What You Can (and Can't) Control

According to Blogger, this is my 500th post.  I debated about whether to try something special and decided just to keep it a regular post.

Yesterday, I saw the movie Oppenheimer.  I'll save you the review, but it is dark and difficult in ways I was not expecting.  Brace yourself if you decide to go see it.  One of the more interesting takeaways for me came from a moment after the successful test at Trinity.  The military is driving away with crates containing the bombs that would be dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Oppenheimer is conflicted about its use, but it is clear he has lost control of his own creation as it drives away.  He had been in charge of this project, but he was not in charge of the result.

Earlier this summer, I blogged about my summer goals.  While I have met goals related to reading, school work, and home projects, the goals I have been most invested in this summer have been related to working out at the YMCA.  This is the sticky note on my computer where I listed my goals to hold myself accountable.  I have completed the first four goals, and I will continue doing three of them from now on (not the 12 miles - that would be unrealistic to make a regular thing, but I wanted to see if I could do it once).  In kickboxing last week, I came very close to completing the last goal on the list, but there is a weird jumping jack that I didn't try.  I will do it this week.  While my pushups are getting a little better, I'm not sure I will be able to call that goal completed because I saw myself in the mirror today while I was trying them.  My elbows are bending more than they were in May, but they aren't bending far enough to call them pushups. 

Anyway, the point of this post isn't to congratulate myself on meeting my goals.  It is to point something out.  None of the items on that list are about weight loss.  I don't own a scale because women have such an unhealthy relationship with that number, so I wouldn't know anyway.  There is nothing about inches or a clothing size I want to fit into, although surely I hoped to fit comfortably into my Tuesday pants again because that's their job.  All of the goals are things I wanted to be able to do, not changes I wanted to see in my body.  Why?  Because I have control over what I do, but I do not have control over how my body will respond.  I'm not going to lie; I'm pretty happy with how it has responded, but if I had chased those numbers, I might have done the exact same things I'm doing now and not achieved them, resulting in feelings of failure rather than accomplishment.  I wanted to set goals that were related to things I could control.

Teachers, as the school year starts, you are going to be setting a lot of goals.  Keep the lesson of Oppenheimer and my workouts (a combination I never imagined typing).  Recognize what you can and cannot control.  Don't set goals like, "Half my children will make As" or "Every student will love me." Those things are not in your control.  In their book, Clarity for Learning, John Almarode and Kara Vandas say that students and teachers should know three things when going into a learning activity - What they are doing, why they are doing it, and how they will know when they have achieved success.  This should guide your goal-setting as well.  Figure out what is important to you to do or to have your students do.  Then, you will know what you are hoping to accomplish and why.  If you say you will "engage each class in retrieval practice at least five times per month" or "upload lesson plans on time every week," you will know what you are doing.  If you chose them for a reason, you will know why you are doing it.  And it is easy to identify success in a goal like that.  Put it on a list and cross it off when you have done it.  Tracking your progress is motivating, not being able to tell if you are successful because your goal was too nebulous is de-motivating.

There is much in the world of education we cannot control.  We cannot control the home lives of our students, no matter how much we might like to.  We cannot control the attitude or motivations of our students, although there are many evidence-based techniques we can use to challenge motivation.  You cannot control the broken nature of the system, no matter how many red shirts you wear.  You cannot control another teacher's policies that frustrate you because your philosophy is opposed to theirs.  Instead of wringing your hands over those things, focus on your actions in your sphere of influence.  Set your goals based on what you can control, and stop fretting over the things you cannot.

 

Engagement is a Tool, not a Goal

I was scrolling through Twitter and found this tweet.  Before I clicked on the video to watch it, the title put me off.  "What message is this guy sending to students?" I thought, "that they have to be entertained for learning to be valuable?"  I want to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I thought maybe he means something different by the word engaging.  Maybe he means engaging in a way I might agree with (like valuable or interesting), so I clicked on the video and realized why Tom Bennet had commented that it looked exhausting.  Tom was right.  This video is an ad for the guy's professional development seminars, and it is filled with teachers in training, doing a lot of energetic dances at the instruction of the trainer.  There is not a single moment (at least as portrayed in this ad) where anyone has a chance to sit and reflect on what they have learned.  They may be energized; they may be having fun (although I imagine the introverts among us would be miserable).  I'm not sure they are learning.  I'm not sure what they will take back to their classrooms that would add anything other than motion.

This causes me to ask the following question.  What's the sweet spot?  Where is the line between fun for the sake of fun (which is fine for recreation) and fun that actually enhances learning (which is what I want if I am going to spend class time on it)?  Are there times when having students dance while learning might be useful?  The research is clear that some movement while learning is good.  But, where is it just movement for the sake of movement?  I fear that is happening because well-meaning teachers hear "Movement is good" at a conference and don't take the time to find the nuances of what kind of movement is good and whether it should be connected to content.  

So, let me start by exploring what we mean by the word "engaging." I did a quick google search and found the first definition was "occupy, attract, or involve someone's interest or attention."  I'm on board with that.  I want to have my students' attention and interest.  Next question.  What do I want them to pay attention to?  What do I want them to be interested in?  The answer should obviously be "the thing I want them to learn."  I can put on a good show without teaching them a dang thing, and that is the opposite of what I want.

If you follow me on social media or have read a few blog posts, then I hope you know I am not in favor of boring students to death and just telling them to deal with it.  I believe strongly in involving students in their own learning and teaching with appropriate hands-on activities and technologies.  I assign projects to deepen learning in a way that my talking in class might not achieve.  But, teachers, please hear me - We must be intentional to choose activities that engage students in learning, not just in class.  When I tell my students about the time my cat ran up a tree and would not come back down, it is a little bit to get them to view me as a real person, but it is mostly to give them a visual image of gravitational potential energy transforming into kinetic energy so that when I give them similar problems to work on, I can say, "It like the cat in the tree," giving them something to connect to.  The seeming aside of that story doesn't just engage them in hearing a silly story; it has an educational payoff.   I show a lot of short videos in my class, often those that demonstrate things I cannot, but I have very few that last a full class period.  When I do show one of those, it isn't just because it's fun and engaging to watch videos (otherwise I would show them Marvel movies).  It's because the videos I have carefully chosen give them a view of something more effectively than I can.  For example, Steven Johnson's How We Got to Now: Glass shows students how their lives would be very different today without mirrors, lenses, phone screens, fiber optics, etc. and they leave with a different view of a seemingly mundane thing.  When I take kids into the lab to electrolyze salt water, I am aware that it is not going to involve fire or explosions or other things they might find more engaging, but I also know it is the most valuable lab we do because I refer back to it during the bonding chapter, the solutions chapter, and the electricity chapter (and tangentially in the acid/base chapter).  I have chosen it because while it is less engaging than another lab might be, it has more academic value.  When I blow something up, it is to demonstrate pressure and Boyle's law or synthesis reactions, not just to blow something up.  Are those things engaging?  You better believe it.  But what makes them valuable is the lead-up to and the reflection after the explosion.

We cannot out-entertain their phones, and we should stop trying.  It doesn't make us engaging; it highlights how lame we are compared to the entertainment industry.  I like to think I'm a pretty entertaining speaker, but they aren't going to choose me over Disney or Batman.  They have a budget that allows them to be immersive, but it is more than just that.  The end goal of the entertainment industry is, not surprisingly, entertainment.  Ours is learning.  For us, engagement is a means, not an end.  Learning is the end.  We're educators who use entertainment, not entertainers who might teach you something along the way.

