• I started teaching when I was hired to teach middle school art.

All of these were different jobs, and they required some of the same skills, but the contexts were so different that each one has been its own universe of professional expectations and growth.

Navigating the teaching profession itself is a process, and it takes years to find one's place.

When I started, I was really focused on fitting in with my colleagues.  Do they know and accept me for who I am?

How comfortable am I in sharing who I really am?  Being a teacher is a weird thing.  In grad school they told us that one teacher got fired because she was tagged on facebook drinking a glass of red wine in a photo from her trip to France. 

What?

I know a few teachers who divide themselves between their school personae and their personal lives.  I did that for awhile when I was singing in a band.  Is this the real life?  Is this just fantasy?

I was caught in that landslide for years.  Perhaps it can be summed up by calling it a crisis of priorities.

I'm happy to be able to look back and say I've gotten past these questions.  The double life thing is exhausting.  I discovered a really comfortable place where I can be myself with my colleagues, my students, their parents, my parents, my friends, everybody.  I discovered that my career is more rewarding than the personal pursuits that were splitting me down the middle.  I still perform and record music, but now it all fits together nicely.

Will this process begin anew if I take another position at another school?  Or is this a rite of passage that teachers need only endure once in their career?

Any way the wind blows...

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 28

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 28

Respond: Should technology drive curriculum, or vice versa?

I don't think it's like that.  The student should drive both.  What is the reality of technology use in the world that our students are growing up in?  I pay attention to what technology they're using outside the classroom.  My middle schoolers are using their parents' smartphones, their own ipods, xbox, google docs, online gaming, instagram, snapchat, skype...

Next step, teach with those technologies in the classroom.  And teach how to use them responsibly, with health and safety in mind.  The class content vehicle is student-driven.  Relevance is key.  For Media Arts, I'm not going to ask my school to invest in a bunch of cameras when there are cameras on the devices in their lockers not being used.  #BYOD (bring your own device)

Curriculum also looks at the student's world.  Media Arts in general ought to teach kids about voice, mass communication, storytelling, media literacy, collaboration / teamwork, project management, and how to take a good photo.  Now - when I apply this to instagram, for example, I need to consider what the student's needs, desires and definitions of success are for that medium.  The curriculum is shaped to the student's real world experiences.

Technology has been a hot topic in education for a long time, and for obvious reasons.  Computers have ruled the realm of knowledge acquisition and application since their invention, gaining ground in this arena year after year at a dramatic rate.  Ever since the day in 1983 when all those classrooms got Apple IIe computers, technology has been an integral part of education.  Curriculum of course has been around a whole lot longer, but from our students' perspective, there's no priority between the two.

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 27

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 27
What role do weekends and holidays play in your teaching?

Haha I'm here in my classroom on this Saturday morning!  I guess that says it all.

I was just having this chat with my S.O., also a teacher.  We were going in to work today and talking about how we were going in to work on a Saturday.  We love it.  We love our jobs, and we only love our jobs if we're on top of our responsibilities AND able to pursue our pet projects.  These help us grow as professionals and as people.

As a montessori teacher, her pet project is literally to bring a pet into the classroom.  She already has fish, but she wants something furry and cuddly.  Her students would love that, and they'd learn so much from taking care of a mammal.  Most of her evenings this week were spent researching the possibilities of welcoming a rabbit or a guinea pig into the school community.

Prep time does not afford us the peace of mind, the space for research and experimentation, or the hours to devote to these projects, so we make that time for ourselves.  This is how we learn, this is how we grow.

Saturday!

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 26

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 26
What are your three favorite go-to sites for help/tips/resources in your teaching?

• Right before I started writing this I was watching a youtube tutorial for the iPad version of iMovie.  I needed to figure out how to add special graphics related to the themes that you can add to your project.  I am endlessly grateful for video tutorials on youtube!

• All through my 3D printing summer camp this year I used TinkerCAD, which kind of blew me away. Web utilities these days are getting REALLY powerful and REALLY easy to use.

