To help encourage conversations and dialogue about resolutions, beginnings, and renewal as we welcome in 2019, our topic/question of the week is: Please complete this statement: For 2019, I am committed to these 1-2 resolutions...
What Lies Ahead (Week of 1/1/19) (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.
Happy New Year! Hopefully you are reading this in a rested and relaxed state of mind, as we say goodbye to 2018 and hello to 2019. After a festive and celebratory first few days of vacation with family and friends (including the annual holiday party I have been attending as long as I can remember in Sherborn), our week was pretty unscheduled and relaxed. My pre-vacation blog post (Making Room for Growth) helped lay my own ground work for reflective thought - looking back on 2018 and looking forward to what lies ahead, all the while trying to frame the thoughts and hopes of under the ‘umbrella’ of #willfulhope (a mantra from a dear friend that I have embraced). I have shared before that one of my favorite parts about ‘externally influenced’ down time (i.e. vacations and weekends) is that I am given the opportunity to practice my goal/resolution to #slowitdown and reflect. In this season of resolutions and intentions, I appreciated the structured break to diverge from my daily routine and take advantage of this ‘space’ (as is often the case, I think there are important implications for our work with students and our own professional development that we can think about incorporating - good ‘food for thought’ for future discussions).
Topic/Question (Week of 12/16/18): What are you hoping to do and/or looking forward to do during the vacation?
- Relax and spend time with family and friends.
- I'm looking forward to playing with my kids and getting into a book or two that I have been looking forward to reading.
- Going to galleries/museums looking at art. Doing a lot of walking every day.
- My Relatives Coming!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Singing in church
- I am looking forward to going to Jamaica and making gingerbread houses on Christmas
- Having a break from homework
- Ski
- Relax with friends and family
- I am looking forward to traveling to Raleigh to see my family.
- I am looking forward to relaxing and eating amazing foods during the vacation.
- Seeing my family
- Spending time with family and getting to unwind and relax.
- I’m looking forward to Christmas and the New Year
- Seeing my cousins and extended family
- My grandma coming to visit from Indiana
- De-stress, reconnect with family, come back fresh and ready for the new year.
- Celebrating the holidays with family
- For Christmas I am going to my grandparent’s house who live in Walpole for brunch, and for dinner I am going to my great aunt and uncle’s house. They also live in Walpole.
- Christmas
- I am really looking forward to chilling out and really being in the moment. I also can't wait to read a book just for fun.
- Sleep
- See my family that lives far away and finally relax
Some Year-End Lists and Reflections/Predictions
Finished! Here Are All Thirty-One 2018 “Best” Lists
by Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo)
This list is always my 'first stop' for reflections upon the year. Ferlazzo is a prolific writer, reader, archivist, and blogger of 'all things education' and this link has over 15 lists, from content-specific 'best of' to recommendations to predictions for 2019. I recommend bookmarking this site.
12 Areas School Leaders Should Focus on in 2019
by Peter DeWitt (@PeterMDeWitt) in Education Week
The Year's Most Usable The articles that resonated most with Usable Knowledge readers in 2018
from HGSE’s Usable Knowledge
2018 Education Research Highlights
by Youki Terada in Edutopia
Education research continues to remind us of the powerful impact teachers have on children. This impact is overwhelmingly positive—the studies we highlight here demonstrate specific ways in which teachers can or already do help students feel a sense of belonging in school and make gains in learning.
The Best Parent Engagement Resources – 2018
by Larry Ferlazzo (@LarryFerlazzo)
Top Education Stories of 2018: Education Week’s Most Viewed
Compiled by the editors at Education Week
Top Teacher Stories of 2018: Education Week's Most Viewed
Compiled by the editors at Education Week
Top Education Videos of 2018: Education Week’s Most Viewed
Compiled by the editors at Education Week
Top 20 Posts from 2018
Selected by the Getting Smart Staff
Top 100 Education Blogs in 2019 for Educators and Teachers
from Feedspot Education Blogs List.
