Our Secret Weapon

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by carolynhack

Ok, clearly its not meant to be a secret, and its not really a weapon either. I just loved the idea for the title and the picture.

I have been thinking lately about how one decision that was made at our school has had beneficial effects on so many other areas of what we do. It was really reinforced for me when I was out in BC meeting with some fantastic educators doing awesome stuff. In the conversations I had with David Truss, Gallit Zvi, Jess Pelat, Parm Brar and Chris Wejr, we were able to share what we were doing in our schools and how we were able to make positive changes happen. When the conversation turned to the work we are doing at Greystone, the conversation kept ending up back at the one aspect of our school that is key to so much of the work we do.

 

Common Planning Time

 

If any of you reading this are administrators, I am sure you are working on plans for next year’s timetable, staff assignments, and your school schedule. Our building is Grades 5-9 with roughly 550 students, so in the wide world of difficult timetabling, I know ours is pretty tame, but it still can offer some struggles. We have to worry about getting all of our kids into the gym, we have to worry about ensuring French and Music for our younger students, and we have options classes for the older students. Add to that staff on varying contracts, some with part time or half time schedules, and you get quite the Rubik’s Cube to figure out.

What our school decided, long before I got there, was that if we were able to make common planning enough of a priority that it occurred regularly in our timetable, we would see growth in the areas we had made a priority. This past year, we were able to ensure that each teaching team had at least one of their two preps together with their entire grade-level teaching team (we call them learning communities). We saw a real impact on our school in a number of different areas and with a number of initiatives.

 

Learning Coach

This year our division participated in the learning coach initiative that was a push from our provincial government. This meant that we had a teacher with half of her time dedicated to working closely with teachers to help them improve their practice. She is a veteran teacher with a ton to offer, especially in the areas of Inquiry and Critical Thinking. In our planning for the year, we timetabled the learning coach purposely to ensure her attendance at each of the team meetings. This initiative is obviously beneficial in any building, but I believe it is maximized when the learning coach gets to sit in on the common planning times for each grade level team. As the team plans lessons for the coming weeks, they have the advantage of not only utilizing their fellow team members, they can also work with the coach in those meetings. If the team feels they have an area they need to work on collectively, the learning coach is there to offer advice and direction.

 

Assessment

When it comes to assessment, it can be difficult to know if our assessments are effective, if they are assessing what we want them to. As professionals, we review our students’ work on assessments and we try our best to adapt them and make them fit our needs and the needs of our students. This process obviously becomes more effective when we utilize similar assessments across numerous classes and then as a group come together to compare them. Having common planning time gives our teaching teams the opportunity to bring in sample student work and discuss the validity of their assessment practices.

 

Assisting Struggling Students

Getting together on a regular basis, our teaching teams can discuss how to assist struggling students from their learning community. Students often struggle with similar material or tasks, and strategies can be shared amongst team members on how to best help students with those challenges. We are also able to find groups of students and target them for small group activities with a teacher in a pull out or assign Education Assistant support to a group of students from different classrooms.

 

Meaningful Learning Experiences

Our school has been focused on inquiry and critical thinking for some time now, and each year we improve in these areas as we look to bring the most impactful and beneficial learning experiences to our students. Having the opportunity to bring teams together to plan the inquiries on a regular basis, and then to have our learning coach who is very strong in these areas join them, means that our inquiry projects have become more numerous and more effective. If teams have teachers who do not teach all core courses but rather have a couple specialties, as our LC7, LC8 & LC9 teams do, it means we are giving them an opportunity to ensure cross-curricular inquiry projects can happen even at our highest grade levels.

 

Common Planning Time exists at Greystone because our administration and staff agreed that it would be the most effective way to ensure that our school priorities were met. Every building, every division has priorities. So many talk about how they want collaboration, they want rich learning for their students and staff, they want professional reflection and growth. Its really easy to have goals and a vision, but shouldn’t your vision live in the way you plan for your school? Whatever your vision is, whatever your goals are for your school, does your timetable support it? Do you plan meaningfully for a school year that will align with your vision? Everything from classroom spaces/design, room assignments, supervision scheduling, professional development and even the way we communicate with our staff can have an impact, and I believe that we should be mindful of the impact each decision can have to add or take away from our vision or our goals.

What do you do to ensure your school’s goals are realized when you plan for the next school year?

