Why I Teach...

Today I read the story Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney to my second graders. The beautiful story encourages readers to find a way to make the world more beautiful. Miss Rumphius does so by planting lupines everywhere. As we finished the story, I told my students that I hope each of them will find a way in their own life to make the world more beautiful. "We've already started, Mrs. Arnett," stated one of my children. I asked what he meant. "We are helping the orangutans and helping make less trash in the lunchroom. All of our projects this year..." His comment gave me the shivers and I felt a lump in my throat as another child said, "You planted the seed."
I could have scooped them all up and hugged them at that moment. This is why I teach...

The Most Powerful Teaching Site on the Internet

Yesterday was an AH-HA day like no other in my second grade classroom. If you will read through my ramblings about that day, you will discover at the end of my blog, a resource to create many days like this one in any classroom!

We began the day discovering that after only five students returned orders for our DVD called LearningFrom the Past - The Elder Project, we had already raised $175 in donations for the local charity called Christmas for Seniors. The students interviewed their grandparents and great-grandparents over the past months. We made videos of the interviews and added student created digital stories of tales from their grandparents to create the DVD.

A trip to our school arboretum followed. The kids worked along with a visitor from the Bureau of Land Management to identify and band trees for the Shout Learning project. They will take measurements of tree growth to add to a data base from students around the world to study the impact of climate change on trees for the next three years. The local expert was so pleased with the project that she asked to return in four weeks to join us when we take the first measurements. She wants to teach the kids more about each tree.

After lunch we discussed our current class project inspired by Interrobang . After studying the problem of school lunchroom trash all week, the kids finalized their plans for making next week a trash free lunch week for our class. There were a couple of obstacles to overcome for the kids having hot lunch at school and the answer came in an email. Earlier in the day the kids emailed the head of food service for our district with concerns about the use of disposable styrofoam trays and the many prepackaged foods served. She responded quickly and positively. The old plastic trays will be delivered to our school this weekend for use next week. She also told the kids she would work toward making that happen for next year as well! She also gave them an update on an issue of palm oil in Uncrustable PBJ sandwiches they have been serving. She is in contact with Smuckers concerning that ingredient and is working on changing lunch choices in the future to make sure no palm oil is served in our school. The reaction to the email: "We did it!!!"

The discussion of palm oil reminded one of my students that he had something in his backpack to share. He had been reading a magazine when he found an article about orangutans. He shared the picture and map from the article and recapped the content for the other kids.

When we finally got ready to complete some more typical schoolwork (math papers) the kids reminded me that we actually had already done math for the day. "Yeah, remember, Mrs. Arnett? We did lots of math in the arbortetum!" And in fact they had as they measured and marked the trees for the bands.

As the kids spent the rest of the afternoon completing unfinished writing, grammar, and math for the week (we call it finish up Friday), I saw something remarkable happening. They were so uplifted by the successes of their day. They had raised more money on the first day of DVD sales than they had anticipated making in all and could see the potential for that project helping many more local elders than they dreamed possible. They felt so important and connected to the world as they participated in a project for the Smithsonian and realized their work would have a global impact. The quick positive response to their request for help from the food service department in reducing trash in our lunchroom was unbelievable and empowering to them. The reaction from the kids for all of the success of the day was total engagement in their work. They sat straighter, worked harder, celebrated personal success in their assignments, and smiled. I did not have to ask a single student to work harder or get back on task.

We MUST make learning real for our students. All of the text book reading and testing in the world cannot inspire the motivation in students that a real project about a real life issue can. With the online connections available to our students right in our classrooms there is no reason not to involve them and empower them in the world. My ah-ha was how doing so engages and builds confidence and motivation. We ended our day singing along with a song written by our friend, John Farrell. It is called "It's the Little Things" and sums up perfectly the projects we have been doing in class.

I have had a year filled with personal and professional successes. The result of that for me has been an increase in my motivation and effort to improve my teaching. I am engaged and constantly learning to better myself. My students are equally motivated by meaningful successes. It is my job to present them with opportunities.

I titled this blog "The Most Powerful Teaching Site on the Internet" because I have discovered a wonderful site that will help me continue involving my students in real learning. Any teacher can go to the site to find ideas for project and problem based learning. Making changes in the way we teach is not easy, but this site will help any teacher at any grade level get things moving in the right direction. The site? Interrobang . It is filled with opportunities and possibilities. Check it out and engage your kids!

Assessing the Gingerbread Village....

