Tag Archives: creative

Fraser Valley Ed Camp

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Water ripples

Water Ripples by mcconnell.franklin

I  participated in my first ed camp last weekend at Garibaldi Secondary School in Maple Ridge, hosted by @MrWejr and was so inspired by the people I met; some for the first time, others like @davidwees and @datruss who I’d been learning from all year. There were so many passionate educators/learners there that I’ve needed a few days to digest all the wonderful ideas I came away with. When trying to describe the experience to someone who wasn’t there I had trouble articulating what was so special about it. It wasn’t quite that I heard ideas I had never heard before, after all we share our ideas all the time online, but there was such a great synergy that came from being together, in person, sharing with and challenging each other, knowing we’re all working toward the same goal – doing whatever we can, wherever we are, to enhance learning. The image above came the closest to describing what I felt – many ripples on a pond, all overlapping to create waves.

Tami Oudendijk and I presented in the first session of the day. It was a little intimidating, as it was a first for us in this type of setting, but the format of edcamp is brilliant and we did okay :) We looked at “How we are letting structures (some that we may not even be aware of) drive our students’ educational experience.” and put out the question “How willing are you/is your school to bend the structure for the sake of your students’ learning?” In an ironic and very telling aside, the way edcamp works is anyone who has a topic to present writes their topic on a piece of paper and posts in on a board. There were paper and markers on the table, but when we started writing out our planned question we realized it was too long to fit. We started to rework what we could call our session when we started laughing at ourselves and realized that we were letting unnecessary structure limit what we wanted to learn. We got a second piece of paper. ;)

As our session got underway we heard great examples of interdisciplinary teaching (math and art), student-directed learning and the difficulties that teachers and admin face when trying to make schedules and various groupings of students work. One of the biggest challenges educators had faced when structures were removed and learning became more student-led was how to ensure academic rigour was maintained. It’s difficult to create a system to track individual student progress without having the nature of the assessment drive the type of learning.

One of the concrete ideas that intrigued me most came from David Truss, who suggested the possibility of a digital portfolio (student work, marks, teacher evaluation, personal profile, strengths/weaknesses, interests) that would follow a student throughout his or her academic career and be accessible to all the stakeholders (student, parent, teacher, admin) in that child’s education. Imagine having access to all that history when evaluating where to guide a student next on their learning path.

We also participated in sessions on Knowledge vs Skill presented by Tyler Suzuki Nelson and Different Types of Reporting presented by Remi Collins
The best part of Edcamp Fraser Valley is that it’s not over. As I’ve been writing this post I’ve found Google docs, new blog posts and hundreds of tweets giving me an impression of what happened in other sessions. I’ve been trying to check out K12online and what I’m watching is that much richer because of what I learned at EdcampFV. I’m also feeling overwhelmed by all I’m missing because there are not enough hours in the day! But meeting with all of you gives me the energy to feel that it’s worth the effort and that there is so much we can be doing to take our practices just a little bit further towards where we want them to be. Thank you!

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Do What You Believe Is Great Work

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Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

We’re all watching this speech today and each time we see it something else may strike a chord. For me, today, it was:

You’ve got to find what you love..the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe to be great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

Consider how it applies to your teaching and to your students’ learning.

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Summer Vacation Silly?

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Canada Day 2009 – 2010 and 2011 were too wet!

There is a lot of talk about how much students forget over summer vacation and that year-round learning with 3 more evenly spaced breaks makes more educational sense. Logically, I can’t come up with a great argument against it, but I will never be able to support it.

Here’s why – I was born in Vancouver and have lived here my whole life. When I was 8 years old I read Ray Bradbury’s “All Summer In a Day”. I have never been as horrified by or related as completely to any story before or since. This may be only a Vancouver thing ;)

We’re still waiting for a day warm enough to spend all day swimming outside. It would break my heart to think of my girls spending any part of our short and sporadic summer inside at school. That is not to say they won’t be learning lots, just not at school and hopefully not inside. This is their time to be as free as kids can be these days, to explore on their own, to have to figure out how they’re going to fill up a day, to not have to count how many days they have left until school starts again.

