I'm Tired

I'm tired this morning. Not the normal tired from mental fatigue that I've often experienced over the past year, but physically tired. On Thursday I arrived at school at 6:30 am to open up and prepare for the day. After school ended at 2:00, we got ready for the "second shift" with a soccer game at 4:00 and a football game at 7:30. I got home last night close to 11:00 pm. Not once in my life have I uttered the words, "I don't think my alarm clock went off" until today. I scurried out of bed quickly at 6:00 am to get ready to be right back here. I made it by 6:45 am. Several of you probably know a similar feeling this morning if you coached or helped out last night. I'm not sure if you'll share my feelings, but I can tell you that I think it's a glorious thing. 

Yesterday I got my first vaccine shot and I've never thought twice about it. I have been fascinated with the science of it and impressed with the rollout. As a history teacher, it reminds me of the civilian efforts under World War II and the science expansion of the Space Race all rolled into one. And while some people are skeptical, I personally trust the experts. Similarly, we ask parents and our community to trust us as experts with the education and welfare of their children. 

I know that many of you have either received or scheduled your first vaccine shot already this week, but if you're on the fence, I encourage you to do it. I am tired this morning, but it's a tired like I have not been able to feel in a year. It's a tired that I missed. It's a part of my life that I got back, and even if it's just a small piece, for now I'll take it. I'll sleep well this weekend for sure.

Let's Hear It for the Girls

One of the initiatives that was given to me eight years ago when I became the principal of Greene Central was to reignite our Ag and FFA membership. More specifically, we were recruiting girls. At the same time, our STEM program was very young and it also had a goal of 51% female membership in STEM courses. These initiatives were started because our leaders recognized that these fields are overwhelmingly dominated by males and if we are going to pave the way for things like gender and pay equity, we have to get girls interested in these programs early on. 

I can tell you that it's been a bumpy road to get the kind of female participation in FFA and Ag courses that we had been hoping for. It's hard for students to take the first step into something like that where they are an instant minority. They will tell you that they quickly recognize that "there's no one like me in that class." I've heard that response from so many students over the years and I'm still always shocked by how observant students are on things like this. 

But perhaps we have turned a corner. This week, our FFA team had their first competition and when you see the list of winners, it's hard not to recognize something different. Eight out of the twelve winners were girls, including an all-female parliamentary procedure team that took first place. The entire officer team is female as well. That's nothing short of impressive and exactly what we have always been hoping to achieve. So give credit where it's due. Our girls are doing a great job. And we can't diminish the great work that the boys have done as well. Their accomplishments are just as important. And that's the point of equity. I'm just proud to say that we have come to see a longtime goal achieved. 

Investments

This past week I had my annual meeting with my investment guy. He handles my retirement savings and the college savings for my girls. Our conversation is always about the same. We look at what's happened over the past year and we talk about what he projects retirement and college will look like in future dollars if we stay the course. He always reminds me that we shouldn't think about growth as good times or bad, but how it looks averaged out over decades. When the stock market is doing great, we are always happy but when it starts to turn, you can't help but wonder if you're doing the right thing. Either way, he says it always works out to an "expected growth" over the long term. 

He used the word "growth" enough to trigger my thoughts about student growth. We generally look at student growth from year to year as they matriculate through different levels of math, science, and English. We talk about Expected Growth and High Growth for EOC courses and those teachers use lots of specific strategies to try to get the most out of growth. But once the student leaves their class, they are most likely forgotten as the new group comes in. Unlike the advice that my financial advisor gives me, we think of growth in the short term, instead of the long term and I think we might be missing the point. I won't say that we are not concerned with growth this year at all, but it's easy to see that our focus is not the same as it would be under normal circumstances.

If you take a step back and see students over time, we can start to see that "expected growth." Their elementary teachers made the initial investments. Middle and high school teachers built from there and tried to compound it. After us, they will continue to learn professional and life skills that further enhance their growth. And just like stocks, some have bad years and some have tremendous years. Overall, we hope that the growth averages out and a well-rounded, educated person emerges. Not all investments make us rich, but if they slowly grow over time, they do pay off. If a student leaves us and has a career, supports a family, and contributes to a community, we have to regard that as expected growth. Every now and again, we get one that exceeds expected growth, and those are the great stories that we love. But what we have to remember, is that we have no way of knowing the final outcome in the short time that they are with us. We are simply the installments. We are payments made to a long-term growth plan. And even if this might be a year that doesn't fully yield what we want, it doesn't mean that our investment is lost. If we stay the course and we all give a little, we can still expect a return, and sometimes that return can still be huge. You just never know which ones it might be.

