#WeirdEd Week 51- Bullying

**Ed. Note: #WeirdEdE moderator Shawna Briseno (@nolagirlfromtx) wrote both this blog and the questions for this week's chat. This topic is very close to the heart of everyone at #WeirdEd and I'm thrilled Shawna felt so passionately about it she pursued making it a topic.**

by Shawna Briseno

It’s time to talk about the “B” word. It seems as if it’s always in the news but whatever we’re doing isn't working because it’s still a gigantic problem. Kids are still being bullied for any number of reasons.  

Sometimes those kids who are being bullied do very bad things. Like this:

http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/local/tarrant-county/2015/03/23/northwest-isd-school-violent-graphic-threat-story-protest/70327006/

Or this:

http://www.bigcountryhomepage.com/story/d/story/social-media-post-prompts-big-country-school-to-ta/13209/3OZuadJ7_EikhVyaL16bDw#.VR3pQdGSijs.facebook

Sometimes they go even farther. We've all heard the stories of kids who commit suicide because the bullying is just too bad. And it’s still happening.

Social media can exacerbate the problem. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook...you name it and kids have used it to spread maliciousness. Oh, and just in case you haven’t heard, there’s now an app for that:

http://www.popsugar.com/moms/Burnbook-App-37160354#photo-37160354

Why, in anyone’s mind, is this possibly a good idea? What responsibility do adults, especially teachers, have to step in when a line is crossed?

So yes, we’re going to talk about bullying. We’re going to decide for ourselves just what bullying is. We’ll talk about how bad it can get and what we can & should do to stop it.  

#WeirdEd Week 36- Tattoos

I love me some tattoos. I have a bunch and want more. I have good tattoos done by well trained artists that I would trust and tattoos that are just ok done by a guy who was later fired from the shop for coming in to work stoned and ruining a dude's arm. I have planned out ink and vacation ink and please stop hurting me ink and all the stereotypical ink (tribal, a skull ans cross bones, and a Chinese character).

Tattoos are a part of life now. They are no longer things that only sailors and people of ill repute have. My mom has three tattoos. The woman who threatened to stop paying for college if I ever got any ink.

I got my first tattoo, the skull and cross bones on my left shoulder (no, I didn't just check to be sure it's the left one as far as you know) on the same day my sister got her first, a rose inside a star because she's a giant KISS fan and Paul Stanley is her guy. Mom gave Summer permission to get tattooed for her 17th birthday. Friends and I went with. I got in the chair when she was done. This is known as The Commutative Property of Parental Rules.

Many more followed, ones that I saved up for and ones that maybe I shouldn't have gotten financially. I don't have anything offensive and all my art is at least well done, though the shark on my left shoulder is toothless and looks more like a whale but hey, second tattoo and I learned. Still looks nice.

What do tattoos have to do with teaching? We can talk permanence. We can talk earning art through pain. We can talk being original vs picking something off the wall and doing that just to do something. We can talk the difficulty of changing your mind and how once you're in it you're in it.

I love talking about ink. It's living art. The application of tattoos is complicated and intense, even when it isn't painful.*Good artists aren't sticker stickers, they are true painters working on living canvass and they take pride in their work. This isn't something you're hanging in your house, this is something anyone can see and you'll have for the rest of your life. A tattoo is forever and an artist respects that bond, that commitment.

Like a teacher.

*it's always painful. Sometimes it's less painful

**I don't normally do this but I've got a really fun story about a tattoo artist speaking to my students in my book He's the Weird Teacher. You should check it out. Please.

***none of the tattoos on here are mine

#WeirdEd Week 33- CUE Rockstar and Conferences

NOTE: Yes, I have presented at two CUE conferences and yes they have my proposals to present at more this summer. This chat is not an hour-long brown nose session so they love me and will let me come back*. I really do love the way Rockstar does things. Trust me, there are easier, less public ways to kiss up.

There are many education conferences out there. Most follow the same format- 60-90 minute sessions crammed  into one-to-three days. Teachers with long, complicated schedules trying to make it to which room at 9:00 and then what room at 10:35 and then that other room after lunch and pretty soon my brain is full and I can’t take one more sit-and-listen session no matter how brilliant the speaker is and I don’t know when I’ll ever be able to implement half of the things I’ve learned.

Here’s where CUE Rockstar comes in. Rockstar is one to three days, but the sessions are extended, normally running 2.5 hours. “Oh good,” you think. “Even MORE time to listen to someone’s face talk at me.” But that is where you are wrong, Mr and Mrs Person Teacher. The session rock star teaches for maybe an hour. MAYBE 90 minutes. Then the rest of the time is for you, the session attendee, to practice, create, and Do The Thing. In the case of one of my Rockstar sessions, I taught the group how to use YouTube’s internal editing program to create easy videos and how they could teach their students to use it too. And then every single person in my session made a YouTube video. With cuts. And edits. And music. And effects. And humor and personality and verve.

I teach you the Google-Fu!

That’s the beauty of CUE Rockstar. Long sessions allow presenters to get in with the attendees and get personal. Long lunches means we all see each other as teachers, not as The All Knowing Presenter and the lowly plebes.

The most fun part, though, happens in the morning.

Before any sessions start there are Shred Sessions. A Shred Session is simple- each presenter has one slide and one/two minutes (depending on which conference you’re at) to make his or her case about why you should come to the session he or she is putting on that day. Boring fails. Dry is unacceptable. I am the King of the Shred Session. In my first one I recited a poem I’d written which described my Using Drive to Unbury your desk. The second day I did no talking, my monster Courson did it all. And the third day, when I was presenting on using Google-Fu, I had a little help from a friend who overdubbed my Shred while I showed off my fauxrate. Shred sessions set the tone and let the conference know this is not your average day of learning.

