Monthly Archives: October 2020

Buncee and Adobe Spark for Creativity in Lessons

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My Journey to Belonging and Wellbeing Buncee activities

One of the major things I missed as an administrator was teaching a classroom filled with students. Even more than being physically present with students, I miss planning and innovating in my lessons. Over the past few years, I’ve learned a number of apps and educational technologies that I wished existed when I was teaching years ago. Tools like Flipgrid, Buncee, Wakelet, Book Creator, Microsoft Teams, Google for Education, Canva, and Adobe Spark have challenged my learning and enhanced my ability to communicate my message about belonging, inclusion, equity, compassion, and supporting refugees. And lately, I have seen the amazing things teachers are creating for their students to ensure learning continues even as we face so much disruption and uncertainty. Talk about being FOMO!

There are two apps I am now creating with and have decided to jump back into creating lessons. The apps, Adobe Spark and Buncee are fun to use and extremely versatile, AND there are educators involved in the creation of new features and templates all the time which makes them so up to date and user friendly. I’m sure there are many other creative apps that are versatile and easy to use for students and teachers, but I’m most familiar with these two and I can get lost for hours creating and sharing. I’ll start with my Buncee journey first.

About a year ago, I gently dipped my toes into the Buncee waters. Initially, the water felt a bit cool since I wasn’t using it very often, so it seemed a bit daunting to figure out. But then I heard about the Buncee Summer Challenge and decided to join in the daily activities. I could choose when and which ones I wanted to complete and then share them on social media I started figuring out the different and multiple ways I could fulfill each challenge and when I shared my finished Buncee, the reaction from the community and from Buncee was so gratifying! One day the challenge was to use the draw feature in the app to create a “copy” of famous artworks. I thought to myself, I feel intimidated by drawing, so how do I feel about drawing and sharing it with people I don’t know? Well, as you can see from the finished product, I didn’t do too badly. And the best part was I had fun while I did it! How amazing is that from someone who has always suffered from a lack of confidence in my ability to draw anything?

But then I realized I wanted to share my expertise in Belonging with teachers since many are wondering how to build safe spaces and relationships in a virtual space or mask to mask in the classroom (and 6 feet apart). So I created a Buncee lesson about how to become a Good Ancestor which is posted in Ideaslab: https://app.edu.buncee.com/buncee/9a0d4c4f25784f74a03b9cdda5f91691

“Treat the world well. It was not given to you by your parents. It was willed to you by your children.” Kenya proverb

I have also used Buncee templates to create activities related to “My Journey to Belonging and Wellbeing”. I am also working on a lesson plan to go along with the activities. https://app.edu.buncee.com/buncee/13d2f34486a84f8791406a26a54025e5

Lately, after a competition announced by Wakelet and Adobe Spark, I found even more creativity that I could use to amplify my voice and the voice of the refugee leaders I support in Kakuma (who are now using Adobe Spark). The competitive challenges and supporting training videos by Dom Traynor really helped me understand the amazing ways I can use it to tell stories and market ideas. Then I found out about the Adobe Creative Educator training track with badges and 1-3 hour courses. I started with a Storytelling course and then followed with the Level 1 ACE course. Once I uploaded the assignments, I felt so accomplished!

The Level 2 course was recently released on https://edex.adobe.com and I couldn’t wait to start. Once lessons are completed, there are two assignments to complete. The first is a lesson plan using Adobe Spark and Assignment 2 is creating a video with Spark. There are examples and templates which is really helpful and a variety of educators present videos throughout the 3-hour course. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to complete the lesson plan since I’ve been out of the classroom for seven years, but I decided to try anyway. Once I saw the exemplar, I knew I could do it! There are so many lessons I used when I was a third-grade teacher before the age of apps and edtech. This would be my chance to upskill my lesson and show how to incorporate creativity. I remember having my students create a school newspaper and how much they enjoyed choosing the section they would contribute to and create the final product. Here’s the lesson I created which can suit ELA standards and language objectives in almost all grades 3-12, and with a bit of support, even scaffolded or scaled down for KG – 2.

I’m so excited to be back into the lesson planning mindset and am looking forward to creating plans for the book I am writing about belonging. I’d love feedback about the lessons and activities I’ve shared here.

What happens when we open the door, even a tiny bit.

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But over time people break apart, no matter how enormous the love they feel for one another is, and it is through the breaking and the reconciliation, the love and the doubting of love, the judgment and the coming together again, that we find our own identity and define our relationships.

According to the Cambridge online dictionary, the meaning of reconciliation is “a situation in which two people or groups of people become friendly again after they have argued OR the process of making two opposite beliefs, ideas or situations agree”. Like wearing a mask or not wearing a mask; Black Lives Matter or All Lives Matter; Republican or Democrat; Vaxers or Anti-Vaxers; Refugees Welcome or No Refugees Allowed, and the list goes on. This might seem like it will be a negative or depressing post, but it isn’t. I’m here to tell you a personal story of my reconciliation with my family, my parents to be exact, and how opening the door, even just a tiny bit, can bring opposing sides to a point of compromise and understanding. My story begins in 1982 at a dinner with my parents, fiance, and me.

