Day 1: Why Blog? #EdBlogADay

Day 1: Why is blogging important to teaching and learning?  #EdBlogADay

I started seriously blogging Fall of 2013.  I made the decision to chronicle my journey through bariatric surgery.  It was a life changing experience- both my surgery and the documentation of the last 18 months.  I quickly learned that the feelings I was having, the thinking I was doing and the highs and lows I experienced were not unique to people who had weight loss surgery.  I also learned that truly authentic reflection is the best way for me to develop and grow.  

With any sort of reflection, there are ups and downs, periods to self-doubt and celebration, things to reconsider depending on the day.  Ultimately, for me blogging is important to teaching and learning because it challenges me to seek clarity about my own work, my own learning.  Often when teachers come together, it leaves teachers dwelling in the negative but I have found the solitary and contemplative nature of blogging results in the opposite.  Evolution and growth.

Day 27: Let Go In Order To Grow

Prompt: How to Build a More Powerful Classroom by Letting Go

On Friday, my most difficult class of 9th graders came into class and one young woman was all fired up.  She was going to get into it with a young man.  The tension was palpable.  As they began trading barbs, I stepped in and asked the young woman to walk down to our social work office to cool down and check in with someone there.  I knew she would be pissed at me.  I had to let that go.  Kids get over things.  What I couldn't let go was what it would mean if the two kids got into a fight in my classroom and one or both got suspended... on a Friday.  So, the student grabbed her things, and headed out ready to work independently for the period.  Class went on as planned and I had a surprise informal observation, of course!  Isn't that always the way.  Letting go...

Being a good teacher is often about picking moments to dig in and moments to step aside and let something else run a  course.  Some classes are so fantastic at things like leading conversations, accountable talk, project based learning.  Others need lots of hand holding, micro managing, sentence starters, and guided notes.  No matter what the group, I eventually need to get out of their way and let them lead, learn, grow.  It's not my job to control or manage each moment of each day.  School is organic and amazing things can happen when I get out of MY own way.

This morning, I stopped by Guidance and that very student who had to step out to avoid the fight was sitting there. I didn't know if something else had happened, but either way-she was not in class.  She was sitting with two of our Social Work interns so I pulled up a chair next to her, not before catching that daggers she shot at me with her eyes when I came in the room.  I spent a few minutes talking with her, asking questions like that would eventually lead us through a dialogue about why teachers have to make choices like the one I did on Friday in order to protect our students and that I watched the boy pushing her just to get a response because he knows she has a short fuse.  I also asked her about the work she did, questions she had and asked her to come in for tutoring tomorrow after school and that was that.

I few minutes later I got an email from one of the interns who had been sitting at the table: 

You are the only teacher that comes in and talks with students like that and it's amazing. It's so hard to tell the kids they had to leave cause the teacher cares [about them] when the teacher's not there. I greatly appreciate your being.

Over the years, I have learned to let go, to get out of the way and grow with my students with each choice we make.  I could have easily not gone to talk with the student and she would have come into my class this Thursday, still mad and not understanding my decision and seeing it as a punishment.   But I didn't and we both grow as a result.

Day 24: I Love My School Because... April Blog A Day Challenge

Prompt: I love my school because...

My school is pretty amazing.  I came in the second year of the school and have helped to build and develop this extraordinary teaching and learning community.  Next year we will have our first cohort graduate, the Class of 2016.  I knew it was something special when I arrived for PD in the middle of August two summers ago and proceeded to spend the next two weeks working with a team of educators and professionals who were passionate, excited and committed to our school and our kids.

I love our school because we are an amazing community that is building something special.

11th grade team at Facebook NYC

I love my school because our kids are amazing.  I like to think that all teachers things this way.  Our kids are here.  We have 94% attendance on average each day.  Our kids show up.  They stay and they are learning and growing and I get better at my job because I am here with them.

I love my school because I get to work Rebecca every day.  She and I are both in the Model Teacher program this year.  It's been a gift to have a colleague, confidant, sounding board and friend.  I was lucky enough to meet her sister +Gretchen Ziegler  9 years ago in grad school at NYU and getting to add another member of this family to my circle is a gift.

I love my school because as teacher leaders Rebecca and I have been able to invest in the development of our Year 1 and 2 teachers as mentors and through professional development. Below are photos from PD yesterday where teachers created posters for a gallery walk showcasing a assessment strategy they tried with a target class for the last month.  They had to provide student work, highlight pros and cons of the method, modifications for next time and a ranking- 1-4 stars.

I love my school because it's in Union Square, NYC.   If you have been to NYC you know.  If you haven't, come to NYC! I love my school because we move in a pack through the streets of our city.

I love my school because through my battle with thyroid cancer this winter, they have been a huge part of my support system, cheering me on taking away some of the stress that goes with missing days with my kids.  In other schools, it may have been a different story, and thankfully this was not the case.

I love my school because it is a home away from home.  I thrive when I am there and I could not imagine being anywhere else at this point in my career. 

Day 19: "I Think In Word Not Excel" or "Tech In The Classroom?" #AprilBlogADay Challenge

Day 19: Tech In The Classroom?  How? Why? Should we?

