Kindergartners will be world changers. Right now they are learning to share, cooperate, and take turns. It is inspiring to think that one day these amazing little humans will make our world a better place.

The kindergartners at De Vargas Elementary School, in San Jose, California, recently completed a Project Based Learning (PBL) Unit called World Changers. What is PBL? It is a teaching method in which learners gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and answer an authentic and engaging question. PBL enables the learning to be personalized so that each learner has access to and ownership over their learning.  

Academic standards are embedded into each PBL. The kindergarten social science standards include learning about now and long ago, learning about the community, and learning how to work together. All these standards were embedded within this PBL. In addition, key vocabulary and sentence structures were taught as most of our school population are English language learners.

Launching the Project

The Driving Question for this World Changers PBL was: How can you change the world when you grow up? This is a big question for little kids and one that they took seriously.  To launch this project and give them the hook to inspire their curiosity and wonder, we invited community members to come, dressed in their professional wardrobes, and talk to the children about their careers and how that impacts the world.

Community members talk about their professions

This community member talked about the importance of heating and cooling homes.

Expanding the Driving Question

After learning from people in our community, we returned to the driving question for our PBL.  We brainstormed things we need to know and new vocabulary needed for this project. We kept track of this information on our PBL Wall.

The children had opportunities to choose books on a variety of career topics that interested them. We found some video clips to aid in this discovery.  More discussion took place, as they learned about different careers. They noticed that some careers that were important in the past are not needed presently. We talked about how and why those changes took place.

During playtime, they enjoyed dressing up and trying on different career choices.

Choosing Careers the will Change the World

Towards the end of the project, the children chose the future career they felt would fit them best. They created a model of their future self and stated how they will change the world. The children displayed these products in the Guided Learning Center for learners, staff, parents, and community to see. They also documented all their learning on a digital portfolio that is shared with their parents.

“When I grow up I want to be a veterinarian. I will change the world. I will help animals.”

“When I grow up I want to be a chef. I will change the world by making food for others.”

“When I grow up I want to be a shopper. I will change the world by buying food for people.”

“When I grow up I want to be a scientist. I will change the world by making medicine so people get better.”

“When I grow up I want to be a pilot. I will change the world by taking people to the other side.”

Through this project, the children learned about different kinds of careers, and the many ways in which they can change the world. They are now looking towards the future, and they are excited about what they can do and how their actions will affect others.  It is my hope that this PBL will inspire the children to continue to think about how they will become world changers.

 

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Paula Ford graduated from the University of California at Davis with a Bilingual Cross-Cultural Language and Academic (BCLAD) multiple subject teaching credential. She also has a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction and Early Childhood Education. She has been teaching for over twenty years. She began her career in bilingual education and then moved to teach second language learners.

Paula taught kindergarten, first grade, third grade, and has been a resource teacher for grades transitional kindergarten through fifth grade. The majority of her career has been teaching low-socioeconomic English language learners. Currently, Paula is teaching kindergarten at Manuel De Vargas Elementary School, and she absolutely loves it.

Make sure you follow Paula on Twitter at @prford5

 

Other Posts by Paula on Rethinking Learning

• Kindergarten PBL with School in Africa
• Random Acts of Kindness PBL
• Farm and City PBL Part 1 Traveling Toy Animals Part One
• Farm and City PBL Part 2 Traveling Toy Animals Part Two
• Episode #4 Podcast and Post with Paula Ford on Collaborative PBL with Kindergartners

 

 

 

 

 

Ira Socol is Senior Provocateur and Learning Environment Specialist at Socol Moran Partners LLC. He is a co-author of Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools with Pam Moran and Chad Ratliff.  

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Ira presents nationally and internationally on the need to radically change the four technologies of school – time, the division of students and content, spaces, and information and communication tools – in order to give all students an opportunity to succeed. I was lucky to have a selfie with Ira at SXSW EDU. Enjoy Ira’s journey.

 

Your Background

I started my journey in education in some problematic ways. School was never my favorite thing. Classrooms are not my favorite places. The structure of school never really worked for me. I started out in an urban setting outside the Bronx in New York, the first city north of the Mason-Dixon line to have a Supreme Court desegregation rule. I went to a K-6 elementary school that was a huge place of 1200 students with 5-6 classes that had 30-36 students in each grade level. It was a place where teachers had a lot of independence to try a lot of things.

Even though I didn’t have a particularly good time in that school, I also knew a lot of people were trying to find solutions and new things. I deeply appreciated that and wrote a novel a long time ago that includes part of that in the story. The failures I experienced were not the fault of educators not trying.

The Drool Room https://www.amazon.com/Drool-Room-Ira-Socol/dp/0615165443/

 

What it was like for you as a student

I was lucky enough after middle school to end up in a brilliant alternative high school that was created by some local teachers in New Rochelle, NY. Neil Postman who had had just written Teaching as a Conserving Activity built that then was called a “School without Walls”. There were really no requirements credits, we had to take the NY Regents exams at the end of a required class. Other than that, we were able to learn on our own, with another, with a group. How we got the knowledge base was entirely up to the student. What I learned is that it put a lot of pressure on you. Teachers would say if you don’t want to do it that way, then do it another way. That forces you into a lot of adult thinking and makes you really process things.

This school graduated 99% of its students and sent 95% to four-year colleges. This was way above the other high schools even though it was made up of kids who were failing or because the school was not working for them. Many of the graduates have led pretty successful lives. The school existed for about 18 years until the conservative crackdown

How being a New York City Police Officer led to Technology

I studied studio art at Michigan State University and then came back to Brooklyn, NY in the mid-1980s to study architecture. The area in Brooklyn at the time was going through the most difficult time that was incredibly violent and a dangerous place. It was the neighborhood in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.”

http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2009/06/great-schools-3-profession-without.html

One of the things I did to help pay tuition was security tours around the neighborhood for incoming freshmen. In doing that, I met a number of officers from the 88th precinct. From talking to them, I found a way to contribute every day to society as a man in his twenties wanting to have an ability to make an impact. Being a NY police officer was an immediate impact job. It was a time when people were happy to see a policeman. They convinced me to take the civil service test. They were extremely accommodating to my reading difficulties. The police academy education was a remarkable education and I worked in some really crazy environments.

I got hurt a number of times. When I was hurt the last time, they handed me an early IBM PC and said to see if they could use this for anything. That was my introduction to computers. I figured that coding was something I could do and also how to assemble and share knowledge. I never fully understood algebra until I really needed to find X (the criminal we were looking for). Then I had to assemble an equation to what we knew to what we didn’t know. Somehow algebra in the Sherlock Holmes way made sense to me.

Share your journey with Assistive Technology

I was always looking for something next to do that gave me that sense of what happens when you intervene at a key moment in someone’s life and change that moment. That search eventually led me to schools. I moved to western Michigan and worked in another of things to pay the bills. Then I went to Grand Valley University through the technology and educational psychology departments led me to assistive special education technology. Instead of working in the classroom, I worked in special needs technology in a high school. I was looking for technology that could read to me and that I could dictate to. The technology I found was used for blind people and not appropriate for people with dyslexia. My boss gave me a year to research to come up with a plan to make the campus accessible from a computing point of view. All the assistive technology was hidden in the disabled student office, basement, or library. One of the things I’m very proud of is that we put accessible computers everywhere there were students. People shouldn’t need a diagnosis to use the tools they need.

 

Toolbelt Theory

As technology began to change while I was working in schools and a vocational rehab agency, I realized that I was starting to use multiple technologies throughout my day. I wasn’t using the same things to read to me in my car as I was in my home or classroom. The writing was different at work then by myself. The driving question is “what is your skill at the moment?”

Humans are tool users. When students use tools, they choose it based on what they have to do. You don’t use the same saw to create a table that you would use to cut down a Christmas tree. The environment you’re in matters. If you’re out in the woods, you’re doing one thing. In a machine shop, you’re doing other things. Feelings even matter. Disability and ability are not stable states. You need to know the tools that are available.

One of the things we started pumping into the schools I worked with was lots of different choices of things on the computers of the time. Back then we had a variety of text-to-speech readers, browsers. The theory became the most important thing we can leave our kids with is to know how to use their technology to solve their own problems.

In 1999, I said “no technology we are teaching your kids will last more than 5 years. So we better teach them how to learn it and research it.”

The Toolbelt Theory is that you assemble your toolbelt and that toolbelt changes as you change. The theory works today. In Albemarle County School District, we always said that with computers there are always three ways to do something. Three browsers, three different word processors, three different text-to-speech systems, and more. We tried to create different tools so students could choose.

These are personal learning devices. If a student cannot control or personalize the device, then that is not personalized learning. This was a hard sell at first to some teachers, administrators, and even tech staff. Kids were learning and understood the consequences because they could lose everything on their computer.

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This is Barbara. I had the most wonderful conversation with Ira and pulled out some interesting conversations. There is more in the podcast. Ira shared resources with me that I want to share with you of his work at Albemarle County Public Schools with Pam Moran and Chad Ratliff especially their book, Timeless Learning.

