With Thanks To Shaun Mitchell, @_Mitchellaneous, Keynote For Celebration of Teachers and Teaching @FairfieldGSEAP

For the 7th year in a row, I was lucky to coordinate an end of the year Celebration of Teachers and Teaching for Educational Studies and Teacher Preparation in the Graduate School of Education and Allie Professions. This year, Shaun Mitchell, a 2017 Lawrence A. O'Toole Teacher Leadership Award recipient, was our special guest and Keynote. In addition to summer bulbs for planting and little gems for inspiration (The Story of the Boy and the Starfish, Moonbeams/All Stars, and carrying the world on the backs of our shells), I offer Mr. Mitchell's incredible talk. Happy Teacher Appreciation Week, too. We offer one another praises for to little.

Student Teacher Celebration
Fairfield University
May 7th, 2018

         Thank you, Dr. Crandall and thank you to the Fairfield University community for having me here today.  And more importantly, congratulations to all of our new educators!            What an interesting time to become a teacher.  It seems as though we are needed more than ever in our society.  We are also on the edge of evolution in our profession and that will require new, innovative minds like those that are in this room.  In the last nine years of my own career, I’ve seen teacher evaluation get coupled with test scores, then dismantled; I’ve seen the coming and going of a little thing called SBAC; I’ve seen the economic disparities between the suburban school where I student taught and the urban school in which I currently teach.  And last year, we saw the rise of an anti-public school advocate buying her way into heading the US Department of Education.             And yet, I’m not discouraged.  We may be going through troubling times, but the institution of public education in America has endured many struggles before this and will endure a great many struggles in the future.  This, too, shall pass, but not without the work of dedicated professionals like yourselves.              To be here today, you all have gone through your student teaching and have seen firsthand the trials and tribulations of what it takes to be a teacher in the 21st century.  It’s very different from when our parents were in school and it’s even changed quite a bit from when we were in school.  In a decade from now it will be all the more different.  But then I’m reminded of the old saying: “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”              This idea has been on my mind quite a bit this year as I started my work with the Nellie Mae Education Foundation after I received the Lawrence O’Toole Leadership Award in November.  I won it for my student-centered practices in the classroom, but as much as education has changed over the last few decades, students have always been the heart of why we do what we do.  Student-centered learning is a new buzz word, but it’s hardly a new concept.            By and large, students have remained the same at their core over time, regardless of the technology that has invaded our classrooms.  They still depend on great teachers to show them the joys of learning and living; they still are highly social creatures just as they’ve always been; and they still have stories to tell - maybe even more so now than in the past.             Education in general has also remained the same at its core - which could be part of our current identity crisis.  Content is taught, learning is assessed, and relationships are formed. Whether you use Socratic seminars, exit tickets, or Do Nows, none of it matters if you don’t build relationships with your students.  That has always been the one constant in an ever-changing educational landscape.  And so, regardless of what new trends in pedagogy are invading our classrooms in the future, if we remain focused on the students, our path forward will always be clear.            And so on that note of building relationships with your students, I want to impart some take-home value in this and give you some student-centered advice for your upcoming first years as educators.  These are some student-centered tips I wish I was told when I was in your position.  They are hard-won knowledge from my first years in education and they have helped lead me to where I am today, a champion of student-centered classrooms.                        (1) Tip #1: relationships with your students are everything - it’s the keystone to student-centered learning.  It’s the only thing that got me through my first year of teaching.  You see, I grew up in a small New Jersey town very similar to Fairfield; in a word: suburban.  When I was propelled into my first week of teaching at Central High School in Bridgeport I was a fish out of water.  To say I was culture shocked is an understatement.  On top of that, I was drowning in curricula - African-American Literature - which I knew nothing about, and that I’d soon have to teach over the course of the next year. I vividly remember calling my mom every night that first week saying I was going to quit.  I actually wrote 3 different versions of my resignation letter.  Then, in a moment of clarity, in the middle of my classroom, having a real moment with my students - complete with trust and understanding - and that’s when I remembered why I wanted to be a teacher in the first place.  We all have our own reasons.  Mine was to change lives the way my teachers changed mine - they turned an apathetic and scared little boy into a confident, academic young man.  They accomplished this by forming relationships with me. Trust and understanding are two crucial and reciprocated parts of the teacher-student relationship.  Looking back to my own teachers for inspiration, I knew what I had to do that first year.            I started trusting my students.  And I took time to understand my students.  Like magic, something you can’t quit explain, I was teaching as a stranger in a strange land and I was surviving.  I no longer cried in my car before walking into the building.  