A close friend of mine once shared some good advice – share the positive stories. Keep your tweets positive. We need to know the good things that are happening in education.

I agree. There’s so much negative in education these days, that we need to ensure people read and hear all the amazing things that are happening.

I have so much for which to be grateful, and every day, my students do incredible things. It’s easy to share what they’re learning, what they’ve discovered, the funny little things they say. So much good happening!

To be honest, though, I want to be sure to provide a balanced version of what happens in my classroom. If I’m too “Pollyanna,” am I misleading anyone about what happens on a daily basis? If I don’t share the struggles along with the successes, am I giving people the wrong idea about our learning journey?

And if I’m keeping with that honesty… there are some days that are just HARD.

There are days where steps forward that my students have taken all come crashing backward, and it feels like we’re starting all over again. I really believe in the inquiry-based classroom, but there are challenges.

This is the TRUE picture of our classroom:

• Some days, we misuse the freedom we’re given.
• Some days, we are not able to manage the independent learning structure, and we get needy. Even the simplest tasks are outside our realm of abilities for those days.
• Some days, we just want the answers given to us instead of searching and making our own decisions.
• Some days, I expect more from them than they’re able to do in one setting.
• Some days, I get frustrated with things that aren’t really related to my kids.

However, if we look at the learning involved in the difficulties, we find some really major life lessons in those struggles. And as the teacher sharing what we do, I need to be certain to share what ISN’T working just as much as what IS.

I’m really proud of my students. They have come such a long way this year! Have I been as open with what’s troubled them as I have with their successes? Probably not. Maybe that’s my learning curve.

How do you balance those things that you share about your classroom? Two bloggers that I follow regularly, Shelley Wright and Deirdre Bailey, are really good about that balance. You should read them, if you don’t already.

And finally, are you sharing more about what YOU are doing than what your STUDENTS are doing? I admit it’s easy to do sometimes, but I really feel it’s more important to put the focus on the kids. If we’re in this for that “rock star” status, we’re doing it wrong.

Thanks for reading. I value your feedback.

This morning, during our staff professional development time, we all talked about inquiry-based learning. Inquiry is already embedded into our school’s philosophy and practice. Just as we do with students, we spent time this morning reflecting upon our own practice:

• What does Inquiry look like?
• What are we doing already in our learning with our students?
• What is the process?

We also discussed the challenges of an inquiry classroom. Sometimes, the learning is messy and chaotic. Sometimes, the amount of freedom that the kids have overwhelms them, and they don’t always make good decisions. And sometimes, loose deadlines are too much in the “grey area” for those kids who really crave structure and boundaries.

Ultimately, though, those challenges help kids to understand that the process in learning is often more important than the outcome. Mistakes happen. We all make mistakes, and we learn from them. Through inquiry, we reflect on our learning, and we make choices about what we learn, how we learn, and how we demonstrate what we learn.

Our students are thinking critically about decision-making, problem-solving, and sometimes, even behavior choices. They are always asking questions. A LOT of questions! When we have guest speakers or when we go on learning trips, I’m always so pleased to hear our speakers/tour guides remark about the types of questions our kids ask. “Wow, your kids have such great questions!” “Hmm… that’s a really deep question. I’m glad you asked that.” “Boy, you guys sure are curious!” (I’ve heard these three statements in the last two weeks.)

My kids are currently struggling with completing projects. They often have these wonderful ideas, but those ideas don’t always manifest into completed projects. We sometimes have a difficult time, at 8-10 years old, with using our work time to the fullest. Sometimes, we get distracted by each other, by the learning tools we have at our disposal, or by absolutely nothing at all. The latter is what one of my students calls his “spacing out time.” Parents occasionally wonder how we keep our kids accountable if they don’t always finish things during school. Parents like to see neat, high quality, completed projects. I get that, because I do, too. However, as the teacher in the classroom, I have the fortune of also seeing the process – the questions the kids have about different topics, how they decide what they’re going to investigate, and the choices they make in what they do with their learning. Mistakes are made, but again… I get to see how they problem-solve those mistakes. The kids blog about their learning, including what they learned during the process, but they’re not always able to articulate exactly what that process was. My biggest challenge is capturing the process to share with parents and other people. I need to get better at that.

