Increase Student Accountability and Responsibility

I am a strong believer in student's need to advocate for themselves. Almost to a fault, I believe that the sooner a student is able to find that confidence they will ask more questions, challenge themselves, set goals, and begin to create their own path. I feel like too often, students are talked about or talked at with the intention of supporting and motivating them. But when will a student be allowed to make adult decisions? Some would say after college or thereabout which is way too late in my opinion. Too many people can take advantage of you with long term repercussions.

School is a place where a student can learn such responsibility and need to plan. I was at a morning meeting and heard others sharing how they communicate with parents and although there are many options out there, this can be time consuming and it often takes the student out of the equation. So I set out to try an experiment and see what could be done to inform parents of their student's progress in a meaningful way that does not require a large portion of my week.

For a month now, I ask my students to write an email to their parents each week. In this email they copy and paste important dates and announcements that my teaching partner and I send to them in an email. The student accesses their grade online and pastes that into the email with a description of missing assignments and why. Then they reflect upon the week citing something that went well and perhaps an area of growth for them.

After they send it to their parents and cc my teaching partner and myself, I ask the students to respond to the email by Tuesday morning (they have sent it by Friday). The parent simply has to say, "I got it" or something similar in order for the student to get the citizenship points, but what I have found is that many parents write a longer reflective piece back about how they can help their student improve.

What saddens me is the direct correlation between parent involvement and student achievement and how many parents do not write back. We still follow up other ways but I feel so much pain for those who are not able to have as much interaction with their parents. On the other side of that, these students who were previously failing, are beginning to see their grades as their own and not something that the teacher "does to them" but a reflection of their work. I am seeing them begin to take responsibility and seeking out ways to recoup those points.

Now anyone of my students will tell you that grades are not the central focus of my classroom but if this is helping them to advocate and stand up for themselves and carry out an action plan for how they can succeed then I am extremely glad that they went through the frustration of the first semester and are figuring it out while they are still young enough to make these kind of mistakes and recover beautifully. I have seen so many students go to the edge of failing or dropping out and realize that they were better than that. But it has to come from them, no amount of browbeating, coercing, or punishment will make them see their potential. It has to come from them, we can only give them opportunities to succeed.

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Student Led Conferences Facilitates Communication and Student Empowerment

At least once a year all over the country, parents come into their child's school and sit down for a meeting with the teacher. Often this is focused around grades and behavior and students cringe at the thought of parents and teachers meeting and talking about them. Even those students who are doing well in everything, still hope that their parents will be pleased with what they have done.

Parent and teacher communication is really important and should occur when there is a need to tell a parent about concerns and successes within the class. However, I have always found it awkward to talk about the student in the 3rd person when they are sitting right there. The time provided usually does not allow me to go into any sort of depth. I am grateful that at my school we have implemented Student Led Conferences which I believe goes a long way in facilitating parent/student relationship while focusing on goals and success.

Twice a year for about a week or so we ask our parents to come in for about 20 minutes each. They come in and sit down with their student. The student gets out their work and shows the evidence for what they have done so far this year. They talk about what has worked well in the past and what they have/are struggling with. The student has goals on what they hope to achieve over the year and is well aware of what needs to be done to help them reach their goals. Because each student is having an one-on-one conversation, we can have as many going on at once as we have space for.

We the teachers, purposefully avoid being drawn into the conversations because this is supposed to be a chance for students to take control of their own learning. We provide a sign up sheet if the parents would like to have a follow up conversation. This is difficult for everyone involved especially their first time because we are so trained in the typical parent/teacher roles at a conference.

While there are occasionally meltdowns or frustrations, we coach our students beforehand to take charge of the conversation. Similar to a job interview, we encourage them to talk about what has not gone well in the past (emphasis past) and how they are going to work to overcome those challenges in the future. Parents love seeing what students have created and hearing them talk about the work they are doing.

There really is no reason why you shouldn't do student led conferences. They allow a more deep conversation, are more efficient, and encourage parent support within the classroom. Concerns you have can be overcome once you see how much more confident, self-motivated, and empowered your students are afterwards.

