Mrs. C's Essential TED Talks ... and a few extras!

I was inspired during a discussion at #NAISToF today to start tweeting some of my favorite TED talk videos ... and then realized there were too many I would want to share!  This is the start of my list.  

Please share your favorites in the comments or by contacting me on Twitter @MrsC_Teach !

All titles are hyperlinks. Click to access the videos listed.

Kimberly's Essential TED Talks:

"The Power of Introverts"
"The Danger of a Single Story"
"Glimpses of Modern Day Slavery"

"Hackschooling Makes Me Happy"

"On Building a Windmill"
"The Unheard Story of David and Goliath"

"The Power of Belief -- Mindset and Success"

"The Other Brain"
"Where is Home?"
"Everyday Moments Caught in Time"
"We Need to Talk About an Injustice"
"The Key to Success -- Grit"
"What Teachers Make"

I am excited that only one of the videos from my list above is on Mashable's list of “15 TED Talks That Will Change Your Life” and only two are on TED's list of “The 20 Most Popular Talks of All Time” (as of 7/31/14).

Here are a few more non-TED videos I recommend:

"The Revolutionary Power of Photography"
"Changing Education Paradigms" (an oldie but a goodie)
"The Story of Stuff"
"The Story of Solutions"

"Maine School Engages Kids With Relevant Problem-Solving Challenges"

How can we avoid the perpetuation of privilege in integrated service learning?**

My mind is spinning from my first full day at the NAIS Teachers of the Future program at Episcopal High School in Alexandria, VA.  I am honored to be a part of this year’s cohort.  Instead of trying to make sense of my copious notes, I will flesh out a challenge we discussed in small groups today.  Thank you to Shannon Montague for the protocol we used for this.  This is something on which I am particularly focused at my school, as a result of my close work with Elizabeth Ricketts and Branson Skinner of The OR Network.

There are numerous ways to begin to chip away at the “helping others” aspect to most service learning programs.  Here are some suggestions.  Please feel free to comment with questions if there are points which need additional clarification.

• Be VERY intentional with language, think through all potential discussions ahead of time and start with inclusive and person first language and be consistent.  Students will follow your lead.
• Deemphasize differences and highlight commonalities.  Find shared ground so that different groups can come together as one community.
• Educate on the topic prior to the personal interactions to avoid oversimplification and decrease assumptions.  Know the groups with whom you are working and their circumstances.  Try to avoid surprises with your students (not all can be avoided, but planning can decrease their number).
• Discuss assumptions with both groups.   What assumptions of privilege or lack thereof are there? What is the root of the assumptions?  Why might they be true or false?  What complexities are overlooked by making assumptions?  What is the history behind the assumptions?
• Provide similar (educational) experiences for both groups so there is common ground to discuss and explore together.  Shared experiences, be they shared as a large group, or shared at different times in different places, provide an easy entry point for peer conversations.
• Work towards a common goal that helps all involved in addition to something that helps the other group involved.  Tackle a global issue impacting everyone participating from all groups so that you are all working together.
• Provide opportunities for students to learn something new that they wouldn't otherwise from the group with which you are working.  We all have gifts to share, how can your students grow n unexpected ways from this experience?
• Make it something that can engage students beyond their time with you.  Have an immediate project, but ensure it is within a larger structure so students can continue with their passion in the future after they have (sniff) left your classroom.

Potential challenges you will likely encounter along the way include, but are not limited to that …

• Service is inherently viewed as being for others (or the environment).  See above for suggestions about how to expand the overall experience so that the service is in a broader framework.
• Students are not aware of their own privilege and so there is a lot of unpacking involved.  Addressing assumptions ahead of time may involve helping students understand how many assumptions they make about their peers or their neighbors.  Simply discussing what a family vacation may look like to different families can highlight how we assume common backgrounds when they often are not present.
• Students can feel like they have less riding on the successful outcome of the experience than the other group involved.  You must find ways for your students to feel invested in the program, invested in the relationship, invested in the broader issues, and invested in the success.  This can be challenging and will vary widely based on individual circumstances and programs.

Some takeaways from bumps along the road and ways I have grown from them:

• You can’t force relationships, sometimes the interpersonal relationships do not develop beyond the superficial connection.  However, if you find ways to highlight personal commonalities early on, this can help avoid a disconnect and facilitate relationship building.
• Students can choose to not engage.  Unfortunately, this can make the experience less rich for others beyond the ones choosing not to engage.  By more closely monitoring the process, interactions, and keeping an eye to consistent engagement, if you catch disengagement early enough you can find ways to pull students back in.

What successes and challenges have you faced in re-framing service learning in your community?  Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @MrsC_Teach !

**This could also be titled “An effective summary of everything I have learned through collaboration with Elizabeth Ricketts and J Branson Skinner of The OR Network.”

ps. Check out our #NAISToF tweets from the program!

Inspired Attire: Integrated global service learning

The work I do in my homeroom and social studies classes with the organization the.or was recently highlighted in the Alumni Magazine. You can find the article on page 52. Enjoy!

Olympics and Graphs

This is by no means groundbreaking, but it will be one of the options available to students in my sixth grade math class during our graphing unit.  During the unit they will learn the fundamentals of the coordinate plane, as well as review measures of central tendency and bar and pie graphs.  I am a big proponent of choice in the classroom - this mini-project will allow them to practice one of these main themes.  The poster will be one option on a menu unit, which is a modification of some of the ideas from Universal Design for Learning (I plan to blog about that experience/technique sometime over the next few months).

Graphing Winter Olympics Poster Guidelines

Select a poster topic from the options listed below.  Make sure your poster meets all of the requirements on the rubric.  It should be neat, colorful, and creative.  All information should be displayed clearly and writing should be very neat or typed.  Please ask a teacher if you have questions about expectations.

Use these websites:

Winter Olympics medal information: http://graphics.latimes.com/winter-olympics/

Population information: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

For countries that have changed names (such as Soviet Union à Russia and other countries or East & West Germany à Germany), however you choose to combine or separate results, be sure to state it clearly on your poster.

Option 1:  Create a scatter plot of the number of gold medals by country population for 10 countries from the 2014 Winter Olympics.  Write a 5-7 sentence reflection on the results displayed in your scatter plot (What surprised you? What trends did you notice?).

Option 2:  Create a bar graph of the number of gold, silver & bronze medals for 10 countries from the 2014 Winter Olympics.  Write a 5-7 sentence reflection on the results displayed on your bar graph (What surprised you? What trends did you notice?).

Option 3:  Create three separate pie charts of the distributions of gold, silver & bronze medals for the top 5 medal earning countries from the 2014 Winter Olympics.  Write a 5-7 sentence reflection on the results displayed on your pie charts (What surprised you? What trends did you notice?).

Option 4:  Calculate the mean, median and mode number of gold, silver & bronze medals for 15 countries from the 2014 Winter Olympics and clearly display your results.  Write a 5-7 sentence reflection on the contrast between the measures of central tendency (What surprised you? What similarities/differences did you notice?).

Option 5:  Calculate the mean, median and mode of the total number of medals for 5 countries from the past 10 Winter Olympics before Sochi (1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006, and 2010) and clearly display your results.  For each country, write a prediction of how many medals you think they earned in Sochi in 2014 based on their past performance and explain why you predicted that amount.  After making your prediction, check the Sochi medal total and see how close you were.  Write a 5-7 sentence reflection on how your predictions for 2014 for each country compared to their actual results in Sochi (What surprised you? What similarities/differences did you notice?).

Option 6:  Come up with your own way to graph medal information from the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and write an accompanying 5-7 sentence reflection about your results.  You must clear your personal idea with your math teacher.