Summer Reading Recommendation #1

Can be purchased here

Summer brings about many things for me, one in particular being a summer reading list.  I have been an avid reader since I was a kid, which is probably when the expansive book lists began.  One thing I have learned in my lifetime is that when you love books, reading lists are forever growing and never shrinking!  I am a balanced reader between fiction and non-fiction, and plan to blog about books that inspire me as I reflect on the past year of teaching, learning, and growing and establish goals for the upcoming school year.

Brain-Based Teaching in the Digital Age, by Marilee Sprenger, was a great first PD book for me this summer.  It confirmed so many professional beliefs I have developed over the past 3 years teaching within multiage classrooms.  These years have truly pushed me to let go and expand my understanding of a student-centered classroom.  This book brought forth 5 important points for educators to consider: 

1. The Net-Generation, more than any other, will be coteachers in the classroom. (pg.31)  Ann and I have dynamically shifted our practice to involve our students in every aspect of the teaching and learning process.  Students increase their memory by being a part of the discovery process and are courageous when researching information that meets their individual goals.  Providing opportunities for them to teach others enhances their learning and makes information relevant.  I really appreciated the term "coteachers" being used in this statement!
2. Students can both learn and teach in this world.  Education is available everywhere. (pg.43) ...well isn't that the truth!  Adapting this mindset is the first step in providing opportunities for our students to learn and teach globally.  Education no longer has to be confined to the walls of the classroom, or the building.  Rather there are a plethora of tools, resources, sites, etc. that spark communication among students around the world.  Imagine the possibilites! 
3. Brains learn best when working with other brains. (pg.50)  Ann and I both had professional goals in the area of speaking & listening this year.  Pushing ourselves in this realm of literacy enabled our students to authentically communicate with each other.  Their dialogue, silent signals, debating skills, and sharing of creative ideas added another dimension to learning within our classroom.
4. Your job as knowledge keeper is obsolete. (pg. 69)  In the beginning years of my teaching career this was a hard concept for me to grasp.  My college experience prepared me as the keeper of knowledge and how to share this knowledge with my students.  Technology has advanced at such an immense rate, it was difficult to shift my thinking and become comfortable with how accessible information is these days.  However, it has relieved the pressures of having to feel as though I had to play that role.  Instead I bask in the glory of teaching my students how to be learners in the world we live in and navigate the infinite information at our finger tips.  How cool is that?!?
5. Memories make us smarter and give us the tools to be creative, to synthesize, and to build relationships.  These are 21st century skills that our students need to succeed. (pg.125)  Everyday as a learner should be full of enriching experiences.  These experiences allow us to view the world from different angles, sparking creativity.  These experiences help us to be able to make genuine connections and deeply synthesize concepts.  These experiences provide opportunities to engage in conversations with other and problem solve together, building natural relationships.  Enriching experiences should be a part of our learning environment to build these skills that our students so desperately need.

At heart, I am a brain-based educator.  It is important to me to teach students about their brain and how we gather information through experiences and novelty, sparking creative juices along the way.  It is important to me to provide ample opportunity for my students to reflect during their learning journey and solidify the information they have encountered and establish goals to continue mapping their learning path.  I want my students to be a part of the learning process, every step of the way;  a navigator, rather than a tourist.  Sprenger's book helped me confirm my teaching philosophy and provided me with more strategies to strengthen my teaching skills, as a facilitator of the learning process.

 ~Celina

Infused Teaching

It is funny to think that the school year just barely ended, yet I feel that new learning and past experiences are beginning to fuse together as I am to a simmering stage already.  I honestly did not expect to be in this place until the beginning of August, but here I am:  ready and willing. 

As I approached our week learning how to infuse art into our daily teaching and learning, I was giddy about the prospect of new information.  Now I am giddy about the connections that are occuring.  Ann and I had a big AH-HA moment yesterday, during our training, when we were in a session that was covering a variety of teaching models:

Discipline-Based Teaching = Subjects/classroom disciplines are taught separately
Thematic Integration = Two or more subjects using the same theme at the same time
Multi-Disciplinary = Two or more subjects joined together for relative concepts
Infused Teaching = A concept shared by multiple disciplines, with the concept meaning also being shared

Incredible Us

Image found here

As we returned to school yesterday from our spring break, we dove into our third and final theme:  SOAR.  Our students began the year working hard building their own unique STRUCTURE for learning and developing a plan of relevant personal goals.  In the winter, they were courageous as they began to BLOOM.  Students were excelling in their goals, and continued to raise the bar for themselves.  Now they are ready to celebrate their growth and SOAR.

Yesterday we began decorating our classroom with inspiration to encourage us all to SOAR.  They worked individually to decorate a star that represented their personal goals and aspirations for the remainder of the school year.  In teams they developed banners for the windows to inspire others in our school community to SOAR.  We reestablished routines and rituals to help us SOAR to success.  And above all, students reevaluated their personal goals to SOAR to new achievements. 

Today our school Social Worker and her amazing Intern came in and shared a beautiful story, “Incredible You”, written by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer.  They share in our desire for students to believe they can SOAR to new heights and celebrate their amazing achievements.  The book explains 10 ways to let your greatness shine through, which was a perfect tie-in to our theme.  As I thought about each of these, I connected them with the overarching philosophies that Ann and I remind each other of daily; the words of wisdom we truly live by.

