Finding Joy in Embracing Failure through STEM Innovation

Transcript

Kris (00:00)

Welcome everyone to the Learning Loop Podcast, your best source for educational insights and trends. I’m Kris, your host. Today’s special guest is Diane. She’s the Academy Specialist at Hart Academy in Julian Newman Elementary and a longtime STEM superstar. During today’s interview, she will discuss with us how her inspiration to become an educator was driven and how Seesaw has impacted her career. Diane, welcome to the show.

Diane Trout (00:37)

Good afternoon, how are you today?

Kris (00:39)

Wonderful, wonderful. We’re very excited you’re here and getting connected with you. I’m gonna kick things off with a really easy question here. When did you first realize you wanted to become an educator and what do you think prompted you to come to that?

Diane Trout (00:54)

Well, I actually started my education journey later in life. My boys were in kindergarten and fourth grade when I started my education journey. So I was in my 20s when I started back to school as a teacher and I just saw the way they looked up to their teachers and I saw the way they enjoyed learning. And I was working as a bank teller.

and I really hated my job. It was an awful job. And I spent more time at my job than I did with my boys. So I quit my job as a bank teller and I worked as a preschool teacher while I went back to school to earn my elementary education degree. And it was the best thing I ever did. I’m so thankful my husband supported me. And now I have the best job ever as a STEM lab teacher. And I taught.

four years in kindergarten and one year in second grade. And this is my fifth year in the STEM lab, but I just really love the way kids look up to their teachers and they just learn so much, not only academically, but just how to be a person. we just are such good role models for them. And I’m just so thankful for the teachers that my boys had.

Kris (02:09)

Yeah.

Diane Trout (02:17)

because they spend more time with their teachers than they do with their parents as they grow up. teachers are a big impact on students more socially than academically. So that’s what prompted me.

Kris (02:25)

that they are exactly. yeah, for sure, for sure.

Yeah, especially like younger students too. being somebody who was a former kindergarten teacher too, we know there’s so much more learning that happens in school than just academics. Those are important and wonderful, but you learn so much more. You learn how to be a friend. You learn how to have conflict. You learn how to ask questions, how to work through your day, how to manage time, all these super important skills that really, really help you as a teacher to be the person of impact in your life.

Diane Trout (02:58)

yes.

Kris (03:00)

Awesome, well I want to ask a question about your specific title now and kind of what drew you to that and really what you love about that. I know you talk about your, you run the STEM lab. Can you just share like what the STEM lab really is and why you absolutely love to continue to be there?

Diane Trout (03:17)

So the STEM lab where I’m at I see all of the kids in my school pre-k through third grade once a week for about 35 to 40 minutes and We I have a wonderful principal Basically what I do is I look at the science standards in our state and I design my lessons based on our science standards

and computer science standards, but I also pull in, of course, reading and math and they don’t know that I’m doing that because I make it so much fun. So I support the classroom teachers in their units that they’re on, but I also make it fun because I push the kids to think outside of the box. We hear that a lot, but to me, getting these kids to recognize that failure is okay.

and it’s okay to not be perfect, that’s a big deal because especially with the standardized testing nowadays, so many of them think that they have to be perfect all the time and that there’s only one way to think of something. Getting them to think of multiple ways to come up with an answer, to come up with a project is okay. And getting them to work as a team, those are those skills that are gonna go with them throughout their life.

And also just being able to manipulate, for example, Legos. When we build our Lego robots, it amazes me how many kids have a hard time following the directions to put the Legos together because they play video games so much now and they don’t build Legos at home. So just being able to manipulate in that spatial reasoning to put those things together, it’s just so much fun to watch them and teach them.

you know, just the different ways to do things. So we just do all sorts of building and learning and exploring in here. First grade just got done with their sound unit. So we started out with tuning forks and water and sand. And we ended up this week with Dash playing the xylophone. So we have gone three months in their sound unit. The high school band came and demonstrated their instruments, how their instruments make sound. So.

Diane Trout (05:31)

It’s just a full community unit. And anytime I can get the community people to come in and demonstrate things and talk to the students, I like to have that happen too because we’re a small community. And when students can see things happening outside of the school and learn from people outside of the school, it’s great.

Kris (05:51)

Absolutely, for sure. Love that, I love it. And what I really love too is when you said how you’re teaching students how to overcome failure. The old acronym of like fail is your first attempt in learning. That resilience that you’re building in students is really what they’re gonna remember and take with them for the rest of their life beyond the academic standards too that they’re gaining.