As you lesson plan, choose activities that engage students in the thing you are trying to teach, but don't waste time on dancing and jumping around and taking laps around the room if they don't connect in some way to what you are teaching (that's possible, by the way, if you plan it well - I have a "States of Matter Dance").  Ask yourself how it will benefit your students, and if the answer is engagement with no objective or learning words after that, choose something else.  Engagement is a tool, not a goal.

Summer Goals

As the year that would never end finally came a close, one of the tasks I had to check out was to review my Professional Growth Plan.  I'm not sure if other professions require this level of introspection on a yearly basis, but at my school, we examine goals in a variety of categories, spiritual, relational, professional development, and technology use in pedagogy.  One of the things they ask us to do is to choose a word that we would like to focus on for the following year.  In the past, I have chosen words like Depth and Enjoy.  Last year, I chose the word Trust.  

The word I have chosen for next year is Restore.  This year was a lot of things, but most of all, it was exhausting.  I don't mean tiring (although it certainly was that).  I mean exhausting in the sense of depletion.  Teachers were drained of physical energy, mental energy, emotional energy without the social aspects that usually refill those reservoirs.  I chose the word Restore as a way of thinking about stocking back up on those resources.  To that end, I am also structuring my summer goals (which I always set to keep summer from slipping away while I just watch TV) around renewing some of what became depleted.

1.  Getting my brain back - For me, one of the things that occurred from the lack of physical contact during the lockdown was structural brain changes (I'm trying to avoid saying the phrase brain damage) resulting from a lack of oxytocin.  From March to June of 2020, the only other being I physically touched was my cat.  From June of 2020 until March of 2021, I was still only engaging in physical contact with my mom.  After vaccination, I started touching people a bit more, the occasional pat on the back or punch to the arm; but it wasn't until two weeks ago that I started having regular contact, hugging friends and students.  That lack of oxytocin has created some cognitive issues, mostly slow processing (kind of a brain fog) and searching for words (mostly people's last names).  For that reason, I am going to do a lot of mental weight lifting this summer.  I have a large stack of books on a variety of topics, both fiction and non-fiction; and I am starting with Tolkien.  I have already started The Hobbit, and I hope to get through at least one of the Lord of the Rings books in addition to other reading (The Stuff You Should Know book that's been waiting to be read since November, a book on church history I have had for a year and finally started reading last week, a few books about learning, and some novels).

2.  Physical Health - While I was careful not to eat poorly throughout the pandemic and did not gain weight from it, I know the stress under which I have been operating for the past year has taken a physical toll.  I first noticed it when I gave blood last September.  My blood pressure was higher than it has ever been, and it has been high (for me) every time that I have given blood since.  To that end, I have to do some aerobic activity to bring it back down.  I have been clenching my jaw at night since August 3rd.  My Vitamin D level got pretty low this winter, so I want to get back to long outdoor walks.  Also, at 45, I feel like it important to build muscle strength, so I'm doing a little weightlifting, including a full box of yearbooks so that, by next year's distribution day, it won't feel as strenuous loading those into the car.

3. Working on my House - School required all of my thought and energy in the past year, so my house got very little attention.  I've got some home repairs to do, and some of my walks will be to Home Depot for the tools I need to do that.

4. Reacquainting Myself with Public Spaces - This morning, I went to Walmart for only the third time since January of 2020, and it gave me just a little anxiety, not because I'm worried about the virus, but because I just haven't spent much time around strangers (or anyone outside of my family and school people) in a long time.  I know when I go to camp in July that I will have to make 6 or 7 trips to Walmart, so I need to reacclimate myself to this store.  I have only been in a restaurant three times, and I haven't been to church in person because we were supposed to register and sit with our bubble.  That would have meant me surrounded by six empty seats, which felt silly because a six-person bubble could have been in the space I was taking up alone.  That requirement has now been lifted, so I plan to return to church in person next week.  Many of my walks this summer are going to be public spaces, just so I can get back being in them.  

5.  School videos - For some time, I have thought that it might be good to have some videos for students to review while doing homework or to pull from on a day when I have a sub or to do a flipped lesson.  I had never done it because setting up and familiarizing myself with the tech I would need was time-consuming.  This year, doing everything online meant I had to develop familiarity with many tools.  I started making some of these videos on Memorial day weekend, and I have been making 1-3 each day (some are more complicated than others) ever since.  I will be able to begin school next year with a decent pool from which to draw different types of lessons, reviews, and help for struggling students.

This is what I have chosen for myself, and I do not expect it from anyone else.  You may have decided that recovery from this year looks like playing Fortnite with your kids all summer.  You might want to binge Seinfeld.  You might want to train for a marathon.  All of that is fine, but I would say that whatever you decide, be intentional about the goals you want to meet.  For you, it may be catching up with your family or allowing yourself to do nothing for an hour a day.  What do you want to restore this summer?  Design your days around that, so you don't enter August 2021 as depleted as you are right now. Get some rest.

Productive Summer Days

If you ask ten different teachers what they are going to do with their summer, you will likely get ten different answers.  We all approach it differently, based on our life circumstances and our philosophies.  Some want to supplement their income, so they take on summer jobs or tutoring.  Those with children will approach it differently than those without.  Some believe it is a time for professional development and preparing for the next school year while others believe they should do nothing but rest.  The following is how I approach summer days, but, as I tell my students, it is "a way" not "the way" to do it.

By nature, I'm a planner and a goal setter.  This looks different during the summer than it does during the school year, but I have to make some plans in order to keep one day from blurring into the next.  I don't want to wake up on the first of August and realize I didn't do anything.  I divide my goals into four categories, reading, exercising, school-prep, and home projects.  Then, I devote some time each day to each category.

Reading - I love to read, but the school year provides very little time for pleasure reading.  I do well to get two books read during the school year, and usually at least one of those is for school.  During early May, I make a list of books I want to read during the summer.  Some of those are professional development books.  This year, those are The Power of Moments, Fantastic Failures, and Powerful Teaching.  There are a few others on my list (The Left Brain Speaks, the Right Brain Laughs and Faking It come to mind), but I don't want ALL of my summer reading to be professional, so I also read some things just for fun.  On that list are a couple of Dean Koontz novels, some Sherlock Holmes stories, and Captured by the Labyrinth, a book about Sarah Winchester and the house she built out of her guilt over the people killed by the Winchester Rifle and her fear of their ghosts.  What I'm reading today is not even on my list.  I heard so many people talk about Educated that I let it jump in line.  I'm a planner, but I'm not rigid about it.

Exercise - One of the other things I rarely have time to accomplish during the school year is exercise.  I start the school year with good intentions about doing a little every day, but it rarely happens.  During summer, however, my car remains parked, and I walk everywhere.  As soon as I hit publish on this blog, I'm heading for the bank.  I walk to the grocery store, church, lunch with my parents, WalMart.  I walk everywhere.  That takes care of cardio and legs, but this year, I've been bothered by the way my arms look, so I'm also aiming at 10000 lifts (bicep curls to wall pushups, which could become real pushups by the end of the summer) by the time school starts.

