To encourage dialogue and reflection about our hopes and vision for the future, our question of the week is: What would you like to do in the future? Why? Fostering the Future (Week of 4/3/22) (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
I hope that the sunshine and warmer temperatures last Saturday (certainly warmer than the beginning of this past week!) were enjoyed by all and that it was a nice weekend for all. We had a pretty quiet couple of days with the kids, doing a little spring cleaning and enjoying some time in the garden.
- If we have articulated what we want for the future (for students and ourselves), what can we do today to help realize the ‘wants’?
- How do we know if the individuals in our community (students, staff, families) are feeling known, seen, and heard? What are our indicators?
- What habits are we fostering in our students, both explicitly and implicitly?
I hope that they generate questions and thoughts for others as well and am curious what ‘chords are struck’ - my door is always open for dialogue with an eye towards action.
Towards A Creative Future: Rethinking Schools For The 21st Century
by Nick Morrison in Forbes
** This post highlights the last ‘work’ of Sir Ken Robinson, Imagine If...Creating a Future For Us All…his final thoughts have been published, setting out a vision for rethinking schools for the 21st century, completed after his death by his daughter Kate.
Schools are in need of a complete overhaul to meet the challenges of the 21st century, according to the last testament of the world’s leading advocate for creativity in the classroom.
Rather than separating the curriculum into discrete subjects, Robinson advocates a structure based on flexible disciplines, focused on equipping students with the ability to meet the challenges they will face throughout their lives. These personal, social, cultural and economic challenges will be met by instilling what Robinson describes as eight core competences: curiosity, creativity, criticism, communication, collaboration, compassion, composure and citizenship.
“In order to effectively raise children who will thrive in the world they are inheriting, we must revolutionize education. The revolution we need involve rethinking how schools work.”
“Children are on a conveyor belt and things are added to them as though we are making a car, but cars are inanimate objects that don’t care what happens to them, whereas children do care. The overwhelming emphasis is on output, whereas it should be focused on the experience.”
…we exist in two worlds: the world within us and the world around us, with education systems often focusing purely on the latter.
“The case has never been against formal school, it is looking at how we do it,” Kate says. “We’re at a point where we can’t continue to do what we have been doing.”
“A lot of things we do because it’s the way we’ve always done it but what is education for? Is it for the admin team or is it for the children? The more complex the challenges become the more creative we must be to meet them, and to channel that into a sense of purpose. Just imagine the world we could be living in.”
The School Smile Quotient
by Thomas Hoerr in ASCD
As a school leader, how do you measure the quality of your school? It’s an important question to reflect on—and often.
…academic achievement is only part of what makes a school successful. Instead, I propose this: The quality of a school can be determined, in part, by its smile quotient.
Simply put, a smile quotient is the number of students and staff who have a smile on their face as they work or learn, and I believe it reflects the joy in a school. A smile not only expresses an emotion, but also influences the emotional experience. When the smile quotient in a school is high, it means that people generally enjoy being there; they are confident in their role and anticipate success; and they encounter others with a warm and welcoming attitude.
…a high smile quotient does not mean that school is easy—for either the students or the staff. It does mean, at least in my experience, that people are engaging in meaningful and relevant activities, that they trust others around them to look out for their interests, and that learning is taking place.
As a principal, I learned that trying to make all staff happy all the time was a road to disaster, as some of their priorities and interests naturally diverged and were not consistent with our school’s mission. It was not my job to make sure all staff members were smiling all the time. My job was to help everyone grow. But I did find that when I worked with my colleagues to create a setting in which collegiality—faculty members learning with and from one another—was the norm, teachers were happy.
Of course, not everyone will smile, even when a school has a high smile quotient. Life has its challenges and so do schools. Indeed, if someone smiled all the time, I would wonder what was really going on with them. But in a school with a welcoming environment in which individuals feel known, seen, and heard, smiling becomes the norm. People smile because they are succeeding and because they want to be there.
Sampling of Responses from Last Week’s ‘Question of the Week’: What daily habits have you found to help you to reach your goals?
- By making a schedule
- Staying active
- Having a routine I can follow to keep up with my schoolwork and stay organized
- Doing homework
- Setting aside small amounts of time to chip away at a larger goal.
- I have a weekly agenda / checklist that I make at the beginning of the week and consult and adjust at the beginning and end of the day. I call it my WIN sheet. WIN is short for What's Important Now, which I find to be a helpful reminder when prioritizing the order I need to complete my tasks in.
- Waking up earlier than needed to make sure to be ready for school
- I would usually come home, have a snack and then immediately get onto homework while listening to music so it isn't too tedious
- Making lists before the end of day. It clears my head and sets the agenda for the next day.
April is National Poetry Month and each week I will share a poem or two to foster connections and dialogue about poetry in our lives. Wendell Berry and and Alice Walker’s poems speak to staying in the present moment and embracing our individuality - mantras and approaches I hope we can embrace and live as a community of learners…
For the Future
by Wendell Berry
Planting trees early in spring,
we make a place for birds to sing
in time to come. How do we know?
They are singing here now.
There is no other guarantee
that singing will ever be.
Before I Leave the Stage
by Alice Walker
Before I leave the stage
I will sing the only song
I was meant truly to sing.
It is the song
of I AM.
Yes: I am Me
&
You.
WE ARE.
I love Us with every drop
of our blood
every atom of our cells
our waving particles
-undaunted flags of our Being-
neither here nor there.
As always, let me know of any questions/concerns.
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Take care.
Nat