To help encourage conversations and dialogue about the role that self-reflection plays in our growth as learners, our topic/question for the dinner table is: When thinking back on 2019, what have you learned about yourself and how have you grown as a learner? Holding Up a Mirror (Week of 12/15/19) (This is an anonymous Google Form)
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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 rain on Friday evening and into Saturday certainly contributed to a ‘quiet feel’ for the weekend, even though the pace and our current reality right now does not feel quiet! I know it sounds cliche, but it really seems at this time of year that there just isn't enough time to get it all done (even though I’m not sure I could name what ‘all’ means!). Our Saturday was spent with errands, practices, and ‘stuff’ before seeing our nieces in a performance of The Nutcracker at the Norwood Theater. Our Sunday was full as well, with basketball games and Grayden hosted a yankee swap for his friends. We are doing our very best to slow things down (have you heard me say that better?!?) and enjoy ‘the season’, be present, and take it all in - I’ll be sure to let you know how that goes!
Kelly C. and I were fortunate to attend a workshop this past Thursday morning in Newton facilitated by John D’Auria (@jdauria) and Mike Welch (@MJWelchDedham), entitled ‘Maximizing Our Influence: Connecting Social-Emotional Research to Leadership’. John has been a long-term mentor of mine, and I initially connected with Mike about five years ago through a workshop series that we facilitated together on blended learning. When both Kelly and I received the flyer about this workshop, we had the similar response - ‘Let’s go’. It provided a ‘vitamin’ for us, as we took the time to listen, learn, reflect, and then look to apply the learning to our current work. There were many ideas I look forward to sharing with the staff (I have noted some of the ideas/concepts below), but the notion and practice of ‘holding up a mirror’ was what I keep thinking about. Although those words - ‘holding up a mirror’ - may not have been shared explicitly by John and Mike, the concept was conveyed and clear. We need to continually be asking ourselves about our roles, our influence, and our own actions - namely, ‘How am I contributing to this dynamic? What does this mean for me/us? How may I be contributing to the problem?’ They are humbling questions for sure, but they are the ones we must continue to explore - for ourselves, for one another, and for our students.
Notes from Workshop with John D’Auria and Michael Welch
- We have underestimated SEL’s value in the deployment of effective leadership
- ‘If we don’t feed the adults, they will eat the kids…’
- ‘If we don’t feed the adults, they will eat the kids…’
- Emotions are contagious
- Resonance is contagious...So is dissonance
- Resonance is contagious...So is dissonance
- 3 Important Leadership Skills
- Recognizing emotions
- Acknowledging emotions
- Managing emotions
- Recognizing emotions
- Are we aware of what we are feeling? Are we managing our emotions or are our emotions managing us?
- What’s the movie in your head about the word ‘strength’?
- Context Matters…
- Rate of Technology Change is faster than Human Adaptability Change
- ‘Tyranny of the Urgent’
- Horace’s Compromise - always compromising what you are trying to do…
- Horace’s Compromise - always compromising what you are trying to do…
- Challenge of Leadership - Achieving goals through other people
- Setting conditions so work is collectively owned
- Setting conditions so work is collectively owned
- ‘We are preparing children for the world of the past…’
- Amy Edmondson - Balancing Psychological Safety and Accountability
- Two opposing Neural Networks
- Positive Emotional Attractor (Psychological Safety)
- Negative Emotional Attractor (Accountability)
- Two opposing Neural Networks
- Learning and Change are Stressful
- ‘I know I can improve but critical feedback can feel like a lack of appreciation for what I am accomplishing.’ The ouch factor.
- ‘I know I can improve but critical feedback can feel like a lack of appreciation for what I am accomplishing.’ The ouch factor.
- ‘What they did’ vs ‘What they are’ conversations
- Create norms that build trust (Roger Schwarz)
- I have information - so do other people
- Each of us see things that others don’t
- People may disagree with me and still have pure motives
- Differences are opportunities for learning
- How might I be contributing to the problem?
- I have information - so do other people
- Develop a Culture of Mutual Learning
- We can’t go in with solutions in mind - because we don’t understand the problem…
- Diagnosis - What are the layers to this problem?
- Spheres of Control vs Spheres of Influence
- ‘I’ve made every mistake in education’; ‘I’ve taken advantages of opportunities to screw up’
- If we fail to acknowledge the emotions, we will get bitten by them
- SEL - Social Emotional Leadership
- Distributed leadership - When you distribute power, you are not giving it away (you are empowering others)
- Shared vision
- Authenticity
- Tapped into needs, made everyone feel needed and included
- Strong sense of emotional intelligence
- Overt vulnerability and accountability
- Distributed leadership - When you distribute power, you are not giving it away (you are empowering others)
- Are you willing to convey what you heard? - Tell someone else’s story…
- Know the role vs Know the person - They need to know me… (emotionally)
- Trying to take these concepts into practice…that is the challenge
This last note (‘trying to take these concepts into practice’) is indeed the challenge that is always present for us. We often talk about the importance of connecting the dots -- reflecting upon the ways that theory/research/philosophy inform our beliefs and the ways that our beliefs inform our practices. It is through this cycle of reflection-action-reflection that we will continue to grow - and, in turn, grow our students as learners.
