One of the new traditions at our school is to hold a schoolwide assembly when we come back from winter break. This assembly focuses on goal-setting. The new year is often a time to make resolutions, but in the education world it is a time to check in with the progress made in the first half of the year and think about what we strive to accomplish in the second half of the year. Last year, I invited all of our students, teachers, and families to join me in “expecting the miraculous”. We created a Flipgrid where we shared our expectations for 2014 and “expect the miraculous” because a common mantra in our school. My principal asked if I would once again share something at this assembly. I wasn’t quite sure what to share at first, so I spent some time thinking about the goals for the library that I established over the summer. One of those goals is to “support the reading habits and curiosities of students, teachers, and families. I’ve done several things so far this year to support this goal. We’ve held 2 author visits, a storybook celebration, Polar Express Day, a picture book month challenge, and a picture book smackdown. However, I feel like I haven’t done something that really encourages reading a variety of texts for students, teachers, and families.
As I was pondering, I was reminded of something in my Facebook feed about Mark Zuckerberg’s new year’s resolution. Each year he “takes on a challenge to broaden his perspective and learn something about the world beyond his work at Facebook.” This year, a crowdsourced list helped him decide on his resolution. He will choose a new book to read every other week and post about his learning on Facebook. His selections will have “an emphasis on learning about different cultures, beliefs, histories, and technologies.”
I thought this idea would make an interesting challenge for our students, teachers, and families. What if we invited students, teachers, and families to choose a reading goal for themselves? Maybe it could be something they want to learn more about. Maybe it could be about selecting books from a genre that they haven’t tried. The goal would be completely up to them.
The second piece of Zuckerberg’s goal is a frequency of reading, so I wondered what it would be like to invite students, teachers, and families to choose a number of books to read across the next 3 months of school or a goal for how often they might finish a book.
The 2015 Barrow Reading Challenge was born. I created a log that explained the challenge. I made 2 versions. One could be copied to hand out to our prek-2nd grade students who do not have 1 to 1 computers. The second version could be digitally shared with students.
Since our 3rd-5th grade students are 1 to 1, I setup a Google Classroom and sent an email to all students inviting them to join the classroom if they wanted to participate in the challenge. Once students join, I will assign the Google doc reading log to all of them so that they have their own copy to edit and turn in by April 1st.
In addition, our principal will email the digital copy of the reading log to all families on her listserv and I will copy additional paper copies to have on hand in the library.
I made a slideshow to show students, teachers, and families at our assembly. It includes slides on the story of where this challenge came from as well as the details. I hope the assembly will get the whole school excited about participating.
Along the way, I hope to spark some conversations about what we are reading within the Google Classroom as well as offer opportunities for all students, teachers, and families to talk about their reading through tools like Flipgrid, Padlet, and our library glass board.
Once the challenge ends, I hope people will consider continuing their challenge through the year. There will of course be some rewards beyond accomplishing your goals. Participants who turn in a log will receive a certificate, a bookmark, and be entered into a drawing for lots of new books and anything else I can round up over the next 3 months!
It’s almost 2015! Many of us will make resolutions for the year, but in the education world a new calendar year most likely is a halfway point in the year. For me, it’s a great time to pause and check in on what I hoped to accomplish for the year, and think about what I still need to tackle. One of my big goals for the 2014-2015 school year was to “engage in global thinking and global collaboration”.
So far this year:
We collaborated with multiple schools for International Dot Day and used Google Drawing to create works of art with our collaborating schools.
We beta tested Wandoo Reader for Evanced and held Skype sessions to offer feedback on improving the tool for schools.
We exchanged our recycling problem with multiple schools during America Recycles week and brainstormed solutions for one another, while realizing that we all have recycling challenges as well as ideas for both recycling and reusing.
