What are YOU doing for others?

by | Jan 19, 2014 | Reflect

Make sure the day off school on Monday, that many of us around the US have, isn’t just about a day off of school. It’s a reminder, from our past, that we are all here to do something. Ask your students, staff, and each other, what that something is.

Thanks to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for the great quote, and great reminder.

What We Assume Is Innate

by | Jan 19, 2014 | Reflect

There are things we assume.  I did this in my classroom.  A lot.   It’s probably called the “Blame Game,” but I like to call it being blinded by the things I thought I learned in college.

“These kids won’t work together.”  I would say it a lot.  I would provide them these opportunities I had carefully planned out, and then I’d be disappointed that the collaboration and cooperation I’d planned for would never unfold.  I blamed them.

I should have blamed myself.  I had never given them the foundation for collaboration.  The community.  The team building.  The pieces where they learn each other’s personalities, appreciating the intricacies of each strength and weakness they bring to the table.  I was rolling them around like marbles in a jar, wondering why they never stuck together.

I should have been helping them to see themselves, and each other, as pieces of a puzzle.

Now, I zoom out.  The bigger picture.  Not just the classroom, but school wide.  Those kids that I learned with, back when I was learning, in eMINTS training, about collaboration and community, and the power of teaching, embedding, and modeling those skills, they taught me.

Collaboration isn’t innate.  What’s innate is the drive to do what’s best for kids.  We believe in it. It’s why we teach, lead, get up every day.  Because we believe in our jobs.  But, we also are taught to believe that we need to have all the answers.  We grew up in an educational system where the “A” was our responsibility and in a college program where we needed to be an expert.

So while it is innate that we need each other to make it, to grow, to do better, it’s just not in us to automatically know how to do that.  If we find ourselves, standing back, scratching our heads, wondering WHY collaboration isn’t happening, maybe the question we really need to be asking is, “How can we support people to understand HOW to collaborate?  What can we do today to break down the fear embedded in us that makes us believe we have to know all of the answers?”

I learned that from kids.  And now I’m left thinking, isn’t this exactly the same for us, as adults? Collaboration isn’t innate.  It’s a skill learned through modeling, teaching, practice, and ongoing support.  It doesn’t matter if you are the student or the teacher.  We are all learners.

What if Common Core Was Just One Page?

by | Jan 18, 2014 | Reflect

You can’t really walk into any school in America without hearing the term Common Core at least 1,432 times. The document, complex, filled with standards, is supposed to create “common standards” for learning in America’s schools. I’ve even heard that it might possibly change the way teachers implement instruction, because the standards are written in a way to incorporate more integrated learning and more non-fiction learning.

Except lists of standards won’t change teaching.

Teaching will be changed through conversations. Tough conversations. Deep collaboration. Reflection together. Developing a common language. Rolling words through our staff meetings. debating them openly. Not reading them on a slide. Not getting a list of things to do. What does ‘resilience’ mean? What does ‘rigor through depth’ look like in a classroom? What does ‘reflection’ sound like? Until we develop a common understanding of the most important words in a learning environment, a standard will continue to just be a standard. Words on a document. A list of things to “do.” Checkmarks. One by one.

Imagine if the Common Core was one page. Imagine if we all made a list like this and compared it. And then went back to our offices, classrooms, curriculum departments, and looked at what we’ve developed and asked ourselves… is this working for our kids?

  • Curiosity: Starting with that natural motivation of learning, the part that fires up your brain and gets your soul connected to content.
  • Creativity: Thinking of old things in new ways. Invigoration of the depths of your brain.
  • Collaboration: Your ideas might make my ideas better.
  • Communication: How can I best get this message across? Technology? My voice? My choice.
  • Critical Thinking: Looking at a problem in multiple ways, with multiple skills.
  • Connections: What does this mean to me? How can I connect it to other things I have learned?
  • Community: How am I a bigger part of a team?
  • Resilience: Finding it within yourself to push through. Grit. Determination.
  • Reflection: Pausing to think. Personal commitment to understanding and building new thoughts.
  • Regulation of Self: Student driven learning. Their journey. Their thoughts. Their self management.
  • Reasoning: Tackling challenges from a new angle, drawing on what you know, and learning new things. Powerful thinking.
  • Rigor of Depth: Not do more stuff, but think deeper more consistently about the stuff you do.
  • Relevance: If you even have to ask ‘why’ you need to learn something, it’s not real enough.
  • Real World: See relevance. Seriously. We’re not creating learners FOR the real world. Learning IS the real world.

One page. We’d not only save on copy toner. We’d save learning. Someone will say, “Wait, these things are really difficult to test!” Not really. Life is the ultimate test, and isn’t that what we are preparing kids for?