10 days left of summer and I did nothing. I just laid in bed and watched movies. At first, I was kind of hype for summer. Then I found out I wasn’t going anywhere but home. My hope for having a fun summer was destroyed. I barely hung out with any of my friends and never had the time to do anything. The only place I went was to my tutors. When I come back home, I just go back into my room and lay in bed. Honestly, it wasn’t that bad, but once you repeat doing the same thing every day, nothing is fun. I keep seeing stories on SnapChat about how amazing people’s summers have been. I look at those stories and don’t seem to care.
I can’t wait till summer is over though. This is one of the first times I’m excited for school. I can finally hang out with all my friends and I can get out of the house. The new school year may be terrible for me. Junior year is probably the hardest year overall. I have to take the SAT which is going to kill me, and I have to make my college resume. I’m very afraid of my junior year because I don’t know how I will do. On the other hand, I could get my license. I can’t wait to get out of the passenger seat and drive.
Nothing really happened to me this summer and I’m alright with it
Tuesday, August 14, 2018
Woofers & Rufers by: Sam Fremin
This summer a lot of my time has been dedicated towards taking part in musicals. Throughout July, I took on the role of Glen Guglia, a disgustingly materialistic Wall Street type in The Wedding Singer. After that show closed, I was right back into it with a production of Thirteen as the lighting designer. The former was a cast full of high schoolers and the latter was a cast full of middle schoolers. Almost every aspect of the two shows were different from each other (the plots, the age of participants, the style of music, the roles I would play, etc.), however one thing remained constant throughout: a sense of community.
Theatrical shows are full of collaboration. Everyone is onstage, attempting to bring the same text to life for an audience’s entertainment. Without successful teamwork, the final product would be a mess. If an environment hasn’t been created where kids feel comfortable with one another, they are far more likely to take a more self-serving route to success, leaving the team on different pages. Conversely, when castmates are comfortable with their peers, they are more likely to solve problems together and lift each other up.
Much the same way, seamlessly functioning classrooms take place in environments where students feel safe and comfortable to branch out among the community. It is practically cliche at this point, but the ice needs to be broken early on. Although students can get to know one another through ‘icebreaker’ topics such as favorite ice cream flavor and favorite vacation spot, by a certain point every student has gone through that array of questions. It becomes tedious to have to answer the same ‘get to know you’ questions every year and no real bond or memory is created out of that experience. Through the musicals, I tried a different form of breaking the ice.
During one of the days of Thirteen’s production, I was tasked with getting all of the energetic middle schoolers hyped up. While it would be important to get them excited, it was also important that whatever I had them do was engaging and helped build the community between those involved. I had a strange idea. There was a line in the show that had gained cult popularity among the cast where one of the lead characters barked like a dog. Every time it was delivered, it received a laugh, so I wanted to use that pre-established inside joke as a building block for my activity. Then, I thought about my target audience. As I’ve said before, they were an energetic bunch. Rather than try to avoid that energy for controlling purposes, I figured it would be easier (and more fun for them) to tap into their excitement. The final step was coming up with a plan for how I would respond if the kids veered too far away from a healthily exciting environment and devolved into chaos.
On the day my quick activity was scheduled, everything had been planned out. I had the room split into two groups, by walking through the middle of everyone and designating who was ‘group one’ and who was ‘group two.’ I then had them all get to know their groups, but to their surprise, I disallowed them from communicating with human language. They had to become dogs. The kids had to crawl around and bark and shake paws to get to know their teams. Once they were well acquainted, they were pitted against one another in a barking match. One team was full of “woofers” and the other side was full of “ruffers,” to ensure we could declare a winner. After the competition, we all joined together to howl at the singular light in the room that refused to turn off.
