By Suzanne Crowley and Jennifer Fischer Trapper Keepers. They answered the prayers of the ‘80s most disorganized students. Style. Organization. Velcro. Trapper Keepers had it all. Let’s be honest, there was a time not so long ago when you couldn’t walk down a school hallway without seeing these colorful three-ring binders and their super-stylish plastic flaps. Add to that the personal stylings of a pegasus, a Lamborghini, or a Care Bear. It was enough to make a kid stand up and shout, “Yea, see that Care Bear sliding down that rainbow? Yea, that’s my stuff.” Never before was a school supply considered this cool. Now a lot can be said about the advances of modern technology. Even more about the 1:1 initiative that’s taking most schools by storm. You can’t argue the benefits of technology in the classroom. You just can’t. And while we love (with devotion) all that Google Classroom has to offer, searching through Google Drive just leaves us wanting more. Color-coded folders? Sure, that’s a help… but still everything seems so… same. It’s hard to harness the excitement and hype of 1980’s school supplies when there is no individuality. No personality. No fun. When we think about student achievement in the classroom, and compare it to what the digital generation students “get” to the students of years past, again, it leaves us wanting more. The content is the same. The kids’ desire to achieve, also the same. The things is, it’s become difficult for kids to stay organized, to easily locate important notes and documents. Here’s why: Google Classroom has allowed the teacher the control to organize their drives for them, to literally label every document for them, to push it into their drive for them. And that’s the problem: for them. They have little ownership. And when you don’t create it, everything just looks, well, the same. Now, imagine the ability to take all that modern technology (eh-hem, Google) has to offer, but add to it individuality, ownership, and personality. Imagine taking the best of the Trapper Keeper and bringing it into 2017. Imagine adding fun. Enter the DigiKeeper. The best part(s)?
DigiKeeper. The best of 1980’s school supplies. Without the velcro.
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Goals. Resolutions. It seems every time I set one the same thing happens (with very few exceptions). I fail.
Take, for example, my brother's wedding. If ever you needed motivation to get in shape it should be this: You are about to be a 40-year-old bridesmaid. In a wedding party of mid-20-somethings. Oh, and the bride? Yea, she's a yoga instructor. Man, I was going to be healthy and thin and gorgeous at that wedding! I mean, how could I fail... I had a year to get ready. Except a year later, there I was looking exactly as I did a year before. Maybe worse (with the exception of my hair and makeup, which a was, if I do say so myself, G.O.R.G.E.O.U.S. The result of being literally spray painted). So what went wrong? When I returned to my classroom after Christmas break, eager to welcome in 2017 with my students, we created a Jar of Goals and Blessings. We would write our goals on white paper, blessings that happened along the way on pink, and in June we would open the jar, take out the papers and see how we'd done. The kids were excited and we got right to work setting goals. The conversation naturally turned to what we would do to actually reach those goals, It turned to making plans. Looking back on my own past goals, the ones I reached and the ones I didn't, the true determining factor, the thing that made the difference, was always the same: Did I have a plan? Without a plan, you don't have a goal at all. You have a fleeting hope. Things don't just happen. I didn't magically turn into a super model, even though that was my hope. But I did reach my goal of running a few half-marathons, after loyally following a training plan. Every good English teacher knows the value of the plan. Heck, forests have been sacrificed for the greater good of the graphic organizer! Enter the plan and blue paper: what we do along the way to work towards that goal. Now when I glance across the room at the Jar, I see blue. And after completing this post I'll get to add another blue of my own to the jar. My goal: To Continue. To Share. To Write. My plan: At least twice a month... or when the feeling moves me. The Question.
Which teaching tools are you loving right now? EASY! I can make an almost infinite list: blogs, digital portfolios, Storybird, Storyboard That, Dotstorming, hyperdocs, digital book clubs. The list goes on and on. I can even make a pretty (very) good argument for how these tools are improving student interest and engagement. Yay! The Tough Question: Which tools are improving student understanding and achievement? Answer: I'm not sure. More Honest Answer. I am so very in the thick of it all, that it's become hard to step back and look at the big picture I'm creating. As far as English teachers go, I'm about as skills-based, old-school as they come. I know that the literacy skills I taught years ago are the same that I'm teaching today. Granted, the platform has changed, but I have stayed fiercely loyal to the content. Why, then, has the level of understanding gone down? Is it the bells? The whistles? Or just a different generation of kids? I'm not sure. Lately, my students are proving that, while they seem engaged, they are just not "getting it". So I need to reassess. I need to figure out what's changed. Flashback to 2013. I was happliy and loyaly married to the Interactive Notebook. In fact, you could spot a "Crowley Kid" in any crowd a mile away. They were the ones hauling thick, used, heavily decorated marble notebooks (often more than one, duct-taped together because, yes, we will need this information again!). Those kids "got it". Present Day. My divorce from the interactive notebook was messy. I had a hard time letting go. Still do. When challenged with navigating all the shiny-new-things of the Google world, I faltered. I wanted to try everything new. Now. At the expense of organization and routine. And I'm afraid that, at least in part, student understanding paid the price. Finding Balance. I'm working to reunite with the interactive notebook, but this time in a digital world. More of an interactive website/portfolio/work-in-progress. What used to be pages and pages of notes, practice, risk-taking, and acheivement housed in a marble notebook is now taking new form, becoming pages and pages of notes, practice, risk-taking, and acheivement house in a student-created website. I'm not sure yet if this is the answer I'm looking for. The thing I'm most loving that is also improving student achievement. But stay tuned, I'm still in the thick of it. |
AuthorSuzanne Crowley: middle school English teacher, middle child, mid-career, mid-life. And in the middle of it all, mommy. Archives
July 2017
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