Journey to the Google Teacher Academy

My journey with Google started in June of 2007. I had graduated college and was preparing for my first job as a teacher. I think it was my friend Chris who first told me about this service that it like Microsoft Word, but it saves your files automatically and you can access it anywhere you have an internet connection. Having to write lesson plans at school and modify them at home was becoming tedious, especially when I couldn't remember which version on my 256 mb flash drive was the most accurate. Google Docs was the way to go!

Flash forward about a year, and I heard about this VERY prestigious and exclusive community called the Google Certified Teachers. If you put the word exclusive in front of something, I want it. Over the next few years, I worked diligently towards my goal of becoming a Google Certified Teacher. I kept track of those who were applying, watched their submission videos, and kept looking at the application. 2 years ago I found a podcast called Google Educast on the EdReach Network. The hosts of the podcast were all GCTs (Google Certified Teachers), that's what threw my desire into overdrive! I had already been using the Google Drive products in my classroom. I was drinking the Google Kool-Aid, and wanted to learn everything that I could about the products and how I could use them even better!

In May of 2013 I attended my first Google Event. It was the Texas Google Summit (#TXGOO). I dusted off my dormant twitter account and started following the presenters, and educators who I came in contact with. I saw how other people were sharing quotes from the presenters, so I started to follow suit. One of the sessions I attended was Amy Mayer's session on becoming a GCT. Here it was, I was about to learn how to get into that club that I've been eyeing for many years! One quote stood out among the rest. One little piece of advice I took to heart was when she said, "Be honest, but not humble." There it was. I was being too humble in everything that I was doing. I'm not one to beg for the spotlight, I prefer to let others know that it was a group effort. At that moment I decided that I was going to work on being more outgoing.

At the conference I also learned about these 2 people called the "3 Tech Ninjas" Todd Nesloney (@techninjatodd) and Stacey Huffine (@techninjastacey). I started following them on twitter and learned that the things they were doing in a district VERY close to mine, were the same things that I wanted to do! Then the kicker, I heard that they were going to be at the conference MY district was hosting! I attended their session, and was inspired, but didn't have the confidence that I could do what they were doing. Then this past summer, they came back to our conference. Again, I listened to their session, but this time it struck a chord. Todd talked about how he shares EVERYTHING he does in his classroom. My curriculum was going to be all new, so what better time to make a change of the way I do things than now? I started a class blog and twitter. I pushed the envelope further than I ever had before. Curriculum Coordinators started hearing about the level of integration I was doing in my classroom, and how I was sharing it out on the internet, and it garnered interest.

Finally, I decided it was time to apply for the Google Teacher Academy! It was in Austin, so what better opportunity? I will tell you, when you fill out the application, be prepared. They will ask you some basic essay questions, but then you also need to submit your video. My advice is to complete your video first, and then work on the application.

My next post will be about the Google Teacher Academy!

Google kind of day

Yesterday was all about Google. First the domain administrator was finally able to cross all of the red tape and give my students access to our GAFE accounts. That alone made yesterday Christmas for me. We are going to spend a day just playing in Google. I'm going to let them explore the tools, and ask them to figure out a way to use the tool to explain a concept that we have learned or are going to learn, you know just in case admin comes in and wants to know why we're playing around. :)

You would have thought that would have been the highlight of my day, but it wasn't. The moment I received the email inviting me to the Google Teacher Academy in Austin was one of the greatest moments of my educational career. In the moments since that event, my phone has been blowing up. Between the voxer chat, the G+ updates, the hangout notifications, and the twitter notifications, my phone is living on the charger. I may need to trade it in for an android before December.

I am still amazed that I was one of the 50 educators to get into this Google Academy. Out of the hundreds who applied, I was selected!

Leo

Yesterday was the first meeting of our Leaders Empowering Others group. It's made up of many of our teachers who want to take the next step in our careers; be it administration, counseling, or instructional. It was great to see that there are many of us who want to take that next step. One of the activities that we did was to list the qualities that we see in leaders. Naturally this was a long list, but it got me thinking about the type of leader that I want to be. I've been branded as being a people pleaser, and to be honest, that's probably pretty accurate. I do love to please people, but I know that I can't always do that. I've actually been working on that as Technology Liaison. I can't always make people happy. Sure it's nice when things work out, but there are many times that I have to tell them no.

On another note, today my partner was out, and there was not a sub. I could have split them across the grade level and deal with what they missed at a later date, or I could try to take it all on. Thinking about being a leader, I went ahead and took on the challenge. Honestly, I think it's worked out pretty well. I mean yes there are 37 students in my room, but I have the assistance of paraprofessionals to help me along the way. What I have been able to accomplish today has been phenomenal! I was able to make sure that I had complete understanding in my science and math lessons, and then relate it to the reading and writing! There is something to be said for self-contained teachers. If you are able to integrate, and I know the curriculum departments don't always make easy to do so, you can really reach that deeper level of understanding.