Support your School Counselor

Last week I was talking through the registration process with Stephanie Snow. She was stressed because it will take longer this year than normal due to the tracking of students and the restrictions on the number of students that the counselors can meet with at a time. She also knows that the time that students are in class is very valuable and she wanted to protect that for teachers. After finally scratching out a plan, it hit me that our counselors haven't had much of an opportunity to do the rewarding parts of their job this year. Their time has been filled with endless scheduling needs, student and parent check-ins, and locating disengaged students. In the meantime, we have squeezed in college planning, FAFSA applications, program enrollments, and the other more redeeming work that they do. (Ironically, our FAFSA applications exceeded last year's total by just October of this year.) They have been caught in a world of trying to triage students that are not successful while still finding time for students that are. 

If I'm being honest, the school would run fine without me right now. So many of you know and demonstrate leadership and could take the reins of what traditionally fills my time if you had to. But I cannot imagine school this year without effective school counselors. They built the framework for how our school functions under Plan B and keep the wheels moving every day. Their work defines the term "essential" that seems overused in many areas by comparison. 

So if you haven't spoken to our counselors lately, make a point of it today and show some love. They deserve it now more than ever.

"I don't know how to teach people how to care."

It's strange how some things can stick in your brain. Things your parents or grandparents tell you as a child, or messages from your heroes often occupy a part of your brain and stick there. I'm almost certain that there are important things that went into one of my ears and out the other. It just didn't stick. And then there are things that seem meaningless at the moment, but make so much sense later on. This week I had one of those experiences and it led to a bright idea that I really do think can help us be better educators right now. 

In the 2016-2017 school year, Carrie Ann Miller had agreed to take a step out of teaching full-time to try to coach other STEM teachers. At the time she had received a lot of praise for the work that she was doing and STEM education was a buzzword nationally. We had asked her to try to get teachers to think and work in the ways that had made her successful. She was apprehensive but agreed to try. We knew going into a coaching position, that it is hard to see quick success. Ask any of our instructional coaches. Getting adults to change is difficult, but incredibly rewarding when it pays off. Carrie Ann quickly realized something about herself and what was holding her back as an instructional coach and what she told me has occupied a small corner of my brain ever since.

"I don't know how to teach people how to care." 

Carrie Ann wasn't critiquing the pedagogy, standards alignment, or any other piece of instruction that she thought she was there to fix. Those parts are easy to identify and much easier to correct than other problems. What she saw instead was that when teachers were struggling, so were their students and vice-versa. This struggle often left teachers, good teachers, being dismissive or overly focused on tasks than on human beings. She wasn't saying that they didn't care about their students or even their work. Instead she saw a difference in how teachers managed students and themselves in difficult situations and how easy it was to forget that we are people first. Her struggle left her frustrated and she returned to the classroom full-time the next year because she needed to feel the success of something she knew she could control. 

I had not thought much about that year until this past Friday when I heard a podcast about the economics of compassion in medical care. The show cited several research studies that proved that compassion and empathy on behalf of the doctors actually made patients heal faster, provided less expensive care, and reduced doctor burnout. They could provide amazing medical care, but beyond that, the biggest impact on themselves and their patients had nothing to do with medicine. The researcher was now searching for ways to teach doctors how to care about patients as human beings instead of just treating their illnesses.

So many students are in a state of educational trauma this year and so many teachers have resorted to some form of triage as we try to make things just work for a bit. If that's left you burned out or if your students just are not responding to every education trick you try, maybe it's time to try a dose of compassion. It sounds strange and a bit hokey, especially for high school teachers, but I can tell you that there's a lot of research that says it works. We have to teach everyone how to care right now.

What Are We Grading?

