Category: Growth Mindset (Page 1 of 2)

Develop a growth mindset demonstrated in collaboration with others

Hoop Check-In – Final Video!

November 24, 2019 / knikolich / 0 Comments

Well, I did my best

I set out this semester to learn how to choreograph and perform a routine in the aerial hoop (lyra) discipline. I came in with some knowledge of my strengths and weaknesses in the hoop, and with some practice under my belt, but with no experience putting together a routine or moving to music in the hoop. Through online resources, the generous help of my mentors and coaches, and listening to that song until I couldn’t anymore, I was able to put together a routine that played to my strengths while also challenging me to improve in my weaker areas. I practiced and practiced, filming periodically along the way, until I arrived at the end of the semester (and the end of my filming opportunities with Eve at Studio 4 until the new year).

This is by no means the best I can do, and I’m going to keep working at it – with a different song this time though! That said, I’m fairly proud of what I was able to accomplish, and moreover, I forced myself a long way toward getting over my aversion to being filmed.

With enormous thanks to everybody who supported, guided, and ooh’d and aah’d me through the process, here’s what I have so far:

Coding for Beginners (Like Me)

November 22, 2019 / knikolich / 0 Comments

A Question on My Mind

I’ve spent a lot of time in the field of professional and academic science, and one thing is clear: in order to go on in science, engineering, or technical fields, you need to learn how to code. At the post-secondary level, there are few classes offered on coding for non-computer science majors. I’ve had to learn to use R and MATLAB on the fly, or learn to use them as part of a course on statistics or signal processing, respectively. The most successful and in-demand of my former colleagues are the ones who came from a computer science background, and can code in multiple languages. Being able to see a problem and solve it by coding an application is the best way to get a job in the research field – or, honestly, probably any field.

So something I’ve been wondering is: as a high school science teacher, when is it appropriate to start teaching my students to code?

Screen capture from Hour of Code, showing coding games available for ‘pre-reader’ age children.

The answer, it seems, is ‘from before they can read’.

And Here’s How

Today in class, Rich McCue came in to give us an introduction to learning activities that teach students to code. There are a number of great resources out there, including Scratch (for beginners or younger kids as it’s mostly picture-based and requires little typing and no spelling), and Grasshopper. Grasshopper is a Google-based platform (see my post on Google for Education for my thoughts on Google’s brave new world), but don’t hold that against it. It is an incredibly intuitive app that guides and scaffolds the player through games that start out very easy, building self-efficacy, and build quickly toward real coding tasks.

Example of a game screen in Grasshopper. Screen capture.

In the game, your instructions are on the left, with the command screen in the middle. there are buttons ta the bottom as ‘building blocks’ of syntax, in case the student doesn’t feel comfortable typing right away. there is an example on the top right of what your code should create, and the bottom right shows what you have so far.

Remember how I said I’m not one to get into computer games? Well, having spent about half an hour with Grasshopper, I’m addicted. I’ve downloaded the app and can’t wait to play it on the bus tonight.

Screen capture from Hour of Code, showing coding games available for ‘pre-reader’ age children.

For hour-long lessons in coding, Hour of Code has compiled hundreds of games or sections of games that incorporate code and take about an hour to complete. On Hour of Code, you can search by subject area, level of experience, platform (iOS, Android, computer), and age level, and find fun activities to help get students engaged with coding.

As the CodeBC teachers’ guide to Computational Thinking states, computational thinking is the new literacy if the 21st century. I think of coding as a tedious, frustrating chore that I will never learn to do properly and that I do as little as possible. I believe it’s essential for high school students today to think of code as the opposite: a fun, engaging, and accessible activity that is as necessary for life as reading, writing, and arithmetic. Games like Grasshopper and the lessons on Hour of Code are great ways to get students started coding in a way that makes them want to code, and feel like they are good at it.

