The Pyre

KTOY 2018 Team at Newman University In a district, seven-seat Dodge Caravan, I began my KTOY 2018 Team adventure this week. Our team had scheduled most of our college and district visits, so it was time to meet face-to-face to nail down our collaborative message and delegate duties on the very big list of to-dos. Each team member brought something amazing to the table, and our planning session ended with success. Gil secured us the perfect room on the Newman University campus. Sam set our direction with a detailed agenda. Jamie and Sarah provided us all of their scheduling prowess. Jennifer kept us warm with snazzy jackets from her PTO, as well as her compassion for others. Megan gave us all of the #enthusiasm any team would ever need. Brad inspired us with our "Mission: Possible" theme. We all marveled at how close we felt with each other, despite the fact that most of us had only met one time before.  We all appreciated how our individual talents naturally dovetailed...

Developing lifelong reading habits in my students has always been a goal of mine. Along the way, other educators have inspired me with their reflections on evoking lifelong reading habits, including Donalyn Miller. I read Reading in the Wild a few years ago, but what I learned from this book continues to inform my teaching today. Shortly after reading this book, I collaborated with a colleague to create a framework for developing lifelong reading habits, which I shared in this blog post . I've been honing this framework every year since its inception. I'm sure I'll never be completely satisfied, but I hope that my efforts will pay off for my students for years to come. This quarter, my students and I have been making reading goals and monitoring our progress towards those goals. While readers make all kinds of reading goals, I started simple: I asked my students to make reading goals based on pages read by mid-November and the end of the semester. Then, they went back ...

I'm not gonna lie to you: the day Jessica Skoglund came up to me and said, "Let's have our students make collaborative documentaries," I was more than skeptical. But if you know Jessica Skoglund, you know that she makes amazing things happen by sheer force of will. And so, I began my first deep dive into  PBL  in the summer of 2017. Throughout the summer months, members of my PLC and I collaborated to bring together students' summer reading , current events in the state, and even a documentary from our own professional development. Most importantly, we wanted to provide students an opportunity to sharpen their skills and share their thoughts on education to an authentic audience. Thus, A Whole New School was born! Ready . . . Our first challenge was making sure students had the opportunity to build their background knowledge and skill sets required to pull off mini-documentaries. Our team felt well-equipped to do this in many areas--but we lacked th...

Why read? As a high school English teacher, teaching students WHY to read is just as important as HOW to read. Inspired by Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher , I dedicate class time to developing lifelong reading habits in class. The first habit is seeking out and self-selecting reading material. One of the most important things I can do to support this habit is model it, so I show students how I use GoodReads as a method for finding books. I use this website (or app on my phone) nearly every week. If somebody I know suggests a book that sounds interesting, I add that book to my To-Read shelf on GoodReads. I currently have 70 books on this shelf, so when I retire, I have LOTS of options for reading material! In fact, while students were using GoodReads in class, I noticed a few of them rated This is Where It Ends   by Marieke Nikamp    highly. As I asked them about the book, it captured my attention, so now, this book is on my To-Read shelf! Some students don't...

What did I learn? As my students learned about how to research their problem, I learned a great deal about teaching research skills. Teaching research is hard. Students link it's a linear process where people start with a question and then they find sources that will give them the answer. Instead, it's an incessantly circular process where sources give different perspectives and sometimes even more questions. On top of that, good teaching means making sure students question sources, especially those on the Internet. In the past, I've used CARRDS to teach students about assessing the accuracy of internet sources. The steps of the acronym are great, but it does seem a little repetitive and long. This year, I used CRAP instead, and I liked being able to say "Don't use CRAPpy sources." More importantly, the acronym is shorter and simpler. Most importantly, I learned that I need to model HOW to assess sources with the CRAP rubric, as well as provide students...

Why a survey? In the research portion of my Soul Force project , I found many stories from schools across the nation that have been impacted since the election. I also found a great deal of data, mostly collected through surveys of the nation as a whole. What I didn't find is what's happening here at ONW. Sure, I hear comments and receive reports from students about conflicts--but there was nothing that gave me a big picture of ONW. Thus, instead of interviewing somebody who is an "expert" in my problem, I decided to survey the student body. I can't think of a more credible and authoritative source than the students who walk down the halls everyday. What did the survey tell me? I am still compiling the results of ONW's 2016-2017 Climate Survey, but so far, I'm not surprised by the data. Overall, ONW is a great school with great students and great staff, and the data supports this claim. The key takeaway from the partial results has been the data fo...

Why My Problem Is Relevant February 2017 Vandalism at Shawnee Mission East If a picture speaks a thousand words, I think this picture totally nails why the problem of school climate after the election is important. While team rivalry and vandalism existed way before the election, graffiti such "Hilary Won LOL" and the swastikas refer to the backlash that's occurred since the election. There's no doubt that this election has fueled contempt . What Questions Lingered The questions that lingered after my pre-search were "How does school climate affect learning?" and "How can school climate be improved?". I felt my pre-search process revealed a clear picture of the rise in bullying, harassment, and assault in schools before, during, and after the election. I don't think just these problems are just going away on their own, so my research focused mostly on why school climate is important and how to improve it. What Source Addre...

This summer, I watched We Are Superman for the first time with a dozen other educators across the metro area who all shared my passion for teaching and writing. As we learned about the history of Kansas City together, my mind kept wandering: how could I use this documentary in my classroom to launch students into the kind of literacy-based problem solving shown in the film? Just a few months later, here I am in a cape--ready to introduce my students to the documentary and their new roles as superheroes. But wait . . . as inspiring as the activists in the documentary are, I knew that my students needed me to guide them along the way. And this isn't the time for me to pretend I know all of the answers. Pick a Problem Just like my students, I began my Soul Force project by picking a problem that bugs me: school climate. No, I don't mean how hot or cold the school is; I mean how "safe" the school is for students physically and emotionally. One of the reasons...