 

Stuck

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I spent this past weekend in Banff at the Middle Years Council Conference where I did a session on using technology to improve communication and make our learning public, and listening to a number of good presentations. The two speakers that inspired this post were Phil McRae and Shelley Wright, as they both helped me tie together a few ideas I have been having trouble connecting.

Phil McRae spoke about where education is going in the future and talked about two specific areas we need to be concerned about – Technology and Parenting. The point I took away from his talk came at the end when a question was posed to him about how we can best focus on helping our kids for an ever-changing future and Phil’s response was that we needed to teach them Resiliency.

Shelley’s talk was amazing, she told great stories of the work she has done with her students and the power she found in giving up control of her room, her classes and her teaching to her students. It was an engaging 90 minutes, and the point that really hit home with me was when she talked about how her kids worked so hard and gave more than she had ever thought they could because the work they were doing had Meaning.

During our Innovation Week, there was a common theme we found amongst the really special projects our students were able to complete. We found that when the students took on a really challenging, but meaningful project, they all hit a moment where they were Stuck. A point in the project where the progress hit a stand still and the group or individual was put to the test. How would they move forward? WOULD they move forward? What we found in those that created great work is that they did find the motivation, or inspiration, to continue and to find the answer they needed on how to progress. In the end, they would all talk about how they didn’t know what to do or where to go, but that they kept at it and in persevering, found the path to success.

Resilience. We have all heard that its an important attribute to instill in our students, but how often has that comment been followed by “… and this is How”. Its very easy to say Resiliency but a heck of a lot harder to figure out how to introduce it, teach it, develop it, challenge it. I am not writing this post to tell you I know how, but I think with our Innovation Week project, we have found one method to create the opportunity for students to develop resiliency. I believe that one way we can foster resiliency is to create learning opportunities that follow this progression:

 

A) Start with Excitement

We need to create learning opportunities that get kids excited. Listening to Shelley talk about the projects she had done with her students, and the amazing results they were able to achieve just reinforced this idea for me. When we give our students the chance, they will exceed our expectations, but we have to provide them work they believe is exciting.

 

B) Get Our Students Stuck

We have to help students get stuck. This is a big challenge, and maybe one that you end up failing more than you succeed at in the beginning, but worth it if you are able to figure it out. We have to help students find projects that are challenging enough that they can’t just breeze through it, and not so difficult that they could never find success. With our Innovation Week, there was definitely a selection of student groups who were able to find that key zone of challenge, one that pushed them to the edge but that they were able to persevere through and complete. Yes, there were groups that fit on either side of this zone, some who chose work far too easy and some who tackled tasks that were a little beyond their abilities. When it comes to the ones that found that right level of challenge, maybe it was just luck, or maybe it was that these students had a very developed ability to judge their own potential. Maybe with more opportunities, the rest of the students who didn’t quite find the right challenge would develop this awareness as well. Maybe, if we know our students well enough, we can help guide them towards projects that are the right level of challenge for them, remembering that we WANT them to struggle.

 

C) Meaningful Enough To Work Through

Now that we have them “stuck”, what is going to happen? Well I believe that if the work is personally meaningful enough to the student, they will do what it takes to keep going. If the work isn’t meaningful enough, there is a chance, probably a pretty strong chance, that the student could shut down or walk away. We have all seen it in our classes, I know for me the clear memory I have is of trying to teach a class Trigonometry and a student being so frustrated by not getting the ratios that he blew up and ended up having to be removed to the hallway. So how do we make the work meaningful enough? My best bet is Choice. The reason that projects like Genius Hour are so successful, and that we see the best work come from our kids during these projects, is that inherently there is always meaning for the student doing the work. Innovation Week for us provided our students the meaning in their work to push through challenge and literally practice resiliency.

 

If we are going to teach students to be resilient we are going to have to have them practice being resilient. We want them to know what it feels like to be frustrated, to feel lost or helpless, to feel like they are at a dead end. That is not pleasant, and if we don’t give them the meaning in their work to want to see it to its completion, they won’t persevere. We found our Innovation Week provided a solid blueprint for this type of practice, but what has worked for you? I’d love to hear what lessons or activities you find provide your students a great experience in resilience.

Take A Trip!

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by Dave Greebe

Wow. What a couple days! I spent Monday and Tuesday in Coquitlam, Surrey and Agassiz learning from some very smart people about all sorts of things. I was in BC for some coaching related work, and was able to extend the trip to spend some time at my parents and get down to the Lower Mainland for these meetings. While it meant a few more days away from my wife and daughter, I am really glad I made the trip, and that these kind and brilliant people had the time to spend with me.

