8 Laps

While I viewed Greene Central as my school's rival when I was in high school, I did run my last track race at Greene Central. The Rams hosted a regional championship and I qualified for the 3200m that year despite a nagging knee injury. I knew at the start of the race that it would likely be my last. Since then I have been in and out of running depending on if I had a personal goal or race in mind. Over the past couple of years I haven't been very motivated to lace my shoes up and go for a run, but lately, it has called me back. After most of the students and staff are gone for the day, I have headed back out to our track to run the 8 laps of the 3200m. It takes me about 5 minutes longer than it did when I was 18, but it has brought me a lot of inner peace and time to reflect. It's frustrating not being as fast as I once was, but I don't think it's about racing anymore.

Over the next couple of weeks, I hope that the time you have to sleep in, visit with family, share gifts and eat great food gives you the time to recharge. During your time off, take a moment to find some inner peace and reflection, especially if that's something you've put in the background like I did. What may take 8 laps for me, can be something different for you, but either way, it's an investment in yourself. When you invest in yourself, you're more valuable to everyone else. Enjoy your time off, you've all earned it.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Someone To Go To

On the way to school each day, I pass by a neighbor's house with horses. I grew up with horses and I can't help but look at them each morning. This morning I noticed that two horses, an older mare and a young filly had gotten out of their pasture and were standing beside the road. I couldn't help but pull over and try to get them to safety. The horses let me walk up to them and they both followed me back into the yard and away from the highway. They stayed beside me until the owner came to put them back into the pasture.

Aside from my horse wrangling time, I'm reading a book about children with Adverse Childhood Experiences titled, Childhood Disrupted. I led a discussion at my principal's meeting this week on a chapter about resiliency. The chapter looks into why some people, despite the negative events that happen to them, turn out to be ok. It appears that genetics can determine how sensitive we are or are not toward negative or stressful events. But despite those genes, having an adult in your life that you can trust and talk to during stressful childhood events, can almost completely negate the effects of the events or the genetics.

Often, as school employees, we become that caring adult that students talk to. You don't have to teach very long before a student will open up to you and tell you things that make you worry about them. As an administrator, I often get tough stories from students, their parents, and teachers that need to get something off their chests. I'll quickly admit that I do not always feel like I know the right thing to say. But I think that the few minutes I spent with two horses this morning, taught me that you don't have to hear the right thing as long as you have someone to go to when you feel like you are in trouble. Those horses also showed me that it works for everyone, young and old. While students look to us for a caring adult, remember that you need that person as well. I had to tell myself that just this week, and I'm glad that I did. Teaching students about mental health, grit, and resilience also means modeling those behaviors and being vulnerable enough to talk about it.

Looking Out for Others

While I'm not at all a fan of cold weather, I do love Christmas. I think that I have appreciated this holiday more as an adult that I ever really did as a child. Growing up, we never had a live Christmas tree, so when I had my first apartment in college, I decided that I wanted one. My wife, Erika, still laughs at me every year when we pick out a tree, in memory of the giant tree that filled up my small, one-bedroom apartment that year. With that tree in the apartment, there was only one side of the living room that could see the TV and you had to maneuver around it to get into the hallway. It was ridiculous. In true college student fashion, it was decorated with cheap ornaments and a homemade garland of beer bottle caps. While it showed my love for the holiday, looking back it was very ugly.

Fast forward almost 20 years and Erika decided that it was time for us to update our Christmas decor this year. With our kids with friends and family last weekend, we set out to buy new decorations. We had a great time, and while I'm usually not one for spending the day shopping, I had a blast getting ready for Christmas. I was so excited to post pictures on Facebook of our new things in my celebration of the holiday. And that's where it started. Several teachers saw what I posted and what I didn't post, was my actual tree. (I still have a problem buying large trees, but now I just have bigger rooms to put them in.) This week several teachers were genuinely worried that the small tree in the corner that I took a picture of, was the only one that my family would have this year. They took the time to check on me and finally broach the subject of why I didn't have a real Christmas tree.

By now, you've probably learned that I like to use daily events to tell a story or lesson, and this week is no exception. This week's Christmas tree misadventure taught me a lot about how teachers pay attention to those around them and try to look for signs that something isn't quite right. I never noticed that my Facebook post gave clues to people around me that something in my home was out of the norm. In the same way, teachers notice their students and can pick up on small signs that show that something may not be right. We have seen quite a bit of that lately as students struggle with hunger, depression and family problems outside of the school. They wear small signs that they may not even realize. But caring people in our building have paid attention and took those signs as a chance to help. That help has probably comforted more students than we may ever realize.

In the spirit of the holidays, I want to say thank you to those of you that look out for me as well as all of the other people in our building. I have always asked that we work hard to take care of ourselves as well as one another. I learned this week that you all do a great job of this.

Leadership Matters

I came to Greene County under a somewhat strange set of circumstances. I had always lived and worked in Pitt County and while I had gone back to school to be an administrator, I was somewhat disillusioned with education at the time. I was sitting in a conference room in Chapel Hill, listing to guest speakers talk to us about school leadership and the job that we were about to embark upon when I met Patrick Miller. He caught my attention with what he said to us and I remember thinking, "this is a guy I can work for." When he finished speaking, he had to leave to get to another appointment. I stepped out of the room after him, pretending to go towards the restroom, and followed him into the parking lot of the Friday Center. I introduced myself and told him I was interested in coming to see Greene County Schools. That introduction didn't immediately lead to me working in Greene County, but it did lead me back here a few years later, and I'm thankful.

