A Great First Day

Every year I think about doing things differently the first week of school, but I'm never really quite sure how to go about it. I always start out with the best of intentions, but in the whirlwind of setting up my classroom, inservice, and open house, I always found myself behind the 8 ball. So I always went to the good old, tried and true beginning of the year activities that I've always gone with. They're safe. They're comfortable. And they're old.

Thankfully, I was able to set up my classroom prior to my surgery, so I had the entire last three weeks to think about how I wanted to start school this year. I had all of my new learnings from the different books I read, so I knew I wanted to add in a type of "tech boot camp" that I had learned in the EduProtocol Field Guide. I also knew that we were going to be learning more about the 7 habits, so I definitely wanted to incorporate more of those activities as well.

Despite all of these new learnings, I found myself still going back to the same activities I had always used. I was trying to fit the old activities into these new frameworks because they were safe, and I knew just how they would go. I had mapped out my plans for the first week, trying to tell myself that I had done something different, when really I was doing the same old thing just with different names.

Yesterday I spent a few final hours at school just make sure everything was ready to go. While I was there, I erased everything I had done in terms of plans. If I really wanted to make a change, I couldn't just take the same thing I had always done and give it a pretty new name. I had to really think about the activities I was doing and see exactly what their purpose was.

One thing that will not change: I am not jumping right into the content that I teach. I spend the first two to three weeks establishing routines and developing community. I know it puts me behind on the pacing guide, but the time I gain during the year makes it totally worth it.

So how did I change it up? I followed these steps:

• Establishing Categories - I sat down and thought about the things that I really wanted to or had to accomplish this week. When I really thought about it, I ended up with four main categories:
• School Needs - fire drill practice and school wide stations to learn about the school since it's our 4th graders' first year at Bear Creek
• Management - setting up binders and folders, morning and dismissal routines, lockers, and how to use your agenda
• Community / Habits - getting to know you activities, our class mission statement, setting up the classroom so it works for us, learning the 7 habits and how they fit in our classroom
• Tech Bootcamp - learning all about our new Chromebooks, setting up guidelines, Schoology, Google Suite, and any other activities we'll be doing
• Examining Activities - After I had the categories, I looked through my beginning of the year information and picked out the items for school needs and management. Next, I went through all of those beginning of the year activities that I have always used. I wanted to see if they actually fit into any of these new categories. While many of them did, some (and it pained me to put them to the side) just did not serve a purpose as I looked at my new classroom. Rather than spending that time simply because it's what I've always done, I tabled those activities for others that better met my needs.
• One really helpful step during this process was looking at each of my ice breakers and community building activities. If they fit with one of the 7 Habits, I kept it. If not, it was one of the tabled activities.
• Making A Plan - One thing that I've always done is plan WAY too much for the first two weeks. I always feel rushed because I'm trying to get to everything, and I'm sure that not much sinks in. So I decided to try something totally different. 
• First, I mapped out the beginning of the year school stations that were scheduled for me. Those items, along with lockers, took care of my school needs.
• Next I looked at the management issues that needed to be completed so I could do my ice breaker / community building activities. These activities included setting up our math and leadership binders, setting up our science folders and journals, and learning how to use our agendas.
• Then I added in the community building activities that fit with the 7 habits. I chose one activity each day, a daily reflection, and a weekly reflection so that we could get right into that routine.
• Finally, I thought about what we needed to learn in order to be successful with our new Chromebooks. I picked one of these activities each day to get the kids using technology.

We will be doing at least one activity from each of those four categories each day throughout the first week of school. 

Following this plan helped me have one of the most successful first days of school I can remember in the last 21 years. I didn't feel rushed, I felt like everything we were doing set the groundwork for my classroom goals, and I was able to help the kids see the purpose behind each activity. I cannot wait to see how the rest of the week goes!

Building Bridges

bridge

a: a structure carrying a pathway or a roadway over a depression or obstacle (such as a river)

a bridge connecting the island to the mainland

b: a time, place, or means of connection or transition

building a bridge between two cultures

According to Merriam-Webster, those are the first two definitions of the word bridge. While this post was inspired by a picture of the first definition, I'd like to focus on the second.