• I'm still reeling from this notion that George Lucas sold Star Wars and donated it to education, in part creating Edutopia.  It's particularly personal to me that my lifelong favorite film series was sold to benefit my chosen lifelong career path.  If its origin story were different, Edutopia would still be one of my favorite resources.  I love how linked it is to the education community on Twitter, and how inviting it is for educators to publish on the site.  Today's headline about educating 20th century parents to see the benefit of 21st century education is extremely relevant to my everyday challenges as a teacher

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 25

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 25
The ideal collaboration between students–what would it look like?

One ideal collaboration in Media Arts happens every year between the 7th grade filmmakers in my class and the poets of 6th grade.

There's a lot going on in this collaboration:

Cross-grade creative partnership!
Adapting a poem into a film = abstract thinking!
Celebrating the amalgamation by screening it at assembly!

These projects make the best middle school films.  Two of the three biggest award winners in class history were adapted from 6th grade poems.

Here's my favorite one:

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 24

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 24
Which learning trend captures your attention the most, and why? (Mobile learning, project-based learning, game-based learning, etc.)

The one that's got me fired up right now is Design Thinking.  The way I see it, it's project-based learning in its purest form.

I'm facilitating Design Thinking in a small team of 5 middle schoolers who signed up to build an Identity Booth.

Ever heard a StoryCorps recording?  These 5 students are going to create something like that!

Right now, my school is in the process of learning about / reflecting on Identity.

The questions students, employees, and families are thinking about this year:

• What is identity?
• How is identity developed?
• How does my understanding of identity development support my role in our school?

As a teacher, I'm merely guiding students into the design thinking process:

What I love about this process is that it's student-driven from the very beginning.

1. Students need to develop a sense of empathy for their creation's ideal end user. 
2. Next, they need to define their focus.
3. Brainstorming!
4. Creating the first prototype.
5. Testing it out - a lot!

The cycle repeats itself again and again until the product has achieved the designers' goals.

More info as this project unfolds!

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 23

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 23
Write about one way that you “meaningfully” involve the community in the learning in your classroom. If you don’t yet do so, discuss one way you could get started.

I can't wait to make this upcoming project a reality:

There's a map in the main office of our school that parents, visitors, and other community members can see every day.  It labels the names of all of our buildings, fields, gardens, memorials, and even works of art.

My 7th & 8th grade media arts classes are teaming up with 6th grade history to complete a real-world map that interacts digitally with mobile devices.

When you hover the device over an item on the map, a movie begins to play on the device's screen that informs the viewer about that part of the map with photos, video, audio and text.  It creates an immersive experience that seamlessly blends online and real-world resources.

We're planning on designating an iPad to live in the main office for visitors to use and experience this collaborative, community piece.

The iPad software used to accomplish this is called Aurasma.

One excellent bonus feature to this piece is that the movies can be tagged to GPS coordinates.  This means that any community member walking around campus can use Aurasma to learn more about their surroundings, wherever they are, thanks to this project our 6th, 7th, and 8th graders are collaborating on to produce.

Can't wait til it's up and running!

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 22

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 22
What does your PLN look like, and what does it do for your teaching?

I got into developing my PLN last year when I heard Will Richardson speak at my school.  Someone asked him about joining Twitter, and he said it's the most valuable professional development he's ever encountered.  It's also free!

I agree with Mr. Richardson.  My personal learning network is the folks I follow and who follow me on Twitter, my friends and family on Facebook, my colleagues where I teach, my LinkedIn contacts, and my cohort & instructors from grad school.

These folks are always expanding my horizons.  Sometimes it's a great article someone posts about my content area.  Sometimes I ask a question, like, "Is there an app for easy voice recording and storytelling?"  My new favorite app, Adobe Voice, came to me in the form of an answer to that question from @actionhero.  Score!

This 30-Day Blog Challenge in and of itself expands my PLN.  I get to know more like-minded folks interested in reflective teaching, and I've already made some great connections and learned a lot from fellow bloggers!

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 21

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 21
Do you have other hobbies/interests that you bring into your classroom teaching? Explain. 

I bring karaoke to my classroom, sometimes.

Here's a BBC story I'm in about it, actually

Playlist of music ideas for upcoming school play, all Creative Commons

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 20

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 20
How do you curate student work – or help them do it themselves?

I curate, the students curate, it's a pretty even mix.

Their work is usually in the form of .mov files, which are so handy to upload to our school's YouTube channel!

The YouTube channel has gotten too cluttered, and the ads started to become too distracting, so we just recently switched over to Vimeo accounts for each class and division.

