To help encourage conversations and dialogue about what you/we have learned about ourselves during this period of remote learning, our topic/question for this week is: Share what you have learned about yourself as a learner during this period of remote learning. Remote Reflections (Week of 6/1/20) (This is an anonymous Google Form)
Blake's Guiding Lights
Our Students
Blake's Core Values: Respect, Responsibility, Resourcefulness, Reflection
Our Essential Question: How can we cultivate and curate the progression of student learning and growth?
Our Mission: Blake Middle School believes in a living mission statement, based on the concept that our community seeks and respects knowledge, integrity, character, wisdom, and the willingness to adapt to a continually evolving world.
The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning. - John Dewey
You cannot teach today the same way you did yesterday to prepare students for tomorrow. - John Dewey
I have shared with many of you (and I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling this way), but when we left school Friday, March 13, June 1 felt like a far-off distant date. And, as each phase of our remote learning was extended it was hard for me to fathom ‘making it’ until this time. And, as is always the way, now I am feeling ‘the crunch of time’ as June 16 is only two weeks away! With this mixture of emotions and feelings all coming together and finding myself on Friday working way too late and not practicing what I preach, I did my best to step away and spend some time in the garden this weekend. If I’m being honest, it doesn’t always help my thoughts from racing but I enjoy the meditative pace of being outside with the plants (and weeds of course!).
As I shared with the staff via e-mail on Friday morning I attended a webinar facilitated by Jon Saphier on Thursday afternoon, featuring educators from different realms sharing ‘lessons learned’ with an eye towards ‘looking ahead’ to next year. The opening slide served as a way to frame the webinar/discussion and the question was posed for all to consider...
- What have you learned thus far about teaching and learning that you hope we can 'hold on to' when we return (either remotely or face-to-face)?
- Define 'closure' - what does closure mean to you? What elements should be in place to provide 'closure'? What does that mean for our students? What would this look like?
- What do you/we hope our students will 'take with them' when they leave us June 16?
Our mission…
The ‘living nature’ of our mission, coupled with our desire to embrace a ‘willingness to adapt’ have certainly been brought to light during this unique time in our history - and, I am confident our mission will continue to guide our work...
These words were shared last year at this time - they seem more appropriate now than ever before…
The questions below are ones that I ask everyone to reflect upon each year with the hope that the active answering and putting thoughts to paper will further our collective learning...
- What was meaningful this year? What made teaching worthwhile? What mattered?
- Describe a positive interaction or experience you had with a student during this academic year.
- Describe or explain an accomplishment you attained or something you are proud of taking place during this academic year.
- Describe a particular student or situation during the school year who or that you feel you could have handled in a way that would have resulted in a more positive learning experience.
- How have you 'lived' our mission statement in your work and growth this year?
- What is an area that you would like to grow professionally?
- What have you learned this year from a student?
- What messages do you want to leave for our students? What do you want them to remember? (A humbling but important and centering question)
- What are you looking forward to doing this summer?
‘Being Seen’...
This period of remote learning has underscored what we already knew - intentionally caring for each individual and providing opportunities (in multiple ways) for students to ‘be seen’ is critical - and, more important than any ‘grade’...
Notes from the ‘Looking Ahead’ webinar with Jon Saphier, a sampling of responses from last week’s topic/question of the week, along with the three posts shared below (some I have already shared in different forums), all speak to important factors and points of reflection we should all consider in the interest of furthering our mission as an educational community of students, staff, and families…
Notes from ‘Looking Ahead’ Webinar with Jon Saphier…
(with Jay McTighe, Kim Marshall, Deb Reed, Peter Light, Aminata Umoja, Craig Martin, Althea Terenzi, Tara Gagnon, and Suzanne Russell)
- ‘Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.’ - James Baldwin
- Make meaning in small moments
- I’m here with you and we are going to lean in
- Create spaces that are…personalized, meaningful, and inclusive
- Keep equity at the forefront
- This is messy - no one solution as a district for all of our students
- I hope we don’t lose this sense of deep collaboration
- Wellness, Engagement, Equity as Core Values
- I wouldn’t ask my teachers to do anything I wouldn’t ask myself to do
- Personal reflection is a must
- Unity, Criticism, Unity - A framework for PD, Feedback, and Growth
- Primary goal of a modern education is for students to transfer their learning to meet a goal
- Rote learning will not prepare our students
- 83 different connotations/definitions for curriculum when looking up the term
- Curriculum is the path to be run towards designated goals (from Latin)
- Long-Term Transfer Goals - Keep the ‘end in mind’
- Transfer goal is ‘playing the game in athletics’
- Coach with ‘game in mind’; work with players you have’ differentiate because players’ needs are different
- Cornerstone tasks frame the curriculum
- Map curriculum around performances we want students to do with their knowledge
- We want to take what we learned from this into the fall and make things better
- Ten things: 1. Appreciate physical contact; 2. Sometimes just a voice is better; 3. Differentiation - wider distribution of achievement in the fall (we are going to have to get a lot better at this); 4. Taking dependent students and making them more independent; 5. Looping students (think about it); 6. Teacher teamwork (teacher isolation is unacceptable); 7. Need good teachers 8. Spotlight on equity issues; 9. Get down to Power Standards; 10. Families - be in better touch with families
- Culture of reflection will guide us
- We should rethink ‘the calendar of school’
Why Vulnerability is Exactly What We Need Right Now
by Jon Harper (@jonharper70bd)
Reflecting upon discussions I have had with students, parents, friends, and colleagues about what 'we all need right now' (or at least I know that I need), this post by Jon Harper is one that spoke to me and I wanted to pass along as it speaks to the strength of vulnerability - a mantra I hope we can all embrace and model for our students and one another...
