1 Powerful Writing Tip: Use colour coding to teach organization in expository writing.

Sometimes, the simplest tweak does the job.

If you have students who struggle with executive skills , you might have noticed that these students find it very challenging to organize their thoughts during the writing process.  Using graphic organizers during the pre-writing/planning stage certainly helps, but what if a student doesn't have the time to do pre-planning?  Or, what if they are the type of student who balks at pre-writing. I just want my students to write and some students can actually edit and revise as they go along.

So that brings me to my class of ELA 7s in a school dedicated to students with diagnosed learning disablities.  ALL of my students struggle with organization.  And, most of them really don't understand what it means to "organize" ideas around a thesis statement. I also find that using a organizational graphic organizer like Maraconda's "Expository Pillar" doesn't always do the trick either.

What did work for my students? Colour coding.

And the best part was that we stumbled upon that little nugget totally by chance.

My students are reading Skellig and I want them to extract information from the text and describe what the main characters are like. So, we brainstormed word lists that describe the characters, we worked on establishing plot events that show these characteristics, and then we worked hard on developing very simple thesis statements such as "Mina is a fascinating person because she is kind, perceptive and critical".

This took a few days.  Such thinking is very challenging because students have to hone down all of their thoughts into one general, yet focused statement of intent.

I felt that this would result in simple, yet clear and organized writing. For some of my students that was the case, but for one student in particular, his writing was still profoundly disorganized.  It was clear to me that he had ideas, but even when I tried to map his writing out, I could see he was struggling to understand that each paragraph in his essay needed to correspond to 1 idea mentioned in his thesis statement.  As an emerging writer, this student had not yet internalized the organizational structure of formal, expository writing and, after going through his piece with him, I could see him beginning to lose not only his focus, but, most importantly, his confidence.  I could literally see him thinking: "Oh boy, another piece of writing that's sucks."

Desperate to find a way to make this highly abstract concept work for him, I appealed to one of his strengths: visual representation.  I went back to his thesis statement.

I colour-coded each one of his three main ideas.  Rather like a legend, we decided that kindness=yellow, perceptive = green, and critical =orange.  I also added a fourth colour, pink, which equaled "random".  Then, I asked him to go back to his text armed with four highlighters of those colours and  asked him to highlight each sentence with the colour that matched the idea being discussed.

Well.

Talk about a lightbulb moment for this young writer.  Excitedly, he turned to me, eyes wide with realization.  "I get it!" he excitedly proclaimed.  "I have to keep all the colours together, and get rid of everything that is pink!"

I love it when a simple "lifehack" has  a profound effect upon a student's learning.

To extend this activity further, when my students peer edit and I want them to focus upon organization, each student creates a legend for their thesis statement, and then their peer editor goes through their essay and highlights each sentence in the appropriate colour. It's hand-on, it's visual, and it's fun.  Furthermore, the conversations that the students have about organization and ideas is deeper and more critical than any lesson I could ever provide.

Together, let's re(vision) our practice. It's worth every lightbulb out there!

Six reasons why educators need TED.

Why should attendance at a TED conference (in any of its versions: Active, Global, Women, Youth or TEDx) be mandatory Professional Development for educators?

1. If we are teaching for the future, then we need to know about the future. Do I really need to say more?

2. TED-ED. TED-Ed  had a real presence at TEDActive 2013 and 2014. Once educators and the general public realize what this education platform is capable of doing and then begin to use it, education will never be the same again. Check out the remarkable TED-Ed Lesson Library. It has about 139, 544 FREE lessons.  That's like 139, 544 remarkable educators banding together to build the best curated library of lessons the world has ever seen.

3. Practice the art of being an entrepreneurial educator by facilitating a TED-Ed Club or curate, organize or volunteer at  a TEDx Event.  Go to one of these big events.  Learn how it's done and then bring the excitement of "ideas worth sharing" to your own community. It will change your life.

