Mentoring Failure

I love these conference connections!

I am presenting at the Michigan Google Summit today at Lake Fenton High School on both teaching with TED-Ed and a session on mentoring passion.  I love the conversations that stem from my presentation on the work Christy Brennan and I did on our mentoring passion project, bringing together students of differing grade levels to share their inquiry experiences with one another.  In fact, I was hoping to scale this into a much larger project by putting together an online space to connect various teachers, students, and experts engaging in similar passion-driven inquiry projects across the country.  It was to be my TED-Ed Innovative Project.

But I failed.

Sharing my Mentoring Passion project with TED-Ed Innovative educators in June

I love this presentation, but so much of it is still in process.  It is not a finished project.  I am still reflecting on the role student ownership plays in the inquiry process. As I was presenting today, I revealed some of my pitfalls with my passion-driven inquiry projects and where I was still struggling. I need more time to reflect on where I am stepping into the student inquiry process.  I still spend too much time hunting down expert connections for my students, instead of facilitating opportunities to define and find those experts themselves. And as I shared, a conversation emerged that has me thinking more deeply about changes I want to make in the coming months to our inquiry projects.

Here is what I have learned: I need to open up more space in my classroom for students to talk about their failures. So much time is spent honoring the successes, the students who have done everything we have asked and have come to the conclusions that we expected them to have.  But what are they really learning?  Instead, I need to open up time and space for my students to share their struggles, like I did today, because the conversations that emerged from my admission of failure has moved me forward in my planning and thinking in important ways.  Imagine the power of those types of moments in our classroom.  Instead of teaching students to jump through hoops, we should be mentoring students on how to recover from initial failure.  This is a critical step in innovation. If we want to grow innovation in our classroom, we must open up spaces for failure.

Why It's Important to Share Heartbreak

I don't even recall what the student said. It was an off-hand, joking comment about my weekend. And that's when I started to feel the tears well up. "It was a bit difficult, actually."

A few students noticed, crossed the room, and asked gently, "Are you okay?" I answered honestly.

"Not really."

About a year and a half ago, my father was diagnosed with cancer, but after a difficult surgery and six months of chemotherapy, he recovered. Unfortunately, this past weekend, we learned that he again had cancer. A different type of cancer. But cancer.

I shared this with my students. And what followed was heartbreaking. Cancer has touched the lives of nearly every one of my students.  I have a number of students who have lost uncles and aunts, grandparents and cousins to cancer.  The student who left my first period class in tears this morning revealed that her aunt was in surgery this morning to remove a tumor and that family had texted her during class to update her on the progress. A couple of my students have lost parents to cancer. A father lost to lung cancer five years ago. Another student learned this weekend that her mother's cancer has grown. Doctors discovered a tumor on her lung and two more growing on her brain.

It is a club that none of us want to belong to: the Those-Touched-By-Cancer club.

What I discovered today was just how large our club really is. As students in the room caught snippets of what began as a small group discussion, they drifted into our conversation circle, sharing with us their heartbreak. Before long, many in the room were sharing their stories.  At one point, we started to wonder how it was that so many of us, nearly all of us in fact, had so many personal connections to cancer.  "When I was younger, I don't think I understood what it was. Maybe it has always been like this, but we're just starting to realize what it means to have cancer," volunteered one of my tenth graders.

"My family just wouldn't talk about it. I don't think they thought I could handle it. They thought they were protecting me. But not knowing just made it worse."

"Maybe it's always been like this, but we've gotten better at identifying cancer. Maybe the tests have gotten better."

That's when a student made a connection to something we are working on in class. "I wish I did something about cancer for my IonPassion project. That's what breaks my heart. Cancer. That's what I want to fix."

And that's when I could respond, "You can."

This is how meaningful, purposeful, heartbreakingly important works comes from the classroom.  We have to share what touches us, what breaks our heart. Both teachers and students need spaces to share without fear. This is where innovation comes from.  We need classrooms where students have flexibility to share, to find the work that is meaningful both to them personally but also to our local and global communities.

