To help encourage conversations and dialogue about the importance of reflection and learning more about ourselves, our topic/question for the dinner table is: What have you learned this year about yourself as a learner? Learning About Ourselves (Week of 10/27/19) (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.
Welcoming our 7th graders and teachers back from their trip to Nature’s Classroom Friday afternoon was a great way to start the weekend. A special thanks to all of the chaperones for their willingness to support the experience: Emily Alland, Jon Haycock, Deb Manning, Nate Walkowicz, Juli Dalzell, Michael Gow, Judy Silva, Matt Millard, Kelly Campbell, Mark Nickerson, Lisa Matthews, Greg Keohan, Kara Farrell, Kevin Farrahar, Amy Cuomo, Tracy Allen, and Maura Batts. And, of course, a very special thanks to Judy Silva, Kelly Campbell, Tracy Allen, Aimie Keigan, and Tricia Williams for their thoughtful planning, care, and preparation for a safe and successful trip!
This past week was full of learning, both from the day-to-day work at Blake but it was particularly uniquely full of professional development (both formal and informal)...
- Attending a screening of the documentary, In Search of Greatness
- Speaks to much of what we discuss and explore as a learning community here at Blake (passion, creativity, play; fostering intrinsic motivation and interest; meaningful feedback; the role of teachers/coaches in learning)
- The concept of a ‘rage to master’ - within the film, that is a thematic element that is found in ‘greatness’
- Speaks to much of what we discuss and explore as a learning community here at Blake (passion, creativity, play; fostering intrinsic motivation and interest; meaningful feedback; the role of teachers/coaches in learning)
- Attending MassCue's Fall 2019 Conference at Gillette
- Enjoying the opportunities to explore some recent trends with colleagues across the Commonwealth
- Learned about some tools for assistive technology, ideas for community-based learning for our students, and made some tangible connections for future collaboration with schools and districts
- Enjoying the opportunities to explore some recent trends with colleagues across the Commonwealth
- Attending DESE’s Leading With Access and Equity conference
- A series of workshops aimed at examining our current practices and gaining an increased awareness of how we can put innovative systems and practices in place to support all students
- One of the most meaningful conferences I have attended (both last year and this) - really pushing all educators (at every level) to look inward and outward at the ‘# 1 for Some’ reality we have in our schools/districts/state
- See some notes/highlights below
- A series of workshops aimed at examining our current practices and gaining an increased awareness of how we can put innovative systems and practices in place to support all students
Through each of these experiences, coupled with the conversations/dialogue/reading that followed (and will continue to happen in the future), I learned more about myself, our learners, the practice of teaching, and others (for lack of a better term or more articulate phrasing). That is at the heart of our work and our mission for our students, ourselves, and our community - I hope that the sampling of responses from last week’s question, some ‘sharing out’ from the formal learning above, and the two highlighted posts will serve a similar purpose...
Some Notes/Ideas from Leading with Access and Equity Conference
Kimberly Parker (@TchKimPossible)
- How do we do better at engaging kids?
- By reading about different cultures
- By reading about different cultures
- ‘I work with young people who hate reading’ - consistent across all ages
- Every child, Every day…
- You have to read to improve writing
- ‘All of our behaviors emerge from beliefs’ - Elena Aguilar
- ‘I can cite the research that informs my practice.’ - Cris Tovani (@ctovani)
- ‘The internal work matters...a lot’ - Tricia Ebarvia (@Triciaebarvia)
- ‘All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you.’ - Octavia Butler
- Jason Reynolds - @JasonReynolds83
- ‘They don’t need you to save them, they need you to see them’
- ‘They don’t need you to save them, they need you to see them’
- Know and articulate your non-negotiables
Katie Novak (@KatieNovakUDL)
- ‘Dinner Party Dilemma’ - analogy for learning/school
- How would you prepare a dinner for 30 people?
- What would you serve?
- One size fits all barriers
- How would you prepare a dinner for 30 people?
- Kids are not broken - curriculum design is broken
- The old system never worked...for all students
- What do we have in place - what do we not have in place?
Jason Wheeler from Safe and Supportive Schools
- Important to focus on what’s going well, why it’s going well, and how we can replicate ‘the good stuff’
- All families are different
- All students deserve a safe, supportive school environment free of bias-based behavior
- All students are scanning for safety
- What does respect look like here?
Topic/Question (Week of 10/20/19): What is going well so far for you in school this year?
- I am enjoying getting to know my students and developing positive relationships with them.
