Celebrating Accomplishments

Take a look at my 5 year old daughter's progress evaluation for her gymnastics class:

I bet your eyes went right to the checks that weren't under the "I can do it by myself" column. Mine did too.

When I first looked at this report, I realized that my initial response was to find out what she couldn't do. I stopped myself because I wasn't taking the time to consider what she could do. What if my conversation with my daughter started with, "Well, you can't do a pivot turn by yourself yet"?

Instead, I told her how proud of her I was and I asked her, "Do you want to do this again?"

"Yes!"

What if we took the time to celebrate with teachers and tell them how proud we are of their hard work? How would celebrating our accomplishments affect the start of the next initiative? I bet there would be more willingness to get started.

Change in schools often deals with improving something. There will always be room for improvement--but who will want to bother if we aren't stopping to celebrate our accomplishments?

Curiosity and Introverts

I just finished watching the 60 Minutes interview with #Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. It was a very insightful interview into the creative history behind this social media platform. Two things came to mind while watching.

First, Dorsey shared that the idea for Twitter came from a childhood curiosity of wanting to know how things like trains and 911 dispatches worked. It made me wonder, "How are we fostering curiosity in our classrooms?". How much time are we giving students for exploration of a topic they are interested in learning more about?

Second, Dorsey admitted at the end of the interview with Lara Logan that he would rather be alone with his thoughts than engage with someone face-to-face. While I am no expert on personality types, this sounds like the characteristic of an introvert to me. I bring this up because I wonder how much support we are giving introverts in our classrooms? I was very introverted growing up. Teachers would constantly ask me to "speak up" during class. That terrified me. Sound familiar, teachers? How many times have we asked students to communicate more? There are students in our classrooms right now that feel the same way Dorsey does. How are we creating an environment where introverts can thrive?

Collaboration and sharing are important to the sense of community in classrooms and in schools. However, we need to remember those who shy away from public interactions so that we can help these students feel supported and safe as well.

RunKeeper, Trust, and Leadership

I’ve been using RunKeeper to help me track the stats of my runs.  I’m not a serious runner or anything, but I like to be able to reflect on my progress.  I've finally started running over three miles on a consistent basis, which is good for me.

RunKeeper is a great app to use for running or walking because it uses GPS to track your distance, time, elevation, and calories burned.  That is, it’s a great app when it works.

According to RunKeeper, my run today put me closer to qualifying for the U.S. Track team with a total distance of 3.43 miles at 5.5 minutes per mile (about 11 mph).  As much as I wanted that to be true, I knew something was wrong.  There's no way I can run that fast for that long.  Actually, this is the third time this has happened, so I’m starting to think RunKeeper isn’t a keeper for me.

This made me think about the blind faith we sometimes have in the people and things in our lives.  Most of us want to trust the people we know and the products we use because we have faith that they have good intentions.  However, we have to be cautious as school leaders to protect ourselves and our students by listening closely to what others are saying and by asking questions that help clarify issues.

Trusting in others and in things is important, but so is knowing when something isn’t quite right and then doing something about it.

A question I will be reflecting on is What am I doing to earn and keep the trust of others?

Digging Deeper into the Research

We are removing our deck in preparation for a new patio.  I offered to do the demolition because when else will it be okay for me to destroy something?  After removing the decking, I started to dig around a support post so that we could pull it out of the ground.  After 5 minutes of digging, my wife asked if we should call the utilities commission to see where the power, cable and other utility lines are buried.  I'm glad she made that suggestion because I found out after the utility lines were marked that I was digging right in the area of our electrical line.

That was close.  I will definitely be more cautious as I continue to demo the deck.  I realized I was too focused on getting the job done and I wasn't thinking about the bigger picture.  It made me think of how we educators are sometimes too narrow in our focus when we need to slow down and dig deeper into the issue.

Educational research plays a large role in our lives as educators.  Our district and our building have high standards for providing “research-based” interventions for our students.  What I have learned from my teaching experience and from the research I have done recently for a quantitative statistics course is that educational research is a complicated world.  “Research-based” interventions can sound like a safe bet, but digging deeper into the research can reveal a truer picture of the research.