Of course, this example of an icebreaker is a little bit out there. The absurdity of it all may be a bit too much, but the end result was arguably a success. Although the activity was ridiculous, that’s what made the kids bond. If nothing else, every kid walked away with a memory or a story from that experience, an instantaneous conversation starter. I would even go as far as saying a good portion of the kids enjoyed it and connected with others who felt the same. When everybody in a room is simultaneously making a fool of themselves, there isn’t any space for people’s guards to be up. While rounding up students and asking them to combatively bark at each other might not necessarily be a successful icebreaker, I would recommend using similar elements when planning your beginning of the year activities. Find ways to immediately push students not just to step out of their comfort zone, but leap out of it. It’s kind of funny how it works. On the first day, when kids are pushed to interact in a healthily uncomfortable environment, they will be set up for a more secure classroom experience in the long run.
Theatrical shows are full of collaboration. Everyone is onstage, attempting to bring the same text to life for an audience’s entertainment. Without successful teamwork, the final product would be a mess. If an environment hasn’t been created where kids feel comfortable with one another, they are far more likely to take a more self-serving route to success, leaving the team on different pages. Conversely, when castmates are comfortable with their peers, they are more likely to solve problems together and lift each other up.
Much the same way, seamlessly functioning classrooms take place in environments where students feel safe and comfortable to branch out among the community. It is practically cliche at this point, but the ice needs to be broken early on. Although students can get to know one another through ‘icebreaker’ topics such as favorite ice cream flavor and favorite vacation spot, by a certain point every student has gone through that array of questions. It becomes tedious to have to answer the same ‘get to know you’ questions every year and no real bond or memory is created out of that experience. Through the musicals, I tried a different form of breaking the ice.
During one of the days of Thirteen’s production, I was tasked with getting all of the energetic middle schoolers hyped up. While it would be important to get them excited, it was also important that whatever I had them do was engaging and helped build the community between those involved. I had a strange idea. There was a line in the show that had gained cult popularity among the cast where one of the lead characters barked like a dog. Every time it was delivered, it received a laugh, so I wanted to use that pre-established inside joke as a building block for my activity. Then, I thought about my target audience. As I’ve said before, they were an energetic bunch. Rather than try to avoid that energy for controlling purposes, I figured it would be easier (and more fun for them) to tap into their excitement. The final step was coming up with a plan for how I would respond if the kids veered too far away from a healthily exciting environment and devolved into chaos.
On the day my quick activity was scheduled, everything had been planned out. I had the room split into two groups, by walking through the middle of everyone and designating who was ‘group one’ and who was ‘group two.’ I then had them all get to know their groups, but to their surprise, I disallowed them from communicating with human language. They had to become dogs. The kids had to crawl around and bark and shake paws to get to know their teams. Once they were well acquainted, they were pitted against one another in a barking match. One team was full of “woofers” and the other side was full of “ruffers,” to ensure we could declare a winner. After the competition, we all joined together to howl at the singular light in the room that refused to turn off.
Of course, this example of an icebreaker is a little bit out there. The absurdity of it all may be a bit too much, but the end result was arguably a success. Although the activity was ridiculous, that’s what made the kids bond. If nothing else, every kid walked away with a memory or a story from that experience, an instantaneous conversation starter. I would even go as far as saying a good portion of the kids enjoyed it and connected with others who felt the same. When everybody in a room is simultaneously making a fool of themselves, there isn’t any space for people’s guards to be up. While rounding up students and asking them to combatively bark at each other might not necessarily be a successful icebreaker, I would recommend using similar elements when planning your beginning of the year activities. Find ways to immediately push students not just to step out of their comfort zone, but leap out of it. It’s kind of funny how it works. On the first day, when kids are pushed to interact in a healthily uncomfortable environment, they will be set up for a more secure classroom experience in the long run.
