We are Life-Changing Teachers!

I can still remember the pink gingham dress my mother picked out for me to wear on my first day of kindergarten.  I remember how excited I was to finally be able to go to school.  I actually attended school here in Charlotte County at Meadow Park Elementary.  I had Mrs. Irwin as my kindergarten teacher.  She was kind, caring, fun, and pretty.  Although, I can remember reading, coloring, and playing, I can’t remember specific academic lessons I learned.  I do however, remember how she made me feel.  I decided then, that I wanted to be a teacher. 

Over the next dozen years, I had teachers who were passionate about their job and I had teachers who were not.  I am sure that all of you can think of those few teachers who left a lasting impression on you.  Those teachers who changed and molded you into who you are today.  Those teachers that you would consider unforgettable and life changing. 

Recently, I came across an article in a blog at https://www.edutopia.org/article/6-traits-life-changing-teachers-betty-ray titled 6 Traits of Life-Changing Teachers.

In education there’s a lot of talk about standards, curriculum, and assessment—but when we ask adults what they remember about their education, decades after they’ve left school, the answers are always about their best teachers.  So what is it about great educators that leaves such an indelible impression? If the memory of curriculum and pedagogy fades with time, or fails to register at all, why do some teachers occupy our mental landscape years later? We started getting curious: What are the standout qualities that make some teachers life changers?

To answer this question, we asked our Facebook community directly. Over 700 responses poured in from teachers, parents, and students. When we analyzed the responses, some clear patterns began to emerge, across all age ranges and geography—even subjects.

Each trait includes detailed information in the blog.  I hope that you can take time to read it in its entirety.  I will just pull bits and pieces of the information for each life-changing trait.  It makes my heart happy to know that the teachers here at Myakka River Elementary possess all 6 of these traits.

1.       Life-Changing Teachers Help Their Students Feel Safe

The research is unequivocal: People can’t learn if they’re anxious, frightened, or in trauma. Safety is part of the education starter kit. Unsurprisingly, many of our readers recalled that the best teachers establish a culture of safety and support in their classrooms, whether it’s physical, emotional, or intellectual.

2.       Life-Changing Teachers Possess a Contagious Passion

A passion for education is in the blood of the best teachers—the word passion showed up 45 times in our audience responses—and the best teachers pass it on to students.

3.       Life-Changing Teachers Model Patience

Learning can be slow and messy. Classrooms are filled with students—sometimes more than 30 at a time—who arrive each day with different emotional needs, and learn at wildly different speeds. Remarkably, life-changing teachers find a way to stay calm amid the chaos and play the long game, giving their students the time and support they need to learn.

4.       Life-Changing Teachers Know When to Be Tough

If life-changing teachers are patient, they also know when to change gears and get tough. They’re the teachers who challenge us to be better students and better humans—and then up the ante and demand that of us.

5.       Life-Changing Teachers Believe in Their Students (and Help Them Believe in Themselves)

The power of a teacher’s simple, unequivocal belief in a student was mentioned almost 70 times by respondents. Most of us have had some sort of self-doubt, but many students are crippled by it. Life-changing teachers have the gift of seeing potential in kids when others don’t, and then have the perseverance to help the children find it within themselves.

6.       Life-Changing Teachers Love Their Students

Respondents used the word love a whopping 187 times (and that’s not counting an additional 157 heart emojis). Showing love for students—through small but meaningful gestures of kindness—is far and away the most impactful thing life-changing teachers do.

Taking a step back, it appears that the most direct and longest-lasting way to reach a child—to really make a difference in his or her life—is through so-called non-cognitive dimensions like passion, patience, rigor, and kindness. And when students are lucky enough to find a life-changing teacher, the benefits last a lifetime. In many cases, those students take up the vocation themselves: 145 of the people who responded to our question had become teachers, passing the gift of education forward to the next generation.

Thank you for changing lives every day!

I also wanted to share this video that came across my news feed this weekend.  This principal is not your typical principal, but his number one goal is to make all his students feel loved.  https://www.facebook.com/whatweseee/videos/1580623271997035/

Red Ribbon Week

Motivational Monday Morning!

This is Marie Gibson, your school counselor, and today starts the first day of our activities for “Red Ribbon Week”. The mission of this program is “Helping kids grow up safe, healthy, and drug-free”.  Our focus for the week is to continue spreading awareness of the dangers of bullying and drug use among our students. The goal is to encourage as many students as possible to take part in each day’s activities so that they have an understanding of how to live above the influence of others and to say no to drugs and bullying, and be proactive when bullying or other destructive  activities takes place in the classroom, lunchroom or the playground. Red Ribbon week spreads an amazingly positive message and our school will help support this message this week with prizes such as water bottles, spirit sticks and red ribbons. Together let’s encourage full participation in the poster contest, signing of pledges and activities for each day, and make it a fun and educational week for our kids.

