Make Learning Magical and Professional Development Reflections
Over the holiday break, I resolved to take some time for myself to relax after a busy fall semester. I had started Make Learning Magical as I had read about it on Twitter and it seemed like it would be a good book to help support the Applied Arts department that made some huge progress last year under new leadership. I recommended the book to the instructional leader as part of their shared departmental goal and PLC work for this school year, as the author was a former Culinary teacher that I was hoping could really take our already fantastic Culinary classes to the next level and also perhaps provide some room for reflection and growth for all the other area's of the department as well. Our new Culinary teacher immediately went out and bought herself a copy and began reading the book, before we even had a chance to order the books.
After finishing Innovate Inside the Box which really resonated with me, particularly after my dissertation work around UDL, I purchased ten copies for our staff to engage in a book study around these practices. I was thrilled when all of the old pilot team wanted to join in, and then more people came and asked to join, so we ordered more books. We now have about 20 teachers across all the content areas voluntarily engaged in reading this book, we meet about once a month after school in the library learning commons for our book study.
I was excited to dig into Make Learning Magical after Innovate Inside the Box, and even more excited when I saw George Couros quoted and the Innovators Mindset integrated later in the book. One of my recommendations or takeaways from my dissertation work was the need for leadership to create professional development that meets teachers where each of them are individually and then to find the pathway that works for them as learners to inspire their next great learning experience for our students. In both Innovate Inside the Box and Make Learning Magical, there was a strong message that before we even think about content, we have to think about building relationships. As administrators and leaders in our districts and buildings, we have to model this practice by designing learning experiences through the limited professional development time that we have to build relationships among our staff as a community of learners themselves, particularly with all the changes taking place in education today.
My goal from any education article or book that I read is to try and see how it fits in with my overall and ever changing philosophy of what school could and should be in our world today. I am excited to begin the book study with the Applied Arts department and see where this book could take us in terms of redesigning our Applied Arts courses and thinking about the overall connections between units of instruction through potentially adding components such as gamified experiences where students are empowered through authentic learning experiences. I loved the example in the book of the Amazing Race because I love to travel and learn about the culture in new places. It was hard not to buy into the idea of re-thinking how everything in a class fits together to make a cohesive curriculum that engages and empowers students through pedagogical practices that bring in some of our favorite games or reality TV show themes to our classrooms. I even found myself thinking about how we could do this with our overall professional development goals for the school or district for the school year because I sometimes feel that our teachers and staff don't see how everything connects because we designate the limited days we have on a calendar for certain things like emergency operations, faculty meetings, department meetings, program days, RULER training, social emotional learning days, technology training, etc. Instead what we should try and think about is how we started our school year with a BreakOut EDU for the entire district to do in smaller teams to introduce and explore our vision "for a better world".
We should think about new and innovative pedagogical practices that we want to model for staff and use them for all the things on our meeting calendars. We have done this in some places, such as where we have remodeled the special education departments IET time and developed sprint sessions where different teachers share their passions or a new or relevant teaching practice with their colleagues. The teachers walk away from these meetings empowered and wanting to implement these new practices, whereas in the past this was not the case after our department meetings that were run by an agenda of business items, most of which could (and now are) communicated through e-mail. In our recent digital advisory committee meeting, we started a design thinking sprint where my colleagues (a teacher, district administrator and myself as a building administrator-- so we were missing a student leader), led the committee through the first stages of a design sprint to develop our problem of practice. We did this through interviewing students and teachers that were in attendance with questions from the IDEO curriculum template to develop empathy for our target audience which are students and teachers. At the core of both of these two examples is our district vision "for a better world" and moving towards actualizing this vision.
Some other ideas or take aways I had from the book that I hope to better incorporate into professional learning include #booksnaps on Twitter and perhaps in our bi-weekly newsletters, creating challenges for teachers for staff meetings as opposed to sit and lecture so that they are actively involved in being part of the solution. An example might be putting down the names of different presentation programs on slips of paper and then have them each choose one on the way into a meeting and then pair up with 2-3 other people on the faculty that have the same program and learn how to use the technology, and then create a short sprint session or training on it. They could record their training and post it to a Padlet or other place to reference later for themselves or students so they have a how-to. We could leave the meeting with the challenge of incorporating one new digital tool into their classroom before our next faculty meeting. At the next faculty meeting, we could begin by re-visiting with our new friends for 5 minutes and sharing what digital tool we used and how we felt about that experience. This would demonstrate exactly what we are hoping our teachers are doing in their classrooms, including the metacognition and reflection that will help our learning community learn and and grow together "for a better world".
