domingo, 16 de septiembre de 2018

September 16, 2018

KARCHER STAFF BLOG


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Kudos
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  • Thank you to Sue Bekken, Eric Sulik, and Wendy Zeman for your work over the course of the last two weeks with the advisory lessons and The Karcher Way Day!  The new activities went over really well for both staff and students!  Great job!  So much goes on behind the scenes to make it all happen... kudos again!  
  • Thank you to Steve Berezowitz for cooking all of the hot dogs for the students and the brats for the staff!  
  • Thank you to our food service staff, especially Judy Heinz and Lori Dorn for your willingness and efforts to make it all possible on Friday outside for our students!  
  • Thank you to Kim Moss, Jane Peterson, Karen Gerold, Steve Berezowitz, and Ryan Heft for assisting with some amazing salads and desserts to go along with the brats for staff on Friday!  Some great salads!  Thank you! 
  • And thank you to all of our staff for all of your efforts this past Friday.  Days like Friday only work because of all of your efforts and positive attitudes!  Thank you all for a great day for students.  
Article this week 

Finding Your Classroom's Greatness

Tracey Tinley
How a Nike ad campaign helped one teacher change students' beliefs on learning and set the right tone for the school year.
Stuff doesn't last long on the walls of my classroom. Bulletin boards, student work, anchor charts. Nothing stays up much longer than our current classroom conversations. Which made it all the more curious that, at the end of the school year a few springs ago, one spot had managed to elude my busy fingers. Above the door of my 4th grade classroom were three little words that I had posted in September—Find Your Greatness.
I have always found it difficult to subscribe to the belief that there are good classes and bad classes when it comes to behavior management. To think this way reduces our impact as educators and essentially turns the possibility of having a productive year into a roll of the dice. Are some classes more difficult to manage? Absolutely. A classroom community doesn't just show up on the first day of school along with the glue sticks and boxes of Kleenex. But a community of learners isn't a natural phenomenon that we have no control over, either. It requires careful thought and planning. It requires a strategy. I often find myself spending more time thinking about crafting community during the first few weeks of school than anything else. Math and spelling can wait. Community building can't.

Training Wheels for Conversation

Back-to-school acrostic poems and essays on summer vacations have never been my thing. I've always used the first few days of a new school year to focus on where we plan to go, rather than on where we have been. A few years ago, I found inspiration in the Nike campaign "Find Your Greatness." The campaign had initially run during the 2012 Summer Olympics and continues to gather views on YouTube today. The ads consist of several vignettes of athletes, both children and adults, in a variety of sports. They feature very little dialogue. The message of each ad is presented by a voiceover offering a specific belief about "greatness." For example, in one ad,1  a child is pictured standing at the top of a diving tower. It is clear that he is hesitant about making the jump. We watch him shuffle uncertainly for a few moments and then the voiceover states, "Greatness is a scary thing. Until … it isn't." The ad concludes with the child making the leap into the water as the phrase "Find Your Greatness" appears on the screen.
The clips are short and snappy, making them ideal for classroom use. I knew they would be just the thing to catch my students' attention after the long lazy days of summer and provide rich opportunities for discussion and learning.
One of the cornerstones of a classroom community lies in students' ability to share, listen, and respond during group discussions. Like many of the expectations in my classroom, conversation (or "accountable talk") is a skill that requires explicit instruction and authentic opportunities in which to practice. That year, these ads became the training wheels for our first few conversations together, and I couldn't wait to hear what my students' beliefs about "greatness" would be.
Many students come to us with the mindset that learning is a competitive sport. That's really not surprising when the very nature of schooling, with its grades and percentages, seems designed for the sole purpose of ranking and ordering students. Also not surprising is the fact that the older my students are, the more entrenched this competitive mindset appears to be. Maybe this is why this particular ad campaign grabbed my attention. I loved the juxtaposition of building a cooperative community out of an ad campaign airing during the Olympics—the ultimate contest designed to separate winning from losing. Unfortunately, many of our students view learning this same way. Even as early as 4th grade, there are children who have already decided whether they are a "winner" or a "loser" at the game of school. I wanted my students to understand that winning and losing would have very little to do with the way we would be learning that year. We would need to have a shared vision of what our learning would look and sound like—and what it would not.
I remember anticipating what the students would say when asked what greatness meant. Would they, as the voiceover suggested, believe that greatness was only for a chosen few? The superstars? What preconceived ideas would they have around excellence? One particular student comment, made during our initial conversation, still stands out in my memory: "Second place is just the first-place loser." To be sure, I had heard this quote before. But to hear it uttered as fact from the mouth of a 9-year-old while other students nodded in agreement was a defining moment for me as an educator. How did we get here? More importantly, did my students actually believe winning was the only thing that mattered? This moment took place well before I had begun to hear about the power of a growth mindset. But even back then, I knew that learning as a competition was a belief system that simply could not exist if we were to build a community of learners together.

