To help encourage conversations and dialogue about seeking, fostering, and embracing change, our topic/question for the dinner table is: How have you changed as a learner this past year? Be specific. Seeking and Embracing Change (Week of 6/3/18) (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.
With graduation season in full swing, it was a busy weekend for us - celebrating high school graduations in Holliston for friends and up in Newburyport for my nephew. It probably sounds trite and may be echoed by others, but it's crazy to think back to the day my nephew was born! We had a nice evening on Friday as a family, watching Wonder (can't believe it took us this long to watch it!), and then the weekend craze began right away Saturday morning. As a family we are trying to #slowitdown (my 2018 mantra that has not felt too successful as of late) and take it one thing at a time.
In the cycle of the school year, June is a natural time for reflection. With graduation speeches, transitions taking place, wrapping up curriculum, looking ahead to summer and change, it is important that we acknowledge the year, think back, look forward, and simply reflect. In this process of reflection I am continually struck by how 'change' is often noted - how thoughts and beliefs have changed and evolved over the course of the year, how students have grown and changed, how our initiatives have grown and changed, how the structures and staffing have changed, etc. It is important to note that change is implied in our mission with 'the willingness to adapt to a continually evolving world.' And, within our mission, there is an active implication as we encourage our community to both seek and respect this willingness.
In an effort to channel the work of Tom Whitby (@tomwhitby) by valuing both traditions and relevance in schools (Methods: Tradition vs. Relevance), I am continuing our tradition of reflection as we end this school year. At our last faculty gathering luncheon after the students have left for summer, my hope is that we can individually and collectively #slowitdown, reflect, and answer the questions below...
- What was meaningful this year? What made teaching worthwhile? What mattered?
- Describe a positive interaction or experience you had with a student during this academic year.
- Describe or explain an accomplishment you attained or something you are proud of taking place during this academic year.
- Describe a particular student or situation during the school year who or that you feel you could have handled in a way that would have resulted in a more positive learning experience.
- How have you 'lived' our mission statement in your work and growth this year?
- What is an area that you would like to grow professionally?
- What have you learned this year from a student?
- What messages do you want to leave for our students? What do you want them to remember? (A humbling but important and centering question)
As I share each year, these questions provide a sense of closure to our year together as a community, while also opening up a window or path to the future. I will be answering them as well, and I encourage all members of our greater community to read through them and see how they may or may not apply, as we are all learners and contribute to the education of our students. The intent of this process is simple: to keep our mission alive, stay present, and end the year on a strong and focused note.
As I reflect upon the changes we are embarking upon, I am sharing a wonderful and poignant post by Will Richardson (a must follow - @willrich45), as he references his paper, Why School?, with an online course he has helped design and orchestrate, Change School. The post can read as a 'plug' for his course (that I highly recommend), but the information within 'holds up a mirror' to our practices and encourages us to challenge the system and status quo of education.
Why Change School?
by Will Richardson (@willrich45)
I particularly like Richardson's encouragement to seek and embrace learning, providing a nice 'definition' of full-on “professional development,”: ...helping you develop your full capacity to lead given the modern contexts, tools, challenges and opportunities that are available today.
The changes I see are mostly tweaks. Aside from a few pockets of true reimagination, the systems and structures at their core remain basically the same. The same power dynamics between administrators and teachers and parents and kids sustain. Cultures are still focused on teaching, not learning. We aspire to outcomes that are inherently easy to measure and to turn into data. In general, the traditional narrative of schooling is unbroken.
But there is a hole in the foundation of that narrative, one that we are loathe to acknowledge. One that I wish I had focused on more in that essay. One that is the most compelling, and perhaps the scariest argument of all for real change in school: When it’s all said and done, our kids aren’t learning much of what we’re trying to teach them. And we know it...If “productive” learning in schools really does happen only when kids walk away from an experience “wanting to learn more,” it’s hard not to question our approach.
At a moment when the changes in the world are forcing us to consider profound changes in the way we think about education and schooling, it’s a deep and serious examination of all that that entails, and it’s an experience that will change you as much as it will enhance your ability to change your school.
A few more thoughts...
- Change is not easy
- Change is important
- Change is at the heart of all progress
- Our students are potential 'change agents' and I hope we can foster a sense of agency within them
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Take care.
Nat