Our 4th grade pushed their explorers project out to the global audience and invited people to view and vote on the explorer perspectives that were offered
Joyce Valenza and I hosted a GlobalTL Google Hangout to encourage librarians to push the start button on global collaboration through multiple online communities including the GlobalTL Google Plus Community
What I know: I still have a lot of work to do! While I’ve had many collaborative experiences, I still feel like I’m just scratching the surface of something that could be much bigger and meaningful. I also know that I have lots of ideas, but I can’t expand those ideas alone. I need my professional learning network of global librarians to think, plan, and create with me.
Joyce Valenza and I will be hosting the 1st TL Virtual Cafe of 2015 on January 5th at 8PM EST. During our session, we plan to outline three levels of global collaboration.
This process might happen as a three-level taxonomy:
Introduction: We learn to use the tools for connection and share their affordances with learners, through engaging, though often one-shot, activities, like__Mystery Skypes__.
Inquiry: Guided by teachers and librarians, students engage in authentic partnerships to address issues and problems, engaged in curricular projects like__Flat Classroom__.
Independence: Students transfer use of the tools and strategies we’ve modeled, using hashtags to identify global experts, setting up their own investigatory conversations and events. They become citizen journalists, scientists, collaborative writers and creators, engaging in such projects as our Eyes Wide Open initiative.
Our children deserve teachers and librarians who are global. TLs who can plan meaningful global learning partnerships, connecting learners, classrooms and libraries through inquiry projects and expanding the possibilities of expanding the books we read.
Join us for what we hope will be a global conversation. We want this TL Cafe to not just be a presentation of success, but instead have it be an opportunity to ponder what we’ve tried and brainstorm new ideas for what we can do together as teacher librarians around the world.
Over the summer of 2013, I was fortunate enough to receive an advance reader copy of Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures by Kate DiCamillo. She is by far one of favorite authors because her words always seem to speak to me in some way beyond just the story. On p. 130, I came across a quote that I have honestly carried with me in my heart and mind since reading it. In fact, it has become a motto that I embrace in our school library because it exemplifies the brand that our library represents.
“All things are possible,” said Dr. Meescham. “When I was a girl in Blundermeecen, the miraculous happened every day. Or every third day. Actually, sometimes it did not happen at all, even on the third day. But still, we expected it. You see what I’m saying? Even when it didn’t happen, we were expecting it. We knew the miraculous would come.” ~Kate DiCamillo
Expect the miraculous. It’s the phrase that I cheezily say to myself as I enter school each day. It’s what I remind myself of when I sit down to plan with teachers. It’s what I whisper to myself in the midst of a technology fail. It’s what came out of my mouth in a recent interview with School Library Journal:
For wary school librarians, Plemmons adds, “My philosophy is, if we don’t expect miraculous things to happen in our libraries, then we’re just limiting ourselves. Why totally shut a door when we don’t know where it leads to?”
I don’t want to put limits on what kids are allowed to do just because I might not be an expert in a particular tool or concept. I’m willing to try anything new with any age of students and expect that something great will happen even if it’s not what I imagined happening in my head. In Invent to Learn, Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager say,
“It is unacceptable and unnecessary to deny children the opportunity to work on something they are passionate about because the teacher is not an expert in that particular field.”
Looking back through my posts of 2013, I see so many incredible things that happened in our library because we (myself, students, teachers, families, connected educators, and special guests) expected the miraculous. Here are just a few:
5th graders working together to design, plan, persuade, collect, paint, and dedicate during the Little Free Library project. We now have 2 Little Free Libraries thanks to their hard work. We went into the project with so many unknowns, but we always expected that the libraries would exist in our community. Check out the posts!
2nd graders developing their writing skills through blogging and connecting with students in Van Meter, Iowa. This project included a miraculous connection with author/illustrator Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw. Check out the posts! Post 1Post 2Post 3
3rd graders engaging in action research to solve a real-world problem at our school. Their investigations included webcam observations, indoor and outdoor observation, skyping with Cornell University and a former Barrow Buddy via Skype, and email communication with other experts. Their work resulted in many attempts at saving birds from crashing into our school windows. Post 1Post 2
1st graders using Twitter to write persuasive messages about our environment. Check out the post!
Students purchasing books for our library with their very own student book budgets. Check out the post!
