Category: Reflections

My Journey to #FallCUE 2017

Micah (he/him) Carlin-GoldbergLeave a comment

This weekend, I attended Fall CUE at American Canyon High School. My journey started 18 months ago when I attended my first EdTechTeam Google Summit. It was at this summit that I became a Connected Educator. Since that time I have connected with several communities through Twitter and Voxer. The two I feel the most connected with are TOSAchat and ConnectedTL both groups have a large connection with CUE and the CUE affiliates. I followed along on Twitter as my PLN went to Fall and Spring CUE and I picked up tidbits here and there.

This year I made a point to go to Fall CUE. I scheduled it. I registered. Then on October 8th the #SonomaFires swept through my community. As the fires raged all of my students, many colleagues and friends were evacuated from their homes. Some have no home to return to. As of now the best count for my district is that we lost one school site and 38 teachers, 50+ classified, and 900+ students lost their homes in the last three weeks. The entire district has been closed for three weeks as we waited for the fires to be under control, the schools to be professionally assessed and cleaned, and there to be enough staff available to reopen the schools.

As this calamity beat up my community my attendance at Fall CUE became uncertain. I simply did not know when school would reopen, when we would be able to bring a little more stability back into our students’ lives. As it happens our first day back and the first day of Fall CUE were the same day. I was disappointed to miss the sessions I was looking forward to on Friday but totally jazzed to see all of my students again for the first time in three weeks. It was very much like the first day of class all over again, except they knew the procedures and I knew everyone’s name.

Shortly after school let out I headed out to CUE hoping to be able to attend the last session of the day. Three traffic incidents and an extra hour of driving later I pulled up to the school just after registration closed and within minutes everyone was leaving their sessions. I felt horribly disconnected and lonely as hundreds of people streamed out to their cars. I knew there were people I knew in the crowd but I didn’t see any of them.

This year Cate Tolnai (@CateTolnai) and CUE Member Engagement scheduled evening socials in nearby Napa (BEST. IDEA. EVER.). My first stop was to attempt to meet up with North Bay CUE (@NorthBayCUE) folks at Norman Rose Tavern (@NormanRoseNapa). It was my local affiliate but I hadn’t met any of them before. Unfortunately, when I got there CUE had stuffed the place to the gills. Every seat was filled with 25+ waiting by the bar. With no familiar faces in sight I headed out and went to Napkins Bar & Grill (@NapkinsNapa) to attempt to meet up with the Hyperdocs Crew. It was slightly less packed and as I walked in I saw Lisa, Sarah, and Kelly right away. Immediately I felt reconnected, their authentic, happy greetings as soon as they saw me was exactly what I needed. Though I hadn’t seen any of them in quite a while it felt as though it was no time at all. They quickly drew me into the group and introduced me to those who I didn’t know.

Over the next five hours I reconnected with friends I hadn’t seen in a while and finally met face to face with people that I have been connecting with online for the last year. I had finally arrived.

Thursday Coding and Robotics Elective – Five Months Later

Micah (he/him) Carlin-GoldbergLeave a comment

Apparently I forgot to post this months ago, oops.

Three months ago my school instituted a Thursday afternoon elective program for our 4-6th grade students. You can read about the process of getting it started here. We are now coming to the end of the school year and I want to document some stats and make some notes for myself.

Coding and Robotics Elective

Cycle One Stats:

  • 6 weeks.
  • 20 students, 4 girls, 16 boys.
  • 5 robots, 1 Ozobot, 4 Dash robots.

Cycle Two Stats:

#Hyperdocs Bootcamp – My FIRST Hyperdoc

Micah (he/him) Carlin-Goldberg4 Comments

Well, I finally did it. I completed writing my first Hyperdoc. I have wanted to for over a year since I first learned about them at the Sonoma GAFE Summit in April 2016. I had planned to write one before but never managed to get anywhere with it. Last month, in June, I jumped at the opportunity to take the Hyperdoc Bootcamp put on by the Hyperdocs Ladies (Lisa, Sarah, and Kelly).

Our final project was to write a new hyperdoc to use this year. After scrapping a few ideas I settled on one that I think worked out well. I designed a hyperdoc to both serve as a beginning of the year get to know you activity as well as to teach my students about Google Slides and Google Docs. I set the level of skill needed very low because my students last year had zero experience creating with computers. This is probably a good fit for 5th grade and above.

The base of the hyperdoc is built into a Google Site. The Engage and Explore phases are done on the site and can be used for reference. The Explain, Apply Share are done in individual documents. After the students Explore they click a link to make their own copy of a slide deck or a doc. The first thing they do is rename and share the document to the teacher. I set up the instructions to allow the hyperdoc to be used with or without Google Classroom (but honestly much easier with).

As a part of the Explore phase I created a Slides and a Docs cheatsheet to teach about the icon bar. They are available here: Slides Cheatsheet | Docs Cheatsheet
Feel free to share them separately from the hyperdoc.

