3 Awesome Ways to Use Unsplash (with a bonus anti-bias activity!)

Hey everybody! I'm super excited to share a little bit about one of my favorite websites, Unsplash! 

Unsplash is an awesome website with free pictures that you can use without running into copyright issues. 

Yes, I know what you're thinking. Who cares about copyright issues?! Why can't I just download free stuff off of Google? 

• Reason #1: Teachers aren't automatically exempt from copyright laws just because they are using things for educational purposes- the law is more complex than that. Learn more here. 
• Reason #2: Unsplash pictures are actually very high quality and often yield better results than a Google search.
• Reason #3: Using sites like Unsplash gives you an opportunity to model safe, fair, and honest use of technology for students. 

Have I convinced you yet? If not, read on to see some the great reasons why I love using Unsplashed. 

1.) Creative Writing Prompts: I am reminded of the opening scene of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book- 

"There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife." 

Good writing can provoke powerful images in a reader's mind. Why not try letting good photography provoke powerful writing? Consider using your summer "vacation" to collect your favorite Unsplash images for use in writing warm-ups. 

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

2.) Math Warm-Up: I've used this with my students tons of time, and it works great! Choose a picture that demonstrates real life examples of whatever math principle you will be focusing on for the day. OR choose a picture that could help set up the context for a word problem you will be working on. 

Photo by Lottie Griffiths on Unsplash

3.)  Point of View and Perspective: This is a theme that weaves its way into various literature and social studies standards. A few well chosen pics demonstrating different perspectives of the same object could start a great conversation with students. 

Photo by Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash and Photo by Howard P on Unsplash

BONUS! Unpacking stereotypes: One of my favorite TED talks is by Chimamanda Adichie. She talks about the danger of a single story- the danger of using one narrative to describe a whole race, gender, culture, language, or people. Pictures can be a simple, uncomplicated way to both challenge and recognize single stories. 

Photo by Daniel Lloyd Blunk-Fernández on Unsplash and Photo by Vincent Camacho on Unsplash

Take the pictures above for instance. If the only thing we knew about Mexican and Hawaiian cultures came from these two photos, then we'd have a pretty incomplete and even inaccurate understanding of them.  But what if we had other photos as well? Photos from the past, photos from the present, photos of people who consider themselves part of the culture (government leaders, celebrities, ordinary children and adults, etc), photos depicting everyday life as well as specific cultural traditions or celebrations. Such photos could help us recognize the danger of a single story (or in this case, a single photo). 

Interested in this idea, but don't know where to start? Start with what would be most relevant in your own classroom: 

• Focus on the cultures and issues most relevant to your students or most relevant in the communities where you teach. 
• Encourage students to informally challenge the images they come in contact with (Ex: Well I'm Mexican, but I don't celebrate the Day of the Dead). 
• Have students create their own albumn designed to shatter stereotypes that people may have of their own culture, race, gender, religion, family, etc. 

Got any other ideas for using Unsplash images in your classroom? Drop them below! 

5 Free Ways to Keep Your Kid's Brains from Melting This Summer

Wondering how to get your kids off the couch and up and doing something (literally anything?) Here are a few ideas of educational things you can do to keep your kids busy and engaged this summer.

1.) Sign your kids (and yourself!) up for library summer reading programs: The best thing you can do for your kids during the summer is encourage them to read diverse books across genres and across grade levels. Summer reading programs are a fun way to provide kids with a bit of extra incentive to read. Have some avid readers in your family? Sign up for multiple programs at multiple libraries, if possible. Consider also any other educational programs your library might have, such as STEM-themed classes for children or videomaking/art classes. You can also check out this list of businesses that also offer free rewards for summer reading. 

2.) Keep review materials on hand: This will look different for every family. Some parents like to have scheduled "school time" during the day, where their kids review content for the coming school year; other parents prefer to let their children enjoy their short break without structured review time. Regardless of your style or preference, it's a good idea to have interesting review materials your kids might go through when bored. You'd be suprised how many kids I've seen voluntarily do math problems or write a story for "fun". Here are a few ideas of where to get educational materials: 

• Old math, writing, or science notebooks from the past year: Bonus if you have old worksheets from older children that could be used to "challenge" younger siblings.
• Online math or literacy games: Your kids probably played these during the school year and might be intersted in playing them at home, too. Check out Duolingo, ABCya games, Prodigy, or FunBrain. 
• Review workbooks: If you ask around your neighbor or check at a dollar bookstore, you could probably get one for free or cheap. Or, check out this list from VeryWell Family. 

