To help encourage conversations and dialogue about fostering curiosity in our students and community this year, our topic/question for the week is: What are you curious about learning this year? Fostering Curiosity (Week of 9/4/17) (This is an anonymous Google Form)
Hopefully everyone is reading this with a relaxed and refreshed frame of mind, having spent some time to breathe, regroup, play, sleep, or whatever felt necessary for you! We had a nice mix of a weekend, starting with Katie and me getting away for a night on Friday as we went to Tanglewood to see one of our favorite bands, The Avett Brothers - such a beautiful spot! We have also been able to get in some gardening, runs, reading, yoga, and a low-key get together with friends Sunday evening - this sounds much busier than it felt! All of these elements of our weekend bring to light the hope that we have discussed for our students and all of us at Blake - a balanced and wide array of activities to spark interests and passions. The opening days this past week were a great success and I want to thank everyone for their help in making it happen - the professionalism, care, and commitment to our students and one another was certainly felt. Thank you.
Each year I share these sentiments/thoughts and this year will be no different - I think it is important to establish a foundation at the start and to keep coming back to it, adjusting as necessary...
A continued goal that I have and hope you share, for both myself and the school, is to maintain a culture of sharing and transparency with one another and the community. It is important to take the time to highlight our work and progress, both the good and bad, in a reflective manner so that we are all held accountable to 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. My hope is that we continue to come back to our mission so that it does become, as I said at our opening meeting together, a 'broken record' and the mantra of a 'willingness to adapt' is second nature for all of us. The weekly 'Natworthy/blog' will remain as one of the vehicles for communication and transparency, sharing what we are talking about as a community, highlighting some readings, and simply offering some of my own thoughts and questions that are floating about in my head. As shared at the end of the 16-17 academic year and again this summer, in an effort to keep all of us (myself included) focused on 'what really matters', the weekly Natworthy/blog update will be 'prefaced' with our guiding lights...
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.
Looking back at the slides, activities, and discussions that have taken place over the last week, it is hard to believe that we have only been back for one week. I have enjoyed the conversations that have taken place and am looking forward to the ones we will have this week and in the weeks/months to come. As I shared last week with the staff, I do struggle with 'finding the balance' of initiatives, as it is my sincere belief that we can not talk about any of this work in isolation if we are going to really make progress and support the learning of our students. We will be sure to come back to them, and I have found myself really thinking about a few key ideas/mantras that were introduced...
- What does success look like?
- What story do we want our students to tell?
- What problem do you want to solve?
- What are you curious about learning?
Some Videos/Clips
The Danger of a Single Story - Chimamanda Adichie
Obvious to You, Amazing to Others - Derek Sivers
Dear Teacher Anti-Bullying PSA
Jaime Casap Discussing How Learning is Changing
James Ryan's 5 Essential Questions in Life
Some Quotations
And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been. - Rainer Maria Rilke
The single story creates stereotypes. And the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. - Chimamanda Adichie
I’ve always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person. The consequence of the single story is this: it robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.-- Chimamanda Adichie
May we never forget that for a brief moment in time we were a part of the future by being a part of a child’s life. - Pernille Ripp
Questioning what we do and why we do it is essential for innovation. - George Couros
In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted. - Bertrand Russell
...a generation of kids that are growing up learning on the web...how they learn how to do things is different than the way we learn how to do things and we need to keep that in mind. - Jaime Casap
Posts of Interest
Schools Are Missing What Matters About Learning
by Scott Barry Kaufman (@sbkaufman) in The Atlantic
This post by Kaufman is one that really spoke to me as I think about what it is that I hope for my own children as well. It looks at control and non-control groups and explores motivation, gifted-and talented education, and implications for all learners. It is one worth coming back to again and again and begs the question - 'what does curiosity look like in each domain in school?'
The power of curiosity to contribute not only to high achievement, but also to a fulfilling existence, cannot be emphasized enough. Curiosity can be defined as “the recognition, pursuit, and intense desire to explore, novel, challenging, and uncertain events.” In recent years, curiosity has been linked to happiness, creativity, satisfying intimate relationships, increased personal growth after traumatic experiences, and increased meaning in life.
Yet in actual schools, curiosity is drastically underappreciated. As Susan Engel has documented in her book, The Hungry Mind, amidst the country’s standardized testing mania, schools are missing what really matters about learning: The desire to learn in the first place. As she notes, teachers rarely encourage curiosity in the classroom—even though we are all born with an abundance of curiosity, and this innate drive for exploration could be built upon in all students.
Stimulating classroom activities are those that offer novelty, surprise, and complexity, allowing greater autonomy and student choice; they also encourage students to ask questions, question assumptions, and achieve mastery through revision rather than judgment-day-style testing.
