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.

Practicing Poetry

Flickr image the from TED Conference

I was fortunate to be able to attend both Eric Johnson's and Sarah Kay's poetry workshops at the TED Summit in Banff a couple of weeks ago. Both workshops invited participants to delved into the performance aspect of poetry, and for those of us in the classroom setting, consider how we might bring these lessons back to our students. I walked away from both sessions not only with a notebook filled of excited, albeit nearly illegible, reminders of the exercises both presenters lead us through, but I also left with a few drafts of new poems.

High school English teacher Andrew Simmons wrote about the importance of bringing poetry into the classroom in an article published not long ago by The Atlantic:

"Reading original poetry aloud in class can foster trust and empathy in the classroom community, while also emphasizing speaking and listening skills that are often neglected in high school literature classes."

I couldn't agree more. Bringing perfomance poetry into the classroom, whether via YouTube channels like Button Poetry or through live performances, can help student voice and choice take center stage in our learning communities. Poetry builds bridges; it helps readers and writers to connect and empathize with the particular experiences that connect all of us. Poetry brings into focus our humanity.  So here are ideas I learned while attending the TED Summit workshops to help bring performance poetry into your classroom.

Erik Johnson's session began with Willie Perdomo's poem titled "Where I Live." Erik asked workshop participants to listen for the sensory details the words and phrases of the poem evoked. Using this poem as a mentor text, we then were asked to imagine our homes and make a list of what a person would see, smell, taste, hear, and feel.  I could easily picture this exercise being used in conjunction with George Ella Lyon's "Where I'm From" poem. In a similar way that I've used Lyon's poem, we created a list of concrete images and details which we then crafted into a poem, sharing our favorite lines aloud. The idea Erik presented was about giveing students mentors for their potential slam pieces and deconstructing those models into smaller chunks in order to give the novice poetry performer a place to begin.

Sarah Kay's poetry masterclass workshop also focused on the inclusion of sensory and figurative details in the craft of poetry performance. She started her workshop by inviting participants into a safe-space, asking that we refrain from engaging with social medial during the session in order to focus our attention on the stories unfolding in the room. Our writing began with a prompt which had us creating a list. Why a list? Well, most people don't spend hours each day crafting poems, especially poems for performance. It can be an overwhelming task to ask of students, or in our case, a crowded room of adults. But a list, a list is something we all know how to do. We don't need instructions on how to create a list.

We listed out three things we knew to be true, an activity she used to craft the piece she perfomed for her 2011 TED Talk titled "If I Should Have a Daughter." As we created our lists, Sarah asked us to be as literal as possible, adding in concrete details to help listeners understand the particulars of our truths. Here are mine:

1. I know that teaching without heart is not teaching at all.
2. I know that homemade pickles taste better than any pickle you will ever find on a store shelf, especially if the cucumbers are homegrown.
3. I know there is forgiveness in gardening.

After sharing our favorite truths, Sarah walked us through why this type of list works so well as a starting point for poetry. Lists, whether they are about three things we know to be true or 10 things I should have learned by now, help us access and illuminate all that stuff that is just floating around in our brains. It is being able to toss a baited hook into our conscience and come back with potential writing ideas. Without that starting point, we're standing on the shore and simply hoping an idea will jump out at us. Writing rarely works like this.  A list gives writers a starting point.

So, you've got a list, but now what? Sarah lead us through a discussion and activity meant to elicit more sensory details in our writing.  It is those details and particulars that help readers connect to our writing.  This time we started with an abstract concept - regret. Sarah explained that regret, as a concept, can mean so many different things to different people.  Instead, she challenged us to think about what regret looks like, sounds like, tastes like.  Participants came up with such powerful metaphors to define regret. Regret looks like a trash can filled with crumpled notebook paper. Regret stutters, trying to grasp for words you should have known in the first place. Regret tastes like bitter chocolate. Challenging us to use more sensory details helped reveal a more particular and descriptive experience of an abstract idea. This same exercise could be used with any of those lofty ideals that emerging writers struggle to make sense of - justice, hate, love, sorrow.

After completing this exercise, Sarah had us dip back into our original list and select one truth to add sensory details to. I returned to my homemade pickles. As we added sensory details to capture what we knew to be true, Sarah paused to challenge us again, this time to try to include figurative language as well. How might our descriptions and metaphors do double duty? As I wrote about planting cucumber plants with my youngest son, I challenged myself to describe small moments in novel ways. Sarah asked us to picture a single moment. For me, it was the dirt collected under my son's small fingernails.  And that one moment is where I think my new poem will start:

The smell of earth collects under small fingernails, changing waning moons to full eclipses.

