Campaign for Kindness

 This is a challenging year.  We have our professional struggles with how to handle the learning options, the social distancing, the mask breaks, the wiping down of desks, etc.  But then we go home at night and we have personal struggles as well - balancing family needs and others (grad school for me).

That's why I'm choosing to start a campaign for kindness.  Kindness never goes out of style and you can never have too much of it, so I might as well spread it thick like nutella!  Will you join me in my campaign for kindness and be an ambassador?

I was inspired by the pink sticky notes on desks, doors, computers that someone put around after school at the middle school.  I heard and saw the positivity that this created both when people talked to each other or mentioned how it brightened their day on social media.  One small act.

With this in mind, I'm going to let people know what they mean to Warrior Run.  I have "You Matter" cards that need to be spread around.  I have some ready to go - if you want a set to share with others, sign up for a pack here.  When you see a student, teacher, paraprofessional, administrator, parent struggling, slip them a card.  Let them know they matter.  Keep it a secret or do it directly - that's up to you.

For the month of November, I plan to express my gratitude for the myriad of blessings in my life.  I will be writing thank you cards weekly to those that need recognition the most - everyone!  If you would like 4 thank you cards to join me, please sign up for a pack here.

Spread the word by emailing this blog post to another WR employee.  Let's create a campaign of kindness.  

Reflection in learning

Thank you to everyone that sent me your words for 2020. I really enjoyed reading them and hearing your thoughts. I've decided to choose the word "Focus" because I find that I let myself get distracted by competing priorities and I'm working to strike that proper balance between family, work, and my grad classes.

The reason for choosing a word for your year is to reflect. Reflection and metacognition are powerful ways to make learning stick. So this post will explore techniques for incorporating reflection into your classroom.

According to Bransford et al. (2000), "Metacognitive approaches to instruction have been shown to increase the degree to which students will transfer to new situations without the need for explicit prompting."  The strongest learning happens when the new knowledge can be applied in a different situation, as we know from models like Bloom's Taxonomy and Webb's Depth of Knowledge.  

Some of our instructional practices already contain the opportunity for students to reflect on their learning, such as Everyday Math, which prompts teachers to ask students about how secure they feel on particular skills or topics.  If you've ever used an exit ticket, you're using reflection.

Here are some effective ways to incorporate reflection in your instruction:

• White boards with reflection question - How do you feel about ______?  
• I can do it!
• I still need practice
• I need help!
• Exit tickets with a question prompt
• Think-Pair-Share
• Journaling
• Flipgrid
• Sentence stems, such as, "I used to think...but now I think...."
• Interactive notebooks

Add these to your teacher toolkit.  Now here is a reflection question for you:

What does it mean to have usable knowledge?

I'd love to hear your responses!

Resolutions

It's 2020 and I spent some time over the holiday break reflecting on 2019.  There were many things worth celebrating, but I was disappointed to find that I had let the blog slip away to some degree, and I am starting recommitted to writing it more regularly.  With new beginnings comes the opportunity for recreation.  While the blog had focused on edtech integration in my time as a librarian, I would like it to have a wider focus since I have a new role.

With that idea came a post from my friend Lauren, a special educator in New Orleans, LA.  She posted about her word for 2020 and what she would strive for as an educator.  Being a member of a professional organization allows me to feel empowered by like-minded educators, which is why I felt so inspired by her word: catalyst.  She seeks to be the catalyst for positive change in education.  What a goal!

While I would love to steal her word, when I look up the definition of catalyst, it mentions that it "speeds up the rate of change without being changed itself", which just doesn't fit for me.  I recognize that there is no change that I could be asking or leading for others that would not impact me in some way.  So I need to find my own word.

So I will spend some time reflecting over the next week on my word.  I'm going to pour over some websites related to creating goals:

• Word of the Year
• What's your guiding word for 2020?
• One Word 365

What will your word be?  Share it on the padlet below.  You may choose to share your name as well or leave it off.