Time to rest, reflect, and recharge. I hope it’s just the boost we all need for the winter weeks ahead. In room 206 we will wrap up the year with Community Circle.
Have a great holiday, everyone. May you and yours find some joy this season. I’ll be back here on January 6th.
Do. Reflect. Do Better.
“I need four, Sy.”
Wednesdays are “Kindness Card” days. After Smiles and Frowns, I distribute small cards (a sheet of paper cut into sixths) to the kids, and they write each other little notes of kindness. It has now become a ritual, and many kids have elevated the spirit of it by requesting more cards. I oblige. If they have more kindness, I have more paper.
Each week, I have seen kids venturing out and giving cards to people outside their immediate circles. And though it’s always nice to get a kindness card from someone close, it’s pretty cool to get one from someone outside our circle, too. It’s cool to see kids’ faces light up from the kind words of others with whom they are not close. For some it’s the first “contact” they’ve ever made with the other person. And where there’s contact, there can be connection. Kindness connects. I witness it every day, especially on Wednesday.
And, yes, “all this connection stuff” takes time. Smiles and Frowns, Kindness Cards, and Community Circle take time. They take a lot of time. And I give it. In the end, we all decide how we spend our time. For me, I have found focusing on the things that will matter in the end is reason enough to give them the time they require now. It’s hard for me to devote every second of our time to things that kids will mostly forget after the test next week. It’s hard for me to follow this singular path. In fact, it became impossible. I started to hear noises from the edge, and, distracted, I started to wander from the trail, stumbling upon something. The humans in the room. There are humans in the room. Of course, they’d been there all along, but I did not always see them. And once I saw them, I saw everything. Contact to connection. And, then, to content. But first, contact. Everything grows from there.
Along today’s trail we will experience…
…connecting through Smiles and Frowns.
…submitting complete, but yet-to-be-edited drafts for Wisdom Writers.
…reflecting in our Journey Journals.
…hearing a Sappy Sy Rhyme.
Happy Thursday, all.
Do. Reflect. Do Better.
I tried to fight it. I tried to hide it. But in the end, I let the tears run down my face–at school. This has now happened to me three times in my twenty-four years. Year two. Year eight. And now year twenty four. All three times I was caught off guard by a moment. Damn moments, they always seem to create leaks in this sentimental old fool’s face.
Year two. My first big goodbye. I had ended up following my first-year kids, whom I had as seventh graders, into eighth grade, so I had them for two years, and in that time we had become quite connected, quite close. For the last day of school, I had written the entire class a letter I called “The Last Word,” honoring each of the eighty-some kids with a personal mention. Before school started, just thinking about the moment started some premature leaking, and I went to a trusted colleague for some help, and she, a veteran teacher we called “Ma,” helped me patch myself up before class started. Thinking I had composed myself well enough, I headed to class (the bell had already rung). And as I walked in late, as if on cue, Green Day’s song, “Time of Your Life (Good Riddance),” started playing on the radio. The patchwork started falling off, and as I went to get the letters from my file cabinet, the dam broke and my face flooded in my “A fork stuck in the road” moment.
Year eight. Big move. Big changes. Moved back home here to Cheney. My wife, carrying our first child, stayed back in Royal with her fifth graders until it was time to have Finn, our son. So, it had been a hard, lonely transition that fall. Trying to hold onto the comfort that was Royal (taught middle school ELA there for seven years), I had been reading Freak the Mighty to my sophomores. We finished the book on Halloween, and as I read the last few lines, my voice caught a bit, and I was once again struck by a moment. I will never forget Matt Yancy’s patting me on the back telling me it was going to be okay, as I quietly cried at my desk. “No big deal.”
Year twenty four. Yesterday. It was at the end of our staff meeting and our student orchestra was there to play for us. And as they started to play, and as looked upon the amazing kids (both present and former students), I found myself caught again, and my face started leaking. But this one was different. I wasn’t crying amongst my kids in my classroom; I was crying amongst my colleagues in the library. Abashed, I hid it as best I could, and thankfully I think only a few witnessed my waterfall. Of the three moments, this was the most caught I’ve felt. Yes, the music was truly beautiful. Yes, I was immensely proud of the kids. And, yes, it was a moment, but it was not a moment like the others. So, I was surprised when the tears started trailing down my face. In my family, we talk about how we sometimes just need a good cry. And maybe that’s what yesterday was. Maybe I just needed a good cry. No big deal.
Along today’s trail we will experience…
…connecting through Smiles and Frowns.
…cultivating kindness, connection, and community with our Kindness Cards.
…completing drafts.
…reflecting in our Journey Journals.
…hearing a Sappy Sy Rhyme.
Happy Wednesday, all.
Do. Reflect. Do Better.
“Be kind. Be patient. Be supportive.”
