As I being writing this blog post, I want to acknowledge at the top here that I'm using this post to process my COVID-19 experience. As I'm begin week 5 of working and living remotely, I'm realizing that I have a lot I want to get down, so this will probably be the longest blog post I've ever written and won't include my usual visuals. Feel free to skip to the section that speaks to you or skip the entire post. 

A a part of my personal growth journey, my goal is to do my best to live by my values and cultivate healthy mindset. While I am by no means perfect, I have been trying to use this time as an opportunity to deepen my study and show up in ways to show up in alignment with these values. Below are some of the top ways this has showed up.

• Compassion and Grace - As I interact with colleagues, family, and friends online I try to check in with them on how they are doing and acknowledge that we are truly in unprecedented times. We are all struggling in one way or another with the current reality and both patience and understanding are incredibly essential. To prevent empathy burnout (aka compassion fatigue), I have been using the tips from this episode of the Happiness Lab to develop a more healthy compassion practice.  
• Gratitude - I still have my job. I'm still getting paid. My family is currently safe and healthy. My toddler is amazingly cute and sits on my lap during work meetings sometimes. Even when things get tough (and they have), it's hard to feel anything but remarkably grateful every morning that I wake up and this is still the case. That being said, I want to caution against the practice of comparative suffering, as pointed out in the related episode of Brené Brown's podcast, Unlocking Us.
• Future Thinking - Multiple times each day, I think about the stories I'm going to be able to tell about this time and remind myself that I am living through a historical moment. This does two important things. First, it reminds me that this state we are in is impermanent and someday the pandemic will end. Second, it encourages me bring out the best version of myself. I want to be able to look back on this time and feel proud of how I decided to show up.
• ​Adventure - I remind myself that we are in completely unmapped territory. While the unknown can feel scary, it is also and incredible opportunity for learning, growing, thinking outside the box, and discovering amazing things! Absolutely nobody is an expert in emergency remote learning. This means that anyone experiencing this moment gets the chance to become those experts. I am learning from everyone, especially those with fresh eyes technology in education. 

As a part of my work, I created a quick-study course for teachers with top pedagogical practices to keep in mind for remote learning. Knowing how saturated the Internet is with articles about this topic, I focused on these top practices, keeping them tech tool/platform agnostic. 

​In case you don't already know, I'm a complete podcast junkie. Below are the podcasts I'm listening to that others may also enjoy and are specifically supporting this journey.

• The Happiness Lab - This podcast is the work of Dr. Laurie Santos, a professor at Yale University, made famous for her college course "Psychology and the Good Life". She gives tips on how to take care of your emotional and mental state during this tough time.
• Unlocking Us - This is the new podcast from Brené Brown. I'm still catching up on episodes, but it has been a wild and thoroughly enjoyable ride listening to her launch this podcast at the same time COVID-19 started shaking the world. As always, Brené provides meaningful insights and thinking around what is means to be alive and human.
• Up First - I listen to this <15 min podcast to get the biggest news headlines each morning. This allows me to stay informed on the biggest news stories, but not get overwhelmed with every single things happening. 
• Science Vs - This podcast has been putting together some great information on COVID-19 and work to provide the latest answers to the biggest questions around the virus.
• ​Every Little Thing​ - This podcast dives into random questions and facts from listeners and recently put together a beautiful episode with essential worker interviews. It has a whimsical feel to it and always makes me feel smarter.
• Reply All - This is one of my favorite podcasts in general. Hosts PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman are a breath of fresh air and always make me laugh. They have been taking calls from listeners on their COVID 19 experience and sharing some of those stories, along with other stories from the Internet.

Don't worry! I do listen to non-COVID related things. For fun, I listen to Buffering the Vampire Slayer, Angel on Top, and Harry Potter and the Sacred Text.

While I have made time to connect with family and friends, I have also found it important to find professional means of connection during this time. Below are a few connections that have really stuck out and meant a lot to me.

If you've made it down this far on my post, I want to thank you for reading it and hope that you found something that helps you during this challenging time. We are all hurting. We are all grieving the loss of our lives as they were. While the current moment feels incredibly difficult, I am excited to see what happens next in the field of education and how we rise from this moment stronger and more innovative than ever. I hope you are all able to do what you need to take care of yourself and your families. I know I am trying to use this moment to cherish and soak in moment with the loved ones near me and I hope you are able to do the same. Take care and feel free to reach out and connect. We are all in this together!

