You're Faaannn-Tastic!

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!

Alexander Hamilton

This past weekend I saw several television shows featuring a writer, actor and rap artist named Lin-Manuel Miranda. He currently has a Broadway musical about the life of Alexander Hamilton performed in modern rap. The show has been wildly successful and already has pre-orders for tickets over $56 million. I first heard of Lin-Manuel in 2009 when he performed a rap at a White House state dinner about the life of Hamilton. You can find the video here. A social studies teacher showed it to me and told me all about having her kids communicate with Lin-Manuel via Twitter to ask questions about his motivation and style as they were assigned to write similar performances about the lives of other founding fathers.

The story of Alexander Hamilton is great and one truly founded in the concept of grit. An orphaned immigrant moves to America, works incredibly hard and eventually designs the foundation for our entire monetary system. He was passionate about his goals and driven to success. It was these character traits that resonated with Lin-Manuel Miranda. 

Miranda attended a school for gifted and talented students, however his talent was in the arts, not in the regular classroom like almost all other students in the school. In his 60 minutes interview, the reporter asked Lin-Manuel why he had been so successful despite "treading water" academically in this school. Lin-Manuel responded, "I found my lane and I stuck with it and ran." He was simply determined to be successful in what he was passionate about. When he read a biography about the life of Hamilton on vacation, he was hooked.  Here was a man that he could connect with and a personality that resonated with his own.

Determination and passion to succeed can often overcome other shortcomings in life. When all signs point to failure (or in our world "at-risk") these traits seem to more than level the playing field. I see the same in many of you in your classrooms. Successful and memorable teachers are the ones that are determined and passionate about what they do. They are the ones that students truly believe eat, sleep and breathe the lessons that they teach because of how involved they become. So what is it that makes you passionate about what you teach? Can your students see it? Are you running in your lane? If so, maybe there's a little Alexander Hamilton in you too.

My Parent Hat

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.

The Milgram Experiment

I recently read an article that referenced the famous Milgram Experiment. I loved teaching this experiment to try to determine how students would act in a similar situation. In short, the experiment had Yale students shock a volunteer to test the link between electric shock and memory. The voltage increases each time the volunteer gets a question wrong. What the Yale students did not know was that they were the real experiment. The "volunteers" were actors. Stanley Milgram wanted to see how far people would go in hurting someone while acting under "orders" from a higher authority. The results were amazing and researchers throughout the world have studied the ethics of the experiment itself and the results.

In a similar study referenced within the article, a graduate professor asks banking students how they would respond if asked by a Senior Associate to fudge reports to show a client that they are doing better than they actually are doing. Most quickly respond that they would seek to talk with the Senior Associate about the ethics of the decision. When the role-play has the Senior Associate stick to the request, most students fall into two camps. They either comply with the request or resign from the job. What the researcher is really looking for is a third option. Very few students are creative enough to look for an alternate means of getting around the request such as speaking with a higher authority or another Senior Associate. These people are the creative problem solvers that the professor is looking for. Strangely enough, those people are a rare as the Yale students that refused to continue the shock experiment.

The Milgram Experiment taught us a lot about human nature. From the outside, it is easy for us to think that we are among the few that would react differently, but in practice, we can get caught up in our routine and what we think is normal. Take some time to really think about your practice. Do the things that you do really agree with your beliefs as an educator. Don't be afraid to be the rogue that steps out of the norm. Those are the teachers that are often remembered.

Getting Back to Good

Tonight's football game is a big deal for Greene Central. More than that, it is a big deal for Greene County and for our school system. On the surface, it's a rivalry football game and at the end, one team will emerge unbeaten and another will lick their wounds and seek to find a way to win down the road in the playoffs. More importantly than a football game is the community support behind Greene Central and the rest of Greene County Schools. Before the game even begins tonight, I think that it is important to acknowledge how we got here.

Several years ago Greene Central was struggling in more ways than one. The school was recognized as a low performing school in the state. Our graduation rate was well below the state average. Teacher turnover was high and morale was low. Who really knows how things got that way. Truthfully, it was probably a combination of many different factors that plague high poverty schools and school systems. On top of that, sports programs that receive a lot of press (like football) were not doing very well either. If memory serves me correctly, the season before Coach Wooten took over was winless. Those of you that have worked for the school for many years remember that time.

I was lucky enough to join the school (like most of you) during the upswing and I have seen the emotional struggle that getting back to good has caused. People, young and old, tend to wear their beliefs about themselves and their community. Much like a child labeled as "bad" will continue to misbehave, this community has struggled to forget that we once were not what we wanted to be. But things are changing.

This school year I have seen more community support for our school and our students than ever before. While the attention from the press for both athletics and academics has been exhausting at times, it is worth the time and effort to rally the community. When I thought up the theme of Teaching Grit, I could have never imagined or scripted an event like tonight's game. Win or lose, tonight is about grit. It took grit to get here. It will take grit to move on. The work has been tough, time consuming and exhausting. Tempers have flared. Tears were cried. Despite the struggle, the tide has turned. While we will always have students with issues and parents that disagree with us, wins and losses on any field, we are indeed, getting back to good.

Us

So maybe you guessed it. A post about you, a post about me and now a post about us. Really "us" is what homecoming is all about. We belong to a unit that is Greene Central High School. No matter if you grew up here and attended the school as a student, just arrived this year, or even went to a rival high school like I did, you are a part of us now. The "us" component of our school is what really makes it work. Students working with students. Teachers working with teachers. Teachers and students working together. The celebration of Homecoming brings us together to acknowledge what makes us unique. As exhausted as we all are, please enjoy today. We celebrate it for all of us.

Me

Last week I wrote about you. This week I'm going to write about someone else that struggles...me. This time of the year is hard for all educators, not just teachers. Balancing the many things that go on at the school day-to-day often means coming home, getting a bite to eat, working some more and passing out on the couch by 9:00. The look that I  have been coming home with finally prompted my wife to ask if I was ok. While I get that a lot from her, this time she had real meaning in her voice. I needed a dose of my own medicine. I needed a pep talk to get me back into the right frame of mind about school and about myself.

I said last week that teachers are gritty. Sometimes we are gritty to a fault. One of my mentors used to have a phrase that I have stolen from time to time. His rule was to "take care of yourself and take care of each other." Taking care of yourself sometimes means to put down the work when you get home to enjoy those few hours with friends and family. Taking care of each other sometimes just means accepting each others faults and helping each other anyway. So as I give myself advice this week, please learn from my mistake; take care of yourself and take care of each other. Without both parties, this place would fall apart pretty quickly.