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?

Ernie's Subs

Strangely enough, the thing I miss the most about working and living in Greenville had nothing to do with my job or where I lived. I miss my frequent access to a small, cinderblock building restaurant named Ernie's Subs. Coach Willis was nice enough to bring me an Ernie's pepper steak sub this week and I was in heaven! For those of you that are not familiar with Ernie's, you have probably driven by it hundreds of times and never noticed it. The outside is nothing to look at. The restrooms are outside and remind me a lot of the men's restrooms under our press box. The only furniture inside consists of a non-matching plastic patio table and chairs. While they make several different kids of subs, but almost everyone orders the peppersteak. It is the best sandwich I have ever had and I can literally taste it as I am writing this.

While Mrs. Willis and I were enjoying our sandwiches this week, she mentioned our school was a lot like Ernie's. (She's always looking for a metaphor.) The building is old and we are a rural, low-income school. From the outside, people may not expect much. But on the inside, there is so much to love. While we have our struggles like any other place, we also have so much to be proud of. This year's senior class has already amassed over $500,000 in scholarships and we have two semi-finalists for the Park Scholarship and a semi-finalist for the Morehead-Cain Scholarship. Simply put, good things can come from small, unassuming places. Each of us is a part of the recipe that makes our school and our students what they are. You are all ingredients to student success. Over the break, please take time to rest and recharge and come back ready to put those ingredients to work.

"Do you know how lucky you are?"

When I came to Greene Central five years ago, the school was in a huge transition. I had to quickly verse myself with all of the terms and requirements of a priority school, the School Improvement Grant and a programs like STEM, READ 180 and Carnegie Math. Some of you remember this transition very well and for others that have arrived since then, it may be all that you have ever known of the school. Within my first couple of years, it seemed like we were also showing off the school or some program within it to legislators, federal transition coaches or groups that were interested in doing something similar. At the time it felt like I couldn't get anything done for having to talk with this group or that group, but over the years, the frequency of those tours has started to slow down.

We recently had two of these visits to our school that helped remind me of a lot of things. Last Friday I had a visit from a group of principals that I help mentor from across the east. They have schools with similar backgrounds and they have similar problems of poverty in their districts. On Monday, we were visited by a representative from the Successful Practices Network, a group that studies STEM learning and technology in schools across the United States. These site visits may have done more to remind me about just how great our school is, than it did for our visitors. Much like you do in your classrooms, I also focus on the problem areas. Too often I see problems of student discipline, problems of teacher effectiveness, problems with facilities that need repair or even more long term problems of programs or budget. With all that focus on problems, I think I had lost sight of all of the solutions that were in front of me. It wasn't until one of the principals from last Friday's visit asked our student leaders, "Do you know how lucky you are?" that I paused to ask myself the very same question.

It sounds simple, but do take time to step back and focus on the positives and not just the problems. They are all around us. They walk our halls as kids that we connected with. They come back to visit as ones that are success stories. They teach down the hall as new teachers that learned from you. They are there as parents that appreciate what we have done. While we will always have new problems to solve, it's also important to take time to look around and count our blessings to appreciate where we have come.

Adversity

This fall has been a tough time for several students and teachers. Several have lost family members or have been there for devastating medical news about a family member. Several students have received some tough news about their own health as well. Undoubtedly it is hard to focus on teaching and learning when things like this fill your attention and drive your emotions. In the face of this adversity I have seen students and staff members show true compassion for one another. I have seen students worry about grades and attendance because despite their troubles, they recognize that they still have goals to meet for their future. I have seen teachers show up and teach when every logical reason says that they could have taken another day or two off.

Even though no one would ever wish this type of adversity on themselves or anyone else for that matter, there is some truth to the idea that adversity builds strong character. Persisting through adverse times and troubling situations has statistically shown to build strong leaders and character traits of compassion and empathy. One of the most common characteristics among United States Presidents is that an unusually large number of them lost a parent as a young child. We think of this type of adversity leading to troubled teenagers that would be at risk for failure. But when we see people that face adversity and work to succeed in site of it, we often see tremendous results.

Thank you to all of you that help our students face their own forms of adversity, large and small. And thank you for choosing to stand and deliver for your students, when bad things come your way as well. Tremendous results are waiting.