Rethinking Learning Podcast

Michelle Baldwin is a Lead Teacher at Anastasis Academy in Centennial, Colorado. She believes in inspiring students to follow their natural curiosity and take ownership of their learning through inquiry, problem-based and experiential learning, and the Arts.

 

I’ve known Michelle for many years always meeting up with her at different conferences. When I talked to Michelle at the Digital Badge summit, she shared some exciting things that were happening at her school. So, of course, I wanted to have a conversation with her. Below are excerpts from the podcast:

 

Can you share your background and your family?

I was born and lived in Omaha, Nebraska. I went into teaching as a 7-12 music educator for six years, then I started to lose my voice and didn’t have enough opportunities to see my children. Being a music educator is time intensive, and I found myself at the school all the time. I decided I wanted to see my children grow up too. I went into the corporate world for a while and did some technology training and that’s where I got into all that techie thing. I remember thinking around 2000-2001 that there was so much potential for education. After that, I went into technology staff development and helped teachers use technology in their classrooms. Then it wasn’t long before I missed kids and needed to get back into the classroom. I taught elementary music for a couple of years. At that time (2009-2011), three of our four kids had already graduated high school. All four of our children are now in their mid-twenties. We are expecting a grandchild in December. Three of our children are still in Nebraska; two are in Omaha and the other in Lincoln. Our youngest daughter is in Lenexa, Kansas (works in Overland Park).

Photo by M. Stokes Photography

Then, my wonderful friend, Kelly Tenkeley said: “I think I would like to start a school.” She explained school is starting to take the joy out of learning and how kids are so naturally curious when they come to us. After being in school, they are just going through the motions. So we talked back and forth for a while and I said, “if you build it, I will come.” She did and my husband said, let’s move to Colorado. Colorado is beautiful so it was not a hardship to move here. Even though our children are not here, we aren’t that far away and visit them often.

 

What is the background and philosophy of Anastasis Academy?

Kelly started the school August 2011. We really wanted to start with that piece of each child where you know every kids’ name. Kelly has written many blog posts how she came to think how we would design the school, how she wanted to have it run on a daily basis. It starts with the kids. We don’t do grade levels so we have mixed-age classrooms. The way that we place the children with a teacher is based on where they are social, emotionally, and academically and their peers are. The way that I do it that I have 5 to 7-year-olds. The next class there are 7 to 10-year-olds and so on. We are a K-8 school with five-year-olds up to fourteen-year-old kids. We have a lot of overlap age-wise in classes throughout the school. That’s a big change for a lot of kids. We don’t do homework. Everything kids need to do they do during the school day. We honor the time they have with families and the learning that happens outside of the school. We don’t need to monopolize that time. That again is something different for kids. We are a 1:1 iPad and BYOD school so we have kids who bring in their laptop or whatever device the kids need for the tasks.

Using @seesaw to document our learning about the bean seeds.

 

How do you build the culture and help kids develop the structures?

We call it from day one the first week or month our detox tim...

Bobbi Macdonald is the founder and served as the first board president of City Neighbors Charter School in Baltimore, MD. She was selected by the Annie E. Casey Foundation as one of 16 leaders from across the country for the 2013-2014 Children and Family Fellowship.

 

I met Bobbi at Educon in Philadelphia last year when she presented with Education Reimagined and shared her story about City Neighbors. She invited me to visit her school so I did with Lori Roe in February. First thing I noticed was Bobbi’s passion and purpose was about creating an environment for kids. It was an amazing visit where I could see engagement and hear how teachers and kids were motivated to learn. I really enjoyed our conversation and added excerpts from the podcast below.

 

Can you share your background, your own story and why you are so passionate about transforming learning?

I grew up on the southside of Chicago and my family to the south suburbs in the 70s. I come from a long line of educators and salesmen. The school I moved away from in Chicago was a strict instructional experience. I remember sitting in a circle reading Sally, Dick and Jane books and each person would get to read one word. I wished I could read “Sally” or “Jane” but I always got “and” or “the.” Then we moved to the suburbs and I went to Willows School. There were kids in the hallway laying on their tummies with their math books open and other kids practicing a show. I grabbed my mom’s hand and said those guys are going to get in so much trouble. She said, “it’s a little different here, Bobbi.” That made such an impression on me. When I grew up, I became a kindergarten teacher, early childhood educator, and worked in child development labs. I loved that research on how children learn and how you create a great environment. That led to different positions and eventually moved to Maryland for graduate school.  