Hoop Check-In – Week 10

November 15, 2019 / knikolich / 0 Comments

Posture and Expression

The difference (okay, one of the many, many differences) between where I’m at with aerial arts and where the real pros are is in their ability to use their bodies not just to do the neat tricks, but to express emotion and exhibit fluid motion. I can work on making my moves flow together smoothly, but it takes another level of strength and competence with those moves to use them to really express what you want to show. It’s a literacy all its own that requires facility with the parts, much like poetry or great prose requires automaticity with grammar and vocabulary. One thing I’ve noticed from watching the pros is that they can use posture to make moves look more fluid, or use body positioning to emote without even being able to see their face:

I am working with a very limited vocabulary, and a basic grasp of the grammar of dance and movement. I can’t expect poetry to come out yet, but here are a few things I’m working on right now to push my expression a bit:

Photo by AerialShowgirls on Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

Slow it down and lean in

A pop of a hip, a roll of an elbow, or an arch of the back can add drama and emotion to a move. the photo above would look way less appealing or intense if the performer’s head was not thrown back, or if her shoulder wasn’t cocked. You can do a lot with the difference between a flexed or pointed foot, a bent or straight knee, etc. At my level, this means I need to slow down and do every move REALLY hard, like I mean it, instead of trying to flow through them quickly, which makes it look sloppier and less deliberate.

Posture counts

In the video above featuring my favourite aerial artist on YouTube, you can see how she arches her back to pull up into the hoop, straightens her back to show balance, and sometimes even hunches forward for almost a springboard effect, when she’s about to do something really impressive. I like this idea, and as I work on my back flexibility I’m always trying to be aware of what my posture is doing.

I’ll be doing my final video recording this weekend for a few weeks, so wish me luck!!

Hoop Check In – Week 9

November 11, 2019 / knikolich / 0 Comments

Things I’ve Learned

The semester is drawing to a close, and as I prepare to wrap up my Free Inquiry project, I’d like to take a moment to summarize my learning thus far.

As I’ve stated before, it’s more difficult for me to reflect on my learning and make it visible when I’m working on a physical skill and not academic research. I’ve been watching and learning, rather than gathering prior research. I’ve been seeking advice, rather than gathering data. And, very importantly, I’ve been gaining an understanding of physical limits (mine and gravity’s), rather than analyzing observations. I’ve learned a lot about my strengths and weaknesses, and how to learn by experience.

Along with my latest progress video (the entire routine through with music for the first time), here are a few practical things I’ve picked up along the course of this project that I think apply to life in general:

You can substitute strength for flexibility when it comes to showmanship…but you still need to work on both.
It is 100% harder to resist gravity when spinning very fast.
You can condition and you can gain calluses, but in order to put on a good show, some things are going to hurt very badly no matter what.
Covering up doesn’t always prevent you from getting burned.
Leaning into every move makes it look more intentional.
Always think of what to do with your hands.

And without further ado, my progress so far:

Video taken by Eve Carty at Studio 4 Athletics. Used with permission.

Wolves and Airships and Axes, oh Minecraft!

November 1, 2019 / knikolich / 0 Comments

Today we had a team of experts from Colquitz Middle School come to UVic and teach us how to use Minecraft EDU, an educational application of a computer game that I haven’t really thought about since my friends got into it about ten years ago. We learned about the ways Minecraft can be used to promote teamwork, communication and collaboration, creativity, and survival skills in students and classes. The experts told us about projects they have done in Minecraft, including building competitions using Creative mode and ancient civilization simulations using Survival mode, and code machine-like creations using certain materials! Their teacher also showed us how to design a game and curate the students’ interactions. There are pre-built worlds and games for several different age groups, and in different core subjects, although if the teacher is well-versed at creating in Minecraft, building your own worlds is the best idea.

Then they let us play:

Some of my classmates with more experience built a ship in the sky!

Little wolves were very friendly and followed us around – until it gets dark. Then they get deadly!