Rockstar John Wick and I.

This week #WeirdEd is lucky enough to have CUE Rockstar founder Jon Corippo (@jcorippo) here to help us talk about what we really want out of conferences and to give us the run-down on what’s new with Rockstar this summer. #WeirdEdE brothers and sisters, I'm sorry Jon can't make both chats. But the questions are still co-written by him and are still excellent.

To submit to present or to register to attend please visit http://www.cuerockstar.org/

*though, I mean...if it helps…

#WeirdEd Week 31- Narwhal

 Last week's #WeirdEd was amazing. A smart moderator would take that popularity and momentum and parlay it into another Big Important Topic*. A smart moderator would see the credibility having a NASA engineer on gained his chat and write more of that, because the audience gained from that single chat would love more of that.
But that's so not what #WeirdEd is. #WeirdEd is my baby. It's the anti-chat. Our format might be the same as many other chats but that is where the similarities end. #WeirdEd should be a chat that people who take edchats way too seriously scoff at. #WeirdEd should turn some people off. I'm fine with that. At some point being too Big Tent means losing all connection to reality and specificity and the real audience. I love our ability to tackle all sorts of subjects, from serious to ridiculous. I love that all of you come play with me when I want to take us to Mars or Ferguson.
But #WeirdEd is founded on being goofy. Making education fun and silly and, well, weird. We are at a place in the school year where everything is looking bleak and long and tough. Classrooms are dragging. Students are dragging. Chats are dragging. It's time to mix things up. It's time to challenge ourselves.
I need a challenge.
How does a moderator challenge him/herself? By picking the dopiest topic possible and figuring out how to make it work in an educational context. I love the challenge. #WeirdEdE moderator Lauren (@LTaylorELA) tossed off what might have been a joke when we were talking about this week's chat. "Narwhals."

Narwhals...
Narwhals. Narwhals have nothing to do with education. There is no obvious connection a normal person could draw from the narwhal to the classroom which makes it a perfect #WeirdEd topic. What a fun writing game for me! What a fun thought game for you. There will be no obvious answers this week. Bumper sticker edutweets will be impossible because no one (as far as I know) has ever tried to make narwhals an educational topic.
How well will this go? I have no idea. This might be the #WeirdEd that crashes and burns. I might be skewered on my own horn**. But I know if I can generate good questions the #WeirdEd family will bring your A game and give answers that surprise everyone.
Let's do this.

*seriously, this week was going to be Military Families and School, which is a Big Important Topic I want to do, and is even timely with Veteran's Day, but when I sat down to write it I had nothing. It'll happen, just not today.

**I know it's a tooth. It looks like a horn. It's a horn.

(BTW- You can buy that amazing Shark v Narwhal thing at the top for me for my birthday here)

#WeirdEd Week 30- Bobak Ferdowsi, Space, NASA, and Mars!

I have to be honest, I'm kind of freaking out here. Like many people I pulled myself away from the Olympics to watch the Curiosity land on Mars in August of 2012. Thanks to the interwebs I was able to get a live feed from inside mission control and experience the landing in a way that was possible during no other landing. I saw realtime data, lightspeed delayed Mars data, and a dude at a computer with...a mohawk? A NASA engineer with a painted mohawk? And, like thousands of other people, I immediately became a fan of the guy known simply as Mohawk Guy. Here was someone I could relate to. Not to say I'm as smart as he is, not even a little, but here's a guy who takes Science and Cool and mashes them together in an interesting engaging way. Like landing a car on Mars wasn't cool enough, one of the guys doing it looked like he thought it was as fun as I thought it was. A man after my own weird heart.

Reaction after the Seven Minutes of Terror and a safe Touchdown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki_Af_o9Q9s

Bobak Ferdowsi, the Mohawk Guy, quickly became a star in his own right, including getting a shout-out from the president. He did tons of interviews and made science cool and exciting for the masses. What a great hook for a science lesson or a space lesson! Want to get your kids' attention? Just put up a picture of Bobak and say "Rocket Scientist" (close enough) and they will be on board with whatever you have to say.
A few months ago I got a wild hair to ask Bobak to help with #WeirdEd one week. He's on twitter, he probably won't answer, but it couldn't hurt to ask. I noticed he was active one night and sent him a tweet explaining #WeirdEd and asking for his help (not easy in 140). He DMed me back (no, he wasn't following me. He saw the tweet, followed long enough to DM me, then unfollowed) that he was interested and to email him more information.
I've never been through more drafts of an email.
We began an email back-and-forth, trying to figure out the best time for him to come on and talk with teachers and the best way to run the chat. I didn't want to do an hour-long Q&A because that's too unfocused and splintered and not what #WeirdEd is about. And I didn't want him to just ask us questions for an hour either because that isn't the best use of access to such an incredible mind. So we're compromising.
There will be three mostly traditional #WeirdEd question, asked by Bobak (@tweetsoutloud), and then we'll turn it over to you all to ask him questions. His specialties are, obviously, space, science, and engineering, and I think getting a look at education from someone who has been through a few different education systems (check his wiki, no I won't link to a wiki) will be invaluable to us all.
I know I can count on the #WeirdEd family to come up with some amazing questions. Let's impress Bobak with what kind of teachers we all are and what good hands our future NASA engineers are in.

My #WeirdEdE brothers and sisters- I'm sorry, but I can't ask him to do two chats. That feels like stretching his goodwill. Instead, #WeirdEdE will have three planned questions and I encourage you all to stay up late and join us at #WeirdEd.