School Prep - While I do believe in taking time to rest from school, I also know that I cannot improve my teaching while teaching.  Some time in April, I start thinking about next year and the changes I would like to make, so I make a list of activities that can be done during the summer.  This includes changes to rubrics, edits to the textbook, and seeking out some new demonstrations. Next year, I'll be teaching an elective I have not taught before, so I'm spending some time this summer preparing for that class.  Today is supposed to be rainy, which I find to be a good time to write recommendation letters, so I'll spend about two hours today working on that.  Depending on the goals I have, I spend anywhere from 1 to 3 hours a day working on school-related stuff during the summer.  When I was writing my textbooks, it was more.  This year, it is less.  I let the goal guide. 

Home Projects - Most teachers will tell you that if anything gets neglected during the school year, it is home maintenance.  Clutter builds, light bulbs go unchanged, and entropy just generally takes over.  I have a list of home projects that I take care of during the summer.  Some are large goals (paint the kitchen), and others are pretty small but need to be done (organize the closet and vacuum the stairs). 

I sort of treat these goals like a job, scheduling 8 hours of each day toward meeting them.  They aren't necessarily 8 continuous hours or evenly divided.  I may walk really far one day and devote less time that day to school projects.  I may spend a lot of time on a school project one day, leaving only doing a load of laundry or dishes for home activity.  Again, I let the goals guide rather than a rigid schedule. 

For those who think summer should be nothing but rest for teachers, don't worry.  I still play plenty of video games and watch a lot of television.  You can get rest without being completely unproductive.

Celebrate GRACE - All In

Every year, our school has a dinner which is both for fundraising and for celebrating our love for the school.  It is called Celebrate GRACE.  This year, I was privileged to speak on the topic of being All In.  For those who weren't there and care to know, here's a copy of my speech.

In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt said, “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”  Each day, I hope to honor that prize by working hard at the education of your students, work that I am certain is worth doing.

I was asked to speak to you tonight about the benefits that come from being “all in” at GRACE.  Before I do that, we should probably be on the same page about what it means to be all in. If I surveyed this room, there are some answers I would imagine we could expect.  For some, being all in would mean arriving early and staying late. While true, I think we would find that in most places. It is not unique to GRACE. For others, being all in might be defined by attending school events, like dances, plays, and games.  This is also true, but if you are friends with teachers, you know that this is not unique to GRACE either. Teachers everywhere are doing that. For many, money is where commitment is shown; so their definition of being all in would likely include giving money to a cause.  I agree, but this is true of any non-profit and thus, only part of what it means to be “all in” at GRACE.

For me, what it means to be all in at this school is to be completely on board with the mission and vision statements in the everyday practice of our work.  For those of you who don’t have them memorized, let me remind you what those statements say. The mission statement reads “GRACE Christian School is a loving community that spiritually and academically equips, challenges, and inspires students to impact their world for Christ.”  The weight of this mission is heavy and requires daily dedication. As big as the mission statement is, the vision statement requires even more. It states, “Students at GRACE Christian School will be grounded in God’s Word and challenged to achieve academic excellence as they prepare to use their gifts and abilities effectively to follow God’s plan for their lives.”  At the first meeting teachers had with Eric Bradley, he challenged us to pray students names into the vision statement. That’s an amazing perspective changer because it is no longer “students will” but “Hannah will, Bradley will, Olivia will.” When you start putting student names into the vision, it requires knowing students as individuals and helping them to grow in the uniqueness of God’s plan for them.  To teach anywhere is a sacrifice of time, energy, and emotion. The uniquely GRACE combination of these two statements requires each teacher to do their work with their whole heart invested in service to the Lord.

What are the benefits of this investment?  After sixteen years here, I can tell you, there are many.  Like any good investment, there are short term returns as well as those that take years to mature.  I want to tell you some stories, but I will mostly use fake names.

Day after I day, I see the evidence of students benefiting from the “all in” teachers around here.  It is evident in Caleb and David, who come to my room still debating about a point they were arguing in history because their history teacher isn’t content for students to memorize dates and themes but makes it relevant to their experience as students.  I see it in the open mouth wonder of Rebecca, an anatomy student who has just taken someone’s blood pressure for the first time, because while we all know Dr. Smitley gives hard tests, his commitment to the mission statement means he doesn’t challenge students without also inspiring them.  (We were recently contacted by Kira, an alumnus who just earned her Masters’ degree and will soon be pursuing her Ph.D. in Genome, Cell, and Developmental Biology) because of that inspiration during her freshman year.

It is visible in Roger, who has always hated reading until this year, but because Mrs. Petty is so dedicated to the GRACE vision to help students’ develop their individual gifts that she found just the right book to spark a love of reading in that student, his world has been turned upside down.  It shows up in the yearbook inscription where a student tells me that they admire me for “not caring what other people think.”

Each year, I have the joy of seeing a kid “wake up” in the middle of the year.  It’s hard to describe what it is like to see a student like Mike go from disengaged to fully involved, it seemed, literally, overnight.  From the outside, it looks like magic, but the experienced teacher knows that it is the cumulative result of years of “all in” teachers and parent investment that caused this “sudden” awakening.  

One of the best things about teaching at a school the size of GRACE is the opportunity to teach a student for more than one year.  Because of this opportunity, there is another reward that comes from being all in. I get to see students grow from goofy middle schoolers to mature young men and women.  When Josh was in the 8th grade, he did the minimum he had to do just to get by, but this year, he is fun to teach, asking many questions and offering suggestions for videos we can watch that illustrate the concepts we are covering.  I don’t know how he knows about every video on Youtube, but he’ll say something like, “We should watch that video where they spin honeycombs” during a discussion of centripetal force, and suddenly, I am learning about something I didn’t know.  One of my favorite responsibilities is writing college recommendation letters because they give me the chance to reflect on a student’s growth and tell stories that illustrate it. They leave us as different people than they entered, and that is the result of God using us as we are “all in” with our students.

The long term payoff of being “all in” can be seen in the lives of our alumni.  If you come to the upper campus during the first week of January, you are likely to find a dozen graduates roaming the hall, visiting their high school teachers.  They share their stories of college, thank us for preparing them well, and reminisce about their time with us. Jake and William visit together every time they are in town.  Not only are they successful in school, but they are also excited about serving the Lord. For many students, the bond is long lasting, and we forge actual friendships. Liz used to drop into my classroom frequently and say, “I’m here to kidnap you.  Let’s go to dinner.” She’s the mother of five children now, so that doesn’t happen anymore, but we still get to communicate online and enjoy each other as people. Last year, when one of our teachers had a baby shower, half of those in attendance were her former students.   When Hannah got married last summer, there were GRACE teachers at almost every table.

Sometimes, alumni return for more than a visit.  Liz Murray returned to teach 1st grade. Sarah Jarvis is currently on our 2nd-grade team.  Anna Green and Lizz Wilson have coached basketball for us. Hannah Eichhorst, who sat in my physics class as Hannah Vanderkin, is now not only a colleague in my department (who still won’t call me by my first name), but her teaching inspires me every day.  I can’t think of a more profound payoff on the investment of teaching here.

While I am standing here tonight as a representative of teachers who are all in, I am thrilled to tell you that I am just that, a representative.  I am not the exception at GRACE. As the yearbook advisor, I see every teacher in every classroom on both campuses at some point during the year, and usually multiple times.  I get to see them do incredible things that require time, love, and dedication. In short, I get to see teachers and staff being “all in” on a daily basis.

