Who Packs Your Parachute?

A couple years ago I learned about the former Navy Fighter Pilot, Captain Charles Plumb, who was a Prisoner of War for 2,103 days during the Vietnam War.  In fact, I was captivated by several Youtube videos of him speaking about his experiences in the military and as a POW.  I never thought about how I might use parts of his story as a learning activity, but recently found myself planning a team building professional development session for the teachers in my building.

Most people hear "team builder" and cringe at the thought of wandering around aimlessly trying to find people's names to fill in on a form. I get it, ice breaker team builders kind of suck.  Anytime I'm tasked with the opportunity to facilitate team building, I try very hard to make sure it's not absolutely cringe-worthy.

I wasn't sure what this upcoming team builder might look like, but I knew I didn't want it to cause anyone to groan in anguish at the very thought of completing it.  So, I did what I always do when I'm stuck---started poking around the internet, my Pinterest boards, Twitter, etc.  I was fortunate enough to stumble back across Captain Plumb's story but in the form of an article titled "Who's Packing Your Parachute?"   In this article, Captain Plumb recounts a story when he ran into a man who knew everything about him because he was the sailor who packed his parachute and ultimately saved his life.  This caused Plumb to wonder about all the times he took the sailors who packed parachutes for granted.  It also made him reflect on life and ask the question: who packs your parachute?  Who keeps you going when you want to stop?  Who is there to catch you when you fall?  Who makes even the hardest days bearable?  Who makes it enjoyable to come to work each day?

And I had the team builder: Packing Each Other's Parachutes.

Spring is tough in education.  Spring Break is near; the kids want to be outside; everyone is restless.  We wanted to bring everyone back together, remember how we keep each other going even on the tough days, and thank each other for being great colleagues and friends.  We threw in some root beer floats because ice cream makes everything better!

My principal read the article to everyone, explained the activity, and dished up ice cream while everyone packed each other's parachutes in the form of written affirmations on a paper for each staff member.  We laminated the sheets and delivered them to everyone at the end of the day!

With 50+ staff members, the idea of taking everyone's photos, cropping them down, and placing them on a template was a bit daunting.  However, in an effort to work smarter, not harder, I used the Chrome Extension DriveSlides by Matt Miller and Alice Keeler.  This amazing little Chrome Extension will take a folder of images and put one photo per slide in a Google Slides document!  This saved a lot of time of me manually inserting 50+ photos one at a time.  If you ever need to make a slideshow using Google Slides, DriveSlides would make it so easy and quick.

Once I got each photo on its own slide, I did have to resize and crop each one individually (I couldn't figure out a way to automate this process).  I recently learned that you could crop photos into different shapes, so I cropped the photos into circles.  To crop a photo into a shape in Slides, you just double click the photo until the black crop frame appears.  Then you click the crop tool on toolbar and select your shape.  This will crop your photo into any shape you choose.  In this case I chose a circle.

I found a parachute clip art to put on the sheet and put each teacher's name on each slide.  Then I just printed the Slides document so that each slide was on its own page.

Feel free to use my template here (just make a copy of the document so you can edit). But I would definitely start by using DriveSlides to get each picture on each slide and then add the parachute and name to each slide after.

Overall, it was a great afternoon during which we all just hit the pause button and took time to appreciate the people who make our school so great!

Breaking Out (Of Our Comfort Zone)

I've been quietly watching and reading about the Breakout EDU movement for about a year now.  If you're unfamiliar with the concept, it's basically a challenging, collaborative learning activity designed to make students think critically about clues in order to unlock a box.  The idea is that the puzzles and clues require students to not only use critical thinking skills, but also to apply knowledge of course content in the process.  It's a genius concept and one that is engaging and fun for everyone.

A year ago when I started seeing talk of Breakouts in education on Twitter, I quickly registered on the Breakout EDU website to get access to some of the pre-made games, and I joined the Breakout EDU Facebook page.  I read everything I could, and I was intimidated.

How could I come up with something so creative?  What was I supposed to put in the box?  What if nobody was able to breakout?  What if my clues were terribly constructed?  What if I couldn't figure out how to make my content fit all the locks?  I labored over these questions for almost a year before I decided to finally just give it a shot.

In January, I reached out to the almost 20,000 people on the Breakout EDU Facebook page to get advice for using Breakout with staff as professional development, and the people who commented got me on the right track.

My starting point was a pre-made game called TEAMWORK on the Breakout site.  I modified it to fit the staff in my building and started to wrap my head around how this whole Breakout EDU concept might work for us!  I started brainstorming ideas with my principal, and we had to purchase a box and a few extra locks to make it work.

Last Friday we had a PD day, and we took the opportunity to Breakout!  We had eight teams; each team had a letter in the word TEAMWORK as a starting point for their clues.  Teams had to go throughout the building to solve their clues and ultimately unlock the eight locks.  For instance, the "T" team had the clue "Timeline" and four events from the history of our school that they had to put in chronological order.  They had to recall where all the yearbooks were kept in the library to get their events in order.  On the back of all their events was a code written in invisible ink, which they needed a black light to solve.  The black light was hidden in a small box that another group had to open based on their clues.  There were puzzles for each of the letters in TEAMWORK, and each team had a lock that they were responsible for unlocking in order to get the box opened.

They broke out in about 40 minutes!

Here's what we learned after our first breakout:

• When ideas become so big that they scare us, we have to reach out to our PLN for help. Without that Breakout Facebook page, I'm not sure I would have ever gotten started with planning this.

• Don't be afraid to use your colleagues in the building to bounce ideas off of.  I'm lucky to have a great working relationship with my principal who was able to help with the planning process for this as a staff development activity.

• Our teacher brains are not wired to let others struggle.  It was so hard for me to see the groups struggling and to not jump in and help, but the struggle is an important part of the process.

• Don't be afraid to make it challenging.  I was fearful that some of our clues would be too hard, but the groups still worked through the struggle successfully.

• Planning the clues takes a little practice.  We had one group who didn't quite have enough clues and got pretty frustrated while on their wild goose chase.  This group used a hint card, and we gave too much away with the hint.  Next time, we'd be able to find just the right amount of clues/hints to give them.

• Have someone double check all your clues and locks.  I had done my math wrong (former English teacher here) on one of the puzzles and would have had the lock set wrong!  That would have been a disaster, but luckily my principal caught it when he was helping me double check everything.

• Taking a risk is worth it even if you fail or partially fail.  The Breakout game was fun and engaging (even though I was stressed about planning it for a few weeks), and teachers were able to brainstorm ways they could use this in their classes with kids in the future.  The risk of trying this for the first time paid off!

Overall it was a great afternoon.  My only regret was that I waited a year to get started with Breakout EDU.  If you're thinking about trying a Breakout, make sure you use the resources, your colleagues, and your PLN.  Most importantly, though, just give it a shot and see how it goes!