Open Letter to Monte Syrie

In response to a call for inspiration, I am writing this open letter. Thanks for the inspiration, Monte!

Hi Monte,
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I've been greatly inspired this year by your blog/Twitter feed (I'm @MadameGaudet), by your insistence on finding a better way, and by your genuine care for all of your students. I've been teaching for 15 years now, and it's nice to know I'm not alone in the struggles I have with grades vs student ownership, and in my focus on community and connection building first and curriculum only after that. 

If you're still feeling like you need some inspiration for your blog as the year winds down : Who are your "go-to" people either online or in person for inspiration and/or help navigating these changes? What benefit do you get from hashing out ideas with people in your own school vs online connections? How does blogging enter into your attempts to do better?

I am a middle school teacher, so grades in the traditional sense "don't matter" as much as they might in high school. I still find my students are so hung up on the grade that they neglect the learning when they start with me at the beginning of the year. By this time of year, they are more willing to take chances, and embrace experiences. I worry that when I send them off to high school this openness and commitment to learning will fall by the wayside with teachers who focus predominantly on compliance. This is not to say that the high school teachers at my students next school are not wonderful teachers, who truly care about their students. I know that many of them struggle with the same questions that I have surrounding relationship building and grading practices. However, as an institution, high school has a more grades-based focus than I do in my classroom. 

I hope that I've given my students enough of a taste for learning, for self-motivation, for curiosity, for compassion, and for questioning that they will maintain those qualities in the face of what high school will throw at them.

A Funny Little Experiment

I've been working on an experiment for the past few months, and it came up in conversation with a colleague this morning so it must be time to write about it! The experiment is simple. I have mostly eliminated the words "but" & "however" from my vocabulary.

Now, this may sound bizarre to you. "But what about when you need to say something and then say the opposite?" you may be shouting at your screen. Well, I have replaced those words with "and", "also" & "additionally." How does this sound in practice in the classroom? Here's an example of how a conversation might go:

"Mme Gaudet, I'm thinking of making a flamethrower for my Passion Project, would I be allowed to do that?"

Option 1 : Yes, but you will have to get permission and be safe.
Option 2 : Yes, and we will discuss ways that you can be safe while you do that.

The "Yes, but" option sounds a lot like "No", while the "Yes, and" response doesn't close off any avenues.

I'm also consciously using "and" instead of "but" when giving instructions and feedback to students. "This project will be challenging, and I know that we can do it." Rather than setting up a dichotomy between what is challenging, and what we can do, I link the two ideas together and it becomes as if one follows naturally from the other.

I don't know if this shift in language is evident to my students, or if it is having an effect on their perceptions. I hope so. I hope that they hear in my words a sense of possibility, a sense of openness, a sense of "and".

Students and Passions and Blogs, Oh My!

This week marks the beginning of Passion Projects 2019! I introduced the concept yesterday to huge enthusiasm from my grade 8s, several of whom have older siblings and who have been waiting for this project to begin with great anticipation.


This year, I am trying something different. A common refrain, as readers of this blog - and my students - know by now! I have asked all students to set up a blog and to share the link right away. In the past, I have had students create blogs (or paper journals) but only share them at the end of the eight weeks. This time, I want students to be able to view each others' blogs throughout the project, in the hopes that having an authentic audience will encourage them to take more initiative in documenting their progress.

All students have created their basic blog, and some have written fairly extensive first entries! I am super excited to see where this goes. There were a few students absent today, so I will update this list once they have had a chance to create their blog. Happy reading!

Tanisha - Makeup
Alex - Flamethrower
Ryland - Potato Launcher
Cole - Lego
Makayla - Getting in Shape
Emily - Learning songs on the Guitar
Emma - Nature Photography
Aidan - Free Throws
Maddy - Learning to play Violin
Monica - Cooking
Kalan - Building a little house
Skye - Learning Italian
Carmen - Composing music
Milo - Learning Norwegian
Adrianna - Protecting Sea Turtles
Julian - Cardboard Projectiles
Nash - Creating a Painting
Luc - Smoke Bomb
Adam - Creating a Rap/Hip-Hop Song
Amelia - Learning German 
Stuart - Food Delivery Robot
Ryan - Homemade Go-Kart 


At the end of working on this today, students did not want to leave for lunch. One approached me and said, "I just want you to know that this project is revolutionary. Not just for me, but everyone in the class is so excited about this." Music to my ears!