Middle and High School Culture - Simple Things You Can Do to Enhance It

These are some of the things I do daily/weekly/yearly to help foster a positive classroom culture.

Greeting Circle: I have my colleague Patrick to thank for this but on the first day of the week, we sit in a circle and we take turns answering a question about themselves. Some great examples of this are, "what super power do you wish you had?", "what word do you wish could be deleted from the English Language," or "if you were given one million dollars but had to give it away what would you do," (more great circle starters can be found in books like The Book of Questions).
In order to be effective (not take up a whole class period) you want to phrase the questions so they can be answered quickly in a sentence or less. There are also 5 rules of greeting circle that keep it respectful and sacred:

1. No talking when others are talking.
2. Do not comment on what others have said (even laughing is considered commenting)
3. Share seriously so others feel comfortable sharing seriously.
4. Use your Jamba Juice voice. I managed a Jamba Juice at one time and part of the training was helping new team members be loud enough to be heard by anyone.
5. You may pass once but we will come back to you.

             Some weeks the conversation is silly and lighthearted, some weeks it is somber and deeply reflective. But it is always powerful and a good use of time. The first couple of times it may take a little longer but if you are hard and fast on the rules it should take no more than 10 minutes.

Chair Ceremony: I have a very nice chair that the school purchased for me but just does not work for my back. The students were always asking if they could use it so I devised a little ceremony on Fridays that incorporated this as well as contributing to our culture. The first week I announce that someone in this class has really helped make this class a better place for people, then I will say a couple of examples. That student then receives the chair to sit in for the entire week. The next week that student will perform the same ceremony and pass it on to a new student. A couple of key points are:

• This is for culture not necessarily academics so it is not about best test score etc.
• If you don't want to give up your chair feel free to use something else that is awesome.
• After the official chair ceremony, I ask the students to honor others who have contributed to the class/school culture and made their week better. Often I have to pause for a minute while they reflect. I ask them to keep the ceremony sacred and not simply give shout-outs to their friends and they must say something more specific than "he is nice".
• This ceremony takes about 10 minutes tops once a week, but with News and media bombarding us with all the negative things in our world, I think it is worth it to highlight the good that people are doing.

Content Conversations or Geek Time: Geek has typically been applied to technology fanatics but it is actually a more general term applying to anyone who is exceptionally good or interested in a certain topic. So there are Football Geeks, Spanish Literature Geeks, Computer Geeks, and the list goes on forever. If you just became aware by reading that last sentence that you are a geek, welcome to an awesome club. 

You are most likely paid to teach a particular curriculum and adhere to very specific standards. Once in a while (I will leave the frequency to you), I encourage you to geek out with your students. The science/math curriculum in particular takes a few years to update itself with all of the new advances and so you might love Black Holes, Quantum Mechanics, or a new technology but there is no established time to talk about it in your class. Whether it come up from a conversation, an article that you ask them to read, a YouTube video, please take the time to have a conversation about it. 

Students will feed off of your interest and energy and they might discover an interesting topic that they never knew about. You will form powerful connections with your students. I understand that if you did this too often you would fall behind or gain a potentially negative reputation so you need to be mindful about how you do it but please do it.

Note: If you don't have anything you can geek out about. I encourage you to immediately go to your bookstore/library and find something of interest (just wander around). BBC has incredibly interesting documentaries you can look at. Check out your local paper for groups or meetup.com to connect with others. No one should just go through life without something they are passionate about, and your students want to see you passionate about something.

Puzzles: I love puzzles and I have one up weekly in order to challenge my students. You can have one that is academically challenging as well but I also try to have puzzles that can be figured out and understood by anyone so the class culture is enhanced. This helps students see that math, science, literature is as fun as you consider it to be. You can find a tremendous number of puzzles online (I would suggest you slightly change the wording or your students will find them too), there is also great show on NPR if you get it called A Way With Words which provides a weekly puzzle as well.

