I really like data

I embarked this semester on a mission.  Specifically, a mission for a further learning program through my district, but a mission nonetheless!  I was going to use data to analyze my how effective my teaching has been to help foster a growth mindset in students and make them stronger critical thinkers. 

The first step was how would I collect said data?  Good question, unembodied voice in my head.  I decided to utilize one of the tools I used on occasion last year and hadn't really fully utilized until this year: Google Forms.  I created a Form for students to fill out after every test reflecting on a few things: how they studied, what worked best for them, how prepared they felt, and later, different aspects of growth mindset based on an effective effort survey I found.  About 90% of my students (which is a pretty good percent, all things considered) filled out this test reflection after each of the five tests so far this semester.  It became part of the class culture, and I would address any concerns from them during class time and let them know how it shaped my decisions.   As I showed them I used the data, they gave me very honest answers and examples.

Here's the thing: the reflection is probably 10 questions long (some fill in the blank, mostly multiple choice) and I have 160 students who have taken 5 tests so far, plus a test to come and the final.  To summarize, I have a lot of data.  Plus, I have data on their test performance over all to compare it to.  That's a lot of stuff to go through, and going through question by question to graph or analyze it is tricking to say the least.  I knew I wanted to do something meaningful with this data and draw an actual conclusion (maybe write a paper, who knows?) but the task of going through frankly mountains data with limited assistance sounded like exactly zero fun. 

I decided to do some research about how to analyze my research quickly.  Turns out the explore function on Google Sheets is a godsend.  Just click it.  Believe me.  You can ask questions about your data, you can get charts about specific questions from the form, you can get counts to use in other things.  One thing I plan to do is to graph a change in what students think works best for them to learn and see how it fits Growth Mindset principles and then chart next steps, and I can absolutely do that.  The explore function is one of the most powerful data collection tools I've ever seen, and I actually plan on showing it to my students for their own data analysis. 

And yes, you read that aside right.  I'm thinking about continuing to collect and analyze data and lesson plans to maybe write an article for either NSTA or AAPT.  It's a dream more than anything, but it's nice to have a goal in mind for all of this data.

Stuff I Like

I feel like this is slowly becoming LOOK AT THIS TECHNOLOGY, LOOK AT IT.  But that's not a bad thing.  Something both teachers and students struggle with is how to be a citizen in an increasingly digital world?  Where can technology help me, and where is it a hindrance?  How much money should I invest in good apps?  These are questions that come up every day.  A big part of my preparation for school is looking at available technology and considering all of those things before I really invest both time and money (hopefully not too much) in said app.  And sometimes, that investment pays off.

Planboard

I found this app through a link on Pinterest (can't remember where, sorry, it's November.) and I thought "Oh great, another crappy planning app that says it will make me more productive.  And it will have a terrible interface and not do anything better than my DIY notebook calendar."  Boy I love eating my words.  IT IS SO MUCH BETTER.  Right now, we're in the process of changing standards from the California Science Standards to Next Generation Science Standards (or NGSS) and a big challenge is how does our current curriculum already align to those standards.  Besides a very easy to use interface, Planboard has a database of standards that is easy to navigate and sort by keywords to much unit objectives.  THIS IS AMAZING.  Also, it connects with other programs, and while it doesn't connect with Google Classroom yet, I live in hope.  It does connect to your drive so you can sort materials out by unit.  But the biggest thing is matching units to standards.  Now, I can justify what I do to the actual standards.  That is a dream come true.

EdPuzzle

I love showing videos in class, but frankly it's hard to know what students got out of them.  EdPuzzle is an in video assessment system that now connects to Google Classroom.  I haven't used it what I consider "right" yet, I just used it mostly as a video sharing system, but we'll get there.  It's, again, a time investment to learn a program, and see where it fits, but this one might be worth it once I figure it out.


Of course there are some of my old favorites like Gradecam and Plickers, and Google Classroom has rolled out some updates, but those are the newbies that I enjoy.  Is there some tech you swear by?  Let me know some suggestions in the comments!