I started at the Inquiry Hub with David Truss, and he and his students toured us (Gallit Zvi was also there) around the school and talked to us about their Inquiry coursework, their alternate delivery of curriculum and their very unique school. I was amazed by his students and their familiarity with the language of their school. One Gr. 9 student talked about her “Self Pace” program, another about their “Inquiries” and the students scoffed at how much work they would have had to do to complete an I.D.S. (Independent Directed Study). The school only opened in September, and they have clearly done a great job of educating their kids on the work that they will do and how they will be experiencing their education. After the tour, David, Gallit and I went for some Pho (never had it, not sure I’ll be running out to have it again! haha sorry David) and had a chance to really talk. David told us about the grant that one of his Gr. 9 students applied for and received for a considerable amount of money, which was to be dedicated to her group’s inquiry project in which they were building a school garden. These three girls have been planning and working on this for some time, and they already have plans to bring primary aged students in to experience the garden and grow some plants themselves. It was an amazing story to hear, and I hope for David it was a nice chance to share just a few of his many successes from his school. The topic opened up to what Gallit and I were doing in our buildings and we had some great conversations about infusing innovation experiences into our students’ learning and how to get the most meaningful learning out of those opportunities.

Next it was off to Fraser Heights School to meet with Parm Brar and Jess Pelat, two very bright young ladies teaching an Inquiry 8 curriculum, one where all four core subjects are blended into one program full of project learning and powerful questions and challenges. In typical teacher fashion, the two were very modest about their accomplishments and really didn’t feel they were doing something special, which after 90 minutes of discussing I had heard they clearly were. We discussed what they found challenging and what they found rewarding about this first-time experience developing and teaching this class. We talked about how best to create cross-curricular learning activities and the impact it has on student engagement and motivation. I found myself very excited to know that many of our staff would be at the same conference as Parm and Jess in little over a month and I am hopeful they will be able to connect and share with these two amazing teachers.

Tuesday morning I had a brief but very impressive experience watching Genius Hour in action with Gallit Zvi and Hugh MacDonald. Three groups from their classes were presenting completed projects and sharing how the project went for them. After that, the kids broke out into groups in various learning spaces and went to work on their projects, and I was able to sit with many groups and ask the students about their experience with Genius Hour. It was great to see how proud the students were of Genius Hour and their teachers, and how much pride they took in the work they were doing. I asked one student why they chose to work on a video project and he said that he “had been inspired by the work of his classmate”… no lie, he actually said that. Another student said the best part of Genius Hour is that it “Let’s us all be creative in our own ways”. Before this visit I loved Genius Hour, but now I am not prepared to wait any longer to get it started at Greystone.

(The Genius Hour board in Gallit’s class)

On my way back to Kamloops to catch my flight I was able to stop and meet face to face (finally) with Chris Wejr, someone I have been connected with on Twitter from almost the first day I signed up. Chris is a smart guy, and the one thing you notice when you hear him speak is his desire to make his school better for his staff and for his students. We talked about some shared struggles we have had with technology in our buildings, he toured me around and showed me the amazing view he has from his school field (see pic below) and then over lunch we talked about our shared passion for getting teachers connected via Social Media. It was a quick lunch, as I had to make my flight, but the one thing I knew as I dropped him off at his school was that we will definitely connect more now, both online and hopefully in person.

(The beautiful view from Chris’s school field)

So as I sat in the airport in Calgary waiting for my connecting flight to take me home to my wife and daughter who I missed a great deal on my 5 day trip to BC, and while I was excited to see them, I was also relishing the invigorating energy my trip has provided. I am really looking forward to meeting with our staff and sharing all the great learning I did and to work with them to find ways to put some of that learning into action in our building.

Now I was able to make this trip happen due to circumstances falling into place, but I am sure there are some of you reading this who have never even gone to visit another school in your own division. When we spend time in other buildings and conversing with other professionals, we are opened up to their perspectives, their knowledge and their passions. It doesn’t take long to find schools that are exploring similar ideas to your own, and coming together to discuss these ideas is mutually beneficial for all involved. This is true of visiting another province, state or country but I also believe this to be true of visiting another school in your own division. I know that spending time just 15 minutes down the road in Travis McNaughton‘s Muir Lake School opened my eyes up to a number of things we could do at Greystone.