A quick post for challenging times. In case it is helpful, I put together my top resources and posts that could come in handing for any teaching being asked to teach online. If there are any other resources you need (especially related to Schoology - I currently manage the enterprise version for a large district) please feel free to reach out via email  - [email protected].

• Hyperdocs
• Pear Deck Self-Paced Mode
• Top Tech Tools for Digital Coaching
• Sub Plan Videos
• YouTube Playlists for Homework
• ​Education Companies Offering Free Subscriptions Due to School Closings

Last month, I had the opportunity to Keynote the Connect Colorado Schoology Conference. In my presentation, I talk about the importance of systems, empathy research, and using collaboration to create meaningful learning for all students. My friend and colleague, Paul Iwancio, was kind enough to record it for me. Below is the video he produced. Enjoy!

While the background of each school was very different (I made some modifications for each school), I was able to bring an engaging session for staff about Digital Citizenship, Classroom Management, and SAMR/4Cs while modeling instructional technology strategies. I'm all about the meta approach to professional learning and thought I would share how I designed and facilitated one of my favorite professional learning sessions to date.

While I prefer using as little text as possible and full-bleed images when designing presentations (see design tips from Presentation Zen), I find it helpful to have an aesthetically pleasing template to fall back on when I feel more text is necessary, especially for interactive slides. For slides with full-bleed images, I use copyright free images from the Unsplash Photos Slides add-on. This saves me a great deal of time when finding images. For my recent presentation, I pulled slides from many of my previous presentations and converted them all into a common theme from Slides Carnival. ​

Using an avatar of yourself, or other images can add a nice personal touch to any presentation. Bitmojis are an easy way to to this, especially with the Chrome Extension which allows you to drag and drop the images directly into your Google Docs. You will need to create your Bitmoji using the app (iTunes, Google Play) on a mobile device, but once you create your Bitmoji, you can use it in a variety of places. 

I especially enjoy using Bitmojis on presentations slides that have some text and don't have room for much else. Did I wear the same outfit as my Bitmoji during my presentation? Yes - I happen to have the same outfit and it seemed too fun to not do it.

While I could go on and on about the decisions I make for including question types (maybe in a future blog post), I want to highlight the presenter logistics I used to facilitate this session on the day of the PD.

Before Presenting My Session

• I created my presentation with Google Slides and the Pear Deck add-on.
• I turned on my Classroom Climate and Takeaways settings on my Pear Deck account.

To Present My Session

• I started my presentation using the Pear Deck add-on using the computer connected to the projector.
• I accessed my dashboard on a Chromebook by going to peardeck.com/dash.
• The Chromebook detected my session and let me control the presentation from the Chromebook.

If you're not familiar with Presenter Mode and Dashboard Mode, below are some of the features you can access in each mode.

To End My Session

• I selected 'End Session' and checked 'Publish Takeaways' on my Chromebook (but you can do it from either device).
• Each participant had a Google Doc automatically created and shared with them via email with the slides and any responses they entered during the presentation.
• I can access participant responses and export them to a Google Sheet in the 'Sessions' tab on the Pear Deck Site.

Day 2 at InnEdCO19! Keeping with my organization for yesterday's post, I decided to reflect upon the themes of instructional strategies, new tech tools, and questions I'm thinking about. I want to note that I intentionally put instructional strategies before tech tools. I do this because I think these to be the most helpful, equity-focused information to be gained at InnEdCO. Not every school, teacher, district, etc has access to an increasingly long list of paid tools. However, they do have access to strong instructional strategies and good pedagogy that they can incorporate using whatever tools they already have access to in their classroom. 
​

Collaborative Annotation
Using a tool like Hypothes.is, Scrible, or just Google Docs, students can all annotate the same source of text - generating more learning and deeper conversation. This makes reading a social activity, with opportunities for students to gain insight and support from their peers. Have a class of ELLs? Students can comment on words they know or check to see if their interpretation of a statement is correct. Students don't have to wait until the end of an article to receive feedback from their peers, allowing them to more fully engage in the article.
​

Curation, Remixing, and Parody as Production
​Using just about any platform, how can we provide students the opportunity to curate articles, videos, podcasts, etc? I think about how I used to curate YouTube playlists as support for my AP Calc students. Even though students might not be making the original content, the gathering of materials is a kind of production in and of itself, requiring a keen eye and critical thinking skills. I also think about how students can remix or create a parody of existing content in a way that demonstrates deep understanding and analysis of the original source materials. I think about my love of the podcast Buffering the Vampire Slayer and how the song at the end of each episode demonstrates deep understanding of the Buffy Universe. 
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Check Mark Extension
Providing feedback to students on a Google Doc? Tired of copying and pasting the same feedback over and over again? Check Mark Extension stores your most common feedback, sorted by class so you can easily use it when examining student work.

