Book Review: Coloring Outside the Lines

I was immediately drawn to this book by Roger Schank upon reading its cover text: "If you want to raise kids with a passion for learning... don't confuse intelligence with straight A's. / don't let your kid become a homework machine. / keep your child away from tyrannical coaches. / don't assume the teacher is always right." This statement seemed right up my alley--a chaotic good approach to the educational system, which I always enjoy.

Well, it was fine, I suppose, just not quite up to the high standards I was expecting.

To begin with, the audience Schank had written for was definitively parents. Well, that's fair. A second look at that same cover text should have tipped me off. No big deal. I'll be a parent soon enough, anyway, and I can always use another resource to point parents in the direction of.

What's more, however, was what seemed to be a lack of content to spark my interest. To be fair, perhaps perhaps it was more groundbreaking when it was published in 2000. Fourteen years is not really that long ago, considering that last year I read The First Days of School, which was 23 years old, but still. And it's not that the age of the book was very apparent while reading (except for the chapter about computer-based learning and some comments bad-mouthing video games), just that most of the ideas he presented were things that I'd already considered or discussed, either here or in college.

But again, more resources to give to parents is always a good thing, so I kept reading.

Schank's main point throughout was to convey six character traits that "smart kids" need to develop while growing up: verbal proficiency, creativity, analytical skill, gumption, ambition, and inquisitiveness. He gives examples of how to bring each of these traits out. (He relies heavily on playing sports as an easy solution, though briefly mentioning how play and non-organized games do this better.)

He also makes a firm stance that parents of "smart kids" should not strongly enforce getting good grades at school, rather to find interests outside of school and pursue them in order to find an area of expertise and niche that will eventually become a unique career.

Here are a few highlights I made while reading:

If you want to know where your child's talents and interests lie, pay attention to his questions. The more questions he asks in a given area, the more likely that's where his passion is and where his career should be. -- p. 16

If you want to raise a smarter, more original-thinking kid, tell them the truth: School is a stupid game, but a good college won't accept you unless you take and do reasonably well on all these math tests even though you know you want to be a criminal lawyer when you grow up. So buckle down and get good grades. B's are fine. But don't think for a moment that your grades have much to do with how smart you are or how successful you'll be in a career. -- p. 19-20

The worst thing you can do to a child with an idea to express is to tell him to sit down and be quiet. -- p. 23

History is ... about putting kids in situations where they have to reason out complex issues and solve problems faced by people throughout history. Role playing and gamelike situations would be a much better way to teach the subject. -- p. 30

...I defined creativity as a willingness to come up with and pursue one hundred ideas knowing that ninety-nine of them are stupid. -- p. 33

Motivation is crucial to developing analytical abilities ... People learn from their mistakes in logic only when it's important for them to get it right. Only then does the analytical process they learn stay with them. -- p. 34

Communicate to your child that you only care about one grade. Tell her something to this effect: "I'm not particularly concerned if you bring home B's in most of your subjects or even if you receive C's in one or two of them. What I do care about is that you bring home one A per semester in the subject you really like." -- p. 39-40

My kids went to bed earlier than any of their friends until just before adolescence. ... This rule in our house ensured that they'd wake up early ... when my wife and I were still sleeping. They were not allowed to wake us up, but they were encouraged to do anything they wanted (except watch television). This gave them a few hours to themselves each day, and during this time they were tremendously inventive. Unable to call friends or play in a group, my children were left to their own devices. My son, who became an urban planner, drew cities. My daughter, who has worked as a professional writer, read books. Though they sometimes played together and acted out wildly imaginative scenarios, they often played on their own. -- p. 45

Learning takes place when people fail at something they're interested in, ask questions about it, fail again, ask more questions, and persist in doing it until they get it right. -- p. 51

Most children (and most people in general) don't ask questions to receive answers. They ask them because they're intrigued, puzzled, and provoked. They want the chance to bounce ideas off an expert, to get some guidance so they can find the answers themselves. -- p. 54

When they're faced with a problem or a challenge, they think, "I know what to do here; I've had this experience before." This cognition isn't always conscious; it's sometimes described as intuition or instinct. ... the more diverse your child's memories, the more likely she is to be reminded of the right memory at the right time. -- p. 64-65

...telling a story forces us to think more clearly. ... Verbalizing stories facilitates the mind's labeling and retrieval process. If we don't articulate our stories, they float unlabeled in the nether regions of our brain and are difficult to retrieve at appropriate times. If we do articulate them, we can readily retrieve an old story that's relevant to a new situation. ... what all children do when they tell these stories is make sense of their experiences. By talking about what took place in their lives--even when they embellish their stories or substitute what they wish would have happened for what really did happen--they acquire usable memories. -- p. 66-69

Older siblings often take the words right out of their younger siblings' mouths. They make it easy for them to talk, and this is one reason that the youngest child in a family is usually the slowest to talk. To counter this effect, spend more time alone with each child. This doesn't mean prohibiting them from playing together. But make sure you carve out time where you have conversations with each child independent of his siblings. -- p. 94

...our minds reflexively erase details when we don't talk about them. When we tell stories about our experiences, however, we embed them in our memories. In effect, we're talking to ourselves as much as to another person. -- p. 95

The philosopher Wittgenstein said, "All creative thought takes place in three B's: bed, bus, and bath." In other words, it takes place when our minds are not focused on an activity, when they're not consciously driving towards a particular goal. ... give small children something "mindless" they can do that will give them the chance to let their minds wander. ... give her a simple task, such as playing with blocks or cutting pieces of paper, that requires almost no thought. -- p. 118-119

Successful entrepreneurs, pioneering scientists, and other high-achieving professionals break the rules not because they're anarchists but because they feel the old rules don't work as well as the new ones they've created. They first evaluate the rules, decide which ones are viable and which ones are not, and invent new ones to replace the latter.  This is the process you need to teach your children... how to break rules intelligently. -- p. 141

...obsessive behavior may not make sense to parents or may seem a big investment in a trivial subject, but it's how kids develop expertise. The well-diversified child simply knows a little bit about a lot of things; the single-minded child becomes an expert. ... Expertise bequeaths self-confidence to kids. When they know a subject intimately, they're much more willing to take risks within that subject area, to speak their minds and stand up for themselves. -- p. 142-143

...it's important to teach a child to aim high, but not too high. A perfectionist mentality doesn't allow for failure, and failure...is a key component of learning. ...model imperfect behavior. -- p. 156-157

One of the biggest complaints of graduate students is expressed this way:" The problem with this field is that all of the answers are known." In fact, there is plenty left to learn in most fields; they simply need to ask the questions from a different perspective. -- p. 173

Responding to an inquiry by telling him to come back later ... devalues a child's curiosity. -- p. 174 (emphasis my own)

Children should see life as a buffet and be encouraged to try anything that interests them. This philosophy helps children find their niche in the world and become an expert at their chosen profession. -- p. 177

What a young person chooses to read often provides insights into a future field of study or a career. -- p. 216

It's always interesting to look back and see what stood out most to me while reading. I really enjoy revisiting my highlights and notes, as it serves as a small window into what I, personally, found most striking about an article or book. (Hmm. This is a thought I've had many times before and might also be something I want to explore more thoroughly later on.)

