Numbers Dropping – Week 11

One week left of classes and attendance is noticeably down. I mean, there are a handful to students absent due to various reasons, but it is a bit disappointing. I understand that students have to make choices. Students who were in my class candidly shared that information with me. Reassuring on the one hand but aggravating on the other. It’s the end of the term and students budgeting their time to get papers done and study for tests. I get that. If grades are driving the learning-train, then students are going to act accordingly to get the grades.

Stepping away from this rain cloud was the awesome IGNITE presentations and this final reading reflection. This student was signed up to do her reading reflection today and she was late to class because she got a flat tire on the way to school. Instead of giving up or postponing her reading reflection, she sent me an email to reassure me that she was still coming to class and that she might be late. During our break, she arrived. Wow. I was so impressed by her determination to come to class and readiness to present. She opted to present after the IGNITE presentations.

I would call her “the closer.” That was so bold to want to end the class with her reading reflection. What surprised me more was that she made a PowerPoint presentation for her reading reflection (she was one of two in my class of 35). What made the presentation more impressive was that the article was nothing like what she had expected (based on the title). She was disappointed and expressed that disappointment during her presentation. As a result, she delved into the article with additional research to gain a deeper understanding of “Leading from the Middle.”

She held the class for about 20 minutes. I was engaged.  She pretty much hit the major points of the public education system and roles of each level of governance or government had in curriculum development. She found examples of top-down curriculum development and bottom-up examples. She got it. Her presentation was compelling and she ends her presentation/reading reflection questioning whether or not if it would be appropriate to lead from the middle in the context of curriculum development. Wow. She left me speechless. Good question. Great presentation.

Yes… I can dwell on a few missing students… or I can relish in the awesome work students are doing in this class. The student presentations were excellent and students are already handing in assignments early (even though they asked for an extension for another assignment that’s due). I appreciate student voice and advocacy. Yes, I completely understand their situation and yes, I gave an extension. I am so grateful that my students are willing to ask. I am truly honoured.

Going Meta – Week 10

A deep sigh… only a few more weeks left of Educ 471 and I am stoked about how these students receive feedback, respond to feedback, and provide feedback. We have been working on developing and selecting curricular competencies to be evaluated on. We spend class time discussing assessment and their assessment to ensure that we all have a shared understanding but also ensure that there are no surprises. They have a lot of say in their assessment and evaluation process as we had embedded it as part of our curriculum development in our curriculum development course. We’re thinking about our thinking. We’re going meta.

One conversation caught my attention… and yes, it was about assessment and evaluation. We are fast approaching the end of our course and it is of great importance to me and my students that we are clear about expectations and evaluation framework. One of the final assignments is called the SUMMATIVE JOURNAL ENTRY. We’ve been journalling each week through out the course and from our entries, which reflect what we have learned and thought, we would write a final journal entry to conclude the course and their big ideas from the course.

One student had their computer ‘destroyed’ during the course and lost all of their journal entries to date. This is devistating as I love listening to the 10 minutes of click-clacking during the class when we have a moment to reflect on our learning. This student’s intentin was to rewrite all the the journal entries lost becaused I had asked the students at the beginning of the course to hand in their draft journal entries along with their Summative Journal Entry. This student was going to comply but last class seemed overwhelmed by the task. I would be too.

The most interesting part of this conversation for me was that this Summative Journal Entry was the only document I was going to assess and evaluate. The draft journal entries was only for accountability. I know that this student lost their journal entries in their ‘destroyed’ computer and this person had to buy another one. Then, this student had full-intentions of rewriting them so that they could “comply to the rules,” which in hindsight made no sense when I was only going to mark the Summative Journal. I had to rethink about what I was doing.

Luckily, there was another student listening in to the conversation. Here comes student voice… this student offers a solution. Why not cite date, source, thought as part of the Summative Journal instead of handing in all 10-12 weeks of entries? Why not. Great idea. Not everyone in the class was click-clacking away during class and everyone has a different way of processing their thoughts and reflecting. This was a win-win solution. Remember (to self) we only evaluate what we value. It was the big ideas or “take aways” from the course that mattered to me, not the compliance of journal writing, even though this is an integral part of the assignment.

