Last Wednesday I had the opportunity to spend the day with my new twitter friend, Lindsey Own, in her school in Seattle, Washington.  Lindsey and I met on twitter a little while ago and had chatted a bit about Genius Hour.  She told me that she loves visiting other schools and asked if she could come up to mine during her Spring Break.  Of course I said yes, and told her how much I loved visiting other schools as well.  And so I asked if I could visit hers during my Spring Break (thank goodness we have different breaks so we could make this happen). 

If you haven’t done this before, you need to try it!  It is a wonderful opportunity!  You learn so much just by observing and chatting with a different set of teachers.  I have been lucky enough to have been able to visit other classrooms several times over the years. 

The highlights:

One of Lindsey’s students picked my up from the front office and brought me to her classroom and this is the scene that I walked in on.  Lindsey and a group of her students playing a card game together.  They were chatting and laughing and having a great time.  At first, I was confused…what on earth was going on?  This was science class?  I sat at the side and just watched and realized that it was still before the first period bell.  The children were just warming up for their day.  At Lindsey’s school the kids are encouraged to show up 10 minutes before the bell to touch base with their homeroom teacher and get warmed up for their day.  Lindsey uses this time to check in with her students and make a personal connection.  I couldn’t stop smiling.  What a wonderful start to their day!

After chatting with Lindsey and touring the school (which included watching the K students get in their daily physical activity by having a little morning dance…so cute), I checked out a math class that is using video games to teach.  Now at first I thought that meant gamification (which I do not know a lot about, but it involves a lot of external rewards, which I try to avoid in my classroom), but I quickly learned that was not was she was doing at all.  Teaching through games is different. The video game she was using, Anti-chamber, is built on problem solving, which related directly to the unit of study in her math class.  Students were engaged, on task and enjoying class.  Very cool.

After math, I checked out a few other classes, and then ended my day back in Lindsey’s science class where they were working on their Science Symposium (like a Science Fair without badges).  I was drawn to the windows in her classroom as they had post-it notes all over them.  I asked her about them, and she explained how they began their science inquiry unit with a discussion about deep questions.  They looked at google-able questions and questions that required more in-depth analysis and which would make a better science project.

This is something I also spend a great deal of time on with my students.  Not only in Science class, but also in Language Arts, when we ask our students to ask meaningful questions of the texts that we read.  We don’t want our students asking surface level questions that they can easily look up the answer to, but rather we want them to dig deeper and come up with questions that require deep thought, critical thinking, and perhaps experimentation to solve.

I loved this post-it note activity and it is definitely something I am going to ‘steal’ from my visit.  And that is what is so wonderful about these, as Lindsey puts it, “cross-pollination” visits…we can step into someone else’s world, look at their classroom and units and ‘steal’ brilliant ideas.  

When we are beginning teachers, we are told to “beg, borrow and steal” lesson plans from our colleagues.  But I worry that once we gain experience, too many people stop this practice because their filing cabinets are now full of ideas and they don’t have to ‘shop around’ anymore.  But then we risk losing something so incredible…that conversation with our colleagues, both in and out of our own schools.  

I love visiting…I love wandering the halls of my own school and checking out what everyone is doing and I love visiting other schools.  Thank goodness for spring break, professional development days, and a principal who will cover my class so that I get these opportunities.  Thank goodness for pinterest, youtube, blogs, twitter and all the other online platforms I use to connect with other educators.   

Thank you Lindsey and everyone at your lovely school for inviting me into your precious learning space.  I can’t wait for you to visit my school!