These players created a house out of pink and purple stone…then filled it with puppies!

I have to admit, I am not the kind of person who gets into video games. I didn’t find anybody to play with right away, and with no idea what I was doing, I spent a lot of my time ‘in game’ wandering around and watching other people create.

All the same, I was completely immersed in the world, and felt, as the Colquitz teacher put it, “as though the mouse was my new eyes”. Despite my lack of engagement in the game, I really enjoyed watching other people play and get really involved in it. This tells me that Minecraft EDU would be a great way for me to let my students explore, play, and teach me more about how this immersive and completely customizable tool.

However, this is also a caution. In any class, there will be students who are as overwhelmed, inexperienced, or easily frustrated with this game as I was. Building (or using one of the pre-built) games with specific goals and making teamwork a priority would be necessary in this case, so that students are more motivated to work together and bring their peers up to speed. My feeling is that I need more experience with Minecraft before I can ever consider building it into my classes. If my buy-in is low, students will sense this. If my expertise is shaky, there is only so much patience my students can be expected to have in teaching me. It was interesting to watch my colleagues get immersed and really passionate about the game, and I can see many of them building Minecraft and other immersive games into their curricula. For me? I’ll stick to real dogs for now.

Hoop Check-In – Week 8

October 30, 2019 / knikolich / 0 Comments

I Blame Dr. Albert Bandura

This week, I’ve switched up my classes at Island Circus Space. I’ve found the classes I was taking weren’t helping me to learn or improve new skills, and similarly were not allowing me time to polish skills I already have, or that I am using for my routine. Dr. Lucinda Brown would be so pleased, because it all had to do with…

Self-Efficacy!

The idea of self-efficacy being important in teaching and learning has been on my radar for some time. As a tutor for UVic’s Learning Assistance Program, self-efficacy training (including the four components of teaching for increased self-efficacy) was part of how we learned to help our students take charge of their own learning. I’ve been hearing about the importance of self-efficacy again in Psychology of Classroom Learning (ED-D 401), and it’s made me realize how little of it I’ve been getting from my hoop and trapeze classes.

Image: Reciprocal Determinism by EDCU320RHT on Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 4.0).

I started at this studio taking intermediate hoop/trapeze, considering that I had a year of experience in the hoop. It turns out that I’m halfway between their version of ‘beginner’ and ‘intermediate’, and being in a class full of folks that are much more experienced, and only practicing skills that are new to me, has been really impacting my self-confidence with this discipline. I know as a teacher that this is not how I can learn optimally, so I’ve decided to switch up my schedule to take the beginner-level hoop/trapeze class, as well as an extra strength-training class to get me up to speed with the intermediate class. This is a different angle that might yield the same results, but in a way that I can feel much more comfortable with my progress.

I’ve really begun to reflect on how teaching a skill like aerial arts is intrinsically the same as teaching science or English or anything else in a classroom. Once I start thinking about it, the principles of pedagogy start turning up everywhere!

(Featured image: Psychologist Albert Bandura in 2005 from Fridolin freudenfett on Wikimedia Commons, under CC BY-SA 4.0.)

Project-Based Learning at Esquimalt High

October 30, 2019 / knikolich / 0 Comments

As part of our Multiliteracies class, we had the opportunity this past month to work with a group of students from Esquimalt High School on a project that they were passionate about. This was an open inquiry-style project, and the projects that grew out of it represented emergent learning. I had the opportunity to work with another of the pre-service teachers in the program on a project that interested both of us. I learned a lot during this experience about how to relate to today’s students, how to build trust and rapport with them, and how to enable them to do work that they couldn’t do on their own by providing effective scaffolding and collaborations.

Our Students

Image from PxHere (Public Domain).

