Building Better People

I had one of those moments that makes me proud to be a teacher today.

I'm the 7th grade B-Team Coach. We do not cut anyone from football, so what that means is A-Team takes what they need, approximately 40% of the players, and the rest are on my team. This is made up of a few players who have played football before, but mostly students who this is their first time in an organized team sport. And then there is my student who is Resource. Oh, and I am supposed to make sure that all of my students have equal playing time.

Resource, for my non educator friends, is what we call the Special Education students. Now this particular kiddo is very high functions, but does have an IEP with some behavior goals. Before every game he comes up to me to clarify that he is 3rd string X receiver, and that his only responsibility is to block. He gets very excited when I affirm that he is correct, and gets ready to go in. Every practice and every game, I put him in for a few plays to make sure that his parents get the pictures of him in the game, and he gets the time allotted for him.

So there we are at practice today, fresh off of our loss to Hopper. I had all of my receivers lined up running routes against a Defensive Back and a Safety each (1 guy vs 2 for my non-football friends), when my student walks up to the line. He went out for a pass, and to my surprise, the Quarterback threw to him, AND HE CAUGHT IT! Without missing a beat, he turns up field to try and get to the endzone. All of my guys on defense dove at his feet, doing their best to make it look like they were really trying to get him. When our receiver finally made it to the endzone, he was greeted by the entire team where they did a Touchdown dance!

I did not coach these young men to do that. It was never mentioned previously. The decision to make one of their teammates feel like a superstar was one that they came up with. I know Christina tells me that it’s about building better people, and not necessarily about building better football players, but today I think I did both.

The next chapter

I know I haven't typed on here for the entire school year, and maybe one day I'll post about that. Tonight I want to reflect on what today and tomorrow means to me. 

Today was my last day as an elementary school teacher. As I waved goodbye to my students as their school buses drove by, I was also waving goodbye to my time in elementary. I have spent my entire career (9 years) in elementary. I still remember my last day at Holmsley. I was emotional as I packed my things, and said my goodbyes to my mentor teachers. I was a newbie. I had just completed my first year as a teacher, and still had no idea what I was doing. All that I knew was that I was moving from 2nd grade to a new grade level in a new school, surrounded by new people. Tomorrow is almost an exact parallel. I am moving from 2nd grade to a new grade level in a new (to me) school. It was definitely the right decision then, and I'm sure this is the right decision now.

When I started at M. Robinson, I never imagined the friendships that I would cultivate, or that I would meet my wife. I can safely say that M. Robinson has been my family for the last 8 years. We have been through some good times, and some rough times. So many different things have happened in our time together. I have seen some of my dearest friends move on to bigger and better things. I have seen some phenomenal teachers start their careers and develop into teachers who I want to be like. And the students... The students have been wonderful. Each year they come in excited to meet me, and each year we part with heartfelt hugs and goodbyes. I am going to miss them. 

Tomorrow I am leaving a campus who is responsible for my growth as a teacher and as an aspiring administrator. I have had the privilege of working under 2 different principals, with very different philosophies. Both effective in achieving similar results. I have had the opportunity to work in 3 different grade levels, with 7 different partners. I have started a family, furthered my education, and reached every milestone that I have set out to conquer. Thank you M. Robinson family for everything. May my voice and spirit still ring through the hallways with my KTK YouTube videos. It's time to start my next chapter.

I am a Growth Agent!

This has been a busy summer for me. I tutored students across the country in math, trained teachers and administrators in my district on how to use their new Google accounts, refined my skills as a teacher through the use of professional development, completed my training to become an appraiser of teachers, and I got to hang out with my family. Whew! Yeah it's been busy, but good. Actually better than good, GREAT!

As school was letting out for the summer, I was recruited by a non-profit organization to tutor students in California and Texas in the area of Math. All of this was to happen over the internet via a live feed, and be completely interactive. I had never done anything like that before, but it was something that I had thought about doing for a long time. It was tough adjusting to the schedule, but as with any new position, I quickly found my groove, and was able to help to grow these students in the area of Math.

