New Books and Old Friends in NYC

Yesterday I traveled to New York City for the day to surprise someone very special: my dear friend Monica Edinger.  She was reading and signing her new book, Africa Is My Home, a historical fiction story about Sarah Margru Kinson who was a child on the Amistad.

I taught with Monica for five years at The Dalton School, during the time she was writing this book.  We actually used preview versions to teach forced immigration as part of a larger immigration curriculum.  Monica mentored and supported me in the early years of my teaching career, and I owe a lot of what I know to her!  

The publishing of this book is a great accomplishment that took years of research, writing, and waiting.  It is a wonderful story with beautiful illustrations.  If you teach about forced immigration or the Atlantic slave trade, this text is essential.  Perfect for upper elementary students it brings to life the horror and the hope of the Amistad captives' experience, while emphasizing the resilient strength of the human spirit. 

Yay Monica! I am so proud of you!  And I am making everyone buy a copy.  

Photos: Algebraic Reasoning in 4th Grade

Proactively Teaching Digital Citizenship

The children are connected and online.   And now they are connected not just at home, but in school too.  With powerful tools, students are ever more able to find out what they want to know, to share that knowledge with people around the world, and to actualize their own ideas.   How does the role of the teacher evolve in the connected classroom?  Teaching with iPads has challenged me in ways I wasn't expecting and keeps me on my toes because while it's reasonable to expect a 10 year old to teach themselves to use a camera or an app, it is our job to teach them how to do what they are capable of well and responsibly.

I feel this responsibility most when we are discussing digital citizenship.  In the fourth grade we want our kids to be online in ways that are meaningful, but "Safety" and "Privacy" are illusions.  We can't promise to protect our students from all of the possible troubles being online brings, as much as we would like to.  We can teach students to proactively use technology in a wise and kind way.  We can teach them to decide what kind of mark they want to leave before saving, sending, or posting.  We can teach them to be good digital citizen.

Our fourth grade curriculum has a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, digital citizenship program that is co-taught by classroom teachers, our technology coordinator, and our librarian.  Good digital citizenship is not just an individual aspiration, it is a community necessity.   Ideas and norms are reinforced by all of the other adults and students in the building as we all work with the same lessons and language. Consistency is important in a connected school.  The expectations have to be the same for everyone whether they are 4 or 40.

 iPad Rollout Training Sessions and "Just In Time" Lessons

Our first sessions with the iPad are designed to introduce the technology (without assuming every child has had the same level of experience with the device) and its power.  After exploring the buttons and icons, we talk about what our tech coordinator calls "the most powerful app", the camera.  We spend time role playing different scenarios where a photo of someone might need to be taken and how to gain permission from others to take those photos.  Children are given the power and language to say no: they don't want to be photographed or they don't approve of an image or they aren't comfortable with how the photographer intends to use it.  Our class came up with norms and an agreement that we have posted and will refer to throughout the year.

This exercise made the teachers rethink how we document what is happening in the class (often taking pictures of kids in action without asking their permission).  We also developed a contract and those children who don't mind us taking their pictures for our Haiku page or this blog have signed it.  Those who are not comfortable did not and we do not feature them in any photos or video.

We are now preparing for training in Google Drive and our school Email system.  We will spend some time explaining how to use these accounts for our work flows, but we will also touch on the idea that these are their "professional" accounts to be used for school business.  We will review the major points of our school's responsible use policy, and we will practice email etiquette.

Our classroom generally suggests that students not email other students with their Sidwell Friends account unless it is school and work related.  We don't have the capacity to truly restrict their access so we do it on an honor system, and last year it worked fairly well.  This recommendation is always a debate, but it exists out of respect for different policies about email access among our families and to discourage writing and answering personal emails during the school day.  Fourth graders are also still learning to manage offline relationships and need to practice asking for playdates, joking, and apologizing in person.

Our technology coordinator is also developing a series of "just in time" lessons that will be touchstones throughout the year.  The topics include integrity, balance, and digital sharing.  With this model in place we are prepared to address any new situations that arise.  We hope that starting this dialogue in elementary school will impact our students' choices later on and that common language and experiences will enable them to navigate future opportunities with compassion and respect.

Project Redwood Literacy Connection

For the past two years, we have developed an interdisciplinary literature unit using a book called Operation Redwood by S. Terrell French, a SFS alum.

We have also used Nim's Island.  These books are taught as pieces of literature and we explore the characters, settings, plots, and themes. Sustainability and stewardship connections are made, and students do research about the plight of the California Redwoods.  The characters also engage in questionable digital activities, which gives our students a chance to collectively discuss and evaluate such behavior in a meaningful way.  With lessons co-developed and taught by our librarian, technology coordinator, and the classroom teachers, students are fully supported as they grow their sense of citizenship in our digital world.

