Summer Break

I think one of the bigger myths out there is that educators get a lot of time off.  While it is nice that we have some time off in the summer to recharge our batteries, it’s also true that the summer time isn’t just sitting around doing nothing.  All the districts I have worked for have required some amount of professional development hours to be obtained over the summer and usually there are random things that need to happen over the summer (ie – curriculum writing, leading trainings, interviews, etc.).  By no means am I complaining especially since my whole family is off during this time, but it did strike me odd how I personally torpedo any chance of a restful, school-absent summer break.

The main way I do this is because I generally enjoy presenting and training educators.  It’s one of the main reasons I moved out of the classroom and into my current role.  I love sharing my knowledge with others and this also forces me into my next way to take up summer break.

There are some trainings that only happen during the summer.  My district offers a handful of these and many outside entities offer summer professional development.  I started the Google Certified Coach curriculum this summer because they recommended completing a large portion of it before the school year started.  I need to be constantly learning and engaging in new learning opportunities so I can continue to push the faculty at my school and be prepared for creative solutions to problems.

Lastly, there is one sentence that keeps me up some nights thinking about…”it’s what’s best for kids”.  The students at my state/district/school deserve the best most prepared educators.  My small contribution to this is making sure the teachers and administration have the most competent, well prepared version of me they can.

I think that last reason is why most teachers became teachers in the first place.  To do what’s best for kids.

A New Type of Training

My son started Cub Scouts this year.  He just finished up his rank of Lion and will be moving on to his Tiger rank this upcoming year.  As an Eagle Scout, I’m happy he’s taken a liking to Cub Scouts and I’m also a natural target for someone to ask me to help in the leadership of the Pack.  To do so, I had to get some training, and this weekend was the weekend.

Before I get to the weekend, I’m pretty positive there was not this much training involved in leadership when I was growing up.  I know this because if there was my father probably would not have helped at all in leading.

I had to go to BALOO training through the council.  It’s essentially an introduction to camping and the outdoors for new leaders.  We stayed at a local camp, camped overnight, and had instruction from some trainers from the council.  We got to practice our outdoor cooking skills, learned basic first aid, and got to know basic gear that would be helpful when camping with Cub Scouts.  All in all, it was a long but fun weekend.

When the weekend first started, one of the trainers let me know that as an Eagle Scout I would probably know everything that we were being trained on and would probably be bored.  While I did know most of the topics that were covered, seeing them in context of teaching Cub Scouts was good for me.  I also learned about some more training opportunities and that makes me feel good about what I might get into later in this journey.

New Position

As I was finishing up my Master’s degree this fall, I was given an opportunity to leave the classroom and take a new position in the front office of my school.  The position is a Digital Learning Specialist and it has been a great change and has afforded me a lot of new opportunities.

This position is essentially supporting the teachers of four schools (my middle school and its three feeder elementary schools).  I’m helping train them on district supported technologies, solving software issues, and generally making sure they are supported in the classroom.

This position is not a a teaching position, meaning I don’t see students all the time at my school.  This has come with pros and cons, some of which are unexpected.  I miss building relationships with students in the classroom.  It’s fun to have inside jokes and learn from students in my classroom.  On the other hand, this has allowed me to meet and interact with a lot of people who I would not normally come into contact with.  For instance, I’ve had more interactions with parents this year than almost any other year in education.

I was initially worried about the amount of elementary campuses I would be on, but they have been super warm and welcoming.  I have really enjoyed helping out the elementary students and working with teachers that have a completely different set of issues that I’m used to.  They tend to look at problems in completely different ways and it’s been an interesting new perspective to take into account.

This year has been great.  It has challenged me in a variety of ways and I think I needed some of that in my life.  Being in a classroom is predictable (as much as middle schoolers can be predictable) and shaking things up and try out something new has been great for me.  From time-to-time I’m going to be sharing my projects I’ve worked on here, so stay tuned!

2020 Goals Review

At the beginning of 2020 I came up with a list of goals that I’d like to try and get done.  Little did I know how this year would get turned on its head just a few months later.  With that being said, let’s take a look at how I did this last year.

Professional Goals:

  • Finish my Master’s Degree with a 4.0 – This happened!  I thought for sure I would have one class that I didn’t make an ‘A’ in, but I was able to pull it off.  The last semester was a close call.  If you’re interested in Instructional Technology, I highly recommend the Texas A&M program…but I’m biased.
  • Develop a 1-year and 5-year plan for my career – I started work on this, but my plans had a curveball thrown at them when I changed jobs and some of the items on my plan were taken care of.  A post on this is in the works if you’re interested in my job change.
  • Find 1 mentor to continue my development – This particular goal was when I thought I was predicting a career change outside of K-12 education.  While this may happen at some point, this goal has changed significantly since the beginning of the school year.

