My Favorite Sound

Graduation was Friday night.  I've had many posts about graduation over the past few years.  This one is a little harder to describe, so I need this recording to help.  This is my favorite sound.

I don't know if you can hear it well, but it isn't Pomp and Circumstance.  It is not a song or the speaker.  It is not the exit music.  This is the sound of excitement.  I took this recording a few minutes after graduation.  Every year, after I remove my robe, I stand on the balcony above our graduation reception and listen to this sound for a few minutes.  It makes me happy to listen to it.

You'll notice that you cannot hear words.  You cannot actually discern what conversations anyone is having.  You just hear upbeat, happy, excited voices.

If you are a teacher, find this kind of sound.  Yours may not be at graduation.  It may be the first day of school or a time during Grandparents' Day or an awards night or during a Christmas party; but you should find a time like this in which you can step away, stand off to the side, and just listen to the sound of happiness.

A Tribute to our Technology Coach

I have mentioned Laura Warmke, our technology coach many times in previous posts.  Since this is the last month that she will be employed by our school, I'd like to take this chance to make a post solely in tribute to her.

Laura Warmke came to GRACE as the media specialist.  If you are over forty, this is the person you would have called the librarian; but the job has grown significantly enough to change the title.  She was fantastic at the "library" part of the job.  I don't think I've ever mentioned a book she hadn't already read.  She could converse as easily about young adult literature as she could about historical fiction or books or medical history.  She encouraged reading for pleasure in our students.

Laura also noticed a need in our school.  The year she joined us was the second year in our one-to-one program, and we had hit a bit of a plateau.  It was clear to Laura that we needed cultivation if we were going to continue to grow.  While at a conference, she heard about a professional development program that another school had used with their teachers.  Along with other members of our IT department (Shout Out to Diane Scro), Laura developed a program for us called Level Up.

Level Up was about learning and adopting new tools for people at different levels.  When adopting a new tech program, it's important to realize that some of your people are savvy and others are less so.  We are also a K-12 school, so how each teacher implemented technology in their classroom was going to be pedagogically different.  Recognizing this, Diane and Laura developed missions for different grade levels and different tools.  Each teacher could choose which mission they wanted to accomplish.  Some were as simple as watching a TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson; others were as ambitious as flipping your classroom.  There was a wide range in between of just trying a new tool (Animoto, Canva, Storybird, etc.) with your students.  When you completed the mission, you went into a discussion board on our school's LMS and posted.  I really enjoyed looking at the posts of other teachers as well because I work with creative people.  For every tool, someone had used it in a way I had not thought of, and I was able to enhance my use of it as a result.  After completing the discussion board post, the teacher was given a badge on a poster board in the teacher's lounge.  I know that sounds a little elementary school, but I found it motivating.

When Laura moved to the midwest because she wanted to be with her husband or something, we didn't have to lose her awesome influence.  She continued to be our technology coach, meeting with each teacher once per quarter to discuss the integration of technology, talk through project ideas, help us look for a management tool or website platform, or help us process what we learned at a technology conference.  Level Up was difficult to maintain at a distance (and because she was raising two kids or whatever), so Laura changed things up.  She set up a schedule for teachers to present short presentations on tech tools during faculty meetings.  Each week, we got a 2-3 minute presentation from a peer on some tool that either had used or planned to use in their classroom.  Through these presentations, I've learned some new mind mapping tools, a digital museum tool, and Quizzes (a great replacement for Kahoot if you are no longer find that a valuable review tool).

After two years of distance coaching, Laura has decided it is time to invest in her local community and have some local here at GRACE.  While we understand that logic, we will miss her influence greatly.  I have said it before, and I'll say it again.  She made us better teachers, and I have no higher compliment to give.

The Value of Yearbook Dedication

I am sitting here with a brain so full that I'm not sure I can make coherent sentences.  This is one of the reasons why I blog.  It helps me sort out my own thoughts.  That said, if this seems a little rambling, there might be a good reason for that.

When I became the yearbook advisor for my school twelve years ago, a different teacher had been doing it every year.  That gave me a lot of freedom because there were no long held traditions that I couldn't break from.  I decided that if I was going to do this for multiple years, I wanted to establish some because traditions unite people.  One of the traditions I decided to start was to dedicate the yearbook to someone who had made a difference in our school and the lives of our students.  It had only been done once before, and I believed it was a great way for our students to see us honor each other for dedication and hard work.

That year, we dedicated it to our head of maintenance, Mr. Dale.  The book was presented to him and dedication read at a faculty meeting.  After that, I asked if we could dedicate them in front of the whole school so that our students could not only see us honoring hard work, but they could celebrate it as well.  Since then, our students have cheered for office staff, an art teacher, janitors, a high school science teacher, a fourth-grade teacher, an administrator, members of our IT department, a PE teacher, and a special needs teacher.

Why is this important?  There are probably many reasons, but I'll speak to the ones that matter most to me.