So, now I have students who are rethinking their inquiry projects. I have students who want to do something about cancer. They are not sure what they will research, but you can bet that I'm going to share Jack Andraka's work. Before his 16th birthday, Jack developed a more cost-effective and accurate test for pancreatic cancer. And I know that even before they begin their inquiry work, my students are embarking on learning journey that will certainly bring our community closer. This is learning that touches lives in hopes of changing them. This is what can happen when we share.

We've Got Our Eye on Passion with #IonPassion

We've been talking about passion in my high school English classes for the past two weeks.

No, not quite like that.

Much like the unit I introduced last year, we began our tenth grade inquiry projects about two weeks ago, which this year we've dubbed our #IonPassion Projects (get it? "Ion"...for Ionia), with an exploration of the roots of the word passion.  Students explored how our passions differ from our interests or even our hobbies.  In our discussion, we returned to our very first day of school, where following a failed attempt at folding origami cranes, we learned the importance of failing. Students remembered me saying that I wanted them to fail. I did say this. I want them to take risks, try new things, and fail in order to discover just how resilient they are. We don't learn by staying inside our comfort zones; we learn when we try out new ideas, new ways of thinking. During our discussion of what makes something a passion, students returned to this idea. A passion is something that we will continue to pursue despite setbacks and adversity.  Our passion, as Angela Maiers has pointed out, is what we are willing to suffer for.

And it turns out, I have a variety of passions sitting in my tenth grade English classes!

So now we're looking to connect our passions with experts in a variety of fields. My tenth grade English students have carefully crafted their inquiry questions, found mentor texts, written their initial inquiry proposals, and outlined their action plans for our #IonPassion research projects. But now we need some help. You'll find my students' research blogs linked below.

Roll over each picture to find a description and link to each student's blog. We'd love to hear your ideas and feedback.

1st Period 10th Grade Honors American Literature


2nd Period 10th Grade Honors American Literature


7th Period 10th Grade Honors American Literature


In addition to consulting mentor texts, we are looking for mentors to help us learn more about our inquiry topics. Do you have a passion for photography or mixing music? We are looking to interview, either in person or via email, experts. Please take a few moments to review our inquiry questions below, and if you wouldn't mind if one of my students contacting you, add your name and information to the columns on the right on our list below.

CLICK HERE FOR ACCESS TO THE FULL SHEET.

Presenting with Students

Photo by Billy Krakower as we took our morning brain break at #TCT15

This past Friday, as teachers from all over the world started packing their suitcases for the annual International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference held in our own City of Brotherly Love, a group of excited and passionate teachers were getting up early, having scheduled their trips to arrive a few days in advance of ISTE in order to participate in the inaugural Tomorrow's Classrooms Today conference organized by the amazing team of Evolving Educators: Billy Krakower, Scott Rocco, and Brad Currie. The opening keynote by Cybraryman, Jerry Blumengarten (who really does have a web page for everything), and a crowdsourced lunchtime keynote by my friend Rich Kiker helped to frame an afternoon of learning that was filled with sessions on gamification, flipped-learning, project-based learning and assessment, blogging, and innovations of all sorts.

Christy Brennan's sketchnotes of Jerry Blumengarten's keynote

And perhaps my favorite part, presenting with my colleague and friend Christy Brennan and three of my students!  I was fortunate to present with Christy and a few of my students at this past January's EduCon in Philly, and it went so well that we though, let's do it again!  One of my former students, Jenna, who presented with us at EduCon, joined us again on Friday for our session on Mentoring Passion. Two other students, Kristin and Emily, who had just finished 10th grade English with me also joined to talk about what they each had learned when Kristin surveyed the student body to design an new elective course and Emily interviewed and worked with learning space designers to propose (and have accepted by our school!) a new design for our upstairs library space. And because we had a small group of teachers in our session on Friday, there was time to talk more collaboratively about passion-based learning, fostering mentorship opportunities, and for my students to share their experiences of what worked and what didn't as they pursued their inquiry. The teachers that joined us for Friday's session were able to ask my students about their process undertaking our #HavPassion research.

