Our First Transformation

If you’re anything like us when we were new teachers, then you may have seen transformations, but they seemed very out of reach, looked like a lot of work, and seemed like a lot of money. That being said, we had no intention of making classroom transformations apart of our teaching style, nor did we know the first thing about them....

Let me preface this whole post by saying, at this point in time, we had no teacher instagram, no plan to start an education blog, and didn't even think to take pictures of our transformation because frankly, we didn't know it was one. So, enjoy some blast from the past pictures. And yes, we know these are truly not internet worthy *cringe face*. But, we must share them so you know that transformations come in many forms!

And let's be honest after our first transformation, there was no going back. The impact it made on our students was life changing, mainly, for us!! It turned Bloom’s Taxonomy on its head by challenging students to apply, analyze, evaluate and create all in one class! After experiencing the curriculum in an immersive way, the students familiarized themselves with the content independently!

Instead of students listening passively to our teaching, students gathered data, applied concepts, held meaningful discussions and explored solutions to problems.

This increased our overall engagement and made for more effective learning and higher levels of achievement! And who doesn't want that!?

Okay, okay, okay, you might be thinking “we already achieve this in the classroom, I don’t need all the fluff of transformations.” Here’s what we have to say to that… WHY NOT CHANGE IT UP!? Transformations aren’t always fluff!

When driven by curriculum and standards, they are creating an immersive educational environment for the students!

Now, sometimes can they have fluff? Absolutely! There is a time and place for everything. Remember, you don’t have to do a HUGE transformation to achieve this transformative environment. And, you don’t have to do them all the time! That’s the true beauty of utilizing classroom transformations, they are a tool to enhance your teaching and the students’ learning experiences.

Now if you’re thinking ”sounds great and all, but how do we get there?” Honestly, we stumbled on it ourselves! And we have learned so much from doing transformations; from big ones, mini ones, doing them frequently, using them as rewards, or doing them once or twice a year, we want to share our experiences and our mistakes so you don’t have to make the same ones we did!

Our first transformation was definitely not our best, but man, did it change the game for us!

Our first year teaching together we discussed how we loved thematic units and decided that we were going to align our curriculum with the upcoming seasonal “holiday’s” and Johnny Appleseed just so happened to be first on our list.

It started very small; We planned Johnny Appleseed activities, integrated with the lifecycle and pulled apple books, collected apple items, bought apples from the groceries, aligned our science and social studies standards to Johnny Appleseed content, planned apple crafts and so on…Somehow, it snowballed into “let’s just put up some apple trees for a little something extra.”

Alex mentioned some carpet tubes she had in her garage and suggested them as tree trunks. We then sat and cut out leaves for the top of trees. Suddenly our desks were moved into apple groves surrounded by large apple tree’s that touched the ceiling. We couldn’t stop there, we needed some bushes and clouds. We thought it would help lively up the room a bit… Should we add a stream too? We were like “if you give a mouse a cookie” at this point…

So, did we plan for a transformation? Yes and no. We started with the curriculum and content and narrowed down what standards we needed to hit. We pulled resources and materials that we were going to use and saw this as an opportunity to create life-size visuals and use life experiences!

We built the trees in different stages of the lifecycle, organized desks in apple groves with different colored apples in rows and columns to help supplement our math lessons, we pulled other folk-tales to compare and contrast to Johnny Appleseed, we planned to make home-made apple- sauce to inspire sequence of events.... and then somehow, that snow-balled into a whole forrest in our classrooms.

At that point, Alex and I decided we were all in! We decided to dress up and become Johnny Appleseed. We thought it would be fun to make apple volcanoes and really live in the moment.

We will never forget when the kids came in, they were completely enamored with the room! The decorations, the books, the tree’s, the apples, the costumes; everything. Everything was new to them. The classroom became a learning oasis in their eyes! They lived and breathed it. Their participation skyrocketed! They asked questions, integrated Johnny Appleseed into their play, they became motivated to research and learn outside of the classroom, they got involved in active learning opportunities and they remembered what we taught them! This was literally, all we could ever want!

A few days later, we had cleaned up the area and went back to our normal routine. When the kids came in, we remember the look of disgust on their faces when they saw the room was no longer a forest. But truly, it really didn’t matter…They were still hungry FOR THE CONTENT! The students begged to read more fables and apple themed books, their parents told us they had researched Johnny Appleseed at home, and they retained and made connections to the standards we had learned. And that was a win in our book.

So, if you made it this far, we're going to break down our FIRST ever transformation:

1. IT WAS NOT PERFECT. We learned from it and changed MANY things for the next year!

2. It was not instagram worthy- we honestly, didn't even take pictures of the room at the time!

3. We did not spend any money on the first transformation (except for buying apples).

4. We decorated for it on the weekend. It took us about 5-6 hours (wayyyy more than we want to spend now)!

5. We decorated the entire room! It was a whole room transformation. But it was a more simple transformation in the fact that we just created trees, bushes, covered desks, and made clouds.

6. We began this transformation by using it to enhance our curriculum and standards.

7. It had many faucets. It was not based only on the room.

8. We took it down quickly after.

We share all this because we truly believe in the power of transformation. We want to share our transformative experiences and make it easier for teachers to transform their teaching without having to go through all of the trial and error we went through! Not all transformations will be BIG and bold, and they definitely will not look the same. Our first classroom transformation was just the beginning to many. And we can't wait to continue to share how they not only transformed our teaching, but transformed our balance, and transformed our lifestyle.