Stencyl Project Completed - What's It To Ya? Flash Game

I am finally calling this flash version of What's It To Ya? a finished project.  I learned a lot and I'll write some reflections that might be of interest to teachers soon.  I will also write up a lesson plan to use the game in the classroom as a writing prompt.

I'm not a professional and I know there are lots of little things I could do to improve this.  It's probably as good as I care to get it (functional as a classroom activity).  If you find a bug or have a suggestion to improve it, though, feel free to contact me at mpetty39@gmail.com.

Creative Problem Solving - A Map for Learning

I've been exploring the idea of creative problem solving as the big picture for all of education.  It can be considered the why behind everything we have to teach in schools.

To approach learning this way, step one would be to develop a language that consistently refers to the need for creative problem solving.  As individuals, members of society or inhabitants of planet Earth, we will always be faced with problems.  Personal success will depend on our ability to contribute to the process of problem solving.  It is as relevant to us in the large and small scale of our existence as much as anything.

Step two would be to identify where, in this problem solving process, any current learning falls.

Whether it's a topic in a content area or a skill for communication or technology, it can fit somewhere in the map.  Most likely a specific topic or skill could fit in many places.  The map provides a consistent picture that we can return to between subjects or grade levels and extend into the world beyond the school.

So besides just pointing out where the skill learned in today's Algebra class might be useful, we can also indicate where occupations lie.  If we are talking about how to creatively solve problems, we are always talking about "real life".  

I made the picture below as a draft for a visual display, but the essential flow is as follows:

Finding Resources

1. Better define the Problem
2. Gather tools or resources for continuing the process

Develop Solutions

1. Incorporate existing knowledge, skills and tools
2. Form new ideas - This is the heart of the process, where connections are formed.
3. Evaluate options

Present Solutions

1. Who needs to know?
2. How can we best tell them?

I plan to elaborate on this a lot in the weeks ahead, but here are three things worth noting now:

• There is a circular flow in the map between the main areas.  Notice that most solutions are going to end up as tools available to us for further problem solving.
• There are countless problems to solve throughout the problem solving process.  In one degree or another, every step of a significant problem will likely contain smaller versions of finding, developing and presenting solutions.
• It could be argued that creativity and problem solving are the same thing.  Then creative problem solving is nearly redundant.  I prefer to use the term to emphasize the importance of creativity throughout every stage of this process.  It's the oil of the machine and we can see the whole system grind to a halt in formal learning structures when it is absent.

Advice to a new teacher...if I had a time machine

I really enjoyed Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon.  In it he gives advice about creativity by thinking about what he would tell his younger self.

That prompted me to consider what advice I would share with myself when I just started teaching.  Now, after 18 years in public education, what would be the most important tips I'd pass along?  I boiled it down to the list of six things below.  They're personal, but I think they have some application beyond my own life.

To set the scene I have to admit that the first half of my teaching experience was rough for me.  I did not enjoy much about teaching high school math.  There was plenty to be thankful for, no doubt, and a lot of students liked my classes.  I learned a ton about myself and I have some great relationships that came out of that time.  But dealing with difficult students and seeing my inability to reach all of them was tough.

I never could distance myself and simply say, "Well, I tried."  I felt like a failure many days.  

So here's a short list of what I wish I could have told myself when I was 25 years old, starting out in my career.

1)  Be realistic about what you're getting into.  The students you will be asked to teach are coming in with poor math skills and a poor attitude toward the subject.  Very few of them will see math class as the positive experience that you did.  Be prepared for this!  Set realistic goals of what you can accomplish in those first years as you are learning to be a good teacher.

2)  Take the work seriously, but don't forget about the relationships you are building everyday with your students.  You tend to get focused on the job and forget about people, but they are most important.  Even the difficult ones will respect you for your hard work if they also know you care about them.

Years after the class is over you'll see some of them.  They'll remember that you cared and worked hard more than they ever will the details of lessons, rough days, all those assignments or the grades they got.

3)  Start a game club right away.  That love you always had for games will be a highlight of your time working with students.  A lot of them won't fit in anywhere else, but they'll hang out with you at lunch.  Buy a few more of those games no one else has heard of and use them to connect with the students as much as you can.  Meet every couple weeks or so after school for gaming.  You'll like that extra-curricular work a lot more than organizing the prom.  (For the good of all, tell them you don't want to be a class sponsor!)

4)  Keep up on the technology.  You're kind of a traditionalist and in the debate of calculators versus no calculators you'll be tempted to keep it old school.  Instead, remember that many kids can learn the concept better if they come at it differently than you did.  It doesn't have to be all pencil and paper and a ton of steps.

Keep an open mind on that and use technology to give them a conceptual understanding useful for problem solving. When the principal asks you to try more with technology, do it.  Doors will open for you and you'll enjoy the change as the best years of your career.

5)  Assign creative projects, even in math.  Your department will focus almost exclusively on the state MEAP test, but don't let that drain your classroom of creativity.  You'll be busy and it will be easier to just keep it simple and routine, but things like the video assignment, personalized story problems and the artistic projects are vital.  Keep developing those assignments.  Add a new one every semester so that when students think back to your class, they remember those things they made.  You'll like it best when students say you're not like the other math teachers.