Using Terrain Models to Teach Geography

One of the best things I took away from Bank Street College of Education was a plasticine terrain model I made in Sam Brian's class about teaching social studies. This unit and activity challenges me to make the mundane interactive and interesting. Through this work children can better understand the land and water around them.

I remember being not that small and imagining that the Hawaiian islands my family vacationed on were anchored by chains to keep them from floating away. I had no idea they were attached to the ocean floor. 

Last year I watched one of my students come to the same realization and was reminded of the importance of giving students a chance to understand even those most basic things we adults take for granted. 

Working together we examine mountain, river, and coastline phenomena, developing language to describe what we are looking at.  There were many debates and students worked hard to explain their reasoning, making connections and drawing on personal experiences and knowledge about real places in the world.  

We had a handy picture dictionary to help. 

My student's favorite part is to place little block houses on the model just before we flood it. They love seeing who gets washed away and who stays put against the tide. 

We are going to flood it again Monday. They are planning to bring in little trees and people to enhance it. They want to try a different colored water to make it brackish.  I am just thrilled they are seeing our little fake island as their own.

The Art of Squares

First we made an array museum:

The we talked about squares:

Then we made them into art:

Prepping Tomorrow's Lesson

On geography language and terms!

Teaching Without Ego

What would it mean to

TEACH WITHOUT EGO?

Since returning from Lake Qinghai and the grasslands of Tibet. I have been contemplating this idea deeply, using it as a mantra to keep me grounded in a variety of scenarios.

Because, as a teacher, it's amazing how often I bump into my ego.  Not to mention the egos of my colleagues.  The worst is when you encounter two egos in the hallway duking it out, however politely. You know it's time to back away slowly.

What is "ego"?  It is a projection of the self, a self that is separate and different and special from the other selves in this world.  It is the source of identity and self esteem.  It is the driver of the question, "Who am I?"  Its importance is culturally constructed and particularly celebrated in modern America. 



It is also divisive and a barrier to compassion.  It is at the root of exclusion, indifference, and hate.  It breeds insecurity, fear, jealousy, and competition.   And as teachers,  it can be a detriment to our practice.

There are a good articles on this idea, from teachers of various disciplines:

"...the role of teacher is one in which you gain satisfaction through observing the learning of your pupils."

 "...one needs to teach with as little ego involvement as possible." 

But it's hard.  Because don't we teach who we are?  Don't we need to "guide [students] with a strong sense of self?"

The danger is this:

The ego can exist in two states – one, wherein it is aligned with the higher consciousness and the other, where it is not in alignment with this consciousness.

When the ego is aligned with the higher consciousness, there is just a quiet assertion of the individual self in a particular direction, which it knows intuitively is right for the fulfilment of its life purpose. This assertion is based on love and faith and leads to a harmonious state of goodwill and cooperation for the greater common good. When it is not aligned with the higher consciousness, the ego can really wreak havoc. It can misguide and misinterpret. Propelled by emotions based on fear and insecurity, it can cause action motivated by the desire for applause, attention, getting ahead of competition, reaching the finishing line first, proving one’s superiority over others, etc. Here, the ego is intensely conscious of the other and derives its identity in comparison with the other. The individual self asserts itself purely from the need to create a position of unassailability from which it cannot be dislodged.

~ Sangeeta Menon, "Are Teachers Allowed an Ego?"

"The inviolable principle must be that the interests of the student must at all times be foremost..."

When I joined my current school I entered into a team teaching situation that I greatly underestimated for its difficulty.  I have come to realize that 99% of any angst I feel at work can be traced back to my ego.  Desires to be recognized, respected, and right can be strong. Self-preservation seems sensible and competition seems healthy.  A twinge of resentment over a close relationship or individually achieved success seems normal. Suspicion of new colleagues and initiatives seems expected. Giving priority to the activities and topics I prefer seems logical. But when these emotional responses interfere with my ability to focus on what is best for my students and their learning, my ego is the one that needs to back down.  

In those moments I am learning not to fight, not to defend, not to protect, not to promote.  I am learning to let go.  When "I" am at the center of my practice, the world my students and I are creating together feels fragile and destabilized, tilted in the direction of a self-concerned perspective.  When my students are at the center of my practice, our world seems infinitely more solid.

In pursuing this idea, I meditate on these questions:

• In what ways does my ego support  the development of my teaching practice?
• In what ways does my ego impede the development of my teaching practice?
• In what ways does my ego improve my relationships with students and colleagues?
• In what ways does my ego make relationships with students and colleagues more difficult?
• In what ways can I work with greater compassion?