Advisory by: Spencer Hill
From 1:00 to 4:00 today I was in my county’s advisory planning meeting. Advisory is just my county’s version of homeroom, where the school passes out forms and performs any other administrative roles. However, in the free time, it’s designed to be a rapport-building tool. In my school, an extracurricular exists where students create activities for the classrooms that are designed to build rapport within an advisory classroom (which consists of about 25 students). The students meet up every couple of months to choose key topics to make activities about. When discussing the optimization of these magical twenty-five minutes of morning with other students and teachers, the conclusion of our discussion was that the most challenging aspect of this rapport-building mini-period was the lack of engagement from the teacher and the students.
These two issues go hand in hand and were by far the most concerning issue to anyone I had talked to. Teachers were unenthusiastic due to disengaged students and students weren’t looking forward to it because the teachers didn’t care. It was an endless cycle that I had seen firsthand. Although my advisory teacher was usually very good at keeping the classroom motivated, sometimes, the students weren’t interested in the topic at hand. Throughout the course of that 25 minutes, my fellow students got more wired up and harder to control until my teacher decided that they weren’t going to deal with us on that day. It was sad to me, on the advisory team, to see an activity that someone had worked hard on, go to waste. Students definitely can be hard to work with at times, but there are ways to end this cycle. Teachers often have to take the first step towards ending the cycle though. Although it seems like it should be a student’s responsibility to take it upon themselves and learn, ultimately, a teacher’s job is to break the ice and provide students with an environment they’re comfortable participating in.
In the group that I broke into during the meeting, we discussed various methods that we could use early in the school year to break the ice and make more engaging activities. What we came up with was to use the highest caliber activities during the first week to set expectations, use simple games and competitions like Kahoot (a custom quizzing website), and to let students decide what activity topics they’d like to see in the future.
Although front stacking lessons might sound like cheating, it can be an effective tactic. The first week of a class is a massive sway in how a student will act in a class for the foreseeable future. Having very strong, well-thought-out lessons that exemplify the values of what you want to teach can set a student up for success throughout the rest of the year. Online quizzes are extremely effective, especially during the first week, at getting students hyped up during class or an activity. The students that at know love trivia and have a flair for competition, so a simple online quiz can be a fantastic and versatile way to get students involved in any subject. The last method is more helpful with a situation like advisory, which is short and can be about many subjects. Allowing students to deem which content is good for them to learn can help them build confidence coming into the new year.
The first of school is intimidating for both teachers and students but focusing on icebreakers and making sure everyone is comfortable first can ease the transition from summer into the school year.
These two issues go hand in hand and were by far the most concerning issue to anyone I had talked to. Teachers were unenthusiastic due to disengaged students and students weren’t looking forward to it because the teachers didn’t care. It was an endless cycle that I had seen firsthand. Although my advisory teacher was usually very good at keeping the classroom motivated, sometimes, the students weren’t interested in the topic at hand. Throughout the course of that 25 minutes, my fellow students got more wired up and harder to control until my teacher decided that they weren’t going to deal with us on that day. It was sad to me, on the advisory team, to see an activity that someone had worked hard on, go to waste. Students definitely can be hard to work with at times, but there are ways to end this cycle. Teachers often have to take the first step towards ending the cycle though. Although it seems like it should be a student’s responsibility to take it upon themselves and learn, ultimately, a teacher’s job is to break the ice and provide students with an environment they’re comfortable participating in.
In the group that I broke into during the meeting, we discussed various methods that we could use early in the school year to break the ice and make more engaging activities. What we came up with was to use the highest caliber activities during the first week to set expectations, use simple games and competitions like Kahoot (a custom quizzing website), and to let students decide what activity topics they’d like to see in the future.
Although front stacking lessons might sound like cheating, it can be an effective tactic. The first week of a class is a massive sway in how a student will act in a class for the foreseeable future. Having very strong, well-thought-out lessons that exemplify the values of what you want to teach can set a student up for success throughout the rest of the year. Online quizzes are extremely effective, especially during the first week, at getting students hyped up during class or an activity. The students that at know love trivia and have a flair for competition, so a simple online quiz can be a fantastic and versatile way to get students involved in any subject. The last method is more helpful with a situation like advisory, which is short and can be about many subjects. Allowing students to deem which content is good for them to learn can help them build confidence coming into the new year.