One overarching concept that I kept pausing to consider throughout the Coloring Outside the Lines but not expressly shown in the highlights is that of expectation failure, the learning that occurs when something fails to meet our expectations. Schank illustrates this best with an anecdote of a small child filled with questions when he meets someone remarkably tall for the first time. This is a particularly enlightening story because the archetypal situation of being embarrassed by a child asking many non-politically-correct questions is so pervasive in our culture. Schank encourages a look into that child's mind. That man doesn't meet the standards of what I've come to expect. I need to ask questions in order to create a new set of standards which incorporates him. 

Also, because I'll be teaching high school English very soon, one passage was insightful to me:

...there's the argument that reading great works of literature elevates children's minds and helps them develop an aesthetic sense. That's true only if the books are germane to a child's life. It's difficult for a fourteen-year-old to appreciate the beauty of a Shakespearean sonnet if he views it as an artifact of Elizabethan England and can't see its relevance to the issues he's facing in his relationships. You can force children to read books, compel them to talk about the issues the books raise and write the proper words about these books on essay tests. But none of this is internalized, and it is forgotten as quickly as it is "learned." ...

Schools should allow each kid in a class to read a different book--a book that that specific child is excited about. The assignment would be for each child to excite his classmates about his particular choice. They would engage in one-on-one discussions with each other, write their feelings about the book for others to read, and so on. The literary qualitites of the book as well as the issues it raised would stick in a child's mind far better than a book chosen because it's a classic... -- p. 26-26

In fact, it ties in nicely with an idea I've been throwing around all summer about how I will teach literature next year. The ideas didn't match exactly, but it was helpful to play around with and encouraged me to make some definitive decisions. More on this soon!

And, finally, I was struck by some interesting concept ideas for schools. I'm very fond of dreaming up ideas like these, so I was impressed when I read Schank's:

The best models for schools are Ph.D. programs at universities. This is one-on-one education at its best, where professors guide graduate students, helping them pursue research on topics that the students have chosen and find fascinating. Rather than lecturing and forcing them to take multiple choice tests, these professors ask provocative questions, suggest different directions, provide feedback, and serve as sounding boards for the students' ideas. -- p. 41

If schools wanted to encourage natural ambition, they would allow children to set goals they really cared about. One student would spend the semester reading every James Bond book. Another would work at mastering a difficult Mozart piece on the violin. A third would spend months in the science lab attempting to produce a complex chemical reaction. A fourth would listen to every Beastie Boys CD and memorize all the lyrics. These goals all flow from a child's interest, and they would be self determined and largely self-achieved (with a teacher acting as a guide and mentor). -- p. 161-162

Ideally the school day would be equally divided into three segments. After working at the computer, the kids would meet and discuss what happened during their simulations. This discussion is important, not simply because it conforms to our learning model (telling stories about one's experiences) but because it can help kids develop new interests or take their own interests in new directions. The one-on-one exchanges between peers--with the teacher acting as a facilitator rather than the font of all knowledge--capitalizes on children's innate desire to talk about what excites them. The final third of the day would be devoted to a real world activity that parallels the subject of the student's computer simulation. If someone did a simulation related to building things, the activity might involve spending some time as an intern in an architect's office. -- p. 227-228

What neat ideas!

In conclusion, Coloring Outside the Lines did provide me with a bit of insight, though it wasn't as full of it as I had hoped. Mostly, it will be a resource to provide to parents. Schank has a number of other projects that might be interesting to look through, including Engines for Education, "story-centered curricula" (computer simulations) for high schools; Socratic Arts, computer simulations for businesses, government, and post-secondary schools; and Alternative Learning, what appears to be a PBL curriculum for elementary schools. More stuff to explore!

Educational Magazines and the Case Against Textbooks

Last year was my first year teaching, and I was pretty lost most of the time. One thing I regret doing was automatically accepting and teaching from the provided textbooks (mostly MacMillan/McGraw Hill stuff). Sure, I improvised when and where I could, bringing in additional material where necessary, but we still did the textbook thing. I promised my principal that we would get all the way through the textbooks, and that we did. I pushed us through.

I'm not sure that the third graders got much from last year and our mutual trudge through Textbook Land. But that's okay, because I certainly did.

Want to know what lesson I learned? It will definitely come as a shock to you. It's this:

Children. Hate. Textbooks.

There, I said it. Surprised, aren't you? 

I know, whatever, Holly, this is a fact that everyone knows. But somewhere along the way, I got caught up in "doing my job" and forgot. So just to make sure that we're all on the same page, I thought it worthy of repeating.

Children find textbooks boring.

Somewhere within the first couple of months of school, the word mundane came up in someone's silent reading book, and we talked about it as a class. Having this word in their vocabulary, my students used this adjective to describe everything we did in the textbooks from then on.

What can we do with this information? We can first recognize that children that are bored or that are forced to do something they don't enjoy aren't learning as much as they could be. I would even argue that they're learning not much at all, or perhaps they're learning entirely the opposite lesson that you wish to convey, such as, "Science is boring and stupid, and I hate it."

Of course, I could use this opportunity to argue that any tool is only as useful as the one who uses it. Perhaps in the hands of a truly skillful teacher, a textbook wouldn't be so bad. But alas, I am not quite yet one of those, and I have the tendency to think that the teachers who use textbooks successfully are in the minority. I could be using this time to research how to properly engage students while also using a textbook, but that seems difficult and... well, kind of traditional and boring. So instead, I'll do what I do best and question the whole system.