4. Multi-disciplinary learning at the forefront. In this day and age, why are educational institutions still insisting on putting up walls instead of breaking them down?  The wicked problems of today are not going to be solved by specialists working by themselves, but by millions of minds working together, sharing and synthesizing so that crowd accelerated innovation can work it's magic. Watching great minds discover other great minds is truly a pleasure. Listening to them coming up with innovation is an eye-opening experience that is profoundly humbling and inspiring all at the same time.

5. Network, network, network: there isn't one person who attends TED, TEDActive, TEDGlobal, TEDWomen, TEDYouth or, for the most part, many of the major TEDx Events, who doesn't bring their A-game to the table. The application process alone ensures that a highly motivated and curated group of change-agents end up converging upon the conference locations with the sole intent to learn and then go back to their communities and do something with their newfound knowledge.

6. You leave dreaming bigger than you have ever dreamed before.

It took a village...and a lot of passion!

This is about a dream. A crazy, big, seemingly impossible, personal passion of a dream that came true.  

And it took a village.

That village included 140 wonderful members of the Rundle Academy community, who, because they believe in the magic our little school works on a daily basis, came out and gave their heart and soul to TEDxRundleAcademy's inaugural event and the rest is, well, history. 


There is much written about how to organize and curate a fabulous TEDx event for your community. There are ample resources, examples, and legions of engaged, innovative TEDx'ers out there who will bend over backwards to help first-timer's out.  But, what about writing about the collaborative energy and spirit it took for such an event to occur? 

What about writing about how to launch an academic club that involves reading, writing, and public speaking in a school where every student struggles enormously with those aforementioned learning tasks? 

What about writing about how, back in October, I had to practice entrepreneurship beyond my wildest dreams to get our TED-Ed Club off the ground.Or, how about writing about realizing that you now are the curator of a TEDx event and you have the monumental task of creating the vision of an event that just seems so impossible. 

Or, how about writing about how liberating it was to realize, a few months in, that the voices  of our TEDxRundleAcademy,  despite how unpolished, young, and nervous they might be, would be and will continue to be primarily the voices of the students who attend our school.  We might never get a talk onto TED.com, we might never go viral, but our talks will always represent the heart, soul, spirit and mission of our community which is to make learning and dreams possible for students with often very challenging learning disabilities.


 How about writing about how frightening and exhilarating  it is to open up your very private dream to your entire staff and trust completely that they will take that dream and run with it and then see the utter magic that they create? 

How about writing about the hours and hours of time put in by so many people so that TEDxRundleAcademy could happen?  



How about writing about the incredible effort and grit that 7 young speakers demonstrated over the last 6 months? None of these students find writing or public speaking easy. Many of them were incredibly scared and constantly dealt with nerves and anxiety about our event but they believed in themselves and did it. 

How about writing about the tears that ran down my face on the day before the event, when as I  walked down the hallway and saw, for the first time, that everything would come together; that my students, colleagues, and parents totally and utterly believed in and were excited by my vision. 



How about writing about the incredibly deep feeling of satisfaction and joy that your students LOVED every moment of the event and can't wait until the next one. 



That was the day when 15 years of teaching came together. I realized that everything I  had ever done professionally was coming together at the right moment with the right people in the right place and that THIS was that moment by which I might later define my career. 

Sometime you dream big, and your dreams as a teacher are often gigantic. And, you hope more than any thing that those dreams come true, because, after all, they are the dreams of your students.  And those dreams matter. 

TEDxRundleAcademy gave a voice to those dreams. 

  

2 Days and Counting.

It's almost here!  Wow! The halls of Rundle Academy are buzzing with excitement and and the whole TEDxRundleAcademy team is busy setting up, preparing, practicing, decorating, compiling, problem-solving, and embracing the craziness that comes with putting on a conference event of this magnitude.  

As the curator, I cannot even begin to express how exhilarating it is to see everything come together.  And, when you find yourself only 2 1/2 days away from the BIG DAY, you can't help but marvel at all it took to get here.

