My 5 Beliefs about Education

I truly feel that my actions, for the most part, align with my beliefs about education. Unfortunately, I have a difficult time saying they always align, because of certain limitations that are beyond my control, which include the amount of time I have my students, when I have them, because I don't set the schedule, and activities that are mandated across the board for our schools systems in NC. This leads me to my top five beliefs about education. I have many strong beliefs about the education of our children in this amazing era of technology and information. I guess I can work them down to five.

First, I believe all students have the right to a free and public 21st century education. No child should be limited in access to technologies that will not only enhance their education, but that will teach them technology literacies that will be expected in the work environment. This is a right that the public should expect our school systems to provide. This is why I feel it was so important to have my students exposed to technologies in my class that not only make learning more fun, but that also challenged them.

This brings me to my second belief in education. I believe that students need to be challenged often. Frederick Douglass said, "It is easier to build strong children, than to repair broken men". I truly believe many of our kids coast through school and are not made to really think. If a student "aces" every assignment given, they can do much more than what we are giving them.  If we do not challenge them as students, they will be challenged as adults and may not be able to handle the pressure. As I work to make my students "Brain Sweat", I may not have a class of all "A"s, but my students can't say that they were not pushed in my class to get better.

My third belief may seem rather trite, but it is essential to every successful educator. I believe that all students can learn. We live in a day and age were the push is for every child to be mainstreamed into the regular public education classroom. I think in an attempt to create "typical" students we forget that defining typical is difficult to say the least. Instead of standardizing education, we need to personalize education. Every student is capable of learning, it is up to educators and our system of education to place kids in the most conducive environment for them. Unfortunately, students are not always in the proper environment and this is when they may act out or have other problems. This is difficult for me, because in a class period of approximately 40 minutes, I can't have these types of disruptions. This is where as I mentioned above that my actions, for the most part, echo my beliefs in education. I would love to take the time to break down the issue with the student at that moment, but with the number of students I have and the time constraints that are imposed, that student may get sent to redirect and the issue can't be dealt with till much later. This is not very effective and I have struggled with how to best meet the needs of that trouble student, while not sacrificing the time of other students, in particular this year. This is a very personal issue for me, also. My son, though not having the behavior issues i mentioned earlier, is on the Autism spectrum. He was in public education for 2 years. His first year was very tough at times, but he was successful. His second year, he began to blossom, but in his 3 year, with no teacher assistant and class sizes nearing 30 students, he was having a very difficult time. We are fortunate to have the ability place him in a private Christian school with class sizes of around 10. With this, he has begun to love school again. It hurts me that we don't always place kids in a proper environment because of costs, when we can usually find the money to do whatever else we want.

The fourth belief that I hold dear about education is that what we teach must be relevant to our students. Information is everywhere today and our students have no problem accessing it. Our job is to make information relate to the  "real world" for our students. If not, learning is usually lost in short measure. Students must understand the importance of what you teach and how they can make connections to their lives in the future.

It is difficult for me to put these beliefs in order from least to most important. I think they really overlap to some degree. I say that because my fifth belief is not fifth in importance. We must understand the importance of culture in educating our students. I read where an educator said, "if students don't learn the way we teach, we should teach the way they learn". If we do not relate to the culture of our students, it becomes very difficult to reach them. I think this is one of my stronger attributes as an educator. I often incorporate
activities where students are exposed to people who look like them, who have maybe some of the same life experiences and who excel in spite of any difficulties.

I think the common themes through most of my statements have been relationships, rigor and relevance. All three are required in order to be a successful educator.

Our First Video Conference

I love teaching students how to play music. My classes often discuss how music tends to reflect the joys, pains, and values of people. Today we had an amazing opportunity to explore the history behind some pieces that we are playing and made some connections to our music of today. My 8th Grade band took a day away from the instruments and did a video conference with the National Museum of African America History and Culture, NMAAHC  This museum is part of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC.

