Their Story...

Each child holds the beginning of their own life story.  Someday they will take this crafted story using it to forge their way in the world.  The people who surround each child guide and influence that story by impacting the child’s life experiences. While some children willingly share their story, others will hold it quietly to themselves.  As we approach each day and each moment, what do we want our children to include in their story?

This past week I had an opportunity to participate in the Xperience STEM conference in Denver, CO.  What an amazing experience!  This “non-conference” involved educators gathering together and participating in various experiential learning opportunities which required us to stretch ourselves and be risk-takers.  Through these experiences, well-guided reflections, and collaborative conversations, we each began to craft a story from our experience.  These stories are not only for sharing but can help us to gain a better understanding of what our students’ experience.

Zip lining with educators
from around the country in Colorado

It is not natural for a person to run off a platform in the mountains.  However, this was necessary to feel the freedom, speed, and explore the valleys through zip lining.  Each zip line brought a different feeling when faced with speeds up to 50 mph.  My story evolved by mustering the guts to run off the platform in order to feel the wind whip through my hair and discover the unbelievable views as the trolley zipped along the steel cable.  Within our group, each educator’s experience brought more than just a simple story.  For some there was a direct science and math learning experiences, while other found the challenge of risk-taking.  One individual discovered disappointment.  For me, it was an excellent reminder of how children feel at different points in their education.  There are days where we need them to be a risk-taker as if stepping off the side of mountain.  There are times when we need them to listen to directions in order to ensure their safety.  There are times when we need to them to keep climbing the mountain even though they feel like giving up.  There are times they need to share their stories based on an experience.  The manner in which we help them through these experiences will craft their story which they will use throughout their lives.

As educators, we each have created our own stories and perspectives based on our own experiences.  It is those experiences which makes us better at our craft regardless of our profession.  In the beginning, it is the practical experience which allows us to effectively operate in the classroom.  However, in order for teachers to grow and become masters, we need to broaden our horizons by expanding our experiences, challenging who we are, exchanging ideas with other around us, and continuing our own studies.   We need to expand our own life stories in order to better connect with our students and create learning experiences for them.

Where do you begin?  Anywhere...begin small and grow from there.  How will you be a risk-taker?  How can you create learning experiences for your students?

Engage and Motivate

With the start of school around the corner, I’ve been contemplating various ideas for motivating my students to become responsible for their own learning.  Then, I stumbled upon Krissy Venosdale’s Because School Should be Exciting Like the Ultimate Theme Park inspiration poster.  Her message was school should be fun, complete with wondering, success, struggles, and the push to do it all. Children spend most of their waking hours in our classrooms; they should be excited to come to school and learn. 

A flurry of questions have been racing through my head.  When are students engaged in their learning?  When are they smiling and having fun learning? Why are people motivated to do certain things?  How do we accomplish those things we are not interested in but know have to be done?  So many questions with so many answers varying between people and different situations. Reminding myself to start small in order to make a difference, I decided to focus on a couple of ideas.

Purpose – If I am going to spend time doing something, I like to know how it fits into the overall picture.  This summer, I laid a flagstone patio in our front yard.  As I read various websites on how to install the patio, people repeatedly stressed the importance of taping down the sand base layer and ensuring the stones were level in order for the patio to remain stable and level in the future.  When I was spending hours in the heat of the sun tapping and leveling, I reminded myself to “do it right the first time or redo it.”  This was when I made the connection to students and their need to understand how various lessons fit into the grand scheme of learning to read, write, and problem solve (notice I didn’t say “do math” – that’s for another day.)

Thinking about the meaning of reading, using everything we know to decode and understand the meaning of print, and the five components of reading, phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension, how many of us have ever tied these together for our students?  When we teach a phonics lesson or a comprehension strategy, do we help students understand how this will help them become a better reader and writer?  In math, when we teach different strategies for adding, do we help the students to understand when to use them and how they help our fluency?  It is tough to add more to our lessons, but making a simple tie or having them generate ideas of when to use their newly learned strategies will help them connect the small lessons with the ultimate goal.

Fun – This past year, my favorite math lesson in kindergarten was solving a problem from Inside Mathematics.  The children talked with each other, shared their ideas with the class, and used the manipulatives in order to answer several questions.  By the end of the lesson, they were using repeated addition (the beginning of multiplication) to find the answers, and all I did was facilitate their discussion.  In fifth grade, the students were smiling and having fun when they were sharing ideas and challenging each other’s ideas in order to find a solution in math or better understand the novel they were reading.  Again, they took ownership for their learning and I facilitated the discussion.  In first grade, they were creating writing pieces in the writing center or were exploring the idea of motion by rolling different sized balls down ramps they created.

Why were they engaged?  What was making it fun for them?  They were challenged to solve a problem or find information to share.  They were exploring ideas.  They were sharing ideas.  They felt safe to take a risk in our classroom.  Ultimately, they were seeking to understand and validate their ideas.  My role was to provide them the basic foundations necessary for them to engage in the discussions and problem solving activities.  Then my role was to facilitate so everyone’s ideas were heard, to ask questions, to help them learn to manage the conflict which arose, and ultimately, to observe them learn.  And in honesty, I was having fun watching them take on these challenges.

When are students in your classroom having fun learning?  What did you do to prepare them? What are you doing when they have taken ownership?

Introduction

Well its time.  As I established my professional goals for this next school year, I’ve decided to take on the blogging challenge.  Even though I have so many ideas, thoughts, opinions, etc.  I’m finding it difficult to begin.  So here goes…

Hello, I am Melissa Gibson-Steiner.  Just over ten years ago, I decided to embark in the education world as a second career teacher.  After volunteering in my children’s classrooms and being given more and more opportunities to work with children, I fell in love with the challenge of helping children to think, problem solve, and understand concepts so they could understand the world better.  During my professional business career, I never encountered the same fulfillment as I do working with children.  While there are many teachers who impacted my decision to join them, it was Kristy Crouch and Mary Smithey who became my mentors in this decision.  Thank you, ladies.

I have taught in both the primary and intermediate elementary grades.  Last year, I began teaching half-day kindergarten and spent the second half of the day as the math interventionist (a new position for our school) and math instructional coach.  I have discovered I really enjoy working with both children and adults.  This summer I completed my Colorado principal license through the University of Colorado at Denver and look forward to taking on more leadership responsibilities in the future.

So why am I here?  I am a very reflective person and discovered that if I establish goals for myself, I am more proactive.  As this school year approaches, I have established the following goals:

1. Establish a Professional Learning Network (PLN) so that I can learn from others, reflect, and engage is thoughtful conversations.  I decided to challenge myself to use the following tools to establish a global network:  Blog, Twitter, and Google+.
2. In Kindergarten, I need to engage students to become responsible for their learning and to better incorporate technology as a learning tool.
3. In Math, last year I discovered struggling students need help engaging and taking responsibility for their learning.  This year, my goal is to have them more responsibility for their learning by having them progress monitor their own learning and to utilize math journals.

A dear colleague and mentor, Autumn Crosby, share something she learned about goal setting from the ISTE 2011 conference.

• The first goal, you will have fantastic success at.
• The second, you will make headway and be pleased with what you have done, but will want to do more.
• The third, you will most likely have little growth, but that's ok! Celebrate what you have done with the first two goals and try again next year.

Hopefully, there is success and growth this upcoming year.