In this episode, our host Eric Cross sits down with Miami-based educator, Valeria Rodriguez. Valeria shares her journey of serving in the Peace Corps, working a corporate job, and eventually finding her passion as a middle-school science teacher. Listen in as Valeria explains how sketchnoting, a form of note-taking that utilizes illustrations, encourages student choice and creativity in her classroom. Eric and Valeria discuss the importance of risk-taking within the science classroom, and how their own mistakes can be crucial in modeling resilience for students. Valeria also shares several teachers that have inspired her throughout her career.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
There's so many things that drawing to me makes
an essential connection to ittells me no matter what I can
continue placing lines on mypaper and creating the image I
want.
Some people will say they messedup the drawing.
You know what?
They gave it character.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to science connections.
I'm your host.
Eric Cross.
My guest today is ValeriaRodriguez.
Valeria is a science educator,instructional technologist and
illustrator, who is currentlypart of a steam team where she
teaches third through fifthgraders in Miami, Florida Valer
has presented and led workshopsat education conferences like N
sta ISTI and south by SouthwestEDU.
(00:42):
In this episode, we discuss howshe uses real world projects to
make lessons more meaningful.
And why teaching students how tosketch note increases their
conceptual understanding inscience.
I hope you enjoy this fun-filledconversation with Valer
Rodriguez.
Now you're in, you're in Miamiand you have a biology.
Like we we're like kindredspirits.
(01:03):
Like we, we do the same thing.
I teach biology here in SanDiego in, uh, at a middle school
called Albert Einstein academy.
So I'm in seventh gradeclassroom teaching life science.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
That's so cool.
That's how I started.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Is it
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Mm-hmm I
started teaching middle school
science for seven years, doinglife science in my biology
background.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
How'd you get started?
Like where did you, where didyou kind of be begin in?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Well, I went to UF, uh, for undergrad, uh, as a
runner and I thought I was gonnago to the Olympics, but you
know, running in college ishard.
Can you quickly like realize apath as a full-time athlete is
really hard.
And one of the days that I washaving one of those, like come
(01:42):
Jesus moments of what am I gonnado with my life?
I walked by a sign that saidlife is calling.
And I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2 (01:52):
You literally had a
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Sign.
There was a sign.
So I was like, I'm reading thesign.
I'm I'm following the arrows.
And it was for the peace Corps.
And so I went to this meetingand everything that I'd ever
done, uh, student governmentathletics, uh, school education,
the, my background, uh, myfamily's from Columbia,
(02:15):
everything in that meeting cametogether and they're like, we
need all these skills.
And I'm like, I have those,those are my skills.
And they're like every peaceCorps volunteer teaches.
And so I went in as anagriculture volunteer to Panama
because of my major in mybackground in biology.
(02:35):
And while I was in the peaceCorps doing the work, I was
teaching at the local school.
And I realized that the mostsustainable way to create any
change is through education.
When I came back, I was like,well, what do you do if your
first job in the world is in thepeace Corps?
Like my background was, youknow, managing a machete in a
(02:58):
field and teaching secondthrough eighth grade in one
classroom, on a chalkboard, youknow, in English and in Spanish
while teaching the teacher andthe students.
So I found that going intoteaching allowed me to put some
of those skills, that wide arrayof skills that I had collected
(03:21):
until that moment into practice.
And it allowed me to do thearts, do the running, do the,
the science, do the connectingwith the community in one place
here in the states.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
I don't know if I'm just romanticizing, but you were
in Panama and you were doingthis amazing teaching.
I don't know.
Do you compare it to teachingnow in the classroom?
Is there anything that ever likemakes you wish that you were
kind of in that environmentagain?
Or are you kind of, do you likethe more kind of technology side
of things?
Speaker 1 (03:48):
I tell my students all the time that I miss it,
because when I was in Panama, Iwas in Atia.
They looked at me like this, allknowing, being they, if they
couldn't come to last becausethey, the kids literally had to
work.
They would bring me theirassignment, like run it to me
and then run it back, run backto their parents.
(04:08):
Like I had to turn it in, but Ihave to go to work.
And I'm like, oh my gosh.
And like here, sometimes I feellike, you know, I have to
negotiate and convince mystudents to want to give me
their work.
And maybe it's because we take alot of things for granted.
I mean, I didn't have runningwater in my community here.
(04:29):
You know, we have, we haveeverything.
I miss how we appreciated the,like, my parents would send
suitcases of materials for me tohand out to my students, like
color and stuff, notebooks,things like that.
And the kids would like, holdthat notebook, like pristine and
hear sometimes that my studentsaren't as careful with
(04:51):
materials.
And I'm like, why are youbreaking the carryon box?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
I'm thinking
about that.
Just even just bringing pens andcrayons and, and how that's
valued.
And then the, a culture that'sthat built around esteeming
teachers.
And you're this essential memberof the community.
Like you're you're and you feelthat it's palpable.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah.
And here, sometimes I askstudents like, what do you wanna
be when you grow up?
And you get all sorts ofanswers, but in my community,
it's gonna sound funny.
But they were like, we wanna bea teacher.
Like, that means that we wouldknow a lot of stuff and they
would put their hair up in abun, cuz I always have it in a
bun and they would write stuffwhen they were playing and
(05:29):
they'd be like, see, like theywould act me out and I'm
like, do I, do I do that?
I genuinely got a veryrich experience in the, the time
that I was there.
And what I learned the most washow to try to not do as much,
(05:50):
which I'm still, it's like alesson that I'm still trying to
learn because like I'm here withthe us mentality of go, go, go.
And they're like, but we alreadydid, you know, two things like
now we stop.
And I'm like, but, but why?
And they're like, you can dothat tomorrow.
And I'm like, but no, like we'regonna run out of time.
For me.
(06:10):
It was a lot of struggle of likeslow down.
And as a teacher, I feel likeI'm always like on the treadmill
at a thousand speed.
And sometimes I have to tellmyself like slow down, be in
this moment, like a parenttexted me today that her
daughter was walking with herdad and said, daddy, let's talk
about the layers of the soil.
(06:30):
And I was like, I need to stopright now and acknowledge that
this happened.
Like we were talking she's inthird grade and she's asking her
dad, you know, she could ask himabout anything.
And she's asking him about soil.
That's essential for everything.
And we don't even think aboutsoil here.
Like my community had tons oferosion and every year there was
(06:51):
less and less crops being ableto be produced.
We're not talking about thathere.
And yet, my student asked ourdad here in Miami, about
soil.
And that conversation happenedbecause of our class.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
And you allowed yourself to, to be present like
in and experience and feel thatthat communication came to you.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah.
We put this so much stuff outthere and we don't know where it
lands.
If it lands on hurdle soil,
Speaker 2 (07:16):
There you go.
There you, I like the, I, I likeit.
Yeah.
Bringing it back.
But you're, I think you're whatyou're saying.
Resonates with a lot ofeducators that'll be listening
to this is that there's so muchthat you do.
And there's even times when wedo get the feedback, there might
be a letter or a card orsomething, but like, to your
point, like we look to the nextthing instead of stopping, being
present and allowing yourself toabsorb it.
I think I need to put that up onmy, like on my wall, like this,
(07:39):
just be present.
