Tag Archives: Paige Couros

20 hour Project

There are some definite perks to having a husband like George Couros. He pushes my thinking, asks questions and has high expectations for my teaching and learning. I appreciate all of these qualities immensely and would not be the teacher I am today without his guidance and support. I was talking with him about how I enjoy the idea of Genius Hour and my students really enjoy working on projects like that, but I find that we end up making a bunch of things that eventually get taken home or go in the garbage. I know that the learning is more in the process than in the end product, but I was wanting to try something where the students acquire a skill that they could use for the rest of their life, something they could take with them. My husband, of course, had something for me to watch and told me that he thought I could definitely do this with my kids.

This video is about the 20 hour project. What Josh Kaufman explains is that we can learn a new skill in 20 hours. The way he proposes that we learn this skill is through a few simple steps.

  1. Deconstruct the Skill (Break the skill down into smaller and smaller pieces- practice the most important skills first).
  2. Learn Enough to Self-correct ( Get 3-5 resources about what you want to learn. Too many resources and you procrastinate, learn just enough so that you can start and self-correct as you go. Get better at noticing when you make a mistake, and then doing something a little different).
  3. Remove Practice Barriers (Don’t get caught up in the research phase. Remember that in the end, the point is to actually practice the skill, not just learn how to practice it.)
  4. Practice at Least 20 Hours

I love that this is a simple premise that can yield some pretty amazing results. There are so many skills that students could learn and so many ways to learn them. YouTube is an amazing resources and has hundreds of experts waiting to assist you. I wanted to try the 20 hour project myself before I got into it with the students so that I could show them my example.

My 20 Hour Project

In high school, I ran cross country and really enjoyed it. I didn’t keep up with it in university and when I started my first year of teaching, I tried to get back into it. The first time I ran, I was so itchy I was dragging myself across the concrete (a ridiculous image, I know). The next time I went running, I was luckily with a friend, the reaction was worse. He had to call an ambulance and take me to the hospital ( my blood pressure was dangerously low and I was passing out, and my whole body was covered in hives). Needless to say, after that I avoided running. Fast forward to almost 7 years later and I finally got my doctor to recommend me to see a specialist. What the specialist concluded was that I have something called “exercise induced anaphylaxis”  so basically, I am allergic to running (which no one believes me, so I also asked him for a doctors note). He told me that I would be able to run, if I ran on an empty stomach (hadn’t eaten for 4-5 hours) and took an antihistamine before I went. I was so elated that I could finally run, I rushed to the drugstore and bought some Aerius and started researching. I found 3 resources and an expert who has been running for a long time (my husband) and made a plan. Since I haven’t run in a long time, I started with really short runs and have started working my way up. The first week, I did short 1.5 km runs (because I wanted to stay close to home incase the medication didn’t work). Then, when I realized it was working I started interval training. The first 2 weeks I ran for 2 minutes and walked for 1. Then the third week I ran for 3 and walked for 1. I even started bringing my dogs on the run so that they would push me. The end goal is to be able to run a 10 km in an hour. I am currently only running 4km to get myself used to running and I will continue to increase the distance as I get more comfortable. I am currently running/walking 4km in about 21 minutes, but I know I will get slower as I increase the distance I am running. When I started, it was really tough and I NEEDED that walking time, but as I practice more and more, I feel like I need it less and less. I am really starting to love running. I have also been biking and doing runners yoga to stretch my muscles and help with my performance. So far I am about 5 hours into my project and really liking the idea and the end goal.

As I go through my journey, I have started planning how I can assist my students with their project. I found this resources that has some ideas as to which skills students might choose. Students are definitely not limited to this list, we will also brainstorm ideas and help each other refine our ideas.

One important aspect of this project will be that students do some research. Students will need a mentor to support their journey. They can tweet out asking for help or use YouTube to find an “expert” to support their learning. Students will find 3-5 resources and add them to their 20 hour project google doc. This will allow them to easily find their resources, as well as limit themselves so they don’t procrastinate.

Along with research, we will also need a way to display what we have learned and the process. This way, students can self correct and share with others their progress and ask for support. Students will blog or vlog their progress to illustrate their learning. They must blog each time they work on the project. That might be a few sentences about what they have done that day, their struggles, their success or a video showing progress.

Below is an example of a video of me vlogging my experience. I will continue to document my progress, and ask for support from others as to how to improve my time and how to train smarter. This vlog is only up to day 10, but I will try and update it as I continue to run more and talk about my progress.