Last Week’s Topic/Question (Week of 12/8/19): What is a goal you have for yourself this year that you are willing to embrace ‘the struggle’ to try and meet?
- Trying to improve my diet and eat better foods.
- I hope to make sure I sent all students in the right direction.
- To lose weight
- To make new friends and let my fake friends go
- Making up friendships that I’ve lost.
- I really want to score more points in basketball this year, and I will practice to get better and reach that goal.
- To get better grades
Changing Our Classrooms to Prepare Students for a Challenging World
by Christina Katopodis and Cathy N. Davidson
This post is aimed towards an audience of humanities teachers and professors, but the message and content within can certainly be applied to all disciplines. The focus is on ‘taking a baseline assessment of practices’ of ‘what we do’, looking to create and sustain a student-centered classroom. Six strategies are shared, outlining both ‘How’ and ‘Why’ they work: Share the Floor; Welcome Students into the Learning Process; Prioritize Student Goal Setting; Follow Major Lessons with Reflection Activities; Give Students a Say in the Curriculum; Provide a Public Platform.
We must prepare our students to be empowered to think and to act critically in the contingent, precarious, overwhelming world we have bequeathed to them.
Humanists who care about the fate of our students—and, in fact, the fate of the world—should be taking our mission seriously and delivering on our promises. We need to ask ourselves (not in a general way, but as individuals in this profession) if we are really doing what we say we do in our humanities classrooms...Most of us who were trained mainly by emulating our own professors find it difficult (at first) to reshape our lectures and discussion methods to include students in the building and leading of our classrooms—active learning situations that offer students an opportunity to master essential skills. It is often equally difficult for students to realize when and how they are mastering these skills. Rarely do we describe for students what and why they are learning. Yet reflection or metacognition (the structured, intentional consideration of what one has mastered and how one has mastered it) is one of the most important cognitive tools we can pass on to our students.
While we are undertaking the typically arduous, painstaking, and lengthy process of redesigning outdated departmental majors and minors, university-wide general education requirements, and interdisciplinary relations between the human and social sciences and the STEM departments on our campuses, we can walk into our humanities classrooms tomorrow and help our students understand and master skills that will change their lives. Will they learn art, classics, history, linguistics, literature, music, philosophy, and more? Will they learn how to read, to write, to perform? Of course they will. They will also learn why learning how to think and to do these things critically and creatively are constructive, essential components of their education and survival skills in a challenging world.
“Gaining a Reputation as a Learner.”
by Bill Ferriter (@plugusin)
Ferriter’s post dives into the beliefs that we apply to ourselves as learners, and the resulting categories that we eventually ‘embody’ (i.e. ‘enthusiastic learners’ or ‘those who give up’). In outlining these ‘labels’, the post encourages all of us to reflect upon the ways that we currently and potentially help all students see themselves as learners.
Enthusiastic learners have experienced success time and again. They regularly earn the best marks on tests and quizzes. They are always on the top of class rankings. They place in the highest percentiles of standardized tests year after year. The result: They believe in their academic abilities. That belief inspires their participation, carries them through moments when learning is hard and increases their willingness to take intellectual risks. It is easy to be confident, after all, when you see consistent evidence of your competence.
As Gary Wolf – cofounder of the Quantified Self blog – explains, “We don’t try things we believe we can’t do…We simply skirt the issue. Perhaps we even convince ourselves that it is not necessary, or a waste of time. Ingrained habits of avoidance can become nearly invisible to our conscious reflection, due to how effectively they guard us from the bad consequences we believe will result from failure” (Wolf, 2007).
High levels of self-efficacy can enhance a student’s accomplishments, feelings of personal well-being, and willingness to experiment with new ideas. Students with high levels of self-efficacy also set higher expectations for their future performance and remain calm when approaching difficult tasks (Pajares, 1996; Ormond, 2008). And perhaps most importantly, self-efficacy has a positive impact on a student’s academic achievement. Its .82 effect size translates to a 29-percentile point gain, making self-efficacy one of the highest leverage instructional strategies that teachers can implement in their classrooms. (Marzano, Pickering & Heflebower, 2010). Helping students to develop a stronger sense of self-efficacy – which John Hattie (2009) describes as “gaining a reputation as a learner” – may have a greater impact than addressing achievement directly.
At the end of each calendar year I look forward to setting aside some time for ‘end-of-the year’ reflection - thinking about both personal and collective learning, growth, challenges, and successes. The images and words below are ones that I hope will center us, guide us, challenge us, and lead us on our ‘imperfect journey’ with the hopes of ‘getting it all done’...
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Enjoy the week and take care.
Nat