If you need more reason to come, or aren't sure he is right for the chat, or want to know more about him personally, he went on Chris Hardwick's (@nerdist) All Star Celebrity Bowling YouTube show, and you should check that out below.(warning- video contains some language and many dick jokes)

#WeirdEd Week 29- Trick or Treat

 **Note: I tied a long topper on to this so if you want to get right to the explanation of the Game for #WeirdEdE/#WeirdEd skip to the next time you see the double asterisk.**

Ah, the final Halloween-themed #WeirdEd of 2014! How quickly it all goes by. I don't know about you but I'm a HUGE fan of Halloween. Not so much for the scares, I'm a big scardy pants and don't like scary stuff (will make exceptions for some King books and well made horror comedies like Shawn of the Dead), but because it's an excuse to dress up in costumes. I know, with cosplay culture growing it's more and more acceptable for grown adults to dress up and head out whenever (and don't think that I don't), but Halloween is The Night. It's special. It's fun. Festive. Everyone plays along.

I am a firm believer in Halloween at school. I see no reason to take that away from kids. I know the reasons people give, I just don't agree with them. It's unsafe. No it isn't, that's just to go-to excuse to keep kids from doing something. I'm an adult now and I see through your scheme. It's a distraction. Only if your kids are distracted anyway. You should be able to teach in a clown suit and get your lesson's point across. Children might associate school with fun and we can't have that. You're right there. Can't be having the children enjoy the play they spend 180 days of their year. Nope nope nope, there are tests to prep for and there is data to collect. No time to make school a lighter, happier place. (To make this paragraph make a little more sense you should know that my school voted NOT to have Halloween Friday be a Dress in Your Halloween Costume Day. HOWEVER, we, as a staff, DID vote for it to be Superhero Day! Yep. So I got to say the words, "You can't wear your Halloween costumes to school Friday. But you can dress like a superhero or wear superhero stuff on Friday. So if your costume is superhero you can wear your Halloween costume," to my kids. At which point I started feeling really dumb so I had to add, "However, there have been superheroes about all sorts of things. Who's to say there wasn't a Football Man, or a Vampira. They could be superheroes if you name them right. You know, if you wanted to be creative." So I'll probably be in a little trouble on Friday when a bunch of my kids come to school as off-brand heroes because a bunch of teachers are pieces of wood lodged firmly in wet dirt.)

**
ANYWAY, this week's #WeirdEd/#WeirdEdE is a Game! And you'll have to pay attention. Because I think you should have to pay attention to our chat. Full attention. A chat should be interesting enough that you a) don't want to double chat and b) can't double chat because you're too invested in the hour's conversation. But that's a different blog post.

This chat will be a Trick or Treat Chat. Here's how it's going to work. The moderator (Shawna @nolagirlfromtx for #WeirdEdE and me @TheWeirdTeacher) will tag someone in the chat and tweet at them "#WeirdEd @BlahBlah Trick or Treat?" The tagged person will need to quickly respond with "Trick" or "Treat". This choice dictates which question will be asked next. Yes, I really have a Trick Q and a Treat Q for each Q.

TRICK Qs are a little more serious (as far as #WeirdEd goes). They are straighter forward. Think of a TRICK as a Teaching Tip/Trick/or Skill question. Still with the #WeirdEd flair.

TREAT Qs are much sillier and more off the wall. They are all educationally relevant but a few of the TREAT Qs are me indulging my goofy side while still honoring your time.

Enjoy the chat. Points for coming in costume.

#WeirdEd Week 28- Monsters PLUS Edchat Soapboxing

Welcome to Week Two of Three* of Halloween themes here at #WeirdEd. This week we are going to talk about the Monsters of Education. We know they are out there, what can we do about them? What are their weaknesses? What calls to them and creates them? Why do we fear them?

Are classrooms like Frankenstein's monster? Bunch of kids stitched together into one whole, hit with electricity, and brought to life?

*gets soapbox out*

Last week's chat about fear was so amazing and honest and I want to thank everyone again for that. I know you come to #WeirdEd looking for a good time and an interesting chat and I try very hard to deliver that, but without your willingness to go places you might not go elsewhere we'd have nothing. We'd be normal, like every other chat. No disrespect to the other mods out there, but are we still talking about being connected educators? Come on, you guys. We have all of education at our fingertips and we're going to stick to one specific topic for an entire month**? That would be like having 25k twitter followers and only tweeting bumper sticker platitudes. What a waste of an opportunity and of your audience's valuable time. We can do better. Look to #LBGTeach for an easy example of doing more. Jess only runs her chat once a month (not often enough in my opinion, because I love it so much), but every month she takes aim at important topics that are relevant to not only her, but all of us. Anyone who works with kids. #TotallyRossome took on gender issues a few weeks ago. A topic that pissed me off because I didn't get to it first. I LOVE that Ross went there and trusted his teachers to go there. When #InnoEd was running Lauren regularly went to interesting places not many other chats would touch.

How many chats covered Ferguson? Want to get on that? It's not over. It's not an #educolor issue. It's an education issue. Take it seriously. I think I need to write a chat on #GamerGate, but I need the teachers involved to have context, so I need to frame the chat in such a way that everyone knows what we're talking about and why. Why do I need to write a chat on #GamerGate? Because it's an educational issue that is actually happening and edtech should be tackling it but won't for some reason. This is real life stuff, folks. Stuff we need to be talking about. Use twitter as a tool. A flexible, living tool. Talking about being connected is just words if you don't take advantage of those connections.