When it comes to connecting I will always be a big advocate for using Social Media (every link on this page is to a twitter page!), and I would never have been able to connect with David, Gallit, Hugh, Jess, and Chris if it wasn’t for twitter. But I believe there is a great deal of power in making an effort to go to other buildings and go to meet with people so that the conversation can be deep and meaningful and not limited by the number of characters. Take a trip, either somewhere outside of your division, state, province or country, or even just a trip down the road to a school near you. Go and listen to what people do in other buildings and share with them what you do. I bet you’ll feel just as energized as I do.

Engagement is Enough!

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Ad@mK

I love when a metaphor is so clearly portrayed in a picture. We have all heard this one… parent spends an exorbitant amount of money on a toy for their child only to have the child get more out of the box itself. The parent always tells the story as a funny but frustrating anecdote, and with a sigh, laughs at the silliness of it all. In the end, they have a happy baby, excited to play and that’s all that matters.

I have been spending a lot of my free time reading and discussing a number of innovative projects being done by people all over the place. I’ve spent time discussing Genius Hour on the hashtag #geniushour and today, was lucky enough to hang out with the first lady of Genius Hour, Gallit Zvi (tomorrow I am spending the morning in her class for their Genius Hour!). I have been reading about Passion Projects and Fed Ex Days, and of course Innovation Day/Innovation Week. My morning today was spent at the Inquiry Hub with David Truss, hearing how they are able to provide students with the time and space to really take ownership of their learning. Speaking with Gallit and David, you can see their pride in their students and the amazing projects they are doing. They are eager to share just how driven their students are when working on work they care about.

As I read and converse more and more with other people considering these projects, I often hear questions about how the projects are assessed and how they connect with curriculum, and while these are valid questions, they always seemed to irk me a little. I felt like people needed to experience these projects for themselves to see the real power they possess, and if they did, they might not be so worried about the assessment or curricular ties. You see the real power in these projects is the engagement that results in our students when they are given the power to direct their learning. I saw it during our Innovation Week, and I have read about the same reaction is students experiencing Genius Hour, Passion Projects and Fed Ex Days. Kids get excited about learning.

To me, that is reason enough to try one of these projects. After our innovation week, there was excitement residue all over the place. Students talked about their projects, and what they were going to do for the next innovation week. Innovation-style activities started popping up all over our building as teachers embraced the energy from the week and re-created it in their rooms. If we can do projects that get students excited to come to school then we are creating a culture in our buildings of eager students who value learning. Isn’t that a good start for any building?

Eventually, we can add the curricular connections we want our students to make, and we can find appropriate ways to assess their learning, but it doesn’t have to be the driving force behind every learning experience we provide our students. Creating a passion for learning, an engaged young person will pay dividends for us in every lesson we teach so for now Engagement is Enough. We get our excited student the same way we get the excited baby happy just to play with the box, and we can be ok with a student who is just excited to learn as well. If having students excited to learn and engaged in the process is something important to you, think about giving one of these projects a try. While it may not hit the outcomes or end up with a grade on it, I am willing to bet it will be one of the most enjoyable experiences you’ll ever have as an educator.

Think Tank

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by ToddMorris

When I was a kid, I felt I was pretty smart, and I was secretly proud of that. While I put up a front that I was really all about sports, I liked being good at Math and Science. I remember once hearing about a Think Tank, and asked what that was. I remember a teacher telling me that it was a group of smart people that got together to come up with solutions to problems or inventions or something like that. For some reason, I pictured these geniuses meeting in actual tanks, big metal bunkers with doors like on a submarine, locking themselves away from potential idea thieves. I know, I was a weird kid. Even as I got older, I thought the idea of being part of a Think Tank might be the coolest thing ever. To date, I have never been part of a Think Tank, but to me the idea still seems great.

Today I went for a coffee with my friend George Couros. I always enjoy our conversations, George is one of those people who is always a few steps ahead of the rest of us and challenging the status quo. What I enjoy most about our conversations is that they always bring the best out of me. We talk, we come up with ideas for my school and for our division, and I leave feeling energized and empowered. It was on the drive home that I realized that meeting with George is like having my own personal Think Tank. Earlier this school year I was able to spend time with Travis McNaughton, an Assistant Principal in my division. We spent some time in his building and at a conference. With our conversations, I had a similar experience. Travis is a dynamic and brilliant administrator and in our time together we helped each other develop ideas for each of our buildings and even some ideas of how we might help others in our division. There are many others in my division and in my school with whom I have shared these invigorating conversations.

