When you're stuck at home these days, information overload is a feeling that likely comes your way every so often. Work, news, social media and the like can all contribute to that feeling. To that effect, I have seen quite a few different takes on our current situation. People quoting the "and the people stayed home" work by Kitty O'Meara to God taking away. the things we worshiped because they were the wrong things. The latter of the two has really rubbed me the wrong way as a believer; I do not believe in a punitive God but a God of mercy and compassion. But fortunately, that sentiment (one where things have been taken by God) also really gotten me to think about what we're to make of all this. It seems to me like this less about something being taken away, a punitive viewpoint, and more about the fact that we all just got a new pair of glasses.
We've all gotten our new pair of glasses, but their not the same pair. We got the pair that fit us the best, the ones that make a style statement unique to who we are. Not only did we not get the same frames, we've all got different prescription lenses too. Everything about our glasses is different, but yet we all have the same outcome. We can see what we need to see better; what WE need to see better, not what others need to see better. Maybe we're getting a clearer view of what matters most to us. Maybe now we can see that some things are not what they appear to be.Maybe we were farsighted and the thing we needed to see the most was right in front of us the whole time. Maybe we were nearsighted and thought the grass had to be greener out there on the horizon. What are you seeing now that you didn't see before? I will share with you a few of mine. I'm seeing that while discipline is never something to "enjoy" I'm wondering what's going to happen to the kid who could have learned through school consequences but now won't get the chance to make that mistake at school? Will he make that mistake somewhere else in life where there are less forgiving outcomes? I'm seeing that we can still teach kids, feed kids, talk to kids and much more in this new virtual learning environment; in fact, we can do all but one thing that we normally do on a daily basis. What is that one thing? We can't be physically present. It's amazing what that the one element brings to the table in an educators world. I'm learning that my journey as a teacher wasn't complete when I became an Assistant Principal. To go with that I am learning that I would be a mediocre first or second grade teacher at best. More over, I am certified in both. In trying to teach my own kids
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I've been getting a lot of questions from non-educator friends about this brand new "homeschool" journey we're all about to embark on together. The central question I get is "what should I be doing to make sure my child doesn't fall behind?" I am going to tell you all the same thing I have told everyone that has asked me that question: "You're likely already doing it." So what is this it that you are likely doing? Simple, you're actively teaching and showing your child how you handle and overcome adversity. Truthfully, life hasn't given us a moment this "teachable" since at least September 11, 2001 and almost every school age child today was not alive on that fateful day. So let me let you in on a little secret and don't tell anyone I told you this: no amount of knowledge regurgitation performed in a school or any other setting could ever achieve the same amount of learning that's taking place right now. Your child is learning that even in the most advanced world we've ever known, at least until tomorrow comes, there are always going to be challenges that pull the parking brake on us while we're full speed ahead. To use a card game analogy, we've just gone "all in" on a game of blackjack (because we were on a roll) and been dealt the 2 of clubs and the 3 of diamonds. Even more, when we look across the table the dealer has the King of Spades showing. We're going to have to play a tough hand and find a way to win. In a world were people named Alexa, Siri and a host of others can answer most of life's questions simply by asking, don't stress about whether your child would have been better served by just 1 more homework problem or 5 more spelling words. Oh, you've got an older child? Use this new found break to checkout wolframalpha.com if you don't already know about it. Spoiler alert: not only will it solve your calculus problems, it will show you how to show your work as well.
You know what any those tools won't do? They won't teach you how to handle your emotions when you've been stuck inside for 7 days (and counting). You'll never gain the newfound appreciation for human interaction from them. Most importantly, no device, homework assignment, quiz, test or project will be of any use to you compared to the emotional intelligence these moments are bound to teach you. So relax. You're already doing it. You're giving your child the greatest lesson in education just by helping them through another one of life's uncharted waters. Teach your child that they when they've got the 2 of clubs and 3 of diamonds it's a guarantee that they can take another card and not bust. Yes have them read, have them do what the school sends you to do. Those things are important but they're true value will never be realized without this opportunity to develop some grit. Like most things in life, you don't ever seem to feel you need it until the stakes get high. And when those stakes get high, you'll be amazed by the fact that you can't battle your emotions while persevering with the knowledge you've gotten along the way. Even if this goes on for sometime and on the off-chance your child does develop a gap during that time, recovery will be easy if they've got that burning desire to overcome. Let's get straight to the point: this may well be our finest hour. Yes, the challenges are there, the challenges are real, and they are scary. We can do it. We always do. Above all, take a minute to view this through the lens of opportunity.