The first of school is intimidating for both teachers and students but focusing on icebreakers and making sure everyone is comfortable first can ease the transition from summer into the school year.
Thespian by: Nihar Kandarpa
I’m a thespian, so it’s not all that surprising that I took part in two musicals this summer. The Wedding Singer, and 13: The Musical. Both were very fun but very different experiences. Also, I took a week trip to California, and visited different places like L.A., and San Diego. I definitely thought that this summer was an interesting experience, and it also shows that students can have very different experiences, and teachers have to treat them differently. This all goes back to rapport, though. The more experiences a teacher has with a student, the more the teacher will know about the student. Knowing students’ experiences and their hardships creates empathy, but also allows the teacher to treat that student in their own way.
A great example of students being treated differently happened within my drama camps. During The Wedding Singer, only High School students were allowed to participate, with involved a more in depth and mature experience for both the teachers and the students. With 13, however, Middle School Students were the ones who participated, setting the thing at a smaller, yet still positive standard.
Although differences like this in students can be very evident, some differences are hard to notice, at least from a teacher standpoint. Students can be putting on a positive cover, but actually be in a rather unhappy mood. If a teacher and a student have good rapport, then the teacher should easily be able to sit down with the student and talk about what the problem at hand is.
Teachers have to make sure that while students should be given equal care, they should be treated differently based on different experiences. Children can be going through a rough time, and being treated the right way is almost always exactly what they need.
A great example of students being treated differently happened within my drama camps. During The Wedding Singer, only High School students were allowed to participate, with involved a more in depth and mature experience for both the teachers and the students. With 13, however, Middle School Students were the ones who participated, setting the thing at a smaller, yet still positive standard.
Although differences like this in students can be very evident, some differences are hard to notice, at least from a teacher standpoint. Students can be putting on a positive cover, but actually be in a rather unhappy mood. If a teacher and a student have good rapport, then the teacher should easily be able to sit down with the student and talk about what the problem at hand is.
Teachers have to make sure that while students should be given equal care, they should be treated differently based on different experiences. Children can be going through a rough time, and being treated the right way is almost always exactly what they need.
Freshmen Year by: Jason Nguyen
My first year of high school is rapidly approaching and I am excited for all the new opportunities.
The high schoolers of our county came together and talked about advisory classes for students.
Different students from different backgrounds came together to make their school a better place.
We discussed how those first days of school really set the tone for the rest of the year. The first
day should be about building the relationship and type of classroom. Help students get to know
each other by conducting icebreakers and games. Discuss with students about their other
interest. This helps connect to you and the students. Get kids to interact with the activity and
peers. When connecting to a teacher students are more inclined to listen more and fully engage
themselves. This leads to a productive time in class.
At the end of the class try to get feedback to understand more of what the students want in class. The rest of the week should be more relationship bonding and receiving feedback. Getting this information can help you incorporate their interests into the lesson. Thus, encouraging students to pursue their goals and making class about what students want. Telling stories and talking with them as an equal helps kids open up more. All of this leads to teacher and student engagement, learning about something interesting, and thoroughly enjoying class. That is how I want my first days of high school to be.
At the end of the class try to get feedback to understand more of what the students want in class. The rest of the week should be more relationship bonding and receiving feedback. Getting this information can help you incorporate their interests into the lesson. Thus, encouraging students to pursue their goals and making class about what students want. Telling stories and talking with them as an equal helps kids open up more. All of this leads to teacher and student engagement, learning about something interesting, and thoroughly enjoying class. That is how I want my first days of high school to be.