In the words of Rita Pierson, “Every child deserves a champion: an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists that they become the best they can possibly be”.

I have also attached a copy of this week’s scheduled activities so that the students can be reminded of each day’s activities.

Thanks.

Empathy

Good morning,

Last week I attended a Professional Development. Although everything was valuable, one specific word the presenter shared stuck out to me-Empathy. 

"Empathy is the ability to experience and relate to the thoughts, emotions or experience of others. Empathy is more than simple sympathy, which is being able to understand and support others with compassion or sensitivity."

Empathy is extremely valuable in and out of the workplace. One of the most important skills that you can practice is empathy. When empathy is present it leads to great success personally and professionally. All in all, when empathy is practiced more and more you will become happier. 

With anything we ask WHY...so, why should we practice empathy?

• You will be more likely to treat the people you care about the way they wish you would treat them.
• You will better understand the needs of people around you.
• You will more clearly understand the perception you create in others with your words and actions.
• You will understand the unspoken parts of your communication with others.
• You will better understand the needs of your co workers at work.
• You will have less trouble dealing with interpersonal conflict both at home and at work.
• You will be able to more accurately predict the actions and reactions of people you interact with.
• You will learn how to motivate the people around you.
• You will more effectively convince others of your point of view.
• You will experience the world in higher resolution as you perceive through not only your perspective but the perspectives of those around you.
• You will find it easier to deal with the negativity of others if you can better understand their motivations and fears. Lately when I find myself personally struggling with someone, I remind myself to empathize and I immediately calm myself and accept the situation for what it is.

You will be a better leader, a better follower, and most important, a better friend.

I think the last sentence put this into perspective. We all want to better ourselves and this is a perfect way to do so. We all shine and lead in our own way. We all are important, whether we feel it or not. We all are friends, we care, love and support one another more than we know. We are a family and should practice, teach, and share empathy.

“Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.”

How true is this quote? This is VERY true for our relationships in and out of school.

Please take a few minutes to read the article below. It has alot of useful information about empathy within our school and classroom. 

A small snapshot of this powerful article: 

With a full plate every day, what do we often dismiss first? Empathy—for our students, our colleagues, and ourselves. But without empathy, we cannot understand the diverse students and communities we serve. That lack of understanding may limit our focus to generalizations and assumptions. A mindset without intentional empathy narrows focus, and prevents us from accurately identifying the barriers to learning for our students. In turn, students come to be viewed as academic producers rather than social-emotional beings.

In our educational roles, it is vitally important that we model how empathy has power to influence a variety of contexts and interactions. Investing in the well-being of both our students and our colleagues promotes a positive, empathic culture that makes classrooms and school a safe haven. If we want to make a lasting impact on our students and prepare them to for success in college, career, and citizenship, we must prioritize empathy as an essential mindset.

This all takes strength, which we all have. Even in those tough situation we are strong. We push through, we tackle our students every day needs, we are the shoulder for our co workers, we inspire, motivate, and encourage others in a way we never knew we could. I challenge you to be strong, and promote positive empathy in and out of the classroom. 

http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2016/01/20/building-empathy-in-classrooms-and-schools.html

Resiliency

If you are feeling anything like I am feeling, I imagine that you are all trying to keep your head above water.  The last few weeks have been draining both emotionally and physically.  I know that we all hit the ground running as soon as we came back from our Hurricane days.  Like all of you, I was met with lots of deadlines, team planning, data digging, and deliberate practice selection activities that were due right away.  On top of these expectations, it seems as if there is always another thing to add to our platters.  The one thing that keeps me motivated is knowing that our students need us.  Our students were so excited to get back to the school they love and to their teachers and staff members who care for them. 

My goal setting meeting was scheduled two days after returning to school.  I did not have a moment to think about the deliberate practice indicator that I was going to select to accompany our school improvement goal.  As I was reading through the indicators, I came across indicator 10.1 Resiliency: The leader demonstrates resiliency in pursuit of student learning and faculty development by:

§  staying focused on the school vision,

§  reacting constructively to adversity and barriers to success, acknowledging and learning from errors,

§  constructively managing disagreement and dissent with leadership,

§  bringing together people and resources with the common belief that the organization can grow stronger when it applies knowledge, skills, and productive attitudes in the face of adversity.