We can do better or edchats are going to die on the vine. We must dig deeper. We must see the world as an educational opportunity and we must see each other as true learners. How many times can we have the same chats about the same things? Mods, if you see a chat that covers a topic you wanted to cover change your topic. Or at least take note of the questions and change your doubles. So many of us won't give kids homework that is meaningless but we're more than happy to parrot the same As to the same Qs over and over and over. Stop writing leading questions to answers you already know. That's safe and boring. Stop being bumper stickers and platitudes. Come up with your own memes.

I'm tired of the same old chats about the same old topics. I don't want to play in that pool when we have the entire ocean of education open to us.

Let's get creative. Let's get deeper. Let's actually use the experience and expertise of those around us in a meaningful and impactful way.


*I know last week I said it was two weeks long, but that's because I didn't actually look at a calendar, I just guessed when Halloween was.

**says the guy doing three weeks of Halloween-themed chats

#WeirdEd Week 27- Fear

Welcome to the October sessions of #WeirdEd! (Yes, I know last week was October too but I just thought of this so leave me alone). This week and next we will be talking spooooOOooOooOooky topics in honor of my favorite holiday which has been eaten by Hot Topic- Halloween!

This week I want to talk about fear. Fear is a very real thing and something that can motivate or destroy. It's something that we all can relate to (as opposed to, say, very specific classic science fiction tv shows).

Fear makes us make choices. Unless it shuts us down completely. Fear can be unexpected. Sometimes you have no idea you're scared of a thing until it happens. Fear-based choices can be good but are often poor or at least poorly justified. Fear gets a bad rap. Real men aren't afraid. Bull. Like Gandhi* said "Bravery isn't the absence of fear, it's being afraid and acting anyway."

Teaching, at least for me, has tons to fear. I'm not scared of the kids themselves. I'm not scared of parents. Or my administrators (side note: I refuse to be scared of my school district leadership. That gets you pushed around and mistreated.).

I am scared of failing my kids. I'm scared of lessons that bomb so regularly that there's no way they learned it and why can't I reach them and if I can't help this kid he is sooooo screwed because this thing is the foundation for a thousand other things.

That entire previous paragraph is the real reason why I'm not a kindergarten teacher. It's allll place setting and foundation building. That's freaking terrifying.

There's things we fear that we shouldn't and things we fear that we should but are completely irrational. There's that little voice in our heads that knows if the kids really wanted to they could take over the room because there's a lot of them.

In case you think I've forgotten, we aren't the only ones with fear in school. The kids fear too. And their fear is more important than our fear. That's why we shoo the hornet away even though ahmygawdImgonnagetstungahhhh. Our job is to remove fear and replace it with trust and faith and knowledge.

What scares you?



*on the internet you can attribute any quote to anyone. Just ask Facebook

#WeirdEd Week 26- Star Trek TOS

It's been 26 weeks of #WeirdEd and I haven't written a Star Trek-specific chat. TWENTY-SIX WEEKS! Do you have any idea how many strange, new worlds that is? If George Lucas were writing it, it would be dozens of parsecs!* If JJ Abrams were writing it I'd just copy a chat someone else wrote and change some of the names around and then not admit to anything ever.**

We need some bright future in our lives this week. I'm betting we have all hit that point in the school year where the shine is off, some of the cracks are starting to show, and moods are in need of a boost. What better way than with one of the most hopeful shows in television history?

Trek was about a coming together for a common goal. Creator Gene Roddenberry but white, black, Japanese, Russian, Scot, and alien together on the bridge of the flagship of the United Federation of Planets. This was the crew that would encounter strange, new worlds and seek out new life and new civilizations. One of the most mixed casts in television up to that point (and still much more mixed than anything you'll find on most networks) boldly went where no one had gone before. And let's not forget that Star Trek premiered in 1966, so featuring a Russian and a Japanese man were actually bigger deals than it might seem like today.

From Tribbles to Klingons to Gorn, the crew of the Enterprise always sent their best men and women to deal with the problem, which doesn't really make sense since why are you sending the entire chain of command on every away mission? Someone always got sacrificed to the Television Gods of This Situation Is Serious***. Roddenberry was ahead of the curve on tech as well. Watch early Trek episodes and you'll see Mr. Spock  placing discs into a drive to pull up information. Yeah, Star Trek had floppy discs**** before we all had computers. Cell phones were flip phones for a long time because nerds who grew up watching Kirk call for two to beam up loved the swagger James T. flipped his communicator open with. The first interracial kiss on television was Star Trek's.

It was a show that mixed serious and funny with mixed results, and was occasionally bad, but never unwatchable. Sure, the sets were cheap and every planet looked the same. The uniforms were too tight and some of the dialogue was marble-mouthed. But the ideas were pure. Trek was a smart show with ideals and a conscience (more things I'll never forgive JJ for forgetting). It was the best future. Humanity was over our petty squabbles and were reaching out to the stars. Not to destroy but to find and learn about. 


*let us not forget a parsec is a measure of distance, not time. Star Wars isn't science fiction, it's pure fantasy

**Seriously, JJ sucked at Trek. Good luck, Yoda

***Read Redshirts by John Scalzi for a hilarious take on this

****ask your parents, kids

#WeirdEd Week 25- The Muppets

Last week would have been Jim Henson's 78th birthday. A few days ago Jim Windish wrote a fantastic blog about his love for the Muppets and the ways that they inspired him and I wanted to Ms. Piggy-back on that for #WeirdEd, for I too love the Muppets. I love nearly everything about them and what they represent.

My favorite author of all time is Dr Seuss. He is the greatest author ever. Period. Full stop. Seuss wrote silly stories that were subtly (and not so subtly) subversive. He got generations of children thinking about equality and fairness and war and differences without bashing us over the head with it.

