Even More Quotes That Resonate

Posted on June 27, 2016 by Amy's Reflections

When I read I annotate my books by underlining key words and phrases and making notes in the margins. Sometimes I underline a quote that I just can’t stop thinking about. Here is another post in my series of quotes that resonate.

“Routines create buckets for healthy emotional behaviors; they become a structural assurance that emotions will be attended to.”

~The Art of Coaching Teams by Elena Aguilar

This quote jumped off the page for me. The routines mentioned above relate back to creating  norms for teacher teams in order to build behaviors that lead to high emotional intelligence. But the routines could just as easily refer to those in a classroom of students. Students, just like educators in a team or PLC, need routines and structure in order to feel safe. They need their emotions attended to, just as adult learners do.

“The process of learning how to see without judging is a skill…”

“…practice does not improve in isolation”

~Leading for Instructional Improvement: How Successful Leaders Develop Teaching and Learning Expertise by Stephen Fink & Anneke Markholt

These excerpts come from chapter four, which is about observing in classrooms and facilitating learning walks with a clear purpose. I’ve worked with enough coaches and administrators to know that learning how to observe teaching and learning without judgments is a skill that takes time, effort, practice, and feedback. But none of our practice can improve in isolation. We all need trusted colleagues, peers who can provide us with feedback that will improve our leadership in order to  impact teaching and learning.

“Failure is a part of the process for innovative teachers. Each mistake is simply another iteration on the journey toward success.”

~Launch: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student by John Spencer & A.J. Juliani

I love this quote! We need to redefine failure in order to be innovative and creative in our classrooms and schools. Failure is that “first attempt in learning” and it provides us feedback along the way.

“We do not really see through our eyes or hear through our ears, but through our beliefs.” ~Lisa Delpit (1995) quoted in The Art of Coaching by Elena Aguilar

I am rereading Aguilar’s first book in preparation for some work with our district mentors next month and this quote leapt off the page at me. Our beliefs drive everything we say and do, whether we realize it or not. Aguilar’s advice is what led me to craft my coaching beliefs and my core values and to make them public. This quote is an important reminder to know thyself and thy impact, as Hattie’s research tells us.

“As Darling-Hammond (2013) notes, ‘Peer learning among small groups of teachers was the most powerful predictor of improved student achievement over time ‘.” ~ Intentional and Targeted Teaching: A Framework for Teacher Growth and Leadership by Doug Fisher, Nancy Frey and Stefani Arzonetti Hite

This concept is mentioned multiple times in the first few chapters of the book- teachers collaborating together on their practice can change teaching and learning. PLCs are so valuable when the work is focused on teaching and learning. The continuum proposed by Fisher, Frey and Hite ends with teachers as leaders, being able to help their colleagues learn about key elements of intentional and targeted teaching (FIT). Everyone in education can be a leader. How are you leading? How are you supporting the leadership development of others?

  • What quotes have resonated with you lately?
  • What do you read (or view or listen to) for inspiration?

More Quotes That Resonate

Quotes That Resonate

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Breaking Out of the Boxes

Posted on June 23, 2016 by Amy's Reflections

I recently successful broke out of two Digital Breakout EDU games by myself!

Having succeeded in my mission, I reflected on why this matters.

  • These digital challenges were created by a colleague of mine who is very creative and is always pushing herself (and therefore others!) to be innovative and adventurous.I felt compelled to try at least one (especially before I agreed to go into a real-live breakout room with friends!).
  • When I first I tried one of the games, I was immediately frustrated and annoyed and I quit. Going back (to the easiest level possible) and succeeding built up my confidence. After completing the first game, I knew I could do more and I tried the next level. This reminded me of my fixed mindset painting experience.
  • I like earning badges as I explore the world of digital badges and micro-credentials!
  • I learned that my fast-paced nature was not helpful in this situation, even though when you play these with a group the goal is to finish and breakout as quickly as possible! My impatience caused me to make silly mistakes that I had to go back and fix in order to solve the puzzles.

