Bringing My Whole Self to All of These Things

Welcome to Season 3! We're launching this season with Amanda Cornwell. A colleague at the makerspace, Amanda runs field trips, student programming, and brings a huge amount of creativity, innovation, and joy to the makerspace. We asked her about how she's changed as an educator and how she's bringing that into fall.


Music By: David Biedenbender

Links: Heather Lanier 

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Transcript

Ashley O'Neil: 0:01

Okay, now we're recording so welcome to teach blender. Guys, welcome to Teach Wonder. A podcast hosted by Ashley O'Neal and Julie Cunningham.

Amanda Cornwell: 0:21

Well, Hi, I'm Amanda.

Ashley O'Neil: 0:24

We've got Amanda Cornwell here in the podcast today. And I'm so excited to share with you, mostly because she's my coworker, and she's phenomenal. And she does so much of the student work that we have here at the MakerSpace. And I don't think she's actually been on the podcast before. So I'm excited to have her share a little bit about what she does in her day to day and share some of her really great ideas about the MakerSpace.

Amanda Cornwell: 0:45

Sounds great. So it's different every day. Yeah, pretty much. So mainly, I work with students in the MakerSpace. For Design Thinking field trips, that's usually like fourth grade to eighth grade, I've developed a pretty good relationship with some of the local younger elementary school. So those tend to be like I go to their classroom, and do different experiences with them. We host monthly, Open MAKE type events, I don't want to say that we host monthly student events, where they might have a program that or a plan that they want to enact. And we try to build a community of makers in that sense. And we do different workshops. Sometimes it's tech related, sometimes it's content related. And a lot of times I don't lead those, but I'm here to support the facilitator of those programs.

Ashley O'Neil: 1:41

And I give you all the credit for summer camps, because while I was running around with teacher stuff, you were really making sure that summer camps ran wonderfully and smoothly. And you ran some of them.

Amanda Cornwell: 1:50

Yeah, yeah, I think that that worked really well, it. Honestly, we couldn't do our summer camps without the teacher. So if you're listening, and you want to partner with us in a different way, come on, oh, come on over join. The team is a summer camp instructor. But yeah, I really liked the micro camp, that we the format that we've came up with this summer, and I was able to lead a couple things. And it's always interesting to take hobbies and interests that I have and figure out how to think through that and make those workshops for students.

Ashley O'Neil: 2:20

So what are some hobbies and interests that you've brought into the MakerSpace?

Amanda Cornwell: 2:25

Absolutely. So I love I love technology. And I had just gotten an iPad. And of course, I started like tinkering around and doing some digital drawing. And that was one of the things that we turned into a camp. And it was pretty cool to me to see one of these like middle school boys drawing away drawing away. And by the end of the few hours, he had exported some I think he even shared it online, exported some really cool like animated GIFs that he had made

Ashley O'Neil: 2:53

and like wanted to text it to his parents

Amanda Cornwell: 2:54

and AND what I also like about that particular and this is why we're kind of carrying it into the fall was that it was designed for students and or an adult in their life to come. And one of the parents ended up like importing a photo and was able to like digitally digitize that, if that's digitize that with their art, and they were really excited about it.

