Moodsaic

These thoughts are mine, and aren't representative of Mosaic as a whole, but I do know that I'm not the only teacher in Mosaic that's feeling this at least a little:

Many (or at least some) students aren't doing much. They're not getting our content. We compare them to the students in our "normal" classes and their progress, and as content specialists, we're frustrated. We air that frustration and try to fix the problem by starting to create a blended learning environment (using the district supported Moodle LMS) where we can get our content to our students online without the formal classroom setup of traditional schooling.

Are we being too impatient? We "knew" about what Shawn Cornally calls airlock before we even started, but is our frustration evidence of not really knowing about airlock? Before the year even started, I worried about what I have seen to be the tendency of many teenagers to prefer to "not do" than "to do," and I was always comforted by the airlock idea. I thought, They will not do and not do and not do until they organically come to the realization that not doing is not fulfilling, and then they'll get off their butts and do. Is 4 or 5 weeks enough time for students to come to that realization? Have we filled their time with doing that isn't quite meaningful enough so that they're not given the chance to come to that realization? Or is that comforting thought I had in the first place foolish and really it is our jobs as their teachers/coaches to light a fire under them?

Mosaic is not Iowa BIG and it really can't be as part of a public high school starting with more than 10 times the students BIG did. They have to hit all of their core standards and get almost all credits to graduate through their projects, through Mosaic. No matter what, Spanish is hard to work into their projects (especially with most students starting at very low or 0 proficiency) without instruction outside of their projects. I'm encouraged by being able to help students increase their proficiency at their own pace through personally designed online courses blended with my instruction.

Mosaic is quickly evolving and I am lucky to work with so many great thinkers, problem solvers and hackers. We're going to get this going, and it's going to be as great as we imagined because the team of teachers working on this are pros at modeling the resiliency that we hope to impart to our students. I think we (and by we I mostly mean I) need to model some extra patience at this point, too.

Keep on keepin' on

Mosaic progress continues, and as can be expected when lots of challenges hit incredibly bright and creative people, TONS of growth and development has happened since the start of the year. It's hard to be such a small part of something so exciting. This great post made me feel like I missed an important meeting today, and I have been struggling to squeeze my content into others' projects to get myself out there in the bigger group as much as I can (thanks, Shaun and Kayla!).

Still, I'm able to say that while I've been along as much as possible for the challenges, I have taken part in bits of the growth as well. I'm finally getting to place where I'm feeling better about what Spanish is looking like in Mosaic. I used youcanbook.me to set up a schedule and am (slowly but surely) having all of my students meet with me one-on-one. I'm using this time to get to know them, to make sure we're on the same page, and to encourage them to take the lead in their language learning as much as possible.

I told them that I want them producing something once a week in Spanish, no matter what. It can be anything at all, as long as it's in Spanish. I pointed them to my Spanish 3's blogs and blog assingment for inspiration. Their options for this that I came up with (I assured them that they could come up with their own as well) were a blog/vlog, posting to our Google+ Community, or emailing me. The newbies were told that a translator was okay as long as they used their brains too, and they could be assured that I would follow up and ask them what words or phrases they learned from each post/writing. I also created Drive folders for all of them using gClass Folders and got them started creating their own personal vocab list so that their learning is based on what is important to them. I ended with asking them for input on how we could incorporate Spanish into what they are doing in Mosaic and just a mini-convo in Spanish. I haven't met with all students, but I have loved connecting so far.

I was inspired by one of my students that got very excited about the blog post. She sees ways to incorporate Spanish everywhere, and came to my Spanish 3 class today just because she wanted to. She was so excited about the blog idea that she set it up today (same day) and told me that she can't wait to start reflecting in Spanish on it about her day to day life in her first year in a public school. #win

Tomorrow we have a seminar in which we meet one of our exchange students from Spain. We've been preparing all week by going over a profile that he wrote for himself and brainstorming questions and comments for him. I can't wait to reflect on how it goes tomorrow to improve for our next student spotlight!

This is for you, Ryan: #thatkidneedstofigureoutthecalendar #waityou'reholdingphysicsclassinthisroom? #atsomepointwe'llbespeakingSpanish #mosaicisawesome #fearprojectscaresthe!outtame

Mosaico - Challenges and Successes

One of the challenges I'm having with Mosaic so far is also one of the successes. Seminars have been going well and students are responding well to my ideas for how Spanish will look this year, but everything is moving slowly. "Go slow to go fast" is one of our mantras in the group, and that alone is a challenge for me. Once I have a goal (ie: getting a specific set of students more proficient in Spanish), I want to just do it! But getting the kids rounded up for seminars is part of the trouble: I offered 4 of the same "Get to know you" seminars last week. Of my 22 kids, 19 made it to at least one. That means that there were 3 of my students I wasn't able to connect with AT ALL in an entire week! 19 out of 22 isn't bad, but with four options I really hoped they would make at least one. I definitely can't afford to offer the same seminar 4 times in a week with only one period dedicated to Mosaic. I found I spent a lot of energy tracking kids down whom I don't yet know to tell them to do things that they should already be doing in Mosaic- checking their email and Project Foundry for tasks I sent them. I'm slowly getting to know them, though, and they're slowly getting used to the expectations we have of them, so this is improving.

Another challenge that arises from this is the lack of tangible consequence if they do fail to check and complete tasks, check their email or attend seminars. I have a fear that my students will just decide that Spanish credit isn't important enough to them and I will end up with 1 or 2 students total at the end of the year. I also feel a ton of pressure to make every seminar unforgettable, perfectly leveled and über-engaging so that this doesn't happen. When I get wrapped up in my fears though, I need to remind myself that those come along with risk-taking and nothing rewarding in my life so far has come without a little risk.

