This past fall, I had the AMAZING opportunity to speak with Robyn Robertson of Honey I'm Homeschooling The Kids and be interviewed for her podcast! Have a listen. If you can tell...I'm really really pumped about all the things. Have any questions about RADeducators, mindfulness or what I do for assessment to promote wellness in my classroom? EMAIL, TWEET, MESSAGE or find me at school!
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I'm not great at waiting for permission to do the things I know I need to do. This is why I am so passionate about teachers claiming their mental health and wellbeing instead of waiting for others to make it a priority. If we know that healthy teachers in front of kids will improve the wellbeing of students, we need to start making self-care a priority! Here is a 12 days of self-care calendar to help ease you into the Christmas season. Take care friends, get some rest and find your JOY again! I hope you are enjoying your first few days back at school! What an awesome job we have hey? Today, I want to talk about why Passion is likely the most important thing you will talk about in your classroom to your students. So often, we ask students “what do you want to be when you grow up?” but what if this was the wrong question? If we want to move forward and find new solutions to problems in our world, we need PASSIONATE people to use their gifts and talents to find those answers, not necessarily just more educated people. Here is a sample lesson from the PASSION & CREATIVITY section in the RADeducators training that will help you put student passion at the forefront of their learning. Invest in letting their light grow and we’ll set the world on fire with innovation and creativity! Let me know what you think!
Lesson available on www.kateweber.ca/products Teachers, I'm calling you out. I know that it's easier to pour yourself fully into work and ignore your own needs - believe me I've been there. But students deserve your best, and if you want to be at your best you have to invest in yourself. It's time we put teacher wellness at the top of our priority lists for back to school. Healthy Teachers = healthier classrooms = healthier students. YOU MATTER. You can't pour from an empty cup. So this year, set yourself up with some important boundaries for work and role model self-care for your students. We can only expect them to do the work that we also would do ourselves. Here is a checklist for you to keep close and remember what matters most - YOU! This would also be an amazing list to give your students the first day - putting our self-care first is NOT selfish but a form of self-respect.
Find this little goodie on www.kateweber.ca The beginning of the school year doesn't have to be the mindless rush that we are used to. This year, start off with mindfulness as a priority in your classroom. Students benefit from using mindfulness, but so do teachers! Below is a free PDF mindfulness activity that you can use to start this year off right - helping your students stay present, calm and an joyful. Let me know how it goes!
Find this lesson, and others, at www.kateweber.ca! There are usually two camps of students when it comes to social studies class: those who loath and those who love. But the great equalizer of both groups is the age old teenage desire to argue. Students (for the most part) LOVE a good debate. Any chance to argue is an automatic in with almost every class I've ever taught. For this last foray into my inquiry workshop, we did something a little different and we tried out a u-shaped debate. I also had a colleague visiting my class this day and she was able to participate and made this debate extra lively and impassionaied.
If you have not attempted this style of debate - it is so easy (and fun)! You will need: - 4 signs labelled: strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree - Your desks/tables arranged in an upside down U shape. - A polarizing (but appropriate) topic or statement. We began with a warm up question to get the juices flowing. This was not for the u-shaped debate but to get our brains in the right place before entering into debate mode. Our first round was "Is humankind essentially good or essentially evil?" As per our usual style, I gave two minutes of discussion with peers then two minutes of large group discussion on the topic. I jumped for joy when a students responded with a question "Well...what is the definition of good?" and better yet "Who decides what is good an evil?". Inquiry nirvana! For the U-shaped debate I gave students instructions on how to move around and how our debate would work. Here are a few pointers: - Move around the U and place yourself where you agree with the statement (SA, A, D, SD). It is a continuum with varying degrees of agreement and disagreement. - When you would like to speak you may only respond to one previous point (not multiples) and you must attack or