I was tagged by 3 friends in the blogging homework meme but decided to break the rules and post 11 questions about education that need answers rather than 11 random facts and responses to someone else's 11 questions. It has been brought to my attention (ahem.... Andrew) that, while ignoring rules is admirable, posting questions for others without responding to any myself is not quite fair. So, in the spirit of equity, below are 11 random facts about me for anyone who may be interested. Some of these are not-so-random for those of you who know me well.
1. I've always wanted to be an astronaut. Still do. I'm a huge nerd when it comes to all things space. As a classroom teacher, I was selected for a week-long NCCAT seminar at Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. It was, without a doubt, one of the best weeks of my life. So much fun. At the time, my first graders were convinced that I actually went to the moon.
2. I'm a recent Mac convert. I've been PC my entire life, with the exception of iPad, iPod Touch, & iPhone. Last summer, a local school district partnered with me so that my STEM campers could use the district's iPads. I used iMovie on the MacBook Air that was with the iPad cart to create videos for campers' parents. That was the turning point for me. After using the MacBook Air during the summer, it was really, really, really tough to go back to using my PC. Since last summer, my husband has surprised me with both a MacBook Pro and an iMac. I'm completely spoiled now and love my Macs.
3. My husband and I have two beautiful children (6 and 2 years old) and are in the process of adopting siblings through a local adoption agency. We're still several months away from being licensed and are super excited about expanding our family!
4. Katie Wood Ray was my writing methods professor and student teaching supervisor. For most of you, that probably means nothing. But for some of you, you know that's a big deal. Katie is a Heinemann author and speaker on writing workshop, and I was most definitely in the right place at the right time in my undergraduate program. She is the reason I am a professor.
5. I didn't want to be a teacher. Like, ever. I always did well in school and was encouraged by family and others to be a doctor, so that (and astronaut) is what I always thought I would do. I can't remember ever wanting to do anything else. I was a pre-med biology major when I first went to undergrad, but decided my sophomore year that I didn't have the stomach for it. Since I'd never thought about another career, I was lost and had no idea what to do. I had a long conversation with my advisor, and she recommended that I take an introductory education course. After just a few class meetings, I found my calling. I honestly don't know how I'd missed it all along.
6. My first year teaching, I taught in Marietta, GA. The move from student teaching in the rural mountains of NC to teaching just outside of Atlanta was like culture shock for me. I faced a lot of challenges that year, as do all first-year teachers, and I learned so much from my students. After that year, I moved to Hickory, NC, where I live today.
7. I've owned 9 cars, and I've been driving for 18 years. Two reasons: I've had several accidents (only one of which was my fault) and my husband works at Carmax.
8. I play piano. I took lessons from 6 to 16 years old. I don't play nearly as much as I'd like, mostly because my free time is spent on doctoral work. I've played for a couple of weddings, and my favorite thing to do is play duets my mother.
9. I almost flunked keyboarding in high school. I was a really fast typer because for several summers I did clerical work at my mom's office. My keyboarding teacher didn't understand how I moved through assignments so quickly, and I think she didn't like my attitude about it all, which probably wasn't great. My mom came to the school to talk to the teacher, which was the second time she'd ever done that. (The first time was in 4th grade when I went from being the kid who loved school so much I cried when I had to stay home on sick days to being the kid who was literally sick to my stomach every morning because I hated school so much. My teacher was a very, very not-nice person.)
10. I'm allergic to furry creatures, which is sad because my daughter wants a dog in the worst way and I refuse to take a pill every day or get regular shots. I wasn't always allergic to furry things. We actually had dogs and cats while I was growing up, and it never bothered me. I developed allergies in my early twenties, which my doctor told me is completely normal. Apparently someone can not be allergic to something one day and develop an allergy the very next. I'm hoping one day the allergy will go away as quickly as it came.
11. I was on the TV show Club Dance on The Nashville Network when I was an undergrad at Western Carolina University (Go Cats!). For one of my PE credits, I took folk and line dancing. The culminating assignment for the class was an appearance and group line dance on Club Dance. I'm pretty sure I have it recorded on VHS if anyone is looking for a good laugh.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Sunday, December 22, 2013
11 Questions that Need Answers
You may have seen the blogging homework floating around your PLN. Bloggers are sharing info about themselves, then tagging other bloggers to do the same. I have now been tagged by 3 friends, so I decided it's time to write a post. Thanks Jaime, Craig, & Jill for sending this my way. I'm going to play along, but I'm not going to play by the rules. Instead of sharing 11 random facts and sending 11 questions to other bloggers, I'm going to ask 11 questions that need answers. These are the questions that keep me up at night.
