Sometimes it's the little things

I saw this pin on Pinterest last year about leaving words of encouragement on pencils for students during exams. I tried it for my Honors class and they really loved them. One student even made a Tweet about it a few months later when she found the pencil in the bottom of her backpack.

I wanted to do this again for all my classes for finals this past year but with 152 students there was no way that was going to happen. So, at the last minute, I decided to just take a whiteboard marker and write the message directly on the desk.  Here are some pictures of what I wrote:

I think my favorite part about the day was when some students came in early, noticed the messages, and went around the room trying to find the one they liked best.  I don't know if it helped improved scores, but it definitely put a smile on their face.

One student told me at the end of the year that she feels so comfortable learning in my classroom.  I think I can call my year a success.

Going to the GTA!

One of my unwritten goals for the past year has been to make it into the Google Teacher Academy.  I missed the December deadline for NYC because I chickened out at the last minute over making my one minute video.  When the application opened this spring for Mountain View (Google HQ!) I knew I couldn't wait another year.

To be honest, it was one of the most stressful things I have ever done, probably because I wanted it so badly.  Not only was the application stressful, but the day I knew I would be receiving my email of acceptance (or denial, but I was staying positive) was horrible.  I must checked my email at least 100 times even though my phone would have alerted me to the received message.  Everything stopped in my life whenever my pocket vibrated thinking that this could be it.

• At about 4pm, the email telling me I was accepted arrived and I literally jumped up and down and started screaming.  Luckily I was alone in the school cafeteria waiting for my Relay For Life meeting to start so it wasn't that embarrassing.  I wanted to share two things I learned from this experience.Make sure you read the directions!!  I was asked to answer 2 questions.  One on hardships that I have faced and how I overcame them.  The other on why I wanted to attend the GTA.  I read the question and noticed that underneath it said 'Maximum 800 words."  I remember thinking 'wow, there are at least 1000 people going to apply and they are going to read all of these essays in a week.  That's impressive!'  So I wrote out this page and half essay and when I was finally ready, pasted the text into the box on the Google form.  That's when the little red error popped up and said "800 characters exceeded."  You read that right:  CHARACTERS not WORDS.  I had to take an essay that was nearly 800 words (779 to be exact) and turn it into 800 characters including spaces!  On the day it was due!  While I was teaching classes!!  Here is my submission as to why I wanted to attend the GTA:

School needs to be transformed; GTA will lead to this. I long to be part of something transformative, something cutting edge, something elite, to be part of a community of educators redesigning education; the concept of GTA excites & energizes me. As a GCT, I will draw on connections to the people most passionate about achieving the best for students while I do the same for mine. I am excited about the opportunity to work closely with like-minded educators innovating, shaking up the system, daring to fail. Every teacher should be fighting for a chance to attend a GTA. I’m geeking out about the opportunity to just apply, that I stand a chance of getting to explore the Google offices & get to talk about the great things other excited educators are doing! Plus, I hear the food is awesome.

• You need to create a one minute video about how you are innovating education and having an impact in your school.  A couple of students and I had worked on a project for the White House Film festival a few months ago so I tapped their talents to help me again.  We found clips I had recorded from various activities, filmed a short intro, and edited over the course of a couple of hours in the video production lab.  One of the students is very talented with Garage Band so while 2 of us were editing clips (and dealing with my OCD/perfectionist tendencies), he was creating an original score for the piece.  It is not the best video that I have seen submitted, but we were pretty proud of it when we were done.  Below is my video submission.

The students in the video were so embarrassed at first, but then were showing their friends that they made it in the video.  People from all over the world were seeing it and that gave them a sense of pride.  Plus my son loved being there at the end.

I think my biggest takeaway and best advice for anyone thinking of applying is to just go for it.  I panicked at the first one because I felt I wasn't good enough.  But afterwards, and after watching a colleague get in, I realized I was selling myself short.  We all do awesome things in our classrooms.  We need to be positive and promote that.  Sell the the awesome however and wherever we can.  

Love what you do

I took this video while waiting at a red light.

It doesn't matter what you do for a living.  Love what you do.  Do it to the best of your ability.  And, above all else, bring the awesome every day!

I Am Awesome

Repeat after me...

I

AM

AWESOME.

Ok, one more time...

I

AM

AWESOME!

Last time, and with some feeling...

I

AM

AWESOME!!!

How often do you do this?  Just stop what you are doing and say, out loud, that you are awesome.  We just don't do it.  Why?

