Every teacher dreams of Christmas gifts, and it’s not just sugarplums that dance in our heads. As edtech coaches, we often play the role of “gift givers,” especially during major rollouts. Of course, our “gifts” come with expectations and enticements — anything to leverage meaningful learning, emboldened and empowered by the tools of technology. So this Christmas season I thought it appropriate to imagine a tech-willing teacher’s Twelve Days of Edtech Coach Christmas:

On the first day of Christmas my tech coach gave to me: an iPad just for me.

On the second day of Christmas my tech coach gave to me: two creative colleagues and an iPad just for me.

On the third day of Christmas my tech coach gave to me: three freebie apps, two creative colleagues, and an iPad just for me.

On the fourth day of Christmas my tech coach gave to me: four helpful screencasts, three freebie apps, two creative colleagues, and an iPad just for me.

On the fifth day of Christmas my tech coach gave to me: five student geeks, four helpful screencasts, three freebie apps, two creative colleagues, and an iPad just for me.

On the sixth day of Christmas my tech coach gave to me: six kmz files, five student geeks, four helpful screencasts, three freebie apps, two creative colleagues, and an iPad just for me.

On the seventh day of Christmas my tech coach gave to me: seven YouTube channels, six kmz files, five student geeks, four helpful screencasts, three freebie apps, two creative colleagues, and an iPad just for me.

On the eighth day of Christmas my tech coach gave to me: eight Gigs cloud storage, seven YouTube channels, six kmz files, five student geeks, four helpful screencasts, three freebie apps, two creative colleagues, and an iPad just for me.

On the ninth day of Christmas my tech coach gave to me: nine PLN hashtags, eight Gigs cloud storage, seven YouTube channels, six kmz files, five student geeks, four helpful screencasts, three freebie apps, two creative colleagues, and an iPad just for me.

On the tenth day of Christmas my tech coach gave to me: ten Gmail subaccounts, nine PLN hashtags, eight Gigs cloud storage, seven YouTube channels, six kmz files, five student geeks, four helpful screencasts, three freebie apps, two creative colleagues, and an iPad just for me.

On the eleventh day of Christmas my tech coach gave to me: eleven Flipboard feeds, ten Gmail subaccounts, nine PLN hashtags, eight Gigs cloud storage, seven YouTube channels, six kmz files, five student geeks, four helpful screencasts, three freebie apps, two creative colleagues, and an iPad just for me.

On the twelfth day of Christmas my tech coach gave to me: twelve new twitter followers, eleven Flipboard feeds, ten Gmail subaccounts, nine PLN hashtags, eight Gigs cloud storage, seven YouTube channels, six kmz files, five student geeks, four helpful screencasts, three freebie apps, two creative colleagues, and an iPad just for me.

HoHoHo!

(See you after the holidays)

We all do it, especially in December. We rush around, telling our colleagues and our students how busy we are and how much there is to “get done” before [insert your holiday or academic deadline here]. A recent Wall Street Journal article cautions against the spread of “secondhand stress.”

Uh-oh. Guilty as charged.

In the classroom, we let our own deadlines and work requirements spill onto the kids. If the Common Core changes or the latest iteration of high stakes tests have thrown our planning process out the window, the kids feel it.  If a change of school administration or a new teacher evaluation system has us on edge, we are probably just like the boss confronted in the article, “your volume goes up, your pace of speaking goes up, and you’re not fully in the conversation.” Just as a business environment incubates a contagion of secondhand stress, so can our classrooms (and schools). The kids cannot name it or explain why, but they feel some of the same responses the article describes from secondhand stress:

(#1) Have your elementary students started to take on your mannerisms in the way they talk to other students about “getting their work done”?

(#3)Has a parent ever told you their child was “afraid” to ask questions?

(#4)Has a student ever chased you down the hall on your way to your next class or duty?

(#2 +#5) Do your students throw away their own work? Have you ever found the papers/plan book from your desk in the wastebasket (most likely in middle school)?

Though the business world Sue Shellenbarger discusses in the article is an entirely different culture from school, there are glaring similarities. The faculty room can certainly be a stress-infection zone, teeming with the stress virus. And don’t think we don’t take the virus right down the hall to the kids.

So what do we do about it (and can technology possibly help ease the burden)?

1. Make our classrooms a community of learners instead of a boss-worker environment. Start with a wiki as a class “hub” and give ALL students access to edit it. Then show them how, valuing their additions by commenting on them and encouraging them to “discuss” things you say via constructive criticism. There are LOADS of collaborative tools you can use to build on community. Link to them from that one hub so they are easy to find.

2. Try a writing prompt taken from the WSJ article: “If I were a household appliance, which one would I be?” You may discover signs of secondhand stress — and will least learn something about each student. Be sure to write along with the kids and let everyone share what they have to say. If you have a class blog, that’s perfect.

3. Include prevention of secondhand stress in the class rules your class generates at the start of school.

4. Value and make time for questioning by someone other than you. Make a question page on the class wiki for kids to enter questions as they do homework. Give extra credit to kids who ANSWER them. Handle unanswered questions (and highlight great answers) at the start of class. Who should answer? Hopefully anybody EXCEPT you. Be willing to say, ” I did not realize that was so confusing. I learned from you!” Message: Questions are not “interruptions.” They are a valued part of learning for all of us.

“Yeah, yeah, I know that,” you say?  I am sure you do. Sometimes it just takes the observations of a peer (or student) to remind us that we are virulent spreaders of stress. Maybe there is a New Years resolution in here somewhere.

Wow.

