Every year that I’ve spent as an educator has been a journey of discovery. Some years I discovered more than other years. Some years I grew deeply in my understanding of content, some years I grew as a leader, but this year is different. This year I feel like I am able to take a step back and see the big picture all while noticing how small day-to-day interactions with children make a huge impact. I can see the impact of educators everywhere I turn. This week, I noticed the impact in my own home! On Wednesday we were eating dinner, as usual. My boys, who usually don’t have much to say about school except for their very detailed recaps of the happenings at recess and PE; both were enthusiastically sharing all of the details of Mr. Ford’s impending retirement. I mean they could barely keep from talking over each other. I was trying to follow their story that went something like this “Mr. Ford is RETIRING! He is going to spend his time working on a farm! I wish he would wait until the end of the year. Why do people retire? Why doesn’t he want to come to school anymore. He loves school…” I was a little embarrassed to have to ask, but I wasn’t sure who Mr. Ford was. The boys stopped dead in their tracks when I asked and both said, “THE JANITOR!” This was followed by, “He the nicest person at school! Yeah, he is funny and he jokes with us.” My 5th grade son, Rocco said, “He calls me Taco and I call him Bob. And, mom, I’m NOT being disrespectful, it’s our inside joke.” Gino chimed in with, “He always waves to me. He really likes me.” This conversation made my heart sing. Not only, is it so comforting to know that the adults at school make meaningful connections with my kids, but I also loved the fact they my kids respected and appreciated the custodian. So, I said, “Boys we should get him a retirement gift. When is his last day?” Of course I wasn’t expecting the answer to this questions to be, TOMORROW, but as luck would have it, that was exactly their response. So, instead of a gift from a store, my boys each made a card for Mr. Ford and I think there words are better than any gift I could have purchased from a store. There are so many "Mr. Fords" in schools everywhere. To each and every one of you, I say, thank you! Thank you for enjoying children, thank you for making a connection with them, thank you for being a smiling face that they get to see every day. Whether you are a custodian, secretary, bus driver, cafeteria employee, teacher, or librarian every little interaction you have with children makes an impact.
To the real Mr. Ford, thank you for being who you are. Thank you for loving your job and making my children happy each day. Enjoy your retirement and I hope you know that your impact will last a lifetime.
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The ability to impact students is one of the special superpowers that all teachers possess. It can be used for good or evil. We can have extremely positive or extremely negative impacts on the lives of kids. The thing about impact is that it’s hard to measure. Most often our impact can’t be measured for years, long after our students leave our classrooms. Dave Burgess speaks about this very thing in his book, Teach Like a Pirate, Dave says that, “A teacher’s impact can only be measured through generations!” The story I’m about to share, proves just that… My mother-in-law, Rosanne Prati, spent over 30 years teaching first and second grades. She retired about 4 years ago and started working at Hallmark just last year. On Saturday, I noticed that I had a voicemail from her. She told me to call her so she could tell me a teacher story that my father-in-law just didn’t fully understand. When I called her back she shared this story with me: Yesterday I was at work and it was really busy. I noticed a lady at the register next to mine who looked familiar. I could tell that she was looking at me, too but couldn’t place me. Then I remembered that she was a former student of mine. So, I said, “Tammy! You don’t remember me do you?” The lady looked at me and quickly said, “Mrs. Prati!” I came around to the front of the register and gave her a hug. We didn’t have much time to talk, but she said, “I’ve always wanted to thank you for what you did for me. I’ve thought about you so much over the years.” If the story ended there, it would probably have been plenty. To me, the thought of hearing those words from a student you taught 20 or 30 years ago would be music to any teacher’s ears, but this isn’t the end of the story. My mother-in-law went on to say: I was so happy to see her and I wasn’t even really sure what I’d done for her. Then the next day I came in to work and there was a package and a card waiting for me. I opened the card, it was from Tammy. Here is what it said:
She then read the message that Tammy wrote inside:
Upon hearing what she wrote, I instantly had chills. I could feel the impact that my mother-in-law had on her former student’s life coming alive in the words of that card. Proof! This is proof that our impact can’t be measured by test scores, can’t be measured by an SLO, but instead is measured by the way we make our students feel and how they live their lives years after being in our classrooms.