Before I left the school, my principal asked for a recommendation on what to do about textbooks and curriculum for next year. Well! That was certainly one document I didn't mind typing up! I'm sure he was actually looking for something along the lines of, "This book is fine, but this other doesn't match Common Core standards. Here's a different one that I found that is CCSS aligned," but that's not what he got from me.

Instead, I recommended purging all textbooks in favor of subscriptions to educational magazines for all students.

There are a number of benefits. We'll start with what will make your administration happy--They are directly aligned with Common Core standards. (They have to be, in order to sell, these days, so that's an easy one.) CCSS urges an increasing amount of nonfiction in the classroom, and magazines provide age-appropriate nonfiction articles on a regular basis. 

On top of that, the articles typically relate in some way to current events, providing a good basis for authentic learning and discussions.

Got digital readers in your classroom? Perfect. A lot of magazine subscriptions can be delivered digitally. No digital readers? No worries, they also come in paper version.

But I think the most important point is that these magazines are specifically designed to attract students' attentions. Most have full color photographs with eye-catching headlines. They use authentic language that doesn't scare students away and also doesn't come off as trying too hard. (I know that in many instances, I tend to shy away from something designed specifically for children, but this isn't one of those instances. These magazines don't come off as patronizing or trying too hard to be cool, at least the good ones. They were designed properly.) As a para, I worked in a few classrooms that used educational magazines, and the students devoured them, cover to cover. Effective, indeed.

Alright, so what magazines am I talking about? Give us some examples. Here are the ones I found, though this may not be a comprehensive list:

• Time for Kids. This may currently be the most widely used educational subscription magazine, at least in my experience. I even remember getting these when I was in elementary school. Full color photographs. Different issues for different grades: K-1, 2, 3-4, and 5-6. Available in print or digital copy. Weekly issues. The content in these magazines is mostly current events, which are usually science or social studies, along with a little bit of fluff. Cost is $4.00 to $4.50, depending on how many copies you buy.
• Scholastic Classroom and News Magazines. (See all available.) A range of magazines for PreK through grade 12. Cross-curricular for younger students. Older students' issues are available for current events, language arts, science, math, fine arts, life skills, Spanish, French, and German. Issues are weekly, biweekly, or monthly. Prices range from $5 to $10 per issue. 
• Studies Weekly. Separate issues for Science, Social Studies, Health, Character Education, Heritage, and Math, and for each grade level, K through 6 (math only available for grades K through 2), though some grade level issues overlap. Color comic-style illustrations with the occasional photograph. Available in print or digital copy. Weekly issues (hence the name). Some are magazine style, others (specifically the older grades) are newspaper style. A specific selling point for this one is how it directly aligns with CCSS. I get the feeling that this one is all pre-written, no current events, and stays the same (or with minor adjustments) each year. So, a textbook with comic book illustrations, in a newspaper format. Huh. Some issues cost $1.75 each while others come in sets, $10.78 for 1-9 copies, $5.39 for more than 10 copies.

The other thing I recommended to my principal was using literature circles to teach language arts. I had an entire cabinet full of sets of books that I never touched, regretfully. 

Literature circles to teach language arts. Current educational magazines the introduce topics in science, social studies, and current events. Student-centered project-based-learning assignments that cover everything else (including math and writing). 

And we're still using textbooks, why?

An Initial Look into Exploring Emotional Intelligence with Teenagers

A teacher friend posted a link to this PBS Frontline clip about the teenage brain earlier this week, and I can't stop thinking about it. The most important point, in my opinion, was how, when shown images of adult faces expressing emotion, teenagers saw anger and shock where the adults saw fear. Further exploration of the interview with researcher Deborah Yurgelun-Todd finds that about half of the teenagers studied, slightly more boys than girls, incorrectly identified emotions that a full 100 percent of adults were able to identify.

What does this mean? I kept asking myself all morning. Is this usable information?

I definitely feel like I'd been presented with this information before, perhaps in college in my teacher training courses, or perhaps in my own high school psychology classes when I was a teenager. Whenever it was, the information must not have been pertinent to me at the time, and so I didn't retain it (a point I'm finding more and more interesting as time goes along--personal pertinence in regards to information retention). But here it is again, and, faced with teaching teenagers for the first time, it is pertinent to me now. So what can I do with it?

My natural response is to say, "These students need more emotional intelligence practice," and then, almost as a reflex, I reply, "But is that even a possibility? Can I teach emotional intelligence to teenagers without coming across as condescending or patronizing? Even if I attempt to do so respectfully, what if they misinterpret my intentions? Oh, the irony!"

And then I remember that I went to a SECD (social, emotional, and character development) presentation specifically geared towards secondary English teachers during the recent professional development workshops I attended. So yes, not only is it possible, but it's certainly recommended.

(Come on, now. Obviously I have enough faith in my students and their comprehension skills, regardless of human development and psychology. Sure, there will always be hiccups in teaching, but my philosophy is to respect my students enough to teach them items of importance and to trust that if they will retain it if they truly benefit from it--and if I introduce it properly! Must remember. Don't get confused again.)

I didn't type up my notes from the presentation, so I'll just relay some of them now.

The first point I made in regards to SECD is stressing the importance of creating a safe environment where one feels free to share their honest opinions. This is a given, but it's important enough to have a reminder. How does one create such an environment, though? I had this question during the seminar and here's what I came up with: start slow. Use the same style of discussion (Socratic circle, debate, etc.) that you will use throughout the year, but start with easier topics that students are already aware they have opposing opinions on, such as "Do cats or dogs make better pets?" or "Is ice cream or cake a better dessert?" Develop the skills of the discussion style first, and talk to the students about how to respectfully handle speaking with someone that has a different opinion than you. And when someone forgets and makes a disrespectful comment? First let them know that what they said was disrespectful, since they might not know or they might have fallen into an old habit of speaking that way. Help them find a better way to say what they meant, and do so gently. Getting indignant or shaming them would be counter-productive here, as it would model inappropriate behavior. After an initial testing period of getting comfortable sharing their opinions, it should encourage students to share deeper, more honest feelings. (This is definitely an area I want to explore at greater length soon.)

I also noted the importance of role playing, which is another activity I imagine I'll have to ease my students into. One way to do so is with a writing activity called R.A.F.T., which stands for Role, Audience, Format, and Topic. The topics, and/or any of the other criteria, may be chosen by the teacher, but it's an easy way to start students off thinking from another person's point of view. For instance, in the seminar, I was in a group given the assignment, supposing we were in a unit on To Kill a Mockingbird, of writing a newspaper editorial about the trial from Boo Radley's point of view. Once students are in the mindset of thinking from a literary character's point of view, it may be easier to see things from a peer's point of view.