Henson did the same thing on television. Think about Sesame Street.

Not one character looked the same. Some were similar, but none were the same. This is social engineering at its finest. This mad cast of characters lived together along with a incredibly diverse, by ethnicity and gender, human cast. They solved problems, worked together, sang, danced, and played. And generations of kids watched it unquestioningly. Sure, we learned to be a little ADD and they whipped some math and spelling and other skills on us, but the main unspoken message of the show was one of community.

The Muppet movies are (mostly) good-to-genius, especially if you like silly sight gags like I do. Or maybe I like silly sight gags because I love the Muppets.

The main characters embody all the archetypes and even invented a few. Kermit is the leader who has it all under control, or at least appears to. Fozzy is the comic relief. Gonzo is the whatever (my favorite). Piggy is not the love interest, but the strong, aggressive female who kicks serious butt and is still feminine. There are scientists, a band you know was stoned all the time, depressed monsters, monsters with impulse control disorders, imaginary friends, an eight-foot tall canary who was the embodiment of childhood, and old men taking the wind out of their sails and keeping their feet on the ground. And that's just a tiny fraction. The Muppet Show was insane, a meta joke about late night shows aimed at children who hadn't seen late night shows. Stars would come on, but play their characters. I won't even pretend that that level of awareness and silliness hasn't permeated my classroom.

This week we embrace Jim Henson and his Muppets. What they taught us. What we can learn. How we can grow from them. And remember, this is all coming from a guy who has his own classroom monster.

#WeirdEd Week 21- Candy

#WeirdEd this week is about candy. Because the last week or more on twitter has been brutal and I need some candy. Between watching Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian become punching bags for manchildren masquerading as gamers, the ongoing injustice of Ferguson, a child killing someone with an Uzi, and the sexual abuse of stealing and posting a female celebrity's private pictures I need a break.

Oh yeah, and school starting. Which is never stressful.

I want to cover gender issues in this space. And more racial issues. And more equality. And LGBT issues. All things that education alone can work to solve. We are going to hit these things because we have to.

But not this week. I want to do those heavy lifting chats because this group has proved twice now (three times if we count eulogizing Robin Williams) that we can handle it with aplomb and grace and intelligence and openness. But they are hard and dark and a downer and #WeirdEd should not be a downer.

We deserve goodness and light because there is no much goodness and light in the world. We deserve sweetness and smoothness. We deserve peanuts and caramel mixed in.

We deserve a chat about candy.

Because teaching should be a tasty treat. Of course it's not all candy, that'll rot your students' teeth out of their heads. But here in #WeirdEd world we have earned candy.

#WeirdEd Week 19- Ferguson

By Doug Robertson (@TheWeirdTeacher)

With help from Samantha Bates (@sjsbates), Sarah Thomas (@sarahdateechur), and Rafranz Davis (@RafranzDavis)

Ferguson

*deep breath*

Here we are. My silly little edchat where we talk about all kinds of issues great and small through my own personal lens. We’ve talked about our students (and ourselves) as aliens. We’ve spoken in the voices of ourselves as children. We’ve remembered a fallen favorite actor by connecting his work to our own classrooms. We’ve rhymed an entire chat to talk about classroom flow. We were Alice Cooper.

And after two school shootings in one week we talked about guns and school safety. Because #WeirdEd is about more than just how we teach our kids math or what behavior plan to use or how data is important. #WeirdEd is about us, our kids, and our lives together. Our connection. Anyone who has read anything I’ve written about education knows I’m firmly and loudly in the Relationships First camp. And school shootings impact that connection.

And now we are here. As I write this a town in America is being torn apart by its own police force. Next Monday morning* the students of Ferguson, MO are supposed to start school. In that morning's light, by foot, bus, bike, and car, children will pass canisters of tear gas, looted businesses, spent shells, and drying blood on their way to their first day of school. 

Teachers are supposed to welcome these children into their classes. We know what the first day is like. Everyone is nervous. What’s the new teacher going to be like? What are the kids going to be like? I hope she/they like me. 

You settle them in, play an ice breaker, start putting names to voices and faces, go over rules and expectations, practice routines. The children are, at least in my class, very quiet those first few days. Still feeling me out. Still trying to understand me and learn the tricks of the classroom.

But the children of Ferguson will have so much more on their minds than that. So much more stress and anguish and anger and fear. 

How can you possibly teach to them? How can you start building those relationships? How can the children ever trust an authority figure ever again? How would I do my job in a situation that is so much more than how to line up and is this where the dull pencils go?

#WeirdEd Weds at 7PST/#WeirdEdE Weds 7EST is going to be about Ferguson. It has to be. We cannot close our eyes and pretend it is not an educational issue. Twitter is about immediate response, and the tragedy in Ferguson continues, compounded now not only by police overreach and violence but by the children having to return to school. How can we not talk about this?

This chat will not directly be about the murder of Mike Brown. It can’t be. But it also won’t shy away from hard topics and issues. This is part of the reason I brought in Sarah and Rafranz. I respect them very much and in this topic I feel I needed more voices, more input, which I’ve seen them provide on this topic for over a week on twitter. 

As with our chat about guns in school, I insist and demand complete respect from all participants. I can’t kick anyone off a hashtag but I will encourage muting or blocking of disrespectful tweeters. And I will take disrespect towards someone in #WeirdEd/E personally. Like with the gun chat, we can disagree, that’s how we learn, but we must remain civil.

I do not think that is a real concern with the teachers who come to #WeirdEd. I have said before and honestly believe that #WeirdEd collects the best group of educators on twitter, which is why we continue to grow. But with a situation like this, a topic like this, safety must be guaranteed for all participants. I trust everyone who comes to the chat to know this already, since the gun chat was even more respectful than I ever could have hoped.

