When in doubt, do it.

     I don't feel well today. (Which is truly terrible as it is a gorgeous day outside on a long weekend!) I made myself go to school today to get sub plans ready. Now, I could (should) be resting so I could get better, but as soon as I tried, I panicked. How is this sub going to manage my room with the flexible seating?
      Just to give you a little background, I need to start from the end of last school year. When I was packing up my room, I told one of my teenaged helpers to recycle a lesson or something. She asked me why didn't I want to keep it and use it for next year, and I told her (a quote which has stuck with me since college), "You can teach for 20 years, but don't teach 1 year 20 times." So I go into every year determined to make it different and better. During last summer, I did a book study about increasing comprehension through inquiry circles and did the National Writing Project Summer Institute.  I also chose not to have a desk this year. I cleaned it out, gave it away, and put my computer on a small table. (Other teachers guffawed at my choice to do this. Their  biggest concern was where was I going to put my stuff.) Then during the year, I joined the Innovation Team at school. I learned about ways to offer choices for learning including assessment and spaces. Then I switched to flexible seating about halfway through the year.
     Since deciding to go with flexible seating, I have gone through ups and downs & back and forths, with trying to figure out its implementation. First, I had to try and explain it to the students. There isn't any trying - they got it! They were so excited about it they wanted to start that day! They were excited to not have a desk. Different than what I had read on other blogs while doing some research. Most of the concerns were about where were the students were going to put their stuff. Next, there had to be some ground rules we could all accept. As we discussed the rules, I learned the students were more ready for this change than I was. Kismet! And they had some reasonings behind the rules I hadn't thought of!

        Here are the 3 rules we have in our room for flexible seating. Rule number 1. You have to find a spot where you can do your best learning. Students came up with the notion that if they were allowed to sit wherever, then some students might take advantage of that and sit next to their best friend and talk all day. The students were worried about their own learning being affected! Rule number 2. You had to sit in a different spot each day. They were worried about everyone not getting the chance to sit in the 'best' spots. Rule number 3. You could only move if your spot wasn't working out and you spoke with the teacher. They were concerned people would just be picking new spots all the time throughout the day - and distracting from others' learning! They also gave absolute power to the teacher - if someone was being a problem, I had the right to move them - no questions asked. How nice of them, right?

     Now - without the desk and what to do with the stuff?  I found magazine file holders to use as desks.  They were donated to the Teacher's Closet from the local library getting rid of their periodicals. They are heavy duty and can also be purchased online (Demco) for just under $2 a piece.They also have book boxes and pencil boxes. I'm working on replacing the book boxes with small book totes which I will hang from my outdated chalk rail. Next year, I won't have pencil boxes as we will have community supplies. Somethings you just have to learn as you go.
     We started with just a few students 'losing' their desks a week. This was the highest motivator for on-taskness I have seen to date! Students showed engagement, organization, and participation - all to prove to me they were ready for the responsibility of not having a desk. It continues to evolve as the weeks pass. I have new, or really - new to my room, furniture waiting in my garage  - so the seating options can change and evolve as needed.
     I have a very busy classroom. I have 28 students with a wide variety of needs. I have a number of paraprofessionals - couldn't live without them - whom float in and out of my room throughout the day. I don't mind what others may see as wandering about the room. I have a bubbler in my room and let students use it when they are thirsty. I let them get up to blow their nose when they need to. If they have to go to the bathroom, they don't have to ask. We have a procedure in place that works and doesn't interrupt anyone. I have many partnerships established so then students need help, I'm not the only one who can or has to help them. Our classroom may not be the best oiled machine, but there are very few squeaks.
    We have now successfully made our full transition to flexible seating. I still have 4 desks in my room. I will probably keep them for next year too. The students who have them are either students who have expressed that a desk IS their best place to learn, have little to no organizational skills (despite my best efforts), or have chronic behavior issues that keep them from being able to sit and work by others without distracting them.
     Doesn't my room sound great? But remember how this all started? I don't feel well and won't be at school tomorrow. This will be my first absence since flexible seating started. I can't lie, this freaks me out! I had a very hard time trying to explain all of my philosophies and expectations without writing a book for the substitute coming in. I don't have a seating chart. The beginning of my day looks like a time-lapse movie of the inside of an ant hill with everyone going in different directions! It only looks like this because of all the jobs that occur in the morning and it only looks like that for 12 minutes. Transitions are also a chaotic time but this also allows for the brain to get an active break so great learning can occur. Should I just tough it out and go to school sick?
    AND then it also makes me also think -what do I do next year? I started half way through this year and the students were excited for the change. Now I have a whole new set of ups and downs & back and forths. How do I explain this at open house? How will I know which students should be in desks? How can I build what I have this year with next year's class that I haven't even met yet?! What if? I'm glad I didn't and don't take these questions too seriously. It will all work out fine. We teach our students to be flexible and adaptable, we must be the same.