So I think that’s such an impactful moment that you’re gonna have with all these children and just get to grow that mindset within them in a way that is gonna help them to just succeed in everything else as they continue to go.

Diane Trout (06:27)

Absolutely, and I think it’s funny sometimes because my lessons don’t always go according to my plan. And I think it’s important for them to see that teachers fail sometimes too, because we’re not perfect. We’re human beings too. And you know, they have to see that we mess up and we have to roll with it just like they have to and we can’t get frustrated. And you know what? We have to take a detour and fix things and next week will be better.

Kris (06:55)

Exactly. that’s so awesome. I heard you talk about a couple different things like how you design your curriculum, you design your content around standards, but then you’re also trying to weave in the community. Can you just share a little bit how CSO has found a home in this and how it’s become something that has helped your classroom to find a way to make these things a little bit easier for you to teach with?

Diane Trout (07:18)

absolutely. So since I’m not a homeroom classroom teacher, it’s really hard for me to communicate not only to the parents, but also to the teachers what we do in here because I’m a special area teacher. know, the classroom teachers get busy with what they’re working on. So we just put what we’re working on on seesaw so the teachers can see what we’re doing. The parents can see what we’re doing in here. And then one of the great things about seesaw is we can tag the standards.

And so the principal can see what we’re working on in here. And even though we’re playing, we’re also learning. So I can attach whatever science, math, reading, social studies standards we’re working on and assign them the stars and tell them what we’re working on. That way the classroom teachers know what I’ve covered in here. And really, we don’t even have to talk about it. They can just see it. And it makes the communication so easy between the classroom teachers and myself.

and the principal and then the parents get to see what their awesome kids are learning in here.

Kris (08:19)

that. I love the streamlinedness about that too and just making sure you know we have one space that they can engage with and that they can engage to and

a way that allows them to really see what’s happening. I know a lot of people who use Seesaw, they think about it as just kind of this one way communication is drawn, but if you really are sharing pictures, videos, and recordings, and all these pieces with people, and allowing them to comment back or like things, you’re really creating a robust opportunity for people to participate in the learning as well.

Diane Trout (08:50)

Absolutely.

Kris (08:52)

I do want to ask you one more question about your teaching with Seesaw. If you could think back to your favorite thing that you did in your STEM lab. mean, it sounds like you do a lot of really awesome things. If you could think back to your favorite thing, can you just share what that is and maybe how Seesaw kind of played a part in that?

Diane Trout (09:02)

Hahaha

Diane Trout (09:10)

geez, there’s so many fun things we get to do in here. One of my favorite things that we get to do other than robots, because of course robots are one of my favorite things in here, but second grade creates a cave out of sugar cubes and clay and warm water. And so they document how they build the cave with their sugar cubes and their clay.

Kris (09:22)

Yeah.

Diane Trout (09:37)

And the cave, they explain that the cave is made from limestone and the sugar cubes are the limestone rock. And then the topsoil is represented by the clay and then they poke holes with the toothpick and then they drop water on it with an eyedropper. And that’s the rainwater coming through the topsoil and they take pictures and then they take a final video as they are making it rain and then it is eroding the rock.

And because we can take pictures and video and integrate it all in seesaw, the teachers and the parents can see that they fully understand it before we go on our field trip to the cave. But it’s something that just a picture wouldn’t be able to convey. And the kids just explaining it to their homeroom teacher wouldn’t be able to convey. So being able to put the pictures and the voice recordings with the videos.

on seesaw, the kids are all doing it. It shows that they really understand it and they’re having fun doing it and the construction process. So it’s, they really like it. They think it’s pretty cool. I think it is too.

Kris (10:49)

Yeah, I’m sure, no, I love it. That sounds super fun, I’d love to do it. But what I hear you talking about too is how you could capture that.

Diane Trout (10:54)

Yeah

Kris (10:58)

that understanding and that learning like in live real time. You know, we as teachers and everybody’s probably experienced this in any some way, shape or form where you take a picture of something that happened, but you’re missing a lot of things that happen around it. You know, you might be missing the conversation. You might be missing the light bulb moment. You might be missing some things that can’t get conveyed. But what I hear you saying is you can use Seesaw to really capture as many of those pieces as possible, allow students to share

thinking, allow them to capture moments and progress over time and have that be something that gets shared with families which is super super unique.

Diane Trout (11:38)

Yes, absolutely. And what I also really like is the ones that are usually pretty quiet in the group. They really like recording themselves, I have found, because they think it’s just them and their iPad. So they are more apt to talk to their iPad than they are, like if they’re presenting in front of the class or even presenting in front of the group. So it gives them a chance to have a voice and you can get more out of them.

if they’re talking to their iPad instead of to the whole class.