The Gingerbread Village stands complete in my classroom. The children did it their way, working together and totally engaged for about 45 minutes a day throughout the week. The next step is time to simply "play" (although they would tell you that is what they did all week). Before I turn them loose to enjoy their creation for the sake of simple play, however, I want to assess their learning to see if the time spent on the project was worthwhile.



As I reflected on their dialogue during the assessment I had only one thought for the next time I do this activity. Rather than limiting my students to boxes, construction paper, and a city on the floor, I hope that the next time I am able to allow them to create the town in the way they choose. Perhaps it will be a virtual town on the computer that they can all access and interact with. Who knows? I'm learning new things along with my students everyday.

Lessons From the Gingerbread Man...

For the past two weeks I have been encouraging my students to bring empty half gallon milk cartons to school for a project that I have always done during our fairy tale unit. They have not brought in nearly enough cartons for our project. In fact, they have brought in only four or five total. The 15 or so that I had saved made enough for us to begin the project last week, but we are faced with the inability to complete it at all if they do not show up with quite a few on Monday. The fact that I am still in the process of changing my teaching is probably the reason the solution to this problem was slow in coming, but today while reading blog posts from Twitter, I had another ah-ha moment!

The project I am using comes from a wonderful book of what were at one time innovative ways to teach math. It is spelled out in specific steps and even has "The Rules of the Kingdom". Guess who the ruler is? Why me, of course! I don't know how many times I will have to learn this lesson before it becomes instinctive, but I don't have to be the ruler and I don't have to set the rules for my students to learn something worthwhile!

Our project is based on the story of The Gingerbread Man. With a simple change to the ending of the story, he escapes from the fox and finds himself on the other side of the river where he meets other Gingerbread people who are building a village in the forest. The project is a set of activities that incorporate math skills and social studies. Everything is based on half gallon cartons so that the pieces of the village fit together as planned. Well.... we can learn a great deal by venturing away from the prescribed lesson and turning the kingdom over to the Gingerbread people rather than the "king"!

The Gingerbread families have been created. Each family has an elaborately designed milk carton home. Now all they need is floor space and an opportunity to work together to create a village that will meet their needs. They don't need me to tell them what to do or how to do it. I only need to pose a question that will guide their learning. "How can the Gingerbread people build a village that will meet their basic needs and provide a safe environment in which to live?" It occurs to me that they will learn so much more by working together and figuring that out as a class. I plan to show up at school with a variety of boxes and materials for them to use and to see where our project goes when led by the students rather than a book. Will it involve math? Maybe. Will it involve social studies? Definitely! Will the kids be engaged and learning? Certainly!

I can't wait to see what happens!

Lessons From Palm Oil

My second grade students watched a live broadcast from Borneo via TakingItGlobal earlier this week. They learned about the destruction of the rainforest and the orangutan habitat for the production of palm oil. A reflective discussion following the event generated a list of ideas for how seven and eight year old children can help with the problem. "We can speak for the trees!" suggested one student. They went on to suggest writing letters to the companies that are responsible, writing a blog about the issue, and starting a campaign against the use of palm oil. The kids were not, however, exactly sure what products contained palm oil. In an effort to transfer the responsibility for gathering information from myself to my students, I suggested that they go home that night and begin searching labels to find out. A wonderful lesson for children! But... the lesson had a twist I had not foreseen...

The next morning the children arrived ready for a new day. One of the first little girls through the door enthusiastically exclaimed that she had found a product containing palm oil! As she announced her finding, sugar wafer cookies, my eyes traveled quickly to a Walmart bag sitting on the table. With a sinking heart, I opened the bag which contained brownies I had purchased for a reward I owed the kids. They squealed with delight as I lifted them from the bag, only to dissolve in dismay as I turned them over and read from the ingredient label: palm oil! A tiny voice rose from the class asking the question they were all thinking, "Do we still get to eat them?" There was a collective sigh of relief as I said, "Of course you can, but I just learned a huge lesson from you! Next time I will look at the label before I buy things! Even better, perhaps baking from scratch rather than buying ready made would be best!" I don't think a single child in my class will ever forget the lesson I learned that day.

As we lined up to go home, I reminded them that over the weekend they should look for more products that contain palm oil to report back to the class. My favorite question of the day was, "Would it be cheating to look on the internet?"

We are learning together, keeping it real, and making a difference!

Right in our backyards....

