Week of April 27

                  Thursday Thoughts April 27

                         

 

I was off campus when our school board member came yesterday; however just as she was leaving, I walked into the building. She was very complimentary of our school and our classrooms. One thing that she commented on was the positive climate.  Of course, this made me smile because it's awesome when people can walk in and recognize it.  I shared our hashtag and told her that Medlock truly is a special place.  We love kids and we love what we do.  Our staff goes the extra mile to make sure that Medlock is safe and fun for kids.  But I am so proud that we also take great care to make sure that Medlock is a place that is safe and fun for adults too.  I thank you for making our school one that is welcoming to all.  We work hard but we play hard too (as evidenced by the kickball game).  You make Medlock awesome!

 

Staff Spotlight

This week I would like to shine the spotlight on Sharon Bradford.  It has been quite the year in the clinic!  Between the lice "outbreak", the flu "epidemic", seasonal allergies and the never ending bumps and bruises, it seems that Sharon has had a revolving door.  You'd think that she would tire of the runny noses and hacking coughs.  You would also think that amidst all of the sickness, she would herself catch an occasional cold.  But not so!  Sharon is here day in and day out, sometimes with standing room only in the clinic, attending to students and even a few adults.  In addition, Sharon once again found time to spearhead our FCS Charitable Fund Campaign. Sharon we appreciate your commitment to the wellness of our school and thank you for doing a thankless job!

  

Why Teaching Is Still The Best Job In The World

www.Teachthought.com

By Paul Moss

April 1, 2015

7 Reasons Why Teaching Is Still The Best Job In The World

Sometimes, good teachers quit. Teaching is an increasingly demanding job with divergent influences, dynamic sources of innovation, and aging dogma that makes it all a struggle. It can be emotionally draining, and at times, impossible.

But in lieu of that–and in an age where start-ups are glorified, entertainment is endlessly emphasized, and tech is kind, teaching continues to be the best job in the world. Or at least I think so anyway. Here are 7 reasons why.

7 Reasons Why Teaching Is The Best Job In The World

1. The potential to transform lives – ask any teacher who has helped a student in any number of ways, from academic to welfare and emotional learning, and they will tell you that life is not only good, but amazing.

2. It gives you the chance to be continuously creative – of course there are increasing levels of accountability in teaching, but teachers are allowed to be creative in every lesson. Even in observations, in fact most of all in observations, lessons are encouraged to be creative and interesting to engage the students. Teachers have so many opportunities to try new ideas, and indulge in iterative process to ensure the optimum learning environment is created.

3. It offers you a chance to continuously get better – teachers are not only encouraged to seek continuous professional development, but can ask for observation on a regular basis, to provide opportunities to grow and learn from masters or more experienced practitioners. In so few professions is there such support, and considering that as a minimum, contracts are for a year, teachers have so much time to demonstrate improvement. A growth mindset is part of the foundation of teaching.

4. It is a grounding, humbling profession – the amount of work teachers do compared to remuneration is shockingly disproportionate, in 2 senses: firstly, in terms of how many paid vs non paid hours of work they receive, and secondly, in relation to other similarly creative and important (and not so important) vocations in our society. But that is not why teachers teach. So few teachers go into the vocation for the salary – it’s a calling before anything else.

5. There is always satisfaction somewhere – teaching is a calling, and no one enters it without his or her inner voice telling him or her that. Of course there are always some imposters, but the massive majority have their hearts in the right place. How cool is that for the students?

Having said that, teaching can be and is incredibly demanding, and often we can lose sight of that calling, bogged down in aspects of the profession that don’t seem to be connected to it. But on closer inspection, most of the extra demands are actually central to the job itself: explaining to parents where you are coming from; being observed; collaborating with others; marking.

Take this last aspect, crucial to understanding whether students are learning what you believe you are teaching. Yes, it is very time consuming, but perhaps one of the most important and fundamental weapons in a teacher’s arsenal; any good school will understand this and the other cited demands, and create an environment where they become part of directed time.