Beyond Bingo

Our exploration of greatness had begun. As a class, we watched the video clips. Then, in pairs and small groups, the students wrote shared personal responses to the messages presented in the ads. Some of the ad messages students selected were:
    ▪ "Greatness needs a lot of things. But it doesn't need an audience."
    ▪ "Is it speed or endurance? Does it happen in 2 hours or 4 or 6? Is it finishing strong or barely finishing? Yes."
    ▪ "Some people are told they were born with greatness. Some people tell themselves."
I listened as students bounced ideas off one another. After they completed their written responses, each pair and small group traveled around the room in a "gallery walk" to read and reflect on their peers' thinking. It was interesting to listen to their comments and watch clusters form around certain student responses. The students discussed, negotiated, clarified, and yes … sometimes respectfully disagreed. We then gathered as a class to summarize our noticings and share our developing understandings. We challenged one another on what we had come to believe about greatness. There were no right or wrong answers. No answer keys to consult. Our discussions were rich, thoughtful, and never long enough, if the groans when we stopped were anything to judge by!
Through these shared conversations, we got to know one another—authentically. We didn't need a game of Bingo to help us learn one another's names. We learned them by listening and responding to what others had to say. The fact that the students had shared their thinking enthusiastically was a good indicator that our community-building journey was off to a strong start.
Tracey Tinley's students participate in a partner-writing activity in response to one of the taglines from Nike's "Find Your Greatness" ad campaign. Photo courtesy of Tracey Tinley.
We viewed several ads over those first few weeks, each time with students responding in pairs and small groups, reflecting on the thoughts of others, and then engaging in a whole-class discussion. Students were paired strategically during this activity so they could work with a variety of classmates—of different genders, perspectives, and so on. From the beginning, I wanted my students to recognize all of the possible positive working relationships that were available to them.
Some of the partner responses were:
    ▪ "It's your strength and courage that makes you great. Greatness doesn't mean gold medals—it's you."
    ▪ "Sometimes greatness can feel scary because you might be afraid or embarrassed to make a mistake. You have to do it anyway."
    ▪ "You don't need an audience to practice what's inside your heart. It's not about the medals and the trophies."
These revised slogans went up on our walls to provide daily inspiration. Several times, I overheard students whisper parts of these phrases to one another. It wasn't uncommon to hear "do it anyway" or "greatness is a scary thing" when a student appeared nervous to share an idea or try something new. Their words also found their way into my classroom management repertoire. On one particular occasion, I had a student doing a little too much celebrating over a soccer goal during gym class. A quiet "greatness doesn't need an audience" was all it took to remind him to stop showboating and get back to work.
Toward the end of our study, we gathered the best parts of our thinking in a "popcorn poem" (a poem built collaboratively, with each line of the poem being offered by a student in a way that connects and builds onto the line shared by the preceding student). It was a piece of writing that left us all stunned by its power—and it belonged to all of us. We decided to share it with parents at our Classroom Showcase that October—not only to show off the rich thinking we had done, but also to give parents a preview of what we were striving to develop that year. My hope was that parents might connect to our shift in defining greatness. Perhaps they might begin to echo these sentiments at the hockey rink or on the soccer field. When report cards eventually did make their way home, they might appreciate the greatness that their child had achieved that term, even if it didn't present itself in the form of straight As.

A Much-Needed Message

That September, those three little words above our door were meant for my students. They were intended to remind them that every day is a new opportunity to become our best selves. I realize now that these words were a much-needed message for me as well. Being a teacher is hard work. Creating the conditions for a healthy classroom community can be that much harder. There were mornings where I'll admit I was tempted to pull these words down and replace them with "Find Your Pencil." As teachers, we need to believe in the greatness within ourselves just as much as we believe in it for our students. Too often we focus on our limitations—the marking we didn't get to, the student conferences we didn't have, the parent phone calls we didn't make. Finding and developing our classroom community takes time and patience. It takes a willingness to keep trying even when things get hard. It takes forgiveness for our students, but also for ourselves.
I learned a lot about greatness and community from my students that year. Greatness was when a group of students were willing to admit they needed extra help and stayed behind with me at the carpet after the lesson. Greatness was a student telling his mother that a poem was the best thing he ever wrote "even though it has some spelling mistakes in it." Greatness was the letter left to me by a substitute teacher telling me how kind and helpful the children were on a particular day. Greatness was an entire class cheering when a student scored a basket … in his team's own net. Greatness meant a lot of things in our classroom that year. But above all, it became a word that described our classroom community.

