Giving Thanks

This post is about recognizing why we are in the building and do the jobs we do and also about those around us that help us and make us keep coming back each day.  For example, I give thanks to my students.  Every day I show up for you. I come to school to see the amazing that you can accomplish and I leave every day with a smile on my face for something awesome you did.

Thanks need to go to the team of teachers that I work with on a daily basis.  Again, I show up for you.  Your efforts do not go unnoticed by the world around you and while not everyone will say thank you, remember why you wanted to be a teacher in the first place.  The thanks in education comes from very subtle things: the student that suddenly remembers that I comes before E, the child that smiles when you hand back that A after they worked so hard with you to bring it up from a C, and the kid that finally listened the first time you asked them to sit down.

I need to thank the families and parents of our students, your support and love for your children allows me to come to work daily feeling supported.  I know that you are sending me your pride and joy.  I take that responsibility very seriously and want to make sure that your child is provided with the best every single day.

There is a long list of people who need to be thanked for the work they do in EVERY school.  But that is not the purpose of this post.  This is very difficult time of the school year.  Not everything that we are doing is going according to plan.  We as a group can get very down on ourselves and start to become frustrated.  However, now is the time we need to recognize everything we have done and take a moment to say thanks...to ourselves.

When was the last time you thanked yourself?  When was the last time you sat back and reflected realizing, that while there is still so much work to be done, the work that we have accomplished is a job well done?  But when was the last time an educator took a moment to thank themselves?  How often do you recognize the work that you do and put value to your own time and effort?

Even as I type, I recognize how smug and arrogant this sounds but the intent is much different.  As educational leaders, we tend to work diligently and selflessly in order to serve those that we work with on a daily basis.  Educators are notoriously hard on themselves when it comes time to reflect, great educators even more so.

See if this sound familiar:

You are sitting in a post observation conference with a teacher and you ask them how they felt about their lesson.  As the teacher talks, the conversation quickly turns to all the aspects of the lesson they felt they could have done differently.

"I know I took too much time on the drill."
"I should have had the students read the directions first."
"I spent 20 minutes reviewing single step equations and I only budgeted for 10 minutes, so we missed the chance to assess at the end of the lesson."

Regardless of how it gets to this point, it is time to shift the conversation.  What did your students learn today?  What did you do well today?  What aspect of teaching did you do better with today compared to the last lesson you taught?

The point is when we work with students, families, and teachers we sometimes need to take a step back and recognize that there is so much more that goes into teaching than just teaching.  We need to recognize the AWESOME!  We need to recognize all the hard work that got us to where we are today, at this moment, and then figure out how we can go further.  We need to thank each other and recognize the awesome in everything each of us has done and what each of us will do to make sure that every child is getting the best.  For they deserve nothing less.


If you haven't noticed yet I try to put some articles in each post that I have found through many excellent digital tools.  The articles for this post are not related to giving thanks but are related instead to persevering through the struggles the mid-fall/winter doldrums.  So while we can give thanks for all the work we have done, these articles are geared towards helping us move forward.

ARTICLES:

Teachers Crying- From England, a point of view from a union secretary.  What I pulled from it is that teaching is difficult work but one must still find time for oneself.

DON'T QUIT- From NPR, the inspiration for this post.

Emotional Resilience- Edutopia article, basically take some time for yourself.

Semper Fi- Article is a bit contradictory to others posted, but this is geared more to the education leaders.  There are two other articles mentioned in it that I have read as well. I always look to fields outside of education for positive influence and innovative ideas.

More Resilience- Another Edutopia article, same author, some more ideas to build one's emotional resilience.

OUR FIRST CHAT #bcps_msm

As promised readers, here are the questions for the very first chat to compliment this blog.  As an administrator, it is important that we keep our students at the front of our minds and that our students are the drivers of the decisions we make.  With that being said, an important idea is to make sure that students are learning.  If students are engaged then learning should be taking place.  Hence:

THE BEST PRACTICE FOR ENGAGING MIDDLE SCHOOL LEARNERS

In all fairness and honesty, I am borrowing some questions from a previous school chat I ran on the topic last year.  I archived some articles related to engagement and motivation on an accompanying blog post here.  Also a short article from ASCD here.  Interesting tool to review engagement.

Here are the rules/procedures for this chat:

1.  This is a slow chat.  Meaning that we will have one question per day for the week Monday-Friday: 10/12-10/16.

2. Use the hashtag #bcps_msm

3. We will use the Q1/A1 system to ask and respond to all questions (e.g Q1: do you like ice cream; A1: Yes)

4. Answer as often as you like and please respond and interact with each other.
5. Use abbreviations as needed: Ss= Students; Ts= Parents; Ps= Parents; Admin= you get the idea.

6. DON'T FORGET THE HAHSTAG #bcps_msm

QUESTIONS:

Q1: How can you tell the level of Ss engagement when entering a classroom?

