When I first applied to the Applied Digital Learning (ADL) program, I genuinely thought this would be a walk in the park, breezing through the content in a few weekends, taking any assessments, and having the rest of the time to relax. I would follow what seemed to be the easiest path to learning some information, regurgitating it in assignments and tests, and walking across the graduation stage with a master’s degree, ready to change the world. I now know how naive that perspective was but how grateful I am to be wrong. It was apparent from my first course in ePortfolios that choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning environments (COVA) would be something I would experience firsthand (Harapnuik et al., 2018). It did not take me long to be VOCAL and embrace the COVA approach despite the discomfort. Looking through all of the examples and suggestions on how to build an ePortfolio, I was overwhelmed with the abundance of options within a number of blogging websites for layouts, fonts, and colors that I would have to choose from to represent my brand, my spirit, and my passion for education. I quickly realized my use of language, pictures, and videos would help me be vibrant and share my love of teaching. I even wrote about my path in building my ePortfolio a few times early on... ePortfolios - GenuineLee Me, ePortfolios - GenuineLee Me Pt. 2, and Exploring Worlds through ePortfolios. Getting feedback that did not address my lack of color but really about the content supported my understanding that I genuinely had choice, ownership, and voice over my products and even the process to building them. The initial shock of the program being the exact opposite of what I had anticipated wore off pretty quickly, but that also is likely due in large part to being a life-long learner (see my post on the Living Museum of Me, Math, and More). I figured out quickly that this program is the antithesis of my previous experience as a student, which initially was overwhelming. Freedom and responsibility for my learning means making more decisions on top of the numerous other decision I make daily as a teacher, leader, wife, dog mom, and friend. Embracing the challenges and discomfort of freedom has nurtured substantial personal growth than a factory model program I expected. One decision I am beyond thankful I made was taking ownership and tackling everything head on, including forming a collaborative group. Finding others as eager as me meant looking at discussion boards, actively engaging in breakout rooms during class meetings, and being bold to initiate the awkward conversation of “hey, do you want to be in my collaborative group?”. This actually reinforced my confidence in my own voice. I have always had a strong opinionated voice and being more confident and comfortable in my own skin came out of my mental health journey (one which I am still very firmly on...). What this program is helping me to do is to speak more boldly at school. My innovation plan, Teaching 21st Century Skills in a Blended Learning Environment, is very authentic but has evolved into one that utilizes Building Thinking Classrooms by Peter Liljedahl to provide opportunities for students to use 21st century skills. First semester, I did little to nothing regarding my innovation plan with the exception to telling colleagues about it in the first week back to school. The challenge has really been about how to articulate my plans effectively in my organization and acquire the support I feel I need to bring people alongside me in my innovation plan to help me be intentional and consistent in my work. As we learned about how to influence people by identifying vital behaviors in my big picture growth and catering to the six sources of influence, motivation, and ability in the personal, social, and structural categories (Grenny, 2013), as well as Covey’s four disciplines of execution in my big picture goals, (Covey et al., 2018), realized why I was ineffective in gaining traction from the beginning of the school year, essentially abandoning my notion of change in the fall semester. Even if I had gotten others invested in my ideas and dreams, the whirlwind got in the way, and I did not focus on my big audacious goals. My goal, like most teachers lately, became to survive. Lately though, it has become overwhelmingly clear that the work is hard, but necessary and I should not let obstacles or fixed mindsets hold me back. My innovation plan was not just created to get through the course work; I really hope to change my organization from inside out, starting in my classroom and working out in waves across my content team, department, campus, and district. One major change that I desire to bring is actually utilizing COVA and creating significant learning environments in the math classroom. The analytical logical person I am finds comfort in the cognitivist mindset within my learning philosophy, building connections between what I know and what I am learning to weave everything into the existing web of information, but the ADL program has evolved my perspective into a blend of cognitivism and constructivism. If I cannot find a connection, I ask questions and search for my own answers, making and creating new connections. Another way I fuse these viewpoints together is through my writing and the use of analogies. They help me to create a picture of what my brain visualizes and understands to be true, attempting to articulate that viewpoint to others also have their own unique perspective and internal philosophies. With this new viewpoint of the importance and necessity of COVA and CSLE, I am empowered to make decisions that disrupt the comfort of students, parents, colleagues , and administration with purpose, to engage students in deeper learning than they have probably ever experienced inside the walls of a classroom. My campus has a legacy of high achievement in the state and nation, so changing the pedagogy that produced those results seems ridiculous. Why fix what does not seem broken? If it worked before, it should work now, right? Realistically, because our society has evolved exponentially over the past decade, we cannot continue implementing past practices in a future world. Disturbing the sense of order is daunting because it directly impacts others and their sense of comfort and safety in what they feel should be normal. Going through this program though has immersed me in the environment I know I need to build for my students. Having lived the life of a learner breaking out of my comfort zone of regurgitating information on an assessment and into a world of connections and creation, it is inspiring me to really consider the possibility of what might come out of doing this in a mathematics classroom. Conflict