I'll tag 11 bloggers in my post in the hopes of getting a conversation started around these 11 issues. Time and again, my PLN has come through for me in searching for answers to questions and, more importantly, finding the right questions to ask. So here goes...
1. How can we cultivate a risk-taking, innovative learning environment in a high-stakes testing culture?
2. How can we recruit promising prospective teachers and keep effective educators in the classroom?
3. How can we increase the amount of connected educators who actually do what they blog and tweet about?
4. If we know that collaborative planning is powerful, why don't we create time and space for teachers to do that regularly?
5. How are schools empowering teacher leaders?
6. How should we really be measuring educator effectiveness?
7. What kinds of support do K-12 schools need from teacher educators and educational researchers?
8. How can we empower educators to use classroom assessments to inform instruction rather than externally controlling the assessment environment in our classrooms?
9. Why do we insist on teaching kids to hate reading by pushing programs that use extrinsic rewards?
10. What do the best school administrators do? How can we spread that to less effective administrators?
11. How can we expand collaboration across schools so that we continually help each other better meet the needs of our students?
Responses from my PLN:
Derek McCoy, North Carolina principal and valuable member of my PLN, posted his responses to my 11 questions here. Check them out and post your own response to keep the conversation going.
Jennifer LaGarde, librarian extraordinaire and North Carolina Educator-on-Loan, developed 11 questions (about libraries) that need answers. Her questions for teacher librarians are thoughtful and urgent, particularly for libraries today.
My dear friend, North Carolina high school English teacher and #coflip co-founder Andrew Thomasson, posted his responses to my 11 questions here. As with everything Andrew writes, his responses are thoughtful and well-written. Andrew is also giving me grief about my posting questions without first answering someone else's, so I'll have to see what I can do.
In the spirit of the bloggers who tagged me in their posts, I'm tagging the following 11 bloggers that I hope will engage in this conversation with me. There are plenty of other folks who are non-bloggers that I hope will join the conversation.
Kurtis Hewson
Andrew Thomasson
Steven Anderson
Melissa Edwards
Andy Marcinek
Michael Maher
George Couros
Bill Ferriter
Jeff Carpenter
Steven Weber
Derek McCoy
I'll tag 11 bloggers in my post in the hopes of getting a conversation started around these 11 issues. Time and again, my PLN has come through for me in searching for answers to questions and, more importantly, finding the right questions to ask. So here goes...
1. How can we cultivate a risk-taking, innovative learning environment in a high-stakes testing culture?
2. How can we recruit promising prospective teachers and keep effective educators in the classroom?
3. How can we increase the amount of connected educators who actually do what they blog and tweet about?
4. If we know that collaborative planning is powerful, why don't we create time and space for teachers to do that regularly?
5. How are schools empowering teacher leaders?
6. How should we really be measuring educator effectiveness?
7. What kinds of support do K-12 schools need from teacher educators and educational researchers?
8. How can we empower educators to use classroom assessments to inform instruction rather than externally controlling the assessment environment in our classrooms?
9. Why do we insist on teaching kids to hate reading by pushing programs that use extrinsic rewards?
10. What do the best school administrators do? How can we spread that to less effective administrators?
11. How can we expand collaboration across schools so that we continually help each other better meet the needs of our students?
Responses from my PLN:
Derek McCoy, North Carolina principal and valuable member of my PLN, posted his responses to my 11 questions here. Check them out and post your own response to keep the conversation going.
Jennifer LaGarde, librarian extraordinaire and North Carolina Educator-on-Loan, developed 11 questions (about libraries) that need answers. Her questions for teacher librarians are thoughtful and urgent, particularly for libraries today.
My dear friend, North Carolina high school English teacher and #coflip co-founder Andrew Thomasson, posted his responses to my 11 questions here. As with everything Andrew writes, his responses are thoughtful and well-written. Andrew is also giving me grief about my posting questions without first answering someone else's, so I'll have to see what I can do.
In the spirit of the bloggers who tagged me in their posts, I'm tagging the following 11 bloggers that I hope will engage in this conversation with me. There are plenty of other folks who are non-bloggers that I hope will join the conversation.