Next door to my classroom is Zane Smitley.  You will find him at his desk at six o’clock every morning.  In the afternoons, his room is filled with students who are taking measurements of plant growth, studying bones, or attending his incredible help class (which is always standing room only and once required the use of two rooms).  Zane is all in.

I can’t remember the last time Meagan Stone was alone in her classroom.  She teaches Calculus and Statistics, four sections of which are AP classes.  She challenges students and then gives of her time to help students meet that challenge. Yet, she still volunteered to sponsor the math club and take on the job of student council advisor. Meagan is either a crazy lady, or she is all in.

Speaking of student council, we have student council on both campuses.  Carol Shelton has been advising the TK-6 student council for years. Imagine with me, if you will, trying to develop the leadership skills of 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students, wrangling their energy into something productive and instilling the ideal of service to others in their hearts.  This photo is on the student council page of Carol praying with those student council kids, and it is a beautiful thing to see. It’s safe to say Carol is “all in.”

Elizabeth Walters spends hours planning field trips and preparing student artwork for competitions.  She takes them to Art Spark, museum exhibits, Duke Gardens, Art Space, the Scrap Exchange, and Cristal Cerrone glass studio.  She enters their work in the State Fair, the Women’s Club, Congessional Art Competition, and ACSI art competitions. While it would be easier for her to keep them in the classroom, she wants them to have real-world art experiences and spend time with others who share their gifts and interests.  This is a tangible expression of the GRACE vision, and it shows that Elizabeth is “all in.”

Several weeks ago, there was this picture on facebook with two teachers, a facilities staff member, our TK-6 assistant principal, and a slightly embarrassed 3rd-grade boy, happily holding up his retainer. The caption read, “How many adults does it take to dig through the garbage to find a retainer??”  I have vivid memories of digging through the trash for mine when I was in middle school, and I can tell you that there are no adults in those memories. Each of these smiling people showed this boy what a loving community really looks like.  They are, for sure, all in.

Marcia Wingerd believes so strongly in the value of students’ reading that she has organized her classes around reading choice and gives up the first ten minutes of her instructional time.  She has invested hundreds of dollars in books for her classroom library and tracks their reading so that they can see the cumulative effect of reading time. She spends her summers designing and refining projects so that students will interact with their reading, not just fake their way through a classroom discussion.  And, this year, she started the Writing Center, a place where students mentor other students in their writing. Marcia is all in.

Willa Bea Coates has been all in for as long as I can remember.  While her official title is student information manager, I’m pretty sure her job description reads “whatever needs to be done.”  She does all the intake paperwork for admissions, administers medications to students, helps with dress checks for dances, deals with dropping and adding of classes, creates report cards, and has anything anyone might need in her office.  She does all of this with a smile and is the first representation many kids get of our loving community.

Mary Claudia Huntley is the first-grade teacher you wish you had.  As soon as you walk through her door, you know you are loved, and so does your six-year-old.  Last year, when she was at home recovering from surgery, she posted many times on facebook about how she wanted to be at school and how much she missed her “firsties.”  Mary Claudia is all in.

So, as you can see, I stand here representing an entire school of faculty, staff, and administrators who take the work of educational equipping, challenging, and inspiring very seriously and joyfully.  It is our pleasure to know your kids as individuals and help them find and develop their gifts. While it looks different in each of our classrooms and roles, we are all “all in.”

Teddy Roosevelt was right.  Working hard at work worth doing is a wonderful thing.  The outcomes are not only deeply meaningful prizes, but they are also eternal rewards.  I’ll leave you with one last thought from Freedom Writer, Manny Scott. In a seminar that I was privileged to attend seven weeks ago, he said, “Life, at its best, is about helping people, serving people, and giving yourself to people.”  You have the ability to experience life at its best tonight by being all in. Thank you.

It Seemed Like A Good Idea at the Time

I was walking down the hall when a student pulled out a piece of paper.  I wasn't trying to read over his shoulder, but I couldn't avoid seeing the paper.  I do not know what it said.  All I saw was that it was in the form of a letter and had about fifteen signatures at the bottom.  I said to him, "that looks petition-like to me."  He said that he guessed it kind of was.  I said, "Just so you know, petitions aren't usually accepted well by anyone, except maybe the government."  At that point, someone joined us, and I was never able to finish talking to him.  However, I have a similar conversation with a student about once a year. 

I used to teach in Oklahoma.  Because of that I still have a number of teacher friends there.  You may have seen on the news that their teachers' union has recommended a walkout, starting April 2.  I keep getting invited to the facebook page.  Since I don't believe in strikes and have refused to join the union in both states I taught public school in, they don't really want me to join this group. 

After the Parkland shooting a month ago, students in various districts have planned walkouts in an effort to get the attention of lawmakers concerning gun laws.  It is unlikely that this would change the vote of any lawmaker, but they make the news because students walking out of class to march in the streets is good TV.

The problem with all of these methods is that they put the recipient on the defensive.  In the conversations I have had with students about various petitions over the years, the conversation has always gone something like, "when they see how many of us agree, they have to give in."  Setting aside the language of "they have to" for the larger point, I try to get them to see why that doesn't work.  Put yourself in the position of the person receiving this letter.  No matter how respectfully it is written or presented, the moment someone opens a letter and sees multiple signatures, they feel ganged up on.  The brain perceives this as threatening and responds with the fight or flight instinct.  You have automatically turned off the rational and listening parts of their brain as it is flooded with adrenaline, undermining your ability to get what you want.  You accomplish the opposite of what you were trying to do. 

The same is true of the teacher and student walkouts and all strikes in general.  At the time, it seems like a good way to get the attention of the powers that be.  Again, I say imagine you are one of them.  When management sees you walk off your job to make a point, the danger part of their brain goes into high gear, imagining angry mobs with torches and pitchforks.  It doesn't "get their attention" in the way you hope.  The attention turns to self-protective measures, which involve digging in their heels, not meeting you even half-way.

I am not criticizing the students who make these petitions because I know that it seems like a good idea to them at the time.  I know that it is far less scary than sitting down with people above them and having a conversation one on one, and it doesn't seem disrespectful.  I am not criticizing those teachers who have been brought to this point.  I have read the posts of so many of them that feel this is the only action they have left.  I disagree with them, but I don't believe any of them are ill-intended.  That doesn't mean it is going to work.

Getting a lot of signatures seems good at the time because our signature is hidden among the others, so we feel secure in the number.  Walking out feels good in the moment.  The rush of dopamine we get makes us feel a power we do not actually possess, especially when there are others with us.  When we get tv coverage of our protest, it makes us feel like we have the world on our side until we go online and find that half of the people are not.  Those feelings of the moment are as temporary as the "love" people find on The Bachelor.  It feels real in the moment, but we must think beyond the moment.

Actual change requires people to make decisions using the rational parts of their brains.  That requires calm discourse, the ability to listen to facts and persuasive arguments, and the time to take substantive action.  Next time, something seems like a good idea, pause for a moment of empathy.  Imagine you were on the opposite side.  How would you receive the action you are about to take?  Chances are you would wish people would approach you individually, calmly, and rationally.  Try that first.

