Three for the Week

Saturdays are my time to reflect on what I read, heard, and discussed throughout the week. It is my “exit ticket” for the last seven days. So here are three ideas that made me think this week. (They are not in any particular order.)

1 – My daughter and I have spent a good deal of the quarantine learning about individuals who have fought injustices in the world. This included watching the movie Just Mercy, which is based on the memoir of the same name by attorney Bryan Stevenson. If you have not read the book, please read it as soon as you can. It is a phenomenal book about how the justice system is stacked against the poor and individuals of color, especially in the south. One of Mr. Stevenson’s quotes has been on my mind a lot lately: Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. That’s a pretty powerful idea. His speech is one of the best Ted Talks I’ve even seen.

2 – I recently heard the term negativity bias. This is the psychological notion that even if a person is exposed to an equal amount of negative and positive information, the negative information will have a greater impact. This obviously has implications far greater than education right now. This will be a more detailed blog post in the future.

3 – This is a spot usually reserved for an uplifting or funny video. This dad dresses up in costumes every day to keep his daughter entertained during the quarantine. That’s top notch dad work right there!

Three for the Week

Saturdays are my time to reflect on what I read, heard, and discussed throughout the week. It is my “exit ticket” for the last seven days. So here are three ideas that made me think this week. (They are not in any particular order.)

1 – The Coronavirus has forced many school districts across the country to make an abrupt move towards online learning. That sudden shift has left some students and families trying to navigate a new normal which is dependent on having devices and access to internet. This article, and video, profiles a 10-year-old girl in New York City who lives in homeless shelters with her mother and grandmother. They have a loaned device from the girl’s school but have trouble finding Internet connections. Hopefully one positive that comes out of all the challenges with Coronavirus is more equity with technology, and connectivity, for students in all areas of the country.

2 – In light of the need to get technology in the hands of students, many districts have loaned devices to students. My own district did that earlier this week.

3 – This spot is usually reserved for something fun or uplifting. This video shows a 15-year-old girl named Courtney returning from her last chemo treatment. Coronavirus and social distancing prevented her friends from having a traditional gathering to celebrate the occasion, so they lined the streets and cheered her return from her final treatment. Sometimes difficult times like we are facing right now bring out the best in people!

Three for the Week

Saturdays are my time to reflect on what I read, heard, and discussed throughout the week. It is my “exit ticket” for the last seven days. With everything that’s happened around the country this week related to Coronavirus, I’ve decided to keep all three lighthearted and inspirational this week. We all probably need to take a deep breath, relax, and smile this week. So here are three ideas that made me think this week. (They are not in any particular order.)

1 – Amen, Shonda Rhimes!

2 – This dad is the master of homeschooling.

3 – I first saw this video with the caption: Day 6 of Quarantine. I watched it many times more than I’d like to admit. In all honestly, long after Coronavirus, this will probably still be one of my go-to pick me up videos.

Three for the Week

Saturdays are my time to reflect on what I read, heard, and discussed throughout the week. It is my “exit ticket” for the last seven days. So here are three ideas that made me think this week. (They are not in any particular order.)

1 – Not only is today Pi Day, but it also my daughter’s 11th birthday. This really made me think about how quickly time passes. Make every moment of every day count!

2 – Creating situations where students can “see” math in action helps build conceptual understanding. This should be one of the goals of math education. I saw this tweet, and it is a great example of how bar models can show variables and unknowns in algebra.

3 – Get the tissues ready. A 16-year-old boy died in a car accident. His organs were donated. The recipient of his heart sent a teddy bear to the boy’s father. The teddy bear had a recording of the deceased boy’s heartbeat.

Three for the Week

Saturdays are my time to reflect on what I read, heard, and discussed throughout the week. It is my “exit ticket” for the last seven days. So here are three ideas that made me think this week. (They are not in any particular order.)

1 – This is an older article from ASCD, but I still found it very interesting. It is titled Eight Things Skilled Teachers Think, Say, and Do. It discusses, as the title suggests, eight tools good teachers have in their toolbox of strategies. They’re all interesting, but one in particular caught my attention: apologize. Teachers are human, and they make mistakes. Why not apologize when this happens? It will show students that you care for and respect them. This will go a long way towards building a positive learning culture in the classroom.

2 – It is very common for students to be reluctant to take academic risks. They’re often afraid of being wrong. One CEO encourages her employees to make mistakes in emails to prove mistakes are not the end of the world. I wonder what that would look like in a classroom. How might this change the way our students think and approach challenges?

3 – The third spot each week has become a place for something lighthearted or uplifting. This week I present to you a dog who is living his best life.

Three for the Week

Saturdays are my time to reflect on what I read, heard, and discussed throughout the week. It is my “exit ticket” for the last seven days. So here are three ideas that made me think this week. (They are not in any particular order.)

1 – Edutopia published an interesting article on literacy conferences. One of the hesitations teachers have with one-on-one conferences is the time it will take to conduct them. The author addressed that concern. “Before I began using conferencing, I rarely left school without a bag full of papers or tests to grade. Conferencing shifts some of the time teachers spend on grading to conversations that take place in class.” They are also shared ideas about getting conferences up and running.

2 – This article explores the idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. There is growing research questioning the long held belief that breakfast is king. If you know anybody who has tried intermittent fasting, you are probably familiar with eating windows which usually eliminate breakfast. It’s an interesting read.

