This is part of a series of inquiry-based provocations for essential elements of the PYP and the Learner Profile. For more, click here.
As with many other character traits, cooperation is one we clearly value, but how well do our students understand it? For them, is it just the absence of fighting? Or is it something more? This week’s provocation is meant to help students investigate it further for themselves.
Resource #1: What Is Sustainable Development? by World’s Largest Lesson (I plan to begin SDGs provocations after I finish the PYP ones!)
#2: Head Up by Film Bilder
#3: This Too Shall Pass Rube Goldberg Machine by OK Go
#4: Simon Senek on Intensity vs Consistency by The RSA
Resource #5: Flora & the Peacocks by Molly Idle
Resource #6: Officer Buckle & Gloria by Peggy Rathmann
#7: It’s Mine! by Leo Lionni
Provocation Questions:
How does cooperation work?
In what ways must we depend on each other in order to cooperate?
Why is cooperation sometimes hard? How do we overcome obstacles?
How do cooperation and sustainability connect?
What is our responsibility to cooperate with one another as families? As communities? As a planet?
How is creativity enhanced when we can cooperate?
How is productivity enhanced when we cooperate?
How is cooperation connected to relationships? To vulnerability & trust?
This is part of a series of inquiry-based provocations for essential elements of the PYP and the Learner Profile. For more, click here.
When we’re asked what makes us feel successful as parents, I’ve noticed that our answers often involve our kids’ choices. But as I reflect, I can’t help but wonder if that is a perilous decision. After all, what if we do everything “right” and our kids still don’t “turn out” as we expected? Or worse still, what if our kids ultimately define success differently than we do? Might we then condemn ourselves to a life of stress and perceived failure?
Because we only truly have control over ourselves, hinging our sense of success within may prove more beneficial. And teaching our children to do so will in turn help them to take more ownership over the course of their lives.
To me, this is all tightly woven with being balanced. My days feel most scattered when I have neglected important roles, and they feel most successful when I have managed to give each the attention necessary. This week’s provocation is intended to help students consider what it means to find balance in their own lives, and to recognize what a lack of balance looks like.
A humorous and more direct connection to “balance.” I like how it addresses how we sometimes take ourselves too seriously in seeking balance.
Resource #3: Nuggets by Filmbilder
This video gets into the heavier topic of how drugs cause dependence. However, its representation can be expanded to anything that causes us to have extreme dependence, causing a lack of balance and self-control in our lives.
Resource #4: Yelp: With Apologies to Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” by Tiffany Slain & Let it Ripple Studio
The “looking for an info fix” here might add an interesting element to this discussion. I am a huge proponent for teaching kids the potential for good within tech use (rather than just teaching them not to do bad things); however, even with the most positive perspectives, might the result still be negative if balance is not part of the conversation?
Resource #5: Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson & Kevin O’Malley
If you’ve missed this spunky twist on an old tale, it’s worth checking out! Adds a great element of what it means to be well-rounded.
Resource #6: Moon, by Alison Oliver
My 8 year-old was very clearly able to see that Moon’s to-do list was seriously out-of-balance. Investigate with your students what else our to-do lists should include to live balanced lives.
Provocation Questions:
What does it mean to live a balanced life for you?
What does it mean to have balance in your family?
How does balance impact our quality of life?
How does balance impact our societies?
What are the consequences of a lack of balance?
What role do humor and flexibility play in seeking balance?
What changes might I make to achieve greater balance in my life?
My friend, Faige Meller, wrote this week on how she is driven. Her words have inspired me to consider what drives me right now!
I am currently about halfway through my “longterm sabbatical” from teaching as I’m home to raise our little ones until they are at school. I’m amazed how fast the time has whipped by since the day I was put on bed rest, but I know that by the time I return to the classroom, much will have changed in the education world. Blogging and tweeting have been privileges for me to stay involved, but I’m also grateful for this unique phase of my life during which I have more time to take action in my community. For me, these opportunities all blend together to help me grow as a parent, teacher, citizen, and person.
And I, too, am driven.
I am driven to never stop learning.
I am driven toward authenticity.
I am driven to identify practices that put learning in the hands of — learners.
I am driven to learn how to empower kids to become powerful 21st century citizens and healthy self-regulated human beings.
I am driven to learn more about my community so I’m better prepared to serve them when I return to the classroom.
I am driven to model the very kinds of design thinking and action that I hope to see in my students (both my current very small ones and my future classroom ones).
I am driven to stay current with quality children’s literature so I can give timely recommendations and cultivate myself as a reader.
I am driven to share thought-provoking resources to help current classroom teachers inspire wonder and meaning in their students.
I am driven to always be able to say with confidence, “I am a teacher!” AND “I am a learner!”
This is part of a series of inquiry-based provocations for essential elements of the PYP and the Learner Profile. For more, click here.
It’s funny, really, how we sometimes altogether remove our own voice from our communication. We water it down in the attempt to look like everyone else. We apologize needlessly. We shy away from owning our strengths and what makes us unique. So if you use this provocation into what it means to be a communicator, I challenge you to bring voice front and center into the conversation with your students!
Resource #1: Obvious to you. Amazing to others. by Derek Sivers
Resource #2: Ballet Rotoscope
Resource #3: Citius, Altius, Fortius by Felix Deimann (similar to above, but equally thought-provoking!)
Resource #4: Barcode Band by W88N
Resource #5: The Big Bed by Bunmi Laditan (lots of fun, but pay attention to the way this savvy girl makes her case)
Provocation Questions:
What is the role of voice in being a communicator? Why is your unique voice important as you communicate?