But just like any other technology device, tool, app, or program, I have to wonder what the educational value of games like these are.

I can see the value of these tools in a classroom, especially with teams of students, to develop perseverance, risk-taking, and problem-solving. These are important life skills, especially when we want to help students develop into life-long learners who can tackle unknown problems as 21st Century thinkers.

I imagine that if a teacher has gamified his/her classroom, the class could break out of other challenges that were directly linked to the academic content of the class. Having read and enjoyed Explore Like a Pirate by Michael Matera, I see the value in using gamification to engage, inspire, and challenge students with new learning.

Design thinking was impressed upon me when I saw the documentary “Most Likely to Succeed“. The film was created to get people talking about what we can do differently in our schools. It highlights the project-based learning that takes place at High Tech High (here in San Diego), as well as some other unique schools across the country. The final products designed by students in the film were impressive, outstanding, and overwhelming. I left the film inspired to start conversations about what we want our high school graduates to know and be able to do by the time they leave us. However, I also left feeling unsure of how to begin, considering the staggering gap between most schools in America and those featured in the film.

As I read LAUNCH by John Spencer and A.J. Juliani, I am reflecting on the value of design thinking and inquiry-based learning at the classroom level. The LAUNCH cycle proposed by Spencer and Juliani is very similar to the inquiry process presented by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels in Comprehension and Collaboration. In my previous role, I worked with Studio teachers who were using Harvey’s inquiry process with their students, in a new and foreign-to-them pedagogical approach. The students designed final presentations and projects that answered their essential questions. All of the work was student-centered and driven by their own curiosities and interests. Without realizing it, I had lead a team of teachers and their students through design thinking! Making this connection brought down some of the anxiety I felt after seeing the film.

All of these experiences have taught me that I need to redefine creativity and design thinking and problem-solving. Just like so many other buzz words in education, we need to collaborate with our colleagues to come to a collective understanding of what these words- these concepts- mean to us, in our context. These words have fluid definitions and they shouldn’t live in boxes. Our teaching shouldn’t live in boxes. We need to break out of the boxes to enhance student learning. As leaders, I hope we inspire teachers to break out of the boxes our system has put them in so that they can be creative, inquiry-driven, student-centered and focused on learning that impacts students in meaningful ways.

 

boxes

 

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[Mentor Text Monday] Snapchat

Posted on June 20, 2016 by Amy's Reflections

snapchat

All the cool kids love Snapchat.

But what does this have to do with mentor texts and writing? Well, some of the coolest features on Snapchat are the daily filters. Each day there are a new set of filters you can use on pictures, most famously on selfies. Some filters paint over your face to look slightly smoother and younger and prettier, while other make your head explode. One filter made me excited for my South African safari later this summer and another scared me with memories of the old “Bodies” exhibit.

I could see students using these filters as story starters for writing. Just look at all the pictures below. What do they make you think of?

 

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  • Fantasy stories about creatures with human and animal features
  • Fantasy stories where humans turn into animals or flowers
  • Biographies that highlight a person’s lifetime accomplishments as a saint, hero, or warrior
  • A memoir about a trip to Hawaii
  • Illustrated account of a vivid dream
  • A poem about the love of a pet
  • A cartoon or anime story inspired by a picture

Are you using Snapchat in your classroom?

How might these filters support students’ with independent writing? 

How can Snapchat help inspire creativity? 

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Blogging Reflection

Posted on June 9, 2016 by Amy's Reflections

I recently rediscovered a Blogger account I have no memory of creating it (back in 2009!). It was my first attempt to make my writing practice public. I was very hesitant to say much and there is no record of my name or personal information linked anywhere (one more reason it was easy for me to completely forget it existed!).