There are so many, many positives that come out of asking students to present at conferences. Perhaps the most obvious reason to encourage student participation in education conferences and workshops is that as a group of teachers sitting in a room talking about educational philosophies and practices we're not getting a full picture of what is happening in the classroom if students aren't also seated at the table.  For all our talk of student-driven learning and student-ownership, there are very few students presenting their work outside of the classroom. If our goal is to innovate, to change what is happening in education in order to help support more critical and creative thinking, students need to be involved in our conversations about what that looks like. My students showed up on a Friday during their summer vacation to present to a bunch of teachers. Hang on. Let me repeat that.

My students showed up on a Friday during their summer vacation to present to a bunch of teachers.

The students were not getting any points for showing up. There wasn't a grade involved. They were not getting extra credit. So why did they want to present? Because what they undertook in our classroom, authentic research that included contacting and conducting interviews and primary research, that involved finding mentor texts and becoming a mentor, that involved a lot of blogging, and time, and effort, was something they want others to hear about. They are passionate and proud of their work. So passionate that they took time out of their summer vacation, arranged their own transportation, and volunteered to talk in front of strangers about what they had learned. When was the last time a student got that invested in a multiple-choice test?

So here's a little more about what they presented. Below you will find our slide deck on Mentoring Passion. Be sure to check out the speaker's notes as Christy and I loaded them up with links and information.  Beneath that you will find the recording of our presentation shared live via Google Hangouts.

Searching for a Few Good Experts

We're looking for a few good experts. My tenth grade English students have carefully crafted their inquiry questions, found mentor texts, written their initial inquiry proposals, created a pitch video, and outline their action plans for our #HavPassion research projects. But now we need some help.

You'll find my students' research blogs linked below. Roll over each picture to find a description and link to each student's blog.  We'd love to hear your ideas and feedback.

10th grade honors English students

10th grade English students

And we also would love to interview experts in our inquiry fields.  In addition to consulting mentor texts, we are looking for mentors to help us learn more about our inquiry topics.  Do you have a passion for crochet or mixing music? Maybe you know a MLB coach that we could email a few questions? We are looking to interview, either in person or via email, experts.  Please take a few moments to review our inquiry questions below, and if you wouldn't mind if one of my students contacting you, add your name and information to our list below.

Click here for the full document.

Anything? Really? Really!

When I first describe our #HavPassion research project to students, I get this quizzical look. "I can research anything? Really?" Really!

For the last eight weeks, my tenth grade students have delved into the origins of the word passion, explored what it means to have grit and persevere through initial stumbles and failures, and ultimately share their passion with readers and audiences outside of the classroom.

Today after school, I listened in as Skylar interviewed someone form the Center for Forensic Science Research and Education in order to learn about how one gets into this field of study. Earlier in the day, TJ pulled up curriculum outlines for computer programming language courses and computer science classes taught at a high school in Washington. He mentioned that he was going to try contacting a principal from the school to help with his current research. He thought he was just going to be building a computer from scratch (which he did), but then he asked the question, "Why don't students have the opportunity to do this is school?" So this weekend, he put together a course proposal and research curriculum guidelines and state teaching regulations which he plans to share with our principal and hopefully the school board. Jillian connected with Duckworth Labs and with professors to learn more about growth mindset and its impact on student success in the classroom. Juliet was excited when her free book arrived after she connected with Ed Lebetikin, store owner and teacher at The Woodwright's School (if you are a fan of PBS, you might be familiar with this show). We tweeted best-selling author of Born to Run and running advocate Christopher McDougall when Abigail started to research how to prevent running injuries. He's making a visit to our school next month! Students have been taking cake decorating classes, shadowing landscape business owners, composing scores for orchestration, conducting and teaching middle school band students, and so much more. And all the while students have been blogging, sharing their research and their reflections with students both around the country, as well as those around the block.

