Technology is advancing so quickly that we are not preparing kids for the jobs of today, but for jobs that don’t even exist yet. We can not anticipate the workplace skills that they will need to function in this ever changing world. So how do we prepare them for the future? I believe the answer is in the 5 Cs of an Innovative Environment, by Julie Woodard. Students need to learn how to be creative, think critically, collaborate, communicate, and function as a part of a community. With these issues in mind Hanover County and the Hanover Education Foundation are sponsoring the first ever HCPS Inspire Conference in August. These soft skills were also the focus of Google’s most recent research on successful teams. They learned that there were 5 key dynamics associated with success; psychological safety, dependability, structure and clarity, meaning, and impact. It is this type of environment that I seek to provide for my students.
As an REB winner this year, I had the opportunity to reflect on educational issues and trends and determine what experiences would help me become a leader and innovator in my school. Our elementary school opened an Innovation Studio in the Fall of 2017, thanks to the Hanover Education Foundation. All the resources and technology are at our fingertips, but will we as educators be ready to optimize our new classroom? In a recent training, I learned about Scrum. Scrum is a framework for completing complex projects. It began as a process used by software developers and values focus, courage, openness, commitment, and respect. I was inspired by the Scrum strategy and I can see incredible potential to increase productivity and teamwork in our elementary students. Making connections between education and business and learning how we as elementary teachers can optimize our newly acquired Innovation Studio has become my passion. I knew that I wanted to be a leader in our educational community and I knew I had so much to learn. Winning the REB award allows me to participate in all of the following professional development activities. The Future Festival, Scrum Training, the Silicon Valley businesses, the Research Triangle, and ISTE can provide incredible insights. Richmond offers Scrum Master training with Scrum certification for the business community, which I will be attending in May. Training for educators does not yet exist; therefore I am hoping to be one of the first to create professional development experiences for elementary education. The Future Festival has been described as the “world’s best innovation conference.” The Future Festival highlights the most successful businesses in all categories, presents next year’s trends, presents “disruptive ideas”, and hosts famous innovative workshops. A wide range of companies attend. This conference is the perfect place for me to access businesses and learn about the future trends in multiple industries. Networking will allow me to meet and discuss how they promote innovation and productivity in their companies. The Future Festival will serve as inspiration and networking. I will be posting pictures, tweeting, and blogging about my experience. Silicon Valley is at the cutting edge of technology and engineering. Google, Apple, Lockheed Martin, Facebook, and Tesla are located there and Space X is only a train ride away. The practices of Silicon Valley companies can provide insights for all schools in our county. I hope to make a simple podcast of the interviews at each location. The podcast would be inspired by the Genius Dialogues which are a set of interviews with MacArthur Grant winners. Each company will answer a similar set of questions and the listener will not only learn about the company but about the innovators that work there. I will be asking about innovative environments, collaboration, goal setting, task completion, and how they foster an efficient, healthy environment. The Research Triangle in North Carolina participates in an initiative called US2020 STEM. A variety of opportunities exist for companies and schools to partner to increase STEM education. The Industry Summit is the perfect opportunity to learn about a community model that is successfully linking businesses and schools. Learning about the STEM in the Park events will help me apply some of the insights I learn at the conference and in Silicon Valley. Lastly, The International Society for Technology in Education is on the forefront of innovation. Learning about strategies and new technologies and applying the insights I gain throughout these experiences will lead my educational community into the future. By connecting successful business practices to educational practices we can foster innovative thinking, collaboration, communication, and problem solving in our students. “Challenge me! Inspire me! Listen to me!” This is the message in their eyes. Eliza sees herself in so many of the students she serves, because she herself was not easily inspired as a young learner. Now, as an inspired educator, she hopes to motivate students to find joy in learning and to take pride in being part of a community of learners. As the daughter of a policeman and an educator, public service was a way of life for Eliza Gemmill. In addition to both parents working full time, her family farmed over 350 acres. Eliza grew up driving tractors, hauling wood, and raising chickens. Yes Ma'am, No Sir, Please, and Thank you were expected. Eliza learned the value of hard work and the benefit of being part of a small, supportive community. These values drive her daily practice as an educator.
