Dr. Miller has the principals of Greene County working on a book study on parental and community involvement. I'll admit that it is a topic that I struggle with from time to time. I think I can usually handle parents and community members well, but at least half of my parent interactions are negative due to grades or discipline and getting community partnerships that work is often a long and arduous process. I love my positive experiences with parents. I relish them. The not-so-positive ones can take the wind out of your sails and make you question every decision you ever made. Lately, many of my tough conversations with parents have had little or nothing to do with the academic success of their child and more to do with playing time, leaving for lunch or poor behavior choices. When parents and school personnel disagree on those items, there is usually not much middle ground. (Thought: By not finding an alternate viewpoint, did I just fail the Milgram test from last week?)
Amidst my struggling with ideas on how to engage parents, I visited the teachers of my own children to get their report cards this week. The duty has formerly been handled by my wife, but now that the girls are in school in Greene County, I have earned the job. My visit to Snow Hill Primary and Mrs. Cook's class was awesome! I had a great discussion on how my child is doing, what specifically she can do to improve, how it links to assessments and what I can do to help. As a parent, I left feeling so empowered and proud! While I'm certain that Mrs. Cook was probably hesitant about talking with a principal that she barely knows, her professionalism and honest critique of my child's learning were so great that it changed my mind about parent contact and communication all together.
So there I am on cloud nine, and then I visit West Greene for my oldest child, Rylee. Rylee is smart, but she is too much like her father and she gets herself into situations that often take great work to get out of. While her academics were good, I listened to her teacher talk about behaviors such as hanging from bathroom stall doors and a foiled attempt to purposely trip another girl in class. Her teacher was honest with me (and I appreciate that) but I left struggling with what to do (other than threaten to strangle my child before we left the parking lot.)
I say all of this, because we are at the point in the semester where we know that we need to do something about our kids that are not cutting it. Just about every teacher has kids that have given up, skipped classes or acted out to the point of utter frustration. You need administrative and parental reinforcements and for the right kid you might just do anything to get them working and behaving again! Being a parent is tough. Some do a great job at it and some down right suck at it, but both of those parents have times that are tough with their kids. Please make the effort to connect with your student's parents and if you need help, please let me help you do that. Remember to contact the parents of those kids that are doing well too. Those make us feel just as good as it makes them feel. If you're up to it, take up the challenge that I posted last year of making just one positive phone call home per week. Good or bad, all kids make mistakes and they desperately need adults in their lives to help them when they do.
Yesterday I joined the other principals in the district in walking through math classrooms in several different schools so that we could look for mathematics practices at different levels. Math is a district priority this year and we are looking for some universal best-practices as they compare to research. I saw great teachers from the Early College all the way down to a Kindergarten classroom and I was really able to learn a lot from each. Despite the assignment of looking for math language and strategic questioning, I couldn't help but look for general teaching practice. I am a strong believer that you can teach anything to students of any age if your methods are engaging enough to capture their attention and interest. Out of all of the classrooms, I think that the very best thing I saw yesterday was in the Kindergarten classroom. The teacher had a practice of having kids celebrate each other when they got a question right and celebrate themselves when they had mastered a concept as a group. As each child answered a question correctly in front of the class, the whole class recited, "You're Faaannn-Tastic!" Each and every child walked back to their spot on the carpet with a smile and a glowing sense of accomplishment.
Certainly this classroom practice is too juvenile for our teenagers...or is it? Watch our successful athletes when they practice and compete. Leaders on the team often congratulate teammates when they do well and encourage them when they make mistakes. They do it in different ways, but what they are really saying is, "You're Faaannn-Tastic!" How many of us have this kind of culture in our classrooms? Sure, many of us encourage kids and praise them when they do well, but is it done by peers as well? Do we celebrate academic achievement publicly? If you have ever had the privilege of being recognized for your efforts at a staff meeting, just think about how it made you feel about your work and your willingness to continue to make a difference. If we did this in our classrooms, could it make an impact on student effort and in their grit toward things that are hard? I'm challenging you to work to build this kind of culture in your classrooms. Every one of your students learned this kind of practice in Kindergarten, so it shouldn't be hard to replicate. If you can build this in your class, you might just be Faaannn-Tastic too!
