eSchewing the Schoolteacher Summer Slide: Elevate Your Personal & Professional Learning with Our Five Fantastic Tips

Introduction

We know you’re wondering about it, so we’ll let you in on our secret…Yes, we had to use a thesaurus to make the alliteration work for the title of this post. To eschew means to avoid at all costs. And look—you’ve learned something new already! Undoubtedly, you’ve heard of the summer slide—the dreaded “learning loss” that occurs in students during the months spent out of school—but what about the teachers? Will your brain cells soon be shriveling up and rotting away as well? Most likely, your personal answer would be, “No, my brain is recovering from the incredible stress of a pandemic school year quite nicely, thank you very much!” The word “loss,” after all, has such a negative connotation. Implying that teachers’ summer is pure “vacation” and can be chalked up as a loss is a serious accusation and implies that teachers aren’t reflecting, learning, planning, and improving as experts all the while.

The same could (and should) be said about students! To call the time spent in summer a loss for them not only completely ignores the hard work schools and families do in tandem to support students’ continued learning, but also glosses over the new skills they acquire, the adventures they undertake, and the social-emotional well-being that a respite and time spent with friends and family can afford. Dr. Peter Gray, the unofficial inspiration of the annual Global School Play Day points out the paradox of our misguided thinking around unstructured play:

Perhaps play would be more respected if we called it something like ‘self-motivated practice of life skills,’ but that would remove the lightheartedness from it and thereby reduce its effectiveness. So we are stuck with the paradox. We must play’s triviality in order to realize its profundity.

Peter Gray, Free to Learn

Do you hear that? Profound things can happen when adults step back and let kids be kids. And who knows what profound things could happen if everyone gets out of teachers’ ways and lets them be kids too? So please, let us take a moment to vehemently disagree with these misguided assertions being bandied about by uninformed politicians and honor all the work that took place this year, and the work that will undoubtedly take place this summer for educators and students alike. Professional learning is no longer an event that happens to you; it’s a continuous process that happens with you, and we hope you find our own tips for continuing your personal process below helpful to you on your playful summer journey.

The Expert Effect: Learning from Experts, Near and Far

Welcome to the second installment of The Expert Effect book launch blog series. In our first post last week, we wrote about an overview of what The Expert Effect means and the backstory of how this book came to be. As a summary, The Expert Effect is a three-part system to break down the walls of your classroom and connect your students to the world. The three parts of this system are:

1. Students learn from experts, both near and far
2. Students become the experts through Project Based Learning
3. Students teach as experts to authentic audiences around the world

In this post, we will zoom in on just the first part of our system: students learning from experts, both near and far.

The Expert Effect: A Three-Part System to Break Down the Walls of Your Classroom and Connect Your Students to the World (A Synopsis of Our New Book)

Introduction

The last year and a half gave some people a great deal of time to engage in projects, both personal and professional. Some became sourdough bread-bakers or houseplant horticulturists. For us, that extra time spent indoors meant putting the finishing touches on the book we’ve written for teachers. After two years of going through the writing process, we are excited to announce that our book is finally here!

We’re so proud to introduce you to The Expert Effect: A Three-Part System to Break Down the Walls of Your Classroom and Connect Your Students to the World—now available for pre-order on Amazon and to be released on May 17th. In fact, to say we’re excited is an understatement. As a lead-up to the big day, we wanted to write a few blog posts to tell the story behind it and give a preview of what’s to come in the book!

What Comes Next? Leading & Learning Beyond COVID-19

This blog post is a summary (not a verbatim transcript) of a conversation I recently had with three influential school leaders in the state of Michigan. The topic of the conversation was “resetting” teaching and learning beyond the pandemic. The conversation was recorded for the Leaderful Schools Podcast, produced by Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. A link to the recording will be available within about two weeks of this publication. Check my Twitter feed, @GMcKinney2 for updates.

Engaging Students in PBL During Remote Learning

Introduction

Imagine the following scenario: your favorite college basketball team is playing in the NCAA finals. They’re even hosting the tourney in your hometown. You’re driving into work one morning, jamming to the radio, when all of sudden the DJ announces they’re giving away free tickets. On a whim, you call in and get through to a producer. They ask you to hold and a few seconds later, you’re on the air. As it turns out, you’ve won! You were caller number 68 (the number of teams in this year’s tournament) and you’ve just secured your tickets to the Big Dance!

So here’s the question: What do you do? Do you take the tickets and go to the game or watch from the comfort of your own home? The buzzer-beaters, break-aways, and bracket-busters coupled with the smell of savory hot dogs, the taste of soft pretzels with tangy mustard, the sounds of cheering, announcers, and music, plus the electricity of the crowd make the national championship one of the most exciting events in collegiate competition. Watching through a TV screen from your couch wrapped in a Snuggie while eating a plate of lukewarm nachos sadly doesn’t compare…there’s nothing like attending an event like this in person.