My colleague and I ended up attaching ourselves to a group of four students who were all passionate about organizing a class trip to Carmanah-Walbran Provincial Park. All four had strong opinions about the logging of old-growth forest on Vancouver Island, and wanted their classmates to see the beauty of the forest (and the devastation of the surrounding clear cuts) for themselves. These students were part of a challenge program, and so were already very high-achieving youth that are in their final year of high school. In addition to this project, they are all dealing with the stress of graduating, applying to university, and finishing their year with strong grades. They were fantastic resources for us, as they knew the school and the staff within it well, and were able to access the resources within the school that we needed.

As challenge students that are very involved in their school and community, our group were already quite comfortable interacting with adults, which made it easy to establish a respectful rapport with them. They were able to clearly articulate their ideas, and were also very aware of their own strengths. With very little prompting, they were able to put together a plan of action and self-organize into loose but interchangeable roles: the researcher, the artist, the designer, and the logistics handler.

Our Project

The group agreed that their goal in this project was to win their class over to the cause, in order to prepare a field trip proposal to take to the administration for approval. As outdoor educators, my colleague and I were both able to advice on the kinds of logistics required, as well as offer suggestions toward a ‘save the forest propaganda campaign’. This campaign came together as follows:

The students contacted a researcher at the Pacific Forestry Center and arranged for him to come in and talk to the class about the importance of preserving old growth rainforest.
The students independently researched and produced multimodal publication (called a ‘zine, pictured below) aimed at informing their classmates about the issues facing the Carmanah and Walbran valleys.
With minimal input, the students explored arrangements for camping accommodations, transportation, and possible dates for the field trip, to begin the process of their application.

Front and back cover of ‘zine. Photo by me.

Inside of ‘zine. Photo by me.

Opportunistic Collaboration

It so happens that another pre-service teacher in our cohort is a member of the Friends of Carmanah Walbran collective, and was in possession of some cedar with which the organization was planning to make trail marker signs. We were able to take advantage of the opportunity for our students to design these signs themselves, as the colleague I was working with is also a visual artist and had access to the CNC router at UVic’s Digital Fabrication Lab. Using a free design program, our students produced another product: two trail marker signs that the class will take with them on their field trip and install in the Carmanah (pictured below).

Photo by me.

This was a phenomenal experience, and I hope that our students keep in touch about the results of their efforts!

EdCamp and Un-Conference for Collaboration

October 25, 2019 / knikolich / 0 Comments

Like a Conference, but Better

Today in EdTech we practiced a ‘mini-EdCamp’ design. EdCamp is a design for a casual conference that has a bottom-up or ‘un-conference‘ design. I have participated in a few un-conference events before, as they’re very trendy now, especially in education. However, I’ve never participated in an ‘EdCamp-brand’ conference. I look forward to participating in them once I’m working in a district. If the district doesn’t typically run an EdCamp, I’ll be organizing one early in my career.

Side Story

PEEC 2019 Participants. Photo by pacific_eec on Instagram. Used with permission.

Little known fact about me: running peer conferences is something I both love to do and have a ton of experience with. Have you heard of the Pacific Ecology and Evolution Conference (PEEC)? I was the lead organizer last year (no big deal). While it gets restructured every year, and the topics are influenced by the papers that participants submit, it’s a really inclusive research conference and not as amenable to bottom-up control, as we’d hate to exclude presenters because their field was not ‘voted up’.

I also attended Science Talk ’19 this past year, which was built on a digital un-conference model. Several months before the physical conference in Portland, OR, the organizers sent out calls to the sci-comm community to send in topics they are interested in, and they collate them into discussions and workshops, as well as bringing in speakers and panelists to speak to the ‘hot topics’. There are still keynotes and presenters, but it’s a much more organic, participant-controlled feeling. I’ve been to a lot of science conferences, but meeting some classroom teachers at this science communication conference was what gave me the final push into becoming a K-12 educator. This year’s conference interferes with the PDP program, but I cannot wait to go back and represent K-12 educators once I’m working in a district!

Back to Our Mini-EdCamp

Low-tech survey methods to choose our sessions. My photo.

