Practicing Gratitude

 “Trade your expectation for appreciation, and the world changes around you”  -Tony Robbins

That never-ending mess you're always cleaning, that thing that always takes precedence over the finite things in life.

Life is finite. Time is finite. Time with loved ones is nonrenewable.

Routines and habits become part of the norm. Morning coffee, listening to the radio, the drive to work, or taking the kids to school.

However, there is much to be said about taking a pause to our day, to our routine.

To appreciate the fortune in our lives.

The absolute abundance we are so lucky to have.

In a world where comforts are the "norm," we have to actively remind ourselves how good our lives are.

The thought of losing those precious parts of our day is a sobering one.

There will be a final cup of morning coffee for us.

There will be the last chance for us to listen to the radio.

And if we are lucky enough to have kids, there will be the last time we get to wait in traffic as we drive them to soccer practice.

As Tony Robbins quotes, if we can remove expectations from the norm, and replace them with a sense of gratitude, our entire world changes.

As we start our day, what are three things that we are grateful for? Why are we grateful for them? How do they make us feel when we think about them?

Don't brush the surface - dig deep. An action of gratitude is one of the most powerful leverages we can take to improving our lives.

Thanksgiving and the holidays may look a little different this year. Just like how you created new classroom procedures and routines for this year, think of this as an opportunity to create and test new holiday traditions. Spend time with your loved ones safely and have a happy, healthy, and restful Thanksgiving break!

Google Drive Assignments

Schoology and Google Drive Assignment

Google Drive Assignment allows teachers to add Google Documents, Slides, and Sheets.  The app does not support Forms.  When a student opens one of the assignments, an individual copy is generated and saved in a folder.

Only the teacher that creates the assignment for the student can currently access and grade student work within Schoology.
The teacher can share the folder within Google Drive with a co-teacher or student teacher.

IC Tech Tip: Copying Assignments between sections in Virtual Campus and In-Person classes

This productive, time-saving tech tip allows you to copy assignments between sections in Virtual Campus and In-Person classes. You can also use this tip to copy assignments between quarters (such as Q1 and Q2 this year for high school teachers with the same prep) and even between school years!

To do this, go to Gradebook and add an assignment as you normally would in your Gradebook. After you have added the assignment in a section:

1. Open Settings in Gradebook, in blue on the left side.
2. Under Grade Book Tools, click on Assignment Copier.
3. Under Source, check the assignments you want to copy. 
4. Under Destination, click on the drop-down menu in Section to select the appropriate section to copy to. Scroll down to look for your Virtual Campus section. Repeated assignments will be grayed out in the Source column. Select Next at the bottom right-hand corner (Assignment Copier: Step 1)
5. Change the Start and End dates as necessary (Assignment Copier: Step 2). Select Next.
6. Change Category, Points, Multiplier as necessary (Assignment Copier: Step 3). Select Save.
7. You will receive confirmation that your copy is complete.
   

Other helpful tips:

• You can only copy to one section at a time (not to multiple sections)
• You do not have to be in the Gradebook section to copy from. You can change the Source section in the drop-down menu if you are in the wrong section.
• Change the year drop-down menu if you want to change the year of the Source and/or Destination

Emergency Learning vs. Online Learning

 

We studied for years to be educators.  We had college courses, practicum hours, student teaching, all while never preparing for this current type of teaching virtually.  We are in the future.

We cannot just move face to face teaching to an online platform.  Even though the action of our teaching may not look the same, the essential elements are the same.

 Backwards Design IS familiar.

Icebreaker Ideas

     Icebreakers are great opportunities to get to know your students and for students to get to know their classmates. While the time it takes to facilitate these fun activities is usually sacrificed due to time constraints, having these non-academic conversations goes a long way. They give a chance for everyone to participate in, help build a positive classroom atmosphere, and are low-risk, informal ways to practice your classroom norms. Here are some icebreaker ideas with accompanying links:

1. Two Truths and a Lie

Write three statements about yourself - two of your statements should be true, and one should be made up. Be creative! Then, have them guess which statement is false and explain their choice. Check it out at this blog post!

2. Time to take a Selfie
Have students take a selfie and answer some questions about themselves on a Padlet wall, similar to how I did it with the 'Second Start' Padlet. To encourage learning about their classmates, have students play a trivia game with their classmates. Creating this trivia game will help you learn about your students too!

 Credit to Catlin Tucker

3. Who am I?

Give three clues to a person and have the classmates guess who or what the person is. If you do this during videoconferencing, have the student turn off their video camera and then reveal him/herself after their classmates guess. I did this during a professional development videoconference session around Halloween and it was a hit.

