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