To encourage dialogue and reflection about learning and growth as we start a new school year, our question for the week is: What are you hoping to learn this year? Starting Fresh (Week of 9/4/22) (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 wonderful to be back together as a community last week with both students and staff. With the ups and downs (and sideways) of the last few years, (and I hesitate saying this!) it felt great to start the year with a sense of steadiness and refreshed energy. Our Labor Day weekend was really nice with a one-night ‘escape’ to the cape to celebrate Grayden’s birthday with some of his buddies, bike rides, yoga, and some time to just relax a bit. Hopefully the 3-day weekend provided a nice respite as we ‘dive back in’ this week!
** The words/reflection/thoughts/shares below hope to serve as a framework for our learning community for the school year. As has been the practice in past years, my hope and intention is to open up and provide a space for dialogue, engagement, and collaboration - it will be important to continue our collegial, communal, and professional culture as we aim to provide a rich and meaningful learning experience for our students...
John Hattie’s research and findings emphasizes the importance of professional learning and intentional learning of teachers -- ‘...the greatest effects on student learning occur when the teachers become learners of their own teaching and...when students become their own teachers.’ This is our true goal - to be a community of active learners. My intent for our learning community is to take both the proverbial 40,000 foot view and ‘rubber hits the road views’ during these days to ask questions, plant seeds, frame the year, and foster dialogue in an effort to grow and learn. It is through the questions and ideas that we discuss and explore that our beliefs will be formed - these beliefs will then guide our actions.
Our work each day with students will align and help us towards our mission - please help me to articulate and examine these together. Much awaits us - hopes for our students and community, ups/downs, successes/challenges, our theme of discovery - and I am hoping we can continue to be active learners together and reflect as a community, pushing and supporting our individual and collective growth...
At the outset of each school year I share these sentiments/thoughts and they are ...
As we work to establish a foundation for our work, a continued goal that I have (and one that I hope is shared by our entire community - students, staff, and families) for both myself and Blake is that we purposefully, intentionally, and actively strive to maintain a culture of learning, sharing, and transparency with one another and the community. It is critical that we 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 both our mission and our essential question...
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.
Essential Question: How can we cultivate and curate the progression of student learning and growth?
Guiding Premises for 2022-2023
The essence of these bullet points below have served as guiding principles/beliefs/convictions that were articulated as a staff in June 2020, as we entered a time of real ‘unknown’ and ‘uncertainty’. They are not unique to a pandemic, remote learning, or in-person instruction, and they are important to state and live - they are our ‘guard rails’ that we can (and need to) lean on for ourselves and one another…
- Safety, Health, and Shared Responsibility will be guiding principles throughout this coming year (they have always been guiding principles, but they will be emphasized and articulated more than ever).
- Priorities for the year: Care/Flexibility/Grace, Theme of Discovery Race/Social Justice, Our Mission - Adaptability (keeping our BCAP in mind), Priority Standards, Learning Skills
- Your well-being is most important - please take care of yourself, your family, and one another. Let us (the 'royal us') know if we can be of any help/support.
- Please take/make time for yourself and your family - at night, mornings, weekends - this will be helpful for our students/families as well throughout this coming year.
- Relationships, relationships, relationships - that is the most important thing we do and will continue to be the most important thing we do. Everything else is secondary (important, but secondary).
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- What hopes do you have for this year?
- What fears do you have for this year?
- Imagination will allow our students to…
- Blake provides opportunities for our students to discover…
- What gifts (areas of strength/interest) do you bring to the Blake community?
Quotes…
Each and every school day will bring tens of thousands of reasons to celebrate in schools across the country. - Bill Ivey
Posts/Shares of Interest and Relevance for Our Work
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 Corba in CNBC News
Without the right tools to handle adversity, hopelessness can set in and kids’ overall well-being can decline. Hope is what energizes them to stay mentally strong during tough times, and it’s what sets them apart from those who give up easily.
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.
A neuroscientist’s insights on the adolescent brain
by Tim Vernimmen in The Washington Post
Adolescence may be a time in life when social experiences really matter and have long-lasting effects on people’s kindness and how they feel connected to others.
That, to me, was somehow a hopeful message: This is something we can possibly train people to be better at — you can learn to take the perspective of others.
My research has made me rethink the assumption of adolescents being troublemakers, because it just didn’t fit the data. We have demonstrated such a strong feeling of purpose and meaning in adolescents. They feel a fundamental need to contribute in a positive way.
