Soon after I wrote my first book, My Pencil Made Me Do It: A Guide to Sketchnoting I realized there was a whole group of educators, non-educators, and most of all, children who would never read that book. I also knew I didn’t want what I had to share, to say and teach about sketchnoting to end with that book. Most of all I knew I wanted to continue to connect sketchnoting, its parts and its power with more and more people (if I’m being honest…the whole world). I couldn’t think of a better way to do that than to write a children’s book.
When I did it became a story that is all the parts of my heart…
A couple of weeks ago I was answering emails, updating grades and checking boxes off my to do list during my plan period. It was time to start thinking about classes and curriculum planning. I began to think about my ELA class, our current unit and the routine (rut-ish) it felt like we were in. Next up in the lesson was vocabulary review. My brain began to swirl with ways I could flip the lesson to make it more interactive, more engaging and not me simply asking a question and students answering. Instantly I went to the games part of my brain and began to swipe through options that would go with my lesson: Werewords, Code Names, Just One, Starlink…
Just One. That’s an option. Warewords…oohhhh I’d been wanting to bring that into my classroom. Wait…Code Names…Code Names. Oooooo! What about Code Names and Among Us? Could I? Would it work?
The Tuesday before Winter Break a group of students walked into my room after lunch. As I said hi to them and asked them how lunch was, I watched them exchange looks with each other. You know, the: “You say it”, “No you say it” look. Until finally one of them said, “Mrs. Baughcum, can we play Among Us on Friday?”
“But…” I added, “Not the online /digital version and no killing.”
“Ok,” they replied in chorus and smiling at each other.
I added,”We can do a live version. I will create something for Friday. ”
After a few minutes of idea exchanging and tips on how I could make the live version work, I had a good read on what each of them loved about the game and a few ideas to get me started.
“Trust me you guys. I promise I will make it fun. I will not let you down,” I smiled as the bell for rang for class to start.
Two different people, who I follow because they share inspirational drawings, self care advice, make me laugh, make me think and who genuinely care for people, students and our mental health did it (and I am paraphrasing)…
“We know that 2020 has been awful and terrible and hard but what is something that has changed for the better or something you are looking forward to next year?”
At first I thought , “Oh for goodness sake! Is this really going to be a thing?! Are we going to have to see these types of posts until the new year?” Then I thought, “Are well intentioned people going start flooding us with inspiration and phrases that has us setting goals and picking words for the new year?”
I have started and deleted this post at least 3 times. Each time I started the words just never came out right and never worked. This week marked my 6th week hybrid teaching and it also just happened to be the first week the general education teachers in my building started hybrid teaching.
This morning as I drove to work conversations we have had during my team and conversations I have overheard recently started to nudge at me…” You should share with your friends and teachers in your building how you felt when you started last month. Someone might need to hear your experience.”
Today after my teaching day was done I wrote this email and hit send.
Hi all-
I have had a few conversations and overheard a few conversations lately and it made me feel like it was time for me to share something. Six weeks ago we (my special education team) started teaching students in a hybrid model. Some of our students would be in-person for 1/2 the day while some students would also be remote and at certain times all of our students would all be remote. My first week teaching in this model was the hardest and most challenging week of my 22 years of teaching. I would drive to school and suddenly start to cry. I would leave school to drive home and cry some more. At home with my family, I felt this overwhelming sadness that wouldn’t stop. It wasn’t until later in the week when a friend asked me about my week and I decided I was finally going to be honest about how I was feeling that things started to change. I told them I was sad, sadder than I had ever been in my life and the only way I could describe it was that it felt like my best friend (being a teacher) had died and I was mourning its loss.
The days went on and the more honest I was with my friends, the better I felt. I also started notice other things that helped (and I am not a huge…oh boy! yeah! its self-care… kind of person). I noticed that adding things to my day that bring me comfort made a difference. Like, having my travel mug of homemade Chi Tea, that my friend taught me to make, every morning. I noticed that giving myself grace by taking things off my plate started to help too. If I didn’t have the energy to make dinner I stopped and got dinner (sometimes even more than once in a week). I made sure I got out and walked. Even if it wasn’t the more rigorous workout I would usually want to do, I was moving and it made me happy. Finally, I started to really focus on the reason I loved teaching, my connections with my students. No matter how hard my day was, every smile (under our masks), every laugh together or each new thing I got to know about my students made my day better and it made me happier.
So know that this does get better. The hard and different will get easier….and no matter what we all have each other and none of us are in this alone!