3.) Play, play, play! Research backs up what common sense already tells us: kids benefit from unstructured play time. Here are a few ideas to make sure your children are getting adequately time to play: 

• Unstructured play: If your kids attend a day care, then they already have an amazing opportunity to play with children with diverse interests, abilities, and ages. When choosing a day care, choose one that allows for unstructured play time as well as structured play activities. If your kids don't attend day care, consider connecting with other parents for play dates or simply letting your kids loose in a public park (most kids will make a friend!) 
• Board Games: Family board game nights are a great way to authentically use various "academic" skills, such as counting, addition, subtraction, multiplication, reading, critical thinking, and problem solving. 
• Outdoor play: Such play is healthy for children's physical, mental, and emotional health. Go to the park, the beach, the lake, the mountains- it doesn't really matter as long as you and your kids are having fun! 

4.) Take advantage of vacation opportunities: Vacations are rich opportunities for family learning. Consider visiting a free musuem, historical monument, or national park if it fits in with your travel plans. Is a vacation not in the plans for this summer? Look for free virtual field trips that would interest your child, or do Zoom calls with extended family that you haven't seen for awhile. 

5.) Give children time to pursue passions: Schools are often overly focused on literacy skills and mathematical fluency. Give your kids a chance to learn about other rarely taught subjects in an authentic context. Here a few things that your kids might be interested in: 

• Geography: Maybe try geocaching, explore Google Earth, or do a city-wide scavenger hunt.
• Environmental Science: Do a home recycling project or join a water/electricity conservation effort.
• Art: Painting, coloring, origami, etc
• Coding/Technology: Try this website with your kids. 

Whatever your plans for this summer, I hope you enjoy every minute of it! 

A Pioneer Woman, Today

During this month of July, I've been thinking a lot about Pioneer Day, which is July 24th. Here in Utah, it's a big holiday that celebrates the many pioneers that made Utah possible. It's celebrated in Fourth-of-July style, with fireworks, food, parades, stories of faith and bravery, and lots of kids dressed in clothes from the 1800s. It's supposed to be super fun (this is my first Utah Pioneer Day, so I haven't experienced it yet), and I'm looking forward to enjoying it! 

Although the word "pioneer" often conjures up images of mighty voyages and cross-country travel, a pioneer is anyone who does something that's never been done before- that leaves a trail, physical or ethereal, for others to follow.

As a woman living in the twenty-first century, I've often felt like a pioneer. Sure, there's nothing terribly unique about my life choices, but the context within which I make my life choices has changed drastically.

Never before in the history of the world have I had so many options available to me as a woman. 

I could run for political office. 

Become a engineer. 

Raise ten children, or two or three.

Travel the world. 

Get a PhD. 

Start my own business. 

Cure some social problem.  

Write a textbook.

Fly an airplane. 

I really have almost limitless options to choose from. Granted, not everything on that list is appealing to me, nor is everything on it equally easy to acheive. But my point is that some woman somewhere pioneered the way so that I could have the chance to choose, to decide for myself who I want to become.

Yet, despite these well-worn trails that many a woman has left for me, I still feel like I am trailblazing my own path in the wilderness. 

How many kids I have, if I choose to stay home with them, how long I choose to stay home with them, how I balance family and work life, how I balance multiple dreams and multiple responsibilities, how I leave a legacy for the generations after me to follow- it's all up to me. 

My life will leave a well-worn trail of something that's never been done before. 

Something unique. 

Something messy. 

Something twisty and windy with lots of switchbacks. 

Something dirty and dusty and long. 

Something beautiful.

This pioneer holiday, I hope we can all think about the ways we can be a pioneer in our own generation, and especially how we can support the girls and women in our families as they decide what it is they want to do with their lives. No matter who we are, we can be pioneers in changing the way we speak of other's life choices to be more loving and inclusive. 

To support the pioneering stay-at-home moms who are raising children in a generation unlike any other before it. 

To support the pioneering small business owners who balance mom life and boss life- well, like a boss.

To support the pioneering doctors and nurses and researchers who save lives on the daily. 

To support the pioneering early childhood and elementary educators who spend all day with "their" kids. 

To support every woman in their journey to be a pioneer. 

Musings on Family History

Goooooood evening everybody! I am finally back, on this last day of January, with my arms full of New Year's Eve resolutions to write more and create more. I thank you all for supporting me on my journey.

