What Changes!

I have been quiet on Twitter and my blogs lately because I have experienced major life changes that have taken all my energy.  I’ve moved from the Midwest in the USA to the small island nation of Bahrain in the Middle East.

I’m eating new food, sleeping in a new bed, and walking across two parking lots and up an elevator (lift) to go home instead of driving past ten miles of corn and soybean fields.

I’ve also said goodbye to junior high land, and have taken on the daunting role of English teacher to two kindergarten classes. I have 50 students in all, and I see each class for 1.5 to 2.5 hours a day, depending on the day of the week. The students are beautiful, loving, fun, and I am fully charmed.

As I’ve always said, I am a lifelong learner. Since I have a million things to learn, that’s a good thing!

I’ve also been “eating my words” when it comes to some of the things I’ve espoused and commented about freedom and choice in the primary classroom. Right now, I have a seating chart and even a behavior chart! These are things I’ve definitely shied away from in the past. So much to learn!

I am in my second week. Actually, even though it’s only Tuesday morning right now in my old stomping grounds, I’m actually 3/5 of the way finished with my second week. The weekend is Friday and Saturday and I’m 9 hours ahead of Iowa, so I just finished teaching on Tuesday, the halfway day. To be sure, I have not gotten used to the days of the week here!

Right now I’m getting my tail whupped, but I’m trusting God to fill in the gap.

I also want to listen and learn from you.

A few pictures on a Flickr set:

Why School? The Movie

Quotes from Will Richardson’s blog post about Why School? The Movie

Thanks to a tweet from Nancy Carroll, I learned about Will Richardson’s huge project.

It will be a movie inspired by his TED book Why School?

He wrote about the project on Friday here: “‘Why School?’ The Movie (?)

Regarding the movie and the students and educators Will is hoping to recruit to help, he writes:

…we want it to be “our” project as in the global community of connected educators that care deeply about what schools must become for our kids to flourish in their futures. Those who believe in some semblance of that third narrative I wrote about recently and that we need desperately to bring to scale a new conversation about schools and classrooms and learning in the modern world.

I am all in for that third narrative he wrote about earlier this month in the post “The Three Narratives.”

The way forward is to change the emphasis on student learning from “what” to learn to, instead, “how” to learn.

I’m attempting this in my classroom. I lean every day on my PLN to help me find the way. And now, I’m excited to help make this movie happen!

Do you want to be part of this ground-breaking movie? I signed up to do “grunt work,” maybe you’ll want to join me. 🙂

Read Will’s post to find out how you can be involved.

Mitch Resnick: Let’s Teach Kids to Code

Mitch Resnick, of MIT Media Lab and Lifelong Kindergarten, has a new TED Talk out, here and embedded below. Take 17 minutes to watch it today. You will not be disappointed — learners of all ages, elementary through adults.

As a result of this talk, more and more people will be inventing, designing, creating, building, sharing. Scratch is free to download from MIT. Get started today!

(If you already have an account, you can work on the beta version of Scratch 2.0.)

In addition, MIT Media Lab and P2PU are sponsoring a free class “Learning Creative Learning,” which will use Scratch. When you register, add the code #geniushour if you want to work with a group of genius hour teachers.

Now watch the video:

The graphic above was inspired by Mitch Resnick’s Lifelong Kindergarten video. You can watch it here:  http://youtu.be/z7rlLml5ReQ

Creativity and Learning

I am so excited about creativity and learning. I can’t read enough or learn enough about how students learn and what creativity has to do with it. (Speaking of reading and learning about creativity and learning: I’m just finishing up The Element by Sir Ken Robinson for #geniushour chat on Wednesday, January 2, at 8:00 p.m.)

Tonight my husband and I had three little girls come over for some fun, food, and fellowship while their parents went out to eat and to a movie. They brought a bunch of new toys and fun things to do, and we did almost all of what they brought. There was one thing we didn’t do, though. Here are some things the four-year-old said, which will show why…

“I brought all these coloring books, but I don’t want to use them.”
“Do you have any plain white paper?”
“Can we hang them up?”
“Doesn’t our art museum look nice?

I was tickled that she was so creative and had so much fun. Her two sisters (ages 1 and 2) and my husband and I were creating up a storm too. I was impressed that Keith just kept going in and getting more paper whenever they ran out.

One of the things I did on my paper was to make dots and connect them, and Miss A asked me what I was doing. I told her about the video I watched yesterday where Vi Hart connected dots and made really beautiful mathematical creations. She was curious. I made a graph for her to connect some dots.


We had so much fun! Creativity and learning. It was happening here tonight. And I’m glad the coloring books stayed in the bag.