My thoughts, our thoughts, are with the students of Ferguson, their families, and the teachers who must begin a school year under a dark cloud of anger, fear, and tear gas.

*Ferguson School District announced due to the unrest they will postpone the start of school a week. It was supposed to start this Monday.

#WeirdEd Week 18- Robin Williams

THESIS: As I wrote the questions and blog for this and looked at Robin's most memorable roles one thing kept popping up-These were characters going against the grain to find ways to be true to themselves. They are different, the weird kids, outsiders who are ok with being on the outside. I'd never realized that before and am starting to realize just how deeply his movies must have influenced me. One more thing to thank and love him for.

Robin Williams was, to me, the ultimate Weird Kid. He was out of his mind in the best possible way, kinetic to the point of explosion, and faster than a ferret on angel dust equipped with a warp drive. He was, to be cliche, a true original. There was no one else like him before, and we'll never seen anyone like him again.
I had a different topic planned for today but that can be pushed backwards a week. We need to talk about the brilliant, side-splitting, and ultimately heart-breaking Robin Williams. His work, and how he influences teachers across the world.
I'm young enough to have missed the early madness live and have had to catch it on albums and video like "A Night at the Met" and Mork and Mindy. I was probably first introduced to him the way a lot of us were- through ALADIN. And then I followed him through MRS. DOUBTFIRE, WHAT DREAMS MAY COME, PATCH ADAMS, DEATH TO SMOOCHY* and HOOK, going backwards and memorizing huge chunks of GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM in the process. To this day THE BIRDCAGE is one of my favorite comedies of all time. When he would release a new special, like Weapons of Self Destruction, my sides would ache and I wouldn't be able to remember half of what he said because I was laughing too hard at the other half. So many words. So much brilliance being fired in every direction.
Robin was either the best or worst interview you've ever seen, depending on what your goal for an interview is. If you want to be entertained he's the best. If you want a straight answer to any question he was terrible. Watch and part of his Inside the Actor's Studio interview (YouTube doesn't have the full one any more). Free association doesn't begin to describe how his mind worked. He called it, "voluntary Tourette syndrome." And I think we have students like that. I know I do. Kids who say things that are obviously part of a much longer conversation that they have been having all day, which you are supposed to be aware of but aren't. I can't imagine that Robin was an easy student to have. No comedian is, I'm sure, but I think we can all agree that he would have had even the most patient of us pulling our hair out and sending home letters, "Dear Mrs. Williams, I am trying very hard to help Robin focus, but he's very...spirited. Please speak with him at home about the value of paying attention and not calling out every time a thought pops in to his head." Shows what we know.
Teachers love to quote his role as teacher John Keating in DEAD POET'S SOCIETY because he played the kind of teacher a lot of us want to be and managed to reach the students in a way we want to reach our own. I personally gravitated to what he said at the end of MRS DOUBTFIRE (not this clip, but this is how I want to teach a lot of the time, even though it would drive the calm kids crazy), a quote which I can't find anywhere online but amounted to, "Don't talk down to children, just talk to them." That is perfect.
I could go on and on, but rather than do that let's just leave it at I loved Robin Williams. I wish I could operate at half his speed. I wish we hadn't lost him.
But even though he's gone, we still have our memories of him and the laughs and inspiration he has provided. Let's use his light to guide our teaching.

If you or someone you love is thinking about suicide, please call this number. 1-800-273-8255

*SMOOCHY is darkly hilarious. Completely underrated film.

#WeirdEd Week 20 - Asking Questions

Riddle me this, #WeirdEders- What is it that we expect our students to be able to do, but rarely give them a chance to so?
Give up? Because it's too vague to be a good riddle?
Oh no, you know because you can read and you noticed the title of this post? Asking questions, you say? Well done, Dork Knight! You've foiled me once again!

Teachers, whether we admit it or not, operate under a paradox. We have, or the kids think we have, All The Answers. But we don't we know we don't. We also don't want the kids to see us as a fount of all knowledge. We want them to see us as a gateway, a tool, a guide to knowledge. We want them to learn to ask us questions. We want to not give them the answer, but give them the inspiration to go find the answer. Or an answer. Or to write their own answer. How amazing of a feeling is it when a student does something truly original. A new thought, a new question, and new insane, impossible, ridiculous, beautifully original idea?
But those thoughts must start with a question. And questioning, for most people, needs to be taught. We are a curious species but some of us are not natural questioners.
So let's practice questioning. This #WeirdEd(E) will be backwards. Lauren (@LTaylorELA) and I will not be asking questions. We will be providing answers and you must write a question you think connects to that answer in some way. Practicing backtracking is practicing asking Why. The sky is blue. Why? The engine makes the car go. How (I know that's not a Why but it's a question)? Your eyes face forward. Why? I should read He's the Weird Teacher. Why? (A- Because it's awesome. Nathan Fillion riding a comet through a storm of lightning bolts and howling wolves awesome.)
So again, because I know some of you will be confused (yes, this is how I introduce things in class too), we will NOT be asking Qs. We will be giving As and you provide the Q.
Do not be confused.

#WeirdEd Week 17: The Public

Ah, the court of public opinion. Thanks to the internet everyone is allowed to express their views in a manner that makes them easily share-able, mock-able, and get-unreasonably (or, rarely, reasonably)-angry-about-able. And because we are teachers we key in on public opinions that have to do with us. Naturally. We don't really care what everyone has to say about plumbers. Not in a deep, meaningful way. If your neighbor makes fun of his plumber you laugh along with him. If your neighbor makes fun of his kid's teacher we take to the internets to blog with great vengeance.

