Mid-year New Year

Having spent most of my professional life as a teacher (and most of my life before that as a student), the January New Year has never felt quite right to me. The real New Year for me was always in September (or August). The January New Year seems like a bonus New Year, a mid-year pause to reflect on the first half of the year, and re-focus for the second half of the year.

For the record, I am not much a resolution maker (or keeper). I have only successfully kept two resolutions: 1) to moisturize and 2) to make changes in my life when I felt like I needed to, and not when dictated by a date on the calendar.*

The second half of the year is, generally speaking, much busier than the first half of the year, at least in my library (though how my year can get any busier is beyond me; maybe I should go buy some more coffee). The fall is a warm-up in a lot of ways. Students and teachers are getting into the groove, getting to know each other, and just starting to dive into content. I, too, am getting to know new teachers, new courses, and testing out new ideas. Come spring, however, we're all warmed up and far more people are ready to dive in to more and more ambitious research projects.

I like this pattern a lot. I always have teachers who do research in the fall, and it gives me (and them) a chance to test out new ideas for instruction and resources. I'm then able to fine-tune, re-work, or completely abandon those ideas come spring, when the research projects and requests for instruction and resources start coming fast and furious (and usually with short turn-around time).

But, as I mentioned, this fall has been busier than most. This is a result of many things--having more on my plate (first as the de facto ed tech facilitator, and then as the actual ed tech facilitator), more teachers who want collaborate more often and earlier in the year (file that under "good problems") and, as I start to feel really "at home" in this profession, and more professionally active (both formally and informally) I am increasingly aware of what's out there, what other people are doing, what I want to do, and what I think I should be doing. And all of that adds up to a lot.

As a result, I feel both more and less ready for the second half of the year than I usually do--more ready because I have more ideas, but less ready because this fall has been so busy I've had less time to really reflect on what's working and what's not working.

This has been one of the downsides of being so busy this fall; as I have more and more I want to take the time to reflect on, the less time I feel like I have to reflect--both on the day-to-day of my practice, but also on the larger picture of how I work. How do I pace myself, without feeling like I'm leaving something out? How do I focus, while continuing to grow? What is the balance? Is there one?

One of the most amazing parts of this past year has been the many people I've been able to meet and learn from.** While more and more librarians are going solo, this experience is far less isolating than it used to be; even though I have no librarian colleagues in my school, I feel like I have colleagues all over the country. And because of all I've learned from these people, I feel the need to give back, but I want to give back something that is as good as what I've taken from people. It's a pressure that's coming from no one but myself, but it's a pressure I feel nonetheless.

I have ambitious plans for the rest of this school year, and for the calendar year as well. I know that I will fall short on some of them--I know because I've fallen short on my plans even when they're less ambitious. And I think I've decided that's okay. I would much rather over-extend and fall short, than just work within my comfort zone.

It's not exactly a resolution, but it'll do.

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* I did, however, tweet the following last night: ""When someone asks you if you're a god, you say yes." #favoritelinefromGhostbusters/NewYearsResolution". This resolution was inspired by the fact that a) I had a couple nights earlier gotten into an "argument" with a friend of mine about whether or not I was well-liked (I was arguing to the contrary) and b) I'd been watching Ghostbusters.

**And holy crap, as I think back on the past year, I have met a lot of people and had a lot of amazing opportunities. I'm half-inclined to do a year-end inventory of everything I've done in the past 12 months, but just thinking about it is kind of overwhelming, and right now I'm trying to focus on being overwhelmed by the upcoming year.

Our students are not robots (except when they are)

I have just finished teaching an intensive two and a half week course on Lego Robotics. I met with the same 13 students all day every day during that time, and we built and programmed Lego robots, completing increasingly complex (both for them to program and me to build) challenges. It was an amazing time, but I’m not going to miss either the incessant whir of the motors or the incessant calls of “Ms. K-M, Ms. K-M, Ms. K-M!”

The other constant refrain of the course was, “My robot’s not doing what I want it to do.” To which I would reply, “Your robot is doing exactly what you told it to do; what did you tell it to do?” We talked a lot about programming and free will—specifically, your robot does not have free will, and it will only do what you tell it to do. If you’re robot is not doing what you want, it means you didn’t tell it what you wanted to do. (I managed to thoroughly undermine this line of argument by showing them Short Circuit.)

After the 342^nd (give or take) time I had this conversation, I started to relate it to other conversations I’d had with colleagues, usually as they bring me their students’ final products (sometimes these are projects they’ve worked on with me, sometimes not), and they tell me, “This is not what I was expecting students to produce.” And then we look at the assignment and/or rubric, and I often end up thinking (and saying), “Well, based on this, your students gave you exactly what you said you wanted.” Sometimes it’s teachers who are disappointed their students didn’t elaborate and build on ideas—but the assignment clearly asks for a report, and makes no expectation of applying ideas and facts to new situations. Sometimes it’s teachers who are frustrated that students spent more time on bells and whistles and fancy colors (whether the product be a poster, a PowerPoint, or something else) and not as much time on content—but the rubric gives as much weight to color and visual appeal as it does to content.

If we don’t ask our students to engage in inquiry, or use critical thinking, or apply prior knowledge to new information, they won’t. Some will, sure. But most students need to be prompted, guided, and taught to do so. And that’s our job.

I’m often able to revisit these conversations the next time I start planning a project with a teacher, and we’re often able to design something that, from the outset, asks students to use critical thinking skills and demonstrate the application of those skills.

However, our students—unlike most robots—do remember the programs they’ve been told to run before. Even the bad ones. So even though we’ve created something new and different, many students will fall back into old habits.