One thing I've been thinking a lot about is family history. I'm not very good at it. I like reading stories and exploring the different sides of my family tree, but I'm definitely no expert. In fact, I must confess that I spend half my time on Family Search praying I don't accidentally delete someone off of my family tree. I don't want that hanging on my conscious in the next life.

So if I'm not performing any swash-buckling feats on Family Search, why even bother?

1.) Family history grounds me: There's something comforting about seeing myself surrounded by a little of network of individuals who came before me. It reminds me that the mortal experience I am going through right now is temporary. Someday soon, I, too, will be a reduced to a tiny little clickable box on a Family Search screen. This knowledge helps me put my trials in perspective and reminds me of my purpose here on Earth. 

2.) Knowing my roots gives me tolerance: There's something about family stories that help us connect with other people. Stories in general are powerful because they resonate with and connect us to our own lived experiences. In fact, I believe that stories are reauthored every time they are read because every reader brings with them a different lens of understanding and experiences (This concept is often referred to as transactional reader theory, but I'll save you the nerdy details). 

As such, learning about our ancestors' experiences helps us expand our vision and understanding of the world around us. If we learn about an ancestor's desperate struggle to immigrant to America, for example, we might view a modern-day immigrant's experience in a different light than previously. 

3.) Reading others' stories gives me hope: Often, I am tempted to myopically assume that my life is so terribly hard, and that no one understands what I am going through. Although to some degree, no one, besides Jesus Christ, can really understand eeeeverything I go through, it's comforting to read about ancestors who actually went through remarkably similar difficulties. One of my favorite examples is the story of Alice Keeler. Alice's husband died and left her to care for her children alone. At great personal and familial sacrifice, she went to college (at BYU, no less) and got a degree in teaching. She taught at a local school for a few years before beginning a new career. I love hearing this story because it reminds me that as I seek to navigate personal, familial, and educational goals, there are many women in my family who had to struggle with the exact same thing.

 

Whelp, that about does it for Kaila musings today. I want to know: what does your family's history and culture mean to you?

Thoughts on Good Online Teaching

It's been a priviledge to be a guinea pig for pioneering large-scale online learning. From completely online classes, to blended in-person classes, to online Church, I've been able to experience the good, the bad, and the ugly of online learning. Here's a few tips for any professor, Sunday School teacher, businessman, or elementary educator looking to spruce up their online teaching skills. 

Created at canva.com

Bungee Jumping aka Teaching

 I've decided that teaching is lot like bungee jumping.

As this semester is winding to a close, it's been great to look back and see all that I've accomplished so far. I've explored classroom managament theorists from B.F. Skinner to Alfie Khon to everywhere in between. I've created high-quality, peer-reviewed asseesment questions for diverse standards and adjusted them to make them more equitable and accessible to English Language Learners. I've learned about school governance, educational policy, and the nitty-gritty stuff of being a teacher. I've spent hours crash-coursing everything special education, from IEPs, FAPE, IDEA, and several other acryonyms.  

Now, just a month or two away from my first practicum, I feel as if I am about to go bungee-jumping off into a deep abyss.

Photo by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash

Part of me knows that bungee jumping is a safe endevour. All the training I've done the past 2 1/2 years will act as a safety cord to prevent my certain demise. Master teachers, professors, and peers will be their watching to ensure that I don't fail. But I'm still the one who has to make the jump, alone, into the deep dark abyss where all my teacher idealism, passion, and planning meets the real world. And it's terrifying. 

What if my bungee cord snaps? What if a decade and a half of experieince in the public school system has not adequately for what school is like now, in a *hopefully* post-pandemic world? What if my management plan is a flop, what if all my progressive teaching techniques get thrown out the window and I end up using jolly ranchers as open bribery to keep children on task for 3 minutes chunks of time?

It could happen. Probably won't, but it could.

What I've begun to realize, however, is that feeling of complete, incomprehensible, terrifying uncertainity- that feeling of teetering on the cusp of either greatness or failure- is a feeling that most teachers, or, at least, the BEST teachers, experience daily. 

The best teachers are incredibly confident, but they never assume competence. The best teachers know they are well educated, but they also know they are not experts. The best teachers know what works well in their classroom, but they aren't afraid to try something new. In short, the best teachers aren't teachers at all: they are really students, eternal students who are wholeheartedly and completely committed to the excrutiating process of learning something new every day.