If it sounds like I'm mocking people who blog with great anger I'm not. I'm the guy who made this, this, and this. To be fair, I try not to be negative that often and I also made this and this. But we do like to get angry at the general public for their views on teaching. And we really like to get angry (or get behind) famous people. Because famous means better informed, I guess.

The first of our two favorite celebrities right now are Louis CK, who tweeted a rant against Common Core a few months ago and was crowned King Of Education Policy by people who have no idea he also has a five minute long "suck a bag of dicks" routine (which is hilarious). And I like Louis CK, but come on, if a parent at your school ripped on how you taught you'd ask them how long they went to school to be a teacher. He's a comedian and a parent. An excellent, smart comedian, but still not actually an expert in what we do, how we do it, or how those decisions get made.

The second is Whoopi "Guinan" Goldberg, who is in hot water because she said on her show that she's against teacher tenure for bad teachers. For the record, I like tenure, it's an important protection we have. But, her argument, as poorly thought out as it might be, is being lost in the outrage. As far as I can tell, she's against bad teachers having it.* Which leads us down the road of define a bad teacher, rate a teacher, no you suck and your show is dumb.

We overreact when famous people talk about our cause because we don't feel our voices are loud enough on our own. Famous people own megaphones much bigger than any we have. Millions (I assume) of people saw Whoopi talk about tenure on her show. 3.6 million people follow Louis CK on Twitter, most of whom are probably real people. But we forget that these people have no idea what they are talking about. Or we remember that and it pisses us off more. Because they are talking to people we have to deal with. Our parents watch those shows, follow those people, see those clips online out of context. And we know people are teeeerrrrriiibbbblle at context. It's one of the reasons we (I) teach deeper reading so hard. So my kids grow up knowing to look closer at an edited video clip presented as whole.

So let's talk about the court of public opinion and what we can do about it. How do people feel about teachers in general? Education in general? What do you think? Are there things we can do to sway the public? What's a good way and a bad way to get people to listen to us? At what point do we become unprofessional about it and lose public trust that way? At what point do we become Chicken Little and lose credibility because Everything Is Awful All The Time? At what point do we say, "Screw them, they don't get it." How deeply do we, should we, could we engage? How deeply do you engage? Online? In the newspaper (people still read those?)? In person?

It occurs to me this might not be as silly a topic as some others. Sorry kids, can't have ice cream all the time and this is important to education.

*For the record, she's wrong. But not for the reasons she's defending herself against. And the massive hatewave doesn't help us at all.

#WeirdEd Week 16- Flow With It

Tonight's #WeirdEd will be a little change

For some of you it might be kinda strange

 I'm gonna make you think

Make you struggle make you link

 Every answer that you say

Will rhyme this Wednesday

We'll be talkin' 'bout school

How as teachers we are cool

But if the kids could see this chat

They'd laugh, "Ha! Lookit that!"

All your answers to my queries

Better rhyme, my sweet and dearies

Get creative, like the kids are

Get silly, and you'll go far
How smooth can you be
When your trying to rhyme with me
Your classroom is a song
And your teaching must flow along
Sometimes things make the groove skip
How do you handle that kinda bad trip

This chat is #WeirdEd

Led by the voices in my head

Our topic is the Flow

And making your class go

So buckle up and enjoy the show

#WeirdEd Week 15- Sammiches

This week's #WeirdEd is Weird Teacher-less for I will be just finishing Day3 of CUE Rockstar Las Vegas when #WeirdEdE starts and I'll be on an airplane flying home when #WeirdEd starts. Which means that both chats will be piloted by the wonderful and talented Sam Bates (@sjsbates).

In honor of Mrs. Bates, this week's topic is Sammiches.

Let us think about the sammich. Held together often with bread, but not always. And there are so many kinds of bread. And what goes inside a sammich? Anyone who's been to a real sammich shop (yes, I'm going to spell it like that the whole time, get used to it) knows you can put just about anything between those slices. You can have small sammiches or big ones. Some are very simple and some are multi-layered. Some are peanut butter and jelly and some are good.

This feels like a perfect metaphor for education, doesn't it? Everything in education comes in layers. And so much changes if you remove even one piece. So let's think about sammiches.

And a thousand thank you's to Sam for taking over #WeirdEd for me for the night. She's a chat saver.

#WeirdEd Week 14- Aliens

This week you need to get your tones, lights, bicycles, and power loaders ready because we are talking about aliens.

So much of #WeirdEd is about being slightly different. Weird. Not fitting in or being one of the group. And through that learning acceptance, flexibility, and empathy. So basically, being an alien and learning to cope.

Let's talk about different aliens and what they represent in pop culture.

There's the ones we are supposed to fear, the titular Alien of Riley Scott's (mostly) excellent series, Klingons from Star Trek:TOS and the Cardassians from Star Trek:TNG, Pacific Rim's kaiju, and the Vogons.*

The lovable aliens like Alf, Paul, Micheal Jackson, Zoidberg (because why not Zoidberg), and tribbles.*

The ones who help us and teach us like Ford Prefect, Nibbler, Vulcans, Yoda, Valentine Micheal Smith (not technically an alien but so very alien), and The Doctor.*

And the ones we are supposed to help like E.T., The Little Green Aliens (pictured above), Nibbler again, and the little bots from Batteries Not Included.*

We are and we have these aliens in our classes and in ourselves. That's why we like writing about them so much. It's why so many great movies (E.T.) and awful movies (Transformers) are about aliens. We can project anything we want on to them. Our hopes, our fears, our aspirations, our wish to have sex with a very tall blue monkey lady (looking at you James Cameron). These things (with the exception of the last one [probably...hopefully]) show up in our kids all the time. They show up in our teaching. We can learn from them.