I have worked face to face or side by side with at least 30,000 to 50,000 teachers in my career — at least if you count each teacher-year as “one.” That does not include the Thinking Teachers I encounter in my role as sort of  24/7 “edtech coach” via a free web service I am in charge of. Of those, I am privileged to know so many GREAT teachers, and yet every day I discover more. Sometimes I wonder why we don’t tag them in a global geocaching game for “Amazing Teacher Here- X marks the spot.” I read their blogs, I watch their students’ videos, I work together with them on an ISTE SIG, I meet them in OK2Ask online professional development sessions. I want to scream to the post-PISA media,”You guys, LOOK! These teachers are AMAZING! Did you see what that kid just did? Did you see what the teacher did to make it happen!?”

Wow.

So today I am thrilled and humbled to discover this blog among those named as finalists for the 1oth annual Edublog Awards.

Wow.

One of the real standouts among those 30-5o,ooo-teachers-I-have-known nominated me. I have thanked her by email, on Twitter, and now on this blog. I worked with her virtually for a couple of years before we actually met face to face. She is one of the teachers I point to, exclaiming, “You guys, LOOK! These teachers are AMAZING! Did you see what her bio class just did? Did you see what Louise Maine did to make it happen!?”

Thanks again, Louise.

I suggest that every teacher look at all the nominees. You, too, will say, “Wow” at the amazing things your fellow Thinking Teachers have to say and share. If, after losing yourself in the nominees,  you think this blog deserves a vote in the crowd-driven selection of “Best Individual Blog” from Edublog Awards, find Think Like a Teacher on the list here. Then follow these steps:

1. Click the up-vote arrow bottom-left of the post. A pop-up from List.ly (the voting tool) will appear.
2. Sign in to List.ly with your Twitter, LinkedIn,Facebook, or Google + account.
2*. You’ll need to provide your name and email if this is your first time using List.ly.
3. The window will disappear.
4. Click on the up-vote arrow one more time to cast your vote.

Wow.
Pass it on.

I cherish my collection of memorable teaching/learning moments that exemplify how gifted students “see” the world differently. I do not believe that gifted students are alone in their unique views. They are, however, uniquely willing and able to express these thoughts —  or may have them far more often. In any case, I believe we as teachers can learn much from listening to the questions of gifted students who blow away the cliche, “think outside the box.” Their questions, ideas, and thoughtful approaches unfold the boxes, creating something entirely different from the plain brown cardboard called “school.”

One such unfolded view comes in the “visual creativity” Jonathan Wai describes on the Mindshift blog. Wai posits the importance of recognizing and promoting visual thinking (“spatial creativity”) among all learners. I have seen memorable moments of this acuity “unfolding” in front of me, students whizzing through Tangrams and Set so quickly the rest of us missed  the answers before they began another problem!  Visual-spatial skill uses an entirely different part of the brain, one typically underdeveloped in teachers’ verbally adept brains and ignored by tests, Standards, and cardboard school. The Common Core Standards include shapes, slices, rotations, flips, turns, surfaces, and the usual volume and area. CCSS high school geometry standards include endless requirements about relationships and functions that define shapes. There is even one standard that calls for “Apply[ing] geometric methods to solve design problems (e.g., designing an object or structure to satisfy physical constraints or minimize cost; working with typographic grid systems based on ratios). Another calls on students to “Identify the shapes of two-dimensional cross-sections of three-dimensional objects, and identify three-dimensional objects generated by rotations of two-dimensional objects.”  But all of these are within confines (boxes) that are rarely unfolded outside of “math class” or for other purposes and approaches to thinking visually.

Stop to think about the kid you went to school with, the one who was amazing at geometry and stunk in every other math class. S/he “saw” the proofs that you struggled with, even if s/he never quite got them on paper correctly. Remember those kids. I taught them, the gifted kids who scored the maximum 19 on the Block Design subtest of a WISC-R  but could barely write or speak a complex sentence.  Jonathan Wai may be onto something. If promoting talent in visual thinking is good for these extreme cases, perhaps we should be encouraging all students to unfold and repurpose the boxes. I share ten FREE, reviewed resources to get started, since this is not an area most teachers feel adept to address:

Several reviewed, online Tangram games

A collection of virtual, visual manipulatives (requires Java)

Blender 3D animation— a REAL challenge!

TinkerCad design for 3D printers

Foldplay (very cool!)

Box Templates (to make, UNFOLD, and change?)

Origami Club animations of MANY foldables

A new way to look at unfolded boxes (direct link)

Cloud Dreamer (for younger ones)

Sodaplay

Another, profoundly memorable teaching/learning moment for me came in a single question from a second grader: “Is the number of grains of sand on the earth — at any one moment– infinity?”  I thought of this question when I ran across this post, an example of a box unfolding to new thinking. Questions like the second grader and blog versions of the grains-of-sand debate defy boxes. They do not go “beyond” a box, they create new folds in our understanding of the world. Like many questions that pop into our students’ heads, these fall outside the scope of cardboard school. But shouldn’t we invite them inside? The BEST source for questions is your students’ own thought questions. If you don’t want them to “interrupt” a lesson by unfolding their thinking out loud, at least offer a virtual graffiti wall using a tool accessible from any device where they can post their questions and “crazy ideas.” How/ how often do you encourage your students to interrupt YOUR thinking with theirs? Here are some sources for questions you and your students can drop into your curriculum, outside the “standard”:

PopTech

Think (elementary)

101 questions

Super Thinkers

Thought Questions

This is the season of boxes: shipping boxes, gift boxes, ornament boxes, etc. Why not use the inspiration of a few experiences with gifted kids to unfold some of the cardboard in your class’s thinking as a special gift? You never know what you might unwrap.