Having a presence of leadership, whether you're the superintendent, the principal or the classroom teacher, is all the same thing. And let me be clear, being in charge is not the same thing as leadership. Leadership envokes people to get behind you and the mission of your group or organization. In a school district, that means working toward lofty goals that take years to come to fruition, but in a classroom, it can mean getting through a lesson or unit. Either way, the objective is met by having someone that inspires and guides the group to do their best. In both roles, you can demand certain actions and berate failure, but true leaders get the most out of others through encouragement, coaching, modeling, and patience.

Students screw up, teachers sometimes fail, and principals sometimes lose sight of the big picture. But it is leadership that puts all of us back on the right track and causes us to regain sight of why we are all here. I'm thankful to work in Greene County and for North Carolina's State Superintendent of the Year, Dr. Patrick Miller. Working here and with him literally kept me in the field of education. But I'm also thankful for the dozens of classroom leaders that I work with every day. Leadership matters at every level.

Managing Behavior

I always thought that the hallmark of a great sermon was that you left church feeling like the preacher was speaking to you directly. When a message resonates with your daily life or a struggle you are going through, the message feels personal despite that fact that it was given to a large audience. I'm going to attempt that today, so if something resonates with you, then know that I may have had you in mind, or maybe I never knew that you needed it. Either way, I hope it helps.

I've had classroom management on my mind a lot lately. Somewhat because we put it on our School Improvement Plan and somewhat because I have worked with some teachers in efforts to improve a situation. I've seen some validation in the concerns that were voiced in last year's Teacher Working Conditions Survey and it's popped up in some strange places. Places I didn't expect to be perfectly honest. At the heart of each issue was a teacher with good intentions. They were working to get a student, a group or a class in line and were not being effective. That ineffectiveness comes out in strange ways. You can see frustration, anxiety, anger, sadness and sometimes apathy on the face of a teacher when they know something isn't really working. We raise our voices, change our language, insert sarcasm or just give up. None of that works though.

Teaching is a strange job. We tell teachers to build relationships with students. Sometimes those relationships are as close a family for both parties. In that, we forget that this is a job. It's business. But in our business transactions, we take things personally. When we invest in a person and they let us down, it's hard not to feel that way. At the moment, it's difficult to separate yourself from those feelings. But we have to.

I could use this paragraph to reference professionalism or teacher leadership as the reason why we cannot show that frustration and all of that is true. But greater than that is the fact that these children rely on us as examples of how to act. Through our actions, we either entitle them to continue negative behaviors or stand as a consistent example of what good adults do. Whether you demonstrate professionalism or lose your cool, you model behavior the exact same way you model a problem on the board. The "I'm the adult and you're the student" excuse for differing rules and expectations doesn't work, especially in high school. Not all of our students come equipped with examples in their homes of how to behave or how to act in the presence of frustration in their lives. And while we never took a class on that in college, it's our job to teach it. If we are successful, it's probably much more important than anything in our curriculum.

So if today's message spoke to you in any way, then use it to reflect on your priorities as an educator. It's not an indictment and I'm not calling anyone out. Trust me, we're all in good company. If you need help, then that's what I'm here for, along with Mrs. Willis, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Simms. That's also what your colleagues are for. There is no silver bullet in managing student conduct. But there is help and support for when you feel like you need it.

A Difficult Job

The last time I had to hire a receptionist, we had 84 people apply for the job. Many of those people
had different qualifications and experiences, but I had an image in my head of what I wanted, and I didn't see that on any of the resumes that I was reading. Often when I hire for a position, I am looking for a particular personality type. I strongly believe that you can teach a person to do a job (any job), but you cannot teach them to be someone that they are not. At the time, I was working hard to build parent contacts, especially among our Hispanic student population, and I thought that having someone up front that could speak Spanish would help me a lot. I had also seen how stressful that job can be and I knew that answering phones was a small part of the position. 

While I had not formally met Liz, I knew her sister from my time at Greene Early College and I had heard several stories about how great of a person she was. She was in school part-time but didn't really know what she wanted to do. She had taken a part-time job working with ESL students at GCMS and I used my connection with her sister to call her. She was unsure about taking the job but I did my best to convince her to interview and we offered her the job quickly after. Her first day was April 1st, and in retrospect, I probably should have waited one more day. I am amazed that she came back after she had to read fake names over the intercom (she realized it with Chris P. Bacon) and was frightened with fake roaches. But she did come back and somewhere along the way, she became part of our family. 

Today we say goodbye to a young woman that has helped us all countless times. She has endured the craziness of the front office. She counsels students when they are upset or sick. She calms parents before they make it to see us. She finds substitutes when we have none and she knows who to call before a fire drill. She helped us build bridges to our Hispanic community, who, for the first time, knew that they could call the school and ask a question about their child. But more importantly, she had the right personality. She knew how to make us all feel better about the place we spend most of our daytime hours. And along the way, she figured out that she wanted to be a school counselor. While I hate to see her leave us, I am reminded that I made her promise that she would finish school when she took the job. 

Liz has a difficult job in keeping us all straight, but I think in some way, we served as her internship for counseling. Her experience has been priceless and we have all been better having her here. Thanks for everything Liz.

Eavesdropping

Sometime last week, I was waiting outside a restaurant for my name to be called so that I could be seated. My wife, Erika, was with me and she is fully aware of my propensity to watch people in public. People-watching is one of my favorite things to do and she tells me all the time that it borders on being rude. Nonetheless, I was watching a group of young adults in their early twenties and I couldn't help but overhear their conversation. They were discussing high school and while some of them were quick to hate their experiences, one young woman defended her time there as positive. Her evidence came back to one teacher in particular that made her appreciate American history. (Now you know I was hooked!) She talked about trench warfare lessons where the students built trenches from classroom furniture and threw foam and paper balls at one another in a recreation of World War I. While she was speaking about the teacher's methods and how she allowed her students to experience their content rather than listen to it, she was also recalling key pieces of information that I couldn't help but notice. She used key vocabulary and could tell why they did what they did as a part of the teaching process.

