Art Show

Tonight was Northside Primary School's Sixth Annual Art Show.  This year's theme was the jungle.  Our amazing Art Teacher, Misti King (she is in the black t-shirt) worked with students to design, create, paint, and display pieces created from recycled plastic bottles. The students also created and built the jungle items that make up the displays. To put this into perspective, these are five to seven year old kids.

Work on the show began in January and continued until just minutes before the guests arrived.  Students and staff spent the last week turning the building into a jungle including creating a walk through cave with cave drawings and a waterfall.  The rest of the building looked like a scene from "Jumanji."  In the middle of all of this, each student created their own jungle-themed art piece that was displayed throughout the hallways.

As a school leader, I am so proud of the work put in by the students and staff here at Northside Primary.  Honestly, the only thing I did was set up a couple of tables and try to document the work on camera.  Throughout this process, I've seen students actively engaged, excited, and ready to show the over 100 parents who came the work they did.  It was an amazing night at Northside.

Five Weeks

The countdown has begun.  The days are being marked off and thoughts are drifting toward that idyllic place called "Summer."  As I hear the hallway talk and watch the calendar days disappear, it reminds me that, yes, summer is coming, but more importantly, our time is limited.  We have just a moment left with this group of kids and then they are off to the next grade.  This remaining time is so precious.  I wrote the post below for my staff in our Friday newsletter to remind them of all that we can do with the short time we have left.  I hope you enjoy.

I looked at the calendar today and realized that we have five more weeks of school.  Just five weeks.  What on earth can you do in five weeks?  I would have to say quite a lot.

In five weeks, you can

• inspire a child to become better.
• build stronger relationships with your kids.
• raise a child’s reading level by (fill in the blank).
• teach your children new math/reading/writing strategies.
• recognize something positive about every child in your class.
• Encourage every staff member in the building
• help a child get their AR shirt.
• Make a positive contact with every parent in your classroom.
• try a new teaching strategy.
• visit another classroom and see how someone else teaches.
• read that book you’ve been trying to get to all year.
• develop a new habit.
• learn more about a coworker.
• walk 33 miles (if you just walk one mile a day).
• read 33 blog posts (by just reading one a day).
• Start setting goals for next year.
• Add your own ideas to this list

How will you choose to use the next five weeks?  Whatever you choose, use it well.

Good for kids?

Last week, a student ended up in my office.  He was having trouble controlling himself and was bothering other kids to the point that they couldn't learn.  When I got him into my office, he was all over the place, barely able to sit still.  We talked while he bounced.  It didn't take long to find out the circumstances that brought on this behavior.  For one, the adult he normally works with in the class was out.  Plus, he had been brought to school late by a family member who didn't know his morning routine.  Everything was off.  It was now 9:00 in the morning.  Normally, this child can be calmed by looking at some calming sticks I have in my office.  These are tubes filled with colored liquid and glitter that slowly move when turned.  Not this morning.  They quickly turned to drumsticks and were taken away.  It was now 9:15.  I knew he liked to read, so we got some books out and I told him I had to finish what I was working on at my desk.  He could sit in the chair or on the floor and read.  That lasted all of 5 minutes. I then sat on the floor with him and we read together until he could no longer focus.  Having an errand to run in the building, I took him with me and let him help me carry a few things back to my office. Deciding that I would likely get no work done, we sat at my desk and tested out apps I had recently downloaded.  We would do them together and he would rate them for them.  Most were not any good in his eyes because they weren't games.  We did have some fun with Sock Puppets as I tried to get him to explain some things to me using his puppets.  However, he could only focus for a short time. It was now 9:45.  I had to make another quick trip to a class and saw a teacher waiting for an appointment.  I asked her if she would sit with him for a minute.  She agreed and I went into the building.  When I returned 10 minutes later, they were sitting on the office floor making funny faces into an app.  It was now close to 10:00.   I knew that he would have some extra support arrive in his class at 10:30, so I made the decision to keep him until that time.  We went back to my office, read some more, explored a few more apps, and then it was 10:20.  I took him back to class.


Walking back to my office, I asked myself three questions:

1)  Was that time good for the student? I would have to say yes.  He got positive one-on-one time with an adult, wasn't getting into trouble in class, and did learn a bit in the process.
2)  Was it good for the kids in his class?  Again, I would have to say yes.  They were able to work for over an hour with the teacher focusing on them and not on this one student and his constant movement.
3) Was it good for me?  Yes and No.  While I built a stronger relationship with this child, I had really needed to use this time to visit classes and finish an appraisal I was working on.