1.  We Honor Work
Our culture spends a lot of time honoring people for beauty, musical talent, and athletic talent.  We have people who are famous for being famous without actually doing anything and people who are famous because their parents are famous.  We have an unhealthy obsession with people who "speak their minds" whether or not they have anything to say.  This yearbook dedication shows that we honor people who work hard at the thing God has called them to do.

2.  We Unite in Honor
One of my favorite parts of the day is the reading of the first paragraph of the dedication.  Students try to figure out who we are reading about before the last sentence when we say the name.  Then, there is a roar into the room when that person makes their way to the front, we let their family into the room, and the entire school cheers and stomps the bleachers and celebrates.  It is a moment when our school is unified.  This year, our school has outgrown the space we have traditionally used to have our dedication.  We would violate fire code if we tried to put our student body all in that place, so we are having to split into two events.  I'm a little bummed about it, but I can't insist that we break the law.  I'll just miss hearing everyone all together in this moment.

3.  We Shower A Person With Love
Every year, the staff chooses the person we do because we love them.  That love is obviously already there, but it is not often expressed on a daily basis.  As James Taylor advised us, you should "Shower the people you love with love.  Show them the way that you feel.  Things are gonna be much better if you only will."  We do.  We usually make them cry.  We invite their families.  We explain why we love them in detail.

4.  We Show A Real Person
I don't know if you ever thought about the life of your teachers outside of the classroom, but I know I didn't when I was a kid.  They were a teacher, not a person.  In the process of our dedication research, we find out who this person was before they came to our school.  Some of our people have had really interesting jobs.  We tell the story of how they met their spouse if we can find it.  We share funny or touching stories.  I want our students to know that their teachers are human beings with childhoods and adolescent embarassments, and love stories, and hobbies, and all those things other humans have.

As long as I am the yearbook advisor, this will be an important part of our yearbook.  That's why it's right up front, just after the title page.

Fidget Fads

Fads come and go at a faster pace than they used to.  Social media and youtube have increased the rate of communication about everything, including the latest greatest thing since the pet rock (just in case your generation thinks your fads weren't ridiculous).  Social media and youtube have also given parents and teachers an increased opportunity to fight about the new gadgets, peer pressuring and bullying each other about whether or not the new thing is something their child REALLY needs or the downfall of education as we know it.

Take a deep breath.  Remind yourself that you are a grown up.  Let's have some perspective.

First, fads are not new.  I mentioned pet rocks above, but it goes back farther than that.  For fun, go to this site or this one and have some nostalgia.  We have an astounding lack of memory about the obsessions we had as kids.  That doesn't mean we should mindlessly accept all our students' obsessions, but perhaps it will help you empathize with them.  By definition, they come and go.  Remember rainbow looms and the distraction they were in the classroom?  Now, they aren't there.  Try to remember that.  This year alone, I have seen the rise and fall of bottle flipping, Rubic's cubes, and slime.  Spinners are just the latest one, hardly the worst.

Second, every new fad is a distraction in the classroom.  If a student wants to be distracted, they will be.  We must stop blaming the object as though they wouldn't be distracted if "fill in the blank" didn't exist.  When I was a kid, note passing was a big deal.  Absolutely no one blamed the pencil.  I have watched students read their pencil or stare at their own hands in order to be distracted.  (That student then raised his hand to ask me questions about his fingerprints.)  If you are at your wit's end with spinners, it is because you haven't created parameters for their use.  Tell kids they can have them the first five minutes or the last five minutes.  Tell them they can use them while doing independent work but not while you are lecturing (or vice versa - It really doesn't matter what your boundaries are as long they know you have some and will stick to them).  I say yes until there is a reason to say no, so slime was allowed in my classroom until the day I had to scrape it out of the carpet.  My students learned that the proper use of something yields positive consequences while the improper use of it yields negative ones.  Be the teacher, not the curmudgeon.

Third, every new fad brings an opportunity for engagement and learning.  Personally, I love the spinners.  I teach physics, and there's not much better way to get a kid excited about rotational inertia and the friction-lowering power of ball bearings than these little guys.  They don't make as much noise as the bottles and Rubic's cubes, so I let them experiment with them and ask questions.  I saw a blog post yesterday that bemoaned the fact that if you get one spinning fast enough it will lift off your finger.  I say that was a teachable moment about aerodynamics.  Someone in another article was complaining that her students were trying to spin them on their nose.  There's a teachable moment about the center of gravity and balance that was lost in that classroom.    You may not teach science, but what if you created a writing prompt for English or created a math problem around rotation rate?  The kids are showing us what will engage them, so take advantage of it.

Finally, let's get real about the word "need."  I have read a thousand social media comments from parents who claim their child needs one of these.  You can't need something that was invented yesterday.  As human beings, our physical needs are nutrients, water, oxygen, and the ability to expel waste.  Recent brain research is showing what teachers have known for decades.  Some kids benefit from movement and sensory input during their learning.  Teachers have kept things in their rooms for students to use for as long as I can remember because it helps.  That's not the same thing as a need.  Again, I say take a breath.  Your child will not have their graduation delayed if their teacher makes them put away their spinner for half an hour so that she can concentrate while she is teaching.