It is when these aspects are not acknowledged in directed time that the conditions for burnout are rife.

6. It’s a chance to truly to lead the world in the 21st century – introducing students to new technologies and ways of presenting, curating, and collaborating with others with what they know is truly exciting and truly invigorating. Modern teachers are actually pioneering pedagogy, and can and will be able to hold their heads up high in the future when we look back and see how learning in this day and age took a radical but enormously beneficial turn for the better.

Engaging students in greater collaboration, and instilling initiative in curation and the promotion of information leads to truly independent learning, and setting up such learning environments is an opportunity that all teachers now have before them. There are few more gratifying feelings that being needed.

7. The children. 

Conclusion

Of course, so much of the technological addition to teaching has all been achieved mostly through our own initiative, having to source and implement the enterprising learning strategies. But this only provides another string to our bow, and in the context of how important 21st century skills are, another example of why teaching is such an amazing thing to do. Sometimes teaching is exhausting, but friends, always come back to the core of what we are doing.

We are change makers, and that is something to be proud of.   

Long live teaching, still the best job in the world!

Week of April 20

                  Thursday Thoughts April 20


                            

I can officially say that my son Jordan is headed to Kennesaw State.  You may recall that earlier this year I wrote a blog where I confessed to being a naysayer regarding his college application choices.  While he was accepted to two of his three choices, he ultimately decided to go with Kennesaw.  I am excited because my husband and I attended Kennesaw for undergrad.  In fact, that is where we met.   But I am more excited for my son, Jordan, because now that his decision has been made, he seems happier.  He knows that graduation is just a few short weeks away and he has already secured a roommate...... his best friend.  You see, while I spent years focusing on my sons' grades and their sports and making them walk the straight and narrow (maybe not so straight but definitely narrow) I forgot to emphasize that life is about being happy and fulfilled.  Jordan says that Kennesaw is the perfect fit for him.  He likes the campus size, he knows other kids who are also attending and it isn't far from home.  Essentially, he is happy.

 

As educators, we are paid and programmed to prepare children for their academic future with little emphasis placed on their current or future state of happiness.  Starting in Pre K, we preach college and career ready when really all four year olds want to do is play.  As parents, we cloak our children with our own experiences and perspectives of the world but the world as we know it is changing.  Millennials and Generation Z (yes high school students are Generation Z) want more out of life than a good job, a family and a picket fence.  They want to be carefree.  They want to create things.   They want to travel.  Really, they just want to be happy.  I am learning how to back off (a little) and let my kids experience life in their own right.  In this next phase of parenting, I am learning from past mistakes and listening to my kids when they share the things that make them happy.

Staff Spotlight

This week I would like to shine the spotlight on Shanell Maddrey.  While Shanell is not a brand new teacher, this year she has had to learn the "ins" and "outs" of a new school system while living in a new state.  As an experienced educator, she has been a great fit for the fifth grade team and for Medlock as a whole.  She has a passion for literacy and has worked hard all year to develop solid readers and writers.  During second semester, Shanell facilitated a weekly book club for students who were ready for a little more challenge in reading.  She runs a tight ship in her classroom but genuinely cares about her students.  She has been able to effectively work with students who have exhibited difficult behaviors.  Shanell, we are glad that you are a Mustang and thank you for your work with our students.  

Interest-Based Electives: Engaging Students With STEAM Explorations

Educators at Walter Bracken STEAM Academy engage students by letting them choose outside-the-box enrichment classes, like toy making, drones, and candy chemistry.  

Edutopia

FEBRUARY 16, 2016

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Interest-Based Electives: Engaging Students With STEAM Explorations (Transcript)

Student: It's like, way more rougher.

Roshelle: How many of you noticed that the club soda started to get bubbles around it and fizz? Why do you think that's happening?

Student: In most sodas, around the glass, like bubbles appear and I think the same effect happened with the candy.

Roshelle: The benefits of having explorations class is keeping the kids engaged, getting them to ask those questions. It just really gets the kids excited and motivated to learn more.