After that, I began to go back to my first blog posts written here, back in 2012. I am rereading my posts to edit them (such as taking out the second space after each period!), to add links to relevant, more current posts, and as a reminder to myself. It’s been a fun journey to read the first thoughts I was willing to make public when I began this blog.

blogging

One idea that really stood out to me as I reread my former posts, was how I developed mindfulness habits before mindfulness became my focus word of 2015. It was clear that during my doctoral journey, I was stressed out and out of balance. I began seeking that balance and I believe that led me to choosing mindfulness as a focus. Many of the habits I developed as far back as 2013 are still with me today. I still maintain a professional leadership journal. I am still passionate about social justice and love what I wrote in this mentor text post!

It’s also been a sad journey in some ways. Some of the posts I wrote four year ago resonate as much today as they did back then. While it is nice to think I’ve put words out there that stand the test of time, it is disheartening when those words were reflecting on some necessary changes I hoped to see in education.

I could let this trip down memory lane put me into a depressed funk over the state of education today, or I can use it to fuel my current work. I blog because I have something to say and I want to interact with other educators around the world. If more educators were reflecting and blogging about their work, maybe the progress we’ve made over the last four years would be more evident. We still have a long way to go, but I am proud to be surrounded by many dedicated colleagues who are striving for equity for all students, more creative, interactive lessons that engage kids, more time for teachers to let their passions drive their instruction, and a greater focus on life after high school for all students.

If you have a blog of your own, I encourage you to go back to the beginning for some rereading and reflecting!

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Core Values

Posted on June 2, 2016 by Amy's Reflections

The Art of Coaching, by Elena Aguilar, is one of my favorite professional books. I have professed my respect for the work multiple times here on the blog. This month I finally began to read Aguilar’s newest book, The Art of Coaching Teams, which is just as incredible! This is an amazing resource for leaders.

art of coaching teams

Each chapter is rich with reflective questions and resources that help you consider your vision, your leadership style, and the purpose of your work. One activity I recently completed was about your core values. You can find the directions and the word list on Aguilar’s website.

The activity begins with you looking over a list of about 110 words. These words are not an exhaustive list of possible values, but it’s a great place to start. You are directed to circle ten values you feel are important to you. In my first read of the list, I circled 22 words. There were THAT MANY words that struck me during my first view of the list.

Since I overshot step one, I narrowed my initial list of 22 words down to 10. While this cut took some thought, it wasn’t too challenging. I was able to eliminate a few words that I associate more with my personal life than my professional life (though many overlap). However, the next step was to cross off five words, leaving me with a list of five values.

This step was painful. I hemmed and hawed a lot. Truthfully, I reflected on what I believe, how I act at work, how I hope to be perceived by others, and what drives me. Each of those five words was important to me as a learner and as a leader.

The next step was to narrow my list further down to only three words- the three most important values to me at this point in time. After more serious reflection (which was one of my top five words!), I decided on my final three values:

  • Equity
  • Making a Difference
  • Trust

The final step in this activity was to reflect on the process- what led me to this list.

As expected, it was hard to keep cutting words off my list. I cut off balance and mindfulness before the first cut, though those are both important words in my personal life (and they do support my work). But I was focused on my core values as a leader, an educator, a coach, a mentor, here in this current world. I knew that trust and equity would be on my final list; they are non-negotiables in my life. They would not have been on my list 12 years ago, but I was a younger, more naive leader 12 years ago, who didn’t know how critical trust was. I also was just learning about all the inequities in education and discovering the importance of social justice leadership.

The phrase making a difference stuck out to me. At first, I wasn’t even going to put it in my top 10. But I kept coming back to it. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I am driven by the desire to make a difference- on behalf of students, teachers, staff, and other leaders. In my coaching and leading, I want to make a difference in the lives of other educators, so they impact students. The more I thought about it, the more important it became for me. So something that wasn’t even at the surface of my thoughts ended up in my top three after much reflection.
I found this activity to be a valuable reflective tool (and you know how much I love reflection!). I think this is something that all educators would benefit from. In The Art of Coaching Teams, Aguilar references this activity as an important one to consider when new team members are getting to know one another. So often in education we react based on our own beliefs, without taking time to listen to what drives others.
A team may end up with completely different lists of core values at the end of this activity, but they will be stronger for recognizing where their colleagues are coming from in all their future interactions. I’d love to hear what your top three core values are.
*May 2018 addendum: This post is one of my one-read posts of all times! I wrote this original Core Values post in 2016. I revisited my core values again in 2017 and wrote about them in Revisiting My Core Values.  This week I began reading Aguilar’s newest book, Onward, about emotional resilience, which is so important at this time in our world. I see a future core values post coming out in the future. Stay tuned!