Because someone might hear?

Because we don't think we really are awesome?

Because someone might prove us wrong?

I have been developing this post for a couple of days and something happened in class today that made me sit down and finally put words to this.  I have a students who is an amazing artist.  I love everything that she sketches in her book.  She was working a drawing of a parrot and the eye on the parrot was so fantastically drawn that I actually touched the paper to make sure that she didn't glue a picture on top of it to make it look better.  The shading, the colors.  I was blown away.  I told her work was amazing and she got embarrassed.  Not embarrassed like "Oh, you are just being kind." but actually was on the verge of a panic attack because I was giving her compliments.  I told her that she is extremely gifted and she should be standing up in class showing her work to everyone.  That made it worse and she covered up her book with her arms so I couldn't look anymore.

There is a ton of research out there on brain theory and the differences between men and women.  I have read that males are more likely to raise their hands and answer questions in class, but females will only answer after they have a thoughtful response and are confident in their answer.  I see this happen every day.  Typically guys will call out the first thing that pops in their head, but the girls are more likely to get the answer correct.

We tell people to have confidence in themselves, but if they were to go around proclaiming their awesomeness, we call them egotistical.

You were made to be awesome.  If you ever doubt yourself, just look in a mirror and say "Who's Awesome? I'm Awesome!"

And don't you ever forget it!!!

My New Year's Resolution

I stopped making resolutions a few years ago.  They were always the typical stupid ones like lose weight, eat out less, blah, blah, blah, but they never got finished.  In the end I never felt better or felt like I accomplished much.  When I changed my focus last year and made my goal not about me, but about doing something for someone else, it increased my motivation.  I worked harder, found people to help me accomplish my goal, and found much greater satisfaction at the end of the year when it was done.  Something else unexpected happened as well: I forgot about my resolution.  The work I was doing completely consumed my focus that I forgot why I was doing it and just concentrated on making it a success.

So, for 2014, here is what I am proposing:

1. Something audacious.  It will not be related to Relay as that was my goal from last year.  I don't know what it is, but it will probably have to do with TED Ed and Google Glass.  I will let it develop more.
2. Get people recognized.  There are so many amazing things that are happening in my school and by my colleagues, and we don't publicize it.  I think NCLB, standardized testing increases, and the general attack on the education profession has turned teachers into turtles.  We hide in our classrooms and don't stick our heads out for the fear of what will happen to us.  That needs to end.  I work with teachers that have done Fulbright programs, day long PD at farms learning about nutrition and sustainability, completing PhD programs; and no one knows about it!!  That is going to change.  I am also expanding this to get students recognized.  There should be pictures of students working on projects popping up all over the Internet.  When you search for my school, you should see nothing but excellence on every link.

The thing about these goals is they are nothing that fantastic; they are things that we should be doing anyway.  So let's git-r-done!!

You know who's awesome?

Ms. Flood is awesome!

My older son qualified for the 1st grade Gifted & Talented program; something both of his parents

participated in.  We were very excited because he earned his place due to his creativity and imaginative problem solving skills. It wasn't test scores nor teacher recommendation, but the traits we value most in our children.

Since the teacher is shared between multiple schools and my wife and I are both educators, we asked for parent-teacher conference outside of the normal scheduled time.  We feel it is very important to meet our children's teachers face-to-face.  Ms. Flood agreed to meet us, but the only available day was a Friday afternoon at 3:30.  +1 in the awesome column for a Friday afternoon conference.

Our conference lasted nearly an hour because my wife and I were fascinated by everything Ms. Flood was saying.  She tells us she threw out the curriculum because it didn't put enough emphasis on things like problem solving skills, collaboration, and creativity.  Right now they are designing their own lunchboxes.  They have to create blueprints, collect materials and physically build the entire thing.  Nothing is "HARD" in her room; everything is a CHALLENGE.  When someone is struggling, she has the other students help instead of the answer always coming from the teacher.  The homework is to analyze things in their own world to see how they can be improved upon and have more creativity added to the design.  These are engineering concepts the teacher is teaching them in FIRST GRADE!  +2 in the awesome column.

I tell Ms. Flood about the science demos I had done that week for my son's class and told her it would be great to partner on something for the entire first grade.  Since she has a background in science (that's right.  An elementary person with a real science degree) she was very eager.  Now we are going to create a STEM challenge night for parents and students that are going to involve a variety of engineering challenges throughout the school to emphasize everything that we both value.