Now you came back and then youwent into the classroom here and
you started off teachingscience.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
I didn't go straight into the classroom.
I knew that I wanted to continueteaching.
Um, but I wasn't back here inMiami.
When I moved back, I moved toAustin.
Um, and I ended up gettingmarried and there, I started
teaching Spanish as a secondlanguage, uh, like corporate
classes.
And I was kind of like tiptoeingaround, like, do you dive into
(08:09):
education?
Cuz the idea of a teacher hereis very different than the
teacher idea that I had while inthe peace Corps.
So he, a lot of people werelike, you can do so many things.
Why would you teach?
And I was like insulted.
I was like, wait, what do youmean?
(08:30):
Like even to this day, I'vestarted a blog post, maybe 20
times with that statementbecause people all the time are
like, you're so talented.
Why do you teach?
And it drives me crazy becauseit makes me feel like they're
looking down on my choicebut I came to terms with it that
(08:53):
it's just like a societal thing.
Cause of that quote, like thosewho can't do teach.
And I was like, let me let thisgo.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I find though that educators who come in as a
second career, come in with a, a, a variety of skill sets that
I, I think you can only get whenyou're outside of academia.
I mean, you can, you can developthem, you know, going kind of
K12 education college and theninto the classroom.
But those soft skills, thebusiness skills, a lot of those
things you really develop.
(09:21):
And uh, it's funny cuz your,your story almost sounds like
some of the people that I knowthat work in big tech firms,
they have this eclectic storyand then now they're, you know,
working for Google or Facebookor something, but that actually
was a as set to them becausethey are able to see the world
through multiple perspectives.
And I'm hearing kind of adistinguish between art of
(09:43):
teaching and the science ofteaching.
Like you had the, maybe the artconnecting ideas, these things,
and then the science, like thequote unquote like formal
teaching.
Okay.
That had to get built on later.
Like am I hearing that right?
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Yeah.
The that's what rocks I'mteaching the rock cycle right
now.
So I'm, I'm under a lot of heatand pressure
Speaker 2 (10:02):
We got the funds, we got the funds rolling.
All right.
All right.
So bringing in the, so the, theart side or the science side we
have, and then we just have thisamazing illustrator.
Now you mentioned your websiteand we're gonna post it
somewhere, but just so we haveit here to, and you say, what is
your website where all yourmajors and sketch notes can be
found,
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Www dot Valia, sketches.com.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Okay.
So folks that are listening, ifyou wanna check out, uh, the
art, there's some awesome stuffon there, as well as Twitter and
Instagram.
And we'll make sure we have ithandles in the, the bio of the
podcast and the notes.
Your art's amazing.
I looked, I checked it.
I saw inauguration.
I saw, uh, astronauts.
I saw all kinds of differentthings.
(10:44):
How do you use that in theclassroom
Speaker 1 (10:45):
To draw connections?
The ones?
So what I do is I airplay myiPad onto the board.
And sometimes as I'm talking,I'll draw things, draw things
I'm saying, or assignments I'llsketch out different ideas, or
maybe like the schedule I'llhave an icon of some sort that
(11:06):
represents things.
I use it for everything andanything, because just the way
that I tell my students thatscience is everywhere.
I, we don't realize howprogrammed we are to use images
to for, for information they'rein the street.
Um, bathroom signs, we see thezoom little link, like the
(11:30):
image, the icon of zoom.
And we know that it's a call theapps.
You know, our phone doesn't havethe words for everything that
we're opening.
We just have a list of imagesthat represent information.
So we're programs for this.
And all I'm doing is showing mystudents how we're programmed
(11:55):
for it because we're so used toseeing images, to represent
things that we're taking it forgranted again.
And sometimes my students willlike, I'll write something and I
ask them, make your own visualvocabulary.
So I give them the word of thedefinition for every unit, the
(12:16):
younger ones, I give them thedefinition they have to plug in
the word and an image, the olderones, I give them the word they
have to plug in the definitionand an image.
But I don't tell them what todraw because they need to create
an image that will help them toremember the definition.
Not me.
I tell them, I wrote the list.
(12:36):
I know the words, you're the onethat needs to think of something
that's going to help you toremember this.
You need to draw a connection tothis information.
Like I use it and I mess up allthe time.
And I, I scratch things outbecause I feel that my students
or the student that I've had ingeneral are risk averse.
(12:57):
They don't want to makemistakes.
And drawing is one of thosethings that it taught me that
it's okay to make mistakes.
Like people won't buy commit tobuying houses or they won't
commit to things because they'regonna make a, I'm like, you can
sell the house.
You can move again.
(13:18):
I mean, I've lived in a lot ofcities.
I've been married, divorce, goneout with people.
It's worked out it hasn't, um,you know, there's, there's so
many things that drawing to memakes an essential connection to
that it tells meno matter what I can continue
(13:40):
placing lines on my paper andcreating the image I want.
And if a line doesn'tnecessarily go in the direction,
I want it to, I can continueshaping it so that the overall
image is in the direction Iwant.
And I can look past those linehere and there that some people
will say they messed up thedrawing.
You know what?
(14:00):
They gave it character.
I, I cycle and I have scarseverywhere.
They give me character and Ikeep writing.
The overall image in my head isI'm a cyclist, not I'm banged
up.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
I feel like there's so much to mind in what you just
said.
This was like a mini Ted talk.
And I couldn't write fast enoughbecause there were so many gems
of the things that you said, butlet me say something worse.
And this is I'm gonna be surfacewith this because, and it's your
fault because you got methinking in puns and you said,
take it for granted.
And I said, take it for grantedbecause you're talking about the
rock cycle.
So that's what I heard way back.
Anyways, you have your studentscreating what, but it's low tech
(14:38):
, which is really cool because alot of times we think of
creating content and it's kindof high tech, but they're
creating something.
And this is for us, like asbiology folks, like you're using
kind of like this neurosciencethat exists about students,
creating an art to help themlearn.
And this is something that I, Ifeel gets missed a lot in.
(14:59):
When we talk about the quoteunquote, the formal teacher
training is the element of howcreating an art can actually
lead to improved learning in theclassroom.
It's something you have to go tolike a conference to kind of go
and see or something, but it'snot as, it's not as pervasive,
um, everywhere.
And that thing about risk averse.
I feel like I, you spoke to myown life.
(15:22):
What I see cuz with my ownseventh graders, I see the same
fear or anxiety when I ask the'em to draw.
As I do, when I ask them to giveme a hypothesis about a
phenomena that I'm gonna teachand I say, it's okay to be
wrong, but I see them drift tothe Chromebook and want to
Google it.
You know what you just saidabout just try it and you can
(15:44):
always change and givingcharacter, I feel like is just a
great message for everybody tohear
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Today.
Students, um, made fossil,right?
Cuz they're learning about rocksand we made using plaster, but
then I put the green screen upand not only did they make it
and they excavated them, butthen we put it on the green
screen.
And they're like all of a suddenat a dig site,
Speaker 2 (16:04):
What I'm seeing right now for those of you who are
listening is, is students whoare on, is this on IMO?
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Uh, this is on we video
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Video and they're holding up fossils that they
made.