We talk a lot about expectations in education. We signal both the need for high expectations and the danger of low expectations. But nearly always, the buzz is around teachers’ expectations for kids, not kids’ expectations for teachers. Yesterday, I decided to explore the topic a bit, starting with my #MyRoomMessage.
But the more I reread my own words and the more I thought about the idea of reciprocity with expectations, the more I found myself wondering, “What do kids expect from us?” So, I decided to ask them. At the end of each period, I asked the kids to share on a sticky note what they expected from teachers.
Of course, answers varied, but three common ideas emerged as I read through the sticky notes. Students expect us to be kind, patient, and supportive. And while I imagine these are considered given, the kids led me to believe they may not be as “given” as we think. And this gives me pause. These are not unreasonable expectations. As a parent, learner, human, I, too, share these expectations for the person at the front of the room, and while I do not believe any teachers would willfully be otherwise, I do know that these three essential elements are not always in play. But, I blame the game here more than the player. I point my finger at a system so focused on the business that they’ve seem to have forgotten about the customers–the humans in the room. Kids. Kids want to learn. I believe this. But to learn is to trust, and kids aren’t going to trust someone who can’t meet their basic needs: kindness, patience, and support.
In the system, if kids are not meeting our expectations we pour abundant resources into addressing the shortfall. But it seems, then, we should do the same for the shortfall of the system when it fails to meet the expectations of the kids, and this leads me to believe that perhaps the path is meeting kids’ expectations rather than always and only responding when they don’t meet ours. We’ve worn out the latter. Maybe it’s time we focus on the former if we really want to change education. Maybe instead of worrying about teaching kids to listen, we need to learn to listen to learn.
Along today’s trail we will experience…
…connecting through Smiles and Frowns.
…completing and submitting a draft.
…reflecting in our Journey Journals.
…hearing a Sappy Sy Rhyme.
Happy Tuesday, all.
Do. Reflect. Do Better.
Mini milestone today. This is my 850th post since starting my blog four years ago. As I have said before, never did I imagine that I would blog so much or so long. It’s become a daily, school-morning habit now, an important reflective tool for me as I work to provide better learning experiences for my students. Some mornings, it comes easily to me, but others it eludes me. Either way, it’s now habit, and I sit here in the dark each morning trying to find my muse. How much longer? Not sure. I will at least finish out this year and continue next. That will give me five full years of Project 180, and we’ll see where my journey takes me from there.
For now, I will continue making my way one day at a time. Thank you to all of you who have joined me on my journey. Couldn’t do it without you.
Along today’s trail we will experience…
…reconnecting through Smiles and Frowns.
…finishing up and revising our Wisdom Writers pieces.
…reflecting in our Journey Journals.
…hearing a Sappy Sy Rhyme.
Happy last school Monday of the year, all.
Do. Reflect. Do Better.
Late start to my post this morning. Don’t even know where to start. I have nothing to say and everything to say at once. So, I think I will just share an exchange between a student and me from a feedback conference yesterday.
I have not always been so patient. It’s taken time for me to become a better listener, a better questioner. And though there are still times when I rush to fill the silent moments in my conferences with kids, I have gotten better at letting go. Here’s the message I shared with all my kids yesterday.
I am learning to let go.
Along today’s trail we will experience…
…connecting through Smiles and Frowns.
…demonstrating our learning with a Learning Check.
…reflecting in our Journey Journals.
…hearing a Sappy Sy Rhyme.
Happy Friday, all. Have a wonderful weekend.
Do. Reflect. Do Better.
Real, I’ve come to find, is rarely ideal. It has blemishes. It will always have blemishes. It’s real–it has to. And though some think it unappealing and unattractive, it is authentic, and I think authentic is beautiful.
Of course, on some level, this may simply be my rationalizing my own reality, but I have little interest in “playing school” with my kids. To be sure, that is not to say that I have no interest in their learning. In fact, it’s their learning that compels me to dare different in the first place, which often leads me down a different path for I am afflicted: I have an aversion to playing pretend. I’m suspicious of the “look of learning,” believing we can–and often do–dress things up to make them look like–what we believe–to be learning. Of course, this is not to say this always the case, but in many cases we seem to have this idea that the compliant classroom is the model classroom. I don’t accept that at face value. But I suspect by now that comes as no surprise to my readers, for I have long pushed the commitment-over-compliance narrative, believing true learning comes from commitment, not compliance. And in my experience that means things have to look different, and different is not always pretty.
Yesterday, we had a personal-reading day, and not wanting to play pretend with my kiddos, I offered this message to set the stage.
Kids made choices. Were all those choices ideal? Nope. Some chose their phones. Some worked on math. Most read. Not ideal. But it was real. So, you let kids hang out on their phones and do math during reading time? No, I let them make a choice. And then, I asked them to own it in a record/reflection at the end. Am I remiss in my duties, then? I don’t know, but a choice is not a choice if it’s not a choice.
