Differentiating

Finally, we talk about differentiated learning. So, yesterday was my first day back and we spent the whole day in various meetings discussing what it means to be focused on Common Core Standards. My principal said something that I absolutely love her for. She said, "You know, I'm not really all that blown away by the standards, because this is what I've watched great teachers do for years. Most of you are already doing it!" True, so very true. I think, for a long time, that many of the people coming into teaching (myself included) are young, inexperienced, and have a hard time suddenly being in charge of forming people. Which is literally what we do. Whatever students love about their experiences is directly connected to their teachers. Sit back a minute, and think of your favorites. I bet you can picture them right now, supporting you, guiding you, and inspiring you in a direction you might not have gone in without them. We aspire to be these great people. People who are role models, people our students can look up to, and most importantly, people who can actually educate your kids. The last one is the hardest. At the end of every year I take a bit to reflect on what, if anything, I passed on to my students. I pray that they will retain the passage of Harry Potter I read, or that they loved the bird cam so much they want to become ornithologists. But what I don't consider often enough, is if I did enough to differentiate what I taught. If I were effective as a whole group teacher. If all my students left the library with good intentions about how they were going to use the information I fed them. There are, of course, plenty of students who need a completely separate transfer of information. And I always figure out who needs a little extra support during the course of a year. But I also always feel stretched as I try to travel among groups and decide who needs me more. Who can continue on without me as I work towards my own goal of sharing the information they need to grow as students. We spent a bit of time discussing how to differentiate our students- which means how to make a teacher's time as effective as possible during a lesson. Most teachers, maybe I should say all teachers, do not have the support they used to. Teacher assistants are in high demand constantly, and their schedules absolutely blow my mind. I can't even really read them. They spend like 20 minutes in one place and then it's on to the next. So it really is up to a classroom teacher to decide how best to use a students time during a lesson. The typical formula has been a mini-lesson in the beginning, then group work that allows students to work where they currently are or on a slightly higher level. The good news? We are announcing that every student is different, with different abilities and needs. We are saying that we want every student to succeed on a level that matches what NC asks us to do. The downside? Do we have enough support to make this a reality. Personally I really like the Common Core. If used properly it could completely change the way a school runs. But are we ready for that?

Reaching Out

Our building is officially open next week, and I'm almost excited about the prospect of getting in there and starting to catalog some of our new books. They have been sitting in boxes all summer and my hope was to have some new ones available for the kids by the time they came back, kind of throwing them into the awesomeness of the printed word. Of course, this also means considering what my focus will be this year. Do we continue on trying to push printed books or do we focus on how we are going to really incorporate technology into our kids education? Last night I was talking to a friend who just purchased a laptop and was telling me about it. Of course he then pointed out that a five year old could probably run circles around us when it came to computers. This is not only true but seems normal to me now. I'm used to my students being able to figure out how to do things before I can, but I had not considered what this meant as far as their education. What I'm thinking is how much time should we spend teaching them how to physically use the computer skills they need versus how much time we should spend teaching them how to protect themselves within the realm of all the information that is available. This is the first year internet safety is part of the curriculum, part of what we are teaching our students, along with how to type in a web address and create a Prezi. The stories don't scare me- the stories about kids getting hooked up with strange men, and how they bully each other online, and create situations that are dangerous for all those around. I am scared of what they will do with all the information about themselves that is public. I'm not sure they realize the gravity of what they post. That everything they write or say or record or do that is released becomes a permanent part of something we actually don't know that much about. Because they are the first generation to never know a world without the internet and because we don't know that much about guiding them through it. Of course I can tell them that everything they post will become public information no matter what they do, but what I can't tell them is that the picture they have of them out at a bar with their boyfriend might one day be held against them when they run for a public office, or that their politically biased comment that they believed in at age 15 could be brought up again in a job interview at age thirty. I guess what I'm saying is that the stories that frighten me for our children are the ones that haven't even happened yet, but inevitably will. So how do we navigate around something that hasn't happened yet? How do we compare their experiences with our own? And how do we reach out in a way that maintains and balances the benefits and risks of posting online, of looking for answers online, and making sure they check their information over and over again?

Edmodo and Voicethread

Monday was spent in a workshop explaining the amazing and unparalleled uses of Edmodo and Voicethread in the classroom and learning community. Since we are switching to Common Core Standards this year, we are having to readdress not only how we teach but who we work with when we teach. Edmodo is essentially a social networking site for educators. I'm not sure why it took so long for it to reach us, but hopefully it's been around for a few years. Currently it has approximately 8 million users world wide, which is quite nice when you consider that part of your job as a teacher is to check off that globalization box on your evaluation. The layout is simple, and similar to other networking sites, you can post on your wall, on others walls, and join groups and communities. To be a part of a group or a community you have to have a code from the group starter, and this is the only drawback I found. One of the teachers who was in my workshop knew there was someone who has an awesome iPad community, but couldn't join it because she didn't know the founders name, and did not have the group number. And, you can't look up the group without that information. Maybe something for them to work on. When you start a group, you can invite your students to join in. Students are given a special code, you can put them in manually or upload them via a CSV file, and even parents can be given access (making them feel much better about social networking for their kids). Once they are a part of your group, you are the moderator, thus able to protect them from what they might say to each other. Since I'm in an elementary school, I worry a little less about this, but I think its' definitely useful for secondary education. I started a small group and added a fake student to play around with Edmodo. What I found that I liked was that you can add lots of polls and quizzes to force your students to be engaged with the group. Because everyone has an individual account, it's easy to follow what they are posting (or not posting!) on the site, and there is even a gradebook feature that allows you to grade your students online. Voicethread is a site that seems to me almost like a virtual Powerpoint with comments. Because you can record yourself (both voice and movements) on the site, you can communicate with your students online. Great for students who might have missed a presentation and are at home. Also a great way to let them literally hear what their classmates have to say. For students who are shy and have a hard time speaking out in class, this is a great way for them to share what they are learning without having to do it in front of their classmates. Voicethread offers you the option, once you have your lesson complete, of sharing that lesson with a broader community. You can search and find lessons from all over the world with comments from every corner, or you can completely restrict your comments to only those within the account. What can this do for our kids? It can make them excited about learning things they may not have been excited about before: i.e. War of 1812? Bo-ring! War of 1812 Voicethread with school from England? Yay! It can give those kids who have a hard time finding their voice in the classroom a more private (even though it's really more public, right?) way to voice their opinions and show us what they are picking up on, and what kid in today's world doesn't want to play around on a site in which they can record themselves, or a social networking site- at school! How taboo! What makes this different than other, similar technologies? They are so ridiculously easy to use, and your school district can sign up for one account- which means the money isn't coming out of your pocket. Check on it before you pay for an account.

