To encourage dialogue and reflection about hopes, dreams, and discovery, our question(s) for the week is: Share one or two dreams or hopes you have for the future. What is one step you can take towards this/these dream(s)? Hopes and Dreams (Week of 10/16/22) (This is an anonymous Google Form)
Blake's Guiding Lights
Our Students
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 another gorgeous weekend and I hope that everyone was able to take advantage of it. It was a nice one for us, with just a couple sports games and time outside. It was fun to watch the Holliston-Medfield soccer game at Holliston High on Saturday afternoon - seeing some of Owen’s friends play against our former Blakers!
In addition to these formal ways of checking in or ‘taking stock’ (Google Forms, surveys, conferences), it is equally important to articulate the need, acknowledge the need, and create space for this need. ‘Speaking from the I’, it is in this space and time that we can dig a little deeper, reflect, discover, learn, and grow. In carving out the space for reading and listening, I find my thoughts open up as I look back (reflect/process) and forward (dream/hope) almost simultaneously. The two posts below speak to the importance of intentionally dreaming and the power/role that hope can and should play for students and adults alike in the context of school and learning. They both provide prompts/structures that can help us individually and collectively lean into our dreams and hopes on various paths of discovery.
Radical Dreaming for Education Now
by Jamila Dugan in Ed Leadership (ASCD)
Urgency, fear, and the pull of the previous dominant paradigm of schooling are leading us to attempt a feverish return to the status quo—reducing schooling experiences to addressing perceived student deficits and learning loss. We're missing the forest for the trees. If we continue on this path, we will miss a big opportunity. The transformative chance to dream.
What if our first step to changing the trajectory of schooling took shape from a radical dream?
What does a schooling experience look like where students are seen as fully capable to chase their dreams?
What if we rejected the notion that we need to teach students how to go to school again and embraced questions like, What does it mean to go to school now? and What is its purpose?
We must push ourselves to think beyond what can't happen and to think instead of our duty as the holders of dreams. We must move through this moment by radically dreaming and hearing the dreams of others.
The dreams of students are alive and well, but if we focus solely on what we believe they've lost, we may miss another opportunity for transformation. Leading with fear and hyper-focusing on students' perceived deficits and loss will not lead us to a better future.
So, if dreaming for potential, not reacting to loss, is the answer, how do educators begin? Here are a few ideas:
Listen and expand.
Slow down.
Learn from the dreamers.
Dream with students.
Dream with your fellow educators.
The pandemic has been tough for all educators, but we are not without resources to guide our way forward. Let us learn from those who have come before us and look to the rising sun. The future is bright if we let ourselves radically dream.
Child psychologist: The No. 1 skill that sets mentally strong kids apart from ‘those who give up’—and how parents can teach it
by Michelle Borba from CNBC.com
Research shows that hopefulness can dramatically reduce childhood anxiety and depression. Hopeful kids have an inner sense of control. They view challenges and obstacles as temporary and able to be overcome, so they are more likely to thrive and help others.
Yet despite its immense power, hope is largely excluded from our parenting agendas. The good news? Hope is teachable. One of the best ways to increase this strength is by equipping children with skills to handle life’s inevitable bumps.
Here are nine science-backed ways to help kids maintain hope, especially during tough times:
1. Stop negativity in the moment.
2. Use hopeful mantras.
3. Teach brainstorming.
4. Share hopeful news.
5. Ask ‘what if?’
6. Celebrate small gains.
7. Boost assertiveness.
8. Create gratitude rituals.
9. Embrace service.
As part of this process of formally incorporating hopes and dreams into our work with students and ourselves, we can lean on insight shared (and hopefully we can continue to ask along the way) about the ways that we face the challenges we will certainly encounter and are inevitable…
Sampling of Responses from Last Week’s ‘Question of the Week’: What strategies help you to work through challenges?
- I like to tackle a challenge from all different angles. If the beginning of it is really hard, I will start from behind.
- use tools
- I will reread the problem and say I can do it.
- Thinking about it in simpler terms
- Breathing, taking a walk, taking a break from the task/situation and then coming back to it, asking for help
- Breathing and exercising
- Persisting through works for me.
- Meditation. Meditation helps me calm down and recenter myself to be me and always go 110%.
- Sometimes the "Wall of Awful" (whatever it may be) can make us shut down and give up, but recognizing the struggle and making a plan to climb the wall, step by step, is what can help to get over it.
- making sure i set time apart to work on it
- Writing and journaling my thoughts and ideas always helps me to process what I am thinking and make a plan for next steps. Exercising also helps me, but I need to remember that because it is often the first thing to be taken off my list when I am feeling stressed
- Music. Taking a break and coming back to it.
- Person to Person help.
- Taking a deep breath and doing things one at a time
- Being calm, asking teachers or parents for help
- Take deep breaths, ask people for help.
- Asking a teacher for help
- deep breathes
- Deep breaths and taking walks
- Asking for help
- Working with others helps me work through challenges
- Take a deep breath, take a break or look at the challenge from a different perspective.
Please click here for Blake Updates.
Please click here for District Community Notices.
Take care.
Nat