Well, hello, and welcome back to the Hillbrook school podcast. My name is Bill Sullif. I'm our director of technology. I'm here with Clara. Clara, hello.
Hi.
Who are you? What do you do?
Well, my title is director of the hub.
There's more to it.
I run PD for teachers. I help other teachers integrate hands on learning projects into their classrooms.
Yeah, making, doing. Making, learning. I doing.
Perhaps failing. All part of it.
Ooh, failing. Let's start with failing, because when we think of school, most people think failing bad. It's an f. Some people can write it with the letter f and the color red.
What if we have two f's, like, failing forward?
Ooh, double f. That's like a vending machine. How? Like, once they go through the Alphabet, you get, like, the hh and you push h, and, like, potato chips come out. You have to push hh to get what you want.
Ff, right. Failing forward.
What's the upside of failing? So much? Like, I think the default reaction is fail bad.
Right.
Why is fail good?
Well, I think even when I was a kid, I was afraid to fail 100% as a math teacher and a lover of math, it was all about getting the right answer. Oh.
And it's very clear. Like, right or wrong?
Right. Yeah. But there's so much to learn from failing. Like, more than one lesson. And I think that's what we're here for, is not to get the right answer always, but to learn. So I think failing can teach you a lot in a lot of different ways, depending on how you see it.
Well, and I think this is part of what drew you to the hub, which is our makerspace, is so much of how we teach math in the US is right, wrong, good, bad, right. So, like, binary. Yeah, but with the hub, it's this whole process, and it's not clear what a right answer looks like.
Yeah, well, it's clear when you do the thing, and then you make the mistake. For example, like, if you're trying to make a chair, and you're like, I want the seat to be square. In the math mindset, you're like, oh, I need four equal sides. Then you cut four equal sides of wood.
Great.
You put it together, and then you're like, depending on how you put it together, it becomes a rectangle, and you're like, what happened? And then you have maybe an aha moment. Oh, I need to think about the thickness of the wood and subtract it. Yeah.
If I use a two x four, suddenly that adds two inches to wherever I depending on how I butt it up, right? Yeah.
Well, even a two by four is not even two inches by four inches.
Wait, it's not?
No. So if you go measure a two by four, I want to say it's like one in three quarters.
Or what?
Yeah, or one and a half.
I can't even lie to our whole lives. We gotta give people a warning if they listen to this while they're driving.
Right. Go measure before you put things together. Measure twice, cut once. Or three times.
Or three times. Well, yeah. So I'm thinking of different examples I've done. Maybe we can talk about things we've done together in the hub with making around. This didn't work. I tried. I tried. And so much of the time, I think it's like a self assessment when things don't work. And so I was trying to get, one of the first things I 3d printed here was an extra kind of knob extender. Our traffic, the tube counters. When you're driving on campus and you hear that connects to a big rectangular prism, and that has. You have to reach in to take the little cap off. And every time I reached in, I would cut up my knuckles. And so I'm like, I wish there was like, I wish this cap was longer. So I basically built a cap to fit over the cap. I was like, cool, it's done. And I think in, like, most traditional classes, it would be like if I was in the class. It's done. Check. Oh, it looks great. It meets all the criteria. Done. You get an a. Move on to the next thing. And I went to put it on, and it didn't fit.
What'd you do? Did you make another one?
So then I made another one. I made it slightly bigger. Cause my measurement was off the teeniest bit. And then put it on and it fit perfectly. And then I went to twist, and it just twisted by itself. It didn't actually twist the cap. So I had to put, like, little lines on the inside, like, little ridges that would actually kind of grip it.
Right.
And then went to put it on, and then it didn't fit. So then it turns out the cap in real life is not a perfect circle. So then I had to get a heat gun and then slowly melt the plastic as I slid it on. And it's been on for five to eight years now and totally works.
Amazing.
And so that's great.
I'm just thinking, like, look at all the things you learned.
All the things I learned, for sure. Like, I went deep into Tinkercad, like.
Circle doesn't look like a circle sometimes.
