The beginning of another school is upon many of us and some teachers do amazing things on the first few days while others either don’t know how or can’t or think they can’t make the first few days of school engaging and less about the rules and regulations.

In this episode, we discuss and explore a number of ideas you can implement at the beginning of the school year. Our conversation was inspired by an episode of StartED Up with Don Wettrick.

• The Toilet Paper Game
• Rock, Paper, Scissors
• 30 Circles

We also speak to special guest, Robbie Lindes about his own experiences on the first days of school from a student’s perspective.

Rather than recommend additional episodes and podcasts, these are the podcast episodes we’ve used so far in our Summer Podcast Listening Group:

• Cult of Pedagogy, episode 90 – OMG Becky. PD is Getting SO MUCH BETTER.
• Future Focused Podcast, episode 2 – Goal Setting Workshop: How to Set Goals to Change Your Life
• The 5 AM Miracle, episode 27 – Service and Selflessness at Work: An Interview with August Turak
• StartED Up – Promise Me You will NOT Start Your School Year Off with This
• Mindshift – Be the Change You Want to See
• Focus 3 Podcast, episode 39 – A Turning Point in Education

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This episode is the second part of our conversation about George Couros’ published an article on his blog titled, ‘4 Reflection Questions for the End of the School Year’. In this conversation, we address questions three and four.

This Episodes Questions:

• What things will I challenge myself with next year?
• How will all of these answers impact the learners I serve?

• Chris: Hidden Brain – When Everything Clicks
• AJ: Better Leaders Better Schools – Leading w/o Labels, Finding Your Culture of Compassion
• Stacey: Great Women of Business – E1: Coco Chanel and E2: Julia Child 

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Recently, George Couros published an article on his blog titled, ‘3 Reminders for the End of the School Year.’ In his call to action, he had readers share their suggestions. He ran with one person’s suggestion about the value of reflection, in his next post, ‘4 Reflection Questions for the End of the School Year’.

Four Reflection Questions:

• What did I do well this year?
• Where do I need to grow?
• What things will I challenge myself with next year?
• How will all of these answers impact the learners I serve?

• Chris: ESPN 30 for 30 – Bickram
• AJ: Live Like A Mother
• Stacey: Making Obama

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Jay Billy is an elementary principal in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Jay received his master’s degree in educational leadership from The College of New Jersey in 1997. He first served as supervisor of behavior at the high school before moving to the principal of the Joseph Cappello School in 2000.

He has worked for Lawrence Township Public Schools since 2007. He maintains his passion for leading and learning and innovative practices inside schools and classrooms by reading and working with his colleagues. Jay is passionate about making school and learning fun and engaging for everyone in the community, including Teachers, Students, and Families. He received the 2016 Exemplary Educator award from the New Jersey Dept. of Education. Jay is active on Twitter @JayBilly2, and you can often find him in his office dreaming of making school amazing and doing school differently.

Resources Mentioned:

• Lead with Culture: What Really Matters in Our Schools

• Jay: Cult of Pedagogy, StartEdUp, House of #EdTech, Truth for Teachers

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Matt Larson is a wonder-er, a family man, an animal lover and true believer in education. He’s a physical education teacher from New Jersey who LOVES to read and through his love of reading, he harnesses his talent for connecting people. Through Voxer, Matt has lead a number of virtual book studies, continues to lead conversations around great education texts, and is truly moving the education needle on professional development.

Resources Mentioned:

• Drive – Dan Pink
• The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined – Salman Khan
• Customers who viewed Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
• Mathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students’ Potential through Creative Mathematics

Also mentioned…

• Hoopla – Free Audio Books
• Paul O’Neill – PLN365

• Stacey: UP First, TechMeme Ride Home, StartUp
• Chris: Cobra Kai on YouTube RED
• AJ: EDU Match Tweet and Talks
• Matt: TLTalk Radio, School Leadership Series, Better Leaders Better Schools, DitchPod, Transformative Principal

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Nerd Camp is an EdCamp inspired conference with an exclusive focus on literacy instruction. The workshop board is built prior to the conference, but the spirit of collaboration and flexibility remains strong. Teachers, librarians, administrators, teacher educators and local authors come to Nerd Camp to present and attend workshops for FREE.

Our guest today is Oona Abrams, a graduate of The College of Mount Saint Vincent and Manhattanville College, Oona teaches English at Chatham High School. Oona has presented and collaborated with colleagues at the NCTE, CEL, NJCTE, NJWA and EdTechNJ conferences, and she has been a guest blogger for NCTE and The Nerdy Book Club. She served as editor of English Leadership Quarterly from 2014 until 2018. Professional learning is one of her greatest passions, and attending #nErDCampMI and #nErDCampLI inspired her to launch #nErDCampNJ as her Genius Hour professional development project in 2017. She lives with her husband and sons in northern New Jersey.

