Silicon Valley Cue

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Cheryl and I co-wrote this post. We would love your feedback as we continue to develop workshops to educate teachers in the tools of flipping and the magic of puppets.
Sam:
In my life as an educator I have lead workshops in responding to student writing, writing college essays, writing blogs with students, and sharing student writing.  There have been other workshops and they all revolved around the common theme of writing.  I love working with teachers on writing instruction because it is a challenging task that needs support.  This year I have been sharing another part of my professional interests, on 3/8/13 Cheryl and I lead a workshop on learning with puppets at the Silicon Valley Regional Cue conference.
The workshop was an afternoon "hands-on session" and when we were planning, Cheryl and I were challenged to design a workshop that was, fun, informative, and invited teachers to play around and discover what they needed to know.
This was not the first puppet workshop we have lead, but we are young in puppet years and we are always learning.  Cheryl and I led a puppet workshop at #EDCAMPSFBAY, this seems so long ago.  I was still getting ready to teach with little kids, and I had just built the PVC green screen puppet theatre.

The Edcamp workshops were only and hour and even though the ethos of Edcamp is conversation based the 2 Edcamp puppet sessions I have lead ended up being mostly me talking.  The teachers in the room were puppet-curious, but the structure of the workshop never allowed them to open up.
Cheryl kept our process focused on getting teachers active and exploring.  I think her experience running choice day workshops in puppeting for her high school students really benefited us.  Cheryl set the space up so we had room to work.  In fact the first thing we did was lay claim to an attached hallway.  (Cheryl and I both laughed about how our kids seem to always end up in the hallway working.) We also unpacked all of our puppets onto the CART.
Moments I loved
Participants tweeting out pictures of them with puppets
Teachers using the livestream to puppet at their friends
the Dig Cit video that was made on the spot
the after tweet about the great sale on fleece
the tweet about how teachers not on twitter are behind a “selectively mute puppet”

Questions I am left with
Would it be better to have multiple steps of puppet construction?  (puppets in process?)
that was my intention with the puppeting stuff i brought. are we actually doing full puppet construction at CUE?
at CUE we promised Flipping. . . .
What about a hot glue station? (burn yourself here and now so you know what it feels like?
that seems less helpful than I’d like.
Should we bring or collect info on teacher's discount at fabric stores?
are there others? isn’t it just Michael’s and Joann?
What have we learned that we could use to shape the Edupuppets?


Cheryl:
Co-teaching is not something new to me - in fact, I have more practice co-teaching workshops than doing them on my own.  And the value in the co-taught workshop is that instead of one brain and one set of answers, you have two brains and infinitely more sets of answers.  Plus, in a workshop that is more than just lecture, you need two people who can help make the content meaningful and something that can be taken home and used on Monday.

This workshop was the first time I’ve presented about puppets having actually used them in my class.  In the EdCampSFBay session, I had big ideas but nothing I had actually done.  Plus, I had no puppets of my own - just the ones that Sam had given me.  So I was learning as much as I was leading that session.  But this time, not only have I made puppets of my own and used them in class, I’ve actually taught students how to puppet.  My leadership class does a weekly puppet newscast and has gone from videos that look like badly overdubbed Japanimation to clever, often hilarious, dialogue-driven puppetry.  The puppets have a personality that is independent of the person providing the voice and is consistent from week to week.  We even have story arcs - puppets in relationships, puppet-napping, and puppets banned from Ninja News for violence against other puppets.
While I am sad there weren’t many high school teachers there, I hope that there are some who will watch the video of the session and pick up the puppeting spirit.  That really is the beauty of capturing these presentations on video and sharing them with people who couldn’t attend: you are opening up the learning possibilities from the number of seats in the room to the number of people with internet access.  The second figure is FAR higher than the first.  As flipped classroom teachers, that’s some of the motivation for putting content online: increase the number of people who can access what we teach.
In fact, all of human life is about collaboration - it is, as John Green says, about helping one another tilt to catch the wind.  Without YouTube and Shakespeare, Sam would have no puppets.  Without Sam, I would have no puppets.  Without puppets, there would be no Ninja News.  Without Ninja News, I would not have presented at this conference.  Without us presenting, the information stays in Sam’s head and potentially tens of people can be transformed by that.  And those tens of people affect hundreds of students, who affect thousands of people.  So we are literally changing the world through collaboration.  One puppet at a time.

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