Senior Year by: Kellen Pluntke
School is back in 10 days and for the first time since the third grade, I am genuinely excited. Last year was riddled with various complications that I was able to fight through thanks to the relationships that I was able to create with my friends and teachers. Now that I can walk into the first day of school with these great relationships already established, I can finally focus on my academics with a lot less stress than I had before. I’ve been waiting for the days to come when I can look back on my education and see all the progress I’ve made and feel pride and accomplishment, instead of resentment for the next years’ work that I know I will need to accomplish. I have finally reached that point. This next year I get to really work for my future. I cant wait to learn all the real life skills that I will need to take with me into whatever my next stage of life is.
This being said, I know there are many upcoming freshmen that are coming into high school that are likely very anxious about their future in high school. There are lots of things that I know now that I wish I knew walking into my first year. The most useful of these pieces of knowledge that I found way too late is how you set up appointments to meet with your councilor, and how to use your councilor to advise you for the future. I encourage any teacher of a freshman class to share with the students that they are able to go to their councilor to discuss how their education is going, or to get advice on anything they need. I often found myself confused about picking classes for the next year with little to no information provided, and I would have been able to pick classes that are a good fit for me with much less stress if I knew that I could ask my councilor, those decisions wouldn’t have been so difficult.
Another tip that I didn’t know about until my junior year is that you can go to other teachers for help even if you don’t have them in class. My freshmen year, I had a hard time in one of my math classes so I decided to come in early one day to make sure I understood the content before I took the test later that day. I felt like I was really showing my initiative by doing this and was happy about my choice to come in until I walked down the hallway, and saw that her class was full of students asking the same kinds of questions I came to ask. I ended up just sitting in the room waiting for her to have a gap in teaching other kids so I could ask my questions, but the moment never came. This happened often until my junior year, when I decided I was just going to try and ask another math teacher for help.
This being said, I know there are many upcoming freshmen that are coming into high school that are likely very anxious about their future in high school. There are lots of things that I know now that I wish I knew walking into my first year. The most useful of these pieces of knowledge that I found way too late is how you set up appointments to meet with your councilor, and how to use your councilor to advise you for the future. I encourage any teacher of a freshman class to share with the students that they are able to go to their councilor to discuss how their education is going, or to get advice on anything they need. I often found myself confused about picking classes for the next year with little to no information provided, and I would have been able to pick classes that are a good fit for me with much less stress if I knew that I could ask my councilor, those decisions wouldn’t have been so difficult.
Another tip that I didn’t know about until my junior year is that you can go to other teachers for help even if you don’t have them in class. My freshmen year, I had a hard time in one of my math classes so I decided to come in early one day to make sure I understood the content before I took the test later that day. I felt like I was really showing my initiative by doing this and was happy about my choice to come in until I walked down the hallway, and saw that her class was full of students asking the same kinds of questions I came to ask. I ended up just sitting in the room waiting for her to have a gap in teaching other kids so I could ask my questions, but the moment never came. This happened often until my junior year, when I decided I was just going to try and ask another math teacher for help.
DIVE INTO INQUIRY & SPIDER WEB DISCUSSIONS by: Jason Augustowski
Happy Tuesday! As promised yesterday, below is the conclusion to my three part summer piece regarding the six texts I read in preparation for my new classes. Today I will share my takeaways from Dive Into Inquiry by: Trevor Mackenzie and published by EdTechTeam Press and The Greatest Class You Never Taught by: Alexis Wiggins and published by ASCD. Let's DIVE IN. Get it?
INQUIRY
1. Have students help in creating course syllabus. Discuss how they like to learn, be assessed, and graded. Have them list traits of positive and negative experiences from the past (without names). Introduce then evaluate the pros and cons of inquiry style learning.
2. There are four types of inquiry: structured, controlled, guided, and free so that teachers are able to scaffold students into full on autonomous inquiry.
3. The four pillars of inquiry are: passion, goals, curiosity, and new learning. Once students reach free inquiry they can develop their own essential questions.