And while the sounds (and smells) of your typical school are not as enticing or exciting as those involved in March Madness, most educators know that the consistency, community, and camaraderie of the classroom is what typically works best for children’s learning. Yet during the last year and a half, millions of kids have been isolated at home and required to learn remotely to avoid the risk of being exposed to the novel coronavirus at school and spreading it to their family at home. Despite educators’ best efforts, Zoom and the like haven’t turned out to be very fulfilling for students.

So the question on every teacher’s mind has become, “How can I engage my students during remote learning? How can we make this work for kids?” The simple answer? Don’t stop doing what you were doing before! Deep learning experiences—those meaningful learning opportunities that stick with kids long after they’ve left your classroom—are what got kids excited to come to school before the pandemic and I believe they are also what will get us through to the other side. Whether you’re making student podcasts, schoolwide newspapers, or Minecraft models of green cities for the future, project-based learning can inspire, engage, and excite…even when learning remotely. In this article, I’ll share three important reminders for teachers who are trying to make it all work for their students “From Downtown.”

Going Beyond the Code: Getting Kids to Think Like a Developer

Introduction

“Never again is someone going to pay you to give them answers they can look up online. They will only pay you to solve problems that don’t yet have answers.” Let this powerful reflection, courtesy of Seth Godin, sink in for a moment. The purpose of education is shifting. Rote memorization of facts and figures is a bygone necessity. In order to survive in the real world, fulfilling the requirements of jobs that may not even exist yet, we need problem solvers and problem finders… students who can recognize a problem and design a possible solution. Giving students this kind of opportunity is not always an easy feat, but during this past school year at our school, we took this shift in pedagogy to heart. Our goal was to provide opportunities for ALL our students to connect to their learning in a meaningful and passionate way. To do this, we sought to leverage coding and computational thinking skills to empower our students to own and deepen their learning, giving them yet another avenue to become lifelong learners, critical thinkers, and productive contributors to our global society.

Getting ConnectED on Clubhouse

The newest frontier in social media-based professional development and networking.

If you’re a teacher, chances are good that you know the importance of collaborating with colleagues. When it comes to planning high-quality learning experiences for students, two brains are better than one…no question.

Now let’s kick it up a notch. If you’re reading this blog post, chances are good that you already know the value of being a connected educator on social media. For many years now, I’ve been a fan of using Twitter and Facebook to connect with other educators and thought-leaders, and the education I’ve received through Twitter Chats and specialized Facebook Groups has been immeasurable. Having the ability to brainstorm ideas, find resources, solicit advice, seek feedback, collaborate with educators and classrooms around the world, and share evidence of student achievements 24/7 has been a game-changer for many teachers I know and is well worth the risk of coming across the occasional conspiracy theory or troll. EduTwitter, especially, has some of the most valuable content. But are you ready to kick it up to notch 3.0? Recently, I’ve become hooked on what I’m calling the next generation of professional learning: Clubhouse.

The Pedagogy of “Peloton”: Six Takeaways for Teachers

I have struggled with my weight for most of my life. I typically do not enjoy working out. I would consider myself an optimistic person with lofty goals for my overall health…but not especially in control of my own willpower.

A student joked with me the other day:

Them: Mr. McKinney, are you on a seafood diet?

Me: No…I’ve never heard of that.

Them: It’s whenever you see food, you eat it.

Me: Hardy har har…

I was not offended. I laughed out loud. Self-deprecating humor is my go-to. This stems from that little voice inside of me that is quite negative and very persistent in shooting down most of my aspirations. I joke to hide the pain.

The reason I share some of my personal demons with you is that I feel like I’m pretty normal—we all have issues that we wrestle with. No one starts out with the body of a demigod. Hercules? I’m probably closer to Maui…without the magical hook or cool tattoos. Note the deprecation? Bear with me.

But for the last three months and counting, I have been hooked on Peloton. My wife and I made a pact to exercise every day as a 2021 New Year’s resolution. We don’t have the Peloton Bike or Tread because—let’s face it—we’re teachers and have three kids….we couldn’t justify spending thousands of dollars just now. So we signed up for a two-month free trial of the app and have been taking daily strength, yoga, meditation, cardio, stretching, and outdoor running classes on demand. Surprisingly, it’s been going really well.

So why have I been able to stick with an exercise routine recently when it never really worked before? I believe it has something to do with the way that Peloton works. It’s addictive in a good way, and it’s my opinion that teachers everywhere could learn a thing or two from the system that has helped us to be successful so far.