Yeah, yeah. Real life circle is not a real life circle. Like, so many levels along the way. But I also look at, like, if that was a class assignment, I would have stopped, like, 20% of the project.
Right.
And actually, should I tell them? I think I will. It actually started off as, like, some, some kids in the ilab, like, before we had the hub makerspace, they were like, hey, is there a problem you have? And I was like, oh. Like, I just scratched up my knuckles, washing it out. I was like, here's what I need. And their version, like, didn't fit at all. So I actually took that as, like, I'm gonna do the thing. But they, like, did that for their project, and they were done. I was like, actually, the project should have been, let's get it that other 80% until it actually works. And so school just doesn't.
That's why I asked, did you try again? Because a lot of the kids, once they do their first version, they're like, oh, that didn't work. And then they kind of give up, and they're like, well, I ran out of time. I don't really care, or I'll just work on something else. Maybe attention span is also a thing of this generation, but that's kind of also what I love about flag. So I also run student council, and every week we have a assembly of sorts, and student council runs this flag, and every week they get to try again. Yes.
I can see why you're drawn to this.
Yeah, it's really cool to see their development, and they have to try again in this case, or we encourage them to try again.
Running a show for, you know, all the, all the JK, eight students and parents. So it's four or 500 people.
Right?
Yeah.
So, yeah, the opportunity to try again, you're not bounded by time, which a lot of classes kind of are. Like, we got to get to the curriculum. You can't. We don't have time to try again.
Sure, sure. Yeah. Oh, you got a b or, like, you tried the thing and, like, it didn't fit the cap. Oh, well, onto the next thing.
Right. Because we kind of all have to move together as a class or something. But, yeah, I do hope that kids learn that concept of trying and persevering. I think that's a lifelong skill that we also need to develop in children and in adults. Right. Like, even I give up sometimes.
Well, yeah, I mean, so let's talk about that. I think that's definitely one of the themes of this season is the idea, like, how the arts actually impact all kinds of parts of our lives for the rest of our lives. One thing we talked at the top of the show that I want to get back to now is actually adult learning. And so a lot of. I mean, there's so many different memes for teachers around, like, PD and faculty meetings. You know, like, the one that comes top of mind is, you know, if I am ever gonna die, I hope it's in a faculty meeting where just I slowly, slowly lose all of my senses and just fade away into death. Like, the transition would be so seamless. And I've seen, like, so many teachers share that so many times over the years. But it doesn't have to be that way. No, I can actually be engaging. It can develop these skills, like perseverance, lifelong learning, which is a very vague, like, aspirational thing. So walk us through, like, what does learning look like for adults in the hub?
Yeah. So this year we did four pd's for teachers in the hub around different topics. Our first one, we made little cars with our. A random colleague out of popsicle sticks, one motor, a battery pack, and, I don't know, a straw skewers. Some just random materials from the hub.
But it was a very specific thing. Like, you have this little baggy of materials and you get nothing else.
Right, right. So the limited materials, some teachers knew how to put it together, a lot of teachers didn't. But it was like, how do you collaborate? How do you communicate? How do you celebrate each other? A lot of the cards at the end didn't even go straight.
Yeah.
But so much learning and laughter was happening and thinking and talking and just, like, looking at other people's ideas, getting inspired and all that was just really cool to see within our community.
Well, and even the engineering behind that to actually understand. I remember my group actually won.
Yeah.
Right. When, like, chat GPT four came out, perhaps, or, like, the. The latest. Like, it was actually helpful. So I actually just wrote in, here's all the stuff I have. I need to make a car. And it gave us a couple of suggestions pretty early on, and then we asked a couple clarifying questions that actually really helped us move beyond how do we put this together to, like, how do we make this good?
Right?
And so for us, there was a little motor that was attached to one wheel, and then the skewer connected to just two other wheels.
Right.
And I think a lot of the groups had just never really thought about how cars work. And so they were like, they tried to connect the motor to all of the wheels, or maybe ended up doing none of the wheels. And so pretty quickly just to realize, oh, we want the motor on one wheel. We want that centered and then two in the back just for support. And that ended up as wide as possible. I'm using my fingers to really stretch out right now for stability so that it would actually kind of go straight in the way we wanted, and that really helped us. But, like, it's fascinating. That was. Do you remember what month that was? Was that back in September?
