To help encourage dialogue and reflection about which experiences influence our own learning, our question of the week is: During this school year, what experiences have helped you to become a better learner? Explain why. Teachable/'Mirror' Moments (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
The gorgeous weather at the end of last week was truly a gift and I hope that everyone was able to enjoy it! We did our very best to be outside as much as we could, also feeling fortunate to have a nice physically distanced visit with cousins on Saturday evening. It was so good to just be, laugh, and connect - and, in line with what I shared last week (Making Time for Joy), I am working on making sure I make more time for just that.
Teachable/Mirror Moment # 1
At both the Incoming 6th and 7th/8th Grade Info Nights via Zoom in early March, I shared a slide (below) that I have shared in the past that was presented at a conference I attended a few years ago. It is a graphic that displays the percentage of students (sample size of 929,888 students) who ‘Strongly Agree, By Grade’ from 5th-12th grade to the following three statements…
- In the last 7 days, I have learned something interesting in school.
- I have fun at school.
- At this school, I get to do what I do best every day.
- In the last two weeks, I learned something interesting in school.
- At Blake, I get to do what I do best every day.
- I have fun at Blake.
Teachable/Mirror Moment # 2
A number of years ago I added an item to my weekly calendar on Friday afternoon at 3 p.m. labeled ‘Resolutions/Intentions’. I honestly forget how the idea came to be or the impetus for doing so - but, the idea was to hold myself accountable for looking at and examining my own progress towards the resolutions/intentions/goals I had set for myself for that calendar year. The idea was to ‘make space’ and be intentional about my intentions. Well, another ‘truth serum’ moment - although I have had it on my calendar, I have not been great about actually practicing this practice. This past Friday at 3 p.m. the notification vibrated on my watch with a reminder - ‘Resolutions/Intentions’ in 10 minutes. I am honestly not sure why this reminder impacted me (the truth is that I get this reminder every week!), but it impacted me. So, in effort to actively grow and respond, I am re-sharing my Resolutions/Intentions with everyone - with the hope that it will increase my own accountability - even if I may not want to hear it in the moment, any reminders/prompts for others will be appreciated...
Resolutions/Intentions for the 2021 calendar year (some carry-overs from previous years)...
- #slowingitdown with intentional time for self-reflection, mindfulness, and growth
- Defining ‘personal time’ and ‘professional time’ (an uphill climb for me)
- Intentionally strive to be anti-racist by integrating social justice, equity, diversion, and inclusion into all facets (personal, professional, leadership)
- Practice #willfulaction with #willfulhope
- Lead with flexibility, understanding, and grace
- Explore musical interests (playing and listening)
- Listening to understand rather than listening 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 sharing and growing (networking, connecting, collaborating) within Blake, Medfield, and beyond
My Annual Resolutions/Intentions
- Be open to the ideology of those who do not share my thinking and better understand those views (ask questions and be genuinely curious for feedback)
- Be a mirror for others and ask others to do the same for me
- Articulate and focus on the 'good problems'
- Foster leadership at all levels (students, staff, parents, and community), balancing ownership with healthy delegation and growth for others
- Stay the course and keep the 'big picture' in mind at all times
- 'Lean towards yes' and maintain the mission of our mantra, 'a willingness to adapt'
Teachable/Mirror Moment # 3
This Saturday morning I woke up early to hop on the exercise bike. With a few things on the to do list for the day, I knew that it would put me in a better head space to ‘get it done’ early. As I have shared in the past, one of the ways I have found great joy is by listening to and learning from different podcasts - a challenge, though, is making my way through them and selecting one on each given day. (Side note for another time - it is a manifestation of just how much information/curriculum is out there for our students in terms of learning - we only select/present/explore a tiny sliver in our ‘formal curriculum’ - but, I digress a bit.) Earlier in the week I saw a quick post about Arianna Huffington’s (@ariannahuff) podcast, What I've Learned, with Arianna Huffington. I had not listened to it before, but her recent episode drew me in as it was with organizational psychologist, Adam Grant (@AdamMGrant)...
Adam Grant on Rethinking
(32 minutes)
Adam Grant, Wharton's top-rated professor, speaks with Arianna Huffington about gratitude, meditation and sleep. The author of Think Again says the pandemic has him rethinking his core values: integrity, freedom, generosity and excellence.
I highly encourage and recommend this episode to everyone - and, although there was not one specific ‘teachable/mirror moment’ per se, I am sharing a few notes I scribbled down in the hopes that I will come back to them. They paused my thinking and helped me to make connections that I hope will lead to action - that, in my mind, is at the heart of genuine and authentic learning…
- Adam shared some thoughts about how his views on living with integrity have evolved - the difference between ‘practice what you preach’ and ‘preach what you practice’ was and is transformative for me…
- ‘Before I thought integrity meant you should practice what you preach. Now I have a different view of how to live with integrity which is that you should only preach things you already practice - it’s a great way to avoid hypocrisy and it also forces you to become the person you claim to be before you make the claim.’
- Towards the end of the episode, Arianna asks Adam (Adam is a social scientist and practitioner of the scientific method) how we can measure progress on items (for lack of a better word) such as values/beliefs - ‘As we live in the world of the quantified self where more and more of our lives are being tracked and gamified and measured, how can we make sure we measure our progress by these other more important and intangible metrics?’ Adam acknowledges the difficulty of doing so (‘I don’t know if we can measure it...I don’t know how to measure if I am becoming a better person’), but offers some weekly reflection questions for all of us - they are poignant and ones I hope to internalize, practice, and realize. The last bullet point below is one that I truly welcome - I admire his openness to engage, reflect, grow, and learn with others.
