The Sunrise Story

The school year is ending. We are days away from packing up and saying goodbye to another year. I'm proud of what my students have accomplished this year.  Currently, we are working our way through projects that sum up our year of learning.  These projects are varied as students got to design and create their own project. Some students are creating movies, others are writing speeches that they will give, some are redesigning the classroom space for next year and a few are working with me to present at a local conference after school ends.  The engagement is high. Students reflect weekly on their progress or lack of progress and report out on how it's going. I love seeing them engaged in their projects, but I love reading their reflections even more. After weeks and weeks of practicing, they are able to reflect in an authentic way.  My hope is when they leave this class, they will remember how much they have to offer. I want them to remember that work d...

I've been looking for a new way to begin class...something that will help us begin with more calm and allow the students to express themselves creatively. I found it...self-portraits.  Lynda Barry. She is brilliant. I own all of her books, but this idea came from Syllabus . Students are given a blank index card and invited to create a self-portrait of themselves today. I give them approximately two minutes. Here are a few of them...       I thought students would love this activity, but surprisingly they approached it with some fear and a bit of dread. I heard over and over again, "I can't draw."  We are persevering. Students are finding ways to be more creative and allowing themselves to have more fun with it as the days go on... My next step is to share this video (parts of it) with them and invite them to take more risks. What would your two-minute self-portrait look like today?  Find more slices on  T...

This school year is a different one for me. I am purely a teacher of elective classes. The majority of my day is spent working with my seventh-grade communications students. In my county, it's the first opportunity that students get a say in their learning. Their choices include a foreign language high-school level class, coding, and my class. Last year, I taught communications and English. My communications classes totaled seventeen students at the beginning of last year. This year, I started with 72 and I'm already over 80 since the year began.  We create in our class! Right now they are finishing up photography portfolios. We collaborate on projects. Our next project is to create student presentations. We learn and practice communication skills. We struggle through critical thinking and problem solving and we contribute to the class, the school, and the world around us.  My friends, those of you who teach core content classes...did you know how different it is...

Monday was rainy and cold and, well, it was Monday. Why was I awake and out of my house by 4:40 AM? We had a field trip to visit 94.7 Fresh FM . We were invited to be guests of "The Tommy Show" . We spent a few hours watching Tommy, Kelly, and Jen create incredible entertainment.They shared their tips and advice with the middle-schoolers. They listened. They answered questions. They treated the students with such kindness, generosity, and respect.   Students got the opportunity to record a promo for their segment, "Can't Beat Kelly". It was amazing getting to stand back and watch these kids speak on the radio. A few students interviewed Tommy and Kelly too.  As the morning came to an end, they decided to film some of our segments in the studio. Just watching these students grab Tommy and ask him to be in the joke of the day or asking for advice made my heart grow with pride. They had fun. They took our time here seriously and I watched them lear...

I teach a seventh-grade elective called Communications. I've blogged about this class and my students before. It's a class I've grown to love! Our main focus this year has been creating and sharing our daily morning news show, B-AM News .  Last week I watched the Oscars and I saw a commercial that inspired me... Walmart challenged three talented directors to create a short film, one minute, about a box. The three versions were creative and different and entertaining. I gave that same challenge to my students. One class finished and presented their videos. I'll share a couple below for your viewing pleasure.  I made my own film.  It was just like writing a story. I felt the same worry when I began, "Is this going to be good enough?" I drafted and revised and revised and revised. The process is exactly the same as writing. My film doesn't have any dialogue, but the creating was not easy. Looking for a new way to approach writing...

An art teacher at our school won a radio trivia contest (94.7 Fresh in the DC area) and when they heard he was a teacher, they offered to treat the staff to cupcakes, Georgetown Cupcakes. That was exciting! Cupcakes?!?! Georgetown Cupcakes on a Monday...heavenly! As I walked into the staff lunchroom, I realized that the people who brought the cupcakes are the people who are on the morning show on 94.7, The Tommy Show. I started talking to them about our amazing news show and the hard-working students who create it every day. Bragging. Yes, I was bragging about my middle schoolers! Their faces lit up! They had so many questions. We chatted for awhile and then Tommy asked if I'd like to answer a couple of questions. He interviewed me right there...on the spot. I'm going to be on the radio show this morning.  What a connection! My hope is that we can continue this connection and my students will benefit from it. It's moments like these that make me grateful tha...

Morning Announcements. The communications classes I'm teaching have taken over the morning announcements or the news, as we call it.  I have a confession about this...I was nervous about it and kind of dreading it. I had no experience and no idea what to do or how to make it good. I'm so glad that I stuck with it because it's amazing! How did we begin? We watched the news and talked about previous experiences with announcements and recording ourselves. We used FlipGrid almost every single class to get used to being on camera. We spent hours observing and rehearsing until the day we did it for real. Communications is the last block of the day, so we record the news the day before and push it out to the classrooms the next morning. Students work in pairs or groups of threes. They get their assignment, their press pass, and they have a limited amount of time to record their segments. They search the building for the very best place to record.  It's been two w...