After one year at Virginia Commonwealth University, she left aimless and looking to find purpose. Luckily, she was hired as a fulltime First Grade Instructional Aide for her hometown elementary school. Little did she know that her Assistant Principal, Mark Allan, would become her mentor and lead her to Hanover County. Watching five different teachers and assisting them daily allowed her to learn about quality classroom management and teaching strategies. Each day she walked away feeling the satisfaction that comes with a day full of purpose. Returning to VCU with a relentless determination to get into the classroom, Eliza finished with her Masters in Teaching in three years. Marriage led her to Ithaca, NY and Cornell University’s Family Life Development Center. She quickly rose to an associate position and was given the opportunity to train preschool teachers in military bases across the country in violence prevention strategies. When she moved back to Virginia, Westmoreland County Schools and Stafford County Schools were stepping stones on her way to Hanover County. The opening of Pole Green Elementary offered an opportunity to work for Mr. Allan again and then she followed him to the State Department of Education, working for the Reading First Grant for a period of time before returning as a Gifted Resource Teacher at South Anna Elementary. Eliza’s journey in education has provided her with the opportunity to learn from the exceptional professionals she met along the way. Each relationship she built made her stronger and more capable to tackle challenges. Developing collaborative relationships is one of her greatest accomplishments. The relationships that Eliza has built led to significant contributions to her school community. Teaming with the Physical Education teacher in 2007, Eliza began the South Anna Spirit Stride, a 5K and one mile Fun Run. This community event highlighted fitness and family. For eight years, Eliza has directed school musicals including School House Rock Jr., Annie Jr., Little Mermaid Jr., Alice in Wonderland, Seussical Jr., The Wizard of Oz, and Magic Tree House. Collaboration with the music teacher and a classroom teacher/choreographer turned these musicals into incredible productions. Eliza also tackled the National Board Certified Teacher process and with the help of her collaborative partners, achieved certification in December 2017. Over the past year Eliza has written and received grants to help facilitate the use of innovative practices in her school: The Classroom of the Future Grant, a Hanover Creative Instructional Grant, and a Dominion Resources Pedal Power Grant. These grants have allowed her to purchase resources, technologies, and supplies in order to promote innovation. Reaching out to the community to garner support for our studio has been key to its success. She worked tirelessly all summer to make our collective vision a reality; painting, ordering, researching, sewing, organizing, building, and planting. In connection with the HEF Classroom of the Future Grant, she had the privilege of sharing how we are using innovative practices with HEF Board members, the Hanover County Council of PTAs, and Randolph Macon students. In collaboration with a colleague, Eliza developed an Innovator’s Bootcamp and offered it to a small group during the summer, and then to the entire staff this fall. As part of this camp, they developed a common language about our innovative instruction and created a continuum that has now been shared with our county wide Innovation Team members. Eliza provided professional development in Hanover over the summer of 2017 and presented App Smashing at the state 2017 VSTE conference. Eliza serves as the STREAM Committee Chair and ran her school’s first STREAM Night with success. Over 250 people were in attendance with over 50 teachers and volunteers running stations. This winter she served as the mentor for a high school student working on a Community Service Project related to STEM. Eliza helped her develop and run a free after school camp for 32 students called Blast Off. Upcoming initiatives support her dedication to connections with businesses and schools, and better preparing students for the workplace of the future. They include her travels in conjunction with the REB award for a proposal called Innovation Nation and creation of the Innovation Institute. I believe that students should be independent thinkers and problem solvers. They need to be prepared to work collaboratively to solve problems in the real world. Solving problems takes critical thinking, perseverance, and teamwork. Innovative integration will help provide hands-on opportunities to foster these skills. I believe students can learn to think critically when we immerse them in meaningful investigations and project-based learning. I believe the teacher should serve as a facilitator and guide. Providing integrated, relevant, student-centered experiences allows learners to make connections between content areas. Teachers should guide the process, maintain a level of rigor through questioning and constraints, all while encouraging student development as communicators and collaborators. We want learners to be more than creators, but innovators. I positively impact students’ growth by seeking out and learning new instructional strategies, while building relationships with other teachers so that I can learn from them. Taking risks by using new materials, new methods of instruction, and trying new technology, keeps me and my collaborative partners on the forefront of best educational practices. Making mistakes and reflecting on how I can improve is constantly modeled for my students. I measure student success by the student’s willingness to participate and enjoy a productive struggle, and their ability to function independently and also in a group. Students should be faced with problems that they are invested in solving and should be motivated to share their thinking and perspectives. When students are immersed in meaningful problem based learning, they learn to think, communicate, collaborate, and persevere. If we promote this type of learning environment we will see academic gains as well as the social and emotional growth that will produce a life-long love of learning. Questions drive my instruction: Why is that? What do you think about? How do you feel? What would happen if? By asking thought provoking questions and providing an environment where not knowing is celebrated, students remain engaged and develop perseverance. Talk to your shoulder partner. Discuss with your group. Focused student discourse moves us through content seamlessly. Students are driven to question it, prove it, create it, fix it, show me, and share. Students understand that hard work leads to success and they are praised for their efforts and process and not for