Carrie
Whether you are deep into hybrid teaching or just getting started, none of this is easy, none of this is something any of us would have ever expected to be doing in our teaching career. Most of all, caring for ourselves, being there for each other and consistently building our relationships with our students will fill us up and get us through this.
Four seasons ago (oh my goodness…did I just type four! Holy wow) Annabeth and I decided we both missed drawing together and wanted to give this Youtube Live! thing a try. One Saturday, on the third Saturday in November we clicked the red “go live” dot and Doodle and Chat was born.
As Season 3 ended, Annabeth and I were not only having an insane amount of fun with our Doodle and Chat family every Saturday morning, we both knew we were ready for a new creative project. A creative project for kids. A creative project for teachers and classrooms. A creative project that would take everything we loved about Doodle and Chat and wrap it in a fun, easy to use, simple, activity that students, teachers, families and people could all be a part of…Doodle and Chat Snack Sized: Sweet Doodle Challenge Wrapped in a Fun Sized Weekly Video was born.
Three months ago I clicked on my Instagram DMs to see a message from Lisa Johnson.
“We should totally do a month long doodle/journal project together, ” it said.
Before this message, Lisa and I were not strangers. I had spent a lonnnnnng time watching, consuming, smiling each time one of her newsletters wooshed into my inbox and completely loving all the resources, heart, thoughtfulness, honesty and creativity shares. Heck we had also spent a lot of social distancing DMing each other momma solidarity messages on surviving being in your house all day, every day for months with our children. Between the smiles and connecting and honesty Lisa’s awesomesauce x all kinds of holy wow was everything I had hoped she would be.
So when she asked, “We should totally do a month long doodle/journal project together?”
I instantly replied, “Are you serious?!” (because it’s always exactly what you should ask the person who just asked you to work on a project with them…build confidence! )
Followed by another super professional, “WOOT WOOT!! Let’s do this,” message later she knew I was in! (sighhhhh….what can I say. It’s just how I am)
I mean…Heck yeah I was in. How fun would this be!! I mean duhh!
Fast forward to the end of July. School had ended, summer school was over and Lisa and I had some time to recharge. A brainstorming google doc, a Zoom call and several phone calls and tons of texts later, Lisa and I knew exactly what we wanted. We wanted a project that would weave together ways for teachers to connect with students and a way to build relationships with their students, all while allowing students to connect with their goals, strategies that work well for them, connect with self-care tools and define organizational and time management strategies. Most of all we wanted something that would empower others to share about themselves and facilitate opportunities for classrooms to feel more connected all while giving them a virtual / print, hands on, visual thinking, create to connect learning experience.
Soooo between the conversations, getting to know each other, oh my gosh yeses, idea sharing, exchanging stories and oooohhhh I love thats…Home Room: One Room That Shares All About You
A project designed to connect thinking, learning about who we are and what brings out the best in us with doodles and images that will enhance our learning and connect us with each other.
February meant it was time for a road trip. Edcamp Madison was finally here and as luck would have it was also the start of Season 3. Yes, you read that right…Season 3 of Doodle and Chat! Up before the sun, Annabeth and I loaded up the Jeep and drove north to Edcamp Madison. We could not have thought of a more perfect way to celebrate the start of a new Doodle And Chat season than to be at an Edcamp, with our people in person and the ones that join us virtually each Saturday!
Filled with smiles, a season’s new topic, friends, idea sharing, doodles, laughter, new adventures and chatting everything Doodle and Chat Season 3 Episode 1 made the start of this season more than we could have hoped it would be.
Whether you can’t remember the last time you drew, say, “I can’t even draw a straight line!”, doodle in the margins of your notebook, on post-its or on the sides of papers or have always loved to draw and doodle…Doodle and Chat is the fun for you!!
Set all your reminders and join us every Saturday on Youtube Live! at 9:33ish am CST to connect, smile, doodle, have fun, chat and share. Come for the people, stay for the doodles and fill your heart with warm conversation, laughs and smiles that happen when we put pencil to paper and draw together!
When I wrote My Pencil Made Me Do It :A Guide to Sketchnoting I thought I had a clear picture in my head of who it was for and who I hoped it would impact. Fast forward to a month-ish after my book was published and I saw an email in my inbox from Tim Bogatz of Art of Ed Radio. Gulp. A few google searches later. Gulp Gulp. An art podcast. Me? A podcast for Art teachers. Guuulllpppp.