We had a wonderful curator from the museum, Heather Buchanan, who took use though several artifacts. The name of the exhibit was "Living Objects" and the premise was that objects tell a story. We spent time looking at objects from slavery. To help facilitate the video conference, students took actually quotes from January 1, 1863, the day the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect and wrote first person letters using one of the quotes. They wrote to President Lincoln or a fictitious relative or friend. This was meant to allow students to get into the mindset of the times. During the presentation they were asked by the presenter to explain how their person might feel in several scenarios, according the objects shown. One such example was a picture of slave shackles. Using a ruler students determined that the size of the shackles meant that they must have been used for a woman or child. Students then were asked more higher order thinking questions like "how would wearing the shackles make the slaves feel". The experience, exposing my kids to an expert on that time period, was great. Students were very interactive and were anxious to answer. The technology does what technology does...We had two drops, but we were able to get back on quickly. I was really excited to also experiment with students tweeting about the experience using #gcsk12 and #ycbandvidconf

My hope is that after having our video conference, students have more a connection with some of the music we're doing. Understanding the history brings a wholeness to the music. Students need to understand that humanity is a part of creating art, and human experience is not limited to the "pretty" stuff. When we play the blues I want students to understand where that feeling came from, or when we play a negro spiritual like Wade in the Water, I want students to understand, to some degree, the pain and hope in the lyric along with the ingenious coded message.

We are learning to make connections across all areas in the York Chester Band, and our first video conference is another step in achieving that goal.

Digital Learning Day

Digital Learning was such a neat day in the York Chester Middle School Band  We started out the day with a pic of a runaway slave collar on the Smartboard screen. Students were asked "In one word, how does this image make you feel?".

In order to collect student responses I created a Padlet Board for my classes, and then made a QR code for the Padlet URL. My students used a QR code reader to get to the Padlet page. We then collected the "One Word" responses from all of the students in the class. It was fascinating seeing what my students wrote. I then probed them further and had them explain why they chose the word that they did. I am constantly trying to get my students to outwardly express what's going on internally and this exercise seemed to recall get them to open up.

Empathy is sometimes difficult for our students, but one of the things that we discovered through our conversations is that when we can put ourselves in the place of others we stand a better chance of treating them the way we would want to be treated, but when we create a culture of "them versus us" it is quite easy to do the most inhumane things to other human beings. 

It was amazing how the use of technology helped facilitate this dialogue, which led us into the piece of music that we are preparing to perform, a negro spiritual. Digital Learning Day in the York Chester Middle School Band led us down wonderful road of discovery and we are continuing to use technology to facilitate the learning and innovate how we teach our students.

My First "Official" Staff Development

This past Tuesday, I dove into the waters of providing staff development at my school. I am used to teaching my students. I teach adults at my church and I have helped people from my school, my community and even provided, what I believe to be valuable training or at least guidance and/or instruction to people of all ages and abilities, from across the state. With that said I was surprised at how nervous I was to speak to the staff at my own school. There's something about doing a professional development at your own little pond that can be unnerving. Anyway...

I found out that we were doing some staff development the Tuesday after the MLK Holiday. I offered to do a session, but I had not heard anything...then, the Friday before MLK Day. I was told, "by the way, we need you to do a session on Google Apps Tuesday, ok", and oh course I said sure.  When I looked at the schedule and saw approx 40 minutes, my mind went racing.  What can I do in 40 minutes, how much could I cover, how much should I try to do...after taking a breath I decided to focus on Google Voice, Google Advanced Search, Google Forms, & Flubaroo.

Since we were coming off of MLK, I showed the class, by the way largest group I had was 3 people because I was only teaching our Encore staff which was spilt between about 4-5 other sessions, how to do an advanced search to find MLK presentations to demo for kids to get them thinking about how to create a presentation.

Next I incorporated Google forms and showed the teachers how easy it is to create a digital dropbox for student projects. While I was in forms I created a quiz to demonstrate how teachers can create a test about MLK and use Flubaroo to grade it.

All of this went well and teachers were very receptive, but the winner for the day was Google Voice. I walked the classes through creating a Google Voice number and setting up their voice mail. Teachers have already begun to hand out their Google Voice numbers to their new classes, since we have just hit semester change. Many people were so amazed by Google Voice that as people were walking by the computer lab, they began coming into the session to find out about it. This is a great tool for our staff to begin using.

All in all a pretty good start to presenting staff development. Thanks YC for my first opportunity. I'm looking forward to many more.

GCS Technology Smackdown

What a great experience today at Stuart Cramer!!! The GCS Technology Smackdown was a wonderful way to begin the second semester. As a member of Pinnacle 17, I felt very fortunate to be a part of the event. Fit so very inspiring to see what was going on across GCS and of course it is a perfect time to pick up new idea and new methods as I create college and career ready learners. There was one tool that stood out to me as a great fit for my classroom.