So here was a student, at least 5 years displaced from the classroom, that could recall key information from a high school lesson. While contemporary research speaks volumes about how students are simply memorizing information long enough to test in our age of assessment, this young woman was proving that wrong. Her experiences allowed her to learn things that we associate with standards and vocabulary comprehension, but she knew it only because she associated it with good teaching.

So here's my take away, and I don't think it's going to be what you are expecting. While you might think that I'm talking about active learning or project-based instruction, I'm not necessarily advocating for that. What I am advocating for is this: Do your students associate you with good teaching? If not, it doesn't matter how much planning you did or out-of-seat time they have, the connection was lost. The conversation that I overheard had much more to do with her connection to the teacher than that teacher's methods. There are many of you that have different teaching styles that work for you and may not necessarily work for a teacher down the hall, and that's ok. The question that each of us needs to consistently ask of ourselves, is "Does my style actually work for me?" If not, it's time to change it up!

Stubbornness Can Get You Far

Standing outside of a church, I was a nervous 21-year-old kid in a tuxedo that today I would know didn't fit as well as it should. To break the ice before we went inside, my soon-to-be-wife's father made a joke and told me that I was going to make a great first husband for her. I think a lot of people had that in the back of their minds that day and before. She was only 20 then and we had gotten engaged when she was just 19. We were young and dumb, but you couldn't tell us anything.

My wife, Erika, and I celebrated our 15th anniversary this week, and while that's no huge feat by any means, I do think that it's a bit farther than a lot of people expected back then. We are both very different people today than we were then, but one trait that we both have has remained. We are both very stubborn. We hate admitting defeat on anything. Just ask our kids. We are not above cheating in games with them to win. While that trait is sometimes viewed in the same realm of closed-mindedness, when it is applied positively, we often change the word to persistence.

Doing something new in your classroom is often not easy. As adults we are resistant to change and even when we know that change could be a good thing, we stop with early obstacles. At the start of the year, Mrs. Garcia issued a 30-day challenge to make your objectives at the forefront of your lessons and in your instruction. Some of you took up that challenge, and others set it aside for now. Some persisted, and others did not. The great thing about it is that you can start again today. If you do start again, try being stubborn about it. Don't think of it as a task or a change. Think of it as a challenge. I'm sure that some of you are like me and if you went into it with the mentality of a parent in a game of monopoly against an 11-year-old, you would do anything to win. Or maybe you're more sentimental. Then you could use the mentality of a 21-year-old kid, stubborn enough to marry a 20-year-old girl, and stubborn enough to make it work. Either way, put your stubbornness to work for you. Sometimes you never know just how far it could take you.

She Called My Mom

This week I had a discussion with a teacher that knew one of my former teachers from 9th grade. I had to chuckle when I heard her name because this teacher and I bumped heads often. By mid-year, the phone calls to my mom at work were becoming more regular due to my smart mouth in class. In my adolescent opinion, her comments in class were deserving of my quick reply and I was not about to lose a battle of words with anyone. In hindsight, I most definitely crossed a lot of lines that I shouldn't have. At some point, it reached a breaking point with my mother. I had been marched from class into a teacher's lounge where we interrupted my mom at work with another phone call. After the teacher spoke with her, I took the phone. My mom did not care to hear my side of the story, or really even the teacher's side. She had had enough of all of it. What she said to me was something that I couldn't forget. She was tired of the calls to work and told me that it was my job to change it. Whatever I was doing, whether it felt justified or not, was not bringing about the action that anyone wanted.  If I wanted the teacher to stop calling my mom (and I did) then I had to change what I was doing.

Some part of that did not seem fair at the time, but there was some genius in it. We do not control how people act or react to us as individuals, but we do always control how we react, even in the midst of adversity. None of what was happening to me in that class felt fair to me at that time, but if I wanted something to change, then I was just as responsible as anyone for changing it. There are many things in life and in our jobs that do not seem right or fair and while we cannot change many of those things, we do control so much of the outcome related to us. If the results you are getting are not what you want, and you can't seem to change the people or events that cause them, then think about your reaction and how that can change to create a new outcome. A new strategy can work and get you what you want in the end.

Clinometers

Over the summer I received a gift from a family member that knew about my appreciation for nautical items. The gift was a ship's clinometer and it sits on a bookshelf on my office. I set it there as something neat to look at and thought that this would be the extent of its use. Little did I know that in the wake of hurricane Florence, this antique would become a metaphor for how our school would progress in the weeks and months after our return.

Most people do not know what a clinometer's purpose is. On a ship, it measures the incline or depression that the ship takes on the water. On rough seas, it measures the chop of the waves as the ship rises and falls and on calm seas, it can measure how balanced the load on a ship is distributed. If the ship is loaded incorrectly in the front, the ship must plow through more water while the rear of the ship rides much more smoothly, yet inefficiently.

The week and a half of school days lost due to the storm and impassable roads have placed a large weight on the front of our ship. Our fall semester has fewer days and getting material covered, grand challenges presented, certifications earned, benchmarks completed and exams prepped will be a challenge. The front of our ship will have to plow through a great deal of water and along the way, there will be waves. There will be good weeks and tough ones that tip our clinometer back and forth. But while we ride the waves on or unbalanced ship, it's important to note that the ship pushes on. It does not sink and it does not sit still.

The next three months will present us challenges, but rest assured that our crew has the expertise and experience to weather the journey. Your leadership in your classroom and beyond will be called upon to get our precious cargo to their destination. Everyone must play their role. And while the clinometer of our school may be out of balance, it is no match for the will of our school, our staff, our students and our community. Steady as she goes.