I also ask students to present their work at middle school assembly.  I secure a block of time (about 15-20 min), and each filmmaking team presents their movie by talking about the assignment and their goals for the piece.  It's kind of a big deal to stand up in front of all of your peers and share the movie you made.  This is what my students look forward to most.

I select what I consider to be exemplary films and include links to them on a Hall of Fame list that I introduce to each new set of kids on the school's LMS.

Students submit their own work to youth film festivals for which they're eligible.  Sometimes, a team produces a film explicitly for a film contest, which may result in a festival screening.

Every year I curate a school wide film festival that collects a sampling of the best work produced across my school's many grades.

Each filmmaking team creates a movie poster for their project, and these posters are hung up on the walls of my classroom.  Each team then uses the mobile app Aurasma to turn the poster into a trigger (like a QR code) that loads the film onto the viewer's mobile device.

Every day these teams create fascinating work.  We all share an Instagram account called cgsmediaarts and work together to capture the tiny flares of brilliance from our work-in-progress.

Students also exhibit their own work on their middle school blog.  Established in 6th grade, each student uses his or her own blog as a portfolio of sorts, in every class, through to the end of 8th grade.  In my class, they use it for exhibition, as an archive, and for formative & summative assessment.

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 19

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 19
Name three powerful ways students can reflect on their learning, then discuss closely the one you use most often.

In Media Arts, students reflect on their learning in these 3 ways:

1. Self-reflection through formative self-assessment (posting to their blog)

2. Sharing with an audience (rough cut screenings for class, final cut screenings for school)

3. Teaching the class (daily student-taught lessons at the start of each class)

The type of reflection I'm most excited about now is teaching the class. 
(I call this activity "Dailies", referring to the film studio practice of watching the footage shot the day before that was processed overnight)

Yesterday, a student who was assigned to cover the app Aurasma did such a thorough job of teaching the class, that I had to email her and her parents that evening in congratulations.  

She wasn't sure how to use the app, which allows people to embed content into an image, much like the way a QR code works.

Her lesson was so successful, that the entire class followed her lead and experimented with Aurasma.  They were so engaged, they were trying to top each others' achievements one after the other.

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 18

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 18
Create a metaphor/simile/analogy that describes your teaching philosophy. For example, a “teacher is a ________…”

A teacher is a guide that leads the student into the mode of learning and growth.  This, in turn, educates the teacher.  Both are growing together.

We are at our best when we are learning and growing.

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 17

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 17
What do you think is the most challenging issue in education today?

Class size.  

It's my opinion that a smaller class (not too small) solves a great number of the concerns facing education today: differentiation, ownership, community, academics, teacher workload, student sense of belonging, graduation rate, parent-teacher communication, and more.  It doesn't solve the standardized testing issue, but it does offer a greater opportunity for a teacher to reach a student individually, thereby making test scores a secondary measure of identity in the school consciousness regarding achievement.

Rethinking Schools publishes an interview with Alex Molnar, director of the Center for Education Research, Analysis, and Innovation at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukie

Great!Schools highlights the benefits of smaller class sizes

Brian Lehrer asking NYC teachers to call in to talk about class size

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 16

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 16
If you could have one superpower to use in the classroom, what would it be and how would it help?

I think Cher said it best when she expressed the desire to be able to turn back time.

Maybe just for an hour, so I would know the kind of energy my students were going to bring into the room so I could modify my lesson accordingly.  Maybe just for one day, so that when my student asked for help I'd always be able to provide it.

Either that, or the super brain pills from Limitless

Infographic about digital storytelling validates its growing popularity

Read more about it on onespot.com

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 15

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 15
Name three strengths you have as an educator

1. I am a people person.  I am the C-3PO that can act as mediator between R2-D2 and Han Solo.

2. I work best in creative collaborations.  This means interdisciplinary curriculum for the students!

3. I learn new tech fast, and my class is adaptable, so students are always using the latest in edtech.

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 14

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 14
What is feedback for learning, and how well do you give it to students?

Feedback in a learning environment is the response from the audience.  Who is the audience of the student's work?  What was the intended message of the work?  Did the audience receive this message?  What was the audience response?