I love how this class gets me thinking about my thinking and I love how they are spending their time thinking about their thinking. There are parts of this course I would redo or improve on for the next time… no question. This is my first time teaching at SFU as a sessional and I appreciate the students’ insight on what works and doesn’t work. They have come a long way and I’m so proud of the work they are accomplishing. Students keep me humble. BTW: they did great on the third round of curricular competency development. #thumbsup

Team Building – Week 9

I love collaboration and competition. It reminds me of curling… (but that’s for another blog). We’re working together, we have a common goal, and we’re motivated to WIN. This week’s warm-up activity changed momentum and we’re team building. The challenge… teams of 5, 20 pieces of paper, 7 minutes… make the tallest tower. GO!

OK… I thought our team did pretty awesome… but we did not “win.” That said, we were very satisfied with our teamwork, our ideas, and our collaborative approach to building our tower. I noticed that my team members drifted off to other teams to help out. What the? How super cool is that? We’re helping others to do OUR best.

There is nothing I like more than a warm-up activity that nourishes, exercises, and develops all 3 Core Competencies are in action: Thinking, Communication, and Personal/Social. We were problem solving. There was no extrinsic motivation… no prizes, no marks, no stickers… just the sheer pleasure of competition.

Although we declared a “winner”… a measurable outcome (seriously, with a measuring tape)… none of us felt like “losers.” We were more in awe of how tall the paper towers got. We could have continued the activity thinking about our thinking, communicating about teamwork and tactics, and how we could do better next time.

It was a beautiful and easy activity to facilitate… brought to us by one of the students in class. Using our hands, building, and creating. It reminds me of MAKER SPACES and how learning from making things can lend itself perfectly with BC’s New Curriculum. I can see inquiry. I can see personalization. I can see student engagement.

As we approach the end of our course… I would like to mention that we had two students collaborate and co-present their reading reflection in class, we had an inspirational and humorous video as our wild-card activity, and the third round of IGNITE presentations were wonder-full. I would definitely agree that to make space for student inquiry, there must be less  content, much like BC’s New Curriculum.

It was a great day… even though our class right in the middle of the US Election. That was a little distracting, but we managed to stay on task. Good job everyone!

Over Prepped – Week 8

I thought this slide was funny… but loved her IGNITE talk. She changed my perspective on online math learning. I had always thought that learning math online was difficult and challenging. I her presentation, she said that using technology was her strength, she like calling the shots when she was ready to write tests, and she found her online teacher supportive and helpful. What a nice connection to her lived experience, learning mathematics, and personalized learning. As a result, this was her best mark in math (an A) ever… even though she still hates math. OK. Noted.

6 IGNITE presentations, 2 reading reflections, one warm up activity, one wild card actity, and one make up reading reflection… we had a tonne of things to do in addition to talking about our final curriculum project. I was over planned. Last week, I was under planned. Where do I find the sweet spot? It depends (a classic education response). I had 2 additional activities planned for this week… but they have been postponed to future weeks. I do enjoy that the students are completely aligned to my edu-speak and it’s just a matter of fact. I am so proud of my shy students who mustered up the courage to present their IGNITE, loved the MATH warm up activity (a new numeracy idea), and “Where I am from…” Wild Card Activity. I am learning.

Four more weeks left in this course and I cannot believe how fast time has flown by. I wonder how we will end the course. I feel like there might be cake in the near future.

Feeling Ignited – Week 7

Wow. We are over the half-way mark in our Educ 471 course at SFU. Where has the time gone? I cannot believe what these students have accomplished and what they desire to know and learn. I am so impressed with this class and I am reminded of my purpose. We are imagining what’s possible. How can one not feel ignited?