Kurtis Hewson
Andrew Thomasson
Steven Anderson
Melissa Edwards
Andy Marcinek
Michael Maher
George Couros
Bill Ferriter
Jeff Carpenter
Steven Weber
Derek McCoy
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Are we avoiding best practice simply because change is inevitable?
Last week I had a brief conversation with a colleague from a different department at my university. The conversation went something like this:
Him: "You know, my theory was right."
Me: "What theory is that?"
Him: "I predicted that by the time I learned how to use the new management system, we would switch to a new one." (By the way, the "new" LMS he's referring to has been in place for several years now.)
Me: "Yeah, I know the task force is working to select a new LMS this year."
Him: "That's why I didn't bother to figure out how to use that one. I knew that by the time I learned it, we would move on to something new."
Me: (like a coward) "It can be hard to keep up sometimes."
Since that conversation, I've thought of so many better things I could've said instead. Here are a few of them, beginning with helpful responses followed by some snarky ones.
"When I was new here, I attended some workshops so I could learn how to use the LMS well. Did you participate in any of those?"
"How do your students feel about all of the paper you use in class? My students don't particularly like our LMS, but they like having access to course resources online."
"It might have taken you a semester or two to become familiar with it, but then you could have been pretty efficient with it for the past 4 years."
"I would love to help you transition to the new LMS once the task force selects one."
"That's why I never attend mandatory faculty meetings. I figure that once I get used to the meeting schedule, they'll change the date on me. Why bother?"
"Wow. I wasn't aware of your psychic powers."
"That sounds like a cop-out."
I hear conversations like this all too often in education. Let's face it, things do change. And often, the change is just some reiteration of a previous initiative. Educators who've been in the field for a while are quick to let you know that they've seen things come and go. They proudly state that they're going to "wait it out" because "this too shall pass".
While there's some truth to these comments, I wonder if that perspective is in the best interest of our students. Our students are the ones who suffer when we choose to dig our heels in and wait for the next big thing. Is it your students' fault that your district is implementing a curricular change that looks, at first glance, similar to something you did 15 years ago? And is it their fault that it's difficult to keep up with changes in technology? Our students deserve our best. Every. Single. Day. Even when it's not easy. Even when it takes more of our time. Even if it means we have to ask for help.
The next time you overhear or participate in a conversation like this one, I hope you'll be brave enough to encourage / challenge your colleagues to embrace change in order to better serve our students.
Him: "You know, my theory was right."
Me: "What theory is that?"
Him: "I predicted that by the time I learned how to use the new management system, we would switch to a new one." (By the way, the "new" LMS he's referring to has been in place for several years now.)
Me: "Yeah, I know the task force is working to select a new LMS this year."
Him: "That's why I didn't bother to figure out how to use that one. I knew that by the time I learned it, we would move on to something new."
Me: (like a coward) "It can be hard to keep up sometimes."
Since that conversation, I've thought of so many better things I could've said instead. Here are a few of them, beginning with helpful responses followed by some snarky ones.
"When I was new here, I attended some workshops so I could learn how to use the LMS well. Did you participate in any of those?"
"How do your students feel about all of the paper you use in class? My students don't particularly like our LMS, but they like having access to course resources online."
"It might have taken you a semester or two to become familiar with it, but then you could have been pretty efficient with it for the past 4 years."
"I would love to help you transition to the new LMS once the task force selects one."
"That's why I never attend mandatory faculty meetings. I figure that once I get used to the meeting schedule, they'll change the date on me. Why bother?"
"Wow. I wasn't aware of your psychic powers."
"That sounds like a cop-out."
I hear conversations like this all too often in education. Let's face it, things do change. And often, the change is just some reiteration of a previous initiative. Educators who've been in the field for a while are quick to let you know that they've seen things come and go. They proudly state that they're going to "wait it out" because "this too shall pass".
While there's some truth to these comments, I wonder if that perspective is in the best interest of our students. Our students are the ones who suffer when we choose to dig our heels in and wait for the next big thing. Is it your students' fault that your district is implementing a curricular change that looks, at first glance, similar to something you did 15 years ago? And is it their fault that it's difficult to keep up with changes in technology? Our students deserve our best. Every. Single. Day. Even when it's not easy. Even when it takes more of our time. Even if it means we have to ask for help.
The next time you overhear or participate in a conversation like this one, I hope you'll be brave enough to encourage / challenge your colleagues to embrace change in order to better serve our students.
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