Creativity, Sir Ken Robinson and Edmodo

I was lucky enough to be at a conference where Sir Ken Robinson was the speaker. Last March at CUE, Sir Ken was the featured speaker and he is even more engaging and compelling in person than he is on video.  Sir Ken talks in the attached video about Teaching Creativity v Delivery,  taken from a larger TED talk: How to escape education's death valley.

Some of the highlights that I take away from his talk include:

• Children are natural learners... if you can light the spark of curiosity in a child, they will learn!
• Teaching is not a delivery system. Great teachers pass on info but also mentor, stimulate, provoke, and engage.
• If there is no learning, there is no education. The whole point of education is to get people to learn. We are only teaching if our students actually learn! The role of the teacher is to facilitate learning, that's it!  
• Successful "alternative" programs have similar attributes: They're very personalized. They have strong support for the teachers, close links with the community and a broad and diverse curriculum, and often programs which involve students outside school as well as inside school. Why is that alternative? 

In the end, education and learning are personal and that is where Edmodo is an incredible application to help teachers provide personalized, engaging opportunities for our students to learn and express their learning in creative ways.  

As Sir Ken Robinson said, "great teachers teach, but also mentor, stimulate,  provoke,  engage." Edmodo helps teachers do this in a number of ways.  First, Edmodo provides incredible access to educators worldwide. If I want to find a new way to teach my students about the solar system, I can find someone with a great idea. If I want to learn more about something, I can join a community. Edmodo helps to fuel the engine we teachers use to drive learning in our classrooms.

Edmodo can be used to individualize and personalize teaching. Through small groups, I can create assignments and provide resources directly to the students who need them.  Edmodo provides creative ways for students to learn and to demonstrate their learning with apps like StoryLines, GoAnimate and Pixton.  I can attach or assign content videos and websites for students to view in the safety of Edmodo, enabling them to learn subject matter in engaging ways. I can connect with other teachers to get suggestions, lessons and feedback on my ideas.

Edmodo creates a strong link between home and school.  Students can connect, collaborate and communicate with each other outside the walls of the classroom. Teachers and parents can also connect, with parents having immediate feedback related to student progress and classroom information.  Parents report a feeling of connection to what is happening in their child's day.

Finally, Edmodo provides a safe and engaging way for classrooms to connect across the globe!  This year we partnered with classrooms across the country to discuss a book we were all reading as part of the Global Read Aloud.  Our students learned to communicate in more authentic ways, learned about geography and became more understanding of others' perspectives all through their interactions on Edmodo.

Edmodo provides schools with a way to create a climate of possibility - where teachers and students will rise to their possibilities and achieve things that we may not have even expected!

Global Read Aloud - day 1

In the book we are reading, Out of My Mind, by Sharon Draper, we just read how 11 year old Melody can't speak and is in a wheelchair. Some people, we are told, never bother to ask her name. We asked them to blog about this. Here was one of the posts and a comment that followed.

"I think Melody might feel sad or upset when people don’t ask her name or ignore her because she might think that she is sort of invisible. Just because she is disabled, it doesn’t mean that she can’t be respected like other people."

1 Comment
I agree that melody should be respected. When I came to Bagby, I kinda felt respected. But, not a lot of teachers talked to me. I earned respect when I was in 4th grade when teachers wanted me in class. I learned more words so teachers fought over having me in class.

Another post from a boy who is mostly non-verbal, "Melody is sad, or shy.  Maybe she as a broken leg? She is sad when people ignore her.  I am, too."

Global Read Aloud 13 is going to be an incredible and intense experience reading this book with our classes!

+Sheila Monger  +Jonah Salsich +Tim Swick +Joni Stevenson +Pernille Ripp

The business of education?

Ever since I left ‘big business” and started working in education, I have thought about how to apply efficiencies of a business environment top help make ‘the business of education’ more effective. When I started teaching, I was advised to ‘put my patience hat on’ and not make waves. It was so frustrating to see that decisions made based on what has always been done or not done. Rather than find all the reasons why we can’t do something (RtI, CCSS, implement new technologies, etc.) I prefer to figure out how we can do it.

A lot of that attitude comes from a business background. I believe my background and experience make me a better teacher than I would have been without it. Notice I did NOT say I am a better teacher than anyone without the experiences, just that I am a better teacher because of it. The work and travel that I did have given me a perspective of skills needed beyond education. Yes, you can get through a day without knowing how to diagram a sentence! I can communicate with parents in a language they understand and I am open to improving my practice by learning new ways to do things, and using latest technologies. I have actually heard teachers say, “why do I have to do to this training, I am already a good teacher?”

In what other world can a worker say, I know enough, I don’t need any more training on new products or ideas? I am always learning.


