To encourage dialogue and reflection about the ways we help ourselves stay centered and focused on our ‘why’, our question for this week is: What helps you stay centered and focused on what’s important? What's Important (Week of 1/22/23) (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
January seems to be moving rather quickly (maybe it’s just me?), and I find myself having a hard time believing that this week is the last week of the month! In addition to the weekend basketball for the boys, Katie and I enjoyed a nice dinner out with cousins in Brookline - it had been a long time, and it was so great to get together. On Sunday we watched some football and relaxed before the start of the new week.
The Rise and Fall of the Teaching Profession
(44 minutes)
The teaching profession is in the worst shape of the past 50 years. That’s according to researchers Melissa Arnold Lyon and Matthew Kraft, who crunched a half century’s worth of data on indicators like whether students want to go into teaching, the prestige of teachers, and the job satisfaction of teachers themselves. What emerged were some striking historical patterns and a clear warning about the state of the teaching profession.
I really enjoy that podcast and the title of this episode drew me in - knowing the realities of the teaching profession, what we have been experiencing in schools, and the overall context of ‘the great resignation’. This time of year is a challenging one for me, and I have found myself reflecting upon ‘the state of schools and education’ (I always am thinking about this, but certainly more so in recent years) - news stories, anecdotes, and the reality of the current and future dearth of teachers and the ‘unknown’ feelings of the direction of education.
The episode is an enlightening and affirming one on many levels - validating much of what we are experiencing, while also providing some historical context that outlines many of these trends are not new and go back a number of years. This gave me a bit of comfort (maybe not the best word, but it did help me to think that the challenges are not new nor unique to us, nor are they new - however, many things are more highlighted and feel more ‘extreme’). And, in many ways it brought me back to the importance of ‘our why’ (Rachael George’s words) in our work.
Earlier this week I came across an updated blog post by Peter Gow (shared below) that I remember seeing a number of years ago - a letter to new teachers. It is so spot on and resonated with me as a ‘focus on the why’ and a compass or path to staying centered when challenges exist and will continue to exist in our profession. This post then led me to a reflective deep dive into similar posts written in the past - as noted above, the historical lens really spoke to me and I hope they do the same. I have shared a few before - although not written in 2023 (Bregman’s post - 2013; Gow’s post - originally about 10 years ago and revised in 2022; Minkel’s post - 2016), the words and sentiments hold true for me and are prescient. Each one provides a different lens and context for staying centered and focused on what is important to help bring us back to our ‘why’. The responses from last week’s question - and the continued practice of listening to our students to provide the ‘space’ for reflection - will help us gain an understanding of ourselves and our students so that they can do the same.
A Letter to New Teachers
by Peter Gow
We are in a renaissance in curriculum and assessment design that has been a long time coming. Thought leaders in our world have called these changes “disruptive,” and many of them are just that—but so are wars and pandemics disruptive, so we’re all adapting. It’s likely that your school, although they may not have said this in so many words, will be looking to you to bring new ideas, methods, and perspectives into its culture. You may become a thought leader in your school yourself.
…teaching isn’t about content. It’s about kids, about building relationships with them, about believing in them, about finding out what they can do and then creating opportunities for them to do it. And it’s about seeing them goof up and giving them chances to try again.
Know your students, have faith in their capacities, understand that they occupy a world that you may not fully understand but that is their reality and must be respected as such, and magical things will happen.
You’re not as alone—all, all alone—as you will feel. Be the master of what you can, but when things get really hard, be forthright in taking your worries and concerns to an amiable colleague or to an administrator you trust…Whatever it is, you owe it to your students and your school to seek the assistance you need, pronto. Most of all, you owe this to yourself, and of course your school owes it to you to help. It’s a problem to be solved, and it can be and will be.
…go to your school’s website and re-read the mission statement and every word you can find about its values and its history. This is the deep cultural material in which the ideals of your school are embedded, and teaching is a profession of ideals. It’s probable that someone founded your school because they believed in something, and the school has evolved in certain ways because of those beliefs. Sometimes the beliefs get lost (and sometimes this is a good thing), sometimes they get transmogrified, and occasionally a school has had to stop and then start all over again in a new direction. But believe me, beliefs are fundamental to the enterprise.
So: Believe in kids, soften up crusty colleagues, be patient with families, be a grown-up, and, to paraphrase a much better man than I, be the mission you wish to see in the world.
Also: Don’t forget to breathe. And have fun, lots of it.
A Question That Can Change Your Life
by Peter Bregman
So here's the question I'd like to propose you ask yourself throughout your day: What can I do, right now, that would be the most powerful use of this moment?
What can I say? What action can I take? What question can I ask? What issue can I bring up? What decision can I make that would have the greatest impact? Asking these questions — and answering them honestly — is the path to choosing new actions that could bring better outcomes. The hard part is following through on the answers and taking the risks to reap the full benefits of each moment. That takes courage. But it's also what brings the payoff.
Rejection, failure, even ridicule — those are the risks of making the most powerful use of a moment. But in my experience, boldness, combined with skilled communication, almost always pays off because it moves the energy of a situation and creates new possibilities in otherwise old ruts.
What can you do, right now, that would be the most powerful use of this moment?
Why I Plan to Stay in Teaching
by Justin Minkel in Education Week Teacher
So here are three reasons why I hope still to be teaching elementary school when I’m an old, tired, yet happy man. To all of you who see teaching as a lifelong craft, worthy of a lifetime’s practice, I’d love to hear your own list.
1) The Kids
2) The Work
3) The Colleagues
So to anyone considering a career in this battered, beleaguered profession that makes all others possible, I have this simple advice: Do it. It will be hard. There will be days when you stagger from the driveway to your couch and wonder how you will summon the strength to do it all again tomorrow...You will laugh when you least expect it, startled from your usual thoughts by something a child in your class just said that you have never heard before. You will work with amazing colleagues who are not only the kind of professional you strive to be, but the kind of human being you strive to become. You will get better each year. And when your students come back to see you ten or twenty years later, when you marvel at the human beings they have become and dare to recognize that you played some small part in that becoming, you will know beyond any shadow of a doubt that you chose the right profession.
Sampling of Responses from Last Week’s ‘Question of the Week’: What is one thing you can commit to doing to help improve yourself and the lives of others?
- I am committed to helping others actualize their (reasonable) dreams.
- Taking care of me. When I am my best self, I am better to others.
- I can be more considerate of others opinions
- I think that extra help should be more normalized, it shouldn’t be something that someone does if they think they are failing.
- Make better choices and be a better and kinder person
- Try not to be obnoxiously loud in public places. You'll get a lot less looks that way.
- Be good
- Help people
- You can continue to keep a smile on your face to make others happy and yourself. A smile can change someone's day.
- Show up at your best everyday :)
- Trying to make good choices
- I can try and be kinder.
- Waking up everyday and 6:00 and walking my dog around the block
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Take care.
Nat