 

 

Jobs With Purpose

help wanted

I am sure we have all had job charts in our classroom and they come in many different shapes and forms. As I see it, the point of having classroom jobs is to help students take ownership of the classroom as well as take responsibility for the physical space they are learning in. This past year I set up my classroom so every student had a job. We came up with the jobs as a class and then rotated through the jobs each week. This was awesome because each child had a responsibility and they reminded each other of their jobs. Some jobs were more desirable for some kids than others and some students were better at remembering to do their jobs than others. One problem I saw was that kids would forget which job they had because we rotated through them each week. Another issue was that they were not always very interested in their job.  As I plan for the upcoming year, I was thinking about how to make this system better and allow for students to be more engaged in keeping our classroom running.

I came up with an idea, but I think I need some help building upon the idea. I was thinking that we would have classroom teams, as opposed to one person per job. (The teams could then choose to delegate different aspects of the job, or use a combined effort).
One job that I thought we could have would be PR department. This team’s job would be to post our daily or weekly classroom events on Twitter, Instagram and our blog. They would be in charge of managing our classrooms image.
A second job I considered would be HR department. Students would be trained to support students with small or “kid sized” problems they were dealing with. This team would also be on the look out to make sure all students were enjoying themselves during recess and were getting everything they needed (like extra permission slips). This team would also be in charge of covering the office while our secretary took her lunch break. (this could also be handled by the neat and organized team if they needed to switch)
A third team would be the IT department. This department would be in charge of ensuring that technology was functioning properly and any tech issues we had could be resolved. They would also be in charge of making sure our chromebooks and iPads were fully charged and ready for use.
A fourth team would be the health and wellness team. They would be in charge of giving ideas for healthy snacks, leading the gym stretches and picking the warmup games for gym class. They would also help set up brain breaks during the school day.
A final team would be the Neat and Organized (still working on the name) department. They would help with handing out anything students needed, ensuring that the classroom and hallway was Neat and organized. They would also be in charge of doing any clerical work we needed such as answering the phone or running things down to the office. This team could ensure all students had the supplies they needed and be in charge of keeping track of the extra supplies. It would also be helpful if this team kept track of all the forms students hand in and ensure all students handed it what they needed to.
Each team would have its own cubby to store supplies or so that the team could communicate with each other. It would also be a place for students to have meetings on Monday to talk about who would do which job for that week.
Is there a department I am missing? Does anyone do something similar in their classroom?
I am not sure how kids will “apply” to be in each department or what will happen if they are not being a valued team member. If you have any suggestions or ideas, that would be awesome as this idea is just in its preliminary planning phase 🙂

MicroSociety®

As a kid, one of my favourite ways to play was to mimic society. My mom would bring home old forms from the bank and my friends and I would fill them out and play teller. We would open our own spa and set up massages and manicures for our moms. For a while, we even played gas station and made idol chit chat while pretending to fill up each others tanks using a hose (that was really hilarious for our neighbours). Play is important. Even today, I really enjoy playing, creating and imagining. When no one is looking, I’ll admit, I lip sync to popular songs and imagine myself as a superstar. As a kid, if I had had the opportunity to mimic society at school, I would have enjoyed school even more.

Recently I visited a school called “Aspen Heights Elementary School” in Red Deer Alberta. There I experienced a MicroSociety® school in action. According to the Aspen Heights Website a MicroSociety: 

“[Aims] to prepare students for the real world. In MicroSociety, the school is run like a country with student run banks, businesses, an elected government, police, postal service, newspaper and non-governmental organizations. Each student fills out a job application, goes through an interview process, and has a work performance assessment completed by their manager.

All students earn wages in the school’s ‘micro’ currency, make deposits in the ‘micro’ bank, and pay taxes. In addition, they work together to overcome problems encountered in their ventures while becoming responsible citizens. In a MicroSociety students learn and grow to their potential. Most importantly, they experience the pride and benefits of their labor, as they become business owners, bankers, legislators, and entrepreneurs in a safe and supportive learning environment.“

When I arrived, I was greeted by Aspen Height’s Prime Minister. She looked me in the eye and shook my hand. She was well spoken and very respectful.  I was very impressed with how grown-up she seemed and she later explained to us that she used to be quite shy. In grade one and two she barely raised her hand and was afraid to be called on. In MicroSociety she pushed herself outside of her comfort zone so that she could grow as a person. When she started as Prime Minister she was nervous to make announcements in the morning or greet new people. She said now, a few months into her role,  she feels like “it’s no big deal”.

