Tag Archives: value

Celebrate Success (Even When It’s Someone Else’s)

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It’s pretty easy to celebrate your own accomplishments.  I mean, you know your journey.  You know what you have been through to carry out the goal.  However, it can be harder to celebrate the success of others.  It got me thinking.

  • Do we not celebrate the success of others because of the competitive world we live in?  Maybe we don’t celebrate because we are fearful that someone else’s success diminishes our own.  Maybe it makes us feel a little safer with our own status.
  • Do we not notice? Let’s face it, it’s a fast pace world we live in. Maybe we get so busy, we just don’t see anything going on with anyone else because we have hyper-focused on our own circumstances.
  • Do we doubt the impact our “congratulations” mean to someone else?  Maybe we think that the other person will question our sincerity or even value our acknowledgement of what they have accomplished.

Recently I had a colleague of a campus that had been through a tremendous challenge to help her campus meet some specified accountability standards.  While I had not directly experienced the steps and measures they had gone through to achieve the goal.  I knew it was certainly arduous.  Her team rallied. They invested.  They learned. They reflected and they grew.  Most importantly, they never gave up.  It was huge accomplishment when they achieved this task they had worked on for years.

As I watched them celebrate, it hit me how important it was that not only they celebrate for themselves, or be acknowledged by superiors, but that they be acknowledged by peers and colleagues.  I didn’t know whether my words would really matter to them, but it just seemed important.  When we live in a world where education is constantly under fire, we must stand together in good times and in bad. It just seems like it’s easier to acknowledge and feel pity for someone’s struggles. We must not compete against each other, but celebrate each educational organization as a part of the great big “whole” of public educators who make a difference for children.  That is why my teacher leaders did a twitter storm of celebration for this campus marrying their hashtag and ours to celebrate their success.

…we must stand together in good times and bad. It just appears it is easier to acknowledge and feel pity for the struggles.
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I don’t think it matters if you are a district, a school, or a teacher of a classroom.  As Susan Phillips says “Celebrate the success of others.  High tide floats all ships.” When you are in a battle, you unite your armies, not battle over who is the frontline or the support. Both are critical to winning longterm.  We must recognize that every success of any campus is asuccess for all public educators.  It’s a check in the win column to tell the world what a difference a group of educators can make in the lives of children when they have a common vision and purpose. Congratulations, Central Elementary! You have accomplished great things.  You have shown grit, growth mindset, and grace under fire!  You did it and you make us all look good because of that!

 

 

I Choose Thankful

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November is traditionally a time of reflections on one’s blessings, and as I think about this school year, it has been full of ups and downs and in only been 13 weeks.  One of the biggest challenges is seeing children bear such heavy burdens. Whether it is a parent’s illness, today-i-choosephysical/emotional abuse or neglect, the loss of a parent through family separation or death, or just the stress of poverty and the worry that comes with it about one’s basic needs being met, it is hard to see children suffering.  Add to this mix teachers who have their own personal stressors and a nation of unrest in a highly polarized political climate. Forget the typical school challenges full moons and holidays, folks; we are talking about real trauma.

Supporting children living with trauma can be a challenge. They bring it in the door. Trauma may not be visible, but a child in trauma will let you know immediately if they are suffering.  With their actions, their words, their lack of connection, they will let you know. They fight, they run, they shut down. Children in the most need of love often ask for it in the most unlovable ways.  It can be exhausting for those responsible for providing “trauma care” much less a high-quality education.  One could easily lose hope.

However, I have learned so much from supporting children of today.  If you can make that thankful-people-are-happyconnection, create that bond, make the child feel safe, there is no better feeling in the world. When you watch a teacher persist to form a relationship despite multiple attempts by the student to push them away, there is a sense of pride to be a part of an organization that puts first things first.

I have learned that it is in the most difficult circumstances that the biggest blessings are revealed.  We can be grateful for the challenges and know that they are helping develop our character into who we are meant to be, or we can feel mistreated.  