This is a challenge I know I’m not alone in facing; I’ve talked about it with colleagues both at my school and in other schools. It is so frustrating. We want to make the shift to inquiry-driven, student-centered work that builds critical thinking ability. But we can’t make that shift all at once. But in order to make the small shifts, it seems like we have to overhaul the entire culture. But we can’t. . . you get the idea.

I don’t know the answer for this, but I am starting to think about the spring research season and how we can help students reprogram their own learning behaviors.

Reflections on Research

We're nearing the end of the first go round with the collaborative research unit I talked about a while back. And as I mentioned in that post, we're on a modular schedule, which means we'll be starting the same project from the beginning. Which, of course, means revamping based on our experiences this first time around.

In talking with teachers about revamping things, they have sometimes lamented that it's unfortunate that this first group had to act as guinea pigs--but I point out that usually all students have to act as guinea pigs, and we have to wait an entire year in order to test our new ideas again. I'm excited about being able to re-do this unit so soon, and get more ideas for how to make it better.

And boy do I have ideas for how to make it better. I love this project, and I think many things worked well the first time, but there are definite areas for improvement. One big change will be where in the process we explicitly introduce the writing of the thesis statement (speaking of which, have I mentioned how very, very much I love Tom March's Online Thesis Generator? 'Cause I really, really do). We talked with students from the beginning about the need to form an argument and write a thesis, but we didn't do much direct instruction until late in the process of finding sources--and many students discovered that the sources they had were not helpful to their thesis, which was very frustrating for many students.

For our next go round, we'll be asking students to find a certain number of sources on their topic in order to establish their background knowledge and get an overview of their topic. Then write the thesis, then find additional sources in order to specifically address the subtopics of their thesis. This is one of those ideas I have that makes me feel kind of foolish for not having thought of it the first time around.

As frustrating as citation has been, I'm nerdily excited about deploying my citation map to its full effect. And I have to remind myself that I no longer see Works Cited pages that simply list "www.google.com", so progress is being made. There have been some interesting mistakes, and I think understanding those will help me help students avoid them in the future (for example, one student entered a magazine article from a database as a radio broadcast, because he'd used the database's built-in text-to-speech feature (which, by the way, much UDL love there) to listen to the article). (Did I just do a parenthetical aside within a parenthetical aside? I think I have a problem. . .) And inspired by Buffy Hamilton (a statement which could be true of about half the things I do), I'm going to work on some citation guidesheets to help my students move through the process from finding a source to creating an accurate citation. While I love NoodleTools (and eventually many of my students come around), many of my students struggle with identifying what type of source they have and how to answer the questions in NoodleTools. I want to help them get things right at the beginning, in order to limit future frustrations.

And after reading Kristin Fontichiaro's recent post about reflection it occurred to me in that "why didn't this occur to me before?" kind of way that while I regularly checked in with students on their progress and got a good sense of what they were struggling with and what was going well, it would be good to ask students to reflect in a more formal way on their own process. So I created a form asking students to reflect on each part of the research process--from topic selection to citations, and which parts were easiest and most difficult for them. This will help in adjustments for the next go round with this project, but I'm hoping that it will also help students realize how much they've managed to accomplish.

There are also lots of little tweaks, and I'm sure after the next time I'll have even more ideas for how to adjust. I don't know if I've ever taught the same unit the same way twice, and I think it will be a long time before I do. If I ever do. Which is just the way I want it to be.

"Whatever you are, be a good one"

I will potentially catch flack from my mother, several friends, and a number of colleagues for sharing a blog post with this title and agreeing with most of what is said, but I'm going to do it anyway (I live life on the edge, clearly):

My Job is Not What I Do, It Is Who I Am

During my first year as a librarian I remember a colleague asking me how things were going, and when would I be done and able to take some down time. And I remember saying, "There's no point at which I'm 'done.' There's just a point at the end of every day when I say 'enough for today' and I stop."

That is, I think, the nature of working in education (and in a lot of other fields, I know; it's just that most of my experience is in education). I get frustrated with colleagues who want to do something "like we did it last year." Even if a project went perfectly (ha!), I always want to try something new, make something better. And every year we're working with new students who bring different strengths and weaknesses to the table. No matter how good a lesson or unit is, it never feels "done" to me.

Which is not to say I never drag my feet through a day, or want to do something that's just "good enough" or get frustrated or feel like work has consumed my entire life to the exclusion of the possibility of social interaction. 'Cause I do. But 9 times out of 10 a positive interaction with a student (whether that's working with a kid on a major project or someone just stopping in to say hi and ask for a book recommendation) will bring me back to where I need to be.

This is, I think, part of how I'm wired. Even when I worked in, um, let's just call them "jobs not crucial to the future of our nation" I often spent too much time at work or thinking about work. I'm not very good at just leaving half-done things aside at 5:00 and not thinking about it till the next day. And I took any feedback on my work--good or bad--to heart. Often too much so. So I suppose it's a good thing I'm in education, as leaving half-done things aside at 5:00 is never really an option, and taking critiques of your work--good and bad--to heart is incredibly important.

Like the quote that is the title of this blog post (attributed to Abraham Lincoln, who I think it's fair to say took his own advice to heart), whatever it is I do, I think it's important to be--or try to be--good at it. But I've come to realize, too, that being good at what I do also means taking time away from work; it's important to create balance, and perspective. Spending all my time immersed in and consumed by my work creates a kind of myopia that is counter-productive when it comes to actually improving.

My job is who I am; there is no way I could feel as passionate about my work, or unbegrudgingly give over so much of my life to it if it didn't speak to something deep within me. But it's not ALL of who I am.