 

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May Reading Update

Posted on May 31, 2016 by Amy's Reflections

This month felt like a slow reading month. Below are my reading experiences from May.

  1. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates- I chose to listen to this as an audiobook because I was in the middle of reading a few other books and I was feeling guilty about not having read this yet. So many people I know in person and online have recommended this book as a must-read, especially for educators, especially for educators who did not grow up in the black male experience in America. Knowing all of that, the book was not what I expected.  There were only four chapters, and it felt less focused and clear than I was anticipating.
  2. Who Do You Love by Jennifer Weiner – After reading a number of heavier professional books and some lackluster fiction books, I wanted to back to an author with whom I was familiar. I’ve read many of Weiner’s other Chic Lit books and have always enjoyed her stories. The age of the characters at the beginning of the story surprised me, but I enjoyed traveling with them through their life.
  3. Well Spoken: Teaching Speaking to All Students by Erik Palmer – The ELA TOSAs in my district offered this book to any teacher who wanted to read it, with an invitation to an evening book club to chat about the book.  I loved the way the author broke down the content into two parts: building a speech and performing a speech.  His examples were specific and clear and great advice for ALL teachers.  I truly believe that we don’t give students nearly enough instruction in how to speak academically, nor enough time to actually practice speaking. This is a great resource for all educators!
  4. Untwine by Edwidge Danticat- This YA novel has been in my house for awhile, and I finally picked it up and read it over a weekend.  It was a bittersweet story about twin sisters and their interesting family, as they struggle through a difficult period in their lives. I enjoyed reading this, though I prefer faster-paced, upbeat stories.
  5. Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo- I was surprised to stumble upon an older DiCamillo book I hadn’t read, so I quickly added this to my Audible account and listened to the story. It was full of fun characters and a sweet storyline, though this is one I would have rather read in print than listen to in audio form.
  6. A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore- I have vague memories or buying this paperback in a bookstore a few years ago. At that time, the blurb on the back sounded interesting. As I read it, I found myself disliking the level of descriptive details the author used for EVERYTHING, and I really disliked all of the characters. However, I was interested enough to want to know how the various storylines would end. It was slow, but full of oddly created, flawed characters.

2016 Monthly Updates

January

February

March

April

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Key Words

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Amy's Reflections

Every once in awhile I like to put my blog’s URL into a word cloud generator and see what comes up. The bigger the word, the more prominently it was used in my posts.  Last January learning and reflections were key words on my blog. In November students and coaching came up as additional key words.  This month, I was, at first, surprised to see read and book as the two most prominent words from my blog.

wordle 2016

During 2016 I decided to capture my reading experiences in monthly blog posts (see April’s update here). I have been doing a lot more blogging about the books I’m reading. I also happen to have more time to read since finishing my doctoral studies, and recovering from the stress related to those endeavors!

Each time I look at a new word cloud, I ask myself these reflective questions:

  • Do the most prominent words reflect my current work and/or beliefs?
  • Have I been focused on something (like rejuvenate, my word of 2016) that I would expect to see?
  • Does the word cloud show me some concerns that I wasn’t consciously aware of before?
  • Am I surprised to see some key words missing (such as coaching)?
  • If someone was trying to get to know me as a leader and a learner through my blog, would this word cloud accurately portray me?

Based on my reflections, I often come up with new blog post ideas to write about, wanting to make sure that my overall blog reflects me as a professional.  What other reflective questions should I consider? How do you check yourself for focus and relevancy?