The Best Education blogs from thousands of top Education blogs in our index using search and social metrics. Data will be refreshed once a week. Also check out Educational Podcasts and Educational Videos from Top 100 Educational Youtube Channels.
A Few 'Big Picture' Posts
Modern Learners 2018 Provocation of the Year
by Bruce Dixon
Dixon, one of the co-founders of Modern Learners, is worth following and this post does an excellent job of framing the need for communication with all stakeholders. I particularly like the notion that we are becoming ‘comfortable at being comfortable’, the need to ‘stand for what you believe’, and the meaningful role provocation can play in our work.
2018 has indeed been a very different year, in so many ways. Economically volatile, politically unpredictable, while in education it’s also fair to say the conversation is changing quite dramatically. While we’d all like to think we are a small part of making that happen, there are now many more diverse voices calling for us to rethink what school could and should be. At long last we are starting to become comfortable at being uncomfortable.
...you can only get those vibrant, thoughtful, deep conversations when listening is preferred above speaking, when questions are prioritized above answers, and when provocation presents a platform for new ideas, for a different perspective that might otherwise never have been heard. In this context, provocation is therefore about deconstructing meanings and hidden agendas, challenging assumptions and seeking new ways of thinking not just about what we do, or how we do it, but most importantly, why we do what we do. It is in this context that the choice for our 2018 Provocation of the Year came down to a single word… assessment.
So that sets an agenda for all of us in 2019. I think we have to think about how we can take this provocation to the wider community: our parents, our students, and importantly to those in the public media. We can’t repeat the mistakes of previous iterations and assume the community understands why we think this is so important and what they can do about it.
It takes us back to where we started the year, to our beliefs around learning. If we can’t anchor our conversations around a topic as provocative as assessment in our beliefs around learning, then frankly, all is lost. So maybe that even sets up a possible resolution for 2019. Stand by what you believe. It’s surely the foundation for the most productive conversations you can have with peers and your school community, and it gives you a strong foundation to lead deeper conversations around a provocative topic like assessment.
The Fallacy of the ‘I Turned Out Fine’ Argument
by Justin Coulson in The New York Times
I read this after Thanksgiving this year and have come back to it several times since then. I’ve shared it with a number of people as it really resonated with me as a parent and educator. We often hear the 'kids these days' narrative and I find the 'I turned out fine' to be similar.
The “I turned out just fine” argument is popular. It means that based on our personal experience we know what works and what doesn’t. But the argument has fatal flaws...It’s what’s known as an anecdotal fallacy...It relies on a decision-making shortcut known as the availability heuristic...It dismisses well-substantiated, scientific evidence...It leads to entrenched attitudes.
Where is the threshold for what constitutes having turned out fine? If it means we avoided prison, we may be setting the bar too low. Gainfully employed and have a family of our own? Still a pretty basic standard. It is as reasonable to say “I turned out fine because of this” as it is to say “I turned out fine in spite of this.”
We expect our children to embrace learning and to progress in their thinking as they grow older. They deserve to expect the same from us.
Is Assessment Ready to Move Beyond Standardized Tests? These MIT Researchers Think So.
by Emily Tate in EdSurge
As we continue to grow as an educational community, it is important to stay ‘in the know’ with current trends in education. The concept of ‘playful assessment’ is one worthy of serious consideration, as we look to foster, teach, and assess curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking.
Playful assessment, not to be mistaken for gamification, seeks to capture student mastery in many of the areas that are hard to gauge. Louisa Rosenheck, a research manager at MIT with experience in game design, says the idea is to measure “all the things we say we care about”—like curiosity, creativity and critical thinking—but that traditional assessments miss. “By making assessment playful, we can get closer to measuring the things we actually value,” she says.
The beauty of playful assessment, she says, is that it can be done without interrupting the rhythm of learning, thereby alleviating student anxiety around testing. “Kids don’t even have to know they are being assessed,” Rosenheck tells EdSurge.
