Recently I have read a lot about critical friends, especially in articles and books by Stephen Brookfield, Arthur Kosta, Bena Kallick,Tom Russell, Sandy Schuck.  And I love the idea--someone who you agree to sit down with on a regular basis so that you are able to examine your practice through another lens.  Great idea!

But it had me thinking about the people with whom I do this anyway.  They aren't formal critical friends, per se, as we have not made any formal agreement or set any rules/expectations/time frame from which to operate. However, I would like to suggest that these informal critical friends are just as important as the formal critical friend relationship.  

Who are these informal critical friends?  They are the people that we talk to about education on a regular basis.  We may not have regular meeting times but we get together for coffee or dinner and talk about what is new and exciting in our classrooms and in education in general.  It's the teacher down the hall who you go and visit after school to celebrate with because you are bursting with excitement about a successful lesson.  Or, for many of us, the teacher down that virtual hallway (twitter).

Being a connected educator has enabled me to experience the perks of a critical friend without even really knowing it.   As I move forward I would like to explore the benefits of a more formal critical friend relationship (anyone with experience in teacher education want to sign up for that?), but I already know that that will never replace the energy I get from all of you, my friends and colleagues with whom I discuss learning, education, passion, and life.  

Thank you.  All of you.

Some of my critical friends: Tia Henriksen (@Tiahenriksen), DIana Williams (@teacherdiana1) and Robyn Thiessen (@robynthiessen).

We get together regularly to discuss education.  

Another critical friend, Antonio Vendramin (@vendram1n).

He is my former principal and has pushed my thinking and learning further than anyone else I can think of. I became a different kind of learner and teacher because of him and his mentorship.  

Thank you Antonio.

Here he is pushing me out of my comfort zone again.

Another place where I feel like I have a group of critical friends is on twitter.  On twitter, I have met so many people that help push my thinking forward.  Like Denise Krebs (@mrsdkrebs). Denise inspires me all of time!  More than she knows. 

Here we are together in person.  Denise drove up to Surrey, BC in the Spring of '13 and it was so wonderful meeting her and her wonderful family in person!  I love twitter, but there is something really special about talking to a person face to face!

And of course, I cannot leave out Hugh McDonald (@hughtheteacher), probably my closest critical friend!   I have learned so much from, and with this guy!  I miss teaching with you, buddy.


I could go on and on listing people who have taught me so much and who are such important informal critical friends, because there are so many!  But I will stop here as it is time for me to check out who is presenting next at #RSCON4 (http://www.futureofeducation.com/).  Check out the link to find another way to get connected!

And again, thank you all for being my critical friends.

How do you get feedback on your teaching/practice/thoughts/ideas?  Do you have a critical friend?  Is it a formal relationship, with arranged meeting times? Or more informal, like the ones I have described?  I would love to hear about them!  And again, if there is anyone working in teacher education who wants to arrange some sort of formal critical friendship, please let me know!

Last week, Lindsey Own (Seattle teacher) spent the day visiting my classroom.  You can read about her experience on her very thoughtfully written blog here.  Lindsey was very impressed with the overall feeling at our school and asked me how we got this way?  I wasn't, and still am not, sure how to answer that question.  Was it the amazing leadership of the administration?  The fact that we have so many amazing teacher-leaders at our school who model innovation and are not afraid to take risks/embrace change?  All of the above?  None of the above?

Honestly, I cannot say for sure what it is, but she is right.  Our school is fantastic and is involved in all kinds of interesting and innovative projects.  And I think a lot of it has to do with the support of a caring, curious, and innovative administrative staff who model life long learning.  And I am referring to the leaders in our school, and even beyond, at a district level.  

At our school:

• Students took part in a Entrepreneur Fair and carefully thought of a sales idea, crafted a business plan, and then made and sold products for a profit.

And I am sure there are some other unique, amazing projects in the works that I have forgotten to mention.
Clearly, I work with amazing educators who embrace 21st century learning.  But to go back to Lindsey's question again, how did we get to this?  My thoughts:

• We work with a principal (Antonio Vendramin) who is obviously an enthusiastic, life-long learner himself.  It makes an amazing difference because his enthusiasm and involvement in projects sets the tone for an innovative school culture which then further supports the climate of learning, exploring and innovation at all levels within the school.  We know that we have his support when we bring up new project ideas and sometimes it is even him that comes to us with the cool project ideas (like the wikiseat project).  
• Teachers here are learners too!  We are all looking to improve our practice and are constantly striving to give our students the best learning opportunities. 