While I was growing up, I lacked the ability to voice any disagreement with decisions made by my parents. I was a rule follower and respected my parents, actually idolized my parents, for being the all-knowing and compassionate examples I needed to emulate. When I moved to Miami, Florida in 1978 for grad school, I had no idea that would all change. I happened to meet a young, Kuwaiti grad student right before I left. I assumed once I moved, our friendship would be distant and we’d soon move onto other relationships. However, we remained in contact throughout the year I spent completing my MBA and continued after I moved to Atlanta, Georgia to work. I began to sense a gap building between my parents and me as I moved away from their vision of an obedient child and began venturing out to discos (it was the 70s) and letting my boyfriend stay with me when he visited. I lived with a sense of guilt that I was somehow betraying their trust, but I also wanted to “be my own person”. After two years of a long-distance relationship that blossomed into a more serious one, I decided it was time to move back to Buffalo. I packed and headed north. I decided to rent an apartment near my boyfriend (who soon became my fiance) since it was convenient to get to my work, and after all, I was independent of my parents by then. That was 1980.

My parents knew about my relationship with my fiance, but I never really asked how they felt about me dating a Muslim when I had grown up in the Jewish tradition. I just assumed since they’d raised my siblings and me to be open-minded and accepting, this would be acceptable to them. Now that I was back in my hometown, I invited my parents to dinner, so they could get to know him better. There was friction between my parents and me that had started while I was away. I believed they were picturing me as the “old” Ilene; obedient, rule follower, etc. But now I was partying, staying out late, and not contacting them as often as I used to. One evening, I invited them to an early dinner at my apartment. My fiance joined us to socialize before we ate and stayed for a while afterward. Then he excused himself to return to his apartment for a nap. As soon as he was out the door, my parents began criticizing him for disrespecting them because he left before they did. I tried to explain that it was his culture and habit, but they weren’t persuaded. After a few minutes of shouting, they left and demanded I return my house key (they’d given me a spare in case I came by and they weren’t home yet). That was the last time I spoke to them for almost eight years. I moved to Kuwait in 1984, married, and had two sons. My parents had no idea where I was or what was happening in my life during that time. None of us tried to reach out during that time.

Then, in a phone call with my brother in 1988, who I’d kept in touch with throughout my estrangement with my parents, he asked me if I’d consider contacting them. I had recently been thinking about it since I felt so hypocritical talking to my sons about how important family is, but they didn’t have a clue about my side of the family, except my brother. I told him I needed to think about it. I remember sitting on the side of my bed that night and thinking, “If I never see or talk to my parents again, will I be alright with that?” The answer was a resounding, “No”. I never want to live regretting any part of my life, and I realized that my children needed to grow up knowing my side of the family.

My brother helped me set up a phone call with my mother and father a few weeks later. The tone was reserved, but I’d decided to keep an open mind and heart. I knew it was going to be difficult and I had no idea how long it would take, but I was determined to make it work. We arranged a visit to their home the following summer (1989) and corresponded by snail mail and phone calls in the meantime. The visit was good. My parents were so happy to meet their grandsons and that served as the initial bridge between us. My husband was so supportive and determined to make sure the broken fences were mended. It definitely didn’t happen overnight. There was shouting, especially between my mother and me, and lots of remembering about past words we said to each other in anger. She stung me many times, but throughout, I was determined to speak my mind, so we could continue building our way back to a relationship. My father let us work it out. He seemed to understand we were past the time of being apart. My mother needed to work out all the details, including the hurt and the depression she suffered during those eight years. Once we were on better terms, she and I made several road trips to take my sons to summer camp. While they were in the car, we reminisced about good times, and she chatted with her grandsons. After all, she only had two months with them each year, since we always returned to Kuwait in August. Once we were on our way home, inevitably we would hit upon a subject that reminded her of our split and the anger would creep in again.

Let me say that the process of reconciliation was raw and difficult, but it was worth every moment because the result was we laid our feelings, good and bad, out in the open. With time, we came to learn that each of our perceptions created our misunderstandings. My perceptions were deep-rooted and included my lack of understanding of how much my parents cared about me that I interpreted as trying to control how I lived my life. On my parent’s part, they believed I was rejecting the life I’d grown up with and, in turn, rejecting their values.

The time we spent reconciling was worth all the initial pain and suffering. Our relationship is better than ever because now we can talk about anything and everything without getting angry. I Skype with my mom almost every day. We often say how blessed we are that we lived long enough to have this wonderful and joyous time together. My children have deep and abiding respect and love for their grandmother and miss their grandfather dearly since he passed away in 2009.

I’m sharing this very personal story today because we all need to take a close look at who we believe is on the opposite side of whatever issue we hold a tight grip on and consider “loving anyway”, just reaching out and starting a conversation with them. It’s amazing what you find out when you open that door, even aa tiny bit.

When plans don’t go quite the way you planned

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If the plan doesn’t work, change the plan, not the goal.