Ashley O'Neil: 3:17

Yeah, one of the things that I loved is that you know, at home, I'm pretty creative here at work. I have some creative ideas. And my kids are very creative, but we don't often make together. And so it was really great that we opened it up and we said, you want to make bread, you got kids, you don't have kids, you want to come as a teenager by herself great. And having this really unique mix of community together was just so cool to see them all making. Okay, here's my caveat. For my next question. I know you really love technology. So this answer could be related to technology, but it doesn't have to be. So when I think about this summer, I had a lot of informal PD time, I spent a lot of time with teachers, watching them observing them, and then interacting with them in various workshops. And I'm different, I've changed over the summer, my thinking has shifted and grown. And it is directly impacted by the time that I spent with other professionals kind of talking about teaching and then observing them teach. And so specifically this fall, I'm thinking a lot about the conversations that I had that challenge me the experiences that I had, that really shifted my thinking specifically, it's related to how I develop respectful relationships with students by thinking about student autonomy and student dignity. And you know, because I'm not in a classroom this fall, my role is supporting teachers and working with the Chief Science officers. I'll definitely be bringing that into my interactions with the students through our events in programming and through the Chief Science Officer Program. But also, I'll think about that in the ways that I frame questions when I interact with teachers and ask them about the things that they're doing in their classroom and what their goals are about what classroom could look like about what a classroom could feel like, you know, when I'm stressed or looking for tools, my automatic tools are still, the things are the ways that I was taught or the ways that I experienced when I was growing up, right. And some of those were fantastic tools and some of those, we I have better tools now. And I just need to dig a little deeper to find them. And so I'm thinking about that a lot as I go into fall, and how that translates to conversations that I have with other educators, and then the work that we do with the middle and high schoolers that we interact with, or that I'll interact with the most. So I

Amanda Cornwell: 5:37

feel like one I resonate with a lot of the things that you talked about, right, like, there's all I feel like, sometimes we've got all these sort of separate selves. And for me, one thing that I'm trying to be more mindful of just in my own practice, as a teacher, as a parent, as a person, a learner is trying to, like, bring more of my whole self to all of the things rather than parsing it out into these separate things. And I think that that's true, then to be looking and I want to create activities where the participants can bring their whole selves as well, that the, the active learner in a classroom doesn't have to, like, restrain that activity, when they're here, they can be active and do their learning and, you know, meet their needs and accomplish the goals that we have at the workshop all at the same time. When I think about that, I think sometimes when I, I you, it does relate to technology a little bit like sometimes I think we have all these tools that I use to like manage all of these different places and these different roles and appointments. And I don't know, I feel like it streamlines but then it doesn't streamline if I'm trying to remember which of the calendar apps I was using, it creates more issue or more confusion or potential cracks for things to slip through. So I think the biggest change I have is trying to think about the times when I felt fully present and that I felt that I was able to connect like I didn't, my mind wasn't worried about where I was supposed to be what I was supposed to be doing or what was coming. were times when I knew that there was this system or which could be tech related or personnel related or community like the maker communities, the participants or the families themselves. When all of that was sort of handled, I felt like the freest. And so I think a change that I'm bringing to this fall is how can I be more thoughtful about the tools that I'm using, and streamline that and create time and space to be fully present and be and ignore and enjoy the the fruits of that? Because I think that that's we've got a lot of things competing for our attention.

Ashley O'Neil: 8:01

Sometimes it's hard for us, I think it's hard for teachers, because so much of the scheduling can be outside of our control, or it's dictated for us. So because of family or because of scheduling that's within your work structure. You might be told, you know, this is the best time where all of your emails have to get answered. But you might think, Man, I need to put some thought into this, I need to get these resources around properly answer that email. And I just don't have the time to do that. So sometimes one of the biggest challenges is looking at all of the tasks that you have in front of you and looking at the time or the space that's available to you and trying to best match what it is you should be doing in that timeframe? Well,

Amanda Cornwell: 8:45

I think a phrase that we've used often this past summer is like, well, will the May Amanda be happy with the September, Amanda's choices. And I think that just having that sort of like future thinking has helped.

Ashley O'Neil: 9:01

For sure. Is there a program that you're excited about coming to the MakerSpace?

Amanda Cornwell: 9:05

I think I think I'm actually really excited about well, two of the things that we've got going on, and they're kind of versions of things that we've done before. One is a re naming rebranding of a really entry level making opportunity for students and for our STEM education scholars. It was called Open MAKE and now it's called make shift. We're trying to change it a little bit to instead of kind of like what we're talking about, instead of being overwhelmed by too many choices of doing anything which kind of almost can create a sense of creative like paralysis for makers. We're going to instead focus on a particular activity and then we're going to end with some free play with materials that we have available. And so excited about that. That'll be once a month and then on another night To have or another Wednesday of each month, we're going to have a group of students who are pursuing a long term project of their own. And basically, we're just going to be here to support the student makers. And I think that one I'm excited about because I feel like it best honors our goal of promoting student agency.