4. Students should pitch their free inquiry projects to their teachers and once approved let the exploring begin!
5. Reflection is built in with journals, conferences, and feedback from authentic audiences.
My takeaways: I will be using this method with my freshmen next year as we engage in the different types per quarter (beginning with structured, moving to controlled, next to guided, and ending in a fourth quarter of free inquiry. I will be mixing this idea with the genius hour presented in Empower. I also really like this idea for how to begin the year with syllabus and a reflection of the past/look towards the future.
SPIDER WEB DISCUSSIONS
1. Spider web discussions must be an unweighted group grade and the teacher must sit back to collect the data and make the "web." The SPIDER is an acronym for what the students are expected to do.
2. Teachers can code the discussions while mapping to indicate who made great points, who interrupted, who built upon previous concepts, anything.
3. The book explained how to quiet some superstars and extract some quiet kids so that everyone in the discussion shares an equal amount. Some ways to help can be to assign students specific "roles" within discussions.
4. Be empathetic towards all kinds of children throughout the process and assess the class based on clear rubrics and debriefing sessions that follow the general principles of what comprises a spider web discussion.
5. Spider web discussions allow us to teach our content while vastly improving our students' social skills - thus preparing them for the real world.
My takeaways: I will be using Spider Web discussion in my APLang classes next year to ensure that all students are able to openly discuss the nonfiction articles we read and they will use these discussions to help them better understand and debrief their argument, rhetorical analysis, and synthesis writings. We will also weave in and employ the high level of literary vocabulary into these discussions that students will need in order to be successful on the AP exam at the end of the year.
That's it for now! I will write back in September to discuss the past three posts in action and let everyone know how my lines are going and how my students are doing. Enjoy your end of summer!
INQUIRY
1. Have students help in creating course syllabus. Discuss how they like to learn, be assessed, and graded. Have them list traits of positive and negative experiences from the past (without names). Introduce then evaluate the pros and cons of inquiry style learning.
2. There are four types of inquiry: structured, controlled, guided, and free so that teachers are able to scaffold students into full on autonomous inquiry.
3. The four pillars of inquiry are: passion, goals, curiosity, and new learning. Once students reach free inquiry they can develop their own essential questions.
4. Students should pitch their free inquiry projects to their teachers and once approved let the exploring begin!
5. Reflection is built in with journals, conferences, and feedback from authentic audiences.
My takeaways: I will be using this method with my freshmen next year as we engage in the different types per quarter (beginning with structured, moving to controlled, next to guided, and ending in a fourth quarter of free inquiry. I will be mixing this idea with the genius hour presented in Empower. I also really like this idea for how to begin the year with syllabus and a reflection of the past/look towards the future.
SPIDER WEB DISCUSSIONS
1. Spider web discussions must be an unweighted group grade and the teacher must sit back to collect the data and make the "web." The SPIDER is an acronym for what the students are expected to do.
2. Teachers can code the discussions while mapping to indicate who made great points, who interrupted, who built upon previous concepts, anything.
3. The book explained how to quiet some superstars and extract some quiet kids so that everyone in the discussion shares an equal amount. Some ways to help can be to assign students specific "roles" within discussions.
4. Be empathetic towards all kinds of children throughout the process and assess the class based on clear rubrics and debriefing sessions that follow the general principles of what comprises a spider web discussion.
5. Spider web discussions allow us to teach our content while vastly improving our students' social skills - thus preparing them for the real world.
My takeaways: I will be using Spider Web discussion in my APLang classes next year to ensure that all students are able to openly discuss the nonfiction articles we read and they will use these discussions to help them better understand and debrief their argument, rhetorical analysis, and synthesis writings. We will also weave in and employ the high level of literary vocabulary into these discussions that students will need in order to be successful on the AP exam at the end of the year.
That's it for now! I will write back in September to discuss the past three posts in action and let everyone know how my lines are going and how my students are doing. Enjoy your end of summer!
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