The Schoenblog

Today was day three of my school new year. Tomorrow is freshman orientation, and on Friday, I meet my new students. I’m excited for the new year and for the changes I’m planning in my classroom and teaching.

But I’m also excited for something else: there’s change coming. In the first two days, I felt it everywhere. From conversation with administrators, to our edcamp unconference day, to the opening assembly and keynote. It was a very different start to the school year.

It focused on learning, positivity, relationships, and culture. We discussed meaningful change, disrupting the norm, and reflecting on growth. And it left me excited to move forward and get started.

I wanted to write tonight to share some quick thoughts about why these days excited and inspired me and share two great experiences that started our school year.

#EdcampOssining

Last year, I ran our first ever Edcamp PD with #EdcampOHS, a building-level day of unconference style learning. We adapted the Edcamp model for 100 educators, and it was a real success. I wrote all about it in Making Professional Development Matter with the Edcamp Model and Life After Edcamp: What Comes Next?

This year, two district administrators teamed up to create an opt-in edcamp day to start the school year. They asked for input back in June but I was uninvolved in the real planning. That’s why it was so rewarding, inspiring, and meaningful to see 50+ educators choose to attend during the last day of summer vacation and to see a wonderfully planned event. Sessions focused on vocabulary, data, social media, Google Classroom, SIOP, collaboration, and so much more. A blank session board quickly filled up with 20 different topics and conversations for educators of all contents and age levels.

In addition to meaningful conversations and learning, many Tweeted and backchanneled throughout the day, sharing our work with the world. It was an awesome experience and I’m inspired by the leaps we’ve taken in designing meaningful professional development.

I’m looking forward to helping to plan more of it now that we’re back in school and to working to evaluate these models to determine their impact in our teaching and students’ learning.

#EdcampOssining session board is filling up! pic.twitter.com/sb1ezqdn1j

— Adam Schoenbart (@MrSchoenbart) August 29, 2016

It’s Going to Be the Best School Year Ever!

For years, we started school with an opening assembly, bringing the whole district to the high school auditorium for long speeches. In a hot and crowded room, with so much to do, this rarely felt like the most productive or inspiring of starts.

For a few years, this changed to building level activities and prep, but this year the dreaded assembly was back on the schedule. I heard rumblings that it was planned to be something special, and it really, really delivered.

Our Superintendent, Ray Sanchez, started by looking for teachers who were missing in an awkward moment where the audience isn’t sure what’s happening yet. He told us he had to find them, directed the district photographer (@MrQPhoto) to follow and record it live, and raced down the aisle. As he did, the video below started playing.



It was fun and funny and showed thought, humility, and positivity. I think it was the first time I’ve started a school year laughing. And laughing in the room with 300 other educators, most who are never in the same room or even building together, was powerful.

The video was followed by remarks from union and board of education presidents, but they were short and purposeful. Then David Kirkland, Director of the NYU Metro Center for Research on Equity, took the stage for a powerful talk on students, equity, and relationship. We wrapped up the morning with student performances and continued on our day.

Beyond access and opportunity, Ss need hope and healing. Really powerful talk from @davidekirkland #OssiningPride pic.twitter.com/F7p9tEkc2b

— Adam Schoenbart (@MrSchoenbart) August 30, 2016

And a day later I’m still thinking about it all. About culture. About change. And about tomorrow.



The start the school year is always a new challenge but it’s rewarding. It’s a change to start over, to build on successes, grow from failures, and impact students once again. Let’s get started.

What was your most memorable or meaningful start to a school year?

Tomorrow is the first official day of the school year. For the first time in many years, I’m teaching freshman, along with my usual sophomores, and I’m excited. Sure, the end of summer is always bittersweet, but I worked hard this summer and I’m excited to bring my new knowledge and skills back to my classroom.

A few weeks ago, I reflected on purposeful change for the upcoming school year. In 5 Big Shifts for My Classroom in 2016, I explored my thoughts on rethinking grading, student publishing, project-based learning, moving from engagement to empowerment, and failing forward. One of the throughlines in this post that’s stuck with me all summer is finding ways to build stronger relationships with my students both with and without technology.

I always survey students for interests in the beginning of the year and try to find ways to connect with them, but this year I wanted to rethink my practice. I wanted strong relationships and class climate to be a focus from day one for all of us.

To that end, I plan to focus the first few days of class strictly on this goal. Through critical thinking, communication, and collaboration, I hope to lay a strong, transparent, and powerful foundation for the school year. If we build the relationships, the learning will follow and become even greater because of it.