After finishing Innovate Inside the Box which really resonated with me, particularly after my dissertation work around UDL, I purchased ten copies for our staff to engage in a book study around these practices. I was thrilled when all of the old pilot team wanted to join in, and then more people came and asked to join, so we ordered more books. We now have about 20 teachers across all the content areas voluntarily engaged in reading this book, we meet about once a month after school in the library learning commons for our book study.
I was excited to dig into Make Learning Magical after Innovate Inside the Box, and even more excited when I saw George Couros quoted and the Innovators Mindset integrated later in the book. One of my recommendations or takeaways from my dissertation work was the need for leadership to create professional development that meets teachers where each of them are individually and then to find the pathway that works for them as learners to inspire their next great learning experience for our students. In both Innovate Inside the Box and Make Learning Magical, there was a strong message that before we even think about content, we have to think about building relationships. As administrators and leaders in our districts and buildings, we have to model this practice by designing learning experiences through the limited professional development time that we have to build relationships among our staff as a community of learners themselves, particularly with all the changes taking place in education today.
My goal from any education article or book that I read is to try and see how it fits in with my overall and ever changing philosophy of what school could and should be in our world today. I am excited to begin the book study with the Applied Arts department and see where this book could take us in terms of redesigning our Applied Arts courses and thinking about the overall connections between units of instruction through potentially adding components such as gamified experiences where students are empowered through authentic learning experiences. I loved the example in the book of the Amazing Race because I love to travel and learn about the culture in new places. It was hard not to buy into the idea of re-thinking how everything in a class fits together to make a cohesive curriculum that engages and empowers students through pedagogical practices that bring in some of our favorite games or reality TV show themes to our classrooms. I even found myself thinking about how we could do this with our overall professional development goals for the school or district for the school year because I sometimes feel that our teachers and staff don't see how everything connects because we designate the limited days we have on a calendar for certain things like emergency operations, faculty meetings, department meetings, program days, RULER training, social emotional learning days, technology training, etc. Instead what we should try and think about is how we started our school year with a BreakOut EDU for the entire district to do in smaller teams to introduce and explore our vision "for a better world".
We should think about new and innovative pedagogical practices that we want to model for staff and use them for all the things on our meeting calendars. We have done this in some places, such as where we have remodeled the special education departments IET time and developed sprint sessions where different teachers share their passions or a new or relevant teaching practice with their colleagues. The teachers walk away from these meetings empowered and wanting to implement these new practices, whereas in the past this was not the case after our department meetings that were run by an agenda of business items, most of which could (and now are) communicated through e-mail. In our recent digital advisory committee meeting, we started a design thinking sprint where my colleagues (a teacher, district administrator and myself as a building administrator-- so we were missing a student leader), led the committee through the first stages of a design sprint to develop our problem of practice. We did this through interviewing students and teachers that were in attendance with questions from the IDEO curriculum template to develop empathy for our target audience which are students and teachers. At the core of both of these two examples is our district vision "for a better world" and moving towards actualizing this vision.
Some other ideas or take aways I had from the book that I hope to better incorporate into professional learning include #booksnaps on Twitter and perhaps in our bi-weekly newsletters, creating challenges for teachers for staff meetings as opposed to sit and lecture so that they are actively involved in being part of the solution. An example might be putting down the names of different presentation programs on slips of paper and then have them each choose one on the way into a meeting and then pair up with 2-3 other people on the faculty that have the same program and learn how to use the technology, and then create a short sprint session or training on it. They could record their training and post it to a Padlet or other place to reference later for themselves or students so they have a how-to. We could leave the meeting with the challenge of incorporating one new digital tool into their classroom before our next faculty meeting. At the next faculty meeting, we could begin by re-visiting with our new friends for 5 minutes and sharing what digital tool we used and how we felt about that experience. This would demonstrate exactly what we are hoping our teachers are doing in their classrooms, including the metacognition and reflection that will help our learning community learn and and grow together "for a better world".
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