producing a “right” answer. My classroom environment would be described as student driven, inquiry based, and engaging. Setting up environments so that students discover and uncover strategies in reading and math makes them invested in our process. Whether it is a classroom assignment, multi-week innovation projects, or implementing new technologies, students are engaged, motivated, and determined learners. A new strategy I have been using with students is the Breakout Box Challenges. These require students to work in teams to solve content related puzzles to open a series of locks. When all the locks are open, they can access the inside of the box. There is rarely anything inside except for a sign saying, “You did it.” A fifth grader, Henry, exclaimed after opening the box, “I feel so satisfied!” Henry described perfectly how I feel about teaching. I am faced with the challenge of engaging students in meaningful learning. By listening to and valuing student feedback and by having high expectations, students know that I believe in them. Students know that I am completely dedicated to them and that I work tirelessly to make sure that they are enjoying the learning process. The students respond with enthusiasm every time I enter the room. They even call it being “Gemmill Ready”, which means being focused and ready for a challenge. Watching the students enjoy and look forward to that perfect level of productive struggle is like opening that Breakout Box; it makes me feel so satisfied. Any quality lesson or unit begins with the environment. I work daily to set the stage for innovation, risk taking, and perseverance. Students enter the Innovation Studio and put on an apron. Every one of them can tell you that the apron is their pledge to have a growth mindset. They are ready to be challenged and learn in a new and different way. I also wear an apron as do my collaborative teachers. It is our pledge to our students that we are striving to teach them using new and better strategies, resources, and technologies. This innovative culture promotes an understanding that we are there to think critically, problem solve, and communicate. Students know that we are a team and it is our responsibility to remain active participants in learning. We fail together, are resilient together, and learn from our mistakes and our successes. Students are driven to question it, prove it, create it, fix it, show me, and share. One particular strategy has transformed my instruction, SCRUM. This framework for productivity and teamwork has empowered my fifth graders to be goal driven, independent problem solvers. They are collaborators, communicators, and critical thinkers. Through the use of story points, a backlog, and a SCRUM board, students remain on task and support each other as they work toward a team goal. SCRUM allows students the freedom and voice that they need to be innovators. Through the use of effort rubrics, students gauge their own and their peer strengths and weaknesses in flexibility, perseverance in problem solving, communication, and collaboration. Allowing them the freedom, voice, and choice to use those skills promotes innovation. The environment that I create influences the type of learners that are developed.
The U.S. Regions Golf Course Unit best defines me as a teacher and exemplifies the amount of quality instruction content that can be addressed in a truly integrated STREAM lesson. As a class they created a US Regions Golf Course. Each hole of the course represented a region, its characteristics, and geographic features. The students incorporate the basics of golf course design including hazards and inclines and declines. Teams investigated the limitations of the Sphero in different terrains and determined how that affects the speed of the Sphero in traversing each course. At the conclusion of this project teams played golf on our Regional Sphero Golf course and attempted to get the lowest score. Geography objectives included learning about each region and its characteristics, the geographic features, and waterways. Students had to read and research the types of golf courses and choose the best one for their region. They had to engineer hazards and obstacles and make sure that the engineered features match the region. In science, we determined how force and motion would affect the sphero and if friction played a part in the way the sphero moved through the course. Students determined how simple machines like inclined planes might change how they programmed the bot. Students experimented and gathered data about which surface materials would work best on flat surfaces and ramps. In order to program the Sphero, they needed to use their recently acquired math skills, rates, and ratios. They had to ask, “How did the speed setting relate to the distance traveled in a period of time?” Obstacles and hazards provided another challenge and students had to have a strong understanding of angle measurement in order to program turns, all the while using the blockly coding language. After presenting the long term goals for the project, students created the criteria for a Minimum Viable Product which translated into a student created rubric. This process is part of the SCRUM framework and is a strategy that fosters student ownership. Working in teams of four and using SCRUM, students were completely engaged in every step of the process. The Five C's Of an Innovative Environment sum up my beliefs in teaching and are demonstrated in this lesson. Creativity was necessary to design and engineer the golf hole and create the geographic features. Students even used online tutorials to create origami trees. Programming required students to analyze logical connections, overcome challenges, and determine what adjustments are necessary to effect a successful outcome. This critical thinking paired with perseverance led to many hole in ones. In every aspect of this project, communication and collaboration was key. Practicing SCRUM work sessions were interrupted by “Stand Up” meetings so students could check in, share their progress, and make decisions together to maintain productivity. Lastly, students invited other classes to come and “play” the courses. Building community in this way built their own communication and technology skills, and at the same time allowed other students to learn how to program using the Sphero. Some of my proudest moments have been spent coordinating events and activities connected to the community. The Spirit Stride brought together teachers, parents, students, and business sponsors. We had approximately 70 volunteers that donated their time to make everything run like clockwork. Students watched the community come together and they felt how powerful events like the Spirit Stride can be. South Anna student alumnae returned year after year to volunteer or to run.