I have been investigating “computer-assisted instruction” and its effects on comprehension.  I wanted to look into this area because I help facilitate intervention plans for students who are struggling with a specific academic, behavioral, or social skill.  Many of the students who are referred to our team for assistance are not responding to classroom instruction, and these same students may need the instruction to be presented in a unique way.  I wanted to see if computer-assisted instruction could be a possible solution to help increase student comprehension.  Computer-assisted instruction usually refers to instruction that is guided by a computer program that responds to how a child answers questions or how a child is applying a skill that the program is teaching.  A good example of computer-assisted instruction is Khan Academy.

Here is what I found out from my research:

1. 
   

   Most of the computer-assisted instructional programs for reading focus on phonemic awareness and word solving skills.

   
   


2. 
   

   All of the studies measured aspects of phonemic awareness and showed positive gains among student in this skill.

   
   


3. 
   

   While all of the research studies I read claimed the computer-assisted instructional program they studied might improve comprehension, NONE of the studies included reliable data about the effects on comprehension (which is the ultimate goal of literacy instruction).

   
   

So, how does this impact me as someone who wants to lead a building some day?  

• 
  

  I have a responsibility to dig deeper into “research-based” claims.

  
  


• 
  

  I need to remember computer-assisted literacy instruction probably focuses only on phonemic awareness, which is only one aspect of learning to read.

  
  


• 
  

  The best way a child can improve his or her comprehension is by being immersed in quality texts that are at the child’s instructional level and when the child’s reading behaviors are being supported with explicit language from the teacher.

  
  


• 
  

  I need to remember to stay true to my belief that nothing can replace high-quality literacy instruction that is provided by an expert teacher (the kind that live and breathe).

  
  

I invite you to take a look at some of the research yourself.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7pbjcf5Ua1kNEpqaHRMTzhxTnM/edit?usp=sharing

"Remembering educator Rita F. Pierson" from TED Blog

"Remembering educator Rita F. Pierson" from TED Blog

Yesterday, TED Blog posted news that Rita F. Pierson passed away.  I saw her TED Talk about a month ago and I was blown away.  Her passion and advocacy for building lasting relationships with children is inspiring and reminded me just how important my job as an educator is to the kids I work with.  And she did all of that in about 15 minutes of speaking.

We are lucky that her message has been captured in her TED Talk, but her passing is a great loss.

Relationships, not technology, make a difference

I am fortunate enough to be hosting a session at the Ohio Innovative Learning Environments Conference this year.  I am excited to be presenting on the topic of blogging in schools and sharing our participation in the #learn365 project by blogging about what our community was learning each day.

The conference has “innovative” in the title, which makes me think of “edtech” as a major theme for the conference.  It also makes me think that people are expecting a tech-themed conference.  Blogging this school year did involve a lot of technology use in order to share our learning and I was ready to put the focus of the session on the technology and web-based apps we used.

However, when I look back on the posts we did, the themes that were most common had nothing to do with technology.  Our learning community shared stories of relationships, collaboration, hopes, dreams, and reflections.  We did share a couple of posts about technology, but within those posts were ways we were using technology to connect with others in order to learn.

Learning about how we can utilize technology in our classrooms is important for us educators to do in order to strengthen our instruction.  However, I believe that there needs to be a larger purpose that drives this learning.  This year, I learned that there is amazing power in connecting with others through technology and sharing what we are learning.  This affirmed my belief that it’s the relationships and the connections we make with other learners, not the technology, that really matters most.

Relationships, not technology, make a difference

I am fortunate enough to be hosting a session at the Ohio Innovative Learning Environments Conference this year.  I am excited to be presenting on the topic of blogging in schools and sharing our participation in the #learn365 project by blogging about what our community was learning each day.

The conference has “innovative” in the title, which makes me think of “edtech” as a major theme for the conference.  It also makes me think that people are expecting a tech-themed conference.  Blogging this school year did involve a lot of technology use in order to share our learning and I was ready to put the focus of the session on the technology and web-based apps we used.  

However, when I look back on the posts we did, the themes that were most common had nothing to do with technology.  Our learning community shared stories of relationships, collaboration, hopes, dreams, and reflections.  We did share a couple of posts about technology, but within those posts were ways we were using technology to connect with others in order to learn.

Learning about how we can utilize technology in our classrooms is important for us educators to do in order to strengthen our instruction.  However, I believe that there needs to be a larger purpose that drives this learning.  This year, I learned that there is amazing power in connecting with others through technology and sharing what we are learning.  This affirmed my belief that it’s the relationships and the connections we make with other learners, not the technology, that really matters most.