To encourage dialogue and reflection about understanding our own needs and the needs of others, our question for the week is: What are the ‘things’ that matter most to you? What Matters Most to You (Week of 10/24/21) (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
We have been so fortunate with the stretch of lovely autumn weather last week (it really felt like a gift every time I stepped outside), and I’m pretending that the rainy weather is not happening this week! We had a nice weekend, watching the kids’ sports and beginning the process of putting the garden to bed. I enjoyed a walk on the Holliston rail trail with a dear friend before having dinner together as a family to help ‘frame the week’.
- Why am I feeling this way?
- What is this feeling telling me?
- This ‘reality’ is not sustainable
- How is this impacting our students?
- What’s next?
With these thoughts/questions floating about (sort of in the background and foreground at the same time) in my head, I continued about with the ‘day-to-day’ work. On Thursday night, while Owen had basketball practice, I sat down to catch up on e-mail. While working through the e-mails, I opened up Henry Turner’s (@turnerhj) newsletter - within, he referenced ‘The Platinum Rule’ (Learn how others want to be treated and treat them that way. ) The article linked within his newsletter is shared below, and it really resonated with my ‘feeling of being behind’. It is important to dig into these questions and push these notions/feelings we are having …
- Who is defining behind?
- Behind what?
- Does what we are chasing (the ‘behind’ notion) directly relate to our convictions, mission, and what matters?
It is this last question that helped me make a connection and reframe my thoughts. I hope to keep coming back to these questions with an eye on changing the narrative of ‘being behind’ to ‘what matters most’. The posts below, coupled with a sampling of responses from last week’s question, speak to and support the importance of asking questions about ‘what matters most’, listening to the responses, and then making sure we ‘act’ take some action. There is an inherent accountability in this relationship of questions/listening/action, and I hope we can keep these at the forefront of our work. The reference to ‘the platinum rule’ is one I hope to operationalize in my own work, and Jal Mehta’s post is ‘spot on’...
How the Platinum Rule Trumps the Golden Rule Every Time
by Peter Economy in Inc.
Says Kerpen, "We all grow up learning about the simplicity and power of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would want done to you. It's a splendid concept except for one thing: Everyone is different, and the truth is that in many cases what you'd want done to you is different from what your partner, employee, customer, investor, wife, or child would want done to him or her."
...Kerpen came up with the Platinum Rule: Do unto others as they would want done to them. Says Kerpen, "The Golden Rule, as great as it is, has limitations, since all people and all situations are different. When you follow the Platinum Rule, however, you can be sure you're actually doing what the other person wants done and assure yourself of a better outcome."
Says Kerpen, "The Golden Rule, as great as it is, has limitations, since all people and all situations are different. When you follow the Platinum Rule, however, you can be sure you're actually doing what the other person wants done and assure yourself of a better outcome."
Why We Have the Wrong Kind of Urgency in Education | NGLC
By Jal Mehta (@jal_mehta)
The urgency around learning loss is crowding out space to listen to and support students who are in their third year of pandemic schooling. And the urgency to get teachers to do what system leaders want them to do is similarly crowding out a chance to give teachers the support they need. This pattern is not desirable in the short run. And it is not sustainable in the long run. While it will take more time to get hard numbers, all available evidence suggests that many teachers are burned out from the many challenges posed by COVID; they need more support, time, and space, not less.
There is another path. We need to remember that schooling—and childrearing—is a marathon and not a sprint. Over a very long period of time, children come to acquire knowledge and skills. Our hope is that at the end of that process, they are people who can think critically, contribute to democracy, empathize, collaborate, and otherwise be ready for the world that will face them. We have no way of knowing whether any particular thing we do today will actually contribute to those long-run goals. But a reasonable assumption is that if we treat students—young people—as the kinds of people who can think, reason, empathize, collaborate, and so forth, they will gradually become those kinds of people. Kids are smart—they watch what we do, not what we say—so our hidden curriculum needs to communicate our values.
