In this episode of UEN Homeroom, Dani and Matt are joined by Author and educator E.E. Dowd (Erin Dowd). Learn more about what inspires E.E.’s work and how she’s encouraging educators to build global classrooms and explore creativity with writing.
In this episode of UEN Homeroom, Dani and Matt are joined by Author and educator E.E. Dowd (Erin Dowd). Learn more about what inspires E.E.'s work and how she's encouraging educators to build global classrooms and explore creativity with writing.
Learn more about E.E. Dowd, and make sure to check out her book, "Shipshape" here: www.eedowd.com
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Hi, Dani.
Hey, Matt.
I'm so excited for you to meet our author today.
So I love when you find someone for our podcast that you know and I don't because it's just like-- it's like a surprise. So I'm excited as well.
I-- and I absolutely love this person. Her name is E. Dowd, and I met her, I think it was ISTE 2018. They had this great-- for some reason that year they had a really wonderful global educator group that I happened to fall into just going to the conference because I was like, this seems cool. And EE was in that group, and we just had a blast doing sessions, going to different groups.
They had a party one night, and it was just so much fun. And it was great to get to know her and then the whole group that was there. And so I'm very happy that this year at ISTE 2022 got to see her again, and she was like, I have a book coming out. And I'm-- and the book is fantastic. It's a great little book for late elementary or junior high level. So I'm excited to talk about it.
Oh, that's awesome. I love educators. I love authors, and so like the mesh of these two, and then you put it out into the global community. I feel like I'm just going to love her. So--
Absolutely, let's get into it.
Let's do this.
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Hello. I'm Spencer Jenkins, Executive Director of the Utah Education and Telehealth Network. I've spent the past 15 years working in technology and higher education in Utah. More importantly, with five kids in first grade through 12th grade, I see on a daily basis the impact of educational technology.
We at UETN are deeply grateful for the dedicated educators who continually work to help support and engage Utah students. As UETN continues to support education in our state, we will continue to provide high quality resources, engaging programming, and professional development for all educators. Thank you for listening to UEN Homeroom.
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All right, I'm so excited about our guest today. It's-- I'm a big fan of hers, generally. I've known her for a few years, but now I get to be a fan of her writing because she's a published author. We have EE Dowd today with us. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in the education world but then also in the world of writing for schools.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me here today, and wow, I'm so humbled to hear that you're a fan of mine. I don't know if I have any fans. So you might be my first. So thrilled about that. Yeah, it's actually-- it's really surreal that the title of published author is going along with my name. That's really exciting because I am an educator.
I've been an educator for, gosh, almost 20 years now. I can't believe that. And I was in the classroom for 10, and really, all of my classroom experience brought me to this point of publishing the book because I've always loved writing. I've always loved reading.
When I taught-- third, fourth, and fifth grade was what I taught, and it was always a lot of writing and reading and literature circles and things like that. And so I just-- I spent those years in the classroom just reading a ton and getting really excited about middle grade novels, which is what I wrote, and just tried to provide space for my students to use writing as a way to express themselves and to share their voices.
And I think now more than ever, writing is such a tool for that to happen and for creativity to occur. And it can be done digitally, and there's so many opportunities now. And I get really excited about, yes, I have this paper book out in the world, but there's also so many other opportunities that can come from it. So that's kind of how it got started and how I ended up with this book and how it really goes together. That reading and the writing, it's-- you can't have one without the other, really.
That is so fantastic, EE. I'm a former fourth grade teacher, and my son is a current fourth grade student. So we are super excited to read your book together. But I think especially for those middle grade students, at least for me, it took a long time to separate between that, oh, the skills that I'm learning in school for writing can really be transferred into creative writing and writing for fun.
And so I love that that's what you're bringing with this book. So I'm wondering if you'd be willing to tell us a little bit about your book, Shipshape, and how teaching prepared you to write a novel and any advice that you have for other educators who would maybe want to write for a younger audience.