Playing Catch-Up

Wow, a lot has happened since my last post. Sorry about that, I need to get better about posting more frequently. In the past couple of weeks my classes have connected through Google Hangouts to more people ranging from district personnel to NASA! It's really exciting when we're in the middle of class, and a notification comes up that someone would like to connect to our class.

I am having a hard time, however balancing this with my AM class. In this class there happens to be a couple of students who want to do nothing more than cut up and act silly. Naturally I look at the situation and try to determine if there is anything different that I can do. I don't want to reward those students who are acting up by doing this amazing technology and subject the rest of my students to them being rude/disrespectful to our guests, but at the same time I don't want the rest of the class to miss out on these opportunities because of a few people. Is teaching with this level of technology a right or a privilege? The things I'm doing aren't written anywhere in the curriculum, so I have to make time for the things we are doing. If the grades aren't there, then I have to go back to the more traditional methods.

In other news, I am now a snake wrangler. For those who know me, you know that I think snakes are amazingly interesting behind glass, where I am safe. Well, a couple of weeks ago, I had to overcome that fear when I needed to capture a juvenile water moccasin.

I know what you're thinking, "That's a Copperhead" and that's what I thought too until doing some further research on the matter. First of all, it is obviously a venomous snake. Look at the head (venom glands) and the thickness of its body. Now a little herpetology for you. Copperheads have hourglass bands that are fairly thick. Water moccasins have bands too, but they are less connected. They also have a stripe on their face which you will see in the next picture. Let me set the scene for you. We are walking back to our classroom from Large Group (PE, Art, Music) when I noticed this outside of the door to go outside, next to our room. I got the students inside and working on their vocabulary while I snapped a few of these pictures and called the front office to get someone from district to remove the snake. Yes I said "removed" and not killed. In a situation where it's me or them, I take me, but this wasn't one of those situations, yet. So as I'm investigating this snake, another 4th grade Science teacher came up to investigate it too. Everything was fine. The snake was hanging out there, and we were safely inside the building. Just then, a group of PK students started walking on the sidewalk, less than 4 feet away. Now we have some danger. I quickly went in my classroom, grabbed my terrarium and with the help of the other 4th grade teacher, got the snake inside, lid closed, and escaped being bitten! 

There the snake is, not as happy to be in there, but safely secured from endangering any of our little babies. As I was scooting the terrarium to the snake, all I was thinking about was how I hoped the snake went inside, and not around the container. 

So like I said, it's been a busy couple of weeks! Today I did start beta testing flipping my classroom. We've been modeling for a while now, but this was the first time for them to try it on their own. It was exciting for me to watch their responses come in. I got 8 out of 38 students to participate. Tomorrow I will find out about the other 30. I asked that their parents write me a note explaining why they couldn't watch the video online. I already know about a couple of those, but I want to make sure so that I can begin to make arrangements for those students. 

I know this post is rather lengthy. I'll try not to wait so long for my next post.

Children

Yesterday was my youngest child's birthday, and it made me reflect on how having children changed me as a teacher. Before I met my wife I thought that homework was the be-all end-all of my classroom, but that all changed when I met my wife and her daughters. 

She likes to joke that she is a microwave, not a crock pot. With her it was an instant family. I quickly learned that what sounded like excuses from my students was probably true. I would hear time and time again that they didn't do their homework because there were a lot if tasks that they needed to do when they left school. After having a family I found out that it was entirely possible for them to not have been able to do their homework. There were times that after work, we would pick up the girls and have to go to the grocery store. By the time we got home we had to feed them, and get them showered and ready for bed. There wasn't any time for homework. 

Having kids softened me up as a teacher. I learned to work with the students and not against them. They really have made me a better teacher. 

On our way up.

     I feel much better after my last post. And true to form, things started to look up immediately following. No I didn't end up getting a "come and interview anyway" message, but I did get a "thank you for understanding." 

     Yesterday I received an email from one of our Instructional Technology Specialists saying that she wanted to visit my classroom and see how I was using our class blog/twitter/instagram. My immediate reaction was "Come on in!" I am very humble. I think that is part of the reason why I decided to start my own blog. This is a place where I can say what I am doing in my classroom. I can go back and edit my words so that things sound better. In a face to face conversation I hide behind bringing up those who are around me. The fact that someone wanted to come in and observe me is flattering to say the least. (Humble post coming in) I don't think what I am doing is all that spectacular. Now I won't tell you that when I'm trying to promote it. I guess it's that I'm worried someone will see what I'm doing, and knock me down a few notches. I can take criticism, that's not what I'm saying. I just don't want to be called a fraud. Any way, my guest came in and seemed to be pretty happy with everything she saw my students doing. It was definitely a giant leap up from where I was the day before!

