To encourage dialogue and reflection about our hopes and the ways we want to grow as learners, our questions of the week are: What are your hopes for the end of this school year? How do you want to grow as a learner? Hope and Growth (Week of 4/24/22) (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 the week of vacation was restful, relaxing, and restorative for all! We had a nice week, balancing time to ‘do nothing’ along with errands and time for ourselves. The weather during the April vacation can often be ‘hit or miss’, and we did our best to be outside in the garden and taking some walks. We also enjoyed a two-night trip to New York City with Maggie and Grayden, as Owen stayed back with Katie’s mom for baseball.
Throughout the week I found myself coming back to two phrases, ‘being present’ and ‘locus of control’. As a worrier and an overthinker, I am often looking ahead and thinking/worrying about things that are out of my own sense of control - and, those things I am worrying about may change. It’s a cycle that does not always serve me well. So, I have been trying to stick to these two mantras. The ‘locus of control’ is one that Justin Reich referenced at #DLDMedfield this year, encouraging all of us to have a…
‘High internal locus of control as a teacher; recognize and have a low internal locus of control as a citizen’
The advice has resonated deeply with me on both a micro/personal level and macro/professional level, and the ‘being present’ mantra certainly aligns in a similar fashion. As we think about education and the school environment we strive for our students, a hope I have for myself is to carry these forward. Knowing that there are some practices that need to change and others that should continue, ‘being present’ and exercising our ‘locus of control’ will both sustain our efforts and hold us accountable as well.
Back in April, 2019 (Conditions for Learning) I used an intentional structure to share some reflections from the vacation week. As the last two years were very different and we have had a more ‘typical calendar’ this school year, I thought I would return to it as we are about to embark on an exciting and busy time of year…
In an effort to ‘practice what I preach’, for the last few years I have dedicated ‘space’ as April vacation concludes to reflect via an intentional structure to foster discourse, reflection, learning, and growth. I hope the structure provides a ‘window’ into some current thinking, while also providing a structure to examine both our conditions and practices with an eye towards improvement...
- Mirroring and sharing responses from the most recent ‘topic/question’ of the week
- Re-sharing my resolutions/intentions for this calendar year (please keep me honest and on track)
- Sharing some posts that held meaning as of late with mindsets that I hope will carry me forward
- An annual request for all of us to not 'count the days', stay focused, and enjoy our time with the students
- Elicit some feedback and reflective thoughts from staff
There are many themes that can be found in the ‘shares’ below, but hope and growth are ones that are clear - they are critical and we must continue to actively foster them for our community.
Sampling of Responses from Last Week’s ‘Question of the Week’: What do you enjoy most about school? Why?
- The kids!!! They say true happiness exists when you give to others. Rather than take. I get that opportunity every day!
- Seeing my friends because they’re cool
- Social Life
- Friends
- Lunch because I can eat and talk to friends.
- I enjoy getting to know the people around me
- I enjoy English because it is really fun.
- Being with my friends because they make me happy and I get to socialize
- One of the things that I enjoy most about school is english. I really like English because I feel like I am very good at it and I love to read and write. One other thing that I like a lot about school is being able to see my friends everyday!
- Recess and gym because I get physical activity in school while learning at the same time
- chorus is it
- I enjoy my friends and me being able to be myself around anyone.
- English
- Gym because I love to exercise
- I enjoy creative projects because I can be creative and have fun with them.
- Making connections with students and finding ways to allow for deeper understanding.
- The school
- I enjoy classes with my friends.
Resolutions/Intentions for the 2022 school year...
- #slowingitdown with intentional time for self-reflection, mindfulness, and growth
- Defining ‘personal time’ and ‘professional time’ (an uphill climb for me)
- Align beliefs with practice (hope with action) in the realms of anti-racism, social justice, equity, diversity, belonging, and inclusion (personal, professional, leadership)
- Intentionally strive to integrate social justice, equity, diversion, and inclusion into all facets of life and work
- Practice #willfulaction with #willfulhope
- Lead with flexibility, understanding, and grace
- Explore musical interests (playing and listening)
- Listen to understand rather than listen to respond
- Embrace and model authenticity and vulnerability
- Explore ways to 'go deeper' and find more meaning
- Think about ways to connect more directly with students (focus groups, check-ins, discussions)
- Broaden and redefine some methods of leading, sharing, and growing (networking, connecting, collaborating) within Blake, Medfield, and beyond
Some posts/podcasts that resonate...
Why We'll Never Be the Same Again (and Why It's Time to Talk About It) - Brené Brown
(55:33)
From the Dare to Lead Podcast
This is one of the most important conversations that we’ve ever had on the Dare to Lead podcast. I’m talking with Scott Sonenshein, a researcher, organizational psychologist, and New York Times best-selling author, about the pandemic, the racial reckoning, and work—specifically, what it means for people going to the office for the first time, or staying hybrid, or working from home. We will never be the same again after what we’ve experienced over the past couple of years, and it’s time we talk about how we’re going to rebuild moving forward.
We Have a Creativity Problem
by Matt Richtel in The New York Times
…the emerging science of implicit bias has revealed that what people say about creativity isn’t necessarily how they feel about it. Research has found that we actually harbor an aversion to creators and creativity; subconsciously, we see creativity as noxious and disruptive, and as a recent study demonstrated, this bias can potentially discourage us from undertaking an innovative project or hiring a creative employee.
The reasons for this implicit bias against creativity can be traced to the fundamentally disruptive nature of novel and original creations. Creativity means change, without the certainty of desirable results.
“Our findings imply a deep irony,” the authors noted in the 2012 paper. “Prior research shows that uncertainty spurs the search for and generation of creative ideas, yet our findings reveal that uncertainty also makes us less able to recognize creativity, perhaps when we need it most.”
