It’s been awhile since I last posted. I think school was still in session and school is now almost ready to start again. Actually I have  had much to blog about but I keep putting it off. Oh the lazy days of summer! Well my lazy days are pretty much over for the next year. School and field hockey begins shortly, plans to finish, a new course to design. And a few weeks ago I decided to take the plunge and go for NBCT in AYA-Science (Bio) this year. I paid my deposit and received my big box of portfolio goodies.  That box made me realize that I have a lot to do this school year and not just for NBCT.

I have thought about doing NBCT for awhile and every year I would say that I didn’t have time to do it. Technically that was true. However, I have come to realize that mother nature does not plan to increase the number of hours in a day anytime soon. I have been asked by many people why I am doing this. In many ways I don’t really need to do it. I teach at an independent school that doesn’t require certification. I will have many hoops to jump through and added stress of meeting deadlines, filming and sitting for an exam. I have heard that NBCT may not be as progressive as what I am already doing regarding 21st century learning and technology. But what I do like is that I have heard that it causes one to be very reflective about their teaching. Other than getting a national certification that may be useful for me in the future, I feel the need to really reflect on and analyze my teaching practices this year.

I have gotten lots of advice about NBCT and appreciate it all. I already have some NBCT folks in my PLN  to ask for help like @stardiverr @kellyhines, @Twilliamson @jmiscavish @sharon_elin (I know I am forgetting a few- my apologies in advance!) And there are several who will be going through the process this year. So overall I am looking forward to the experience and hope that I don’t later say to myself:  “What was I thinking?”

I know many of you were looking for an update last week about the marine ecosystem project on Friday but it was not to be. Honestly I was too tried to write anything by Friday at 5 PM and needed the long Memorial Day weekend to recover. Trust me- it really is a good thing that I felt that way! Throughout last week I had students in my room all day long. At one point I had almost the entire freshmen class working on their projects. (I work at a small school so it wasn’t a tremendous number but still plenty to look like chaos to outsiders.) I also allowed them to listen to music while they worked as long as it was appropriate and I was amazed at the amazing classic hits of the 70’s and 80’s that they actually wanted to listen to!

All ecosystems needed to be finished by 3:15 on Friday and my room was in a frenzy as groups worked to finish. One said it reminded her a bit of what must happen on reality TV shows like Project Runway or The Apprentice. They were all intensely working on their creations, focused on what they need to accomplish for the most part.  And I like to call them creations because some of the work was really creative yet accurate in what they were trying to depict.  I can happily say that they managed to finish the task and my room is no longer “insane asylum gray” but rather a colorful array of beautiful ecosystems and their organisms.

Anyway, as with any project or unit, I reflect back on this experience and think about the positive outcomes, improvements to be made, and other observations. Here are just a few thoughts.

Positives

1. All groups finished on time. Hopefully that will also translate to completed projects.
2. Students were really engaged and worked outside of class time to complete the work and they seemed to like doing it! The groups appeared to work well together for the most part.
3. I had several of my very artistic and “non-science” students get into this project and were top performers.
4. Students were truly interested in the work done by others and not in a competitive way.
5. Students from other grade levels also wanted to see what the students had done. In fact the 10th graders were complaining that I didn’t do this project with them when they were freshmen.
6. The learning was student directed and I was a facilitator.
7. I received positive feed back from some of my coworkers.
8. The students did an evaluation of the project and felt that they learned much more this way than through a traditional style of learning.
9. I will do this again in some fashion. It was worth the time and effort.

Improvements/Considerations/Other:

1. The timing was a bit of a crunch. I should do this earlier in the year and not at the end when they are stressed about exams and other projects in other classes. (Although some found it to be a mental break and may have used it to procrastinate from other work.)
2. Some groups got sidetracked with the the “art” and left out the core concepts that they needed to include on the organism cards. This is something that happened before on another project so I am not sure if it’s the age or something I am doing/not doing. In order to score all groups for content equally given that the creativity would be different, I had a rubric for them to follow as far as how to get an A, B… (what they needed to include for each phylum of organisms). So a few that look like “A” projects are really B’s because of missing content requirements. I need to figure out how to make sure that doesn’t happen.
3. The kelp forests did not turn out as well as I had expected. One of these groups had ”A” students. I thought they should have done much better. The other Kelp forest group lost two members due to absences in the last several work days and so the group had trouble completing it fully. I need to address both situations in a better way for future assignments.
4. At least one member in the remaining groups did not pull their weight as compared to their peers. Oddly on their self eval, these students thought they were a major contributor to the group. Could it be a “self-awareness” issue?  I need to get all members to be active contributors and aware of what they actually did do on the assignment and care about that.
5. I wanted them to analyze the other ecosystems and reflect more on their own work but we ran out of time. This is a necessary step to make this a well rounded project.
6. I want the Lower School students to see the projects  but they may not have time. It is important that the students  act as role models and share their work with younger students.
7. I had an impression that a few coworkers saw this assignment as “fluff” or not very scholarly. Nothing negative but nothing positive. More like a “hmm this is interesting.”  I am not sure why that bugged me so much. Although they’re hard to ignore, I need to dismiss that negativity and know that solid and long lasting learning was taking place in my class. Whether or not they see it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I know that my students learned a great deal of information in a short period of time and they will remember it.

Yes that’s right- a mess but that’s ok. I must say today my classroom has stressed me out a bit. I walked into my room at one point today and felt as if the Clean Sweep crew needed to take over. Tons of paper, paint, markers, and junk. Students all over the place. Paper mache glue stuck on the floor.  What was I thinking? Why didn’t I just save myself the the end of year ughs and just teach it old school style with just 9 class periods left in the year? I left school today exhausted which really doesn’t make sense since I only teach 5 of 9 periods on this day. I don’t really have two of my classes because they consist of seniors or AP students. The remaining 3 classes are 9th graders all of whom are working on this project I previously posted about. No true “teaching” by me. On my free periods, I had many things to do: I had research papers to grade and two finals to write but didn’t get to them. I had a bunch of  glassware to clean but didn’t do that. I wanted to sit in on a Skype call today in the Global Science Issues class concerning genetic technology and intellectual property rights. Didn’t get to take part.

