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.
Hopefully the extra hour from daylight savings this past weekend served everyone well, providing a chance for more sleep, rest, exercise, reading, or just simply time. We enjoyed a lovely fall weekend, taking advantage of a relatively light schedule of activities and watching soccer. On Sunday we enjoyed more of the same and a family dinner centered us before the busyness of the week ensued.
If we are successful, we are all going to get a little uncomfortable. - Robert Kegan
The best thing we can do is prepare students to learn for the rest of their lives. - Tom Whitby
They serve as compass points for my work and, I hope, for the work of our students, staff, and community. Although the words do not explicitly mention change, the concept and principle of change is certainly implied. And, Hargreaves artfully wove these concepts into his message to the audience that evening as noted in the final bullet point below (Giving feedback, Taking responsibility for others’ kids, and Taking initiative). I could go on and on (and would enjoy doing so), but my key take-away that evening was to embrace the challenges and aim to 'teach for good' - and, the only way to do that is by 'diving in'. I have shared below my notes from Hargreaves and would welcome conversations with all about any and all of them...
Teaching for Good Lecture - Andy Hargreaves
- I love to learn
- Teach for Life: Collaborate for Good
- Be an ally in the fight for public education
- Teacher has more power than anyone - once the door is closed
- We give away our best ideas so we can get more
- Where do you find solidarity?
- The fight of our lives - that is how important this is
- Collaboration costs money
- PD is critical
- Culture is everything
- Collective moral responsibility - we need to acknowledge and embrace this
- Standardized testing fosters ill-being (vs well-being)
- Learning Forward work
- Diversity and Building Relevance - key principles
- Environment is not a disability
- Criticize the lesson, not the teacher
- Collaborative professionalism
- 'What’s essential for those kids is good for all kids'
- Friendship Bench - a nice idea
- We are our best with each other
- Fight for things as well as against things
- Three keys: Giving feedback, Taking responsibility for others’ kids, Taking initiative
In line with some of this thinking and practicing one of the principles I believe will help us 'teach for good', a few posts I have found of interest are referenced below...
A Cadence of Accountability to One Another
by George Couros (@gcouros)
Couros's posts always push me to a deeper place of reflection and I appreciate the push here to move from talking into action. I hope that this 'cadence of accountability' is a norm we can all embrace.
...what happens after the conversations? We are often really good at having meetings, but not necessarily great at doing something because of said meetings.
We can talk all we want in education, but only action will move us forward. Creating a cadence of accountability to one another and our students is something that should be a norm in school if we are going to continually grow as organizations and individuals.
What IKEA and Our Education System Have in Common (It’s Not a Good Thing)
by A.J. Juliani (@ajjuliani)
Having a personal fascination with IKEA (and I know friends and family who have that in common), the title of Juliani's post stood out. As with many of his posts, it forced me to think a bit more about what it is we really want for our students and schools. For these 4 reasons, we do not want them to be IKEA-like:
1. IKEA is easy. But, I didn’t learn anything.
2. IKEA is about compliance. Satisfaction is only in getting it done/finishing.
3. IKEA is convenient. It’s not creative.
4. IKEA is standardized. It is prime for hacking.
We want students to be successful, so we scaffold and build up support systems for them to find success. But, where is the line? How can we support student success, celebrate them making mistakes along the way, and make time for them to learn during the process of creating, instead of just following a process to create?
The Top and Bottom of Leadership and Change
by Andy Hargreaves (@hargreavesBC) and Mel Ainscow (@MelAinscow)
Although the scope of the content of this article is aimed towards a larger level (district, state, federal), the intent applies to all levels and structures of education. I particularly like the principles of 'collective responsibility' and the importance of members 'at the middle' becoming the 'collective drivers of change and improvement together'.
...all top-down reforms have an Achilles heel: Their focus on micromanaging two or three measurable priorities only works for systems pursuing traditional and comparatively narrow achievement goals. A digital age of complex skills, cultural diversity, and high-speed change calls for more challenging educational goals and more sophisticated and flexible change strategies.
A third way to reduce bad variation among school districts is to promote collaboration among them so they share resources, ideas, and expertise and exercise collective responsibility for student success. In this leading from the middle approach, districts don’t just mediate and manage other people’s reforms individually; they become the collective drivers of change and improvement together.
Large-scale success cannot be achieved if districts continue to act independently of one another. Leading from the middle, not just in the middle, can use the power of local solutions to diverse problems in an environment where schools work with schools and districts work with districts as they exercise collective initiative and responsibility for all students’ success. This kind of leadership needn’t be confined to districts and can encompass networks and other kinds of partnerships as well (Rincon-Gallardo & Fullan, in press). But collective responsibility is not just something districts should ask others to undertake. It is something that districts now have to take on themselves.
Change is healthy, necessary, and inevitable - but, it certainly is not easy. As an avid reader and lover of ideas, at times I find it to be challenging to keep a concerted focus on what is important. The message from Andy Hargreaves, coupled with these mantras of 'teaching for good', 'a cadence of accountability', 'collective moral responsibility', and 'collaborative professionalism' align with our mission and are ones that I think provide the necessary focus. I hope we can all, both locally at Blake/Medfield and more globally, strive to find ways to embrace and embody these principles for healthy discussions, progress, and action. I welcome all of the conversations, push back, and actions - that is the only way we can move forward and it is what we want for our students, and more important it is what they need and deserve.
I look forward to the work that lies ahead for all of us.
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Take care.
Nat