To help encourage conversations and dialogue about supporting one another, fostering community, and serving others, our topic/question of the week is: What does it look like to support and serve others? Supporting and Serving Others (Week of 1/20/19) (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.
Hopefully our no homework weekend was relaxing and restful for all and that the storm (between sessions of shoveling and cleaning up) provided a great reason to just simply slow it down. After a day of basketball on Saturday we took it easy on Sunday, cooking and enjoying the playoff games as a family. Monday’s Day of Service is always a great way to honor Dr. King - thanks so much to Cynthia McClelland for her leadership and to all of the students and staff who supported and participated in this annual tradition of service!
Now let me say as I move to my conclusion that we've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We've got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. If it means leaving work, if it means leaving school, be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike, but either we go up together or we go down together. Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
With the down time this weekend I enjoyed perusing and reading more about Dr. King, viewing some speeches, and learning. I hope we can find ways to make more connections for our students and our community about the impact service and speaking/living one’s core beliefs has on one another and oneself - and the direct impact on growth and learning.
The responses to last week’s question (How can you help others improve as learners?), along with a couple of posts of interest and some more words from Dr. King, will hopefully help foster conversations and reflection about service, support, coherence, and learning for our community...into our conversations
Topic/Question (Week of 1/20/19): How can you help others improve as learners?
- By modeling our own learning process and allowing others to see that learning is a life-long process.
- I can speak slowly, and carry a big question.
- share valuable life experiences and skills. Include and share ideas. It is beneficial to ALL!
- Talk slower when I’m explaining things
- 1. Individual and small group conferencing...2. Model presentation format/practices, then let them present content to their classmates; either individually or in small groups.
- Being respectful and nice
- I can model my thinking and reasoning processes as I am working with staff and students to help them see how I am reaching conclusions or making decisions. I can work individually with students to help them understand their disability and self-advocate.
- To inspire other people instead of telling them how to learn
- Be kind and patient with them, and do not distract them from their learning.
- Teach don’t tell, don’t give people answers, help get them out of them.
- Be patient and supportive. Mistakes are not wrong; mistakes are part of the process. Whether is content, skill or maturity based.
- Actually 1 on 1 teacher student time
- To help students with work they’re having trouble on
- Listen to them, hear what they need and adjust.
- Help them find the correct answer and show them why they got it wrong.
- Support them in all the achievements they want to achieve. Help them out! 😊
- Model patience and curiosity, and continue to reinforce other strategies that help in learning
- Stay with them...listen...give your own vantage point in a low key way. It helps if you were not such a good learner so they can reflect in their own way when it applies.
Why Competency-Based Education Is Exciting And Where It May Stumble
by Katrina Schwartz (@KSchwart) in MindShift
This post references some of the challenges we face when transforming towards a competency-based framework of education and highlights some of the work that Justin Reich (@bjfr) has done in this field. I appreciate the underlying premise that Justin promotes - that of coherence - and the recognition that it is a process.
Educators all over the world are thinking creatively about ways to transform the traditional education system into an experience that will propel students forward into the world ready to take on its complex challenges. Competency-based education has piqued the interest of many communities because of its promise to make learning a more personal experience for students….Wouldn’t it make more sense if everyone could move at their own pace, investigate their unique interests and demonstrate their knowledge in the ways that are most meaningful to them? In its purest form, that’s what proponents of competency-based education want to see.
“It forces or compels people to think really carefully about what it is we want students to know, to do, to believe, and to have conversations that are not just within one person’s classroom or department, but across departments, “ Reich said. “They’re thinking really carefully about what it looks like for students to be on a trajectory.”
That kind of coherence is key to innovative change, Reich said. And often it's the incremental changes, not the huge innovations, that ultimately transform systems. So while competency-based education in its most radical form may not end up being a viable solution for many schools, elements of the reform may make a big difference for educators and students where these conversations are happening.
How to Help Tweens and Teens Manage Social Conflict
by Lisa Damour (@LDamour) in The New York Times
As both a parent and educator of tweens the title of this post jumped out at me. It provides a nice framework of thought for support with three strategies: Don’t confuse conflict with bullying; Teach healthy conflict; Let them pick their battles. I particularly like the metaphor of setting up bumpers along the bowling alley.
Indeed, as children turn into teenagers they become more devoted to their peers, but also more likely to come into conflict with them. In middle and high school, social friction and hurt feelings often come with the territory, with the risk of causing intense emotional stressboth for the tweens and teenagers themselves, and also for the grown-ups who care for them.
While there are times when adults should step in, according to Blake Revelle, principal of Indian Hills Middle School, a public school in Prairie Village, Kan., “our job as parents and educators is to set up some bumpers on the bowling alley, not to dictate the exact way the ball goes down the lane.” Grown-ups are probably most helpful to young people when we take their social turmoil in stride and have strategies to coach them along as they work to resolve things on their own.
As Ms. Shaffer notes, “we don’t have emotional Bubble Wrap for children, but we do have ways to help them develop the emotional agility to navigate through difficult situations.”
Words from Dr. King
“So even though we face difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.”
“Find a voice in a whisper.”
“There is no such thing as separate but equal. Separation, segregation, inevitably makes for inequality.”
Enjoy the week and take care.
Nat