We once again have two 'topics/questions' for the week...
1) To align with our work with students this month about 'digital footprints' and 'digital citizenry', our first topic/question of the week is: If parents had digital footprints in middle school, what might they have looked like? And, what does your digital footprint look like?
2) To help encourage conversations about the connections between failure and progress, our second topic/question of the week is: What would you attempt to do if you knew the efforts that end up failing will eventually lead you to success?
I hope that this update finds everyone well as we look forward to (hopefully) some warmer and potentially spring-like weather this week (fingers crossed). Our weekend was very kid-centric with Maggie's performances in Heidi, the boys attending a Lego/engineering 'playaround', watching the Medfield girls win the sectional finals for basketball (congrats to the coaches and team), and Owen had his first baseball clinic for the spring (can we call it that?) season.
This past week I was fortunate to experience the value of connections and learning via two events, one within Medfield and one outside of our community. The first was the opportunity to be involved in one of my favorite days of the year, visiting Memorial School and participating in 'Read Across America'. I always look forward to this day as it grounds me both personally and professionally - sharing a passion for reading and making connections with students and staff across the district. Each year I ask my family to select the books and the choices this year were The Day The Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt, Pete the Cat - I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin, and Wemberley Worried by Kevin Henkes. At the end of the week I attended MassCue's Leading Future Learning conference at Holy Cross, learning from and listening to educators from other schools. Although they are not shared in context, here are some of the 'mindsets'/thoughts that have stayed with me from Eric Sheninger (@E_Sheninger), Damian Bebell, and Patrick Larkin (@patrickmlarkin)...
- 'I dwell in possibility' - Emily Dickinson
- 'The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion' - Paulo Coelho
- Learners have changed
- We should be having students create products that have value
- How do our assessments reflect learning?
- Continue to make your mission and values both transparent and possible
- Foster ways for students to create, tinker, play, and explore
- 'Problem solving' and diagnostic skills are requisite to figure out why something won't work, come up with a creative solution, and minimize frustration
- Teach students how to unlearn and relearn
- How can we use new and emerging technologies to advance the state of the art in our research and work?
- Be way of misalignment of what we are espousing and what we are 'measuring'
- How do we keep our agenda moving forward?
- Sharing failures is equally important as sharing successes
Connecting with others - both in and outside of education - inspires me and helps bring forth new ideas, examine current thinking, and reflect. From time to time (and you might be thinking it right now), I am asked why I write so much each week and if it is worthwhile. It is a fair question and has been an evolving process for me. In the same way I have benefited from the reflections and sharing of others I hope that I can 'pay it forward'. The weekly reflection centers me, helps me to do what is noted above (align our mission and philosophy with practice), and feeds me personally and professionally, merging two of my core values - communication and transparency. It is a work in progress, for sure, but I hope that it does help to explain my thinking and open doors for conversation and feedback. Yes, I am biased about the Blake community but I do recognize we have areas of growth where we need to improve. One of my intentions through the weekly sharing is to 'open up' so we can have a place to start, continue, or revisit these areas. With this notion of 'opening up' and inviting conversations in mind, I am sharing three posts this week that I hope will do just that...
When School Leaders Empower Teachers, Better Ideas Emerge
post by Katrina Schwartz (@Kschwart) in MindShift
I am continually reflecting upon the concept/framework of leadership and my own practices. In this post Schwartz highlights the importance of 'distributed leadership', and as one who likes to be involved this can be a challenge for me. I know I can learn in this regard and believe there are great implications for the learning that takes place for our students as well. I particularly liked the connections we can make towards having our mission guide our decisions, programming, and systems.
"One way of building that kind of unified school culture is through distributed leadership, the idea that no one person at the top of the hierarchy makes all the decisions that will affect the work lives of the adults in the building."
"It’s the leader’s job to listen and include different viewpoints in a school’s vision statement, and once that structure is set it should guide every decision. If school staff are constantly re-examining core beliefs, there is no time to get good at anything. Through flexibility and distributed leadership, staff can work together to improve the teaching practices that help them reach those big goals."
"...when teachers feel valued and trusted, they are more likely to trust and empower their students...when students are empowered to lead, they not only learn to trust their own capabilities — they also produce their best work."
"In short, slowing down and changing our mindset are two things that could do a lot of good...We've got a long way to go. Are we there? Not yet. But one day we might be."
Are We Ready to Have a Real Conversation About K-12 Grading?
post by Dave Powell (@profpow) in Education Week
As we collectively make progress with our discussions about assessments and grading, the title of this post by Powell stuck out. I believe this is an area we can improve and engage parents in this work as well. There are some salient implications for both grading and teaching and how they should be interrelated in regards the ideas of fixed vs growth mindsets.
"The psychologist Carol Dweck has spent the better part of her career trying to understand not only what intelligence is but what we think it is. Recently she has focused on the idea that there essentially are two kinds of "mindsets" about intelligence: either people think it's fixed, and doesn't change—either you're born smart or you aren't—or they see intelligence as fluid, something that changes as conditions change and as we experience new things. Unsurprisingly, Dweck is in the second camp. So am I."
"In short, slowing down and changing our mindset are two things that could do a lot of good...We've got a long way to go. Are we there? Not yet. But one day we might be."
Grading: A Duct-Taped System In Need of an Overhaul?
post by Brianna Crowley (@AkaMsCrowley)
Along similar lines this post is the first in a series of three posts by Crowley as she reflects on these three question: 'Is the current system fair and relevant? What is the relationship between grading and learning? What alternatives to the 100 point system do educators have?' We are in this process at Blake and felt as though she could be writing about our school. I am hopeful that our conversations will move us beyond the 'duct-tape options' of improvement.
"We need to have the more challenging discussion of how we--the teachers and the system--should be reaching this student."
"...my feelings of being unsettled distilled into a restlessness for action. I too felt that our current grading system was broken, but what was I going to do about it? I started asking myself tough questions like: what did I believe was the purpose of grades? Could I help my students by taking a risk to try a different system of accountability and assessment?"
"Our grading system seems up for review. Teachers care about learning and about students meeting their potential; teachers are worried about the lack of joy and the proliferation of stress in our schools today. These teachers are ready to have a conversation beyond duct-tape options. We are ready to reexamine the system, look at the research, and have that bigger discussion of fairness and equity."
This week marks the end of Term 2 and at each communication of progress (formal and informal) we should be aligning our messages and feedback with our mission. To be honest I do not believe we are there yet, but I do know that we are getting there - steps along the long staircase are being climbed as we empower our students and one another to improve and continually look and be open to input and the messy process of learning and improvement. Using the framework of traditions/relevance, fixed vs growth mindsets, and our mission statement as guides, I look forward to these discussions that are ongoing and need to take place about standards-based grading, our honor roll, demonstrations of learning, and our processes for feedback to students and families. We will continue our formal structures for this work and I am open to informal and new structures as well. As I often say and truly mean, my door is open and I want everyone to be engaged in these endeavors. It is important.
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Take care.
Nat Vaughn