Personal Goals:

  • Read 1 book per month (not degree related) – I started off strong on this one.  I believe I made it until August, but have since fallen off the wagon.
  • Cut my screen time – This goal was difficult for me during the quarantine.  I feel like I managed as best I could, but I don’t know if the numbers would bear out a decrease in screen time.
  • Develop one tradition with each of my children – This was a fun experience.  I think we’ve gotten to a good spot of traditions with my children.  My son and I have Cub Scouts to bond over (I am an Eagle Scout) and my daughter and I have bonded over a love for cooking.  

Overall, I could have done better with my goals, but it was fun trying new things and learning as this crazy year went on.

Transitions in Teaching

I am not going to pretend that we all don’t know what is happening in the world right now.  The Corona Virus is changing a lot about our world right before our eyes.  This includes the way we are teaching and learning and there was not much of a learning curve.

I feel like there are two types of educators in the world right now:

  1. Educators who are comfortable learning new ways of teaching and adapting instruction to include new methodologies and technologies to meet the needs of the learners in class.
  2. Educators who are struggling  because they have always done things certain ways and are either struggling to change or unwilling to change.

I would like to think I can include myself in the former category.  I have always tried to be the person that would be the guinea pig for new technologies in my classroom.  To be fair, this has contributed to the greying of my hair at times, but I’ve learned what I could and moved on.

The world changed quickly during the month of March and there were definitely teachers out there who could not cope with the change.  The question that I’ve been pondering over the past couple of weeks is:

Whose fault is it that teachers can’t cope with change?

Is it the teacher’s fault?  Is it their supervisor’s fault?  Is it their employer’s fault?  Is it society’s fault?

I’m not sure that I have any answers to this question, but it something I’ve had a lot of time to ponder these questions in the past few weeks.  Hopefully in the coming months educators, in general, are going to be prepared to change multiple times because of all the uncertainty caused by our current global situation.

E-Learning Using Adobe Captivate

One thing I’m really trying to focus on in my master’s coursework are practical skills that will add to my future endeavors.  I was presented with an opportunity to take a course on e-learning design and knew that it was a skill that could be beneficial so I jumped at the chance to take it.

We used Adobe Captivate in this class, so I dove into that world.  Our graduate assistant said that it is “Powerpoint 2.0” and while I can see some similarities, Captivate is a totally different beast.  On top of coming up with a topic, doing the needs assessment, and producing the content I had to meet with my group regularly and deal with being quarantined due to the Corona Virus.  It was a wild semester, but I think that I produced an e-learning module that I am proud of.  I want to continue to refine my knowledge of Captivate and produce some more modules over the coming months.  If you’re interested in see what I came up with, the link is right here.

Presenting Followup

In a previous post, I mentioned that I would be presenting at the National Council of the Social Studies annual Convention.  That day has come and gone and I wanted to circle back and report how the convention went.

Let’s start with my presentation.  First and foremost, I forgot my Chromebook at school about four hours away.  I realized this fact at 5:00 AM the morning of the presentation.  Needless to say, not much sleep was had after this moment.  I was able to borrow a colleague’s Chromebook (thanks Anna), and it went reasonably well.  I was trying out something new during the presentation by using Poll Everywhere’s feature that links questions together, but it was not working during my presentation.  I am blaming this on using someone else’s Chromebook, but I have also followed up with the presenter I borrowed this from to get some help for next time.  Other than that, everything went well.  I heard good feedback.  Most people appreciated that my presentation was usable and practical.  I have posted a recording of my presentation in my podcast feed, which can be found here (in case you are interested).

The rest of the Conference was pretty typical of a national conference.  There were a lot of people attempting to sell me something, even more than our annual state social studies conference.  While there are times that i am looking for a new product, I am not as easily convinced of new products.  I find myself heading to my trusty favorites to see how they have adapted since I last saw them.  I also use conventions to network with people in my field.  This time I ran into one of my college roommates who is now teaching history.  It was fun getting to reconnect with an old friend.  Finally, I did learn about some new technology to use in the classroom.  I will be reviewing it on next week’s podcast and it’s awesome, so tune in!

Overall, I love going to conventions.  I think it is important to help spread the knowledge that I have acquired as well as learn from other.  Good times in Austin, TX.