Good leaders know that their most valuable resource is their people, and people need space and support if they are going to invest in their work over a long period of time. It takes time to become a really good teacher, and thus, unless we find ways to sustain teachers, there is a natural limit on the kind of teaching that our students are going to experience.
...we need to resist the calls of urgency. We want to “go slow to go fast,” “move at the speed of trust,” or, the most revealing of these cliches to me, “if you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far, go together.” We should slow down—slow down with students to give ideas time to marinate, slow down the rush of content to support the needs of the whole child, and slow down decision-making in favor of “listening leadership” that really gets people on board before moving in a new direction. School improvement is “steady work,” as Richard Elmore and Milbrey McLaughlin said in the 1980s; or we need to “let it breathe,” as D-Nice says today.
...while this kind of hamster wheel urgency leaves us spinning in place, what is missing is the kind of broader urgency we need to reimagine the school system. After a historic worldwide shutdown in schooling, we seem to have picked back up right where we left off, having, on the whole, learned little from this massive forced pause in our system...schools seem in a rush to return to a status quo that wasn’t working for many students.
Where is the urgency about changing this status quo? Where is the urgency about the kind of inequalities that persist in our system year after year? Where is the urgency about giving students more voice, agency, and relevance in their schooling? Where is the urgency about lessening the disengagement that only increases the longer students are in schooling? The history of social movements teaches us that urgency can be a powerful tool, if it is combined with hope and directed toward the right problems.
We need to exchange one kind of urgency for another. Less learning loss urgency. More “what happened to this human being over the time she was away from us, what does she need, what is she thinking and feeling, and how can we support that” type of urgency. Less “is the assembly line moving fast enough” urgency. More “why did we model schools on assembly lines” urgency. We can choose where to put our energy; why not focus it on the things that really matter?
Sampling of Responses from Last Week’s ‘Question of the Week’: What strategies do you use to ‘clear your head’ when you are experiencing challenges and want/need to get a new look or perspective on things? Be specific.
- I like to go on walks, be in nature, go for runs, have alone time, and spend time with my dog.
- Music, mindless tv show, reading for a little, taking a break if possible, pet love
- I like to listen to music that has a good beat.
- If I can realize in the moment that I need a new perspective, I make sure to step away from what I am doing to allow time to reset.
- I walk away and take a drink of water to refresh my brain. Or i take some deep breaths
- I read to forget about what happened.
- I change the seat I sit in.
- I like to take a break, exercise, and journal about the issue of the challenge.
- Closing my eyes and thinking of a calming place.
- I have a handful of people whose perspective I value, so after thinking something over I will often touch base with them to get their thoughts.
- Sometimes I don't really do anything, but when I have exploration with Mr. Gow and we go outside in nature, it really helps to clear my head!
- I usually sit quietly without distractions (not looking at a screen) and try to think of a solution.
- If I’m struggling with homework, I go outside. It really helps me relax and rewind and then I go back to do my work.
- Sometimes I read, that doesn't help me a lot but writing does, either planning for a book, making ideas or writing a book; I have a journal that i'm teaching myself how to write in one language that is fun to write! Or I watch someone play a video game.
- Get a drink of water and take deep breaths
- Tell a trusted adult
- I usually take a big deep breath and just think in my mind that I have to change what I am thinking. I also sometimes close my eyes for a minute.
- I read or take walks or play with my siblings
- I look at old photos on my phone. I just sit and scroll. This re centers me and gives me perspective. Especially when I see those photos of my family and kids and it reminds me of how far everyone has come. It gives me a fresh perspective on whatever is overwhelming me.
These responses help to remind me that our students (and we as well) have a very good understanding of our own needs, and I hope the systems that we put in place in both the short and long term help to provide more opportunities for them to gain this awareness. Providing agency in their own learning is vital - and this is one of the things that ‘matters most to me’ in our work.
As always, let me know of any questions/concerns.
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Take care.
Nat