Interestingly, non-assessed standards for SECD already exist. Like most standards, they are very dry and somewhat wordy. I had thought to post the high school specific standards here, but I lost the motivation to do so when I opened the pdf. Last year, I tried to share standards with the third graders by having them pick through pdfs. It was not our most successful lesson. Maybe high school students would be more capable of doing it? It certainly wouldn't be a fun lesson, considering how exhausted I got just by opening the file, but maybe we could use it for some sort of technical reading activity. I'll have to gauge my students when I meet them to see if I would actually want to attempt that. Maybe only the seniors? We'll see.

At any rate, I think I've been able to skim the surface on this topic. At least I know that this is something I want to play with further and that it's worth my time. Is there anything on my Pledge about SECD? If not, I need to put it on soon.

Lessons Learned from a Summer Workshop

Last week I attended a three day summer professional development workshop series hosted by the state. The theme was supposed to be Common Core State Standards, but I don't think I actually learned much new information about CCSS. In fact, I don't think I learned much that I didn't already know, but a big part of learning, I've always felt, is reinforcement of known concepts, and there was certainly plenty of that. I even reinforced some ideas that I probably wasn't supposed to be getting. But arguably the most important part of the series for me was that it helped to transition by brain from third grade mode to high school English mode, which needed to happen sooner or later.

First, when separated into content and age groups (so I was with more high school English teachers), I was pleasantly surprised to find myself among like-minded people, and that doesn't happen often. One of the first tasks we were given was to separate into three subgroups and rank a handful of classroom activities by how many Speaking and Listening standards they met. The slips of paper were passed out, and I was given small-group discussion (yay!), Socratic circles (eee!), and popcorn reading (oh...). Immediately I ordered them, 1 - Socratic circles, 2 - small group discussion, 3 - popcorn reading. Then I remembered that I actually had a task, and it was to order based on standards, not preconceived biases. Fine. But when I matched the standards to the activities, I found that they actually remained in this order. And when I combined my given activities with the others from my subgroup, they agreed with my judgement, keeping popcorn reading at the bottom. And when compared with the other subgroups, I found that they had all placed popcorn reading at the bottom, as well! Woah. No one had thought that popcorn reading was a useful or effective classroom activity. I was prepared to keep quiet  my dissenting opinion, shying away from hostility, unable to convince anyone because their minds were made up and unwilling to change because that's how it typically goes. I don't want to fight, and the majority of people will not listen to any reasoning that doesn't agree with their own opinions. But I didn't have to convince anyone. In fact, they all agreed unanimously with me before I even had a chance to defend my position!

And in fact, it was a common theme throughout the three days that students should be taught to listen respectfully to arguments contrary to their own beliefs for the sake of argument, finding flaws in their own reasoning or someone else's, calmly realizing when their reasoning isn't sound, justifying their ideas, and peacefully convincing others.

And did I mention the Socratic circles? Nary a presentation went by without Socratic something-or-other being mentioned. We even held a practice Socratic circle in one of the classes, just so that the presenter could be sure that we had experienced it and knew how beneficial an activity it was to students. Because she wanted us to know that the learning students do together in this manner is much more authentic than anything one could teach while standing in front of the classroom.

I'M. SO. HAPPY.

Maybe I've finally found where I'm meant to be. Aaah, the feelings of satisfaction and gratification, they wash over me.

(For what it's worth, I felt this way when I began to get into Montessori, but it all drained out of me the moment I stepped into the training center. This experience has been the opposite--I went with trepidation, assuming that these teachers were just the same as all the other public school teachers I'd met, but was then surprised to find the opposite.)

Why? What could have caused this? Is this how English teachers have been all along? I wouldn't know, since my education was primarily Elementary, and elementary teachers certainly didn't behave this way, giving students so much credit and acknowledgement. Or is it because of Common Core? Is this the way of thinking that one automatically adopts when forced to study these new standards? In adopting CCSS, did we actually convince teachers to teach students how to learn rather than memorize facts?

If this is the fault of CCSS, I've just decided that I love it even more than I did previously.

If this is how English teachers have always been... well, I'm glad I'm finally home.

Moving right along.

Another common theme that was frequently discussed during the seminar was something called Essential Question, a relatively new concept for me. There's a book that nearly all the presenters had and kept referencing. I may read it and explore it further, but briefly, from what I gathered last week, units of study, thematic units, are now based on a broad question that can be connected to many areas of life and are able to be deeply contemplated. Such questions could be, "What is a hero?" or "Who is responsible for public health?" Things that keep students thinking throughout the unit, changing their minds when presented with new information, and possibly ending up with an entirely different answer at the end than they began with. Essential questions can be designed to be used with one class or a whole school, though either way would be interesting to experience. If multiple teachers were on board, they could all bring something new to the discussion, making it that much more broad and deep, but that's not to say that a single teacher wouldn't be able to do a lot with it, too. More research is needed here. I put the book on my library list.

I have a lot of new references and notes, things to explore and look up, but it's all very messy at this point. There's not much I can make of it with the state that these notes are in currently, short of making another silly notes post, but those aren't actually very helpful to me, I've found. So I'll leave it as it is now, sift through slowly, explore as necessary, and report back with anything that require a full length article.

But I'll leave this particular post with the aforementioned reinforcement of a concept I wasn't supposed to be receiving.

For a little bit of context, this seminar series was held in a large, suburban high school. For the first two days, attendees were organized into small groups of 10 to 20 adults, and we moved between classrooms as a group, watching and participating in different presentations, each about an hour long. There was to be a schedule of what group went where at what time, but there wasn't proper communication, and everyone was rather confused, like a pack of new freshmen. We ate breakfast and lunch in the cafeteria and had whole group assemblies in the assembly hall. It was all so very high school.

On top of that, many teachers from my previous school were there, and I... well, though I'm almost embarrassed to admit, but I avoided them. As much as I got along with the other high school English teachers, I didn't sit with them in the cafeteria or assembly hall, either. They had their own schools to sit with, and that was fine by me. No one else from my school was in attendance, and even if they were, I wouldn't have known them well enough to sit with them, probably. So I spent these times sitting by myself, avoiding eye contact with others, choking down the sub par food that was provided, flipping through notes I had taken, reading a book I had brought along--much the way that I spent my own high school (and even college) years.