 

How did you come up with the City Neighbors Charter School?

My husband and I have four kids. When the youngest was ready to start kindergarten, I went to visit the school near my house and couldn’t believe how so restrictive the teaching and learning was. It was filled with good people but the design was wrong. That was the day Maryland passed the charter school law. So we had the opportunity to imagine a great public charter school. The idea for City Neighbors was to be the best school we could imagine. We based the school in seeing children as powerful, and teachers a powerful. We took a stand on project-based learning, arts integration, Reggio Emilia inspired, and a family-teacher co-op. The work of the school is to have the people in the building imagining together. Once I realized I didn’t have to be exactly right, I felt like I had the courage to give it a try and create an environment where the imagining becomes the culture.

 

What is the philosophy behind City Neighbors and how Reggio Emilia was an integral part of the design?

As an early childhood educator, I learned about Reggio Emilia at the University of Illinois and then in graduate school at the University of Maryland. Reggio Emilia is this amazing program out of Italy that honors the teacher as researcher, the physical environment as being important, and the parent as the first teacher. That just sounded like good education to me, and it made a lot of sense to push Reggio up to the higher grades. The interesting part is that City Neighbors is really a cooperative. It is owned by so many people. That’s the design and the secret sauce of City Neighbors. The teachers and educators are around tables and in groups working collaboratively, arguing, discussing, imagining, and creating. That is what makes City Neighbors come alive. That ethos gets transferred to the kids, and they are encouraged to have ownership over their own learning.

Rich Czyz is Principal of the Yardville Elementary School in New Jersey and Co-Founder of FourOClockFaculty.com and the author of his book, The Four O’Clock Faculty: A Rogue Guide To Revolutionizing Professional Learning.

I started following Rich Czyz and Four O’Clock Faculty on Twitter several years ago and was amazed by how much he was sharing. Rich with Trevor Bryan post almost every day. They even wrote a section on culture in my book. When I finished reading Rich’s latest book, I just had to invite him to have a conversation. Below are excerpts from the podcast:

 

Can you share with my audience about you, your family, and your background?

I live in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with my wife and three children. We really enjoy the area and I work in New Jersey. I started as a fifth-grade teacher and worked my way up through instructional coach to technology coach to a supervisor and then as a director of the curriculum. I felt I needed to be back with students so I took a principal’s job at a wonderful place to be every day in the 2nd and 3rd-grade building. I’m lucky to hang out with kids every day and collaborate with teachers.

 

Why are you so passionate about changing the culture of professional learning?

I’ve sat through a lot of professional development and been responsible for planning professional development (PD). Sitting through a lot of it, I’ve felt that it is not where it needs to be. My personal belief is that professional learning and professional development is the one thing that educators can do in order to change education. They can take charge of their own professional learning. A lot of times PD is left in the hands of a couple of district administrators or building principal. Leaving it in their hands, sometimes teachers are not necessarily getting what they need. It is the one thing that can really change the outcomes that we are seeing in classrooms. We are missing professional learning and development that is connected to what we are doing in the classroom.

 

Is that why you and Trevor Bryan started the Four O’Clock Faculty and posted tips and ideas often?

Trevor and I were colleagues in my first job where he was the art teacher at a new school. When I taught 5th grade, he was my students’ art teacher. We found that we were very similar in our beliefs about education. Trevor and I had some ideas about professional learning and development to help colleagues grow and learn so we decided to start a blog and reflect on our own learning. It all started on a snow day in 2015 with unexpected time and decided that day was the day to start our blog, Four O’Clock Faculty. I wrote two posts that day that started it off. It gives both Trevor and I a platform for sharing our message which we think is an important one about really inspiring students with creativity, collaboration, and getting them to authentic, relevant learning. We’re excited about it and we post almost every day. We recognized that visuals and simple messages are what everyone seems to gravitate to. So we create visuals with tips and short messages for educators to learn something in a quick and easy way.

