Some of the best ideas that I have ever come up with are absolutely ridiculous.
I didn’t learn them in college, I didn’t read them in some sort of education book, but what I love to do is harness my own personal skills and strengths and then utilize those to create a fun, inviting, lovely environment for my students.
And so oftentimes, I find myself experimenting.
I mean, genuinely, sometimes I look at my classroom as it’s like a learning lab.
I am learning, I am growing, and then my goal is to transfer those energies, transfer those thoughts, transfer that just method to my students so they absorb and learn and grow more.
*This blog post was downloaded from the audio transcript of the This Teacher Life podcast. To listen to the audio version go here
Well, not too long ago, I was kind of just being silly in my classroom and I had a pen and I’ve got a large whiteboard.
It’s not a digital board.
It’s just like an old school whiteboard in my classroom.
And on that whiteboard, there’s a ledge where you can store like expo markers and erasers and things like that.
And one day I was just kind of like messing around and I kept sliding a pen on the ledge.
And I would push it and it would go a certain distance and then I would push it again and maybe it’d go a little bit further and then I’d push it again and maybe it’s kind of stopped in its path.
And a kid said, what are you doing?
I said, I’m pushing the pen.
They said, for what?
I replied, I wonder if I could push this pen to a very specific spot.
So then I got a marker and I drew like a starting point and an ending point.
And my goal was to get the pen in the exact location of the parameters that I had drawn.
And so I pushed it and it got really close and the kids were like, oh my gosh, do it again.
So I pushed it again and I completely overshot it.
And the kids were like, you got to do less, do less.
So I pushed it again and it was like a perfect landing.
And the kid then naturally said, can I try?
And another kid’s like, I want to push the pen.
And another kid’s said, I want to try it.
And anytime that you have people excited about something, one of the biggest game changing things that we can do is say pause, why is this working?
Pause, why are they interested in this?
Pause, how can I actually leverage this to my advantage?
Because at this point, pushing the pen has nothing to do with NGSS, which are the next generation science standards.
And half of my classes this year are NGSS.
Now, as a game changing teacher, could I create a physics lab, a trial and error lab off of push the pen?
Absolutely, in fact, it’s a great idea.
I’m probably gonna do that.
Pushing a pen across a whiteboard ledge is not science.
Pushing a pen across the whiteboard ledge has nothing to do with the SEL strategies or SEL standards, also known as social and emotional learning standards.
But actually, what I could do is do an entire experiment or an entire lesson on grit.
Because guess what our kids need in real life to be college and career and life ready?
They need grit.
So interestingly, in fact, I could create an entire SEL effective lesson on pushing the pen using grit.
That in and of itself is a blue apple moment that we just had.
That’s not what this specific episode is about, because I’m gonna give you all the details of how I actually used push the pen.
But I just modeled one of the most important things that we often forget about, is if we have an idea and something is fun and the kids are interested and they wanna engage in the activity, and in this case, it was pushing a pen, then our answer should be, okay, cool.
How can I reverse engineer this so I can actually use it for my content, my curriculum, my curriculum maps, whatever it might be?
And just in this example, I was able to justify two different things, two completely different things on how I could do an entire science lab on pushing the pen and how I could do an entire SEL lesson on pushing the pen.
Both of those would be bomb ideas and those were just off the cuff in this moment.
I don’t even have notes on that.
That wasn’t something that I thought I was gonna bring up, but as I was talking out loud in my office by myself, staring at a microphone and staring at podcasting software, what popped into my head, boom, Monica, there are some ideas.
That’s just me utilizing my blue Apple teacher strengths.
Again, what is a blue Apple moment?
It’s saying, man, that’s different.
That’s not common.
I’ve never seen that in a textbook.
I’ve never read that in a textbook.
I’ve never seen somebody else talk about that on TikTok, but there’s the idea and I gotta run with it.
And sometimes that’s exactly what we have to do.
We have to run with it.
So when the kids were saying, Mishenta, can I try?