- I’m able to manage materials and find good storage areas. Students are doing a great job of returning materials
- Choice Reading Time is re-motivating students to love the written word!
- My son is loving 7th grade accelerated math
- Our choice reading initiative is going well. It is great to see so many students enjoying a pleasure reading book on a daily basis!
- Getting 3s in math and s s
- making new friends
- My grades!
- What’s going well for me this year is adapting to change. Middle school (as I expected) was a big change. Going to all the different classes and much more responsibilities was something that took a while to get adjusted to, but overall was (and still is) a great learning experience.
- I am getting good grades
- Advisory is fun
- I have amazing teachers that support me in my growth as a student at Blake. I am really liking middle school because we switch classes and get to be with lots of teachers that each have their own unique way of teaching.
- I have done well in intro to engineering.
- This year in school I am doing well in math
- Collaboration among colleagues
- New to the district and am becoming more familiar with different student management computer systems. Staff is welcoming and very helpful.
Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors
by Rudine Sims Bishop
Written in 1990, Bishop’s piece has become one of the most oft-referenced ‘truisms’ in education, specifically the efforts to diversify our curricula for all students. It gets at the heart and essence of our work (or what should be at heart and essence of our work). With 30 years having passed since its publication, we still have much work to do.
Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books.
When children cannot find themselves reflected in the books they read, or when the images they see are distorted, negative, or laughable, they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part. Our classrooms need to be places where all the children from all the cultures that make up the salad bowl of American society can find their mirrors.
Those of us who are children's literature enthusiasts tend to be somewhat idealistic, believing that some book, some story, some poem can speak to each individual child, and that if we have the time and resources, we can find that book and help to change that child's life, if only for a brief time, and only for a tiny bit. On the other hand, we are realistic enough to know that literature, no matter how powerful, has its limits. It won't take the homeless off our streets; it won't feed the starving of the world; it won't stop people from attacking each other because of our racial differences; it won't stamp out the scourge of drugs. It could, however, help us to understand each other better by helping to change our attitudes towards difference. When there are enough books available that can act as both mirrors and windows for all our children, they will see that we can celebrate both our differences and our similarities, because together they are what make us all human.
The TLC Interviews: Elena Aguilar
Jim Knight’s interview with Elena Aguilar (@brightmorningtm)
This interview with Elena Aguilar delves into her work as a ‘coach’ and focuses on her beliefs about what are keys to impact others. Aguilar writes for Edutopia and her insight speaks to the process of change, influence, and emotional resilience - and, how courage plays a key role in all of this.
Emotional resilience is the ability not only to get through adversity and challenges, but to thrive in spite of them and perhaps to thrive as a result of the learning and the growth that we gain in challenging moments and experiences...in our dominant mindset about what it means to be professional, we don’t talk about emotions; we don’t even acknowledge that they exist.
The key concept is that we coach around behaviors, lesson planning, classroom management, use of assessment data, and building relationships with students. We also coach around beliefs because every behavior emerges from a belief. So unless we explore and surface those underlying beliefs, we may not get sustained change and it may not be transformational. The third area that we coach about is our way of being, which is most often communicated through our emotions and nonverbal communication.
I am focused on resilience for two reasons. First, we deserve joy, happiness, and tranquility, and we deserve meaningful connections with other human beings. Second, with the energy from joy, connection, contentment, and resilience, we can more effectively fulfill our purpose in life, which is to help other people cultivate their resilience and, in the case of educators, help our students get what they need in order to thrive in life. This includes literacy, numeracy and so on. So, our resilience allows us to fulfill our purpose to serve others.
As I get older, I’m becoming more and more aware of how much fear that there is in the world. It shows up in every coaching conversation, so I find that I am often working with teachers, leaders, or coaches on how to activate your courage to deal with fear. Where does your courage come from? How do you surface it? What are the seeds of courage within you? Courage is an emotion, essentially it’s a disposition, and we are not going to get anywhere if we don’t activate and strengthen it.
This week I am asking our staff to reflect upon our work this far in advisory and our next faculty meeting will be focused on continuing our efforts to calibrate our practices of feedback. Both of these are critical components of our school and serve as opportunities to reflect, articulate and affirm our beliefs, and establish some points of action - taking the ‘mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors’ approach for ourselves and one another. As we look to truly dive deeper into the challenging work of truly serving all of our students in a meaningful manner with a concerted focus on authentic access and equity, I am excited and inspired by the prospects and the path we are travelling together.
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Enjoy the week and take care.
Nat