When I tell my students that When I was in college... I didn't have a laptop,  and a cell phone didn't come until the last couple years and it was a clunker.  When I started grad school in 2006, the idea of having a laptop in class hadn't even dawned on me.  I like taking notes on paper.  Sitting in grad school, next to Millenials with their fancy shiny new Mac Books and me with my spiral notebook, I felt antiquated. 

Boy, have things changed in 10 years.  Today, I sit in the Starbucks a couple blocks from my house, my Venti Cold Brew (if you haven't switched to cold brew, from anywhere for that matter, you should) my morning pastry, the ridiculous music planing in the coffee shop, and me, sitting in front of a MacBook Air, blogging.  Could I embody a stereotype any more than this?

My laptop is provided by my school and I am beyond grateful.  I have gotten so many hours of work done on this little machine.  When I was with out it for a month last summer when they were doing inventory and upgrades, I was at a loss. I do have a desktop, but being tied to my office, especially in the summer, was an inconvenience.  I have embraced tech (well, most of of).

Working at a school that is ALL ABOUT TECH has meant that I ramp up quickly.  I fill in holes that were lacking of resources and find myself looking for new things that I may be able to use.  We have SmartBoards in every classroom, each class has a cart of laptops and as a result I was about 90% paper free in my English classes last year.  It was a eye opening experience.  It was the first time I felt that I was really preparing students for college too.  Using Google Docs and Teacher Dashboard by Hapara allowed me to support and engage with students in more ways than ever before.  Working in a school that supported this use of tech changed my teaching practice for the better.  (I will qualify, there are things I don't like and wont use that some of the CS Department uses and loves.  I don't find it user friendly (yet)  and despite training, wont use. I think in Word, not Excel.) 

Some of my favorites: 

• Google Docs
• It is still the gold standard, despite it's flaws (a completely inadequate grammar support and formatting options).  I lost all the lessons and materials I had created over my first year and a half of teaching thanks to a faulty flash drive.  Never again.  Hello Cloud, I love you.
• TurnItIn.com 
• I started using this platform for AP.  While not a new resource for students and teachers, it was new for me and I love it.  It keeps student plagiarism in check, offers grammar and punctuation tools/support (especially helpful for my ELLs) when students use it, peer review and feedback, and online grading and feedback.  I love it.
• Quizlet Online Flash Cards
• I have used this for both AP and for Theatre Arts. I can create sets of cards and students can create their own.  It can be used online and there is a mobile app. For courses that have a plethora of vocabulary, this is a great tool. You can also generate quizzes (I don't love this feature, but it is there and I have used it).
• Shmoop


• It just keeps getting better and better as year progress. I only use the free materials.  I love the videos they put together for books.  I think it is more visually interesting for students, especially those who struggle.  Adding "academic WD-40 to squirt on the tracks whenever we can." Indeed.

There are drawbacks to using and depending on so much tech- the biggest being, when hardware doesn't work or the network is down, I am screwed.  Thankfully, the percentage of time that this happens is small, but when it does, I have to think quickly.  I have learned to trouble shoot most connectivity problems and students always have a back up- good old paper and pen- just in case.  

I find myself thinking, pen and paper is not ideal and I can't believe that is my thinking.  But it isn't. This is the state of education and it isn't changing.  I hope that when my students look back on their time in my classroom, they say, "I learned to take really great notes in Ms. Towne's class," or "Ms. Towne taught me how to organize my materials when I am doing research." I learn a lot as I go.  Kids teach me more.  I am teacher future developers, coders and designers their inspirations is everywhere and who am I to get in the way of inspiration?

Day 18: Pump Up The Volume #AprilBlogADay Challenge

Prompt 18: What's small step are you willing to take to elevate the profession?

I suspect that what Chris meant when choosing the word "elevate" was about bringing the profession to a new level, to rise up.  I quickly looked up the definition of elevate and read: To increase the amplitude, intensity, or volume of.  The first thing that came into my mind was, I need to pump up the volume around my craft.  And of course, being a woman of a certain age, this is what popped into my head next: 

For those of you not familiar with the 1990 movie, Christian Slater (swoon!) runs a pirate radio station that earns a cult following amongst his peers.  At the time it was a lesson in free speech and chaos and continuing to cement Slater as my dream husband for many years to follow.

There has been so much rhetoric, both positive and negative about teachers, unions, charter and public schools over the last few years and its place in social media is achieving a fever pitch now especially around opting out of state tests. My Twitter feed is regularly flooded with tweets that are highly political, teaching activists pumping up the volume on what they think is important.  I love that colleagues feel passionately about this work and are willing to elevate knowledge of the interwebs to shed light on things that are happening in and around education.

I however have never been especially political.  While I do feel strongly about many things, for example, I am NOT against the common core, but I do have some very specific feelings and thinking about where it has gone wrong, I am not 100% comfortable flooding social media with my platform.  I think there are better ways for me to elevate the volume on what impacts teachers and what I think is important.  For me, this small step towards elevation and increasing the volume and rhetoric around my profession is going to be through blogging.  While I may not get the same coverage and dissemination that others get, I know many of you are reading, and hearing and sharing.  

I will keep talking about what I have experienced, what I think is important, and working to elevate my craft every day through doing so.