Summer Reading is for Dorks

...and I used to be one of those dorks. When I was a kid, summer was the perfect opportunity to devour books and television. My mom would take me to the public library once a week for their summer reading programming, and I would select a variety of books. Looking back over the records I have (yes, I kept them, because I'm THAT kind of dork) I read A LOT. I think the whole Nancy Drew series was finished in a couple of summers. Every year I went to camp, and at camp we had a nap/rest time (which was pretty much time for the counselors to hang out and talk about us). I could never nap, so I read. I wrote some letters too, but reading was the best. I would take about 3 short novels (couple of Nancy Drew mysteries, sometimes a classic or two) and read. Usually I could finish those books during the time I was at camp, so when I got home it was time to start fresh with a new title. This year, when I was advertising the public library's different summer reading program, I became more and more discouraged as students would say that they didn't have anyone to take them to the library, that their parents were busy, that most of their time was spent alone playing video games and hanging out on the computer. Recipe for disaster? Definitely- don't get me started on the hows and whys kids should NOT be on the internet for long, unsupervised periods of time. Hello, Stranger Danger. Hello, You Don't Need to See That. Hello, You'll Burn Your Eyes Out (Maybe not, but it sounded like it went with the other themes). When I asked if they ever spent time reading, approximately 25% of them (surveyed over the last 6 weeks of school) said yes. That meant 75% of them read fewer than two books over the summer, or only did it as required by their parental units. Thus, the challenge. When I was a kid, the public library summer reading program was awesome. It was there that I touched my first alligator, that I learned how to silk screen a t-shirt, and that I won a ton of prizes. I LOVED going to those programs, and not just because there were cupcakes involved at the end of the summer. I loved them because the librarian (how I wish I could remember her name) was SO excited about the program. She was just as enthusiastic about the books that she book talked as she was about us silk screening a t-shirt. A challenge for any media specialist working in a traditional school is what our students lose over the summer. If not treated properly, it's 8 weeks of brain loss. That's why so much of the early part of the year is going back over what was lost during the summer. Students who may have been solid in math and science can lose a good amount of that knowledge over the course of the vacation. Even when we are on vacation, it is our responsibility to be sure that our children are not letting their brains go on vacation. I'm all for zoning out sometimes- I love doing that, sitting on my deck staring at the waterfowl and not thinking about anything. But I certainly spend a good amount of each day making sure my brain is working- reading, doing crosswords, writing, even researching for this blog. Why shouldn't our children be doing the same? The trick is in making it as easy and desirable as possible. I used to work for a family in which reading was a treat that was earned. Extra chores garnered extra reading time. It is one of the best examples of reverse psychology I've ever seen. But is that going to work on most kids? Absolutely not. And by the time we receive them in kindergarten, they have already been working in a completely different way. So, ideas on how to make our students dorky enough to want to be dorks? Using reading time as a time for family- if you haven't read The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma, you have to, whether you are a teacher or a parent, the father who is so solely dedicated to reading out loud to his daughter every single night no matter what will bring tears to your eyes and cause you to question why your parents ever stopped reading out loud. I see plenty of commercials about family game nights, family movie nights...what about family reading nights? What about gathering in the living room and sharing something wonderful. Or maybe selecting one longer book and making it a family goal to read together? Idea 2: Book Club. Encouraging kids who live in neighborhoods with other kids their age selecting a book together and reading it. Just for kicks. Gathering at the baseball field for a pick up game and discussing it. Meeting for ice cream. Parents could organize a system of discussion and reward. Idea 3: Setting aside a quiet time each day to warrant time to read. Much like the quiet time I had at camp, instead of forcing your kids to take naps, how about giving them the option of reading instead? Please comment with your own ideas, so for next summer I can present more options to my too-cool-for-summer-reading friends, and maybe helping transform their school experience.

I am a media specialist. I have a master's in library science, certification in education, and am currently the librarian at a K-5 school in Wake County, North Carolina. I started this blog as a way to open a forum to help me be a better educator, and to learn more about what's happening in other libraries and schools across the country and possibly the world. Bring it. Something is missing from education right now. We have teachers who work a ridiculous amount of hours each week, who have dynamic, amazing, lessons, and yet we are still struggling to reach a significant part of our population. What is going on? I watch teachers everyday who are literally amazing. I watch kids who pick up on something and boom- it's there. Educated children become educated adults. Educated adults are more likely to hold down regular jobs, contribute to community programs (churches, temples, volunteer organizations, etc) and less likely to end up behind bars. The more children we educate, the happier our adult population will be. So, let's bring it. Let's find out what the gap is, and strive to close it.