Can I try?
I was like, oh man, this is a thing.
How can I use this to my advantage?
I don’t know if I sang it like that in my head, but I got excited because I wanted kids to have the opportunity to push the pen.
So how could I create a space that they were engaged and motivated to do something super simple that costs nothing?
This costs no money at all to have a kid push a pen across a ledge of a whiteboard.
But I believe in like a give and take.
If I’m gonna let you push the pen, what are you going to do for me?
And that’s not being greedy, that’s not being manipulative, that’s just how life works, right?
Like that’s called an incentive, that’s called motivation.
So I decided that I was gonna create a month long competition called Push The Pen.
That’s what I was gonna do.
And instead of having just, here’s where you need to land the pen, I was gonna create like a racetrack in my classroom along the ledge.
This whiteboard is probably 15, maybe 12 feet long.
Like it’s a really large whiteboard.
It fills like one entire wall of my classroom.
Now, granted my classroom is very small, but it fills nearly the entire wall.
And so I created this racetrack where some segments of the racetrack were worth five points.
Some segments of the racetrack were worth one point.
Some segments that were really, really small were worth a hundred points.
One segment was worth negative points.
And then I had a segment of the racetrack that I just drew with a pen, and it was called Mystery Envelope.
And the whole premise of this month long competition was at the end of the class period, if we have met all of the learning goals, like if we crushed the lesson or we crushed the lab, and everyone had a good attitude, or maybe everyone brought a pencil, or maybe everyone actively participated with a positive attitude, like whatever the expectation was that I was seeking for that specific class period, if kids followed that expectation, then I gave one student the opportunity to push the pen, and they would go up to the whiteboard, and they would be like, you guys, what should I go for?
Should I go the risky route and go for the hundred?
And they’re like, no, that’s a really small section.
You’re not gonna land the pen in that section.
Go for like 10, cause that section’s bigger.
And some kids are like, go big, go home.
Risk it for the biscuit.
And every class period, every classroom period family, as I like to call them, had a different strategy.
But the goal was that we were gonna keep track of those points for the entire month.
And at the end of the month, we were going to say whichever class has the most points is going to win some sort of class celebration.
Now I wanna get into some of the nitty gritty details of this classroom competition.
But if you have listened to any of my other competition podcast episodes, then you know all about the details.
And I’m pretty clear and pretty consistent every single time I do a class competition.
I have so many classroom competitions in the book called Game Changers, which we’re gonna dive into in the official course.
But if you have listened to my spinning and winning episode where I use a prize wheel, or you have heard about my large deck of cards that I use as a classroom competition, or maybe even how I’ve remixed Uno as a classroom competition, the goal is this.
We are working as a classroom family.
As a first-hour family, I am wanting every single kid to maybe have a pencil that day, or maybe the classroom family expectation for that day is everyone remembered their science notes.
Or another example would be that everyone in my fourth-hour advisory family actively participated and let their opinions and voice be heard.
So each day, I’m kind of targeting something that I know the kids can do.
It’s like attainable, but it also might be pushing the envelope a little bit for them.
But if we’re going to push the envelope, and kids are going to say like, Oh man, I need to get more organized.
For some kids, that is pushing the envelope.
For some kids, pushing the envelope is, I want you to participate without me calling on you.
I want you to just actively raise your hand and say like, I would like to share an opinion.
So if we’re going to have kids push the envelope in return, they get the possibility of pushing the pen.
And at the end of the class period, if they have followed whatever the expectation is, my recommendation is pick something that’s been a problem up to this point.
Like at this point in the school year, you’re like my kids can’t keep a binder organized to save their life.
They’re constantly forgetting their assignments.
Or maybe it’s my kids can’t keep their hands to themselves.
Dear Lord Jesus, 97 times a day I say like please stop touching each other.
Like pick something that is problematic.
So this can be actually a proactive approach to celebrating kids.
Therefore, they can push the pen.