Ashley O'Neil: 10:20

And both of those projects are a really good example of the thought that you put in behind the scenes to both of those projects, right? Kids and Families, you make it look effortless, so kids and families don't see the hard work that goes in behind the curtain. So I'm gonna peel that back a little bit. So we can look at it. We used to have eight or nine or 10 choices out and we, the kids would come in, and we'd say, What would you like to make today, and we could see that maybe there was a little bit of decision fatigue, maybe there was a little bit of fear of missing out, I wanted to try all of these things, they all look really interesting. But I can't quite land anywhere, because there's so many things going on, or I have a project I want to do. But it's really busy in here. And we'd have these other open ended things like the marble run, or the LEGO wall. And it was almost like students had this competitive feeling of I have to make all of these things are also interesting, I'm gonna rotate through every single station and get to try everything. But it was almost too much. And so you made the decision to pull back a little bit and to offer less. And by offering less stuff, we know that we're actually offering more, we're offering more choice, we're offering more time and space to really deeply explore and interact with a set of materials rather than feeling like you had to flow through this big carousel of decisions. And you're increasing their ability to get invested in something deeply and to be creative, because you're decreasing their need to make all of these entry level decisions. Yeah,

Amanda Cornwell: 11:53

Absolutely. And I think that the activities that we have in mind for those workshops, are intended to have a lot of student choice within it. So yes, we might be creating, I don't know some woodworking Type, Product or project. But within that, what would it What would you like it to be about and then that's where they can draw on their, their interests there.

Ashley O'Neil: 12:17

And I like that you're using the word play. And I like that we're talking about third through seventh, nope, third through eighth graders. Because you don't often hear those words together. But we know, you know, research says and our seven years of experience here at the makerspace says that play is so valuable and important to all grade levels, all ages, but especially these kids. And play can really look like taking the tape that was used for your project and rolling it into little tape balls to make catapults with Legos. Or it can look like coloring the entire time because you're really invested in the logo that you've designed. Or it can look like rolling different materials back and forth on the table to see which one moves the fastest, even though that's not the intended purpose for those materials, right. So by play, we mean, your time is not structured or dictated for you. And you can engage in these interesting and wonderful things without an expected outcome, a goal or someone else telling you, this is exactly what you're supposed to do with your time.

Amanda Cornwell: 13:20

Yes. And I also think that it's important that we didn't leave it, I think the whole time being play would be too much. Because then they would get to a point of we think that boredom can be really powerful and good. And that can inspire some creativity. But also, there's a lot too much of a good thing is still too much. So we kind of purposefully intended to put that at the end, and leave them wanting more.

Ashley O'Neil: 13:44

Yeah, and you know, we see some teachers incorporating this into like a zero hour Genius Hour time. Maybe they call it a Genius Hour project time. The differences for us is that we you know, we have a lot of choice in how we spend all of our time. And students opt to come into our space, they know the project ahead of time, they might know that we are woodworking or working on the laser cutter. And then they also will know that it is a soft end, right, it's not a hard end. So the last bit of time is theirs to go explore something or do something kind of on their own. It doesn't need adult instruction or adult oversight. Or if they're super invested in the laser cutter they can design the entire time. So they have that kind of we're all doing this thing together and then we phase out at the end and you can go play and play can look like Lego while or you can can you to play and play can look like tinkering with your design on procreate for the entire making time. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You know, previously, you didn't bring this up before, but I just want to mention it again briefly because I'm so excited about this change. You know, previously we had these family events and they were pretty structured and we really, you know, we kind of defined what a family event was for people and who the audience was intended for. And this summer we will We pulled back on that and said, you know, we're having these micro camps, students of a certain age can come alone, or with a parent or with an adult students under a certain age need to bring an adult with them. And we were a little interested to see how this would look. But it was great, we would have, you know, an older student come by themselves, the younger student come with an adult, a family who come with a couple of friends from out of town. And everybody had this element of novice, so they all had this shared, we're learning something new together, whether I'm four or 14, or 44, we're all trying something new. And so develop this really interesting community where you know, the older kids were laughing with the other adults that were there. And the younger students were benefiting from all of these other people being around and there was always a hand to help with things. And so it was a really great way to show how you can build a making community. And it doesn't have to be so tightly defined as a student event, or an adult event or, or a middle school event.