Of particular interest to me when looking at how to apply business acumen to the field of education is how to fairly evaluate and compensate teachers. As a new teacher, I regularly have been re-assigned or even laid off in favor of teachers with more years of teaching experience. Merit didn’t matter, time did. There has to be a better way. I have read what I can on the subject, looked at proposals from the ‘experts’ and still nothing rings true. If we were creating widgets, sure, you could say I get paid on the quality and quantity of widgets I produce. But we are teaching children. They come to us with their lifetime of experiences, abilities and knowledge, and hopefully they leave us, 9 months later, with more. But if Johnny didn’t learn ¾ or a year of knowledge from me, can we say for sure it was because I was not a good teacher? Of course not.

One idea from business might work - a 360 review. In business, I received evaluations from my boss, my peers, my employees and my customers. All of those inputs were considered in determining my compensation. We did not all work the same and we were not all compensated the same.

Anthony Cody writes in Education Week’s blog, “The Nine Most Terrifying Words in the English Language: "I'm From Big Business, and I'm Here to Help"

There are two overriding problems with the help our business buddies want to offer us. The first is their primary motivation tends to be whatever will benefit their bottom line, not what will help our students. So they are willing to market solutions that are not truly helpful. They want an ever larger share of the education dollar, so they have, in effect, put the various moneymaking ventures in competition with classroom teachers for scarce resources.

The second is that the policies they advocate place education in a highly competitive framework, as is demanded by their market-based paradigm. This drives us towards the overuse of test scores as a means of measuring performance, so that we can determine winners and losers...Students who do not test well should not be liabilities to their schools or teachers...The market system demands winners and losers, and the biggest losers of all are the students who find themselves left behind in schools that are unprofitable, or because they are more difficult to educate, and thus are liabilities to whatever schools they enroll in.

There is no simple, pat answer to how big business can help education. Educators can stop waiting for someone to save them and we can continue to do what we have always done (and this one I agree with)…do what is best for our students!

How funny - this was just posted to CTA's facebook page today

Reading Centers in Upper Elementary

A colleague, +Shannon Aviña, recently asked me how I use literacy centers to differentiate learning with upper grades.  Though I have doubts about how easy it is to differentiate with 35 kids, I do try to incorporate small group time to meet them where they are as much as possible.    What I have done is based loosely on the book, The Daily 5, by sisters +Gail Boushey and Joan Moser.  You can read about it at The Daily Cafe.  You can also follow Gail and Joan on twitter.

I am no expert, however over the past 7 years, I have found this approach, with reflection and modifications, to be engaging and effective, based on assessments.

At our school, we use a form of RtI (response to intervention) where readers are leveled and taught in groups across the grade level, Monday through Thursday for one hour a day.  This presents its own opportunities and challenges which may be the subject of a future post.

Once a week I meet for 15-20 minutes with one group (Monday group 1, Tuesday group 2, etc). While the group is meeting with me, the rest of the class does word work on Monday, nonfiction reading/comprehension or vocabulary on Tuesday, comprehension work on the novel we were reading on Wednesday and on Thursday they would work on whatever the rest of the class did the day they were with me.

Clearly, classroom management routines must be in place before you can start this.  Students must know how to work independently.  In my classroom each student has a self-decorated index card on their desk which reads 3B4ME.  This reminds them to do three things before they ask me a question.  Number 1- ask myself, do I already know this? Can I just think about it and know what do do?  Number 2- consult a reference, look up a word, look it up in the table of contents or index of a book, check any written instructions, look it up in the web.  Finally, as long as its not during a strict test, number 3 says they can quietly ask a helpful neighbor.  Once they have completed all these things, they can ask me. However, during center time, there is a 4th step - is there is anything else (including free read) I can be working on while I wait for Mrs. McConnell? If yes, do it, if not, then you I ask. And since they always have free read as a back up option during centers, they never need to interrupt my group work. These rules are posted in the room.

I have used this 'center'  process with lit circles using a choice of books around a chosen theme, but that's a lot to change at once. This year I did not use lit circles but did use novels. I try to use novels that are aligned with the curriculum, for example Island of the Blue Dolphins, Sign of the Beaver, Blood on the River: Jamestown 1607, and Boston Jane.

The kids not with working me may work together quietly. Depending on the maturity of the students, I may  let them choose one of the three things to work on, as long as they finish it all by the end of the week. If they complete all their work, they can free read (at their reading level) or they sometimes grade their papers, to save me time and get instant feedback.

The other 40 minutes of the hour are spent reading the current novel, during which time I can meet one-on-one with students, as needed, for conferences.  How we read depends on their reading ability  - if high readers, they read 1-2 assigned chapters independently then we discuss what they've read, to ensure comprehension. They are allowed to read ahead, but may not share what they have read, so as not to spoil it for slower readers...no spoilers allowed! Sometimes we'd read aloud, though at higher ages that is less effective.