What does it mean to be a communicator? What are the different ways in which we communicate?
What is the role of communication in our society? How does it impact your family? Community? World?
What is our responsibility to be communicators? What is our responsibility to own our voices as communicators?
What is difficult about being a communicator? How do we overcome?
How is perspective important as we communicate? What is the role of listening?
Taking part of the Innovator’s Mindset books study via #IMMOOC was one of the most refreshing professional development experiences I’ve had since leaving the classroom.
One of the reasons I chose to participate was because this feels like an important time for me professionally.
For one thing, I just finished the process of renewing my teaching license, which involved a lot of reflection. For another, this spring marks 4 years since I’ve been away from the classroom, which is as long as I was actually in the classroom! I used to think sharing this would hurt my credibility as an educator and as a blogger (“what does she know?”).
Now I know that it’s less about writing what I know and more about writing how I’m growing and changing. I thought Katie Martin summed it up beautifully in the last episode of the #IMMOOC:
“I shifted my thinking from I’m an authority to tell people something vs. This is my space to reflect & learn.”
I feel like this also captures the contrast between working and living from a place of fear vs. a place of passion. Sometimes we think it doesn’t matter if the results are the same (bottom-line thinking); the truth is that fear acts as a drain of our energy and opportunities, while passion feeds our energy and opportunities. While many of us readily accept the above statement, it’s tricky to detect the way it’s playing out in our own lives, particularly if we are, in fact, choosing fear.
My graphic below (last challenge of this #IMMOOC) is meant to capture some of the ways I found that contrast of fear vs. passion throughout reading George Couros’ Innovator’s Mindset and watching the #IMMOOC episodes. My hope is that it might serve as a tool for self-reflection. I would love to hear additional examples of the difference it makes to choose passion over fear!
When classroom literacy instruction starts to become completely overtaken by that literacy programs, do actual books start to get in the way? After all, reading a book takes more time. Selecting passages from actual books to share with students takes time. Talking about our favorite books (and building the culture that makes us want to) takes time.
And time is what we lack most as teachers!
Plus, when that program has mapped out tasks and “personalized” progress for every day of the school year, it seems our literary expertise starts to take a back seat to that very expensive program.
So what starts happening when programs > books?
Books seem like luxurious “extras” (you can get to your book when you finish the worksheet or level).
Books seem less efficient than the programs (we all know books have value, but if they’re not carefully scaffolding the reading development with every word, are they as valuable during class time?)
Read aloud time starts to disappear (after all, the programs seem to encompass all the literary needs, not to mention time).
Programs are deemed more adept at identifying skills (at least, the skills most easily recognizable/test-able).
Kids talk less about the books they’re reading and more about the levels they’re on (it makes sense since all that time on programs suggests we’re more interested in getting them to the next level than we are about their reading interests).
No matter how appealing and adept a program might seem, we must be careful to seek balance and to protect our students’ love of books. As authors by Antero Garcia and Cindy O’Donnell-Allen write, “To see themselves as readers, students must also have opportunities to make decisions about what they will read.” p. 98, Pose, Wobbble, Flow. Pernille Ripp also writes eloquently on programs like Accelerated Reader & selecting literacy programs. Also this:
If you have an expensive computer program to teach reading, but you have no classroom libraries, school libraries or a certified school librarian, something is seriously wrong with the decision making process
If books have started to be relegated to a sideline role in our classrooms, it’s time to ask ourselves how we can bring them back into our reading instruction in meaningful ways.
The beginning of Netflix’s rendition of The Little Prince begins with a mother unveiling her child’s life plan to ensure admission to the “right school.” She tells her daughter, “Let’s face it. You’re going to be all alone out there. So we can’t afford to make any more mistakes. You’re going to be a wonderful grown-up.”
While it’s certainly an over-the-top portrayal, when we think about all the societal pressures to ensure our kids’ success, it’s more representative than it might initially seem.
I remember a day a few years back when I was feeling like a particular failure as a parent. I decided to make a list of all the things that were stressing me. In so doing, I realized that it wasn’t so much the daily to-do list itself that was weighing me down; it was the fear of what would happen if I failed at any given item on the list (ie, make sure the kids get quality outdoor play each day OR ELSE they might not develop proper health habits and someday contract heart disease; make sure the house stays clean OR ELSE they might grow up to be hoarders featured on some reality-tv show, etc, etc).
Dire consequences were attached to every task. And it came down to me to prevent every one of those consequences.
As I continued my list, I came to the essential realization: I had thought my actions were driven by love; turns out they were actually driven by fear.
At first, it may seem that what’s driving the action is irrelevant, as long as the results are the same. But upon closer inspection, we realize what happens in a fear-driven environment:
We focus less on others’ agency and more on control.
We don’t share the load, even with people who have an interest in it.
We trust less.
We worry more.
We stress over timetables & milestones.
We are exhausted.
As I have instead worked to start from a place of love, I have found that I focus more and more on the agency of those around me. Because only when I stop worrying about whether I’m enough can I more clearly realize see their strength. Their capacity. Their courage.
This quote from William Stixrud resonated with me so much that this is my second time sharing it in as many weeks:
“I start with the assumption that kids have a brain in their head and they want their lives to work. They want to do well. That’s why we want to change the energy, so the energy is coming from the kid seeking help from us rather than us trying to boss the kid, sending the message, “You can’t do this on your own.””
When we’re driven by fear, the burden rests with us to prevent calamity and shape the world.
When we’re driven by love, the burden rests with us all in an open, thoughtfully-discussed, and shared manner.
