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.