It’s Week 7… we had our first round of IGNITE presentations. 5 students stepped up to be the FIRST presenters. Hats off to all those who are willing to pave the way for others by being FIRST. I much enjoyed the 5 presentations. I have yet to give feedback. Each student spoke with passion and personalized the BIG IDEAS.

Once again, the students exceeded my expectations. You know when things have turned in your class when you find yourself chasing the students versus your students chasing you. It’s an incredible feeling. These students have embraced the uncertainty of this course and became leaders of their own learning.

These students IGNITED the room. 20-slides, 5 minutes. The class is tasked to identify the BIG IDEAS while I was evaluating the students on the “curricular competencies” they designed and choose to be evaluated on. They are either “meeting expectations” or “not meeting expectations” with formative feedback provided via email.

I am bewildered by the whole notion of GRADING. I know that it is something that we have done for a long time… well, at least my lifetime… and I wonder if we are really supporting students and their learning. Is it possible that everyone can be a winner? With formative feedback, students have an opportunity to be better.

Choosing to improve or bridge the gap should be every students’ right. Not everything can be measured or behaviourally managed with a test, quiz, or bonus mark. Are we motivating students from the outside or the inside? Do we want students to love learning and learning about learning or test for content?

Not every “met expectations” on all 6 curricular competencies. My job is to follow up with those students and give them the opportunity to bridge that gap. In the end, the grade will be assigned. The student and the teacher have a choice. My choice as a teacher is to provide formative feedback to help students learn. Students will either choose to follow through and bridge the gap or not. This is a choice.

The summative assessment or assessment at the end of the course will be final and will be graded. Although I cannot help my students post final assignment, I can certainly help them during the weeks before to ensure that they are on track. This is a choice. I get it. Summative assessment signifies “the end of the learning process.”

I am looking forward to the next 6 IGNITE presenters and what wisdom they have to impart on us. I love that the students have taken leadership in this course, ask good questions, and collectively contribute to the quality of the course. I am proud of the work these students are doing. The second half of the course will be awesome.

Student Leadership – Week 6

There is nothing I love more than students taking leadership of their own learning. On the one hand, it’s a little unnerving for me… as the teacher… not completely in control of student learning. On the other hand, I am in control and I am facilitating (or as a colleague said to me, ACTIVATING) student learning. Yes… that makes sense to me.

Students lead activities (aka. micro curricula), students participate willingly, students lead group discussions, students ask questions, students advocate for their own learning, students provide direction, students are accountable… STUDENTS ROCK!!! This week, we delved into BC’s New Curriculum started to design and develop our own curricular competencies for our upcoming IGNITE presentations on curriculum.

We also discussed and differentiated formative and summative assessment. The crazy part is, assessment has everything to do with how successful a curriculum is implemented, but has nothing to do with how curriculum is developed. Developing curriculum is focused on the WHAT and the WHY. The HOW is up to the teacher.

In our class… we are developing our curriculum in light of BC’s New Curriculum. Our IGNITE assignment is about personalizing their learning with the BIG IDEAS and content area of curriculum, curriculum development, and curriculum theory. Our commonality amongst all students are the curricular competencies. What are students expected to demonstrate and how will this be assessed?

We looked all all three core competency areas of thinking, communicating, and personal/social. At first, I asked each discussion group which core competency they wished to explore as we embarked on developing curricular competencies for our upcoming assignment. Worth mentioning, ALL of the groups wanted to look at the PERSONAL/SOCIAL core competency. So interesting… but not possible.

We looked at all three core competencies and developed DRAFT curricular competencies with our discussion groups. The students taught me about “collaborations” on CANVAS and we collated all of our group work on a live document. From this, we narrowed down the DRAFT curricular competencies to 12. Now, here is DEMOCRACY at its finest… we’re voting for 5. The vote is happening online and students will mutually on decide the curricular competencies.