Resources & Authors Mentioned:

• Colby Sharpe
• Donalynn Miller
• Cindy Minnich
• Katherine Sokolowski
• The Nerdy Book Club
• Hillary Homsey
• Alexandria LaFaye
• Sally J Pla
• Andrea Loney
• Josh Funk
• Jeff Zentner
• Tom Rinaldi
• NERDCAMPNJ

Also mentioned…

• Learning Transformed: 8 Keys to Designing Tomorrow’s Schools, Today

• Chris: Check out the NEW House of #EdTech Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing Skill
• AJ: Golficity Podcast
• Stacey: Hidden Brain – Emma, Carrie, Vivian: How A Family Became A Test Case For Forced Sterilizations
• Oona: The Moth Podcast, ADHD Rewired Podcast

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#TryPod is all about sharing and discovering new podcasts via Twitter or anywhere you use hashtags. Stacey embarked on a 30-day quest to share at least one recommendation between March 10th and April 10th 2018. She Periscoped her recommendations each day and we’ve collected them all here for your listening, learning, and podcast discovering pleasure!

1. Another Mother Runner – Episode 302: The Lowdown on Feeling Rundown
2. UP First – NPR
3. Ask Me Another – NPR
4. How I Built This – NPR
5. Cult of Pedagogy – Episode 70: How HyperDocs Can Transform the Way You Teach
6. What Should I Read Next
7. By the Book
8. Hacking Engagement
9. House of #EdTech
10. Pen Addict
11. PotterCast
12. Techmeme Ride Home
13. TeachonomyTalks with Chuck Poole
14. The Story Behind
15. Making Obama
16. Podsave America
17. A Teacher’s Journey with Brian Costello
18. Wow in the World
19. Ungeniused
20. Future Focused Podcast – Kelly Croix
21. The Sketchnote Army Podcast
22. SERIAL – NPR
23. RS-Town – NPG
24. The Art of Manliness
25. Teachercast
26. The 1-3-20 Podcast
27. StartEDUP
28. Note to Self
29. THIS ONE! PocastPD

What We’re Listening To

• AJ:
• Focus3 Podcast episode 16 – Bring Optimism Back to Education
• 1-3-20 Podcast – Dan Coyle, Successful Groups
• Chris: Ditch That Textbook Podcast from Matt Miller

• Go check out Derrick Crabtree’s new podcast, Top Tenn Teaching!

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One the ways we love to take control of our learning is by attending un-conferences. Our favorite format is the classic EdCamp model. Here are 10 tips for making sure your event is successful.

1. Build a Strong Team
2. Broaden you planning committee so it helps in getting the word out about the event to more than just a couple of buildings/districts.
3. District planning team
4. Location, Location, Location
5. Open WiFi to devices not in the domain, that it will allow for social media connection and YouTube.
6. Arrange the rooms how you want them (in circles, etc)
7. School district planning team
8. Parking
9. Easy to get to
10. Promotion
11. Twitter
12. Instagram
13. Website
14. Flyers – snail mail Superintendents/C&I
15. Business cards – Thank you, Robert Meringolo
16. Email registrants
17. Time
18. Consider weather
19. Remain consistent with your date year after year
20. Edcamp after hours
21. Focus on Learning
22. MOST IMPORTANT! Thank you, Rachel Murat
23. What About the Children?
24. Get kids involved!! Whether it be for a student panel, to showcase their work, culinary students, bring your own kids!
25. Transition Time
26. Don’t be afraid to make your transition time a little longer than you think you need. Those free moments sometimes tend to be the most valuable for teachers. And those discussions may help decide later session ideas. We typically do 10-15 transitions so we have PLENTY of time.
27. Build in a half-time or lunch
28. Attendance
29. Expect about 60% of registered people to actually attend
30. Sponsors/Giveaways
31. Start the way you plan to continue…don’t start out too big
32. Checkout: IPevo, Kahoot!, Flipgrid, Kahoot!, The Edu Cal
33. Work with the Edcamp Foundation
34. EdCamp in a Box

• AJ: Focus 3 Podcast – Focus 3 is committed to the physics of performance. We are a team of people who continuously pursue a deeper understanding of how people, leaders, and organizations combine to produce results. We are passionate students of the fundamentals of high performance.
• Stacey: Join Stacey as she celebrates #TryPod month here in March. Connect with Stacey on Twitter to watch her videos, released daily about her podcast recommendations.
• Chris: The Story Behind – Pez!

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Co-host Stacey Lindes began her career in education as a primary grade, elementary school teacher and was then encouraged to apply for a position as a technology coach in her district. AJ and Chris pepper her with questions about the day-to-day life of being a coach in education.

• AJ: Weird Heat Episode 1: Optimism: w/ Brian Altano and Max Scoville
• Stacey: Thoroughly Considered A show about entrepreneurship, product design, and the ups and downs of running a small indie business. Episode 35 – Jam on This Funky Podcast Co-Creator of Cards Against Humanities is interviewed by the three co-hosts.
• Chris: Cult of Pedagogy episode 90 – OMG Becky. PD is Getting So Much Better!!

Check out the Planning Period Podcast, hosted by ITC Brad Shreffler (FL). On the Planning Period Podcast Shreffler interviews teachers and other school stakeholders. As a podcaster, he is focused on making a guest-centered education podcast, not necessarily talking to experts in any field, or focusing the discussions on one topic, but instead having a natural, comfortable conversation with a teacher and seeing where that discussion takes them.

Check out the podcast’s hashtag #EdBreakroom

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