Everyday Leadership

I work at a school where all participants are viewed as leaders.  Each of us, in different ways, contribute to making the school a vibrant place every day.  Each of us, students and staff alike, in our daily way, offer our gifts and leadership to the school.  Our individual contribution makes a difference and together we do great things.

One of the great leaders in our school is Mr. Kevin, the head of our school's building and grounds.  He is in charge of the campus facilities.  He oversees the upkeep of our building.  The work he does in this regard has helped our school be a beautiful place to work and learn.  What he does for the school though, is so much more.  I see Mr. Kevin at so many school events.  He is probably here earlier than all of us and often is one of the last to leave.  He is here on Saturdays.  He notices the small things as well as the big things.  He jokes with staff and students.  He goes into classrooms and works with students as they need support.  I have heard that during his time here, he has also gone in to substitute when the school was desperate for substitute teachers.  He does what is needed--for any of us.  Where there is a need, Mr. Kevin is there to fill it or find a way.  He is a person who makes a difference in what he does in a quiet and daily way.  He has made an impact on others in ways that he is probably not even aware.

We are all leaders.  Each of us have the opportunity to make a difference in our daily interactions.  On my way to school, I stop for coffee at a local drive-through and recognize the leadership offered by the woman who greets me with a smile, ask how I am doing and takes special care to make sure my order is correct.  Leadership greets me as I work with fellow administrators and teachers, each of us planning in a daily way to offer strong instruction, loving interactions and an environment that allows each member of our community to learn and to grow.  Leadership continues in my interactions with my family in the evening as kindnesses are offered and support is given, sometimes when weariness would be the preferred response.  Every day, all day long we are offered choices that allow us to lead in ways that make a difference.  And sometimes that difference has a huge impact on another.  Sometimes we may never know the impact we made.  And on rare occasions we are offered a glimpse of that impact.

Early in my career my life was changed by what was then called the Bay Area Writing Project.  As a young teacher, I travelled from Ohio to Berkeley one summer to learn about writing and how I teach writing.  The next school year I had the most fun I have ever had in exposing my students to writing and creating a room where a joy in writing was had by all.  Several years ago, I was visiting my home town and was in a local diner.  A young man saw me, came up to me and gave me a huge hug.  He was a former student and as we talked he told me that he was currently in college. And he wanted me to know what a difference I made for him.  He told me that I taught him how to write as a fifth grader in a way that impacted him in middle school and high school.  He told me my writing class set him up for the success he was then experiencing in college.   I think about that experience of finding out that I made a difference.  I felt gratitude in knowing that I made a difference for him that first year after my Berkeley experience.  Those who taught me made a difference.  My student will make a difference.  And the ripple continues.

We never know the impact we have on others.  And sometimes we get to know.  Below is a link to a short Ted Talk (six minutes) that talks about everyday leadership and making a difference.   What can you do to make a difference in the lives you meet today?

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for dedicating space and time for teachers and teachers of literacy to come together to share ideas, practice and life experience.

Summer Poetry Fun

This summer I am taking a poetry class.  It has been both fun and has challenged me to think about poetry writing in a bit of a different way.  I have been pulling on memories, creating sensory experiences, and thinking about craft to shape my poetry.  The class has given me ways to get in to revise my poetry, something that has, beyond word change, been more difficult to do in the past.

Below is one of the poems I wrote for this class that had to do with a first memory.  For the assignment we needed to dig into memories and choose three that occurred before the age of twelve.  With each memory we wrote sensory details.  We then we asked to recreate the experience in twelve lines of six couplets and use specific words.  I used the words trace, glance and crowd.  After we did each of these exercises we were then able to take out the restrictions to make the poem fit the need of the poem.  I did not need to do that part, as each of the parameters that were given allowed my poem to emerge.  What I have struggled with is how best to use first or third person to create image and tone.

Blessed Is the Fruit of Your Womb

As we kneel before the tiny bed

to offer up ritual night prayers

traces of White Shoulder linger on her neck

delicately defying the staleness of the small space.

Repeat after me she whispers, “Hail Mary, full of grace…”

The girl of three mimics the sing-song prayer,

a nursery rhyme tracked in memory one line at a time as

two brothers breathe slowly in sleeping cribs that crowd the room.

With the song, comes a glance between lashes at a familiar silhouette--

long, fingers laced in prayer,  delicate lips,  newly protruding middle.

“I want to be just like you,” the small girl muses,
and the room contracts a little tighter.