The third day was to be a work day in which attendees could work with their school and create units or lessons based on what they had learned on the previous days. I was placed in a new group with other solos.

It was fine, really, I'm not bitter about anything, but for whatever reason, I just wasn't feeling it. It happens. We all have off days, and this was one of them for me. I'm not sure if I brought it on myself by having preconceived notions of not getting much out of this particular day or by deciding that I didn't like the way this particular activity was being carried out. I may have, or it may have been a coincidence. Whatever the reason, I wasn't much help to my group, nor did I have much to add in conversations. And I feel like that's not usually who I am. I would typically have had much to add to professional development conversations. One of the rules I tend to live by is, you get out of anything as much as you want to get out of it. I spent much of my school years trying to determine how the information I was presented with applied to my life directly, trying to pry everything I could from teachers and professors, taking ample notes, deciding what information was most pertinent to me, diving deep into concepts, exploring until the topic was exhausted but revisiting when I could apply the information in a new way. I took learning into my own hands and was regarded as a good student. But it doesn't matter what type of student I am or was, because everyone has off days, days where what's happening in the classroom just isn't beneficial to them. And this was that day for me.

I spent the morning quietly, trying to get by saying as little as possible without seeming completely awkward. We separated into subgroups, and mine had an alpha. Usually I feel comfortable in a leadership role, but today, since an alpha was already present, I felt more comfortable sitting back and letting her take over. I did as little work as possible, writing notes to myself as to seem busy.

At lunch, I ate quickly, then headed outside through a side door, not feeling brave enough to avoid eye contact with teachers from my old school any longer. I found a tree to sit down in the shade of and rested there for a long while, enjoying the solitude. Eventually I lay in the grass, using my book as a pillow. Sunlight flickered through the leaves, shining a kaleidoscopic pattern across my face, the summer breeze blew soft music through the blades of grass by my head, and all was peaceful. Time to resume was drawing near, but I couldn't find the motivation to go back inside. This is what my students feel like, my brain told me. I nibbled a patch of sweet grass, feeling young. Time came and passed, and I remained, my skin breathing in the warm air. I examined the empty windows of the school, writing poems idly in my mind, matching words and listening to them flow attractively. It is getting a little hot, I mused to myself. If I go back inside now, I wouldn't have to go straight back to class right away. I could just wander about the school a little until I felt ready. I hesitated, realizing. That's probably exactly what my students tell themselves, too.

I did go back in then, exploring the empty halls until I satisfied. I found my classroom an hour past time, my "classmates" still working away on the project they had been at before we left, though I was still unable to concentrate on what I was "supposed to" be working on. My brain had a new concept to play with, or rather an old concept to revisit.

Hadn't I decided long ago that if someone chooses not to participate, that's alright? There's no way to force him to learn, and forcing him to do an assignment just makes him frustrated. It's not the end of the world, and it's much more respectful to leave him to sit quietly, as long as he's not disturbing others. A cursory glance through the articles I've written tells me that I never actually wrote about it, though maybe I overlooked it. I remember the exact moment I first had this thought, watching a teacher fight in vein with a child, back when I was a para. Somehow in my first year of teaching, this memory must have left me. I was in survival mode the whole year, after all. Nowhere to go but up. Surely I can learn from my mistakes, and I vow now to give my students space when they need it, recognizing when they're having trouble connecting to an assignment and allowing them time to decompress when necessary.

So, ultimately, it was a beneficial third day, though the lesson I learned wasn't quite the expected one.

Work Period and the Menu System

My greatest accomplishment during my year teaching third grade was a system I developed and used for one quarter, a little over three months. Initially, it started as a contemplation of how I would run the ideal classroom if given the chance. Months after writing that linked article, those thoughts were still swimming around my head, begging for a chance to be let out. Well, no better time than the present, I decided. I worked at a private school, where it was more feasible to try something potentially radical than at a public school, so why not?

I started brainstorming how to make it possible. I rearranged our schedule, providing a two-hour work period in the morning, an hour shy of a traditional Montessori work period, but that's what I could give. (Click images to view the full screen.)

Then I wrote up new rules specifically for this work period:

1. You must work quietly enough not to disturb others.
2. If you are being disturbed, let that person know politely. If someone tells you that you are disturbing them, simply apologize and change the distracting behavior.
3. If you need help, ask someone around you.
4. You may work together with any number of peers, as long as you are on task.
5. Log everything in your Daily Schedule Keeping Notebook.
6. When you are finished with a workbook page, check your answers with your peers. If the answers don't match, find out why. Defend and justify your answer if you think it is correct, but listen politely to the other person. See if you can find a flaw in their reasoning.
7. Workbook pages must have 5 signatures of peers that agree with your reasoning.

And in January, we began.

The system itself is broken up into three main parts: the weekly menus of assignments, daily schedule keeping, and conferencing.

I started out with default menus--everything that we had been doing together in class. It looked a little something like this:

Math lessons, a story and fluency practice from our silly basal reader, grammar and spelling book pages, science (switched out with social studies every other week), daily reflection, and silent reading--everything that the students were used to doing, nothing new. We had spent five months doing these same sorts of assignments, the only difference was that now they had the option of when to do the assignments, in what order, and whom with. I passed out the menus every Monday, and it was expected that all assignments would be completed by Friday. I had some students that completed everything in class and others that needed to take some things home for homework. I let them know that either was acceptable, as long as everything got accomplished.

Meanwhile, I held small lessons (a schedule of which was posted on the board on Mondays), and the students were free to attend if they so wished. They could also skip it and just read the textbook.

My intention was to get the students used to the menu for a couple of weeks, then work with them during conferencing to tailor an individual menu for the following week based on their needs. This part never got off the ground, unfortunately, for a number of reasons. It was such a new idea for the students that they, having never experienced it before, didn't quite know what to do with it. When asked what individual projects they'd like to work on, they were at a loss. I came up with a few ideas, age-appropriate anatomy books to study for those who said their parents wanted them to become doctors, animal encyclopedias to flip through for those interested in animals, and art projects for those interested in art, all of which were accepted and at least attempted, but they rarely came up with ideas of their own accord. This being my first time with the system, too, I didn't have as many resources as I found I needed. On top of that, it was time consuming, and I was frequently strapped for time and stressed. So, for the most part, we just stuck with the default menus the whole quarter long.