Amanda Cornwell: 15:59

So when I think back to my time in the classroom, I was a middle school teacher for the bulk of my career, but I think about these micro camps that we ran, and almost every single one, the adults were like, This was really fun. I really liked to play. And some were like, is there a time, it could just come just me. And so I think that it just, again, like you mentioned, we don't always play or engage in that in our own families or with like, with our own children or just for ourselves, because I think this productivity focused thing. And so I think that that's what happens like when when the September Amanda plans for the May Amanda's calendar or the summer fall Amanda plans for the you know, the summer Amanda schedule, we, for a while we're focused on how many camps How long were they? How many students would be reached? And now I think we're really approaching it more with what type of interaction are we having? What's the quality of the relationships that we're building? And I think that's a shift I'm really excited about.

Ashley O'Neil: 17:08

You know, when I think back to my classroom, I also think about that tension that I held between the productivity and the quality of the product. And a lot of my time was spent focused on Okay, do I have a 90 minute literacy block? Do I have these things? And I, if I could go back my first three years of teaching, I focused on that a lot. And if I could go back and talk to you, early teacher, Ashley, oh, we'd have a lot to chat about. But I would talk to her and say, okay, yeah, you've got this literacy block. But instead of focusing on do you have the minutes, what are you doing with those minutes? What are you doing in that time? What is the goal of your literacy activity? What is the quality of the activity? What opportunities do you have for your students to have choice inside of that timeframe? I'd be asking such different questions now than I was back then. And, you know, we both came from the classroom. And so we have a lot of crossover and a lot of the experience we had as teachers, we bring directly into our work here. And it's interesting to hear the crossover from both of us that if we were talking to our younger self, or if a more experienced teacher was talking to a younger teacher, they will be having the same conversation herself.

Amanda Cornwell: 18:21

Yeah, yeah. It makes me think of and I don't know if I can talk about other podcasts on our podcast, okay. But it makes me think about the podcast episode that I sent you about, like the maker schedule versus the manager schedule. So many times we think, like the things that we value, like the relationships, the agency, the decision making, they take a lot of time, right, which we recognize is difficult, difficult, full stop, and especially then when you layer it into all of the parameters required of teachers. But I think that if we just just for me, even realizing that I was trying to do a Maker project with Ana manager schedule, like, I think identified some of the frustration I was experiencing. And then when I realized, no, I'm gonna make remote I need to Okay, here's what I need. Or, Oh, I'm in a manager mode, I really need to check off these five things. Both are satisfying, but they can't, like can't always coexist. The maker. Inspiration doesn't work well in the manager, schedule. Manager schedule doesn't always isn't conducive to creative endeavors. So I don't know. I just think that that really resonates.