Seeing Growth

This year starts my sixth year as principal at Greene Central. During that time, I have seen the state's accountability system change quite a bit. Some of it I can agree with and other parts I personally think are ridiculous. We have seen Common Core math rise and fall along with new standards in every core subject area. Those that taught outside of the core area tested subjects saw a couple of years of portfolios, graded by fellow teachers, first outside our district then within it, only to see it disappear as quickly as it arrived. In North Carolina, we seem to continue to struggle with how to measure teacher and school success versus failure. Our current system, despite the simple letter grades, can be very deceiving. While grades for a student measure degrees of accuracy or mastery of the content, our measure for schools is not quite that simple. No matter how students do or do not perform statewide, our system will always have a group designated as high growth, meeting growth and not meeting growth. Rather than measuring student knowledge against the standards, we measure teachers against one another. If you have the most teachers at the top of that list, your school wins.

Over the past five years, Greene Central has had years of being a D school and then we grew to a C. There were years where we met growth and years where we did not. Sometimes I think I can predict it well, only to find out that I'm not that good. I'll be honest and admit that I did not see us reaching the high growth mark that was announced this week. Our Math 1 teachers were still perfecting a new way of teaching. We had almost all new teachers on the English 2 team, and Biology was experimenting with new benchmark tests and determining how much time to devote to which standards. When I learned that we not only made high growth but were among the top 10% of all schools in the state, I was blown away. When those results were made public, I can tell you that seeing it in print felt great.

While the whole school is designated with the high growth status, there are actually just a few people in our school that are directly responsible for that portion of our school's grade. The teachers that teach the EOC subjects face a greater sense of pressure in determining not only their own personal growth but also in knowing that that number will also reflect the school as a whole. That often means longer conversations with administrators, more meetings, more assessments and more visits to their classrooms. While the state and the community sees a high growth status and the accolades that we enjoy, they do not see the countless hours of work that went into out-performing almost every other group of teachers in the state. This is the case for high levels of success for almost every field. To be among the best, you have to out-work, out-last and out-think everyone else. Doing just one thing well, will not get you there.

This year I asked that we celebrate being a teacher and the millions of victories that come with our jobs every day. This week we not only have little victories to celebrate but also have a pretty big one. And while achievement can fall just as quickly as it rises, this week we need to pause to celebrate the very skills that we all work to teach our students. Perseverance, grit, determination, and dedication brought us here. A great big thanks goes out to each of you that played a role in that.

Once a Ram, Always a Ram

Near the end of the summer, I was tagged on Facebook by multiple people that had seen a post of a young woman that was looking for the owner of a Greene Central class ring from 1984. I was able to connect with her and get the story of how her grandmother had found it in a used car that was purchased many years ago. Her grandmother had always wanted to find the owner but had no idea where to begin. Armed with the resources of social media, Makayla Meeks set out to find the owner of the ring for her grandmother. Throughout the process of finding the owner, I got to meet Makayla, a former student of Coach Wooten at North Pitt. I also got to meet the ring's rightful owner, Cheryl Moye. Cheryl now lives in Connecticut, but still has many strong ties to Greene County. I also spoke with many other graduates from the mid-1980s that knew Cheryl or were helping to find the owner. This community of people was amazing in their stories and the things that they remembered about the school. I also went through the 1984 yearbook and found some familiar faces, including Coach Edwards and one of my cousins who worked at the school as an assistant principal that year.

The school hasn't really changed much since 1984, and the community hasn't either, and that's a good thing. You still find good people that value personal connections and the time and space that they spent together. I heard stories of people that had not spoken in almost 30 years and could still remember great things about one another. I hope that aspect of our community never changes.

This week, Greene Central welcomed in almost 200 freshmen and several new faculty members. Each of these people is a Ram now and are a part of this complex, interconnected web of people that make up our community. In the years to come, some of these people will remain in the area and some will move far and wide. But no matter where they go and what they do, once you are a Ram, you are always a Ram.

Class of 2018

I'll admit that I may have started out this week tired and overwhelmed. I walked in the door Tuesday morning thinking that I was really happy that it was a short week. When I got hit with Senior pranks a few minutes later, I was already over it. In last Friday's blog I asked teachers to dig deep and work hard this week despite how tired I know that you are, and I came in and did the exact opposite. In my frustration after everything was cleaned up, I made a statement that got twisted around pretty quickly. I joked that the Senior class hasn't been able to do much to organize themselves to do anything as a group, and now they decided to show us that they could. Somehow that statement got twisted into me saying that this class would never amount to anything after high school. I'm not sure how it got there, but it made me pause to consider why they would believe that.

Miscommunication often happens when we are frustrated. We either say things that we don't mean or don't say them well. There's a dose of humility that comes with setting the record straight. I had to do that with a few students that took things to heart. Talking with several of them this week made me realize that this may be some of my final conversations with them as students. I thought back about them as a class and about several of the individuals that stand out. We think about these students as the Class of 2018, but in reality, they are not considered under this title until they graduate. So in my penance for being misunderstood, I'd like to set the record straight on what will be the Greene Central Class of 2018.

This class arrived with high expectations. With an unusually large number of students identified as academically gifted, some amazing athletes, talented artists and young people with strong opinions, they gave us a run for our money pretty quickly. We watched them grow and so many of our teachers tried so hard to push them beyond their comfort zones. We did that because we didn't want them to just rely on talent. We tried to teach them grit and perseverance. We changed school schedules and created more college course opportunities to try to give them every shot we could. So many of them took advantage of these opportunities and their college and career choices will be much easier as a result. We tried hard to teach them to be leaders and to be active in their school. We saw that in how they supported one another over the past four years. They were quick to help a friend when they could because they developed a sense of community amongst themselves. In doing all of this, we created individuals. We created young adults that had an idea of what they believe in and why. 

