To encourage dialogue and reflection about the ‘change process’ and the ways that we can and do adapt, our question for this week is: What helps you adjust to changes and new ideas? Adapting To and With Change (Week of 3/12/23) (This is an anonymous Google Form)
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Blake's Core Values: Respect, Responsibility, Resourcefulness, Reflection
Our Essential Question: How can we cultivate and curate the progression of student learning and growth?
Our Mission: Blake Middle School believes in a living mission statement, based on the concept that our community seeks and respects knowledge, integrity, character, wisdom, and the willingness to adapt to a continually evolving world.
The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning. - John Dewey
You cannot teach today the same way you did yesterday to prepare students for tomorrow. - John Dewey
It was great to start off last weekend by picking Maggie up at the train for spring break - so good to see her and have everyone back in the house all together. It was a low-key weekend for us - watching basketball and doing our best to be present with one another. With ‘Daylight Savings’ taking place today, I hope that everyone has been able to make the most of the weekend thus far! As much as I enjoy the increased light in the afternoon/evening, the darker mornings are not my favorite!
In an effort to make room for some reflection and also embrace brevity (an ongoing challenge as well), I am sharing two ‘oldies but goodies’ from Rick Wormeli. Although each post was written several years ago, they are pertinent, relevant, and timeless. Both, in different ways, address ‘the change process’, while staying true to values and a sense of purpose/vision/mission. It is critical that we continue to keep these at the forefront of our work and to engage in the dialogue that they elicit and prompt, while also always providing spaces for questions to be asked that foster growth.
The Grief of Accepting New Ideas
by Rick Wormeli (@rickwormeli2) in AMLE (April, 2018)
To quote Bob Dylan, the times, they are a-changin’. We wonder, though, if teachers have the dispositions needed to make fundamental changes to their teaching practices in order to respond constructively to our changing times, especially when those changes reveal that what they were doing was less effective than their egos thought they were.
The way we teach is often a statement of who we are. If someone questions our practices, it’s like they’re questioning our value as teachers. Our classroom instruction, including assessment and grading, technology integration, student-teacher interactions, and more, are expressions of how we see ourselves; they are our identity. Can we navigate these frequently troubled waters without invoking self-preserving egos and drowning in resentment?
For any of us educators trying to coach teachers, convince a colleague to try something new, or change a school’s culture, it’s helpful to remember that our teacher beliefs are held tightly, with and without close examination, and for one of us to let go of an accepted truth requires grieving over the loss of that truth, at least to some degree. We’re not talking about the grief one feels over the death of a loved one, of course, but it’s something that is a surprisingly powerful factor in idea acceptance and behavioral change. It can make individuals dysfunctional, if a time to grieve is denied.
We are all fellow travelers, and we are all inconsistent with ourselves and one another. No one likes to have protective layers pulled bare, revealing old scars or sensitive places still raw. To survive the day, we tell ourselves that our truths are THE truths, and they form our version of reality. When we’re confronted with their illusory nature, we’re no longer on solid ground. We grieve for former students we may have wronged, the real or not perceived loss in status among respected colleagues, the time and energy that will be spent in changing who we are, and for the loss of self that was once so sure.
Let’s help each other: Let’s interact in ways that invite thoughtfulness, not invocation of self-protecting egos. Let’s give colleagues time and encouragement to pushback and resist new ideas, and rather than be so self-assured ourselves, let’s look for new insights we need to hear in our colleagues’ arguments. And finally, let’s extend the compassion to others we seek for ourselves, and honor the grief process that happens when asked to give up something we’ve held so tightly all these years—a truth, reality, perception, or practice—as they struggle to accept something new. Instead of leaving them to struggle alone, we can walk that path together.
We Have to Prepare Students for the Next Level, Don’t We?
by Rick Wormeli (@rickwormeli2) in AMLE (February, 2017)
Some universities blame the poor academic performance of their young adult students on the poor quality instruction they think students received in high schools. High schools blame the middle schools, middle schools blame elementary schools, and elementary schools blame their students’ gene pool. It is stunning how similar their commentaries are to those recorded by educators 100, even 1,000, years ago, and yet, here we are, still progressing.
While the brain and body’s development have some universal milestones we all experience, both vary significantly person to person. We are not uniform in what we bring to learning’s table, and as such, the factory model of schooling is at odds not only with modern teaching/learning practices, but also with schooling’s ultimate outcomes.
Young adolescents’ internal mind space rallies around the here and now, not the later. For them, every effort is made to survive the day and navigate the week, not assure college placement in six years. A constant focus on future benefits of current learning is often frustrating for young adolescents.
Thinking that we have to enact the policies and practices of the grade levels above us in order to prepare our students for those levels is deeply flawed. How will they do well in those upper level classes? Through maturation and really learning the current content. Our goal is achieved, then, by using highly effective practices for teaching young adolescents, not by using only those practices of high school teachers or college professors. These research-based, highly effective practices are delineated in the 16 characteristics of successful middle schools from AMLE’s This We Believe.
Let’s stop the nonsense that we cannot differentiate or assess with nontraditional formats because teachers in levels above do not provide those experiences, and thus, students will be unprepared for the unfamiliar. Instead, let’s live up to what actually works: teaching students the course content and skills in whatever ways lead to their continual development, and helping them mature as individuals and learners so they can flourish in varied learning situations, even those devoid of effective teaching.
Middle level schools are vibrant, intense environments with unique needs that are very different than those of high schools, colleges, or the working world. Perpetuating the factory model of schooling by importing policies from high schools and colleges to our middle level schools because we think it prepares students for what is to come is uninformed and ineffective. Let’s be experts in 10- to 15-year-olds instead, and even better, let’s manifest that expertise in our classrooms daily.
Sampling of Responses from Last Week’s ‘Question of the Week’: What do you hope to accomplish in school over the next few weeks?
- I hope to return to my creating rhythm of before break!
- Continue with routines that motivate and engage students.
- I hope to accomplish getting a good grade on a math quiz.
- I hope to provide some meaningful feedback on essays! :)
- Being accepted into 8th Grade Honors Math Class.
- Have fun
- I hope to do well on my Social Studies project.
- I want to become a better classmate and a better friend.
- Not falling
- I hope that I officially don't have any missing work and do well on our next few tests.
- To get a 4 in Mr K’s art class
- Good Grades
- I hope, now knowing what I need to achieve to get into better classes in the coming years, I can improve on those skills.
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Take care.
Nat