Clean Up Procedure: Whether or not you work with power tools like my math/physics students, classrooms can get pretty messy. I discuss the Broken Window Theory with my students to stress how important it is to their learning that we keep our room clean. We spend the last 10 minutes of every class cleaning up my room. If you do not work with tools or computers you could shorten that a bit I suppose but it really makes a difference for students to come into a clean put together classroom. 

My jobs include computers, floor, desks, lab equipment, calculators, notebooks, etc with a description of each. There is also a supervisor who ensures that others do their jobs. The supervisor checks that each job is done and when they believe they are all done, they come to me and tell me that it is done. I excuse the other students and the supervisor will stay and clean up anything that isn't finished. This plus the rotation of the jobs each week ensures that the students do their jobs well and that my room is put back together. The supervisor allows this all to happen without me needing to be involved, which provides me an opportunity to prepare my classroom for the next group of students.

Saying Hello: Seems obvious but you would be amazed at how your relationship with your students will change if you hold the door open for them and greet them each morning by name.

One-on-One Conversations: Student are human beings, they are not just a GPA and every time they do not turn in an assignment or come late, there is a reason. Even if you think the reason is silly, they do not. Rather than acting in a vacuum and creating frustration with your students, seek them out and have a discussion. Some thoughts to consider:

• Don't make it about a specific assignment, make it about the person. Instead of saying, "Why didn't you turn in your  homework," perhaps you can ask them how they are feeling, are they really busy, how is the family, etc. A student who was typically doing well in my class, stopped turning in work. I asked him how things are and he told me a lot about how things are frustrating at home. Our students are human beings just like you with stress, concerns, hopes, and dreams.
• Try and have a conversation with all of your students at some point. All students regardless of their grade or status deserve to be heard and supported. Conversations should initially be a few minutes long so you can have more depth than one word answers.

Class Discussions: I try at least once a semester to have a class discussion about my class and school in general. You can do it sooner if you need to as Anne blogged about here. It can be as meaningful as you are willing to be open to. The conversation should focus on getting their collective opinions and thoughts on how a test went, a policy is working, a news story that impacts them, etc. They are already talking about it outside your class, the question is do you want to be a part of that conversation?

Habits of the Heart and Mind:

At our school our culture stems from our adoption of the Habits originally created at Central Park East Secondary Schools (CPESS) in Harlem by Debbie Meier and her faculty. The Habits are Refinement, Evidence, Mindfulness, Perspective, Perseverance, Cooperation, and Compassion. I will do another post about these in the future.

Isn't this obvious/Why do we need to do this?

You are right, many of these things are what you would do anyway with other people and perhaps you already do it in your classroom. However, many classrooms focus so much on the content and the impending standardized tests that they believe there is no time to acknowledge your student's personhood. I can tell you that your students will be happier and more able to do a great job if they know that you care and you will be able to better serve them if you are aware of what is going on in their lives.

If you have any additional suggestions for what works well in your classroom, please leave a comment!

Crowdsourcing - Be a Part of Something BIG!

Those who coined the term "Information Age" were certainly not kidding. We produce information and data at such a steep rate that it is near impossible to track and store it all. The major search engines like Google and Microsoft's Bing are scrambling to build new Data Storage Facilities just to keep up. According to the thought provoking video Did You Know, last year we produced 4 exabytes of information (that's 4 with 19 zeros after it). 

Now while this data includes YouTube videos and SPAM emails, it also includes new galaxies discovered in the heavens, potential new medications for AIDS, maybe radio signals from other planets. Yet, there are not enough professionals out there to look through all of the data and find what is useful and what it irrelevant.

Humans built computers so they could communicate, calculate, and simply do things faster. Now computers need humans to look intelligently at the data and interpret it. In 2006 Jeff Howe wrote an article in Wired Magazine called "The Rise of Crowdsourcing". A combination of crowd and outsourcing, it details a necessary new route for our species to work with data. According to Clay Shirky we have lots of free time (as a species), if useful projects are able to harness that free time we can collectively accomplish some great things.