    If you are working with younger students, you can start with student-parent icebreakers. This inspires a dialogue between students with their parents. It also helps introduce parents to online space so they feel comfortable about the work being done online.

Build your classroom community. Do not be intimidated by digital natives.

    Who are the digital natives? Mark Prensky (2001) first introduced the terms of digital natives and digital immigrants to characterize the difference between students and teachers with technology. Many teachers are digital immigrants, "not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in [their] lives, become fascinated by and adopted many or most of the new technology." In contrast, "students today are all 'native speakers' of the digital language of computers, video games, and the Internet." They spend hours on social media and sending text messages, but few students realize how powerful their words are.

    It may be intimidating to teach using technology when our students are proficient users. But it is our responsibility to create a safe, online community that practices authentic and meaningful communication. It starts with us, the teachers, to create a clear set of guidelines for student interactions online, model appropriate behavior, and monitor the missteps that occur along the way. Here are some questions to reflect upon when creating the norms in your virtual classroom:

• What habits do you want to instill in your students in order to be successful learners?
• How should they interact with you and others in order to maintain learning conditions?
• What should students do with their learning?

    As you create your virtual classroom norms with the reflected answers above, keep these tips in mind:

• A fewer number of norms, rather than more, work better. The recommendation is about three to five. You can have a bold sentence to highlight the overarching norm and then write a few sentences afterward to clarify the norm (such as this here).
• Co-construct them with students. Have students take ownership of their class and behaviors. Students have a good sense of what is right and wrong, even the young ones.
• State them positively. Beware of norms that start with the word 'No' because these do not tell them what students should do.
• Post the norms. Just as we would have posters of our norms in a physical classroom, it is important to post them in a virtual space so that students are always aware of them.
• Teach and rehearse the expectations. The norms should be taught during the first weeks of school and revisited occasionally throughout the remainder of the year, especially after a school break. You should model each rule so that students can learn what they look and sound like.

    Stay tuned for my next blog post of ice-breakers ideas so that students can practice these norms!

 

My name is Kristen Harms.  I am one of the Virtual Developers for the 2020-2021 school year.  I came to Parkway just a few years ago to be the Instructional Coach at Highcroft Ridge 🌹.  Prior to that, I worked in Webster Groves School District teaching 4th grade and Kindergarten.  I was also the Elementary Social Studies Coordinator.  

I have two children in Parkway, at Barretts and South Middle.  I also have three stepchildren in Kirkwood School District.

I hope to be as much of a support as possible this school year.  

Please reach out at kharms@parkwayschools.net.

Student To-Do Lists

Providing students and parents/guardians with a To-Do List allows families to manage their own time and space efficiently. They can see assignments that need to be completed, when they are due and the equipment/materials needed for the week. It also allows quarantined students to still complete their work. Here are some sample checklists:

Sample Elementary To-Do List (Kindergarten) - This is a To-Do List from Caitlin Faughn and her kindergarten team at Mason Ridge used during Distance Learning. She also emails parents a weekly newsletter and the materials needed for the week (below). The materials list is especially helpful for students who are in learning pods.

Sample High School Student To Do List - This was used by me during Parkway’s eLearning period when the student expectations were different. Nevertheless, this checklist communicated to students the assignments and learning objectives for the week. I uploaded this checklist to my Schoology course and emailed it to all students. I also included a video update with my email as another way to connect with her students. Linking the video update into the checklist as well can help students stay organized. Here is a copy of a template to help you get started!

A 'Second Chance' to start over - What will you do differently?

Dear Virtual Campus teachers,

You have a unique opportunity here. You taught virtually during the first 9 weeks of distance learning and now you get to learn from your mistakes and re-do what went wrong within this school year. Let me emphasize - within this school year. One of the things I enjoy about teaching is that I get a chance to improve every year. But you do not have to wait a full year to start over, you get to do it now.

I get that it's frustrating - you have to save and import from Resources in Schoology. You have to learn about all of your new students and build that community again. But guess what? You have already survived your 'first year' of virtual teaching and you get to already do it differently with your 'second year.' And the year isn't even over! So my questions to you are: 

What did you learn from that first nine weeks of distance-learning?

Now that you are familiar with virtual teaching, what will you do differently with your new Virtual Campus class? 

It's easy to think about this in isolation. However, I challenge you to share your answers and intentions on this anonymous Padlet below.

Cheers,

Elegan

The Move to Schoology

 

Many teachers have used Google Classroom or other platforms to manage their assignments and documents during Q1.

Virtual Campus teachers are to be using Schoology for Q2, Q3, and Q4.