• District leadership: I feel so fortunate to work in a school district that values and celebrates the process of learning (not just the content of the prescribed learning outcomes).  They support our growth by providing teachers in Surrey with great opportunities like after school professional development workshops, the digital learners dinner series (where we get together for a nice dinner at the local golf course and listen to some amazing key note speakers), encouraging communication and collaboration  by displaying the backchannel #sd36learn at all district events, etc.
  

• Which brings me to social media: Many of our staff (administrators included) have an online PLN and we learn so much from them and are always sharing what we have learned with each other.  I think this is important as it pushes us forward.  We are all learning alongside our students everyday.  That is huge.  
  
• BYOD: We allow students to bring their own devices, and we supplement the rest of the class with the the schools iPads, iPod touches, macbooks, etc.  Not every class has adopted this policy yet, but I think most have and that truly allows us opportunities that we wouldn't have otherwise.
• Combined Grades: We have a lot of combined classrooms (note I didn't call them splits) which I think encourages collaboration between students, as well as between staff.  We have huge grade group teams!  Which is fantastic...you know the old saying 'two heads are better than one'...well, we have even more than two!  So there is always someone with a great idea!

I am so fortunate to work with such innovative and inspiring educators every single day!
Thank you all.


I wonder what else I am overlooking?
What do you think supports the culture of innovation?  
What are some of the best attributes of your school?

I have been playing  (yes, playing, I think playtime is so important and necessary with new technology) with Digital Storytelling since I first got an iPad.  But my experience really changed after I heard Dean Shareski talk about the 60 one second movie.  Well my colleagues and I loved this idea and we got right on to playing with our iPads and making our own sample movies.   Making a movie myself was very important...at our school we talk a lot about the importance of going where we want out students to go!  My Thanksgiving 60 second movie is below. 

Our students then created their own 60 second iMovies.  The challenge: Tell the story of School in 60 seconds (thank you to our prinicipal, Antonio Vendramin, for leading this with the grade 6s while the teachers went to camp with the 7s).  The results were fantastic!  The kids told a story using short video clips.

We have also told the story of Healthy Living, using the Learning Outcome: "Describes the benefits of being physically active on attaining and maintaining a balanced, healthy lifestyle" (BC Prescribed Learning Outcome) as our inspiration.  Again, students used the 1 second clip type of iMovie to tell their stories.

And last week, in time for Valentine's Day, we told our stories through music by creating Friendship Music Parodies.  Our inspiration was the learning outcome, "identifies characteristics of healthy relationships" (BC Prescribed Learning Outcome) and of course Valentine's Day too.  

Well, we certainly discovered that this type of storytelling (music video) was very difficult!  Students had to:

-choose a song
-rewrite the lyrics so that they were about healthy friendships and relationships-storyboard the song, thinking about how they were going to make the video images consistent with the new lyrics and the music
-film the story 
-sing their parody version of the song and layer over their video
-edit and add in friendship quotes as they saw fit

Students love storytelling.  Next up for us, telling stories using book creator with our little buddies.  We did this last year and they loved it!  

And then I am looking forward to trying out some new ways of digital storytelling!  Obviously you can see what types I am most comfortable with, but thanks to #etmooc, I am learning about so many more methods!  More to come soon...

We tried something new this past month in Health & Career 6/7.  Hugh McDonald and I wanted to give the students more opportunities to be creative (besides their Genius Hour time of course), so we gave groups of 4 students a Learning Outcome and an iPod and said make a short 60 second movie (inspired by Dean Shareski) proving your understand this Learning Outcome:

Students had a wonderful time creating these short movies.  They:

-COLLABORATED to decide on a story/scenes for their movies
-CRITICALLY THOUGHT about what the learning outcome meant to them.  Side note: many decided that although the learning outcome didn't mention healthy eating, they ought to include it because then it would be easier to be physically active, since they would have the energy from the nutritious food.  
-CREATED short skits and took turns filming 
-COMMUNICATED their thoughts through video and shared online

A nice, short unit that is very student-centred and encompasses many aspects of 21st Century Learning.  
I am so thankful that I have such a great teaching partner, Hugh McDonald, who thinks up great ideas like this all the time! 