My confidence grew along side my students that year.  My lessons got better and more involved with each passing week.  By May of my first year, I was a completely different person than I was 8 months prior.  I was a certainly a different teacher, but I think it’s important to note the distinction that I felt like a completely different human being as well.  Being a teacher changed me for the better.  I’m the teacher I am today because of the relationships I formed with my students then as I still do now, 9 years into the game.    Take the time to understand your students.  Curriculum be damned - it will always be there.  And it will be that much harder to teach if your students cannot have a good relationship with you.  (Slide with my first classes ever.)  These were the first students I ever taught.  I will never forget them.  They changed my life even more than I may have changed theirs.  I took the time to understand them and in turn, they took time to understand me.  Trust was created.  And I’m happy to say that I still keep in touch with many of them today.              (2) TIP #2: Speaking of keeping up with former students, technology plays a big part in that.  So my next piece of student-centered advice is to utilize technology as a tool to differentiate and engage students in their own learning.  The second tenement of student-centered learning is that education should be accessible everywhere, not just within the four walls of your classroom.            The thing about technology and schools is that both environments are in constant flux, so it can be daunting to keep up with it all.  Technology comes with many different uses and with many different modes of delivery.  There are some days I want to banish the creator of the smart phone to a remote planet in the Star Wars galaxy.  And then there are days when I wonder how my teachers lived without them in their classrooms. Between my phone, my laptop, my BluRay player, my iPad, and my desktop, technology is everywhere and I have to use it to keep up with my students who are being raised on it.              One of my favorite projects that I did with my students revolved around an essay they wrote about their struggles and how struggle is part of our identity. We took student voice to a new level when we recorded students’ 2 favorite lines from their essays and edited them together using Garageband and iTunes, ultimately weaving a narrative of Bridgeport youth in their struggle to find the meaning of life and identity. What a project!  It was such an inspirational experience for my students and I to share together. I even recorded my own struggles alongside them. And without technology, a mere 10 years ago, this project wouldn't have been possible to make in a classroom. Now it’s on YouTube for the whole world to enjoy and for my students to revisit anytime they need to remember how far they’ve come and how much they’re worth.  They don’t need to be in my classroom for that, and it’s a lesson that’s available 24/7.            In addition to Garageband, I want to share a few other technological aides that I use to encourage student-centered learning and may make your teaching more efficient next year.  Classroom websites require a lot of work upfront, but the long term payoff is worth it for student achievement and for your students who like to work at their own pace.  I personally enjoy the ease of Google Classroom which has allowed me to upload and interact with my AP students even when we had snow days to ensure we didn’t miss any days of instruction.  We broke down the four walls of my classroom and it was awesome.  School continued outside the traditional school setting, even as we were snowed in, and with more technologies emerging, we are starting to see what learning might be like in the decades to come.            Not forgetting parents, the Remind App for your phone has been an amazing tool for keeping an open line of communication with my students and their parents together.  Whether it be homework reminders, school announcements, or requesting a conference, this has changed with way I communicate with my students and their families.  As the director of our school plays, I also can keep in touch with my cast and keep them updated with rehearsal changes.  Often, students writing essays will ask me questions via Remind and help is virtually only a text-message away.  I know that may sound like a huge commitment to some of you, but you use technology how you like it.  We all know communication is another key to success and this app makes it very possible.            My challenge to you for next year is to incorporate some kind of technology into your classroom.  Whatever makes you comfortable.  As with anything new, you’ll be putting yourself out of your comfort zone at first, but with a little practice, you’ll be a pro - and you’ll be planting the seeds of a student-centered classroom.             (3) TIP #3: The last tenement of student-centered learning is allowing students to take ownership over their learning.  What that looks like is going to be different in every classroom, but it does require one thing from all educators: faith in letting go of the power. In a student-centered classroom, the teacher retains control, but shifts the power of learning from themselves to the student.  We often default to think that everyone learns the same way we do, even though we are well aware that is not the case.  It’s human nature that we must fight as educators.  There are many ways to get to a destination and our students will take every which way they can.  All we can do is support them and find ways to make sure they succeed.            With this last bit of student-centered learning, it comes with many caveats, and may in fact, ask us to think about our traditional schools in different ways than we previously have.  For example, I’ve been thinking lately about the role of grades in school and whether they allow students to fully take ownership of their learning.   It holds them accountable, but does it allow them to take ownership?  