I am sure that in most divisions, people have groups of colleagues they share conversations with that change their practice and the direction of their schools. We all have the potential for our own Think Tanks, but are we doing whatever we can to have these Think Tanks assemble?

I am bad for relying on Social Media to be my connection to the smart people. I am on Twitter, posting and reading blogs, and sharing whatever I can to those conversations, but there is something about meeting with George and Travis and others from my division that brings more to the conversation. Whether it is a shared understanding of where we work, our students, our parent community etc, for some reason those conversations have so much more meat to them.

I propose that regardless of whatever excuse we use to avoid these meetings from happening, we make them happen anyway. No money for subs, no time in the day, conflicting schedules, these are no reason to stand in the way of these meetings when we all know the power that lies in these connections.

I  am unsure if the power of the face to face meeting only exists when people work in the same school or division. In fact, I plan on putting it to the test. I am going to be traveling in less than  three weeks to BC, and while there I am going to make my way to Surrey, Coquitlam and Agassiz to meet with Gallit Zvi, Jess Pelat, David Truss, Neil Stephenson, and Chris Wejr for face to face meetings to discuss various education issues. While the five of them don’t work in the same division or even same province as I do, I know from our connections on Social Media that we do share a lot in common. I have great faith that might be all you need for a face to face meeting to have the potential for great things to come from it. I’ll let you know.

Do you have your own “Think Tank”? What does meeting with your “Think Tank” provide for you? Where do you meet? When do you meet? What structure do your meetings take on? I would love to hear from others on this topic so leave a comment and get the conversations started!

Let Them Discover

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Tinkerbots

I spent some time on my spring break going back over things I favorited on Twitter or put into my “read later” places. One of them was a great interview by Jeff Herb on his podcast Instructional Tech Talk, where he interviewed Jessica Pack and John Stevens about their 20% projects. It was great to hear the two of them discuss how they set up and ran the 20% project in their buildings and the wonderful results they saw with their students. I was lucky enough to attend a Google Apps For Education Summit in Edmonton in February and saw a session by Sean Williams on Google 20% time. He shared stories of people doing similar projects and had a teacher from California connect with us over Google Hangouts to share his story as well. Their are a number of great posts out there on why Google 20% time is beneficial in education (here and here) as well as posts about how it is going in schools all over the place (here and here).

The Google 20% model has a lot in common with what Gallit Zvi is doing with her Genius Hour projects, and what Josh Stumpenhorst is doing with his Passion Projects and Innovation Day. Students having choice in what they learn about, freedom to learn in their own way, not limited by schedule or structure, and students excited about the learning. Josh’s Innovation Day inspired us to run our own Innovation Week this past December. It was an overwhelming success and every day I am at school I am asked by at least one student when our next Innovation Week will take place (Innovation Week 2 coming this June!).

I don’t think there are many educators out there that are surprised by the success of any one of these initiatives. I believe most of us are well aware of the power in transferring the responsibility for learning to our students, and the impact that it has on the engagement of our students when they are given the responsibility. I do think that some educators are afraid of giving up so much of the control of the learning in their classroom. Most have made the transition from stand and deliver to guiding the learning, but this goes even further. We have gone from providing the information to providing the right questions, but with initiatives like these, we want the students to be asking the questions as well.

So what is it that we do as teachers when we undertake one of these learning initiatives?

What I believe we do is we help students to discover whatever it is they are passionate about and are excited to learn about. I believe our job goes from crafting the powerful questions that challenge our students to helping students find ways to challenge themselves. Katherine von Jan recently wrote in her post entitled “Pursue Passion: Demand Google 20% Time at School”:

Real break-through happens when we are free from others’ expectations and driven by individual passion.

I believe this includes us when it comes to the “others expectations”. We can’t judge what our students are passionate about, but we can help shape the experience to improve the chances it will have real depth and meaning. Katherine speaks eloquently to this idea as well when she says:

For example, if a child is inspired by bridges, why not start there and let the learning follow their curiosity? They may need to learn calculus to build a bridge, but then they have a reason to love and seek calculus, rather than calculus being a requirement. They may need to understand the history, policy and politics of getting a bridge approved. Or team-building to get all the right talent on board.