Top 11 List of What it Took:

1. A passion for the TED organization and ideas worth spreading.
2. A ridiculously grandiose dream.
3. Establishing a TED-Ed Club.
4. Convincing teenagers that an academic club is a fun thing to do when they could be going off campus instead.
5. Students beginning to believe in themselves.
6. Applying for a TEDx License.
6. Realizing that the whole school is along for the ride.....could not ask for a better team.
7. 6 months spent developing and curating our speaker program (convincing both students and adults alike that public speaking is not worse than death).
8. Learning a variety of skills we never thought we would ever need. ( I can now embed code and manipulate code???!!!!).
9. Realizing that it is more than okay to ask for help. (How else do you move a mountain?)
10.Gratitude, patience, hard work and the happy realization that it will worth every minute.
11 The realization that your spouse and mother  and colleagues probably should get all of the credit.

In the spirit of collaboration, here is a TED Talk that effectively sums up what a monumental, collaborative undertaking needs if it is to succeed.

Celebrating Diversity of the Mind: Five Ways to support Exceptional Learners

Let's celebrate diversity. Not diversity of cultures, race or religions. Not diversity of teaching practices, but diversity of minds and five actions that a strong and supportive family and school can do to nurture students who, as exceptional learners, have a diagnosed learning disability.

But first, why do I care about exceptional learners; those kids who are the definition of diverse minds? Well, working as a teacher in a Learning Disabilities Academy puts me front and centre into the world of diverse minds and the incredible gifts these children possess.  These students are as intelligent as their peers, but, for some interesting twist of fate and brain development, the way they learn, process information, produce ideas and interact with the world,  is markedly different from many other children.  They come to us often utterly defeated by the school system and their own difficult, if not impossible, effort to fit in.  They come to us scared, withdrawn, or spitting mad. They were often the kid that the teacher and other kids didn't like, they were the discipline case, they were the invisible child at the back of the classroom so quiet the teacher hardly notices their presence, or they were the social butterfly or jock who use bluster, bravado and popularity to hide the fact that learning is hard for them.  

And, unfortunately, sometimes these children come to equate a learning disability with the inability to learn; with an inescapable fact that they might never be successful.  I think that for those who are still struggling to come to terms with the uniqueness of their own learning, it is so very easy to see a learning disability diagnosis as a terrible thing:  a label, a sentence, a definition.  

I don't see it that way.  

But what I will acknowledge as a hard truth is that is is often the side-effects of those learning differences that are far more debilitating than the dyslexia, dyscalculia, or dysgraphia your child has. I truly feel, that if the learning challenges are appropriately addressed , than every child with an LD code is going to be successful. But, so often this is not the case and then, it is the anxiety, the low self-esteem, the aversion to taking risks in learning, and the fixed growth mind-set that the child embraces, that are far, far more harmful to the child's future as a learner than the learning disability itself. 

I look at my students and I see how five important actions celebrate and acknowledge their exceptionality and diversity of mind.

1.  Early identification 
If you or your child's care provider notices anything that seems to particularly different about how your child learns or interacts with the world, see your doctor. Talk to your child's teacher.  Do some reading.  Listen to your "gut", don't dismiss your child's kindergarten teacher as an idiot, don't hate your mother-in-law who might have made an unsubtle comment.  Be proactive and get your child assessed. A comprehensive ed-psych report will go a long way in helping you and your child understand exactly what your son or daughters' strengths and weaknesses are.  Here in Alberta,   students who have a learning disability will not receive any kind of  meaningful help if their learning challenges are not identified by a registered educational psychologist.  Once a specific learning disability is diagnosed, coding and funding begin to fall into place and then, and only then will your child receive the help they will need to succeed; help such as access to a learning strategist, pullout time,  remediation, accommodation and differentiation. Early identification and meaningful supports can do so much to eliminate so many of the side-effects mentioned above.

2. Accommodations.
Accommodations level the playing field for students with LDs.  They are not a crutch and they are not "cheating".  Diverse minds access information and demonstrate learning in many, many ways. Accommodations recognize differences and  learning challenges and give your child a fighting chance.  Accommodations range from extra time, use of assistive technology like speech to writing software, consistent use of a laptop or iPad, sound-diminishing earphones,  note-packs, digital copies of textbooks, exams on different coloured paper, exams with significant amounts of  white space and audio versions of all assessment materials.  These things might seem so simple but if, for example, you are dyslexic, having all of your texts, assignments, and assessments available as an audio file is the difference between failing all of your subjects (because even math requires a student to be able to read a huge amount of material) and passing  all your subjects. And, achievement aside, how do you function and thrive in this current information age if you do not have the tools that enable you to access, interact with, and produce that information?