So, my plan today was to come to my classroom, share what we (their teachers) talked about this morning, and then listen to their thoughts about inquiry. Before the kids came to our room, I checked Twitter and noticed my friend, Deirdre Bailey, tweeted about a post she had just written. I clicked on the link and almost fell over. She had just written about the exact same experience in her inquiry-based classroom at Calgary Science School in Calgary, AB. Here’s her post: Savouring the ISH: Outside the Lines: Student Perspectives on Inquiry Learning.

She had just done the exact same exercise with her class that I was planning on doing with my class this morning! I think “serendipitous” might be a new word to share with my class.

I decided not to share Deirdre’s blog post with my kids until after we had done our own reflection.

Questions I asked my students and their responses:

• What exactly IS Inquiry? learning, questions, research, more questions, individual interests.
• What do we use for our research? internet, movies, books, podcasts, speakers, friends, “experts.”
• How do we share our learning? papers, posters, videos, books, drawing, poems, oral presentations, skit/plays, songs, persuasive writing.

After that discussion, I asked them how we learn differently than they did in other schools. They told me that “old school” is very different than “new school.” <– that’s how they decided to categorize them.

Old school is:

• teacher lecturing
• copying work from the teacher (taking notes from the information the teacher gives them)
• worksheets
• lists to memorize for tests
• teacher=the expert
• teacher corrects their work, but the students don’t always understand what they “got wrong.”
• homework that seems like busy work
• less freedom, less choice

They described “new school” as:

• more discussion in large and/or small groups
• sometimes, the teacher models or gives us stories that provide examples (replaces lecture).
• we ask a lot of questions.
• teacher answers questions with questions, and this used to frustrate us. Now we know it helps us think for ourselves.
• teacher asks us, “What do you think about…” which makes us feel like we have an opinion that matters.
• we problem solve more.
• more freedom, more choice
• more responsibility on us to do our work

I then asked them which “school” they prefer, and they all said “new school.” Then we skimmed through Deirdre’s post together, and they were really excited to see that someone else does what we do. When I asked them if they understood the point that Mrs. Bailey was trying to make, a few of my kids realized that it was showing how much responsibility is on them as the learners.

I asked, “if you have freedom, and you don’t use your time to your best ability, what happens?”

One student replied, “We waste time, and then our projects get rushed. We don’t always do our best work.”

Then I wondered aloud, “Hmmm… does it matter if we do our best work?” They all responded that it did, so a short discussion launched about quality of work, learning, accountability, and responsibility. As a teacher, my heart was overflowing… and my mommy heart skipped a few beats, too. THIS is what I wish my own children had been able to do in school.

Today was an inquiry activity about learning through inquiry. They asked questions. They sought out answers for their questions. They talked to each other, and we read about another class’s experience in inquiry. They shared aloud what they learned about their learning.

It’s been a pretty good day in my book.

Every day, you’ll see several (tens? hundreds?) of Tweets and posts recommending “n reasons why x tool is the best/worst idea for education.”

I very much dislike lists.

You can find pros and cons for everything under the sun, but I think we need to stop promoting or discounting tools and focus more on changing pedagogy.

I’d like to write a bit about iPads now. Our school is a 1:1 iPad school, but students are also welcome to bring and use other devices (laptops, iPods, cell phones) to do what best helps them learn.

I’ve read a lot of posts about how iPads are NOT good learning tools, because you can’t learn to type properly on them,  they’re bad for note-taking, you can’t teach programming on them, etc. But in all those posts, we’re looking at an adult’s perspective: adults who learned to type on a keyboard, either in school or on their own. These same adults learned to take notes in school. If they were taught programming at all, it was done on some type of computer with a keyboard.