I ensure that my students' projects have an audience, and that the audience feedback is clear.  I am never the audience - it's usually the entire middle school and/or a film contest's judges and viewership.  We also post our movies to YouTube or Vimeo, in which case the audience expands to friends, family, subscribers and - potentially - the world (although this RARELY is the case).

Students then reflect on the feedback they received from their audiences in a self-reflection and evaluation at the end of the term.

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 13

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 13
Name the top edtech tools that you use on a consistent basis in the classroom, and rank them in terms of their perceived (by you) effectiveness

The top edtech tools that I use in order of effectiveness are:

iMovie
Digital storytelling that's intuitive enough for kids to use on their first try

iPhone 5S camera app
I just offer my phone up for the students to use - the 120fps slow motion is an amazing resource!

Google Docs
This is the central hub for data storage and organization of the entire middle school.  Students upload their finished work and share it with me through this app.

Photoshop
Learning how to take a good photo is becoming more and more important, and you don't learn it on your own - there are composition rules.  Learning digital photo manipulation is important in terms of creative expression and media literacy.

Adobe Voice
This is the easiest app for voice recording I've ever used, and it delivers a high quality digital storytelling product in a very short time!

Blogger
The middle school has adopted Blogger as the blogging app of choice, and all students grades 6-8 use blogs regularly in their classes.  Teachers prioritize its use for reflection and portfolio collection.

Instagram
My classes use a shared Instagram account to collect and share a gallery of daily experiences.  The kids love it and it's good modeling for productive uses of social media.

Hyperlapse
My new favorite app is Hyperlapse from Instagram.  A separate app on its own, Hyperlapse allows for very smooth time-lapse shots, acting like a steadicam, but free and easy to use.  It taps into the iPhone's gyroscope to stabilize the image.

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 12

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 12
How do you envision your teaching changing over the next 5 years?

My focus right now is digital storytelling.  As I look ahead in Media Arts, I see a move to mobile devices.  Cameras as we know them will become specialty items for some professional photographers, while students will need to learn sophistication with linking the benefits of various photo/video/animation apps into a conglomerated piece of media or exhibit that will communicate the intended message or story.  It will be interdisciplinary by necessity, because in the next 5 years, traditional classroom teaching will change, and digital storytelling will be a big part of that change.

I see a lot of code in my future.  Web design.  Animation, both 2D and 3D.  Robotics.  3D printing.  Video game design.

The next 5 years... this time frame means everything to the future of Media Arts.

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 11

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 11
What is your favorite part of the school day and why?

My favorite part of the school day is when I'm teaching!  I only teach 2 classes among my other responsibilities, and with our 7-day rotating schedule that means for 4 of those 7 days I'm only teaching one section.

My class, Media Arts, is a rare gem of education in a media-soaked world that needs more guided instruction.  Kids should be critical about their consumption and able to wield the mighty camera when they have a story to tell their world.

I'm linking to a recently created organization called the Portland Center for the Media Arts
who made this point better than I could myself:

"More than half of all Internet content is video. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that video is an immensely powerful form of communication. Today, more than ever, actions on a screen really do speak louder than words on a page. A well-presented video message has the capacity to engage emotions and inspire action."

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 10

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 10
Share 5 random facts about yourself
Share 4 things from your bucket list
Share 3 things that you hope for this year
Share 2 things that have made you laugh or cry as an educator
Share 1 thing you wish more people knew about you

5 random facts: 

• I love karaoke
• I've made documentaries in China, Japan and El Salvador
• I'm participating in the commute by bike challenge this month
• I dusted off my backpacking gear this summer after nearly 10 years of car camping
• I bought a surfboard a couple months ago because I think surfing in Oregon sounds exactly like the kind of obsession I need right now

 4 bucket list items:

• Interview Shigeru Miyamoto
• Get a computer science certification
• Learn how to play the blues
• See lava

3 hopes for the year:

• Teach an online ed class
• Teach a 3D modeling/animation class
• Learn web design and HTML basics

 2 things that have made me laugh or cry as an educator

• Last week, when students made videos using Adobe Voice in only 20 minutes that were heartfelt renderings of their experiences visiting Torii Gate (a memorial for the Japanese Americans brought to what is now the Portland Expo Center and MAX Yellow Line station) 
• Every time I get to see the students perform the 8th grade musical, whatever it is, because it's a totally inclusive production - every student in the 8th grade has a role

1 thing I wish more people knew about me:

• I wish more people knew I tutored math.  It's a really great break from the chaos of middle school to work on math problems one-on-one with a student who needs my help.