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for dedicating space and time for teachers and teachers of literacy to come together to share ideas, practice and life experience.

Stop to Savor

Summer begins for me at the end of this week.  In New York, schools go until the end of June so when others have begun their summers these last few weeks, and summer feels like it is here, in New York we have these last few days to push through, making me anticipate the summer pace even more.

What do I like about summer most of all?  Time to savor.  This week I co-facilitated a self-care retreat and the focus was on play.  Just like summer time, play wants a savor space.  One of our activities was to take a Sense and Savor Walk.  This walk can be taken anywhere, but my suggestion is that the walk takes place outside.  A walk like this takes about ten minutes, and its purpose is to simple notice.  To notice the leaf that calls you.  To notice the color of the sky or the ladybug slowly working on a blade of grass.  To notice the intricate patterns and color of a bud and the flower next to it in full bloom.  To notice the ground underneath your feet.   During the retreat we walked in a backyard, all of in different parts of the yard, noticing the world.  In ten minutes we were more focused, more in touch with the world around us and more in touch with ourselves.  More ready for life--and for this retreat, this gave us space to be more ready for play.  I live a fast paced life and don't always notice.  This ten minute walk could be done as a part of my regular practice, not needing summer to give me time and space.

Below are a few of the pieces of nature I noticed on my Savor Walk.  Photos are not necessary to savor...what is happening on the inside as I slow down is.  Notice that on this Savor Walk I mostly viewed things close up.  Next time I think I would like to notice things as a whole, in groups and in sweeping views.

Summer is approaching.  And with it comes the space of time.  One thing I am most looking forward to this summer is time to draw in my journal.  I am not an artist.  Actually the products I produce are not great at all.  Yet drawing gives me a way to slow down and notice.  I can't draw in 10 minutes--I need a stretch of time.  Drawing allows me to really look--just like my savor walk--but only closer.  If I am drawing a flower, I look at the lines of the flower that create it's shape and try to replicate them on my paper.  This takes time and focused attention for me.  I have to really, really look and then take what I am seeing to transfer it on paper.  I try to notice and replicate texture and depth in the flower.  The flower moves in and out in its beautiful shape and in my drawing I try to make my flower look the same.  I first use pencil to get the outline and shape of the flower.  With my pencil I try to make a black and white picture of what I am seeing.  Then I also try to match the color of the flower.  This takes some experimenting.  I work with the color on a scrap paper, looking at the flower's range of hues and experimenting with colored pencils, crayons, markers and paints.  Last year I began to use water color pencils and I felt happy with using this tool.  I didn't always match the color exactly, but I liked the result and the tool helped me to really notice the color.

Below is a photograph of a drawing I did last summer.  I am looking forward to slowing down to draw again this summer.

What happens in my drawing is that I loose all sense of space and time.  It is just me and the flower and the drawing.  Somehow time stops and I am present.  I savor.   It doesn't matter how good or bad the end product of my drawing is.  What matters is the space I am in when I am drawing.  Almost like a prayer.

For those like me who are busy, where time is of the essence, and life is go, go, go...taking time to savor is not only important--it is necessary.  How can you find time to savor.  Can you stop and take a ten minute walk--it can be in your backyard so you don't have to go far, it can be at the park next to your workplace, or it can be at the beach on vacation.  The important part of savoring is noticing and slowing.   And when can you build in those bigger times to savor.  For me I do that in the summer with my drawing.

On Thursday my school year ends.  We are packing up our books and preparing to end our classrooms.  We are thinking about next year.  We are finalizing report cards and thinking about moving up ceremonies.  Life is wonderfully hectic as we prepare to close.  I wonder what I can do to savor this school year and the children in my school one time before I release this year into summer.

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for dedicating space and time for teachers and teachers of literacy to come together to share ideas, practice and life experience.

On Testing Madness, Opting Out and Anxiety

Today New York State testing madness begins.   For the next twelve days we will have six testing days and six make-up days, during which children will be spending approximately 2 hours for each of six days, being tested on tests created by Pearson Learning and mandated by the state of New York.  These tests will determine levels of intervention students are given and for the first time, a large portion (50%) of the teachers’ final evaluation will be based on the test results.

Two years ago I wrote on this blog about the needless stress to which we are subjecting our youth because of the mandated Grade 3-8 ELA and Math tests.  I walked through classrooms, as the teachers and students prepared for the test, and I saw students tapping on their desks, pulling and twisting their hair and biting nails.  I lamented, then, about the level of anxiety we are subjecting or our youngest through the testing process.  Today I write to express another ludicrousness that is placing another wave of stress on our children.  The stress is rooted in what has been the byproduct of procedures created by the state for families who choose to “opt out”.