will inevitably arise from developing an expectation that what was once the norm is now in the past is scary, because it will be, at times, exhausting to manage the combatting side. It will definitely require me to be even stronger in my conviction that COVA and CSLE need to happen now and not later, breaking the chains my current setting has me in. If we want to maintain the legacy of high achievement, we must evolve with society to reach these new heights. I will start by bringing in other members of my content team to come beside me and learn by implementing innovative plans together. I will use the knowledge and resources I have built within the structures I have learned about in the ADL program to develop professional learning that models the blended learning environments we should be creating, providing those attending a glimpse into what our students’ realities could be. I need to be intentional about what I am doing and why. Explicitly sharing the reasoning behind my actions can obtain buy-in and continuously reiterating this rationale throughout the year will only emphasize its importance to me. It is challenging still for me to consider what choice, ownership, and voice looks like in a math classroom bounded by state objectives, grading guidelines, and standardized tests. In a subject where the question usually leads to one correct answer, being intentional about questioning that requires open-ended responses and can lead to multiple answers and even more questions will take work, time, and energy. Current available resources like this are few and far between. Also, the control aspect of the classroom is why teachers, specifically math teachers, tend to stick with the factory model. Math logic is “always” true but when computers can run calculations, we are essentially training our students to also be computers cranking through calculations rather than making connections. Students have been subconsciously conditioned to expect this from a math classroom, which is why my innovation plan and Building Thinking Classrooms principles are so troublesome for a lot of people. I can already hear the complains in questions:
Nobody will argue that 21st century skills are vital to one’s future and society’s survival, but the learning environment needed to facilitate acquiring and refining these skills does not meet the norm. Again, I need to be intentional about what I am doing and why. Explicitly sharing the reasoning behind my actions can obtain buy-in and continuously reiterating this rationale throughout the year will only emphasize its importance to me. Being transparent in my purpose will begin building a culture of trust and collaboration, encouraging students to take risks and explore in their learning. To incorporate COVA, I must provide opportunities for students to have choice, ownership and voice.
As I include these opportunities in the classroom, I can use strategies I have learned about action research to determine the impact of specific structures and share my findings with colleagues to further enrich the work they are doing in their classrooms. Applying effective structures and strategies within professional learning and reinforcing their effectiveness by including my findings will further develop the same culture of taking risks and exploring ideas I hope for in my classroom. If you had told me a year ago that this is where I would be, after ten years of experience in the classroom, ready to start again like a first-year teacher by finding my groove and establishing what my classroom looks, sounds, and acts like with the COVA approach to create a significant learning environment, I would likely say you are nuts. But let’s go crazy and change the world. References Covey, S., McChesney, C., & Huling, J. (2018). 4 Disciplines Of Execution. Simon & Schuster Ltd.
Grenny, J. (2013). Influencer : The new science of leading change. Mcgraw-Hill Education. Harapnuik, D., Thibodeaux, T., & Cummings, C. (2018). Choice, Ownership, and Voice through Authentic Learning. Creative Commons License. Liljedahl, P. (n.d.). Building thinking classrooms. Building Thinking Classrooms. https://buildingthinkingclassrooms.com/ Liljedahl, P. (2021). Building thinking classrooms in mathematics, grades K-12: 14 teaching practices for... enhancing learning. Sage Publications Inc.
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When being VOCAL, choice is the hardest for me and it's rooted in my mindset towards teaching math.
Fundamentally, I acknowledge and recognize that there are multiple correct mathematical ways to approach and solve problems. Encouraging this in the classroom is so impactful for student growth. What makes this challenging is when students choose something I am not as familiar with. The first concept that comes to mind is factoring polynomials. Does anybody remember how they learned to factor? I learned the "guess and check" method or "trial and error" and it relied on understanding and recognizing patterns in numerical factors. When teaching factoring came up for the first time, my gut wanted to go with the way I was taught and what made sense to me. Fortunately, my mentor teacher showed me the "ac method" or "splitting the middle term" so I went with that to provide procedural steps... it was fortunate until students asked about the square method, the XBOX method, the fishing method, geez Louise there are so many methods and I had NO CLUE what they were talking about. I felt inadequate to support them in understanding why they got an answer wrong with a method I could not follow. At our district professional development today, we learned about this "new" concept called "accelerated learning" and "just-in-time interventions"... haven't we always tried to do this? With my content colleagues, we looked at a progression of area models and how they can be utilized from elementary math to precalculus. With experience, I have found articulating to students that their perspective and my perspective might be different but both are equally valid because we just have different backgrounds and experiences that have brought us to this place. We attempt to explain to each other the different methods of factoring, and then develop our voice through the process. When we can teach others the perspective that we see and they incorporate into their repertoire or we include their voice in our mental tool box, we build connections. We also build a sense of self-worth when we can collaborate and communicate our ideas to others that they adopt into their knowledge bases. There is meaning in multiple perspectives, because those multiple perspectives belong to individuals who are valuable and their life and experience matters. Giving students choice in how to articulate their perspective.