- Regardless of what I achieved this week, who did I become this week?
- Did I end up moving closer to my value system?
- Did I live by my principles?
- Did I pursue something that is worthy that will benefit others?
- Did I stay true to the important commitments I have made?
- Broadcast these principles to those close to me and to my community - ‘These are the values that I hold most dear - and if you ever see me falling short of those, I would love it if you could let me know because I am not always able to see that myself.’
The two posts below, along with some of the responses from last week’s question, offer some ways/examples to reflect upon our current structures, thinking, practices, and habits in regards to learning (broadly defined) - and to hold up the ‘proverbial mirror’ for our students as well as ourselves...
The Question That Doesn't Help Students Figure Out Their Career (Opinion)
by Adam Grant (@AdamMGrant) in Education Week
This brief post from Grant is an excerpt from his new book, Think Again, in response to this question: How do I help students think about career options after graduation? The book is well worth reading, along with all of Grant’s work, as he offers a unique perspective and lens on previously held notions and beliefs. In so doing, he provides more options for students, and ourselves, as learners.
We all have notions of who we want to be and how we hope to lead our lives. They’re not limited to careers; from an early age, we develop ideas about where we’ll live, which school we’ll attend, what kind of person we’ll marry, and how many kids we’ll have. These images can inspire us to set bolder goals and guide us toward a path to achieve them. The danger of these plans is that they can give us tunnel vision, blinding us to alternative possibilities. We don’t know how time and circumstances will change what we want and even who we want to be, and locking our life GPS onto a single target can give us the right directions to the wrong destination.
Don’t ask children what they want to be when they grow up. This can lead to what psychologists call identity foreclosure—when we settle prematurely on a sense of self without enough due diligence and close our minds to alternative selves. In career choices, identity foreclosure often begins when adults ask kids: What do you want to be when you grow up? Pondering that question can foster a fixed mindset about work and self.
Do ask children, what kind of person do you want to be? And what are all the different things you like to do? Instead of trying to narrow their options, help them broaden their possibilities.
Challenging the Status Quo to Rewrite New School Rules
by Katie Martin (@katiemartinedu)
The title of Martin’s post jumped out at me - as we have discussed, it is critical for all of us to pause and think about the ways we can improve school. Yes, right now is certainly an important time to do this; however, I believe this reflective practice should be our default mode as educators and learners. Martin’s words are insightful as she bucks the status quo of our schools for very good reasons: The status quo makes it easy to sort and rank. The status quo maintains hierarchy. The status quo feels safe.
In education when we challenge the status quo, it means we can find new ways to meet the needs of our students, families, and learning communities despite the norms and the ways things have always been done. Increasingly, educators are rejecting the fact that students need to be sorted, ranked, and managed and challenging long-held assumptions about intelligence, curriculum, and ultimately learning.
When you are so used to a compliance-driven model it is often hard to imagine that kids (and all people) can function outside of a control and command environment because we are so used to how people operate in our existing systems.
...if our schools don’t value the students we serve and make them feel seen and welcome, we will never be able to grow them.
...if we are learner-centered, we start with the learners and the learning that is most valuable. Understanding those you serve and providing opportunities for them to better understand themselves and others is central to creating learner-centered environments.
Many websites and mission statements describe lifelong learners and creative 21st-century thinkers– but if you don’t challenge the status quo and move beyond what has always been done, you won’t likely achieve these new aspirations.
Sampling of Responses from Last Week’s ‘Question of the Week’: What brings you joy and how do/can you make room in your day/schedule for joy?
- Something that brings me joy is music. I think taking time for yourself to just do what brings you joy for even just 10 minutes can make an impact on your day.
- I see my friends a lot!!
- I think hanging out with my friends and my family brings me joy.
- Seeing all my teachers
- I like to play videogames with my friends and brother, so I try to finish early so I can play with them.
- Something that brings me joy is spending time with my family, and a perfect time for that is dinner. We usually eat together, unless my parents are working and it is really fun. I also find joy in spending time with friends and dance.
- Hanging out with friends or talking I try to leave as little homework as I can for after school
- I like playing hockey. I always sign up for extra lessons or skill sessions apart from my team practices.
- Playing with friends
- I just plan out my day, so I know when I have time for joy.
- Dance brings me joy!
- I like to make sure that I don't have much homework so that I have time to have fun after school.
- Beautiful relationships bring me joy!
- Playing sports and I can use my time effectively by not spending time on screens.
- Playing cards with relatives.
- I try to appreciate small moments in nature, but honestly, this is something that I need to work on.
- Hanging out with friends and painting. I would try to do both once a week.
As we begin to see more blossoms on the trees and gardens come ‘back to life’, Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem, Early Spring, seemed appropriate to share this week to continue our recognition of National Poetry Month...
Early Spring
Harshness vanished. A sudden softness
has replaced the meadows' wintry grey.
Little rivulets of water changed
their singing accents. Tendernesses,
hesitantly, reach toward the earth
from space, and country lanes are showing
these unexpected subtle risings
that find expression in the empty trees.
As always, let me know of any questions/concerns.
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Take care.
Nat