But in the background, becausethere was a green screen,
there's an overlay of like a, arock dig site.
So the students legitimatelylook like they're
paleontologists or somethingsomewhere.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Exactly.
And so it's, it's not justcreating lines, right?
The sketching transfers to somuch be because even the want,
not wanting to make a mistakewith their fossil.
One of the kids today, when hetook off the, the Plato, cuz we
put the Plato at the base.
Then we put in either a shell orsome sort of artifact that they
(16:48):
were going to fossilize.
And then we put in the plasterwhen he took off the Plato, a
piece broke off and everybody'slike, I can't believe you broke
your fossil.
And I'm like, not the first.
Okay.
Do you know how many of theseguys and girls have been out
there?
And all of a sudden they find adinosaur bone and they're
walking and they fall.
(17:08):
And this fossil that tookbillions of years is all of a
sudden broken.
I'm like this selfie, theoriginal selfies, these animals
died in commitment to theirselfies.
And here you are dropping thebone.
So they were all laughing, butit was to go away from the fact
that, oh my God, you broke it.
You made a mistake.
(17:28):
You drew the wrong line.
You asked the wrong question.
Like no big deal.
Keep digging, shout out to theteachers that try doing the
projects that they have.
They don't feel completelycomfortable with or you know,
that they take risks doing.
Because even though in theory,it's like suggested and schools
(17:52):
want that or communities wantthat when it comes down to it,
people also expect us to dothings at work.
But part of our job is alsotaking risks.
Like we did a tethered weatherballoon launch the other day
because we couldn't get approvalto release the weather balloon
in the atmosphere since we'renear an airport.
(18:12):
And it was too short of a time.
And I remember a parent said,oh, you're not releasing the
balloon.
And I was like, well, this is alot of work too.
we, you know, we're,we're doing the tethered launch.
This is a hard project.
So the other day when I heardthat comment, like I went back
to my class and I was like, youknow what?
I took a risk to do thisproject.
(18:34):
I could have played it safe witha handout of a weather balloon
or you know, a YouTubevideo.
It's it's the, the fact thatwe're continuing to push.
And so I wanna like really thankthe teachers that keep trying to
do the hard things that aren'tlike tried and tested because
(18:56):
it's scary.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yeah.
There aren't a lot ofopportunities for them to have
adults that they see inpositions of authority or that
they respect or admire modelfailure.
And I don't mean failure in the,like the negative pejorative
sense, but like things just notworking out and then seeing how
you respond to it, cuz you'remodeling, taking a risk.
But like with real stakes, it'sauthentic.
I had students swab, uh, thecampus and we put it in auger
(19:21):
dishes and Petri sealed it upand then let it grow room
temperature, but we kept it, uh,you know, cool enough at 75
degrees.
So it wouldn't be able tosurvive any, anything
pathogenic.
And then students, you know, Itook pictures of them and then
showed them the results.
So the students never interactedwith it and some things grew and
some things didn't, it wasmostly, you know, fungi and some
bacteria, but I showed themlike, how come mine didn't grow?
(19:42):
And I was like, well, you know,it could have been how we
swabbed.
It could have been some thingsdon't grow the temperature, we
kept it at, but some of theexperiments didn't yield the
cool results.
And that was okay.
But I front loaded theexpectation so that if
everything did go great, sweet,but managing expectation, I
found really helps to mitigatethe pressure.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah.
Well another project that we'veparticipated in is growing
beyond earth where we'replanting seeds that contribute
to like a huge set of data forcultivars that are being
considered for growth on theinternational space station.
And my students are like, well,you know, we just have six
little pots, like what is this?
And I'm like, yeah, we have twolittle seeds in each of these
(20:22):
pots.
And we are one data set in likehundreds of data sets that
they're collecting.
But we are contributing tworesearch on the international
space station.
You don't have to be the nextbill gates or the next, you
know, Steve jobs.
Like everyone thinks they'regonna be the next big thing.
Like you can also be a seed.
That's part of a really bigproject and that is okay.
(20:45):
Like everyone can't be the nextbig thing
Speaker 2 (20:48):
And the other.
And the other thing, I think,uh, what Gladwell talks about
this in outliers and there'sanother book called bounce, but
a lot of the people that we seeis successful or famous, we
don't realize that theirbackground and their exposure to
things was one of the thingsthat led them there, both jobs
and gates had access, you know,gates had access at, at the
university of Washington to likeone of the first computers and
(21:08):
then jobs at, at Hewlett Packard.
Uh, the story go goes on and on,but we don't see the lineage of
some of these people and wherethey come from.
We just see the end result.
You just see LeBron Jameswinning a championship or
something.
We just want the, the end resultthe, the glory, but not the
sweat that it takes to getthere.
(21:28):
They don't, we don't really seethat as much, which leads me to
like the next thing I wanted toask you is how do you, and I
kind of saw it just now, but howdo you engage your kids in the
classroom?
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Well, I think I'm funny.
Some of them don't do
Speaker 2 (21:38):
They like the puns
Speaker 1 (21:39):
some of them
do.
And some of them don't get them.
They get them later.
And I see when they get it, Ilike to engage them by bringing
in real people, real examples ofthings, real research when
possible.
Right.
I can't put them in a real digsite.
So the green screen helps me dothat.
(21:59):
But one of my studentsyesterday, other day before was
like, you have such cool friendsbecause I'll say, oh, one of my
friends does blah, blah, blah.
Or, or, oh, when we go toKennedy space center, we're
gonna, you know, talk to one ofmy friends.
Who's doing research on, youknow, chilies in space and
they're like, wow, your friendsare so cool.
And I took that moment to tellthem, be mindful of the people
(22:22):
that you collect as friends inyour life, like make good
choices, surround yourself withawesome people, people so that
you can share ideas.
Like you connect with friendswho you inspire you to do more.
I try to engage them by givingthem examples of things that
people around me are doing thatconnect to what we're doing.
(22:43):
Do
Speaker 2 (22:43):
You, do you explicitly or intentionally
teach soft skills or is it justsomething that you just kind of
organically do natural or areyou mindful about making sure
that you're doing that
Speaker 1 (22:52):
A hundred percent?
You have to be explicit about itwith amplify?
Actually, we, we did a posterfor incorporating social,
emotional skills and other softskills into the classroom
because sometimes we just likeother things like writing and,
and reading, you know, we siloall these things in education
(23:13):
and the school counselor, can'tbe the one to deal with
everything.
You know, you have to deal withthings as they surface.
And sometimes my kids ha arefrustrated because I ask them to
think I don't have yes or noanswers.
I have, you know, we are gonnalaunch a high altitude weather
(23:33):
balloon.
We don't know how high it'sgonna go.
We don't know what's gonnahappen.
We don't, we don't know if we'regonna find it when the,
when the balloon bursts and itlands in the ocean, are we gonna
find it?
Is the GPS tracker gonna work?
Are we gonna lose all thatmoney?
I don't know, but we have to doall the steps and find out.
But with kids, they don't havethe skills yet.
(23:55):
And I can't wait for thecounselor to come in and talk
about handle the frustrationthat they're feeling over.