In a few days, they will leave Greene Central and be a part of the real world. They will have bills, jobs, pressures and all of the other responsibilities that come with being an adult. But they are ready. We will miss the Class of 2018. While we hope that we made them better people to enter the world, we also know that they also made us better people and educators at the same time. 

Tired Is A Good Thing

A new teacher, trying to make use of her psychology courses, started her class by saying, "Everyone who thinks they're stupid, stand up."

After a few seconds, little Johnny stood up.

The teacher said, "Do you think you're stupid, Johnny?"

"No Ma'am, "he said, "but I hate to see you standing up there all by yourself."

Undoubtedly, we are all tired enough to be that teacher at this point in the year. Between exam reviews, relentless urging of students to give it their best, awards ceremonies, concerts and events and end of the semester, we all look exhausted by the end of the week. With just a few days left of classes, we are at the point of realizing that we have just about given it everything that we have to give. If you are tired, then you are probably tired for a reason. You've used the last few weeks to pour your heart and soul into getting the most from your students. You've helped them make up assignments and attendance so that they have a shot at passing the class or scoring proficient on your exam. With one week of classes left before exams begin, I am going to ask you to give me one more week of your very best. Your efforts and enthusiasm mean a lot for student and school performance. Without you, so many students simply would not make it at all.

Thank you for the long days, the longer nights and the frustration you've dealt with along the way. I appreciate you and even though they may not always say it, your students see your effort and they appreciate you too.

Politics

Recently, the social studies teacher in me has been enjoying the increase in political discussion in our school and in our profession. During last week's primary election, we had members of our AP US Government class help man polling places throughout Greene County. They got a chance to see the political process in action and even signed off on the official results from their district. The real win was that they had to register to vote before they could serve. This assignment gets them involved in voting and is something that will continue to inspire them in the years to come. What each of the students found interesting was how few people vote. Granted, they do not see early voting or absentee ballots. Even with those, about 28% of registered voters in Greene County participated in the last election.

Just days later after the primary election, teachers began the discussions surrounding teacher pay and school funding as our state legislature reconvened. As thousands of teachers descended on our state capital and thousands more supported them from afar, teachers also began to include themselves in the political process. The part that I have appreciate most about the teachers is how they are informing themselves. Civic responsibility requires that we inform ourselves on the issues and follow through on them. What I hope for educators is that Wednesday's rally is not a one and done effort. Just like I hope that our students that served at the polls have started a lifelong commitment to voting and civic duty, I also hope that teachers continue to follow the legislation that impacts them and remain active participants in the laws that regulate our profession. Continued involvement will bring action. Stay informed and participate in the political process. Bringing about change is a marathon, not a sprint.

Teachers as Classroom Leaders

During Teacher Appreciation Week I like to watch you all a little closer than normal. I'm not looking for classroom management or expert lessons. Instead I look for those of you that show true passion for what you do. I have often held the belief that something magical happens to teachers after their 3rd year. Something clicks for them and they start to realize what their style is rather than copying someone else. They have their procedures in mind and classroom management becomes easier for them. They don't feel as hectic all the time and develop a focus on what is important. I saw these characteristics this week in Mrs. Gray. Mrs. Gray was asked to speak about leadership at the JROTC awards night. Her message was short but in a few words, she said a lot.

Mrs. Gray said that she has determined that teacher leadership involved conveying three things to all of her students. First, students should know that she cares about them. Second, they should be shown grace when they fail to meet expectations. Third, they should learn something about how the real world works. While I listened to her, I thought about how universal these three things are. They can apply to every teacher, in any classroom, regardless of subject or age. While these three things show students why you care for them, they also remind teachers why they decided to teach in the first place. As teachers we often can be discouraged when students misbehave or don't put their best effort into an assignment. Our vision of what a student "should be" is often clouded by what we remember ourselves as being. We forget that not every student is like us. But when we put Mrs. Gray's three leadership ideals first, we get a better idea of what our job really is.

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week to all of you. Thank you for working hard when others do not to improve our future. Thank you for refusing to give up and for inspiring others to not give up on themselves.

Don't Tell Me...Show Me

As we have started the final marking period of the year, teachers, administrators and counselors have been rounding up our students (especially the Seniors) that have issues with grades and attendance that will keep them from passing their classes. There are always a few that wait until the end to try to make up work and attendance to keep themselves just good enough to get by. In my conversations with these students, I often hear great promises from students about what they will do if they just get one more chance to prove themselves. Some of them are genuine and some are not, but any educator knows that. I always end the conversation with a simple statement, "Don't tell me...Show me." I am all for redemption as a part of the learning process. Whether we would like to admit it or not, we have all needed a second (or third) chance at some point in our lives. What we do with that chance shows others our character.

When all is said and done, the majority of students will never use most of the information that they learn in most of their classes. I never needed to know the parts of a cell and not once have I used the quadratic formula since it was on a math test. What we really learn in school is how to produce something when it is asked of us and how to navigate the problems that keep us from being successful in doing just that. For many of us, procrastination can be a problem. Dealing with lost opportunities or having to make up work later for less credit often serves as a teaching lesson that corrects some of that behavior. This builds character.

In these last few weeks I encourage you to exercise patience when students ask for a second chance and diligence when when you expect results from that chance. Make them show you. It will do much more for them than the content of the assignment they didn't complete ever will.

The People Around You

Last week, my blog centered around choosing the right people to surround yourself with, so that they make the right impression on you. This week, I gained a new perspective on how the people that surround you serve as a support system and how important you can be to them as well. No sooner than I had submitted my blog last Friday, I received a call from my wife to tell me that her mom had suffered a stroke. By Sunday, I had a house full of her family including Erika's dad, his dog, Erika's sister from Alaska and her brother from New York. Needless to say, it's been a long week with many trips to and from the hospital. Despite the ups and downs of the week, I have been impressed by how much people step up to help out when a member of their circle is in need. I saw it not just with my wife's family, but also with her co-workers and with several of you here that stepped up to help me. (Special thanks to our APs that did a lot to let me leave early several days this week.) The people you surround yourself with, not only impress their values and character traits on you, but also work as a system to support you as a member of the group. There's no formality of asking for assistance or anything like that. People just help the ones that they care for.