The online vote ends tomorrow to give our first cohort of IGNITERS some time to prepare for Tuesday’s class. There will be at least one curricular competency per core competency. I can’t wait to see what the students decide. Furthermore, we will provide formative feedback to the presenter by identifying the BIG IDEA(s) at the end of the presentation. We’ll see how this goes. I am very excited to see how all of this unfolds. I hope they are excited too. #buildingtheplaneinthesky

Restorative Action – Week 5

I’m already falling behind on my journal reflections. My bad. I have the deepest respect for those who are attending school and balancing their life, work, and learning. I find myself doing the same and I want to honour the work of my Educ 471 by doing the same… journal reflections from the instructor’s perspective.

I love this photo… I’m sure the Christine in the photo would really hate this photo but it captures the kind of work my students are accomplishing in my class. It’s been a META project, if you will, where we are trying to best exemplify the ideals of BC’s New Curriculum in this class as we are learning about curriculum development ourselves.

What you see here is are the 3 core competencies… communication, thinking, and personal/social. I love that the students are seeing personal relevance in this course in addition to being active contributors to the course. I am proud that these students have embraced some of the ‘unusualities’ (made that word up) of this course.

I also took the opportunity this week to say sorry to my students (re: Twitter fiasco), acknowledge my strength as a teacher practitioner, and this course is being designed with BC’s New Curriculum in mind but it’s transforming as we are doing. I am taking a risk and what I am doing may not be the norm to any other Educ 471 course.

To see what is possible is to attempt to see what is possible… to nourish students as creative and critical thinker, to create space for students to collaborate and communicate during class as sense-makers, and to enable students to define and personalize their learning within the context of the course. I am learning with them.

Thank you Educ 471 students for being part of my teaching and learning experience. Coincidently, this week I had multiple moments of gratitude for past students I remain connected to (via social media) who share their gratitude, passion, and expertise with me… it’s way to cool for words to describe. Feeling restored.

Bubble Bursted – Week 4

I am not going to lie… this will be a difficult reflection. What can I say? Twitter Troll. I know… it’s not a very nice thing to say. Some would consider me a Twitter Troll at times. I get it. Passion gets in the way of reason. I respect a person’s desire to “fix,” inform, or persuade people on social media but there’s a moment when you just have to let go. It was self-regulation at it’s finest. For me, I had to block this person.

Before class started… I was catching up on some with with my Saint Mark’s College students. I was so inspired with their work that I left Starbucks on campus towards my Educ 471 class at SFU with a skip and jump in my stride. Here’s some irony… today’s theme was STRENGTH BASED LEARNING (SBL). Today could have been a better day. I tweeted out during the break a few photos of our small group discussions (aka. to celebrate student learning). Apparently, my tweet provoked someone online who insisted I provide empirical evidence for SBL.

Well… I didn’t and tried to clarify few times the intent of the tweet. Nonetheless, no satisfaction by this Twitter renegade and she persisted. I called it quits but I continued to receive multiple tweets after class and through the night. This person also tagged my employers and recruited another researcher to fight a good fight. I was not responding. Then, I was accused of shaming, avoiding, and bullying. By 2 am, I blocked both of them. My energy and spirit was completely depleted.

As mentioned, I get it. I’ve been blocked too. Forget about SBL and let’s think about EMBEDDING FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT (Dylan Wiliam, 2011). This person wants citations. For me, my number one concern is STUDENT LEARNING. When I receive tweets like that, make it a learning opportunity. I can see how students feel when the teacher tells them they’re wrong over and over again. You don’t want to take a risk to be wrong again. I got that sense from the twitter convo. I get it… I’m wrong.

The Twitter Troll tried to supplement their point of view with links to blogs and articles. They too were of opinion. What’s the empirical evidence that says otherwise? What is the measurable craze in education? This is the inquiry. What I care about is, does it provoke people to think about what they do. It’s metacognition. My education course is not a content-dump onto students. We are thinking. We are communicating. We are making personal and social connections. #bccurric #corecompetencies

So, I apologize to my students… I was not my best self during the second half of our class. I want to thank my students for reaffirming to me that they understand what I am trying to achieve with them in class in the context of curriculum development. I am thankful to SFU and Saint Mark’s College for their patience, kindness, and willingness to take a chance. And, I am thankful to my daughter and edu-buddy for keeping me in check and saying, “it only matters if you make it matter.”