Presenting

I have a love-hate relationship with presenting.  On one hand, I love sharing my knowledge and experiences with people.  On the other hand, I am more of an introvert so it can be uncomfortable.  Recently, I have had to make presentations in my graduate school classes as well as in real life, so it is time to share what I have learned.

  1. Do not wait until the last minute.  I have this bad habit of procrastinating on things until they are so pressing they have to be done today.  I try and space out time working on my presentations so that I can always look at it with fresh eyes.  This also allows me to think through issues in my presentation to make sure that I am giving the best presentation I can.
  2. Understand that there will be technical glitches.  I like seeing great presenters because it shows me what is possible.  I recently got the opportunity to watch Cara North’s presentation on engagement and thought it was spectacular, so I tried to incorporate some of her ideas into an upcoming presentation.  I also know that sometimes things do not work out ideally, so I have a plan should the new ideas do not work out.  I also try and have every cord I could ever need or want with me, just so I am not reliant on the facility to provide something in an emergency.
  3. Know your audience.  Who I am presenting to matters.  My grad school peers will find certain things important/funny/enlightening/etc. while my co-workers might not.  do you best to cater your message to the group you are presenting to.
  4. Do not be afraid to admit things that do not go right.  In the worst case scenario, it is ok to be honest with the people watching your presentation.  When my presentation in grad school was not going the way I hoped it was, my peers understood and were gracious to me.  Everyone makes mistakes…afterwards, learn from your mistakes.

Professional Juggler

I have never been a very good juggler.  In P.E. they tried hard to get me to juggle.  We started out with scarves, bean bags, and tennis balls but I just could not manage to be very good no matter how I tried.  Sure, as an adult I can occasionally spin a few items in the air, but I will never be confused with a circus juggling act.

As a professional I feel like I am learning about having to juggle a lot of responsibility.  I have multiple arenas all vying for my time and attention and it seems like as soon as soon as one of these areas is doing well another of them falls apart.

As a parent, my kids are growing up fast.  Right when my wife and I think we have things under control they grow into another issue.  I understand that this is a part of “growing up” but it still freaks me out that my two are growing up so differently.

As a teacher, my life is always a bit out of control.  Right when I think I understand Middle School students they will do something that surprises me.  I love that they keep me on my toes, but at times it seems a little overwhelming.

As a student, I feel like I am constantly on the edge of losing control.  My classes have been great and I am learning a lot.  With that being said, I wish I could learn in a classroom as opposed to learning through technology.  I am hoping that learning in a different way will help me in the end grow from my experience.

With these three balls in the air my life tends to feel on the precipice of falling apart.  I am looking forward to some down time over the holidays to relax and prepare for the craziness that is the spring semester.

Glitter Bombs and Education

I laughed hysterically watching would be thieves getting covered in glitter and fart spray. If you are not sure what I am talking about, there is a Youtube video making the rounds on the internet showing a gentleman taking revenge on some package thieves. He is an engineer and was able to create a package that took video, uploaded it to the cloud, tracked the package via GPS, flung glitter, and sprayed fart spray on a few people who stole packages off of front porches.

While the sinful side of me took joy watching payback unfold right before my eyes, I also reflected on the learning process that took place on the video and whether my students are walking a similar process in my class.

He started with an idea of what he wanted. In science class this would be called “forming a hypothesis” but we usually call it “making an educated guess” in history class. He decided what the goal was for his project. He wanted a package that did very specific things. In my classroom I do not think I use prediction as well as I could. Making an educated guess at events that might happen next is a skill that is developed over time. While not a “testable skill” it is a skill that students will need to develop in their lives to understand the possible consequences for actions.

Next, he used his resources to collect materials that accomplished the goals he set out for. I noticed at this point that while he does play to his strengths as an engineer, he did employ some help to accomplish his goals. He constructed something that looked like it would accomplish the goal of payback.

He used his knowledge in building the product to test his goals. He methodically tested each element (the GPS, the camera, the motor for the spinner, etc.) to make sure it did exactly what he wanted it to. He did not include a lot of this footage in the final video, but I would guess there was a bit of trial an error in a machine this complicated.

Lastly he put his product into the real world to see what it could do…and it was spectacular.

My reflections on this process are:

  • Do I allow my students to come up with good ideas and put them to the test? This would be difficult in a history classroom, but I think it would be good for my kids
  • Do I use real world application enough? Again, difficult in a history classroom, but I think it is possible during certain units of study.