The second part of the system is the daily schedule keeping. I had the students start a new spiral notebook, in which they were to record everything done during work period. Two examples:

Along with the date (which should either be at the top of the page, for those that started a new page each day, or beside the first assignment of the day, for those that filled up a page with multiple days), assignment (which should include page numbers or other identifying remarks), and time spent, I also asked students to record who they worked with and a short comment about the difficulty, mostly as a small, frequent exercise in reflective thinking.

Finally, the last component, daily and weekly conferencing.

At first, I tried to gamify it. My husband, a computer programmer and even bigger gamer than I am, had been trying to get me to add gamification features to my class since before I even signed the contract, and hearing about my system, took it upon himself to design a program, which we called Class Quest, to go with it. Unfortunately, he got busy with work and the program never got completed, but basically, it rewarded students for the work they did during the day (taking into consideration both effort and completion, of course). His designs differed in some ways to what I wanted, but here are a couple of concept designs I created for it:

Students' names in columns, their individual "experience points" below. When clicked privately on the teacher's computer, a pop-up would appear allowing for points and comments to be entered. Beside each student's name, a big "Contribute!" button that they could go to the front of the classroom and press on the SmartBoard, adding their exp to the class total and filling a large progress bar at the top of the screen. Under the progress bar, Current Total Experience and Points Needed to Next Level, clearly visible.

And when the progress bar filled completely, Level Up! A notice would appear signifying what achievement, or reward, was unlocked.

But since the program wasn't finished by January, I made the interface manually, black marker on poster board. I added the individual exp on sticky notes next to each student's name, wrote the class total exp, and marked it out with correction fluid to fill in the updated total on Fridays. I tried to give a rough estimation of filling in the progress bar accurately, but it soon became too much work and remained ignored, for the most part. Unfortunately, I never got a picture of the whole thing.

Daily conferencing went something like this: during the final hour of the day, I called students to my desk individually, and they would bring their Daily Schedule Keeping notebook and anything they had worked on, such as workbooks or journals. They told me about their work, and experience points were awarded for each item. I wanted desperately for the points to seem as automatic as possible, not at all arbitrary or up to my discretion, but that's a difficult impression to create, especially not having a finished-looking product like what Class Quest to support me. Each assignment, entry, or homework was worth 10 exp. Well, that was the idea, anyway. I had a difficult time, personally, allowing points to be distributed freely, as I was still trying to determine what my role was.

Reading and fluency practice were easy enough assignments, and I felt like I could trust that students had done them appropriately. When those were written down, they automatically counted for points. Science and social studies journals, reflection journals, and story analyses were all graded at the end of the week, so I took the stance that effort on those counted for experience points while accuracy counted for grades. They counted for automatic points, as well.

Workbooks, on the other hand, were a different matter. Where the science and social studies textbooks could be read for the information needed to answer the questions at the end of the lesson, our math and grammar curricula weren't designed that way. They were meant to be completed only after having been through the lesson with an instructor who was following the teacher's manual. The grammar workbook had a small blurb of minimal instructions to be followed on each page, but not really enough information for a third grader to understand the point that was trying to be made with the given practice. The math workbook had no explanation whatsoever to aid in solution of the problems. They were not meant for my Menu system.

I could have made math and grammar lessons mandatory. I could have video recorded them for individuals or small groups to watch at their leisure, a la the flipped classroom. But I didn't. My desire for the system to inherently work made me blind to this flaw, and I maintained that students who wanted to do assignments properly would eventually learn to come to the lesson. I had failed to consider the human nature, the inclination towards easy mode. My students did the best they could on their assignments with the knowledge that they had and could easily gather, though that often meant guessing. But they were intelligent guessers. They considered problems they had encountered previously and attempted to solve new problems likewise. Unfortunately, math (and grammar, too, to some extent, considering that the majority of my class was bilingual, if not ESOL) is a broad subject involving many skills that third graders just haven't had exposure to. And how were they to get that exposure if not from coming to lessons, since no textbook of information was available to read? I had tried to plan for the option of using other students' knowledge as a resource by requiring signatures of agreement on workbook pages, but even that wasn't enough. Their requests for signatures rarely crossed gender boundaries, and strong-willed students were often able to convince weaker-willed or unsure students of incorrect answers. Proper resources just weren't made available.

Thus, I felt the need to check workbooks for accuracy. I deducted experience points for missed question, scolding that if the child is confused, it should be taken as evidence that they need to come to the lessons. I knew subconsciously at the time that I was going about it in the wrong way, and it's especially difficult in retrospect. Guilt is definitely not an emotion a teacher should inspire in her children.

Daily conferencing was the most stressful time of the day, but refusing to acknowledge the aforementioned was only partially to blame. That hour always felt like a race against the clock. I never felt like I had enough time to spend with each student, even though there were only 14. Four-ish minutes to devote to an individual, allow them to express honest feelings about the material they're learning, assess how they're doing, and giving points that may or may not be arbitrarily distributed? We often ran late for dismissal. But what was I to do? My husband recommended splitting the class in half, only conferencing with each student every other day. I suppose it was worth a chance, but I was skeptical and never got around to trying it.

Weekly conferencing wasn't much better. Because I didn't have the program to rely on, we had to find another work-around--I turned on the SmartBoard on Fridays and opened a calculator, allowing the students to see the numbers as they were added. I stayed silent during this process, but there were always a couple of students standing behind me watching. Therefore, when someone sitting at their desk inquired whose points were currently being added, there was readily someone to supply the answer. I had mixed feelings about the connotations implied in knowing how many experience points each classmate had earned, but it would have been apparent on my version of Class Quest, too. Somehow I must have overlooked that. My indecision was my decision, and I never asked those students to sit down.

Not to mention how doing all the work with the calculator myself removed the feeling of contribution from the whole ordeal. That's not how it was intended. If they got the feeling that they were contributing to some sort of cause, I'm sure it must have been latent.

But it was always very exciting when we earned enough experience points to level up. After a moment of cheering came the question of what achievement had been unlocked. Again, because the program wasn't completed, that left me to verbally announce the reward. Class Quest would have declared the achievement automatically, in a seemingly unambiguous manner. In truth, I would have set the awards and exp needed for the next level personally, so it wouldn't have been any different, but just the fact that I had to announce them myself probably seemed at least a little suspicious to some. Weekly conferencing days were frustrating ones.