3- This is such a wonderful story. A boy asked his girlfriend to the prom. His girlfriend, however, is blind, so the young man created an invitation for her in braille using Hershey Kisses. We need more of this in the world!

Three for the Week

Saturdays are my time to reflect on what I read, heard, and discussed throughout the week. It is my “exit ticket” for the last seven days. So here are three ideas that made me think this week. (They are not in any particular order.)

1 – An article from Edutopia discusses strategies to incorporate choice in the classroom. I really liked one specific idea from the article, “By giving the students choice, I give them the choice to become independent learners with the autonomy to fail but also the autonomy for authentic engagement.”

2 – I’m reading the book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together? in the Cafeteria by Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum. It is a wonderful book about the role race place in our society. Dr. Tatum discusses the definition of racism on page 87. She shares David Wellam’s definition of racism as a, “system of advantages based on race.” That definition has really made me reflect on what we do as a society and as educations systems to provide advantages and disadvantages based on race.

3 – Get ready for a good cry. This is a story about a boy who adopts dogs. It’s the reason why he adopts dogs, however, that shows everything that is good about people, and children.

Three for the Week

Saturdays are my time to reflect on what I read, heard, and discussed throughout the week. It is my “exit ticket” for the last seven days. So here are three ideas that made me think this week. (They are not in any particular order.)

1 – The latest episode of the Freakonomics podcast is called Policymaking is Not a Science (Yet). The episode looks at why promising solutions “fail to scale up into great policy.” This failure to scale up has enormous implications in the education world where so many policy decisions are driven by research. There are a number of reasons why promising initiatives fail to scale up. One is called voltage drop. Think about an experiment testing the impact of a math intervention. During the research, 20 math teachers are needed to run the experiment. However, when the intervention is scaled up to a larger setting 20,000 teachers are needed. It is much easier to find 20 teachers who thoroughly understand the intervention. Finding 20,000 teachers who have that same understanding is much more difficult and often dooms initiatives. This is called “voltage drop.” It is one of the reasons why research which seems promising doesn’t scale up during implementation.

2 – An article in USA Today explored how Memphis schools are trying to increase the number of teachers of color. That article referenced some research that is incredibly important to students all across the country. That research looked at the impact a black teacher has especially on black male students. The researchers from Johns Hopkins University and American University found that, “Black students who’d had just one black teacher by third grade were 13 percent more likely to enroll in college – and those who’d had two were 32 percent more likely.”

1 – Staying with the lighthearted feel of my final thought of the week, I present to you this dog greeting her owner, Christina Koch. My dog greets me with similar enthusiasm when I come home from work each day. Koch, however, is an astronaut returning after 328-day mission.

Three for the Week

Saturdays are my time to reflect on what I read, heard, and discussed throughout the week. It is my “exit ticket” for the last seven days. So here are three ideas that made me think this week. (They are not in any particular order.)

1 – Did you know there are three meanings of multiplication? I didn’t know them until a couple years ago. A blog post by Jeff Lisciandrello reminded me that the meanings are not widely known. They are: equal groups, rates, multiplicative comparison, rectangular array, and Cartesian products. Jeff has a great description of each meaning in his blog post.

2 – Michael Pollan is a food writer and the author of books like  “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” “The Botany of Desire,” “In Defense of Food” and “How to Change Your Mind.” His new book, which is only available as an audiobook on Audible, tackles our complex relationship with caffeine. Pollan explores the effects of caffeine in our society and how it impacts our bodies. I have not listened to the book, but read an interesting preview in the Washington Post. In his book, Pollan says, “Something like 90 percent of humans ingest caffeine regularly, making it the most widely used psychoactive drug in the world and the only one we routinely give to children, commonly in the form of soda. It’s so pervasive that it’s easy to overlook the fact that to be caffeinated is not baseline consciousness but, in fact, is an altered state.” That’s a pretty sobering thought.

3 – The third slot is again reserved for something which will put a smile on your face. I’ve never really believed in the whole idea of a spirit animal. Then I saw this video of a dog sledding down a hill. I now complete embrace the idea of a spirit animal and believe I’ve found mine.

Three for the Week

Saturdays are my time to reflect on what I read, heard, and discussed throughout the week. It is my “exit ticket” for the last seven days. So here are three ideas that made me think this week. (They are not in any particular order.)

1- If you’ve read more than a couple posts on my blog, you probably know that one of my greatest passions is math education. I am a total nerd when it comes to better understanding how to teach math, especially at the elementary level. I am also a huge podcast fan. So, when I heard Marilyn Burns on a podcast talking about math education, it was like Charlie finding Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket. “I think that most teachers begin teaching the way we were taught,” Burns said on the podcast. As her teaching career progressed she started to change her thought process. “I got really curious about how do I get kids to be the stars in the classroom rather than me being the star in the classroom. So everything shifted for me from ‘How do I make myself as the most important person in the room?’ to making the students the most important people in the room.” Isn’t that what we should be striving for in every classroom?

2 – A teacher in Nebraska had his favorite pair of shoes stolen from his classroom. His students all chipped in to buy him a new pair. His reaction to the gift shows the impact a great teacher can have on his students. It’s impossible to not see how much he and his students care about each other. On a side note, when I watched this video, somebody must left some chopped onions near me.

3 – I generally save #3 for something light hearted. This story from CBS’s Steve Hartman fits that mold but also has an important message. The arts are so important to our children. We should do everything we can to protect music and art education in our communities. Seeing the look on this nine-year-old boy’s face when he sees the Michigan Marching Band proves that the arts are critically important.