Anchor
I've been wanting to play with Anchor for a while - this podcasting tool add a social element to podcasts that didn't previously exist. Since I'm a total podcast junkie (previous blog post here), I think it's time that I dig in and finally use this application for its full potential power.

Today I had the pleasure of attending Day 1 of InnEdCO19 for the Leadership Conference. I was able to attend a handful of sessions (some in-person and some virtually through their linked resources). Instead of my normal session by session sharing, today felt belt processed through three themes: instruction, tech tools, and Critical Digital Pedagogy. Below are my highlights from each of these three areas.

I saw this video highlighting the strategy Talk Detectives in the Get Them Communicating session materials. I fell in love with the simplicity and impact of this instructional move, especially in supporting English Language Learners. In the age of standardized testing and data-driven instruction, discussion skills can get tossed to the side. This is a great way to ensure students know how to engage in productive academic conversations that lead to learning and is well-aligned with sociocultural learning theory.

Below are two tools I had not learned about before today (shout out to the Get Them Communicating and A Tool Parade sessions). Each offer a unique opportunity for supporting student learning.

kialo
This platform has a ton of great prompts and a structure for supporting student debates. With a first glance at their privacy policy, data is only used to support their product, making it a tool worth considering. I think this site can provide teachers with inspiring debate prompts to use in the platform of their choice. 

Twine
This open-source tool has a web-based version that allows students to create choose-your-own-adventure stories. This tool has a bit of a learning curve, but offers a free, no-account-needed solution to teachers wanting to support students with a unique writing project.

Today's conference opened with a keynote from Jesse Stommel and Sean Michael Morris, focusing on Critical Digital Pedagogy. I was able to engage in a conversation over Twitter on how we use Critical Digital Pedagogy to look at systemic inequities in our education system. Jesse shared this presentation with me from a previous keynote he gave at WILU2019, The Workshop for Instruction in Library Use. Below is the Twitter conversation, along with my favorite quote from the slides shared.

Jesse and Sean also offered a follow-up session, focused on applying the following questions to the tech tools we use with students. Below are the questions to consider when thinking about implementing a specific tech tool in the classroom.

• ​What assumptions does the tool make about its users? What kind of relationships does it set up between teachers / students? School / the world? Humans / technology? 
• What assumptions does the tool make about learning and education? Does the tool attempt to dictate how our learning and teaching happen? How is this reflected in specific design and/or marketing choices?
• What data must we provide in order to use the tool (login, e-mail, birthdate, etc.)? What flexibility do we have to be anonymous? Who owns the data? Will others be able to use/copy/own our work there?
• In an educational context, how could the tool be used in a way that puts the learning into student’s hands? Does the tool leave students agency or choice in how they use it? Does the tool offer a way that "learning can most deeply and intimately begin”? 

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What are your Day 1 InnEdCO19 highlights? Share them in the comments below!

I have been fortunate enough to spend the past two years coaching and learning with teachers implementing a school-wide 1:1 device program at an urban traditional high school. Grounded in the SAMR framework and the 4Cs, I helped teachers with a wide variety of instructional strategies - from setting up a Schoology grade book to planning for Project-Based Learning. Below are the tech tools I used most frequently with teachers to start them on their instructional technology journey.

The power of Google Sites comes in its functionality - because it is a Google product it integrates well with other Google products such as Drive, Docs, Slides, Sheets, MyMaps, and YouTube. Sites are a great way to support students with blogging, organizing information from a research project, or creating a product of their learning. ​

It is no secret to those that know me that I am very passionate about equity work as it relates to education. I have helped create a hybrid bias and equity year-long course, reflected on conference sessions and presentations, and engaged in countless conversations related to the inequities that plague our educational system. You can find my previous blog posts below.

• BIAS AND EQUITY HYBRID TRAINING
• MAKING EQUITY MORE THAN A BUZZ-WORD
• ​#EQUITY KEYNOTE WITH @PGROSKI FROM #SRIWM17

While engaging in professional conversations and attending professional development around equity is valuable, I have found the impact to be limited. I believe that the hardest and most important work we can do as educators is pursue personal growth and education as it relates to issues of equity, inclusion, anti-racism, culturally responsive education, etc. This requires us to immerse ourselves in these topics on a regular basis - examining our identities, biases, complexes, blind spots, and fragility. It is never-ending work requiring intense study. 