Research has shown that being too strict or too loose is not helpful. Adolescents need guidance as well as opportunities to explore. That is not my own research, but I think it makes a lot of sense. The important thing is that we know from brain imaging that brain activity can change, and that it matters what you do as parents. Because the brain is especially plastic in adolescence, there is a window of opportunity to provide support and help adolescents grow into the best versions of themselves. Young people still find the opinions of their parents very important.
What we get wrong about teens and screens
by Emily Weinstein and Carrie James in The Boston Globe
What adults are missing about teens and screens
Marketplace Interview
(5:54)
“We have spent the last few years doing research with more than 3,500 teenagers,” said Weinstein. “The stories that they were telling us not only stopped us in our tracks, but they made us rethink our own assumptions, and we realized that so much of what adults assume teens are facing or assume it’s like to be a teenager today actually misses the mark.”
We have found some consistently winning ways to approach teens’ online lives and create a united front.
- The first step is to tune in to the dilemmas they’re facing.
- Next, we need to flip the script away from the tired adults-versus-teens tech battle.
- Ask the teens in your life about their tech habits. What do they do that works, and what habits do they wish they could change?
- Talking openly about design tricks is a power move…A study published in Child Development showed that if you want to motivate adolescents to change their tech habits, teaching them about “addictive design” is effective, because adolescents don’t like to be manipulated.
- Try co-browsing — looking together through a social media feed and sharing your reactions with each other as you browse.
When adults start and stop conversations with the message that social media is “bad,” teens are unlikely to bring up challenges that may only confirm our worst suspicions. Getting curious about teens’ digital experiences is essential because, as our research team discovered, there’s so much that adults are missing. Just ask a teen.
The #1 Factor That Determines a Toxic or Thriving School Culture (Opinion)
by Alex Kajitani in Education Week
Here’s what I’ve concluded: the number one factor that determines whether a school culture is toxic or thrives is how staff members deal with their own conflicts as they arise.
It’s Up To US.
When it comes to the success of an individual classroom, nothing is more important than the relationship between the teacher and the students. When it comes to the success of an entire school, nothing is more important than the relationship of the adults in the building.
Conflicts happen when human beings work together. How we deal with those conflicts is where we have the power to truly shape our school’s culture.
Inquiry and Discovery (Priority Standards for Our Work)
In his TED talk, Benjamin Zander speaks to the power of relationships, discovery, and shares his goal to 'awaken the possibility in other people' and to establish an environment for 'eyes to shine'. This is one of our steadfast goals for all of our students here at Blake as well. As Zander says at the end of this talk...
I have a definition of success. For me, it's very simple. It's not about wealth and fame and power. It's about how many shining eyes I have around me.
This is a mantra and definition I believe we all can and should embrace for our learners. And, as he says, taking the time for self-reflection when the eyes in front of us are not shining…
So if the eyes are shining, you know you're doing it. If the eyes are not shining, you get to ask a question. And this is the question: who am I being that my players' eyes are not shining? We can do that with our children, too. Who am I being, that my children's eyes are not shining?
These questions are ones that bring to mind James Ryan’s 2016 HGSE graduation speech. Although I have watched it many, many times, I never grow tired of the message. Ryan’s emphasis on curiosity, care, imagination, hope, and inquiry through questions are what I believe should be the ‘Priority Standards’ for the Blake faculty and staff as we seek to foster and maintain the shining eyes in all of our learners…
Dean James Ryan's 5 Essential Questions In Life
(6:49)
- Wait, what?
- I wonder...why/if
- Couldn’t we at least?
- How can I help?
- What truly matters (to me)?
The transformative power of classical music
(20:14)
Benjamin Zander has two infectious passions: classical music, and helping us all realize our untapped love for it -- and by extension, our untapped love for all new possibilities, new experiences, new connections.
I look forward to the successes, challenges, and opportunities for growth that await us. It is my steadfast hope that we can keep our Guiding Lights (students, core values, mission and essential question) at the forefront of our thoughts, mindsets, and actions with strategic foresight, hope, grace, and a willingness to adapt so that our precious children (and all of us) feel beloved and supported (Knowing our Why, Starting with Why, Sharing our Why, and Acting with Why) on this important and imperfect journey.
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Take care.
Nat