As we talked more about what had happened. Rosanne continued her story. Later that day someone else came in to the store and said, “Mrs. Prati! You were my cousin Tammy’s teacher when she was in first grade. She told me she saw you here and that you had helped her at school one day when she had an accident. You gave her clean jogging pants and none of the kids ever found out that it had happened. She tried to find you on Facebook because she wanted you to see this post.” The person then handed my mother-in-law her phone so she could read this: Yesterday I went to get a couple things for Christmas and I got my Christmas gift in return! I stopped in The Hallmark store at the OV Mall with my daughter and this lady asked if it was me. A little confused (normal anymore) I said yes. It was Mrs. Prati! A teacher who helped a very shy scared little girl on several occasions (yes ME). She has always been in my heart throughout the years. When you think of someone with such a huge heart, caring personality and the patience of God...you get her. Over the last couple of years I have begun apologizing from my heart to several people that I've hurt or was mean to because I was a fool. She was always the mentor that I always thought of and wanted to be like. Thank You Mrs. Prati for being such an angel and making a positive difference in this girl's life! God Bless You! I couldn't find her on Facebook but I hope she gets to read this. I did leave her a special personalized "Forever Grateful" gift at her store that I hope she likes. Our impact is real. What impact will we make today that may not be measured for years to come? Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reading Above the Line by Urban Meyer. The title of Chapter 5 is “Competitive Excellence”. At the very beginning of the chapter Urban states that, “The best ‘gamers’ are the best ‘practicers’.” Makes perfect sense, right? However as this statement began to sink in for me, I realized that there is one glaring difference between elite athletes and elite educators. Athletes have the benefit of practice! Remember what Urban said? “The best ‘gamers’ are the ‘practicers’.” But, wait, we don’t get to practice. Educators must be at the top of their game every day. We have 180 days with our students and it’s “game on” from Day 1. Not one of those 180 days is practice days. So what do we do? How do we become elite performers when we don’t get a chance to practice? Luckily for us, Urban has the answer to this question in his book as well. He says, “Elite performers don’t get to that level by accident, but through great coaching and careful attention to preparation.” Coaches! That’s right. We must use our coaches. Since I became a principal four years ago, I have said time and time again that it is my goal to create a culture of coaching in my building. By this I mean, a culture in which it is deemed unacceptable to not ask questions, reflect on practice and seek out the expertise of others. It is amazing to watch this culture take shape. Over the years I have seen staff members go from anxious and uncertain first year teachers, to educators who are mentoring new teachers, leading data team conversations and confidently making decisions that are positively impacting the lives of students. I’ve seen ELL teachers who were transferred to my building become valued members of our staff. These ELL teachers have coached classroom teachers as they learned to work with students who speak languages other than English. I have seen veteran teachers step up and say “the way I used to teach doesn’t work anymore and I’m trying something new.” When the teachers on a staff trust one another enough to grow together, reflect together and coach one another, amazing things happen. What makes a staff truly ELITE is when they’re not afraid to say that they’re not satisfied with the work they do. I am so happy to work with a staff that isn’t satisfied. We want to be better than we are today because our students deserve it. Game on! Meyer, Urban (2015-10-27). Above the Line: Lessons in Leadership and Life from a Championship Season (pp. 104-105). Penguin Publishing Group.
A few weeks ago I wrote post called "This is Not a Drill". The post was about the importance of panic and a sense of urgency. Ever since that post, I’ve been thinking that in addition to the importance of panicking when necessary, we as educators must commit! And by commit, I mean we must commit to the relentless pursuit of excellence. Our students deserve it. Our colleagues deserve it. Our community deserves it.
