Five Things I Learned In The Colablab

By Joe Bush

During the first eight days of school, I intentionally went to the collablab each day to connect with one of the DTC’s.  Below is a summary of all of the things I have learned from my meetings:

1.    Does it increase student learning?

I asked Mark Heintz to help me “jazz” up a worksheet that I was making.  We talked about formatting, layout and font color.  Then after a few minutes, Mark asked if the new images would increase student learning.  I answered by saying “probably not.”  Mark then asked, why I was worried about spending so much more time designing something that won’t increase student learning. What I took away from that is a lesson I had learned years ago.  The lesson was this: Don’t spend too much time working outside your strength zone.  My strengths are far from anything artistic, and because I can make a halfway decent looking worksheet that will get the job done, spending time trying to do something to make it look too much better is not time well spent.

2.    Students will internalize information more when they share it with each other.

Kirsten Fletcher and I got on the subject of my son’s dual language school.  She pointed out that if he were really going to understand Spanish, it would require him to use it with his friends.  Friends create a special motivation that teachers and parents can’t necessarily replicate.   I took that same idea into my leadership class.  If students are going to practice being leaders, there needs to be a social incentive.  Rather than just hearing the lessons from me, students need to practice their leadership skills with one another. 

3.    Linking Schoology accounts

Quinn Loch showed me how to link Schoology accounts so when I add an assignment to one class, it automatically adds it to another class. This saved me so much time. 

4.    Storify

If you are looking to take all of your twitter hash tags and move them into one succinct location, use Storify.  This will help tell the story of a class, or a topic or any other idea.  It is quick, easy and effective.  

5.    We work with great people

As the year quickly settles in, don’t forget that we work with some amazing people.  I have found that I can learn so much from my colleagues by just asking questions.  Open up a dialog and see what happens. I did not intend to learn any of the previous four points, but they naturally evolved by stopping by the CollabLab.  Check it out, and see what you can learn.

Guest Post: Adding Value to People

By Joe Bush

In February of 2015, I was fortunate enough to attend the John Maxwell Team Leadership Certification Program.  It was the best professional development I ever experienced, and the knowledge I learned from that conference fundamentally altered they way in which I teach.  The most important pieces of information that I took away from the three-day conference are as follows: 1. The best leaders are those who have the greatest influence, 2. Leaders need to serve, 3. Leaders need to add value to people and 4. Expectations drive beliefs and beliefs drive behavior.

As a teacher, I have always considered myself a leader. However, for much of my career, I was a positional leader.  A positional leader is someone who leads because someone else gave them a position.  An example might be an NFL head coach who was handpicked by the owner, but is unable to influence the players.  That type of teacher rarely has success in the classroom because they use their position to hold it over students.  After hearing John Maxwell (The Number One Leadership Guru in the World) speak, I began to think differently about teaching.  If I were going to truly change the minds and hearts of students and educate them they way that I saw fit, I was going to need to serve them.  The second part was adding value to the lives of the students. 

I would like to explain more on the notion of serving others and adding value through an example.  This year I was blessed with the opportunity to teach a leadership through service course.  What I quickly realized was that my students had great ideas, were already influential in their own circles and they all loved to serve.  After hearing Maxwell speak I realized that instead of pushing my own leadership agenda at the beginning of the year I should have focused on helping each student become more influential using their own strengths.  For some it may have been through public speaking, others it was through organization and still others just needed encouragement.  After coming back from the conference, I quickly changed my agenda in time to help the students succeed in our St. Baldrick’s charity drive.  As I incorporated Maxwell’s ideas, I could quickly see how the students grew in an explosive fashion.  I helped my students enhance what they already did well. 

The final piece to the puzzle was the idea that expectations drive belief and belief drives behavior. Motivational speaker and entrepreneur Paul Martinelli talked about how he overcame stuttering and the fact that he was a high school dropout to build several million-dollar businesses.  Paul said that belief drives behavior.  Therefore, if we think we are stupid, our behaviors are stupid.  However, because expectations drive beliefs, as a teacher it is our job to set expectations for our students to live up to.   When we set those expectations, hold students accountable and provide supports to assist them, students achieve more.

What I found to be the best part of the Maxwell training was the fact that serving and adding value to others is something that can be done regardless of your position. Maxwell says, “Everything rises and falls on leadership.”  This is true because leadership is influence.  So, regardless of your position, you can always strive to be more influential, thus becoming a better leader.   Going forward, I will strive to add value to my students right from the start.  Each year will be different based on the different needs of students, but the lessons learned from that conference will forever change the way I think, lead and teach. 

