Tag Archives: learning

My Summer “Vacation” (Learning Never Stops)

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As summer quickly comes to an end I want to reflect on my “vacation”.  I put vacation in quotations because I never had an extended period of recreation.  Don’t get me wrong, my family and I did take a couple of extended trips, but for some reason this summer I never completely disengaged from taking part in meaningful learning experiences.  Usually I’ll set lofty summer goals of curriculum development and course tweaks (sometimes I meet them, sometimes I don’t), and I always participate in a week long seminar related to social studies.

This summer was a little different, no lofty goals, my only real plans were to hang out with my kids.  Then right before school was out I learned about a a Voxer book study on Beyond the Bake Sale by Anne T. Henderson, which discusses the educational benefits to student of having strong parent engagement in the school community.   Since I didn’t have any plans I decided to read the book and join the group.  It was a great experience being able to share ideas and experiences from the book with educators from all across the country.  I really feel that parent engagement is something that as an educator I definitely need to develop, and the lessons that I learned from the group have helped me focus on parent engagement this year.  I have already joined my school’s PTSA, spoken with the PTSA President about engaging with my Leadership class, created a class bi-weekly news letter, and created a parent contact schedule for the school year.  My contact schedule will help me reach my BHAG for this school year.

I also read four other books this summer that have/will impact my classroom this year:

What Great Teachers Do Differently and What Great Principals Do Differently both by Todd Whitaker. I had three take aways from the two books is the importance of learning from the best educators because you want to have those best practices being practiced throughout your school.  Second, education is about people, not programs because the programs are going to come and go, so it really matters how we develop our relationships with the our parents, students and faculty, who aren’t going anywhere.  Finally, it is important to make caring cool.  That goes back to building relationships.  Once your faculty and/or students know you care about them, then they are truly willing to learn from and with you.  We have some amazing teacher leaders in my school and I will continue to pursue positive relationships with them, and take what I learn from them and apply it to my classroom and my relationships with my students.

Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess.  It’s really hard to describe all the amazingness in this book.  If you want to bring high energy into your classroom with Passion, Immersion, Rapport, Asking and Analyzing, and Transformation, you have to check this book out.  I borrowed this one from the library and I wish I hadn’t because I had to use sticky notes throughout the book instead of being able to write in the book.  I’ll say this, my first three days of school are going to look different this year, and I have so many great hooks that we should have a lot of fun and engaging lesson.

Drive by Daniel Pink.  This was the last book I read this summer and one that really got me thinking about how we operate in schools.  Motivation 3.0 is the operating system of the present and is really going to shape a lot more of the activities that I do in my classroom.  I’m going to do a have my students set a performance goal and a learning goal for this school year, then on back-to-school night have the parents set their own performance and learning goal for their students.  After the parents have written their goals I am going to show them what their students wrote as their goals.  My goal is to help start a meaningful conversation between parents and students about how the students will learn and grow throughout the school year.  Going back to the Beyond the Bake Sale ideas of parent engagement.

Well, I think I learned a lot this summer and I can’t wait to continue this coming Monday by teaching what I’ve learned, reflecting on the successes and failures, growing my strategies from what I learn, and repeating the process.

 

 

Finding Your Purpose

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Finding our purpose.  I think that is what our journey through life and education is all about.  As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, many feel that the purpose of school is to get good grades, to get into the right college, to get the right job to earn the right amount of money.  But personally, I think that the purpose of school and education in general is to help students to develop the skills necessary to be successful once they find their purpose in life.  Once you get to high school students are required to take a number of core courses (English, math, science, social studies, and foreign languages) and have flexibility with elective options as well.  Each course helps with critical thinking, reading, writing, and speaking skills, all of which are necessary for college and career readiness, and hopefully we as educators can expose our students to something that moves them closer to fulfilling their purpose.  Now I know that purpose isn’t the school’s primary mission and that students can find their purpose in many different places outside of the four walls of the school, and many do not find that purpose until many years after their academic careers are over, but I think we play a critical role in the search.

