It's Not a Program

Wednesday we had the third phase of our Leader in Me training. We started talking about the next steps in our school journey, aligning the seven habits with academics. To begin the training we were asked the following question:

Why are you implementing Leader in Me?

My first answer for this question was, "to improve the behavior of the students in our building and reduce discipline issues." As I sat there and thought a little longer, I realized that, one - I really didn't know why we initially decided to implement Leader in Me, and two - if that was the actual reason for our implementation, Leader in Me would just be one more program that could easily be replaced with the next new thing.  

In that moment, I had one of those paradigm shifts our trainers and our coach have talked about. 

I shifted my paradigm from thinking that Leader in Me was a bandaid we put on behavior problems to thinking that it's tools we are giving our students and ourselves to be more successful in every aspect of our lives. Erin, our amazing school librarian, brought up the idea that our district's vision is to help students become life-ready, but as a 4th - 6th grade school we rarely see the fruits of our labor. We rarely get to see what our students have become at the end of this journey. 

The language we use and the actions we model are giving our students the tools they need for their futures. Despite all of our hard work, it may not be until 5, 10 or even 15 years down the road that these ideas and tools will really click for our kids and help them make better choices and lead successful lives. 

We need to shift our paradigm and realize that these seven habits aren't a "pill to make the headache go away." By seeing these seven habits as a foundation for the choices we make and by modeling these seven habits for our kids, we will be able to be the role models that our students need to begin using the tools in their own lives and work towards becoming life-ready adults. 

B Minus Is AOK

For the first time in 22 years I didn't spend the entire week before inservice at school, doing school work, or completely obsessed with school.

For the first time in 22 years, I haven't had any back to school teacher nightmares.

For the first time in 22 years, I didn't spend my last day of summer vacation at school.

And I'm ready enough.

I feel good. Actually I feel great!

I was excited (I know.... I know....) to attend our opening sessions today, and I was proud to be part of  a team of teachers leading one of the workshops.

I also got up, did some yoga, wrote in my journal, and went to the gym after school because I will never ever be my best teacher self if I don't take care of myself first.

I spent a lot of time being a perfectionist. I was that student who would rewrite her entire homework so that nobody knew how many times she had to erase mistakes. I still strive to be distinguished in areas where I'm passionate and willing to put forth the effort.

But I have learned to say no.

I am getting better at leaving school at school and making home about home.

And if that means I'm *just* proficient, I've finally learned that it's okay.

While I'll always do my best, if my best is a B- then I'll be the most awesome B- there is. Because as much as being a teacher is an important part of my life, there's now way more to my life than just being a teacher.

Seven Hour Setup

Last summer I had major surgery at the end of July, and I had some pretty significant restrictions. In order to get my classroom set up for the beginning of the year, I had one work day prior to surgery to get ready. Needless to say I was a little panicked about the whole situation.

As I listened to the Chalk Full of Life podcast (unfortunately no longer running), I was intrigued by an idea I heard. Stop planning to do lists and starting planning your time. The basic premise is that you block out the time you want to spend doing something, and at the end of that time, whether you are finished or not, you move on to the next task.

At a loss as to how I was going to set up my classroom in just one day, I figured this was as good of a strategy as any and decided to give it a try. Much to my delight, it worked! I was able to finish everything that was available to me in one day.

One year later I decided to try it again, this time with all of the regular distractions of "back to school week" and lots of people in the building.  Surprisingly, it worked for me again.

Because I found so much success with it, I thought I would share my plan with you. You can find the document here, and I've shared some notes and explanations below.

• Hour 1 - I still have my own personal space. While I don't sit at my desk very often, it's my place where I start and end each day. It's also where I hold individual conferences. The kids also love sitting at or under my desk for independent work, so this has become an important spot in the room.
• Hour 2 - We're required to take most items down or put most items away for summer cleaning. This may not be something you need to do, so this could be a spot where you'll save some time.
• Hour 3 - We place our beginning of the year supply order in May for delivery over the summer. We are extremely lucky to have almost all of our supplies available, so it takes some time to unpack and organize the materials. 
• Hour 4 - This hour bleeds together with Hour 3. Often times as I'm unpacking supplies I'm also starting to pass out student materials, so the two hours mix together.
• Hour 5 - I have a creation station in my classroom with foldable bins holding toilet paper tubes, my scrap paper, colored cellophane, straws, acorns..... all kinds of materials. While my students help clean this up at the end of the year, I like to go through the bins to make sure everything is usable.
• Hour 6 / 7 - You'll see this starts with, "Finish anything that wasn't finished in any other hour," and that's pretty much how I completed my tasks today. I'm mostly concerned with getting the physical room setup completed, so if I need to push off the copies and tech tasks I'm okay with that.
• And the most important part: I put a very polite sign on my door that read, "Welcome back - would love to say hello. Please stop back and say hi when my door is open." People were very respectful of my wishes, and it definitely helped me get a lot done.