As a reflected on these three questions, I was reminded that, as an educator, I come to work each day to do what is best for kids, not necessarily what is comfortable for adults.  Yes, I could have taken this child back to class but would that have been in his best interest?  What about the best interest of his classmates?  At the end of each day, I want to look back and be able to say that I have done what is best for kids, no matter how it affects me.  That is why I come to work each day and why I am educator.  It's not for my own well-being and comfort.  I do what I do for children.

Mission/Vision Planning Part 2

Last week, I posted about the beginning of our journey to craft a new campus mission and vision.  We got as far as deciding our major points for the mission and assembling a team to write our draft mission statement.  Today, that team met and began the process of crafting a mission statement that reflects our purpose as a campus.  From our previous meeting, we had narrowed our focus down to a few select areas.  These are listed below:

Key ideas: 

• Age appropriate

• Safe and secure environment that produces students who are academically successful, creative, and productive citizens

• Problem Solving 

      o Social

      o Emotional 

      o Learning

• Learning focused

• Values, morals, integrity

• Nurturing

• To help encourage students to set and achieve goals

• To teach each individual child to their full potential

• Set the foundation

• Student centered

Starting with this list, we discussed each point and then combined any together that could redundant. We also highlighted the key words and discussed the advantages and disadvantages of each of these.  As we worked, the conversation became lively as people supported their ideas and opinions.  I was reminded of the points in Patrick Lencioni's book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team as I worked hard to ensure that we had effective arguments and not an artificial harmony.  I was elated when members of the team were willing to disagree with me and others and provided excellent points to back up their objections.  We finally decided that we would craft a mission statement that gave the overall purpose of the school and then craft supporting points to serve as our guide in implementing these.  

The first draft of our mission statement is:  

The mission of Northside Primary School is to provide a safe, nurturing environment where each Kindergarten and 1st Grade child learns to his or her full potential. 

This is more specific than our current mission statement, which reads, "As part of Palestine Independent School District, Northside Primary School is committed to providing quality instruction to our students.  The staff is a motivated group of professionals dedicated to assisting children in the development of their greatest potential.  Our vision is to equip all children who leave our school with knowledge and skills that will enable them to achieve maximum success in society."  

The meeting ended with some homework, namely to use the staff input from above to create a set of guiding statements to show how we will fulfill this mission.  We will meet again next week to put these together and rehash the mission, if needed.  

As a part of my own reflection, I will continue to blog about this process and share with others who may be developing their own mission and vision.  Hoping it will be helpful. 

Mission/Vision Planning 1

At the beginning of this year, our campus began a renewed focus on building strong Professional Learning Communities (PLCs).  As we began to put the structures in place, we reviewed our mission and vision and realized that what we had was, number one, not being used, and number two, no longer relevant to our campus.   I began to research mission and vision development and came up with a game plan.  We would start with a staff training and get input from all staff members at that time.  Then we would form a team to take that staff input and craft a new campus mission and vision. The plan was to do the training in November, but due to unforeseen circumstances, it was pushed back to January.

At the initial training, we reviewed the importance of a mission and vision to the PLC process and then spent time reflecting on two questions:  Where are we headed and what will it look like when we get there? (Vision) and What is our purpose?  Why do we exist as a school? (Mission).  I know these are very simplified, but it worked with our staff.  Each individual submitted their own ideas and then collaborated with others to focus their thoughts.  At the end of the afternoon, we had about 30 large sheets full of ideas from our faculty.  As I walked through the room, I also saw them reflecting and dreaming more than I had seen in a long time.

After that meeting, a colleague and I sat down and disaggregated all of this data to produce two documents that simply listed the mission ideas and vision ideas.  I also had each PLC, our support personnel, and special education groups select someone to represent them on a team to create new or updated mission and vision.  Interestingly enough, two PLCs chose not to pick a representative. I approached them twice and then decided it was better to not have them than have someone who would not add to the conversation.  We ended up with twelve people on the team.