In this world in which we live it’s very easy to jump on every new bandwagon that comes along. We live in a world in which we are exposed to new ideas, trends and buzzwords everywhere we turn. But, we as educators must know what our expectations are, what we believe in, what we are committed to. In Seth Godin’s latest blog post, he writes about the “quality abyss". As I read the post and applied his message to education, I began to reflect on the following: What do I pay attention to? What have I stopped paying attention to? Have I lowered my expectations? Or, am I the person who is constantly raising my expectations? Do I have “the guts to care even when it feels like I am not being rewarded”? What is the eventual payoff for having the guts to care? Falling down the quality abyss-Seth Godin Attention stops being paid, compromises are made, quality goes down. Expectations aren't met. Expectations are lowered. Customers drift away. Budgets are cut, because there are fewer customers. Quality erodes even more, because there's less to spend, and employees care less. Repeat. The alternative is the quality ratchet: Over-focus on quality. Expectations go up. Sales rise as a result of word of mouth and customer satisfaction. More money is spent on quality. Repeat. Often, organizations don't realize that they're falling down the abyss until extraordinary efforts are required to make a difference. But it's always easier to fix it today than it will be tomorrow. And here's the hard part: You don't fall down the abyss all at once. You compromise, you cut corners, you don't bring as much to your work, and nothing bad happens (at first). So the feedback loop is broken. Working your way back out works the same way: You work harder, you raise your standards, you invest, and nothing good happens (at first). The challenge is to have the guts to care even when you're not apparently rewarded for caring. In my opinion the most powerful words in Seth’s post are these, “…it’s always easier to fix it today than it will be tomorrow.” Along the same lines, Dan Rockwell reminds us to “err on the side of soon”. I often remind teachers to “pay now or pay later”. The bottom line is that we need to decide what we are committed to and we cannot stop paying attention to it. We must stay the course and follow through. The payoff will come, but not without an intentional, committed investment on our part. So, what are you committed to? Don’t let yourself fall down the quality abyss.
This is an exciting time in education. We are being asked to challenge the status quo. We are expected not only to be great, but instead to be ELITE. It is easy for educators to continue to instruct students the way they were taught 10, 15, 20 or even 30 years before. It is easy for educators to do things like give spelling tests or worksheets for homework because parents expect it, even though we know that these practices are not best for kids. What isn’t easy is to stand up and stop it. It isn’t easy to be the early innovator; the one who is out ahead of the curve disrupting the status quo. And sometimes, it’s even harder to be the first follower or early adopter of those new innovative ideas. But, we must decide who we want to be. We have the choice to lag behind and wait or we can choose to be out ahead of the curve, disrupting, creating a movement. In the following short TED Talk by Derek Sivers we learn the importance of having the guts to stand up and be the first one to join a movement.
This school year, my staff and I have been invited to be disruptive educators. We have been charged with the task of redesigning elementary education. And, we’ve been given a timeline to adhere to. By August of 2017 we will be ready to give children a different, innovative, personalized elementary school experience. And, we have accepted the challenge. In order to accomplish our goal we must overcome our fears, we will need to unlearn and relearn new skills; we will need to be early innovators…disrupters!
In this post by Dr. Sanee Bell the qualities of disruptive educators are outlined. Disrupters innovate. Disrupters find their people. Disrupters move beyond the conversation. As we are thrust into an innovative experience that forces us to disrupt it will be important that we reflect on ourselves. Do we possess the qualities of disruptive educators? How can we build the skills within us to disrupt education in a positive way? Our time is now! I have the pleasure of having five first year teachers in my building. I’ve posted a few times this school year about how these new teachers are causing me to reflect on my own growth since my fateful first year (and not to mention they make me feel very old). This week, I’ve been reflecting on the roller coaster of emotions that occur during that first year. It’s a fact that first year teachers feel extremely overwhelmed in November or December. Check out the graphic below and take comfort in the fact that rejuvenation is coming soon and the fact that you are not alone, there are first year teachers all over country feeling just like you! So as we wait for that feeling of rejuvenation, let’s all take a deep breath and consider some words of wisdom from an educator who's been there:
You can do this! You are making a difference. And, you’re right, this job is serious. It’s not a casual thing! But, you have permission to make mistakes. You have permission to fail. Whatever you do, don't throw in the towel now. Work through the hard parts, persevere and know that when you get through this year (and you will) you will have so much to celebrate. Brittany, Jeff, Sarah, Stacey and Tasha-Hang in there! It's going to be alright. Need some more advice? Check out my post for January 2014-Advice for the Stressed Out Teacher. It’s October. Can you believe it? Not only is it October, but it’s the end of October. The school year is in full swing. Initial assessments are complete, the honeymoon period has ended and we have already completed 40 days of school.
