Ch-ch-ch-changes (with apologies to David Bowie)

Another school year is rapidly drawing to a close, marking the completion of my 22nd year as an educator. For a variety of reasons, it's been one of the longest and most difficult years of my career, and one that is most notably marked by a change in employment. Next year I will find myself in another school district at a whole different grade level: for the first time in a long time I'll be teaching middle school again. Come next fall, I'll be standing in front of a group of sixth grade IB students. While I am saddened by leaving the students and faculty where I currently am employed, and I will miss them terribly, at the same time, I am very excited to meet my new students and co-workers.

The new challenges will be a great opportunity for me to grow as a professional and as a person. The advantage for my students is that since I've taught at the high school level, and having taught IB at the high school level, I know where they are headed and what is in store for them, and so I can help to get them ready for that transition. I've already downloaded sixth grade vocabulary and book lists, and have been running through potential lessons and scenarios in my mind.

I've certainly enjoyed my time as a high school educator. I've worked with some outstanding young men and women (and some outstanding not so young men and women... heh), and I've learned quite a lot. For a while, I resisted the change; there is comfort in familiarity, change represents real risk and is scary. Yet everything kept pointing me in that direction, and the harder I pushed against it, the harder I was pushed toward it. And yet when I think back on my previous years as a junior high/middle school teacher, it is almost always with a smile and a bit of warmth: I genuinely like working with middle school students and find them to be quite a lot of fun.

The other challenge will be figuring out which technological tools will be useful for my students and which ones won't. There are some that in the past I neglected since they were "too young" for my 9th, 10th, and 11th grade students that I will now likely find very useful. I will look at others to see if they are "too old" for my 6th graders or if they can be adapted for use within the middle school classroom. Of course, this is assuming I'll have at least semi-regular access to technology.

So many questions as I venture forth into new and uncharted horizons, yet I'm filled with a sense of adventure and excitement. This year will end bittersweet for me, but the next year is filled with promise and excitement. My next big adventure awaits!

Here we go!

Another year has started! This makes year #22 for me, which is still weird when I think about it. This is the first year in new building, and aside from pretty sketchy wifi, it's been really exciting to be in it at last. It's also our first year in Academies and with a new dress code, both of which seem to be going decently well, at least in the I.B. Academy, anyway. We even made the news, which was kind of neat. I was particularly pleased that I didn't walk into the lcd monitor or trip over anything while on camera, so I'm taking that as a good omen for the year. (ha ha!)

This week was a hectic week for my students. On Monday we took a reading inventory so I would have a decent sense of where my students' reading levels were, then spent Tuesday giving a basic IB1o1 to my students. Yesterday and today we were in the library getting familiar with some of the various tools we'll be using this year: the class webpage, the class blogs, our class and Academy Ning pages, Edmodo, and Coveritlive. My goal was to address some ISTE NETS standards this week, so I focused on collaborative and communication tools.

The only real disappointments came when I received some emails this week that essentially asked me to set aside what I had planned in favor of someone else's agenda; particularly aggravating when those other people don't even deal with my students on a day to day basis. I am certainly flexible and willing to roll with changes, but when those changes are essentially dropped in my lap and the message (intended or otherwise) is "Yes, thank you for planning out your lessons so carefully, but we need you to do THIS right now," I tend to react negatively. A little heads up would be nice. Ah, well. Such is the nature of education sometimes, regardless of how frustrating it is.

Still and all, a good week and an auspicious start!!

Set your presentations on fire

My students are preparing to give their presentations on renewable energy and what they have learned from reading Plan B 3.0 and related readings. I've decided that this time around, I'm going to have them use the Ignite format for their presentations. Basically what that means is that they will be given five minutes and 20 slides (that automatically rotate every 15 seconds) to present their ideas. The students are in various stages of pseudo-panic about this: some think five minutes is so long, others say that there is no way they can present in that short a time. I think this format will work really well. I like the structure this promises, and I also think that teaching them to be concise in their delivery will prove invaluable.

I have become pretty hooked on Edmodo. I've started using feeds for some of the groups I've used and I've discovered that when you put in a link to a video, it actually embeds it in the message... very nice! The next pieces of tech I want to master is OpenZine. OpenZine is basically a way to design and publish online magazines. OpenZine definitely represents some cool possibilities for my classes next year; I'm already thinking about the possibilities for class and IB Academy magazines. (Cross posted to the Global Learners blog.)