Not knowing the correct questionto ask, because by the time they
go meet with her, the momentspass, I have to stop and say,
Hey, like check in with, withwhat you're doing.
It's okay to be frustrated.
You can't take it out on aclassmate.
You can't take it out on me.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
So you were, you, you were intentional about teaching
these skills to your studentsand you had the relationship.
So it makes sense that you werethe one to bring it across cuz
you see them more than anybodydoes.
You know, we've, we've, we'veimagined.
Teaching is for a long time.
It's been okay, you're thescience content expert.
You're the English expert, butso much as teaching evolves,
(24:35):
there are these skills or likeEQ emotional intelligence that
you kind of have to have kind ofcoming in.
Cuz like those moments, like nohaving the presence of mind to
stop and why a young personthrough identifying how they
feel, why, where it came from.
Those aren't always covered inthose aren't really covered in
your methods classes when you'rein college, getting your, your
degree or something.
(24:56):
Now when you're you're sketchnoting and for teachers who are,
or one, could you just maybegive like a brief explanation of
sketch, noting for somebody whomay not be familiar with it,
like how I was sketch anydifferent than just drawing a
picture randomly or something.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Okay.
So you're creating visualsummaries.
You're using text and imagescombined in different ways to,
uh, take notes.
And before you know how we had,uh, like these shorthand things
that the squiggly meant anindent and something else meant
something else.
And we had these lists of thingswhen they would edit our papers,
(25:33):
that represented things.
It's kind of like that for yourbrain.
So you're making a list of maybeicons or small sketches that
represent things for you.
So as you're taking notes, youhear things.
And when people talk now andthey, they say, you know, I'm on
the fence about this.
Like I literally see a fence.
(25:55):
And when they're talking, Iwrite the note, it's almost like
a T toe with pointy tops and Iput a stick figure on top of it.
And so later when I look at it,I think, oh, that's right.
My friend is on the fence aboutthat decision
Speaker 2 (26:08):
For a new teacher or even a, a, a experienced
teacher.
That's interested in sketchnoting, where, where would you
recommend?
They start like the structurize?
Like, do you give creativefreedom?
Are they doing this paper andpencil vocabulary words?
Are they up?
Like, what are some just kind ofmaybe three basic things to kind
of get started for someone whowas just curious about it.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
So it has to be simple because if it requires a
lot of energy to go in, thenyou're gonna be more hesitant to
do it.
For example, I wouldn't startsummarizing a video because it's
moving really fast or a livepresentation is really hard.
So with students, I would startwith here's a paragraph, make a
(26:50):
visual summary of it, or here'sa vocabulary list, make an image
to represent each word.
Then you would move into, well,you know, here's a unit
summarize the three main topicsin unit.
Then you can move onto like alittle YouTube video.
That's like 10 minutes a Tedtalk, make a visual summary of
the Ted talk because they canpause it.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Mm.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
The hardest thing is live presentations, cuz in
conversations you can say, oh,can you say that again?
Sketch, noting.
You start seeing how peopleorganize or don't their thoughts
when they speak.
Because when you start writingthings down and all the
information is about one thingand then like two blue ORPS
about something else.
You're like, wow, that wasreally unbalanced.
(27:33):
So then when you start teaching,you tell them what you're gonna
tell them, you tell them andthen you tell them what you told
them.
So they can check that they putthe notes in the right places
and you tell them what you'regonna tell.
So they can prep the pathwaythat they're gonna set up their
notes and I have to be explicit.
And I have to say like, I'mgonna talk about the rock cycle.
So if I were you, I would put,you know, these four boxes.
(27:56):
Oh, but there's three types ofrocks.
See?
I'm like, yeah, but magma.
So let's put it in the cycle,you know?
And, and then I'm like, if Iwere you, I would put an arrow
from here to here because thisis how, you know, after erosion
and then, you know, heat andpressure.
But then it connects like this.
So the arrows are gonna help meto remember the directions
Speaker 2 (28:13):
As we wind down.
There's there's one question Iwanna ask you there, you are
bringing together this science,the, the art, the social,
emotional learning, therelationships with your students
outside content, like there's somany different things that you
bring in the classroom that isclearly gonna make you a
memorable educator for yourkids.
It just, it's just, I'm justlistening to your learning
(28:34):
environment.
And it's so rich who is oneteacher that really expired you.
So
Speaker 1 (28:38):
There's a few people that stand out overall.
I had very encouraging teachers.
I had that one teacher thatdidn't like my drawing
she also stands out
Speaker 2 (28:49):
We have those too.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah.
So I have colleagues that standout to me that inspire me every
day to like keep trying.
And then I had a teacher in highschool who I actually work with
her daughter now at the schoolthat I work at.
And I didn't even know her momwould make us write almost the
whole class.
And it was world history.
And I remember hearing her saywhen she was talking about the
(29:13):
Roman empire that it fellbecause it reached more than it
can grab.
So it kept extending too farout.
And I heard that, like I thinkabout, yes, I can keep reaching
for things in education andreaching for things in my
classroom.
But I have to come back to like,what can I hold?
I don't wanna reach further thanwhat I can hold.
(29:34):
And yes, I have to believe inmyself.
And I tell my students tobelieve in themselves,
Speaker 2 (29:38):
I'm in this, I'm in this sketch noting mindset.
Because when you said what Ms.
Brown shared with you, I thoughtof a hand reaching out, but then
things kind of slipping throughit.
And I another hand with like afist right next to it.
So even in our conversation herelast hour, I I'm thinking in
pictures now.
And so I'm like, if I can do it,they can do it.
Like if you know, cuz I am justnot the person who spends a lot
(30:01):
of time committing to draw.
Because a lot of times when Iwas that student who tried to
draw and we get frustrated andlook around and now I feel like
this is, I wanna try this again.
I wanna share this with mystudents and encourage them.
This is gonna be a lot of fun.
I look forward to continuing tosee the sketch notes that you
do.
And uh, maybe I'll, I'll showyou one of mine.
Like eventually I don't know ifyou can see that there that's my
stick figures.
(30:22):
Those of you who are listeningright now, I drew, I was drawing
stick figures and taking noteswhile, uh, Blair was dropping
all of this, these like gems andwisdom in here.
So
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Maybe we can do a challenge that once people hear
this podcast, they can tag ussomehow in the sketch note that
they create I'm in.
So we see what they a take fromit.
Cuz that's the other thing aboutsketch noting, you think you're
emphasizing something and all ofa sudden people are walking away
with something else thatresonated to them.
And you're like, wow.
(30:51):
And here I was thinking thatthis was what we were talking
about.
And this is what really jumpedout at them.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Your kids are lucky that you're in front of them,
not just because of how youteach, but how you access all of
these different parts of theircreativity and their thinking
and apply, integrate all ofthese soft skills and social,
emotional skills and just lifeskills and your experience
connecting them to the outsideworld.
They, and like you said, and howwe started, you know, where you
(31:17):
started in Panama, the studentsrealized what you represent and
what you meant to them.
And I feel like your students,when they get older, they may
not realize it in the time, butas they get older and reflect
back, they'll be telling storiesabout you.
So yeah.
Thanks for making time andthanks for being here.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Well thank you too, cuz I know you're in the
classroom and making time to doother things outside the
classroom.