Humility - The Lost Virtue - Part 2

After last week's post, it occurred to me that I really only scratched the surface.  I stopped at the 80's, and that was only the beginning of the end when it comes to teaching humility.  I never thought I would look back on the "everybody gets a trophy days" as only the first step, but that is only because I didn't have enough imagination to know what smartphones would do to our view of the world and our view of how the world views us.

I'm not anti-technology.  As you know, I have a blog.  I work in a school that has a one-to-one program, and I am fully invested in the benefits of that.  I have often said that there is no way I could go back to teaching without every student having a computer in front of them.  I can do low or no tech days, but I could never go back to a year of teaching in which I am the only person in the room with a computer.

I am not anti-technology.  I am, however, anti-dependence.  It makes me crazy that everywhere I go, I see kids and adults alike staring at rectangles.  Kids are actually better at interacting with each other while using their rectangles than adults are, but I still have concerns that we have subjected them to a massive sociological experiment.  Ask a teenager if you can look at the pictures on their phone, and you will find a thousand selfies.  Go to their social media, and you will find out where all those selfies went.  An event hasn't actually happened, it seems, if we don't document that we were there for it and post it for all the world to see.  A picture of fireworks isn't enough.  We must be standing in front of the fireworks.  When we stand in front of the majesty that is the Grand Canyon, we are still thinking about ourselves.  I know that even back in the film days, people took photos of themselves in front of tourist attractions, but it was one or two photos, usually of the whole family, not a hundred photos of a duck-faced, good-side, downward-angled, Snapchat-filtered, posed, etc. . .  I'm pretty sure Narcissus would find us vain.  He only looked at his own reflection; he didn't insist that others look at him as well.

Smartphones have also distorted our sense of time.  It never takes longer than two seconds to get the answer to a question, watch a video we want to watch, or text a friend.  And when we do text, if it takes long than three seconds for the three dots to turn into an answer, we get angry that the person hasn't responded immediately.  We say things like, "Why does she even have a phone if she isn't going to answer?"  This infects other parts of our lives as we impatiently tap our foot next to the microwave, forgetting that it used to take hours to make a meal.  This impatience with time is about our pride, revealing our belief that we should get what we want instantly.

The day of my last post, I had an interaction that reinforced the weird relationship even our most humble students have with their social media.  Our art teacher is having our students participate in the global Kindness Rocks Project.  Because social media can be a place for good, people all over the world are decorating rocks with uplifting images or messages and hiding them with a hashtag so that you can let the world know you have found it and are either keeping it or hiding it again with a clue to where you have hidden it.  This should be a fun and low-stress school project.   As our art teacher was explaining it to a small group of students, one of them said, "This will ruin my Instagram, so I don't want to put it there."  To be fair, I am not on Instagram, so maybe the problem is with my ignorance, but I can't help wondering how a person's Instagram can be ruined by one picture.  Other students understood her concern about messing up the design and colors.  Another teacher, who is friends with this student on Instagram looked at her feed and said that it was all artsy selfies in front of sunsets.  She talked about making a separate account just for this project, but she decided to use her mom's twitter account instead.  I've never imagined this kind of conversation.  Basically, what she was saying was that this picture would be off-brand, and we can't have that.  The idea that her design would be ruined and that she would be embarrassed if she posted one photo that doesn't fit with her image is surely a sign of the pride social media has embedded in us.

Our overinflation of our online image also magnifies our sense of our own influence online.  The rise of "slactivism," from ice buckets to hashtags to the "me too" fad, reveals our belief that we are making a difference by doing nothing.  When a disaster happens, we change our profile picture to a certain color to show our solidarity.  That's it.  The people of Puerto Rico can eat or drink our red, white, and blue profile picture; but we feel good about ourselves because we "raised awareness," as though that is an end.  While our ancestors, only a generation ago, marched on Washington to show their support for Civil Rights, we plop down a hashtag and feel proud of how "woke" we are.  This is pride, and we should take a good hard look at how little we do that has actual value.

This can be fixed, but like everything else, we must do it intentionally.  We must stop and reflect on our actions.  We must model humility for our kids instead of complaining that they don't have any.  We must recognize our place before God, as bearers of the Imago Dei who have been damaged by sin, and place our sins, including our pride, at the Cross.

Cost Benefit Analysis

In my last post, I discussed why we should stop encouraging students to try to have it all.  It's one thing to say that, but it is very different when comes down to making choices about what they do.

Students need help, from those of us who have a lot of experience (see how I avoided calling us old) in learning to make decisions about what to have, try, or do.  There is no one size fits all experience because every kid is different.  God's plan for each is unique, and He has gifted them uniquely in order to accomplish that plan.  We cannot make decisions for them, but we can give them training in how to make those decisions.

When guiding kids to make decisions, you have to ask what are the benefits but also what are the costs.  Then, decision making becomes an even-handed analysis of the two rather than an idealistic or pessimistic look at only one side.

- If a student plays on a sports team, there are benefits - teamwork, camaraderie, a sense of achievement, and such are wonderful things.  There are also costs - practices and travel take time, potential injuries can cause problems.  

- If a student is in a play, there are benefits - camaraderie, a sense of accomplishment, creative brain training, and the like can be awesome.  There are also costs.  Rehearsals take time, and lines must be memorized at the same time other commitments are being fulfilled.

- If a student leads a mission trip, there are benefits - teamwork, spiritual development, perspective on the world are all important goals.  There are also costs - travel requires money, lost school time means make-up work.

- If a student chooses to take 5 AP Classes, there are benefits - increased learning in a variety of areas, saving tuition money if you pass the AP test, and increasing college options are great things.  There are also costs - every AP class requires more time outside of class working that the time actually spent in class, leading to a lot of late nights.


Time, like money, is a limited quantity, so the choice to spend it on one thing means I cannot spend it on another.  If I choose to spend money on a Corvette, I will not have money to buy food.  If I choose to play on a sports team, I will not have time to hang out with friends.  I know students who have attempted to combine all of the above examples in the same year.  There are only twenty-four hours in a day, so the cost that came from this combination was sleep deprivation.  When I suggested dropping something, the student replied only with the benefits.  She loved the experience of being in the play and wouldn't want to give it up; she got a lot out of leading the mission trip and was glad she did it.  I suggested that perhaps three AP classes would have been enough, and she looked at me like I was telling her to drop out of school.  Looking at only the benefits and making choices without regard to cost wore this poor child out and drained the love of learning out of her.  This is the great irony of trying to "have it all."  It makes you hate it all.

When deciding whether to add something new to your schedule, sit down and really think about it.  Make a list of both the costs and the benefits of everything you want to have in your schedule for that school year.  Decide which activities have benefits that are worth the costs and say yes to those.  It's okay to say no to the other things.

Growing Pains (not the TV show from the 80's)

We all know the cliche "No pain, no gain" and have no problem using it as motivation when we work out.  When kids are growing, their bones hurt, and we say they are having growing pains.  We seem to understand that when it comes to physical change, pain will be involved.  We understand that while it is not fun, it is necessary for improvement.

The acquisition of new skills often means failing until we succeed.  We know that to improve our condition, we may have to destroy the old condition.  We practice a dance move over and over until we get it right, suffering leg pain, foot pain, and blisters in the process.  We take a kind of pride in our soreness after a hard workout.  We practice free throws, putts, and other athletic skills over and over.  We hire personal trainers to yell at us, making the pain we experience from a workout even worse.  We intentionally don't look at the ingredients on bottles of skin enhancers because we would rather have the results than be grossed out by the contents when we could just look better.  When it comes to improving the body, we get it.  There must be pain for there to be growth.