Dealing with the World

I have never in my life thought the phrase "dumpster fire" more.  Possibly because my entire state smells like a fire. 

It's extremely hard to be anything in hard times, but I feel it might be even harder to be a teacher.  We are expected to model appropriate reactions and behavior when honestly, all I feel like doing today is curling up in a ball and crying myself to sleep.  Putting it mildly, I didn't sleep well last night.  On top of normal October stress, I have life stress and world stress and health stress.  It's a never ending stress cycle.  Which is why I'm writing this, to help me help you help me cope with life stress.

1.  It's all about attitude.
Two of my coworkers were talking about the state of the world and it was spiraling down to the point where I kept thinking "Why get out of bed in the morning?"  Another coworker brought up this optimistic view of how this time in history is meant to act like acne: show us the disease so we can deal with it.  And that attitude blew my mind, and kind of became my mantra.  It's easy to feel down, it's hard to force yourself to feel up, so I'm trying to shift my attitude as much as I can.  I do have a breaking point though.

2.  Give yourself a break. 
I don't mean like a rest.  I spent part of this morning crying just because I couldn't deal.  And then I felt better.  Sometimes, I just need to let it out.  A lot.  And by myself. 

3.  Keep doing things you love.
Yesterday, I sat on my couch in a ball for about ten minutes.  While letting it out can often make me feel better, I think doing something else that I really enjoy might be an even better use of my time than wallowing in self pity.  This is hard to do, as it is very easy for me to wallow.  I'm an excellent wallower.  Honestly, writing this has been a form of doing something I like to get over feeling the blues.

Anyway, just jotting down some feelings.  Thanks for listening.

Year 4-HOW DID THIS HAPPEN

Why hello there world.  It's been a while.  School year has started, I'm teaching a single prep this year, which is a big change, and it's my fourth year teaching.

Fourth year.  Let that sink in.  Because it's still weird to me and it's week 5 at school.

Statistically speaking, the fourth year is about when teachers start to leave the profession due to burn out.  And I have seen this happen.  A good friend of mine gave me a ton of equipment because they are no longer going to be in the classroom, which I found somewhat heartbreaking.  The person is one of the best teachers I knew from my early camp days, but this does happen for many reasons.

Which brings me to why I'm writing this.  How did I get here?  How did I become one of the ones who sticks with it?  I think it's luck as much as skill.  I went into teaching with no illusions on what a teacher's life looks like.  My dad was a teacher, my mother-in-law is a teacher, my grandmother was a teacher's aide, my great-grandmother was a teacher.  It's genetic and in my family.  I also have had a lot of support through various programs I've found, like SFTR and the Exploratorium Teacher Institute.

I kind of hope to act as a beacon for some of my friends who are just starting their teaching journey.  A realistic beacon.  Teaching doesn't get easier, you just learn more and get better.  Ask for help, be authentic and listen.

I don't quite feel like this is year four because I did switch schools.  But it is better than my first year.  I have great coworkers who love and support me and genuinely want me to be successful, and I want the exact same thing for them.  One of them has seen me at some low points this year, which speaks more to how much I trust her than anything else.

In teaching, to stay you need love and support.  If you don't have it where you are, try and find it as soon as you can.  The world needs good teachers, even if it doesn't act like it.

Shaking Hands with Google Tools in the Classroom

Google has become a ubiquitous part of life.  Even this blog is hosted by Blogger, which is also a part of Google.  Now the thing is, using Google can be a huge boon in terms of teacher organization.  It can help make it easier for students to contact you and for you to allot time throughout the day.   Here a few functions and how I've used them in my classroom in case you were interested.

Google Classroom

Let's start with the basic that most teachers have access to.  Thanks to recent updates through School Loop, another common grade system, it's way easier to connect between Google Classroom and School Loop.  For individual assignments, School Loop will actually update as you grade through Classroom. 