IB authorization, Farmers Market, live blogs, and audio/video blogs!

It's that time of year again! The first Boulder County Farmers Market was this past Saturday, and I attended of course, in spite of the snow. The turnout was pretty light, for both the farmers and the customers, which was understandable considering that the forecast had called for a huge blizzard. It was great to see the farmers again, many of whom I consider friends of a sort.

Life in the classroom continues to take interesting and cool twists and turns. A student in my epistemology class asked if he could record his blog entries as a podcast and upload them or post the link to the class blog site; it then became an overall discussion, and it was agreed that a 3-5 minute podcast or video would be appropriate for the blog entries. I was impressed with the students' initiative and since oral presentations are a part of the class anyway, it wasn't hard to get me to go along with the idea.

The first live blogging session for the epistemology class is today. Topic: What's wrong with modern man? Should be interesting.

I've rescheduled the live blogging session for my MYP classes. The new date is Thursday, April 16. The times are:
Block 2: 8:30 a.m. -9:15 a.m.
Block 3: 9:30 a.m. -10:20 a.m.
Block 4: 11:15 a.m. -12:05 p.m.
Block 5: 12:20 p.m. - 1:10 p.m.

The topic: Within the realms of food, transportation, and housing, what have you done or what are you doing to lessen your impact on the planet and what goals do you have along those same lines?

The epistemology class will also be live blogging on April 16 at 1:30 p.m. (Mountain Time; GMT-7) for our next live blog. Topic: “In order to find out how things really are, one must understand the filters through which one perceives the world.” Discuss and evaluate this claim. The link for this blog is here.

If you can/want to join us, simply click on the class period to be taken directly to the page.

In other very cool news, the school where I work has been authorized for the IB DP program. That means that we can now offer the full MYP/DP sequence here at the high school, and it means that our district is one of the few in the world to offer the full K-12 IB program. Pretty sweet.

Education in the 21st Century: Teachers Without Borders

(Teachers Without Borders provided the logo exclusively for educational purposes and is not an endorsement of comments or opinions on site.)

I recently joined Teachers Without Borders (TWB), an organization of teachers committed to enacting global change through education. TWB goes a bit beyond professional networking sites like the Global Education Collaborative and Classroom 2.0 in that Teachers Without Borders offers opportunities for professional development and even mentorship on an international level, and it possesses the ability to identify and support educational leaders who are willing to put the effort in to making a difference. It’s interesting to see the number of organizations that have developed around international collaboration between educators and students. Teachers Without Borders promises to take training and collaboration to a level beyond mere networking. Like Doctors Without Borders, Teachers Without Borders is a nonprofit dedicated to bridging cultural and geographic gaps for the betterment of humankind; unlike Doctors Without Borders, which is a centralized organization, TWB is decentralized and more driven by its members. It’s also one of the few organizations whose focus is the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, and recognizes that teachers are on the front line of world change. Going beyond mere networking, TWB has specific goals and a plan for affecting change through education. (Best part is that membership is free!) For the rest of this entry, please go here.

November!!!

Hard to believe that it's November already. The last farmers' market of the year was yesterday, so I did a little stocking up, said goodbye to the farmers and told them that I would see them come April. It's a little sad, but I'm sure farmers are looking forward to a little bit of a rest. It's going to be quite strange this Saturday, though, when I don't get up at the crack of dawn to be in Boulder for my scone and coffee at the market before getting my produce picked out and bought. For the first time in a long time I can take my time getting out of bed and getting my groceries for the week.

Term 1 is over in 12 days. Last week I got confirmation that I'm going to be in the IB Academy, which is really exciting. I am a huge believer in the IB program and what it can do for our students, so to be a part of the IB Academy at ACHS is amazing and great. A group of my students have chosen to be in an IB-influenced class starting term 2. Once we obtain authorization, they will be officially designated an IB English class, so that will be cool as well, but in the meantime I plan to get them well acquainted with various IB concepts like the Areas of Interaction, Learner Profile, the Personal Project, and the like. I can't wait!