Yeah, it was early on in a.
While, and I remember so much of that vividly. I think that's because it was, like, emotionally interesting.
Right, right.
It was hands on. It was a problem that we had to try and solve, and then it was that social part. It was collaborative too. It makes it sticky.
Yeah, I really love that. And then our second session, Greg Stamos hosted us in a little culinary, top chef ish form of lesson where we just had random materials on a table. We got with our group, and then we had to make dumplings together. And that was really fun because I was in a group. I semi know how to make dumplings, but I also want to hear what other people like and their ideas and techniques were. And our first version didn't turn out too well. The pan got too sticky or something.
Oil probably wasn't hot enough. I know how to cook dumplings, but I don't know how to make dumplings.
Right.
So we buy frozen ones. So I actually had that part locked in, but didn't know how to actually put it together and pinch it and do any of that. Yeah.
Well, this is weird. As an adult, I'm learning these skills that maybe I didn't learn as a kid. Like, your pan being hot enough, I always think I assumed nonstick pans meant nonstick.
Yeah. No, no, it's not.
But it's, like, pan and hot oil, and you gotta wait a long time. Nothing's instant, it seems. And then you put the thing on.
Yeah, chef Rachel taught me. Cause we moved away from nonstick at home. We have some stainless pants, and she was, like, the thing that every chef knows. And I've asked a few different chefs, and they have the saying, hot pan, hot oil, no stick.
Yeah.
And it doesn't rhyme so clearly. Like, a teacher didn't invent that.
Well, I saw some, I don't know, Instagram reel or something, and it's a good, like, five minute wait.
Oh, yeah.
Or something like that.
To get it the pan hot enough oil hot enough?
Yeah.
I don't know if I have five minutes of my day, but maybe I.
Do while you're prepping the ingredients. As long as it doesn't get too hot, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, and so that's another opportunity, right? Suddenly, if you wanted to, we could. If this was in a class, you could actually, like, do that as an anticipatory set with students and then talk about, like, why stuff burns, how you get it hot, why you want to get it hot, what temperature range you want to get hot, what the oil does, how it conducts.
Yeah. All that science, energy, even the browning.
Of the mileart effect and wet temperature is a really specific way that actually stuff browns and why it browns, and how you do that and how that actually releases flavor and how it dries stuff out.
See, now I'm so curious. Like, sometimes I don't even know what. I don't know exactly.
That's one of the great things about that space, is there's so much stuff that you can just get exposed to. Like, oh, I wonder what that is. And that's where I think one of our core values, be curious, shows up so much. I think if you're a student or an adult and you walk into that space and go, oh, what's that thing?
Yeah.
And that could set you off on a whole new hobby, a whole new career, a whole new, like, life mission, maybe.
For sure. Like, even me, I'm. I would say I'm a jack of all trades, a master of none. Okay, so I know how to use most of the things in there to the depth of being a master. Absolutely not. But if I know a little bit, I could be curious enough to take the next step and take the next step and take this next step.
Well, so what's next for you? What's the thing you're trying to get better at learning right now? Music, maybe?
Music. Music has been on my mind. Trevor's trying to get me to play more. I think I go back to this fear of failure.
Oh, tell me more.
I don't know. When I learned how to play piano as a kid, I just memorized things, and I never understood it. And only about a year or two ago, when the teacher band was coming together, they're like, do you want to play? Like, I don't know how to play. And then people started teaching me about chords and chord progressions and how things go together, and, bill, you were teaching me some things as we made a lo fi song together.
Yeah. So at the beginning of flag if you're listening sometimes on the live stream, but in person, for sure, people hear like, a five to seven minute piece of music that loops. Walk us through what that was.
So, you know, as you enter a auditorium or amphitheater of swords, sometimes you're like, has it started yet? You kind of just want some welcome music to keep people's minds going. And so Bill and I, we're talking about, okay, what music should we do? And I have been really into this lo fi pop playlist lately, and so I've also been interested in learning how to use garageband better, because in video editing and all that, I've been more curious about it. So I asked Bill, hey, can you teach me how to make lo fi music? As I know, he is a music major of sorts and fanatic. And he's like, yeah, for sure. I did say that.