We can choose to feel blessed knowing that we will never be given more than we can handle, or we can wallow in despair.
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We always have a choice.   We can feel wronged, or we can be grateful for the challenges and know that they are tied to a greater purpose.  We can worry about the difficulties we face, or we can choose to feel blessed knowing that we will never be given more than we can handle.  We can grieve the things we do not have, or we choose to see the abundance of our lives and all the opportunities that lay before us. Thankful isn’t something that happens, it’s something you do on purpose. And when we choose gratitude, it becomes you-have-a-choiceimpossible to feel stressed.  They are two emotions that cannot exist at the same time.

So while it is difficult to see children suffer, I choose to be thankful that I get to be a positive force in their lives.  While sometimes the behavior of these students can be beyond difficult, I am blessed to have a staff willing to learn about trauma and utilize trauma-sensitive practices to support these students. While there are many times I have pondered thoughts of “if I just had more… (time, money, staff, parent involvement, resources)”, I know that in my district and community, I have an abundance of support and trust to make decisions that are best for our children, not just a few, but all of them. While it would be easy to lose faith facing such challenging circumstances, I choose to have grit and hope in the future of public education and how we can teach children coping strategies and value for each other in addition to reading, writing, and math.  I am blessed.  I am thankful.  Are you? It’s your choice.

Finding the Sweet Spot

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“To transform schools successfully, we need to navigate the difficult space between letting go of old strategies and grabbing on to new ones.” Robert John Meehan

This quote struck me this week.  It is true to have a real transformation in schools, we must master this balance of old and new strategies.  This dual mastery is especially critical if we are to escape the constraints of a dysfunctional standardized testing cycle. We must find that optimum point of where critical elements of instruction intersect to have the most effect on student learning -“the sweet spot.”

We must find where critical elements of instruction intersect to have the most effect on student learning -“the sweet spot.”
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As I began teaching twenty-five years ago, we ushered in the beginning of the demanding, rigorous, standardized testing era.  The tests at that time were increasingly more complex than anything we had seen before.  They were tied to accountability and a school’s performance on these tests was publicized for the world to see.

No worries.  Teachers were smart.  If the world said these tests were important, we could figure out ways to ensure students were successful.  I remember as a young, fifth-grade math teacher using a strategy that could assist even a struggling reader to determine the correct operation to use to solve the word problem. In reading, we could pinpoint the critical information the students needed to answer the questions, even if they didn’t have the stamina to read the entire lengthy passage.  I don’t think it was that we were trying to shortcut student learning.  We could essentially teach our students to follow a set routine of steps in a strategy, and they could be successful.  We were designing learning according to what society valued.  What was being communicated was that “tests” and “following instructions” were what was important.

authentic-skills

Over time, when have seen the shortfalls of this focus. Society has adjusted their perspective and decided tests based on this limited thinking were not important. We have realized that many students were crippled with no ability to solve a problem when they are not given a specific strategy or procedure.  We unwittingly created dependent students who struggled to approach problems with creativity.  As a result, tests have systematically been recreated to make those strategies from twenty-five years ago almost impossible to use. Words formally used as triggers are now embedded as distractors to see if students understand what they are doing. Tests are now designed to force higher level thinking.  They don’t rely on one set strategy that the teacher can say, “just follow these steps.”  It just won’t work. Regurgitation of facts or actions is essentially useless. To pass the “new generation” of high stakes assessments, our students must be proficient readers, mathematicians, communicators, and creative problem solvers.

Is this a bad thing?  I don’t think so.  Is it needed for our students to prepare for the future they face? Absolutely!  Is it easy? No way.  Essentially, it requires teachers and students to
“unlearn” everything they relied on in the past. Everything that worked and deemed them a success previously is now ineffective to achieve the new bar.

For those teachers in elementary schools today, it’s like being told you have to quit a bad habit, but you will continue to be judged on performance.  I liken it to giving up caffeine. Imagine you have been a heavy coffee or coke drinker.  Now you are giving up all caffeine cold turkey.  You know you need to do this for your health, but you still have to perform at high levels despite the fact that your body might be going through some withdrawal and experiencing caffeine headaches.  Finding that balance of teaching students at authentic levels with high problem-solving and performing triage for gaps between the newer test versions and previous ones take talent, practice, and hard work.

