To help encourage conversations and dialogue about the importance of knowing and understanding oneself, our topic/question for the dinner table is: What can we do as a school community to help students better understand themselves? Understanding Oneself (Week of 12/2/18) (This is an anonymous Google Form)
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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.
After a pretty full week back after Thanksgiving, this weekend has felt like ‘the calm before the storm of the holiday craze’. Owen and I participated in the Angel Run on Sunday (such a wonderful community event!) and we then enjoyed the Patriots game and dinner as a family - a far too rare event these days with the busy schedules at this time of year.
In conversations with friends, family members, and parents I know my friend and I are not alone, either - it is certainly a shared sentiment. So, if that is the case what is that we should be focusing on for our students? Should we be trying to better hone in on ‘vocational pathways’, defined paths, Myers-Briggs personality exercises, or enhancing the ‘delivery of content’? Is that the right path? The more I have reflected, read, and listened, I am not sure we are really going to actually find the right answer - but, the work we are aiming to do to help our students understand their own learning and development seems right. This is incredibly complex work and, like our mission, is constantly evolving. With all of this in mind, our steadfast commitment to a ‘willingness to adapt’ is and will continue to be a key guiding compass point for us.
Through intentional listening and active learning our sense of self will become more defined and that is a lifelong process. I am struck by how often I find myself coming back to the message from Marc Brackett, founding Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, that I heard at Challenge Success - one I have shared several times...
- The # 1 predictor of engagement is relevance
- The # 1 priority is adult development (‘adult development over child development’) - ‘we can’t ask people to do things we don’t do ourselves’
- The # 1 challenge we face is getting adults to see it as their inherent responsibility to do their own professional development
Notes from James McCauley, Riverside Trauma Center
- Concept of 'gatekeepers' - we can all serve as keepers of the gate
- Concept of 'environmental impact of care' (a nice mantra for a school environment)
- For every risk factor there are Protective Factors - We can all be protective factors
- Resilience: Increase Prosociality, Psychological Flexibility; Decrease Toxic Influences
- Compassionate Presence - another great mantra to embrace
- We can build a 'competent community'
- Resilience as a theme - 'Some day it could be better...'
- 'If you think something's wrong, it doesn't hurt to ask'
- Just ask - it does not plant the idea
- ‘Treat everyone like they are vulnerable’
- 85% of any type of therapy's efficacy is dependent on the relationship - lots of implications here for all of our work
- Important question - Who are the adults that really ‘get’ kids?
- Two stages of grief - who you were before and who you were after
- Timeframe of hopelessness for adults- 2-3 years; children- 2-3 weeks
- Distraction and structure are powerful coping strategies
- ‘If you’re about to open your mouth to make someone feel better- don’t ‘
The Most Important Skill for the Future: Being Human
by Will Richardson (@willrich45)
As we continue to think and reflect upon the skills we want our students to have so that they are prepared, Richardson advocates for the active development and promotion of choice and agency - with the goal of helping our students to understand themselves as humans.
...for all of our flagellation over the skills that our kids will need to thrive in the future, we may be missing the most important yet eternal skill of all: knowing thyself.
...if we don’t have a clear understanding of who we are and how we interact with the world around us at the moment we will be losing an important battle for what it means to be human, to maintain our agency in a world that is increasingly trying to manipulate us through the technologies we use...We seem increasingly willing to let others, people or algorithms, make choices for us. To me, that’s less about technology and more about disposition. We seem increasingly disposed to let others’ choices determine our lives. Maybe because it’s easier, because it requires less bandwidth, or because we’re too scared to make the wrong choice.
Seymour Papert famously asked “Does the child program the computer or does the computer program the child?” I’d tweak that a bit: “Does the school program the child, or does the child program the school?” Meaning, of course, does the child have choice and agency over what happens while in school. If Harari and Rushkoff are right, if truly thriving in whatever world evolves means being fully conscious of who we are as humans and exercising our ability to choose for ourselves based on our understanding of who we are and what’s best for us, we should focus all of our efforts on building our students capacity to be fully human.
Topic/Question (Week of 11/25/18): How can curiosity and imagination help you to learn and change?
- It can help us transform what we already have into something that shines!
- You find new things you never knew you knew
- They can help us learn better
- You have more answers and ideas 💡🤯
- When I was young, curiosity took me out of the usual patterns of the day and the wandering in other areas was not always noticed by my parents. In this case and for those that are curious, we become self-learners which is a life skill and causes us to be imaginative and creative in the self-learning, (wandering, tinkering), process.
- It is the pathway to humor, and humor is a great learning tool
- It will help you to think outside the box in ways you never have thought of
- You can discover new things that help you think about things in different ways
- If you are more curious and imaginative you will be more successful in life
- You can become more creative
- It can help you go outside your comfort zone
- Imagination especially can drive you a long way. Curiosity can sometimes lead you to knowing things you’ve never learned before. Curiosity kind of connects to education, if you’re curious about something in education, you’ll learn about it and maybe be an expert at it someday.
- Curiosity and imagination can help you see what you wish to learn or be and then you try to be that way and you change or learn. Using your imagination. Sometimes if you wonder about something you think about that one thing for a while and then you become the thing you want to be or were thinking about without even realizing it.
- Being curious can help you learn because you’re more interested in what is happening
I have often shared how fortunate I feel that my professional and personal lives intertwine and that growth and learning is two-fold. A hope I have for our students and community of learners is that we can foster this ‘intersection’ as a reality, no matter what path is chosen. Through intentional and purposeful reflection we can make individual progress, increase our collective understanding, and allow more doors of learning and opportunity to be opened and navigated. In turn, these new doors will provide a greater insight into ourselves and growth will take place.
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Enjoy the week and take care.
Nat