I see the same among many of you and you may not even notice it yourself. There are countless times that you have covered classes for one another when there was an emergent need arose. I saw our English teachers team up and support Mrs. Medrano's freshmen English class while she was out on maternity leave. I see teachers that support one another when they know that a colleague is having a tough time outside of school. These efforts make the people around you better, and as a result of their improvement, you are better as well. So much about this job involves the people that you work with and how you help one another in a common goal. While our monthly "Whatever It Takes" award usually goes to just one person, there are times when I really think it should go to many of you as a team instead. Thanks to all of you that silently do so many things to help support your colleagues and our school family as a whole. You make us better every day.

Be Great

This week I had the privilege to attend the annual Boys and Girls Club's Be Great breakfast. This is an annual fundraiser for Greene County's Boys and Girls Club and one that I really enjoy. We get to hear from several of our local students and there is always an entertaining speaker. This year's speaker was David Sawyer, former meteorologist and current minister in Snow Hill. David said a lot about how organizations like this impact our community, but one part stuck out to me. He quoted something that I often say to students in my office. He told us that psychology finds that we are an average of the five people he spend the most time with. I use this line to remind students to hang out with people that will bring positivity to their lives. They should find people that push them academically and socially. His argument for this was that organizations like our Boys and Girls Club force children to be surrounded by positive influences in adults and peers.

For some reason that morning, I heard those words, not as a comment on children, but as advice for us all. My last year of teaching in the classroom was pretty miserable. The group of teachers that I usually ate lunch with had turned our few precious moments to eat into a daily gripe session and at some point, I had joined in. It was months before I recognized what I had become and how it was impacting me. Once I knew, I separated myself from everyone just to avoid it all. Surrounding yourself with positive people and people that push you in the right direction beyond your comfort zone makes you better despite age, race or socio-economic status. Being that person for others that surround you in return fulfills a need for the group.

As you finish out your PDPs and reflect on your year in our final weeks, be sure to take account of the five people that surround you professionally. Evaluate what you bring to one another as a group and think about how you all average out as a result. This is one area that we can learn a lot from what we tell children.

Feeling Special

Today is the big day that our special needs students wait for all year. At 10:00 am we kick off the 2018 Special Olympics and some of Greene County's favorite students get to have the time of their lives. While the focus is certainly on them, I am always impressed with the work of those that organize and run the event. From the district's organizers down to the student helpers, servant leadership abounds. I am also impressed with how humble each and every person that serves on this day can be. No one wants any credit or fanfare. That's tough for me as I help open the games because not one person seems to want to be acknowledged or thanked. Not one moment of the spotlight is taken from our athletes. That's what the day is about. Not being special, but feeling special.

Everyone enjoys feeling special in some way or another. We like being appreciated. It's just like having an extra birthday. There are so many people within schools, who come to work with the task of making others feel special about being here and doing their job. When I think of that task, I often think of our assistant principals. So much of what they do involves getting the best out of our students and staff. When those groups feel special, the school just runs better. And much like the volunteers that run our Special Olympics, assistant principals are humble. The spotlight doesn't belong on them as much as it belongs on the school and the people within it. In fact, if they do their job well, they get no credit for what they do.

Making people feel special keeps them working as a part of any organization. It gets the best out of them because they feel like they belong. That's true of everyone from the leaders in a school to the teachers that work for their students to succeed and for every student in every class. Feeling special helps us all. Today please remember to thank those people that make you feel special and to do your best to pass that on to someone else. We all deserve it.

Lessons

With the onset of Spring, I've found myself immersed in Spring sports. I am always nostalgic this time of year when I go to a home track meet. I coached track for several years and was fortunate enough to have some very successful teams and individual athletes during that time. Just visiting a track meet brings me right back and I can't help but talk to athletes and start coaching them. That was fueled this week when I read an article (you can find it here) about the life lessons that the author learned from her high school track coach. There are so many things in this article that I remember teaching my athletes and so many of them that translate directly to the classroom for students and that I still try to instill in us as educators on the same team. Out of the 12 lessons mentioned in the article, I found 2 that I think are pretty applicable to us this time of year. 

Lesson #7 - Take a Rest Between Seasons - 

"You'll come back stronger; I promise. This one was really hard for me. I'd eagerly ask my coach every year if I could compete in cross-country finals on Saturday and start track season on Monday. But he'd always make me take a solid week off and away from the team, with zero exercise. This one was hard for me. Learning how to rest is not easy, but it's so essential to avoiding both injury and burnout."

Many of us are at the point of saying that if we can "just make it through next week, we'll be fine." I get that, and trust me, even as the principal, I feel the same way too sometimes. I strongly encourage you to use next week wisely and set yourself up to fully relax during Spring break. Even if you can have your copies, grading and lessons ready to go for the Monday that we return ready, it will give you that full week of rest that can be worry free. Set yourself up to rest and then do just that.

Lesson #12 - When it's hard, try to laugh -

"A little humor can ease up any hard practice and make it fun. For my coach, it was his self-deprecating jokes that had us in tears during chilly interval workouts. So crack a joke when the going gets rough, because we could all use a little bit more laughter in our lives."

Sometimes, even when you are trying you're heart out, things don't go as planned. It's at that point that you really have 2 options to respond: complain or laugh. Complaining won't make you feel a bit better, but laughing always will. If you can practice this with your students, it will help them just as much. So in the spirit of laughing at self-deprecating jokes, enjoy this picture of an 18 year-old me. A track-ready, 130 lbs, skinny-necked kid that thought he was the coolest thing ever. He definitely wasn't.