    When in doubt, do it. I'm going to nap now.

Tanya Schmidt
4th Grade

Embracing the “Innovator’s Mindset” as a Pre-Service Teacher

Critical and creative thinking: necessary elements in any classroom. As a pre-service teacher, I have heard these terms repeated from one methods course to the next. “Teachers need to require their students to think critically,” and, “Teachers must inspire creative thinking,” (Although we hear less about the later type). These are required elements for true learning to occur. Sometimes, it is difficult to prescribe exact formulas to see these desired outcomes. We’ll come back to that in just a minute.

Often, there is a disconnect between my college courses and what is actually happening in my field of study. This could be for multiple reasons, which, for the purposes of this blog post, do not necessarily matter. Rather, this is a story about a course that made a significant impact on my educational philosophies and overall future career in education. I arrived to my Educational Leadership 325 class (Better known as “Ed. Tech” class) with the expectation that my professor was going to “teach” me about the same old things that I have been doing since I was about twelve-years-old. Skills like using a computer or maybe a SMART board (In the dark ages, it could be comparable to taking a class that simply taught bulletin board design.) However, as you may have guessed, I was happily surprised and challenged as a learner in my #EdLdrsp325 class, and, I have managed to condense my very long list of takeaways into three main points for those of you who may appreciate them.

  One of the first and greatest takeaways from this course had to do with technology use. On day one, Mandy Froehlich (@froehlichm), the adjunct professor teaching this course, introduced the class to George Couros’ (@gcouros) book, The Innovator’s Mindset. College kids don’t get particularly excited over required texts--we’re usually just wondering if there is any possible way we can make it through a class without having to purchase them. I, however, am a self proclaimed bibliophile and like reading textbooks. So, I bought the book. I assumed, since this was an Ed. Tech. course, that this would try to shift my ideals about technology use in the classroom. Which, it certainly did, but not in the ways that I expected.

Pre-service teachers are constantly hearing opposing views on technology in the classroom. We hear things like, “It’s too hard to keep up with,” and, “Screen time isn’t good for kids,” or, “Find a way to fit technology into your lesson plan.” It is hard to know what exactly we are supposed to do with technology. Should we use it minimally? Not at all? Or should class be a total instructional video? The answer is, none of these. Rather, technology needs to be used efficiently and intentionally as a tool to reach higher learning. In his book, George Couros stressed this idea that technology is a tool, not an outcome. “Squeezing” tech into a lesson plan happens when you just have students slap a prezi or slideshow together for no particular reason--thus, technology is used as an outcome as opposed to a tool used to encourage the learning process. Prior to his book, I planned multiple lessons with the mindset of just squeezing technology in because that seems to be the expectation these days. This use of technology is not creative, and does not help students reach higher level learning. However, not using technology in this world is almost like being an illiterate now. Technology is so common, that it is nearly necessary to understand it in order to function within society. Teachers need to offer technology experiences to their students--what better way to utilize such a tool than through learning? I’m not convinced that there is a higher purpose for tech than that of learning!