3. Differentiation
Your child is blessed with a beautiful and capable brain.  It is not broken, it just accesses, processes and  retains information differently. Your child's teacher's job is not to "fix" them, but rather, to help them develop the ability to learn despite their exceptionality using, literally, every strategy and tactic at their disposal. Yes, it is true that if diagnosed early, a great deal of remediation is possible,  especially with dyslexia, but how a child learns is uniquely them and is something to embrace, not rail against.  That is why I am a such a great proponent of differentiation.  Differentiation is mindfully examining instructional and assessment practices and personalizing  one or the other (or both) based upon the needs of the child. It is one of the most respectful acts of pedagogy as differentiation is the explicit acknowledgement that your child is exceptional and therefore deserves a personalized education that best suits his or her needs.   However, it is vital that parents and teachers understand that differentiation is not modification of curricula or assessment.  A child with an LD is more than capable of excelling within the parameters of standardized curricula, but will shine even more if their teachers understand that how they deliver the curriculum will often make the greatest difference. It is also important to note, that differentiation is not a total re-shifting of a classroom and a teacher's pedagogy.  Often times, small tweaks make more than enough difference. I consider it mindful teaching.  Sometimes, I do have to radically rethink a lesson, and sometimes, everyone can cope simply because I provided an audio file of the novel we are reading or I made sure the notes for the lesson were up on Moodle or I give the students the choice between writing down a response or recording it using digital tools like Audacity, Voice Memo or Croak It.

4. It takes a village....
Andrew Solomon, in his talk Love, no matter what  tells the truth that "Ironically, it turns out, that it's our differences, and our negotiation of difference, that unite us".  In the world I work in, it is never just one person who makes the difference in a child's life.  It is never just one person who takes that child from academic failure and/or challenge and brings them into the light.  And, because every person in my building is  a hand-selected, active and willing participant in a collaborative, innovative, and supportive environment, we "negotiate" these differences together because we are all on the same page. I cannot stress how important it is that this village, this school be united in a singular purpose, but that the inhabitants be permitted to achieve this purpose in what ever manner they know will best suit the student, for modelling how to embrace the diversity of minds is far more powerful a teaching act than simply extolling their virtues.

5. And a whole lot of TLC.
When working with exceptional learners in a building where daily, we celebrate the beauty of diverse minds, it takes a teacher not only well-versed in the technical/theoretical aspects of pedagogy, but also a teacher who brings a lion's heart filled with empathy, kindness, tenacity and, hope to help a disengaged, challenging child with no belief in themselves  find and revel in what the delightful Rosie King calls their brilliant individual light. It's hard work, it's emotional work, it's exhausting work.  But, for those of us who work and learn from exceptional students, for those of us who have come to marvel at the sheer wonder of their diverse minds, it is work that is fulfilling and important.  It is fulfilling because we give hope. It is important because there are no greater gifts an educator can give to a student than the ability to shape their own future.

Come, let's re(vision) our pedagogical practices together so that the exceptional learner comes to the empowering conclusion that no matter what the diversity of their mind, they are capable of learning.

  

The Hardest Question of All. . .

"Will my child be okay?" is hands down the most difficult question a parent can ask.

It's so difficult because, when a parent asks this question, there are often really complex issues driving the query.  Issues that do not have, and will never have, easy and pat responses.

And, I personally feel that the only teachers who are permitted to respond with a resounding yes to such a question are those who are brand new to the profession and have yet to develop the ability to respond to such a question with insight and plausible, workable solutions; who have yet to develop the confidence and insight that would enable them to answer "Yes, but. . .".