References
Mashup Math. (2017, March 29). Area Model Multiplication Explained! https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=MVZRD4Fa1OY
With the chaos that is the beginning of the school year, a new semester with my master's program, and everything else, my family has been going through some trials. My husband's grandmother, Poo Poo, has had a pretty big health scare in California. So significant, that my mother-in-law flew out to see her and my father-in-law followed a few days later after Scott and I picked up his brother, Jeffrey. Jeff has severe Down syndrome. He communicates with grunts, limited single syllable words such as yes and no, and his own sign language. While he does have some limitations, he is very intelligent. When I first met Jeff, he was the first person with special needs I had really interacted with, and the best advice I was given was to treat him like he is normal. Jeff and I have a very interesting relationship because of this advice. He has opportunities to be mentally enriched here and there, but his days often include endless YouTube videos of Barney and the Wiggles with meals mixed in. His autistic nature causes him to fixate on specific video clips and sounds within them, so he has ownership and choice over those aspects, navigating through the various channels at his own pace. This goes with what I am learning about applying digital learning in my classroom. Being VOCAL is something we should strive for in the classroom and I realized with Jeffrey being here, I also try to provide him other opportunities to have voice, ownership, and choice. The authentic learning for Jeff comes from doing the ordinary things most people do every day. Now, Jeff LOVES pizza. The first time I "Jeff-sat" when all of the family was out, I basically bribed my way into Jeff's heart the way the cliche goes for any man, through his stomach. He likes to constantly ask me for pizza with sign language and I like to try and sneak some vegetables into his diet. When we have pizza, building the pizza is part of our process. He consistently chooses to overload with pepperoni but the other veggies are placed as his own pace, wherever he chooses. When he is done, he will vocalize that. As the pizza is baking, we also make a salad. He had a number of choices but decided to stick with carrots, cucumbers, and tortilla chip strips. There was not any pressure to pick the others but he knew he had to choose something at whatever degree he wanted. This relates to my classroom because having voice, ownership, and choice in an authentic learning environment is inclusive. I choose to follow a vegan and gluten free diet, so my pizza was completely different than Jeff and Scott's pizza. My salad included a lot more vegetables and Scott chose to take what toppings were left. Even the order in which we ate our meals varied: I ate my salad, then the pizza. Scott ate his pizza, then the salad. Jeffrey picked off the veggies and pepperonis first, taking bites of salad in between. Being VOCAL is inclusive for all learners and in all contexts. We should look for more opportunities to embrace learning in different ways and on our terms. Scott, my sister-in-law Stephanie, and I just got back from a trip to Disney World. We had an absolute blast, each getting to achieve our goals. Scott's Goals: Visit Galaxy's Edge. He wanted to go live the Star Wars dream and build a lightsaber, as well as ride in the Millennium Falcon. A bonus was meeting Din Djarin and Grogu. Here are some pictures from our days in Batuu. This is the way. Stephanie's Goals: Visit Toy Story Land, meet Lilo, meet Mulan, and eat around the world. While she loves the aliens and we had fun riding the Slinky Dog roller coaster, the "best day of her life" was eating at the Polynesian and meeting Lilo and Stitch, then traveling to China and meeting Mulan. Eating around the world took some pacing. Here's a collection of pictures from Andy's backyard, Hawaii, and China. Ohana means family. My Goals: Visit Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade and ride as many roller coasters as possible. Now, I know the Wizarding World is not technically Disney, but it is still magical right? I was on the verge of crying a few times being so happy living in a book. It was also fun getting the adrenaline high. Scott and Stephanie ride the milder roller coasters, but I am all for the biggest, fastest, craziest, usually spending the entire ride giggling and clapping. My hair definitely demonstrated the wild factor. Here's a snapshot of some of my time in London and after the thrills. I solemnly swear I am up to no good. Mischief managed. Times like this recharge me for the upcoming school year. There can be so much to do in one day and the order in which you go through the motions really depends on your choices. We balanced spending time taking care of our individual goals, but also staying together and finding experiences we all would enjoy and part of that came from seeing the joy in each other when we got to experience our dreams. Some of Disney's taglines are the happiest place on earth or the most magical place on earth, but there are always times when it doesn't feel that way... especially when it was as hot as it was. It makes cherishing the simple things, like a water fountain or a tree's shade, very easy. Our classrooms have magical moments, but what if we created a different kind of magic? I am not saying our classrooms need to be Disney World but there are some things we can take away from how the parks operate and the experiences we get from them that we could incorporate into our routines, structures, and lessons. What if our learners could decide the order of their different lessons or activities? What if they could pick when to take breaks and for how long? What if we created efficiencies that took away potential misbehavior and redirected them into more positive choices? What if we embraced individual goals and collective ones, giving learners the capacity to enjoy the rewards of achieving all goals?