I said, for sure.
Yeah, no hesitation. When do you want to do it? And so that was really cool. We got together. We were in your office. He had everything set up, and he let me kind of drive the thing at as he coached me through the process. And that was really awesome.
Right? So it's adding drums, adding a synth. It's loosely based on a song called Cruel Summer that you may or may not know, you know, kind of the melody and part of actually what drove it, for me, it was the initial need was, we want welcome music, right? But if we're live streaming and we're just playing, like, a playlist of lo fi music, then we're streaming someone else's music. And so in addition to us not having the rights to do that, YouTube will actually get us a strike. And if we, depending on which strike we get, we actually can't live stream anymore on that account. And that's a big deal.
Yeah.
And so it was, sure, we can do that, but we can't use someone else's music. And so, you know, can we do our own music? Yes, we can. Of course. Right, right.
Like, I could have went down the rabbit hole of, like, youtubing, how do I create lo fi music? And I've actually done that before, and it wasn't really helpful. Oh, okay, interesting. Because I just didn't know where to start. And when I had questions, I just had to go down another rabbit hole. So I'm very lucky and fortunate to have you as a colleague to be like, hey, Bill.
Yeah, yeah.
Can you help me with this? And whatever questions I had, you're like, okay, start with this. Okay, now you can do this. I'm like, oh, and then I remember the word quantize. Okay. I've seen, like, some reels about. There's this kid named, like, miles music, his account or whatever. This is like, seven year old kid making music. He's like, and I'm gonna quantize that. And I always was like, what does that mean?
So tell everyone. What does that mean?
So this is what I assume it means that you can tell. Usually. Usually when you're playing, you're not playing at the correct beat. Yeah.
Like, your timing's.
Yeah, we're human. So, quantizing it. When you press the quantize button, the computer will align it to the right beat of the music.
Exactly. It snaps it to whatever you tell it. Snap it to, like, the nearest 16th note.
Right.
So, on the upside, you can be not great at playing a keyboard, and it will make it sound like you're perfect.
Right.
On the downside, you kind of lose that human quality. And so people that are really good actually don't quantize, because being a little ahead or behind the beat is part of when you listen to someone go, oh, you're really good. It's because they're not perfectly on the beat every single time.
And I need that quantize button.
Right, right. Unless you're at the point where this is what you're doing for a living. Quantize is an amazing thing. And takes it from, like, wow, that's not great. I'm trying to do, like, a synth bass. I just learned how, like, what I wanted to record, and then quantize. Bam.
Yeah.
Sounds perfect, right? Yeah, no, it's. It's an amazing way to go from, like, I am playing music to. That sounds legit.
Yeah. So that was really cool. And, like, going through that whole process again, going back to failure. Like, we failed along the process, but that was okay. Like, it was free, you know? Like, you mess up and it's free.
Right, right.
It's digital.
We're not paying $100 an hour for studio time.
Right. Like, it's not like woodworking when you mess up. Oh, man, you gotta buy a new piece of wood.
I wonder, you know what? Like, I don't know if there's anything. Now that I've stopped shooting on film, I don't pay for any of my art, which is interesting.
Like, to make art or to make.
To make art, like music. I have my instruments, and so now it's free.
Right?
Same thing with photos and videos. Once you have your gear, you're not paying, like, per use.
Right.
That's really interesting. With woodworking, you do textile arts like quilting. You do, huh?
There's no, like, consumables, right, right.
Interesting. That's how we can hit your budget next year from the hub.
Just digitize everything.
Digitize everything. We'll just.
We'll take new laptops.
We'll take everything that once used to be analog and get a big matic press, like the apple ad, and squish it into an iPad.
I think that's what the kids love also about the digital making is that.
Yeah.
Ctrl Z. Command Z is always an option.
Right, right. And that non destructive editing.
Yeah. Like, you could always go back. So sometimes they're like, how do I do this? I was like, I don't know. Just try it. And you could just command Z if it didn't work.
