Looking to make changes in your classroom? Book rec: Shift This!

By Kim Miklusak

Are you looking for a way to shake up your classroom space or instructional practices?  Are you a mid-career or veteran teacher who is looking for a new way to accomplish your classroom goals?  Are you a new teacher looking for a way to start off your practice in a new way?  Pick up the book Shift This by Joy Kirr!

I first "met" Joy when I attended the ISTE Conference in Atlanta...except Joy wasn't even there that year!  I went to a session on #GeniusHour, another name for a very similar practice of the 20% Time Project that I was hoping to implement for a unit in our American Literature course.  I connected with Joy via Twitter and found out that quite by chance she teaches in a district right near mine.  She was only too happy to meet, share her resources on her Live Binder site, and connect me with others who were doing similar projects.  This one shift in one of my units has influenced my teaching over the past few years as elements of it have seeped into more of my courses.

Image used with permission of the author

But that wasn't the only lesson I picked up from interacting with Joy on Twitter.  She has systematically moved to make her classroom space more student-centered, getting rid of her desk, having student working stations, and even broadcasting student voice and work on Twitter.  I made little steps: I moved my desk to the side, I opened my closet for students to take their own supplies...and eventually I moved to getting rid of my desk.  These little changes over the years have made such a difference.

Most recently I have picked up from Joy the importance of #First5Days.  What we do in the first week of our classroom sets the stage for our year.  Do we review rules?  Or do we jump right into getting to know students or starting our learning.  Every little shift makes the difference.

Book Review

Image used with permission of the author

The best thing about all of this is that Joy then went and put all of her excellent and practical ideas into her book.  Each chapter centers on a different area: classroom environment, homework, grading, student-directed learning, and more.  She shares her stories in her own voice and describes the processes she went through to change.  She acknowledges it isn't always easy but stresses that we don't all have to shift at once or even shift in every area.

But what she does do is start each chapter with questions that we as teachers may have that we hope to consider and resolve.  She then provides very clear examples of how she has done this in her classroom (including some photos!), external resources for more information, and note taking sections for us to reflect on our own practices.

Next Steps

If you're interested in more information, I would begin by following Joy on Twitter.  And if you'd like to do more of a book study with a virtual learning cohort, please reach out to the CollabLab as we will be doing a book study and chat with Joy and peers over three weeks starting in April.

Engaging the Unengaged

By Linda Ashida


For the tenth in our 2017-18 series of Teaming On Tuesdays, Sean Mulcrone facilitated a follow-up session from the workshop he led for our October 16th Institute Day.

Sean facilitated a conversation that engaged the 17 staff who attended––including teachers, students services staff and instructional aides––in a rich conversation to share challenges, solutions and resources to help us foster a culture of learning to engage all of our students. Specifically, we focused on strategies to engage our most un-engaged students.






Check out the photos below to see all the ideas we brainstormed on the Collab Lab Whiteboard wall:

Many of the ideas we shared align with our school goals of creating a culture of learning and mastery, and building relationships with our students.  That is, we talked about how important it is to reflect on and communicate explicitly the "Why?" ––The purpose–– for the activity or lesson we are teaching, and how it connects to the broader learning of the unit, and real-world skills when possible. We also talked about the importance of building relationships and connections with students to better understand the root cause of the challenging behaviors or lack of engagement.

To curate all of the ideas shown in the photos above, and to facilitate our ongoing conversation––and to share our learning more broadly with those who were unable to attend––we created a Google Doc (of course, we did! :-)

Check it out here: http://tinyurl.com/EngageAllStudents

The doc is editable so please feel free to add your own ideas, resources, and questions!

 

It was great to bring staff together who don't otherwise have this opportunity during the school day to connect with colleagues across departments and roles.  It was also really great to get to know each other better and I believe we all left with new insights; everyone concurred that we should keep the conversation going and meet again.

So, stay tuned for news of future Teaming on Tuesdays when we will continue the conversation, including dates when we will invite students to join us as we have so much to learn from their perspective and insights!

We can't end this post without a S/O to Sean! We're grateful for his willingness to facilitate professional learning experiences for our Institute Days, Teaming on Tuesdays and the days in-between!