Everybody say it with me, "I'm a grown-up."  Now, go be one.

Do The Next Thing

Elisabeth Elliott is known for being the wife of Jim Elliott and for her authorship of Through Gates of Splendour, Passion and Purity, and many other books about living the Christian life through the most difficult of circumstances.  My strongest memory of her, however, will always be the time I heard her speak in person.  A group of friends and I took a road trip from Tulsa, OK to Little Rock, AR to see her speak at a church.  During the speech, she spoke little of the grand moves we make in life and much of the mundane - feeding your children, doing laundry, etc.  This was interesting for me as a college freshman, even though she was discussing things I had not experienced.  It is rare to hear a speaker talk about regular, everyday worship acts rather than the big stuff, especially someone who has experienced as much big stuff as she as.  At the end of the night, there was a question and answers time, in which someone asked what to do when they felt overwhelmed by how much they had to do.  Every college student in the audience perked up their ears, expecting profound advice on how to give your worries over to God.  Her advice was this, "Do the next thing.  Since it isn't possible to do everything at once and sitting there thinking about it just makes even less time, do the next thing."  I went back to my dorm room that night and printed, "Do the Next Thing" on a sheet of paper.  It hung above my desk for four years, and it is still in my mind today.

This is a time of year when I have a lot on my plate.  Our school does a lot of activities at the end of the year because everyone wants to do their thing for the last time.  There are senior night games, final concerts for band and chorus, and that one last time a club will get to meet.  There are NHS inductions, senior dinners, and of course, graduation.  As the yearbook teacher, I am involved in most of these to varying degrees.  Whether I am there to take pictures at the senior game or enjoy a strings concert, I am there.  In preparation for the senior dinner, my staff and I make posters with each senior's photo and the logo of their college/military/job choice.  This takes a fair amount of time, and some of the students don't make their choices until the day before the dinner.  I also speak at this dinner, so it is important to write the speech.  The yearbook staff also constructs the senior slide show for graduation, which incorporates music, photos, and quotes from each teacher.  Pulling all of that together takes time and must be copied onto a jump drive for each student so it can be included with the gift they will receive at graduation, a Bible which all of the teachers have written in.  Oh yeah, add to the list that I need to go sign the Bibles.  We hold a fine arts pep rally for the day of yearbook distribution, and that is a big day.  Every year, I forget something, like filling out the event request so that the IT department will know what I need (note to self:  do that today). We are changing the way we do that event this year due to the explosive growth of our student body, so I'm still trying to figure out how to deliver all the books between rallies.  This is all in addition to the regular teacher duties and exam writing and blog posting and faculty meetings and lunch duties.

Please understand that I am not complaining about ANY of this.  They are some of my favorite parts of the job and a big part of what makes GRACE so special.  It's just a lot of stuff in a short amount of time, and it can get overwhelming.  You have times like that too.  It may not be the same stuff, but it we all experience times when we have too much to do and not enough time to do it (or at least, it feels that way).    Let me expand a just a little on the advice of Elisabeth Elliott.

1.  Do the next thing.  I'm going to start with that because it is so powerful in its practicality.  As long as you aren't doing anything, you have the same amount of stuff to do.  Let this be the time when the urgent rules and do whatever is due next.
2.  Start whatever you can as early as you can.  I cannot start working on the senior slide show in August, but I can start it in March.  Doing a few students a day throughout the month of April is much less daunting than doing it all in May.
3.  Do whatever you can whenever you can.  This seems like the same advice as #2, but it isn't.  There are times when I am sitting in the car, waiting to meet my parents for dinner.  This is a good time to work on the slide show.  If I have ten minutes before my next class, I can cut out a few college logos for the posters.  During achievement tests, I stole the Bible pages (don't tell anybody because I wasn't supposed to do that) and signed them during the Language Mechanics test.  I am writing this blog post while subbing for another teacher who is on a field trip.  Making use of any time you have to do small things helps them not add up to big things.
4.  Remind yourself that you won't die.  This time period happened last year and the year before that (and for me, the ten years before that), and I'm not dead yet.  Exactly zero death certificates have read, "Cause of death: too much to do and not enough time to do it in."  Keep doing it, and you will eventually get a weekend to sleep in an extra hour.
5.  Decide what is important.  This can be tough because we often convince ourselves that it is all critical.  Maybe it all is, and maybe it isn't.  For each thing, decide not only if it is important but at what level.  It is very important to me that I speak at the senior dinner, but do I need to speak about five students and give each of them a personalized gift - probably not.  This year, I have chosen to speak about two.  It is important for me to write in every student's Bible, but they don't all need to be a long and drawn out message.  The fine arts pep rally matters, but the power point may not need to be as cute and "on-theme" as I usually make it.  We do some of this to ourselves, and it isn't always necessary.