There is still a little less than a month until the school year starts and I am choosing to hold onto this much needed break for as long as possible, but this trip has been a nice transition from summer to the beginnings of a new school year. I am looking forward to embracing a different kind of magic in my classroom. It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
Have you ever done something that your heart would not necessarily choose but your head knows it's good for your overall health and wellbeing? Here are some examples:
I am overall a relatively physically healthy person, but that does not make me immune to a constant battle between head and heart, especially when it comes to the added layer of anxiety. My heart knows there's no reason to be stressed out, but my head asks are you sure about that? Being an educator has helped me to learn how to balance the relationship between head and heart and I found it to be a lot like running. I HATE running and it's probably because I am really bad at it. It feels like I've been running for days, only to look down at my Fitbit and see it's been 2 minutes and 43 seconds. Each lap around a track seems longer than the last and if my pacing is faster than 11 minutes per mile, WOW it's time for a reward of Taco Bell for dinner. There's an inevitable recursive cycle that happens; I hate running because I am bad at it, so I don't run often and because I don't run often, I am bad at it, which makes me hate it more. Now I am not saying I hate education. On the contrary, I deeply love it because it is my passion and one of my life's purposes, but it is a lot like running and the battle between my heart and my head when it comes to the activity. There are days when a part of me just wants to give in to the frustration a student has when they don't quite understand a concept yet and just give them the answer, but the other part of me knows that purposeful struggle is necessary for true growth. Part of me wants to just stop enforcing inappropriate cellphone usage and just let them Snapchat and Instagram and TikTok time away until the bell rings, but the other part of me knows that as the adult and the facilitator, I have to provide structure for them to see benefits in putting the devices away or structure for them to not have an opportunity to "be bored". I'm sure you have scenarios you can think of based on your experience. On days I run, it usually does not start off with a true heart and head desire to knock out a few miles. A lot of the times, it comes with discipline, knowing that as soon as I get started, I will not regret the choice I made to follow through. The rewards from the temporary pain are small when individually assessed, but 1% daily growth is huge over time versus 1% daily decline. This comes from James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, a book that I plan on reading in its entirety as part of my educational journey but have stumbled across excerpts of. Education can be a lot like running. You could consider each class period a sprint, each day a 5K, each week a 10K, each year a marathon, your career an ultra. If we keep putting one foot in front of the other, being disciplined enough to tell our heads to push through when the heart is conflicted, we can be so much stronger. Eventually, our hearts start to catch up, beating faster and sustaining the rhythm as it becomes accustom to the situation. Balancing the heart and the head simply takes experience and adaptation while also recognizing some days are better or worse than others and that has to be okay. Something my Lee family and I would do together is watch reruns of Law and Order SVU on the weekends and for some reason, my sister-in-law Stephanie, my husband Scott, and I latched onto a line when Elliot Stabler yells "we got a runner!". I couldn't find a specific clip of this, but this scene from Reno 911 feels more accurate for education at times... We have to keep running so that our lives can be examples to others of what balance between the head and the heart looks like. We should make sure we are taking care of ourselves so we can take care of others. Are we perfect? Absolutely not, but we can keep making those small gains every day, reflect back, and be in awe of what we are truly capable of. Also, if we run together, we can pull people into this race and motivate each other to keep going. What are some things you've done that your heart and head have been in conflict over? What did you learn from those? Do we have a runner in you?
References
Clear, J. (2015). How to Master the Art of Continuous Improvement. James Clear. https://jamesclear.com/continuous-improvement
Eric. (2012). WE GOT A RUNNER! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIrkI43NIIU Tim Robinson “You Sure About That” Green Screen. (2023, April 12). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZOIpsxfzxw At the beginning of the summer, I set an open personal goal: to read more. I restarted the Harry Potter series as I do every summer and had my queue of recommendations ready to go to expand my horizons outside light-hearted romantic comedies or science fiction/fantasy novels. I had not anticipated that setting this goal would include the tens of thousands of pages I would be reading as part of my masters. My professor co-authored a book about the educational environment that positively impacts student learning called COVA (request free access to the book here): Choice, Ownership, Voice, Authentic Learning. As I reflect on what I have read, it makes more sense for me to consider these ideas as VOCAL. |
My husband lovingly teases me when I reflect on my day with him and say "I learned something new today!" because he would be surprised if I didn't learn something new.
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