While I walked around to the different ventures, I was able to speak with many of the managers and owners (grade 4 and 5 students usually). Often the students would see a new face in their venture and they would come and shake my hand and let me know how business was going. In MicroSociety, ventures need to pay rent as well as pay their employees. I met an owner in a venture that was working on her market day (a day that students usually don’t work and are allowed to shop at the different ventures). When I asked her why, she said she needed to work that day so that she could make rent. Not only was she learning delayed gratification, she was also understanding the responsibilities involved in running a business.

My tour guide, the treasurer, was an energetic and excited grade 5 student. As we were touring around, two members of R.A.M.P. (Aspen Heights police force) stopped us to alert our guide that he had lost his ID badge that all students must wear. As a teacher, I could see myself saying to this student that he needed to go find it and be responsible for his things, but that is not how the students handled the issue. In fact, the two police officers radioed to other officers to let them know that our guide had lost his ID badge and to be on the lookout for it. About 3 minutes later, there was an announcement made over the intercom letting all students know that the ID badge had been lost. The way that the students spoke to each other was with respect. The police officer was clear that our guide needed to find his badge, but went the extra step to help him find it. It was not about catching people for a ticket, but ensuring that everyone was following the rules and if there was a problem, they would help solve it.

I was so impressed with the idea of MicroSociety and all the real world skills the students were developing. Experiencing “Market Day” was truly amazing. I believe that the skills that the students of Aspen Heights are learning in the MicroSociety, create better citizens and allow students to grow in a comfortable space with their peers. It is an amazing program and I hope that more schools can use this model to better prepare our students to be active participants in society.

 

Teacher for hire: Googleyness a necessity

At the end of a long and wonderful day, I sat down to tackle my ever growing list of emails. In the impossible quest of emptying my inbox, I came across an email from my principal Travis McNaughton about our PD session tomorrow. He asked us to watch a video featuring a talk by Tony Wagner about innovation in the classroom.

During the video, Tony Wagner talks about Google and their hiring practices. Google hires people based on their ability to think outside the box, as opposed to focusing on grades or standardized test scores. When I looked on Googles website, they had a list of things they look for in a potential candidate. Their criteria include: Leadership, Role-related knowledge (someone with a variety of strengths and passions), How you think (problem solving) and Googleyness (what makes you, you as well as how you work in a team). They are not looking for someone with a large content background, because they realize that all people have access to the internet and can easily Google what they need to figure out. They need someone who has skills and the ability to persevere and work through problems. They want employees with passion and creativity.

How do I transfer the ideas from Google to my classroom? What do I need to do to as a teacher to facilitate leadership, passion, problem solving and teamwork?

My question is, how do I get students to think like a Googler? How do I prepare my students for a world that focuses less on content and more on skills? How do I become and innovation facilitator?

Kids are Awesome!

“I can’t wait for Friday!”, “This kid in my class is so frustrating!”, “I don’t feel that parents appreciate all that I do.”, “how many days until summer vacation?”,”I’m not allowed to do that at my school.”

Many of us (me included) are guilty of spouting off the above negative quotes. Teaching is a hard job. We have long hours  and there is a constant need for patience and flexibility. It’s hard! I couldn’t agree more. Sometimes I need to remind myself as to why I got into teaching and focus on the positives. Last week we had a dance party in my class just because we wanted to… and then we did a flash mob in the class next door. I know that we weren’t covering the curriculum, but it made it easier to cover the curriculum later that day. I laugh when the kids say funny things and we all laugh together. On Wednesday I am throwing down a lip sync battle for the last half hour of the day, because kids can be creative and do spectacular things when you let them be kids. (We can call it music class, right?)
The reason I got into teaching is because of the kids. Yes, I love to meticulously organize (and colour code) things. Yes, I enjoy creating cool and engaging lesson. Yes, I like the smell of fresh school supplies. But the reason I love teaching has nothing to do with that. The reason I love teaching is because I think kids are awesome!
Tomorrow, remind yourself of why kids are awesome! Do something fun that allows them to see that “sharpening the saw ” is just as important as reading and writing. Show them that you are human and you want them to be too. Remind yourself why you love teaching.
Please comment below and tell me what you did!