Read more about the origins of the Four O’Clock Faculty.

 

I read your new book, The Four O’Clock Faculty: A Rogue Guide To Revolutionizing Professional Learning. My focus for years has been professional development. Now I call it professional learning and this is the book all of us need to read. Tell me your journey in writing it.

It...

Sue Thotz is the Los Angeles Education Program Manager for Common Sense Education. She works with districts to create a foundation of digital citizenship that fits with their vision.

 

I met Sue several years ago at the CUE and ISTE conferences. Her enthusiasm about everything she is involved in is so inspiring. Then when I had a chance to have a conversation with her, I learned so much that I couldn’t wait to share it with you. Below are some excerpts from the podcast:

 

Can you share a little about you, your family, and your background?

I grew up in central Illinois. My mother was an immigrant from Okinawa, Japan, and my father was an English teacher. We lived in a town with about 1,000 people and my mom worked at my school. My mom passed away a couple of years ago. I was thinking about her growing up in Okinawa that was an extremely social environment in an island where everyone in the community takes care of everyone else. Then she moved to a small town in Illinois where she knew no one else like her which must have been a very lonely place to live so far away from family and all of her connections. As a teenager, I observed my mom constantly reaching out to connect to others trying to make community wherever she could. Being an adult now, I’m much more social than I was as a teenager. I see myself more like my mother trying to reach out to make connections with people that I feel in community with.

I was very much interested in science so I got my degree in zoology and chemistry and ended up working a long time in a biochemistry lab. Then I decided to do lots of world travel and wacky jobs which eventually led to public health education and education research. Then somehow it brought me on this wild path all the way to Common Sense education. I think it really is kind of how I’ve been able to find community and find people that are like-minded when it comes to the way we see the world and the things that we feel are important and of value to us.

 

Common Sense Media is a great resource. Can you explain what it offers for schools and parents?

Common Sense Media is a nonprofit organization that started 14 years ago so parents could have information about the kinds of media and technology that their kids were taking part in. It was in response to a call for censorship when a lot of folks were saying certain movies or music were bad for kids that needed to be censored. Our founder and CEO wanted to introduce the idea of sanity, not censorship. It needed to be about helping make good decisions about the type of media kids were involved with. We started rating media books, music, and video games and continue to do that to this day. That was way before cell phones and all the technology that is part of our lives today. We provide a lot of advice and information for parents to help them guide their kids on how to use technology. Then we created K-12 curriculum for kids that centers on the concept of digital citizenship to help them make good decisions, be responsible and ethical, safe and kind, and use technology for positive forces in their lives.

 

Can you mention what it means to have a digital footprint?

When it comes to exploring kids’ identities and who they are and who they want to be, that is all natural in development and how they want to connect with the world. When you are a kid you tend to take a lot of risks. When we were kids, it was different. We took risks by writing in our diaries or sharing among our own friends and family. Nothing was shared outside of our own groups. Today it is very different. As kids are playing out their identities and making mistakes, we want to encourage them to be curious and take risks to find out who they are while they are growing up. I want my own kids to explore but how do you help them do this exploration in a way that doe...

JoAnn Jacobs is a sixth-grade social studies teacher at Mid-Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii. Entering her forty- second year, she looks forward to continuing learning with her students and members of her sixth-grade team and helping to make the world a better place.

I have known JoAnn for a long time as a colleague of a mutual friend, Melvina Kurashige. I met Melvina when I worked at Mid-Pacific Institute in 2010. Then I met JoAnn the next year at ISTE.  Every year, I look forward to learning what JoAnn is doing with her kids. She eventually became a social studies teacher at MidPac and has written a guest post for me about the global projects they are doing. I know you will enjoy learning about the great projects her kids are doing. Below I added a few excerpts from the podcast.

 

Can you share about your life in Hawaii?