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Multiage Learning Spaces

Here is a presentation on how kids can use technology to close the opportunity gap. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1SNY2EtiTK1eJ-UrmfoTpEijM9wYWQqhXZst0MiOu5IU/edit?usp=sharing

Wondering what it looks like, here’s a short video and this is what Ira described the scene:  We’d like to share one of the spaces we created and get you to observe and think about this space — we can’t do justice to what it means for young people to learn in a multiage setting but we want to challenge you to consider how learning is different when kids are not stamped and graded by age

Your Book, Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools with Dr. Pam Moran and Chad Ratliff

https://www.amazon.com/Timeless-Learning-Imagination-Observation-Zero-Based/dp/1119461693

Best to have Ira share his book in this interview with DisruptED TV.

 

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Ira David Socol is the Senior Provocateur at Educology Partners as he works to complete is a doctorate in education at Michigan State University. He works extensively with Michigan’s Integrated Technology Initiative (where he developed the “Freedom Stick” universal design applications suite with the help of RSC-Scotland-North+East), with Michigan’s Vocational Rehabilitation Agency, with the Albemarle County (Virginia) Public Schools, and with many other schools, districts, and divisions. He presents nationally and internationally on the need to radically change the four technologies of school – time, the division of students and content, spaces, and information and communication tools – in order to give all students an opportunity to succeed. He is the author of the “somewhat educationally-based” novel, The Drool Room, and blogs at speedchange.blogspot.com

Ira’s Contact Information:

• Website: https://sites.google.com/site/iradavidsocol/
• Blog: speedchange.blogspot.com
• Twitter: @irasocol

 

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For all of the Conversations on Learning podcasts with Barbara Bray,
click on the podcast tab at the top, the logo below or go to https://barbarabray.net/podcasts/

 

 

 

 

The Teaching and Learning Continuum was designed to support changing teaching practice. Teachers may not have the tools, resources, and support to change teaching practice on their own. The main challenge for teachers is time.

Schools are looking at strategies to empower teachers to take control of their personal professional learning. That is tough for some especially if the system doesn’t support them. The Stages of Personalized Learning did not address some of the concerns teachers were telling me. Schools reached out to me asking about the contents and why we didn’t include traditional models. They also felt specific criteria were missing. When I started working with Rose Colby on personalized, competency-based education, I realized how much I didn’t know. I interviewed Rose in Episode #43, read her book, and have presented with her twice at iNACOL. It’s not just about personalizing learning. It’s about changing the system to address competencies, skills, and dispositions. I got it that there is still so much more to do.

CCSSO (Council of Chief State SchoolOfficers) along with QED Foundation’s Transformational Model created a CSSR Best Practice Continua in 2012 that I saw when it was in the draft mode. I’m not able to find it now. I saw the potential within that document as a starting point and worked with several schools who were looking for classroom observation forms, coaching tools, ways to identify and monitor progress, etc. So in working with different ideas and models, I co-developed different tools including several ideas similar to this chart. When I shared several iterations with teachers in focus groups, we came up with different criteria and approaches across the continuum. This chart is a general overview with criteria for support moving to a personalized, competency-based system and learner agency.

My focus has been on supporting teachers as a coach for almost 30 years. I see how difficult it is for teachers in traditional systems to be innovative. Yet, the teachers I’ve met and know are amazing. They are my heroes. They do the day-to-day work to make a difference in children’s lives. They have demonstrated to me how they can take an existing lesson and look at areas where they can bring in voice, choice, and autonomy so students start developing learner agency. However, I get questions and see requests on social media for ideas, tools, resources, and other strategies to support teachers and systems. It really is more than just changing one lesson but sometimes starting small opens doors to magical learning.

You can download the chart from the link above in SlideShare and use it. Please let me know how it is working for you in the comments below, contact me here or with my email barbara.bray@gmail.com

 

Dr. Winston Sakurai is Principal of The Prep at St. Andrews School in Honolulu, Hawaii. He was named 2016 @NASSP National Digital Principal and 2016 HASSA Hawaii Principal of the Year, and is moderator of the Twitter chat #PrinLeaderChat  Sunday evenings at 9pm ET for all school leaders.

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I’m so fortunate to have worked with Winston at St. Andrews School and with so many awesome educators. After learning more about all the innovation that is happening in Hawaii and at his school. I really wanted to share his story with you. Aloha!

Your background

I was born and raised in Hawaii. I grew up on the windward side of Oahu. My parents understood the value of education.  They moved from Honolulu to another part of the island where the school system was really good to put education first. They would say that they didn’t want me to have to work as hard as they did. They had to do a lot of manual labor and didn’t go to college. My dad repaired air conditioning units. My mom would get up at 4am as a cafeteria worker at the high school down the road. They put every effort into their children’s education so I could go to college and do well.

Your family

It’s a great story. My wife, Rochelle, and I have had the opportunity of working together as educators in the same schools since we began. She has been a kindergarten and 6th-grade teacher, early childhood and then with our middle school and high school and past ten years before I was here at the Prep, she was the college counselor and I was the principal for the middle and high schools in the upper school. We worked together as a team. We call it “Team Sakurai.” She’s now the college counselor at the Priory at St. Andrews Schools. Her office is right down the hall from where I am.

Rochelle makes me better. I appreciate her because she is smarter than me and she does a lot of things that point me in the right direction. We have two children. I am fortunate to be the principal for my son, Matthew, who is in fourth grade and my daughter, Madison, is in first grade. Not every educator gets the chance to develop a school that your children will go to and benefit from. Even though we are working together as a team, we also get the benefit of seeing our children having those experiences that we create for all children here. I’m very blessed to have this opportunity.

What it was like for you as a student

I did have a little bit of a struggle. I remember third grade and taking the standardized assessment tests and scoring really high. But they wouldn’t put me in the Gifted and Talented Program because my grades in school were just average. I didn’t do well on everyday work because it was kind of confusing. Math was easy. English was a struggle.

My mom asked the school for diagnostics about speech delays and impediments. Through the testing, they couldn’t find anything. In 1983, I made it through because my parents purchased a Commodore 64 for me. It had a spellchecker and a word processor so I was able to get through school.

[This is Barbara: make sure you listen to more about how technology and his mom helped him starting around 14:00]

It wasn’t until later when I was in college and couldn’t get through the foreign language class that I found I had dyslexia. I’m thankful for the University of Hawaii who understood that there are ways to get through college even through struggles with language acquisition. I remember what Mrs. Ito from the student services center said to me, “I can help you.” That was the support I needed.

Voice of Reason on the Hawaii state board

In 1993 at the age of 20, I was appointed by Governor John Waihee to the Hawaii State Board of Education and served multiple terms as Vice Chairperson. I helped to create the BOE’s Committee on Budget and Fiscal Accountability where he redirected hundreds of millions of dollars in wasteful spending back to schools. I was known as the BOE’s “Voice of Reason” during my ten-year tenure, My accomplishments include blocking privatization of public schools, stopping class size increases, and negotiating a settlement to the statewide teacher’s strike.

I would also serve as a voting member on the National State Boards of Education Association and National School Boards of Education. In 1996, I was named by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin as one of 10 people “Who Would Make a Difference in Hawaii’s Future” along with notables such as Governor Ben Cayetano, US Senator Mazi Hirono & US Representative Mark Takai.

Your journey as a teacher and becoming an administrator

I “retired” from the BOE to teach History at Hanalani Schools and spent five years as the elementary administrator before becoming principal of Hanalani’s Upper School in 2008. During my tenure, the school developed an international championship robotics program, national award-winning student government, National Honor Society chapter national recognized for service, raising Advanced Placement (AP) passing exam scores and a college readiness program where 100% of graduates are accepted to college.

Award for National Digital Principal in 2016

My wife was the one who had me apply for the National Digital Principal award. I told her that I’m not anybody and not at that level that everyone else is. I remember that Eric Sheninger won the award in 2012 and I thought I would never be like him. She told me every single year, that I was good enough to apply. It took a lot of her encouragement helping to develop who I am that brought out the best in what I could do. I was one of three digital Principals of 2016. Here is a picture of me with Bobby Dodd and Glenn Robbins.

Principal at The Prep at  St. Andrews School

The Prep, a school within St. Andrews School, is four years old and an all-boys school right in the heart of Honolulu. We’re trying to make it one of the most innovative schools in the state. For a principal to have the opportunity to build a new school is unbelievable. Currently, we’re kindergarten through 4th grade and we hope to continue growing. Even now we’re talking about what to do for our incoming 5th and 6th graders and beyond. We’re building a school with great teachers and the sky is the limit. Having to build things on our own, we have to think creatively and outside the box. Everything is new each year. Follow #WeThePrep on Twitter. Technology brings students together at The Prep.

Design Studio 4

We’re using the design thinking process from Stanford that places a focus on empathy. Our students are building things here on campus and creating different spaces for learning to take place. The kids own the process. Having them think about others and not themselves, being empathetic, understanding people is a process that will help them become successful. They problem-solve, create, iterate, test things out, iterate again until things are right. That’s how life is. We teach them that you don’t fail until you stop and quit. We encourage them to keep on going, going, going and make it better. When you stop because you’re giving up, that’s when a failure takes place. But if you iterate, iterate, iterate, you’re constantly getting better and moving forward, you’ll be very successful for the rest of your life.