6)  Remember that you felt called to teach.  In frustrating times you'll think you should have gone into programming instead of working with kids who don't want to be there.

All those visions of being an amazing teacher will be shattered by reality and you'll think you misunderstood what you were supposed to do with your life.  But just like you did that day when you got the unexpected call and they offered you the job, trust that God knows what he's doing.  You are supposed to be there.

You won't reach everyone personally or with the math, but you'll connect with many students.  You'll remind them that life is exciting when chasing a dream.  They'll take notes when you talk about what true success looks like and many will thank you.  Among other things, you were called to pass on those messages.  Let them flow through all aspects of your work.

Here's the key to success you'll eventually share with them:

Always do your best

At what's most important

Whether you feel like it or not

You and many others will be thankful for the lesson.

Note about my interactive games on Promethean Planet

I submitted a request this week to remove most of my game flipcharts from Promethean Planet.  There was a problem with the terms of use and it was my fault for not looking into it fully before posting them.  The folks at Promethean Planet were helpful, so I appreciate that.

I will continue to use their site to host my own flipchart games (those not based on games from other publishers) and to announce any new flipcharts.

For now, most of my flipcharts can be found on the new Games page I added to this blog.


I will be updating links throughout this blog so that they direct to the correct locations, but for now most links in other posts will be broken.

At the moment it looks like they actually removed all my resources from Promethean Planet.  That complicates things further, but I'm hoping they restore the other ones soon.  I don't know how long it will take them to clear that up, but if at any point you can't find a resource you are looking for, just contact me at mpetty39@gmail.com.

The Three P's of Success - What makes a full life?

From 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ex_magician/4587972292/ 

When I taught high school seniors in a class about life goals they would often talk about wanting to "live life to the full".  The phrase turned up on mission statements and final presentations but it was rarely defined.  


What does it mean to live a full life?  


Certainly a full life would be defined differently in specifics by each of us, but I didn't like that being an excuse to get away with a throwaway line.  


Wasn't there something we could agree on as a basis for discussion or written reflection?


I knew from their conversations that their vision of a full life looked like crazy vacations with friends over spring break and having a nice house and car.  I hoped to get them beyond superficial dreams that would cost more than they realized (almost all of them lived with parents).  I wanted to get them thinking about responsibility too.

After weeks of reading and hearing their thoughts, I put together a few activities and presentations that I called the 3 P's of Success.  I could tell from engagement and comments that it connected with many of them.  I'm not teaching that class any longer, but the themes still are apparent in my work.

Here are three P's with a little elaboration.
Passion - A student can spend a lot of time in school without experiencing much passion.  It's a shame that I was discovering this while working with seniors, kids that had been in the system for almost 13 years.  For this "P", it was an exploration of figuring out what good things they liked to do.  I developed a few questions to let them write about that.

________

Purpose - If passion is what they liked to do, purpose is what they should do.  While our passions almost certainly come into play, purpose is what we're meant to do even if we don't really feel like it in moment.  It's the piece I think students were forgetting when they envisioned lives of fun and material possessions.  


It's also a realm that can touch on matters of faith.  A lot of teachers won't go there, but I refused to back away from this vital concept that I know is an important component in the lives of many successful adults.

This was my approach.  Using thought provoking questions I encouraged the students to consider their purpose in writing.  I told the classes that for some questions, this topic will bring up matters of faith, religion or spirituality for some people.  I made it clear that they were in no way required to include those elements in answers.  At the same time, however, they should feel completely comfortable expressing those thoughts on the assignment.

For writings like this, I never cared if my students expressed very different religious beliefs or if they had no beliefs at all.  I just wanted them to consider the basis of their worldviews and how they affected their purpose.  Many of the comments I read from students as they expressed this important part of their lives surprised me in a good way.  I concluded that they needed to consider their lives in this way.  I decided I would never rob students of the chance to express their personal beliefs, but that I would encourage it in non-threatening ways.

________

Potential - Passion fuels us and purpose sets the direction, but potential is the final measure.  Did we achieve as much as we should?  Of course, potential is impossible to define in detail because our skills will always improve and often we'll be surprised by what we can do.  I just encouraged students to dream about what they could accomplish.  I hoped it would be the exciting start to a never ending process of discovery.

Here are two resources related to these ideas.  I discovered them long after teaching the class, but they provided some thoughts as I continue to develop my work:

• This is a great blog post about finding one's passion in three steps.  It combines the three elements together in different ways than I do, but it's well worth the read if this sounds useful to your work in teaching.  I particularly like the Three Movie Exercise for use with teens.
• And check out Seth Godin's book Poke the Box.  It is a quick read.  He has a few paragraphs on p. 64 about why he believes it is our moral obligation to seize an opportunity.  It's a great thought for discussion and it fits well with the three P's.

I'll be glad to hear other thoughts you might have on this or activities you use with students.