As my tenth graders selected their topics and looked for mentor texts and experts to interview, we also connected with fifth grade students in our district completing a very similar inquiry project. Using Google Hangouts, elementary library Christina Brennan and I connected our students, encouraged them to share their inquiry interests, and then we connected our learners further using collaborative Google docs.  My high schools students read through her students' initial questions and research findings and commented back to the fifth grade students, sharing research strategies and connections. My students moved from finding mentors to being mentors.

We have come to our final week for our #HavPassion inquiry projects. When I shared this with students on Monday, I had groans. But they were not groans complaining about having a week to work on research. Instead, they were groans hoping for more time. Students want to do more, read more, blog more, connect more. Now they are saying, "We can research anything! Really!"

Next weekend, some of my students will be joining Christina and me as we present at EduCon on the mentorship relationship forged between our two groups of students. My students aren't being graded for their presentations. In fact, they are joining me after our class together has come to a close. But this is what passion-based learning inspires. Student and teachers building a community of learning that extends well beyond our physical classrooms and beyond the boundaries of one particular class.

Please check out their blogs. This week they are adding up their final reflection posts and we will be celebrating their accomplishments in class on Friday. I would love to share any words of encouragement that you might have, so use the comments section below to share!

UPDATE:

Interested in bringing this to your classroom?

Feel free to adapt my student materials to suit your student needs! Here's a link to my student materials:

Overwhelmed...but in a good way

I have too many blog posts in me! So right off the bat, know that this post is almost more of a reminder to me of all the things that I want to write more in depth about in the coming weeks. It has been an overwhelming semester, filled with a classroom makeover, presentations, author visits, and so much more.   I look forward to sharing these developments with you in the new year.

First, I need to share a bit more about my classroom redesign.  I shared some of the early steps in my classroom makeover in September, but I need to post my more recent learning space redesigns. My initial steps to create a more student-focused, student-driven classroom have lead to even more changes. As I spent time reflecting on my educational philosophy, I realized I needed to make a few more changes to my classroom space so that my philosophy was mirrored in my physical  classroom space. My classroom is open, with flexible seating in the form of stools, pillows, ottomans (which double as book storage), and a couch.  And I'm also happy to share that our classroom is featured as part of the #ClassroomCribs challenge. If you are looking for inspiration for your own classroom makeover, be sure to check out the work of Erin Klein, Ben Gilpin, and A.J. Juliani over at ClassroomCribs.com.

UPDATE: Shortly after posting this I learned that I am one of the Grand Finalists in the ClassroomCribs Challenge!

Click to enlarge our four essential questions.

In addition to redesigning my physical classroom, my curriculum got a big makeover this semester too. For the last decade, our tenth grade English class has focused on world literatures, connecting with the writers of the non-western world.  However this semester, our department took a more thematic approach to our tenth grade curriculum, focusing on four essential questions to guide our new thematic focus on "Perspectives of the Individual." And although initially a bit apprehensive about this change, it has afforded me an opportunity to reimagine my curriculum. I revisited the work of my language arts gurus to help me rethink what was possible. Kelly Gallagher helped me think through how I provide writing feedback (students should write four times more than you can grade) and how I teach close reading (Articles of the Week). Chris Lehman helped me think through possibilities for teaching analytic reading. And so many more mentors than I could name helped inspire my renewed focus on cultivating a student-driven classroom with students doing, speaking, and sharing more than I do. And in addition to adding new core texts, I figured now was the time to make some other big changes, the most significant of which is the move to a 100% paperless classroom. Now, four months into it, I can't imagine teaching any other way.  Going paperless has meant finding better, more collaborative ways of working with students and with working with readers and writers outside of the classroom.