I also think that this is a question that reflects just how difficult it can be to raise a child, let alone a child who struggles .  A parent doesn't ask this question of just anyone.  They must truly feel (or expect) that, as teachers, we CAN fix the problems their children are experiencing; that we have the skills and knowledge to HELP. It is this incredible level of trust, perhaps even blind trust, or, probably more accurately, fear that their child isn't going to be okay,  that makes this question even more challenging.

So.  When I am asked to respond to this question what do I do?  What do I say? Well, I hope my response is guided by the late Rita Pierson whose mission in life was to find a way to help EVERY child learn and fulfill their potential.

I hope that my response, although guarded, is always hopeful.

I hope that my response highlights the strengths of the child.

I hope that my response honestly takes into account the child's challenges.

I hope that my response offers up plausible, actionable, possible solutions.

I hope that my colleagues and my administrators can  diplomatically voice our misgivings,  find common ground, and then work together to bring these solutions to life.

I hope that my response is taken in good faith, as I don't know everything.  I can only work to find solutions. I can only base my responses on what I see and know from my daily interactions with the child in question.

This leads me to another aspect of my response to the question "Will my child be okay"? Many times, there are things the child can actually do.  I love this quote.  In my classroom, I can always provide learning experiences that are interesting and personalized.  I can learn as much as I can about a student's learning preferences and style, I can be their champion and let them know daily that I believe in them, but at some point, a child who struggles is going to have to decide for themselves whether or not they are going to  be an active participant in their learning journey, instead of letting themselves be victimized and defined by their challenges.  This lesson is hard and not always palatable, but it has to happen.  In such a situation, though I hope:

That the child's voice will be heard.

That the child's own fears, misgivings, hopes and dreams will be taken into account and respectfully integrated into the proposed solutions.

That the child's needs supersede the expectations either explicit or implicit that I, the school, or the parents might have.

And finally, (and so many of the parents I have the privilege of working with do this with so much grace and aplomb that I marvel each and everyday), I can only respond to this difficult question when the partnership between myself and the child's parents is open, honest, and based upon mutual respect. Revisioning a child's path involves: finding solutions, building confidence and self-esteem, enabling learning, supporting curiosity, and looking towards a positive and productive future.  Those are my goals as a teacher.  But, without an entire team working together to engineer actionable solutions, I cannot  respond appropriately to the question posed by the concerned parent.

When we all work together as a team.  When we are  a kind and caring community,  when we look past marks and standings, when we stop pointing fingers and making excuses, when we sit down with our all our cards out in front of us and honestly express our hopes and fears, THEN, together, as a team we can all say "Yes, absolutely" to the most difficult question of all.

All students have LearnAbiltites. Let's make sure we give them what they need.

















 

Changing the composition of the soil: helping students see connections and possibilities through gardening, making and social activism

We have two aspects to our adult lives: our vocation and our advocation. The former pays for life, the latter makes it all worth it. Education, with vision and purpose, makes both possible.

I garden to feed my soul.  The fact that I also can feed my belly is an added perk.  Like all of those who put seed into soil, I find something utterly rewarding in watching my efforts come to fruition.  And, as a teacher, gardening seems to be an apt metaphor for so much that we do as as a recent #TEDEdChat on Ron Findley's Ted Talk  revealed.  I don't want to rehash every metaphor we explored, but I do want to speak towards the very powerful metaphor found in Findley's talk A guerilla gardener in South Central LA and how it relates to a fundamental purpose of education: helping students learn the skills and mindsets that will enable them to productively and meaningfully contribute to the communities they live in.

In his talk, Findley reveals how "I have witnessed my garden become a tool for the education, a tool for the transformation of my neighbourhood. To change the community, you have to change the composition of the soil. We are the soil." How can we as teachers change the composition of the soil so that we have fertile ground for life?  Let me suggest 5 ways:

1.  Eradicate poverty by ensuring the education that every student, in every school around the world, gets will enable them to be meaningfully employed for life:  Once again, developing strong skills in literacy, numeracy, science, and the social sciences probably is the best way to ensure that students have the basic skills and the learning skills needed for post-secondary (and I don't just mean university).

2. Create the kinds of lessons, units, and programs (hopefully interdisciplinary in nature) that give students the ability to solve novel, authentic, real-world, real-life problems using the skills they have acquired in all their courses.

