I've Finally Reached That Age When...

I can't believe it's here:  the end of my 19th year in education.  Well, the end of my 37th year in education, if you count the years I spent as a student.

I remember when I was a young yearbook adviser, and we marked glossy photographs with red wax pencils to crop the photo we needed for whatever page we were building.  Using rulers, ballpoint pens, and 3R graphing paper, we manually built the yearbook from scratch.  Today, as I covered a class for an ill teacher, I watched a couple of yearbook staffers squeeze in page development between projects in the classroom:  there was the page layout, on the student's laptop, and she was plugging in digital photos as quickly as you could say "cheese."  Manipulating font and point size, dropping in various backgrounds, until she finally felt the page was ready for her adviser to review:  it took her about 20 minutes. 

Unbelievable.

I think back even further, when I was a high school student.  Like many schools in rural America, mine had a small lab made up of a few Apple IIe's.  I was lucky enough to be taking an independent study programming class--I remember I built a rudimentary program that kind of mimicked the lawnmower game that many of us remember from those days.  Basically, the computer operator had a "lawn" to mow, and moved the growing green stripe around that virtual lawn until it was all cut.  Their score was based on how little overlap occurred while mowing.

Kind of lame, really, when I stand behind our VREP (Virtual Reality Education Pathways) students and watch them build and manipulate three dimensional models much like those we see in modern video games and in films like 'Avatar.'

In ten years, as retirement starts to become visible on the distant horizon, I wonder what will seem crude and primitive to me, then?

Depth trumps breadth every time

Don’t let the rush, rush, rush of April and May cause you to lose sight of this truth.  If we cover our material faster than usual in order to get as much in as possible before summer (a common practice among educators), do you suppose our students will learn it as well, better, or worse than they were learning back in October when we weren’t feeling this end-of-the-year pressure?  Trust me, they will learn better by digging deeply into a few key concepts than they will by skimming and forgetting.  Make the correct decision when lesson planning.

Living Proof That Character Counts

I've got to tell you, I received two of the nicest phone calls this week. The principal of another school district called to let me know how caring and supportive our students were while our team was competing against them at a recent basketball game. Apparently, at half-time a young boy's family was doing a fundraiser to help offset costs of this youngster's heart surgeries. Our student section and our adult fans called the young man over, encouraged his efforts, and donated to his cause.  I thanked my principal friend for passing along the compliments.

Then today the president of their booster club called with similar compliments, from the same event. She wanted me to be sure I knew how much she appreciated the fact that our students conducted themselves in a way that we should be proud of.

And then I think back to the e-mail we received back in the fall of this year from the parent of a football player whose team was our guest one Friday night at our new facility.  He just wanted us to know how impressed he was with the hospitable treatment their team and their fans received from our staff, our booster club, and our community.  He said, "...we were welcomed as warmly and as friendly as I have ever seen a visiting school be welcomed."

I openly confess an immense feeling of pride for our students, our staff, and our community when I hear these comments.  But what really strikes me is the strength of character it takes to pick up the phone and make a call to a stranger you don't know to compliment him on the conduct of his students, whom you also don't know!  I believe what these good people realize is that when an act is encouraged, it is repeated.  So I don't share these messages to brag about how fantastic our kids are, but to highlight the fact that the standard for the good and kind treatment of others has been set high--and rightly so--and we must continue to live up to that standard.

If we keep our eyes fixed upward on this standard and on these examples, we'll continue to act in ways that are honorable, and become living proof that character counts.

Talent Is Overrated

From Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin

"And what we discovered so far is not what makes some people excel but rather what doesn't. Specifically:

• It isn't (years of) experience.
• It isn't specific inborn abilities.
• It isn't general abilities such as intelligence and memory.

...the differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain."

From "Elements of Grading" by Doug Reeves

"Certainly, Hattie is not the first scholar to recognize the importance of feedback on student achievement. His findings are completely consistent with Robert Marzano's conclusions that accurate, specific, and timely feedback is linked to student learning. Thanks to Hattie's research, however, we can now be more precise than ever about how important it is. We can say, based on the preponderance of the evidence from multiple studies and many cultural settings, that feedback is not only more important than most other instructional interventions, it is also more important than socioeconomic status, drug use, nutrition, exercise, anxiety, family structure, and a host of other factors that many people have claimed are overwhelming. Indeed, when it comes to evaluating the relative impact of what teachers and educational leaders do, the combined use of formative evaluation and feedback is the most powerful combination that we have."

Have We Lost Our Stomach for Democracy?

The elections are over. Winners have been declared. But as I think back, I recall the local and national outcry against the rancor and divisiveness and bitterness of the political debates as they unfolded throughout the campaigns. Frankly, I couldn't disagree more. As a confessed political junkie (it's actually one of my hobbies!) I found great value in hearing one candidate versus another candidate express passionately his or her opinions about their position and attempting to refute the validity of their opponent's argument. This is how ideas are tested. This is how good ideas are developed. This is how good ideas in a democracy become implemented. For we as a nation to have "lost our stomach" for the vigorous exchange of ideas is concerning. To avoid this necessary testing of ideas in order to maintain a peaceful atmosphere is to lose the very process by which our ideas become better. As role models for our young people, I truly believe that we in education need to model this kind of necessary and respectful--but at times oppositional--dialogue. We must be respectful and considerate, of course, but to abandon our passions for the sake of a false sense of civility makes for very little progress, indeed.

Setting the stage for achievement

How high should our expectations be for our students? How much do we think they are capable of accomplishing? That depends, I suppose. Because to accurately answer this question for our students requires first that we educators answer the same questions of ourselves. How high should our expectations be for one another, as colleagues? There is only one legitimate answer, of course: very high indeed. We are entrusted with a significant share of a critical task: the productive education and upbringing of our nation's young people. Parents are our partners in this process--together, we are the strongest influences shaping these young lives. But, how many of us start our day reminding ourselves of this responsibility? How often do we pause for just a moment before a day of teaching--or a day of parenting, for that matter--reflecting on how our attitudes impact our students' abilities to accomplish more than they thought they could?