Fortune favors the bold and we will have to be bold. Many of us are looking at completely reimagining school as we know it in less time than it took Daniel-san to paint the fence in the movie Karate Kid It's a challenge that, when we've met it, history will remember us well for.
On May 2, 2018 the Harvard Business Review, one of my favorite publications for reading, published an article by Ulrich Boser entitled Learning is a Learned Behavior. Here's How to Get Better at It. The article points out that contrary to our popular belief, learning is not necessarily linked to intelligence. It also points to emerging research that shows with practice and strategy, anyone can get better at learning, just like anything else you practice.
This has huge applications for a classroom, namely that our ability to learn can be treated just like our ability to throw a football, dribble a basketball, ride a bike or write something for publication. It can get better with practice. The real question is, why don't we treat learning like a behavior? Why do we still treat it, and more importantly account for it, like it's skill acquisition. Is there more value in a "test" than in a metacognitive reflection on a specific idea, concept or problem? If we're going to be tied to grades, shouldn't we at least place as much value on a metacognitive reflection as we do a regurgitation of a practiced set of steps or historical facts? As Boser articulates so eloquently in this article "The issue, then, is not that something goes in one ear and out the other. The issue is that individuals don't dwell on the dwelling. They don't push themselves to really think about their thinking." Finally the article describes how important a moment of "silent introspection" is to learning. With out quiet reflection we miss that opportunity to really wrestle with our understandings, perceptions, biases and takeaways. A moment of silence can't be underestimated or undervalued in terms of how we get better at learning. Learning is learned behavior. You can (and should) practice it. If we want to really get serious about closing gaps, eliminating disproportionality and all of the other issues we face in classrooms today we better start holding learning practices as religiously as we hold sports practices. In 1991, Rick Astley, a British pop singer released the song Cry For Help. The song was number one on the Billboard Adult Contemporary charts and peaked at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. I heard this song on the radio a few weeks ago and the song really struck me, but particularly, five lines from that song really stood out: Why must we hide emotions Why must we never breakdown and cry All that I need is to cry for help Somebody please hear me cry for help All I can do is cry for help Those words are very profound when it comes to finding our opportunities in life. Think about the way we have all been conditioned more and more over time to just bottle everything up. Maybe even more so, think about how many times we’ve taken someone else's opportunities away by conditioning others to bottle everything up; to keep many of our deepest struggles to ourselves because we just don’t believe that anyone else cares. Unfortunately, many of us are as guilty of thinking nobody cares as we are projecting the exact same thoughts to others. I will be honest, that includes me. For a long time I would have been the first one to complain about a Facebook Post or Tweet that had what I referred to as “the familiar symptoms of whining.” It took a long time for me to come around from that way of thinking. The truth, I discovered, is that much of what I thought was that “familiar whining” was really just someone’s way of saying that they need help.
We often times are both part of the conditioning and the ones being conditioned to bottle so much up inside of us. The thing this limits more than anything is opportunity. We’ve already talked about the role that people play in finding opportunity and they play an equal role in diminishing opportunities from appearing if not careful. If you find yourself in this situation, bottling up things best not left inside, so consumed by emotional baggage and wondering when things are going to get going in the right direction, it’s time to cry for help. Open up, be vulnerable and above admit to yourself and the world around you that things are not exactly as they may seem on this hard outer shell you’ve created. The odds are that someone you know has been there too. They may be the key to your next opportunity in life. Conversely, you may be the key to their next opportunity. As we talked about earlier in the book, opportunity does not exist in solitude or singularity. “Who Am I that someone would want to help me?” “Don’t you know that people look to me to be strong, I can’t be asking for help.” These are just some of the thoughts that tend to flow through our heads on a frequent basis. Things are very rarely what they seem. Once upon a time we would have associated this as an issue for men much more so than women. From at least the 1950’s (and probably even long before that) up through the early part of the 2000’s there was a prevailing sentiment that men shouldn’t be and weren’t in touch with their emotions. “Real men don’t cry.” The perceived weakness of asking for help seems live within the eye of the beholder than the casual observer of any given situation. What stands out to me even more than the fact that we are often the ones to convince ourselves that we need to just suck it up, we almost never notice the person standing in plain sight, wondering if they need to offer support. The by-product of the way we are so timid and afraid of asking for help is that we’ve done the exact same thing with being willing to offer help. You might say that our lack of willingness to ask for help is impeding others opportunity. Think about a recent struggle, one where you likely could have asked for help but chose not to. You’ve probably heard a thousand times over about how everyone will struggle in life; the peaks and valleys analogy. Your struggles will make you stronger once you’ve overcome them and quite a bit has been written regarding that idea. The piece that seems to be missing is the opportunity that comes other peoples way when you seek out help during your struggle. Many times our stories create the greatest impact when we share them with someone asking for help, someone who needs strength and courage in a difficult time. Seeking out help from someone can create two opportunities at the exact same time. The first is an opportunity for someone to find that piece of encouragement, strength, belief in themselves or whatever they needed to face a challenge. The other opportunity is for the person providing that strength. Think of what simply allowing them to pour into you does for them. It could be the first time in a long time that this person realizes the true value in what they have to offer. It