When we die, do people share stories of the unfortunate death or do friends spend time remembering the times of life? I think about my own personal life and the items I would celebrate rarely are condensed into one single event. I celebrate my children for all of the great moments together and watching both of them develop and grow. It’s not about the day they leave my home, it’s about the time we have together! In the words of Garth Brooks, “There’s two dates in time that they’ll carve on your stone and everyone knows what they mean. What’s more important is the time that is known in that little dash there in between.”

Enough rambling! The point of my discussion argues that school reform is a process of development and growth. I believe that no matter the outcome of a reform movement, the process of understanding and implementation will always create professional development and meaningful change. Take for instance the current national movement of the Common Core Standards. Many schools are scrambling to simply complete a curriculum map that shows they are doing what is expected and not taking time to truly understand the purpose of the Common Core. The common Core is most meaningful when teachers explore, map, argue, and create relevant units of curriculum using the Common Core. This time collaborating will always create more change than a district curriculum specialist mapping the standards and handing it down to teachers for implementation.

In closing, I would ask all teachers to celebrate changes and school reform by arguing, debating, discussing, and celebrating the process of implementation. This will create meaningful change that will directly impact your students.

1. Reflection - humans natural reflect on events and process throughout life. It is even more obvious when these life events are important. A great way to conclude a school year is to provide opportunities for students to reflect on both academic and personal growth. Some examples include; looking back at pre and post tests, looking back on sample writings, grades throughout the year, and initial goals set. Often, teachers provide opportunities for students to share personal points of growth including feedback on the processing of learning within a classroom.

2. Academic Celebrations - everyone enjoys a good celebration. By giving students an opportunity to share highlights, successes, and even examples of personal growth in relationships, the classroom family has an opportunity to celebrate the year.

3. Study Trips - No, I am not talking about days out of class doing NOTHING. End of year study trips are an opportunity for students to “give back”. End of the year study trips can be used to work with organizations that need support. It can also be an opportunity to leave a “mark” on life in a meaningful way.

As your year comes to a close, take time to reflect, celebrate, and give back. After all, the students you served over the past year will no doubt remember your class for something !

Have a great summer!

What is engagement? Well, for starters, it is another one of interpretable terms currently being used in education that has numerous definitions but is rarely agreed upon as a community. I believe that engagement is the critical staring point for the process of learning! Engagement is easily felt but difficult to assess. Let’s define the term and then provide tools that help engage all learners.

Engagement is the number of students actively involved in each and every classroom task. Engagement can and does change for every event throughout an instructional day and should be analyzed for ALL events in a lesson. Engagement is important enough that educators must analyze the number of students involved in EACH task in a given day.

It is important to look at each of the events in a classroom and work to increase the number of students actively involved in all of those events in order to achieve maximum engagement for a lesson. Let’s provide a sample lesson as an example:

SEE ATTACHED FILE!

In closing, the goal of this discussion is not to place blame or create a sense of accomplishment/failure but is intended to provide educators with a new way of thinking. I would invite each of you to assess your student tasks in order to identify moments of weak and strong student engagement. This assessment will help in finding new strategies that increase the number of students actively involved in ALL of your daily tasks.

A visit to a Doctor usually happens for a reason, fever, nausea, pain, or…I’ll stop there☺. A visit to the doctor usually begins with a set of routine checks followed by a conversation about “symptoms”. After tests and collaboration, the Doctor will offer a diagnosis along with a recommended remedy to cure the cause of the problem. Most visits will end with a statement, “if symptoms don’t improve, please reschedule a visit.” When vehicles begin to “act up” or even worse, stop all together, it validates a trip to a mechanic. For those of us who try to do everything ourselves, we make a trip to the local auto parts store☺. This trip begins again with a conversation about symptoms and diagnostic tests. Once a potential “cause” is identified, the cause of the problem is repaired and symptoms stop. In both cases, the approach is the same:

1. Look for trends and potential causes 2. Research symptoms to identify causes 3. Work to resolve the cause of the problem 4. Check for resolution and repeat if necessary

In classrooms, educators strive to resolve the problem by using a reactive approach. The most common reactive approach is to simply “remove the problem”! We often confront the student and then remove them from the class. Occasionally, we call parents or have students take an action to prove what they did was “wrong”. The problem with this approach is that it only works for the students that are afraid of the punishment. Usually, these are the “good students”. Imagine if a Doctor used the same approach. One would leave the office visit missing limbs, organs, or even worse, an entire section of a body. Imagine visiting the Doctor for a migraine.

The point of this post is for educators to consider managing a classroom using a proactive approach by using the following steps:

1. Look for trends and potential causes 2. Research symptoms to identify causes 3. Work to resolve the cause of the problem 4. Check for resolution and repeat if necessary

I realize that this process is ongoing and can be challenging. This approach t is NOT as easy as removing the problem altogether. The teacher can feel vulnerable due to the fact that there is no ONE solution. The critical point is that once the cause of the problem is addressed, the problem will always vanish, well, at least temporarily. Don’t misunderstand me, it is important to have rules, procedures, and measures of accountability but these items alone will never address the real causes of classroom management. It is most important for teachers working with classrooms of “non-committed learners” to consider this approach. Non-committed learners aka, “at risk” (I don’t like this label because all humans are at risk) rarely respond to threat or fear. That is why they are labeled “at risk”.

In closing, consider seek to find the causes of your classroom management concerns by collaborating with colleagues, consultants, friends, or administrators in order to create a diagnosis and treatment. This approach will be longer lasting and create an opportunity for your students to be successful learners.

