Innovation and Inspiration

We held our first ever Campbell Family Code Night last week at Rosemary! We had over 100 CUSD families sign up to explore and learn how to code together! It was so exciting to join this nationwide movement to engage all families in learning computer science. We were so fortunate to be about to collaborate with School Linked Services and Measure A to provide funding for this event. Thank you to Casey Agena from the Santa Clara County Office of Education STEAM Team for being our coding facilitator! If you would like to host your own Family Code Night, download your own event kit here:  www.familycodenight.org/ All families also got to create a Lectrify circuit bracelet to remind them of the spark for learning together that was started on Family Code Night!

Universal Design for Learning, discusses ways to recognize variability as an asset, and not a liability. The strategic networks of the brain are mentioned and their connection to The Marshmallow Test. In this test of instant gratification, young students are given a marshmallow. They are told that they can eat the marshmallow now, or if they wait, they can have two when the teacher comes back. It is interesting to see the different strategies the students use to try to help themselves in this experiment. Another strategy that we can teach our kids is a "positive time-out". Usually, time-outs are used as a form of punishment. But it is more powerful, if we teach our kids to use them as a time to self-reflect and self-regulate. Instead of waiting for problems to arise, we must help our kids self-monitor and to recognize when they need a break. One of the first steps in doing so is helping them to see patterns in when they are getting upset and to understand what triggers them...

The purpose of learning is not to get good grades. The purpose is to be an expert learner.  What does it mean to be an expert learner? Katie Novak defines expert learners as, "knowledgeable and resourceful, purposeful and motivated, self-directed and strategic."  In schools today, we don't always give students enough opportunities to practice becoming an expert learner. We often tell students what the final product should be or give them the resources they need. What needs to change in my practice if I want to support teachers as they transform education so all students become expert learners?  First, we need to create environments where it is okay to take risks and to fail.  Second, we need to be flexible and allow our students and teachers to make choices. If there is no flexibility, how will people be self-directed? Finally,  we need to celebrate the risk-taking and resiliency of our students and teachers to keep trying to constantly transform education. ...

I just started taking a course on UDL (Universal Design for Learning) with a few of my colleagues. The more I learn about UDL, the more I see the connections between UDL and STEAM.  One of the main goals of UDL is to foster self-directed, creative learners. One of the ways that we are able to encourage our students to be more self-directed is to encourage a love of learning from an early age. How are we already doing this? In many of our classes, students are given more choices in how they want to learn, collaborate with classmates, and how they want to share their knowledge. Some of our teachers are facilitating Genius Hour, to allow our students to discover their passions, learn about them, and teach others about it. In order to graduate, all of our eighth graders must complete an Exhibition project. This project has evolved over the years. In its current version, students have the option of working with a partner to find a problem that is relevant in their lives. They then...

  Introducing Campbell Union School District's first STEAM Innovation Teacher Leader cohort!  Blackford Elementary School - May Liu Capri Elementary School - Gloria McGriff and Teresa Iden Castlemont Elementary School - Jisung Chong Forest Hill Elementary School - Julie Hart Lynhaven Elementary School - Megan Delaye Rosemary Elementary School - Jessica Branstetter Sherman Oaks Elementary School - Lino Gutierrez Marshall Lane Elementary School - Michelle Beddo Village Elementary School - Elizabeth Shepherd Campbell Middle School - Kimiyo Cordero Monroe Middle School - Anthoney Roe Rolling Hills Middle School - Carrie Tibbs These 13 innovative teacher leaders have been selected to lead and continue to develop our district's STEAM program. Their first group challenge, to come up with a few Back To School Ideas that teachers in their grade level could use to start their year in a STEAMy way! Read about the ideas that we designed that day on  RAFT Ed...

As the school year has come to a close, I wanted to reflect on a few of the successes of last school year. Our 9 elementary schools have created their own school STEAM Space or STEAM Centers. And our 3 middle schools have STEAM resources in their libraries. I can't wait to work with our school leadership teams to help them develop a plan to provide meaningful STEAM experiences for every student! I didn't really get to blog last year, so my new goal for this school year is to blog once a week!

I'm back from my maternity and so excited to be back in the swing of things! This year we have a new (part-time) STEAM TOSA, Sherry Burch, and I am thrilled to have partner to collaborate with! One of the first projects that we worked on together was a Saturday STEAM Academy class with the Piper Kits! We had gotten the Piper Kits through Donors Choose, with the majority of the funding coming from Groupware. Sherry had her STEAM class build the laser-cut, wooden Piper boxes, which she said was both challenging and fun for the kids, as some of them had never used a screwdriver before. As part of the introductory Minecraft programming lessons in the Piper Kit, students use a Raspberry Pi to build the controls for their computer. They first worked with a partner to connect jumper wires to buttons to be their up, down, left, and right controls. They also problem solved to create circuits operate buzzers, LED lights, and switches to truly bring their computers to life. At the end o...