I have been in the educational arena for basically all of my life.  I have filled roles as teacher, as student, as principal, as district administrator, as consultant and as parent—to name a few.  I believe in accountability.  I believe in the power of data to support informed decisions about schools and students.  I believe the Common Core Standards are good for education.  I believe that tying 50% of a teacher’s evaluation on one test is bad for education.  I believe in partnerships between schools and homes to create optimal conditions for student learning.  And I believe in the rights of parents to determine what they feel is in the best interest of their children both in and out of schools, knowing that sometimes they are a prong of a partnership to determine the path to what is best and at other times, they have the final say.

Many of my friends are educators and parents and I have been privy to multiple discussions by multiple stakeholders about the “opting out” phenomenon that has taken root in NYS at a grass roots level.  In some schools and districts the majority of parents are choosing to have their children not take the NYS 3-8 ELA and Math tests. Parents, teachers and schools have grappled with the ramifications of a single test that has tremendous power but has not proven to be a reliable predictor of really much of anything.  One thing we do know though—the test is rooted in money.  And power.   And politics. 

However, for the most part, parents are not rooted in any of this bureaucracy.  They are rooted in their child.  And they are rooted in relationships formed at school.  They are rooted in a partnership with the school for their child.  They want what is best for their child.  And their answer for how to address what is best for their child in what they perceive to be a testing debacle is to “opt out”.  

Sounds easy.  Sounds like an option to lift anxiety.  Right?  Wrong!  The hoops are numerous.  And in the end, the onus for opting out lies on—get this—THE CHILD!  The parent can write a letter to the school asking for their child to not be given the test.  They can say they are “opting out”.  But there really is no provision for the parent to opt out.  A parent can do one of two things.  The parent can take their child out of school for twelve days (the days that the test is being administered and the testing make-up days—maybe that could be family vacation time, I suppose). Or, if the parents don’t want the child to miss the rest of the instruction that takes place out of the testing and make-up hours of a school day, they can send their child to school and have the child refuse to take the test when the test is passed to him or her.

This “opt-out” option, is stressful to all—especially to the youngest of our school partnership—the child.   We are asking our children to participate in civil disobedience.  Children have been taught to obey and appreciate authority.  Yet they have dual authorities giving them differing messages (even though these two prongs of that partnership—parent and teacher—may actually see through a very similar lens).  Parents tell the child to say no to the test.  And teachers pass the test to the child.   The child has conflicting authority pressing on them from both sides, creating a level of unnecessary confusion and stress.  Children are asked to conform and comply with their classroom community.  Yet, on this day, while classmates and friends all around are taking the test, the child who is “opting out” needs to say no and read a book.  Or in some cases, just sit there.   

For some children the notion of doing something different than the rest of the class, especially given the nature of the act as defiant, is impossible.  But to not do what mom or dad tells them they need to do is also impossible.  Leaving the child in an impossible situation.  Children as young as nine-years-old, are given this burden. For many nine and ten year olds and, for that matter, for many thirteen and fourteen year olds, who respect authority and want to be compliant, who want to be liked and want to be a part of the class community, being put in this position is untenable.  Asking this of a child is unfair.  It undermines trust.  It shatters partnerships. And it creates ludicrous stress.  For all involved.  Especially for our youngest. 

Don't get me wrong.  I honor our families that are choosing to opt-out.  It is a viable option in a difficult situation.  And I also honor our families who are choosing to opt-in.  Families are doing their best in a complicated situation.  I honor our teachers who want to do the right thing—who do not want to add unneeded anxiety to our youngest.  They want to teach.    I also honor our administrators who are working to provide an environment that supports the students taking the test and fills obligations around test modifications and testing mandates while creating a system of supports for our students not taking the test.   Above all, I honor our children caught in the middle.

Three years ago I wrote about testing anxiety as New York moved into the high stakes testing arena.  The words I closed with that blog unfortunately still ring true today… 

“The anxiety levels are high for all concerned stakeholders.  I worry for the youngest of our stakeholders—our children, our students.  I worry that we are raising a generation of anxious children.  What a state?   Over a test?  Where is the sanity?” 

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for dedicating space and time for teachers and teachers of literacy to come together to share ideas, practice and life experience.