Meritocracy and selective college admissions
(41:57)
From the Class Disrupted Podcast
Diane and Michael work to dispel the myths around selective college admissions, dissect whether they are in fact meritocratic, and architect what they see as a better path forward.
“These aren't the metrics you are looking for”
by Damian Bacchoo (@DamianBacchoo)
In The Tyranny of Metrics, Jerry Z. Muller attempts to outline why we might be wary about leaning too far into metrics. There are two particular thinkers he introduces, with two related laws for us to consider.
The first is Campell’s Law:The more a quantitative metric is visible and used to make important decisions, the more it will be gamed—which will distort and corrupt the exact processes it was meant to monitor.
The second is is Goodhart’s law: Anything that can be measured and rewarded will be gamed.
In essence, the more visible, quantifiable, and important a metric is, the more it is vulnerable to gaming and toxicity to its initial purpose. Muller does not actually say that we should avoid metrics (far from it), or that they are harmful, but he does counsel against the worship of metrics or what he terms “metrics fixation”.
If high exam results are a school’s NSM then we should expect high results. However, we might also expect to see issues of diversity, access, inclusion, stress, anxiety and mental health. We might also see schools so focused on individualism that they lose sight of any broader purpose of education that they might claim to prepare students for.
There are so many ways to determine the health of a school beyond results. There’s no escaping what exam results can tell you about a school, but I do wonder if schools can do more to define themselves beyond exam results.
I do wonder what would happen if a school decided to make well-being its NSM. Like…total focus. Imagine if it was possible to put together a credible league table based on student health or satisfaction? What if that table was used by the likes of Spears or WhichschoolAdvisor to promote the best schools in the world? Perhaps it could force schools to complete in different ways? More physical education, less homework, flexible timings, blended learning, more arts participation, more focus on the learning experience, less individualism and more world-centred and holistic learning…I would really welcome that.
Given the diminishing return of more schools and students competing for the same number of prestigious university places each year, there will come a point where schools will need to find new ways to compete. I think it will be on health and welfare. If schools can find a way of doing that, of showing how well they do that, it would be transformative. Maybe the only way of achieving this is by committing to longitudinal data…but that’s something schools are not very good at tapping into because we are so focused on the front-end of education. Perhaps we need to turn that around and start focusing on the back-end of education…the bit we all say we are preparing children for in the first place?
Putting Our Assumptions to the Test
(52 minutes)
From the Hidden Brain Podcast
Do you ever stop to wonder if the way you see the world is how the world really is? Economist Abhijit Banerjee has spent a lifetime asking himself this question. His answer: Our world views often don't reflect reality. The only way to get more accurate is to think like a scientist — even when you're not looking through a microscope.
Ungrading with Susan Blum
(50 minutes)
From the What’s the Big Idea? Podcast
In which Dan examines the behemoth that is traditional grading--you know, the A-F and 0-100 scales, and GPAs. Dan is joined by Susan Blum (@SusanDebraBlum) who has done a ton of thinking, speaking, and writing about how teachers can move away from this crude, harmful practice and towards something called ungrading. Susan edited and contributed to Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead). She talks with Dan about why grading is not at all about learning, how it's baked into our educational system and expectations, and what teachers can start doing now to ungrade.
A few annual pleas/requests (paraphrasing of thoughts/notes shared in past years)...
The last day of school for us this year (barring any crazy weather changes!) is June 21 and it is my annual 'ask' to do your/our best (and I include myself in this ask) to not 'count down the days'. I have seen similar posts of this nature before, but Pernille Ripp (@PernilleRipp) shared her thoughts in a very thoughtful way six years ago (On Counting Down the Days) - I appreciate her sincerity and honesty and staying centered on the important work that we do...
Because while the countdown may be fun on the surface; another way to show off student accomplishment – you made it through 7th grade -it also sends a much deeper message; we are done with the year. I am done with you. I cannot wait to be done and finally get a break. Is that really what we want to tell our students?
It is not that we don’t know how many days are left. I have 38 days left to be exact and so much still to teach. It is just that we don’t advertise it. We don’t actively remind children how much better summer will be than what we are doing. It undermines the entire mission we have had all year of instilling the importance of the work we do. It undermines every single time we have said that school is important. So now, when a child tells me that they are excited about summer, I tell them I am too, but also that I will miss them, that I will miss our learning, that I will miss our classroom. That we have so much learning still to do. That we will work to the very last day because our time is valuable. Because we need every minute we can get.
Couros's post, The Policies in Your Head, is one that I often return to when I have a hard time 'getting out of my head' and in times of reflection: Don’t hesitate to ask questions in the pursuit of doing what is best for kids. Otherwise, the thing that might be holding you back is your own thinking, and nothing else. I have shared this before (and have needed to remind myself of this and needed others as well to help me with the reminder!) - I do not always enjoy the feedback that you or others may share but I know it is important and I welcome the dialogue and conversation. I am looking to improve and rely on questions, open communication, and feedback - and please know that I thank you for it.
Continuing the practice suggested several years ago in an Educational Leadership post by a retired principal named Dave Weston, this week I am asking all Blake staff to share their thoughts in response to the following questions...
- What’s going particularly well for you this year?
- What concerns/issues do you have at this point?
- What can I do to best support you right now?
- If you could get some professional development right now, what would it be?
- Anything else?
And, my 'broken record' charge for our community of learners...
I firmly believe that a concerted focus on our mission and essential question will help us to embody our mantra of a 'willingness to adapt' and, if all goes well, learning and growth as we aim to 'get out of our own heads', establish productive conditions for learning, and foster and further a cohesive thread throughout the school…
As always, let me know of any questions/concerns.
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Take care.
Nat