A Year from Now, What Will You Wish You Had Started?

Usually when I hear or read this quote, it's related to health & fitness. For me, it usually has to do with dieting or exercise, as a motivation to get started and stick with it.

Saturday, this quote took on a new meaning for me.

Saturday, my oldest daughter moved into her college dorm.

It was a great day of cleaning, organizing, and preparing her for her year in her new home. Away from home.

And I asked myself, Had I done enough to prepare her? Had I filled her with enough knowledge and skills to be successful? Will she remember all of the lessons her dad and I tried to teach her? 

And I thought of all of the students that pass through our school and every school. Are teachers asking themselves the same questions about their students as they watch them leave at the end of the year and move onto the next stage of their lives?

Are we asking questions like, 

• Did I do enough to prepare my students to think critically and solve complex problems?
• Did I take advantage of every opportunity to teach my students about respect, courage, grit, perseverance, and trust?
• Did I teach students to ask their own questions?
• Did I model integrity, a positive spirit, love, and optimism for my students?
• Did I learn as much as I could about the future my students will face so that I can best prepare them for it?

What other questions should we be asking ourselves?

The First Two Days of School

We started school last Thursday. I love starting school that way... it gives students and teachers an opportunity to "get back in the routine" without experiencing the extreme tiredness that comes by Wednesday night when school starts on a Monday. 

It also somehow "gives permission" to teachers to spend two days on relationship-building activities before jumping into content and academic routines. The weekend provides a natural break, and this year I saw tons of great activities going on in classrooms. I wanted to share some of them with you and give you a glimpse into our school building.

Our teachers know that one thing that I believe in is the importance of a teacher trying to cultivate a positive relationship with each student. I believe that each and every student who is in our school is there because he or she is supposed to be there. I led an activity with staff a couple of years ago so that we could be intentional about making sure each student had a positive connection with at least one adult in the building, because I also believe that every student should have at least one adult in the building that is a student's "go-to" person.

As I visited classrooms on Thursday and Friday, I was thrilled to see that teachers were busy building relationships with students, not jumping into their content. 

After all, if we don't know our audience, how can we connect with them? 

If we don't know our "who," how can we maximize their potential?

If you've started back to school, I'd love for you to leave me a comment and share about it, and if you haven't started yet, how you plan to start your year.

What if You're Teaching Thomas Edison?

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

—Thomas Edison

When Thomas Edison was 7, his mom enrolled him in school. He only went for a few months because he was hyperactive, prone to distraction, and called difficult by his teacher. (His mom, a school teacher, pulled him out and taught him at home.) Thomas Edison went on to invent the telegraph, phonograph, light bulb, and he has thousands of patents.

At one of our school's summer PD sessions about relationship-building, a teacher said, "I ask myself, 'What if I'm teaching Thomas Edison?'"

source

We can't tell just by looking at a student what his instructional needs are. We also can't tell by a student's behavior. 

What if you're teaching the next Thomas Edison?

Catching Teachers Doing Something Right

A big culture changer at our school came during the start of our 1:1 initiative. Up until that time, administrators visited classrooms on a pretty frequent basis, and teachers were used to having an administrator in their classrooms for a short walkthrough. When our 1:1 initiative started, Holly Sutherland (another assistant principal) and I created a school hashtag, and when we visited classrooms we started taking pictures and tweeting the great things that our teachers and students were doing on a daily basis. When we started doing this, sometimes tagging the students and teachers, our teachers started INVITING us to their classrooms on a regular basis. 

I remember being a classroom teacher and getting nervous when an administrator walked in. Even though I knew I was doing a good job, it still made me nervous not knowing exactly why they were there. When Holly and I started visiting and tweeting, the teachers understood why we were there - to “catch them doing something right.” No longer ambivalent about our visits, we would get an email almost daily to let us know about a project, debate, discussion, presentation, etc. that would be taking place in their classrooms. 

When I first became an administrator (prior to social media), I would leave a post-it note on the teacher’s desk, praising him/her on something that I had seen or heard in the classroom. I got away from the notes and started emailing the teacher instead, using my cell phone to send the quick, just-in-time emails. Now, with twitter, I simply LOVE being able to share with the WORLD the exciting things that happen within our school walls each day.  

But, I was reminded this summer of the importance of leaving a hand-written note.  During one of our summer PD sessions, one of our teachers talked about how much he appreciated the hand-written notes that he had gotten from administrators over the years. He said, “I’ve kept all of the notes I’ve gotten over the years. I haven’t kept a tweet.” 

As soon as he said it, I thought of the file folders I would label each year with just a heart and the year, in which I would tuck away cards, notes, newspaper clippings, etc. from the year. 

So this year, along with twitter. I’m going to leave a hand-written note as well as send a tweet when I visit a classroom. If I happen to not have note pads with me, I'll leave a note in their box when I return to my office. I’m looking forward to sharing with the world via twitter, but more importantly, to sharing a lasting word of praise with the teacher in the room.