It’s hard. We’re in a world where we have to understand each other. In order to understand each other in a way that you’re very helpful to each other as well. It’s not just taking something and saying, “I get it.” It’s about what we can do to help that other person be successful as well. Give them opportunities. Help them to be better. Our society will move forward and get better because we’re looking out for each other, trying to help each other move to the next level. We get the opportunity of knowing that the next generation is going to take our nation to a different place that is so unique and so spectacular that we couldn’t even imagine those things.

Why are you so passionate about changing school?

I see that lightbulb go on that they wouldn’t see if they were reading out of a textbook because it wasn’t relevant to them. My son comes home sometimes and asks me “what’s the relevance of this worksheet?” I have to question that, too. Now, he doesn’t say that as much. He goes, “this is difficult, but I think I can figure it out.” Which is spectacular!! It’s such a difference in how he’s learning and how he’s doing things because he’s processing stuff because he wants to. He thinks the challenge is important to tackle and fix.

 

*****

Dr. Winston Sakurai has distinguished himself as an innovative educational leader at the state and national level for over 25 years. He was recently named by the National Association of Secondary School Principals as a 2016 National Digital Principal of the Year and by the Hawaii Association of Secondary School Administrators as the 2015-16 Hawaii State Principal of the Year. He currently moderates a national education chat for school leaders, #PrinLeaderChat, on twitter.

Winston’s Contact info

Winston Y. Sakurai, Ed.D
winstonsakurai@gmail.com
NASSP National Digital Principal
Former Hawaii State Board of Education Vice Chair
The Principal of The Prep, St. Andrew’s  Schools 
https://standrewsschools.org

• Website: http://winstonsakurai.weebly.com
• Twitter: @winstonsakurai
• Twitter chat: #PrinLeaderchat
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/winstonsakurai
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/winstonsakurai

New Book: Education Write Now: Top Strategies for Improving Relationships and Culture with multiple authors including Dr. Winston Sakurai

 

 

Dr. Pam Moran served as the Superintendent of Albemarle County Public Schools in Virginia from January 2006 through June of 2018. She now serves as the Executive Director at the Virginia School Consortium for Learning. Pam has a clear vision of what educational experiences should be for students in today’s world and embodies the paradigm shift that must be made to make schools relevant.

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Pam Moran is a leading advocate of an educational model that prepares all students for success. She emphasizes the value of student-led research, project-based learning and contemporary flexible learning spaces that promote collaboration, creativity, analytical problem-solving, critical thinking, and communications competencies among all students.

You and your family

I grew up in a family of makers. My husband, John, is a maker and artist extraordinaire.. He went to the University of New Mexico but then started making jewelry and working with silver. Included a picture of some of his beautiful jewelry to the right.  John built our timber frame house we live in and he’s a wonderful dad. Despite the fact that he is wheelchair bound, he is still someone who is active and interested in so much. Every day, my son, Jason, who is a digital media director in New York City, calls his father and they have wonderful conversations.

Life is such a great place. If we see ourselves as open to learning, we can continue to evolve and develop who we are and what we can bring to this planet. If we define ourselves as educators, we’re constantly focused on seeing learning as a lifetime event not just something that happens when you got to school.

I have a mother who is 97 years old. She was actually a World War II Vet who worked for naval intelligence in Bainbridge, Washington which is an island outside of Seattle. She worked on breaking Japanese code during WWII. She just received a Congressional award for her work. Two pictures of my mom at 23 and 97.

One of the interesting things is that there was secrecy about her work. She was not allowed to share that she received this medal from the Secretary of the Navy at that time. In 1996, she told our family during the holidays that she had something to share. She pulled out a box with a letter that she had just gotten something that was declassified. That meant she could tell her family what she actually did in the war. She had kept that secret for a lifetime. We never had a clue what she did in the Navy. What this taught me is that my mom was always a person who lived her life by doing what she says and saying what she’s going to do.

I am so grateful that I’m still able to have amazing conversations with her. She has been a great model for me to really think about what it means to just stay open and interested in everything that is going on in life. She’s still that way at 97, and she has amazing stories.

TedTalk. Hacking Schools: Getting Ourselves to Yes

We can learn from anyone if we continue to remember that the lessons of life really are timeless. Even when you do have conflict in the work that you do, that if you come from a position of honesty, integrity, and trust, what a difference it makes in terms of the relationships you have.  

What it was like for you as a student

I had a different trajectory as a student. I grew up on a farm in the low country in South Carolina. We grew up when segregation du jour was the law by redistricting of schools. It was a different experience. When you live in a place like I did, you grow up in a very diverse community. Our African-American community was a strong community and one that was very present and a lot of interaction with the Caucasian community. If you were white, as I look back, the privileges you have are very apparent. If you were very thoughtful about growing up in a very segregated school system. The fact is that in rural South Carolina when I went through school, it was very limiting and no one had the breadth and depth of education we have today. We had some good teachers, but I had a lot of teachers who had not finished four year colleges but went to “normal” schools to become teachers.

My Science teacher was also my guidance counselor was an incredible influence on a lot of kids. She encouraged kids to look at opportunities that would take us beyond the boundaries of our little county. She asked me 2 questions:

(1) Have you ever thought about majoring in science since I loved biology? and  
(2) Have you ever thought of being a teacher?

So I went off to college to a small liberal arts college, Furman university, in a program that was pulled together around field biology doing a lot of work in the outdoors. I enjoyed the work of field biology, but  I ended up teaching in Virginia and doing a Masters and Doctorate at the University of Virginia. 

Your journey as a teacher and becoming an administrator

My career in public education began as a high school science teacher. I subsequently served as a central office science coordinator and staff developer, elementary school principal, director of instruction, assistant superintendent for instruction, and adjunct instructor in educational leadership for the University of Virginia’s Curry School and the School of Continuing Education. She holds a B.S. in Biology from Furman University and Master’s and Doctoral degrees from the University of Virginia. I am also an alumnus of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business Executive Educators Leadership Institute. 

I am a past President of the Virginia Association of School Superintendents, Women Educational Leaders of Virginia and the Virginia Association of Science Supervisors. I’ve held leadership positions with the regional Chamber of Commerce, the Charlottesville-Albemarle Public Education Fund, and the University of Virginia-Public Schools Educational Partnership.

Albemarle County Public Schools Superintendent

I served as the Superintendent of Albemarle County Public Schools since January 2006 until June 2017. The division includes more than 1,200 teachers educating 13,700 students in 25 schools. During mys tenure, Albemarle County Public Schools has become one of the top performing school divisions for students in the state with an on-time graduation rate of 95 percent.  Two out of every three high school seniors graduate with an Advanced Studies Diploma, 30 percent higher than the state average for all school divisions.

Best way for me to share what happened in Albemarle County Public Schools is to show you. Edutopia collection of shared articles about the students and schools. 

Albemarle County Public Schools is comprised of 26 schools in Albemarle County, Virginia. A blend of primarily rural but also suburban and urban schools, each one embodies the culture of innovation and risk-taking that is the core of the district’s approach to teaching and learning. From makerspaces and curriculum to the use of social media, flexible classrooms, and instructional coaches, Albemarle gives students the life-long learning skills they’ll require to succeed.

Multiage learning space at Woodbrook Elementary
(source: Article by Tom Vander Ark. Forbes)

In 2017, a national survey organization ranked Albemarle County Public Schools in the top three of all school divisions in Virginia and among the top two percent of all school divisions in the county. Among the school division’s flagship programs are its Learning Commons, AVID (Advancement via Individual Determination) and M-Cubed. Both the Learning Commons and M-Cubed have received the National School Board Association’s Magna Award, given annually to the school division in the nation with the most innovative and effective program.  The school division is the only one in the history of the Magna Award to twice receive the association’s highest performance honor. The school’s Learning Commons, which is a multi-disciplined, technology-infused learning center, has attracted visits by MIT, Harvard, the Universities of Virginia and North Carolina and from the Smithsonian Museum and the New York Hall of Science.  M-Cubed is a program that supports black middle school males in year-round advanced math studies to improve their high school academic performance. The division’s Jack Jouett Middle School is in the top three percent of all schools in the world for the success of its AVID college and career readiness program.

 

Your Book

Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools with Ira Socol and Chad Ratliff

Writing was a labor of life. After single year of my 43 years of my career, one thing is that if you are open to learning, that every single year of your life can be filled with amazing new opportunities to learn and develop and be a part of a community that makes things better for kids. 

I was fortunate to co-author this book with Chief Technology Officer Ira Socol and Lab Schools Principal Chad Ratliff to demonstrate how you can implement innovative practices that have shown remarkable success. We use progressive design principles to inform pathways to disrupt traditions of education today and show you how to make innovations real that will have a timeless and meaningful impact on students, keeping alive the natural curiosity and passion for learning with which children enter school.