could be a chance for someone who has yearned for so long to be less introverted but never really knew where to begin. It could be the first time that someone got to truly experience the true joy of giving. Whatever the case, keeping your need for help bottled up inside might not only squander an opportunity for you, it might squander an opportunity for someone else at the same time. As a school administrator, I go to quite a few classrooms. A few years ago, something started to rub me the wrong way. I thought I was doing a great job. I was going to multiple classrooms every day and observing what was going on. I was taking data, lots of data about what I observed. We used the data to inform our instructional practices; according to my job description I was on-point. What was bothering me though was how robotic I felt in my classroom visits. Checking to see if lesson objectives were posted, documenting whether or not technology was being used, looking for Schlechty's design qualities, and checking for what level of Bloom's the students were engaged in always left me wanting more from my classroom visits. Visiting classrooms and collecting data will always be a part of my job and for good reason, it's a valuable tool. I just didn't want it to be what kids remembered about my visits to the classroom. It just so happened that a teacher at my school asked me a pretty simple question that has ultimately paid huge dividends. She merely wanted to know if I would be willing to share an experience with her class. The experience? Adopting my daughter from China. She's a Family and Consumer Sciences teacher and the story fit her curriculum. I was honored and took her up on it. I've been doing it for years now and across multiple campuses. It's really helped me in two very important ways. The first is being able to reconnect with what it was to be a teacher. As an administrator, you should never lose sight of what it was like to be in the classroom. The second, it helps you build relationships with kids in an authentic setting. Kids got to see me pull back layers and be me in a very human way. Finally, it led to one of the best compliments that I have ever gotten from a student. I've posted it below (with the students permission, of course): Visiting classrooms is great but don't be afraid to engage in a classroom. Get up there, teach, tell a story or whatever else you can do. It's a great we to live out your purpose and inspire someone else along the way.
Excitement, hope, and eagerness are just some of the adjectives of a new school year approaching. While I certainly experience many of these same emotions, this time of year usually brings me deep thought and reflection. Today is no different. For many years now we've been hearing about the need to innovate our practice. If you've been in education for any amount of time you've heard this. Our education system is dated and was created to support an economy that no longer exists.
Today I heard a great conceptual idea from Tony Wagner. He suggested that schools invest money in Research and Design. It's ok, I probably would have rolled my eyes at this several years ago as well. I get it, budgets are tight, the needs of the kids make it tough to think about reallocating funds to such an undertaking and much of the research is done without schools having to invest a penny (not really, but more on that in a minute). There's also the underlying feeling that such a position would be nothing more than an expedited way to filter central office initiatives down to the campus level. They're all very valid concerns. Any significant change doesn't come without a reason to be concerned and/or cautious. It's the gains I believe a school district would make that make this a valid undertaking. First of all, think of how much a school district spends on purchasing the work of the research that's already been done. Think of the speakers that are paid to come, the books that are bought to be read. The list could go on. What if a school was creating all of this (and more) on their own? Not only would it pay for itself, but it would also change the daily climate and eventually the culture. Work for us (and our students), by us and because of us. Work, research and design that's tailored to what we need in the here and now. Who knows, it just might lead to some great exposure for your district on top of all the other benefits. It might not take much. Simply having a "Director of Innovation" with the ability to connect and work with all professionals from across an entire school district looking for ways to innovate our practices. "What could replace a faculty meeting?" What impact is "X" having on our students?" "How do staff feel about..." You could devote days with teachers to travel to multiple campuses in search of great and innovative practices or creating networks of district-wide PLC's You could also utilize this structure to connect to your community in ways you haven't before. Connect with businesses, community governments, and others to showcase what your students are doing in school and see if it's truly meeting the real-world application threshold. You could also get great ideas on what it is these community partners are doing daily to further the authenticity of your curriculum. I am certain that the possibilities for this are far greater than anything I could illustrate in any single blog post. Each summer we ask our employees to invest some time in R&R and we're better off for it. The same would be true if we invested in some R&D. I read quite a bit, but I likely don't read the way most people read. I'm not into Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Tom Clancy, Stephen King, John Grisham or anything else in the fiction world. I read for information with the occasional non-fiction book about an obscure President mixed in. One thing that I've found to be true in reading, a good idea is a good idea that can have implications in so many different ways, not just the context it was originally contrived in. If you've been in education for any length of time you've probably heard some iteration of the idea that the business world and education world are two industries that just can't compare to one another. While it's true that you wouldn't run a for profit business the exact same way as you would a school (or vice versa), but it's time we stopped the ignorance of thinking we have nothing to learn from one another. One of my favorite reads is Inc. Magazine at www.inc.com (pictured above). It's a periodical that would typically be subscribed to by entrepreneurs and corporate workers. I am guessing there are not many educators that read this at all. It's a shame too because I find some great articles there. The best part about my reading in on inc.com is it makes me think. I don't always agree with everything I read and sometimes, it's written for a business audience so I really have think about practical applications for the school setting.