 

 

 

This is my 5th year teaching 6th grade social studies at Mid-Pacific Institute in Honolulu, Hawaii.  I am blessed to have a great principal, Dr. Priester, who allows me to do what’s best for kids. We learn together and each year has been different and that’s solely due to the makeup of the group and their interests. My life here is very quiet. My husband and I have lived here for 33 years and enjoy being at home and spending time with our rescue dog, Tommy.

What I love about you JoAnn is your passion for encouraging your kids to have a voice in their learning. Why is voice important?

It comes down to who’s learning, is it? If I’m in control than it belongs to me. If the kids don’t own it then what makes it memorable? They’re told to look for their passion but if they don’t get to explore what is meaningful to them how will they ever find their passion?

6th graders sharing their personal interests with classmates

The word for MPI Middle this year is “Unity” – the fantastic 6th graders came up with a great definition and illustration.

 

You wrote a blog post for my site last November on Global Awareness and projects your kids did around that. Can you explain that project?

There are six teachers in our pod and our big idea for the fourth quarter was Global Connections. I found the UN Global Goals #SDG6 #GlobalGoals and worked from there. Students were interested in the Goals and Researching the countries and their issues.

Grade 6 finding out about #SDG6 #GlobalGoals using video, books, periodicals and  independent research

They then developed a product or a way to bring awareness to the issue. These products were sold at school during lunchtime and the funds were donated to the charity of their choice which they had also researched. Each teacher took part in this project since all areas of the curriculum were a part of it. 

For more on project, go to Following the Path to Global Awareness 

What other projects did you do with your kids that you would like to share?

Some other projects we have done are Biomes which included the biome being recreated in PE with an obstacle course and then taking the physical course and recreating it in Minecraft. Students also read and research about a famous person of their choice and created their life story with symbols and researched Nobel Peace Prize winners and then spoke about whether or not the person deserved th...

Dr. Will Deyamport, Instructional Technology Specialist, Hattiesburg Public School District, Mississippi, and founder of The Dr. Will Show. The Dr. Will Show is a podcast dedicated to driving the conversation of what it means to go digital. Each episode features an educator at the forefront of teaching, coaching, and leadership.

 

I’ve known Dr. Will for several years and always reach out to him to learn more about different technology tools. I have been very fortunate to be on his show.  Because of his extensive work with coaching and leadership, he just knows how to make his guests comfortable.  I have several selfies at different conferences with Dr. Will so added one here. I really enjoyed our conversation and hope you will too.

 

Can you share about your background, your story, and your wife?

I kind of fell into Instructional Technology by divine intervention. I was actually Chief Social Strategist for a coaching company. I was making videos and coaching people when Eric Sheninger came to our state to an ISTE Affiliate Conference in 2013. Right before he did his keynote, he said that he has a friend here who is an expert in Google. He said my name so I did the Miss America wave to everybody. After his keynote, I talked to the tech director at Hattiesburg School District who then gave me a job.

My wife, Elvira, is a teacher of the gifted 2nd through 6th grades and uses technology in the classroom. She encourages them to have ownership of their learning. Some of her students don’t like that because they grew up with teachers spoon feeding them. She asks them to work it out and continues to tell them to have ownership of their learning. She presents at conferences as well and enjoys what she does. To learn more about my wife and The Deyamport Group, check out https://www.tdginformation.com/

 

Why are you so passionate about going on this journey to transform learning?

I am so passionate about transforming learning because of  Twitter and at conferences. So many people are talking about 21st-century learning. and I hate that term with a passion because we are knee deep in the 21st century. The 21st century isn’t tomorrow, next week, or two years from now. It is now. We are talking about modern learning. When I look at the technology, I was able to bring the world to the students. For example, we are a rural district in Mississippi, but if you use Google Hangouts or Skype, you can bring in NASA, students, professors, and others from Africa or Brazil into your classroom. Students are being connected and learning in ways that, quite honestly, we never thought of 15 or 20 years ago. I love how students can take ownership of their learning and provide avenues to go deeper into their learning.