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 9

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 9
Write about one of your biggest accomplishments in your teaching that no one knows about (or may not care).

I was just working with a new group of 8th grade Media Arts students this morning, and a student asked me if he would need to submit his finished work to a film festival at the end of the term.  I looked up at the spot on the wall displaying the modest awards that my students have received for their work, and I noticed the Honorable Mention award for "The Page".

When I moved back to Seattle in 2002 from my film school days in LA, I lived in a house where the rent was less than $300 and the basement was a practice space for bands.  I made a friend named Adam whose music and album art were like nothing else I'd ever seen.  I was soooo not together back then, but Adam was a focused artist.

Flash forward 10 years, and I'm an art teacher in Portland, OR.  I see that Adam's band, Chromatics, which claims to be from Portland but spends all its time in Montreal, was playing a show.  I wondered if I'd get a chance to catch up with Adam, who I hadn't seen in a decade.  When I walk into the Crystal Ballroom, I see stacks of a brand new album from the band, and Adam turns around.  What a great reunion.  What a great show.  What a great album.  Adam was excited about offering my Media Arts students a chance to make a music video for one of his new songs.

My students were thrilled.  One particularly driven group of female students chose the song "The Page" and made a music video after school, on the weekends, at each others' houess, and starring them and their parents, in conflict (of course).  It's clearly made by teens.  It's pure 8th grade ebullience.  There's also undeniably a magic to the film.

When I texted Adam what he thought of the video, he replied ecstatically that he and the band loved it.  They agreed to make the video "Official" on YouTube.  The girls got to enjoy the views climbing from 300 to 1,000 to 2,000... 2 years later and it's about to reach 6,000 views.  Not bad for an 8th grade project!

Here's the link to the video on YouTube.

Nobody cares about this story.  To anyone reading this far, thank you for letting me indulge in reflecting on a moment that brought my old friendships and young adult life into a beautiful collaboration with the present day, the result of which being that some middle school students got the assignment of a lifetime.

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 8

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 8
What's in your desk drawer, and what can you infer from its contents?


I don't really have a desk drawer, but here's a photo of my cupboard

and the pouch of my laptop cover

From these contents, I can infer I need some more organization.  And that I am way into tech and maker spaces.

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 7

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 7
Who was or is your most inspirational colleague, and why?

This is easy: Carter Latendresse, 6th grade English teacher and mentor for my student teaching portion of grad school.

There were, first of all, a number of coincidences that I discovered when I learned more about Carter's curriculum.  His class follows The Hero's Journey as outlined by Joseph Campbell, one of the most inspiring figures of my life.  I own and regularly watch Campbell's interview series with Bill Moyers titled The Power of Myth.  The interview is held at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch, because Luke Skywalker is one of the most prominent fictional heroes of the 20th century.  Campbell likes to reference Star Wars because it's a popular example of an ancient storytelling motif.  Campbell discovered that there are many archetypal stories that have been shared among all the peoples of the world, the most universal being The Hero's Journey:

A young person's world is turned upside-down; a Helper emerges to tell the character that he/she is capable of great power, and to give the character a useful tool, weapon, or skill.  Suddenly, the Helper disappears, and this young person is face to face with the great villain but miraculously escapes.  The hero must endure a series of ordeals, including The Supreme Ordeal, that acts as a trial, building the hero's strength and focus.  The ordeals lead the hero back to the villain, and the ensuing battle ends with the hero emerging victorious.

I also discovered that other heroic tales that have remained favorites throughout my life, such as Tolkien and the Redwall series, were assigned reading for his students.

Carter also transformed the school campus within a short period of time.  Within two years, his Garden Club converted a nondescript grassy hill into a flourishing garden, growing all different kinds of food.  Two social gathering structures with green roofs surround a giant chess board, and a cob oven resides nearby.  The Garden Club moved on to similar conversion projects across the school grounds.  This work is part of Carter's vision for the future he'd like to see come to pass: People growing their own food; reducing reliance on fossil fuels and big box stores; a community working and playing together, helping each other learn, grow, and get the things they need.