But Sarah's workshop didn't just include writing poetry. We also spent time talking about the art of perfomance. How do you get students comfortable performing their original work for others. This is not a simple task. In fact, the fifty or so of us gathered in Sarah's workshop all tightened our shoulders a little bit when she introduced that we would be standing to share our work.  However, what made it easier was the fact that we started with an improv game. Performance, Sarah stated, is anxiety-producting, but it should also be fun. These two feelings aren't mutally exclusive.  So we pushed our tables to the side of the room and stood in a large circle. She asked us to pick our favorite word from our writing.  Standing in a circle, we were to make eye contact with someone across the room, and at the same time as all other participants, we said our word to the other person. Then we all shouted our word at the same time. Gradually we added movement to showcase our word and send it across the circle. Because we were all shouting and moving at the same time, people in the group didn't feel nervous. It was a game; it was fun. Finally, we went around the circle and one by one shouted and acted out our word.  The catch was that after each person said their word, all other workshop participants had to do the same movement and say the word with the same intonation. However awkward we might have felt, all the other participants had to act it out as well.  And by starting our performance in this manner, we were able to talk about using our voices and body to impart meaning in a playful way.

I am grateful to both Erik and Sarah for sharing their expertise. I'm looking forward to bringing these ideas back to my high school English classroom in the fall.  I'm curious about how other teachers incorporate performance poetry into their curriculums. Please share your ideas and resouces!

Finding Time

I'll admit it. I'm guilty.

I'm a chronic over-planner.

Each class period starts with our opening routines and check-in, review of previous learning, daily lesson activity, and a launch to close the class period. I rely on routines to help my students move efficiently in our learning space and maximize our time together as a learning team. Like me, many teachers learned in our methods courses and classroom management classes techniques for grouping students; we were trained to manage how students interact with one another. A great deal of the art of teaching is managing how class time is used, how students move about the room, and how they interact. The classroom is a very structured setting.

But here's the thing, this might not be the best way to think about our time in the classroom. In fact, this might be one way that we are structuring students out of authentic collaboration.

Attending the TED Summit has me reflecting on the skills I want students to leave my classroom with at the close of the school year. And here's what I now realize: my micro-managing group work is stifling students' opportunity to truly connect and collaborate. Students will never become creative innovators if teachers continue to map out when, how, and with whom students connect. Ideas come in open spaces.

What I am most thankful for is the in-between spaces that this Summit allowed for. It was in the ample time given between sessions, after meals, and throughout the workshops that encouraged all the organic and energizing collaborations and connections. Moments of serendipity and innovation blossomed because we had time to reflect, to connect, and share our stories.

This is what I  hope to bring back into my classroom. Teachers must build in space and time for authentic conversation. No homework questions to answer or worksheets to fill out during a discussion, just space for the informal and the authentic. This is where connection happens, where innovation happens.

There were so many moments of serendipity at the TED Summit. The other evening while attending the cowboy dinner on a ranch in Banff, one of my fellow TIE teachers (we've started calling ourselves the TIE fighters) let me know that another attendee, Melanie, was looking for me. I've discovered this is not unusual at a TED event. Attendees are invested in connecting. When we found one another a few minutes later, it turned out that we had a mutual friend. We took a selfie together for our friend and ordinarily that might have been the end of the interaction, but neither of us had any place we had to be. We weren't eager to rush off. There was time and space to connect. Melanie asked about the TIE program, and I shared a bit about my innovation project for the program - Mentoring Passion. As I explained, I watched her eyes widen. "You're kidding!" It turns out that Melanie is also a high school English teacher, one who is passionate about helping students find their passion. We were able to talk a bit more about our shared passion and have plans to connect upon our return from the Summit.

We all have so many stories like these from the Summit.  In between sessions, we'd run into people relaxing on the lawn and discover a commonality. While in a workshop, we'd hear a presenter share something that we knew a fellow TIE member might also like. We shared our connections in order to build further collaboration. While in a workshop, my fellow TIE educator, Susan Herder, connected with a woman who works as an advisor to actors, athletes, and other creatives. Her role is to connect her clients to philanthropic organizations that support the causes her clients are most passionate about. In the open time between workshops, we were able to grab a picnic table and chat about her role in connecting her talent with the experts and organizations that her clients are interested in helping. It was striking how her work and my TIE innovation project are similar in a number of aspects. We each shared our process for helping people both understand their passion and then connect with the right people in order to learn more. She was able to help me thing through how best to build a network of experts willing to mentor students in the area of their passion. Her advice to look not for individual experts but for foundations and professional organizations with a diverse membership has helped to change how I am thinking about my project. And this connection happened because throughout sessions, in those in-between moments, we were encouraged to connect and to listen to one another's stories. We didn't need to rush between scheduled events; no bell to signal us to get moving. TED left spaces and time for connection. This is what I will take back to my classroom.

