detox

TTT #290 - NYCWP Teachers Fostering Youth Voices with Jim Nordlinger, Amal Aboulhosn, Carla Cherry, and Valerie Burton - 3.28.12

Youth Voices

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers we have a conversation with three teachers from the New York City Writing Project who are part of a study group that has been sponsored by the NYCWP to foster and reflect on the use of Youth Voices by these teachers. Paul Allison, Chris Sloan, Monika Hardy host a conversation with Jim Nordlinger, Amal Aboulhosn, and Carla Cherry from the NYCWP along with our colleagues Valerie Burton, and Fred Mindlin.
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As an introduction to this conversation, we offer these reflections posted by one of our listeners on her blog, "Short Quips: thinking in (hyper)text" (Check out here blog, to see this teacher's complete response, and view her About Me.):
Tonight I participated in my first live educational conference online through EdTechTalk. The conference is called “Teachers Teaching Teachers” and takes place every Wednesday night. I did not join the group via video, but rather just watched/listened to the other participants and participated through a live chat feature....

It took me a while to catch up to what was being discussed. Participants were throwing around the term “Youth Voices” and I thought at first that it was just a cool catch phrase for high school kids who were blogging. It wasn’t until i joined the live chat that I got a better idea of what Youth Voices is. Youth Voices, it turns out, is a huge site where the main purpose is to offer a space for youth to participate in discussion. It is a place where youth can post their thoughts and comment on other youth’s thoughts....

One of the discussions among the video participants revolved around how teachers should/are assessing their student’s contributions on Youth Voices. One educator shared how she is setting guidelines for how much/what her students need to contribute to Youth Voices within a specific time frame. For example, she will stipulate that her students need to write one post and make one comment within a week, and if they do both they get the marks for it. This particular educator works at a school in the Bronx and has found that participating in Youth Voices has empowered her students to have their voices heard. She noted how much time and effort can be put into a short comment, because the students are very aware of their online presence and ensuring they present themselves appropriately.

... It was an interesting experience to view it. I think the biggest thing I got out of the experience was that I was also able to network with educators from far and wide- always a positive when you are working on developing your professional learning network.

... I would love to come back to join in a conversation in the future, especially if I am looking for information specifically related to the topic being discussed. I am curious to know whether there are any live educator chats/conferences specifically for Early Childhood Educators. If you know of one, pass it on!

Click Read more to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #282 Detox: An Adrenaline Jolt to Your Soul with James Folkestad, Monika Hardy and 3 students 2.1.12


On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers http://teachersteachingteachers.org/?feed=rss2, Monika Hardy and Paul Allison discuss "Detox," a reflective practice that they have been inviting students to do in their different contexts.

Monika has been doing Detox with her students for a couple of years http://labconnections.blogspot.com/p/what-is-detox.html

teachers282Recently, Paul started asking his students to reflect on their work, dreams, thoughts, and learning on Youth Voices: http://youthvoices.net/channel/31618

Monika and Paul are joined in this conversation by a co-conspirator with Monika and a researcher of Detox James Folkestad, from Colorado State University.

We also get the perspective of youths from two of Paul's high school students Evelyn Salazar and (on the phone) Shamar Smith. In addition there are valuable insights from 7th Grader Kelsey Shelhart and her father Scott Shelhart as well as Fred Mindlin.

After listening to this podcast, you might be inspired to try something similar in your classroom or perhaps your students are already doing this kind of reflection on who they are, what they are doing, what they dream could happen, what they are noticing, and what connections they are making.

Either way, whether you are starting something new or continuing a valuable process in your classroom, please let us know about it. We'd love to hear if "detox" is spreading virally or "scaling across trans-locally" to use some of the language that Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze have given us in their book Walk Our Walk On:

Taking things to scale doesn’t happen vertically through one-size-fits-all replication strategies... experiments move horizontally, scaling across villages and nations, trans-locally, as many diverse people learn from their discoveries and are inspired to try their own.
( http://www.walkoutwalkon.net/mexico )
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Teachers Teaching Teachers #279 -Turning "Be You" into "Be Us" with Fred Mindlin, Chad Sansing, Kelsey, Rahul Deodhar - 1.11.12

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers we are joined by:

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Chris Sloan,

Monika Hardy

Fred Mindlin

Chad Sansing,

Scott Shelhart

Paul Allison,

Kelsey Shelhart, and

Rahul Deodhar

In addition to getting to know each other better, on this episode, we also brainstorm possible questions for Deborah Frieze's visit on the next episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers.
Click Read more to see a copy of the chat that was happening during the webcast.