The week after we let out of school, I met with the Instructional Technology team of my district to plan how I would be presenting all of the Google tools to the teachers and administrators of our district. We sat in a round table discussion, developing the presentations, and making sure that everything would run fluidly. What was amazing, was that as the classes were posted, they were filling up. The head of the staff development for technology added classes to my load, knowing that I would be able to handle it. In all I grew 761 educators in four weeks time.

The week following my last class, I immediately jumped into taking my personal professional development. I had targeted that I wanted to grow in the areas of our Interactive Math Notebooks, and small groups, as well as have a better understanding of what a 2nd grade student in Cy-Fair needs to know, and how best to teach it to them. I am so fortunate to be in Cy-Fair, where we offer all of these professional development classes free of charge, and are led by amazing lead learners. I was able to pick up some great tips from more experienced teachers and grow as a professional.

The very next week I was fortunate enough to be able to sit with a group of leaders and complete the process of becoming certified in CFPDAS, our locally adopted teacher appraisal system. This training was led by a woman who had a wealth of experience. She led us through exercises that really stretched our thinking and grew us into becoming Growth Agents. In fact, she kept reminding us, and had us repeat that moniker. "We are Growth Agents." In this 2 day training, I was reminded that no matter what my title is, what position I have in the district, my job, my passion, is to grow those around me. It doesn't matter if they are students or adults, my passion is growing them to their full potential.

Between all of this, I have had to opportunity to hang out with my family. I have held my wife's hand while she takes tests to grow in her education, I have held my oldest daughter's hand while she grew up and got her first job, and first time driving on her own (I held my wife's hand through that as well). I watched my middle daughter grow out of her shell and show her inner rocker. And I have watched my youngest daughter simply grow. I am a growth agent, and I love being a part of the growth of those around me.

Summer is near! Part 2 (Profession)

As I said before, now is the time for some deep reflections. Tomorrow is the last day of school for the students, and I've been having them reflect on them as a class. So it seems only fair that I reflect on myself as a teacher.

I feel like I have grown a lot this school year. I went on a few interviews, none of which resulted in me taking a new position, but each gave me the opportunity to learn something. I was fortunate enough to get to sit down with my principal and talk to her about my 2 most recent interviews. She gave me some great advice about ways to phrase answers to where it shows both my classroom and managerial experience. So I have a few things to work on to be prepared for the next opportunity.

I have also taken probably the greatest professional development I could have imagined in the Google Teacher Academy. Those 2 days were the greatest opportunity for me to grow as an educator I could have imagined. It allowed me to expand my PLN to well beyond what I had already started. It also gave me some credibility to being a great teacher. Despite what some may think, being a GCT has nothing with how much technology I know, but with the way I approach and overcome adversity.

This summer I am going to continue to reach out to my PLN and grow as an educator. I will take the time to reflect on what I did in my classroom, and the best practices to use in my classroom next year.

Summer is near! Part 1 (Classroom)

Well, the end of the year is almost here, and do you know what that means? No, not sleeping in, it means reflections. I am breaking-up this post into separate posts because if I didn't, it would be a book! So this post I am going to reflect on myself as a classroom teacher.

At last year's Digital Learning Conference, I got to talk to Todd Nesloney (@TechNinjaTodd) and hear about his flipped classroom model. I had already been toying with the idea of flipping my classroom, and with a new curriculum, I figured, why not? I made videos and posted them on YouTube/DVDs and assigned them to my students. The level of student success was huge! It showed my students that they needed to prepare for class. The level of academic success wasn't as obvious unless you looked a little closer at the data. The students who did their "homework" were, on average, scoring 15 points higher than those who didn't. Now those 15 points may have still resulted in a failing grade, but it was still higher than those who didn't.

This year I also wanted to make a big deal about exposing my classes to a world outside of their community. I partnered with other teachers from around the world (Canada, Australia, Argentina, California, and Colorado), to local meteorologists, and finally even astronauts aboard the International Space Station. I think the impact of this experience may be hidden inside of them, but eventually the seed will sprout and they will realize that if they want to connect to someone, it's absolutely possible. I just want to stay on this topic for a second to reflect about ALL of the things that my students were able to see:

• Schools in Australia - opposite side of the world, opposite hemisphere
• Schools in Argentina - native Spanish speakers, opposite hemisphere
• Schools in Canada - a different climate than what they're used to.
• Schools in California and Colorado - still in the United States, but they're also different than here.
• Phil Bildner - one of their favorite authors, and then he visited their school!
• Chita Johnson - a local meteorologist who shared her job, and we shared our projects.
• Astronauts on the ISS - astronauts.... enough said!
• The Google offices in Austin - yes while I was out at a training at Google, I shared with my students what the offices looked like, and that I could check on them even from afar.