I have too many students who will only do an assignment for a grade.  And when they get it back, they only look at the grade they get, rather than the feedback which took me 10 minutes to write.              When students only value the grade, or rather, the reward of getting a good grade, students miss the idea of learning to reallylearn, embedding that idea of life-long learning.  We also run the risk of having students psychologically correlating bad grades with worthlessness, regardless of whether learning has taken place.  I understand accountability must remain a factor, but this is a perfect example of how we need new, innovative minds like yourselves to look at the issues of education and find creative ways to update an antiquated system with a student-centered approach, rather than the teacher-centered classrooms that have dominated our profession for decades.              As I start to wrap this up, my last bit of advice is teacher-centered, rather than student-centered.  Seek out mentors.  Mentors come in a variety of places within your professional and personal life, and they come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and genders.  Everyone’s experience is valuable.            Nothing makes this job easier than finding those few colleagues in your building you can look to for guidance, help, and the occasional venting session. These are the people at the base of your support group - your day-to-day colleagues.  In a career that can differ from district to district and building to building, they are the only people who know what it’s like to work in your school. They get you.  You get them.  You both know what teaching and learning look like in your building.  Make sure you seek them out and build the base of your support group.            Adding onto your building colleagues, it’s also good to have a regional perspective of what education looks like.  To help you there, seek out colleagues in other districts.  This room is a good starting point - you all will be teaching in many different districts throughout the area and beyond.  Gain the insight of what it looks like to teach elsewhere.  You know through your student teaching seminar that everyone’s experience in the classroom is different and each experience is valuable learning for other educators - sometimes even more so than PD workshops.            Another place to find out-of-district colleagues is by seeking out professional organizations in your area.  I was lucky enough to participate in one right here at Fairfield University following my second year of teaching.  The Connecticut Writing Project brought Bryan Ripley Crandall into my life and since then my career has never been the same.  Through CWP and the encouragement of Dr. Crandall I’ve had the opportunity to travel the country giving workshops on literacy and writing - next up is presenting in Houston in November!  And we have a book Chapter coming out on the 31st, too!  I’ve met with colleagues across the country to hear what teaching looks like in all 50 states; and most importantly, I’ve sharpened my teacher leader skills by working with teachers and students throughout Fairfield County. Without CWP, I wouldn't have been a finalist for Connecticut Teacher of the Year in 2016 and I certainly wouldn’t have been awarded this year’s O’Toole Leadership Award.              Professional education organizations bring together like-minded individuals to elevate and celebrate our profession.  They develop the teacher leaders who are going to drive education into the next century.  There are many organizations to fit the myriad of interests in education, so find the one that suits your needs and being making change on a larger scale.                        To conclude, I’ll say this: all teachers are superheroes, but student-centered teachers are the real change agents in education.            No, teaching isn't always the glamorous depiction we see in the movies. And no matter how hard I try to be Michelle Pfiefer from Dangerous Minds, I know my students are real people with real needs and there are no cameras to catch my triumphant and vulnerable moments in the classroom.  We are student-centered teachers because we know the future of our society is dependent on the education of our students.  We are student-centered teachers because we know the future of our society is also dependent on developing life long learners who value knowledge throughout their lives.            You will have hard days - it’s just the nature of the job.  But for every bad day, there will be a million good reasons to keep your head up and get the job done.  It’s also important to keep in mind that you shouldn’t take yourself too seriously.  Yes, our profession is very serious.  But you have a responsibility to feed and nourish your mind, body, and soul. Recognize your breaking points and have an exit strategy.  Humor and laughter certainly help in that department.               And then it happens out of nowhere.  You get a letter from a student who you changed forever when you were just doing your job.  Or you get an unexpected hug from a student because you noticed something about them nobody else did that day.  Or you simply gain a students’ respect because you gave them respect first.  And you swell up with emotion and remember why you got into this profession in the first place.              You are all remarkable people for wanting to dedicate your lives and careers to the betterment of our students and by default, the betterment our collective future.  I want to thank you personally for being my colleagues, whom I hope to learn from in the future.              This really is the best job in the world.  You are embarking on a journey that will last the remainder of your lifetime in ways that will surprise you and inspire you.  I wish you all success in your careers and I hope you find as much joy in this job as I have.  And on behalf of every life you will change, I say thank you.              And thank you for your time.