Yes, yes. Well, and there's also that beauty of the balance of actually having a piece of wood. And if you make the mistake, you're like, oops, I was making my bowl last year out of wood and turning a bowl and put a big old dent in it, and it just chipped, like, a whole piece and was like, I guess we're starting over.
Yeah.
You know, that's part of learning how to turn wood.
Yeah. And I think there is learning in that. Cause I was just helping a kid make a cutting board the other day, and we were routing the edges and the bit came off or something, and it made a big chip. And she's like, my cutting boards are already small. I was like, my advice was to cut it off. And she's like, well, I guess I'd rather it be smaller than have a chip in it. But learning how to deal with that, of, okay, do you just give up at that point, or do you find a solution for that?
Right. How do you pivot?
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, that's super interesting. Let's keep going through. We talked about two pd's. What else?
Well. Oh, before the cooking one, we made ornaments. Oh, that's right. Holiday ornaments for gifts.
Other sort of gifts. And wood, mostly wood, like.
Well, so the process of that and what I wanted to teach the teachers around here is that we have opportunities for laser cutting and sublimating, and we use the ornaments as a tool or resource to get them into it.
All right, so let's pause real quick and explain that. So the laser cutting you start in Adobe illustrator have.
Well, we actually use cuddle this time.
We did. Okay, so cuddle is a website that gets you, like, laser cut files.
Right.
Adobe illustrator could also work with that.
They're both vector design software. What was nice about cuddle was that they provide templates. If you have the subscription, there's a plug. And that just lets you move so.
Much quicker from an idea. Or if you're stuck on an idea, like, I want to make a thing, but I don't know what. Here's a few templates to get you going.
Yeah, yeah.
And then you do that and then the laser will both etch the wood or just cut that out for you.
Right?
Yeah.
And that was really cool. It was accessible to teachers who are new to the process.
Yeah. And then sublimation. What's that?
So sublimation. So we used canva to design an ornament with their family's photo or something, and we printed it with a sublimation printer.
And so this is basically a regular printer but has specific ink called sublimation ink.
Yeah. And sublimation paper. Okay. And then you then heat press it onto the ornament. So the photo transfers onto the ornament off the paper.
Onto an ornament off the paper, onto a t shirt.
Right.
Off the paper, onto a puzzle pouch. A puzzle, yeah. So it basically lets you go from any digital image to a physical artifact.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's really cool. And I noticed after that, that was one of those you don't know what. You don't know things.
Right.
And then I saw a lot of teachers popping in the hub being like, can I laser cut this? Can I use the sublimation picture for that? Can you help me think through this lesson where, like, here's what I used to do and it works and it's a fine lesson, but what if we integrated that tool in this way? Like, right. So many, like, I wonder ifs came out of that.
Well, what was really cool, one really cool sublimation project from this year is we made ornaments for the 7th graders grandparents or special friend. And on the other side, we sublimated a QR code. And the QR code led to why they're grateful for that person.
Oh, that's a video.
It was an audio.
Audio. Oh, nice. Oh, I like that.
So that was really cool as a dedication. And they had it as a Christmas gift, so they put it on their tree if they celebrated it. Yeah. That was really nice.
Nice. I love that so much. I also love that that almost kind of instigates innovation for those teachers. Right? Like, once you know it, it's in your head. It becomes a tool you can reach for when you need it. It's a beautiful thing.
And the fact that the whole class kind of got it. Other teachers were curious, too. It's like, oh, where'd you get that? Or, how'd you make that? And then they would ask about their project. So today, I'm gonna go into Huijin's class and teach them about canva and how to use it in her class.
Oh, that explains a tech ticket we got yesterday. Hey, please push canva to all fifth grade mandarin iPads.
Yes. Yeah. So that's been awesome.
Oh, nice. Very cool. And what was that last PD that ran in the hub?
So Laura and Susie ran it, and it was called.
It was like, deep noticing, deep thinking, visual.
Visual BTS, visual thinking strategies. That's what it was. And so they guided us through a process where we looked at art deeply.