Yeah, I love what you said about having the connection between what you're reading and being able to take that into writing on your own. And I think sometimes there is such a disconnect in schools with creative writing and sharing your voice and experiences with these really strict and robotic, if you will-- we'll come to that in a little while-- writing prompts that kids have to write.
The five paragraph essay, and the main idea and details, and while these are very important skills, I don't deny that, it kind of creates this loathing for writing for a lot of kids because they see it as a task to be done and not a way that they can express themselves and process things and experience feelings that maybe they're having trouble dealing with.
So for me, in writing Shipshape, I really wanted to kind of combine all of those things together. So it's kind of-- it has two levels to it. So we have the fun side of it, which is the writing that I did for kids. It's a fun mystery book. It's about three kids who uncover some really shady things that are going on in their elementary school. They're fifth graders, and they go on a mission to make things right.
So they take what they learn in their classroom about being a change maker, and they go on these adventures, and they go off on a mission to save their school and make things right again. It's an adventure book. It's a mystery book. There's lots of problem solving that goes on with it.
We have our three main characters. We have Ben, who's kind of struggling to find his place in the world, as many of our middle graders are doing at that point. They're trying to find their friends and figure out what they're good at. So that's Ben in his little role. He's trying to figure out who he is, really. And
Then Ellie, who is our tech genius, she designs robots. She goes to robotics camp. She's feisty and fiery, and she's a lot of fun. She keeps the boys in order. And then we have Nate who is our super smart kid. He loves history and archaeology, and he loves to eat cookies. That's his thing.
So these three friends who may not ever-- they're unlikely companions, but they're the best of friends, and they use their strengths to help each other out. So that's the fun side of the book. That's the side that keeps the pages turning and keeps the kids excited.
And then there's another level that was really important for me that I didn't even realize at the time was happening when I was writing it. I went through a pretty difficult situation my last year of teaching, and I quit completely. And I said, you know what, I need a break. I'm going to do something else. I'm going to decide to write a little bit, and I needed to process those 10 years in the classroom and everything I went through and how I threw my whole self into teaching and helping my students have the best learning environment that they could.
And so this book is a result of me pouring everything I loved about teaching and everything I hated about education and everything that frustrated me into this book. And it helped me process all those feelings that I was having in a really fun and healthy kind of way.
And it really helped bring me back to education. Once I went through it and I was thinking about all the great things that teaching brought to my life and all the exciting things that I was able to do with students and then also those difficult things that keeps me back working in education and wanting to change things.
Teaching is the best and toughest job in the world, I think, and it's also one of the most rewarding things you can do. But it's mentally exhausting. It's physically draining, and I wanted to put that into this book so teachers could read it and say, yeah, I get that. And then kids could read it and go, yeah, I want to be like that. So we have those two levels there, and I really hope that comes across to my audience.
Absolutely love that. And I love hearing your story and how it tied in to your writing process because I think a lot of teachers over the last couple of years, for obvious reasons, have been frustrated by a myriad of issues from in-building frustrations with maybe administrators or with students or parents to maybe systematic issues as well.
One of the themes it seems like in your book and in your writing is like the absurdity of rules and maybe even things like-- rallying against things like too much testing and that kind of let's over test students. Why is it important in your mind for students and educators to call out these absurdities, these rules, and the amount of testing in schools or other things that are just too much to some degree?
Yeah, I'm going to answer that question in just a second, and I remembered that I didn't answer the second half of the question that you just asked me. So I want to address educators who are interested in writing their own book because I think that's really important. I think a lot of educators think about, oh, well, what if I wrote a book? I have I have a lot of ideas. I read a lot.
I'd love to write a book, and I know lots of teachers who are writers. So I think, gosh, advice I would have first and foremost is to just do it, to just get started. I think getting started sometimes is the hardest thing, and I know teachers are perfectionists. They want to do it right. They want to do it well. And you have to be OK with letting go of that because the first draft is always awful.
It's always terrible. Even if you think it's good at the time, you go back and read it later, and you're like, ooh, yeah, that needs some work. I will say it took me eight years of writing and editing Shipshape before I sent it to a publisher-- eight years. So now, granted, I didn't work solidly on it for eight years, but it was a project that I kept going back to off and on.