Before I share some of the work I've personally engaged in, I want to name that I come to this work as a complex mash-up. I am a mixed, racially-ambiguous-looking, queer person who uses she/her pronouns. I took the last name of my spouse and co-parent a tiny human made with the help of science. Much of my family lineage has benefitted from systems of white supremacy and other parts have been oppressed by these same systems. My growth is incomplete and imperfect. I know I will not get everything right and I will continuously mess up. I am actually quite nervous to write this post because I know I still carry many biases and still have so much work to do. I am not an expert by any means. The work is hard and vulnerable, but I also know that for me to continue growing - reflecting and sharing my journey is necessary.

As someone who struggles to read books on a regular basis (for a variety of reasons), I have found short articles, videos, and podcasts to be my main mediums for personal study. Luckily, I have also been able to participate in book studies and other formal professional development related to this work. I find colleagues, family, and friends to process my learning with and engage in deep, difficult conversations. I take time to internally reflect on my learning and try to practice awareness and speak up as often as I can manage. It is exhausting. There are some weeks that I have to take a break - but I always come back and dive in again. Below are some of the resources that have impacted me the most.

White Supremacy Culture Article by Tema Okun
This article breaks down common organization cultural practices that are soaked in white supremacy culture. I find myself reflecting on meetings, interactions, and school cultures as it relates to this article all the time. Mostly, I find myself deeply concerned about the way schools feed into the 'Worship of the Written Word' element of this culture. Frequently, we do not count students as having mastered a topic unless they can write at grade level about it. Discussions, presentations, videos, and other non-written representations of understanding are seen as less valid or rigorous. This article gives me the words I've needed to engage in conversations to push back on this idea.

This journey has greatly impacted me both professionally and personally. Between my work in public education and the complexity of my family background, I think about issues of equity ever single day. It's definitely changed me, pushing me to be a stronger advocate and solidifying elements of my personal identity. I know I still have a long way to go and I want to take this opportunity to reflect on some of the ways this work has impacted me in terms of awareness, advocacy, and identity. 

• I ask a lot of questions. My brain in constantly spinning through a series of questions. Who is being left out in this conversation? What assumptions are we making? Does this policy disproportionately impact some groups more than others? Is writing the only way to demonstrate mastery of this concept? What are opportunities to tap into a more collectivist culture? What is the unintentional message this sends about our beliefs? What are potential unintentional consequences? Sometimes I manage to have the courage to ask these questions out loud and other times I struggle to find my voice.
• I feel different in different spaces. While this has shifted a bit since I changed my last name (many people frequently assume I'm Hispanic now), I feel different parts of my identity, especially my race, depending upon the group I am in. Over the past few years, much of my work setting was surrounded by groups with a white majority. This has happened at the same time that my personal study has intensified, causing me to be hyper-aware of the non-white, non-heteronormative components of my background. I never know how people see me and it can sometimes consume a lot of my mental energy. I often don't know what to do with this feeling, but it's a constant part of my human experience.
• I am hyperaware of the representation of people of color in any given room. I can physically feel if I am the only person with any non-white background. I notice who is first to speak and who is not speaking. I check to see what the white people in the room say so I know what is safe to share. While I have tried to lower the filter I put up in these instances, there are often some days where I cannot muster the courage to do so. I take it one day at a time and try to be compassionate with myself in instances where I cannot muster the courage I need to speak out.
• My Bitmoji and hairstyle stressed me out. Sometimes it still does. I have slowly worked to embracing a Bitmoji and real-life hairstyle that feel like me. I've been on what I call a 'hair journey'. While doing this personal work, I realized that I was worried about my ability to be taken seriously if I had a Bitmoji and hairstyle that made me look different (shout out to Phoebe Robinson's book, You Can't Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain for helping me on the latest leg of this journey). I kept my Bitmoji skin tone lighter and my virtual and real-life hair straight (both in texture and in cis-gender norms). The progression of my Bitmoji tells a story of my self-acceptance that I'm still working on to this day.

​There are a ton of personal experiences that have gone into shaping where I am at in this journey - it is likely I could dedicate and entire blog or write a book and still not capture everything.  I hope that by sharing a glimpse into my story and this work I can inspire other educators to find the resources and community they need to either start or continue their own equity journey. Our students need stronger and better allies to overcome generations of systemic oppression. Unless we make a greater effort, we will continue to fail our historically underserved populations and perpetuate the inequities still seen in classrooms today.