Luck of the Irish

Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day and that is a holiday that my family celebrates proudly. Growing up, I was always told about my Irish heritage and how we came from Irish immigrants that came to America in the first migration. In the past year, I took one of those DNA tests that you mail in and found that I'm about as much African as I am Irish. (2% each) But St. Patrick's Day is one of those days that everyone gets to be Irish. With that, we think of the phrase, "Luck of the Irish." Historically speaking, that phrase has nothing to do with luck at all. It came from the days when gold and silver mining in America was done predominately by Irish immigrant labor. In those time, mining was more of a guess as to where these precious metals were located. When these Irish miners would find them, the owners used the term Luck of the Irish condescendingly to mean that it was their luck, not their brains, that led them there. While the phrase was meant to belittle the group, I think it speaks more about how hard work leads to luck.

People often think about luck as just good fortune that follows certain people. I've come to think that lucky people are often persistent and determined. When the big play happens for an athlete, we forget the countless hours of practice. When someone wins the lottery, we forget the hundreds of times they lost. So in honor of tomorrow's holiday, may the luck of the Irish be with you in finishing out this school year. It may not be brains that makes it through, but determination and hard work can get us there.

Together We Will

This weekend's state championship basketball game has certainly changed the atmosphere of the school. It feels like that has been almost all that anyone wants to talk about. The community is excited and anxious, but more importantly they are supportive. So many people have come out to buy tickets or t-shirts and to offer their hopes of a win. On Wednesday, the team sat down after practice to eat pizza and listen to a message from Michael Jenkins, a speaker with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. The heart of the message came back to three words: Together We Will.

Michael has spoken to the team several times throughout the season and his message has not changed. He wanted each of them to understand that they are not perfect. They make mistakes. We all fall short of what we plan to do from time to time. And while you should be personally accountable for your mistakes if you want to be better, being a part of a team also means that there are others there to pick you up and support you. Alone you may not achieve your goal, but together we will. Being a part of a team means sharing responsibility, sharing celebrations and sharing blame. No one player loses a basketball game. No one teacher achieves school growth. These things happen when everyone works together. It is not always easy or timely. There are a ton of people that thought that we should have been at this game last year. There were fans this year that stopped supporting when we had early losses to South Central and Kinston this year. But somewhere along the way, the messages of grit, determination, teamwork and mutual accountability that so many of you have resonated in your classrooms over the past few years stuck with these young men. They understood that together we will get there.  These lessons became a mentality and they will extend far beyond a basketball court. I hope that each of you know that you are a part of this team. You contributed to this mentality. You held them accountable when they failed to meet expectations and you celebrated their successes. Saturday's game is as much your championship as it is theirs. It is all of ours. Thanks to all of you for putting in that work.

We Need More

I'll admit that I can easily get passionate enough about a topic that I can go to great lengths to argue my point. I can easily get frustrated when people don't automatically see things my way and it is something that I sometimes have to check myself on. Being patient does not come naturally for me. Last week I wanted so badly to espouse my thoughts on guns in schools, our mental health system, failing parents and failing legislators in an effort to deliver what I thought was a common sense approach to school and student safety. But my temper wasn't ready to put that out there yet and I had to be patient. Being combative and argumentative toward others that are a part of the process, often alienates them when we should being finding common ground instead. So in my attempt to regain rationality, I look to positive people that are up lifting.  This week's voting for Teacher of the Year told me that many of you may have been feeling the same way.

Michelle Galloway has always been the same. Her ever-positive, bright smile is infectious. I first met her when she was still teaching for a Pitt County school and she arrived with a group of people that were interested in starting a church and needed a place to host others on Sundays. At that first meeting, I had no idea if she could teach or not (but trust me, she certainly can). I saw someone that cared. She knew many of our current students and that same positivity shined through. I knew right away that I needed her here. Despite working with some of our most needy students, that positivity has been unwavering. It's just hard to have a bad day when you're in her classroom.

The world needs more people like Mrs. Galloway. We have enough hot-tempered ones that are ready to argue all of the time. And while I don't see myself losing those character traits anytime soon, I am also smart enough to know that there are many times when a bright smile and a helping hand will achieve so much more than criticism ever could. We need more of that.

It Got Hotter

Anyone that works with the public will likely develop theories about why attitudes and emotions change in groups of people from time to time. Many blame full moons or changes in barometric pressure on emotional acts or erratic behavior. One of the changes that I believe in is the relationship between temperature and behavior. Many psychological studies show a direct correlation between increased temperatures (especially humid heat) and increases in violent behavior. While most people report preferring warmer weather, statistics show increases in violent crime during the warmer months. The explanation is that heat increases our body temperatures, raising testosterone and increasing our likelihood for being agitated or aggressive. Perhaps that's why the warm front that changed our otherwise seasonable weather early in the week to near 80 degree temperatures also brought a couple of fights and a lot of students that needed to talk some heated situations out. Adults were also impacted this week. I heard from several of you that were highly frustrated and I sat with several parents that genuinely did not know how to deal with a problem and had had enough. 

By comparison, all of this pales to the violence that occurred this week in Parkland, Florida at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was a mental health problem, maybe we should blame gun laws, the government, his parents, students that perhaps bullied him...the list could go on and on. But what can you do? Just like the arrival of summer weather is inevitable, we tend to shrug our shoulders at school violence with a somewhat helpless attitude. We have come to accept this as the new normal. It catches headlines in our media like word of a fight quickly spreads through a school, but also like gossip on a fight, we tend to lose interest quickly and life goes on. What can we do?