I have mostly used Google Classroom as a method to collect larger project write ups for the group and send out different materials for that project, but in the future, I think I'll have it more used for homework submission.  Initially, I would assign things on Classroom and then collect all of the word via Doctopus and attach Goobrics that way.  The plus side of this is you can compile the rubric scores in a spreadsheet which updates automatically as you fill in the rubric.  The interface is a little clunky, depending on how you format your rubric in Goobric, but it's still pretty easy to use.

As I started having more individual work, Classroom now allows you to send a copy of the file to each student.  Initially, students had to learn how to make a copy for themselves using the Google Doc, but now you can make a copy for each student, which allows easier use of online worksheets where students can fill in their work.  It also is much easier to post things from Drive to Classroom than onto School Loop.  Also, now I can post grades on Classroom faster and it's easier to keep track of things that I have graded.   This year, I mostly used the cross posting thing between Google Classroom and School Loop, but didn't necessarily have them submit everything on Classroom, which explains why it looks like a lot of students didn't finish things below.  It organizes by due date, class and things you've already done.  The done below is for how many students have finished that assignment.  They can even click "done" if they don't submit something, and many will in order to keep organized.  There's also a calendar reminder setting that I have yet to use, but may next year. 

My hope for the future is that eventually Classroom will allow for assigned groups.  As it is right now, students can tell me their groups or put their name on the document, but to have a space for groups to submit together and get the same grade would be perfect. 

Google Sites

This is a recent development.  The new settings for Google Sites are super intuitive and easy to use.  We used it this year to make a webquest for students to study for the final instead of a basic final exam study guide.  It walked them through different simulations and tutorial websites and it is one of the easiest web page designers I have ever used.  The best part is how easy it is to put Drive files into a website.  I think in the future, I will play around with the ability of Youtube embedding and have them get the documents from Classroom but access the sites from Google Sites as a way to curate an experience.  Something I want to focus on next year is having students use videos or readings as a source for evidence in writing.  Using Google Sites would be a perfect way to organize them in one place for students to access from home.

Another thing I'm using Sites for is the ability to put all my study resources and class info in one pretty place.  I had calendar events for meetings and a form for letters of recommendation, but students could never find these links.  Also, students would often ask me if I had any good website resources for studying for tests.  I decided to create a resource website that was easy to go through and find information.  It also has pages with easy ways to contact me and create appointments on my calendar and access the folders I created to share with the class that allow students to find lecture notes if they missed a day.  Truly, this is one of the most beautiful things I have ever made.  I just hope it works. 

Google Drive

I've mentioned Drive in both of the previous things and I haven't talked about what Drive is or how I use it.  Basically, we use drive as a cloud storage system for all of the curriculum and as a way to share curriculum between all teachers.  One previous issue I've had doing this is others changing formatting or content in my work, but no more!  Now, you can share so people can see your work (or you can only see other people's work) and only the author of the file can edit it.  Another good thing about this is you can download the material to your desktop so you don't have to download things every day or rely on what can be very spotty school internet.  If you do this for long enough, however, you can really fill up a hard drive.  Most schools have opted for (at this time, it may change in the future) unlimited storage capacity in the Drive.  What this means is you can put ANYTHING on there, and there will always be space and it does not cost you money.  HOWEVER, this stuff will be deleted the second you leave your current position if you don't back it up to your personal Google Drive.  How do I know?  Because that happened to me and I didn't get a chance to back it up, so that information is gone to where ever Google trash goes to die.  Now, that I can't fix but I can control how much gets synced (or downloaded) to my hard drive. 

1. 
   

Click on the little drive icon and then select "preferences" from the "…"

2. 
   

Put a check mark on the files you want downloaded.  Google will keep the unchecked stuff in the cloud, and everything else will be deleted from your computer.  I did this recently to delete everything from this school year from the computer and keep only the coming school year.  Really useful.