Effectively teaching students at high levels with meaningful, real-life problem-solving while performing triage for gaps between the newer test versions and previous ones doesn’t happen overnight.  Measures that previously determined students, teachers, and schools were high performers have been revised and now deem them lacking.  It is not the people who have changed.  It is the tests.  It is the expectations.  Even businesses learning-testingacknowledge that systematic change takes three to five years. There is often an implementation dip after starting new methods.  I would think that when you add young children to the mix, it can take a little longer. With that, we must be careful not to misinterpret or abuse test results. We are comparing apples to oranges.  These new tests are definitely not like any test you took in school.  It’s not in anyone’s best interest to make assumptions or broad generalizations, especially not the student.

This year is my third year as a principal.  I have been amazed at how fast positive change in instruction is taking hold on my campus.  I am blessed with a team of educators who know why they do what they do.  They understand what we need to do to prepare our students.  They have the grit to persist even when traveling this difficult road.  We are starting to see glimmers of this new way of thinking in our students while putting in extensive work to overcome gaps created by previous approaches.  They live in that sweet spot.

Yesterday, I read a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”

These words were written in a paper Dr. King wrote in 1947. Maybe this change in values of education represents the next swing of the teaching pendulum.  Or maybe it has just taken us 70 years to find the sweet spot.

The Sound of Silence

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While sometimes silence of welcomed, I have to say that in a learning organization, silence can be deadly. Silence in a learning organization means a lack of feedback. It means that people are likely too content, apathetic, scared or angry to communicate with specific feedback, and this is dangerous. It reminds me of the Simon and Garfunkel song:

Sound of silence

In a learning organization, feedback is critical to growth. Sometimes this feedback is positive: “You’re on the right track.” “The effort is paying off.” “The strategy you are using is getting results.” Sometimes feedback offers a correction: “Instead of this, I need you to…” “It might work better if…” “Next time I’d rather you …” Other times feedback sounds like this: “I hate it when you…” “You messed up.” “There’s going to be consequences.” However, even when feedback is negative, it gives the one receiving the feedback a chance to learn and grow if they choose.

When there is no feedback, growth halts.
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People can only guess if their actions are working and more time and energy is spent trying to decipher the silence than working on creating results. “Is what I’m going working?” “Is what I’m doing wrong?” “Why won’t he/she speak to me?” It’s a guess and check method spent mostly on guessing.

Several years ago I worked in an organization where all feedback stopped. The “boss” literally quit speaking to me. In public, I was invisible. Even in a bathroom where there were only two of us, I did not exist. Awkward! I guess I eventually figured out the message. I was not needed, and it was better to go elsewhere. The crazy thing is, if the “boss” had just given me specific feedback, we both probably would have gotten what we wanted much more quickly without a lot of hassle.

It is imperative supervisors give feedback. Too often I see leaders who are afraid to have difficult conversations. They suffer in silence until their aggravation results in an attitude of “done”. At that point, growth and recovery are no longer an option. What if the leader would have just said what needed to be said in a professional way? What if the leader coached their employee? What potential greatness was lost because the leader remained silent? What relationship was lost because things were allowed to become contentious?

Don’t get me wrong. The responsibility of feedback does not lie solely on the shoulders of feedbackleaders. All members of an organization have a responsibility of providing feedback. I tell my staff all the time that I don’t want them just to say yes and agree to everything I say. I need their thoughts, their consideration of unintended consequences and problem-solving, their ability to piggyback and make the idea even better. I need to know if something I have done has made their job harder. Their feedback cannot always result in “their way” because as a leader I always have to consider the big picture for the organization. However, without their feedback, how do I grow? How do I become better for them?

With all of this said, the most growth is going to occur when feedback is professional. While angry feedback is still probably better than silence, it is still destructive. It takes a great deal of energy for those involved in angry feedback to get beyond the emotion and focus on growth again. It is possible, but again, often angry feedback is just the explosion that occurs after a prolonged silence where the feedback was bottled up too long.