As I teacher, I will tell you that most people don't seem to get it when it comes to improving the mind.  When I push a student past their current state, they are rather upset by it.  Many (but not all) of their parents are as well.  I teach eighth grade, which is a difficult transition year because it is the year a  start as a middle schooler and ends as a high school student.  Teachers must take students higher up on the Bloom's taxonomy ladder more often.  The study methods students use for the first years of school are not enough any more.  They must start making connections between different aspects of the material they are learning, and they must connect it to things they have already learned.  They must apply and analyze information in a way they haven't had to before.  Students who have always been high performers on tests suddenly find themselves making lower grades than they used to.

I know this sounds like it is all bad news, but it isn't.  Lifting weights doesn't make your muscles stronger.  If they did, each rep would be easier than the last.  We all know that doesn't happen.  Muscles grow stronger BECAUSE the muscle fibers are broken down by lifting weights that are heavier than the muscle can currently lift.  They then repair themselves with more connections.  Personal trainers take people beyond what they believe to be their physical limits.  If they don't, the trainee will not see results.  The same is true of the brain.  When a student first learns something, they may be confused and feel off balance because the material is more difficult than what their mind can process in its current state.  The educational term for this is "mental disequilibrium."  As the new skill is practiced, the brain is brought back into balance with the new skill.  That is learning.  This means if a student is never confused, he isn't learning.  If I don't stretch them beyond what they believe their limit to be, they will not see results.  You would fire your trainer if every workout was easy, and you should drop any teacher that makes every class period easy.

Teachers at the Start of the School Year

When I was a student, I never thought much about what my teachers did before the first day of school.  If I thought anything about it, I'm sure I must have understand that they hung stuff up in the classroom.  I guess I would have also realized that they must have copied the handouts they gave us on the first day of school.  I had no idea that they had larger thoughts in mind.

As I reported back to school this week, very little of what I did was focused on preparing for the first day of school.  That will come, but there are also bigger conversations happening.  We opened with worship and a discussion of our mission statement.  From a previous post, you know how large our mission statement is.  We talked about each item in it and what it means at school.  Our new head of school talked about our vision and why it was important.  We had a Maker Faire in order to inspire each other to reflect our Creator by being creators.  As our school is encouraging students to be makers, we wanted to remind ourselves and discover hidden talents in each other.  We discussed what skills these types of learning build in our students that are not built other ways.

On Friday, we had many different meetings to discuss project based learning.  Each teacher that had an idea for one (which ranged from Tiny House building in Geometry to providing electricity for missionaries in Physics to a History Department initiative to make every student in expert in a particular world region).  Some of these discussions were brainstorming; others involved incorporating multiple classes into the same project so that students can learn that life doesn't exist in 45 minute segments that never overlap.  These discussions are inspiring, not only because they reflect the depth of education philosophy in our teaching staff but also because they reveal the innovation that new and veteran teachers alike possess.

Don't get me wrong; we will have all the nuts and bolts discussions, arguing about drop/add policies and discussing schedules.  All of that has to happen, but I am so glad to be in a school that never lets the urgent drown out the important.  By the way, we have a lot of fun doing it as well.  Need proof?  Here's our English department.

GRACE EdCamp 2016!

This is GRACE's third year of EdCamp.  It is one day of professional development done by teachers for each other.  We sign up for topics ahead of time, make a schedule, and choose either what we want to learn about or who we want to learn from.

My presentation this year was a joint presentation with awesome English teacher, Marcia Wingerd, on cross-curricular blogging.  If you follow my blog, you know that we have been in a public experiment on 8th graders publicly reflecting on their learning experiences (See this post and this post for background).  We feel that it has been successful (See this page for links to the student's blogs) enough to keep doing it and suggest that other teachers be part of it on across many grade levels.

One of my goals for next year is to develop depth in the four C's, which are critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration.  The best ways to develop those are project based learning (PBL) and challenge based learning (CBL).  While I have been doing a CBL for two years (see this post if you are interested), I haven't gotten where I want to be with it yet.  I want students to really develop in these four areas through all my projects, especially that one.  Therefore, I chose my other topics accordingly.

One workshop I attended was on a project one of our incredible history teachers, Nate Dewey, presented.  He has his freshman create a Manor Faire, based on the serf system they learn in history.  They create maps, food, costumes, explanations of the role of all types of people, explanations of daily life, and they incorporate technology, interact with all attendees (probably 150 of them).  It is a great project, but I only knew it as an interested visitor.  I wanted to learn about his end of it.  What is he communicating to his students to get the great outcome he is getting?  How does he turn everyone's observations into a grade?  The majority of his focus was on creating projects that require kids to be interdependent in group work.  While it was great that they learn the history, he talked about the life skills students learn - teamwork, conflict resolution, debriefing, managing time, and problem-solving.  These skills are as imporant (perhaps evenmore important) than the content.  The hardest part is figuring out how to create the time in your classroom to make sure you are still addressing the content you would have covered in that work time.  He used flipped class videos with occassional checkpoints, using games.  His other main point was that you need to be comfortable with the chaos that large group project create.

Our amazing calculus teacher, Cheryl Herrington, was my choice for the second session I attended.  She presented on teaching creativity.  Yes, that's right - our math teacher talked about teaching creativity.  I have been interested in this topic for - well, forever.  Learning HOW to do it is something that is harder to grasp.  I have read and listened to everything Sir Ken Robinson has ever done (See his TED talks here and here and here).  Because I know Cheryl well and have taught next door to her for the last eight years, I know that she is a very creative teacher.  I was excited about what she would have to say about teaching kids to be creative.  She talked about the difference between imagination, creativity, and innovation.  She talked about how everyone can be creative because we are made in the image of a creative God; it isn't just for a special subset of people.  It also doesn't just mean making a project pretty.  She used the book Imagine to talk about three different types of creativity - the Aha! Moment (Sudden Insight), Incremental Creativity (more of a step by step process), and Getting in the Flow.  Sometimes, you need to practice all three.  Your sudden moment of insight might be good, but if you spend time in incremental creativity, you can trade in good for better.  Getting into a creative flow might require imagining how a child would do it.  Creativity can only thrive in a safe space, where you don't believe you will be penalized for a dumb idea.  She mostly encouraged us to practice creative process in our own lives so that we could then model it for our students.

My choice of the next session was on Inquiry Drien Projects presented by the wonderful Kristen Foxworth-O'Brien.  This was our second year doing 20% Time projects at GRACE, and it was this teacher's first year.  I only got to attend three of her presentations this year, and all of those three said they had failed to achieve their goal.  This was not representative of all her groups because she tweeted some absolutely amazing presentations (e.g. a sophomore who built his own computer), but it made me wonder how many had reported that they didn't get what they wanted to out of this time.  She gives them 20% of her class time, so she obviously wants them to grow in something they are passionate about.  I was interested in finding out how she checks in with them during the project so that she isn't surprised by their outcome (and again, how she grades it).  She talked about buy-in from students when they are choosing their own topics and getting to higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy because of the depth of research.  She spent a lot of time talking about how to help students refine their topics to things worthy of giving up 20% of your class time.  Setting goals throughout the year is important for keeping students on track and accountable.  First quarter, they had mentor meetings.  Second quarter, they held pitch sessions to people who would ask them guiding questions.  Third quarter, they had to submit an annotated research document.  Fourth quarter was their final presentation.  Throughout the process, they blogged about their topic.  Blogs can be
1. Resource recommendations
2. Reflections on your own journey
3. A topic talk post, which could be used as a resource for someone else.
Homework grades are given for blog posts, and each quarter's major goals are test grades.