• Discover the power of project-based and student-designed learning
• Find out what “maker learning” entails
• Launch connected and interactive digital learning
• Benefit from the authors’ “opening up learning” space and time

Using examples from our own district as well as others around the country, we created a map of the processes necessary to move from schools in which content-driven, adult-determined teaching has been the traditional norm to new learning spaces and communities in which context-driven, child-determined learning is the progressive norm. 

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This is Barbara. I shared a few of the excerpts from our conversation and hope you listen to the entire podcast with Pam. I learned so much from her about Albemarle County Public Schools, their book, and her new journey with Socol Moran Partners LLC with Ira Socol. I highly recommend that you read Timeless Learning or contact Pam for any school or district interested in transforming teaching and learning.  Thank you, Pam for sharing your story!

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Dr. Pam Moran’s contact information

Website: https://spacesforlearning.wordpress.com/
Twitter: @pammoran

Dr. Pam Moran served as the Superintendent of Albemarle County Public Schools in Virginia from January 2006 through June of 2018. She now serves as the Executive Director at the Virginia School Consortium for Learning. Pam has a clear vision of what educational experiences should be for students in today’s world and embodies the paradigm shift that must be made to make schools relevant.

A past gubernatorial appointee to the State Council on Higher Education for Virginia, Dr. Moran was selected by her peers across the Commonwealth as Virginia’s 2016 Superintendent of the Year.  She subsequently was one of four statewide superintendents of the year to be selected as a finalist for 2016 National Superintendent of the Year.

In 2016, Dr. Moran was selected to serve on the Aspen Institute’s National Commission on Social, Emotional and Academic Development. She is a member of the MakerEdorg advisory committee and has delivered several TED Talks on the impact of creating a contemporary learning environment for students, one shaped around a student-centered project-based instructional model.   Under her guidance, Albemarle County Public Schools was selected in 2015 for membership in the League of Innovative Schools., a nonprofit organization authorized by the U.S. Congress to accelerate innovation in education.

Dr. Moran has appeared on the cover of Education Week’s Digital Directions magazine as a “National Mover and Shaker” for her advocacy of a curricular digital integration model, which will be featured in an upcoming profile by Edutopia.  She also was selected by eSchool Media as one of its national Tech-Savvy Superintendents of the Year and under her leadership, the school division received the Virginia Governor’s Tech Innovation Award.

Dr. Pamela R. Moran has been named the new Executive Director of the Virginia School Consortium for Learning (VaSCL). A statewide education organization headquartered in Palmyra, VaSCL includes a membership of more than 70 school divisions across the state. Its mission is to improve the quality of K-12 education in the state by providing high-quality professional learning to educators and by facilitating the sharing of best practices among school divisions.

 

Allison Zmuda is an education consultant specializing in curriculum, assessment, and instruction. She works with national and international educators to design learning experiences that are relevant, meaningful, challenging, and appropriate. Previously, she served as a high school social studies teacher for eight years. Allison has authored eleven books and co-developed a series of online courses.

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I have read several of Allison’s books, follow her on social media, and was very excited to have a conversation with her.  I learned so much about her and am honored to share her story with you. Enjoy!

 

You and your family

My husband, Tom, and I have two children, my son, Cuda, and my daughter, Zoe. We lived in a small town in Connecticut. When my son was in second grade and my daughter was in preschool going to start Kindergarten, I was looking around to what kind of public school system for my kids could have to grow. So we settled on Virginia Beach. I was doing some consulting work there for a couple of years. The level of innovation that was happening there at the time as well as the level of diversity was what we wanted. The opportunity to see what’s possible when you have a large scale school system as opposed to a regional small town system.

I wanted my kids to experience a range of perspectives, points of views, diversity, and also wanted to make sure they received a high-quality education. We moved to Virginia Beach with 68,000 students, eleven high schools, and not sure how many middle schools. My kids worked through the system, and now Zoe is in 9th grade and Cuda is in 12th grade. So we’re starting to think about college and university. They really thrived in their experience there and my kids coach me on the idea of what personalized learning looks like to them. It’s interesting to see how they find joy, interests, and passions sometimes in school and sometimes in an area they are interested in.

[This is Barbara. Make sure you listen to how Allison and her husband came up with Cuda’s and Zoe’s names.]

What was your experience in school

I was born in 1971. Growing up in the late 1970s and 80s, magnet schools were part of my public school experience. I went to a Science and Technology Magnet School in the late 70s where there was a planetarium at my elementary school. That was the first time I was on an Apple IIe where we learned turtle logo and Olympics of the Mind. The power of these experiences enriched my learning. All of these were great roots of gifted education infused into the public schools so everybody had access to it.

Montclair, New Jersey has a significant amount of diversity and choice. In middle school, it was an open system with no walls and a level of flexibility and innovation. Then I moved a traditional high school program and went on to Yale University thinking about going to law school or teaching. I was in the teacher preparation starting my sophomore year and graduated with a teaching license. Tore up my LSAT scores and to jump full-fledge into teaching.

Your mission

I was a high school social studies teacher in Newtown, Connecticut for eight years. When I was pregnant with my first child, I was starting to figure out how I can continue to influence the thinking not just of my students by also my peers and colleagues. I had an opportunity to write an article that turned into my very first book with my teaching partner at the time, Mary Tomaino. I wanted to think of a more flexible way of working and started my consulting career at 28. I’ve been at it for close to 19 years. I think about how to grow the heart, the energy, and the joy of what teaching and learning look like feel like and sounds like. That’s been my mission from the very beginning. How we can continue to create that level of joy, passion, energy, and focus while there’s so much anxiety, stress, and worry that not only our students are demonstrating but, clearly, our teachers are as well?

Experiences in middle school

What’s on my mind right now is that we need to look at middle school different than high school should look like. We need to consider the social-emotional aspect of learning and how we can continue to capture energy and life as they transition from elementary to middle school. We’re trying to grow the compassion and empathy as well as cognition as part of their middle school experience.

It is about these kinds of timeless experiences where we believe what we’re doing is in the best interests of the students and also grows the entire school culture. It also involves the willingness of the faculty to grow their possibilities and imaginings of what it is that they can hope for themselves and their students.

Purpose of learning

Learning from mistakes video on ASCD http://www.ascd.org/Publications/ascd-authors/allison-zmuda.aspx

I met Jay McTighe @jaymctighe and Grant Wiggins @grantwiggins early in my career who became my professional mentors, coaches, and colleagues. I was working at a regional center in Connecticut working with magnet schools in the Hartford area that grew my thinking about the possibilities of magnet schools all over again. I also started to think about how to make school more interesting for both kids and adults. That’s when my daughter told me she wanted to learn how to play the ukulele, buy her own ukulele, and then teach herself how to play using YouTube. [This is Barbara: I found a YouTube video on how to strum the Ukulele.]

When a child is interested in something, they go about it organically. It is very different than what we as educators might imagine. I asked Zoe what she wanted to do with the ukulele and she said it was a stress reliever and unwind. Every child and adult needs to figure out a way of unwinding and also giving themselves a level of energy and joy. What they want to learn is connected to motivation or purpose. Why am I doing it in the first place? Trying to grow discovery can be an action plan, something they want to do in a genius hour, or like my daughter, learning to play the ukulele.

What experience changed you?

I had a stroke when I was 37. It was terrifying. I was at my daughter’s soccer field when she was in kindergarten. I tried to stand up and cheer her on and I couldn’t stand up. It turned out that I fell over and immediately an ambulance was called. At the hospital, they performed surgery. When I woke up, I was not able to speak with maybe two or three words in my vocabulary. I was also paralyzed on my right side. After 72 hours, the paralysis worked its way out, but the speech didn’t. I was conscious and my mental faculties were okay the whole time, but the ability to explain my thinking was so highly tortured.

It was interesting because I had turned in to the editor the one book I had written by myself. I knew 6-8 weeks down the road that my book was going to come back to me and I would have to edit it one last time. Trying to think about how to grow my capacity to speak, to write, to communicate. The work I do as a consultant is organic and grounded in what the school or district is imagining. It’s not a canned presentation and every site is different. When I was going through rehab, one of the first persons who worked with me said that I was probably not able to work again. This was 2010.

[Barbara here. Listen at 28:10 to how Allison was determined to come back after this altering life event.] 

LearningPersonalized.com 

My company is just me. Learning Personalized grew out of how do we create a like-minded community of teachers, parents, students, and administrators around the idea of personalized learning. What are the challenges, problems that they are having? What are some of the success stories? Learning Personalized was sort of an act of community to continue to grow the thinking of people in that space.

As part of my consulting, educators have the ability to share their stories or something in a blog on my site. The idea is to for teachers and administrators to help us have a window into their journey even if they are uncomfortable about sharing and that level of risk-taking. You are now focusing on being an engineer, an architect, or an artist as opposed to anyone who is perfecting anything.  That is the spirit of what the community is trying to do. It’s messier because children are going shoulder-to-shoulder with you on that journey. It is growing you as an educator.