I thought this indicator was perfect.  In this career, we are faced with many challenges daily.  It is so easy to get bogged down with all of the “Stuff”.  Things that may not be in our control.  I believe that the way one reacts to a difficult situation or obstacles that they face, is a reflection of that person.  In my first year as a building principal, I have had several experiences with adversity.  I know that through these difficult challenges, it is important to maintain a clear vision and provide students with a learning environment that will allow them to succeed. This indicator will allow me to show that I can overcome adversity and learn from the feedback I receive.  I will be resilient and help my students and faculty achieve greatness.  Resiliency builds a stronger organization. 

I came across an interesting blog the other day that related directly to indicator 10.1.  You can read the full blog at the following webpage. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/8-pathways-cultivate-student-resilience-marilyn-price-mitchell  

Here are a few highlights from the blog and ways that you can cultivate resiliency in your classroom. 

The ability to meet and overcome challenges in ways that maintain or promote well-being plays an essential role in how students learn to achieve academic and personal goals. Resilient young people feel a sense of control over their own destinies. They know that they can reach out to others for support when needed, and they readily take initiative to solve problems. Teachers facilitate resilience by helping children think about and consider various paths through adversity. They also help by being resources, encouraging student decision-making, and modeling resilient competencies.

Five Ways to Cultivate Resilience

1. Promote self-reflection through literary essays or small-group discussions.

Short written essays or small-group discussion exercises that focus on heroic literary characters are an excellent way, particularly for younger students, to reflect on resilience and the role it plays in life success. After children have read a book or heard a story that features a heroic character, encourage them to reflect by answering the following questions. (See the Heroic Imagination Project for additional resources and videos.)

• ·         Who was the hero in this story? Why?
• ·         What challenge or dilemma did the hero overcome?
• ·         What personal strengths did the hero possess? What choices did he or she have to make?
• ·         How did other people support the hero?
• ·         What did the hero learn?
• ·         How do we use the same personal strengths when we overcome obstacles in our own lives? Can you share some examples?

2. Encourage reflection through personal essays.

Written exercises that focus on sources of personal strength can help middle and high school students learn resilience-building strategies that work best for them. For example, by exploring answers to the following questions, students can become more aware of their strengths and what they look for in supportive relationships with others.

• ·         Write about a person who supported you during a particularly stressful or traumatic time. How did they help you overcome this challenge? What did you learn about yourself?
• ·         Write about a friend that you supported as he or she went through a stressful event. What did you do that most helped your friend? What did you learn about yourself?
• ·         Write about a time in your life when you had to cope with a difficult situation. What helped and hindered you as you overcame this challenge? What learning did you take away that will help you in the future?

3. Help children (and their parents) learn from student failures.

In her insightful article Why Parents Need to Let Their Children Fail, published in The Atlantic, middle school teacher Jessica Lahey touched on a topic near and dear to every teacher's heart: How do I teach students to learn and grow through failure and setbacks when their parents are so intent on making them a shining star? The truth is that learning from failure is paramount to becoming a resilient young person. Teachers help when they:

• ·         Create a classroom culture where failure, setbacks, and disappointment are an expected and honored part of learning.
• ·         Establish and reinforce an atmosphere where students are praised for their hard work, perseverance, and grit, not just for grades and easy successes.
• ·         Hold students accountable for producing their own work, efforts from which they feel ownership and internal reward.
• ·         Educate and assure parents that supporting kids through failure builds resilience -- one of the best developmental outcomes that they can give their children.

4. Bring discussions about human resilience into the classroom.

Opportunities abound to connect resilience with personal success, achievement, and positive social change. Expand discussions about political leaders, scientists, literary figures, innovators, and inventors beyond what they accomplished to the personal strengths they possessed and the hardships they endured and overcame to reach their goals. Help students learn to see themselves and their own strengths through these success stories.

5. Build supportive relationships with students.

Good student-teacher relationships are those where students feel seen, felt, and understood by teachers. This happens when teachers are attuned to students, when they notice children's needs for academic and emotional support. These kinds of relationships strengthen resilience. When adults reflect back on teachers who changed their lives, they remember and cherish the teachers who encouraged and supported them through difficult times.

Do you have a teacher who played this role in your own life? What do you remember about him or her?

MARILYN PRICE-MITCHELL PHD'S PROFILE

There are a lot of great articles and resources on this blog.  It is well worth the visit.  Have a wonderful first week of October.