Please find the Welcome to G Suite hyperdoc at:

bit.ly/WelcomeToGSuite

Please use it with your students and I would love your feedback. There is a feedback form on the teacher instructions page of the website.

Encouraging Growth Mindset in Teachers: Steele Lane License and Curiosity Cards

Micah (he/him) Carlin-Goldberg2 Comments

This year I transferred to a new school site, Steele Lane Elementary. My new principal, Mr. Noble, introduced a couple of new ideas this year to encourage a growth mindset among the staff, the Steele Lane License and Curiosity Cards.

Steele Lane License

At our first staff meeting of the year Mr. Noble introduced something that I think is a wonderful idea to inspire teachers to maintain their own growth mindset. He gave each of us a “Steele Lane License”.img_4538-2

The license gives us permission to try new things, explore, take risks, and fail knowing that we will be supported by our principal regardless of the outcome. Now, six months later you can still find the license posted behind most teachers’ desks. We were also encouraged to give our students the same license in our classrooms.

On days when lessons just aren’t working and I decide to try something else mid-lesson or I try something new and it totally fails. I find that having that outspoken support helps me to be willing to try it again, do it differently, and keep growing as an educator.

Curiosity Cards

One thing that many elementary schools lack is easy opportunities to observe other teachers teach. In middle and high school teachers have their prep period and while that isn’t necessarily the ideal time to observe it is at least available every day. As an elementary teacher you are lucky if you get prep time twice a week, not every school has that. It makes it really hard to go and observe other teachers teaching. This year my principal decided to help change that.img_4537-2-copy

Two months into the year he introduced Curiosity Cards. At one of the staff meetings everyone got handed a “Curiosity Card”. The idea behind the card is that you fill out the card with what or who you want to observe be it a specific person “my grade level partner” or topic “4th grade writers workshop”. Then Mr. Noble will arrange with the other teacher to schedule your visit then he will cover your class so that you can go observe.  When he comes to cover your class he will either have your students continue what you normally have them do at that time or will bring an activity to do with the students. Either way no lesson plans are required in order to leave your students to go observe.

So far a bunch of teachers have taken him up on the opportunity and all of the feedback that I have heard has been positive. I have to say that I really like that we are being supported as professionals and as life long learners. As a newer teacher, knowing that multi-decade veteran teachers are taking this opportunity to go observe others and grow really encourages me to do the same.

Introducing Thursday Electives for Upper Grades Students at Steele Lane Elementary

Micah (he/him) Carlin-Goldberg4 Comments

A Little Background…

This year my district is rebooting the elementary music program that withered in the massive funding cuts ten years ago. Some of the other elementary schools are doing their band as an afterschool elective. Here at Steele Lane Elementary most of our students ride the bus and leave immediately after school so that wasn’t an option for us. Around thirty students from the 4th, 5th, and 6th grades are particpating in band this year. Having them miss class for an hour every week, while feasible, was turning into a scheduling headache due to grade levels scheduling core subjects at different times of the day.

Our Solution…

We had a lunchtime meeting one day to try and schedule a time that worked for everyone. It was quickly apparent that the only possibility was one day a week in the afternoon, which is where most of us were scheduling time for our new writing program. Someone, I think it was Principal Noble, floated the idea that we make that time an elective time to include all of the students in a fun enrichment activity. With less than two minutes of discussion everyone was on board with the idea. A few more minutes of discussion and we came to a consensus on the schedule and topics for the first cycle of electives.

I built a Google Form that collected the students’ name, homeroom teacher, if they were in band, and their ranked preferences 1-6 for the other topics. All of the students completed the form on Monday and Tuesday and I built rosters in the resulting spreadsheet using pivot tables to do the heavy lifting. All of the students were able to get assigned to one of their top three choices, ready to go for the first session.

Time from the first discussion to the first session with 175 4-6th grade students participating in electives – 9 days.

Thursday Electives…

Each teacher chose a topic in which they had an interest. Our topics for the first cycle are cooking, poetry, art, drama, makerspace, and coding & robotics. We decided to have the sessions last six weeks with all groups making presentations after the sixth session before shuffling the students. We hit the ground running with minimal planning due to the short decision cycle but everyone’s first session came out great!

In cooking they made smiles with apples, peanut butter, and marshmallows. Drama they did some improv and getting to know you activities. Haiku was the style of the day in poetry. African masks were designed in art. Students in makerspace completed the marshmallow challenge. My coding and robotics group got their first introduction to the Blockly coding language through Blockly Games (More on my elective course to follow in a separate post).

Photos From The First Sessions…

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FSteeleLaneElementary%2Fposts%2F1770208059902602&width=500

Student and Staff Feedback…

Initial reports from students in all of the classes is that they enjoyed their first session and are really looking forward to next week. On Friday we got a lot of interest from the primary grades teachers about what we were doing in the elective program and several already requested to view the presentations at the end of the cycle. All in all our feedback has been almost entirely positive. I for one am really excited to see what all of the students will produce over the course of the six weeks.