The secret of writing books

The secret of writing eleven books is that only one was written solely by me. One of the things that I find incredibly enriching is to think, imagine, and co-create with other authors and consultants. The interesting part about that is it is as much a thing to grow my thinking as it is something I do on behalf of a readership. It’s always a little bit selfish, in that to be in this space where you’re imagining ideas together with another author is just so enlightening. Barbara captured most of my books here.

Students at the Center

Video: Personalized Learning with Dr. Bena Kallick @benakallick and Allison Zmuda

Dispositions for Students and Educators

When you are starting to think about dispositions, it would be helpful to isolate an example that we agree is important. When you are thinking about goals or feedback, there are related dispositions that teachers and students need to grow into. If they are going to be able to create meaningful work and conversations around both of those areas. For example, when you start thinking about feedback, what are the most important roles from a classroom teacher’s point of view when they are providing feedback to students? Based on my continuous collaboration with Dr.Bena Kallick with Students at the Center, feedback is as much an act of teacher’s questioning and problem posing as it is delivering information on how to improve it.

Often times, we jump to guide them before we have a good understanding of what was the intention of what the students were after in the first place. From a student’s point of view, I have to be open to the idea of continuous learning. When we are engaged in rich and robust feedback, often we are looking at making it actionable and regular, but it doesn’t always get to the heart to do on behalf of the learner. We’re trying to grow students’ understanding of the value of feedback and the notion that feedback is something that is accessible from others and knowing that they are growing from their own self-analysis and improvement.

Four attributes of personalized learning

 

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Allison Zmuda is going on 17 years as a full-time education consultant specializing in curriculum, assessment, and instruction.

She works with her clients to imagine learning experiences that are worthy of the pursuit for both students and educators, designing work that is relevant, meaningful, challenging, and appropriate. Since 2001, she has co-authored 10 books, her most recent being The Quest for Learning (Solution Tree), co-authored with Marie Alcock and Michael Fisher and released October 2017, and Students at the Center: Personalized Learning and Habits of Mind (ASCD) co-authored with Bena Kallick, which was released January 2017.

In addition to her consulting work, Allison curates learningpersonalized.com, a website community comprised of her writing and that of colleagues and other educators. She has also developed a series of online personalized learning courses with Bena Kallick, available on Eduplanet21.

Allison lives in Virginia Beach, VA with her husband and two teenage children.

You can follow Allison on Twitter (@allison_zmuda), Facebook, LinkedIn, or reach her via e-mail at allison@allisonzmuda.com.

Website: https://learningpersonalized.com

ASCD Author Page: http://www.ascd.org/Publications/ascd-authors/allison-zmuda.aspx

 

Dr. Jim Rickabaugh serves as the Senior Advisor to the Institute for Personalized Learning, an education innovation lab dedicated to the transformation of public education. Jim formerly served as the Director of the Institute for six years and as a superintendent in several districts in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

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Jim is the author of Tapping the Power of Personalized Learning: A Roadmap for School Leaders and co-author of Five Levers To Improve Learning: How To Prioritize For Powerful Results In Your School. I have been fortunate to participate in several summits with Jim, attend his sessions at conferences, and collaborate on blogs about personalized learning. I learned some new things about Jim in the podcast. Enjoy!

 

You and your family

We are a family of educators. My wife, Lynn, has been a math tutor for a long time and so supportive of the work I’m doing. Our oldest son, Jay, with a newly minted Ph.D., is a professor at Appalachian State University. Our daughter, Christine, is an early childhood educator. I have spent more than 45 years in education with more than 20 years as a superintendent. I loved that. The work I’ve done for the last ten years around personalized learning has actually become all consuming and a fun journey.

What it was like for you as a student/learner

I tend to be an achiever. For me, a school was all about if a task or challenge was set up, I would go after it. When I think back to my experiences in education, what was missing often was the connection to purpose. Rarely, do I recall a specific or compelling purpose around learning? Being an achiever, my focus typically was around doing well on the test and getting good grades. I was fortunate to do well most of the time. The downside of that was how much I forgot because I learned it for the test, not for its inherent benefit or for other value it brought to me. Not that I forgot everything, but I saw the same thing happening with my students.

Jim Rickabaugh: “Getting Learning Right the First Time, Every Time”

When we learn for the task if that’s the driver or if we say  “you need to know this will be on the test” and the test is over, too often what was learned is let go. It’s an unfortunate consequence for learning. The sad part is that even the act of learning tended to be very linear and focused what was going to be on the test. In the process, we ignored and failed to explore so much that would have been interesting, compelling, and enriching. No one ever thought to stop and talk about why we were learning that was value for us. Every once in a while, something would come along like a project or a concept that was so powerful that it transformed all of that and become a really meaningful thing. Unfortunately, that experience was more the exception that it was the rule.

Your journey as an educator

I’m the first educator among my parents and siblings. The choice to go into education was driven by two things. I wanted to make a difference in children’s lives and two there were educators I admired who were brilliant people who impacted me. One, in particular, was in eighth grade. We were doing a project exploring careers. I was having difficulty finding a topic, and my teacher, Mr. David Kitch, said to me, “Jim, you really should think about going into education. I think you’d make a great teacher.” I admired Mr. Kitch as a great teacher, and if he thinks I would make a great teacher, I should pay attention to that. 25 years later, I was visiting the school district I attended and Mr. Kitch was retiring that year. I was so appreciative of his encouragement and advice that I took time to call him and thank him. Mr. Kitch remembered me but didn’t remember the comment and was shocked that it made such an impact for me. For me, it was a driving force because he was such a brilliant teacher.

If teachers only knew how much they made a difference in children’s lives, they would be absolutely humbled. Our influence becomes integrated into who they are, that they might even separate it. It is true that educators rarely know the full impact that they have on the students’ lives they touch.  For many students who don’t have the support system at home, educators are their support system.

Your journey as a teacher and administrator

I taught history and Spanish in a small high school in Wisconsin near Madison. Just before I graduated from college, one of my professors who I respected said, “so to be really clear, your graduation is not the end, it is the beginning. You might start working on your masters immediately. If you don’t, life happens and it will be more difficult later.” So my first year, I worked and started working on my masters and continued working while I worked on my Ph.D. while  I was a teacher. I worked at that school for four years and then moved to the Chicago suburbs as a dean of students handling mostly discipline issues. I learned a lot but I found my perspective about students was too narrow and unhealthy. So I pushed on to become a building administrator, then joined the district office as head of the curriculum, and then became superintendent at a suburb of Milwaukee. After that, I became superintendent of a district in Minnesota and then went back to Wisconsin to become superintendent of Whitefish Bay School District until 2010.

AEI Speakers: Jim Rickabaugh

 

Starting the Institute for Personalized Learning (https://institute4pl.org/)

There were a group of superintendents scratching our heads with two observations. One observation was that educators were working under more stress, pressure, and working harder than any of us could recall in our careers. Yet, we’re still not reaching so many kids. Our conclusion was that it is not that educators don’t care. The second observation was that in 2010 we were continuing to get more money for schools, but we found ourselves continually cutting programs. We committed to spending a year to see if anyone had figured out this issue. In 2010, people thought “Personalized Learning” was computer learning. We read everything and talked to everyone we knew. Ultimately, we came to a very obvious conclusion.

The problem is not that people are working hard enough and the problem isn’t money. It’s that we have a school design that is not aligned to what we’re asking schools to do. All learning is personal, but we have a system as if it is a corporate activity.

Our question was: “What would happen if we actually started the design process looking at it through the eyes of a learner instead of looking at it through the curriculum or other structural elements.”

So it turned out that learning has always been personal. We knew that. We practiced that up until the point when we needed to prepare workers for industry and assembly lines. We asked ourselves how would we engage learners if we didn’t have the system we have? Suddenly, there are all kinds of really good options that engaged learners that were not engaged in the current system in far better ways. We ended up writing a white paper, Transforming Public Education: A Regional Call to Action, on this topic that is still on our website. We were lucky that CESA1  (Cooperative Education Service Agency) was willing to put money behind this for the first two years and then see if there was enough momentum to keep it going. It continues to grow by shifting into a pay-as-you-go model and operates on services we provide using the resources they had. Thankfully, we are coming up on the 10th year and there are over 60 formal memberships and supporting over 100 projects around the Midwest. There were 500 people from 13 different states represented at our last convening.

It’s not always easy, but if people make those design decisions on the front end, then you are less likely to let it go later. Too often, good ideas have been left behind because the funding ran out. Not that the ideas weren’t good. It didn’t matter. The idea is for the each of us to own our learning and the system needs to support that process.

What Personalized Learning looks like

There is always a mystery to learning and still confusion around personalized learning. That’s why the Institute continues and we are constantly surprised by what it does for the lives of children. We partnered with a research team at the University of Wisconsin, Madison to visit schools involved in personalizing learning. They had a question for us that they were struggling with: “Every place we go where this work is going on, why do they all look different?” They asked us about fidelity to the protocol, and we came up with it being fidelity to purpose. When you are really clear that we’re trying to develop capable learners, we’re promoting ownership and agency. These discussions really pushed our thinking. This idea of fidelity to purpose brings passion to our work.