The next aspect this course stressed to me is the importance of forming relationships and pursuing professional development within one’s field of expertise. Mandy Froehlich introduced the class to utilizing Twitter professionally. I was extremely skeptical about this at first. The young adult age group is known for utilizing Twitter as a way to complain about almost anything. I had actually stopped using this form of social media a number of years ago because I got tired of seeing negativity on my feed. But, I gave the idea of a Professional Learning Network (PLN) a shot. I was amazed by how many excellent educators were connecting through this medium, and how many were utilizing Twitter chats as a way to learn through inquiry and discussion. It has actually blown my mind! I started joining in on some Ed. Tech. Twitter chats (#edtechafterdark), and I could not BELIEVE the kind of excitement involved in participating in an hour-long chat. I started to discover other chats of interest (#ntchat, and #wcchat), and I have already learned so many practical philosophies and creative approaches to multiple aspects of education! Seriously, let go of the scepticism for a minute, and give a Twitter chat a shot--if nothing else, you will be encouraged by the obvious passion demonstrated by so many teachers all around the world!

 As the title suggests, George Couros’ book had a lot to do with innovation. Innovation, what a fun buzz word! But, what does it mean? George defined it as, “a way of thinking that creates something new and better” (p.19). Much like the aforementioned critical and creative thinking, innovation is necessary within a classroom. I am a critical thinker. I like logic, questioning, philosophy, and research, but it is much harder for me to think creatively. For years, I have wondered if I could be good teaching students to be creative thinkers. I realized that often times, I provide myself too much structure to think creatively. This book taught me that innovation--which requires one to think both creatively AND critically--can be fostered by one’s environment. That is, teachers need to create a classroom environment that doesn’t punish students for trying something new--one where failure can, and will, safely happen and where risk-taking is highly encouraged. Creative thinking grows when someone has direction but also has freedom to pursue that direction through his or her own ideas. This is one reason why choice is so unbelievably powerful for students.

So, how do we get students to think critically and creatively? What does that look like? There is no exact method--it will not be the same for every group, in every subject, but we can start by implementing some of these ideas. We intentionally and efficiently utilize the tools (like technology) we have around us to reach relevant, higher learning. We learn from other professionals in the field in order to maintain our own passion for teaching, learning, and to offer our students the best learning experiences we possibly can, and we create an environment where innovation can THRIVE by being open to new ideas, allowing for choice, and by continuously questioning how we can make our own practices better. If we want our students to learn, we should also be modelling learning. Critical and creative thinking will flourish when we all choose to learn together.

Jessica Anderson
@jfandersong
Pre-Service Teacher Candidate
Dual Education & Psychology - University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

References
Bill Ferriter/
Edutopia - Willingness to Learn Correlation (Image)
George Couros - The Innovator’s Mindset (Print)

Empowering Students in Assessment

As an educator I am always setting new goals for myself. How can I improve my teaching to better help the students? Being reflective about my own practices is not an easy task. This year I was challenged by my technology coach to become more of an innovative teacher. Finding out what this meant to me personally was my learning journey this year.

Part of this journey was reading and reflecting on The Innovator's Mindset by George Couros. One section of his book has us compare engaging students versus empowering students. We are always taught to create engaging lessons to keep the interests of the students in our classrooms. These lessons help get the children excited about our content. Mr. Couros challenges us to empower students. Empowering students gets them excited about their interests and passions. We have to find ways to give students the knowledge and skills to to pursue what they are interested in. According to Couros, "Kids need to be empowered, NOT engaged."

After reading this section of the book I decided to try this theory out. We had just finished a science unit on light. I had an assessment all set to give to the students where they had to answer questions in a test format. Instead, I used the benchmarks for the unit to create a rubric. The students were shown the rubric and then had to decide how to prove to me that they understood the expectations for this unit.

Wow! The excitement was immediate. Even though the topic was set for them, the children were given the power to choose what platform they would use to show their knowledge. I had students create posters, articles on Seesaw, Animotos, Google Slide Presentations, and speeches. I was amazed at how much information the children presented to me. The depth of their knowledge went beyond what I would have assessed them on in a written test. The fact that they had control over the sharing of their learning brought out creativity and innovation.



I am using the "empower not engage" theory in my reading groups now. Students are given a choice as to what they want to learn more about. They then research the topic and create a presentation of their choice with which to share their new knowledge. By helping to empower my students I am setting them up to be successful in their future endeavors.

Patty Luft