Here are three ideas that I plan to use to get started. I haven’t worked them all out fully, yet, so consider this both a plan and reflection for my first week of school

Icebreakers That Matter!

Over the years, I’ve relied on icebreakers less and less. We’ve just jumped right into curricular collaborative activities to get to know each other. But it always takes me a while to learn students names--and for them to learn each other’s sometimes.

My goal for the first day of school is to learn every single student’s name. I used to ask students to sit in the same seats for the first few days. This year, I want them to switch constantly, to push me, test me, and keep me on my toes. I want to invest in getting to know every individual on day one.

With that in mind, I truly appreciated Jennifer Gonzales’ article, “Icebreakers that Rock” from Cult of Pedagogy. She argues that so many icebreakers are problematic because they push students to take risks before they know anyone, aren’t about bringing us together, or are just plain cheesy. She then lays out some icebreaker ideas that are really, really solid. They facilitate conversation, collaboration, and help build relationships. I haven’t picked one just yet, but I think I’ll use multiple throughout the week. She also writes about the importance of building relationships in another article, "Are You Really Connecting with Your Students?"

#BreakoutEDU

I love #BreakoutEDU. I wrote all about my experiences playing, facilitating, coaching, and creating in June with Ending the School Year with #BreakoutEDU. One of my colleagues and partner in 9th grade planning has pushed me to design a game for our 9th graders to start the year. On the first full day of school, they will walk in and jump into a magical world of collaboration and critical thinking, exploring issues of identity.

We plan to use Kid President’s videos and message to develop our themes and essential questions for the course, starting with his pep talk for teachers and students. I’m not sure how it will work in the game but for now I know that the message below matters.



In tenth grade, I plan to use an existing game from the sandbox for similar purposes to get students working together and thinking differently in week one. It’s tools like this that will hopefully set the tone for the year: it’s time for something different.

The #MarshmallowChallenge

The #MarshmallowChallenge was another activity I explored last year, using it in the first week of school. Students created their structures, documented progress on social media, and reflected on their successes and challenges in Google Classroom. I wrote all about it in Everything I Know I Learned from the #MarshmallowChallenge.

Period 5 winners: Jillian, Sophia, Jonathan, Samantha w 18", followed by 16" 2nd, & my failure #MarshmallowChallenge pic.twitter.com/DCztMgBwVA

— Adam Schoenbart (@MrSchoenbart) September 8, 2015

If the ice breakers facilitate individual and whole group relationship building and #BreakoutEDU focuses on both whole or small groups, it’s the Marshmallow Challenge that I hope to use to really focus on small team building. My students desks are grouped in clusters of four or five, and they collaborate and talk daily. This will be the start of their team building to make that work better and lay the foundations for meaningful collaboration.

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There are so many ways to start the year and so many strategies for building relationships. For now, I plan to use these three ideas to get started. I’m sure all write more about some of them and continue to reflect on my growth and the growth of my students.


What are your favorite ways to build relationships with students? To have students build relationships with one another? Share in the comments or on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” - Helen Keller

This quote is a part of a recent posting from PledgeCents, and really stood out to me. I often write about the value of collaboration, with the mantra: All of us are smarter than one of us. And this quote from Keller really hits home with me and speaks towards the new PledgeCents Preferred Partners program that I’m going to plug today.

I’d be happy to promote PledgeCents anytime but it helps that this new program is really cool and directly involves helping teachers and students access licenses to powerful edtech tools. In my experience, PledgeCents supports educators. They are generous sponsors of both the 2015 and 2016 #EdcampMville and my district #EdcampOHS. It’s hard to find sponsors to financially support these events but PledgeCents generously jumped at the chance, and for that I’m thankful. I also wrote about their #Pledge2Win campaign in an article here.

I get no greater joy in edtech than when I can find new ways to app-smash and combine add-ons to solve problems and create new workflows. It’s the super geek in me that just won’t go away. Just today, I presented a hands-on session at a conference called Make Feedback & Easier with Google Forms and Sheets Add-ons, focusing on automating and improving communication. These are quickly becoming my favorite types of professional development to facilitate. And when I’m stressed or overwhelmed, I feel a calming power from the complexity of a lengthy Google Sheet function that I can’t explain.

So much of what our schools do for students should also be done for our teachers. We need to help students love learning, develop 21st century skills, nurture their passions and interests, and to become lifelong learners. And we need to do all of that for educators, too.