Ashley O'Neil: 19:32

Okay, so that made me think of two things. Thing One, Heather linears, one of my favorite authors, and I was looking at her Instagram page, actually, and she was talking about goals. And she was head head had made this goal for running and she was focusing on her duration of running and it wasn't going super well. And she kept hitting this roadblock and this wall and it she wasn't finding joy in the activity that she was doing that was supposed to be relaxing and bringing her joy. So Instead of trying to meet that goal, she decided to change her goal completely. And she said, You know what, instead of focusing on duration, I'm just going to focus on frequency, how often am I running, I'm running to make my body and my mind feel better. So that's what I'm going to do. And in focusing on a different goal, and leaving behind her first one, she actually ended up accomplishing both, she ended up running more frequently, and she was boasting a celebratory picture, because she'd, you know, made her minute mile accomplishments in terms of speed. And she said, You know, sometimes by letting go of the the thing that is making the roadblock happen, you're able to accomplish your original goal anyway, because you are able to focus on the in a different way, or approach it in a different way. And so that's my thing. Number one. My second thing is I was talking to my brother, and he's a, he's in a creative industry. He's a composer. And so we were talking a lot about this kind of maker versus manager time. And, you know, it's really easy to say, Well, you've got like an eight hour work day, why didn't you get this this piece done. And that really discredits the fact that it's a creative endeavor. And sometimes the really good stuff takes time. And it takes the right kind of time, and it takes the right kind of space. And the same is true for us when we're doing the really good stuff, the complicated stuff. But it's also true with our students, when we're trying to get them into that space of really deep learning and deep investigation, the really good stuff can take a lot of time. But the tricky thing is, is that teachers are on a manager schedule, they have a 90 minute literacy, black recess will come at 1015, regardless of what it is that you're doing, and the same with lunch and the end of the school day. So how do we carve out these times and spaces for the good stuff, that deep learning, that doesn't always happen on this neat and tidy schedule that can be predicted when we're living in a managerial capacity? So how do we manage and get the deep learning in and get the student agency and choice and creativity and wonder in while managing while living in a manager schedule of units and marking periods and semesters and school days and an academic calendar?

Amanda Cornwell: 22:17

That's a great question.

Ashley O'Neil: 22:20

We don't know the answer. But it is I think that tension and just exploring that tension is really important and really valuable because it gets us looking at the hard stuff. And instead of shying away from it, because we're saying well, I only have 30 minutes for literacy. So this is what literacy has to look like we can go, what should literacy look like? And we're going to do it for 30 minutes. And just shifting that can I wonder if it could start to shift our approach to things and the way we consider those 30 minutes, because instead of focusing on the time piece first and we got to get all this done. We're going to say we're going to do this really good work, and it's going to last for about 30 minutes today.

Amanda Cornwell: 22:57

Absolutely. Yeah. Okay.

Ashley O'Neil: 22:59

Okay, got two questions for you. First of all, how are you kind of staying refreshed, recharged in the fall? I know it tends to be more chaotic and busy time for all of us. And then outside of education. What are you reading?

Amanda Cornwell: 23:12

Oh, nice. Resting, resetting recharging. This is silly. But this has been a game changer for me like this fall. Just in like having having like a space that is calm, like we've taken to having like lamps on instead of like the fluorescent lights even just here at work. I think that for me here, that simple thing has been powerful. Or I guess more broadly thinking about like, the place in which I work was like we've had, I've had a variety of different to buckles about where I choose to do personal word is their personal work or like professional work. Yeah. So I think that like just being aware of the conditions under which I feel most calm and focused and able to work is helpful. Letting go of some things that I can't keep trying to hold on to super tightly that's helpful to reset. Yeah, I think those are, those are good things as far as like, what else am I reading? Oh, well, I just finished a really good book. It's called Book eaters. Is that what Julie talks about to

Ashley O'Neil: 24:31

live but I think it's great that you mentioned it, it's okay. We really pitched Book Eaters and everybody's

Amanda Cornwell: 24:36

oh my gosh, it was so good. Like, what was I devoured it? I think it even says on the cover covered. Cover. Hello. Yeah, it was really good. I love that one. Reading a couple other ones right now too, but that was probably my favorite.

Ashley O'Neil: 24:51

Perfect. Okay. Well, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having Yeah. This episode of Teach Wonder is brought to you by the Center for Excellence in STEM education. You can find links and a transcript in the show notes. Thanks for listening