Life is funny. In spite of the best-laid plans, life happens and our plans go, Poof! As they say in Yiddish, “Mann Tracht, Un Gott Lacht”, “Man Plans, and God Laughs.” For the world as a whole, life has been upended and everyone is speaking about a “new normal” once the pandemic recedes. Today’s post is about how we can look at the result of our upside-down lives and continue feeling positive and moving forward.

I’m a planner. I live my life thinking about what I”m going to do next, when does this or that make sense to do, and what deadlines I need to set. So, when I started thinking about retiring a few years ago, my first thoughts were what I was going to do with my “free” time since I knew, as an A-type personality, it needed to be filled with something. Perhaps not every minute, but a good part of the time. I made a list in order of highest priority:
Travel with my husband and to visit family and friends around the world
Volunteer to support refugee teachers online
Start blogging about my experiences living in Kuwait
Read for pleasure

Travel? Let’s see how that went.
When I worked full time, I rarely took vacations. They were usually attached to conferences or other work-related activities. However, I was always in a rush to return to work, as if the department would stop if I wasn’t physically in the building. In 2018, I realized that I didn’t want to continue that pace, and at age 62, life was passing me by. Whenever relatives or friends talked about a place they visited, I realized I’d never been there. But the final reason for retiring was my daughter’s wedding. She was getting married in the U.S. and decided on a date in December 2018, the week before our semester was ending. I pleaded with her to change it since I knew I couldn’t leave for more than the travel time and festivities (a total of five days), but she and her fiance were set on it, so I arrived on Thursday, they were married on Saturday, and I returned to Kuwait on Monday. You might be wondering why I didn’t ask permission to extend my stay; I did and my immediate supervisor replied, “Can’t they wait another week?”. That was the last straw. I handed in my resignation with the intention of retiring after his reply.

That’s why traveling became my top priority. In fact, when people asked why I retired, I replied that I needed to visit my children, who all live outside of Kuwait, my 96-year old mother, and my siblings. Also, I hadn’t spent much time traveling with my husband who retired in 2006. During the first eight months of my retirement, I traveled to the U.S. and stayed for two months. After spending a few weeks in Kuwait, I packed my suitcase again and traveled for three weeks with my husband to Switzerland and Lebanon. At the end of October 2019, I packed summer and winter clothes to spend a few days visiting my dear friend, Barbara Bray in California, flew with her to Palm Springs for a conference, and headed to Buffalo, New York to spend the rest of November with my family. It was the first time I celebrated Thanksgiving with them in 11 years. Even my husband joined us! We returned to Kuwait at the beginning of December. As a planner, I already had a plan to return to the U.S. in March to attend and present at the TESOL International Convention in Colorado, and then fly to Buffalo to visit my family.

So far, so good, right? Then at the end of December, my younger son announced his engagement and that he and his fiancee planned to return to Kuwait at the end of February to get married. They were both graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University. We were excited for him and all was set to go. I arranged my departure for the second week of March after they, and my other children who planned to fly into Kuwait for the ceremony, had left Kuwait. And then guess what? We started hearing that passengers arriving in Kuwait might be required to quarantine, especially from places like Thailand. My oldest son is in Thailand and he worried that he might get stuck in Kuwait and not be able to return to his job and husband. We assessed the situation and decided to change our plans. Everyone would stay where they were, and my son and his fiancee would get married in Pittsburgh and family would attend virtually. By then, I was in Buffalo since once I knew I didn’t have to wait to travel, I moved my departure up by a week. That was a good decision since I was originally scheduled to fly on March 14 at 4 a.m. The following week, the government announced Kuwait’s airport would close as of midnight on March 14th.

Just because you made a plan, doesn’t mean that’s what’s going to happen. Taylor Swift

While I was staying at my mother’s house, I waited for news about the reopening of Kuwait’s airport, so I could return. After two months of waiting, it was obvious the situation was far more serious than we originally thought, and if I wanted to return, I needed to be repatriated by the Kuwaiti embassy. My husband was by himself with no way to meet up with me, and my mother was at a point that she could manage being on her own. So on April 23, I flew to JFK, and on April 24th, I headed home. I was happy to be heading home but disappointed I couldn’t spend a few days in Boston to see my daughter, who I haven’t seen since last Thanksgiving. My son and daughter-in-law drove up to visit my mother and me the weekend after they got married. I haven’t seen them since March 14th, and I don’t remember the last time I saw my eldest son and his husband.

So it’s true that we plan and God laughs. There have been moments in the past nine months when I’ve thought about my top reason for retiring and how I’m not able to travel anywhere right now. It’s ironic that I finally decided to take care of my needs and it isn’t going the way I planned. But then I remember that I still have my other priorities (volunteering, reading, and writing) and that we’re all in the same boat. Everyone’s plans were turned upside down. I look at the positive side and see that I’m using the time to blog, I started a podcast, I host the WakeletWave chat each month with Kristina Holzweiss, I’m writing a book about belonging, and I am mentoring and supporting several amazing refugee leaders in Kakuma settlement, Kenya.

Lesson learned? We can plan and then we can laugh when our plans don’t go as we intended. That certainly helped me re-organize my priorities to ensure I’m “busy” and happy.