What We Teach

While the start of almost all school years will include some settling out of new faces, new needs and new attitudes, I'll easily admit that this year has been exceptional. It's been tough to get kids to effectively communicate in times of conflict. We have seen it the most amongst our freshman class. While teachers and students see the argument or fight in the hallway, those of us in the front office usually get to hear the rest of the story surrounding the event. In many of these cases, the students involved are friends. They are upset over something or someone and when they attempt to communicate that, it fails miserably.

In the wake of this, I was very quick to utter the statement, "Kids today just can't communicate!" On the surface it is easy to say that. Each new generation carries the blame and ridicule of an older generation that disagrees with how we have changed culturally. The more I thought about it though, I'm not certain it's all their fault. All children learn through observation. Their communication skills (or a lack thereof) are learned behaviors, not ones that are innate to a group of people, born at a particular time. So where are our kids learning this? Between families that increasingly split due to conflict, mass media that popularizes all kinds of dysfunctional behavior and political leaders that name call each other via social media, is it any wonder why our children behave the way that they do? So with that being said, what on earth do we do about it? I think that all we can do is educate. We teach kids, and if the truth was told, we teach them a lot more than what we see in our curriculum.  But just like the content knowledge that we want them to know, we have to be explicit about how to behave as well. We all get frustrated and upset at times, and that's perfectly normal. What we have to teach kids (and sometimes remind ourselves) is how to handle life when that happens. Remember that good or bad, we are all an example for our kids. We are the ones that children look to for knowledge and guidance. What we teach, often has nothing to do with what we are paid for.

Over Communicate

I genuinely think that the majority of problems in any organization occur from a failure to communicate. In schools, I think that is even more true. Wether we acknowledge it or not, we are in a relationship with one another. Like any relationship, both parties need to express what they think and how they feel. Also like most relationships, we often assume that the other party understands what we think and feel. We've all been guilty of that at one point or another and the moment we realize it, we usually understand how things could have happened differently. It's often easy to acknowledge that feeling with a spouse, family member or a child, but we are not as quick to see it in our professional lives. I recently read an article about leadership and it highlighted failing to over-communicate as a key problem in leadership. Basically, if you want to lead a group of people, you have to be clear about what you want, and follow up along the way quite often about it. This week I thought I would start with a simple exercise in over-communicating.

I appreciate you. I genuinely do. I've seen so many of you do extra things for each other and for your students, and all of that makes my job so much easier. Homecoming week is always a great time to see school staff work with students on creative projects. That collaboration builds relationships and fosters growth for both parties. Thanks for taking your time to make this week's events happen and for doing the extra little things that show kids that you care. It may be just a silly outfit, participating in the pep rally or organizing the lineup for the homecoming court, but to kids it matters. So thank you. I hope that you know that I appreciate you, but this week, I want to be sure that I've said it.