Webinar for Future Ready Schools

Also, I’m passionate about technology and how digital is transforming at a phenomenal rate outside of education. Our students need to have the types of skills, creativity, and passion to compete. I’ve seen Tom Murray speak in person. He mentioned, “Have you seen a Blockbuster lately?” They’re gone. That’s what I think about when I want to talk to my teachers. I tell them, “I want you to be transformative before the transformation is upon you and you have no choice.”  I want teachers to take ownership and define their why. I want teachers to get excited about what they can do and not feel like it’s just another thing the principal tells them or another thing to do. I want them to wake up in the morning, be rejuvenated and understand how their teacher can be the best they can be with technology. 

 

I know your job is Instructional Technology Specialist. Can you share your district, your responsibilities,

Tom Murray serves as the Director of Innovation for Future Ready Schools, a project of the Alliance for Excellent Education, located in Washington, D.C. and is co-author of the new ASCD book, Learning Transformed: 8 Keys to Designing Tomorrow’s Schools, Today.

I’m fortunate to have met Tom and learn so much from his presentations and keynotes. He sent me a copy of his and Eric Sheninger’s book, Learning Transformed for me to review. What a valuable book for schools! I feel so honored that Tom shared his journey to transform learning with me. Below are a few excerpts from the podcast, Tom’s contact information and a recent webinar with Tom and Eric.

 

Can you share a little about you, your family, and your former life as a teacher and principal?

My family is the reason why I do the work I do. When I do keynotes or presentations, I start with pictures of my family, my babies. My little girl, Paisley, is a second grader at a public school in Pennsylvania at a wonderful district, Parkland School District. My little boy just turned four. They are the lens that I do what I do. I look at what would I want for my own kids. If it’s good enough for my kids, it’s good for every kid. I’m not this 50,000-foot policy person that’s never done what I’m talking about trying to tell school leaders what to do. I spent 14 years in public schools in Pennsylvania first as a teacher, a number of years in 4th grade and taught middle school for a couple of years. I became a middle school principal and then an elementary school principal for three years. After that, I moved to the district office where I was the Director of Technology and Cyber Education.

 

How did you and others start #edtechchat?

You know #edchat was around along with other great Twitter chats and I was asked to guest moderate several chats talking about Ed Tech. About 5 years ago, I talked to Katrina Stevens @KatrinaStevens1, Susan Bearden @s_bearden, Sharon Plante @iplante, and Alex Podchasky @ajpodchaski on a Google Hangout one day where we asked, “what if we started a chat around Ed Tech?”  We decided it was not for the purpose of talking just about tools or devices, but to focus on learning and the effective use of  Ed Tech.  On our first chat, we had no idea how many would join us and over 100 people showed up.  Our team has expanded over the last few years with 9 or 10 of us running the chat. We’ve had guest moderators with people from superintendents to teachers and some like Arne Duncan which was his first Twitter chat to ever moderate when he was Secretary of Education. We avoid the sales pitch side of things because we want to talk about learning and hear from teachers and other educators.  #edtechchat is on every Monday night from 8-9 EST and hope to see people there.

Can you tell me about your work with Future Ready Schools?

After 14 years at my district, I have been the Director of Innovation for Future Ready Schools for the past three years. I get to work with school leaders from coast to coast running events for hundreds of leaders encouraging them to network, collaborate and share best practices or it could be running leadership retreats or being at conferences where I often see you around the country. Under the scope of my role, I see schools in some of the poorest areas in our country and visit the urbanest areas. I’ve truly grown as an educator and learned as much in the last 3 years as I did in my first few years as a brand new teacher as well.

Copyright: Future Ready SchoolsⓇ

What does it mean for a district to be Future Ready?

My home organization where I work in Washington DC is known as the Alliance for Excellence Education. They are a bipartisan,

Episode #11

Randy Ziegenfuss, Ed.D. is Superintendent at Salisbury Township School District and Clinical Adjunct Professor at Moravian College in Pennsylvania. Randy is a blogger, speaker, and podcast host at TLTalk Radio and Shift Your Paradigm.

 

I have known Randy for several years on social media and have been fortunate to be on his podcast show twice. When I met him in person at Educon last January, we had a great talk about the future of learning. I knew then he was going to keep pushing the edge with his co-host Lynn Fuini-Hetten, especially now with their new show, Shift the Paradigm. I was so excited that Randy agreed to join me on my podcast and below are excerpts from our conversation on learning.