You can see examples of this learning process across the globe. It's manifest in the way that teachers in 2020 have spent hours researching edtech tools and online best practices. It's the reason why 30-year experienced teachers still attend professional development conferences with gusto every year. It's why educators download duolingo to attempt to learn a few words of Arabic for the new student in their classroom. Examples of these kinds of teachers are everywhere.

So, in this, my first attempt to bungee jump to... success? failure? the best job ever? I remember that I stand with some of the best educators of the world in my leap. Educators who, to the astonishment of their friends and family, find joy in the exhilirating, terrifying, fast-paced, demanding, sometimes even dangerous, job of teaching. Educators who assume the aura of expertise, yet work with the humility and energy of a novice. Educators who make a difference in the lives of their students

I can't wait to make the leap. 

Top 5 COVID-Approved Wedding Ideas

'Tis the season for engagements. It seems like all my friends are either in serious relationships, are engaged, or just got married. It's been so fun to be able to watch them find joy in their new stages of life.
It is definitely, however, a weird time to get hitched. Nothing like a pandemic to spruce up the wedding drama! I would definitely know. I had my own COVID wedding a few weeks ago, and it was amazing! ...but definitely not the wedding I had always dreamed would happen!
I thought I'd share a few tips for all those beautiful brides out there who are navigating these crazy times!

Tip #1: Host a drive-by or virtual wedding activity. 
This is a great way for friends and family to be able to meet the groom and bride-to-be without anyone getting put at risk. The bride, for example could host a drive-by bridal shower, where people drive by her house at a certain time to say hello and leave a gift. Or, the bride and groom can host a meet-n'-greet video call for their family and friends,where they can share the story of how they first met, what their first date was, and how the proposal went. I will be posting more ideas about virtual wedding adaptations in the future, so stay tuned!

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       Photo by Chris Montgomery from Unsplash 7/16

Tip #2: Create New Wedding Traditions
Months before my wedding, things were starting to look pretty grim for me and my then fiancee. We weren't sure if we were going to be able to have anyone besides our parents present for our small civil ceremony, and we were having to cancel previous wedding plans left and right. To help myself combat all the melancholy, I decided to focus on creating new wedding traditions instead of dwelling on the traditions that I could no longer have. One of those traditions that I chose to participate in was the FIRST LOOK.
Now, the First Look isn't a new concept, but it was a new concept for me. Basically, a First Look involves a dramatic reveal of the bride's wedding gown and the groom's suit or tux. Usually, a cute photo sesh follows that captures both the bride and groom's reactions to each other as well as their excitement for the coming marriage. Previously, I had always wanted my actual wedding to be the moment that my fiancee would first see my dress, but I soon fell in love with the first look idea. It gave me something to look forward to, and it's a great COVID safe tradition since it only needs to involve the bride, groom, and photographer.

Tip #3: Adapt Old Wedding Traditions
Instead of having a traditional huge wedding reception, my family opted to have a small intimate dinner at a nice restaurant. We were able to adapt many of our favorite wedding traditions to this new setting, and this helped our family dinner have a traditional reception feel to it. We had little gift bags with bride and groom trivia, as well as blocks for people to give us date and meal ideas.
The crowning moment of the night was the daddy-daughter dance and the subsequent first dance with my man. It was so, so special, made even more so because I didn't have to feel embarrassed or self-conscious about dancing in front of a million people. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Tip #4: Discard Wedding Traditions You Dislike
I ate a ton the day of my wedding. Yup. It was great.
Most people complain about how on their wedding day, they don't get a chance to eat all the wonderful food that's available to them because they're busy greeting all the guests. Luckily, I didn't have to worry about that! My husband and I were able to sit down and have a nice, relaxing, delicious meal. I even had time to breakfast AND lunch too!


Photo by Tony Eight Media from Unsplash 7/16

Tip #5: Spend Time Together
Usually, the weeks leading up to a wedding can be intensely stressful because of everything that is going on. Although having a COVID safe wedding doesn't make all marriage-related stress disappear, it's nice to have such a special time in your life simplified! As a couple, we decided to do a fun countdown to the wedding. We took turns thinking up of little ideas for how we could celebrate every day we had together, including the excruciatingly slow days leading up to the wedding.
For day 6 before the wedding, I found 6 pennies and told my fiancee, "A sixth sense tells me that I should marry you."
Thought I was pretty clever with that one! ;)

Whatever is is that you choose to do, a few simple tweaks to your weddings will help ensure that this important time in your life is a special, safe, and happy experience for everyone!