It seems so obvious, and yet our educational systems so often recognize what’s best for student learners--choice, passions, curiosity--and then ignore the same for the adult learners. Not every quality of a child’s education should be mirrored for adults, but I’m recognizing more and more connections in what I want learning to be like, for both me and for my students.

These reflections were inspired by Michael Fullan’s The New Meaning of Educational Change, which I recently finished reading for class. The question I kept asking myself throughout was whether or not learning is really a priority for teachers? Not just the small percentage of connected educators and conference goers, but the majority of educators?

And more importantly, perhaps, are our schools a place that foster lifelong learning for teachers? Do our schools value it? Is there an importance placed on learning outside of teaching? Is learning a passion?

Fullan argues, “We need leaders--teachers, school, and district, who model and foster professional capital by being lead learners” (2016, p. 229-230). The only way that we can really develop capacity for continuous improvement and innovation is through learning and leadership.

Yet “restructuring (which can be done by fiat) occurs time and time again, whereas reculturing (how teachers come to question and change their beliefs and habits) is what is needed” (2016, p. 23). This quotes really struck a chord with me as I look forward to the new school year, to learning, and to change. How much of the change that happens in schools is driven by “the right drivers,” like improving culture and learning?

Instead, change is often driven by management and outside influences. Sure, they often lead back towards students and learning, but might have more impact if they developed true intrinsic motivation for learning, growth, and change--what Fullan calls the right drivers.

One way to improve school systems and culture is to build “the instructional skills of teachers, and the managerial skills of principals” (2015, p. 229), but where we learn in communities, not just as individuals. I want to work in, teach in, and learn in schools where learning is the culture and language of what goes on every day. A school that creates “conditions where leaders and participants continually develop a ‘shared depth of understanding about the nature of the work’” (2016, p. 229).

As the summer months wind down, I welcome a new opportunity to do something great for our schools, teachers, and students. And with every opportunity, comes the need to reflect and rethink our drivers and motivations.

This year, I want to make sure that it all comes back to doing what’s best for students. And to be the best teacher I can be, learning and a passion for learning needs to be valued--as a professional educator, as a classroom community, and as a part of school culture.

What’s next? It’s a question I ask myself constantly in every one of my roles in life. Professionally, I can’t help but to look forward. For me that means looking for the next innovative tools, strategies, and understandings to impact my classroom and coaching, followed by inspirations for writing, presenting, and more.

I like to think of myself as a good multitasker, but I need to do more to prioritize. And sometimes, that means making changes or sacrifices. If you’re an educator or writer, I’m sure you can relate--our jobs are different every single day so we have to be open to change, too, but it’s easy to get lost in that whirlwind of new.

Moving forward, I aim to follow the advice of literary greats like William Faulkner, Alan Ginsberg, and Stephen King, and to kill my darlings. The quote refers to a writer’s need to often remove parts of a piece that they value personally but might not be necessary to the whole. We all have the projects and paragraphs we selfishly love that are difficult to cut but better off saved for another day. If you can remove it without hurting the larger whole, it probably didn’t need to be there in the first place.

Image courtesy of quotefancy.com. “Kill your darlings” is attributed originally either Faulkner or Ginsberg, depending on who you ask.

For me, this phrase means to focus, prioritize, and learn to say no. I love to blog, write, present, research, read, and more, but I also want to be a functional human being, enjoy summer, and succeed as a doctoral student.

This post serves two purposes. First, it’s an update for you, fair reader, to let you know about my plans and ideas for the future. Secondly, it’s a promise. If I put these ideas in writing for a public audience, I now have a written commitment with the world. I hope you will hold me to it.

What’s Next

1. Vacation! I’ll be spending the next week or so on the beach in the Dominican Republic so this will be the only post for few days. Enjoy your week--I know I will!
2. Doctor Schoenbart. For the rest of the month, my first priority will be reading and writing to make progress in drafts of my dissertation. I have my topic, a prospectus draft, and now need to get my ideas on paper. 
3. The SchoenBlog. That may mean less frequent updates to the SchoenBlog for a few weeks. It will likely mean more writing that reflects on my doctoral work, too.
4. The SchoenBlog 2.0. Then, with the start of the school year, I hope to return with a revamped Schoenblog. I have a few new features in mind, with plans for a brand new site with updated content, an e-book, and new layout. 

Today is August 1. That means I have about a month to achieve the goals above. With a few conference dates and other deadlines plus preparing for the new school year, it will be a busy August. I’m excited about the challenges ahead and look forward to what’s next.