I would send it to friends and other educators and get feedback, and I got some editors involved. And I was always looking for feedback to make it better. So year nine is where we are now, and it's finally out in the world. So it's not something that once you write a draft, you publish it, and it's all over, and it's wonderful. I mean, it really is a process. And I think that's one of the things we try to instill in our students is that writing is a process.
But here's the caveat with that. Writing is the process, but that process isn't linear. It's not one thing. I think often we teach the writing process as one thing. You start from the beginning, and you go to the end, and you publish, and you're done with it. You never look at it again. But the reality of it is that that's not how it works at all.
Like writing is very messy. It's very-- it's a creative process, and any creative process involves messiness and sometimes frustration and sometimes crumpling up pages and throwing them across the room because it's not what you wanted it to be. I went from-- the book is about 200 pages. It was double that size at one point, and I basically cut it in half.
I edited. I took out lots of things. I took out characters. So you have to be ready to do that editing. Put yourself on the page in the beginning. Get all of those feelings out there, and then polish it and make it awesome. And I think if you want it bad enough, if you want to put that work out into the world bad enough, there's always a way to do it.
I'm not a trained writer. I went to school for education I didn't go to school for creative writing. You don't have to. You just have to want to learn, and I am learning new things constantly as I go through this process. And every time I Google a grammar rule, I learn something new because I still do that very often.
So, yeah, it's just a matter of doing it, getting started, and just being creative. It doesn't have to end up in a book, either. I mean, I can't tell you how many projects I've started and put aside or just blog posts or anything like that. Just write. Get those feelings and thoughts out there. That's what the world needs.
So now I'll go back to the other question of absurdity, which I like to think absurdity is in the eye of the beholder. Because as teachers, we are bombarded by absurdity all the time, but the people making those decisions don't think it's absurd at all. So a lot of times, again, there's that disconnect between the people that are telling teachers what to do and the teachers that actually have to implement this stuff.
And so I think the biggest problem with the absurdity is that we lose sight of the important people in all of this, and those are the kids. Like what are we doing this for? We're here for kids. We're here for learning. And we're here for teachers to help provide the best experiences possible.
And when we lose sight of the kids, that's when things kind of go off the track I think. And that's why I think teachers have to be the ones to stand up and say, actually, this is not good for kids. This is hurting our kids. This is why and getting parents involved in those conversations because the parents, those squeaky wheels, they're the ones that can push boards of education to make different decisions.
Maybe the teachers can't do it on their own, but rally around the parents. They can definitely make that happen. And there's definitely a scene in my book where the parents all get involved, and there's a protest. Some of that goes on as well because the parents are an important key. But I also think the biggest change can happen on the ground and not just with teachers but with kids.
When we empower kids to question this absurdity-- why are we doing this? What's the point? How does this benefit our community? How does this benefit the world? When we start asking those questions, when we start encouraging kids to ask those questions, really powerful stuff starts to happen. And that's when I get really excited in education.
Well, I think that is the absolute perfect segue into our kid question.
Hi. I'm Amelia from Bingham High School. I'm wondering what is the most absurd rule you have ever enforced as a teacher?
I think this is such a fantastic question. I love this question so much because it really made me like-- it's making me really step back and think about, OK, what are some really ridiculous things I had to do? And there were a lot of them.
We've all been there.
As I went through the years, I thought about what were the things that bothered me the most and the things that I would sit down and scratched my head and be like, what on Earth is the point of all of this? And I think a lot of it fueled some of the things that ended up in the book as well, some of those like absurd things that I had to do. So I have I have a couple that I think I would like to share.
One of the big ones, and this one shows up in Shipshape as well, is the scripted curriculum. So providing teachers with basically a script that you have to read word for word for a lesson, which I think is the craziest thing because like students sitting in a classroom watching a teacher read from a paper to me is like, what? Kids are smart. They're like why is my teacher just reading this? Why doesn't she speak to us like a human?