Q2: What factors in a class will lead to an increase in student engagement?

Q3: How are your most effective teachers engaging students?
Q4: In your own words: describe the difference between observable and internal engagement?

Q5: As a leader, how can we increase the levels of authentic engagement in classrooms?
Q6: How can one monitor student engagement? Part 2: How do you allow teachers to see/observe/witness Ts who are academically engaging a Ss?

Let's keep going

"Don't tell me what you know, show me how you learned it."

Think about that idea.  I would like to take credit for this as an original quote; but, I will leave it open sourced for the time being.  However, let's get back to pondering this idea.  There are other ways to say it the exact same thing. "Give a person to fish, feed them for a day; show a person to fish feed them for a lifetime," and many more.

I am sure that as you read this you have said something similar.  And of course, there is a story.

All those years spent holding the flashlight while working on a car.  Being the "go-for" in the kitchen.  Holding the knot with one finger as we tied up the newspapers for recycling.  Holding the fishing rod perfectly still; making sure the hook doesn't move when tying on the lure.

Those were my jobs growing up.  Yet I know how to change the oil in the car, cook a decent meal, and tie several different knots for different purposes.  That is so weird.  I learned and I didn't even know I was learning.

I wasn't given a piece of paper that explained the finer points of changing 10W40 in a six cylinder engine utilizing synthetic oil every 3,000 miles.  I held the flashlight, eventually I graduated to unscrewing the filter, and finally I could do the whole process.  The process of utilizing a roux to thicken the sauce was not a detailed lecture given prior to completing the task. I was asked to get the flour and butter, then I was asked to measure equal amounts, finally I was able to put it in a pan to get the right color and consistency.

I learned through watching at first then by doing and failing.

Think about it.    The same is true about education.  How many times have you sat in a classroom bored because you are sitting a listening to a lecture?  It could have been a college class, graduate school, or your most recent observed lesson.

But how many classes did you have where you actually did something?  Pulled hydrogen and oxygen from water using a battery and two test tubes, discovered that same side exterior angles are supplementary by staring at two parallel lines that are crossed by a transversal and proving it using GEOMETRY.  These are awesome ways to learn.

Watch.  Try.  Do.  Struggle.  Fail.  Succeed.  LEARN.  Have you ever been in that lesson where you just can't help but get engaged and you find your hand is going up more often than the students'?

It is time that we look to put an end to the listen and learn.  Most kids get bored with that idea by the time they are four:

Let's give our middle school students a bit more respect then "A cow says moo."  Let's look to show them the genus and species of a cow and how they became an integral part of agriculture that led to a the dawn of civilization.  Don't tell them that, show them how to use books and the internet to research that idea.

This will be the topic or our first Twitter Chat for #bcps_msm

Best Practices for Engaging the Middle School Learner

Questions will be posted to this blog soon and then sent out via Twitter.  This will be a #slowEDchat style chat for this first round.  Five questions will be posted on Twitter.  One question each day.  All responses must use the #bcps_msm tag in order to be recorded.  We will then use the tool Storify to organize all of are responses and share with the world.

Start sharing with your peers.  It is time we look to engage our students to prevent them from leaving us: either mentally checking out of school or physically dropping out.

New Beginnings

This blog came from a simple idea.  A quote from Teddy Roosevelt:

"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

This is especially true for students, teachers, parents, and everyone else that has any contact with a school.  You can replace the word "people" with any of the groups mentioned above and it INSTANTLY changes the focus to school.  While this quote holds true for every level of schooling, I feel that it resonates with middle school students most.

There is so much that goes on in middle school.  So many changes that take place with students over these three years.  This time frame is the "critical middle."  Students will determine during this time how they will proceed with their education.  Will they go to college, choose a career, or possibly drop out.  We need to come together to work on keeping students engaged and in school.  We want to see an entire cadre of globally competitive graduates come from our current and future middle school students.

The goal of this new community is to share what we know to become better at what we do.  I have often heard that no teacher is an island.  A teacher shouldn't shut the door, block out the world around them, and teach with blinders on.  Neither should a school.  To have globally competitive graduates, we need to know what various school are doing in order to help each other.  Let's use this to expand our community of learners.

We will use this blog to identify best practices for working with middle school students.  There will be connections to article, sites, and resources.  We will work hard to provide guest articles from various people around our district and beyond.  The hope is to also have interviews with those that have direct impact on the way middle school looks and those that shape policy for middle school students.

This blog will also be a supplement to a new chat for our school district.  For years, I have been itching to get a chat going among administrators and teachers that focuses on best practices in the middle level.  With Twitter becoming such a HUGE aspect of how we communicate and how we can learn, the iron was hot and so the strike has come, and we will now begin to host a chat.

The best part is that we are going to work to make this as interactive as possible.  We will allow our participants to choose how they want to learn.  How often, how long, what topics, etc.

Stay tuned for more information on the new chat #bcps_msm