What a list! I think it's easy to say that I did all of this because, "I'm good with technology" but I think that would be missing the point. The point is that I enhanced the curriculum by showing my students what is possible. I got my students in touch with experts when it pertained to our current unit of study. I hope that those seeds have a long lasting effect on my students. I hope that when they get old enough to have their own social media accounts (yes I'm totally ignoring the fact that most of them probably already do), that they use it responsibly, and for good things.

Another thing my students were able to do this year was pilot Google Classroom/Google Apps For Education for our school district. We were the first classes to get into our GAFE accounts, and were the only elementary to do so. My students had to learn how to manipulate a brand new system, how to be patient, and how to share with others. In fact when I asked my students what their favorite activity was this year, they replied, unanimously, "Google Accounts!" There were actual tears, from fourth graders, when I told them that they couldn't use them for this last week of school.

I honestly feel like I have had a huge impact on my students. No it wasn't the greatest academic impact, and the reasons for that could be a whole other post, but it was pretty big in other ways. I'm not sure who said it, but "Students are more than a test score" and I am pretty sure that I have shown my students that this year.

Updates

I wanted to update all of my readers on the latest of what's been going on. First of all, I did not get the Instructional Specialist position. I did make it to a 2nd interview, which I've never done before, but ultimately I was not the right fit for their campus. I reflected on my interview, and I think where I went wrong was allowing the focus to be on the technology I was using, and not how I was using the technology to enhance the lessons. 

So as it stands today, I am going to be a 2nd grade Math/Science teacher. Now, I did put in some more applications for Assistant Principal, but I really just threw that line out there to see if I could get a bite. Don't get me wrong, I want those positions, but it's almost unheard of for a teacher to go straight to administration from the classroom.

Some other cool things, I was asked to be interviewed by Remind. I thought that was really neat! I've always just thrown my ideas out there without anyone really asking my thoughts. This time, however, I was actually asked for my thoughts! I also had the opportunity to present and write a blog post for the Texas Google Summit (TXGoo). This is basically a local conference where all presentations are on Google tools and how you use them in the classroom/school. It's like a big family reunion. :) 

I do want to brag on my students a little bit. So on their last 2 assignments, I have had nearly 100% passing!!! In math we were able to spend more time on the subject than they did throughout the year, and that really made a difference in my student's level of understanding. I'm not blaming the district, they did their best to schedule the curriculum to where everything the state asked us to cover, was covered by the STAAR test. And then my students just ROCKED their Science DPM! We spent a little time reviewing, but they just nailed it. I even told them at one point, that as a teacher, it feels so great to see your students using the strategies that you taught them!

Other than that, I'm just trying to make it to the end of the school year. I'm stretching my imagination on making the last few lessons the district has given me as highly engaging as I possibly can!

Sad Story...

I was all ready to post about how amazing my class did today, and that post will be out most likely tomorrow, when I heard about a teacher in California who took her own life. After reading this story, and listening to comments from my GTAATX cohorts, it got me thinking about what I've seen in my building. I believe that on my campus, there are no loners.

Now there may be more cliques than ever, but I honestly believe that everyone has someone to talk and relate to. Some may not think this is a big deal, or that work is for working, not making friends. I would have to disagree. I think that it is impossible for teachers, whose jobs it is to form relationships with students, to not form relationships with their peers. Does that mean everyone needs to hangout after school, or even eat lunch together? No, but everyone does need someone to listen while they vent.For me not only do I have my wife, but I have my teammates, and my friends on social media to talk to. Note I do not advocate venting on social media.

As teachers we are expected to be "on" all the time. This is hard, because sometimes we don't feel like we can let anyone know what's bothering us. If something is bothering you, please don't keep inside; please find someone to talk to, or write a blog post. Just what ever you do, please don't keep it all inside.