Here are a few examples:

October 3rd was our last #geniushour chat (click here to learn more about Genius Hour) on twitter.
We had a fantastic conversation and some great ideas were shared.   Since that chat (click here to see all archived chats), I have had a few more people ask me about how to introduce Genius Hour.  So I thought I would compile a list of all the wonderful strategies that were discussed. 

Here it goes…

• Danielle Porte tweeted about doing a guided Genius Hour to start her class off this year.  I love this idea!  What a fantastic way to be able to model the inquiry process for your class!
  

• Similarly, Katy Gartside tweeted, “this week they are brainstorming ideas with parents for their indiv proj. Then we'll share, post on wall & they can add ideas” Then they did a group project.  I love how she involved the parents into the process!    
  

• Robyn Thiessen’s students have passion portfolios and they store their thoughts and ideas for Genius Hour in them! She introduced inquiry to her young students (yes, it can be done in primary!) through ME projects (delving into topics like what are your values and what are you not...I just love that this is with grades 3s and 4s).
  

• Denise Krebs' students are researching and presenting their Genius Hour plan before they begin their actual projects. Denise also put together this Genius Hour creativity rubric that students use to show their growth

• Joy Kirr gets her students into the inquiry process by asking them to think not only about what they wonder about, but also to reflect on what really bothers them!  What a fabulous way to get students to start thinking.

• Katrina Ling tweeted, “I set up a wonder wall too for #geniushour, we watched videos and brainstormed ideas. There are some kids invention videos from Ellen show.” Watching videos is a great hook!  Kids love to see what others have done and it gets them thinking hey I could do that. 
  

• Hugh McDonald also shared how he likes to introduce Genius Hour with YouTube videos that inspire curiosity and talk about Genius.  Some videos he uses are:
  

This year, Hugh and I introduced Genius Hour together.  We showed our students the above videos, got them thinking about their passions and wonders and, finally, we modelled it. We both spent some time on a weekend creating our own little Genius Hour projects.  Neither of us had ever made a movie using iMovie for iPads and it was something we wanted to learn more about, so we both learned how and created a short iMovie each.  Perfect for sharing a little of our lives with our students and for modeling the inquiry process! Thank you Dean Shareski, Antonio Vendramin and Jodi Pulvers for the inspiration.

I am sure there are many more ideas out there from other great teachers about how to introduce Genius Hour.  Please comment below if you would like to add to this list!

And I hope this has helped any of you out there that have wanted to start Genius Hour, but didn’t know how.  Happy Inquiring :)

So, last year we decided to toss out our desks in favour of round tables.  

Why?  

Collaboration, community and cooperation!

After many talks with my principal, Antonio Vendramin, and my teaching partner, Hugh McDonald, we all decided to give this experiment a try!  Sitting at round tables (just like the Kindergarteners) seems to be the perfect way to get students to work on projects together, and to to get rid of the mentality that school work is to be done in isolation, alone, without copying.  I don't want to give them the type of work where they can copy the correct answer from their neighbour...I am striving to give them projects where they have to work together with their neighbour, not in isolation from them!

We are all enjoying the round tables and our next goal is to paint them all with white board paint.  Thus far we have two tables done, one regular round table that students sit at daily and one coffee table that is used in our couch area (one of many alternative work spaces that Hugh and I have in our room).  The kids love them and write/draw on them daily.  Sometimes just for fun...but lately more and more for educational purposes!  Here are some ways we use them...

Overall, we are pleased with how the tables are being used.  During the first few weeks of school the students used them only to draw on, and not really as a learning tool and I was feeling discouraged.  But over time, they have started to use them in the way that we had envisioned.  Like with any new manipulative or tool, they just need some play time first!

I would love to hear from any teachers that have also painted their desks/tables/furniture with white board paint.  How does it work in your classroom?  What do the students use them for?

Has anyone else switched to tables recently?  How else do you promote collaboration, community and cooperation?


(check with your school district policy before modifying and of their furniture)