One thing that has gone really well is the Google+ Community I set up for Spanish. I've been posting popular items, such as famous Spaniards doing the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and infographs about ebola, for students to respond and reflect on what they grasped from each. This week, their task is to interact at least twice there, and the challenge is to find something in Spanish to share themselves.

Seminars:
I have 2 planned this week for each level. One they have an option to attend during first or second for a half hour on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the other is required on Thursday and they have only one option. That's a total of 6 seminars that I'm offering. For those without experience, I'll be dappling in TPRS and using a fun little chant/song/game called "Manzanita del Perú" to learn the basics of asking and answering basic questions, and following up on the in the second newbie seminar. For the experienced ones, Seminar 1 will be a brain flow of the structures they know to talk about themselves to review, and then we'll play a game called "Where the wind blows" in English. Seminar 2 for those with experience will be a day for us to go to the library together and pick out novels to read this term. There are only 5 each of the novels available, so they will be reading mostly different things. I'll probably do seminars based on the specific books they're reading starting next week so that we can start the books together.

Future Seminar ideas:

• Experienced students develop a lesson for the newbies
• I model a cooking show type presentation and the experienced students create their own to teach each other structures and newbies foods.
• Novel specific seminars
• Exchange student highlights- we have a lot of Spanish speaking students and exchange students; I think I'll highlight one a week with a profile on the Google+ Community and have the experienced students come with a few questions based on this information, and then have a Seminar with that student introducing him/herself and chatting.
• Blog, Vlog, and Blog carnivals- hopefully eventually student created blogs in Spanish, as I'm doing in my other classes. The seminar would be a chat about blog highlights from the week or month, or a blog carnival.

Mosaico - Dreaming Big

I follow a blog called "Spanish and Illinois" by Dr. Ann Abbott who teaches some really interesting Spanish courses at the university level, including classes for business and community service. This recent post shows part of where I hope to take Mosaic Spanish "classes" at the high school level once my students gain a little more proficiency. It discusses how she is making her business class more real - bringing real professionals into the classroom and having her students prepare real products for the real business world, rather than centering instruction around fictions created for practice. Some adjustments need to be made for Mosaic, since my students are not adults and are working from within a public school, but I think really engaging my students in the Spanish speaking world is doable.

One of my biggest struggles, though, is how often I feel like I say "when they get more proficient." This is an important balance because a real, Spanish-speaking businessperson probably wouldn't have a lot of patience for a 14-year-old that has a hard time even introducing herself. However, I need to figure out ways to keep it real even for my newbies. I think I'll start by sharing these big goals and visions of my own that I have for them and their Spanish so that they can see where I honestly believe they can go with their Spanish. Then, I want to provide them with as much information and as many avenues to explore Spanish locally and globally as I can so as to empower them to figure out how they want to authentically interact with a new multilingual world. And who knows? If I can inspire them to orient themselves toward a big goal like developing business relationships with Spanish speakers in the area, perhaps their proficiency grow way faster than in the classroom which by its nature has to be a more fabricated environment than the Mosaic one.

And so it begins...

And this time I really say that enthusiastically!  Today was, as @ryanmcclintock called it, Day 0 of Mosaic. I've come to appreciate the fact that we're figuring this out as we go, which isn't exactly my personality nor is it how I was trained (backwards planning?). I think it's true transformation though, and that is what makes it so exciting. There's a possibility that the Mosaic product will barely resemble the education world from which it evolved. This is not a time for fear, even though I predict that this year will be full of challenges and setbacks.

Roger Ebert said, "Start. Don't look back. If at the end it doesn't meet your hopes, start again. Now you know more about your hopes."

We've started.

Grades, Creativity, and Frustration

Yesterday right after school, I saw one of my prior students in the hall. After our usual pleasantries in Spanish (which, with almost all of my students, consist of only "¿Cómo estás?" and "Bien, ¿y tú?" - another thing to work on...), I asked her if she was going on to Spanish 3 next year. Her answer nearly broke my heart and actually did leave me speechless:

Translating Spanish into Mosaic: Initial challenges and ideas

When I first expressed interest in Mosaic, I told my principal I would like to start with a small group of students that already had experience with Spanish. Our feeder offers Level 1 Spanish spread out over 2 years; my thought was that I would have students that had either one or both years of middle school Spanish completed when they walked into Mosaic. No such luck. The demographics just aren't there: we don't have enough students enrolled that meet that criterion.

Enter challenge number 1:

Brain Rules: Exercise and CV's Mosaic Collective

Image by "PublicDomainPictures". link

I just started Brain Rules by John Medina, and it already has me thinking.

The first section of the book is about brain power and exercise. The information - that in essence, exercise provides more oxygen to the brain and therefore makes it work better - wasn't new to me, but it was something I had brushed off in the past as implausible to incorporate regularly in my classroom. I got nervous thinking about taking 30 students on a walk and expecting them all to get the benefit of exercise AND learn Spanish. With CV's Mosaic Collective though, it seems like anything is possible!

Castle View's Mosaic Collective... the muddling begins [for me]

Image licensed by Albert Bridge under Creative Commons. link

The name of this post is key... Amazing teachers have been refining and developing the Mosaic Collective, an academy alternative, for well over 3 years I believe and I just found my way into the beautiful mess. Michael Schneider wrote a lovely post describing the project titled "What is Mosaic?" if you're curious about the basics; I thought it better to let the pro explain than the newbie.