For more information on how I do my Passion Projects, you can see the website I created for students or my blog post from 2017

It's the Little Things

Sometimes, it's the smallest things that stand out. I had to be out of my classroom today to fill in for the principal. This was a sudden occurence, for a sad reason, and it is the day after March Break. My plan was to spend the day reconnecting with my students, checking in, getting excited for the final stretch of this school year.  

When I am going to be out of my classroom, especially if it is unexpected, I always email my students with a plan of what the day will entail. I teach my homeroom for upwards of 3 hours per day, in a variety of different subject areas, so prepping for a substitute can be a daunting process. Emailing the students puts some of the onus on them to get things accomplished even when I'm not in the room. It cuts way down on, "But the substitute didn't tell us what we were supposed to do!" 

Although my students are growing up as "digital natives", they are not very diligent at checking their emails. I often will include a little challenge at the end, so that those who do read all the way through have a fun response to send to me (and a reward in Classcraft for such a response never goes amiss!) Last night, as I will not likely have time to check in with each of them today, my challenge was for them to send me a picture expressing how they feel about coming back to school after March Break. The two that I chose to include reflect the excitement I feel about our upcoming Passion Projects, our end of year Interdisciplinary Unit, and my normal excitement at reconnecting with my students after a break.

Here are the pictures I received from five students in response:

 

It's the little things that make a difference. Emailing to let my students know I will be out of the classroom is a tiny, easy thing - I copy and paste notes from the plans I make for my substitute. Letting them know I am excited to see them again costs me nothing, and the responses I get tell me so much (I'll be checking in with the student who sent "ok" and no picture to make sure things are really OK with them). Even though I'm not in my classroom today, I feel like I reconnected in a small way.

Nerd Alert

NERD ALERT : I love professional reading! I love learning new things, adding to my store of knowledge. I love reading things that bolster what I am already doing in my classroom. I love having conversations with colleagues about what I am reading and learning.

Our province is entering a phase of exploring Project Based Learning in a more directed, more intentional way than we have before. As a result, our principal purchased several books on the topic and I have been relishing the opportunity to read and learn and share.

All three of these books are excellent for anyone looking to go deeper in their understanding and practice of project based learning, and innovating in the classroom. The one this post is focusing on more specifically is by George Couros. In May, Mr Couros is coming to speak with all of the administrators in our region, and I am excited for our school to start looking at ways we can encourage and foster the growth of innovation and collaboration. A few key messages stood out when I read The Innovator's Mindset, and I am hopeful that those messages will be reinforced when my administrators see Mr Couros in person.

Four quotes in particular resonated with me, so I went ahead and "posterized" them :

All of these quotes deal with the reality that innovation takes TIME and SUPPORT. It's not something that can be achieved by teachers who are overwhelmed with new initiatives, who are asked to do something that is not modelled by their leaders, or who feel like they don't have time to connect with others.

I have been fortunate for the past 15 years in that I have always felt empowered by my administration to try out new things in my classroom. If you've read many of my other blog posts, you'll know that I often start things in my classroom with, "I haven't done this before, so let's try it together." I'm hoping that the intentional focus on project based learning that is reportedly coming our way will make space and time for an increase in collaborative innovation, creative research, and courageous risk-taking at my school.

Creative, Autonomous, Accountable

We have been using Flipgrid quite a lot this year - it's one of my favourite new finds. I dabbled a bit last year, but this year I've made a concerted effort to use it more consistently. I've made some progress in that area, and I'm looking forward to using it more effectively as time goes by.

This is the tool fo you if you have ever wanted a way for students to provide a verbal/video response to a prompt without needing to host the video somewhere (eg film on an iPad, then upload to Google Drive, then share... so many steps!) Students can log in with their school email credentials and record a video right away. The teacher has control over whether the videos are private or viewable by other students in the class (or, in fact, by other students with the link to the "grid")

There are lots of great resources created by teachers for integrating the use of Flipgrid in the classroom and beyond. For example :

Flipgrid eBook - The Educators' Guide to Flipgrid. This has everything you need to get started. How to sign up, how to give your students access, how to go beyond simple videos.

Flipgrid Integration - So many ideas for integrating Flipgrid in specific subject areas, for specific ages!


Following Global School Play Day (see last week's post), I asked my students to reflect on their experiences. I recorded a video prompt in Flipgrid, and provided them with some reflection questions to consider.

I was out sick, so this was an activity that I was able to leave for my students to complete with a substitute (another perk to using Flipgrid!). Many responses were thoughtful and detailed some (as is often the case in middle school when there is a substitute) lacked depth. When I do this again next year, I will take more time to prepare my students to respond thoroughly.