Our job can be to find the connections to deeper learning in the questions that come from each development in the project. During our Innovation Week, the single greatest commonality among all of the best projects was a shared moment of struggle. Every group that was able to take their Innovation Week project to amazing places found some time where they were stuck. What each of these groups also found was that they were able to overcome this impasse and stagnation by finding a way to solve the problem. It was in these moments that they sought out a new solution, consulted teachers, classmates, websites, pictures etc and they developed a plan.

Our group that built the functioning hovercraft began with a plan to use a lawnmower engine to power it. When they constructed the hovercraft and found it would not float, they tried increasing the number of airholes on the bottom, and they tried altering the position of the engine, but nothing worked. They realized after multiple tests and failures that the engine was too heavy, and in developing a new plan to use a lighter leaf-blower engine they learned far more than just physics. When our students choose topics they are truly passionate about, they will show greater resiliency than we could have ever expected. They will seek out further understanding and they will find solutions to problems that we may not have thought our students could solve.

We talk all the time about how our students can show us so much when given the chance, but then we subject them to learning that never provides that chance. What these projects all share in common is the ability to provide our students with as a great a challenge as they are capable of. Sure, it also provides us with just as many opportunities for our students to fail, but we all know these experiences are just as important as the successful ones. I think this is even more powerful when we distance the assessment as far from the project itself, as we can. We should assess our students skills and competencies during these projects but through observation and through the assessment of their reflections NOT by assessing the actual success of the project. If we can help our students understand that we want to assess their learning, and that failure is just as much a part of learning as succeeding, hopefully these projects can instill a passion for risk-taking, creativity and innovation.

I know how powerful these activities can be. Our innovation week was the most eye-opening and invigorating 5 days of my education career. I also know from experience that it can be a bit scary to undertake one of these activities. It all comes back to the idea of modelling for our students that we are learners too, and that we aren’t afraid to take risks and to chance failure if it is going to provide us the chance to grow. I know that if you are reading this, you are someone who wants to see the best education for our students, and knowing what these initiatives can provide them is reason enough to give them a try.

Modelling

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Www.CourtneyCarmody.com/

And now for a revelation:

Having kids changes your life.

I know, I know, powerful stuff. What can I say? I’m deep and complex and able to breakdown the human condition with ease.

But seriously, it seems like every post I write (or read), every discussion I have about education, every thought I have for what I’d love to see change in schools, it somehow keeps bringing me back to my little girl. From what I hear, that’s pretty normal. Maggie is my first child, and my wife and I are still overcome with the joy of her arrival. I want everything to be great for her. I reflect on what type of parent I want to be, and all the lessons I learned by having two wonderful parents that raised me.

I know a big part of what I pass on to my daughter will be through the type of behavior, decision making and through my actions that I model for her on a daily basis. I’ll want to show her patience, understanding, humility, compassion, empathy, courage, confidence and commitment. It will never be perfect, there will be times that my actions or my words will show her weaknesses, maybe when I lose my cool or I take the easy way out. I understand we can’t always be the perfect example for our children, but like every parent, I will want to strive to do the best job I can.

The topic of modelling has crossed my mind a number of times in the past few weeks, clearly the motivation to write this post. Some staff from our school and I traveled down to Red Deer to see Pasi Sahlberg and Alfie Kohn speak this past week. On the way back we had a conversation in the car about how we would love to have the Canadian public feel as much faith and pride in its teachers as the Finnish people have for their educators. The idea that we can only control what we do, not what people think was brought up, and then we discussed all the ways we could showcase the professionalism of our teachers. We talked about how each teacher that takes the idea of professional growth and learning seriously models for other educators the way we all should conduct ourselves. It got me thinking about just how many ways that we as teachers have an effect on others with our modelling, and how much further it goes than just our classroom management.

We Model For Our Profession

My wife is a physician, and there is a clear understanding that doctors need to continually be learning and current with their practice, with medications, with diagnostic tools etc. In our profession, I think we all know that this is true for teachers as well. Most of us do this on a regular basis, but it stays behind the scenes and not a lot of people know about it. We need to be more open with this professional learning we do. We need to share it with other educators, and we need to showcase it to our stakeholders. How many parents know what the teachers at their children’s schools are working on improving and learning about? Students are our business, and parents along with our school communities are our stakeholders. If we want our communities to have more faith and pride in our teachers, they need to know what we are doing. Find ways to share the professional learning that is occurring by yourself, and the staff at your schools. Let’s model the type of professionalism that the tax-paying public can support and be proud of.

