I spent the weekend presenting at a conference to educators from around Maryland and Delaware. One of my first sessions was called, “Find Your Marigold”. It focuses on first year educators that are trying to find their “place” in, not only their building, but their entire school system and community. First…. stop here if you had not read Jennifer Gonzalez’s article, Find your Marigold: The One Essential Rule for New Teachers. If you sign up for her emails (which I highly suggest), she will send you a nice printable PDF copy to share.

“Having a hard day? Go to your marigolds. Not understanding how to operate the grade reporting system? Go to your marigolds. Confused by something the principal said at the faculty meeting? Marigolds.” – Jennifer Gonzalez

I started by having the educators read the article to themselves and then kicked off the section with a PechaKucha slideshow of my interuptation of the article and what it meant to me. When I present, I always present in a way I teach my students so that they can take the technique and use it in their classroom.

PechaKucha means “chit chat” in Japanese. It is a 20×20 presentation format that shows your 20 chosen images, each for 20 seconds. In other words, you’ve got 400 seconds to tell your story, with visuals guiding the way. I use this in many different ways in the classroom and enjoy showcasing the students skills when it’s time to present. Attached is my PechaKucha 20 x 20 article on Find Your Marigold for an example on how I showed the tool.

Then the educators got a chance to have a round table discussion on how they would/could use PechaKucha in their classroom/job. Here’s are some of their ideas!

• -Novel review
• -Get to know you activity in the beginning of the school year/semester
• -Art project (explaining their art work)
• -Main idea and detail of an article
• -Retelling or Summarizing a text or story
• -Classroom/School rules

Then, we got a chance to dive into the article and talk about how important it is to surround yourself with Marigolds and keep those walnuts tree away from you (if you don’t get it… go back and read the amazing article lol).

The educators then asked for a template to use in their classrooms for the PechaKucha, so I made one with directions for you to use as well! It is linked below and all you need to do is share it with your students!

Pecha Kucha Google Slides Template on Teachers Pay Teachers

Comment below how you would use a PechaKucha in the classroom.

-Casey Keyser