It turns out that there is a lot we can do. In the same way we can prevent school fights through good management and supervision, keen observation of students showing signs of being agitated and responsiveness to those signs, we can also take action to lessen the opportunity for school violence of all kinds. None of this is a silver bullet that will prevent all bad things from happening, but it certainly can make a large impact. We can help, even if we cannot change gun laws or eliminate broken homes, we can be the first line of defense while we are here. As the adults that are on that front line of battling school violence of all types, please take time to think about how your practices can impact your students. Your attitude and energy can impact theirs. Your patience can be what deescalates an adolescent temper. Your relationships can make students take a second thought on their actions. Your eyes and ears can be what prevents everything from students that are depressed enough to harm themselves to a fist fight and perhaps even something much worse. We cannot choose helplessness.

Taxes and Tithes

Back when I was teaching, I worked for a couple of years at a church as a youth pastor. That title got me on the church board where I got to learn about the business side of running a church. Monthly reports showed when tithing was up and the church was in the green or when contributions were down and we had to dip into the reserve fund to pay bills. Overall things usually evened out over the year, but if contributions were down for two months, you could almost expect a Sunday with a sermon on tithing. I never really found those sermons uplifting or motivational, but from being at the meetings, I could see how the minister found them necessary. Tithing is optional, and people give different amounts at different times, based on personal preference and individual decisions. Unlike tithing, taxes are mandatory. They accomplish the exact same task. Money is needed to run the services for the group of people. One you do freely because you feel it is right, the other you do out of obligation.

I want us to start thinking of professional development in this same context. Our school (and district for that matter) takes a pretty unique look at PD. We offer choice based on what you need and change up other things based on school initiatives and what our data says that we need. What I hope is that everyone chooses to tithe of themselves the time and attention it takes to get better at the craft of teaching. Working through the PD challenges that Mrs. Garcia and Mr. Shaw send out or getting the most from in-house workshops by following through takes a contribution of your time and effort, and just like tithing, our organization is better as a whole. We are stronger and more purposeful about what we do. But just like a church, when everyone does not contribute, it takes more from the ones that do to make up what is needed. That's when tithing turns to taxing to make things fair for all. The funny thing is that we feel good about tithing, but we loathe taxes.

So this is me, encouraging you to tithe of yourself in the name of professional development and teacher growth. I want you to want to take initiative and personally, I think initiative should be rewarded. (Congratulations to the English department for earning the first department breakfast for the Objectives Challenge!) Personal initiative keeps me from being the tax collector, even if that means I just had to give a sermon on tithing.

David Goggins

I have a bit of a preoccupation with people that are the best at what they do. I think that it is fascinating to think about the effort that a person has to put into a skill to be the best in the world at it. We often think of these achievements in the form of athletics, especially during the Olympics when a World Record is broken. But to be honest, I'm interested at people that are the greatest at really anything. If you're the world best laundry folder, I want to know what inspired you to accomplish that. That's why I was totally hooked when Dr. Creech sent me a link to a U.S. soldier/athlete that has become the world's greatest endurance athlete.

When the Navy Seals ask you to be their poster boy, you know you've made it. David Goggins is the only member of the U.S. Armed Forces that has ever completed SEAL training, U.S. Army Ranger school and Air Force Tactical Air Controller training. He has completed and placed or won many ultra marathons (many of which are over 100 miles), triathlons, ultra triathlons, mountain ascents and bike races. He even holds a Guinness World Record for the most pull-ups in 24 hours. (He did 4,030 in 17 hours before he ripped his hands). Certainly someone with this impressive resume is just talented right? Don't be so sure. David grew up in a physically abusive home and a brutally racist town. He had asthma and sickle cell trait making his health feeble at times. He had a learning disability and barely graduated high school. After high school he sprayed for roaches for a living and grew to 300 lbs. Then he decided to change his life. (Check out his video here. David is known for his "colorful" language, but this video is clean.)

So when he has run all of the races and won all of the awards, when you are known as the Toughest Athlete on the Planet, is it time to retire? Not a chance. For David, it's not about winning acclaim or medals. It's about achieving his personal best. Each race or competition is a test to see what he is made of. He's only racing himself.

So this is a great story, but how does it relate to you and us? I don't realistically expect any of you to feel that you must become the world's best teacher. Being the world's best is insanely rare. What we can learn from David is that anyone can get better and that getting better can happen at any level. The only real ingredient necessary is the determination and desire to be better. We spend a lot of time talking about making students better, but probably not enough time talking about making ourselves better. It comes up a few times a year for your PDP or after an evaluation. But "Goggins-like" growth requires daily attention and evaluation. You have to pay attention to it. That is something we all can do for ourselves.

I Quit

The new year brings about all kinds of thoughts of self improvement for many of us. Our resolutions seek to make us healthier, more focused on a goal or more relationship oriented. We all want to do something better. While most of us may not focus our resolutions on professional goals, the start of a new semester may be a good time to make some classroom resolutions. What do you want to do better or different this semester? Once you determine that, accomplishing and sticking to that goal will likely be more difficult than setting it.

I recently read a great article (you can read it here) about quitting. Not quitting because things are hard or did not go your way, but quitting something because stands between you and your big goals. Doing something new often requires us to stop doing something old, and we often miss that part. Being an educator takes up a great deal of time and that is something that we cannot create. If we need more time to prepare lessons, provide feedback, call parents or implement a new method, we have to quit doing something else. If we are not strategic about what we quit, we will likely either fail at our goal or miss out on something else that was an unintended loss. Think of it this way, if you want to exercise more in the morning, you have to quit hitting the snooze button. If you want to lose weight, you have to quit eating junk food. If you want to read more, you have to watch TV less. When you are goal setting for the start of the new semester, be strategic. What will you stop doing, in order to accomplish something new?