So that was always the thing, and always those scripts are accompanied by the standardized tests. And so that everything has to be read in the exact same way at the exact same time, and I always thought that was so ridiculous because kids are not robots. Kids are not standardized. And so when you put a script in front of a kid, like they don't-- it just doesn't make any sense. Like I don't even have an explanation for why it makes sense, but it's still around. And I think it's still around because I-- people want things to be equal, but it's not about being equal.
It's about equity. And the difference between equality and equity is that with equity, you get what you need when you need it. Equality is everybody gets the same thing at the same time, and that doesn't work. It doesn't work for kids. It doesn't work for adults, and it definitely doesn't work for learning. So that's one of the things that always drove me crazy is that scripted curriculum.
There's a couple of other random weird things that I thought of, too, so-- right, oh, this was at one school I worked at. This was such a long time ago, but the district had bought a website. And at the time, it was very expensive, and so all the teachers were told you have to have your students spend at least a half hour a day or, I don't know, there was some crazy requirement of how long we had to have our students sit in front of this website and read non-fiction articles and answer questions.
And so immediately I thought, well, that's stupid. Like I can put that in my technology station, in my computer station, and the kids can use that as an option, but I'm not going to sit there for a whole class period and have them stare at a screen. Like that just sounded crazy to me. So, of course, I get in trouble, and I get called into the principal's office. And they printed out the reports, and said, well, it looks like you haven't had your kids on this website.
I was like, no. I have not had the kids on the website. We've been doing projects, and we've been doing all this other stuff. And look at how well they're doing, but sometimes it doesn't matter. They want the numbers, and they want that data. So that was a crazy one.
And then the last one I want to share is that I-- this was not in this country, but I had an administrator tell me that I had to give a spelling list to my students every week. Now, that's kind of a normal thing. But at that point in my career, I was not doing spelling lists anymore. We were doing spelling in context with our writing, and so we were doing it in a different way.
But this particular administrator decided that that's not what she wanted to see, and she brought me, I kid you not, a stack of packets that were like four feet high. And she brought them to my classroom, and she said, oh, I printed all of these out for you so you can do them each week and give them to your students. So she wanted me to do page by page worksheet packets.
And this was a one-to-one school, so we had devices for everybody. And so here I am like doing spelling packets with my kids. So needless to say, I did not stay in that school very long because that to me was like the crowning jewel of absurdity. So yeah, I mean, those are just a couple of things of many that have happened over the years. So yeah, I can only imagine there's many other teachers that would have even more scary stories than me, but yeah, a lot of absurdity out there, for sure.
I love those examples. When Dani and I were writing this question I thought a lot about dress codes and the absurdity of dress codes in schools to some degree. You want certain colors or certain styles are completely out of the classroom, and I just went this seems like someone just decided they didn't like something, and they just went with it. But that was one thing--
And that's that-- that's the equality, equity thing, too. We want everybody to be the same, but we don't take anything else into consideration. So yeah, same stuff.
I love that you said-- you segue this perfectly into the next question which you're a global educator. That's how you and I met. We talked a lot about-- I believe we met at ISTE 2018 and did some global Ed stuff and worked together on that. And it was one of my favorite conference experiences ever working with that global Ed community.
You've taught all over the world, and you've done travel a lot, and you had a blog-- or have had a blog called Journey as well. How do you-- how would you encourage educators anywhere in the world to explore and connect and be more globally minded? But then also how has connecting with other classrooms around the world supported you as a teacher but then also the students that you've worked with?
Yeah, I love this question, too. I love all these questions. I've been really fortunate to be able to travel a lot. I've worked in several different countries. I've worked with teachers from all corners of the Earth, and it's been amazing. But obviously, not every teacher is able to do these things. But that doesn't mean you don't bring global into your classroom, or it doesn't mean that you can't have a global mindset.
And I think you hit the nail on the head there with the idea of global mindset because you don't have to travel. You don't have to go to another country or know about another place to have a global perspective. And I think really, I mean, this might sound counterintuitive, but global education really starts in your own community.