In true game fashion, I had planned for the initial levels to be easily attainable and give small rewards, but become more difficult to achieve, giving better payout as time went on. Apparently I didn't convey this sufficiently, because there were constant complaints that the levels took too long to reach and that the achievements weren't desirable. I don't recall all of the rewards they unlocked, though the first was Extra Recess Time. I thought that surely this would be a nice reward, but apparently not everyone felt the same. Towards the end of February, when a riot nearly broke out at the concept of unlocking a Healthy Food Party, I decided to suspend the Level system. For the remainder of the quarter, we continued daily conferencing as before, though no experience points were awarded. (For the record, everyone enjoyed the Healthy Food Party, as they had enjoyed the other unlockables. It was as though they dismissed the concepts outright, assuming that they weren't good enough before even considering them as viable options.)

There was an easy fix for this problem, to be fair. My husband's concept of Class Quest was much more in depth than what I designed. It was incredibly detailed, based off of Star Trek Online, a game he was playing frequently at the time, and it ran more on currencies than experience points and leveling up. (I guess my personal gaming history of mostly RPGs made conceptualizing game design limited to RPG qualities, when perhaps the model of a strategy game like STO is more suited to the classroom.) There were currency points for class work, as in my design, but also points for behavior, attitude, attendance, and so forth, and it offered multiple unlockables simultaneously, each requiring a different amount of the various currencies. The idea was for the class to work together to decide which reward to attempt to unlock, though each student would still be able to contribute their points as they saw fit. Juggling all of the different currencies would definitely have been too much for me to handle in my first play through of this class game, considering how much I struggled with only one point system, but having the rewards known before they were unlocked would have benefit my students. If there's only one take away to be had from this experience in gamification, it's this: students do not appreciate hidden or surprise achievements. (Though honestly, I guess I knew that, having attended a couple of gamification panels at PAX that I guess I didn't think enough of to write about or even remember when it mattered. Now that I'm thinking about it, they also told me that requirements for unlocking achievements need to be known, as well. Must remember for future reference!) However, my husband just recently discovered a website similar to his design of Class Quest that takes his ideas even farther and even incorporates some aspects of table top role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, turning the instructor into a Dungeon Master. How neat! I'll definitely have to explore it more and see if it's something I can use next year with my high schoolers. It's name is even similar to what we had thought up--Class Craft. Anyway...

Now for the most difficult part to relay.

At the end of March, third quarter report cards were released, and many of my students' grades had fallen. It was to be expected. This was a brand new experience for these students. They had never been exposed to anything but a traditional classroom setting with a traditional teacher who held their hands and all but spoon-fed them answers. Alright, that may be a bit of a biased exaggeration, but honestly, it was a new, experimental system, and I was asking the students to learn in a way they weren't accustomed to. It's understandable that they should take some time to adapt. It didn't mean that they weren't learning. What's more, I assumed that they were learning more valuable lessons than that which basic curricula could teach, like taking responsibility for one's own learning, prioritizing, self-pacing, pride in doing one's work, and contributing to a community. However, I must not have articulated this well enough, either.

One parent, whose daughter had been a straight A student, was so upset, she came in to speak with the principal, wanting removing the menu system altogether. And when I sat down with them, I somehow could convince neither of them of the benefits of the system. I failed as an effective communicator. I was required to teach whole class for the remainder of the year.

The worst part, I think, is that the project was ended abruptly, exactly in the middle, which the worst possible time. My students had just begun to see the results of their actions. They were just beginning to see that their actions had direct consequences. I had intended to teach my students that if they want to learn, they are able to take it upon themselves to do so. I intended to teach them perseverance over time and the value of learning new skills, including thinking in new, unfamiliar ways. Instead, I fear that the only thing they've learned is that if something proves difficult, if you complain to the right people, they can get you out of it. That's definitely not the skill I wanted to get across, and I'm incredibly saddened by it. I guess it's just another way that the world works, and I have no doubt that they will grow up to use that information to their advantage as adults. This could be even worse to consider, but what can you do? It's the world doing what the world does, and it's just unfortunate that I got caught up in it and wasn't persuasive enough to change it. Maybe the lessons that I, myself, learned in the process will make a difference to another batch of students.

So I bit my tongue and did as I was told, because it was the only thing I could do. Most of the remainder of the school year was taken up with standardized testing, anyway. And if it's any consolation, when I had to tell parents during parent-teacher conferences that the program had to be canceled, a number of them were genuinely saddened. They saw the benefit in an innovative system, and it was frustrating to them that there was nothing they could do either.

Daily Reflection

During my year teaching third grade, I admit that I was absolutely scattered. This was my first year teaching, and I wasn't quite sure what to do or what worked for me, so I tried it all. I used various approaches, attitudes, instructional techniques, and discipline methods. I'll be the first to admit to the inconsistent nature of my teaching this year. It's possible that nothing in my classroom stayed the same from one month to the next.

Well, almost nothing. The constant from August to May was our Daily Reflection writing. We started at the last hour of the first day of class, each student pulling out a spiral notebook from their freshly purchased school supplies, and we wrote at the end of every day, right up to the last day of school. 

The assignment was this: reflect on your day. What made today special? What did you learn? What else is on your mind?

It took some guidance at the beginning, to be sure. We talked about what reflection means, to start with. You see your reflection when you look in the mirror, your very image on a piece of glass in front of you. Writing reflectively is similar--you take what's inside your mind and put it on the piece of paper in front of you. It takes a lot of work, especially if you haven't done it before, because your brain isn't used to thinking this way, and you aren't sure how to articulate your thoughts. It just takes practice.

And we came across many difficulties throughout the year, as well.

Frequently, during reflection time, I saw students sitting, perplexed. "What did we do today?" they would ask, sincerely lost. They honestly couldn't remember what they did six hours earlier. I tried not to help these students too much, for fear that they would become dependent on me to relive the day for them, unable to do it for themselves. I encouraged them to retrace their steps using time, from arriving at school in the morning, to sitting down with their notebook. Occasionally I would prompt with some big event that happened during the day, such as, "Did we do anything special in math?" or "Did anything happen when we got back from lunch?" But I didn't want to put words in their mouth. I told them that I could only reflect from my perspective, not theirs. What was important about the day to me wouldn't be the same as what was important to them. Only they could reflect from their own perspective, and that meant that they would just have to contemplate more. I tried to explain this as gently as possible.