Roller Coasters!

     So the last 24 hours have been a roller coaster for me. My class has been successfully connecting with educators outside of our classroom, they were nailing the content, I received some of my donor's choose items, and at the peak, I was sent an email inviting me to a panel interview for the secondary assistant principal pool! Wow things were going GREAT! I felt like I owned the world! Then came today.

     Today started off at the top of my roller coaster. I was scheduling meetings with my administrators so that I could be the best prepared candidate for my upcoming interview. But that was the turning point. My lessons didn't go quite as well as I had hoped. The majority of my students didn't do well on the mini assessment I gave them over the lessons I had been teaching for the past week. Then in my science lesson, I was working to try and get the next part up after I had walked around and assessed that my students were about ready to move on, and technology failed me. Ok so it could have been user error, but to my defense I have never really used Office 2013. I tried to pull up and present a power point, but it went to the wrong screen. Ok easy enough fix, I knew how to do that. I switched the settings, and then pops up some presentation mode! I've NEVER seen that before! So naturally I am trying to rid my screen of this invasive window, and down goes my power point. Geh! My students were nearly ready when I started this process, so they were definitely going to be itching to move forward. And that's when it happened. I made that critical mistake that teachers do. I sat down in my chair to regain focus, and get my power point going like it needed to be. I finally got it up and looked up JUST in time to catch the eye of my principal escorting a high ranking district official through our area. Yep! 2 minutes earlier, or 2 minutes later and they would have seen some amazing teaching happening, but as luck would have it, they saw me "relaxing" at my desk. So there I was walking around my classroom, hoping that they were still in the area and would swing back by and see that it was a fluke, being even MORE animated in my lesson, really trying to overcompensate for the poor timing that they had when they walked by. But alas, it was fruitless. As I hear it, there was mention about me "sitting behind the computer" to the other administrators. Then came the low point of the day.

     Just an hour after the whole power point debacle, it was time for lunch. I tried not to let what had just happened put a damper on my mood, I mean after all it was 1 time. I warmed up my lunch and decided to check my email. That's when it happened. That's the moment that my heart hit the floor. I received a follow up email to yesterday's great news. No it wasn't to confirm my interview time. Instead, it was an email to let me know that the previous email had been sent out by mistake by the system. Evidently every applicant was sent the email by mistake. Only those with confirmed appointments were to be interviewed, everyone else was instructed to disregard the email. I tried my best to hide my disappointment, but those who are around me know when something is wrong. I had to cancel the meetings that I had worked to set up with my administrators, and tell them the disappointing news. Sure there's a CHANCE, I could still get invited to the pool interview once they finish looking over the applications, but as someone who hasn't been able to make it that far in the process in the past, I am not holding on to those chances. It is what it is. I was overly excited to get an interview opportunity, and I'm disappointed that that opportunity is no longer happening.

     The reason I wanted to share all of this with you, is because I really believe that this is analogous to life.There are always ups and downs in life, with bumps in between. I try to always take the high road when it comes to a situation. Sure I could be angry and upset by today's events, but what would that solve? It wasn't the district's fault that the system messed up any more than it was my computer's fault that my principal came by at the mos in opportune moment of my day. Things happen. We have to learn to move past it. The same is true for our students. Things happen with their assignments. We can be upset that they didn't do well on the assignment, or we can take a step back and figure out how we can help them do better next time. Life is a roller coaster, and we are all riding on it.

My first post!

So I haven't done a traditional blog in a LONG time! I've used facebook twitter, but I wanted to make an honest to goodness blog, where I could post my reflections of what's going on in my classroom. Also, since I am having my students blog, I thought I should probably have one as well.

A few things about me. I am entering into my 8th year of teaching. I have taught Kindergarten, 2nd grade Language Arts, 3rd grade Math and Science, and 4th grade Math and Science. I am very adventurous when it comes to incorporating technology into my classroom. My school district is one of the largest in the state of Texas, just outside of Houston. The school I teach at is Title 1 with 1,100 students and 78% or so on Free and Reduced Lunch. Incorporating technology into my classroom is huge because it allows my students to explore the world outside of our "walls."

So it's a new beginning. I am starting a new blog, I have a new group of students, our curriculum is all new, and there are new faces at my campus. Change is good. I'm not always the best at accepting it, but when I'm deep in the groove of things, I realize that it is almost always for the best.

Our first week is flying by. Already my students have shown me that they are the brightest and hardest working students a teacher could ask for. We are working on making connections to other educators or students. As I said before, they are working on their new blog, and it's definitely a work in progress. Any advice on how to get them to be better bloggers is welcomed.

If you are reading this, thank you for listening to my rambling and unorganized writing.