The South Anna Musicals have been a labor of love for eight years. Parents and students regularly thank me for the opportunity to participate in yearly musical productions. In 2007, our show was Annie, Jr. It was an incredible group of performers and they have all stayed invested in our South Anna community. Last year in 2016, we decided to do Annie, Jr. again. The original cast came back to meet the new “Annie”, “Daddy Warbucks”, and the orphans. The elementary students were starstruck as the high schoolers came back stage to tell them to “break a leg”. By the Saturday performance, the audience was full of the original cast members and their families. I was overwhelmed by the show of support and gratitude for the experiences we provided. One of my most precious possessions is the picture of the original 2007 cast members with the 2016 cast members. Spring Break of last year a group of fifth graders came to school over a period of days to create their vision of the Classroom of the Future. They built a 3D version of the classroom and made a green screen movie to complete the presentation. The students would never get to use the new classroom, but spoke often about giving back for future generations at South Anna. I am convinced that their passion and dedication to giving back to our community is why we won one of the first Classroom of the Future Grants. We had the opportunity to use that momentum to bring about incredible change. Students stepped up to give back to our community. We started by enlisting helpers including a girl scout troop and their parents. They stepped up to clean our courtyard, paint the flower boxes, and paint the base for the new mural. A South Anna alumnus, and senior at Patrick Henry, stepped up to design and paint the mural. Another South Anna Community business and former parent, donated their time, supplies, and expertise to create our pond and build our outdoor stadium. Lastly, when I reached out to parents, five fathers of students donated supplies and carpentry skills to finish out our space with see-through rolling planters, vertical planters, pvc pipe for the outdoor xylophone, and bricks for the sensory walk. Students were involved every step of the way and have reaped the benefits of their own and their parents’ hard work and volunteerism. In March, of this year we held our very first Family STREAM Night. Again, South Anna alumni were eager to give their time and energy. Seventeen came out during the week to help run stations with their former teachers. A former student and senior returned to complete her Community Service project at South Anna. She wanted to offer a STEM camp after school for free. I was happy to help sponsor her efforts. Blast Off was a four week camp that served 32 students. Students programed ozobots to travel the universe, engineered M&M dispensers for astronauts, explored all the technology in the studio, and launched Alka Seltzer rockets to end the week. This camp was so successful that it has led to the development of the Innovation Institute for the summer of 2018. Our Innovation Institute objective is to make connections with community and business professionals and practices in order to allow high school students leaders (HSSL) to learn more about their field of interest. We also want those HSSLs to explore that field of interest as they give back to their home community. Each HSSL will research, develop, and lead a project-based learning experience for the elementary campers by ordering and preparing materials, and becoming experts in the technology. The elementary students will then participate in the week long camp run by the HSSLs. This opportunity connects elementary students, high school students, and professional mentors in order to better link education and the workplace. Lastly, my current students are feeling the impact of all of the community connection and investment. They are acutely aware of who is responsible for all of the opportunity and privilege that comes along with the Innovation Studio. The Hanover Education Foundation has completely transformed our instruction and this year we have spent time showing our gratitude. My students have written letters, made a thank you movie, and even written and performed a rap in gratitude for all the HEF has done for us. Presentations to locals business owners, HEF Board Members, Randolph Macon College Students, and Hanover County Council of PTAs have been a monthly occurrence. The students have embraced this opportunity and shared the impact of the new classroom and resources on their daily instruction. They are learning how vital organizations like the HEF are to our schools and the importance of gratitude to others for all they do. |
Author“Challenge me! Inspire me! Listen to me!” This is the message in their eyes. I see myself in so many of the students I serve, because I was not easily inspired as a young learner. Now, as an inspired educator, I hope to motivate students to find joy in learning and to take pride in being part of a community of learners. Archives
March 2018
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