Like a Freelance Musician

Teach Thought 30 Day Blogging Challenge September 18-
Create an analogy/simile/metaphor that describes your teaching.

Often when you register for a new product online or register to attend a conference you are asked for your title. I always get stuck there. I wear many different hats and I'm not sure which role or title to put down here. Am I the adjunct faculty for University of Vermont? or Marlboro College? Am I the regional representative for our ISTE affiliate - Vita-Learn? Am I a consultant? Am I self-employed? The same question plagues me when people ask me who I work for or what I do for work.

Then one day, I realized I had a lot in common with my children who are freelance musician. So I decided to adopt the term 'FreeLance Educator" . Like my children I sometimes get gigs where I get paid like a professional. I sometimes accept a much lower pay rate because of the clients ability to pay and/or the value/satisfaction I get taking on that gig. I do some gigs pro bono because they are just plain fun or its the right thing to do. And I do plenty for free because I'm creating something new.


Usually when I tell people that they say "so you're a consultant?". Sometimes I play that role, but the consultant is usually building a business in hope that it grows, and I don't identify with that. If anything I'm trying to do less building and more creating. So in my case the the world freelance works for me, but usually does not work so well to earn me the respect I'm looking for amongst others.  

#reflectiveeducator

What Does MY Classroom Look Like?

Loving the prompts from the 30 Day Blogging Challenge including today's prompt:  Post a picture of your classroom.

Each prompt really gets me thinking about recent changes in my career and my lifestyle and how those changes impact the way I define teaching and learning.

A little over a year ago I gave up my apartment and started a journey that I call "living and learning mobile".  Some people thought I was retiring.  Have no idea how they got THAT idea!   I had no intention of stopping teaching and learning.

Because of today's technology I can teach and learn from anywhere, anytime.   In the past year I've held class from Vermont, New York, New Jersey,  South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri.   It took some inspiration, nudging from my husband who has wanderlust,  rethinking, and creative solutions, but we now live full time in our 1983 Bluebird Wanderlodge.  I teach online at the University of Vermont and  Marlboro College Graduate School.  I work with schools (mostly in Vermont)  on projects that keep me connected with students and teachers in K-12 education.  I connect with educators and innovators that I meet along the road in a variety of ways ranging from attending conferences like FETC and South By Southwest.   Last year I even enrolled in Intro to Physical Computing graduate course and did some pretty cool stuff (like built a 3D printer from a picnic table in Austin  and completed Arduino circuits while crossing statelines.   Basically my classroom looks like this

What's missing is the parts of a relationship made possible by a  quick smile and nonverbal communication.  But thankfully due to tools like Google Hangouts,  I've found ways to bring some of  that missing piece back into the equation.  Just the other day, I had a student who emailed me that she was thinking of dropping a class because she didn't feel techsavvy enough to be enrolled in an online class.  An  encouraging email would not have reassured her, but when I sent her a link to a GOOGLE HANGOUT and asked her to click on it, she was in awe by the quick response, amazed at the technology,  but mostly had renewed confidence that I could truly help her through the any tech challenges that might arise.   Using the same tools I can also bring in guest speakers into my classroom from all over the world.

I am loving living and learning mobile and feel so fortunate that we live in a time where the current technology it possible for the classroom I teach from or the classroom I learn from is accessible from anywhere, anytime.  You can follow our journey at blog.livinglearningmobile.com

What I love most about teaching

The James Barrie quote in my  signature line at the bottom of all my emails does not surprise anyone.  It is evident that I love what I do for work and that I feel very fortunate to have found a profession  where I can't tell the difference between work and play.

So when I saw today's   Te@ch Thought's 30 day blogging challenge  prompt

                                      "The thing that you love the most about teaching." 

 it was not difficult for me to relate to it.

I LOVE TEACHING because 

I LOVE  'LEARNING" and 

I LOVE watching "LEARNING" happen and 

I LOVE  creating an environment where LEARNING happens

It wasn't  until I had raised 3 very creative children and became more familiar with the creative process and what drives it that I started to understand that what I loved about teaching is that I got to CREATE everyday.  I got to CREATE learning opportunities.  

I use to question my love for my work every time someone told me that I was working too hard and I should not work so much.   But  recently,  during an interview as an honoree for Vermont Works for Women's Labor of Love Celebration,  I started to understand my labor of love in a different way.  It occurred to me that nobody ever told my children who are professional musicians that they should not 'work' so much.  They played music for fun, they played music for pay,  but nobody ever tells them to stop playing music.  I've watched them make a life for themselves where they get to 'create' music for a living.    I'm often asked how where my boys got their creative talents, and I use to always answer "Not from me!   Sister Edmund, told me to just move my lips in chorus class, because I was too short to move to the back row."    But over the years, I've come to realize that my boys and I have a lot in common,  we each get to create every day and find creative ways to produce something that 'works' the way we envision it.   Creating an environment where all the different complex pieces that contribute to great learning has some similarities to creating good music.