We did a one-session version of the EdCamp model, which is done in a single day with sticky notes and not topics submitted ahead of time. In this model, there are no speakers brought in, and no presenters – just groups of peers discussing topics that they care about, and generating good ideas. The topic I chose to participate in was ‘Mindfulness Practice in the Classroom’. It turns out that we had a lot of expertise in the room, and we were able to better define ‘mindfulness’ as well as separate the benefits (and possible drawbacks) from the buzzword that it has become. We even talked about some best practices for using mindfulness in the classroom, including student buy-in and authenticity. A couple of us fell into the role of facilitators, and I think we all got something valuable from the discussion. It was also nice to have somewhat-unstructured time to talk frankly and casually with my fellow teacher candidates, which is another benefit of unconferences – the ability to make genuine connections with colleagues or speak with your coworkers outside of ‘work time’. That social aspect is crucial in a workplace, and I like that unconferences are free and not held during working hours – you’re off the clock!

Hoop Meets Pedagogy

October 18, 2019 / knikolich / 0 Comments

An Ode to Eve

We did no new material in EdTech today, so I thought I’d take a moment this week to talk about something that I’ve learned through my Free Inquiry project, and it isn’t about hoop: it’s about teaching. Having been practising at another studio for a month now, I’ve really missed my weekly classes with Eve and my classmates. I’ve taken a moment to examine why that is, and I’ve been able to link it to what I’m learning about teaching and pedagogy here at UVic.

As I’ve mentioned before, I am not the most graceful, flexible, or athletic person. If I had started practising aerial arts at the studio I’m with now, I wouldn’t have lasted a month – I always leave there feeling weak, inadequate, and clumsy. But I’ve stuck with Eve for over a year, and every time I leave her class I feel strong, empowered, and accomplished. Her classes are a safe, supportive, personalised learning space, where everybody is valued and encouraged to try their best, regardless of their abilities. If I can reproduce even a fraction of that feeling in my students, I will be doing my job as a science teacher. Here are some ways in which Eve, who is not a trained teacher, has shown me to be an effective educator:

Know and use names

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images on Pixabay

It’s so basic, but so important. At the beginning of every class, regardless of who is there, Eve goes around the room and introduces us all by name. It shows that she knows our names, even if it’s our first class. It also makes sure that we all know each others’ names. This avoids the awkwardness of the I’ve-been-coming-here-for-weeks-and-I’m-bad-at-faces-but-it’s-too-late-to-politely-ask-your-name-again game. Even the worst person with names will eventually learn all the regulars because of the repetition week after week.

Do cool stuff right away

One of the first moves I learned!

In Eve’s class, we do a warm-up all together, then go right into learning combos. At other studios, we drill on techniques. We practice the same thing again and again, and if you don’t get it or aren’t strong enough, you have to watch everyone else master it while you wait your turn to struggle again. There is no payoff. With Eve, you learn things right away that look really cool, even if they’re relatively easy. You catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and think ‘I look like a lyra performer!’ even if you’re still on the basics. This increases confidence, self-efficacy, and interest. I wanted to learn more, and felt good about what I was already able to do.

Keep everyone focused on their own progress

Photo from Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

In Eve’s studio, there are only as many people as there are hoops. That means that everybody gets their own hoop, set to the height that they prefer, and everyone practices the moves together. Very importantly, this means that I’m not looking at anybody else – I’m focusing on getting through the moves myself, and the occasional glance at others when I need a reference is not competitive. I’m not watching others and comparing myself to them – we’re all doing it together, and focusing on doing our personal best.