This has become one of my favorite days of the year, and I have thought a lot about why that is a case.  I believe it is because I am learning from people that I know and trust as educators.  I have attended many good and many bad workshops over the years.  Even in the best ones, it takes time to decide how credible this stranger is.  I don't have to spend that time deciding when the presenter is the teacher down the hall, whose class and teaching I know well.  I can just jump in and start learning.

Blood Saves

I was seventeen years old and wandered past the gym at school.  When I saw that it was a blood drive, I turned left and went in.  My mom had talked about giving blood when we were kids, and I figured I probably had good blood.  I didn't know that this little left turn would become a lifelong commitment to blood donation.

I continued to give throughout college, minus a few months when I was slightly anemic from eating like a college student.  Considering my steady diet of Doritos and Three Musketeers Bars, I wasn't eating the iron rich diet my blood would have liked.  I chain donate, signing up for my next donation in the appointment book on the table at my appointment.  When I moved back home, my mom and I started donating together.  Mom has type A positive while I am O negative.  We have been turned away a couple of times, and I had to stop giving for one year after going to Zambia; but for the most part, we have been donating blood every eight weeks for the past 14 years.

I have written before about how much I enjoy setting goals and then trying to achieve them.  Whether it is paying off debt or walking long distances, it is fun to be aiming at something.  Three years ago, I did some math and figured out that I could make it to my 100th pint by my 40th birthday if I didn't have any unusual issues.  I made it a goal.  Tonight I donated my 100th pint of blood.  I was supposed to have completed it in February; but 2/3 of the way into the donation, my blood stopped flowing.  There is a time limit, at which point they give up on your pint, so I was stuck at 99 until now.



I don't want to make this post about me.  I want to make it about what blood can do.  First, a few facts:
- Every 2 seconds, someone in the United States needs blood.  That's over 43000 needs per day.
- There is no such thing as artificial blood.  If you need blood, you must get it from a person.
- If there is an emergency, and your blood type is not known, you will receive O negative.  It's the
  only one they can be sure won't kill you.
- A single car accident victim may require up to 100 units of blood.
- 9.2 million Americans donate 15.7 million pints per year.
- Because blood can be separated into components, one donation can help save up to three lives.
- Some of your blood components will be restored in your body in as little as 24 hours (plasma and
  platelets). Other components (red blood cells) will take a couple of weeks to regenerate.
- The shelf-life of blood is 42 days.  Donors are allowed to give every 56 days.

Another interesting thing to know is that, while 38% of Americans are eligible to give blood, only 10% actually do.  I read recently that if that number went up by only 2%, there would never be a shortage of available blood.  If you are reading this and have never given blood, I would encourage you to try.  Find a blood donation center and make an appointment.  They will be very nice to you and encourage you throughout the process; they'll even give you a cookie when you are finished.  You may find that it wasn't as scary as you thought and become a regular donor yourself.

I talk to my students about blood donation because, even though most of them are not old enough to give, they will be one day.  I would like to think that they will remember this as a way to help people and show God's love.  You may not have money to donate to charity, but you always have blood.  I even devote one wall of my classroom to blood donation.  The most frequent questions my students ask are "Does it hurt?" and "Do you get dizzy?"  I have experienced very little pain.  There is a moment of stinging when the needle is first inserted, coming from the anticoagulant in the needle.  After that, gravity takes over.  I have had a couple of odd instances where my blood clotted or a bit of skin was caught in the needle, preventing blood flow.  As for dizziness, that usually depends on my level of hydration.  If I drink enough water on the day of my donation, I usually have no issues at all.  On the occasions when I have not had enough water, I do sometimes feel woozy.  Once I just laid down in the middle of the kitchen floor and put my feet in a chair.  That'll teach you to hydrate, for sure.  None of that lasts longer than a few seconds.

Oh, I do get one more question from my kids pretty often.  They always want to know if I get paid.  I do not believe in getting paid to donate something I have in abundance for free.  To me, that would be the equivalent of taking my coat to the local shelter and offering to sell it to them rather than give it.  My healthy blood is a gift from God and should be treated as such.

The most important thing I want to say is this.  My blood can save a physical life, but my blood can only save your physical life.  I obviously find this important as I am writing about it, but it is not of ultimate importance.  What is of ultimate importance is the blood of Christ.  It saves your soul.  Donating blood is valuable and gives life, but receiving His blood is critical and the ONLY way to receive eternal life.

Teachers Should Blog - Seriously, I Mean You

According to google, this is my 100th blog post.  I decided that it should be about how great blogging is for teachers and really recommend that you have one too.

1.  Yes, you do have something to say.  
When social media first started, there was a definite generational divide.  I would hear older people say, "Why should anyone care what I am doing right now?"  I would hear students talk about how great it was that they could say anything they wanted to anyone.  I was in between these two age groups (at the time - I'm middle aged now, but I was only 30 when I first joined facebook).  I really saw social media as a great way to keep up with old friends that I didn't see anymore, but I certainly didn't want to post every time I ate a cookie.  As the social media thing has exploded over the past decade, we have come to discover that it CAN be a platform for those who have something to say.  As a teacher, you have something to say.  Forget about posting pictures of every cup of coffee you drink, and think about what you wish you could tell your students, your parents, your fellow teachers.  You have important thoughts about this misunderstood profession.  You might be a new teacher.  Sharing your struggles appropriately can be a comfort to those who know they aren't alone.  It can give parents and students perspective on how difficult that first year is, and maybe they will cut you some slack.  Maybe you have been teaching for many years.  You have acquired the wisdom that comes from experience.  Sharing that can be helpful for younger teachers or provide an idea for someone who needs one.  You really do have something to say; I promise.

2.  Education is misunderstood.  You can help.
I know I am biased, but I don't think there is a profession that is more misunderstood than teaching.  We all think that because we were in school and had teachers, we know how to teach.  I have heard students say, "How hard could it be to get papers back the next day?" about a first-year teacher they had.  My response to them was, "You guys have no idea what you are talking about."  People think of teaching as the 8-3 job with summers off.  You and I know that you do not work from 8-3.  I get to work at 6am and leave at an average of 5pm.  That's if there isn't a game or a play or a performance.  Then, it could be as late as 9pm.  This isn't a complaint because I love it.  It is perspective for those who think a teacher's day is done at 3.  Yes, we do have summers off, and we are grateful for it.  It takes that time to recover from the previous year, develop professionally in ways the school year doesn't allow, and get ready for the following year.  Most people don't understand that because we don't' talk about it much.  We don't want to be viewed as whining or complaining.  For most of us, it isn't.  We just want people to understand it.  Blogging weekly gives some insight to others into this profession.  Seeing that you were grading papers at 9pm so that you could get them back to students might make the students recognize that you indeed have homework too.