We do not honor student stories and ideas when we pack our class time tight with activities. Opening up time and space for students to share and connect is the fertile ground where ideas come into bloom. We need to consider how we are using our class time and spaces to foster collaboration and innovation.

I understand that secondary teachers are particularly limited by the amount of time we have with students each day. My 55-minute class periods are marked at each end by bells. I don't have the luxury of giving large blocks of time for open discussion each day. But there are a number of small changes that I can make in how I use my class time and space to foster organic connections and open up space for innovation.

First, I must consider the physical space and set-up of my classroom. Is my room arranged in a way to foster collaboration? Can students easily move about the room and find the supplies they need? Are there comfortable spaces for students to have small group discussions? Are there spaces for my students to work together on group projects?

Second, I need to consider how I am having students connect. How are students working in groups? Are groups engaged in purposeful activities that will lead to innovation? Am I opening up time for students to explore ideas?

Our class time with students is valuable, and we should be using that time to facilitate the activities that students cannot complete independently at home. Our classrooms need to be places filled with collaborative conversations. Our students need to learn how to speak with one another in order to grow an idea. We all need to make time for time. Let's make our classrooms spaces where students have time to make their own connections, collaborations, and creations.

Thank you to all of the TED community for inspiring me in so many ways this past week!

Framing Innovation

It happens at nearly every conference I attend.

"Oh, I recognize you! It's the glasses."

The thick black cat's eyes have framed my perspective for the last seven years. Sometimes the opposite will happen. If I am not wearing my glasses, students and even friends have walked right by me without a spark of recognition. These frames have become my brand, if you will. It is how people come to recognize and remember me, at least initially. But a conversation at last night's TED Summit dinner has me looking at my lenses through a new perspective.

Amanda Palmer, who happens to be here in Banff for the TED Summit, writes in her book about how her perspective was changed by shaving her eyebrows, a look that has become part of her signature style:

"I found to my delight, that it had the unintended side effect of causing people to look me in the eye. When you have creatively painted eyebrows, people will assume you're approachable and affable, and talk to you."

This has also been true of my black cat's eye frames dotted with silver stars in the corners. I have been stopped on the street and questioned in the checkout line. They are a ready made conversation starter. And as I am not the best at small talk or even introducing myself to strangers, my glasses help me connect immediately. There was the barista who had to know where I got my frames because they reminded her of a picture of her mother, which was a reason I was drawn to them as well. My mother wore a similar pair in her high school graduation photo. The mother who stopped me to share her love of the singer Lisa Loeb (again, me too). My frames are a way to form immediate connections, to share stories, and move beyond simply getting to know someone by asking what they do for a living. These frames introduce me before I even open my mouth to speak.

And last night at dinner, TED fellow Tunji Lardner helped me think through my lenses from a new perspective.

Over our first course, Mr. Lardner asked about the role of the new TED Innovative Educators within the larger TED community. I described the innovation projects that each of us would spend the next year working on. He asked about how we, those of us sitting around him, framed the idea of innovation. What is innovation? The conversation evolved to discusseing how elements of design and innovation are dependent upon a particular cultural lense. Innovation, real innovation, must then both acknowledge that frame and move beyond it. Our culture frames design, frames innovation. What then is innovation at a global level?

Photo by TED Innovative Education YauJau Ku

So now I'm thinking about how my glasses might also serve as a reminder. The fat black frame is always present in my periphery, serving as a reminder for me to check my perspective. I am always aware of the frame through which I interact with the world. My glasses tangibly remind me that I have a particular perspective and perhaps if I want to think outside that frame, I might need to remove my glasses.

Not Just A Matter of Luck

It is our first full day at the TED Summit in Banff. Our group of 30 TED Innovative Educators (TIEs) from around the world is pitching our innovation plans. Mine has to do with mentoring passion. In preparing my pitch, I am reminded of a conversation a number of years back.

The year I first started teaching high school English, we piled into a friend's Honda and drove south to Williamsburg, Virginia, to spend Thanksgiving break with a group of friends from our college years. We spent all morning, afternoon, and into the wee hours of the morning cooking, eating, laughing, playing Boogle, and chatting. Sometime after three in the morning, one of my close friends turned to me and declared me lucky. "You've always known what you wanted to do with your life." And then she popped a question that many of my high school students have also grappled with:

"How do your figure out your passion?"

I didn't always know that I wanted to be a teacher. As a child, I remember declaring that I wanted to be an astronomer, namely because being an astronaut sounded scary and none of first grade peers seemed to know that an astronomer was. I thought it sounded cool. Secretly, I wanted to be a mermaid. But all the while, whether astronomer, mermaid, author, or teacher, I was writing. When I look back at what brought me joy as a child and what continues to bring me joy, it often involves writing. My passion for encouraging emerging writers to share their voice with real readers developed out of my own love for writing.