Okay, so I choose one kid to push the pen and that kid goes up to the board.
They’re totally allowed to look at their peers and be like, what do you think I should do?
What do you think I should do?
Now I mentioned in the first part of this episode that one of the things was a mystery envelope.
Because here’s what I always want to maintain.
I want to maintain motivation in these month long competitions for the entire 29, 30, 31 days.
But if second hour family has 152 points and third hour family in the middle of the month has 17 points, naturally one’s going to look at that and be defeated.
And there’s like, there’s no way we can catch up.
There’s no way that we are ever going to be able to actually win this competition, which is why I love a mystery envelope, some sort of mystery element to this.
Because it’s literally an envelope that I had that had a notecard in it.
And the notecard had some sort of like zinger, okay?
The notecard was actually a game changer for the game, something small, but strategic to change the way that things learn, grow, or respond.
So sometimes kids would go for the mystery envelope.
And on some days, I would have put like negative 100 in the mystery envelope.
So that would have actually subtracted 100 points from the team.
So here’s the thing.
If kids know that the mystery envelope can be positive or negative, if you’re ahead in the game, maybe you’re not going for that.
And maybe if you’re behind, you’re like, yeah, but it could be something positive.
Like at one point, I had positive 542 points.
So in one day, that could have changed the entire game.
But that keeps the possibility open to have every single class period family thrive.
Is it fair?
Well, I mean, I think fair is a relative term.
I invented the game so I get to invent the rules.
I’m not like psyching kids out.
They know in advance that the mystery envelope could be positive, could be negative, could be neutral.
But isn’t that kind of realistic of how life works?
Sometimes things are positive, sometimes things are negative, sometimes things are neutral.
But a lot of things in life are very unexpected.
The question is, how are we going to roll with it?
And so it was fun to see how different classes responded.
Like do we go big or go home and try for the tiny section of the racetrack and go for the 100 every single day?
Do we do like a slow and steady wins the race and just consistently try for like 10 or 50 points?
At the end of the day, do you know what I noticed happen during the course of this month that we played push the pen?
Behaviors were better.
Classroom management was easier.
Kids were more engaged.
Kids were more organized.
Kids were kinder.
All of the things that often get in our way from teaching and reaching kids had just naturally been eliminated because of the dumbest idea ever.
Pushing a pen across a whiteboard ledge.
There is no reason why something that dumb should work.
But when we try new things, when we push the envelope for ourselves, when we try to approach things with new limits that are possible, we end up creating an environment that is fun to walk into.
And I think if kids are having fun, it creates some laughter.
And I think if kids are laughing, kids are listening.
And I think if kids are listening, kids are absorbing.
And I think if kids are absorbing, guess what’s happening?
They’re learning.
So in theory, does this have absolutely nothing to do with teaching?
Yes.
In practice, does this have everything to do with teaching?
Also, yes.
Pushing the pen is just one of those ways to turn problems into positivity.
But that’s exactly what game changing moments are.
In a split second, everything can turn upside down in a positive way.
We just have to ask ourselves, are we pausing enough to create those moments?
Friends, I want you to try pushing the pen with kids.
Does it have to be a pen?
No, it can be a marker.
It can be a Sharpie.
It can be push the pencil.
Does it have to be on a whiteboard ledge?
No, you could literally do this on the floor.
You could call it rolling with my homies, and you could roll a pencil across the floor.
If you don’t have a ledge, you’re like, well, I can’t do it because I don’t have a whiteboard, and I don’t have a ledge.
You got a pencil.
You got a floor.
I’m guessing you got a pencil and a floor in your classroom.
Call it rolling with my homies, and you roll a pencil across the floor, and you can have like get a yardstick.
Okay, get like a meter stick, and you can put little dashes on the meter stick for different points.
That is the simplest remix possible.
There’s absolutely no reason why you can’t try something like this in your classroom.
And when you do, and when it works, will you let me know.
Game on!
PS- If you love ideas like this, you will LOVE this upcoming opportunity