Google Docs/Sheets/Forms

I am a physicist, therefore I LOVE SPREADSHEETS.  There's also a lot of cool options, like calendars, to-do lists and other templates that are fun to play with.  I recommend just playing with them on your own.

So the thing that I will use more this coming year are forms.  There are some crazy easy to use new features to make it more like a quiz or just compile data.  The big way I'm going to use them this coming year is as questionnaires for various data that I really need to collect, like your basic beginning of the year stuff, submitting videos or other websites to add to the resource site and to collect information for letters of recommendation.  As a high school teacher, most of my fall weekends are taken up by writing letter upon letter of recommendation, and they can start to sound the exactly the same.  By collecting really in depth data from the students, you can write an even stronger letter.  Also, this will put all of the letter of recommendation information in one place.  Which is insanely useful.  I just started using forms, so hopefully I'll utilize them more this year.

Google Calendar

Make appointment slots.  Seriously, do it.  Why?  Because then if a student shows up at your door, you can tell them it's not a good time and to make an appointment.  It's also a fast way to tell students you are busy at a certain time and not to stop by.  It sends them reminders so they aren't late and they can tell you what they need in that appointment.  It's amazing.  Just make sure they can find the link.  Also, tell them they have to make the appointment a day before.  They'll do this thing where they'll make an appointment the day of.  It's very frustrating, but stand your ground.  It also gives students equal air time in 15 minute increments.  It's awesome. 

In Conclusion

Google is an incredibly powerful tool of organization, and I've only scratched the surface of what apps exist.  I went for the basic Google Apps for Education.  If you have any other cool tricks, let me know.  I always want to try more stuff out.

When You Need a Break

It's May, we all have those days.  You have the mountain of grading staring you dead in the eye that needs to get done.  You are just feeling so unmotivated thanks to months of grinding through material.  Teacher fatigue happens to the best of us.  Now, what will you do about it?  One of the most important things to remember is teaching is mentally, physically and emotionally draining and self care is paramount.  Let's talk about lazy days.

Project Work Days
Here's the rub with this one:  while the day itself can often not be too mentally taxing, the lead up takes a lot of work.  The project needs to be rigorous enough that it makes sense to give the time.  Once you have that project though, turn on some music and turn them loose.  This one works well for me mentally and in terms of pedagogy.  I'm a constructivist for those who have read a lot of teacher academic writing.  I believe, especially in science, in letting students explore and make discoveries.  This allows the ideas to stick a lot stronger.  And project based learning is great for that. So pros: lots of independence.  Cons:  Lots of prep and planning.

Find Those Best Science (or Your Own Subject) Movies
For biology, I feel like you can't go wrong with Planet Earth or with the Disney line of movies.  Also, Bill Nye never goes out of style.  His new show has a lot that is applicable to current science classes, and I can see turning one of the episodes into a pretty in depth discussion.  In particular, the last episode in the Netflix series can be a great intro to scientific method and can help alleviate that beginning of the year exhaustion.

The ultimate for my physics people is definitely Neil Degrasse Tyson's Cosmos.  The information is great, visuals are good and is overall an enjoyable romp.  I'm a fan.  Plus, there are oodles of online resources in terms of worksheets to use for all the above.  Or, you could use the videos as some sort of evidence for a written assignment.  Also a good idea.

Another great way to bring in student voice is have them create videos as a project and then show them in class.  Less reading for you overall, and they love to see each other.  While they sometimes hate watching their own product, if a student is anxious, they can sit outside.  Also having strong presentation or video class norms is imperative.  This also makes grading crazy easy.  Just have the rubrics in front of you while the video is playing and there you go, all done.  Rubrics, I think, over anything else have allowed me to give timely feedback by grading quickly and having clear standards.  By no means do I think I write great rubrics, but I'm getting better at it through collaboration with colleagues.