 

Can you share about you, your background, and your journey as superintendent of Salisbury Township School District?

Yes, I am currently Superintendent of Salisbury Township School District in Pennsylvania. It was fun meeting you at Educon in Philadelphia last year. In fact, we’re located about an hour north of Philadelphia and 90 minutes to New York city. It’s a great place geographically being so close to cultural events. This is my 32nd year in education. My first 12 years I taught middle school music, general music, and musical theater. I was a music major in college. About 8 or 9 years into my teaching, this thing called a computer landed in my classroom. I got very curious about what I could do using computers for kids learning music. We were sequencing music and making all sorts of sounds. If you walked by my room, it was like a three-ring circus. Kids were doing all sorts of things connected to their interests and passions around music. During that time, I became interested in not only musical things but learning about technology.

After 19 years in the school district next door, I moved to a more formal leadership position as the Director of Technology here at Salisbury Township and did that for six years. I have the pleasure of working with an amazing team of teachers, students, and parents. We accomplished a lot of things during that time. Back around 2006, there was one desktop PC for each instructional area. It was a pretty traditional school. Now we are a K-12 school district where every student has their own learning device which took a lot of planning, thinking, collaborating, and work to get there. One thing I shared with Lynn Fuinehetten, my podcast collaborator and assistant superintendent here is that it has been an interesting journey to see how the conversations and the transformation really moved away from the technology to really focus on learning. Learning has changed and can change as a result of having access.

Mission: Salisbury…Inspire, Think, Learn, Grow… Together!

Can you share how you and your administration created a culture of learning?

All that I learned about leadership, I can trace back to the roots of being a musician. The way that musicians learn mirrors the way we believe powerful learning happens. As a music teacher, much of what I did involve leading groups which helped me shape what I believe is leadership. One of the things we embrace around here is that everyone is a learner and everyone is a leader. That culture of learning is exemplified in the profile of a graduate. We had a lot of conversations on what learning looks like. A few years ago we embarked on this process where we asked two basic questions to help shape our culture of learning:

What knowledge, skills, and dispositions do our current learners need to have to be successful once they leave us? We call that life; not just focusing on a career, not just making money, not just being a good citizen, but just living a good life.

What kinds of learning environments are going to help us to help them best get there? What do we believe about learning not only for our ch...

Episode #10

Ryan Sheehy is principal of Highlands Elementary School in Concord, CA. He is in charge of executing the school’s vision, building and implementing an instructional framework, and collaboratively working with staff and community to design a school that is student focused.

I was introduced to Ryan Sheehy by Adam Welcome who had a conversation with me earlier [Running Because Kids Deserve It]. I first connected with him on Twitter and it became really apparent how passionate he is about doing whatever he can for kids. Ryan came up with something I just had to share with my audience. Be the One! Below are excerpts from the podcast I had with Ryan. Enjoy!

 

Can you tell me about you, your family, and your background?

I grew up in San Diego and am the second oldest of eight kids. I had a diverse educational background. I went to public school, got home schooled for 3-4 years, went to private Catholic school, and then went to public high school. I met my wife in community college a couple of weeks after I turned 18 and have been married for 12 years with 4 beautiful children: Robert (10), Joshua (9), Juliana (7) and Zachary (4). We have a busy household and am currently moving to a new home. School Website

 

How did you come up with Be the One for your blog? Why is it important for you to write about this?

I met Adam Welcome who was my vice principal in another district, and he encouraged me to start blogging so I took the challenge. I try to put out one or two blog posts a week. This is something I feel very passionate about. I found my voice through blogging. I’ve worked at 14 different schools because I was an elementary physical education teacher working at 3 to 6 schools at a time and every staff room had one thing in common. People were scared to take that step to go outside the box and “Be the One” that changes it.

