To encourage dialogue and reflection about growing and learning through challenges and difficulties, our question for the week is: What strategies help you to work through challenges? Space for Growth (Week of 10/9/22) (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
The weather this past weekend felt like a gift - beautiful light in the morning extending throughout the day and into the evening. Maggie was home for the long weekend as well so that was nice to have some time all together. It has felt like a traditional autumn couple of days for us - apple picking, some yard work, kids’ sports, and some walks and time to just be. I hope the same was true for others as well.
This end-of-week routine has helped to provide an outlet, both physically and mentally, to process and reflect. I find that, due to the ‘always connected and wired in’ reality of our lives, physical exercise is one way for me to truly disconnect and allow thoughts and ideas to flow. Although at first it felt contradictory in nature for me, actively doing something (exercise, yard work, engagement) actually provided the path for slowing it down. It provides me the space to grow, process, and reflect. And, as I was reflecting on the past week - thoughts jumping from successest to challenges to to-do lists, etc. - I began thinking about how our students need the structure built in to do this as well.
I first came across the words shared above by Victor Frankl almost two years ago (November, 2020)...
Intentional Curiosity
At the end of Marc Brackett’s keynote for the Learning and the Brain conference last week, he shared the quote below by Victor Frankl. It speaks to the ‘power’ we possess to make choices for response to stimuli - that powerful choice can lead to growth, understanding, and learning. As we continue our intentional work this week, formally via advisory and formally/informally in our moment-to-moment, day-to-day, and week-to-week interactions and lessons with our students, I hope we will help foster a ‘choice of curiosity (intentional curiosity), coupled with action’ in the pursuit of a wider perspective of stories and continued learning.
Frankl’s words speak to the need to seek out, create, and embrace these spaces - it is the space that will allow us the opportunity to respond - and the response will foster growth. I believe that our structures within schools need to continue to be mechanisms to foster and utilize this space productively, for students and staff alike - class time, meetings, professional development, advisory, recess, lunch, passing time, etc. They all serve a purpose and the hope is that each one will help us on the path towards our mission as we seek answers to our essential question for our work. It is a process and one that is challenging and ever-evolving - and I do believe that this is critical to embrace. And, as I am writing this, I immediately come right back to Christi Barney’s words about change, struggle, and the role that struggle plays in learning (see blurb below from a blog post back in May of 2017)...
Considering and Reconsidering - May 23, 2017 (excerpt below)
Christi Barney's words from both professional development and conversations have helped to frame this thinking - 'The struggle IS the treatment' - and, the treatment is the learning. She shared that the phrase helps to remember 'that it is actually in the service of mastery for kids to struggle and make baby steps forward.' Wise words, indeed - and ones that we should remember for ourselves and one another. Please remind me of this often so I can consider, and reconsider, my actions, thinking, and beliefs - and, I will continue to try and do the same for all of you.
In order for this struggle (the learning struggle) to take place, we need to keep creating the conditions (the space - ‘soft place to land’) for our students and ourselves to grow, reflect, and learn. And, I would be remiss if I did not say that all of this is ‘easier said than done’ - and that acknowledgement is critical as well. The two posts below are ones that I read lately - challenging a few of my own notions and, in turn, providing a space for growth. They have direct and indirect implications for our work with all of our learners, as well as ourselves, and the responses from last week’s question help to highlight an important part of the process of learning - giving the space to realize and articulate the growth that has taken place.
Rethinking Resilience: Does the Concept of Pushing Through Actually Hinder Growth?
by Lade Akande in NAIS Online
Maybe it’s time to rethink resilience and the pedestal we’ve placed it on...in the wake of the pandemic, the renewed focus on “resilience,” which calls on us to have a growth mindset, has led to an over-glorification of its role in coping with individual and collective stress and trauma. More than ever, society is desperately leaning on resilience and celebrating the ability to bounce back quickly as a measure of success.
In many ways, resilience has served us well these past couple of years, but perhaps what school communities need now is the space to process, rest, and reconnect with meaning, purpose, and joy. Educators and school leaders need to ask ourselves what can come of the destruction we’ve witnessed and experienced. And we need to ask what role does resilience and the slow, messy, and unique process of growth have within the learning environments we create? But, perhaps rather than relying on the adults to produce new ideas and systems, we should turn to the students, who are most closely affected by the overwhelming call for resilience and who have profound insights that often come more naturally from a less conditioned mindset.