Any teacher that was forced to sit through an educational history or methods course can tell you that the birth of public schooling is rooted in the industrial revolution and a need for a labor force that had basic skills and could follow routines. While curriculum and pedagogy have branched out a lot since then, we haven't strayed far from our roots. We still ring bells and have routines that could easily be compared to the factory system. There has been a modern push to change some of that and it has gained some traction in the concept of grading for mastery. In Greene County, we see it in lower grades with our standards-based grading system and in upper grades, we introduced rubrics. If you were here in the RBT training years, you might recall the Met or Not Met grades that we were encouraged to give. These new grading systems try to focus more on what kids know and can do, but they are also sometimes difficult for parents to understand because we received grades on a numerical scale and that's what we know. 

Since the first progress reports went home this year, I've thought a lot about grading. It's hard not to right now. We worked hard to get students to submit assignments and the phrase, "Just turn in something" was often heard. We gave students authentic grades and after the first report card, we knew we had to do something and developed remedial assignments. That made a big difference, but not big enough to keep me from worrying about it. 

The two children that sleep in my home have done well this year. They have all As and have learned to communicate with their teachers on their own. I'm proud of them for adjusting, but it hit me this week that those grades don't truly belong to them. Those are household grades. My children live in a home with two parents with advanced college degrees. They have access to reliable, high-speed internet and any other tool they need to be successful. Their parents manage people and programs or a living and know the education system well. My children don't have a reason to not do well right now. The problem is that we are the exception and not the norm. 

When students spend seven or more hours at school every day, we are some of the largest contributors to their thoughts and expectations. While we still struggle with getting some students to comply, we can get the majority. It's probably not a fluke that in a normal year, the failure rate hangs close to the unemployment rate and that's pretty low. This year things are different and failures don't reflect curriculum that students can't do, they most likely reflect work they haven't attempted or submitted. Mix that with an adapted curriculum and we are moving much closer to grading compliance than we are learning. 

So what's the answer? I have no clue. And I don't really think anyone else does either. But I believe that necessity is the mother of invention and we are in a time of great need. The education world is holding on to hope that everything goes back to the way that it was, but I believe that teachers are perfectly positioned to create change right now. So how do you know what your kids can do? How do you know that they have learned and grown? You are all in the driver's seat to help make some of those decisions and I'm so curious to see what comes out.

What Did You Do Right?

I started doing my third quarter observations this week. The rubric doesn't exactly fit the way school works right now, so I have been learning how to give a little more latitude on some of the elements that I used to be very specific on. Usually, when an administrator gives you feedback on an observation, you're happy to hear what went well and anxious to see if there's something they did not like or a suggestion for improvement they may have. It's human nature to focus on the negative or to take it more to heart. I had that in my mind this week and stumbled across an article that suggests that focusing on our weaknesses might be detrimental to your future decisions as well. If you're one of those people that gets anxious at the bad news or the negative feedback, it can be even worse for you. 

We started this school year knowing what didn't work from virtual learning last Spring. We went on to center our professional development at fixing courses, improving communication, and trying to fix everything that was wrong. And if you are normal, at some point that work put you in a bad mood. I know I'm certainly guilty of that. With all of the focus on what's been wrong, I thought it might be time to start focusing on what is going well and where we have made progress. Some of you are already doing this and I hadn't really noticed until I stopped this week to focus on it myself. Here are a few successes that came to mind this week:

• The OCS classes are setting up an occupational lab in the school to teach work skills since they can't travel to work sites.
• Five beginning teachers decided to take on an extra professional development with Mrs. Garcia and she's so excited about working with them.
• Mrs. Head holds a voluntary live Zoom each morning to teach Math 1 to any teacher's students and they are attending without having to or receiving any other incentive. 
• Mr. Gnau got back to coaching men's soccer this week with a large majority of players eligible to play despite the academic challenges of the Fall semester.
• Mrs. Mattocks has been initiating our freshmen to the library as a part of her world history classes and it's great to see the space being used by students again.

There are many more, and certainly, some that I have left off that you've shared with me this week. And I think we need to start taking a little time to focus on what we did right. Look for some opportunities to share your successes throughout this semester, big or small. Your ideas and ability to overcome challenges can unlock inspiration in others, and focusing on your successes keeps you in a positive mindset to make better decisions in the future.