1.       Share the Good:  Attempt to inspire others, and seek out inspiration around us.

2.       Find What You Love:  Be passionate and never allow fear to guide us. 

3.       You are Filled with Love:  Extend our compassion and empathy to others.

4.       Find a Quiet Place Inside:  Be mindful and find ways to calm our thoughts to process clearly.

5.       Make Today Great:  Live in the moment and treasure the day we are standing in.

6.       Change Your Thoughts to Good:  Recognize the good and presume the best.

7.       Take Care of Yourself:  We must be healthy and happy to support others.

8.       Picture What You Want:  Honor our vision.

9.       Everyone is Special, Especially You:  Take time to celebrate ourselves and our students.

10.   Good Thoughts Give You Energy:  Thrive on positivity, novelty, and humor.

Ann and I model our Building Blocks to Success (Work Hard, Be Courageous, Celebrate Growth) for our students every day, and these 10 ways allowed me to reflect on how even as adults we must allow our greatness to shine through.  As we work hard, courage is necessary to help us celebrate our own personal growth.  We must soak up our moments of greatness and be careful to not minimize the work we have accomplished.  Every goal reached is a stepping stone on our personal journey, and valuing our own personal successes gives us the momentum to keep going through the ups and the downs. 

Ann and I attribute our incredibility to our students.  They inspire us often and give us the courage to keep going each and every day.  They help us believe.   Incredible Me… Incredible You… Incredible Us… 

~Celina

In Case You Missed It . . .

Yesterday, Celina and I had the opportunity to share the message of our multiage program.  Then today I took the time to catch up on all my favorite bloggers and came across the great post by Pernille Ripp, about apologies.  I instantly made a connection, because while the presentation went well as we talked a full 50 minutes about our growth and philosophy, I am finding myself thinking of the things I wish I would have said.  The things I wish I would have pointed out, those direct highlights that I hope everyone who was there took away from our presentation but am unsure that they were able to easily read between the lines since so much was shared.  So here it is, without apology (thanks Pernille for reminding me to stand tall):

WHY Start a Multiage Movement

Last Friday, Celina and I had the amazing opportunity to share our message with our school.  We were asked to explain our program, and took it as an opportunity to truly reflect on what has made a difference for us this year in being a multiage learning community.

We were both moved by George Couros’ fantastic post on the Connected Principal’s Blog about defining the WHY in our experience with our program.  He cites the Simon Sinek TEDTALK about the fact that “People don’t buy what you do, they buy WHY you do it”.  It had us both reflecting on the WHY that we wanted and needed to share about our program. 

Our Daily Work is Student Driven...

As Ann and I reflect this weekend, we are continuing to devour literature based on the needs of our students.  Our conferences, thus far, have allowed us to articulate the perspective we have within our Multiage Program, as well as the individualized approach we are using, but also the future path we are projecting to travel through the course of the year.  And I say projecting because the bottom line is our path really is dependent on our students' needs and interests...

Our overarching philosophy continues to be:
STUDENTS first, then STANDARDS, then CURRICULUM/RESOURCES

Throughout conferences so far, students have been sharing personal highlights with their families, and these moments for us are priceless.  Their dialogue was not rehearsed, nor practiced, just purely from the heart.  They spoke of their goals, and each one displayed a unique passion for learning.  And can I say again outloud??-  "...And we are only in November people!!"  :)

Ann and I are thrilled with the milestones we have passed within just a few months; milestones we set for ourselves in developing our program.  What we have found over the course of the past 11 1/2 weeks is that our students (regardless of their academic standing or behavioral record) will rise to ANY occassion set before them, due to the environment we have established with them. We truly spent the first 6 weeks of school building a community: identifying learning styles/intelligences, celebrating uniqueness, exploring emotions, and building relationships.  These areas were discussed and practiced as we built the structure of our community and routines together.  The time spent on these endeavors has truly paid off!

We continue to explore the building blocks within each content area.  Our students prove to us everyday that they want to climb their individual towers, filling in their missing blocks as they go.  They know how to set a goal based on their own standards (individualized target walls), decide what resources they need, devise a plan, and accomplish the task (marking progress on their target walls on the standards-based continuum). They recognize what they know (GOT IT!) and what they don't (NEED IT!) based on their own evidence! It isn't about grades in our classroom community, but what building blocks they need to learn.  And if they have a particular building block, they become an expert within the community (aka "a resource"). 

This philosophy of student-driven learning is not new, but it does take a particular mindset.... to allow the students to be empowered by their learning.... to allow them to grow at them their own pace... to allow them to choose their daily goals/activities/resources... and to teach in a way that meets all learning styles within each whole group episode. We do not claim to be experts (as we are constantly in search of new ideas and strategies to further our own personal growth).  However, we do now how much "letting go" this process/teaching style/philosophy has required.

And just as we were searching and reading today, both of us became absorbed within the words of one teacher's blog... many of you may have already read his powerful statements and thought provoking dialogue.  http://stumpteacher.blogspot.com/ Thank you to Mr. Stumpenhorst! (And another thank you to Mrs. Ripp http://mrspripp.blogspot.com/ for nominating him on your blog, which allowed us to easily connect to his!) We are new to the daily following of blogs, but are really enjoying reading other educators' reflections about their daily work with students.  For Ann and I, finding Josh's words (as well as the numerous comments left by other educators on this path) was a full-circle moment for us....
***And Josh, we are at Phase 4 in general... thank you for putting this journey (mindset) into words! Ideas for moving to Phase 5???

~Celina