By quieting our innate need to fill empty space and instead trusting the opportunities that can arise internally and in our communities, perhaps we can grow through this collective experience together.
The biggest myths of the teenage brain
by David Robson in BBC.com
It is only within the past two decades or so that scientists have been able to chart the neural changes across this core period of development, and decode the mysteries of the teenage brain. These exciting new insights not only help explain why teens feel and act the way they do. They also show that some of the traits that adults tend to find difficult or baffling in teenagers can be turned into a strength, and used to acquire skills and insights at a time when the brain is still malleable.
"Fifty years ago, in schools, it would not have been seen as necessary for students to know about puberty," John Coleman, a clinical psychologist and author of The Teacher and the Teenage Brain. "And I think in 20 or 30 years, we'll be asking why we weren't helping students to understand what's going on in their brains. It can make a real difference."
As the neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, author of Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain, recently put it: "It is not socially acceptable to mock and demonise other sectors of society... But it is, strangely, acceptable to mock and demonise teenagers."
HOW DO TEENAGERS' BRAINS CHANGE?
As we mature from children to adults, our brain undergoes massive changes. Here are some of the most important ones:- The frontal cortex builds and then prunes networks throughout adolescence, which helps the brain become more efficient. This allows for a huge expansion in skills.
- In the frontal and parietal lobes, the brain similarly reinforces the most important connections. This shows up in brain scans as a noticeable increase in "white matter".
- As these changes happen, some brain areas develop more quickly than others, which may affect behaviour. For example, areas associated with reward tend to develop faster than those linked to self-control, which may encourage impulsive decisions.
Teens' dogged pursuit of their own interests – and their disregard for authority – can even help to fuel technological, social and political change. "You have a new generation that's going to explore boundaries – you have a great deal of inventiveness and adventurousness and creativity," says Apter.
Parents of teens may be surprised at how long they can spend pondering their own feelings. This is partly because they haven't yet learnt how to interpret them and respond constructively. It's so much harder to process a disappointment over an exam result, say, if you've never faced a serious failure before. When teens appear to be "over-dramatic", they're simply learning to navigate the complexities of their emotional world by themselves – skills that will be essential in later life.
We feel sleepy when levels of melatonin rise in the brain at night – and, in the morning, we will wake up feeling alert once it has dropped below a certain level. For teens, melatonin simply rises and falls later in the day than adults – meaning that they will feel alert and active when their parents are ready to hit the hay, and tired and drowsy in the early morning, when their parents may have already been up for hours. "Virtually no adults will have melatonin left in their brains at nine o'clock in the morning," says Coleman, "but around half of teenagers do."
It is natural to feel frustrated with teen rebelliousness – but their extreme emotional and social sensitivity means that they are unlikely to respond well to anger. "Even though it's very tempting to shout, it's really counter-productive," says Apter. "They are so alert to the emotional message that they won't be able to hear any of the logic you're trying to impart."
If you do nothing else, simply expressing a genuine interest in what teens are feeling, and helping them to understand the reasons for the challenges they are facing, may itself pay huge dividends.
With the right support, that mental explosion may feel less like a shocking jolt, and more like a burst of fireworks: dramatic, yes, but also creative, awe-inspiring and beautiful.
Sampling of Responses from Last Week’s ‘Question of the Week’: What are you proud of from the first month of school?
- Establishing new routines for my students that are working successfully.
- I am proud of making routines clear and supportive for students!
- I have been putting in my best effort and adjusting when things are going as well as I hoped.
- Our sons seem to have made a successful transition to Blake! I am extremely proud of them for showing courage and resilience as they started a new school in a new town. And I am proud of all of their teachers and staff who have been kind and helpful to them!
- The effort my 7th grader has put forth so far in the start of the new school year.
- Well, I’m really proud of myself for my science summary of mass being the example of the “advanced language” for the rubric.
- The strong start of the BRIDGES program, connections being made with students, staff willingness to step up for coverage
- I am proud of how I adapted to a new grade and new teachers.
- Doing well in classes
- Getting a good score on a test.
- I'm proud that I made up for lost time in just a few days.
- I am proud of the work I have in the first month of school.
- I am mathematically good
- I didn't get lost much
- I am proud of my test scores because they are good.
- Did very well on my tests
- How I've handled things so far
- Everything
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Take care.
Nat