Isn't always easy, but it's whatkeeps us going in different
ways.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Thanks so much for joining me in Valer today.
We wanna hear more about you.
If you have any great lessons orways to keep student engagement
high, please emailus@stemamplify.com.
That's TM five.com.
Make sure to click, subscribewherever you listen to podcasts
and join our brand new Facebookgroup science connections, the
(32:11):
community for some extracontent.
There's so many things that drawing to me makes
an essential connection to ittells me no matter what I can
continue placing lines on mypaper and creating the image I
want.
Some people will say they messedup the drawing.
You know what?
They gave it character.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to science connections.
I'm your host.
Eric Cross.
My guest today is ValeriaRodriguez.
Valeria is a science educator,instructional technologist and
illustrator, who is currentlypart of a steam team where she
teaches third through fifthgraders in Miami, Florida Valer
has presented and led workshopsat education conferences like N
sta ISTI and south by SouthwestEDU.
(00:42):
In this episode, we discuss howshe uses real world projects to
make lessons more meaningful.
And why teaching students how tosketch note increases their
conceptual understanding inscience.
I hope you enjoy this fun-filledconversation with Valer
Rodriguez.
Now you're in, you're in Miamiand you have a biology.
Like we we're like kindredspirits.
(01:03):
Like we, we do the same thing.
I teach biology here in SanDiego in, uh, at a middle school
called Albert Einstein academy.
So I'm in seventh gradeclassroom teaching life science.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
That's so cool.
That's how I started.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Is it
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Mm-hmm
science for seven years, doinglife science in my biology
background.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
How'd you get started?
Like where did you, where didyou kind of be begin in?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Well, I went to UF, uh, for undergrad, uh, as a
runner and I thought I was gonnago to the Olympics, but you
know, running in college ishard.
Can you quickly like realize apath as a full-time athlete is
really hard.
And one of the days that I washaving one of those, like come
(01:42):
Jesus moments of what am I gonnado with my life?
I walked by a sign that saidlife is calling.
And I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2 (01:52):
You literally had a
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Sign.
There was a sign.
So I was like, I'm reading thesign.
I'm I'm following the arrows.
And it was for the peace Corps.
And so I went to this meetingand everything that I'd ever
done, uh, student governmentathletics, uh, school education,
the, my background, uh, myfamily's from Columbia,
(02:15):
everything in that meeting cametogether and they're like, we
need all these skills.
And I'm like, I have those,those are my skills.
And they're like every peaceCorps volunteer teaches.
And so I went in as anagriculture volunteer to Panama
because of my major in mybackground in biology.
(02:35):
And while I was in the peaceCorps doing the work, I was
teaching at the local school.
And I realized that the mostsustainable way to create any
change is through education.
When I came back, I was like,well, what do you do if your
first job in the world is in thepeace Corps?
Like my background was, youknow, managing a machete in a
(02:58):
field and teaching secondthrough eighth grade in one
classroom, on a chalkboard, youknow, in English and in Spanish
while teaching the teacher andthe students.
So I found that going intoteaching allowed me to put some
of those skills, that wide arrayof skills that I had collected
(03:21):
until that moment into practice.
And it allowed me to do thearts, do the running, do the,
the science, do the connectingwith the community in one place
here in the states.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
I don't know if I'm just romanticizing, but you were
in Panama and you were doingthis amazing teaching.
I don't know.
Do you compare it to teachingnow in the classroom?
Is there anything that ever likemakes you wish that you were
kind of in that environmentagain?
Or are you kind of, do you likethe more kind of technology side
of things?
Speaker 1 (03:48):
I tell my students all the time that I miss it,
because when I was in Panama, Iwas in Atia.
They looked at me like this, allknowing, being they, if they
couldn't come to last becausethey, the kids literally had to
work.
They would bring me theirassignment, like run it to me
and then run it back, run backto their parents.
(04:08):
Like I had to turn it in, but Ihave to go to work.
And I'm like, oh my gosh.
And like here, sometimes I feellike, you know, I have to
negotiate and convince mystudents to want to give me
their work.
And maybe it's because we take alot of things for granted.
I mean, I didn't have runningwater in my community here.
(04:29):
You know, we have, we haveeverything.
I miss how we appreciated the,like, my parents would send
suitcases of materials for me tohand out to my students, like
color and stuff, notebooks,things like that.
And the kids would like, holdthat notebook, like pristine and
hear sometimes that my studentsaren't as careful with
(04:51):
materials.
And I'm like, why are youbreaking the carryon box?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Just even just bringing pens andcrayons and, and how that's
valued.
And then the, a culture that'sthat built around esteeming
teachers.
And you're this essential memberof the community.
Like you're you're and you feelthat it's palpable.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah.
And here, sometimes I askstudents like, what do you wanna
be when you grow up?
And you get all sorts ofanswers, but in my community,
it's gonna sound funny.
But they were like, we wanna bea teacher.
Like, that means that we wouldknow a lot of stuff and they
would put their hair up in abun, cuz I always have it in a
bun and they would write stuffwhen they were playing and
(05:29):
they'd be like, see, like theywould act me out
like, do I, do I do that?
that I was there.
And what I learned the most washow to try to not do as much,
(05:50):
which I'm still, it's like alesson that I'm still trying to
learn because like I'm here withthe us mentality of go, go, go.
And they're like, but we alreadydid, you know, two things like
now we stop.
And I'm like, but, but why?
And they're like, you can dothat tomorrow.
And I'm like, but no, like we'regonna run out of time.
For me.
(06:10):
It was a lot of struggle of likeslow down.
And as a teacher, I feel likeI'm always like on the treadmill
at a thousand speed.
And sometimes I have to tellmyself like slow down, be in
this moment, like a parenttexted me today that her
daughter was walking with herdad and said, daddy, let's talk
about the layers of the soil.
(06:30):
And I was like, I need to stopright now and acknowledge that
this happened.
Like we were talking she's inthird grade and she's asking her
dad, you know, she could ask himabout anything.
And she's asking him about soil.
That's essential for everything.
And we don't even think aboutsoil here.
Like my community had tons oferosion and every year there was
(06:51):
less and less crops being ableto be produced.
We're not talking about thathere.
And yet, my student asked ourdad here in Miami,
soil.
And that conversation happenedbecause of our class.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
And you allowed yourself to, to be present like
in and experience and feel thatthat communication came to you.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah.
We put this so much stuff outthere and we don't know where it
lands.
If it lands on hurdle soil,
Speaker 2 (07:16):
There you go.
There you, I like the, I, I likeit.
Yeah.
Bringing it back.
But you're, I think you're whatyou're saying.
Resonates with a lot ofeducators that'll be listening
to this is that there's so muchthat you do.
And there's even times when wedo get the feedback, there might
be a letter or a card orsomething, but like, to your
point, like we look to the nextthing instead of stopping, being
present and allowing yourself toabsorb it.
I think I need to put that up onmy, like on my wall, like this,
(07:39):
just be present.
Now you came back and then youwent into the classroom here and
you started off teachingscience.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
I didn't go straight into the classroom.
I knew that I wanted to continueteaching.
Um, but I wasn't back here inMiami.