So pull on your ultra-tight Starfleet uniforms, grab your towel, make sure to fill out form 3652A in triplicate and submit it to the proper authorities before close of business, and don't forget your sonic, because we're getting out there.

***Things to Think About***
Pretty much the four types of aliens I named up there. They will be the basis for the questions and the thrust of the thinking.


*I thought for a second about linking to each of those, but you have the Google. You do the work if you don't know.

#WeirdEd Week 13- Luck and Skill

Welcome to #WeirdEd's 13th chat (and #WeirdEdE's first!)! As there is no way I'm letting a 13 go by without using it to my advantage, this chat will be about luck and skill.

I know I'm not the only teacher who has thought the following thing- "No, I didn't make this class so good. I got really lucky with the mix. And those test scores? I mean, yeah I'm good, but that's all the kids. I got a good group this year. That's most of it."

Luck. It's luck. Is it luck? Maybe.

Or is it skill?

So many of us (ok, so many of you, I wrote a freaking book about how wonderful I am [ok, it's not really about that but still]) are reluctant to step up and take credit for how awesome we are. Yeah, we'll passive-aggressively RT "Teachers are Awesome"-style tweets, but those aren't about Me. Those are about Us. All of us. All teachers are awesome, right guys? And I get to kinda say I'm awesome too because I'm an Us. But much rarer will you see or hear, "I made that lesson wash my car like it was Biff and I was George McFly! Those kids learned everything I wanted them to and it's my fault! Booyah!" But we do have skills. We've got sick nun-chuck skills (a reference to a movie I don't even like). *

So how much of what happens in our classroom is luck, and how much is skill? We know the chemical combination in our classroom's is a delicate balancing act. Too much of one kind of kid or another and the whole mess fizzles or blows up in our faces. So there's the luck of the draw. But a teacher becomes a skilled chemist, knowing how to spread the mixtures around. When to agitate. When to let it rest. When to turn up the heat. When to continue beating a metaphor into the ground.

When to mix lightly. When to cool. When to put the chemicals in a centrifuge until at least one of them tries to lay sideways and falls totally off the wall to the amusement of everyone except the kid who is about to puke his guts out.

Where was I?

Oh yeah. So let's talk about luck and skill. What's bad luck in a classroom? What's pure luck? How heavily can luck swing a room or a lesson? Is there a point where luck and skill balance each other? Is that called Being a Great Teacher?


*there feels like there's another #WeirdEd in here about tooting our own horns...hmmm

Annoucing #WeirdEdEast

I am shocked and pleased and shocked that I even get to write this post. Never, from when I first started writing the book to when I first started #WeirdEd, did I imagine the kind of connections that would be made.

#WeirdEd, in its 12 weeks of life, has grown faster and wilder than I every foresaw. The response has been overwhelmingly positive thanks, I'm quite sure, to the amazing early adopters who knew exactly the tone (anti-edchat) I was going for and who every week manage to keep it light and fun while also bringing the professional knowledge and experience in spades. It's an tricky line to balance and every week I'm shown that there are more Weird-minded teachers out there craving something a little different, a little off center, than any of us knew.

The biggest (honestly, only) complaint I've ever received about #WeirdEd is the time. 7pm Pacific Standard Time. Why is it at 7PST? Because I teach all day and want to work out and have a wife and small human who need my attention. I realize that makes it ok for west coasters, decent for those in the central time zones, and very late for our east coast friends. But what am I gonna do? The time works for me and I'm the moderator. East coasters, unfortunately, will have to either miss out or stay awake past their bed times.

But now, with how big we've grown, I want to try an experiment. I want to broaden the reach of #WeirdEd. Read the subtitle of the blog. This is the hub of my ever-expanding educational empire. So, at the risk of diluting the water or over-extending my reach (something I've always done because even when I come up short I still reach farther than I thought), I'm announcing #WeirdEdE.

Yes, #WeirdEd East, but that takes too many precious characters so just #WeirdEdE will be the hashtag. I love and respect my East coast (and tired Central) friends and I want their input as well. So #WeirdEdE will bring #WeirdEd's fun and philosophy to an untapped wealth of knowledge.

#WeirdEdE will take place every Weds at 7EST. Hopefully this makes it easy to remember. Same day, same time, just change the time zone. #WeirdEd is at 7PST, #WeirdEdE is at 7EST.

Obviously I'm not mod-ing this chat. I can't. 4PST will never work for me. I'm lucky if I've left school by then. Like Wonka, I had to find someone to care for the candy factory. And I knew just the person. She's smart, funny, and understands the #WeirdEd philosophy as well as I do. She's been on board since Day One and was instrumental in talking me into starting the chat in the first place.

Samantha Bates (@sjsbates) will be the mod for #WeirdEdE. She's in TN, which gives her the geographic bonafides, and is completely trustworthy. In the #WeirdEd Jaeger she is my co-pilot and we are in the Drift.

I will still be writing all the Qs (now with more of Sam's input) and writing the overview blogs. Sam will be ringleading #WeirdEdE. The Qs for both chats will be exactly the same.

I have no idea how well this will work. I do need your help. Please spread the word to the right coast twitterers you know, tell them there's a new chat in town, #WeirdEdE, at 7EST. If it fails and no one comes, we'll push on for a few weeks. If it still doesn't fly, then we tried.

Thanks for making #WeirdEd so awesome. Without incredible participants it's just me talking out loud to myself and making myself laugh.

#WeirdEdE, 7EST
#WeirdEd, 7PST