When you consider the people in your life who have had the greatest impact, chances are a teacher makes the list. I have many teachers who are unforgettable...some for what they taught me, some for the care they showed me, some for making me feel special, some for pushing me hard, holding me to high expectations and helping me succeed. I have others who are unforgettable unfortunately for a negative reason. I had a teacher who never planned or prepared for class, and even at a young age, I knew he was wasting my time. I had a few teachers (thankfully not many) who were so negative and made no attempt to connect with their students. I can remember the teacher who spent most of the hour sitting at his desk and not paying attention to the students who were doing nothing or cheating or goofing around. I wanted a safe place to learn. I can remember those classrooms that felt very safe and those that did not due to the behaviors that were allowed or the attitude of the teacher in the room.
I remember awaiting anxiously to get a paper or project back from the teacher and being so excited to see the comments about my work. That feedback was as important as the content I was learning.
I have thought a great deal lately about how in the world are we to ever compete with the world of technology and video games that we now live. How can we keep our students engaged for long periods of time when we are using a book or notebook and not a joystick or monitor? I believe that one way is to provide quality feedback. Think about the feedback our kids get from video games. It is constant, timely. It happens right after they complete the level or even after making a wrong move. If they screw up, they get to start over and try again. I'm not proposing that we begin to teach like a video game, but I am suggesting that perhaps we could learn a thing or two from the gamers handbook. Kids have to know it is okay to try and maybe fail and need to start over. Our kids who know how to reach the highest levels in a game started off failing at level one or two and then trying again and again.
Please consider what impact you are leaving on the lives you touch every day. Know that they thrive on your feedback and depend on you to guide them and encourage them and challenge them every day. What feedback are you giving your students? It is this feedback that allows learning to happen and for students to "move to the next level."
I heard a message recently about being a "Person of Excellence" and what that means. The speaker explained that in order to be a person of excellence, we do not accept the status quo or less than our best in all that we do. He also talked about the fact that we all represent something far greater than ourselves in all that we do. He used the example of being in a grocery store and deciding part way through the store that you don't really want that box of cereal after all. He explained that a person of excellence doesn't just put the box of cereal on the shelf next to the laundry detergent. He said that when walking down a sidewalk, a person of excellence doesn't just walk by the piece of paper blowing on the ground. He said that a person of excellence doesn't let him or her self become negative, treat others with disrespect, use language that is unflattering, or even allow his or her appearance to be sloppy.
I have thought about this message many times, and have had to remind myself in the grocery store when I decided I didn't want that box of cereal. Just yesterday, it would have been much faster to set the cereal on the shelf next to the salad dressing, but I took time to walk to the cereal isle and put it right back where I had picked it up to begin with. I almost convinced myself that there are people who get paid to reorganize the shelves, but then I remembered that we should all strive to be a person of excellence in all that we do and everywhere we are.
Then I started thinking about our school, our staff and our kids. How can we use this message at Parma Elementary School? Are we a school of excellence, are we teachers of excellence, are we helping our kids be students of excellence, am I a principal of excellence? What does this look like? As a school, do we represent #ParmaPROUD, #WSDPanthers, #TeamJXN? Some things seem so simple, like being in the hallway in the morning to greet our kids, walking in the hallway, saying thank you, having lessons planned out and ready, being prepared, being on time (I'm working on it.). Some days it would be easy to stay in my office to finish some things up, or to stay in your room to finish when kids start coming in at the beginning of the day, but is that being a principal or teacher of excellence? Are we being a staff of excellence in our collaboration with each other, during our PLC time and RTI meetings?
How can we share this message with our kids? How can we help them become people of excellence? I think the first way is for us to model this for them. We need to talk to our students about what this means. We also need to hold students to high expectations and hold them accountable. It starts with the little things. Every assignment they do, encourage them to look at it, does it display excellence and represent who they are? Are they treating each other with kindness? I challenge you to remind yourself to become a "person of excellence." Does the lesson you are teaching represent a "teacher of excellence"? Let us help each of our kids be a person of excellence, but let it begin with us! Let's create a school of excellence in all that we do. As Patsy Clairmont stated in the video we watched during our opening staff meeting, AIM HIGH!
This Week At a Glance:
Sunday, September 13: Happy Birthday Colleen White
Monday, September 14: NWEA Assessment Testing Begins
Tuesday, September 15: Kindergarten Readiness Testing with ISD
Wednesday, September 16: First Early Release and Assembly with Grades 4 and 5.
Thursday, September 17: County Principal Meeting 7:45a.m.
School Board Meeting 6:30 p.m.
Friday, September 18: Fire Drill a.m.