We can and must do better, but it take each of us sitting in discomfort and engaging in this work. To quote Brené Brown from her most recent Netflix special, “To not have the conversations because they make you uncomfortable, is the definition of privilege. Your comfort is not at the center of this discussion.”

Over the span of my career in education, I have had the opportunity to experience two distinct coaching models - Cognitive Coaching and RELAY. As I reflect on my experience as an educator and coach, I find myself comparing the two models and exploring why I strongly prefer one approach to the other. Before I continue with my comparison, it is important to note that I have only attended training for Cognitive Coaching. My experience with RELAY is limited to a quick introduction to the model in a general coaching course, my experience being coached with the model as a teacher, and my experience rating coaching candidates as a member of my school's personnel committee. 

My previous blog post on Cognitive Coaching primarily discussed the strengths of the training itself in terms of how well it exemplifies best practices for adult learners. It's been almost three years since I wrote this post. During that time I have been able to implement the coaching techniques presented, especially in my current role as a Digital Coach. I believe there are distinct characteristics of Cognitive Coaching that make it an excellent fit for my strengths and has contributed to my success as an instructional coach. Before I dive more deeply into those characteristics, let me first provide an overview of the two models through a concrete example.

 To prepare for this hypothetical coaching conversation, I created documents to prepare for the coaching conversation, one using the RELAY framework and one using Cognitive Coaching. While preparing these documents, I was able to make a comparison of the two models.
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Based on this experience, I find that Cognitive Coaching is more consistent with my coaching philosophy. Below are the values and beliefs that guide my coaching practice:

• Teachers are highly-educated professionals with a deep sense of self-awareness in terms of themselves and their teaching practice.
• Teachers want to continuously improve their practice and are more likely to do so when they are able choose their own coaching goals.
• Coaching is a partnership where both parties learn and grow from the experience.
• People must change their perceptions before truly transformative change can occur. Perceptions can only change through two-way dialogue.
• Coaching should build a teacher's capacity for sustained growth and learning that lasts beyond the coaching conversation. 

Cognitive Coaching also utilizes my strength in asking deep questions to facilitate teacher thinking. The model starts with the premise that all teachers are capable of determining meaningful next steps to improve their instruction. For those teachers who get stuck, Cognitive Coaching also allows the coach to step into a more directive, consulting role with the permission of the teacher. This simple act of asking permission allows the model to maintain a partnership atmosphere and leads to a more positive experience. The flexibility this provides also makes it easy to adjust the conversation to the needs of the teacher - whether they simply need a thought partner or they need someone to make recommendations for their classroom.

In contrast, when preparing a conversation with RELAY, I did not feel like I was able to ask enough questions to elicit deep reflection. I felt pressure to force a teacher to accept the next steps I deemed right for them, instead of taking ownership of determining next steps for themselves. The practice opportunity felt too much like a performance task and I did not get the feedback I wanted as a coach to make sure that our coaching conversations were meeting the teacher's needs. As a teacher, I dreaded coaching conversations that used RELAY, knowing that I would be asked to work on instructional goals that may not interest me in order to appease my evaluator. ​Overall, the approach feels inconsistent with my coaching philosophy and does not use my personal strengths.

What coaching models do you prefer and why? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

It would be an understatement to call myself a podcast junkie. I just simply love being able to listen and learn while I drive, clean dishes, fold laundry, get ready...I feel like I'm always listening to something. While this habit is largely a personal one, it's definitely come in handy in my role as a Digital Coach. Many teachers are looking for new ways to present engaging content to students and I've been fortunate enough to be able to make some podcast recommendations. Below are lists for Science and Social Studies of podcasts that are related to the content area. All of them are very well produced and do an excellent job fact-checking and investigating topics thoroughly. 

Science

• Radio Lab
• Science Vs
• Every Little Thing
• Surprisingly Awesome (no new episodes, shows still available)

Social Studies

• More Perfect
• This American Life
• Revisionist History
• Uncivil
• Undone (no new episodes, shows still available)

Additionally, This American Life has created the ability to share up to 30 second clips in the form of a video. Find the episode you would like to clip on their website and their easy tool allows you to share segment of text from the episode by clicking "Share a clip". 

​This then opens an editor for you to select the text segment you want using the transcript. After you select your portion, the site creates a video that highlights text as the episode reads. You can see below for a sample of what this looks like. What a great way to support English Language Learners!! While I wish the clips could be longer, this is a great start to making podcasts easier to use in the classroom.