It's when you can identify who are the members of my community? What is the diversity within my community? Who lives here? What programs do we have here? What are the issues that we're experiencing in this community?
And it also starts with curiosity. So teachers just being curious to find out things, either about their community, about the country, or about the world, because that curiosity is infectious. And when you're curious about something, your students will immediately get curious about it. And you can really go down a lot of rabbit holes that way, but it's also a really great way to learn.
So to start, starting points, I want to be very specific because it will be very easy for me to say, oh, it's so great to do all these things. But one of the ways that I've connected with a lot of people is actually through Twitter and other social media. So the global community on Twitter is incredible. That's actually how I met you guys. And ISTE and that group of people is fantastic. And it starts with just connecting with people, like finding out about people as people, sharing an idea, asking a question, just being curious.
Years ago, we used to do Mystery Skype. And I know I don't think anybody uses Skype anymore, but if they do, you can still do it there. Having a video chat with another classroom, even if it's a class across your district, find out what's going on over there on your side of the county or your side of the state. It's about connection. So it's just providing opportunities for your students to make connections with people who aren't like them, having conversations with kids that are different, just learning as much as you can without judgment or preconceived notions about what that other is, just keeping an open mind.
Looking at challenges around the world and saying I saw that there's a drought in this particular country, and you know what, we're really struggling with that this year as well. Helping students make connections, that the issues that you see on the other side of the world are also the issues that we have in our backyard, and it's not, oh, that's happening far away so we don't need to worry about it. But oh, actually, there's a lot of connections that we can make, and we do affect each other.
The other thing, too, I mentioned this earlier is reading a lot, Reading diverse authors, reading diverse voices, bringing some of that work into your teaching. I know lots of teachers use the book a long-- tongue twister. A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park. That is an incredible book. The boy who-- it's left me. It's the one about the windmills.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.
Yes, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. I love those books, and there's tons of picture books, too, to bring in and help students learn about other places around the world. So it's just kind of like taking-- again, taking a first step, asking the question, being a little vulnerable. And it can open up tons of doors. I mean, I-- collaboration.
So that's another word that comes to mind when I think of global is collaborating with others to find answers. So it's not just, OK, I'm going to connect with this class. We're going to share. We're going to share some facts. That is a great way to start, but it's not an ending point.
Think about ways to invite experts into your classroom. So whether it's virtually or if you have members of your community that you can invite in to co-create and co-learn with students, because that's when it's going to be really meaningful is when they're working towards something authentic. I mean, my greatest growth as a teacher was when I took all of these ideas and kind of stepped back and posed questions to my students and said, well, what do you think about this? What do you want to do about it?
One of my favorite teaching stories, I was teaching third grade at the time, and a lot of my career was in Florida in the Orlando area. And there was an issue at SeaWorld where one of the trainers had been harmed by one of the Orca whales. And the kids came in, and they were devastated. And they were all up in arms, and this was years and years and years ago.
And I said, well, obviously, we're not getting anything done this morning. So what would you like to do with all of your frustration? And they said, well, I don't know. Maybe we should write letters to SeaWorld. And I said go ahead. Write letters to SeaWorld. And I took them, and I mailed them. And then a couple of months later, they got back to us, invited us to come. And we did this whole tour, and the kids asked the most amazing questions about what their policies were about keeping their trainers safe.
And it was all them. They organized the field trip themselves, and all it took, really, was saying, how do you want to do this? How do you want to go about doing this? And then they took the reins, and they did it on their own with support, of course. I mean, they're third graders. They need help, but they were the ones driving the learning. And I would guarantee that that is probably one of the most memorable experiences that they've had in school.
And so globally connecting, I mean, that's not exactly a global situation. But it kind of is because what you could do is take that to the next level of like, well, how do other water parks or wildlife parks take care of their animals and take care of their trainers? And how can students be empowered to get involved when something is upsetting to them or something is bothering them? How do they get involved? How do they ask the really hard questions and get answers to make change in the world?
I love that. I've always been such a huge proponent of being a global educator and connecting your classrooms. So this story that you just shared about SeaWorld is just magical, and I think more teachers can do that and can get their kiddos involved. And I don't know what we're calling it now if it's not Mystery Skype, but Mystery Skype with other classrooms.
