Study Hall 2 Hours Before Break

On its best day, a middle school study hall isn't the most productive place on earth.  There's a little work done on some days and more on others, but I can't pretend that there is ever a day when everyone is taking advantage of their time.

Today is the day before Easter Break.  It is 1:45, and we get out at 3:15.  We don't assign work over the break, so absolutely no one has anything that is actually school related to do.  A group of boys is sitting in my room playing a game called CurvyTron.  It is amazing what people will come up with when they have nothing else to do.  I can't claim to be much better because what I have chosen to do is write this blog post and watch the bald eagle webcam from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

While this seems like a silly thing, I love that my guys do actually have the initiative to find something to do and share it with each other.  They could sit here planning trouble or throwing pencils at the ceiling.  Instead, they are sharing an experience without relying on me to provide it for them.

Let's Turn the Pendulum Into a Spinning Top

I've referenced this many times on this blog, so I figured I should write a full post about it.  We have to stop the swing of the pendulum.

If you work in education for any amount of time, you will find that there is nothing new under the sun.  Any "new" buzzword that comes along can be found in the history of education under a different name.  We swing back and forth from one extreme to another, and every time we come back to an extreme, we think it is something new.

I have addressed the introvert/extrovert swing in a previous post.  For years, school was quiet and catered to introverts only.  Now, we act like introverts are strange and must be taught to be extroverts.  For many years, special needs children were self contained; then they were practically all thrown into the regular classroom.  Then some of them were brought back into their own space for at least part of the day.  After the launch of Sputnik, education became all about lab sciences.  Then, we decided we were leaving out the creatives and decided to prepare everyone for liberal arts degrees.  Now, we are back to insisting all kids must be STEM kids.  When I was in kindergarten, there was a high emphasis on the value of play.  Then, someone decided three-year-olds should start reading, so we sat the kids down.  Now, every time I turn around, there is a blog post on the value of play in Finland or somewhere.

Are you tired of swinging back and forth yet?  To be fair, the intent behind each of these swings to the extreme comes from a good-hearted place.  Research identifies a group of kids that are being neglected, and we feel bad for having ignored their needs.  We over-react, making a giant swing in the other direction.  We don't even realize that we will still be neglecting the needs of a group; it's just the other group.  It's time to jump off the swing!

As you watch the swinging fads come and go, remember that you possess something quite valuable - professional judgement.  You know that you have students in your classroom with a variety of needs, not introverts one year and extroverts the next.  You know that what will work for everyone is to employ a variety of techniques as often as you can.  No one expects you to be all things to all people in every single lesson, but you can spread out techniques throughout a week or a unit.  If you use a song to help with a math formula, you help the musicians.  If you allow students to draw a concept, you give the visual learners and artistic processors a chance to process.  Instead of swinging back and forth, maintain a spin of techniques.  This way you are never far from either of the extremes because you spend much of your time between them.  Let's turn the swing into a spinning top.

The problem with a swing is that you spend as much time traveling away from one student as you do another.  It takes some time to get all the way to the other extreme and a lot of energy to reverse the direction when you realize you have left those students behind.  Then the reversal makes you moving away from an entire set of your students again.  The beauty of a top is that the spin gives it balance.  You are keeping all your students in balance at the same time while quickly spinning around the needs of all your students.

You can give your students choices to show that you acknowledge the differences in their needs.  Perhaps there could be a homework assignment in which students have a choice of drawing or writing.  Maybe, there could be stations in your classroom for different activities on the same topic.  There are thousands of downloadable rubrics on the internet that can be modified to any assignment.  I'm not suggesting that students choose for themselves every day or even that they should because there are some things we all need to do together, but if they get to do so once per chapter, they will feel that you acknowledge their needs.

Teachers, you tell your students not to give in to peer pressure, so you shouldn't either.  When a new fad comes along, don't jump to adopt it.  If you try that, you will wear yourself out, and you will never feel secure.  When a new thing comes along, look at it.  Figure out which aspects, if any, will work in YOUR lessons.  Use the judgement that comes from experience to make decisions for YOUR students.  Have the courage to reject whatever aspect of the latest "thing" does not fit into YOUR classroom.  You don't have to stay on the swing.  Jump off and start spinning for everyone.

Together - Not the Same

This week, I have been on an accreditation visiting team.  That means I got to help evaluate and affirm a Christian school that is seeking the renewal of their accreditation.  In the training documents, the following statement is highlighted.

