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.