Instruction is a craft. Some call it an art. Whatever you call it, no doubt it requires skills. As discussed in an earlier post, learning has 2 important steps; Information (usually in the form of the teacher or text book) and Experience (students DOING). Instructing is facilitating both of these important steps for ALL learners. The biggest challenge for most educators is the “art of teaching” can never be the same. I find that most educators are extremely knowledgeable professionals gifted in specific areas. The challenge is finding the skills needed to facilitate learning for all.

There are too many programs and models that work to provide teachers with instructional tools. Actually I can’t say “too many” since that is my career but you get the point. My point is that teachers must work to find tools that engage students in the learning while maintaining the skills of provide information (teaching). Often I am asked, “Which strategy do I use?” The truth is that there is no perfect strategy that works “as is”. Instruction is an “art”. What I can say is that there are a few major strategies that offer more opportunities for more students to be involved in the experience.

Collaborative Work is work where individual members take on specific responsibilities to produce one product. The key is that EACH MEMBER has an assigned responsibility. Collaboration provides an opportunity for learners to compare and contrast ideas and knowledge, synthesize a more thoughtful response, and learn from others. These skills are higher order thinking skills from the Knowledge Taxonomy.

Inquiry-based Learning is a process of presenting a problem or challenge to the students that needs to be solved. This can be a simple math problem or a real-world issue. This problem gives students a chance to see the value of instruction on a new skill or topic. This experience also opens the door for the dance between information and doing.

Similarities and Differences requires students to “make sense” of new information by analyzing something that they already know. The human brain needs to make sense of the world. All humans learn new information by comparing. Some of you already see the connection here☺! Venn diagrams have been overused as a “structure” without truly having students compare and contrast information. It’s bigger than a Venn. There are unlimited tools that help students find similarities and differences; Venn, T-Charts, Teacher questioning, field studies, collaboration, Cornell Notes, etc.. The list never stops.

In closing, teachers must do more than just “implement the tool”. Educators must use numerous tools to get students involved. Many teachers want to simply get cleared by an administrator or consultant for implementing the new strategy and go back to doing what they’ve always done. Shame! Why waste your time? Teachers owe it to themselves to continually challenge, argue, read, practice, create, and implement new structures that give them the opportunity to dance with their students!

Leadership is often confused with management but they are two different items. I want to define each according to TJ☺:

Management is needed to take care of the structures that make schools run smoothly. Management includes things like, discipline, attendance, roles and responsibilities, and even paper work (doing things the right way). Often management is what keeps the system running smoothly. There is no doubt that schools/classrooms require management.

Leadership comes in many different forms but no doubt, leadership is clearly connected to success. Leadership is best defined (by TJ Mears) as the ability to grow others to a point greater than where they are currently. The challenge is that ALL people need growth and each person has a different need to help them grow. If you have even worked with a great leader, you know exactly what I am talking about. Good leaders provide firm “bottom lines” while stretching followers to go above and beyond that “bottom line”. I believe that a great leader is one that grows followers past themselves professionally. There is a risk in this statement because a good leader often helps followers learn even more than they themselves know.

Many of you reading this blog might think that I am referring only to school administration. Read it again! Teachers are managers and leaders. Parents are managers and leaders. With that said, this conversation is about ALL people who are responsible for an individual or a group of individuals.

I often reflect on my leadership successes and failures and would challenge each of you to do the same. Look for a follow-up post concerning instruction.

Group Work is work that is assigned to a team of individuals with no assigned responsibility. Most adult trainings make use of group work, “work with the member of your team to…”

Collaborative Work is work where individual members take on specific responsibilities to produce one product. The key is that EACH MEMBER has an assigned responsibility. Collaboration provides an opportunity for learners to compare and contrast ideas and knowledge, synthesize a more thoughtful response, and learn from others. These skills are higher order thinking skills from the Knowledge Taxonomy.

Group work as defined above can be and usually is punishment for students who want to achieve high grades or do well on the assignment. Usually, group work punishes the “gifted students” because they end up doing all of the work in which all members of the team are assigned a team grade. This type of work also punishes the students that “do nothing”. Learning requires active participation. In fact, the only way that learning happens is through experience.

Teachers must plan instruction with assigned responsibilities for each student working in a team in order to make class work collaborative. We cannot expect collaboration to come naturally to all students. As a matter of fact, collaboration usually doesn’t come naturally to adults working in a team. These skills must be taught and teachers must incorporate structures that enables all students to become active members of a collaborate team.

As a final thought, collaboration is the most needed/requested skill in today’s work force. Look at most of the careers in today’s global market and you will see each ask for individuals that “work well with others”.

In summary, we have a responsibility to make sure that ALL students are actively involved in the learning process while collaborating to gain knowledge from others.

What is the normal measure of a healthy newborn child? Doctors measure the muscle responses and the ability of a baby to cry. The Apgar test uses 5 different criteria (Complexion, Pulse Rate, Reflex, Muscle Tone, and Breathing) to measure a newborn’s health. Only a few years ago (at least when I was born) Doctors use to swat the bottom of a child to make sure that their lungs were working. In summary, one is measured as “healthy” by their ability to move and cry. Let’s talk about the other side of life. A person’s life is declared over when their heart stops beating (movement) and they are no longer able to breath (movement and crying).

The obvious statement that I am trying to make is that we start and stop life using the criteria of movement and making noise and somewhere in between, we as teachers expect our students to “sit down and shut up!” Please don’t misunderstand me. I believe that we have to work with students to help them understand how to function in a collaborative society which does include sitting, focusing, and listening carefully but, it can not be expected 100% of the time. The question one should ask is, “How can I hook into life’s vital signs and make the most of these miracle features to make the most of learning?”

Thanks Jen!!!!!