Kris (12:11)

For sure, for sure. Absolutely love it. Two more questions here. I do want to ask you about the parent experience. I know you talked about bringing the community in. We’ve talked a couple times about how parents get to see some things. Can you share a little bit about either things that you’ve either heard from family members or specific ways that you engage with families to make sure that they’re really a part of the learning in your STEM lab?

Diane Trout (12:33)

well, they definitely get to see what we are learning. If we have a big project coming up and we need something, of course I’ll use the messaging feature and send that out to a certain class. Recently we got a grant for some robots and I had a couple of kids pulled in and they demonstrated the robots for the news when they came and so I sent the message out to those parents that those kids were going to be on the news.

Kris (12:42)

Yeah.

Diane Trout (13:06)

so they could watch. So that was a heads up to the parents. Just little things like that. There’s so many different ways between the messaging feature and then posting in their journal. It’s so easy to communicate and it’s all in one place. I I’m not trying to sell anybody, but I don’t know why anybody would use other things because it’s all in one place. I mean, this is my 10th year teaching and this is my 10th year using Seesaw.

And it keeps getting better and better every year. And I just don’t understand why people would use anything else.

Kris (13:41)

I love it, for sure. Especially the way you describe it. I if it is your one-stop shop, if it’s the place where you have everything that you need as a teacher to communicate with students, to communicate with families, to capture that learning, I mean, I don’t know why you would use a different tool in that specific instance. So, love, love to hear that.

Diane Trout (13:57)

Exactly, our teachers send out their newsletters that way. Our principal sends out the newsletter every week that way. I mean, it’s great. The parents know exactly where to go to get everything.

Kris (14:10)

Yeah, making it easy on the parents too. So that’s important. All right, we’re at our final question here and it’s my favorite question of the podcast I like to ask people. I know you talked a lot about how Seesaw has impacted your classroom and your teaching practice, but I wanna know a little bit more about that. How has Seesaw really impacted you personally? Whether it’s your career, your professional growth. I just wanna know how Seesaw has been that growth partner for you.

Diane Trout (14:39)

Well, Seesaw has really given me confidence. When I was a first year kindergarten teacher, I saw Seesaw, I think it was on Twitter, and there was four of us kindergarten teachers, and I told the other kindergarten teachers, because I had an educational technology minor, I was like, hey, there’s this really cool app I saw on Twitter, and I was telling them all the cool things it did. I was like, I really want to try it. You guys want to try it? And they kind of laughed at me.

And they were like, okay, Diane, you try it and you let us know how it goes. I was like, okay, cool, I’ll try it. And so I tried it for probably about two weeks and probably about 18 out of 20 parents in my classroom were on board with it and they really liked it. And so once they saw how many parents really liked it, they were like, okay, so we need to try it. And so they tried it and they liked it and it kind of grew from there. And so…

That gave me confidence even in my first year teaching to be able to talk to veteran teachers about new ideas. And then not just in my school, but in my district. And then it also gave me confidence to speak at the state level, present at conferences on Seesaw and even at the national level to go present. And it also has opened doors to meet new people and share ideas and.

learn from new people because you know that’s how we learn just from talking to different people and no idea is my own and I will definitely say so and so gave me this idea but I have loved learning from all the different people in the seesaw community on how to grow our practice and it’s just been a great great platform so we can learn from each other so it’s been great.

Kris (16:28)

Yeah, I just absolutely love to hear that testimonial and love to hear how heartfelt your growth is too and with that and how the community has really just helped to move forward because that’s the whole aspiration of any company, right, is to make sure that we’re really doing what’s right for teachers and it sounds like Seesaw’s really been the right tool for you. So, love it.

Diane Trout (16:37)

Yeah

Diane Trout (16:50)

Absolutely.

Kris (16:52)

Well, Diane, we are at time. I just want to say thank you for sharing such amazing stories. Thank you for being such an amazing educator and a champion for Seesaw. We so appreciate you being here sharing things and especially sharing things from your heart too today. That’s so impactful for us and we just love to have stories like this be our highlight for the day.

Diane Trout (17:11)

Well, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Kris (17:13)

Of course, thank you, thank you. And thank you everybody else listening to our show today. We hope you enjoyed this episode and found it informative and engaging. If you’d like to learn more about Seesaw, please visit our website at Seesaw.com. We appreciate you taking time out of your day to join us. Hopefully you have a great rest of your day. Bye bye.