Are we working backwards?

With all of the technology available to teachers, and classrooms, and school districts, educators are bombarded with choices. Marketing reps from EdTech companies put their information out there at conferences to show-off how their program can be used to maximize student achievement.

But where are the teachers in this process? Teachers are on the front line. Teachers already know what they need, what their students need, and can imagine ways to make their classrooms run more efficiently. Some are intimidated my the tech aspect of their job and are satisfied with using their devices for attendance, grading, and power point. Professional development in tech is usually centered around a new program adopted by the district. Some teachers can't wait to jump in, while others may be reluctant to try it. For someone already anxious around technology, experimentation, in front of a room full of students whose attention is already a hot commodity and not something you want to risk losing, can be daunting.

My school received Apple's ConnectED grant and recently went 1:1 with Ipads. Apple sent in support people to make sure our school was physically wired and set up to run 400 devices, but they also sent teacher trainers. We had a wonderful trainer who quickly realized that the level of comfort our teachers felt with technology was as diverse as our student population. She focused her instruction on teaching us the basics-Keynote, Pages, Padlet, GoogleEarth, IMovie, and Explain Everything. Clearly, these are Apps that she has found educators to use and appreciate. As we explored with our new devices and programs, teachers began discussing ways these apps could be used in their classrooms. "I wonder if it could be used for..." "Would this help with..." "How would it work if..."

Great questions. And a great place to begin?

Thank you, Swivl!

I often wonder how I leave school feeling beaten up, run down, and truly exhausted--while my students leave with as much excitement as when they arrived. Do they have a way of sucking the life right out of me and filling their little bodies with all of my energy? I really don't think non-educators, test-creating companies, and politicians have a clue what we do every day in our classrooms.

So, Monday morning I recorded a lesson. Our school just got a Swivl, and I was eager to try it out. Every other week, at 7:45am, a group of fifth grade students who struggle in reading come to me for reading intervention. We use Fountas & Pinnell's Leveled Literacy Intervention kits to help bridge the gap from where they are to where we're heading.

I now know why I'm so warn out and they are not...I'm doing ALL of the work. As teachers, we try to squeeze in so much in such a limited amount of time. We often don't give students enough time to process. Granted, my students are Tier 3 students with limited experiences and reading difficulties, but I definitely can see lots of room for improvement on my part. 

With technology literally at our fingertips, teachers everywhere need to seek it out and use it to reflect on their practices. Watching my lesson has proven to be far more valuable than any walk-through or PDAS I've ever received.

How many times do I really need to say "Ummmmm" anyway? 

Monday, Monday

School's Out for Summer!

This is always a bitter-sweet day for me. I will miss my students greatly, especially those moving on to Middle School. I still remember my first group of 5th graders and the tears we shed on the last day of school.

I held it together today. But I will miss them just as much. I can't wait to see the wonderful things they will accomplish! Amazing young ladies.

Hello Animoto!

As I continue my journey towards Google Educator Certification, I've begun to explore Google Sites. How cool is Sites and why didn't I know about it last year when I bought starraustin.org?

I decided to play around with designing a class site before taking my Google Sites Exam.  I passed my first two and don't want to press my luck. I've had way more experience with Gmail and Calender.  Before creating my site, I wanted to check out other classroom sites and kept coming across teachers using Animoto. Another program I have never used. Yes, I must be living under a rock. I created a short video showing off my most recent trip to Jamaica, just for fun. It was super easy to use. I mean, it took me a whole 5 minutes, maybe. Easy to upload your pictures-right from facebook or instagram. I just used a ready-to-go template and song.

Just from this brief experience playing around with the program, I can really see how much fun my students could have with this! I'm going to have them create an Animoto video as a culminating project for the book we're currently reading The Mighty Miss Malone, by Christopher Paul Curtis. I'll post a link when they've finished it.  The possibilities are endless though. Imagine a math class creating a video on angles, where they have to take pictures of angles and share. Or a unit in science on habitats. I can already see that I will be using more of Animoto.


If you want to check out my Animoto, just click the link below.
Jamaica

*Hey, and you can change the music... Jamaica 2.0
https://animoto.com/play/9fWCjVrSmA2N2Z4ONU9bKw

Refocus and Re-Energize

Results are In

I feel like I'm at a turning point in my career again. Constant change is my only consistency and I need to change this. I am finding this out in my years serving as the Reading Interventionist on a high-need campus.

Working with students performing two or more grade levels below grade level expectations, watching them fail mandated district and state tests, and continuing to motivate them to not give up is often exhausting. Giving everything I have to my students and getting failing test results back crushes me to my core.  Hearing my principal tell me to look at the growth column, “All of your students received a 1 or a 2 in growth,” meaning they either met their expected growth or exceeded it by our state’s standard is supposed to make me feel better. I frantically go through the list of 116 fifth grade students and highlight all of my Tier 2 and Tier 3 students, physically and mentally falling lower and lower with every “No” I read.

And just when I feel crushed to the point of tears, I see a “Yes.” A “Yes” next to Dashanae’s name. That “Yes.” Dashanae passed her STAAR test. A part of me despises that test. Another part protests the excessive amount of standardized testing our public schools endure. How can a four-hour test determine your achievement? Your success? Your future?