Honoree Lucie deLaBruere Listen to the interview Download the audio In creating great music, you have to understand the foundation and the music theory and be able to apply it.  You have to have vision and be able to negotiate all the complex parts that will produce the vision.  In creating great learning, you have to understand the foundation and the learning theory and be able to apply it.  You have to have vision and be able to negotiate all the complex parts that will produce the vision.  Lucky me!  I love teaching because I LOVE learning and creating great learning! #reflectiveteacher

Can more data points inform "Who Am I Being" as a teacher?

The Day 3 prompt for the  Te@ch Thought's 30 day blogging challenge  "Discuss one “observation” area that you would like to improve on for your teacher evaluation."  coincided with a tweet that came across my twitter stream.

Alternative to test scores: innovations in student surveys by start-up called Panorama. http://t.co/5oAwQ5J055
— Tony Wagner (@DrTonyWagner) September 4, 2014

As I followed the link and read an article about the startup company, Panaroma launching an open source design for a survey that measured how teachers connect with students, I found myself feeling rather annoyed about the need to measure how teachers connect with students in a “scientifically-designed survey.”  I was even more annoyed when I heard that this start up company was created by two 23 year olds - thinking “What could they possibly know about teaching” and how did they get in the business of designing products that could be used to evaluate teachers?  But then I remembered that these two young computer savvy students had recently been students in our K-12 educational system and might have a unique perspective.

I'm not sure whether Panaroma will be successful in monetizing this tool aimed at measuring the quality of teacher/student relationship or how the data  collected by their tool will be used, but as I read on,  my initial reaction softened when I reached this statement further in the Manjoo's New York Times article

#reflectiveteacher

"Today, schools assess the effectiveness of teachers primarily through standardized test scores and observations by administrators, but both measures have been criticized as too narrow, unable to shed light on the complex interplay between teachers and students on a day-to-day basis." 

and reflected on whether I agreed with Harvard professor of education, Thomas J. Kane's premise that “Student surveys are the most obvious place to add some other measures that aren’t based solely on test scores.”

Soon my reflection moved away from whether the world needs a sophisticated data collection tool to measure student/teacher relationship to how IMPORTANT relationships are in teaching and learning and what we do as professional to improve those relationships thus contributing to improved student learning.

At the end of each semester,  I frequently surveyed my students and used the data I collected to improve my practice and redesign my classes. It may not have been a scientifically designed survey, but I found it very effective in helping me improve my practice.

Did I need a survey to tell me to tell me which students I was connecting with?  Maybe not,  but relationships are pretty complex and sometimes the the impact of our connection with students is not always obvious.   I still remember one parent teacher conference when “Melinda”’s mother started to tell me how much of an influence I had on her daughter and how often I was quoted during dinner conversations.  “Ms. deLaBruere said this… or Ms. deLaBruere thinks that …”.

“Melinda?”  I questioned.   

Privately I wondered "Is this the  same Melinda that sighs and rolls her eyes every time I open my mouth to give the class directions? Is this the same Melinda that I frequently wonder about and seek new ways to reach her, because it seems I'm not reaching her? "

Following the advice of Ben Zander, I often asked myself "Whom am I being that my children's eyes are not shining" on days when the connections just weren't happening?"  But tonight I reflect on who could I be if I had more data points about how I connected (and/or didn't connect)  with children?   How would this change my practice?

I am remembering the hidden biases that were revealed when my colleagues and I were trained in  using classroom observation tools as part of Dolores Grayson's GESA (Generating Expectations for Student Achievement)    The program aimed at helping teachers "identify and reduce disparities based on gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class and teacher expectations to improve academic and interpersonal achievement."

So as I think back about the Day 3 prompt asking us to identify " one observation” area that you would like to improve on for your teacher evaluation."  it would be to dig deeper into what data can reveal about me as a teacher and how I can use what I discover to reflect on my practice, instead of worry about how others might use that data in teacher evaluation.  

30 Day Blog Challenge - Day 2 (Revisiting Blogger)

The Day 2 prompt was to pilot a new piece of technology.  In this post I  walk down memory lane to a time when I chose to pilot a 'new' blogging platform (TypePad) and liked it so much I  stayed with it for nearly a decade.  Looking back at my first post on TypePad I find it ironic that I'm taking on the challenge of moving back to Blogger as my main blogging platform.   In January 2006,  I posted: 

JANUARY 06, 2006
Getting seriousIt's been almost 5 years since I started dabbling with blogs in education mostly for student projects in my classroom.
It's been about a year since "blogs" have started to really get the attention of the masses (marked by it being the most frequently looked up word in the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary)
It's been a few months since I selected "blogging in education" as a research topic for a few grad classes.
Finally... I've decided that it's time to get serious and start my own blogs with some serious blog tools.  Many of the blogs that really got my attention during my research project were done on TypePad.  Getting serious for me was shelling out a few dollars a month to discover blogging at the next level (beyond free blogging tools like Blogger and Xanga)
My goals -

1. To discover what features non-free blogging tools have and whether they are worth paying for.
2. To move from the  a user of  free blogging tools for educational projects  to a blogger who explores the process of blogging (not just the tools)
3. To update the format of my old web site to a more interactive format

Let's see what happens.

Typepad served me well and I enjoyed the professional look and feel.   So why switch back?