"There is no one type of school. Nor is there just one approach to teaching and learning. Yet regardless of a school’s size, location, philosophy or education model, it benefits from intensive, ongoing diagnostic reviews of its work, carried out by knowledgeable, well-trained, independent reviewers."

Around the same time I began this training, a commercial started airing on television.  For the life of me, I can't figure out what it has to do with Android products (The first time I saw it, I thought it was going to be a PSA about tolerance or bullying or something), but I like the ad itself.  Also, I may be strange, but I like the song he is playing where all the keys are the same as well.  I guess I just like the rhythm.  

These two things made me think of how glad I am that GRACE is not the only school or the only type of school.  Because people are different, their educational needs are certainly different.  While I don't think I could have handled the Montessori approach when I was in school, I have no doubt that there are those who thrive in that type of school.  My school's athletic rival is a very strict classical school.  While I COULD NOT teach there because the structure is too much for me, there are students who absolutely need that structure in order to feel secure.  The school we are evaluating is a very small community, but their people are fully supportive of each other and their students on every level.  I observed some classes that I didn't want to leave. 

 Christian schools have many things in common.  We all want to see spiritual growth and development in students as they make the transition from childhood faith in their parent's church to their own relationship with Christ.  We all want to see students educated in such a way that they can pursue whatever path God has for them.  We all want to mentor our students in citizenship, a lifelong love of learning, and just decision making.  

While all the Christian schools in the world have these things in common, they approach meeting these goals in hundreds of different ways.  Some of them focus heavily on their academic programs while others place a higher priority on student / teacher relationships.  Some are heavily STEM while others place a high priority on their fine arts programs.  Some schools try to meet the needs of all types of students while others enroll only students whose needs they are already capable of meeting.  No one Christian school can accomplish God's plan by itself.  When parents are looking at Christian schools, it is important that they know what matters to them.  Most schools will cover the true essentials, so parents should also look for the school that is a "good fit" for their child.  

As Christian schools, we are together; but we are not the same.  We are all heading in the same direction.  We are just driving different cars.

The Lost Art of Conflict Resolution

"Miss Hawks, he messed up our pool game" was said to me during lunch duty.

My school is fortunate enough to have a basketball cage, foosball table, and pool table in the cafeteria for students to use as energy release after they have eaten.  When this 8th-grade child reported that someone messed up the game, I didn't realize he was asking me to intervene.  I said, "okay" and began to walk away.  He said, "Aren't you going to talk to him?"  I can't remember if I said it out loud or not, but my thoughts were, "Seriously?  You want adult intervention because someone is playing pool wrong?"  He was absolutely horrified when I told him they had to work that out amongst themselves.  "I told him I didn't like it.  Aren't you going to do something?"  I said, "Work it out."

A week later, the topic of our weekly homeroom was "sort of bullying."  The reason I say "sort of" is that my school is mostly made up of kids that have been in the same class since elementary school.  That leads them to often behave like brothers and sisters.  While that may sometimes lead to actual bullying, more often than not it leads to sibling style teasing that just goes to far.  In homeroom, we were discussing ways a person might go about addressing that.  Juniors and seniors said, "First tell them you don't like it.  If that doesn't work, go to the principal."  Another option they presented was to hit them really hard if telling them you didn't like it hadn't worked.  I was flabbergasted that they went straight to the most extreme solutions.  Does a principal really need to get involved if someone who likes you teases you more than they should?  Actual bullying is different.  That may require adult intervention, but that wasn't the discussion we were having.  Is there really not an intermediate step between saying, "I don't like what you are doing" and hitting someone?

These two events made me realize that millennial kids and those who come after them have no concept of conflict resolution.  This comes from the fact that they were never alone.  There is no time in a child's life when an adult isn't within earshot. When I was a kid in the 80's, my friends and I spent a fair amount of time alone.  We played in someone's backyard or the creek near Shelley Lake or in the street until the street lights came on.  If someone messed up a game, we either worked it out or we didn't, but there wasn't adult intervention because there wasn't an adult nearby.  Now, because parents are afraid to let their children be alone, they are rarely out of your eye line, much less out of tattling range.  As soon as the slightest disagreement arises, there's an adult jumping in to say, "You guys need to share." or "If you fight over it, I am going to take it away." or "Be nice." or "He didn't mean to."  Conflicts are never resolved because the adult just puts a stop to whatever is happening.