With all that said I began a tradition several years ago of reading an excerpt of Tony Dungy’s book Uncommon that specifically addresses this topic of purpose, Chapter 14, Career, Work, and Money.  The chapter begins with a quote from the late Hall of Fame Coach Chuck Noll, “The mercenaries will always beat the draftees, but the volunteers will crush them both.”  I use this quote as a warm up to get the students thinking about the effectiveness of each group when it comes to accomplishing their mission.  Obviously the person that is intrinsiclly motivated to do the job will to the best, because the money will only take you so far in the case of the mercenary and as for the draftee, they’re just doing what they need to do to survive. The chapter goes on to discuss loving what you do as opposed to picking a career based on the money you can make because money “isn’t really a good measure of what’s best for you.” I hope I model this philosophy in my classroom and life, and that my students can remember these lessons as they continue to pursue their purpose.

Positive Outlook

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The other day a colleague asked me, “So how did you like your experience with PBIS?” I am finishing my first year as our school’s co-coordinator for PBIS and it has been a very enlightening experience to say the least. I told him, “It’s been pretty interesting. I really enjoy interacting and building relationships with students and parents that I don’t get to teach, but unfortunately I’ve spent way too much time addressing discipline with instead of rewarding the positives. I’ve identified some areas to improve and we’ll get better next year.” “That’s a really positive outlook,” he responded.

Of course I have a positive outlook, why wouldn’t I, I thought. Then I remembered, yeah we’ve got two weeks left in the school year as a result of eight snow days and just about everyone (students, teachers, and administrators included) are running on fumes. It’s tough, but there are still quite a few folks with a positive attitude.  The vast majority though are positively ready for the school year to be over. Then I thought a little more, we as educators have an awesome opportunity and responsibility to be positive. As we finish the school year I am reflecting on the failures and successes that have resulted in extraordinarily positive growth by my students and myself. I saw students who were unfamiliar with sourcing a document at the beginning of the year who now can explain how a sources’ point of view and bias impacts the author’s reliability. I’ve seen students struggle to remember to turn assignments in, who now ask if they can turn their work in early.  I saw vast amounts of immature behavior develop into reliable and respectable behavior.  Personally I saw a stunning amount of growth as well.  I am in a full evaluation year under the Charlotte Danielson Framework, and had to gather evidence last week to prove my effectiveness as a teacher.  After my experience last year going through the same process and receiving feedback from my administrators, I committed myself to improving this year.  I have to say, my results showed a tremendous amount of growth from last year to this year.

That’s right I have a positive outlook!  This year was not without struggles and setbacks, but my students moved forward,  I moved forward, and I positively cannot wait to continue the journey this summer and in to next school year.

Your High School Experience

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Two years ago, during the transition between activities in class, I overhead a student talking to a classmate and she said, “School is all about getting good grades, not about learning.”  The comment really struck me.  I’m not sure what I had going on at the time, but I saw this as a teachable moment that I just couldn’t let pass.  Every single day I see students that are stressed out because of their workload and the pressure that they feel to get the grade, so they can get into the right school, to earn the right amount of money, and the cycle continues year-after-year.

Our education system is in a bad place when our families are only focused on GPA, when there are so many more factors that produce “college and career ready” young adults.  Yes, the grades and classes tell a big part of the story, but they do not tell the whole story of a students’ effort, commitment, character, etc.  I just got my son’s elementary school report card, and yes it is good to see his progress in each of the content areas, but what I value most as a parent is his learning behaviors, which are a separate section on his report card.

These learning behaviors are a great indicator of a student’s potential to be successful in the classroom, on the job or in the community.  Behaviors like:  Recognizing the rights of others with courtesy; follows established rules; exercises self-control; works cooperatively with others; takes appropriate risks; Listens attentively; Responds appropriately to directions; Persists when thinking through problems; Works with accuracy and precision; Writes legibly; and Completes classwork assignments.  I am not a college admissions officer, member of a scholarship committee, or hiring manager at a company, but if I were, I would be looking for the high school graduates that show a pattern of outstanding learning behaviors.  I want the young men and women that show respect for others, have self-control, can work with others, are willing to take reasonable risks, and persist through difficult challenges.

School is about learning.  School is about learning and developing the behaviors that are necessary to be productive citizens.  Students develop those learning behaviors through the coursework that they complete in school and often the only visible representation of their learning is a letter grade.  It is my personal goal as an educator to help my students understand that they are much more than a GPA or standardized exam grade.  They are the learning behaviors that they display daily.