One of the changes I've tried in my teaching this year is sharing the stage. Stepping back and allowing my students to learn from experts, family, and even each other has reaped tremendous rewards. The level of engagement and achievement could not be higher! As with anything new, it seems to get easier as the months go by. Our next project has uncovered treasure right in our backyard! The last Shout event, Study the Land, provided ideas for learning about the effects of climate change on the trees. I also came across a lesson plan from the Smithsonian that I was given last summer in Washington, D.C. about plant fossils found in nearby Wyoming. It contains photos of leaf fossils and a graph of the climate change that took place during the time in which they were formed. The Epals website had a link to information about a coal mine and rain forest fossils. Things began to connect and I made a few calls. It turns out that the husband of our physical education teacher is an environmentalist at the coal mine that we can see from our school playground. A call to him confirmed that there have been plant fossils found right here where we live. Some are large fern fossils, too large for him to bring to school, but he is going to gather what he can and pay us a visit. I can't think of a more engaging way for the kids to learn that there used to be a rain forest right where we live! Even better, he is the uncle of one of my students. Equally important, all the kids are aware that our pine forests are dying. You can't drive into the mountains in Colorado without noticing vast areas of reddish orange pine trees. Pine beetles are killing them. We are inviting someone from the National Forest Service to pay us a visit as well, to help us understand what is happening. Apparently the pine beetle problem is also related to global climate change. A lesson from the rain forest of the past, a lesson from the pine forests of the present, and questions about the future of forests here where we live will undoubtedly be interesting and meaningful to my second graders. I won't be teaching any of those lessons. I will facilitate the learning by inviting those who know much more than I. We will all learn together. The focus will be on learning, not on my teaching. The lessons will not be found in a text book or teacher's manual, but I have no doubt that the learning will be powerful and the reflections of the students will last a lifetime.

Full circle...

It was in August of 2009. I had just attended blog and wiki training for the technology team in my district. I had heard of blogs, not of wikis, and had never tried either one. It was all foreign to me and I had no sense of how it would benefit my teaching. I'm sitting here today, reflecting on how that one simple meeting changed my teaching in dramatic ways. In the 19 months that have passed since the meeting, I have created this blog for myself, one for my class , one for individual student use , and a new one for our school . I have created three wikis. One is for my class and two are collaborative wikis for pen pals around the world ( http://wearepals.wikispaces.com/ and http://joinhands.wikispaces.com/ ) . Along with my dear friend and pen pal partner, Rawya Shatila of Beirut, Lebanon, I became one of the 2010 Epal Ambassadors, won the 2010 Microsoft US Innovative Education Forum, and traveled to Capetown, South Africa to represent my country at the Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Education Forum. The learning that has taken place in my professional life since has been like an explosion. My classroom is not, and never will be the same again. All because of a simple technology training session that inspired me to investigate and explore new communication and collaboration possibilities.

This morning I read a wonderful blog by WhatEdSaid called Change isn't easy.... As I read the simple explanation of what we all face in the transformation taking place in education, I couldn't help but look back 19 months to myself before I became aware of what was happening around me. I, in August of 2009, had no idea that I even needed to make changes in my teaching. There are many, many teachers who are still at that place in their profession. Teaching can be an isolated occupation, spent day after day in a classroom with students. There is often little opportunity for contact with other teachers in the building, let alone a chance to build relationships with teachers in other places. Without social networking and high quality staff development no change is even likely to take place! We can't make changes we don't know about and aren't encouraged to make! Last night I found a charming example on Twitter. For 18 years I have been teaching first and second graders in snowy Craig, Colorado. Although I love snow, the thought of months getting a classroom of small children ready for recess in the snow, still makes me shudder. If you have never experience that, just watch this video posted by Mary Ellen Lynch: Dressing in Snow Clothes. The amazing part of the video for me was that for 18 years I have dealt with small children asking me to pull the cuffs of their jackets over the ends of their gloves after they dress. I have continued to tell them that if I took time to pull every cuff over every glove in the class, we would miss recess entirely. It took Twitter, and a very creative small person to show me that there is, indeed, a better way to do it!

Although the initial training that led me on a journey of change in my classroom took place in professional development provided by my district, most of my learning has taken place through interactions outside of work. There is never enough time or money for all the staff development teachers need. Self-directed learning and exploration are key to professional development. Teachers need to take advantage of the multitude of professional learning communities available on the internet. A great book to read is Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering for Real Learning by Marc Prensky.

I called this post "Full Circle...." for a reason. On Thursday, I will be making a presentation to the NW Colorado BOCES. One of the people I will be talking to is the very person who led the training I attended in August of 2009. I can't wait to share with her the result of her efforts that day. It will be an opportunity for me to inspire at least one of the people in that group to embark on the journey I have taken since. Change isn't easy, but the first step has to be awareness that change is taking place.