Obviously, my classroom is very different from every other room, so I know you'll have to make changes to this plan to fit your classroom. It's my hope that you'll find this to be some help as you are setting up your classroom so that you can reduce some beginning of the year stress.

New Beginnings

I can't help but feel like August, for me, must be like January for other people. While I'm always sad to see my lazy days of summer come to an end, there is nothing quite like the beginning of the school year. Every August gives me the opportunity to do the same job in a totally different way than I did last year. I guess that's why I love teaching so much. Even though I will once again be a 4th grade math and science teacher, my two new groups of students assure me that this year will be completely different from the previous ones.

Last year was one of the best years in my 21 years of teaching, and I know that is because of two things:

• how I started my year
• the hybrid rotational model

My classroom worked so well for all of us because we spent the time at the beginning of the year to really establish routines and build a culture in our classroom. You can read about how I ran my first few weeks (yes, even though when I typed the original post it was about the first week, it ended up being a little over three) here. Being able to spiral back to routines we established gave me so much additional instructional time throughout the year. And the hybrid rotational model? While I was skeptical about only teaching for 20 minutes to each group, the connections I made with every single student and the quality of those 20 minutes allowed me to complete far more than I have ever done before with both of my classes. 

For the first time ever, I'm not getting ready for a new school year thinking, "How do I want to do things differently this year?" This year I'm thinking, "How can I make things better?"

I'll be honest, I'm not sure yet, and that's okay. I had the opportunity to listen to a lot of great videos during this summer's Ditch Summit focusing on teacher wellness. Today, the idea that struck me the most was the idea of picking just a couple of things and being really, really good at them. I think I did this last year by only focusing on my beginning of the year lessons and implementing my new instructional model. I'm going to really think about my goals for this year and come up with two or three new things that I want to try. Then I'll tell you about them here.

And that's one personal goal I have. My blogging as been.... sporadic to say the least these last few years. Also during today's Ditch video, I realized my lack of posting was probably because I felt like people weren't really interested in what I had to say. But it has been really amazing for me to go back and revisit these moments. Because of that, I'm setting a goal to write once a week to share things that are going well and not so well. Hopefully I can look back on the entries and see how I can make things even better next year, and if somebody else finds something they can use, too, then that will be just an added bonus.  

Year 21 in the Books

I have these big goals of blogging! I think, "Oh, I should put that on my blog!" And then in my quest for balance (it's interesting and different when you love to be home and don't want to spend every waking minute on school stuff), blogging was the thing that went.

But just to catch you up....

1. Year 21 -- probably one of the best!
2. Hybrid rotational model -- love, love, love it. I know I'm not doing it the "right way" but it's the right way for me. There's definitely a post here now that it's summer time.
3. Leader in Me -- living the 7 habits.... it just makes sense.
4. I wish we could help kids the way they need help. They're never going to pass any stinkin' test unless we meet their other needs first.
5. Coworkers who are friends - I could not do it without them.
6. Got the Google -- Level 1 certified, and my friends and I just started working on level two.

I know there's way more I should be telling you, and I'll probably get there. But I'm not making any promises. I'll be here when the spirit moves me. :)

Words Matter

Participating in the 7 Habits training that goes along with the Leader in Me program we're implementing in my school has been life changing for me. While I have grown a lot this summer, putting these seven habits into practice has really been the icing on the cake of 4 long years of growth. I would say that the biggest change I've noticed in myself comes in terms of Habit 1: Be Proactive and Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, then to be Understood.

I know in the past there were days when I let my emotions get the best of me. I'm sure anybody who is a teacher can say that, or anybody who's a parent, or anybody who has to deal with any other human being if you want to be honest. We all have had those times where we have snapped at somebody for no good reason, we've yelled at somebody when they really weren't the person who caused our anger in the first place, or we've said or done things when our emotions were high that we looked back later and regretted.

I'm not sure why it took a 2 day training for me to stop and think about how these negative interactions were affecting the people around me, especially my students.

I'm not sure why it took a 2 day training for me to realize that the kids didn't deserve it when I snapped or was angry; they didn't make me do it.

It was all me. It was my choice.

That's kind of a crappy realization, and yet it's also a really powerful realization.

Having that a-ha moment has allowed me to be proactive when my students have me feeling a little frustrated. I'll actually tell them that I need to take a moment so that I don't respond in a reactive way. (What better way to teach them the habits than to model them myself, right?) I ask them to help me think about why I'm feeling that way. Both of these have helped me handle situations where I might have responded by yelling or snapping in a more proactive manner, and I feel like it has helped my classroom community be even healthier than I thought it was in the past.