 

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This is Barbara: There is more so make sure you listen to the rest of the podcast to discuss his books and his latest venture: you learn purpose for learning (Start and Stay with the Why)

A picture at the iNACOL 2018 conference during Jim’s presentation on change

 

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Dr. Jim Rickabaugh serves as the Senior Advisor to the Institute for Personalized Learning, an education innovation lab dedicated to the transformation of public education. The Institute serves a growing number of member school districts engaged in personalizing learning and is a part of the multi-state Innovation Lab Network coordinated by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).

Jim formerly served as the Director of the Institute for six years and as a superintendent in several districts in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Dr. Rickabaugh was Wisconsin Superintendent of the Year in 2008 and Minnesota Superintendent of the Year in 1996. He is a member of the boards of the Wisconsin Education Business Roundtable and the Innovative Schools Network and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Midwest Comprehensive Center. He received the Excellence in Educational Leadership Award in 2005 from the University Council for Educational Administration and a lifetime achievement award from the Master Teacher in 2010.

Dr. Rickabaugh is the author of Tapping the Power of Personalized Learning: A Roadmap for School Leaders focused on helping principals and other educational leaders to engage their staffs in designing and implementing personalized learning ecosystems. Jim is also a co-author of Five Levers To Improve Learning: How To Prioritize For Powerful Results In Your School. An engaging speaker, Jim has presented on personalized learning at several national conferences including the Annual Visible Learning Conference, ASCD Annual Conference, AESA Annual Conference and iNACOL Blended and Online Learning Symposium, among others.

Senior Advisor, Institute for Personalized Learning
Twitter: @drrickabaugh

Resources:

Placing Learners at the Center Article

Tapping the Power of Personalized Learning – ASCD 2016 

Keys to Implementing Personalized Learning as a Leader: An Interview with Dr. James Rickabaugh

 

Jennifer Casa-Todd is a Teacher-Librarian in Aurora, Ontario Canada, and author of the book, Social LEADia, published by Dave Burgess Consulting. Before this, she spent six years at the District level as a Program Resource Teacher for Literacy and Literacy Consultant, respectively.

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Jennifer guest hosted the #rethink_learning Twitter chat that I co-host with Shelly Vohra @raspberryberet3.  I was able to learn so much about Jennifer in the chat along with reading her book and connecting to her on social media. I am so honored that we had this conversation and even learned some things about her that I didn’t know. I hope you take time to enjoy her story!

 

You and your family

I am a mom and wife. My husband, Stewart, is a principal. We have two children, my daughter, Sydney, just started university in a marine biology program. That is what she’s always wanted to do since she was a little girl. My other daughter, Kelsey, is in grade 11.

I loved being on Parent council and was for over 10 years beginning when Sydney was in Kindergarten. I even ended up being co-chair of the council because I wanted to be involved and have never looked back since. I had nothing but positive interactions with other parents that are now lifelong friends that I developed as a result of being in the council. We definitely need to create an environment where we are not judging each other. This environment is where we can be there to support each other.

CUEByte Speaker:

 

What is what like for you as a student

Here is something a lot of people don’t know about me. When I entered school when I was four years old, I didn’t speak a word of English. I spoke Sicilian. No one could understand me so they chalked it up to a lack of mental ability. The first formative years in my learning were very tough. I was a nonreader. Learning English while learning to read and all those things that many people had already when they come to school. It’s kind of ironic that I’m a teacher/librarian because no one read books to me when I was young. When I started to learn to read, it opened a whole new world for me. In elementary school also, I was severely bullied. I was cross-eyed, had very thick glasses, and had several operations. I was called four eyes. My mom made my clothes because we didn’t have a lot of money.

Those were very, very challenging years. Books were my reprieve because I didn’t have any friends. I lacked self-esteem so I made a lot of poor choices in high school. As a student, I realized I needed to get good grades so school became important to me. In grade 11, I had a teacher, James Stewart, who absolutely enthralled me because he was so passionate about literature. At one point, I had to make a choice between becoming a teacher or expand my part-time job at McDonald’s that I really enjoyed because of the social aspect. I was offered a company car, benefits, and the opportunity to go to the Hamburger University in Chicago. That’s when I decided that I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to give opportunities to kids who are disadvantaged in a way that I kind of felt I was. I was a good student from then on and went to university and teacher’s college.

Coffee with a Geek Interview with Jennifer Casa-Todd https://youtu.be/xT2pBrKihvU

 

Your journey as an educator

I started teaching at a young age, 23, and the first class I taught was a grade 12 media literacy class. I wasn’t much older than some of my students. In fact, one student was 21 who asked me to the prom. That didn’t happen. I also taught ESL, English, religious education, cooperative education, and special education all at the high school level at a variety of different schools. When I was at St. Theresa’s where I taught English and Special Education, an opportunity for a program resource teacher came up and worked at the district level for about six years. That was an amazing opportunity because I worked with a small but mighty team, so we did everything. I dabbled in literacy, assessment, and new teacher development. We rolled out a 21c technology learning program for our teachers at all of the 128 schools in our board. I got to work with some incredible K-12 educators.

After six years, I really missed the classroom and being able to implement ideas I had for the students. Then I worked with some teacher/librarians in my district who were all incredible and realized this was what I could do. It is very similar to what I was doing at the district level, but it would be in a school. I applied twice and the second time was successful and have been here at Cardinal Carter Catholic High School in Aurora, Canada for three years. My first year was very tough though because I incurred a concussion on October 31st and then was off for the rest of the school year with a 10-month recovery. Now I’m feeling blessed to be almost 100% recovered.

 

Why does digital leadership matter?

Digital leadership is actually a concept I borrowed from George Couros (@gcouros) who is an incredible mentor in my life. I tell this story in the beginning of my book. My daughter was on an interview and asked “what social media are you on and what will I learn about you if I go there?” When I reflected on this question, I realized I did not mentor my own child when it came to social media. Rather than showing her what she could do online, I prevented her from doing things and thought I was controlling her use online. Actually she figured it out how to get around the safe search I had put on her phone. It was George’s definition of digital leadership that using the vast reach of technology and social media to improve the lives and the circumstances of others that had a great impact on me.

What if we change our stance and our students’ stance toward social media was on digital leadership? What might that look like?

In my journey, not every adult was like me. There were so many students who showed leadership online and were being supported around some of their passions and ideas by adult mentors not always teachers. There is a chasm when students know there is a possibility for doing good online where so many students go online only for entertainment.  Since 2014, I have seen incredible changes in how we are listening to student voice, the ability to mentor students with class accounts, and the growing reach of students on social media. I continue to celebrate and share the students who are doing positive things online and shine a light on them. The more all of us do this, the better off we will be.

“Social media is social currency for young people.”

 

How did you come up with the title, Social LEADia?

Coming up with a title for a book is the hardest thing ever. I maybe threw out a thousand possibilities and asked my PLN (Personal Learning Network) for support. I remember texting George @gcouros on a regular basis where we were both share many titles and he came up with Social LEADia. That was it! We both knew it. It was a play on words. Social Media, Social LEADia kind of rhymes and I’m talking about digital leadership. So that’s how the title was born.

Check out the companion for my book, Social LEADia at https://www.socialleadia.org/ that includes Flipgrids that connects to each of the chapters along with some of the students’ stories.

Listen to Jennifer talk about her book here, https://youtu.be/LWjGVD5bL7Y

 

Why does social media need to be a part of teaching and learning today?

Because it is part of our world. I know we are fearful, but social media is a literacy, reading and writing the world. Stanford University did a study in 2017 showing that most middle school students couldn’t tell the difference between a credible news source and one that was sponsored. When I consider how digital citizenship can be taught in context with a class account really being able to show kids that social media is a place to learn and share their learning, to empower others, and to have a powerful influence on others. We are doing that mentoring for them by showing them what appropriate use looks like in our classrooms. Digital citizenship lessons can’t be just one class at the beginning of school, it needs to be an ongoing conversation.

Banning mobile devices and to say that this is not our problem is easier for schools. We absolutely have a distraction problem with our students. There are always a few students who pull out their phones when it is not appropriate. I think self-regulation is huge.  To me, it’s an inequity issue. All of us including parents need to emphasize effective media use. If we don’t, then who is teaching our kids how to do this? Some of my kids have told me that they have been on YouTube for over a decade. This generation of kids has probably been on social media entirely by themselves without adult mentors. I worry about the huge chasm between the kids that have mentors and the kids that don’t. It’s complicated but we just have to engage in courageous conversations to figure out how this is going to work. There are many positives and so many ways to learn using these powerful tools in their pockets. If we’re not showing them as educators how to use them to learn, who are showing them?

 

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This is Barbara. Make sure you listen to the entire podcast. Jennifer explains about parents views on social media and how to build communication in and out of the school using social media. She puts on workshops for parents who have tons of questions. Jennifer has opened the door for great conversations that need to happen to everyone in the school community. She even created with BreakoutEDU a game for Social Leadia as a team building, book study. 