Although I have been pushing my emerging writers to connect with audiences outside the classroom for a number of years now, this semester I have witnessed the pinnacle success of that focus.  My students and I used social media to connect with and invite in a number of writers from a variety of genres into our classroom.  In the last four months we have:

• heard a Holocaust survivor speak of his experiences in three death camps,
• used Skype to speak with the senior editor of Philadelphia Stories and Philadelphia Stories, Jr., Ms. Christine Weiser, about what editors look for in creative writing pieces seeking publication,
• virtually connected with Ms. Leah Nicholson of the Jenkins Publishing Group to learn about ghost writing,
• Skyped with founder and senior editor of Teen Ink, Ms. Stephanie Meyer, to get some advice for submitting our work for publication,
• invited three talented YA authors - E.C. Myers, Marie Lamba, and Ellen Jensen Abbott - to come to our school to speak with us about their inspiration and advice for writing stories,
• learned with a local psychologist about psychoanalytic theory, the 
  
  divided self, and repression which we applied to our reading of The Kite Runner,
• chatted with musician, actor, and novelist Dave Patten about what it takes to "make it" in a creative field, and
• used Twitter and blogs to connect with students and experts all of the world as we researched our #HavPassion projects.     

And the next four months look equally as packed with connections! We will be hosting:

• poet Cameron Conaway, author of Malaria Poems, who will be speaking with my creative writing students about his inspiration and writing craft,
• Elise Juska, author of The Blessings,
• Christopher McDougall, best-selling author of Born to Run,
• Zachariah OHora, children's book author and illustrator,
• Judy Schachner, children's book author and illustrator of Skippyjon Jones,
• Donna Aviles, presenter and author on the United States Orphan Train Movement, and
• Christina Baker Kline, One Book One Philadelphia author of Orphan Train.

So many of these connections have come as a result of my students and I reaching out on social media and asking.  This has been a big take-away that I need to explore more in the coming months.  In talking with Teen Ink's founder Stephanie Meyers when we first connected my students with her via Skype, she graciously showed us virtually around her office and said, "No one has ever asked me to do this, and I love it!"  In putting myself out there and asking anyone and everyone to come into my classroom - fellow teachers, writers, parents, other students - whether it is done in person or virtually, I have opened up opportunities for my students to connect with real audiences. Very little of their written work is seen by only me. We blog using Blogger and respond to classrooms around the country. Students post their work in online portfolios which can easily be shared with fellow teachers, students, and even parents.  And in talking with my students about these opportunities, I have also encouraged them to ask.  They are reaching out through their blogs and through Twitter in order to build their own personal learning network (PLN). I hope to share more of this particular adventure both here and in some upcoming presentations.

Yup, that's me presenting.

Speaking of which, wow! I need to share more of the presentations I've been doing! In the last few months I have had the opportunity to present at the Pennsylvania Council for Teachers of English Language Arts (PCTELA) as well as at the Michigan Google Summit. I was honored as an Emerging Leader at the recent PASCD conference. In a few short weeks, I'll be presenting at the upcoming EduCon conference in Philly with Christina Brennan on "Mentoring Passion" about how we connected my high school students with her elementary students through passion-based learning. And I need to share more about what I have learned from these fantastic organizations and connections.

So, I'm overwhelmed...but in a good way.

Connecting Passion

Just before Thanksgiving break, my tenth grade students opened up Blogger and started to design their first blogs. Well, now we are up and running.  Over the course of December and January, my students are using their blogs to connect with other students, supporters, and experts interested in learning with them as they explore an inquiry question they are passionate about. We call it our #HavPassion project.  Students have selected a wide range of topics to research, everything from how to refinish vintage furniture to how to prevent injuries while running. Interested in learning more about how we have conceptualized and organized our research? Here are the details of our inquiry project.

And we would love to connect with other students and classes also completing 20% time / project-based learning research! Below you will find images with links to our blogs. Hover over the image to learn more about our inquiry topics. Connect with us! Leave a link to your blog / class site in the comments section below.