When I moved back, I moved toAustin.
Um, and I ended up gettingmarried and there, I started
teaching Spanish as a secondlanguage, uh, like corporate
classes.
And I was kind of like tiptoeingaround, like, do you dive into
(08:09):
education?
Cuz the idea of a teacher hereis very different than the
teacher idea that I had while inthe peace Corps.
So he, a lot of people werelike, you can do so many things.
Why would you teach?
And I was like insulted
I was like, wait, what do youmean?
(08:30):
Like even to this day, I'vestarted a blog post, maybe 20
times with that statementbecause people all the time are
like, you're so talented.
Why do you teach?
And it drives me crazy becauseit makes me feel like they're
looking down on my choice
(08:53):
it's just like a societal thing.
Cause of that quote, like thosewho can't do teach.
And I was like, let me let thisgo.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I find though that educators who come in as a
second career, come in with a, a, a variety of skill sets that
I, I think you can only get whenyou're outside of academia.
I mean, you can, you can developthem, you know, going kind of
K12 education college and theninto the classroom.
But those soft skills, thebusiness skills, a lot of those
things you really develop.
(09:21):
And uh, it's funny cuz your,your story almost sounds like
some of the people that I knowthat work in big tech firms,
they have this eclectic storyand then now they're, you know,
working for Google or Facebookor something, but that actually
was a as set to them becausethey are able to see the world
through multiple perspectives.
And I'm hearing kind of adistinguish between art of
(09:43):
teaching and the science ofteaching.
Like you had the, maybe the artconnecting ideas, these things,
and then the science, like thequote unquote like formal
teaching.
Okay.
That had to get built on later.
Like am I hearing that right?
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Yeah.
The that's what rocks I'mteaching the rock cycle right
now.
So I'm, I'm under a lot of heatand pressure
Speaker 2 (10:02):
We got the funds, we got the funds rolling.
All right.
All right.
So bringing in the, so the, theart side or the science side we
have, and then we just have thisamazing illustrator.
Now you mentioned your websiteand we're gonna post it
somewhere, but just so we haveit here to, and you say, what is
your website where all yourmajors and sketch notes can be
found,
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Www dot Valia, sketches.com.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Okay.
So folks that are listening, ifyou wanna check out, uh, the
art, there's some awesome stuffon there, as well as Twitter and
Instagram.
And we'll make sure we have ithandles in the, the bio of the
podcast and the notes.
Your art's amazing.
I looked, I checked it.
I saw inauguration.
I saw, uh, astronauts.
I saw all kinds of differentthings.
(10:44):
How do you use that in theclassroom
Speaker 1 (10:45):
To draw connections?
The ones?
So what I do is I airplay myiPad onto the board.
And sometimes as I'm talking,I'll draw things, draw things
I'm saying, or assignments I'llsketch out different ideas, or
maybe like the schedule I'llhave an icon of some sort that
(11:06):
represents things.
I use it for everything andanything, because just the way
that I tell my students thatscience is everywhere.
I, we don't realize howprogrammed we are to use images
to for, for information they'rein the street.
Um, bathroom signs, we see thezoom little link, like the
(11:30):
image, the icon of zoom.
And we know that it's a call theapps.
You know, our phone doesn't havethe words for everything that
we're opening.
We just have a list of imagesthat represent information.
So we're programs for this.
And all I'm doing is showing mystudents how we're programmed
(11:55):
for it because we're so used toseeing images, to represent
things that we're taking it forgranted again.
And sometimes my students willlike, I'll write something and I
ask them, make your own visualvocabulary.
So I give them the word of thedefinition for every unit, the
(12:16):
younger ones, I give them thedefinition they have to plug in
the word and an image, the olderones, I give them the word they
have to plug in the definitionand an image.
But I don't tell them what todraw because they need to create
an image that will help them toremember the definition.
Not me.
I tell them, I wrote the list.
(12:36):
I know the words, you're the onethat needs to think of something
that's going to help you toremember this.
You need to draw a connection tothis information.
Like I use it and I mess up allthe time.
And I, I scratch things outbecause I feel that my students
or the student that I've had ingeneral are risk averse.
(12:57):
They don't want to makemistakes.
And drawing is one of thosethings that it taught me that
it's okay to make mistakes.
Like people won't buy commit tobuying houses or they won't
commit to things because they'regonna make a, I'm like, you can
sell the house.
You can move again.
(13:18):
I mean, I've lived in a lot ofcities.
I've been married, divorce, goneout with people.
It's worked out it hasn't, um,you know, there's, there's so
many things that drawing to memakes an essential connection to
(13:40):
placing lines on my paper andcreating the image I want.
And if a line doesn'tnecessarily go in the direction,
I want it to, I can continueshaping it so that the overall
image is in the direction Iwant.
And I can look past those linehere and there that some people
will say they messed up thedrawing.
You know what?
(14:00):
They gave it character.
I, I cycle and I have scarseverywhere.
They give me character and Ikeep writing.
The overall image in my head isI'm a cyclist, not I'm banged
up.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
I feel like there's so much to mind in what you just
said.
This was like a mini Ted talk.
And I couldn't write fast enoughbecause there were so many gems
of the things that you said, butlet me say something worse.
And this is I'm gonna be surfacewith this because, and it's your
fault because you got methinking in puns and you said,
take it for granted.
And I said, take it for grantedbecause you're talking about the
rock cycle.
So that's what I heard way back.
Anyways, you have your studentscreating what, but it's low tech
(14:38):
, which is really cool because alot of times we think of
creating content and it's kindof high tech, but they're
creating something.
And this is for us, like asbiology folks, like you're using
kind of like this neurosciencethat exists about students,
creating an art to help themlearn.
And this is something that I, Ifeel gets missed a lot in.
(14:59):
When we talk about the quoteunquote, the formal teacher
training is the element of howcreating an art can actually
lead to improved learning in theclassroom.
It's something you have to go tolike a conference to kind of go
and see or something, but it'snot as, it's not as pervasive,
um, everywhere.
And that thing about risk averse.
I feel like I, you spoke to myown life.
(15:22):
What I see cuz with my ownseventh graders, I see the same
fear or anxiety when I ask the'em to draw.
As I do, when I ask them to giveme a hypothesis about a
phenomena that I'm gonna teachand I say, it's okay to be
wrong, but I see them drift tothe Chromebook and want to
Google it.
You know what you just saidabout just try it and you can
(15:44):
always change and givingcharacter, I feel like is just a
great message for everybody tohear
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Today.
Students, um, made fossil,right?
Cuz they're learning about rocksand we made using plaster, but
then I put the green screen upand not only did they make it
and they excavated them, butthen we put it on the green
screen.
And they're like all of a suddenat a dig site,
Speaker 2 (16:04):
What I'm seeing right now for those of you who are
listening is, is students whoare on, is this on IMO?
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Uh, this is on we video
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Video and they're holding up fossils that they
made.
But in the background, becausethere was a green screen,
there's an overlay of like a, arock dig site.
So the students legitimatelylook like they're
paleontologists or somethingsomewhere.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Exactly.
And so it's, it's not justcreating lines, right?
The sketching transfers to somuch be because even the want,
not wanting to make a mistakewith their fossil.