1. Blogger has evolved over the years and offers many of the features that I used in Typepad (though not ALL of them) 
2. I've come to live in the Google world more and more and it made sense to work within an ecosystem of tools designed to integrate well together.  
3. As I'm  starting to use and maintain several active blogs and become more and more active on Google Plus. Blogger and Google Plus integration might make the process of maintaining and moderating multiple blogs
4. Blogger is free - (although I will still be paying the annual fee to keep my Typepad blog as an archive for the time being)  With an increase use of blogging platform, I find myself enjoying having my blogs all in one place and Blogger provides me with that option. 

So my new technology will be to revisit Blogger and take Blogger to a new level,  and perhaps blog about the challenges and successes of doing this.   Interestingly enough,  with a few 'tweaks', my goals remain pretty much the same as they did in 2006.

1. To discover what features non-free blogging tools have and whether they are worth paying for.
   TWEAK:  To discover features of 'free blogging tools" that make full featured blogging accessible to ANYONE! 
2. To move from the  a user of  free blogging tools for educational projects  to a blogger who explores the process of blogging (not just the tools)
   TWEAK:  To continue to use free blogging tools as an easy publishing platform for educational projects as well as to become more regular about the process of blogging and do a little less "BINGE BLOGGING" 
3. To update the format of my old web site to a more interactive format.
   TWEAK:  To update the format of my old website to a more integrated format with other digital projects (i.e. Google+  and other digital projects that currently use Google tools) 

Let's see what happens. (do I hear an echo?) 

Kicking off a New Blog - 30 Day Challenge Day 1

With the onslaught of 'ice bucket' challenges happening all around us lately,  I almost overlooked this challenge from colleague,  +Bonnie Birdsall  to join her in  Te@ch Thought's 30 day blogging challenge towards more reflective teaching.   The challenge provides educators with a new prompt each day for educators to reflect on and blog about for 30 days starting September 1 using the hashtag  #reflectiveteacher to share with a greater audience.

Like +Bonnie Birdsall I no longer have a classroom full of K-12 students physically walking through my classroom door right now, but I'm still involved with teachers and students on a daily basis using technology tools that connect me virtually and have plenty of plans to connect physically with as many K12 schools as I can this year.   Today's technology also provides me with opportunities to have a classroom full of educators enrolled in my online classes at University of Vermont and Marlboro College and to connect with schools throughout the country and beyond by engaging in projects that digital tools make possible.  Those current opportunities as well as 30+ years of memories from my active involvement as a  K-12 educators provide me with plenty to reflect upon -  so I accept the challenge,  reserving the right to wander from the reflection prompts provide by Te@chThought.

However, the first reflection prompt fit quite nicely to kick off this 30 day blogging challenge.

What are your goals? 

Every Fall teachers set up their learning space to reflect the goals they have set to kick off the new school year.   Arranging the furniture,  setting up learning centers, and creating bulletin boards speak volumes about the goals a teacher has set for herself and her students.  Several goals came to quickly came to mind,  and those who know me know that I never have a lack of goals -  more like too many goals.   So I decided that I would focus on ONE goal to kickoff this challenge -  The goal of  setting up a new digital presence (a goal I've had for a while, but one that keeps finding itself moved to the back burner)   So what better motivation to get started than with this 30 day blogging challenge than to make a 30 day commitment to this goal!

My reflection when kicking off this goal was to ask myself WHY which lead me to a journey down memory lane about my blogging history.  From 2001 - 2005 I had been using blogging platforms in a variety of ways, and had even completed an action research project on blogging  as a grad student in an course for the same program that I'm currently teaching for at the University of Vermont.

But in  2006 I moved from a static website to a blogging platform as my primary web presence using TYPEPAD - at that time it was the blog platform of choice for Guy Kawaski (which I'm sure had an influence on my decision).  
It was less about 'blogging' the verb as it was
about leveraging the blogging platform to quickly create digital content in a way that made it visually appealing, readable, easy to update and thus more accessible to others.

 
This was about the same time I started blogging (yes this time I'm using the verb "TO BLOG" in its more traditional sense) and joined a team blog

 The Infinite Thinking Machine) with +Mark Wagner +Lucy Gray  +Wesley Fryer +Steve Hargadon  +Tom March   +Julie Duffield  and +Chris Fitzgerald Walsh.  This was probably one of the most reflective times in my teaching practice.  I would spend whole weekends crafting one blog post.  I made sure there were lots of links to related research for any topic I wrote about.  It really was more like writing a bi-weekly column.  I truly enjoyed the practice of reflecting and writing each week and I met the most amazing educators while doing so - most of which I'm still connected with today.   I was sad to see Infinite Thinking Machine blog get retired,  but my practice of reflection never really stopped,  though it became less visible, less regular, more binge-like.  Perhaps this 30 day challenge will get me back into the practice of blogging -  perhaps it will simply set me on the road to re-designing my digital presence.  Only time will tell, but I'm ready to get started reflecting on this goal and other changes in my practice that are happening all around me.

Thanks +Bonnie Birdsall  for putting the challenge out there;  I'll do my best to keep up with you.