 

 

We Model For Our Parents

My principal talked to me on that car ride home about how having kids can make you a little bit crazy. She was saying how even though you try to be as calm, rational and level headed as possible, you can’t shake that innate desire to protect, and maybe, stand up for your child. When situations arise where a parent has an issue with what is going on at school, we have to know that they come in with a fairly narrow view of the situation, an artificially limited scope due to the limited information and love for their child. It is so important that our interactions with parents always show a fair, honest and open approach to the situation, one that not only takes into account all of the students involved, but also an understanding for a parent’s natural instinct to protect and care for their child. Some times we may even model certain tools that a parent may not have the greatest handle on like conflict resolution, positive feedback or even the power of modelling has on their child.

 

We Model For Our Students

Of course we all know that we model for our students when we don’t raise our voice, we don’t lose our temper, or we don’t bully our students. I am finding that the importance of our modelling for our students is growing all the time beyond these classroom interactions. Often we have students who are being raised by one parent, or a relative. We have students who may have parents who are struggling with issues that hinder their ability to be at their best. I’ll never forget when I was working in an alternate education setting and my principal at the time put forth one of the most powerful ideas I  had ever heard. He asked me “Have you ever thought that you might be the best adult role model that your students have? Do you understand that your students might learn from you how a healthy adult carries themselves, handles responsibility or even handles conflict?”. Don’t underestimate the impact you have on your students. Its a power that comes with a great deal of responsibility (Did I just quote Spiderman?). If you tell them a story about a fight you got into when you were in high school, you model for that student that its ok to get in fights in school, because you are a successful adult and you give the student the ok they need to justify those actions. I know that we all entered the profession to educate our students, not parent them, but the more that students come home to empty houses, or are in difficult situations where their parent’s ability to raise them is hampered, the more you become the prime model that will guide your students’ decisions.

 

I know its not crazy to want to be a good role model for my daughter, but it a little crazy to start thinking about how her teachers wil model for her… she’s 9 months old. By the time that Maggie would get to my school, the importance of this modelling by teachers may be even more crucial. Its my hope that when Maggie is in middle school, school leaders along with the professionals in their building have embraced this importance and helped it shape their practice. A building full of educators who understand and accept this responsibility will always be one that exudes care, integrity and especially professionalism.

The Most Important Part of Change

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There is a storm coming. That’s the caption for the picture above, and in my province, its assumed that, for us in education, a storm is coming this spring in the form of budget cuts. We are going to be forced to do more with less in our buildings and this definitely puts a strain on administrators as they plan for the coming school year. Sacrifices will have to be made, and the effects will be felt by all. It’s not a pleasant time for anyone. Conversations may venture into the areas of what programs should be cut or projects scrapped.

That is where this post is aimed. It has been common practice in the past to look at what we can’t do when the money is not there. The budget is cut, the money is stretched as far as it will go, and buildings go into survival mode. What often suffers is the projects a building, a division, or even a province is undertaking. There was talk about significant curriculum change for our province and now there are rumours that those changes will be shelved for now due to the budget constraints. I understand why these decisions are made, but I can’t say I agree.

We are not at a time in education where waiting for money is an option. Now is the time for continued and necessary change to our education system. The easy answer has been the shelving of our projects or scrapping of our plans because we can’t afford them. Doing this again will only have us fall further behind in the change process. We all know we owe it to our students to keep on the path and not waiver no matter what the concern. Change is not an option, change is a necessity.

Which brings me to my point. The most important part of change is your attitude towards change. Do you make it a priority even in the face of challenges? Do you adjust rather than scrap your plans when limitations are placed upon you and your school or division? Is change important enough to you and your staff that putting it off is simply not an option, and sacrifices are made in other places to ensure it’s continuity?

I know that in our building, we will continue working towards a better education for our students. Our job will then be to find ways to be creative, flexible and determined in our effort to continue the work with less resources. No doubt the harder way to proceed but the necessary one.

I know budget cuts for us are on the horizon, while many of you have been experiencing them for quite some time. How did you proceed when cuts were made? How did you continue to work towards change when you had less to work with? Did cuts result in difficulties when it came to trying new things and implementing new programs? As we see the storm coming, we know many of you have experience living through such storms and we would love to hear from you as we prepare.

 

 

Educational Leadership

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Many times in my life, I have been sure I knew something, only to find out I was dead wrong. I guess that’s part of life; growing up, learning about the real world, having your assumptions challenged and often changed. When I got into education, I thought I knew what made a good educational leader. In fact, I tried to formulate a checklist of what makes a good educational leader as I progressed through my career, as I was certain one day I would fill a leadership role. I made that list, but I find that list continually changing the longer I am in education and with each leader I encounter.