We’re lucky that we can spend our summer days together.  We read in our tent camping or in a fort we make out of beach towels and lawn chairs in the backyard. My girls listen to Neil Young songs for the names of places we drove through on our way from Vancouver to Toronto (and back – without air conditioning!) We try to figure out what is eating our strawberries before we can pick them. I wouldn’t trade any of it to save them from having to review in September.  Most of what is worthwhile learning they’ll remember.

By the way, our trip across Canada was 3 years ago and they remember every single day of it.

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The Tragic Adventures of Joseph Halpenny

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This short was done by students from Lord Tennyson Elementary at the Museum of Vancouver in a one-day workshop called Animating History. A short animation demonstration taught them how to do cut out animation. Animating History is a partnership of the Museum of Vancouver and the Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth.

The animation was based on the letters of Joseph Halpenny, a prospector from Gloucester, Ontario that tried his luck at mining. He apparantly didn’t have much!

A great example of interdisciplinary learning: Language Arts, Social Studies, Technology, Art, Collaboration, Teamwork, Creativity, FUN!

What a great wrap up to the Natural Resources portion of the Grade 4 curriculum. This class also dramatized a town hall meeting to debate a proposed clear cut, with students representing various stakeholders in the community – and tried panning for gold in class.

They definitely had more fun than poor Joseph Halpenny!

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Finding Relevance Through Reflection

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I’ve read a number of provocative posts over the last week or so about encouraging students to ask the right questions, the right kinds of questions and to process the subsequent information.

http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com/2011/04/10-ways-to-help-students-ask-better.html

http://mrspripp.blogspot.com/2011/04/bring-back-thinking.html

There is another aspect to this focus that I’ve been pondering, trying to figure out if, or how, it applies…

Bear with me, I’m somewhat uncomfortable even as I write this post, which probably only proves the point I hope to make…

Are we guiding children to become self-actualized people?

Are we encouraging children to develop a self-concept that

  • is not tied to other people’s opinion i.e. their self-worth is not dependent on whether others like or agree with them
  • is not tied to outcomes i.e. decisions are not based on “What’s in it for me?” “How much money will I make?” “What grade will I receive?”
  • is not based on controlling other people i.e. energy is not spent on forcing others to agree with their points of view or conform to their ways of doing things

Are we, as the adults guiding them, aligned with these principles?

The inner “light” that is present in children appears very bright and focused to most adults. Young children project a lot of energy and often parents, teachers and other adults unconsciously turn away from that light.

Why?

The conditioning that has become a part of school and overall society’s collective teaching about what is possible teaches us to cover up and suppress that light. We are uncomfortable when someone expresses “too much” passion for or joy in something.

It seems that reflection is a skill that could be emphasized more in our educational system. We have strategies for teaching reading and writing, exploring the external world, collecting the thoughts of others through books, internet, etc., but no common practices for teaching students to go within, to distill all this external information, make connections and recognize what they think and feel. To know how to listen for it, to hear themselves.

There is a connection to be made here. For children to learn how to trust who they are, to focus on that light that is THEM and then to be able to listen to what other people have to share and know what to do with it.

One problem that intrudes is that when we think of turning “inward”, the practices that allow us to do so most effectively are often labeled religious or spiritual. But, isn’t this ability to be self-aware really what makes us human and capable of higher thought? If so, is it also not a skill that needs to be taught and valued as the way opens the door to creativity, empathy, flexibility and meaningful connection?

Is there a way we can allow students this opportunity? Make time and space for it in our classrooms in a way that will be effective and also acceptable?

A teacher at our school engaged her students in the following activity based on the story “The Three Questions.”

http://www.amazon.ca/Three-Questions-Jon-J-Muth/dp/0439199964

She asked them to write down their answers to the following 3 questions:

“When is the best time to do things?”

“Who is the most important one?”

“What is the right thing to do?”

Then she read them the first half of Jon J Muth’s version of the story and had them answer the questions again. When they were done she finished the story.

They didn’t have to hand in their answers. It wasn’t for marks. They were able to answer from their hearts, then accumulate more ideas and re-evaluate. They were learning that they are not alone in asking these types of questions and they weren’t judged. They weren’t right or wrong. They were learning to find their own answers.

They were given time to reflect.

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