The Post Test Day
My master teacher back in the day would always show a fun movie the day after the test.  Why?  To grade the damn test.  She would use that time for kids to compile their stuff from the unit to put into their portfolios and do the reflection.  I kind of wish I felt like I had the time to do this, and someday I might give the post test day its due.  As of right now, however, I kind of do this on the actual test day in some form.  However, it was a nice chunk of time to just crunch out the tests and allow students to organize themselves and reflect on what we learned that unit.

End of My Third Year

There's this feeling in teaching that once you make it to your third year, you're really a teacher.  You've had your first two bumpy years to work things out, and now you have figured out your methods and voice as an educator.  That is, if you stay at the same school.

Between my second and third years, I switched schools.  Districts, in fact.  I went from teaching in the Bayview to the heart of Silicon Valley down the street from where I grew up.  While I am now teaching in my community, both where I currently live and where I am from, there are some challenges that come from changing schools, just like changing any job.  From discussing this with friends, it takes about 5 weeks to get the hang of a new company and feel secure.  In teaching, because things change so often throughout the year, you don't feel comfortable until the year is over.  And even then, you still feel like you have a lot to learn.  Plus, the next year, you get new kids.

With all of this, I think I still improved as a teacher.  I had better classroom management and organizing things as well as posting grades more consistently.  However, I feel like there are a lot of new tricks I want to steal from coworkers in terms of homework return and test and quiz retention.  It's all about figuring out what is expected at the school, and how much students actually want their work back and what is realistic for me to do.

I've already gone through and figured out some new organization methods for work return and classroom set up.  Something that hasn't changed is how messy students can be, so whatever I can do to minimize that (and keep myself organized), I will most certainly do.  I think my strength as a teacher is being reflective.  I look at how thing went (even as they are going) and think about how I can improve it.  I will never think I am perfect.  I don't think I will ever stop growing or learning as a teacher.

In the future, I hope to post more activities and ideas onto this blog, and less reflection of my practice as I move forward.  I am planning on reorganizing my classroom and recording that here to hopefully help other teachers like me, especially science teachers, to keep themselves sane.  Writing definitely helps, I can tell you that.

Paperless Grading: A Saga

I thought to myself "How hard can it be, to go paperless?  Or at least decrease paper in the classroom?  Easy peasy."

Ha. Hahahah.  Ha.

So, let's go with the pros.  It gives my students way more autonomy and access to materials.  Worksheet with a video embedded?  Yes please.  Neat tools that are super fun to access?  Don't mind if I do.  Interactive rubrics?  With a side of documents to be organized by a neat system.  In theory, I should be streamlined more than a slick shaved swimmer.  In theory.

But there is something to be said about the ticking time bomb that is a hard copy to a thing.  It is much easier to have one physical object to represent a student.  Then it gives you a hard timeline because you want that thing out of of your face.  Without a thing in my face, I find it very difficult to get things done.  What I used to get back to students quickly for feedback can now take up to a month or more.  Occasionally, I will also have multiple assignments pile up on me and that can be entirely overwhelming.It's much more satisfying to decrease a pile than to fill in a spreadsheet.  It became hard to feel like I had accomplished anything.

On the other hand, not having a pile of papers lets me keep my desk and classroom so much less cluttered with extra mess.  Without hard copies of their projects, I don't have student work to put on the walls.  Therefore, I only have nice science posters to post.  Kind of nice and pretty really.

There are also a lot of programs to help expedite the grading process, like Doctopus and Goobric, which are now communicating much better with Google Classroom.  And Google Classroom now communicates with our grading system, School Loop, so now grades (more or less) automatically fill in the gradebook on School Loop from Google Classroom.

While I feel like I'm getting the hang of the system as it exists, there are many modifications I would love to see.  I would love for group projects to be easier to assign, grade and enter.  On the developer side, I would love for the connection between School Loop and Google Classroom to be less glitchy.  On my side of things, I want to make more webquests and autonomous discovery based assignments.  I want to do things faster and better.  So, off to a good start.  I just want things to keep going.