A Little Help, Please!

We could use your help! We've mapped our passion and identified our inquiry questions. We've located mentor texts and started out blogs, but now we need to connect. In the coming weeks, my students are looking to connect with experts in the fields of their research. And they are researching a wide-range of topics, everything from cake decorating to auto mechanics, from refinishing historic furniture to the psychological impact of art.

And that's where you come in. Take a look at our open spreadsheet.  On it you will find our inquiry questions, mentor texts, links to our blogs, and some ideas for who we are interested in interviewing. If you have expertise in any of these areas and wouldn't mind a student emailing you or calling you with a few questions, please add your name and contact information in the boxes to the right of the spreadsheet for the topic you have knowledge of.  This is an open document, so if you would rather email me information privately or if you have questions or ideas, please don't hesitate to email me.

Please considering adding to our research HERE.

 

Powerful Connections

It is my lunch hour...okay, half hour. I am standing here nearly in tears and a bit at a loss for words. Just a few minutes ago, the bell rang and my tenth graders hurriedly shelved their Chromebooks and scuttled down to lunch. Today was our #HavPassion research day, the one day each week that my students have to work on their independent inquiry projects. They had 90 minutes. And now that I have a moment to reflect on those 90 minutes, I am in awe.

In 90 minutes, my students not only blogged the introductory posts to their research and shared a video pitch of their project, but they connected. Really connected. As part of our #HavPassion project, I have been encouraging students to develop their own personal learning networks by engaging other researchers and bloggers. As part of helping to foster those connections, I've reached out to a few other teachers who are also blogging with their students. My students will be reading and commenting on the blogs of other students who are completing similar 20% time / Genius Hour projects. But some of the most important connections are not those that you can plan for; they just happen.

A fellow Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project (PAWLP) teacher, Brian Kelley shot me a quick email yesterday after I shared a link to my students' blogs.  He was contemplating opening up his classroom blog for others to comment on his students' writing.  Would it be okay for his students to respond to my students' blogs? Yes! Would we respond to his? Of course. And so today in class, I posted the web address for Mr. Kelley's 8th grade writers.  I'm not going to lie, I was a little nervous. How would my high school writers respond to his middle school writers? How would his students respond to mine?

When my students logged into their blogs this morning, I heard an audible wave crescendo around the room. "I have 55 views on this post!" "Ms. Ward, I have 11 comments!" "Holy cow, people are reading my work!"  And then my students started to respond to Mr. Kelley's writers.

Julia, an eighth grader in Mr. Kelley's class, wrote about her struggles with blogging, with coming up with topics.  And my students responded, honestly, with empathy, and with encouragement.

This is the power of having students compose for real readers. This is the power of connection!

Beginning Bloggers: Sharing our Research

Welcome to 2nd block.  This is my group of inspired researchers. They are learning about music production, about the perceived value of homework, about opening a bakery, and how to tell if someone is lying. And they would love to learn with you. You'll find their blogs connected in the image below. Please read, share, connect - learn with us!

WHAT IS #HAVPASSION ALL ABOUT?

The basic premise of our #HavPassion project is that it is student-driven, passion-based inquiry research. The idea behind this project started with Daniel Pink’s book Drive.  Pink, a former speech writer for Al Gore turned author, cites an idea that started with the 3M company and was expanded by Google. Google encourages its employees to spend one day each work week, 20 percent of their work time, focusing on their own projects. Why? It turns out that when people have autonomy over their work, time to master their skills, and a clear purpose, they are more motivated to learn. And scientific studies and research supports this claim. In fact, Google’s philosophy of 20 percent time is how we have Gmail!