When I was teaching, we would do that with our students, and sometimes it would be across the country or across the world. But the one that tripped them up the most was I got one of my educator pals from a school just a few miles away. And they were trying to figure out where they were, and they were in the same city. It was hilarious. They were just-- they were ready for other time zones.
Yeah, exactly. And I think it's great that you brought that up because I'm thinking about the climate in the US and how there's a lot of division. Having those conversations across state lines can be so powerful and just having kids have those conversations.
Like, kids are so open to talk about difficult stuff. Like they want to talk about it. They want to be like, what do you think about this? And here's what I think about that. And so having-- like teaching students how to have those kinds of discussions in really safe spaces I think is just one of the most valuable things that can happen and such a great way to expand their global competency.
Thank you. So on your social media, you frequently talk about the UNSDGs. What in the world are those, and how could they help educators in their classrooms? Why should educators know about them?
Oh, yeah, one of my favorite things to talk about. So the UNSDGs or United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, it's a mouthful. Basically, in 2015, the UN put out 17 goals for the world. They were based on the Millennium Development Goals, and they are goals designed for people and planet to be achieved by 2030.
So things like climate action, hunger, poverty, quality education, energy, you name it. There's a goal about it. And so the SDGs can be a really powerful tool to help you as a teacher take what's going on in your local community and connect it globally. Because topics like poverty, they're going on everywhere. They manifest themselves in different ways.
So poverty in the US is going to look a little bit different than poverty in India, for example, but it's still poverty. It's still people living in terrible conditions. And it shows students that there are a lot of issues in the world, but at the same time, the goals are hopeful because there are things that we're working on as a global community. And each person, in order to make them a success, in order to reach these goals, each person is responsible for helping us along the way.
And I think that alone is a very powerful thing for a student. I think often kids get overwhelmed because they hear about things going on in the world, and they want to do something. But they don't know what to do. They're just bombarded by information. And so these 17 goals can really provide avenues for students to take their curiosity and kind of dig in to what does this goal mean?
How are people already working on it? How are people changing the world through this goal? And also, how are these goals all connected to each other because they're all interconnected. I love to put goal four, which is quality education, in the middle. I do like a mind map where goal four is in the middle, quality education, and then we take students through the idea of, OK, well, in order to have quality education, what else has to happen?
So if you're living in poverty, you're probably not going to school. Or when you go to school, you're not learning that much. So that's affected. If you're hungry, you can't learn. If you don't have access to water, like you're not going to school. So all of these different things connect directly to the SDGs.
I mean, when the pandemic started years ago, the first, the very first thing I thought of were the SDGs and how this pandemic that we've been through and are still going through has touched every single goal of the SDGs in a different way and how we've had to rework and rethink about how we solve problems and how we work together to address the biggest issues in the world. I mean, talk about a global connection. I mean, everybody was involved in this and finding solutions.
But that's big, right? That's a big topic. So how, as like an elementary teacher, for example, do you tackle some of these goals? And the answer is pretty simple, actually. You start with your curriculum. So you look at what am I already teaching? What's in my science? Science and social studies are usually good places to start.
So what am I teaching in science this year? What am I teaching in social studies? Where can I overlap? I like to take the poster of the 17 goals and put it next to, when I'm designing curriculum, like, OK. Where's the overlap? Often, in elementary school you're doing units about water.
Water is a wonderful way to make those connections to the SDGs. So, for example, we've got water. It's goal six is clean water. Yeah, six, clean water and sanitation, and it's an issue around the world. Everybody needs water to survive. Sanitation is really important so that our water sources don't become contaminated.
So in your water unit, you can expand a little bit. You don't have to throw it out the window. You can make some adaptations. You can have students dig into where does their water come from? How do they get their water? Is there any threat to water? Is there scarcity in the area?
Contacting your water company or utility companies and finding out how they manage water. What is sanitation like where you live? Do you have sewers? Do you have septics? Like kids love to talk about that kind of stuff. They can go on and on all about that. That alone is a good topic.