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Jennifer Casa-Todd is a Teacher-Librarian in Aurora, Ontario Canada, and author of the book, Social LEADia, published by Dave Burgess Consulting. Before this, she spent six years at the District level as a Program Resource Teacher for Literacy and Literacy Consultant, respectively.

Jennifer works with teachers from Kindergarten to grade twelve in practically every subject area to integrate technology in the classroom, to support literacy, assessment, and differentiation, and to promote twenty-first-century competencies. She also had the privilege to write curriculum for the Ministry of Education of Ontario’s 21st Century Learning office as well as the Catholic Curriculum Corporation and is currently studying at the University of Ontario, Institute of Technology with a focus on social media in education and Digital Citizenship.

Jennifer has been the co-chair as well as an active member of the Parent Council for over a decade, bringing parent and school communities together for a variety of issues. I have also worked closely with the Bully-Free Alliance of York Region with whom I initiated a panel discussion, “Fears, Cheers, and Unclears: Parenting in a Connected World.” She is also the lead organizer for the Digital Citizenship Summit, Canada happening in Fall of 2018.

Jennifer is the author of Social LEADia: Moving Students from Digital Citizenship to Digital Leadership   It is full of examples of students who are leveraging social media for good, and the teachers who are empowering them to do so.

Contact info for Jennifer

Websites: https://jcasatodd.com,  https://www.socialleadia.org/
Twitter: @JCasaTodd  #socialleadia
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/socialLEADia/

Sketchnotes by Sylvia Duckworth @sylviaduckworth

 

“We have banned and blocked social media for over a decade, and we are not exactly happy with the result. It’s time for a new approach.”

 

Hans Appel has been a Counselor at Enterprise Middle School in the Richland School District in WA for the past 17+ years. Recently, Hans launched his own blog about School Culture and this fall rolled out a student-led leadership podcast called Award Winning Culture: Hosted by Wildcat Nation.

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Hans is absolutely driven to helping students and educators find purpose and joy in life. Just listening to his passion when he talks about school culture and Character Strong made me want to learn more about him, his life, the kids, and his school. Below are excerpts from our conversation.   

 

About you and where you live

I was born in Westfield, New Jersey, and an only child. My family moved to Corpus Christie, Texas when I was a little kid. My dad was a chemical engineer and my mom was an art teacher and interior designer. When I was in second grade, we moved to Richland, Washington so he could work at the Hanford Nuclear site. I spent most of my life here and went to Hanford High School where I met my wife, Jennifer and been married for 19 of the 24 years we’ve been together. Jennifer is a passionate educator and teaches at the same school as me, Enterprise Middle School, as a Language Arts teacher and teaches leadership. We are fortunate to work together and talk the same language.

We don’t have children of our own. Our kids are the kids at our school where we spend our energy. We have two dogs that are Shelties who are babies who we love and spoil. We live in the city of Kennewick which is in the Southeast corner of Washington and is much drier than Seattle. It is more like the climate of Napa, CA so it is conducive to growing wine.

Your journey in school

A school was good up through elementary school. Middle school was where school got really hard for me. My parents were fighting a lot in kind of an abusive home and not the greatest situation for me at that age. Learning in school really became secondary. I didn’t get good grades in middle school and didn’t find my own until high school where I got into sports. I’m 6’4” so I was a basketball player. The more I got into basketball, the more I realized that grades mattered. I had to keep my grades up to stay eligible, but that is also where I started getting excited about my education. I went to Central Washington University which was 2 hours away. I took business and psychology classes. The more psychology classes I took, the more I realized I was more into human behavior and how to help others.

While I was in college, my parents went through a divorce, and I became their mediator. This was a weird role to play as a 19 or 20-year-old kid, but I kind of helped both of them through that experience. So while all of that was going on, Jennifer was in the education program. She had come from a long line of educators who asked me if I ever thought of education. As I took more psychology classes and was learning to help others, it just felt like a natural fit. When I was graduating with a masters in school counseling and because of my own experiences, I knew, unequivocally, that I only wanted to work in middle school. I believed that was where the kids needed me the most.

School Counselor at Enterprise Middle School (EMS Counselor)

When I graduated, I went to work at Hanford Middle School which was my alma mater which closed in 2005. The district built Enterprise MS where most of the Hanford MS staff went. There’s this core group, two-thirds of us, that have been together for 15 to 20 years. It’s like we’re a family here, and it is pretty special. I’m lucky to have the best administration in the district and top of the line support staff and teachers who put kids first and care about making this place amazing. I realized as a school counselor there are a lot of things I don’t have influence over what happens to students at home or around decisions made at the district office. As a counselor, I have a lot of influence on what our school culture looks like and how that impacts experiences for students. Love this quote from Peter Drucker:

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

That makes so much sense to me because there are so many intentional small things we can do on a daily basis that lift other people’s spirits

 

About Wildcat Nation

Wildcat Nation is Our Brand. We have spent a few years building that brand. Joe Sanfellipo has this quote that really stuck with me.

“Your brand is what people say about you when you are not around.”

School brands have to go beyond mascots and logos and have to be rooted in authenticity. It can’t be a couple of people coming up with a cool name or idea. It has to be something that grows naturally. We focused on three main parts with these questions:

• Character: Will you do the right thing?
• Excellence: Will you do your best?
• Community: What will you do for others today?

Wildcat Nation has become who we are. A student mentioned to me that school for her is “a place where kindness is normal.”

 

Kindness and Social Emotional Learning program

We’ve been doing advisories for about 8 years that involve three areas:

• Social-emotional learning
• College and career
• Academic

The first 30 minutes of every Friday, students learning one of those aspects of education. Students loop with their teachers so they build relationships with their teachers that last three years. It has been pretty successful for a while, but we decided it was time to update our social-emotional curriculum.

We found in our research CHARACTER STRONG that was created by John Norlin and Houston Kraft who have combined character ed and social-emotional learning. We realized we were missing the character ed piece because character really gives social-emotional the why. Instead of teaching kids what not to do, it’s more a proactive way of teaching them how to be kind, to serve, and use empathy. It’s highly experiential because it gets kids up and moving around. Not only in lessons, but there are also challenges outside of advisory. They do things called “Character Dares” where they are asked to do things in the community, in the school, in other classes, and at home. There is part of this program that will move you to tears and impactful for teachers and students. The two-day training I had a year ago on Character Strong was the best professional training that I’ve had my entire career. It was a life changing event for me and highly recommend it for other educators. It really helps you deeply discover your why and is so powerful in how you can use that message to change the world.

 

What Character Strong looks like at EMS

Every morning, our kids greet others as they come to school. There are high fives, fist bumps, and music playing. It’s so powerful. No matter what the weather is, the kids make everyone feel welcome to our school. We have something that we call “Golden Broom” which is a demonstration of service to those who serve us. It is really special when we recognize people like our custodian and had the kids work for the custodian for 30 minutes to give him a break. They also made hot cider and cookies and brought those to the bus drivers. Those kinds of things were sprinkled throughout the year.

Golden Broom: “A Demonstration of Service to those who SERVE US.”

Blogging about Special Magic

It started because our school was getting attention and people wanted to see what is the special magic that is happening at Enterprise Middle School. John Norlin and Houston Kraft reached out to me to start writing some blog posts for Character Strong just sharing our story. That basically morphed into having other people at our school writing. So we asked educators and others  LA Teacher, Parent, B-Ball Coach, Math Teacher who were experiencing the magic like I was. What they found was that those were some of the most popular blogs that were posted on Character Strong. When the students started sharing their stories, that’s when I got excited about student voice.

 

Student-led podcast

In early Spring 2018, I attended the annual SERVUS Conference in Kent, Wa where students, speakers, authors, celebrities, and athletes showed up with 7-8 hours of inspiring work. Just imagine all the best leadership minds in your state together in an arena to learn from each other. I was listening to some of the speakers and there was this holocaust survivor that was talking. I mentioned to my wife that we need to make this happen more than once a year.

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Listen to more from Hans Appel about the student-led podcast and how it was created in the podcast along with information about the following awards:

-2018 ASCD Whole Child Award for the State of Washington
-2017-2018 Global Class Act Award for Random Acts of Kindness

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Hans Appel has been a Counselor in the Richland School District, for the past 17+ years and at Enterprise Middle School since it opened in 2005.  He’s passionate about school culture, servant leadership, and kindness. In 2018, EMS was awarded the ASCD Whole Child Award for the State of Washington, for creating a culture of excellence through kindness, service, and empathy.

 Additionally, RandomActs of Kindness chose Wildcat Nation as the 2017-2018 Global Class Act Winner for “making kindness normal.” Recently, Hans launched his own blog about School Culture and this fall rolled out a student-led leadership podcast called Award Winning Culture: Hosted by Wildcat Nation.  Hans is absolutely driven to help students and educators find purpose and joy in life.