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Keep Calm and Blog On

Posted on May 12, 2016 by Amy's Reflections

keep-calm-and-carry-on

How many Keep Calm and… posters, pictures, and memes have you seen in the last year? I can’t even begin to count how many I see on Pinterest and Instagram on a daily basis. However, for the first year or so that Keep Calm signs seemed to flood my Social Media screens, I had no idea where it came from. I researched the history, reading a number of resources including this.

I knew the original poster was from English during World War II, but I just recently learned that the Keep Calm and Carry On poster was the third in the series and was never actually used. The originals were found many years later (60!) at an auction. After multiple reproductions of the original gained popularity, it was only a matter of time before modern techies took the idea and morphed it into something funny and annoying and trivial and all over the Internet.

They even have a Keep Calm generator where you can create your own phrase and then purchase items with the phrase printed on them:

Keep Caml

Keep Calm and Blog On

If I was a teacher in a classroom today, I would challenge my students to come up with creative Keep Calm sayings based on the content we were studying (after learning the origin of the idea!).  Then I would see how they could share their creations with the world as part of a movement to have an impact.

But since I don’t have the opportunity, I will just Keep Calm and Blog On.

 

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SAQ’s

Posted on May 9, 2016 by Amy's Reflections

SAQ’s = Should Ask Questions (great idea from this post)

By now we all know that during most job interviews, the interviewee has the opportunity to ask questions of the person/panel/organization. It is important to not only ask at least one question, but to prepare your question(s) based on the job for which you are interviewing. I offer the list below as a starting point to consider, the SAQ’s an interviewee should ask in an educational interview:

  • How do employees treat one another here (in this school/ office/ department/ district)?
  • How might I see your organization’s vision come to life if I walked into a classroom/ meeting/ event?
  • In what ways is your organization innovative?
  • How do people communicate within your organization?
  • What would you describe as the greatest strengths of the organization?
  • What would you describe as the greatest area ready for growth within the organization?
  • How is technology used for work efficiency within this organization?
  • What would you like me to know about the organization that I can’t learn by visiting your website?
  • Is this position a new job or is it being vacated?
  • If vacated, why is the previous person leaving this job?
  • Why should I want to work here?
  • How do you see this job evolving in the next 5 years?

What other SAQ’s would you add to this list? 

See here for ways to stand out in an interview and here on some interview advice!

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Thank you for being a… teacher

Posted on May 3, 2016 by Amy's Reflections

Anyone else humming “The Golden Girls” theme song “Thank you for being a friend”?

May is the time when we celebrate the hard work and dedication of teachers. Teacher Appreciation Week is a small drop in the vast, complicated ocean that is teaching. But having a specific day or week called out helps us remember to honor this incredible profession.

In 2015 I celebrated The Art of Teaching during Teacher Appreciation Week. In that post I remembered some great learning experiences I had, thanks to my own teachers. Teachers still rock!

This year I just want to thank each and every teacher – the teachers I’ve had, the teachers I’ve known and worked with, the teachers I connect with through Social Media or conferences, and all the millions of teachers I’ve never met.

Teaching is hard. It is complicated, challenging, and rewarding work. People outside of education spend a lot of time judging teaching. But only those of us who have stood in a classroom full of students understand the reality. Teaching is powerful. Teaching is learning every day. Teaching is creativity as well.

In the last 3 months I’ve visited 180 classrooms in my district. I would like to thank these teachers for:

  • creating risk-taking environments for students.
  • welcoming colleagues into their classrooms.
  • wanting and appreciating feedback on their work.
  • creating labs and hands-on experiences that engaged students through multiple modalities.
  • integrating technology into lessons that asked students to think critically.
  • providing authentic, rich texts for students to read and discuss.
  • making learning meaningful for students.
  • framing lessons around essential questions that lead to deep inquiry.
  • trying out Twitter for the first time.
  • being willing to plan an Edcamp.
  • being awesome every day!

THANK YOU TEACHERS!

I hope that during this Teacher Appreciation Week  you take time to thank a teacher.

#TeachersRock

 

 

 

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