To encourage dialogue and reflection about ways that we can foster the desire and willingness to learn, our question for the week is: What can teachers do to help you be willing to learn and grow? A Willingness to Grow (Week of 11/13/22) (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
Hopefully everyone enjoyed the three-day weekend, as we recognized Veterans Day and weathered the remnants of Hurricane Nicole. Ours was pretty quiet, watching some high school sports and continuing the ongoing work of putting the ‘yard to bed’ for the winter. We had a nice Sunday evening, as Maggie was home for a brief stint after visiting one of her friends this weekend at UVM.
The experiences also led me to more reflections about the systems we are employing and building for our students to grow and learn. And, again, the development and refinement of these systems necessitates a spirit of humility and introspection - easier said than done, for sure. I am sensitive to the reality of the increased expectations that are on all of us - educators, students, and families - and, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that the ongoing process of reflection/refinement takes energy and time. I do not know the right answer (or if there is one - I doubt there is, to be honest) for finding the ‘proper balance’ of change/stability. However, I do know that the spirit of questioning and adaptability is one that will be needed for our students, both in the present and the future. It was enlightening and affirming to hear from some of our local veterans this past week sharing similar sentiments - why they served, what sustained them, and their advice to our students.
The two posts below speak to some of these ideas that have been floating around in my head, and they are ones that affirm and open up room in my thoughts for change and openness - to adapt, grow, and learn. And, in the same spirit of last week’s question of the week, they validate and help to center the perspective on valuing all of our learners - an understanding that brings forth a willingness to grow, reflect, and improve.
Bob Dylan on Vulnerability, the Meaning of Integrity, and Music as an Instrument of Truth
by Maria Popova
To know yourself is to know that you are not invulnerable. The honest encounter with that vulnerability is the wellspring of art: Every artist’s art is their coping mechanism for the extreme sensitivity to aliveness that we call beauty — the transcendent and terrifying capacity to be moved by the world, to let something outside us stir deeply something within us. All great art — and only honest art can be great — is therefore the work of vulnerability and all integrity the function of fidelity to one’s fragilities.
True integrity necessitates the honesty of vulnerability — that great valve between us and the world, through which reality rushes into the chamber of our being and art pours out.
You must be vulnerable to be sensitive to reality. And to me being vulnerable is just another way of saying that one has nothing more to lose. I don’t have anything but darkness to lose. I’m way beyond that.
Educator as Futurist: Moving beyond “Preparing for the future” to “Shaping the future” | by Laura McBain | Stanford d.school | Medium
by Laura McBain and Lisa Kay Solomon - Published in Stanford d.School
Educators shape the mindsets, behaviors, and skills their students will carry with them into the future. And while this has always been true, the global pandemic, nationwide public attention to social justice, and the need to dismantle historically inequitable systems have heightened our collective sense of urgency to design more equitable and abundant futures with — and for — our students.
As educators, we spend an inordinate amount of time preparing students for the future as if we know how the future will unfold for them. But in an ever accelerating moment of uncertainty and ambiguity — merely being ‘prepared’ feels insufficient. In a world filled with more unknowns than knowns — how do we help our students not just be “prepared” but capable of envisioning and building the futures they want to bring to life?
To be an education futurist means weaving the practices of futures thinking and design into our learning experiences with leaders and students. In a rapidly changing world, futures thinking helps us imagine a wider range of the possible, plausible, probable futures in which we will be learning and living. Design helps us build toward more preferred futures by giving form to ideas, rapidly experimenting, and learning through iterative processes and feedback. Through these lenses, we see the world not just as it is, but how it could be if we took a more empathetic and human-centered approach to uncover and solve complex challenges in the hopes of creating a more equitable, humane, and anti-racist future.
We have to teach our students to become adept time travelers — to make sense of the past in order to envision new futures; to be sense makers of disparate types of information — moving seamlessly between what’s known and unknown; to flex their imagination in expansive and applied ways, and to become critical and contextual thinkers.
We are being shaped by this moment, and outcomes of the choices we make will shape us for years to come. Educators and students are the futurists we need today.
Sampling of Responses from Last Week’s ‘Question of the Week’: What can we do to help make other people feel valued?
- Show that you are open to listening to them and then do just that.
- Listen
- Thank Them! No matter how many times they have done a particular thing for you, it's always appreciated when people drop a note to say "Thank You".
- Compliment them
- Help them when they seem down.
- Compliment them
- Compliment them
- BE KIND
- Be kind
- We can support and encourage them to do things they love
- Give them attention and compliments
- You can include them and maybe give them a compliment.
- If they do a good job in a project or an assignment let them know .
- Be kind
- Include other people if they aren't in a group for an activity. Help people if they need it and listen to others.
- Complement people more
- talk to them :)
- If you notice something that can be complimented, compliment it!
- Help them
- Let them share their ideas and always be inclusive
- Include and invite kids to play with you
- Spend time with'em
- Include them
- Listen to them
- Say thank you and please
- When you compliment them or include or ask them for their opinion
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Take care.
Nat