The unit I shared with Carter during the winter of 2012 was titled "Empathy", and it led students through the Supreme Ordeal portion of the Heroic Journey.  This became a theme I never let go of, and I incorporate Empathy into my own classes at every turn.  In fact, the primary step in the process of Design Thinking is Empathy - empathy for the end user of the finished design.

Currently, my views on the role of technology in our civilization's future differ somewhat from Carter's.  Perhaps the greatest value of a mentor is the chance to hold a perspective outside of yourself in high regard, while also being able to compare and contrast it with your own.

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 6

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 6
Explain: What does a good mentor "do"?

A good mentor cares about the student.

I tutor alongside my teaching duties, and after years of experience working one-on-one with students, I have found that the most important thing I can do is to make it very clear that I care.  It's all about relationships.  A close second to this is setting high expectations.  Those expectations won't inspire anything in a student who does not have a healthy human connection with the mentor.  I, of course, can only be a mentor if I possess and readily demonstrate the skills or qualities that the student is interested in learning.

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 5

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 5
Post a picture from your classroom and describe what you see - and what you don't see that you'd like to.

Here's my classroom!  I share it with a few other teachers.  It's dedicated to Visual Arts with an emphasis on digital storytelling through audio/video/photo.  Classes run throughout the day for middle and high school grades.  There is a U-shaped seating arrangement with the teacher's table front and center.  There are two white boards and a TV monitor mounted in between.  Along the walls and corners are video editing workstations and two photo printers.

What I don't see that I'd like to: Bretford whiteboard flip tables, Hokki stools, no central teacher station, a class set of iPads, and an empty wall painted chroma green.

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 4

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!


Day 4
What do you love most about teaching?


I love the creativity of teaching!  I love watching students create projects and then work hard, following it through to completion.


I love the creativity of lesson planning.  Any given class can be a performance, a showcase, a workshop, a brainstorming session, a group discussion, a movie theater, a think tank, a laboratory, a research library, a social gathering, and more!


I love the creativity of the student / teacher dynamic.  This relationship goes back to the beginning of time, and it's still radically relevant.  My favorite is when "the teacher has become the student," and "the student has become the teacher."

I love the creativity of learning!  There are so many learning styles, that the approach each student takes to their learning is so unique, like an individualized signature.

I love the creativity of collaborating with my colleagues.  Interdisciplinary units can be very exciting, because it's always a combination of source materials, the energy of team-teaching, and the merging of two classroom cultures.  Two heads are better than one.

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 3

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 3
Discuss one "observation" area you would like to improve on for your teacher evaluation.

I'd like to improve on crafting formal backwards-planning curriculum maps using Understanding By Design as the framework for my class units.  I believe that by focusing on transfer goals (that students take with them from my class to others), the learning environment becomes student-centered.

UBD FTW

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 2

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 2
Write about one piece of technology you would like to try this year, and why.  You might also write about what you're hoping to see out of this edtech integration.

The new piece of technology I'm trying this year is Pinterest.  I've been using it for myself as a teacher, because it's an incredible resource for lesson ideas, classroom organization, inspiration, and more.

I'm a Media Arts teacher.  For my 8th grade students who are 13 or older, I'm assigning them to create Pinterest accounts and build inspiration boards.  They are instructed to pin at least 30 different bits of inspiration that they have carried in their hearts and minds throughout their life.

Here's a link to my example inspiration board

This work will be completed as homework, and students are encouraged to share their boards with each other and myself.  I'm hoping that it will spark conversations about what ideas we bring into the classroom, what our stories are, and what stories we'd like to tell.  I hope to get a good picture of my students' interests this way, so I can tailor class content to each individual.

30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 1

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting on today, September 1st, Labor Day, the day before school starts!!!  So exciting!!!

Day 1
Write your goals for the school year

• Tell and show my students that they matter.  They matter to me, they matter to the world, and they matter to themselves. 

• Have a TON of fun with my students, colleagues, and school community this year!

• Set and communicate high expectations for students in my class.

• Communte by bike every day.

• Keep a tidy email inbox!

• Make collaboration with other classes the top priority this year.  Regularly produce work out of my middle school Media Arts classes that matters to multiple audiences!  (See example below)