There is power and promise in choice. One of my kiddos pointed that out during Smiles and Frowns.
One will not find the ideal in room 206. That is a choice that I have made, and I will own that choice. Yes, I want better, but better is more real than ideal. That is the reality I welcome in my classroom.
Along today’s trail we will experience…
…connecting through Smiles and Frowns.
…self-assessing work with theme.
…preparing for our next Learning Check on theme.
…reflecting in our Journey Journals.
…hearing a Sappy Sy Rhyme.
Happy Thursday, all.
Do. Reflect. Do Better.
A bit lost this morning. Caught in thought about what I’ve done, what I’m doing, and what I want to do. Sometimes, the lines are so blurred, the view so dim, that I am no longer certain about who I am and what I am doing. And while I do believe at my core that I am doing necessary work to disrupt the status quo, the edges fray at times, and I am left dancing with doubt.
Of course, he’s a familiar partner, and we execute our choreographed routine expertly, but it is contrived–we share no love, court no connection, for each threatens the other’s existence, but there on the floor we meet anyway, stepping through our now-automatic routine. Some days, he leads. Other days, I. Either way, we dance.
My latest lead, has me pushing him around the floor, trying to gain ground on what best represents learning. No, not a new routine. I have been stepping to this for some time, but it’s a quandary that gets me moving in double-time as I consider the routine (now rut) of the status quo and its dependence on standardized data. In the end, I imagine a reckoning, a place I’m moving towards, a place I cannot escape. And I worry a little–maybe more than a little–about the consequences of our final dance. And though this finale is not near, it’s not too far away either, for I only have so many years. At some point, we will have our last dance.
Along today’s trail we will experience…
…connecting through Smiles and Frowns.
…self-assessing a Learning Check.
…the freedom of personal reading.
…reflecting in our Journey Journals.
…hearing a Sappy Sy Rhyme.
Happy Wednesday, all.
Do. Reflect. Do Better.
“Sy, it’s my goal to break your spirit by the end of the year.”
He didn’t mean it meanly. And I really don’t think he fully meant it, but he said it, and while I like to think he was only joking, I also know that there is nearly always some truth in kidding.
I think my “spirit,” as he likes to call it, confounds him a bit. I think he’s used to “breaking” teachers. I think he’s come to expect their predictable responses to his behavior, and so far my responses have not fallen into line. Most of the time we think it’s incumbent on the teacher to figure out the kid, but sometimes it’s the kid who has to figure out the teacher. And I’m not quite sure he’s fully figured me out yet. So, when I hear “break your spirit,” I really hear “figure you out.” And, I suppose, that’s what it’s really about–figuring it each other out as we daily dance through the human experience. I am honored to have such a skilled partner. He keeps me on my toes.
Along today’s trail we will experience…
…connecting through Smiles and Frowns.
…demonstrating learning with a Learning Check.
…reflecting in our Journey Journals.
…hearing a Sappy Sy Rhyme.
Happy Tuesday, all.
Do. Reflect. Do Better.
There’s a difference. It’s there. I see it, feel it, hear it daily. And as “present” as it is, the reason eludes me. Why is there a difference? Are the honors kids really smarter? Are the “regular” kids (hate that title, by the way) actually dumber? Is it parenting? Is it socioeconomic? Is it bias? Maybe. Maybe not. But there’s a difference. And I want to know why.
Most of my career, I have taught “regular” kids. Not until my twentieth year did I start having honors kids. And though I have more honors than “regs,” each year I have continued teaching a few sections of regular sophomore language arts. This year, I have four sections of honors and one section of regular. And there is a difference: academically, behaviorally, socially. But why?
Of course it may be impossible to know the actual answer. It may be equally unlikely that we could ascertain all the factors that contribute to the difference, but if I were to guess, I’d put my finger on the institutional bias the kids have experienced since they entered the schoolhouse. From day one, they have been ranked and sorted; consequently, they have learned to live into the roles of school.
As such, my informal observations have led me to believe that the biggest difference is one group simply plays the game of school better than the other. And the longer they play the game, the more situated into those roles they become. And why wouldn’t they? We handed them the script, and we have made them follow it for years. In truth, we have largely made them. We have fixed them into place. And we keep them there–mostly, it seems–because we believe we have to. But we don’t. And until we radically rethink how we do things, they will remain statically stuck waiting for the deus ex machina to liberate them. But the god in the machine won’t save them. The play must go on. The script and stage are set. They are what we think.
Maybe we need to think differently.
Along today’s trail we will experience…
…reconnecting through Smiles and Frowns.
…preparing for tomorrow’s Learning Check.
…reflecting in our Journey Journals.
…hearing a Sappy Sy Rhyme.
Happy Monday, all.
Do. Reflect. Do Better.