Welcome back to another school year. I am sure that there have been changes all over the place. Change can be a wonderful thing, but very difficult to accept and deal with in the moment. We become very comfortable with the status quo, sometimes even when we know there are things that can be improved.
For students, change occurs all of the time causing them to have to continually adapt to new situations. Over the summer, when discussing how to help students express themselves better, about their academic, emotion, physical, psychological, etc. needs, a teacher told me that kids today tend to "live in the 10 seconds". They react before they think about the larger picture, understand the root of the issue, what is the real cause, and what some of the effective solutions could be. When this happens, sometimes students will yell and scream, hit, withdraw from communicating, and other non-effective actions to help remedy the issue. If we, as educators, accept that we must educate the whole child, then we must educate them on social emotional needs, conflict resolution, goal setting and achieving, in addition to their academic needs. But we know this...
As we open the school year, we, the adults, need to keep the big picture in perspective. Teachers might not like having to switch classrooms, when their planning period is, classes are full, teaching assignments change, etc. With the excitement and hiccups that always accompany the opening of school, we need to NOT live in the 10 seconds. We need to look at the larger picture to solve the immediate issues and once things have settled down and reached equilibrium, then we need to reflect on the system and look for improvement. Changes that happen will disrupt equilibrium and that is uncomfortable. Adults need to discern the difference between the discomfort of change and an actual problem. If it is discomfort, give it a chance to work and know that reflection and evaluation will occur to make improvements. If it is an actual problem, we need to develop a solution and then monitor if that is the best scenario for the big picture.
As leaders, we need to exercise our listening abilities to help teachers discern those differences and identify them ourselves. We need to effectively communicate with teachers about the big picture and prioritizing how issues will be handled.
Change is never easy. But when the need for change is communicated, team members listen to one another, and the change is understood to help the system improve, it can be an easier pill to swallow and might allow people to see the 11th second and beyond.
Have a great start to the year!
Showing posts with label teachers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teachers. Show all posts
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Tuesday, February 05, 2013
Tweet Chats
Last night was the first Illinois Ed Chat. If you are interested, they are scheduled to be Monday nights at 8 pm CST. You can see the Storify transcript below.
The topic of the chat was the 5Essentials survey that is being given to schools in Illinois for teachers, students, and parents to provide feedback on their preceptions and experiences of their school. The survey is meant to be anonymous in order to get more honest and open feedback. While there was much discussion about the reporting of the data, what is will be used for, etc, there were two things that kept me thinking about this ed chat.
First was a comment by Ryan Bretag that questioned how an instrument designed for urban school settings would be appropriately applied to schools not in an urban setting. This is a question that never occurred to me because, although my school is technically in a suburb, we can easily be considered an urban setting. Ryan's school district is in one of the most affluent areas in the Northern Suburbs and, while there can be commonalities, have some very different issues than a school in an urban setting. His question is a valid one because of the original design of this instrument. He was not indicating that the instrument would be ineffective. The parts of the survey relating to rigorous curriculum, teacher collaboration, parent involvement, etc. are applicable to all schools.
The other thing that kept me thinking was from someone new to tweetchats. Rob Raphael is a teacher in Southern Illinois and wanted to learn more about the survey and how it will be used to help students. (For this reason alone, he is someone that should be followed on Twitter.) Unfortunately for Rob, this was not the main focus of the chat and he wrote a blog that described his disappointment. He then followed up that post with another indicating what he was looking for and what he wanted the chat to be. He provided some interesting points from a classroom perspective in his blog post that administrators can easily lose sight of. Hopefully, with reminders like his, I will not lose that classroom focus.
Long story short, continue to participate and communicate. As I told Rob, we can learn more from people with whom we disagree than a room full of "yes"-ers.
The topic of the chat was the 5Essentials survey that is being given to schools in Illinois for teachers, students, and parents to provide feedback on their preceptions and experiences of their school. The survey is meant to be anonymous in order to get more honest and open feedback. While there was much discussion about the reporting of the data, what is will be used for, etc, there were two things that kept me thinking about this ed chat.
First was a comment by Ryan Bretag that questioned how an instrument designed for urban school settings would be appropriately applied to schools not in an urban setting. This is a question that never occurred to me because, although my school is technically in a suburb, we can easily be considered an urban setting. Ryan's school district is in one of the most affluent areas in the Northern Suburbs and, while there can be commonalities, have some very different issues than a school in an urban setting. His question is a valid one because of the original design of this instrument. He was not indicating that the instrument would be ineffective. The parts of the survey relating to rigorous curriculum, teacher collaboration, parent involvement, etc. are applicable to all schools.
The other thing that kept me thinking was from someone new to tweetchats. Rob Raphael is a teacher in Southern Illinois and wanted to learn more about the survey and how it will be used to help students. (For this reason alone, he is someone that should be followed on Twitter.) Unfortunately for Rob, this was not the main focus of the chat and he wrote a blog that described his disappointment. He then followed up that post with another indicating what he was looking for and what he wanted the chat to be. He provided some interesting points from a classroom perspective in his blog post that administrators can easily lose sight of. Hopefully, with reminders like his, I will not lose that classroom focus.
Long story short, continue to participate and communicate. As I told Rob, we can learn more from people with whom we disagree than a room full of "yes"-ers.
Friday, November 30, 2012
Fantasy Teaching
An interesting thing happened on Twitter today. Dr. Chris McGee (@cmcgee200) and Josh Stumpenhorst (@stumpteacher) had conversation starter of what teaching would look like it teachers were drafted like pro-athletes. The conversation had a root in the educational practices of Finland and their great successes.
As an aside, did you know that in Finland, students do not start school until the age of 7 and receive all post high school career training for free? Pre-service teachers in Finland go through extensive internships and training and receive salaries on par with other educated professionals in the country. The training is so extensive and challenging that only 10% of the participants complete the program! You can read more here.
Once the idea of a pro-draft was discussed, the conversation took a turn to how might a fantasy teaching league look and how would the "owner" of a league might score points. The conversation started with a few people and eventually had dozens of people contributing. The conversation started around 11 AM CST and within 2 hours had over 200 contributions.
The contributions ranged from serious to silly including:
See the storyfi of the #fantasyteaching conversation below. If you want to contribute, please do by tweeting with the hashtag #fantasyteaching!
As an aside, did you know that in Finland, students do not start school until the age of 7 and receive all post high school career training for free? Pre-service teachers in Finland go through extensive internships and training and receive salaries on par with other educated professionals in the country. The training is so extensive and challenging that only 10% of the participants complete the program! You can read more here.
Once the idea of a pro-draft was discussed, the conversation took a turn to how might a fantasy teaching league look and how would the "owner" of a league might score points. The conversation started with a few people and eventually had dozens of people contributing. The conversation started around 11 AM CST and within 2 hours had over 200 contributions.
The contributions ranged from serious to silly including:
- +2 points for giving borderline students an opportunity to publicly succeed (@wmchamberlain)
- DQ'd for using sarcasm to put a kid down (@jmarkeyAP)
- +2 points for admitting, out loud, in your class, that you just learned something from a kid, and being proud of it (@ktvee)
- +1 point per hit for playing Dodgeball with 200 kids and letting them hit you (@stumpteacher)
- -2 points for splling errrors (@jaymelinton)
See the storyfi of the #fantasyteaching conversation below. If you want to contribute, please do by tweeting with the hashtag #fantasyteaching!
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