I’m passionate about the idea that one person can change the life of a child and change education for all. For me, I’ve been the one really pushing the envelope and changing things so now it’s time for me to share my message, my manifesto with the world. It’s been a model I’ve lived my life by. We all have the power to “Be the One.” All educators can live their life by this model because we’re in the business of kids and we need to “Be the One” for them, for each other, for our families, for education, and for life. Website: Be the One

 

You ask 2 questions in your blog “Who Tells Your Story” to teachers that tell you everything about the climate and culture in their classrooms: How do you connect with your families?  How do you tell your classroom story?  Why these questions?

When you walk into a classroom, you can instantly get the feeling in the classroom. Is this teacher showcasing everything they are doing in their classroom? These tell you how invested they are in their kids.  We as an education profession have a hard time bragging about all the wonderful things that are happening in our classrooms. Most of us are in this for the right reasons, and we really need to showcase that. We need to “Be the One” that tells those stories. Too often we hear about all the negative things that happen in education and rarely hear the positive things. We know that there are negative things that happen and constantly face adversity.

We can “Be the One” that flips the script and tells the positive story. We can flood positivity through social media, newsletters home, and any other ways we connect and communicate to share our successes with everyone. Back to the two questions, I ask these questions when I do presentations with teachers and...

Rethinking Learning Episode #9

Alex Corbitt is a middle school English teacher in The Bronx, New York. His work focuses primarily on socio-emotional learning, gamification, education technology, and literacy. Alex’s passion for teaching will thrive as long as he continues to laugh with and learn from his incredible students.

I met Alex on Twitter and was so impressed with how active he is on social media. When I asked Alex if he would join me in a conversation on my podcast series, he was so open about sharing that I couldn’t wait to talk to him. After our conversation, I found that he was leaving the next day for a big family trip overseas. Alex made sure he accommodated me and my time and sent me amazing resources for the blog post.  Below are excerpts from the conversation. I hope you listen to the whole podcast and enjoy the conversation with Alex as much as I did.

Can you share your background, where you live, and your role as a middle school English teacher in the Bronx?

I grew up in a suburb of New Jersey and attended Fordham University as an undergrad which was my introduction to New York and the Bronx. I live in a Queens, NY since coming here for college and love it here because of the food, music, just exploring the city, going to museums, and hanging out with friends. I have been working at a small middle school in the Bronx right near Yankee stadium for about 5 years now. A fun fact is that I teach in the same classroom that I did my student teaching. I had a great mentor who was transitioning into a leadership role so he said to me, “why don’t you just stay here?” So I did. The school is in a community with a lot of high needs population with 99% qualifying for free and reduced lunch. I work with predominantly Dominican, Puerto Rican, and West African students. They are all incredible even in the face of challenges. We are all a big family, and I get support and trust from the parents. My co-teacher and I also have 2 ICT classes with students with special needs and general students.

You said one of your focuses is on socio-emotional learning. Can you explain why socio-emotional learning is so important?

When I was in grad school, I heard of an interesting analogy comparing adolescents to a man riding an elephant along a path. The man symbolizes adolescents logic and the elephant is their emotions. Our job as educators are to frame the path that the elephant walks along. That spoke a lot to me. Before I try to appeal to my students’ rationale thought, I want to be very mindful of the space that I create is a space of emotional support. Really tending to the elephant metaphorically. As an educator am I creating a space that is safe emotionally, physically, and academically. The way to do is not by lecturing them, but rather to be a model of what you want to see. For example, if I want my students to take academic risks, I need to be at the head of that endeavor. I need to take academic risks and even fall on my face. We can all laugh together so we can help each other. I always try to be mindful jumping into whatever activity I ask them to do and be right by their side.

What do you do at the beginning of the year to build the culture of learning?

I have been outlining ideas about building a culture so this is a great question. One thing I do within the confines of a 55 minutes period is trying to find time in between classes to find out what their interests are and information about their culture. I always tell them on the first day of school that they don’t know me yet, and I don’t know them very well, but I’m going to put myself out there and tell them right away that I have their back. I tell them that I struggle and have bad days just like everyone else. I became a teacher because I get a big kick out of kids. I love laughing. I want them to know that I’m here to support them. I teach 7th grade. I wouldn’t say this in a school setting but another analogy....