Contact Info

Hans Appel Counselor, Enterprise Middle School
EMS Counseling Center Website
Email: HansAppel094@gmail.com

Website: http://www.awardwinningculture.com/

• Twitter: @emswildcats1 @hansappel094
• Instagram: @emscounseling
• Award Winning Culture Blog
• Podcast Page iTunes Stitcher Libsyn GooglePlay Spotify
• YouTube: WildcatNation
• #WildcatNation #AwardWinningCulture

“What will you do for others today?”

 

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For all of the Conversations on Learning podcasts with Barbara Bray,
click on the podcast tab at the top, the logo below or go to https://barbarabray.net/podcasts/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Todd Nesloney was a classroom teacher for seven years before taking the leap straight from classroom teacher to campus principal at John C. Webb Elementary in Navasota, Texas. Todd took over a struggling campus and brought in a brand new staff. He used his creative ideas to transform the campus and has been recognized with many awards even by the White House.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

Todd has written several books including “Kids Deserve It” with Adam Welcome, Stories from Webb, and now Sparks in the Dark with Travis Crowder. We did this podcast a few months ago so we put together this excerpt from the conversation and added some new resources and links to share with you.

 

About you and your family

I was born and live in Texas my whole life. I taught for seven years and now in my fifth year as campus principal. I love teaching and working with the underserved families and kids.  I have found a passion in reading and writing over the last couple years which led to the creation of Kids Deserve It, Stories from Webb, and now Sparks in the Dark with my best friend, Travis Crowder. He is a secondary teacher in North Carolina and we just published our book about reading and writing instruction.  I love what I do which means getting to work with kids and adults and, yes, I do a little traveling and speaking too. I do balance my life though and make sure I spend time with my wife, Lisette, in the evenings, read a book, watch a movie, or sit and talk with my family. 

Lisette and I celebrated our 6th anniversary last April. We have two dogs named Paris and Jet. We live in Brenham, Texas that is the home of Blue Bell ice cream. We are the only city that has every flavor ice cream but I love their vanilla. I work in Navasota school district that is 30 minutes up the road right outside of Houston. I’ve lived in Brenham for over 24 years and have never regretted working in education.

 

What it was like for you as a student

Growing up, I always loved working with kids. For 13 years, I worked every summer for a week at a children’s summer camp with my church. I hold the record for going the most amount of years to be a helper there. When I was in high school in my junior year, my school signed up to be a pilot school for a class called “Ready, Set, Teach.”  I took this class to see if being a teacher is what I really wanted to do.

There were 12 of us in the class. In my senior year I was ready for “Ready, Set, Teach 2” with only one other student. It was pretty much an internship where several days a week instead of going to class, I was assigned to a teacher at the local elementary school. I was more like a student teacher getting experience in the classroom, and that’s when I knew that teaching is what I wanted to do.

 

Beginning as a Teacher

After I finished high school, I was hired by Brenham ISD as an instructional aide in their Grow Your Own program. At that time,  if I worked in a public school for so many hours a week for four years while I was going to Texas A&M University to become a teacher, the state of Texas paid for my college. Because of that work, I was able to bypass student teaching. There were no openings at Brenham when I graduated. I was offered two jobs at Waller SD (30 minutes away) and took the 4th-grade position and worked there for 7 years. Now I work in Navasota which is also 30 minutes away. I actually like the commute so I can enjoy the ride while listening to stuff.

 

Classroom Champion Teacher

The Classroom Champion program is one of my favorite programs. It was started by an Olympic Gold Medalist, Steve Messler, who was on the men’s bobsled team with his sister to leave more of an impact on kids than a one time visit to a school. They connect top performing Olympic and Para Olympic athletes who create videos on goal setting, fair play or teamwork and connect them with kids.

My para-athlete was Olympian Josh Sweeney who fought in Afghanistan where he lost both of his legs and joined the men’s sled hockey team. The year he was our athlete was the year he went to the Olympics where he scored the only goal against Japan to win the gold medal.

 Our kids made a video about his story and they actually won so he was able to spend a half day with the kids. One of my kids asked,  “Josh, are you angry that you lost your legs?” Josh said, “not at all. Why would I be angry about something I can’t change? When something bad happens to you, you can make the best of it.” Josh is one of the most inspirational people I know and really impacted our kids. The program does not charge anything.

 

Tell Your Story | Todd Nesloney | TEDxTomballED

 

Your Children’s Book

When I was at Texas A&M University, one of our assignments was to write and illustrate a children’s book. At that time, I did not see my self as a writer or artist. This was tough, and I struggled to try to think of a story. One day, this idea came to me about a little spruce tree, named Spruce, that never grew any larger than sprouting out of the ground. The story is about him standing out from the other trees as they grew up and had jobs. The apple trees produced apples for the animals. the evergreen trees provided shade. All these trees had jobs and he was still a little sprout that did nothing. Halfway through the book, he comes across an ant named Lucy who got separated from her colony. He ends up being her shade while she’s trying to figure out where her friends are. Through that, they form a friendship and agree that size or what you look like doesn’t matter. You can still be a help to someone.

The moral is that all of us play a role in somebody else’s life, and all of us are important, have a job, and have to figure out what it is. The professor had us read all of the stories (over 150) and choose the best. Mine got voted the best by the class. The teacher helped get it copywritten my junior year, and didn’t do anything with it until my wife years later found it. She encouraged me to self-published it, sell it online, but I read it to my students every year. Then I tell them how I wrote it, struggled with the writing process with hundreds of drafts, but the more you practice at it, the better you get.

“Everybody is a reader when they find the right book.”

 

“Kids Deserve It” book, podcast, and movement

https://amzn.to/2LBqIfw

I’m so proud of “Kids Deserve It” that I created with Adam Welcome @mradamwelcome. I didn’t want to write or be part of anything that doesn’t reflect what I do on a daily basis. I don’t always have it all together and, yes, I make mistakes. That’s why it is so important in the books and blogs I write and the things I share online are not just the highlight reel. I really want to make sure I share the tough parts and the struggles. When we look at others on social media who seems to be successful, teachers might think their life sucks in comparison or I cannot get my stuff together. I want others to know that I don’t always have it together. We all have good and bad days. As a principal, I don’t get the opportunity to be depressed or have a bad day. I drive the feeling of the school. I need to hold it together and make it the best it can be for the kids. The kids don’t care what you do when you go home. They want to know what you can do for them in school and say, “I need you to love me, listen to me, and teach me right now.”  Our job is tough. We have to get in there and bring a smile and our best attitude to every day, every kid. I want to be a voice out there celebrating positive even when I don’t feel positive.

 

TedTalk: Kids Deserve It

 

Stories from the Webb

http://amzn.to/2DMX5qg

This is the project that I have been most personal to me and is the second book in the Kids Deserve It collection. I’ve been given a very wide platform with my social media presence and things I have the opportunity to do. If I don’t use that platform to amplify the voices of others, I am wasting my platform. This book is not about me. I work with the most incredible and brilliant people here at John C. Webb Elementary https://jwe.navasotaisd.org/. 

So many educators don’t believe they are as brilliant as they are. I decided to write this book similar to and in the same style as Kids Deserve It to share my ideas and beliefs. In every single chapter, I wanted to feature a story from somebody at my school that they wrote. There are 53 stories from the teachers, instructional aide, school secretary, the school nurse, the librarian, and more. When I read it for the first time, I cried because I was able to provide so many amazing people from one school an opportunity to share their stories. The book is so much more than an education book. It is about the stories. There is a chapter called “It’s okay to grieve” which is such a powerful message that as humans it is okay to allow ourselves to grieve sometimes. There are stories about faith and what that means for our lives, one on having a miscarriage, another about the death of her grandmother. There is a lot of heart in the book.

 

*****

This is Barbara. Todd and I did this podcast in January 2018 but it is still timely with all the amazing resources and books he can share. I’ll be bringing Todd back with Travis Crowder @teachermantrav to discuss their book, Sparks in the Dark. In Sparks in the Dark, Travis Crowder and Todd Nesloney share their experiences as educators who purposefully seek to spark a love for reading and writing in the learners they serve. The reason is simple: Writing and reading have the power to change the trajectory of life.

https://amzn.to/2LBqIfw

*****

 

 

Todd Nesloney is the Principal/Lead Learner at a PreK-5 school in Texas. He is an award-winning author for his work in co-authoring Kids Deserve It!, Sparks in the Dark, and authoring Stories from Webb. Todd has given two TEDx talks and has also been recognized by John C Maxwell as a Top 10 finalist for the 2018 John Maxwell Transformational Leadership award, by the White House as a Connected Educator “Champion of Change”, the National School Board Association as one of the “20 to Watch” in Education, by the Center for Digital Education as one of their “Top 40 Innovators in Education”, by the BAMMYs as the “National Elementary Principal of the Year” and the “National Elementary Teacher of the Year”, and by the Texas Computer Education Association as their “Texas Elementary Teacher of the Year”..

Website: http://www.toddnesloney.com/
Twitter: @TechNinjaTodd
Facebook: www.facebook.com/toddnesloney
Instagram: @TechNinjaTodd

 

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For all of the Conversations on Learning podcasts with Barbara Bray,
click on the podcast tab at the top, the logo below or go to https://barbarabray.net/podcasts/