For my fifth graders of poverty, taking a test may be the last thing they care about on that day. They face so many battles outside of school.  I have no idea how they cope.  

I mean, I can talk to my parents. I am not on medications one day and off the next. I know that I will eat dinner. I know I will sleep in my bed, in my home.

Dashanae

I have worked with Dashanae for two years. She was in fourth grade reading on second grade level. According to the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark reading assessments I gave her, she was at a Level L, which correlates to just below a third grade reading level.  She struggled with writing conventions, spelling, and grammar. She didn’t like reading. Or teachers.  She certainly didn’t trust teachers. She was constantly disrupting the classroom, no big infractions, but silly distractions that annoyed all. She was assigned to my Response to Intervention reading group. Her teachers were relieved to have a break from her for that 45 minutes each day.

I instantly liked her. It’s easy to like students in a small group setting. I find that often, they really just need someone to talk to or a minute, someone to listen to them. I took an interest in her life, in her person, and worked to get her back on the reading track. I’m not sure which happened first, her silliness prevented her from learning, or her struggles increased the silliness. We had our work cut out for us.  

As teachers, we read article after article on better teaching practices, classroom management, student engagement.  My key is building  a relationship with Dashanae, of caring and support. She learned to trust me, the  teacher who grew up in a different neighborhood with different circumstances and different experiences. I shared stories with her about growing up. I actively listened to her stories, and problems, and concerns. What I discovered was Dashanae was an amazing young lady, full of creativity and brilliant ideas. She was very artistic and her peers recognized her abilities and humor.

When she read with me, she naturally made connections to her life (a TEK that many students struggle with). She needed to share her thoughts as they came to her head.  I watched Dashanae make gains in comprehension and fluency. She began to love discovering new words. She took great pride in her ongoing list of vocabulary acquisitions she measured on an anchor chart in my classroom. Although she was making these gains, and learning to love reading and learning, she was still at third grade level at the end of fourth grade.  

Fifth Grade

When fifth grade began, I brought her to my room in September to assess her, and all of those gains we had made seemed to have vanished.  She was still just as creative, but her fluency drop greatly impacted her reading comprehension.  She hadn’t read a book over the summer. This  “Summer Slide,” was devastating to her progress -- and for me.

Two positions to take: Why bother? or Let’s get to work.

We started reading. I pulled out my childhood favorite Boxcar Children. She started out reading the words very choppy, but we began a new vocabulary chart. She related to the characters -- begging me to stay longer to read another chapter.  We moved onto another book. She could not put Sideways Stories from Wayside School down. Thank you Louis Sachar!  This book accelerated Dashanae’s growth spurt --  from learning to read to reading to learn. The entire reading group began talking about the book so much that other fifth graders were asking me for it. We laughed --  not just chuckled, but belly-laughed with tears --  and couldn’t wait to meet the next character in the book.  

I looked forward to working with her group. We began to feel like a real family. They asked if they could come read with me during lunch, we  formed “The Lunch Bunch”, eating and reading every Friday.  It was one of those books that none of us wanted to end.  When we finished, Dashanae proposed writing our own version starring each of us as characters.  They had just as much fun writing their chapter as reading Sachar’s.  Struggling fifth grade students loving reading and writing. It was amazing.  We went on to  Shiloh and Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus.  They were unstoppable.

Relationships Above All Else

It made me realize that it wasn’t the reading strategies I taught or the mini-lessons I delivered. It was the relationship I built with Dashanae.  Dashanae was often the scapegoat in her classes. It seemed as if even when other students were also talking, her classroom teachers singled her out. They grew tired of writing her up and began sending her to me. She liked coming, so her behavior continued.  A female Holden Caulfield at age 10. It’s difficult to find a connection with every student, but that is what an effective teacher must do.  Think in terms of Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller. It wasn’t a miracle worker,, it was a dedicated teacher, with the same affliction, giving Keller tools to pull herself out of her blindness.

If  classroom teachers would have made the time to really get to know Dashanae, and accept her humor, they could capitalize on it within their classrooms, like  our reading group did. We would listen to her crazy connections to her life, which evolved to connections to other books we had read, and eventually to world events and theme. Her thinking helped her entire group grow as readers and thinkers. Isn’t that the ultimate goal?

As teachers begin the new school year, building relationships with students must be their biggest priority. Not just the students that are easy to connect with, every student. There is a Dashanae sitting in every classroom, waiting for a teacher to take a genuine interest in her, to awaken the brilliance within. The classroom is the only constant in many of their lives. Make it genuine, caring, and fun.

New Perspective, New Job

Dashanae’s success motivated me to create a summer program, STARR Austin, to combat the Summer Slide.  She’s  inspired me to do more.  I’d love to help teachers grow to further their growth in students exponentially.

I have envisioned what a school I helped lead would look like for a long time.  All of the great teaching strategies and programs and curriculum will get you nowhere without an environment of family, mutual respect, and high expectations.  Genuine, positive relationships will help every child succeed, every time. It’s worth the effort and needs to be given priority over all else. Thinking of Dashanae gives me strength when I feel I am getting nowhere.  I will remind myself of her when I’m in that final stretch to STAAR. I will continue to stay focused on my students and not tests. I will teach my students, not my subject matter.  Students are where educators find their true successes, not scores.