respond to the point not the person who spoke it. Respectful discourse must be upheld at all times. - If you hear something that you agree with, move yourself towards that speaker. Same thing goes if you disagree with something said and you would move away from the speaker. - Note where you start and where you end up. - Listen and 'collect' one point that was stated that made you move towards/away from the speaker. You will be reflecting on this in a small writing piece at the end of the debate. Here was our topic: "In order to graduate from high school in Alberta, students must complete a set amount of volunteer hours." This debate was AWESOME - students were moving and shifting as their peers spoke. I also had students request MORE time during the writing portion. Yes. You read that right. Students wanted more time to complete their reflections on this debate. The kicker for me, and something I will never forget, was when a student came up to me after the class was ended and said "That was the best debate I've ever had in class". NO WAY! The craziest part was, this student did not even provide a point during the debate, but upon reading their reflection stated things like "I was so torn by various speakers ideas. On one hand I agreed with their idea of giving back to the community and benefiting me in the long run, but on on the other hand I also agree that students are really busy and overloaded already and that we need to have the choice to do it or not. Is it even volunteer work when it's mandatory?" Yup. That was pretty much the icing on our inquiry cake that day. Critical thinking, engaged, and deep questions. We are well on our way in this inquiry journey! To start off building inquiry into my social studies class, I decided to approach it as a skill based 'workshop' once a week where we just mingle, ask big questions, and maybe try and tie it into our materials. Ultimately, I just want my students to be comfortable with BIG questions, so that when we start out first inquiry project in a month or so, they aren't blindsided by the magnitude of the question I propose to them.
Today, we used a set of 3 inquiry questions. 1) Should teens rebel? 2) Is conflict necessary for change? 3) Is freedom ever free? The first two that we approached, I let students chat with a group they were comfortable with for approximately 5 minutes. I also inserted myself into certain student groups to get a bit of the conversation fired up or if it was going well I just listened to the conversation. Then we did a 5 minute group chat about the question as a class where I asked more questions or probed for deeper meaning (this was me modelling that next level of inquiry for them). This was the FIRST WEEK I have known my students (I just returned from maternity leave) and the first time I have ever asked them to try inquiry questions with me. The students were focused, interested and liked the openness of the questions. There were engaged and eager to get into the nitty gritty subject matter. I felt this exercise was even more successful that I thought it would be the first time around. For the third question asked to the students, I had students do a free-write (writing as much as they could possible get down in 5 minutes --- they could also mind map, type, record or draw) for their response in silence, and then we did the 5 minute group exercise. When they were writing, it was completely silent. Every. Single. Student. was writing furiously or typing or drawing. Completely engaged. The responses were, for the most part, meaningful and in depth. I also let students know ahead of time that this was a formative exercise, and I would be giving them feedback on their writing for next week. Here are a few excerpts from the student exercise: "Freedom is a double sided coin. If someone tells me I am free, is the very act of them telling me a restriction on my true freedom?" "Freedom has to be limited. Limits create boundaries that keep us safe. Is there were no boundaries wouldn't we all just live in chaos?" "Freedom is always at a price. Wars were fought so freedoms could remain. Freedom is a not in and of itself free, but always comes with loss of something like human life." "Freedom is something I decide I have." Pretty cool hey? I thought so too and this is only week 1! My favourite part about the responses is that the students started asking MORE questions. They nailed it. So grateful to my students for their trust in me to guide them on this inquiry journey and honesty of their responses. Way to go! Here we come week 2. For this year, my professional growth plans are looking a little different. This is in part due to my new position in high-school redesign pod project, but also because I'm feeling that there is something greater going on behind project-based learning that keeps popping up around every corner. Our BIG question for this year in St. Mark's College (our pod) is....