Sometimes I let them buddy read. I think that is my favorite, if they stay on task. In the beginning of the year we discuss and model strategies for buddy reading, as well as independent reading. Usually we'll use the alternate reading format of buddy reading, but with a lower reader, sometimes I have them listen then reread.

At the end of a novel students are assigned a response to literature essay to evaluate comprehension.

I hope this makes sense. Please contact me with comments, questions or suggestions!

Choose Happiness by guest blogger Monger

Choose Happiness.  Is this a true life strategy or a cliche? I worry.  Choosing Happiness should be s simple act.  However, it is not.  It is hard work and complicated .  I try. I am flawed. I fail.  The guilt sets in.  What a spiral.

I look around and see that it is so much easier, so much more satisfying to blame, complain, let others influence me.  I hear the excuses and watch as those around me continually look outside for relief.  How you doin’ today?  “I’m so tired”, “Can’t wait for the the weekend...(vacation, summer break... etc.)  Why is it we rarely hear, “Doing great!”, “Glad to be here”?

Driving in today I sat and listened to the voices in my head trying to rile me up, try to excuse my poor choices.  I felt the guilt of letting down those I hold dear in my heart and trying to justify my attitude with some outside force.  BUT, and I mean but, I know that the feelings in my heart must override the voice.  I will negate the instinct to blame with accepting my own responsibility in this world.

I believe that Choosing Happiness is a responsibility.  It is conscience act of love and I want my love for you to prevail.  Ask me how I am doing and I will tell you true that I am blessed to have you in my life.  I am sorry for my failures, and will continue to strive for Happiness.  Ask me how I am doing and I promise to answer you with True Happiness.  “I am doing great”.

~ by guest blogger +sheila monger

We Make it Look Easy

For the past two years I have been blessed to work with some amazing and talented colleagues. When I went to my new hire training last year, I sat next to a woman named +Sheila Monger, not knowing we'd become teaching partners, collaborators and friends. We ended up in adjacent classrooms and because my previous SpEd team had trained me so well ( thank you +Julie Paolini), and because my parents raised me right, I fully embrace an inclusive model of education.
From Day 1, Monger ( as she is known) and I collaborated and integrated our classrooms. We joined the iPad Academy, and worked with students across the school to film and edit content for CreaTV. Our students have been exposed to new ideas, new technologies and new ways of thinking.




This school year, I was asked to teach a combo - a combination of 4th and 5th graders. Due to space and budget constraints, our school, has a combo at every grade level split this year, my 5/4, a 4/3, 3/2, 2/1 and a 1/K. It is a lot to ask from teachers and students. We try to place independent learners (read: not behavior problems) into combos, which tends to place a disproportionate disciplinary, and sometimes an academic, burden on the non-combo classes. Nonetheless, combos are still a lot of extra work. We have twice the curriculum to teach, twice the grade level meetings to attend, and yes, we do have behavior issues in the classroom as well.
Since Monger teaches a 2/4/5 combo this year, we decided to team up and make it work the best we can. Sometimes we have all of our 4th and 5th graders in the same room. Sometimes, she takes one grade level and I take the other. Our kids fluidly move from one room to the other, from one teacher to the other. If you walked into our rooms, you would see all of our students working together, learning together, teaching each other. They make it look easy.
It looks easy because of the hours of planning Monger and I put in, like a calm duck on the surface, we are paddling like hell underneath. It looks easy because we have instilled in our students a sense of responsibility, compassion and accountability. It looks easy because we communicate regularly with our parents and administration, and have built a community of trust. It looks easy because we choose to be positive and happy and optimistic.

A Unique Year

Usually at this time of year I am fighting to keep my emotions in check while still presenting a compassionate, engaged teacher face to my students. Because every year that I have been a teacher, I have been laid off. For seven years. This year was different. March 15, the Ides of March, the day lay off notices to go out, came and went without much ado. I didn't even realize I HADN'T been laid off until three days later when I received notice from our Director of HR that I was being 'promoted' from temporary status to probationary status, the first step to tenure. Now, I have an odd bias against tenure, but it is the game that education plays, so I'm in it. I was thrilled to hear about my new status.

Does it make me a better teacher? Or more complacent? No, I still do my best everyday. The good news is, this year, my best does not have to include worry filled sleepless night, fighting back tears, misdirecting responses to the "will you be my teacher next year?" questions and packing my room back into storage for the summer. The comments of tenured teachers worrying about next year's class size or make up won't seem so insensitive. I hope to even know what my position is next year before too long. Who knows, I may actually get to teach the same thing two years in a row!

But I'm not quite ready to give up my storage unit.