Above all, it's shown me that businesses are really looking to do a lot of the same things that we in education are currently trying to do. They're looking for ways to get actionable feedback. They're trying to find out how to appraise their employees job performance outside of the traditional "annual review" or "observation." They're looking to become more efficient and expand their impact. I could list so many more. My point is that as we continue to talk about business and education as if we're fighting two very different battles on two very different continents. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I said in the beginning, a good idea is a good idea. Yes, sometimes we might have to tweak the implementation but doesn't that require what we're trying to teach kids to do right now? If we're not willing to open up to new ideas and think critically about them it's going to be hard to convince students to do the same; not to mention the "hypocrite" t-shirts we'll all need to buy. This is the part of the school year where the pace really picks up. Our hard and fast deadline known as the last day of school is quickly approaching. While you channel your inner Olaf and sing "A drink in my hand, my snow up against the burning sand probably getting gorgeously tanned in summer" the back of your mind is also likely nagging at you about all that is left to do as well.
One thing that I've found this time of year lends itself to is asking the questions that start with "I wonder why we...?" This is a great time of year to keep a list of those questions. It's often in our frantic final sprint of the school year that we find ourselves debating the merits behind whether or not something needs to go forward for years to come. Keeping a list of these things will really help you when you begin to look at next year. I am big proponent that every year you ought to be able to either take something off of your plate all together or, at least be able to make sure that some things don't occupy as much space on your plate as you go forward. This is the time of year when those seeds are planted. Keep tabs on them and then, take action on them going into the next year. When I was a coach we called this phenomenon "Addition by Subtraction." The idea is simple; we get better by either taking something or drastically reducing our reliance on it. In coaching, you learn quickly that the size of your playbook has little to do with your success. If you can't run one play then you won't do very well with fifty of them. The same is true for us in education. Quick side note, you'll have to pardon the Olaf reference. We just returned from 7 days at Disney World and while my physical body has made it home my sanity remains between the doldrums of lost luggage and the human reprogramming the Disney has mastered over 50 years. Good luck in the home-stretch everyone. I hinted at this in my last post. I am not even sure that I fully understand what I want to convey with this post, so please accept my apologies for my "published" rough draft.
Every teacher I know works hard at their craft. They are trying to create new and exciting lessons for their students. We're all well aware that the days of writing a lesson and implement it for the next 10 (or maybe more) years are gone and with good reason. We've done a great job of making education more exciting, more engaging and much more about the learning than compliance. Why then do we feel like we're bumping up against the ceiling when it comes to innovating our practice? I will submit to you that if you want innovative lessons then it's time we innovate the lesson planning process. As I wrote in my last post "Do something innovative like plan WITH your students, not for your students." I think that this is a starting place for just about anyone and everyone. I am hesitant to outline too many other steps because I have always been a firm believer in the idea that what works for you may not work for me. The inverse would also be true. You are a professional. You know what your kids need, what works for them and what meets them where they're at. What I will say is that it's time to think long and hard about the conditions in which we lesson plan. Including kids in the planning process is just one idea. What if we stopped sitting around in groupings that are homogenous by subject area when we plan? Another idea, what if we put our teacher work days in the middle of the school year, so we could have entire days during the school year to make the adjustments we need to make to the ever-changing needs of our students? There could be an infinite list of ideas to try. The bottom line, changing what you do is hard if you never change how you do it. |
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January 2020
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