If your school is like mine, you have sat in more data team meetings this year than ever before, grade level data teams, ELL data teams, title reading data teams and I’m even trying to figure out how to start data team meetings to focus on our special education students. In all of these meetings with all of these different groups of amazing teachers, my literacy coach, Tonya Buelow and intervention teacher, Eric Gulley, have been with me as we facilitate targeted conversations with teachers around student data. With every group of teachers we have tried hard to deliver one specific message- PANIC NOW! Yep, that’s right, we said it…PANIC, it’s okay, we want you to AND we want you to do it NOW. Not later, NOW. What we mean by this is: teach with a sense of urgency. Regie Routman says it best in Reading Essentials: When I suggest that we need to “teach with a sense of urgency” I’m not talking about teaching prompted by anxiety but rather about making every moment in the classroom count, about ensuring that our instruction engages students and moves them ahead, about using daily evaluation and reflection to make wise teaching decisions. Complacency will not get our students where they need to be. I am relaxed and happy when I am working with students, but I am also mindful of where I need to get them and how little time I have in which to do it. I teach each day with a sense of urgency. Specifically, that means that I am very aware of the students in front of me, the opportunities for teaching and evaluation on the spot, the skills and strategies I need to be teaching, the materials I need, the amount of time available, and the optimal contexts and curriculum. We need to get down to the essence of what we believe and what we do to ensure our students become excellent readers who choose to read. If we don’t know how to teach reading and move students forward, we must take responsibility for learning how. We must jumpstart our own professional development. If you aren’t panicking then you might need to ask yourself why? And remember, we don’t mean panic driven by anxiety but instead panic driven by urgency. Are you okay with the status quo? Are you missing something? Are your standards too low? Panic. Now. This is not a drill. Every moment counts. Let’s use them because if you don’t you’ll lose them. (Thanks to Eric Gulley for the inspiration for this post!) I have several brand new teachers in my building this year and for the first time in my career I’ve felt old. Not just experienced, but old. I find myself thinking back to my own first year of teaching, fifteen long years ago. That school year is forever burned into my brain. I was so young, so naïve and I was so overwhelmed.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve watched my new teachers learn and grow. I’ve remembered so many of my own firsts from my inaugural year as an educator, like the first time I encountered and ELL student and had no idea what to do, the first time a student threw up in my room and the first time I had to deal with an upset parent. Today, however, was pay day in Hilliard City Schools and I found myself reminiscing about my first real pay day. I remember exactly how much I was paid on that first check. I remember driving to the bank to cash it. And, I remember having to use most of it to pay my rent. Today, I was excited for my first year teachers to be paid for all of the hard work they’ve put in to creating a great learning environment for their students. But, every educator knows that we don’t become teachers for the money. Now, don’t worry, I’m not writing this to complain about teacher salaries, I think we make a great living. Instead I want to remind us of a different kind of pay day. A great friend and mentor of mine, Jane Leach, helped me recognize that we get “paid” all the time. You know what I mean, those moments when the light bulbs come on for a child, when a parent tells you what a difference you’re making, when a student from years past comes back to visit and shares all of the great things he or she has accomplished…those are the moments when we really get paid. Over the past week I’ve been paying close attention to teacher “pay days” and I realized that when you look for them you find them quite often. Just like today in the cafeteria when our art teacher walked in and every kindergartener began waving excitedly, then one little girl said, “Mrs. Cline! Mrs. Cline! Come here! I have a secret!” Mrs. Cline walked back towards me smiling after hearing the secret. I couldn’t help but ask if it was a good secret to which Mrs. Cline replied, “Yes, her secret was that she loves me!” PAY DAY! I got paid the other day when I reached into my mailbox and pulled out a letter from two 4th grade girls. They wanted me to know that they have been helping kindergartners and first graders on the playground and wanted to set up a table to recruit more helpers. They also told me that they are working hard to live up to the guiding principles in our school: Take care of each other, ourselves, this place and this moment. PAY DAY! So, my friends, let’s certainly enjoy our pay days and go buy ourselves something every now and then, we’ve worked hard. But, don’t forget that we get paid every day. We just need to take a step back and notice it, revel in it, and remember that we are making a difference. “It’s the little things…” I’ve said these words countless times in my life when reveling in some small moment that brings me great joy, like pouring fancy creamer into my usually black coffee or when the shoes I want go on super clearance sale and they actually have my size. It’s the little things that can bring joy to an otherwise dull day.