3. Let them make mistakes, but ensure that you provide them with the supports to learn from their mistakes. If you want to change the composition of the soil, students are going to need grit.

4. Let them learn how to make something.  What is wrong with students knowing how to do an oil change, build something, cook something, sew something, fix something, create something?  The Maker movement speaks to something almost primal in our pyscholological make-up. The skills students learn in these environments just might be the avocation that gives purpose, excitement and flow to their lives for years and decades to come.

5.  Playtime.  Have as many different kinds of clubs and extra-curricular programs as possible in school.  Sports are vital, but, so is the crochet club, the manga club, the take-it-apart-and-put-it-back-together club. Even in high school, we need to help students learn to create balance in their lives.  Students with avocations are more likely to develop the skills that help them stick it out in their vocations.

So.  I have just given myself work for life!  Over the next year, I want to explore how I can help my students improve or optimize the composition of their soil.  And I don't think that academics is the only way.  I have spent more than half of my career in schools were many of my students will not go to university and will not have white-collar jobs. They will work with their hands and be active participants in society.  They raise families and pay their taxes.  But I am also very mindful that the last 10 years in North America has clearly highlighted how both these white-collar and blue-collar jobs that were once deemed life-time vocations are not as secure as they once were.  So, this brings me to my next point.

Education today must give our students the ability to be life-long learners with one more spectacularly important skill: the ability to see connections and possibilities that do not seem to exist.  And that is were I think we need to focus far more upon the connections between the disciplines; upon the fact that in life, rarely do you just use one skill to solve a problem.

I'm a big fan of Gever Tully and his Tinkering School: Life lessons from tinkering and 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do.  Gever Tully thinks that we need to let kids just get dirty and make things.  In doing so, they learn a lot, make many, many mistakes, probably cut themselves, and use skills from all of the disciplines to solve problems.  As a mother, watching my young children do this daily in our backyard, I'm scared silly, but it also fills me with awe. Children are natural makers and problem solvers and, when we cut up learning into isolated disciplines, we slowly kill that innate ability.

So out of all of these observations and ideas, I have a suggestion for a interdisciplinary, inquiry, project-based unit centred around the idea of gardening using Findley's notion that gardening is all about changing the "composition of the soil" and Tully's idea that there are  "simple things that we can do to raise our kids to be creative, confident and in control of the environment around them".

I'm going to call it "Life Gardening" (hopefully my students can come up with a much more inspiring and hip name) and I want to use it with our grade 7s.  We recently received a grant from the BP A+ For Energy program  http://www.bp.com/en/global/aplus-for-energy.html that will enable our school to build a greenhouse.  Initially, the grant was for grade 7 science and in particular for a single unit "Plants for Food and Fibre",  but I see the potential for something much bigger within that grade.

I'm toying with using Ron Findley's talk as the central text and then bring in math, science, language arts, social studies, food studies, art and music to create a 6-8 week learning experience that will not only help students master the skills and knowledge of grade 7 science, but, more importantly, help them make connections within all of their classes.  We might end up growing the plants that the First Nations people were cultivating in pre-colonial times here in Canada,  or honing our informational text skills by researching and reading about gardening, or donating our produce to the homeless at our local drop-in centre, or holding a fundraiser for materials to continue once the funds from the grant are used up,  or becoming politically engaged so that our environment can continue to sustain and feed all of the citizens of our planet,  but those are all big steps in making Grade 7 Social Studies, Language Arts, Math and  Science more relevant and real to a group of students who might, otherwise,  not be able to see the connections between those disciplines; who otherwise, might not be able to see early enough that all of life is connected in some meaningful and compelling way.

And, hopefully, in the end, the final result will be a dedicated and devoted group of kids who grow up to not only be avid gardeners,  with meaningful and productive careers in related fields, but adults with an advocation and passion for social justice that was ignited by the lessons they learned this year in a small greenhouse on the playground.

Talk about planting the seeds for the future; talk about changing the composition of the soil.

Come, let's revision our pedagogical practice together.