One of the kids today, when hetook off the, the Plato, cuz we
put the Plato at the base.
Then we put in either a shell orsome sort of artifact that they
(16:48):
were going to fossilize.
And then we put in the plasterwhen he took off the Plato, a
piece broke off and everybody'slike, I can't believe you broke
your fossil.
And I'm like, not the first.
Okay.
Do you know how many of theseguys and girls have been out
there?
And all of a sudden they find adinosaur bone and they're
walking and they fall.
(17:08):
And this fossil that tookbillions of years is all of a
sudden broken.
I'm like this selfie, theoriginal selfies, these animals
died in commitment to theirselfies.
And here you are dropping thebone.
So they were all laughing, butit was to go away from the fact
that, oh my God, you broke it.
You made a mistake.
(17:28):
You drew the wrong line.
You asked the wrong question.
Like no big deal.
Keep digging, shout out to theteachers that try doing the
projects that they have.
They don't feel completelycomfortable with or you know,
that they take risks doing.
Because even though in theory,it's like suggested and schools
(17:52):
want that or communities wantthat when it comes down to it,
people also expect us to dothings at work.
But part of our job is alsotaking risks.
Like we did a tethered weatherballoon launch the other day
because we couldn't get approvalto release the weather balloon
in the atmosphere since we'renear an airport.
(18:12):
And it was too short of a time.
And I remember a parent said,oh, you're not releasing the
balloon.
And I was like, well, this is alot of work too.
This is a hard project.
So the other day when I heardthat comment, like I went back
to my class and I was like, youknow what?
I took a risk to do thisproject.
(18:34):
I could have played it safe witha handout of a weather balloon
It's it's the, the fact thatwe're continuing to push.
And so I wanna like really thankthe teachers that keep trying to
do the hard things that aren'tlike tried and tested because
(18:56):
it's scary.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yeah.
There aren't a lot ofopportunities for them to have
adults that they see inpositions of authority or that
they respect or admire modelfailure.
And I don't mean failure in the,like the negative pejorative
sense, but like things just notworking out and then seeing how
you respond to it, cuz you'remodeling, taking a risk.
But like with real stakes, it'sauthentic.
I had students swab, uh, thecampus and we put it in auger
(19:21):
dishes and Petri sealed it upand then let it grow room
temperature, but we kept it, uh,you know, cool enough at 75
degrees.
So it wouldn't be able tosurvive any, anything
pathogenic.
And then students, you know, Itook pictures of them and then
showed them the results.
So the students never interactedwith it and some things grew and
some things didn't, it wasmostly, you know, fungi and some
bacteria, but I showed themlike, how come mine didn't grow?
(19:42):
And I was like, well, you know,it could have been how we
swabbed.
It could have been some thingsdon't grow the temperature, we
kept it at, but some of theexperiments didn't yield the
cool results.
And that was okay.
But I front loaded theexpectation so that if
everything did go great, sweet,but managing expectation, I
found really helps to mitigatethe pressure.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah.
Well another project that we'veparticipated in is growing
beyond earth where we'replanting seeds that contribute
to like a huge set of data forcultivars that are being
considered for growth on theinternational space station.
And my students are like, well,you know, we just have six
little pots, like what is this?
And I'm like, yeah, we have twolittle seeds in each of these
(20:22):
pots.
And we are one data set in likehundreds of data sets that
they're collecting.
But we are contributing tworesearch on the international
space station.
You don't have to be the nextbill gates or the next, you
know, Steve jobs.
Like everyone thinks they'regonna be the next big thing.
Like you can also be a seed.
That's part of a really bigproject and that is okay.
(20:45):
Like everyone can't be the nextbig thing
Speaker 2 (20:48):
And the other.
And the other thing, I think,uh, what Gladwell talks about
this in outliers and there'sanother book called bounce, but
a lot of the people that we seeis successful or famous, we
don't realize that theirbackground and their exposure to
things was one of the thingsthat led them there, both jobs
and gates had access, you know,gates had access at, at the
university of Washington to likeone of the first computers and
(21:08):
then jobs at, at Hewlett Packard.
Uh, the story go goes on and on,but we don't see the lineage of
some of these people and wherethey come from.
We just see the end result.
You just see LeBron Jameswinning a championship or
something.
We just want the, the end resultthe, the glory, but not the
sweat that it takes to getthere.
(21:28):
They don't, we don't really seethat as much, which leads me to
like the next thing I wanted toask you is how do you, and I
kind of saw it just now, but howdo you engage your kids in the
classroom?
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Well, I think I'm funny.
Some of them don't do
Speaker 2 (21:38):
They like the puns
Speaker 1 (21:39):
And some of them don't get them.
They get them later.
And I see when they get it, Ilike to engage them by bringing
in real people, real examples ofthings, real research when
possible.
Right.
I can't put them in a real digsite.
So the green screen helps me dothat.
(21:59):
But one of my studentsyesterday, other day before was
like, you have such cool friendsbecause I'll say, oh, one of my
friends does blah, blah, blah.
Or, or, oh, when we go toKennedy space center, we're
gonna, you know, talk to one ofmy friends.
Who's doing research on, youknow, chilies in space and
they're like, wow, your friendsare so cool.
And I took that moment to tellthem, be mindful of the people
(22:22):
that you collect as friends inyour life, like make good
choices, surround yourself withawesome people, people so that
you can share ideas.
Like you connect with friendswho you inspire you to do more.
I try to engage them by givingthem examples of things that
people around me are doing thatconnect to what we're doing.
(22:43):
Do
Speaker 2 (22:43):
You, do you explicitly or intentionally
teach soft skills or is it justsomething that you just kind of
organically do natural or areyou mindful about making sure
that you're doing that
Speaker 1 (22:52):
A hundred percent?
You have to be explicit about itwith amplify?
Actually, we, we did a posterfor incorporating social,
emotional skills and other softskills into the classroom
because sometimes we just likeother things like writing and,
and reading, you know, we siloall these things in education
(23:13):
and the school counselor, can'tbe the one to deal with
everything.
You know, you have to deal withthings as they surface.
And sometimes my kids ha arefrustrated because I ask them to
think I don't have yes or noanswers.
I have, you know, we are gonnalaunch a high altitude weather
(23:33):
balloon.
We don't know how high it'sgonna go.
We don't know what's gonnahappen.
We don't, we don't know if we'regonna find it when the
when the balloon bursts and itlands in the ocean, are we gonna
find it?
Is the GPS tracker gonna work?
Are we gonna lose all thatmoney?
I don't know, but we have to doall the steps and find out.
But with kids, they don't havethe skills yet.
(23:55):
And I can't wait for thecounselor to come in and talk
about handle the frustrationthat they're feeling over.
Not knowing the correct questionto ask, because by the time they
go meet with her, the momentspass, I have to stop and say,
Hey, like check in with, withwhat you're doing.
It's okay to be frustrated.
You can't take it out on aclassmate.
You can't take it out on me.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
So you were, you, you were intentional about teaching
these skills to your studentsand you had the relationship.
So it makes sense that you werethe one to bring it across cuz
you see them more than anybodydoes.
You know, we've, we've, we'veimagined.
Teaching is for a long time.