All in all, the Fullerton study is proof that giftedness is not something an individual is either born with or without--giftedness is clearly a developmental process. It’s also proof that giftedness can be caused by various factors. As the Gottfrieds write in their book Gifted IQ: Early Developmental Aspects, “giftedness is not a chance event … giftedness will blossom when children’s cognitive ability, motivation and enriched environments coexist and meld together to foster its growth.”
Traditional School Imperils Kids; They Need to Be Innovators
by John Larmer (@johnIBIE) in PBL Blog
This brief post highlights the work of Ted Dintersmith, producer of the film Most Likely to Succeed, and the Project-Based Learning focus in schools. This will be one of our areas of focus at Blake this year, and I hope we can bring the film back this year to the Blake/Medfield community.
One of the defining issues of our age, Ted says, in the “relentless acceleration of machine intelligence,” which is growing exponentially, which makes it beyond our ability to imagine what kind of change this will bring. ...Any job that requires pattern recognition, following instructions, or recalling content is in danger of being done by a machine. And yet, that is primarily what our schools still teach.
Automated solutions are getting better and better, so how do we teach kids how to leverage machine intelligence? They need to be taught how to work with other kids, communicate, and see that “a crazy idea out of left field” can become a project. And, Dintersmith claimed, “the amount of learning even in a bad project is enormous.” (I might amend that to: kids can learn a lot from a project even if they fall short of the original goals.)
Here’s another quote from Ted that struck me hard: “If schools stay the same, I’m not sure civil society will stay together.” He said this six years ago, and NOW he sees that people are coming to understand the truth of it. Amen.
How Ending Behavior Rewards Helped One School Focus on Student Motivation and Character
by Linda Flanagan (@LindaFlanagan2) in MindShift
Rewards have been a common practice in schools, and I enjoyed reading this post about the shift this school made - it speaks to much of the work we have been doing as a school and community. It certainly pushes us to rethink and potentially re-shift our goals.
...a substantial body of social science research going back decades has concluded that giving rewards for certain types of behavior is not only futile but harmful. In his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink identifies seven drawbacks to extrinsic rewards: they cripple intrinsic motivation, limit performance, squash creativity, stifle good conduct, promote cheating, can become habit-forming, and spur a short-term mindset.
Students took pleasure in helping others, and recognized that they had abilities worth sharing. “Their academic skills and attention and willingness to participate in academics grew immensely,” Valleroy said.
What Do We Mean When We Say 'Social And Emotional Skills'?
by Anya Kamanetz (@anya1anya) in MindShift
SEL (Social-Emotional Learning) is certainly one of the most significant areas of focus in education right now. Kamanetz's post attempts to address the reality that right now there is a lack of consensus on what constitutes SEL. Within the post she categorizes a glossary of terms: 21st Century Skills; Character; Grit; Agency; Growth Mindset; Resilience; Non-Cognitive Traits and Habits; Social and Emotional Skills.
There is also new research indicating that school-based interventions to promote social and emotional skills have large, and long-term, positive impacts: an average of $11 for every dollar invested, according to an analysis by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (which is a supporter of NPR).
Building Culture and Community in the First Five Days, Weeks, and Months
by Beth Holland (@brholland) in Education Week
Beth is an instructor with EdTech Teacher and has worked closely with much of our staff over the past several years. She is a wonderful resource and become a good friend. I always enjoy reading her thoughts and this post outlines a wonderful framework for our culture and community, focusing on both cognitive and social inquiry.
In light of the violence in Charlottesville this past week, I keep thinking about the message that then Dean Andrews gave all of us on my first day of doctoral studies at Johns Hopkins: your job is to go out and change the world. With teachers across the country either already in school or preparing to start the new year in the coming weeks, that charge can feel more like a daunting platitude than a mission. However, what if we could break it down into manageable objectives. A few years ago, based on an idea from Alan November, I wrote about the First 5s with iPads. This year, instead of talking about devices, workflow, or classroom procedures, what if we focus on how we might develop school and classroom culture, students' global identities, and a community of learners during the first five days, weeks, and months of the school year.
This year, more than ever, students need the opportunity to engage not only in cognitive inquiry but also social inquiry (Banks, 2015). They need the opportunity to develop their own voice as well as a deep understanding of the voices of others. To change the world still seems like a daunting charge. However, if we focus on the first five hours, weeks, and months of this school year, think about what might we be able to accomplish by the start of 2018.
As I share at the outset of every school year together (in fact, it would behoove me to say it at the outset of every day!), I look forward to the success, challenges, and opportunities for growth that await us. I hope we can channel the words of Peter DeWitt and James Ryan so that students, staff, and parents all feel supported and beloved. I think - in fact, I know! - we can do that.
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Take care.
Nat