These are difficult days. And I have a feeling they are going to be difficult for some time. And when they are over we will have more difficult days.But if we start sharing now. When it may be most difficult. When we are most scared. When we are most unsure. Well, then we won’t have to go it alone. We may be required to wear masks when we go out and I get it. As uncomfortable and hot as they are, they help keep us and those around us safe. But there is nothing that says we must go through life pretending to be okay when we’re not. That is a mask that we can take off and I believe we should. Be vulnerable. And remember—you are not alone.
Leaning Into The Innovation Opportunity
by Tom Vander Ark (@tvanderark) in Forbes
This brief post highlights the opportunities for innovation and creative thought that are necessary as we move forward. I look forward to the conversations, planning, and actions we will be taking - daunting, for sure, but equally exciting and promising for our students. Agility and a ‘willingness to adapt’ will be essential.
In what is likely to be the most challenging ever, next year will make clear that education is a team sport—collaboration and flexibility around common tools, resources, and teaching strategies will be critical to meet dynamic conditions and student needs this fall.
As we think about the next school year, the new opportunity is helping learners thrive, meeting them where they are, and encouraging work that matters— combining social and emotional learning, competency-based learning, and project-based learning. These learner-centered strategies can be incorporated into the core blended learning that students engage with at schools and when learning remotely. They can also serve as the design principles for new academies and microschools serving unique groups of students or focused on a career pathway.
In what is likely to be the most challenging school year ever, there is an opportunity to create more valuable learning experiences and schools that are more humane and more community connected.
Has This Crisis Really Changed Schools?
by Will Richardson (@willrich45)
Richardson always pushes my own thinking, and the questions posed within this post are worthy of consideration - they will serve as a ‘truth serum mirror’ for all of us. As others have shared as well, I hope that we will be sure to truly look at each of these questions, answer them with honesty, and push ourselves for action-oriented responses that lead to changes that are necessary for all of our students.
But aside from the venue through which schooling is happening, how else has the overarching narrative truly shifted?
Have power relationships between students, teachers, parents, administrators and policy makers really been significantly reoriented?
Are students now at the center of determining what, when, and how they learn?
Has schooling become more equitable across society?
Has the definition of “success” changed?
Aside from turning to technology to deliver the curriculum, has anything about the curriculum really changed?
Has technology amplified learning instead of teaching?
Has our long-term thinking about assessment shifted in any real way?
Do kids find the experience of school more relevant? Less competitive? More empowering?
Sampling of Responses from Our Last Topic/Question (Week of 5/25/20): What do you wish you had more time to learn? Is it possible to learn about that topic/area/subject during the last few weeks of school?
- I want to learn about what Blake students have liked and disliked about our approaches to remote learning. It would be helpful to know if we find ourselves in this situation again. Also, some of our remote learning practices could transfer well into the classroom with minor adjustments.
- I’d like to learn more about making videos and uploading them to YouTube
- I feel like I have time to learn a great deal with the current structure. I love to learn about gravity and space-time.
- Computer science/coding(JavaScript, Python, C2, etc.)
- Nothing
- I wish I understood reading music more. (Chorus)
- I can’t think of anything.
- I don’t think I want to learn anything more than that. I liked taking Arabic classes, but it doesn’t affect school.
- I really liked intro to engineering and I would like more time to learn about it.
- I wish that we learned more about the process of photosynthesis.
- All of the things we missed when we were getting used to remote learning.
- I wish I had more time to learn English.
Although our last two weeks of school this year will certainly look and feel different from our ‘closing time’ in previous years, I look forward to this period of reflection, learning, and closure. Learning is constantly happening and I am confident that we will continue to adapt as a community. I welcome your reflections and will keep both my ‘physical door’ and ‘virtual door’ open for conversation, dialogue, and discourse.
I look forward to the work that lies ahead for all of us.
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Enjoy the week and take care.
Nat