Today, we sat down for our first meeting.  As a team, we reviewed the responses from the whole group regarding our mission.  Each person rank ordered these with no more than five number ones. Prior to starting the meeting, I had been casually talking about reading the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown and brought up the concept of looking at whether something was simply a Yes or a "Hell, Yes" and then choosing to focus only on the "Hell, Yeses."  The team took this to heart and really honed in on what our purpose is related to the children on our campus, a Primary (K-1) school.  After individually rank ordering the ideas, we then grouped up (one admin, one teacher, and one support person) and did the process again only with our number one items.  Finally, as a whole group, we recorded the top choices.  Conversation was active as we looked at each item and discussed whether it belonged on the list.  We also discussed themes that emerged in the final information.  The final chart is below:

Notice the big "K-1" across the page.  This was a reminder to focus everything on the fact that we serve kids in these two grade levels.

After completing this, we chose a team from the larger group who will meet over the next couple of weeks and put together a draft mission.  This will be presented to the team for review and editing until a final mission is created.

Once we finish with our mission, we will follow the same process with vision.  We will also begin crafting our values and goals, but I don't want to overwhelm people yet.

Since I've never developed a group mission or vision, I was unsure how this would all work.  I've been pleasantly surprised so far.

One thing I've kept in front of the group throughout the process is that, if these are just words on a page, they are useless and we've wasted our time.  For the mission to be effective, it must be kept in front of us all the time and used for setting our priorities, evaluating decisions, and keeping us focused on our purpose as a school community.

I'm looking forward to continuing this process and growing as a campus.  I'll be sharing more as wer move along.

What's the real need?

How often do we jump to conclusions with children?  I know I do way too much.  It's easy to think, "That student is acting up because they are just trying to get attention."  "Just ignore them.  They always act that way."  But, there is usually an underlying problem.  Maybe they are trying to get attention.  But, maybe not.

Today, I had a child acting out and literally throwing a fit in a corner. It took a while to calm him down, but once we did, we were able to start asking questions.  Did something happen at home or on the bus this morning?  Did you eat breakfast?  Are you angry at someone?  After multiple questions and lots of "Leave me alone's," we finally determined that the child hadn't slept last night.  It was obvious due to red eyes, but that could have been allergies as well.  Once we were sure we had the problem nailed down, I gave the child some choices.  "You can go to class and try to focus or you can come to my office and take a nap."  The child didn't respond, so I left him with an adult and walked down the hall. "Let me know what you decide."  Less than two minutes later, he came up behind me and said "I think I'd like to sleep."  We went and got a mat, a pillow, and something to cover with and set it up in my office.  He got under the covers and in less than a minute was sound asleep.  I worked at my desk with the lights off (I have a large window) and  let my staff know he was there if I happen to leave.  I was in and out for the next two hours, but he never moved.  Finally, someone came and told me he woke up and was back in class.  He had a great rest of his day.

If I had jumped to the conclusions, I could have easily made this problem worse.  I could have given him a consequence that would have been ineffective.  I could have made him stay in class and exacerbated his behavior.  I could have called his parent and had them come up, probably resulting in them taking the child home.  Instead, I decided to find out what the real need was.  In this case, it was sleep.  It could have been hunger, fear, anger, or a multitude of other issues. It is so hard to tell by looking at behavior alone.  Getting to the real need takes time and effort.  You may not find it in one day.  But, when you do, it is imperative to see that the need gets met.  Otherwise, you will rarely see any behavior change, either short or long term.  

So, take the time to find the real need with children  It is worth it. 

The Question - Reflections on The Innovator's Mindset

Over the past week, I've been reading The Innovator's Mindset by George Couros.  Throughout the first part of the book, he repeats this question, "Would I want to be a learner in my own classroom?"  For administration, it is revised to say, "Would I want to be a teacher in my school community?"  These questions are not designed to be condemning, but to provoke reflection on what is best for those we serve.  Based of of this, here are two questions that I am reflecting on and asking staff to reflect on as well:  As a teacher, do I meet my student's needs, both academic and social-emotional, like I would want my own needs to be met?  As an instructional leader, am I doing everything I can to help my staff grow and develop both as educators and as individuals?

When I seriously examine everything I do in the classroom or school and ask myself, "Is this what is best for students and teachers?" I realize that there are many things that could be done better and more effectively and help create a positive culture of learning.  Things like learning structures, use of technology, professional development, support for new teachers, instructional strategies and materials, communication, student discipline, and classroom management all need to come under the thoughtful eye of reflection.

Only when I begin to truly reflect on my practice will I be able to make the changes that will lead to better teaching, learning, and leading.  Otherwise, I risk just following the status quo and never really growing.  And, to me, status quo is simply not acceptable.