Energizing the Mid-Career Teacher

By Kim Miklusak

We have all perhaps seen a variation of this chart during our teaching career: phases of first-year teachers' attitude toward teaching.  It makes sense, and it makes new (and veteran!) teachers feel less isolated in their attitudes as the year goes on.  There is a natural progression to things, and it is something we can be conscious of and try to address and prevent.  See this image here:
Graphic from http://www.newteachercenter.org/

There has been a lot of talk in the past ten plus years--but again recently--about new teacher retention: its costs, its causes, its remedies.  I think it's vital to have these conversations about new teachers.  However, I think another conversation we need to be having is mid-career teacher retention--or, more specifically, mid-career teacher re-invigoration.

I wonder what the above chart looks like across the span of a career.  I'm sure there are many peaks and valleys for a variety of reasons both internal and external to each individual.  I wonder how we can support mid-career teachers as we do new teachers to help them connect to other educators, to continue to grow as experts in their field, and to help them find new avenues to learn.

One way is for teachers to make those connections on their own whether that be through Twitter, conferences, EdCamps, etc.  I think another way is for teachers to start finding ways to publish their own writing and reflection be that in journals, websites, or their own blog!  Another way is for schools to facilitate this re-invigoration.  This past week our school held Spark Sessions and a Mini-EdCamp at our first In-Service day in addition to the teacher-led sessions held at our Institute Days.  In addition, administrators both in-building and at the district are working with many mid-career and new teachers to branch out into new roles and help guide new and existing initiatives.  I hope that all schools follow this lead and spend their resources in some of these ways as well in order to connect to new and veteran teachers.  While it's true that teachers can hit a groove in mid-career and be left on their own, it's also a time to be sure to find ways to remain energized and constantly reflect and grow!

Skilled Workers

By Mark Heintz

On Monday, April 6, 2015, our district had an in-service day.  In the new contract signed last year, our Education Association and District Administration agreed to add an in-service day to the school calendar.  The day's intent was to allow teachers time to digitally convert their curriculum.   The day was great!  In the early stages of planning, I might have been a nay-sayer, but thanks to @Ashida_Linda and @MrsMiklusak, their wisdom prevailed.   In the morning,  spark sessions were given from a variety of staff members on topics from flipped classroom to the use of stop motion videos. The spark sessions flowed to two hours of EdCamp. You can read more about it here.  

Not to change subjects, but recently my history classes finished learning about the industrial revolution.  I can't help but make the connection between the in-service day and industrialization.  No, I am not talking about horrible working conditions or child labor.  I am writing on the needs for educated workers and the development of skilled laborers to work in factories.  People needed to be educated to work the complicated machines and perform a specialized job.

The in-service day showed how teaching has become increasingly skilled.  With the proliferation of technology and the ease of accessing information, teachers are shifting their role. New brain research drives educators to understand what methods work better to maximize learning.  Brain research coupled with new technology, it is hard to stay current with both the brain research and the technology.   The pedagogical techniques to meld these two together are difficult skills to master. The in-service day was great way to allow teachers to see a variety of new techniques and hear the latest brain research on effective teaching.  It was even better because the day allowed for time to development, collaborate, explore and create materials for their classroom from the new understandings they received at the beginning portion of the day.

A final thought: the day reminded my of a scene from Scrubs where two doctors are talking about how hard it is to stay up on the current research and how times have changed.  I have only been teaching for nine years, and the changes are drastic from when I first began.  I am fortunate to be in a school and district that has so many support systems in place to provide the tools and knowledge to become even more specialized and skilled in the art of teaching.  The teachers I work with constantly push me to new understandings of students and different ways to approach the subject matter.  I work in a school where teachers share ideas constantly.  It makes it easier to grow and stay current in a world that is ever changing.

In-Service Day Preview: Spark Sessions & EdCamp

This Monday the CollabLab will help facilitate a portion of our school's In-Service Day focusing on instructional technology.

First, we will be offering a 45-minute session of "Spark" Presentations. A Spark Presentation is a 3-5 minute presentation of an educational technology strategy that teachers employ with their students. These are not formal presentations;  think of a "spark presentation" as a kind of "show and tell." For example, Gary Alperin will share how he uses the student-response app Kahoot and Dean Burrier Sanchis will share how he uses his Weebly Website. We are planning to have Spark Presentations by 8-10 staff members. We already have several teachers who have volunteered, but we want to open this opportunity up to everyone. 


After this we will move into a mini-EdCamp.  EdCamps are "un-camps," free professional development for teachers and by teachers.  There are EdCamps hosted in many areas around the world.  Our local one is EdCamp Chicago, and the next meeting will May 9, at Bednarcik Junior High School.  Elk Grove will host its first "mini-camp."