Why wasn’t I able to get anything accomplished? Why am I so tired? Well– I had students in my room all day long working on their ecosystems! They were there on their own, outside of regular class time, on their free time. At one point today I went to check my school mailbox and came back to a room of at least 15 students listening to music on my speakers and diligently working. How can I complain about that?

So it appears that the experience for the students is a good one. Most of the groups are on task and most of the students are excited about it. I’ll admit that I have one group that I am worried about though. They are a bit disconnected but are at least coming in outside of class time to work. But for the most part, I have students engaged in their research  and ecosystem recreation who were not typically engaged in my class or are top students.  For example, I have one student who is completely obsessed with creating/painting a life size model of a blacktip reef shark. He never thought of himself as artistic. He spent class time and two study halls to work on it today and finished it!  And not only did he paint but he revised his painting because he felt that the caudal fin was not accurate. He then explained to me in detail about the life history of this shark while he was painting. I have another average student who described the kelp forest and wanted to make sure their model was an accurate reflection of the real thing. Pretty cool! Another average student has gotten into the unusual coral reef mollusks and had made some incredible depictions of them. He told me that he used to draw a lot when he was little but stopped because didn’t think he was very good. His drawings were very, very good- especially of the blue-ringed octopus. It made me a bit sad to know that he didn’t think he could draw.

So overall, besides my own issues of feeling overwhelmed, I think my crazy idea has been a good one. And honestly they all looked at me as if I was crazy on Tuesday morning when I told them what they were going to do for animal diversity. Seeing my students engaged outside of class time really made my day. They were working things out on their own and coming up with ideas about how to create- like the tomato cages and duct tubing to make hydrothermal vents. And they actually seemed politely annoyed when I tried to “help them” with their system designed.

So check back next week for the next set of up dates. I am hoping that they will have these finished by next Friday.

I had planned to make my second blog post about something completely different-something about learning new technologies this year and their influence on my teaching. But that will have to wait because I decided to write about my last unit of the year.

Well I have approximately 9 teaching class periods left with my 9th graders- class time that takes me through the Wednesday after Memorial Day. I took today off- a personal day to catch up on my gardening. It rained and so I have been stuck inside most of the day. Instead, I was working on my plans about animal diversity for these remaining days and all I could think of was blah and boring. I love teaching about animal diversity especially invertebrates but I just didn’t like what I had planned to do for these last few weeks. I couldn’t figure out how to cram it all in. I guess that’s the point…I can’t. A phylum a day in the month of May? It seemed so choppy and nonthematic. I also think my students would be bored to death and grumbling about whether or not this was going to be on the exam and when the last day of school would be. I also realized that I hadn’t done much on ocean systems this year which troubled me. I always try to touch on it in 9th because my school competes every year in the Blue Crab Bowl- a regional ocean science competition.

So animal diversity and oceans–how to combine the two in just a short time period without stressing them out? I thought back to things I had done in the past and remembered an old project I did on the ocean zones at another school. (Old meaning my second year of teaching with no technology in my room other than my computer used for Word and my gradebook program.) I don’t have a copy of it anymore either but I don’t think it would help. It’s all in my head and the resources available for research are vast now compared to then. I don’t have enough time to teach them all of the zones and all of the animal groupings but I want them to see how organisms interact with their environment (we did ecology in the fall) as well as their structures and functions.

So here is my plan: The students will be split up into three of the following ecosystems: Coral Reef, Kelp Forest, Hydrothermal Vents. We have talked about all three throughout the year which seems more relevant than doing all of the different zones.  The Kelp Forest will be located on the wall of window (perhaps a cool blue and green celophane effect??), Coral Reef on the walls perpendicular to the windows where all of my cabinets are and the hydrothermal vent community will be up front furthest from the “sunlight”. Each ecosystem will have certain criteria to meet but how they design it and what specific critters to include is up to them. I also may  add in a tech component-perhaps a wiki as a twitter follower suggested or on our class ning. Still thinking about how they can tell me who’s who in their ecosystem. I’ll figure that out tonight. Yes this is last minute “replanning” but it always works out.

I am sure somebody else has done this in their rooms but I don’t know if they did it at this point in the year or in this period of time. Regardless, I just don’t want to teach them something for a test and then have it gone from the brain the next day. I want them to remember what they have learned. I don’t want to be bored teaching a topic either. I really think I am crazy doing this one right now and perhaps I will lose my mind by Memorial Day. But the adventure will be worth it. Check back periodically or at the end of May to see if it worked.

Well I have been meaning to do this for awhile-starting a blog that is. It has always been on my “To Do” List but got shuffled to the bottom time and time again over the past school year. I am a Twitter user and was challenged this evening by a real life friend, coworker, and Twitter pal to get my blog set up. (And a few others added in additional positive peer pressure.) The only thing that really kept me from setting one up was selecting the name. Silly I know. I had a similiar issue when I had to set up class Nings. As I had put it on Twitter- it’s like choosing a paint color.  But I can always change the paint right? But my friend told me that I would not be allowed to Tweet again if I didn’t do this. So thanks friend! I think this name is better than the one you suggested: “I made this so I can tweet again.” So can I tweet again? But I like the name I picked- it’s a nickname given to me originally by a wonderful field hockey player/AP Bio student and it has stuck. And over the past year my classroom has grown quite a bit outside of its physical space. So welcome to Dgar’s room!