So, iPads are bad because adults can’t type as quickly on them, and they don’t know how to program on them. Hmm. So, are we saying that students must learn to use specific tools because those are the tools that work best for adults?

What I find interesting about this advice is that no one considered asking a child how they might use an iPad.

What if we asked kids how they would use a device? What if we got out of the way and let them explore? That’s what I have the privilege of doing every day.

One of my students, a 9 year old girl, types more quickly on an iPad than most adults type on a standard laptop. Another one of my students, a 10 year old boy, has his iPad “keyboard” split, and he types like he texts… with his thumbs. Neither of them prefer using a standard keyboard. A couple of my students learned early to type on a keyboard, so they have an iPad case with keyboard. And then there are those students who struggle with typing and writing. Although they practice those skills daily, they also have access to dictation apps that help them as well.

The beauty here is that the students have the option to choose what works best for them, and there is no need for my intervention.

My kids also document their learning in different ways. They have a camera on their iPads that they use to photograph evidence of their learning. They often switch to video mode and record what they’re experiencing while narrating simultaneously. They’ve become documentarians without an adult telling them what they should do.

They create videos to share what they are  learning. During one experiment, while they were making race tracks, the students noticed that the toy race car kept flipping off the track. It was happening so quickly, however, that they couldn’t SEE where their track was failing. One student decided they should record the car racing in slow motion to troubleshoot the problem with their track. Within five minutes, they had the problem solved, because they used their iPads to record using an app called Slow Pro. All of this happened while I watched and said nothing. They had access to a tool that allowed them to quickly grab an app and begin recording immediately.

When we go on learning excursions, they don’t grab their laptops. They grab their iPads so they can take photos and videos easily.  When they take notes, they use an app that not only allows them to type their notes, but also provides options for adding photos and voice recordings.

Some of the kids in our school are learning programming. Did you know there are apps for that too? For my own learning, I’m checking out ScriptKit right now.

iPads work in our school for a number of reasons:

1. Our leadership had a plan in place when making the decision to include iPads as learning devices.
2. In our inquiry-based classrooms, students have a lot of choices in determining what the will learn and how they will demonstrate what they have learned. Every kid is different, and what works for one may not work for another. Their iPads and other devices provide them options.
3. Our teachers were provided iPads to use as well. Everyday, we work together to share what we’re doing and learn from each other.

My purpose in writing this post really isn’t so much about how I love iPads. If your school or district rushes out to purchase large volumes of these devices without any plan, time for learning about the devices, and how those devices will support teaching and learning, then ANY tool will fail.

Additionally, if the tool isn’t used to transform learning, then you’re just wasting money. If you purchase a netbook for every child in your district, but then continue only lecturing while the students take notes, is learning transformed? Or did you just buy a really expensive substitute for paper and pencil?

The tool isn’t the problem. WE are the problem. If we don’t know how to provide options for students and then get out of the way, we aren’t transforming their learning. In my opinion, children need to have access to MULTIPLE devices so that they can make decisions about what best suits them for a specific learning activity.

iPads in the classroom are neither the problem, nor the solution. iPads are tools. However, if you choose to write a list about why iPads are not good for learning, maybe you need to rethink that list. I know a school full of children who can refute your arguments by what they do every single day.

“Too often we give our children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.” Roger Lewin

It’s been about 12 years now that I’ve had that quote on my email signature. I’m sure I’ve tweeted it out more than a few times as well. Oddly, I can’t make myself change that quote to something else, because I still see that as a major issue in education today.

In my grades 3/4 classroom, I have multiple levels of competency in math. We often start our time in math with similar activities, but then move on to Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, etc. to ensure that the students understand the concepts, are able to find success in what they know and are able to do, but also are challenged to move up to something more difficult.

What I’ve been finding all year is that, regardless of their mastery or lack of mastery in specific concepts, word problems stump them all.