I've spent a lot of time since those events thinking about what it means that I have juniors and seniors and 8th graders with no conflict resolution skills.  Those seniors will soon be living in the dorm.  There is no time in my life that I needed conflict resolution more than that.  They WILL have conflicts with their roommates, and the problems they have with them will have to be resolved because they live in a tiny room together.  They will be married and have no idea how to end a fight with their spouse.  I am actually concerned that the divorce rate will soar even higher than it already has.  If we send out into the world a generation of adults who believe that there are no steps between telling someone to stop and hitting them, what is going to happen to the crime rate?

Teachers, parents, grandparents, and anyone else who spends time with children, may I have your attention.  I beg of you, stop stepping into every disagreement.  Allow kids to argue and work things out among themselves.  An insincere apology doesn't mean anything.  One of them may need to apologize, but it shouldn't be because their mom made them when they weren't really sorry.  If we don't allow them to learn conflict resolution even when it is messy to do so, we will have a generation of adults who are always in conflict with no idea how to get out.

Tyranny of the Urgent

Some time ago, I heard someone warn against living under "Tyranny of the Urgent."  This made a massive impact on me, and I have tried to remain aware of it ever since.  Some things are urgent without being important, but many more things are important without being urgent.  MOST of the time, we should be focusing on the important.  I think this important for every person, but it is of critical importance for teachers.

There are a lot of urgent things on a teacher's plate.  Lesson plans are due on Monday, and exams must be done by a certain time.  Grades are due so that report cards can go out when they are scheduled to, and it is important to give timely feedback on written work.  It can be easy to get caught up in spending much of your time on things that seem urgent at the moment and even those that truly are.  MOST of the time, however, we need to keep our eye on the bigger picture.  If those lesson plans are submitted a day late because you were focused on something that matters more, your administrator will understand.  If they don't, you either have a habit of turning in late lesson plans or you need a different administrator.

The conversation you have with a student about their future career may not be urgent.  It isn't "due" tomorrow.  The extra help you give a student to help them understand something may not be on your schedule, but it is the important way you show a student you care.  That timely feedback you are trying to give is only worthwhile if it is meaningful feedback.  If there is a choice between giving back generic feedback tomorrow or meaningful feedback the next day, take the extra day.

I'm not saying this is an easy thing to do, but there are ways to make it easier.  You know all the advice we give to students about organizing their time and projects.  That advice is just as true for us. If we don't start working on the lesson plans that are due on Monday until Sunday afternoon, they will most certainly seem urgent.  If, however, we start working on those lesson plans the Tuesday before they are due, we will find them easy to put down when a student asks to talk.  If the exam we are writing is tomorrow, we won't be able to close the computer when a kid comes in with questions about that exam.  Getting a yearbook done doesn't happen in one day; it requires months of planning for photography, planning pages, and meeting intermediate deadlines.  It is important on my staff that every student is pictured at least three times, but that doesn't happen if we wait until the day pages are due to tag those pictures.  Tagging isn't urgent, but if the coverage goal is important, it must be done.  That means planning ahead and working as you go.  Again, you may recognize this advice from your own instructions to students.

It also helps if you know what is important to you.  You need to put some thought into this because if you leave it to decide in the moment, you will succumb to the urgent every time.  What is critically important to one teacher may only be mildly important to another.  Knowing what you find important will make you more likely to recognize it when you need it.

You may have noticed that I have twice capitalized the word MOST.  MOST of the time, you should  be focused on the important rather than the urgent.  It is equally important, however, to give yourself occassional permission to give in to the urgent.  For me, there are two weeks of every year that I allow myself to put off grading and finishing my lesson plans because the things that are urgent in that week must happen during that week.  Spirit Week is the most notable example of that.  I must take pictures, hundreds of them, on two different campuses every day of that week.  This means that my planning periods are taken up in going from class to class, driving to the other campus, processing those pictures, and uploading them to Jostens.  During that week, my students give project presentations, watch relevant videos, or spend time collaborating on a project.  That frees me from grading and lesson planning during that week, allowing me to give in to the urgent.  The other week is the week before the final yearbook deadline.  My students may take a test during that week, but they will not get them returned that week because I must meet my yearbook deadline.  Since I have developed credibility with them during the rest of the year, my students are usually pretty forgiving that they don't get things back as fast they would like during that one week.

If you spend most of your time focusing on the important, the few times when you do have to succumb to the urgent won't seem quite so tragic.