To make this point clear, this is not an individual task but something that simply could not have been done easily or at all without the collective power of all of us. You and your students are capable of being a part of these projects. Some need active participation but some only need your computer's spare cycles (e.g. when you are not working on it). 

Here is a video from the Solve for X conference where one of the founders of Foldit (more info below) demonstrates how powerful crowdsourcing can be.

Some examples of crowdsourcing effectively serving a need are:

• Ushahidi - Referred to in the Cognitive Surplus Video, allowed reports of violence in Kenya to be collected easily. This software was later Open Sources and used in the Haiti earthquake, and to know when road conditions are bad in Washington D.C.
• Netflix - After you watch a video on Netflix, the site will recommend others to you. A couple of years ago, Netflix offered a one million dollar prize to someone who could improve the service. Groups stepped up and competed back and forth to best each other's algorithim.
• Open Source - The philosophy behind open source is summed up in Linus' Law, "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". This refers to Linus Torvalds who started the development of the Linux Operating System. Rather than have a few programmers working on software/hardware, the code is freely published so others can improve and modify as needed. This has proven to be extremely successful with the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox Browser, Open Office, and many more listed on my software recommendations page.

So what projects are available for you and your students to participate in? The number grows every day and spans all disciplines:

• Guttenberg - An amazing site with lots of free literature available for download. But how did all of that literature get there? Through their Distributed Proofreaders program, you can sign up and review books that have been scanned or transcribed for typos or grammatical errors thus making more resources available to the public. LibriVox provides an opportunity to record books to audio.
• Galaxy Zoo - This is fun for all ages. Telescopes are becoming more and more powerful and scientists cannot keep up with all of the new pictures coming in. After taking a brief training, you are provided the opportunity to classify what type of celestial object you are seeing a picture of (e.g. galaxy, star). The most famous instance of this was when a Dutch School teacher named Hanny van Arkel discovered such a unique object that scientists are still studying its nature. This object might never have emerged as relevant had it not been crowdsourced.
• FoldIt - When was the last time you could say that playing a video game could win you a Noble Prize for science? Innovative thinkers at the University of Washington developed a game that made it fun to discover new proteins and molecule structures. This has led to greater understanding of protein folding and structure and can reduce the amount of research and development needed to create new cures for HIV/AIDS, Cancer, and Alzheimer's.
• BOINC - Perhaps you want to contribute but just don't have the time, then BOINC is for you. Created at UC Berkeley, it allows scientists to run complex data analysis by using the combined computing power of humanity. 
• For example, creating models of what could happen if our global average temperature increased by 1 degree is too difficult for any one computer, and super computers are expensive and at a premium for time. However, when you download the BOINC software to your computer, it will run the calculations when you are not using your computer (like a screensaver) and then send the completed data back to the scientists.
• There are projects related to global climate change, the search for extra terrestrial life, prime number calculation and more. You don't have to do anything except download the software and let it do all the work. Note: this will not affect your work or privacy.
• Brainrack - Companies post challenges and how much of a reward they are willing to offer. Then students submit their ideas and they are voted on by the community. The winner gets the prize money and an awesome resume/college application blurb.
• Phylo - Support research in comparative genomics by playing this game simple enough for elementary students.

Maybe you are saying to yourself, "well this is amazing stuff but what has crowdsourcing done for me lately?" If that is you, then you might want to consider looking at crowdfunding websites like Kickstarter, where anyone can propose a project and ask the world to fund it through micropayments. 


Projects that individuals or groups were previously unable to do because of funding, are now happening. That is the fundamental lesson from crowdsourcing. Some might say the computer is taking away our humanity, but the combined power of our species connected by the Internet is making altruistic acts, discoveries, and creative expression more possible than ever before. When we choose to give our free time or resources to a worthy cause, we can make a huge difference.

Staying Connected to Parents, Friends, and finding Others to Collaborate With

We are given an incredible amount of trust. Parents who have spent years loving and raising their children are handing them over to us for 8 hours a day. Placing their hopes and dreams in our hands, allowing us the opportunity to help students grow and mature.