"Mr., what's the definition of truth?": Adventures in Epistemology

I think I've mentioned before that I'm teaching an cross-cultural studies/epistemology class this year. It's a junior/senior level class, and I've been borrowing from the IB Theory of Knowledge (TOK) curriculum for supplemental material for the class. This week's blog question asked the students to address whether or not truth is culturally based or if there are some truths that are universal. One of the students read the question, then looked at me and said, "What is the definition of truth?" And so began the class. At first, he stated that he was interested in the literal definition, but then found that the literal definition wasn't helpful and didn't give him the information he was really looking for, and so as a class, we began to discuss the philosophical side of the question. It was an amazing class period: the conversation ranged from culture to politics to semantics to science to religion and so forth. By the end of the class, we still hadn't answered the question, but one student acknowledged that she knew I wasn't going to answer the question, that the whole point of the class was to get them to ask the question and to think about it rather than answer it.

The student that asked the question was a student that I've had for the past two years and was in my IB-influenced class, so I wasn't surprised by the question, but very pleased to see that the seeds I had been planting for two years were beginning to bear fruit. It speaks well of the MYP program and speaks to the importance and urgency of implementing it here if our DP students are to be successful. I am fairly convinced that the encouragement to think differently in his freshman and sophomore years led him to begin the questioning that led him to asking that question in class today. He got bonus points from me for asking it, with the hope that he will ask more, and that other students will pick up on it and begin asking similar questions as well.

This is the realm where I function best, really. While I acknowledge that I do well working with freshmen and sophomores, I also flourish when placed into an environment where I can explore the "deeper" and less "traditional" questions in a class. I guess that's why in the long run, I definitely plan to apply to be in the IB Academy at the new school (this isn't exactly a state secret- I've been saying that since we found out about the Academies), for both MYP and IB TOK.

More importantly, however, it shows that providing a continuum of IB style teaching and learning definitely sets a student up for success within IB. I'm really excited about the implications for IB within the district, especially since the ultimate goal is a K-12 IB program. IB is an amazing program, and we have amazing students, so we're perfect match! :-)

Goals for the year

I'm going to be giving my students weekly blog topics to write about, and I will be writing my own entries along with them... after all, that's only fair, really.

This week's question is: What are your goals for this year both as a student and in general? Well, since I'm not a student this year, I will instead address my goals from a professional point of view as well as a more personal one.

Professionally, I have several goals, really. First, I want to become much more adept at the use of technology in my classroom. I am working on a few lessons involving the Smart Board in my room, but I haven't actually used it yet, and I feel a little guilty about that. I haven't nailed the podcast thing yet, which is fairly disappointing, but I'm working on putting up a podcast/PowerPoint for my students on how to get their blogs set up, and my goal for that is to have it done by the end of the week. I'm thinking of recording tomorrow's lesson on the 11 sentence paragraph as well, so that should also be available soon. I would also like to attend an IB Extended Essay training this year, so that I can be fully up and running for everything I'm going to be teaching once we are an official IB World School.

On the coaching side, my goal is to continue to build and strengthen the program. We had a great veterans' meeting yesterday, and the students continue to push themselves even higher than previous students have. I'm very encouraged by what I'm seeing, and I think this year promises to be an amazing year for the team.

Of course, there is also the book club for the students and faculty that I want to start up, and I need to get the cycling program moving again as well.

Personally... hmm. This one's always a little tougher in some ways. First, I want to become more adept at cooking Tibetan and Vietnamese foods. I've cooked a few things from the Tibetan cookbook I picked up, but I haven't hit up the Vietnamese one yet; I need to get moving on that.

It's also a goal of mine to be able to keep up not just with this blog, but also with the Elephant Journal blog entries and reviews that I've been doing. I really enjoy doing the reviews and working with the magazine, though I haven't published an article in a while... I would like to get at least one more article in print in addition to the online reviews and blogs.

In general, though, I want to continue to learn about as much as I can about as many different topics as I can. I really love to learn new things, and I see learning as a celebration of life and what it has to offer. I haven't picked out my next book yet, but as I certainly have plenty to choose from, I don't see that as a problem... except knowing which one to choose, of course!

Oh yeah... another personal goal: I really want to get more consistent with both my meditation and yoga practices. Both of these really help to keep me centered, and I can always feel it when I start to drift. I didn't do a great job of that this summer, and so I need to put more effort into that.

Wow... I have several goals, which isn't a bad thing, I don't think. Of course, these will continue to grow and change as some get met and new ones develop, but I think that's a good start.