Getting divorced isn't easy. While the actual process I went through was simple compared to many, the process of looking at yourself, seeing what you did wrong or could have done better, and then trying to figure out who you are and what your new life should look like... well, all of that is really hard.

It's been four years. Four years this week that I said I wasn't happy and was told that it didn't matter, he wasn't going to change. Three of those years I worked closely with a counselor, and this last year I've been doing a lot of reading, listening, and learning on my own to finally get to the place where I wanted to be. Some people have said to me that I must have had an awful summer, what with my foot being broken and having to have major surgery. But actually, this summer was one of the best. It was an amazing bridge. It allowed me to really focus on myself and learn and apply many of the strategies that I had been hearing and seeing in all of these great resources.

Then Wednesday and Thursday happened. Our school is beginning to implement the Leader in Me program, and it's a very interesting training process. Before you implement the program with the kids, you learn how to live the seven habits in your own life. Rather than being a bridge, my two days of training were really the bow that tied up and connected all of the puzzle pieces I had been collecting the last few years. Everything made so much sense, and, next to our opening day a few years ago, this was the best inservice I have ever attended.

The bridge that inspired me during this training appeared in a video about win-win situations. It is a bridge called The Bridge of Aspirations, and it connects the Royal Ballet School of London with London's Royal Opera House where the Royal Ballet practices and performs. The students in the school are reminded all of the time of their purpose and goals simply by seeing and walking across this bridge. They can see exactly where all of their hard work will lead them.

I got to thinking about this Bridge of Aspirations, and I wondered how many schools are actually creating Bridges of Dread instead of the bridges that show how students can achieve their dreams. These bridges are paved with things like:

• You have to have lots of homework this year so we can get you ready for next year.
• If you do that next year, you're going to get detention or be suspended.
• Your (insert grade level teacher) next year isn't going to put up with that.
• You're going to be very embarrassed if you're still acting like that next year.

I know the list can go on. I've said some of these myself, and I'm so disappointed. Instead of setting my students up to cross a bridge of aspirations, I'm setting them up for fear, worry, and anxiety by painting the next school year and the next year's teachers as some awful place with awful people. What I should really be focusing on is: 

• how our skills this year will help them next year. 
• how their choices now will help them develop skills they can use as they get older and the choices get harder.
• the fact that developing courage and consideration will help them solve problems and work with others effectively, no matter how old they are. 
• understanding how important mistakes are to learning, and how important fixing mistakes is to growing.

This list can go on, too. The point is we need to stop building bridges of dread for our kids and for ourselves. 

We need to focus on building bridges of aspiration so that when our kids leave us, they are ready to learn and grow from whatever lies ahead. 

And when we come to those inevitable challenges in our lives, we know we have the strength to go forward and face whatever happens to be on the other side of that bridge.

Living the Dream

A few weeks ago I was talking to my friend as she was helping her son move into his first apartment.  It's a big step for any young person, but even more so because he was getting ready to begin his job working for the NFL. It was an exciting and difficult day for her, and, not being a mom, I could only imagine how she was feeling. As she expressed how difficult and emotional it was, I said the only thing I could think of:

I can’t imagine how hard this is. But how many moms can say that their child is living their dream! How amazing is this?

It’s true. How many people settle for whatever comes along instead of pursuing something they have always dreamed of doing? She had raised a young man who didn't settle, and here he was. He was about to begin living his dream!

As I was thinking about the start of the school year with our first day of inservice today, I realized that my mom could say the same thing. I wanted to be a teacher for as long as I could remember. And my brother, now a coast guard instructor pilot (formerly a search and rescue pilot) always wanted to fly. And here we both are, living our dreams for over 20 years. 

I wouldn’t say it’s been easy or what I had expected, but it was my dream. So this year, instead of saying that summer went too fast or that I’m disappointed to be back, I’m going to remember that I am one of those lucky people to be living my dream. And I’m going to make sure that I make the best of it.