Multiply this situation many times over and you will have the modern day teacher's great responsibility. With so much at stake it is critical that we keep in contact with our parents so we can best understand how to help their children as well as keep them informed. It is my belief that parents will do everything they can to help their students get the best possible education they can. Parents can support with time, talent, and resources only when they best know how they can do so.

There are many great resources for communicating with your parents, each with their strengths depending on the situation. Here is a list of ways you can keep in touch with your parents.

• School Phone/Phone Call Home
• Email
• Newsletters/Letters home
• Text messages/Texting with Gmail (free)
• Facebook, Twitter, and other social media (free) note: make sure to keep a separate account from your personal account
• Skype Internet Phone 
• Strengths: Not giving out your personal number, can be used anywhere you have a computer and some phones. Video conferences are possible.
• Weakness: Only free if you are calling another Skype user.
• Google Voice
• Strengths: Not giving out your personal number, can be used anywhere you have a computer and some phones.  Video conferences are possible and calls are free in the US and Canada (confirmed until the end of the year).
• As of now you can make phone calls from within Gmail. This is the best option as of now. It should be interesting to see how this develops. Personally, I see this as a huge game changer in the communications market. 
• After installing the plugin from the link, go back to Gmail and in the chat window you will see the button Call Phone.
• Weakness: There is no assurance as to how long this will remain a service or be free for US and Canada. This service is not available for Google Apps.
• Google Translate
• While not a communication medium in and of itself it is important to be able to try and communicate across language barriers.
• Note, all translators are imperfect in its translation so do not rely to heavily upon it.

Gmail Ninja or How to Have an Empty Inbox

Do you fear signing into your email box because it looks like this?

Are you missing important emails because they just keep piling up?

Whenever I give training one-on-one or in groups, someone always stops me and says, "How do you keep your Gmail Inbox empty?"

Yes folks, I am a Gmail Ninja. I am also a huge fan of David Allen's Getting Things Done philosophy. All of us are busy and most likely we are getting emails from friends, family, colleagues and it is enough to go crazy and give up. Yet, BrokenAirplane.com is here to save the day!

Keeping your Gmail (or email in general) manageable does not require you to sit and read emails all day. In fact if you know how to use Google Search then you can find peace once again and rule email instead of the other way around.

Step 1: Open your Inbox. Sounds silly, but you would be surprised how many people are avoiding it because it is so overwhelming. Take a nice deep cleansing breath, it's going to be ok.

Step 2: Decide if you need to create labels (link to earlier post on Labels), which are like Google's Filling System. You might create labels like "Parent Emails, Funny Emails, Student Work, etc". These are completely optional, but they do help many to organize their email.

Step 3: You may wish to set up some filters. I use them when my students send me homework so they automatically go to my "Student Work" folder. Here is a link on how to setup your own filter in Gmail.

Step 4: Now the fun begins, read the first email and decide what needs to be done with it. In my opinion there are three options:

1. Delete it because it is just quick information and you no longer need it (e.g. meeting changed to 3pm, or Jimmy will be absent today). If you decide to delete an email, don't worry as Gmail will still save your deleted emails for up to 30 days before it goes away. I'll show you how to get it back in a minute.
2. File it away in a label or archive it if you will need the email later but it no longer needs to be in your inbox. (e.g. parent email, receipt from vacation airline booking, etc). In order to do this, either click Archive which saves your email in your Gmail storage but removes it from your Inbox. Or click the Move To menu button and select which label you want to file the email away to. Once again, I'll show you how to retrieve your emails in a second. Keep in mind that this process takes the email out of your Inbox but it is still stored in your Gmail as opposed to deleting it.
   
