Author: mattvaudrey@gmail.com

New York BOCES 1/4/2018

Temperatures below zero.
Snow on the ground. Lots of snow.
Bomb cyclones on the way.
Middle of the week.
Up to 6 hour drives.
Away from the teachers, the students, and the schools.

There were a lot of reasons for a group of over 50 instructional coaches to be upset about meeting on a cold day in January, especially since many of them had long drives or flights to get here. As Theresa, one of the leaders of the day, put it, “We’re New Yorkers; we find a way to get it done.”

And so they did. The group, consisting of full-time classroom teachers, instructional coaches, and administrators, all came to Albany, New York for a full day feast of The Classroom Chef. Theresa started us off with an around-the-world set of introductions, including the one word to describe us for 2018. It was great to hear so many commonalities in the room. We as coaches are overwhelmed, inspired, invigorated, and seeking balance. That was clear in this group as well.

As is customary, we kicked off the morning by using a pitcher of water and irregularly-sized cups to build a culture of risk-taking through estimation. With a few laughs and a whole lot of curiosity, the room was captivated to find out just how many cups will it take to send the pitcher from empty to overflowing?

This group, though, was different. Most of the work that we have done with The Classroom Chef has been with classroom teachers. We are giving educators ready-to-implement ideas from all over the Internet, and they get excited about the newfound ways to engage students. With a group of mostly instructional leaders, we weren’t sure how it would be received, but it didn’t take long to convert a room of instructional leaders into eager students; they were fantastic! And to top it off, over half had already read the book, and arrived ready with real questions and real pushback.

As we made our way through toilet paper, Red Vines (did you know they don’t have Red Vines in New York?! This is a shame. OK fine, Twizzlers.), pie, quarters, and pencils, there was an increased emphasis on the pedagogy of what we were doing and less on the content itself. Attendees were asking about specific teacher moves, getting deep into the “Why” of what we were doing, and obviously translating our tasks into something they could immediately take back to schools of teachers. Watching this unfold was phenomenal.

While we have traveled the country to bring The Classroom Chef to teachers, this was our first venture into New York. In January, especially.

The reality of this struck during lunch, when we were approached about the news of an incoming storm and the pending closure of the building in which we were working. Now, instead of a 4:00 ending time, we needed to end by 3:00. If you have been to one of our workshops, you know that things are timed out, dialed in, and planned in advance.

YOU WANT US TO CUT AN HOUR?!
No, the weather demands that we do.

Making a quick pivot, we decided to cut down how much time we dedicated to Desmos. Folks, this is a full day workshop by itself (Talk to us for more) so cutting it from an hour to 40 minutes was painful. What do we keep? What do we remove? We decided that this group needed to know about Activity Builder and Polygraph, as well as the Desmos Bank, so we flew through it with a disclaimer that it was going to go fast. Did we mention that this group was awesome? They took it all in stride, taking risks and engaging in the content throughout the day.

And when The Scorpions began to play and the Mullets began to appear, the group turned to giggles, tweets, and murmurs of, “This is so weird. I love it.”

With the clock staring down our final course, dessert, we made the conscious decision to truncate the assessment piece, both with students and with teachers. With about 8 minutes to spare, we ended and shared some wonderful conversations as attendees reflected on the day, shared their own experiences, and challenged us with tough questions.

The biggest takeaways from our time with instructional leaders in upstate New York are:

  • When you need to get it done, you get it done.
  • We should be inspiring and energizing our instructional leaders and coaches just as much as we work to do so for our teachers.
  • Brave risk-taking sometimes means pushing your presenter to clarify a point; they should be able to handle a little heat in their kitchen (Thanks for that, folks).

No matter your climate or weather conditions, we would love to chat about how we can help your team take risks and make math a more meaningful experience for your students. Please reach out by completing a reservation request and keep the conversation going. Thanks for stopping by!

Orange County Department of Education

Saturday’s workshop was in our backyard.

Well… not literally; we still were up at dawn to drive the 51 miles to the Orange County Department of Education. Our first relatively local Classroom Chef workshop was full of motivated and interesting teachers.

And about eight brand new student or first-year teachers, which was a giddy, exciting experience. We chatted the whole drive home about them.

John: Can you imagine how much different our first years would have been if somebody had shown us examples of different instruction? All the free stuff we shared with them that didn’t exist when we started?
Matt: Ugh, yes. There would have been way less notes and way more smiling.
John: I wonder if any BTSA providers would be interested in contacting us.
Matt: Oooo, yeah!

All attendees left with a copy of the book, and several shared their Dessert with us; pointing out what they’d learned and sharing it in a way that was comfortable to them:

(Created by Chef Cheryl)

Made with Padlet

 

 

 

And we got to end the day with some brainstorming/snowballing with Omar of OCDE!

Thanks, Orange County chefs, for a great day!

~Matt and John

R4SDSS Google Tools 2.0 3.11.17

The team at Region 4 has given us many opportunities to support teachers over the past few years, including The Classroom Chef workshop, Google Tools, and an upcoming full day of Desmos and how it can empower teachers and students.

This weekend was no different, with a room of teachers ready to take their knowledge of the Google Suite of tools to a new level.