Exceeding Expectations – Week 3

It’s already the fourth week at SFU… labelled WEEK 3 for those in Educ 471 (the first week didn’t count… aka. WEEK 0). We are on our way… moving from grading and assessment to 21st Century Learning. It was YONG ZHAO day in our class. We read his article, watched a brief plug on his book “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?,” and watched his TEDxAmsterdamED video on “Everyone is a Rudolf.”

We had a full slate of student participation… 2 reflective readers, one warm-up activity, and one Wild Card activity. I should also mention that we also had someone do an online summary of the article as well as record the “unfolding” of the class. They are living their “dream school”… choice, freedom, and personalization.

The Wild Card activity was so unexpected, timely, and entertaining. The warm-up activity was engaging and interactive. And the two reading reflections just WOWWED me. I did not expect these student to make connections with previous readings or videos. Surprisingly, they were very similar in terms of what each of them quoted and cited. I loved how each of the reading reflections concluded with their own thoughts and a thought-provoking question. What more can I say?

Oh yes… the group discussions were amazing. What is your dream school? They hit it. What they genuinely want is exactly what BC’s New Curriculum is intending… and what we’re doing in Educ 471. Most of the class was student led… facilitated and orchestrated by me (the teacher). The class concludes with a self-reflection journal on What’s your definition of personalized learning? Key words from both the group discussion and journal reflection were shared on the white wash board… participation to contribute key words was voluntary. What a collection of words!!!

I am so proud of this class. We put assessment and evaluation aside to focus on learning. I am resistant to tell them exactly what I am looking for because they are exceeding my expectations every time, every week. The class concludes with a half-hour discussion about WHAT’S THE ANSWER with a few students after 8:20pm… the end of class. Full engagement and the irony to realize that deeper learning, intrinsic motivation, and inquiry happens when there is no multiple choice test at the end of their journey. This is what I know for sure… anything is possible!!!

Assessment Again – Week 2

Even though the blog is labelled “week 2″… it’s really our third week together. We are talking about ASSESSMENT AGAIN. The course is about curriculum development: theory and practice yet we need to clarify what is expected, discuss what needs to be done, and establish when things are due. I appreciate the meta-conversations as we discover one of many factors that influence curriculum implementation.

What you see in the photo is the class figuring out a rubric for the 5 participation activities. The work was collaborative, exploratory, and student led. 8 groups of four challenged with what a rubric would be to assess a student’s demonstration of their understanding. Students have choice in what activity they want to be evaluated for and choice on how they facilitate the activity. What would the rubric look like?

Eight groups led to 8 different rubrics. Different sub-divisions, different criteria, and different rationales why they had constructed the rubrics they did. Furthermore, I loved the creative and collaborative aspect of producing a rubric using NON-PERMANENT VERTICAL SURFACES. I knew NPVS works in high school mathematics, why not Education 471? It worked like a charm. We saw diversity and subjectivity.

What a wonderful teaching/learning opportunity to show that something that is seemingly objective really isn’t. We also discussed Assessment AS Learning, Assessment OF Learning, and Assessment FOR Learning in the context of curriculum and student learning. This tied nicely last week’s article on curriculum theory with this week’s topic of “The Heart of a Teacher.” I love Chapter 1 by Parker Palmer.

Identity and Integrity. I am reminded why I am a teacher and why I am in education. This class is a part of me restoring my broken heart and stoking my fire for the love of teaching/learning. I also love that this class has quickly become a family… a community of learners… where we are focussed on the divergent and personalized nature of learning versus the potential narrowness of testing and grading.

THANK YOU Education 471 E200 students!!! You make me whole. I love your leadership, your thoughtfulness, and your vulnerability to ask questions, have voice, and share ideas. You have embraced the direction of this course and I look forward to what’s to come in the next few weeks. It’s been an awesome 3 weeks and I appreciate your willingness to engage in student choice and student voice. I am learning.