Katie: Explorations, the idea behind it is creating classes of choice for children, so that they can sign up for an interest that they may have. And then it also provides the teachers with an incentive to be able to teach something that they're very passionate about.

Vicky: Each teacher picks a topic that they're interested in that fits in our STEAM theme, the science, technology, engineering, the arts, or mathematics, and they come up with eight lessons that go along with it. And then the kids get to choose which topic, and you have mixed grade levels.

So is the wheel going to go on here?

Student: Yeah.

Vicky: So we're going to put the wheels on which direction, this way or this way?

Student: I think this way is going to be better.

Vicky: Right now, I have toyology, which is fourth and fifth graders, and we are going to analyze how toys are built, what the components are in them, and then they will apply that information and knowledge to make their own toys?

Georgette: A blueprint is like a sketch of your model. It's what, you want to make a model, you blueprint it, and you would have what it looks like, what it's made out of. Anyone who really builds anything would use it because it scales what they were going to build.

Katie: We make sure that our kids have a lot of opportunities to be very curious, to observe, to wonder, to have a hypothesis, to find something out, to re-engineer something and think about the world around them, how can they contribute?

Georgette: We're having fun, but also learning.

Student: It didn't really do nothing, it just really stayed.

Roshelle: The exploration class I'm teaching is called candy chemistry. The kids come in and we get to-- like yesterday we did the Mentos and Diet Coke challenge. So they get to really do a lot of science observing.

Student: If it has bubbles, it might like affect the thing you're putting in.

Alexa: You learn about how candy works with different drinks and how it dissolves, and why it dissolves. Science is everywhere. It's in trees, grass, dirt, the whole earth and the sky, so science is everywhere.

Klaus: I started a drone explo, the idea of opening their eyes to the possibility of, like drones can really help you do a lot of things.

Set it down, okay.

You have a brain break. The idea of them moving to a different teacher, it's really, really beneficial.

So, Elizabeth, what drone did you develop?

Elizabeth: I put on cameras on each side, so that like, they could get it from all angles. And I also put like a camera in the middle.

Klaus: If I say, "Okay, we're going to spend twenty minutes doing math and then we're going to just do twenty minutes of drones," but I'm still going to teach math. So what that does is it opens up the diversity of curriculum, so we get to develop something that starts off from the ground.

You guys ready to fly a drone?

Students: Yes.

Student: Whoo-hoo!

Katie: When the kids come in and they're able to choose what they're going to learn about, they're much more engaged. They're much more likely to go and read some more nonfiction articles based on the topic that they were studying. It's all about engaging students and getting them excited about learning.

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Overview

At Walter Bracken STEAM Academy, a Title 1 magnet school in urban Las Vegas, Nevada, they've turned enrichment classes into Explos. Explos, short for explorations, are 50-minute, hands-on, enrichment classes that teachers create based on student interest. These classes -- on topics from costume engineering to bubble gum science -- give students choice, engage them, and allow teachers to get creative with developing Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) curriculum.

Explo classes:

• Tie into STEAM curriculum
• Are offered at the end of the day, three times a year
• Meet two times a week for four weeks
• Are non-graded
• Are multi-grade level

"When the kids are able to choose what they're going to learn about, they're more engaged, and they're more likely to pursue that topic outside of class,” says Katie Decker, Walter Bracken's principal. "It's all about engaging students and getting them excited about learning."

How It's Done

Step 1: Choose an Explo Topic

For ideas on STEAM Explo topics, Decker recommends looking at:Topic ideas come from teachers' passions. They get to bring their hobbies into the classroom. Past Explos have included The Art of Street Performing, Decoding the Rubic's Cube, The Usefulness of Drones, Girls Just Wanna Engineer Fun, and Can-struction (construction principles taught with cans of food, which are later donated).