How to Wrap Advice as a Gift a Teenager Might Open
by Lisa Damour in The New York Times
This is a wonderful post by Damour and is a ‘must read’ for all parents and educators - a nice reminder of ‘intent and impact’ and the importance of keeping your ‘audience in mind’.
The giving season is again upon us and if there’s anything adults are always eager to share with our teenagers, it’s our own hard-earned wisdom. But why do our well-meaning efforts to advise our teenagers often get a chilly reception? Usually, it’s because we’ve got our attention trained on the wrong thing: the thoughts we’re hoping to pass along, and not how it feels to be on the receiving end of such lessons.
As much as we might want to simply tell our teenagers what to do, we equally know that doing so won’t serve them well in the long run. Our aim, of course, should be to help them learn to make good decisions on their own. And when we do have hard-won perspective that we’re longing to share, let’s package it so that our teenagers are most likely to be receptive — both during this gift-giving season and all year round.
12 Alternatives To Letter Grades In Education
by Terry Heick in TeachThought
Heick’s posts are always thought-provoking and the ideas within are ones worthy of our reflection as we continue to find meaningful ways to provide feedback for our students in the pursuit of reflective learning.
The letter grade fails because its job–to communicate learning results to learners and families—cannot possibly be performed a single symbol. Further, the letter grade “pauses” learning–basically says that at this point, if I had to average all of your understanding, progress, success, and performance into a single alphanumeric character, it’d be this, but really this is over-simplifying things because learning is messy and understanding is highly dynamic.
But parents don’t want to hear about understanding because it’s grey area that doesn’t make sense. It sounds like spin. It’s subjective. Complex. They want it to be distilled for them–and rightfully so, but that reduction dissolves the honesty of the learning process. Conversations with parents turn most frequently on missing work, learner temperament and/or attendance, and the letter grade, but rarely on knowledge, curiosity, or the ability to evaluate information.
My Annual Shares
5 Media Resolutions Every Family Should Make in 2019
by Caroline Knorr in Common Sense Media
Each year Knorr shares her advice for how families can try and make sense of the benefits and challenges that we all encounter and embrace with media. Common Sense Media is a phenomenal resource and these resolutions hold meaning for educators and families alike - as we do each year, Katie and I will be reflecting upon them for our own household.
What do you remember from 2018? Did you share pics of your kid on Facebook? Did you sneak a peek at their texts with their friends? Did you yell at them to get off their devices? Did you watch a movie that made you both laugh (or cry)? Did they send you a text that filled your heart and reminded you of why you had kids in the first place? So much of our daily lives revolves around media and tech that we barely notice it anymore. But we should. Why? Because these moments are the stuff of life. And the way we use technology really matters.
The start of a new year is a perfect time to reflect on the role you want media and tech to play in your family's lives. After all, media and tech are just the enablers. Learning, connecting, growing -- even setting a positive example for your kids -- are where the real magic happens.
Help your kids become more aware of their own online time and help them take control of their use, too. You don't have to shut everything down. But really focus on what you're doing, when you're doing it, and why. The way you use media and tech has a huge influence on your kids, and you can be a great role model for using them mindfully.
To My 13-Year-Old, An iPhone Contract From Your Mom, With Love and To My 13-Year-Old, An iPhone Contract From Your Mom, With Love
by Janell Burley Hoffman in The Huffington Post
I share these posts each year and I find it resonates each time I come back to it. # 18 is wonderful - 'You will mess up. I will take away your phone. We will sit down and talk about it. We will start over again. You and I, we are always learning. I am on your team. We are in this together.'
We need to remember to look forward to build and to know we have the strength and collective capacity within…
Each and every school day will bring tens of thousands of reasons to celebrate in schools across the country. - Bill Ivey
I also want to share and highlight these quotes - affirming progress, embracing resistance, and the importance of 'finding flowers'...
Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I look forward to the work that lies ahead for all of us.
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Take care.
Nat