Students from throughout the school crowd-sourcing a poem using Google Forms for Poem In Your Pocket Day. Check out the post!
Our annual Poem In Your Pocket Days live on Adobe Connect with viewers in multiple states and countries. Post 1Post 2
Kindergarten students becoming experts inTux Paint and making an informational video to teach others to use the program. They even connected with students in Van Meter, Iowa to share their expertise. Post 1Post 2
Moving into a brand new library and working together to learn how to use it. Check out the post!
The entire 4th grade working together in the library over several days to research explorers and Native Americans as well as challenge their thinking about heroes and villains. Check out the post!
A Picture Book Month Smackdown with 2 authors and schools in 5 different states. Check out the post!
After our district decided not to buy a 3D printer, we continued expecting the miraculous. Miraculously, Donors Choose and Makerbot created a partnership and overnight a 3D printer was funded for our library! Check out the post!
Classes in every grade level committed to exploring computer programming during the Hour of Code. I’m expecting more miraculous things to come out of this one hour experience. Post 1Post 2
Our very first student-made design was printed on our 3D printer. Grant and I expected the miraculous (even though we were prepared for failure). Check out the post!
When we give kids the space to explore, the tools to create, the connections to expertise and collaboration, and a global audience to share with, miraculous things will happen. I know that not everyone believes this. Recently, an article was published in the Athens Banner Herald highlighting out Hour of Code activities. In the article, I was quoted saying:
“I encourage them to think about how coders aren’t afraid to make mistakes,” Plemmons said. And when they do make a mistake, they work with their peers to fix it.
Even though I try to avoid reading online comments (and I wish I had used the word failure instead of mistake), I was disturbed by one commenter’s post. She said:
Such a lax attitude is not acceptable in my book. I am afraid to make mistakes in my work so I make sure all possibilities are considered and all details are addressed and included. I also make great effort to anticipate any questions my clients may have and am ready with an answer before I sit down at a meeting. I don’t need to ask others to help me fix any problems; I’ve already fixed them.
It’s good to tell kids to relax and not worry about making a mistake as they learn, but that real work for hire must be near perfect without wasting a lot of people’s time or your own.
The most disturbing part of this comment to me was the notion that giving kids space to fail, step back, re-evaluate, and try again is having a lax attitude. Many major companies encourage their employees to fail early and fail often. This allows their employees the freedom to be innovative and take risks knowing that those risks are what unveil the latest great ideas. By failing early, learning from failure, and fine tuning their products, companies are able to release the best quality product that they can. In the digital world, companies continue to listen to the consumer and push out updates to improve any mistakes or ideas that they missed. This is the same kind of situation with students. They aren’t publishing final products online that are full of mistakes. Rather, they are attempting to make the computer do what they want it to do, trying some code, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and fine tuning their work. No one sits down and makes a perfect product without first failing. Expecting the miraculous certainly doesn’t mean that you are expecting things to be perfect on the first try.
I was reminded of the importance of failure when I was recently reading Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. Reynolds says:
“The fear of making a mistake, risking an error, or being told you are wrong is constantly with us. And that’s a shame. Making mistakes is not the same thing as being creative, but if you are not willing to make mistakes, then it is impossible to be truly creative. If your state of mind is coming from a place of fear and risk avoidance, then you will always settle for the safe solutions–the solutions already applied many times before.”
“Children are naturally creative, playful, and experimental. If you ask me, we were the most human when we were young kids. We worked on our art, sometimes for hours without a break, because it was in us, although we didn’t intellectualize it. As we got older, fears crept in along with doubts, self censoring, and overthinking.”
In 2014, I am going to continue expecting the miraculous with my students, my collaborators, my families, and my peers. We will embrace our failures, learn from them, and continue to create innovative work together.
I am going to start 2014 by asking my students, “What miraculous things do you expect in 2014?” They will record their responses on a Flipgrid. I invite you to add your own expectations to the same Flipgrid. Go ahead. Give it a try. Expect the miraculous.
Expect the Miraculous 