• Steve Spangler Science
• Pinterest
• We Are Teachers' "STEM/STEAM Lessons, Activities and Ideas" Pinterest board
• Teacher Pay Teachers
• Content Searches
• Google Images
• Science in a Nutshell
• GEMS Kits

Step 2: Pitch Your Explo to Your Students

The Explos with the most interest are offered as multiple classes. If one teacher's Explo doesn't get enough votes, someone else's Explo gets a chance. This encourages all teachers to create a captivating pitch so that students will choose their course.

"It's all about selling it to the kids," says Vicky Zblewski, a Walter Bracken fourth-grade teacher.

To create a good pitch, Zblewski recommends:

• Make sure it's something that captures your students’ interest.
• Create a good title.
• Create a fun and exciting two-sentence course description.

To make the voting process unbiased, don't mention:

• The teacher's name in the course title or description
• Food in the course description

Example Explo Titles and Descriptions

Here are two Explo titles and descriptions that Bracken teachers created and pitched to their students:

• Bubble Gum Science: Whether you like to chew it, pop it, snap it, or chomp it, bubble gum is a fun treat! Have you ever wondered how it is made or who invented it? Learn the science behind gum in the Bubble Gum Explo!


• Mousetrap Mania: Calling all engineers! A mouse is loose in the school, we need the best mousetrap builders to safely catch Squeaky and return him to his family. No mice will be harmed in this explo.

Step 3: Set Up Student Voting

Bracken teachers send their Explo titles and descriptions to Principal Decker, and she makes a sign-up sheet for each grade. The sheet includes a space for the student's name, teacher, and room number. She lists each course title in one column, and the course description in the adjacent column.

Decker advises:

• When presenting students with their options, only show them the choices for their grade level.
• Send the sign-up sheet home with your students, and give them at least two weeks to pick their first, second, and third choices.
• Include space at the bottom of the sheet for parents to give feedback on the Explos.

After students hand in their sign-up sheets, teachers review the choices and send them to Decker, who divides the students evenly among all staff members.

Step 4: Get Creative With Your Curriculum

In Zblewski's Toy-ology Explo class, students learn about engineering concepts. "When you are building toys, you don't necessarily think that that's educational,” she observes, “but they're using their engineering skills. They have to plan it out, they have to think about measuring and putting the wheels and dowels on equally. In education, curriculum sometimes can be scripted, and these exploration classes give us the freedom to come up with a different idea.""You don't have to have a standardized mainstream curriculum to teach the standards," explains Klaus Friedrich, a Walter Bracken fifth-grade teacher. "I don't have to spend two hours on math out of the math book to teach math. When I teach about drones in the Drone Explo, I'm still going to teach math. That opens up the diversity of curriculum that normally you wouldn't find in a lot of schools."

Step 5: Fund Your Explo

To get funding and materials, Decker recommends:Zblewski's Toy-ology students are making their own toys using Kleenex boxes, water bottle caps, straws, glue, and markers, and they're planning their toy designs with pencil and paper. Making an Explo doesn't have to be expensive.

• Ask parents and staff for donations.
• Ask if you can borrow items from other schools.
• Reach out to your local community.
• Run a crowdfunding campaign on DonorsChoose.org.
• Collect Box Tops for Education.
• Apply for small grants from the Rotary Club, McDonald's, Women's Junior League, and local organizations

Step 6: Survey the Students at the End of an Explo

Once students finish an Explo, Bracken teachers give their students a survey to find out what they enjoyed about the class, what other existing Explos they would want to take, and what new subjects they want to learn about that aren't yet offered. This helps inform the teachers in designing their Explos for the next semester.

When creating a survey, Decker recommends:

• Simplify the survey for younger students.
• Give younger students the list of classes to help them fill out the survey.
• Use SurveyMonkey to save on paper.

Step 7: Give Yourself Time

"The biggest challenge that I'm faced with as an educator," acknowledges Friedrich, "is traditional thinking in teaching." He explains that schools will often try a new practice for a year, look at the results, and if it's not meeting their expectations, move on to a new practice. "The hardest part is they need to give it time," adds Friedrich. "It takes years to see it grow and get better. It has taken eight or nine years to get this to be where it is."