The other thing I'm doing, instead of instantly blaming a child for their behaviors, is taking a minute to have a conversation that starts with one of these two phrases:

• Can you help me understand why you are (insert whatever it is the child was doing)?
• You look frustrated. Can you tell me a little more about why you are feeling this way?

I had a great opportunity to use these yesterday when I was on recess duty. I saw a friend sitting on the curb alone, hood pulled up over his head and covering his face. I went over to see what was up, and I had the opportunity to make a new friend.

Now, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this friend, if he were in my classroom, would probably be the friend who tries to see what buttons he could push. I'm guessing he stretches the rules as far as he possibly can, and I also learned (because he told me) that he can respond to his teachers in a pretty reactive way and probably can be, in his words, "yeah, a little disrespectful." So I get why he had a parent phone call coming his way.

At the same time, I met a very well spoken 4th grade for somebody who was able to rattle off the 7 different schools he's attended in his very short school career. I met a young man with an amazingly confident handshake, and he looked me right in the eyes when he did it. I met a young man who was able to tell me that he was mad that he got in trouble because his dad didn't sign something. I met a young man who felt like he didn't have any friends. And I met a young man who, it seemed, just wanted somebody to listen to how he was feeling.

I talked with him about trying to be more proactive and not so reactive when talking with his teacher and when doing things in the classroom. I'm not sure that will help - he seems like he has a pretty strong will. 

I also told him that if he ever just needed somebody to talk to, he could always come and talk to me. I may not always agree with him, but he could be sure that I would always listen.

Words matter.

Relationships matter.

First Month Reflection

When we last left off, I had shared about my amazing first day of school. It truly was one of the best, and I'm thrilled to report that things have continued to go just as well as they did the first day. While I can't say that everything is all unicorns and rainbows, things just feel different this year. I want to share some of the reasons why these first few weeks have been so successful.

• Using the four categories to plan my days and taking the time to establish routines:
• In my last post, I talked about establishing four categories to guide my first weeks of school. I ended up sticking with these categories for the first three weeks of school. 
• I slightly tweaked the management category to include training for our two student led stations. I spent about a week helping the kids learn how to be independent. We created a chart similar to those I did with the Daily 5 when I taught ELA classes, and we used Freckle, Exact Path (which I am excited to be piloting), and Study Island during this time. That made it an extra opportunity to practice some of our tech boot camp skills.
• We also spent about a week and a half learning how to work effectively in collaborative groups. A lot of our conversations focused on socialization vs collaboration and being willing to accept help or constructive criticism. During this time we used Week In Math activities from YouCubed to start developing the mathematical mindset I'm hoping to grow in the kids this year.
• Teaching and living the 7 Habits
• Since we are beginning to implement the Leader in Me program this year, I have been living the 7 habits in my life, and it truly has changed the way I interact with my students. Yesterday we had another fantastic training, and I'm looking forward to moving beyond just using the words with my classes and focusing on the principles.
• I always made the effort to make positive communication at the beginning of the year, but I always dropped the ball when things got busy and didn't keep it up. I am making this positive communication a priority this year.
• While hard conversations are never fun, my new learnings are helping me make these difficult contacts less challenging. I've stopped taking them personally and see them for what they are: ways to help my kids grow.
• Having 1:1 chromebooks in my classroom
• Being a teacher with 1:1 resources has made a huge change in my class, simply because of all the time saved in transitions. There's no, "Go down the hall and get your computers," or, "You need to go put the computers back in the cart." Because the kids can keep their computers in their desks and have the most important sites bookmarked, transitions are down to about a minute. It's pretty amazing.
• I am able to give the kids more opportunities to come up with different ways to show their learning.
• We are able to use different tools for formative assessments rather than just a paper pencil test.
• We're continuing to develop our technology skills, and I'm looking forward to the next big step: adding Schoology.
• Having my entire class do their independent station first in the afternoon allows us to meet with every single student individually each day. That's been a great way to learn about the kids and see how they are applying skills we're doing in groups.
• Doing all instruction in small groups
• While I know that I am not technically doing my station rotation model by the book, I am already thrilled with it. Students spend 20 minutes per day in each station.
• Having the opportunity to meet with all of my kids every day in small groups during math instruction has allowed me to see where kids are making mistakes more quickly and talk through misconceptions with them.
• Changing my spiral reviews to mostly small group number talks has allowed me, when not working with individuals, to walk around asking critical thinking questions that I learned about this summer at my Franklin Institute training. This has really helped me feel more like a facilitator than a teacher.

While there are always bumps along the road, I feel like this really has been the best start in my 21 years. I feel happy to come to school each day, and I really am looking forward to seeing how we can continue these routines and grow and adapt them to help the kids be even more successful.