Like a really specific protocol. It wasn't just look at this art and really look at it.
It was like, you know, it's like, tell me more. And then what else do you see and start?
And, like, initially being silent for at least a minute, just looking at the piece of art on a massive tv.
Right. Just so that we don't influence each other's thoughts. I think the one thing that was mind blowing to me is the use of color in art and how it draws your eyes. There was a point where there was like, oh, this blues in a triangle in this piece of art. Oh. And then other people are like, oh, the red did it, too. The yellow did it, too. I was like, oh, yeah. That's something I've never noticed before.
Interesting. Yeah. And that's also one of those things where maybe not if you're hearing this, you're like, this doesn't seem immediately applicable to classroom teaching, but the idea that you can pause and really, really look at a thing. I know there's reading strategies called close reading. I remember taking a photo on Instagram when Instagram first came out and I had a book touching my nose. I was like, I learned about close reading in PD today. But the idea that at first glance, it feels really obnoxious of read the paragraph, then read it again, then read it a third time, and then notice this. And it's, you know, it's the idea of, like, slowing way, way down and that there's actually a lot more to see.
Right.
When you give yourself or your students some space.
Yeah. I was just thinking about, there's this one photo that we looked at, and some people had thought, like, oh, it's a grandpa teaching a kid how to use an iPad or the kid was showing the grandpa how to use the iPad.
Right.
And I was thinking, to me, I was like, oh, the grandpa's trying to tell the kid, this is how you play the game. And what was cool about that is, like, with one photo, we have so many different perspectives of how we see it and analyze it. And I think through, like, teaching, and if kids did this process, it's like, oh, with one situation that we see, a lot of different things could be possibly happening. So that different perspective thing for the same moment.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what I always love about art that isn't literal, is that you bring yourself and your experiences to it. And so actually having that protocol where we had that forced time to stop and reflect was really interesting.
Yeah. Somewhere I'm like, I think before artists was like, this is what I'm doing. And this is the art that I created for this reason. And I think nowadays, it's like, I'm gonna create this art. What do you see?
Yes. What do you think?
And maybe there is no intention, but maybe there is an intention. I don't know.
Yeah, I love that. Well, so why do all of this work with teachers for PD? Like, how is this professional learning?
Well, I personally think that schools and subjects like the real world should be integrated.
You mean you don't learn math problems in real life and have to do math problems aside from everything else?
Yeah. In addition to that, you might be having to talk to your colleague about this math problem to solve a product that they are trying to make. And there's communication in that. There is English in that. There is math in that. So one of my really pushes is to integrate more subjects so that they're not so standalone and siloed to replicate the real world more.
Well. And also, one thing that got me when I was at my last school towards more project based or problem based learning was realizing that when you do these projects, you're able to hit so many standards at once. And so my last school, there was such pressure to cover all the standards, and there was a perception amongst most of my colleagues that you had to just stick with the textbook and you couldn't veer off course for a moment. Otherwise, you wouldn't get to the end of the book, and you wouldn't be able to cover all the standards that you were tasked with covering in the state of California. And I realized, actually, if we do this project, I may well hit, like, five standards at once. If we spend half an hour writing a melody with second graders, that actually hits, like, eight different standards. So obviously, like, two or three different musical ones. Cause you're not teaching the music in isolation. You're writing a thing together. In garageband, if you're making a pattern, that's actually algebra.
Right.
Right. A repeating pattern. And so then we can have a little mini lesson, and suddenly it's not, let's do this worksheet. It's let's actually talk through what that pattern sounds like.
Right. And it also reinforces a lot, too. Like, for example, I personally think you could teach algebra through coding.
Yes.
I haven't mapped it out, but I know it's possible. Yeah. So if you're learning math, we could put it into coding, and then it becomes a story, let's say.
Well, and then with that story, there's all the writing.
Absolutely. Yeah. So imagine making a story through scratch, where the character roams around and says certain things, like, that's English, that's math. Maybe they're telling some history through the scenes, and that's art. So I think that would be a really cool project.
That is amazing. Clara, thank you so much for being on the show, and thank you all for listening.