"Found Our Greatness"

I finally did reach up for those three little words, but I didn't take them down. On the last day of school, I got up on my chair and changed a few letters. It was a small change, but it represented a big shift in our learning that year. I remember thinking the students might not even notice the difference. They noticed. Immediately. The words above our door now read, "Found Our Greatness." As they ran toward me, eager to point out the change, I smiled and assured them that I had known they would find their greatness all along.
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Information/Reminders
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  • SLO/PPGs due October 29  
    • PPG - This year all staff members need to have their PPG aligned to one of our Big Three for the district:  Essential Skills, Best Instructional Practices (GRR Model), and/or Universal Access.  
      • If you have any questions or need help thinking of ways to develop your knowledge in one of these areas let Ryan or I know!  
    • SLO - A push throughout the district is to utilize a tiered SLO approach for your individual SLO.  In the past we frequently see subgroups as the focus within staff SLOs.  A shift in our focus is to ensure we are paying attention to the growth of all students.  Therefore, working to utilize a tiered SLO is encouraged in order to move the whole group.  
    • Your PPG and SLOs are due by October 29.  Let Ryan or I know if you have any questions!  
  • Ready Sub Information...
    • When you are in Ready Sub you can set up "Sub Preferences" and the subs you put in while have access to your posting for 16 hours and then it will open up to everyone else.  
      • It is under "Substitute" and then "Request Substitutes".  
        • You then click on "select a requested substitute" 
        • Once you do that you will see the list of subs available.   The "Status" just means who is available for Karcher MS - Green is available.  
        • Then click on their name and this will allow them access prior to other subs.  
        • You can request more than one sub if you want.  
      • Whoever you request (1 or multiple) they will see your posting for 16 hours prior to the rest of the sub pool seeing the posting.  So after you post, you can reach out to them to let them know if you want to.  
        • If you list multiple subs whoever accepts the request first will be the one that gets the position.  
  • Richters - Stickers 
    • In case you did not know... when you go to Richters and they ask you if you want a sticker you should say YES!  Then... bring the receipt into the main office (give it to Kim) as Karcher then gets 1% of the total sale!!!  So the next time you are in or a friend/family member is in always accept the sticker!!!
  • Twitter:  So... BLT brought up the use of Twitter, which is a great idea.  So... we have a Twitter handle set up for Karcher.  We just need to verify a few things from the district to ensure we are utilizing it as the district would like us to.  Hoping to have it up and running by next week!  
This week:  
  • Monday, September 17 - Extended Advisory 
    • 7th grade - Follow advisory plans
    • 8th grade - Using this time for our Outdoor Education Meeting as a house.  
  • Monday, September 17 - iReady will not be starting until September 24 - this is reflected on the Karcher Calendar.  
  • Monday, September 17 - BLT Meeting 
    • Please make sure you have read the first chapter in Better Learning through Structured Teaching and within On Your Mark.  
      • We will be discussing both books and other nuts and bolts.  
  • Monday, September 17 - District Literacy Committee is meeting @ Cooper from 3:45 - 5:15
  • Tuesday, September 18 - Start of iTime rotations. 
    • Please remember to tell your advisory students where to go starting on Tuesday for iTime. 
    • iTime groups 
    • Student council students need to report to the library on Tuesday instead of iTime with Brad Ferstenou and Stephanie Rummler.  This is just for Tuesday, otherwise the groups will remain the same through the week of October 19.  
  • Wednesday, September 19 - Essential Skills PLC in the library 
    • We will be recapping and reviewing what our goals are for Essential Skills and doing an activity with the Adult Learning Framework developed for Essential Skills.  
  • Friday, September 21 - First FNL (Friday Night Live)!!!  
    • From 6:00 - 8:00pm  
    • If you are able to volunteer to assist please let Mike Jones or Donna Sturdevant know!  

Pictures from this week were posted onto our Facebook page!  There were simply to many to post onto the blog!  Our Facebook page is always accessible at the top of this blog but I added the link again here:  


  



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