The work we do in school however is not little, it’s quite big, in fact. It’s safe to say that teachers have one of the most important jobs on the planet. I mean think about, where would any of us be without the great teachers we’ve had in our lives. The teachers that I spend my days with are among the best that you’ll find, anywhere. They understand the impact that they have in the lives of kids. And, when you stop to think about it, coming to this realization can be very overwhelming. This week I watched my teachers welcome 500 children into our school. Every child who came through the door had his or her own story. I watched as the teachers quickly began building relationships and turned anxiety into excitement. As I listened to my teachers reflect on these first four days, many of them were worried that they just weren’t doing enough for their students. I heard them worry out loud that they wouldn’t have reading groups up and running fast enough or that they haven’t spent enough time teaching routines for math workshop. Each time, I made sure to remind them of the little things. For example, all of the kindergarteners made it off the school buses and found their teachers this morning, the 5th graders choose who they want to sit by at lunch and have made sure that no one feels left out, all of the new students have spent time with our guidance counselor and made some friends, all of those kids who couldn’t find their classroom on the first or second day made it on their own today. These, my friends, are the little things. These are the things we take for granted but as they compound over time they add up to the big things. Those “a-ha moments” will happen. Those moments when you feel like you’ve helped a child turn a corner will happen, too. But, don’t discount the little things. All those times you took a minute to help a lost child find his classroom or that moment you encouraged a child to invite a new friend to sit with them at lunch, the few minutes you talked to a nervous parent to reassure her that you’ll take good care of her child. The little things matter. Celebrate them. You and your students are on your way to great, BIG things-just don’t discount the little things along the way.
Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever been so engaged, so completely engrossed in learning that hours go by and you are left thinking, “Did I go to the bathroom today?” One of my favorite educators and author of Teach Like a Pirate, Dave Burgess, would describe this as a class that you could sell tickets for!
No matter how you describe it, I can finally say that it happened to me today! Today, I had THE BEST DAY EVER at THE Hilliard University. Hilliard City Schools took full advantage of our waiver day today by creating a course catalog of over 100 offerings for staff. Courses ranged from staff wellness to literacy best practice to blended learning and everything in between. We filled one of our high schools AND one of our middle schools as certified and classified staff personalized their own learning. As I participated in sessions today I found myself totally engaged and present in the moment. Was it because I had nothing else to do? NO! Was it because I was hearing a presentation from an expensive speaker? NO! Was it because I had an assignment to do or a report to write about my learning? NO! I was completely engaged, simply because I was given the choice to learn about things that were important to me. I was able to learn from my colleagues and I was encouraged to share my thinking and my new understandings with others. There were countless reasons why I loved today, but here are my top six: The energy-Words cannot describe the energy at The Hilliard University today! The choice-We were given the freedom to reserve a room for collaborative meetings with whoever we wanted! The schedule-I decided what I wanted to learn! I set my own schedule. The people-Seeing colleagues that I don’t get to see every day! The hallway conversations-“What session did you go to?” “What did you learn?” “Oh, that sounds great, I’m going to that later!” “This is the best day!” (I can’t tell you how many times I heard that last statement today.) And of course-the food trucks!
I’ve participated in a lot of PD. I have paid to attend most of it. Today’s PD was free-but I would have bought a ticket for it!
Want to get a feel for what went on in Hilliard City Schools today? Check out the Storify of our tweets! |
AuthorI hope my blog posts inspire risk taking and new ways of thinking. I hope to connect with other educators on our journey to always do what's best for children. Archives
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