As their teacher, I need to help them find strategies for solving word problems, so we put on our “Math Detectives” hats and started looking at clues. They found that certain words are red flags for certain operations and then created some fun posters, sorted clue words by operations, etc.

That helped, but only a little.

I realized my kids were fixated… perhaps even obsessed with finding the answers. When they are unsure of an answer, they just start guessing and throwing out more answers.

I tell them, “Whoa! Back the truck up here. You don’t even know what the problem is. How can you be answering it already?”

So in our math sessions this week, we’re practicing finding the problem. We have discussed how some problems seem fairly simple and you can see the answer right away in your head, but if you miss one little detail, you’re not even solving the correct problem. How can you find the proper solution if you don’t even understand what the problem is?

We have this same approach to our inquiry block, our reading and writing activities — probably most of the learning activities we do every day. Many times, we learn that there aren’t really answers to some problems. Other times, we discover that some answers that “everyone knows” as specific facts aren’t actually correct. I love that my kids get into the detective role and really think through their discoveries.

This has me thinking about education in general. Everyone and their brother thinks they know how to “fix” education right now. I see all sorts of solutions thrown out there: more testing, more school days/hours, younger teachers, older teachers, Common Core Standards,  flipped classrooms, Khan Academy, passion-based learning…

There are so many answers, I can’t even post them all.

I’m wondering, though, if anyone really has spent time on the problem. What exactly is THE  problem?  Or problems? There are as many theories as there are solutions already suggested, I’m sure. And don’t get me wrong, I think there are troubling issues in the way many children are being educated right now. However, I think most of the proposed solutions aren’t really solving the right problems.

I guess I’m just worried that we’re approaching “fixing” education like my students do with their math problems. Throwing out a bunch of answers before really looking deeply at the problem rarely solves anything properly.

We all have our own agenda. We all have our pet peeves about what kids don’t know, but should. If, however, we were able to come together, free of our agenda and pet peeves, and talk about what is really important for the education of children…

… how would we define that problem?

My dad loves to say, “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.”

I’m going to revise that to, “Don’t fix it until you really know what’s broken.”  So let’s start there.

Thanks for thinking along with me.

Learning lessons with my students is probably one of my favorite things about teaching.

We have been working on puzzle problems in math, specifically those that help us practice operational facts (something my grades 3/4 need) and challenge us to think differently about numbers.

Grant Wiggins wrote a post about The Problem of Non-Problems in Math Programs a couple of years ago that I recently re-discovered. As I plan learning opportunities for my students, I am constantly reminded of his words in this post. So many math programs have “problem-solving” listed as a high level goal for students; yet so few math programs ask students to solve anything other than equations. Equations are not problems. In fact, I find that my students are pretty good at solving equations I put in front of them, but they can’t come up with an equation when I put a problem in front of them.

My solution to helping them learn to become better problem-solvers is to give them a lot of math “puzzles” to solve. The math geek in me LOVES these puzzles. My students… not so much.

Today, I heard a lot of whining from my kids– kids who are attending a school like Anastasis because they want to learn, not just do worksheets. The whining sounded like:

Another puzzle? Auuuggghh!

Can’t you just give us a hint?

This is so hard!

So, after a bit of frustration on their part (the math puzzle) and mine (the whining), I gathered them together for a pep talk.

“Of course this is hard. It’s supposed to be challenging. If it were easy, it would show what you already know, rather than what you are about to learn.
You’ve already shown me what you know. I want you to show me what you’re LEARNING. Once you learn how to solve the puzzle, you’re going to feel pretty great about what you accomplished, right?”

They all agreed and then set off to finish their challenge.

I have to admit that I kind of borrowed that pep talk from Tom Hanks in A League Of Their Own (my favorite baseball movie):

Dottie: It just got too hard.

Jimmy: It’s supposed to be hard! If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great!