DISCOVER  ★  QUESTION  ☆ REFLECT  ★  TRANSFORM

THE PROJECT:

What do you want to learn? Each Friday during the second quarter my students and I will be using our time to research the topic of our choice, an idea we are passionate about. Our goal is to become an expert on that topic. But this project is not just about researching…it is about doing something with what we learn. To complete this project successfully we will:

1. Pick a topic we are truly passionate about, something we want to learn. Students may work alone or in small groups. Keep in mind what we learned about the origins of the word "passion." Passion is rooted in suffering; what is it that you are willing to suffer through, to push yourself to learn?
2. Find a book to guide our learning.
3. Pitch the project idea in a project proposal to the class for topic approval. Students will submit both a written proposal and produce a video proposal to be posted to our class site for our community of learners to vote on.
4. Connect with an expert to interview.
5. Blog each Friday reflecting on our progress. Each post should also incorporate reflections on how our selected mentor text is guiding our research.
6. Produce something – a presentation, a writing piece, a show, something tangible – to share with people outside of our classroom.
7. Reflect on what we have learned in a TED-style talk.
8. Share all of our work on our online portfolio.

This is not simply a research project.  Once we’ve finished the research phase of this project, we must do something with our new found knowledge.  Students will be creating products and presentations (either individually or in small groups) that will extend beyond the classroom, such as documentary videos, web pages, pamphlets, newspaper or magazine editorials, an article for the school or local newspaper, letters, public speaking presentations, fund raising, music, plays…or whatever we can think of to best make our community aware of our research topic.  The idea is to reach an audience outside the doors of our classroom in order to share our research.  We will need to identify leaders in the field of our research in order to connect and engage with those thought leaders. 

Need some inspiration? Here you go!

Let's Blog It

My tenth grade English students have jumped in, feet first, to our #HavPassion inquiry research projects.  Last week, we mapped our passions as we tried to narrow our research questions. This week, not only did we share our initial inquiry questions with one another, but we also had an opportunity to connect with fifth grade students at an elementary school in our district.  We used Google Hangouts to share our inquiry topics with the elementary students, and they in turn, shared their research questions with us.  In the coming weeks, both groups of students will be using Google docs to collaborate. We'll be looking for connections with our inquiry questions, building our knowledge together.

And, as a way to share our process and reflections, we set up our blogs.  This is a new adventure for me.  In the past, I have had students blog on our closed website, a Ning, which made it difficult for students to reach a readership outside of our classroom. But this time around, I'm jumping in feet first as well.  We're using Blogger, allowing for a greater connection to a wide range of readers.

Another change that I have made this year is spending a bit more time deliberately introducing the concept of blogging to my students. Today we examined the 20% time blogs of the Nerdy Teacher, Nicholas Provenzano's high school English classes as well as blogs from Mrs. Scheffer's Burlington High School students. Rather than standing in front of the room and dictating a list of what to do and not to do when blogging, I had the students use a shared Google doc to come up with the list themselves. Before they began, we reviewed our earlier discussions on the impact of written and digital rhetoric, and I asked students to pay attention to not only what they were reading on each blog but also how they were reading. Here's what they noticed:

What Works?
Having looked at a number of sample blogs, use the space below to note what works. What do successful bloggers do to engage their readers? Take into account both written and digital rhetorical choices made on the part of the author.

• No longer than 2 paragraphs.
• Black/white or blue/yellow text (contrast makes text easier to read)
• Times New Roman font is easy to read.
• Some posts are long and detailed, and others are simple and sweet. A mix of lengths, which is something that I like.
• I like how they give a brief description and then explain what they did to accomplish their task.
• Short headers, capitalizing works well and use of colors to separate sections of a post.
• Explain why they chose what topic they wanted to use for the project and the story behind it.
• Pictures!!!! Make it interesting.
• Actually title the post. Please don't title it Blog Post #3 and the date.
• Spell check!!!!
• Bullets are okay, but numbering is boring.
• Keeping posts short lets readers read the post without losing interest, while in a long 5 paragraph blog post, readers could lose interest.
• I like when they have pictures of themselves and when its colorful, not just boring white.
• Bold letters with color emphasize important points.
• Make sure the background picture doesn't distract from the text!!!!!!!!!!!!