And then from there, looking at what's happening with water in our community and then connecting with other classrooms. What's happening with water in your community? What's happening with water in these other places? There's an incredible organization called Dig Deep, and they focus just on water issues in the United States. And they've done tons of research, and they have all these free resources for schools and for students that address water issues around the US, particularly in areas that don't have any access to water.
So if you can believe it, there are places in the United States where there is zero access to water. So they go in, and they help provide systems to get water flowing. So connecting with organizations is another way. Bringing in literature, as I mentioned earlier, another way to do it. And just looking at that interconnectedness and how students can make the most amazing connections.
Like we're talking about water, but you know what, we can also talk about the jobs that are created when we have water involved. Like who works with water? We can also look at climate action. Like how do water issues affect climate? And they can dig in that way.
If you've got older students, so we're looking like middle school, high school now, having students-- and I think I'm jumping ahead, but having older students choose an SDG that they're passionate about, and then you as the teacher have a central topic that you want everybody to focus on. And then each student addresses that topic through the lens of their individual SDG.
So by the time you finish that unit, you have 17 different perspectives on one topic where students have been able to dive into what they're passionate about and potentially take action on issues. So like, I don't know, if that's not powerful learning, I don't know what is. And the SDGs really, they make that possible. And that's why I get so excited because like 17 little goals can make all the difference in student learning.
Erin, absolutely. I'm right there with you, that last a little bit about letting the kids explore 17 different goals and then coming back and sharing out their learning, sharing out their passions. That's exactly how I approached it in my classroom, and it was so much fun. And it created so much depth of learning and depth of knowledge, especially when I paired it with creative activities as well.
And so what-- where this leads us to is a great jumping off point, which I'm going to ask you like the biggest question possible here. But what is the future for education, and how does it all tie in with the things we're talking about? So writing, creativity, the UNSDGs, and teaching in general play roles in our future. How does it all wrap together for us?
Yeah, that is such a huge question. It's one of those really juicy questions that I love. I'm really hopeful for education. I think as many things as we hear on the news that are doom and gloom, I think that there are amazing people in schools all over the country and all over the world working really hard for their students and being innovative and getting students to think and create and just be inspired to step into the world as themselves.
And I think when we can have students that feel comfortable doing that, showing up as their true selves, who they are, and creating, I mean, we've done our jobs. When kids can question and think critically and value other people and respect other people, anybody can learn content. So it's not about the content that you're learning in class. It's about those skills, and it's about helping students with competencies.
And one of the reasons I'm really hopeful is because of states like Utah and what I hear about the wonderful things going on in your state and all the innovation that's happening to help students be thinkers and creators and designers and global citizens. It's really a big boost. It's really exciting. And then I see organizations like an organization called Redesign, and they are doing incredible things with breaking down curriculum, like the typical things that you see in schools, like the same units that you see every year and looking at them from different lenses.
So taking an anti-racist approach, for example, and looking at content through an Indigenous lens and just looking at different perspectives and different ways of teaching content that maybe we haven't considered before. And that, to me, is really exciting. And I think it's those grassroots movements. It's like the pockets of teachers that are doing really cool things.
It's the international teachers that I talk to like my friend in the Ukraine who sent me a message yesterday saying she's putting together all of these English language resources for teachers in the Ukraine because they don't have access to physical schools right now, but they can learn online. And so there's so much innovation happening that that's what gives me hope for the future. And I think our kids coming up, they want to create. They want to impact the world. They just need to be given the chance.
And I think writing and creativity are essential components to what we're going to see in the future of education. And that's how we're going to address those systemic issues.
And that's how we're going to address these 17 SDGs is by empowering our kids to take action and be thinkers and show up in the world in ways where they can make a difference and feel like they can make a difference. They're not just going through the motions of school. They go to school because they're working on something cool that's going to impact other people. And I get goosebumps when I think about that because that's what the learning is. That's where learning happens.
