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The Power of Culture

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According to Horn and Staker in their book, Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools ( 2015), and numerous blog posts on the topic, establishing a strong school and classroom culture is crucial to implementing a successful blended learning model.  It's only natural that I would spend some time analyzing my current school and classroom cultures prior to implementing any form of blended learning into my own classroom. Healthy School Culture At some point during the 2018-19 school year, my school's administrators decided to begin each Administrative Team Meeting (once per week) with "Toast" Moments.  These are celebrations of any kind - school, classroom, students, personal, family, etc.  Anything "toastable" could be shared.  I noticed that at the start, teachers seemed hesitant to share things that were not school-related.  Like it was taboo or cliche somehow to share something of personal nature.  But as time went on, the "Toast...
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ISTE Standard #6

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Standard 6: Facilitator Educators facilitate learning with technology to support student achievement of the ISTE Standards for Students. Indicator b: Educators manage the use of technology and student learning strategies in digital platforms, virtual environments, hands-on makerspaces or in the field. Kansas Standards for English Language Arts RI.8.2 - Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to supporting ideas; provide an objective summary of the text. RI.8.3 - Analyze how text makes connections among and distinctions between individuals, ideas, or events (e.g., through comparisons, analogies, or categories). W.8.2 - Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content. DESCRIPTION In the state of Kansas, typically during their 8th grade year, students learn about the Hol...
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My Job to be Done

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     Thinking back on my education growing up, I have very distinct teachers who impacted me, while others I can hardly remember their name.   What was the difference that make some stand out in my memories more than others?   It was the student-teacher relationship that was created.   Elementary school was filled with teachers who cared about kids and made learning fun, but there was one teacher in particular, to protect her identity I will refer to her as Ms. Pat.   Ms. Pat didn’t just care about her students, Ms. Pat cared about getting to KNOW her students.   What they were all about – their interests, their family-life, their extra-curricular activities.   She would let classmates share jokes and silly stories, write plays that would be performed, and attend sporting events.   Even after I left the school to attend middle school, and eventually high school, Ms. Pat kept in touch and take me and some friends out for...
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Rallying Cry

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Time.   A simple word, yet something all educators can connect with.   As a result of the increased pressure to have high performance scores on state and district assessments, along with the current generation of students’ desire for new approaches to learning, many educators, myself included, have found themselves struggling to cover their content standards in the amount of time they have with their students each day. In a traditional classroom setting, a large percentage of instructional time is spent lecturing over new material. Moving forward into the 21 st Century, technology has entered the world of education, allowing instruction to move out of the classroom and into the homes of students.   Thus, providing more time in class for individualized instruction and student practice. Changes to the middle school schedule came with the start of the 2018-19 school year in all middle schools across my district.   The daily middle school schedule was...
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