Being that I have less than 45 minutes with my student each day I have to maximize what I get out of that time. One of the time suckers of instructional time for me is having to bring students up to speed when they have been out of class. "Ted Ed" was a great tool to help me flip my class for those particular students or for students who need to review a concept. I have used various screen casting apps to do this, but what sets Ted Ed apart is the fact that you embed questions, so that students can answer questions, which make sure they are "getting it", as they go through the video...Genius!!! This keeps my questions and the video all together and I can keep check on my students answers to make sure they understand the concept. Great time saver!!!

I can't wait to get the list of all of the Smackdown technologies. I am sure I will find more that will innovate the way we do music at YC. Who knew a Smackdown could be a good thing...lol.

TPACK and Apptivities Times are Changing!

Great discussion and work session today at the GCS Pinnacle summer session. This session equipped me to explain to other educators the proper way in which to integrate technologies. One of the main challenges to many of my peers is where to start when trying to use technology in the classroom. The session today answered this question.After group today, I have been reminded that technology should be used seamlessly to create the already established goal or as we were told, "begin with the end in mind".

Reminding teachers to start with their Content Standard, which is where most teachers find the most comfort, is the most important thing. I have found myself so excited about a piece of technology that I have tried to shape lessons around that device. We should rather start with the standard and integrate technology that makes teaching that standard most effective. The Venn diagram for the TPACK model, demonstrated this very clearly. TPACK is a useful tool for wading through all of the technology and getting to the Core of what I want my students to be able to do. I am excited about the process and trying to make what I do in my class more and more seamless, when it comes to technology integration.

I saw some great potential in the Apptivity piece today. The students have much of the responsibility by way of choosing which tool to use, design, collaboration, evaluating data, etc. The process leads students to use higher order thinking skills along with several 21st Century technology skills.

I think that we naturally will improve the quality of teaching that goes on in the classroom as teachers begin to use some of the tools available through mobile apps or various other web 2.0 technologies that engage students at a high level.

The Teacher of the Year Process Reflection

Well I have completed the last step in the process for NC state Teacher of the Year, and I now await the results from the committee that was compiled to make the decision. As I reflect on my experience, several things come to mind.

First, I was and I still am so humbled by the fact that my peers choose me for this role. It's one thing to be chosen by your school to represent them. We all know each other and respect and appreciate each person's contribution at all levels in our school. I was caught completely off guard when I was selected for the county. It was such a blessing and I didn't realize that there were people outside of the community of my school who were aware of what I did or who were taking notice. We have so many fantastic educators in Gaston County Schools that, when my name was called, I literally was in shock. I still have not fully wrapped my mind around it.

By the time I was getting used to being the Gaston County Schools Teacher of the Year, I learned about the next step in the process, the regional competition. I was feeling totally satisfied with where I was representing my county and did not think in my wildest dreams that I had a chance in the regional competition. I thought about all of the counties that were included and the size of some of those schools systems and I said to myself...well it was just an honor to make it this far. When I was notified by the regional staff that I was a finalist, I actually thought the call was the..."thank you for all you do, but...." call. I was again telling myself that it was an honor to make it this far, and this will probably be as far as I go. My school administration did a good job of making me think that my classroom observation went very poorly, and my central office staff were silent about any news about results. When the program came together to announce me as the regional teach of the year winner, my heart was beating so fast and my mind was spinning...of course the fact that I had been sick the last couple of days before and still was not well, may have had something to do with that. All of the cameras, news stations, and reporters...I had no idea this is what it would be like winning the regional competition. I never allowed myself to think that far ahead in the process, because I felt it so unlikely, but there we were.

Yesterday, I went to the Umstead Hotel in. Cary, NC, along with the other 8 regional winners, for the NC Teacher of the Year competition. It was a beautiful venue and it was a great experience to meet these wonderful educators from every area of the state. In talking with them, I found that NC has some innovative things going on in classrooms all over. There were teachers who taught from language arts to dance at traditional public schools and charter schools. They came with a wealth of life experience which included the military to off broadway musicals. I look forward to picking their brains about all things educational. If there is anything I have learned from my years in teaching, it's that collaboration usually yields better answers than isolation. After finishing the interview process, we all headed home.

I have noticed several opportunities that have come available because of being a regional teacher of the year. I have enjoyed being a part of several county committees that are helping to shape the future of education in Gaston County and I am impressed with every committee and team. Gaston County seems to be on the cutting edge of things like schools safety or performance pay. It really makes me proud to be an educator from GCS.

No matter what happens next, I know that everyday I have surrounding the best teachers and staff members in the state, here in Gaston County. We are Gaston County.