The Work Around Podcast: EDU Tangent

Last week, I did a new(ish)* thing for me: I was on a podcast! I was contacted via Twitter by Jon Fortney of FortneyTech.com to record an "EDU Tangent" episode for his podcast, The Work Around Podcast. It sounded cool, so I said yes!

When recording my story for this episode, I was given the direction to "...share a story (or stories) of events that led up to you becoming a teacher that helped you decide to be a teacher, stories as a teacher that were influential to your practice, and lessons you’ve learned along the way."

Because my story of "becoming" a teacher isn't really that interesting IMHO, I decided to tell my rollercoaster story of trying (and repeatedly failing) to move forward in my career. Perhaps my failures can be someone else's inspiration. :)

Here's a little trailer for the episode:

If you're interested in listening to the entire story, you can find it here. I'm very honored to have been asked to be on Jon's podcast, and he says extremely flattering things about me at the beginning that make me feel like he must be talking about someone else...! #impostorsyndrome

*[Fun fact/side story: five years ago, I was on a live Hangout on Air Podcast with the LadyGeeks talking about art. Want a blast from the past? Last I checked, you can still watch it here.]

- Mrs L.

I'm A Failure, And That's OK!

I’m writing today’s blog post to tell you all about how I’m a failure. I’m going to my first ISTE Conference this summer. Because I’m a WeVideo ambassador, I typically present a session on their behalf in exchange for admission to the event. Well, this time around, the deadline for sessions had already passed, so I was asked to submit proposals for the “New Ideas” sessions at ISTE.

Well, yesterday I found out that BOTH proposals were declined. Heck if I know why, but it happened. It is what it is. I still get to go to ISTE, and I’ll be running some fun demos at the WeVideo booth (so stop by and say hello!), so it’s not really a loss on my part except for a little blow to the ego.

I really feel like it’s important to talk about our failures as well as our successes, for a variety of reasons:

Failing teaches us about what DOESN’T work. 

In the great wise words of Jake the Dog, “Dude, sucking at something is the first step towards becoming kinda good at something.” We learn a lot from failing!

You won’t have ANY success if you never put yourself out there.
If you never try, you never take a risk, you never even gave yourself the chance that you just might succeed. You’re doomed to fail no matter what!

Failure makes us human.
Failure is a part of life. No one is perfect, or succeeds all the time, and showing vulnerability is just one way that we can relate to other people.

Trying new stuff (whether we fail or find success) is good for your brain.
It stimulates creativity. You get to know yourself better. You overcome fears.

Failing shows others that you’re trying.
Again, as in #2, if you never try, you’ll never achieve. Others see you working hard and putting in effort regardless of your success (or lack thereof).

So speaking of taking chances and putting yourself out there, I decided to apply to become a Google Certified Innovator - the next cohort is being hosted in LA this summer (#LAX18). I know a few people who have done it, and I decided that I’m ready to take the plunge, knowing full well that many people do NOT get accepted the first time they apply, and it takes several tries before they got in. But I’m doing it anyways. Because failure is good.

Guess what? My theme, or problem that I want to tackle as an Innovator, is all about failure and risk-taking! I want to help other teachers and school staff be OKAY with failing. Let’s try new things! We always tell our students about how failure (or trial and error) is a learning process, so why don’t we follow our own advice?

I had to make a movie about it, you can check it out here:

Applications close TODAY. I’ll know if I’m accepted sometime after school gets out (our last day is May 25th), and although it’s nice to be accepted, if I fail, I’m okay with it.

Actual footage of me failing miserably. :)

Just get back up, and do it again!
Hope to see you at ISTE this summer!

- Mrs L.

Teaching Technology in the Zone of Discomfort

I see and hear a lot of stories, tweets, quotes, images, and infographics about failure. How it's an important part of the learning process. About how we need to allow for the possibility of failure in our students, and allow for them the ability to reflect, revise, and try again.

I'm on board. Sounds great!

But what about teaching? Teachers need to feel like it's okay to make mistakes, too. We need to embrace the zone of discomfort. We need to feel like we're taking risks, but within reason... a safe risk-taking, if you will. Teachers can no longer wait until they've "mastered" a tool, or feel 100% comfortable with technology inside and out before utilizing it in the classroom. Things move so fast that if we waited, it's likely that the technology would be obsolete by the time we've fully grasped it!

For example, here's my story: I teach 6-week classes. Yep. I see kids for 6 weeks, and then they're gone until the next school year. It's less than optimal, I know, but it's all I've got. The good side of this is that I have the ability to reflect and revise my curriculum and teaching strategies many times throughout the school year. 

The downside? 6 weeks! Ugh. 

But anyways, this year I've been very fortunate to receive two new technology tools for my 6th and 7th grade students: Ozobots and Dot and Dash robots. We're a 1:1 Chromebook program, but I received 8 iPad minis to use with these new tools. Luckily, at home, we're an Apple family. 

Awesome! But uh oh... I have a lot of new stuff to learn! 

Since my "free" time is quite limited, I had to take a different approach to incorporating these new tools into the curriculum: I had to teach it without knowing it 100%! This is very scary for many teachers, and, I'm not gonna lie, it's quite stressful, because there are so many unknowns. But it's also challenging, which is something that actually I love when I'm teaching - give me a challenge! I'm a pretty good creative problem-solver. 

Here's what I did: I opened up the boxes, watched a few video overviews, and made sure that I knew the basics. The VERY basics. I took a set of robots home over the weekend and had my 4 year-old play with them with me. He loved it, and I got a little bit more practice with everything. 

via

Then, when I went back to school, I had a conversation with my kids: we were going to learn this new thing TOGETHER. Students were tasked with discovering new features and concepts and sharing them with me and the rest of the class. When someone was having trouble, or stuck on a task, we'd poll the class: "Hey, we're having trouble getting our program to load on the Ozobot. How are you guys doing it? Can you show us?"

The same thing happened with advanced coding. I used Codecademy and allowed students to choose a course to take, based on their level and experience with coding. I feel competent enough in the HTML course to provide help to students, if needed, but many of them chose languages that I am not well-versed in, like JavaScript or Python. Basically, I admitted my shortcomings up front: "Hey guys, I am not an expert on these courses, so I can try my best to help, but I cannot make any guarantees. But feel free to try them out if that's the level that you are at. We can also try to find another student to help you out if I can't." 

Students LOVE being the expert on stuff! Bonus points if they know something that the teacher doesn't! It's a real motivator. By the time my first 6-week term was up, I felt way more comfortable presenting to the class the second time around. The sad part is that I'll never quite capture that magic of discovery from the first round again. Yeah, it's all new and exciting to the next group of students, but there's something really fun and special about learning it alongside with your classes. 

My point here is that you shouldn't be afraid to jump in and teach something just because you don't feel like a total "expert" on it. You shouldn't hold your students back simply because you're "not there" yet. It's okay not to know all the things. And admitting that to your students is very humanizing and honest - many of them will respect you more for having admitted your shortcomings.

- Mrs. L.