Two New Things I've Tried this Year

It had been a while since I had run. I've been getting in a lot of miles by walking, but running was something that I hadn’t done in a while. Running in the winter usually happened on the weekends with my friend Karen, but due to scheduling conflicts, we had not been able to meet to do our usual 6 or 8 mile Saturday morning runs.

Winter is now gone, and the weather has been beautiful recently in Alabama. I’m currently leading a 21-day health & wellness challenge on Facebook which requires exercising every day, so today I decided to go for a run after school instead of going to get a manicure.

Loved the endless yellow flowers by the trail today!

It felt like coming home.

I don’t know if that’s a southern phrase, but running today reminded me comfort… of something that has a feeling of being “just right.”

When I run, my mind clears and I can reflect on so many parts of my life. The first mile is the hardest, and I truly think it’s because my mind is so used to being in GO MODE that it’s fighting the emptying that is about to take place. 

Tonight was little different, in that the first mile was refreshing. It was easy. It rejuvenated.

I’ve been experiencing writer’s block lately. I couldn’t figure out why. I think it’s because I haven’t been running. Walking has been great, but the physiological changes that happen during a run aren’t there during a walk, and I was reminded by today’s run the importance of making time and space for running.

This week, our blogging community members are writing about something new we’ve done this year. On my run, I had an opportunity to be alone with my thoughts and reflect on the school year. There have been several new things I’ve done, and a few more I want to do. Below are 2 NEW things that I've tried this year.

One major initiative has been the blogging community that CraigVroom and I started last summer.  We make weekly contact via email with the members, and we are continually in contact via twitter. The blog posts that I have read by the members have been incredible, and I feel like they have helped me grow personally and professionally throughout this school year.

Something else that I’ve tried this year that has been way out of my comfort zone was to lead a book study via Voxer. We read The Differentiated Classroom by Carol Ann Tomlinson, and I invited teachers at my school to be a part of it. We had three participants from outside of our school:  Jeff Zoul (Assistant Superintendent of Teaching & Learning in Illinois), Neil Gupta (Director of Assessment for a district in Ohio), and Melinda Sears (a French teacher at a neighboring high school). I really enjoyed the experience, because it allowed me to give input, hear the input of others, reflect on what they said, go back and re-read and contribute to the conversation again.

Sometimes my mind gets full of ideas, and then I get caught up in the busyness of work and home and lose the ideas or don’t prioritize well.  Something new I'm trying is a new way to stay organized, which I’ll share in an upcoming post.

What NEW thing have you tried this year?

Would you do it again if you could do it all over?

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One Tip for Making Changes

For two years, I was the principal at a high school in a suburb of Birmingham. In the south, football is a big deal, especially Fridays in southern high schools. The pep rallies at this school happened every game day, and the first year of my principalship I learned one of the school’s “traditions.”

Our biggest rival was a neighboring school, one that was part of a community that had split away from the one in which I was working. On a warm Friday morning, I walked through the gym and out the side door to the parking lot. I was shocked by what I saw! Our female students were getting out of their cars and walking across the parking lot to school, and they were dressed up in blue, the other school’s colors.

Our students said they were trying to look “redneck” in the other school’s colors, jerseys, and t-shirts. I was shocked and disappointed to see so much blue at our school on a day when our school colors were red and white. So I talked to the kids that day… in my office, in the hallway, in the lunchroom... wherever I saw them. If they had something offensive on (a few had on t-shirts with offensive phrases on them), I had them to change. If they just had on the opposing school’s colors, I talked them about focus. 

As a player I was taught, and as a coach I taught my players, to “focus on US” not the opponent. Sure, we wanted to scout the other team and know what to expect in terms of plays they would run, key players, and tendencies, but our FOCUS would be on US. We would focus on what we could control. 

Because of my experiences, when I saw the girls dressed up in our rival’s colors I saw it as misdirected focus. I thought we should have been celebrating OUR team and school, instead of dressing up in our opponent’s colors. (Focus changer: After that day, I encouraged everyone to wear red on Fridays.)

Sometimes in life, we tend to focus on others instead of ourselves. Trying to make a change? Feel like you’re sitting in neutral without moving forward? You can change gears by changing your focus. 

Make a change in your life by changing your focus.

  

Click the Tweet button to tweet the quote.

What changes in focus are you trying to make?
How do you maintain your focus?

I would love to hear your story in the comments!

Teachers' Expectations, High or Low, are Always Met

In our teacher training, we're taught the concept of the Pygmalion effect. We learn that students will live up to the expectations that are placed upon them. When teachers have high expectations for students, the teachers unconsciously give more positive attention, feedback, and learning opportunities to students. 

Learning information like this prepares teachers for the day when they walk into the classroom and stand in front of 25 students and make a first impression. That first impression that is made will come from the teacher's belief about the students prior to that moment. And what about the subsequent days. Over time, the longer a teacher is in the classroom, do the teacher's beliefs about students fade, get higher, or even change completely? Each day, the teacher's expectations will be communicated through body language, tone of voice, inflections, and word choice.

Invariably, in the classroom a teacher's expectations will be met. 

• If a teacher expects students not to do their homework, they won't. 
• If a teacher expects he or she will have to raise his or her voice to get students to behave, he will.
• If a teacher expects students to try their best, they will.
• If a teacher expects students to misbehave, they will. 
• If a teacher expects that he or she will enjoy learning about the students - as people - while helping them to learn, he or she will.

In your classroom, what if you find that your students and the classroom are not meeting your expectations? What can you do?

Here are some questions for self-reflection:

• Do I separate the student from the behavior?
• If I can't change the students, how can I change my view of them?
• Can I do anything to improve the outcome?
• Am I teachable?

What's been your experience with teacher expectations?

Work is Love Made Visible

I've attended many parent and IEP meetings for students. When I was in the classroom, I always taught (and asked for) inclusion classes. I also wanted to attend IEP meetings so that I could meet the parents and share my input there. As a grade level administrator, I’ve attended many parent and IEP meetings for ninth graders over the last four years.

In a recent meeting, a special education teacher who was conducting the meeting told the parent about the student, her child, 

“He wants to do his work; he wants to make us happy.” 

In other words, the work was about behavior. It was about compliance.

It got me thinking.

About the work that kids do, and the work that we do.

Work is important. It teaches discipline. It brings satisfaction and pride. I learned from a great coach early in my career that self-esteem doesn’t come from telling someone positive things. It comes from completing tasks successfully. Give a person tasks that he can complete with success, and gradually give him increasingly challenging tasks. Praise and recognition of completing the tasks will a positively to a person’s self-esteem.

When the teacher is the only audience for student work, it’s easier for the work to be about compliance. It’s personal. It can become more about “Do this because I said so,” than “Do this because ________ (it will help you learn/process content, you will be able to demonstrate what you know, it will help to make your thinking visible…)

While we all have tasks that we are required to do and may not enjoy or see a bigger purpose in doing them, we are more motivated to do the tasks when we understand the reasons behind doing them. We are also motivated to complete tasks when the audience is authentic. Think about the posters hanging in the hallway for all to see, or the presentation done for a live or online audience. What about the blog post that’s read by a global audience or the athletic skill that’s done in front of a crowd.

What happens when the audience is authentic? Is love still visible?