Offer choices and modifications to accommodate different levels

Image by Dan Moyle on Flickr (under CC BY 2.0)

Every move we do with Eve, she offers both an easier way, for those who don’t have the strength or flexibility yet, and a more challenging option, so you can push yourself if you feel like you’ve mastered the move. That way, nobody’s bored and nobody feels left behind. The language she uses is key: instead of saying “beginners can do this, advanced can do that”, she offers a move, then follows with “…if it’s available to you”. Not “if you can do that”, but “if it’s available”. In this way we learn to listen to our own bodies, and determine if that particular challenge is available to us. If I can’t do the splits, some things are not available to me, but it’s not like I’m being lazy or I’m not good enough yet. It’s simply unavailable to me at this time. I would like to adopt this phrase, or something like it, to use in my classes.

Create and hold space

Image by sciencefreak on Pixabay.

Eve also teaches yoga, including aerial hammock yoga, and she ends every one of her yoga classes with a savasana (‘corpse pose’), including a guided mindfulness meditation. These meditations invite the class to turn inward and find a place to relax away from the stress of the day. In my most stressful, traumatic times, Eve’s classes were a shining light in my week. I would do an hour of yoga, finishing with a meditation, then launch into an hour of fun in the hoop. I left energized and completely at peace. Everybody in the class seemed to have a similar reaction, and it allowed us all to gather closer as a collective. I have shared stories, woes, aches, pains, and shared smiles across the room with the women in that class, even though none of us are friends ‘in real life’. Eve’s studio was a bastion for me, and I started referring to it as my ‘upside down women’s circle‘. More than a form of exercise, these evenings were a spiritual oasis for me. I won’t aspire to that for my high school science students, but if I can create a similar safe space for them to share with each other and with me, then I am doing the job I have set out to do.

Hoop Check-In – Week 6

October 18, 2019 / knikolich / 0 Comments

The Path So Far

I’d like to take a moment, halfway through this free inquiry project, to say that I’m learning a lot. This is not my usual way of learning: as an academic, I have had few opportunities to track my learning in certain skills, as opposed to concepts. Learning to do something has different metrics than learning to know something. Back in September, I enjoyed playing in the hoop or trapeze or silk hammock, but had no idea how one would actually perform such a thing. I knew a few cool poses, and had built up some strength, but until I started watching videos of performers late one Friday night, I hadn’t dreamed that I could put those moves to music, let along choreograph a whole song!

Look at this goober.

Undergoing this free inquiry has helped me understand that ‘learning’ doesn’t have to be reading peer-reviewed articles or writing a paper. It turns out that video editing isn’t as daunting when you’re editing a video of you having fun and doing something cool! My biggest sources of knowledge in this endeavour have been my instructors at Island Circus Space, where I’ve been practicing weekly, and my amazing mentor Eve Carty, who has taught me not just hoop combos but how open pedagogy can be as easy and natural as breathing. The structure for my project came from a dance blog that breaks choreography down into 6 steps. Those steps have been working really well to structure my process, and so far I’ve completed four steps:

Pick a song and listen to it like crazy (I actually did this twice, as I’ve since switched my song to On the Arrow by Rachel Rose Mitchell [a cover of the original by AFI])
Get actively inspired (by watching videos of others, talking to my instructors, and listing the moves I could do so I could put them in order)
Freestyle! (At practice every week, I got the feeling of new moves and new ways to combine and move between ones I already knew)
Piece combos together by ‘chunking’ (I did this by first choreographing moves to pieces of the song that were really poignant or important, or to certain lyrics that spoke to me. After that, I filled in the rest of the song)

Next Steps

There is no way to not make this look awkward.

The next two steps will be covered over the following weeks:

5. Polish execution of the moves (in free jam sessions with Eve, I’ll drill the choreography and film it for my reference so I can make it look awesome)

6. Make edits – but not too many (If there are moves that I’m not as comfortable with, or that take longer than I expect to get into even with practice, I might have to adjust the choreography a bit)

In addition, I’d like to do an audio interview with one of my instructors so I can work on my audio editing skills. I’m still attending weekly practices and biweekly sessions for filming, and I am amazed at how this project is coming together. I’ll check in next week with another video, this time hopefully my first attempt at the full song!