Teachers Teaching Teachers #278 - Maybe Detox is a Curriculum - 1.4.12

On this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers, learn more about the co-hosts of our webcast, +Chris Sloan @csloan, +monika hardy@monk51295, and +Paul Allison @paulallison 

Recently, Monika had a meeting with Jared Polis, U.S. Representative for Colorado’s 2nd congressional districthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Polis . She shared with him her efforts in Loveland, CO at the Be You house and http://labconnections.blogspot.com . Perhaps this could become a true experimental lab to the state. “Perhaps we might get funding per census, as we crowdsource communities of practice.” Monika explains more, and gives a deeper history of the work she has been doing over the past four years.

Paul has recently updated a guide he uses to organize a passion-based curriculum with students using http://youthvoices.net and he would love thoughts about this document as well: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1eqLUXP6TXxrtor-HnXOobZEVmwTMfex9TxOlnN5Z3iU This guide, which animates Paul’s classroom is part of a wonderful collection on NWP’s Digital Is: http://digitalis.nwp.org/collection/assessing-multimedia-compositions and Paul explains it in this resource on NWP’s Digital Is: http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/1259 

Chris talks about a survey he recently conducted with his students who are also using Youth Voices.

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Teachers Teaching Teachers #264 - A Rizomatic Revolution Blossoms in Colorado - 9.14.11

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If you were to create a space where learning would happen the way it does on the Internet, what would it look like? That's what Monika Hardy has been thinking about and doing for the last four years. And now she is working with a group of people to produce a book about their work at the Innovation Lab.

Monika has begun to co-host Teachers Teaching Teachers over the past several weeks. She has modeled listening without an agenda and welcomed many new, inspiring voices to the show. On this episode Monika and her colleagues, Amy Lewark (with her son) and Jodhbir Singh have a conversation about the topics they are writing bout in their "quiet revolution." Please take some time to read the text. They would love comments.

This is what Monika wrote recently on her own learning about learning on Lab Connections:

Previous to the last few years, I have been tinkering with teaching math within the public school system. Alongside, I have been listening to people, kids in particular, but all ages. A common thread, most people often share a sense of stress. They talk about being anxious for the end of the school/work day, or the end of the school/work week, or summer, or graduation, etc.

About 4 years ago, because of my reading so much of Seth Godin, I joined his online Triiibe. It was there that I met up with a small group discussing school. From that group I connected with one person in particular. We spent the next 6 months skyping, practically 24/7. We had so many similar ideas about life, school, stress. It felt like I learned more in that 6 months than I had in the previous years of my life. Whether or not it was more, it was most definitelydifferent. I think I can describe it best as a learning from my soul. It was something I couldn't not do. I was hungry, craving to know more and more. How could we change up the way we spend the hours in our days?

That relationship/learning spurred in me three things in particular, that has been ongoing for the last four years now: a reading frenzy; a revolution of thinking facilitated by twitter; and an intense listening to youth.

Two years ago, kids crafted/designed a four year plan of disruption, while piloting a self-directed math course. [If you're so inclined, see a bird's eye viewof that unfolding, and/or more specifics to that first pilot year of self-directed math.]

We just finished year one of the four year plan (2010-2011). The Innovation Lab was a space within a public highschool, where 50 kids from the district (all ages, but mostly highschool, and mostly the highschool where we were located) came for one or more classes to practice/experiment with self-directed learning per passion, rather than curriculum/standards. We dabbled in game design, portugese, permaculture, homelessness, human trafficking, sign language, hebrew, dog training, neuroscience, pedagogy.

Enjoy!

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