   
   
   
3. Add it to your tasks. Tasks is Gmail's built in ToDo list. I use this for those situations where I need to be reminded to do what is in the email. (e.g. grant proposal instructions, project notes to refine, Agenda for All Staff Meeting).
• Click on the Tasks button on the left to activate your Gmail Tasks.
• Now select an email that you want to add to your GTasks by checking the box next to the email.
• Click on the menu that says More Actions and then click on Add to Tasks. This will add it to your tasks with the subject of the email being the reminder. You can click on the smaller link Related Email in your tasks if you want to quickly refer to the email.
• Finally, archive the email unless you need to keep it in your Inbox.

If you have a lot of emails this initial process will take some time. However, once you have processed all of your old emails you can make the decision to delete, archive, or add to tasks in seconds without distracting yourself from your primary focus.

How to Retrieve Emails

So you have archived your emails and are biting your nails wondering where in the world did my email go? Now it is time to realize the power of having Google power your email. Once your email is archived, retrieve it by searching for it.

Right next to the big Gmail icon in the upper left is the familiar Google Search bar. Try searching for the subject, sender, text in the email, or anything else that you can remember. Gmail will quickly search through your emails and find anything that relates to your search. The more specific you are, the less results you will get so if you can't find it at first, try being more broad.

So that's it. Ok, well there is a ton more you could uncover but these steps will get you to that heavenly state called "The Empty Inbox".

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or otherwise leave a comment.

Sending Text Messages Through Gmail

Hi everyone,
 Sorry to interrupt the series but I always want to try and help someone out that needs it. The series will continue right after this post.

On the Edutopia boards there was a question about contacting parents. Many suggested sending text messages through your phones since so many people have phones and are at them more frequently than their computer.

I agree 100%, but my only concerns would be:

1. Taking the time to text each parent "Open House is at 7 pm" would take a long time.
2. Sharing your personal phone number might not be something you wish to do with your students/parents.
3. This could end up costing you in text message fees.
4. This will tie up your phone and fill up its memory rather quickly.

So my suggestion was to use your Gmail account to send the text messages. My reasons for this are:

1. You can cut and paste your text from one to another so repeating is easier.
2. Your email address will be sent out and not your personal phone number.
3. Any replies will come back to your Gmail account and not your phone which could save you a night on your phone.
4. You are not charged for the texts from Gmail
5. Gmail will store these texts in your history if you wish. This is useful if you ever need to recall or prove that you were in contact with parents.

In order to do this we are going to use our Gmail account and Google Labs. Don't let the name fool you, while they are still experimental in the sense that they are still fine tuning these add-ons, they are of high quality, reliable, and have all the same protections that Gmail offers.

Here's how you enable texting through Gmail:

1. Scroll to the bottom of your Gmail account and ensure that chat is enabled. You should see it say, "Turn Chat Off" which indicates that you chat is actually on.

2. Next look at the upper right for the green beaker. This is the button to access Google Labs.

3. Enable "SMS in Chat Gadget" and "Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat". In my opinion you should also enable  "Right Side Chat" as this saves you from having to scroll down to see your chat.

4. Scroll to the very bottom of the page and click "save changes"

You should now see on the left hand side of Gmail a section that says "Send SMS"

How to Send a Text Message in Gmail:


1. Type in the phone number you wish to send the text message to.
2. A pop up should appear that asks for the contact's name. Type in the name and click save.

You only need to do this step once for each number as it is just adding it to your chat list.

If you look at your chat window now you will see the normal green, orange, and red dots for those who are available, idle, or busy; but now you have an additional icon that looks like a tiny cell phone with the contact you just added.

3. To send the text message, click on the person's name as if you were going to have a regular Google Chat with them.

A new popup will appear just like Google Chat and you can type and hit enter to send the text.

Congratulations your text message has been sent! You can repeat the process of adding the contacts (which you only have to do once) and then just select the individual contacts for each text message.

As it mentions in the above picture. Keep in mind that each message you send will cost them the same as a regular text message (but not you) so choose your words carefully. Also to prevent spamming, you are only permitted a certain number of messages. Once they respond, that number is reset.

I hope this helps you, if you have any questions, comments, or would like help with another part of technology  and education please don't hesitate to leave a message in the comments!