Saturday, September 19: Happy Birthday Sarah Walter
I have been reading a book about medicine, about surgeons and doctors and about performance in the field of medicine. The book is called, Better by Atul Gawande. Why would an educator want to read a book about doctors and medicine? This is what the back of the book states, "The struggle to perform well is universal: each of us faces fatigue, limited resources, and imperfect abilities in whatever we do. Nowhere is this drive to do better more important than in medicine, where lives may be on the line with any decision." This struck me as we are also always seeking to do better in education. We face the same struggles of fatigue, limited resources, and imperfect abilities. And along with the field of medicine, our field of education also has lives and futures at stake. We are constantly seeking ways to improve, ways to reach (cure) every child, and how to constantly get "better".
The book is filled with stories of specific patients. One story is about a woman being treated in the hospital but with no real diagnosis. Gawande was a resident taking care of her while a senior resident kept a close eye on her and continued to check on her. The senior resident ended up catching and treating what could have been a life threatening condition. "Because he checked on her, she survived." He checked her temperature, her blood pressure, her oxygen flow, etc. He performed "formative assessments" in order to inform his diagnosis and treatment.
From this case Gawande stated, "What does it take to be good at something in which failure is so easy, so effortless? When I was a student and then a resident, my deepest concern was to become competent. But what that senior resident had displayed that day was more than competence - he grasped not just how a pneumonia generally evolves and is properly treated but also the particulars of how to catch and fight one in that specific patient, in that specific moment, with the specific resources and people he had at hand." We know that not every child responds the same way to instruction. If they did, our jobs would be so much easier. Not every child will respond the same to any given instructional strategy. Some students will grasp the concept the first time around. Others will require reteaching or interventions before they get it. And some students may require a completely different approach before they understand the concept. "What does it take to be good at something in which failure is so easy, so effortless?" It would be easy to teach it once and move on.....effortless. It would be easy to assume our instruction worked the first time without checking the temperature, blood pressure, oxygen flow of each student to make sure our course of instruction was working.
Formative assessments are crucial to the success of every student. I know this year has been a frustrating year to say the least with assessments. NWEA and MSTEP testing has and will continue to take a great deal of time in our classrooms. Most importantly are the formative assessments that we need to be giving throughout all lessons. A check for understanding, a pulse, of each student in order to determine next steps and interventions needed before moving on. There is compelling research that says that frequent formative assessments improve student achievement for all students. Our PLC focus should continue to be spent discussing common formative assessments. If this is not happening during your grade level time, what is being discussed that has more value?
Read this final passage from Gawande's book and replace medicine with education. I'm sure you will see the correlations I see:
"In medicine, lives are on the line. Our decisions and omissions are therefore moral in nature. We also face daunting expectations. In medicine, our task is to cope with illness and to enable every human being to lead a life as long and free of frailty as science will allow. The steps are often uncertain. The knowledge to be mastered is both vast and incomplete. Yet we are expected to act with swiftness and consistency, even when the task requires marshaling hundreds of people - from laboratory technicians to the nurses on each change of shift to the engineers who keep the oxygen supply system working - for the care of a single person. We are also expected to do our work humanely, with gentleness and concern. It's not only the stakes but also the complexity of performance in medicine that makes it so interesting and, at the same time, so unsettling."
So, what does it take to be good at something in which failure is so easy, so effortless? Teaching a lesson and moving on would be easy. Assuming they all got it...effortless. "Better" requires the time to assess and inform instruction based on results. "Better" requires professional development and seeking ways to grow and improve. "Better" requires that we take a look at our instructional practice and strategies against the assessment data to determine if what we are doing is working. Shame on the doctor who continues a course of treatment when the vitals are not improving and symptoms are not decreasing.
Let us refocus on our common formative assessments so that our kids will get BETTER!!!
There are three stands to the nurtured heart approach. Stand 1: Refuse to Energize Negativity, Stand 2: Relentlessly Energize the Positive, and Stand 3: Clearly but Un-energetically Enforce Limits. Previous blogs have highlighted stands 1 and 2. Let's dig into and really look at what Stand 3 means in this post:
The premise of stand 3 is to set clear limits and provide clear, unenergized consequences. It is also about providing a true consequence, without looking the other way. And, when a rule is broken, allow the child to reset and be welcomed back with forgiveness. This reset needs to be brief with no lectures, warnings, explanations of why. This creates the result we want in the moment which is to get the child to pause while breaking a rule so that he/she can get back to greatness. I think that perhaps the most important words in this are "clear" and "unenergized". When a rule is broken or a child is disrespectful, it can be difficult not to give energy with the consequence. Simply talking too much about the behavior or the consequence is giving too much energy. If the rules have been made clear, and the consequence for breaking a rule are consistent, the child already knows and doesn't need a long lecture or discussion. "Here are the rules, and here's what happens when you break a rule."