My son has been very lucky in the teachers he has had over the past 2 years.  They are caring and creative educators who always put students first.  I know that won't always happen, but I am glad it has because he really loves going to school every day.

Mole Movie Posters

Every year, the American Chemical Society has a poster contest.  They pick a theme (usually some sort of movie) and the students are to create mole poster based around it.  Unfortunately, the contest is set for 10/23 and rarely am I in the mole conversions unit when it happens so my students would have no clue what they were making this poster for.  So I decided last year to just do it for my classes.  Their assignment is this:

"Recreate any movie poster so that The Mole is the theme."

I am all about not giving specific guidelines so I let them pick any movie and do with it whatever they want.  Some students hand draw their posters, some use Photoshop.  Some pick very popular movies and some pick obscure ones that are their favorites.  The key is the creativity that they put into it.  I also tell them in advance that the class will vote on their favorite and that person wins a prize.  I never tell them what the prize is so they always think it is something really, really cool.  This year the prize was one of those squishy ladybug toys that when you squeeze it, it expands in a different spot.  I am not describing it well, but I found it in the $1 part of Target.

The kids got really into this year and several handed the assignment in days in advance.  They were arguing with each other over who got to do what poster, but in the end I had no duplicates anyway.  I want to share the amazing work they did, so here is the photostream from Flickr.  Enjoy!!

Awesome #2

I thought since my first Awesome post was about things non-education related, that I should jump back and talk about a couple of things my students do that feel awesome.

#3  When former students come to visit
I love it when graduates come back to visit, even if it is students I was not particularly close to.  It is amazing the transformation they go through in the 1st year of college.  Last week some of my former students showed up randomly and one ended up spending nearly 2 hours just chatting with me during my classes.  He is not really that different than when he left, but his confidence level is so much higher.  He just went on and on about the different things he was doing, the people he was meeting and even the places he was traveling to.  I was only his teacher for 1 year, but I am proud of the man he is becoming.

#4  When a plan comes together
One of the philosophies of the Flipped Classroom is to increase peer teaching to allow the teacher more interaction with all members of the class.  In my classes, there is much more collaboration than there is peer teaching.  But, in one class I have three guys who just fight with each other over who has the right answer.  And when I say fight, I mean disrupt the entire class as they argue back and forth as to who has the best method for solving the problem.  Normally, you need to squash this kind of behavior, but after the argument they sit down and explain the solution to each other.  It is so amazing to watch this sudden shift from combatants to teacher to combatants again.  I love it when a plan comes together.

The first A in Awesome

Today my students took the AP Exam in Chemistry.  Every year since I started teaching AP, I provide breakfast for my students:  bagels, OJ, apple juice, granola bars, water, pop tarts, oranges.  The Chemistry exam is always in the morning and some of my students have lunch at the time when the exam is occurring.  I feel it is important to take a snack break in the middle of the exam to revitalize you and give a little boost for the next section.  I do this because I love the look on their faces when they walk in the classroom and see that I really did bring in food (why do they always think I am lying to them) and I love to hear how more upbeat their voices are as they talk over the simple meal.  Normally there are a number of thank you's, but this year I got something different.  One of the students from the other AP class, that I don't teach, asking one of my students "what's with all the food?"  The reply stopped me:  "'Cause Mr. Seigel's Awesome!!"

So, I was thinking about this all day and I decided I needed to show my students Neil Pasricha's TED Talk.  As I am watching it for the 3rd time, I realized that I need to start my own list of Awesome Things to turn to when I am having a rough day.  This will be an ongoing post and by the end of the year, I hope to have 100 things on this list. (In no particular order)

#1  Fresh Baked New York-Style Bagel
Now I will eat almost any bagel, but there is something about a New York-style bagel.  It's crisp outside crunches perfectly as you bite into it and then the inside is warm and soft.  There is a place near my house which conveniently opens right before I pass it on my way into work and the bagels are coming out of the oven as I am ordering them.  Granted, the cream cheese gets liquified because it is so warm, but it is so worth it when you are licking it off your fingers later.

#2  The smell of my son's head after a bath
I want to be clear that this is not the smell of the baby shampoo because we use something that absolutely has no odor to it when it is in the bottle.  There is just something about little babies and little children; they give off some sort of magical aroma that makes you want to love them more.  If someone could bottle that and sell it as perfume they would make a fortune.