It's been okay, you're thescience content expert.
You're the English expert, butso much as teaching evolves,
(24:35):
there are these skills or likeEQ emotional intelligence that
you kind of have to have kind ofcoming in.
Cuz like those moments, like nohaving the presence of mind to
stop and why a young personthrough identifying how they
feel, why, where it came from.
Those aren't always covered inthose aren't really covered in
your methods classes when you'rein college, getting your, your
degree or something.
(24:56):
Now when you're you're sketchnoting and for teachers who are,
or one, could you just maybegive like a brief explanation of
sketch, noting for somebody whomay not be familiar with it,
like how I was sketch anydifferent than just drawing a
picture randomly or something.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Okay.
So you're creating visualsummaries.
You're using text and imagescombined in different ways to,
uh, take notes.
And before you know how we had,uh, like these shorthand things
that the squiggly meant anindent and something else meant
something else.
And we had these lists of thingswhen they would edit our papers,
(25:33):
that represented things.
It's kind of like that for yourbrain.
So you're making a list of maybeicons or small sketches that
represent things for you.
So as you're taking notes, youhear things.
And when people talk now andthey, they say, you know, I'm on
the fence about this.
Like I literally see a fence.
(25:55):
And when they're talking, Iwrite the note, it's almost like
a T toe with pointy tops and Iput a stick figure on top of it.
And so later when I look at it,I think, oh, that's right.
My friend is on the fence aboutthat decision
Speaker 2 (26:08):
For a new teacher or even a, a, a experienced
teacher.
That's interested in sketchnoting, where, where would you
recommend?
They start like the structurize?
Like, do you give creativefreedom?
Are they doing this paper andpencil vocabulary words?
Are they up?
Like, what are some just kind ofmaybe three basic things to kind
of get started for someone whowas just curious about it.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
So it has to be simple because if it requires a
lot of energy to go in, thenyou're gonna be more hesitant to
do it.
For example, I wouldn't startsummarizing a video because it's
moving really fast or a livepresentation is really hard.
So with students, I would startwith here's a paragraph, make a
(26:50):
visual summary of it, or here'sa vocabulary list, make an image
to represent each word.
Then you would move into, well,you know, here's a unit
summarize the three main topicsin unit.
Then you can move onto like alittle YouTube video.
That's like 10 minutes a Tedtalk, make a visual summary of
the Ted talk because they canpause it.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Mm.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
The hardest thing is live presentations, cuz in
conversations you can say, oh,can you say that again?
Sketch, noting.
You start seeing how peopleorganize or don't their thoughts
when they speak.
Because when you start writingthings down and all the
information is about one thingand then like two blue ORPS
about something else.
You're like, wow, that wasreally unbalanced.
(27:33):
So then when you start teaching,you tell them what you're gonna
tell them, you tell them andthen you tell them what you told
them.
So they can check that they putthe notes in the right places
and you tell them what you'regonna tell.
So they can prep the pathwaythat they're gonna set up their
notes and I have to be explicit.
And I have to say like, I'mgonna talk about the rock cycle.
So if I were you, I would put,you know, these four boxes.
(27:56):
Oh, but there's three types ofrocks.
See?
I'm like, yeah, but magma.
So let's put it in the cycle,you know?
And, and then I'm like, if Iwere you, I would put an arrow
from here to here because thisis how, you know, after erosion
and then, you know, heat andpressure.
But then it connects like this.
So the arrows are gonna help meto remember the directions
Speaker 2 (28:13):
As we wind down.
There's there's one question Iwanna ask you there, you are
bringing together this science,the, the art, the social,
emotional learning, therelationships with your students
outside content, like there's somany different things that you
bring in the classroom that isclearly gonna make you a
memorable educator for yourkids.
It just, it's just, I'm justlistening to your learning
(28:34):
environment.
And it's so rich who is oneteacher that really expired you.
So
Speaker 1 (28:38):
There's a few people that stand out overall.
I had very encouraging teachers.
I had that one teacher thatdidn't like my drawing
she also stands out
Speaker 2 (28:49):
We have those too.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah.
So I have colleagues that standout to me that inspire me every
day to like keep trying.
And then I had a teacher in highschool who I actually work with
her daughter now at the schoolthat I work at.
And I didn't even know her momwould make us write almost the
whole class.
And it was world history.
And I remember hearing her saywhen she was talking about the
(29:13):
Roman empire that it fellbecause it reached more than it
can grab.
So it kept extending too farout.
And I heard that, like I thinkabout, yes, I can keep reaching
for things in education andreaching for things in my
classroom.
But I have to come back to like,what can I hold?
I don't wanna reach further thanwhat I can hold.
(29:34):
And yes, I have to believe inmyself.
And I tell my students tobelieve in themselves,
Speaker 2 (29:38):
I'm in this, I'm in this sketch noting mindset.
Because when you said what Ms.
Brown shared with you, I thoughtof a hand reaching out, but then
things kind of slipping throughit.
And I another hand with like afist right next to it.
So even in our conversation herelast hour, I I'm thinking in
pictures now.
And so I'm like, if I can do it,they can do it.
Like if you know, cuz I am justnot the person who spends a lot
(30:01):
of time committing to draw.
Because a lot of times when Iwas that student who tried to
draw and we get frustrated andlook around and now I feel like
this is, I wanna try this again.
I wanna share this with mystudents and encourage them.
This is gonna be a lot of fun.
I look forward to continuing tosee the sketch notes that you
do.
And uh, maybe I'll, I'll showyou one of mine.
Like eventually I don't know ifyou can see that there that's my
stick figures.
(30:22):
Those of you who are listeningright now, I drew, I was drawing
stick figures and taking noteswhile, uh, Blair was dropping
all of this, these like gems andwisdom in here.
So
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Maybe we can do a challenge that once people hear
this podcast, they can tag ussomehow in the sketch note that
they create I'm in.
So we see what they a take fromit.
Cuz that's the other thing aboutsketch noting, you think you're
emphasizing something and all ofa sudden people are walking away
with something else thatresonated to them.
And you're like, wow.
(30:51):
And here I was thinking thatthis was what we were talking
about.
And this is what really jumpedout at them.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Your kids are lucky that you're in front of them,
not just because of how youteach, but how you access all of
these different parts of theircreativity and their thinking
and apply, integrate all ofthese soft skills and social,
emotional skills and just lifeskills and your experience
connecting them to the outsideworld.
They, and like you said, and howwe started, you know, where you
(31:17):
started in Panama, the studentsrealized what you represent and
what you meant to them.
And I feel like your students,when they get older, they may
not realize it in the time, butas they get older and reflect
back, they'll be telling storiesabout you.
So yeah.
Thanks for making time andthanks for being here.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Well thank you too, cuz I know you're in the
classroom and making time to doother things outside the
classroom.
Isn't always easy, but it's whatkeeps us going in different
ways.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Thanks so much for joining me in Valer today.
We wanna hear more about you.
If you have any great lessons orways to keep student engagement
high, please emailus@stemamplify.com.
That's TM five.com.
Make sure to click, subscribewherever you listen to podcasts
and join our brand new Facebookgroup science connections, the
(32:11):
community for some extracontent.
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