Just as important as being clear and not giving energy to the reset is welcoming the child back with forgiveness. We need to acknowledge that the child has come back to greatness and is ready to move forward. All students need to be held to high expectations of behavior, and all students are held accountable to consistent rules and expectations. This needs to be and can be done in a nurturing way if we are going to help our students grow in appropriate choices and grow in their greatness. When the child resets, make sure to welcome him/her back and recognize them in the moment. "Welcome back", and then 30-60 seconds later, find a moment to honor that student for making a change in the behavior. "Thank you for working quietly" "Thank you for raising your hand" "I love the way you are focusing on the assignment" "You are really using your time wisely"........
Are you practicing the following:
1. I will have intentional clarity in my rules and expectations.
2. I will always provide a true consequence, without looking the other way.
3. When a rule is broken, I will allow the child to reset and be welcomed back with forgiveness.
Over Christmas Break, I was able to do some reading and watch a few movies. Every now and then something will strike me in a book or a movie or something I watched on TV. It seemed that happened over and over again during the last few weeks. Needless to say, I thought a great deal about our school and our kids and our staff. I'd like to share some of these thoughts with you:
Let's start with the Spartans: If you missed the Cotton Bowl game, you missed a come from behind win by MSU. After the game, Coach Dantonio and a couple players were interviewed. Please watch the video below for some great highlights, but especially listen to the interviews at the end. (Interview starts at 5 min.)
Coach Dantonio credits the outstanding football team and the come from behind win to 3 things: Grit, Guts and Belief in Each Other. Grit: courage and resolve; strength of character Guts: personal courage and determination; toughness of character Belief (in Each Other): trust, faith or confidence in something or someone
Each player had to depend on the teammates around them to do their job. As a team, they didn't give up. They hung on to their mission of being a winning football team.
Over break, I read Laura Hilenbrand's Unbroken. What an amazing story of resilience and the power of the human spirit. If you are unfamiliar with the story, it is about Louie Zamperini, an olympian and American World War II prisoner of war survivor. There is more than one section in the book where grit, guts and a belief in each other kept these men alive. Prior to becoming a POW, Louie was a bombardier on a B24 aircraft. Each man had a job to do on the aircraft. Each job was critically
important. Each man had to depend on and have confidence in the other men on the aircraft to perform their jobs to the best of their ability. They survived many combat missions due to how well they worked together as a team and the success at which each man performed his own job. I don't want to give too much of the book away, but know that grit, guts and belief are seen throughout!
I watched the movie, "When The Game Stands Tall", a movie based on a true story of a football team on a 151 game winning streak. Here is the movie trailer: ( I bought the movie if you would like to borrow it.)
The coach in the movie often tells his team that he is not after a perfect game, but he always expects a "perfect effort" from each player. He stresses the importance of being dependable and being someone who others can depend on to give a perfect effort every play, every game. Grit, Guts and Belief also play a huge role in this film and in the success of this team.
So, what do grit, guts and belief in each other have to do with Parma Elementary? I believe they have everything to do with our school, our staff and our kids. I believe these are traits we need to instill in and teach our students.
It takes grit and guts to try new things, to be creative, to share ideas, to be willing to learn and continue growing as an educator. I knot that it takes grit and guts to just make it to 3:30 some days.
And, if we didn't believe in each other and know that we are each giving a perfect effort on our part in educating our kids and making our school the best place it can possibly be, we couldn't be successful as a staff. Our first grade teachers have to believe that our kindergarten teachers are giving a perfect effort to make sure every kindergartener is ready for the next level. Our fourth grade teachers have to believe in our third grade teachers and trust that when those students enter their rooms next year, they will be ready. I have to know that when a student gets on the bus at the end of the day, he/she will be treated with respect and cared for and kept safe. When students head to the lunchroom or to the playground, we know that they will be greeted with a smile, treated respectfully, corrected when necessary with kindness, and nurtured along the way. I can walk out of the office, and not worry for one second that we are in good hands in the front office. Everything there is handled with a perfect effort every day. So, how important is this belief in each other. I feel that it is crucial to our success. Being dependable and knowing that we can count on each other to do our jobs with a perfect effort makes all the difference in our school community.
I ask you to have grit and guts and a belief in each other. Take risks and share with each other. Be creative, try new things, don't give up, ever! I ask you to consider, are you dependable and are you giving a perfect effort every day? Imagine if a perfect effort is given every day by every one! Some days this will take a great deal of Grit and Guts and Belief in each other. I know our kids need it!