Week of April 13

                   Thursday Thoughts April 13

Testing is one of the most stressful times of the school year.  With so many "dos and don'ts" we can often find ourselves worrying more about what might happen than what actually does happen.  I have to say that Karen Cooke really knows how to make us feel at ease during testing.  Not only does she provide us with feel good quotes and memes, but her calm persona and big smile truly brings out the best in our staff.  This year Karen has outdone herself by keeping a full specials schedule for all and minimizing the amount of time that we need support personnel for testing.  Because I served as a testing coordinator for eight years, I understand the stress that she is under to "get it right".  Her desire to make things flow effortlessly for us is a testament to who she is as a person and as an administrator.  I am so thankful that "testing" at Medlock brings out the best in us and not the stress in us.  #itsbetteratmedlock

Staff Spotlight

This week I would like to shine the spotlight on Amy Davis.  Amy is not one to bring attention to herself and quite often shy's away from the spotlight but she is someone who loves her students and does whatever it takes to help them succeed.  Amy has a passion for teaching and learning and goes above and beyond to support her students.  She provides constant praise and creates a classroom environment where students feel loved and nurtured.  When Amy brings students to SST, she follows through with any and all suggestions and seeks advice when new strategies are needed.  We can count on Amy to keep relevant data and submit all of her information accurately and in a timely manner.  Her dedication extends beyond the classroom.   She is a true team player who contributes her time and resources in any capacity.  She is constantly exploring ways to incorporate new instructional strategies into her classroom and share them with her team.  Amy's hard work is often overlooked but her value to our school is immeasurable.

April 12, 2017Spring Into Three STEM ProjectsBy Nancy Jang

Spring brings rain, flowers, and a wonderful time to bring even more STEM projects into your classroom! Assign them as homework or work on them in class, either way it’s a win.

April:  Egg Drop Challenge!

Since Easter egg hunting is a highlight of many children’s memories, eggs make an interesting and easy topic for a spring science and engineering connection! We dissect eggs and learn about the various parts and then create egg protection devices for an egg drop challenge!
In my class, we throw eggs that are placed in protective containers off the top of our play structure and make predictions about which eggs will survive. Then we record the results. The owners of the devices that successfully protect an egg get a certificate of recognition and a prize from my prize box.




Check out this video from Mark Rober that shows five different easy ways to make the egg drop challenge a breeze.
Teacher-to-teacher tip: use a tarp or butcher paper with a target taped on to it to make clean up a breeze!

May: Kite Challenge!

Flying kites in good weather is a fun pastime for people of all ages. Have students build a kite from easy-to-find materials like paper, straws, tape, string, and party streamers. If the weather permits, have students launch their kites by running into the wind, and then measure the length of string and/or time in the air.



If you can get your hands on a Tyvek mailing envelope for your building material, this kite is even more durable, but a piece or cardstock or copy paper works just fine for an afternoon of fun. Here are step-by-step directions from the Babble Babble Do website.
Here is a link to the NASA website that has another version of the sled kite. You can photocopy it onto paper or copy it onto cardstock to use as a tracer and see what other materials fly well! Try cellophane, Saran Wrap, shower curtains, wrapping paper, paper and plastic grocery bags, butcher paper, poster board, etc. The sky’s the limit!

June:  Solar Oven Challenge!

The weather is heating up and the kids are excited that summer is almost here. A hot sunny day and a few materials are all you need for creating solar ovens to cook your s’mores!
In class, we create a simple solar oven using a Styrofoam cup, tissue, black construction paper, and aluminum foil. The challenge is to use the knowledge from our solar ovens to build a better solar oven out of household materials that will reach 103 degrees — enough heat to melt chocolate and soften the marshmallows (weather permitting)!



Here is a quick video to show you how to make an easy solar oven!


I hope that your class enjoys these spring STEM challenges!
Happy Teaching,
Nancy