Maybe that’s how I was taught to learn… that “the hard” is what makes learning great. I’ve always loved puzzles, brain teasers, problems to solve. My favorite teachers were the ones who said “figure it out” and challenged me.

I’m guessing, though, that we (educators) don’t always provide opportunities for kids that make learning great. Giving students work that is difficult only for the sake of being difficult isn’t going to help kids learn anything. [That’s my problem with policy wonks who overuse the word “rigor.”] On the other hand, giving kids work that is mindless and “easy” does nothing to help them stretch themselves.

This is our second year in our school, where inquiry and problem-solving are foundational concepts… yet, I still find myself occasionally stepping in front of the kids and giving them questions to answer, instead of problems to solve (this is part of a Roger Lewin quote that has been a part of my email signature for many years).

I am a huge advocate of our school philosophy, but it’s so easy to fall back into those habits of how I was taught to teach.

My learning challenge as their teacher is to remember to make the learning great, to challenge them to think and wonder. It’s not always easy to find opportunities for them to learn in this style, so I have to keep working harder to make it happen.

I guess this is my plug for problem-based learning… challenges that take children to the brink of frustration, where they have to struggle just a bit, but aren’t so overwhelming that they can’t ever find solutions. In the midst of learning to solve the problems, kids are also learning perseverance, using their creativity, and analyzing what works and what doesn’t work. And as their teacher, I have to persevere, use my creativity, and analyze what works and doesn’t work FOR THEM.

That’s pretty great, isn’t it?

Today, my class celebrated International Dot Day at Anastasis– that specific blog post will be up next week on our class blog. In conjunction with Dot Day, FableVision partnered with my friend Angela Maiers to include her #YouMatter message (See her TED talk here).

We had a lot of activities planned for today, and we spent a good portion of the last week discussing why it’s important to believe in yourself, try your best, and understand that you do, indeed, matter. Whether you’re five years old or 105, you matter to someone. You make a difference in someone else’s life, whether you know it or not.

Our Dot Wall

For one of our activities, we wrote anonymous dot notes, sharing why someone in the classroom matters to us. We didn’t address them to anyone, and we didn’t sign them. The kids really loved the mystery of being anonymous, but also that their messages would be read by others.

This was by far my favorite activity. The kids walked around reading the dots, wondering for whom they were written, by whom they were written. One of the kids said to me, “I think that one is for you,” and then beamed. I love being a teacher.

The #YouMatter Dot activity got me thinking about every smile, every encouraging word, every pat on the head I give to kids. It also made me think about the times when I’m not so encouraging, and how my actions matter so much to these children. They’re learning all the time, even when I’m not expecting them to do so.

Oddly enough, we had a funny little teachable moment today — have I mentioned how grateful I am to teach and learn in a school where there are no scripts, pacing guides, or state tests to follow? If there were, we probably would have missed out on this lesson today.

When we were deciding together what our #YouMatter Dots could look like, I drew some examples on the board from kids’ suggestions. In one dot example, the kids told me to write, “You sit with me at lunch. #youmatter”  In my haste to write what they dictated, I also began writing on the lower portion of the board. For most adults, even those of us who are height-challenged… handwriting suffers a bit on that part of the board.

Soon, I heard giggles from my kids. When I asked them what was so funny, they noted that my writing looked like “You sit with meat at lunch. #youmatter”  We all laughed together, and I said, “Huh. So I guess spacing matters, too, right?” They giggled some more, and then I shared the fact that punctuation matters… in fact, it can be a life or death situation. 😉

The photo shows part of our mini-lesson… one that we would not have had today if it hadn’t been for a bit of fun. To those kids, fun matters. Friends matter. Learning matters. Curiosity matters… and I matter more to them than I often realize. In less than thirty seconds, a mistake that I made in writing on a whiteboard became a joke and a lesson about writing. Our kids are learning all the time, even when we don’t always expect it… and that’s just another reason I love teaching.

I hope that you realize that you matter in the life of a child. That’s a pretty serious responsibility, but I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do… can you?