"How can an inquiry-based approach to teaching promote student passion and authenticity in learning?" In the past, I've used a project-based approach to build engagement and authenticity, but more and more I am convinced that it is PASSION that drives every little thing we do on this planet (and conversely, a lack of passion too). If I want to effect change in my classroom, and hopefully the communities/world we are apart of, we have to tap into the deep-rooted interests students have and allow those to find our authentic, real-world problems for student to work on. I think using an inquiry-based approach to teaching will naturally lead into project-based learning (which I love. There are some SERIOUSLY awesome things coming this year!). In my experience, there are so many approaches to project-based learning it is hard for one to know exactly 'what' it is. But isn't that the cool thing? It can be SO many different things! One piece that is vital, however, is that the problem students are working to solve is REAL and/or has real world applications. Inquiry-based learning also uses this rich, messy, grey area of real world problems to drive students to be curious about a topic. But in inquiry based learning the focus is not completely on the 'product' or 'project' students are working on, but the questions they are finding/asking/seeking as they work through something. DEEP and MEANINGFUL learning happens here. At the question a student asks when they reach a new conclusion or learn something new. I guess this naturally happens as a by-product of project-based learning, but because I keep finding myself at inquiry's doorstep, I'm going to focus on that as my professional project this year. What I will be focusing on in the next month (October) for an inquiry-based approach: - QUESTIONS: not just yes/no, but those firecrackers that get your class buzzing. Also, a good question beckons for more questions to be asked. ex. "What is the best type of power?" - CURIOSITY: what don't we know? what else is there to this story? Who's perspective is missing? - ASSESSMENT: varied, student driven, and real world. Using self feedback and reflection as well as conversations with students. One of my favourite blogs is todaysletters.com. The author writes her blog in letters to her husband, daughter, family, friends and even to herself. Her letters are often humorous but always from the heart. She thanks those around her, reflects on what has gone on in her world, asks meaningful questions and offers up gratitude for everyday things. I appreciate her format mostly because it is laid back and to the point. Letters are special and as the header on her blog states "There are many things that can change a life...a letter is one of them."
Letter writing is something that in school has been relegated to English classes and mostly for a business purpose. I think a lot of the romanticism of letters has been lost when we restrict them soley for business purposes. Writing letters used to be the one and only way to communicate with those at a distance - in a pre-social media world - and the only way we could express our wants, needs and desires to those around us other than face to face conversations. I believe we should use letters in a BIG, MEANINGFUL, AWESOME way in our classrooms from day 1. I have used letter writing as an intro tool during the first days/weeks of September as a way to get to know my students in a more meaningful way. My Pod Team used this exercise when meeting our "Pod" for the first time this week, and I know another new teacher who employed it in his jr. high classroom too. It is an effective way to let students know you are there for them, want to get to know them and care about their needs. Below is my outline and a few tips for a successful letter writing activity: 1. Begin by outlining what you want your students to write: - I post this somewhere for students to refer to. I usually have them include the following: Introduce yourself, passion areas, strengths/areas of success (academic or otherwise), weaknesses/areas to work on (academic or otherwise), what I need from my teachers this year, other information your teachers could need in order to best SERVE YOU (I strongly recommend using this language. I remind students constantly that that is what I am really here to do: SERVE them the best way I can.) 2. Remind students this is completely individual and confidential: - These will not be shared with anyone but the instructors - These letters are meant to be individual...you don't need to talk to a friend about it beside you. 3. Give TIME to write: - Great letters won't come out of a rushed writing session. Students need a good chunk of time. Also, if students don't complete them, have them hand in what they did complete, and they can finish writing to you at home if they think of more things later on. 4. THESE ARE NOT SUMMATIVE. I REPEAT. THESE ARE NOT SUMMATIVE. - Make sure to reiterate to students, that these are not for assessment. Remind students that this is an opportunity to ask your teachers for what you need to be successful. They should be legible, but spelling and structure are not as important as content. 5. Keep it light! - Some students will shoot back an eye-rolling-groan-slump-in-chair attitude, but tell them if they wish to add in a drawing, diagram, song lyrics, anthem, or ANYTHING that will help their teachers understand what makes them tick...then put it down! 6. It's a two way street: - It is usually best practice to begin with an example or do this exercise yourself. I usually narrate my introduction and what I need from my students to be the best teacher I can be before beginning the letter writing activity. 7. Keep the letters: - Do not read and toss these. There is some SERIOUSLY valuable information you may need from them at a later date. I usually keep these until the end of the year and then return them to the students. It is a great measure of growth and sometimes great for a laugh or two. This is a great intro activity to get to know your students and truly find out what the needs are of your students. I look forward to reading the letters from my new pod students and know they will serve to make me a better educator for my students this year. Happy September and may your year be fulfilling and full of growth. |
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