We began the day by having everyone complete a Google Form that gave us some information about the attendees, but also to show off the quiz feature of Forms as each person answered questions about Polar Bears (a common theme for the day… you’ll see).

Once we had “taken attendance” with the Form, each attendee dove right into creating their own form that they could use in class – or role outside the classroom – this week. We saw a variety of Forms being created, from a 4th grade book review to a college visitation form to quiz about color palettes for an high school art course. The time was well-spent not only for the opportunity and freedom to create a product for their class, but to also see how others were using their newfound knowledge of Google Forms.

Next, we wanted to highlight some of the new features of Google Slides and to lean on some of its existing features that make presentations cleaner, more efficient, and more student-friendly. The group made a copy of our Polar Bear Slides template and built things like this:

More specifically, we introduced the addition and editing of video, insertion and masking of images, and theme design. After we all create an individual report on Polar Bears, the task became applying these principles to a slide deck that could be used this week, so time was given for the creation of a product.

For as little discussion that happens around Google Drawings, it sure is useful. From diagrams to flow charts to handouts and beyond, Drawings is the forgotten gem of the Google Suite; not in our workshop. All in attendance made a copy of a Bear Venn Diagram and sorted the descriptors, then created their own to use with their class.

This theme, along with Polar Bears, persisted throughout the day. When doing an advanced Google Suite training, we felt that it would be more useful to have a unit of study that teachers could refer to–and build on their own–before leaving for the day. After all, if you don’t use it, you lose it.

We closed by going through the various ways in which Google Slides can be presented, how content can be collaborative and shared, and encouraged everyone to take some risks.

If you are interested in having us come work with your staff on using the Google Suite of tools in class, head over to our reservations and get in touch!

#ESU10 – Kearney, NE

Full disclosure; this was our first workshop in Nebraska. And the largest. And the first with microphones (despite our best efforts to use teacher voice).

Over 100 people crammed into ESU 10 today, and we checked in with administrators and coaches before everyone else arrived. They shared concerns that echo those we hear around the country: We’re adopting a textbook, some teachers are resistant to change, and we’re feeling the pinch of time.

Yeah, we get that. Thankfully, Classroom Chef isn’t about the materials or the resources or the supplemental materials. It ain’t about the what, it’s about the how.

We felt our own challenges; moving 100 adults around a room is tough, getting 100 adults on wi-fi is tough, and speaking loud and clear to 100 adults is tough.

With all that, though, we had an incredible day of conversations, learning, and risk-taking. Yes, we poured cups of water into a pitcher, compared stacks of quarters to cash, and came up with reasons why shapes didn’t belong in a group. Beyond that were rich discussions that will be seen for weeks to come in teachers’ classrooms all around Nebraska and we look forward to hearing about them.

During the Mullet Ratio entree, there were some high quality epiphanies from the elementary teachers who were talking about using the lesson as a way of introducing measurement while others found useful modifications like relying on whole numbers versus the decimal values in the current lesson.

Because of the size of the room and the range of teachers attending, we showcased three different Desmos Polygraph activities based on grade level and gave Nebraska just enough Desmos to want more. Here’s to hoping they are still hungry to learn about what Activity Builder, Polygraph, and the Desmos calculator can do.

We finished with a delectable dessert of Choose Your Own Assessment, which can be summarized–in part–by the tweets below. Thank you to ESU10, Dianah and Denise, and the incredible teachers who drove up to 3 hours to spend their day with us!

If you are ready to become The Classroom Chef, please make your reservations early.

 

Harney ESD – February 10th, 2017

“Burns, Oregon? Where… where is that?”

When our publishers first told us that we had been requested in Oregon, we were stoked; we hadn’t yet done any travels to Oregon and we were thrilled to bring a full menu to the state that houses Tillamook cheese.

…even more stoked when we Googled it and found it’s a three hour drive from Boise, the nearest airport.

Map of the 3 hour drive from Boise Airport, through the middle of nowhere to central Oregon.

That drive, blanketed in snow, gave us time to wonder about the teachers who serve students in remote areas. Surely, those rural folks are often forgotten, so they’d be quite receptive to learn about the #mtbos and all the free goodies that come with connecting to a larger community.

How right we were. In the crowd this weekend were teachers from boarding schools, rural schools with heavy-bussing communities, and a one-room schoolhouse where the teacher has three students this year.

They dove right in, though. As usual, we discussed the Mullet Ratio, and this crowd had two responses that stunned us:

Kimberly: Lots of my students ride horses, we could do the horse ratio! Comparing the tail to the forelock!
Vaudrey: …yeah! Okay, um… whatever that means! Go for it!
Carla: I would be careful about actually using the Mullet haircut as a silly example; it’s a common hairstyle among the low-income community I serve, and they don’t need any more reason to feel self-conscious.

We talked for a while, and all agreed that it depends on the student with the mullet; some might enjoy the added attention and being the star for the day.

Throughout our Friday together, one theme ran consistent:

Teachers know their students, and will modify anything to better fit their needs.

The teachers in Harney left with a copy of Classroom Chef, the promise of our continued support, and our encouragement to take a risk in their own, unique classrooms.

Those students will benefit from risk-taking teachers, too.

~Matt and John