Luckily, I had teachers along the way that encouraged my writing. Tucked away somewhere in a trunk in my parent's basement is my very first book - The Amazing Talking Dog -  which I wrote as a fourth grader as part of the Young Author's initiative. In eighth grade, my English teacher, Mrs. Zeinstra, had us bring in notebooks which we wrote in every single day. We scribbled down lines from favorite poems which we found in her collection of anthologies lining the windowsills. We crafted stories that incorporated the hijinks of our peers as main plot points, taking joy in reading them aloud. We wrote every day. As a high school senior, my AP English teacher asked if he might submit a poem I wrote for an assignment to a regional writing competition. Before submitting it, we met after school to talk about the tone of one particular word I had used in the piece. Mr. Dik and I discussed how a single word can alter the feel of a text, but ultimately, he left the decision about whether I changed the work in my hands. Weeks later he took me into the city along with a couple of other classmates when the winners were announced. My name wasn't classed, but it didn't matter. I was lucky. It was this experience - playing with words, crafting lines, working with writers - where I was lucky to discover what I wanted to spend my life doing.

My good friend and so many of my students have not been as lucky, especially when what has brought them joy does not easily fit into one of the content-area silos of our current education system. What happens to the student who wants to design toys? What content-area does that fall under? Will that student be encouraged in our current system? What happens to the passion that does not easily fit into the curriculum of our algebra classes or biology or American literature?

We are educating students out of their stories. We are educating people out of passion.

That Thanksgiving conversation has haunted me, namely because I found my friend's question so difficult to answer:

"How do you figure out your passion?"

She wanted something more tangible, something she could do. Was there a class that I took in college that helped me discover a career path I am passionate about? Was there a book she could read? In my current classroom, I hear echoes of this same question. Is there a website I could look at? A test I might take to understand what my passion might be?

We have taught students how to look up the answers, but we have given them the questions. We have fed them questions that have right answers. My students, many of them, lack the confidence to struggle with the unknown, lack the practice of coming up with their own big questions.

I teach high school English in the third poorest county in my state. Our high school of about 900 students sits squarely in the middle of Michigan farm country. Over the course of this past year, I have had students struggle with food insecurity, homelessness, depression and suicide, broken homes, and broken hearts. Our teachers are fighting to raise our graduation rate and prepare our students for what lies outside the walls of our school. Unfortunately, our effectiveness is measured in how well our students pass the state tests. And so to prepare students for these tests and to take the college entrance exams, many of the writing experiences that my students have had in school have been in the form of timed essays written to a single prompt. As many of my students will be first generation college students, early exposure to the type of writing tasks that they will encounter on the SAT and ACT and AP test is helpful. To an extent. However, this cannot be the only type of writing we ask of students. Such high-stakes testing situations will not make up a majority of the writing experiences that my students will have over the course of their lifetimes. And yet, this is the type of writing they are most often asked to craft whilde in school. By the time I meet students as sophomores, juniors, and seniors, they are frustrated writers, frustrated by a lack of choice, lack of purpose, lack of writing that has relavence to their lived experiences.  They no longer see the purpose of writing yet another essay. Far too many papers have been returned with red circles and hash marks and a letter that looms large at the top of the page. Sure it is for a grade, but what does that mean? What has that taught someone about the purpose of writing?

I want my students to graduate high school as connectors, collaborators, and creators. If we don't facilitate more opportunities for students to do this inside the classroom, how can we expect them to be curious and critical learners outside of the classroom. As teachers, we need to facilitate possibility, potential, and passion. How can we help students not only discover their passion but pursue it as well? It shouldn't simply be a matter of luck.

A New Kind of Resume

Last summer I had the opportunity to participate in the ThingLink Summer Challenge for Educators.  As part of our initial challenge, we were asked to use the ThingLink platform to create a digital portfolio. I linked my many professional learning networks and digital platforms to a a static image.  But I've been thinking lately about the importance of video, of movement and photography. In our weekly video conversations with fellow TED-Ed Innovative Educators (TIEs), we've been reflecting on how video has changed the face of learning in the last few years.  How, where, and when students are learning has substantially changed in the last decade.

So, why shouldn't resumes change? For teachers interested in the intersections of blended learning, video opens up a number of opportunities to share what we, too, have learned.  In particular, platforms like ThingLink (or Touchcast, EdPuzzle, TED Lessons) offer opportunities to make videos interactive.

And so here it is: my interactive resume. I made this using Adobe Spark, WeVideo, and ThingLink.  I'd love to see what others are doing to create interactive teaching resumes. Share yours!

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.