Fast forward to two-ish weeks later the podcast is live on the website for The Art of Education University. I can’t be happier and more excited to have had the opportunity to be a small part of a fantastic podcast that is bringing thoughtful, smart, creative and new ideas to the world of Art education and teachers everywhere!
CLICK play and join Tim and me as we discuss calling myself an artist, my first ever live sketchote, ideas for bringing sketchnote elements into any classroom and how we can empower students to put pencil to paper and draw to learn!!
Draw This in Your Style Challenges are all the rage right now. My own children can not get enough of them and for young artists they are all the rage. Artists share one of their draws (in the their style) and then challenge others to take the drawing they drew and draw it in their drawing style.
Watching my own children take part in these has been absolutely wonderful and left me in awww seeing what they create. It has made me giddy to see them be inspired by other’s ideas and their style. Most of all my heart sings seeing this community of creators truly embracing this idea but the real incredibleness is seeing this mind set they have. This mindset that an idea/a creation, can inspire us and we can each re-create that same idea in our own style and it is still beautiful, amazing and holds value no matter what the technique or style used to re-create it.
This got me thinking.
What if we joined in on all this fun too!
What if teachers…yes us!! What if we embraced our teaching style, grabbed hold of it, hugged it and valued the heck out of the style we teach in. What if we shared a fun idea, a singular idea, that any of us could add to any lesson, any subject, any part of our day, any classroom, that would enhance each others teaching, improve learning and challenged each other to flex our teaching skills.
Embrace, take in, soak up, be inspired and learn the idea. Apply it to your own classrooms in your style and share what it looked like in your style/in your classroom for each other to see. Share how the idea you used in your classroom and in your style with each other.
Then watch all the incredible awesomeness that we all have to share and inspire others with when we embrace the power of our teaching skills and value the style we teach in!!
I’ll start…
…and seriously I am ridiculously excited to see where this goes because draw this in your style is awesome but TEACH THIS IN YOUR STYLE is going to be incredible!! Teachers are absolutely incredible creators who bring out amazing things in kids and I can’t wait to see what they start bringing out in each other too!!!
My #TeachInYourStyle Challenge runs until November 30th!! I can’t wait to see what it it inspires. After you use an Idea Flood in a lesson, activity, your classroom snap a picture of it and share it out on twitter #TeachInYourStyle
The words “I Can’t Draw” are so powerful they can stop us in our tracks. The words whisper and lie. They make us believe we are not capable of something. They hold on tight to us and sometimes even make us believe them! When it comes to visual thinking and doodling to learn these words even keep us from picking up a pen, putting it to paper and using these incredible tools to enhance our thinking and improve our learning.
…but don’t let these words fool you!
There is a doodler inside of each of us. Sometimes it is a doodler just waiting to be reminded it was there. Sometimes it is just waiting and wants permission. Still other times it needs to be awoken and still other times a wall needs to be broken down so that the incredible doodler be rebuilt, rebooted and reset!
There are things, ideas, tools, technology in education that are made to specifically do [insert description]. I am reflecting on the power of mismatch thinking. The power of thinking differently about what things are created to do. Changing our thinking, retraining our thinking to think about what they can do for us and our student’s learning. What if we stopped thinking what technology and tools say they can do and started using what they can do to enhance student learning and improve teaching.
Gamifiers organize their classroom gamification systems in all kinds of ways. Me…. well I’m old school. Paper, dividers, clear sleeves, envelopes and a big honkin binder!
Today while organizing my elements for my year long game of my gamified classroom I realized that there is great power in looking back, seeing where you have come from and how far you have come. Oh and I also give you a peek into my binder and how I organize my game and its elements.
The other day over sharing and talking visual note taking (sketchnoting) awesome a teacher said, “I just don’t know how to even get started with this in my classroom.”
Of course that question and the rush of the soon to be new school year got me thinking, “Why does sketchnoting have to feel so complicated or intimidating?”
While, learning the complete process of visual thinking, doodling and creating visual notes (sketchnotes) is way more than a single post. Getting started (like anything) doesn’t have to be scary or difficult. It is something (like anything) that you can dive in cannonball style and go all in or you can dip your toe in to and get into it little by little. Continue reading “Sketchnoting: I Just Don’t Know How To Start”
There are things, ideas, tools, technology in education that are made to specifically do [insert description]. I am reflecting on the power of mismatch thinking. The power of thinking differently about what things are created to do. Changing our thinking, retraining our thinking to think about what they can do for us and our student’s learning. What if we stopped thinking what technology and tools say they can do and started using what they can do to enhance student learning and improve teaching.