At the start of the event, teachers come up and suggest a session they are interested in.  This does not mean that you are running it or presenting it; it just means that you are heading there to start talking about it.  The idea is you vote with your feet.  If you go to one session, and it is not what you need, or if there is more than one session you want to see, you simply get up in the middle of the session, and go to another one! Another aspect of EdCamps is the sharing of information. There will be an open Google document available for each session to share out ideas with those in and out of the workshop time.

Check out this site next week for reflections from the day!

How to Stay Energized

By Mark Heintz

How do you stay energized as a teacher?  Stressors emotionally drain us as teachers throughout the day.  In the midwest, it is furthered by February.  Stupid February.

The answer to staying energized is to collaborate with colleagues.  I always feel renewed when I talk about student learning in a positive way with other staff members.  When I get a new idea from them, I want to try it out. I have passion, a renewed purpose, and with the idea it engages the classroom in a new way.  I reflect on it's use, and I report back to the peer to let him or her know how I used it and what I would do differently the next time.  This is why collaborating is so powerful.  Collaborating improves instruction through bettering your craft to improve student learning in an organic and meaningful way.

Furthermore, the EGLLT (Elk Grove Lead Leaders Team), which you can read about by clicking here, met to collaborate on the topic of literacy.  Through the efforts of that meeting, teachers were exposed to a TED talk by John Hattie on Maximizing Impact on Learning. One of the great things is that when teachers work together to enhance student learning, it is one of the most powerful things teachers can do.  So, while you renew yourself, you will be impacting student learning at the same time!  Here are excerpts from John Hattie's work and the video.

If you want to watch the video or read the entire study you can use the links below to access it.  

Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning By John Hattie (Routledge, 2012)

Reasons to Collaborate

By Mark Heintz

As the holiday season winds down, I find myself thinking about the conversations I had over the past few months.  The holiday season is when I have time to catch up with family and old friends. Often, there are new people I meet, and once they find out I am a teacher, they share their own experiences with education.  Many are positive, and they share memories of great teachers and coaches that impacted them.  But, often they talk about the state of education and how it is worsening. They share stories of ineffective teachers and how they wished they would have gotten more out of their time at school.

My response is to compare schools to television.  I tell them to look at the typical T.V. series and how many people are involved in the development process. They have writers, directors, producers, costume designers, actors, actresses, acting coaches, set designers, special effects specialists, advertisers and the list goes on.  Each person works together to create a single series.  The typical series is comprised of about twenty-four episodes and targets a specific audience. Despite all of the people involved, over 50% of new T.V. series fail.  All of the collaboration with trained professionals with typically a budget of millions of dollars, and they still fail.  Now, I understand they fail for a variety of reasons that are often not at the fault of the people involved in the making, but the point remains that they fail.

I then compare the television industry to teaching. It is not a direct comparison, but I watch a lot of T.V. and am a teacher, so I talk, and now write, about what I know.  I tell them a teacher typically plays all the roles in the developmental process of a television series.  As teachers, we are writers, directors, producers, costume designers, actors/actresses, coaches, set designers, special effects specialists,  advertisers and the list goes on. We deliver around 180 "shows" a year to an audience that is compelled by law to attend.  The audience at the high school level is hormonal, developing their identity, self-centered, sleep deprived, and not always wanting to be there. They cannot simply pause the show or set their DVR to come back to it when they are ready. The audience can criticize or praise you to your face as the lesson progresses.  Even if a student is hungry, going through a crisis, ....they are there to learn.

I make the comparison not to wallow in self-pity or showcase how great I am or all teachers are.  I make it to show people's memories or understanding of their educational experiences might not be the clearest. They might have been going through something at the time they were learning and just because they cannot remember every detail from history or whatever subject, does not mean they did not grow in the skill development or as a human being.  I also point out that education is in the pursuit of educating everyone.  I feel every year we, as educators, get better at that pursuit.

As I reflect on the conversations, I see the need for teachers to collaborate with one another.  Also, we need to collaborate to develop new teachers.  We need to foster their spirit and skills so they can continue in the educational pursuit of every one.  We need to collaborate to share current research and best practices.  We need to work together to ensure we do not feel isolated with our daily problems.  Bottom line, we need to collaborate with one another.  It helps us grow as an institution and to help the public understand what we do in the classroom and the school.  Working together helps all students feel welcome and can foster their individual needs in a classroom of many.  It helps lessen the load of teachers, so they can spend time giving feedback, support and better instruction to students.   It helps the community as a whole become better.