I shouldn't be surprised, but for both sections of my tenth grade class today, we were hard at work to the last minutes of class.  In fact, I had a couple of groans in each class that our 90 minute class period had come to an end. On a Friday!  Students wanted more time to write. What more could an English teacher ask for!?

And So It Begins

I have been waiting for this week since the start of our school year - the start of our #HavPassion projects.

Last fall my students and I completed our first 20% time projects. While my students researched the most effective ways of addressing the homeless problem in our area and learned how to quilt, I completed my own research on the teaching of research writing. In the process of my researching and presenting, I connected with so many educators interested in how passion-based inquiry changes our learning communities. It is a growing community, a community of teachers excited about sharing how voice and choice impact student learning.

It was at July's Chromebooks and the Common Core conference that I met Chris Aviles. Following my presentation on Empowering Writers through passion-based inquiry, Chris shared how he and his students are creating and collaborating in a similar way through his Be About It project. Since that first meeting, I've had opportunities to hear Chris present on his 20% time inquiry research project, and specifically, how he renamed it for his unique group of learners, branding his passion-based project to meet the needs of his students. The combination of meeting Angela Maiers in June and talking with Chris in July inspired our own name change. And so #HavPassion was born.

But we've made a few other important changes as well.  Some of the feedback that I received last fall from students was about how overwhelming it was in the beginning to be faced with so much choice.  Initially, many students selected topics they were interested in but not necessarily that they were passionate about. So this past week when I introduced our passion-based inquiry project to students, we spent more time exploring just what passion entails. It started with sending students home with this assignment:

You have this page. Use it to depict your understanding of “passion.” Consider researching the definition and etymology of passion. Reflect on the ideas and issues that you are passionate about. You have 8 ½ x 11 inches to share your passion. How will you do it? Be creative. Try Canva or PiktoChart to create a stunning visual. Use Tagxedo to craft an image using words. Take a picture of your passion and use Aviary or Pixlr to alter your image. What is passion?

The next day in class, we shared our representations of passion and discussed our definitions.  A number of students discovered that the etymological roots of passion lie in suffering. The Latin root of passion, pati, means to suffer, to endure. What is it that you are willing to suffer for? We used this question to help us map our passions.

In a similar way that Angela Maiers has students map their heartbreak, I asked my students to create a visual map of our passion. We started with the big categories: what are the issues and ideas that we are most passionate about?

I got us started by adding "education" to our map. Students added art, baking, music, languages, and helping others as our initial categories.  Then, I directed students to help each other think through the issues and concerns that stem from these categories.  I added literacy and digital literacy as off shoots from the larger category of education. Then from digital literacy, I added access as a concern. And that's all it took. Students jumped up to surround our map, adding connections and concerns to their initial categories, helping their peers think through different perspectives on our initial categories. More categories lead to more concerns. After five minutes, I stopped students and directed them to only contribute to the growing map in the form of questions in order to push our thinking further. Questions, connections, and collaboration helped us to think through potential inquiry topics.

By spending a bit more time helping students develop a more nuanced understanding of passion, my hope is that they develop inquiry questions that will lead to inspired learning in the weeks to come. Passion and purpose must be connected. As A.J. Juliani writes in his recent book titled Inquiry and Innovation in the Classroom,

"Passion may get you going. It may have you fired up about a new project or opportunity. It may lead you to shout it from the mountain tops. But purpose is a different animal. It keeps you going when others fade away. It drives your everyday actions because there is a reason behind everything you do" (60).

In the coming week, students will continue to brainstorm and explore.  As they do, we will be using collaborative tools like Google Docs and Hangouts to connect with Christy Brennan's fifth grade students who are undertaking a very similar learning adventure. I'll be asking my high school students to not only find mentors for their own learning but also become mentors to younger learners.  And along the way, all of us will be blogging our adventures in learning. So, stay tuned! Our adventure is just beginning.