I have always alluded to the principal in my building or the superintendent of my division  as the captain of a ship. I have always said that I need to believe in the direction that the captain is taking us. For the most part, this metaphor rings true for me, as I believe that it is often the leader in a building or division that sets the direction. In the past I have felt the need to be inspired and motivated by the path my leader set for me.

Today, this characteristic of a leader is important to me, but is not nearly the most important one. I am finding more and more that the most important aspect of an educational leader to me is someone who opens doors and clears the path. I want to work for someone who inspires me to take risks, to try new things and to explore ideas I believe can be successful. I look now to work with people who very rarely say no, and only do so when every possible option has been exhausted. To me, the best leader in a changing educational world is someone who has your back when you want to explore and removes any barriers they can. As far as metaphors go, Educational Leader as Captain of the Ship is now being replaced with Educational Leader as Doorman.

As the education system changes, so to will the models for successful leadership within it. I hope that educational leaders of the future recognize risk taking, action research, continual learning and professional growth as necessary components of success in any building or division. Recognizing of course means less control, less top-down management, and more of a support and guiding role for our leaders. Less saying “No” and more finding ways to make “Yes” the default. I hope our leaders do less of steering the ship and more of opening of doors.

Workplace Resolutions

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The sun will come up tomorrow and many of us will have one or more New Year’s Resolutions that we plan to pursue to improve our lives. Lose weight, save money, less junk food, or quit smoking are many of the usual suspects. I know I will be making a couple myself, and have made them in the past, some successful and some not so much.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife shared with me an interview she had heard on CBC radio with an executive coach named Margot Ross-Graham who spoke about the idea of Workplace Resolutions (Link to the Interview HERE). The idea itself wasn’t overly profound, but it was in her examples of these resolutions that I was intrigued. She spoke about four resolutions that she thought fit the business world, but I see great value in them for the education world.

 

1) To Not Be Afraid This Year

Margot speaks to the idea of not being afraid to make a mistake, to take on a new project or to be yelled at by your boss (yikes!), which for the most part are things we want to see in our classrooms. Teachers who are risk takers are usually trying to make the learning in their classroom the most valuable they can for their students and aren’t afraid of a lesson falling flat once in a while if they can find innovative new ways to provide learning experiences. If you are a teacher, what a great resolution for you to take on for the next 6 months. If you are an administrator or division executive, you too can take risks, or you could ask yourself what you could do to foster this type of environment in your building or division.

 

2) To Make A Difference In Someone Else’s Life At Work

I love this one. Margot talks about mentorship of a young colleague, our profession relies so heavily on the development of our young teachers. She also talks about helping a co-worker who is struggling. I am sure that there is someone in your building that could use a little assistance with a project, with coaching a team or simply with their busy day-to-day schedule. What a great professional goal for the rest of this school year, to make sure you make one person’s day easier, in turn making your school a better place.

 

3) To Make A “Breakthrough” At Work

Here Margot talks about breaking old habits and pushing through with something you have wanted to change in your career. Her comment is “if we do what we’ve always done, we’ll be what we’ve always been”, and being the teacher or administrator you want to be may require a breakthrough. Getting more comfortable with technology, creating a more student-centered approach or maybe a change in your classroom environment, whatever it is you could make a work resolution to do it.

 

4) To Not Say “But” At Work

“Imagine how different we would be if every idea we had wasn’t followed by someone telling us ‘but we can’t do that because…’ ” here Margot talks about how the Sara Lee company handed out buttons to their employees with the word “But” crossed out with a red line. I like this from the standpoint of colleague to colleague but also from teacher to student. I wonder how our schools would be if we could strive to tell our kids “But” less often. As a staff in a building or division, how can we strive to be supporters of the big dreamers rather than skeptics? Maybe this workplace resolution is a start?

 

Sure Workplace Resolution in itself is no groundbreaking idea, but change is always difficult and what ever trick it takes to improve ourselves, our schools, our teaching or our relationships with our colleagues and students, we should jump at the chance. I like the workplace resolution of finding one person in my building that could use my assistance every day and helping them. Which one do you like? Are you going to make a workplace resolution? Add it in a comment or keep us posted on how it goes.

Happy New Year everyone, I hope it is everything you could hope for.