3.  It's reflective
This is the reason I have my students blog.  The world is moving so fast that we rarely take the time to think and reflect on what things mean.  We are so busy taking in new information that we rarely take the time to process the impact of that information.  My student's blogs are 5-10 sentence, but that requires enough reflection each week that they might make it a practice in their lives.  As a teacher, my blog posts are a lot longer, but the chance to reflect on new practices, technology, traditions, or student activities is just as valuable for me.  Even if no one read this blog, I would still want to write it.  It is good for me to process things.

4.  It's not just something else to do.  It's cathartic.
When I first thought of blogging, I wasn't sure I wanted to.  It seemed like it might just be another assignment for the week.  Fortunately, it hasn't turned out that way.  While I do have to take some time to think and write, I find that it frees my mind when I am done.  I have gotten the thoughts that were swirling around unformed in my head into the computer.  That frees me from thinking about them further and lets my brain focus on the rest of the to-do list.  Forming the thoughts into coherent sentences gets my brain ready for work.  While you can't just rant about whatever is bothering you and keep a job, you can process issues constructively by blogging.  It gives you perspective while you think through the issues.  As I already said, I would keep writing this even if you didn't keep reading it.

Thank you
All that said, thanks for reading these last 100 posts.  I hope it has done something for you.  If you are a fellow teacher, I hope it has given you some ideas or let you know you aren't alone.  If you are a parent of students, I hope it helps you to understand that your child's teachers really are doing the best they can.  If you are a student, I hope it helps you realize that you are taught by thoughtful professionals who care deeply about you and your success, who have a plan and a reason for that plan, who put every waking moment of 10 months into being the best they can be.

Lessons From the Pavement

I have walked 500 miles, and I have walked 500 more.  Last spring, I used this goofy song from The Proclaimers as inspiration for my exercise goal.  I set the goal to walk 500 mile during the summer and 500 more during the school year.  As of today, I have officially reached this goal.  This is not a post for bragging about the thousand miles I walked in the past 10 months (even though I am pretty proud of it).  Much like pastors pull from their family life for sermon illustrations, I find myself seeing everything in my life as an application to education.  My year of walking is one of those things.  Here are some things I learned and their applications to education.

1.  Setting goals is only good if the goal is both challenging and doable.
People set goals for motivation.  This doesn't work, however, if the goal is too small to care about.  If I had set out to walk 100 miles during the summer, that would only have required a mile or two per day.  There would have been no fun in reaching that goal because it is too easy to do.  It is also not motivational to set unrealistic goals.  If I had decided to walk a thousand miles during the summer, I would have sabotaged myself.  By knowing it was not possible, I would have an instant reason to do nothing.  If I can't reach the goal, why do anything?

Application to education:  Projects should only be assigned if they are challenging.  Since there is no intrinsic motivation if something is too easy, don't give easy projects.  However, remember that your students are students.  You may think that setting an impossible goal will mean that at least you will get their best, but you won't.

2.  You must have a schedule.
You had to know this one was coming.  A challenging goal cannot be achieved overnight.  To get the 500 miles I wanted during the summer, I had to average about 9 miles per day.  If there was bad weather one day or my feet hurt, causing a shorter walk, that meant I had to make it up another day.  Knowing that meant I couldn't just decide not to walk for several days in a row.

Application to education:  If a student who can pull an all-nighter to complete your project in a way you can't tell, it is not a good project.  An appropriately challenging project requires planning.  Depending on the age and experience level of your students, you might want to set goals for them or allow them to set their own.  If this is a change for your students, don't assume they can do it alone.  This is a skill to be taught; it's not innate.  Give them a calendar with some landmarks, and allow them to figure out what is doable by that time.  If they don't accomplish what they want by that date, have them create a plan for how they will catch up.

3.  Take advantage of opportunities, so you can push through the obstacles.

This is what it looks like when you
walk a hole through your shoe.

If you know me, you might know that I have a lot of goals.  This walking thing was just the latest in a string.  In order to make good use of my summer, I usually set several - for school, exercise, reading, and a home project.  Some are fairly short term (a couple of days to get a closet organized or patch the hole in the ceiling) while others are very long term (5 years for my blood donation goal).  The ones that last more than a few days will be frustrated by obstacles.  Walking a thousand miles means sometimes dealing with weather, sore feet, tired legs, back pain, and destruction of shoes.  Almost every day, at the half mile mark, my legs would tell me that there was no shame in turning back.  If I kept going, my legs would soon shut up.  I walked as many as 15 miles one day, but I had to ignore my legs at the half mile mark in order to make that happen.  Taking advantage of each opportunity meant that one rainy day didn't mean failure.

Application to education:  Any goal worth setting means setbacks.  A student can have the best schedule in the world, but if a group member gets sick or there is a sudden family emergency or the team they are on suddenly makes the state championships, adjustments will have to be made.  This is fine as long as they have been ignoring their tendency toward apathy at other times.  If they accomplish work every week, their schedule can absorb the unexpected.  Our school yearbook is an example of this.  We have three deadlines.  One is always right before exams, and one is always near the school play.  These are only problems if I or my staff have not been making progress up to those days.

4.  Don't give yourself prizes.
This goes against everything you have read before.  People often give the advice that you should treat yourself to a spa day or a new outfit when reaching a goal.  The problem with that, at least for me, is that I will find a way to justify getting the prize anyway, even if I haven't reached the goal.  Letting the accomplishment be its own reward is the only thing that works for me.

Application to education:  We have to stop rewarding every little thing students do.  I used to be part of the problem.  I had a prize box (of worthless stuff I bought from Dollar Tree).  I gave this stuff to students for winning review games or answering questions correctly.  I thought I was providing motivation for participation, but I came to realize that I was feeding the very beast I then complained about in the teacher's lounge.  Entitlement.  I stopped buying things for the box, and I will not go back.  At the beginning of the year, when we play our first review game, kids always ask what they will win.  My answer now is "the joy of winning."  Don't get me wrong; I am not saying that it is wrong to give a kid a sticker if they make a grade above their normal performance.  What I am saying is that they won't work for the sticker.  In Drive, a great book about motivation by Daniel Pink, the research is laid out that IF prizes are to be given, they should not be "If . . . then" prizes that are announced ahead of time.  Rather, he advises "Now that" prizes that come as a surprise after the project is finished.

5.  Share - but share sparingly.

I shared this picture at the 500 mile mark, not every day.

Sharing your goals and accomplishments with others is great, unless you do it too much.  We all have that Facebook friend that tells everything they do.  They are always having the most amazing experience or having the best cup of coffee of their life or reading the best book they have ever read.  Their kids are always doing the most clever thing any child has ever done.  If you don't have one of those friends, consider whether or not you are that friend.  I do share my goals because I find it holds me accountable to them.  When I decided to write a science text, I e-mailed my administration and IT people.  Doing so meant that I would actually do it because the goal wouldn't just be in my own mind.  What I did NOT do was e-mail them after I finished each chapter.  When I set the walking goal, I posted it on social media, but I didn't share every mile or every day. I shared at the half way point, and I am sharing it now.  Sharing it at a milestone means your friends will celebrate it with you.  Sharing it all the time means your friends will be sick of hearing about it.

Application to education:  Teachers always want to share what their students are doing.  We share with other teachers, in faculty meetings, in parent e-mails, an on social media.  I share about my students projects on this blog.  All that is great, but think it through before you share.  If you are sharing about the same thing too often, you will annoy everyone.  Share the big stuff, but remember that not every word your kids write or say is gold.