If you are a part of a learning organization, here are some tips to defeat the deadly sound of silence:

  • Give feedback, in good times and bad. People you work with need to know. It’s way more efficient than guessing. Each individual’s background experiences may muddy the water of interpreting “silence”
  • Feedback should be a two-way street. Both the leader and members of the organization should give feedback so that everyone has a chance to grow.
  • While feedback is better than silence, sometimes you may need a moment to compose yourself. Don’t give feedback in the heat of the moment, but don’t wait too long either. Feedback should be timely and professional.feedback matters
  • Be specific. Say what you mean and mean what you say. The more specific you are with your feedback, the more likely you are to get what you need.
  • Don’t ever allow yourself to become so comfortable that feedback stops. At that point, so does growth. Today’s good is tomorrow’s mediocre.
  • If you are the leader, create venues for your organization to provide you with feedback. Surveys, exit tickets after professional learning or staff meetings, and Google docs are all great ways to collect feedback. While I’m not a huge fan of anonymous feedback (it can be as bad as silence in the fact it doesn’t provide an avenue for clarification), I recognize that sometimes you have to start their of those you lead don’t feel safe giving feedback. It is a starting place, but the leader should work diligently to build relationships and get people comfortable with feedback that is specific and individualized.
It takes the grit to put others’ need to grow before one’s personal comfort of staying silent.
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Yes, sometimes it is easier to be silent. Silence can punish those with whom we are upset. It can send the message “I don’t even care enough about you to acknowledge your existence”. However, it rarely results in growth for anyone. Feedback with a growth the-sound-of-silence-simon-garfunkel-8-638mindset takes both grit and grace. It takes the grit to put others’ need to grow before one’s personal comfort of staying silent. Even more, it takes grace to give feedback in a manner that others are willing to listen and hear the intended message so that growth can occur.

Additional Resources for Giving Feedback:

Picture Day

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Today, my teachers were given a compliment that made me both incredibly happy and sad at the same time.  You see, it was Picture Day.  Picture Day is one of those things that we all have to do, but it can truly wreak havoc in an elementary school picture-Day-300x271student’s need for routine and structure.  They get accustomed to knowing what to expect for when, where, and how to be.  When you add Picture Day, it can totally disrupt routines, especially if the picture schedule runs behind.  Picture Day takes a lot of grit on everyone’s part.

Our day was also affected today by about 40 district leaders, campus administrators, and teacher leaders who were visiting our campus.  Typically, my students and teachers are very used to having visitors in and out observing, but this was the first one for the year.  I guess a “normal” picture day just didn’t give enough challenge so we raised the demand by adding 40 strangers to the mix on top of an altered schedule, just to really see how the students can handle change.

I do have to say that today we were lucky. No cameras broke. Everyone was on time.  The schedule flowed smoothly.  Students were amazing demonstrating their learning and even sharing with the adults walking through their classrooms.  I am so fortunate to have a fantastic group of students and an incredible staff.

We got amazing feedback from the visitors.  But as the photographers got ready to leave, they made this comment, “Your teachers are so respectful in how they speak to your respect-meansstudents.”  Wow.  Well, you need to know that many years ago before I came to Degan, there were some comments  to the contrary about this staff.  To hear from an outsider, even outside the profession of education, how impressed they were with the staff-student interaction, was a proud moment.  But as I thought more, I thought how incredibly sad it was that this photographer, who probably spends a great deal of time in schools witnessing teachers interact with their students, felt we were the exception.  You would think this would just be the norm.

As I reflected more, I did think about the stress that shifts in schedules and the unexpected happenings of a school Picture Day can cause.  However, as adults, we have to absorb that stress to keep it off our students.  Some of our students, especially those who live in poverty, live in chaos on a daily basis.  They sense the tensions of adults and react to it.  Even more important is the relationships. If we are snapping at our students to deal with our stress about a situation, we are damaging our relationship with that child and limit our ability to have a positive impact on them. If we are going to treat others with respect, and model this to children, we have to show we value them all the time, not just when we have had enough sleep, the schedule and routines are in place, and everything is going our way.

perfect-effortBut it goes even further. How do we as campus leaders, create a culture where our staff feels safe and confident, even amidst a great deal of change?  That is the true key.  We have to make sure everyone knows what to expect.

We have to create a culture driven by growth mindset and not perfection.
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When staff feels confident that effort, not perfection, is the desired outcome, everyone can exhale.  They will function with confidence and not be paralyzed by fear of the unknown.  They can become truly comfortable with ambiguity and learn to thrive, knowing that they are valued, no matter what.  When the teachers feel safe, they can make students feel safe as well, and then even Picture Day plus 40 strangers walking through classrooms aren’t an issue!