Yeah, I love that you're sending us out on this message of hope. But before we wrap up, earlier you mentioned one of the ways that teachers can become a global educator and get their students more involved is having an expert come into their classroom, even if it's over Zoom. And you had an exciting giveaway that you wanted to share with our educators here in Utah.
Yeah, I would love to share this giveaway. So if you are listening, and I would love for you to send me a message on Twitter or tweet out, tag me at eedowd27 and I would love-- and I'm going to choose somebody to do a virtual visit at your school. So author Q&A for your students.
We'll talk about the book. Your kids can ask whatever questions they want, and I would love to be a virtual guest in your classroom. So to enter, all you have to do is tweet out at eedowd27 and send a little message about this podcast. Mentioned this podcast, and I will choose a winner.
That's fantastic, EE And I think that there should be a caveat that you also have to invite me and Matt, right? I mean--
Of course.
Just making sure. I thought that was part of the rules, but I just wanted to make sure that it was part of the rules.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Can you tell us a little bit, too, before we leave where we can find your book and where people can find you on the web and then be on social media as well?
Yeah, absolutely. So the best place to start to find information about the book, about where to buy the book, and lots of resources on creativity and teacher guides and activities to go along with the book is by visiting my website. It's eedowd.com, and if you sign up for my newsletter, you'll immediately get a PDF of creativity activities to do with your students.
So nice little giveaway there if you sign up for the newsletter, and I'll be updating things throughout the year. So check it out, and also you can connect with me directly. You can send me an email, send me a message, and if you are interested in author visits virtually or otherwise, you can also contact me through the website as well.
That's fantastic Thank you so much for your time today. I'm so excited to-- this conversation was just incredible. So thank you so much for your time.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. Pleasure being here.
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Join the Utah Coalition for Educational Technology on November 12 for Edcamp WASO or Wasatch South. Edcamp WASO will take place this year at Timpanogos High School on November 8 from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM. Join us for a wonderful day of un-conferencing and connecting with our fellow educators. More registration details at ucet.org.
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So one thing that we didn't really get to in this, but I'm really excited about it, is that we're talking to authors during National Novel Writing Month. And I think that if you don't know what that is--
No.
It's great program where people are encouraged to write, I think it's like 1,000 words a day for the entire month of November. And by the end of it, you have a book. And even if it's terrible, you have a book.
You did it.
And I just love that we're talking to somebody like EE who took this upon herself to really push for herself to write something that would be valuable not only for her but for the larger educator community as well.
Absolutely. And I love that she talked about the writing process so much in that it's not linear. It's very iterative because it's true. But I feel like a lot of the time when we teach writing to our students, we teach it in this very linear way. It's the introduction paragraph, then three detail paragraphs, and then you wrap it up with the conclusion, and then you're done. I know, and that-- anyone who, outside of education, has done any writing, even academic writing, does not follow that. In fact, the introduction is the last thing that you write.
Exactly. One of my favorite videos is-- and no surprise to anybody that knows me personally-- is Kurt Vonnegut talking about plot. I don't know if you've ever seen this video. It's fantastic. I'll send it to you, but he shows the normal plot curve, which is introductory action, inciting incident, climax, and then down. And he's like, let me show you what this actually looks like when we apply it to plot.
And he shows Cinderella, and it's just these emotional things that are going up and down and up and down and up and down. And then finally climax, and then it's still going up and down and up and down. And so this idea of writing as something that happens over time and that there's ways of-- myriad ways of doing it is so important for students to recognize. And I love that EE brought that up, and that it's not just about I have to get a good thesis statement and good support and then conclusion.
Yeah, and it should be fun.
Yeah.
Writing is arguing your ideas, and kids, at least my kid, love to argue. Like they have so many ideas and so many opinions, and if we can help them to see like, that's what writing is, is just trying to convince someone that you're right.
I didn't know kids like to argue.
Oh, I have so much to teach you, Matt.
I know. Well, maybe next time. This was so great, and I'm so excited that we're talking to authors all month. Yeah, we'll see you next time on the next episode of UEN Homeroom.
Thanks for listening.
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