Most of the feedback I received was very positive. Students were happy to have had a "break from the normal school day." For the most part, students felt that the expectations had been followed by their peers, and that it was a fun experience. Many of them commented on the fact that it was enjoyable to be able to do what they wanted, when they wanted, speaking to the fact that a "normal" school day is generally structured by the teacher. I am interested in exploring how more of that freedom can be incorporated into my classroom.

One of the comments that was surprising to me came from a grade 8 student. She stated first that she enjoyed Global School Play Day, but that, "I wished there were more activities I could do, because I was kind of bored. Like, if I was allowed to, like, build a fort, I would be pretty happy."

I was surprised by this response because I tried very hard to be clear that I was not putting any limits on what students were "allowed" to do. In fact, I explicitly stated that, as long as they were following the expectations we established together, anything was possible. All of the students in my classroom chose to spend most of the day playing either cards or board games, so I wonder if she felt that building a fort would break some sort of unspoken rule. I will absolutely follow-up with this particular student, to determine how I could have made it clear that any activity was possible.

Students' Flipgrid responses

Another comment that came from multiple students, and one that didn't surprise me at all, was that they wished there had been more organization to the day. They are so used to having their time scheduled for them, they struggled when they were given freedom to choose their own paths. I see this in project work as well, and I hope that having experienced this day of unstructured play will allow them to draw some comparisons when it comes time to choose their passion projects, or other free-choice ways of showing their learning.

Thinking creatively, making decisions autonomously, and holding themselves accountable are skills I strongly encourage in my students. These are the skills they will need moving forward. These are skills we could all stand to improve upon.

It Takes Time, and it is Incredibly Worth It

Today was Global School Play Day (globalschoolplayday.com) and my students and I participated wholeheartedly. There was a wonderful hum in the room all day, with all of my students engaging in unstructured play time. They organized themselves, chose their activities, rose to the expectations we had set out, and generally had an awesome day. The activities they chose were varied and completely self-directed.

Some students preferred to spend their time reading...

... or drawing ...

... or learning to play chess!

Some of the highlights from the day include:

- My newest student (arrived just three weeks ago) noticing someone not being included and inviting them to take part in a game without making a big deal out of it.

- The sincere and sudden vocal excitement from all players when another player took a risky move in Black Jack and it paid off. The rest of the activity in the classroom stopped and we all revelled in the glory of a well-timed risk.


- This exchange, fully embracing the expectation to be good communicators :
     "Do you feel like playing Spot It with me?"
     "Not right now, but when I'm done this game of Solitaire I will."
     "OK, sounds good."




- This statement when I approached a group playing Cranium, showing their willingness to improvise. "We don't really know what the actual rules are, so we made up our own. Is that OK?" YES.




One of the most important contributors to the success of GSPD was the lead-up over the two days preceding the actual event. As a class, we spend a significant amount of time focused on building strong community, so I already have some structures in place to set expectations collaboratively with my students. For this activity, I began by outlining my expectations of them for the day.

Students then took some time to come with expectations they had of me and of each other. Each class came up with their own, and the differences in their expectations is reflective of the culture of the individual classes. The grade 8s spend a lot of time with me (at least 3 hours daily), while the grade 7 class only comes to me for an hour each day. As a result, we haven't had as much time to focus on community building.

Grade 8 Expectations

Grade 7 Expectations

We also talked about what they were excited about for a day devoted to unstructured play, and what they were worried or concerned about. This part of the conversation was very helpful to me, as it let me put some of their worries to rest (some worried about what would happen if a toy was accidentally broken, some that they would not be able to handle a full day without an adult organizing them into activities and groups, others that there might be judgement about what games or activities people chose) I was so impressed with their openness in sharing their worries, and the care they took in responded to the concerns of others (some of the expectations above came out of the conversation about worries) Without those conversations ahead of time, I think our day could have played out very differently. Having a list of expectations that we co-created allowed me to quickly make reference to #4 for example, and students would use them to remind each other of what they should be doing.

This student taught multiple classmates how to play chess over the course of the day

Students creating a marble maze together

I had a moment of concern when I sent out my memo to parents last week, explaining the event. We have had some school closures lately because of weather, and this would be another day without "real school", but I did not receive any negative responses from parents at all. I've been really focused on building community with my parents this year as well, through very regular communication about what goes on in our classroom. I hope and believe this has contributed to a certain level of trust when it comes to some of the paths I take with my students.

Grade 7s at play!

Building a strong community is the reason I can engage in the types of activities I write about on this blog. It takes time, and it is incredibly worth it.