Belonging

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

The following are my reflections for the Senia Conference in Cambodia. I wrote the below paragraph for our school newsletter. 

The prompt was about one takeaway. When thinking about what to write, I kept thinking about my reflection after the conference. When I was at the conference I felt included, valued, seen, and heard.

It felt good. It felt distant. 

I have not felt like that in a long while. It felt good. 

When we feel included, we’re more likely to take risks, which helps us grow and reach our potential. When all voices are heard, people feel valued and respected. That sense of validation encourages self-expression and motivates participation.

The Head of Inclusion summarized my thoughts to be: 

Thomas Hammerlund, our MYP/DP Inclusion teacher, underscored the power of inclusion in encouraging risk-taking and personal growth. He pointed out that when all voices are heard, individuals feel valued and respected, leading to greater self-expression and motivation to participate.

My first draft was a paragraph that somewhat slighted my school. "How dare you ignore others' opinions and not allow outside opinions!"

We are an interesting little school. There are definite cliques and I have heard that some teachers have not felt as welcome as others when they joined. 

I wonder how we can start to make that change here so that everyone feels welcome.

Senia Cambodia 2025 Resources

Here are the resources I shared with the participants to my [our] workshop in Cambodia. 

The presentation

The resource sheet

A resource list I didn't share out

How to use the sample data with the data set (linked) 

Let's Make Sure We Remember to Model What We Want to See

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

(Not an actual photo of me.)

Once upon a time, I was observed by a Vice Principal the first time I taught a Writer's Workshop Lesson. I thought the lesson went pretty well. By the end of lesson 1, I had the students bought into making a class newsletter. 

My plan was to create a class newsletter, as I did a few years before this lesson, but this time, I would organize my students better.

Interestingly, the students were really into this idea. 

My principal wasn't. He reamed me out after seeing the lesson. 

In a follow-up meeting, he told me to do some things that I didn't fully understand. I asked him to demo a lesson for me. 

He said he couldn't because he was "too busy".

My point here is that if you are not seeing what you want to see, one way to affect this change, to get students to do what you want, is to model for them what you want them to do.

I once saw a lesson where a teacher wanted students to make a poster about a scientist and gave them a template. The students had many questions about what to do with the poster. I didn't know either.

A quick tweak to fix this for next time could be for the teacher to allow students to research different posters. The class could come together again and share ideas to make a bigger list. This might be a good time to launch into creating poster together with the class while talking aloud and asking for student ideas. I might also introduce the website Coolors.co to show them how to make a color swatch.

The idea is to give students an idea about what to do and how to handle the assignment.

What? You Used AI to Make This?

Yesterday, I had a presentation for grades 9 to 12, and at my school, I was asked to do this pretty suddenly, so I didn't have much time to prepare.

The night before the presentation, when I was preparing, I decided against giving a traditional presentation and opted instead to make a quiz. This would make Friday afternoon more interesting.

I've seen many teachers at my school and at other schools I've worked at turn to Kahoot to do a quiz. The problem with Kahoot is that it's stale because students have done it so much. Another problem is that the same people always win. And then, another problem is the way it's set up; you need to have a device in order to use it, and your screen only shows the answers, making it less accessible for those of us with weaker eyes.

[game link]

Fortunately, I know about another tool called Baamboozle. I really like Baamboozle because the students don't need a device to answer - you can project the questions and answers at once. You can set up a quiz very quickly because there is a library with premade options. Additionally, the teacher has control over the answers and whether they're right or not on the spot. Even if a student gets the answer correct, you can choose to not give them points. I can’t think of many use-cases for that, but one thing I do is allow the other teams to challenge the answer to add a little more thinking to the game.

In order to set this quiz up, I turned to AI and asked it to generate 25 questions with answers (see below).

https://chatgpt.com/share/67c27909-6584-800c-9880-27c81cce40b3

During this quiz, I mentioned to the students that the quiz and the answers were generated with AI. I was surprised by the response.

Many students seemed to think that it was not OK to do that. I am wondering how the school can better educate students about when it is OK to use AI.

I really like the scale that the State of Washington, probably based on this work, have put together.