Unfortunately this continued to happen throughout the final week of school for one or two. Even with ten months of practice, these students couldn't recall important events from the day without struggle. There are many explanations for this. The most likely, in my opinion, is that I am the first person to ask this of these children. Their brains weren't used to having to work in this manner, as I told them on the first day, and, for some, ten months just wasn't enough time to adjust. Another is this: by age nine, children generally have the capacity to delve into reflective thought, but, perhaps, when asked to do it on command, they froze, suddenly forgetting everything they held in their mind moments before. A sort of stage fright, perhaps. It's also entirely possible that there was something more serious going on with the student that this occurred most frequently with, as he occasionally showed signs of a minor learning disorder. Surely they couldn't really be floating through life, acting and doing without though, right? Regardless, despite the near-constant struggle, I have faith that this sort of mind exercise was beneficial for those one or two students.

Another set of students wrote down merely the subjects they practiced during the day. An entry like this, for example, may read, "We did math, read a story in the English book, and did three questions in social studies." This may have been a good start at reflective writing, but, unfortunately, I saw this up to the last week for some students, as well, despite how often I reminded them to add more details. "But you do these things every day," I frequently told them. "What made today special? What did you learn today that you didn't know yesterday?" This typically evoking a week of entries such as, "We did page 208 and 209 in math, read a story in the English book, and did chapter 13 in social studies." For some students, this was as many details as I could elicit, and the explanation as to why is probably similar to the above situation--their minds didn't yet have the capacity to think any deeper than that. Surely it couldn't be because they were too lazy to think harder, right? I would have hoped that with ten months of practice, one would make more progress than that, but perhaps that's as much progress as they could handle at the time. Regardless, I have faith that exerting just that level of reflection on a daily basis was helpful.

A third "problem" I came up against was reflection after reflection of only Islamic Studies and Quran lessons. From one student, in particular. I wasn't the teacher for these subjects, so such entries were largely meaningless to me, as I had no way of making heads or tails of what they meant, not sharing the religion. But who am I to say that this wasn't the most important part of his day? Perhaps those classes were the most meaningful to him. Or perhaps he wanted to remember these parts specifically to please his father. It's not my place to say or to make any sort of judgement, so, despite that his entries mainly consisted of what chapter of the Islamic Studies book they were on and how many suras he memorized, I said nothing.

But for the large part, my class of third graders did excellent, starting off slowly and building their way to, in some cases, multi-page reflections of their entire day and considerations of emotions, reasoning, and, occasionally, insights.

It was also a great way to get to know my students. My favorite grading by far (a participation grade, of course) was reading what my students had to say about the different activities we did during the week. I greatly enjoyed hearing each student's different perspective on common events, and frequently I received more information on social issues that helped me better understand situations and give advice, particularly with the girls.

Apart from all of that, apart from how beneficial it is to all students to begin thinking reflectively, or at least in a way they're not used to, one of the most beneficial things our daily reflections gave us was the expectation and practice of writing every day. And writing every day is the only way to become a better writer. So at the very least, I can say that my third graders are writers. Not a bad claim to be able to make, at all.

Initial Reflections of First Year Teaching: On Confidence

Well, this year just happened to me. It definitely wasn't how I expected it to be, but I think I learned a lot. Now if I can somehow articulate... everything.

I haven't touched my blog in literally six months, and that feels very strange to me. I suppose I have reflected just the minimal amount possible, not delving deep into thought once in all that time. And what a sad feeling that is, but I can't be too hard on myself. This was my first year teaching, after all, and I know that I was in survival mode for most of it. Not only was it my first year, but... well, I guess it needs to be said--I worked for a terrible school. One of the things I've come to realize as a young adult is that we aren't actually as put together as we seem to children. We're all just doing the best that we possibly can, winging it most of the time. But that being said, the private "school" I just spent ten months of my life at is honestly just masquerading as a place of education, causing me to make everything up as I went along, forced to reinvent the wheel many times over. It was definitely a learning experience, and I'm grateful for it to be sure, but, oh my goodness, was it stressful! I may want to explore this more when I'm feeling less bitter, because I think I can work some great ideas about what a school needs to be successful out of it, and that would be useful, particularly, because I like to consider thoughts about small, private schools. It's probably all in the hands of administration, really. But come now, enough on that for the moment, and we'll revisit it later. The point is that my thoughts and I have a lot of catching up to do while I decompress from the year and work out what I can make of it.

The first thing that comes to mind when I consider how I have changed from August is that I certainly feel more confident. Though I've been working and volunteering in schools since 2009, even spending a year working full time in a daycare, I could never really say that I felt comfortable with children. I suppose I was still working out what my role was and what it all meant, even up to my first day, no, even through my first few months, of actual teaching. I was uncomfortable speaking, giving lessons, even just standing. I remember thinking to myself, "How does one stand when one is in front of children? The feet go..? And the hands..? Clasped..?" I could never get it right. A direct sign of lack of confidence. I know that for some people, and I'm thinking specifically now of some classmates while I was in college, everything seemed to come naturally. They stood in front of the children and everything just fell into place. That was never me. I was always second guessing myself, stumbling in my speech and awkward.

And to defeat, it took day after day, hour after hour, of just being. First, it was the praxis, the swallowing my fear and awkwardness and just getting up there, speaking when I wasn't sure I had the right words and doing when I wasn't sure I was ready. Turns out that 180 seven-hours days is a lot when it comes to honing skills. Second, honestly, was probably, again, the terrible administration I had to put up with. At first I meekly followed instruction, doing my best to complete what was expected of me, but when faced with challenges, I found myself standing up for the decisions I was making in the classroom. "I am a good teacher, I am doing the right things, and here is my justification as to why," I had to declare many times. Apparently defending your actions to critics day in and day out does wonders for confidence, too.

And here I am today, far from the girl I was. The puzzle pieces of the past fit together to make the present, and every bit of experience makes me who I am now. I am grateful for the struggles of this year and how they only make me stronger.

I have declined signing next year's contract with this school. If nothing changes, it will undoubtedly crumble until nothing is left. It's unfortunate, but I did as much as I could for them. Perhaps in some ways I failed, but I can't allow them to take me down with the ship. There are better things in store for me, and I'm just getting started. Yesterday I hugged 14 third-graders good bye and with that, I started on my next path. Next year I'll be teaching English at a small, rural high school with an administration that appreciates my innovation and enthusiasm. I'm looking forward to reflecting more on this year, but, also, I'm ecstatic to see what kind of amazing things I can bring to the future.