Community Trumps Management

I no longer like the term behavior management as it implies that our work is to manage children rather than inspire, lead, mentor and collaborate with children. When we think like managers, I believe, we miss the essence of teaching well which is to create a community of learners who lead their own learning and contribute to the collective learning of the class.

The movement towards greater SEL (social emotional learning) is a positive direction to move in as we encourage and inspire our young learners forward. How do you teach them to lead their own learning in ways that matter?

Please take a look at my collection of SEL links and resources as it may help you to build a dynamic teaching/learning community with self-motivated, young leaders, learners and contributors. If you have suggestions for the guide, please share. Thank you.

Earn Your Words

I'm thinking of a Saturday Night Live skit where a guy sits on his couch tweeting out ideas/suggestions, but never acting to make those ideas/suggestions a reality. There's lots of couch-pundits/radicals/politicians who speak out a lot and don't act. This kind of advocacy can have a bit of impact, but not the kind of impact that occurs when speak and action work in tandem towards service, betterment and change.

Hence, how can I assure that I'm not one who speaks, but doesn't act? It's the big-idea-to-small-action flow that occurs. We read, research, think/speak big and then bring it down to your real-time work.

So today I tweeted about a lot of issues and process, and how can I bring those tweets down to my own action/speak.

We're all a mix of good/bad--it's a continuum
It's important to refrain from judgement about individuals or groups based on evident action or words, instead it's good to go deeper to find out what's really going on and what someone truly believes or represents, and see the continuum that exists of good and not-so-good actions/speak/think.

"Go hard on the problem, not the people."
This advice from the book, Getting to Yes, reminds us to figure out what the problem at hand is and work with others to deconstruct that problem and remedy it rather than staying focused on individuals.

Don't label whole groups
There's tremendous variations amongst people within groups, refrain from speak/judgement that labels whole groups. Look deeper and find out more. Know individuals well.

Be respectful
When cornered, disrespected, demeaned or dismissed, we can revert to our primitive selves with disrespect. Instead it's imperative to always be respectful as that paves the way to greater resolve and good collaboration.

Work Together
Acknowledge that we all come at living from different perspectives, beliefs, vision so it's critical to work together, collaborate, and use that diversity to come up with better solutions.

We live in a complex world that's often not simple to understand or navigate, but it's in our best interest during this short life to do what we can for betterment, positive change, and living well.

Lessons from a Trump Presidency

As I watch the Trump Presidency unfold, I think of my own work and wonder what lessons I am learning. Here are a few.

• Use respect. Disrespectful words, actions and attitudes distance people from you.
• Be honest. It's true none of us are right all the time, and that's okay, but it's best to be honest.
• Let ambition support mission, but don't let ambition trump mission. Keep the mission of your work and role center stage.
• Don't degrade those you work with, but instead seek collaboration with respect whenever possible.
• Obey the laws and if you don't like them, work to change them.
• Develop rather than destruct new laws, efforts, alliances, and ideas.
• Steer clear of illegal, unethical activity--do what's right.
• Surround yourself with good people, people who are well informed, bright, well intentioned, hard working, servant oriented, kind, compassionate, empathetic, visionary.
• Engage with diverse voices--get to know the people you work with and for. Have respect for all. 
• Don't be afraid to deal with tough issues, debate with civility, and reason with people to make good progress.

President Trump has been alarming, worrisome and troubling. Yet we know that no leader is all bad or all good--like all of us, you can always find points of positivity as well as points of challenge, it's a a continuum. The learning above is culled, in part, from Trump's troubling efforts to lead as well as a few positive efforts I've noticed. I'll let you figure out which points connect with his positive work and which points connect to his less-than-positive leadership.

In all, we are all teachers to each other--we teach with our good work and we teach with our bad examples too. Onward. 

Where are you headed in your professional work?

Readying for an important conversation, I'm thinking about where I am headed in my professional work. I've mostly read the big books on my list--books including NBPTS What Teachers Should Know and Be Able to Do, Junger's Tribe, Friedman's Thank You for Being Late, and Darling-Hammond and others' Empowered Educators that gave me a broad look at education and society today and into the future. These books helped me to right my thinking and direction with regard to service and education for my students. I will meet the conversation as one more way to direct my teaching/learning efforts in the year to come.

Once the conversation is complete, I'll be ready to zoom in on the community, classroom and student efforts that will be the main focus of the year ahead, a focus that includes the following efforts:

1. Attend MTA Union School and work w/local union team to update website, plan for year ahead
2. Reading, research and writing to support our revised orientation efforts
3. Reading and research to update math teaching/learning efforts for the year to come
4. Good analysis of data points related to last year's efforts and this year's class
5. Team collaboration to map the curriculum, plan orientations, review data, create initial materials and schedule special events including expert visitors and field studies
6. Read new book about classroom set-up, draft grant for modern-day classroom supplies and signage
7. Organize classroom materials, set up the room and purchase additional supplies
8. Prep initial school lessons and signage
9. Attend early-year meetings
10. Embed systemwide goals into teaching/learning program
11. Review mandated trainings
12. Start the school year

Summer is a great time to think big and then to focus in on the year's efforts to come. Onward. 

Squashed

During a Twitter exchange this morning, I was squashed. A tweeter implied that I needed greater Christian values/efforts. While I keep my religion private, I do honor the good values of all religions including Christianity, and I was offended by the individual's quick appraisal of my values and efforts due to my tweets that disagree with President Trump--a President that some Christians regularly and outwardly support with religious words and phrases on social media.

During my professional tenure as an educator, I've been similarly squashed. On a few occasions colleagues have disagreed with me using similar disrespectful and all-knowing statements rather than engage in an open-minded dialogue and discussion to understand my point of view and relay their point of view. Similar to the tweeter, these colleagues see only their point of view and typically don't make the time or demonstrate the interest to listen to others or work together. This does not represent all colleagues, but does represent a few.

How does one react to situations where you are squashed?

First, it's best to analyze. Why did that happen? What buttons did that push? At work, I believe the "squashed" feeling originates in structural hierarchies that promote a top-down leadership approach where teachers who are not tightly connected to leadership have less voice and choice. This is an area of school life I've analyzed a lot and continue to work to understand and hopefully change since I support greater teacher voice, choice and leadership as well respectful debate and discourse and the value of diverse voices/approaches to teaching well.

On Twitter, I believe there are some who tweet without the desire or ability to engage in civil debate and exchange. Instead they're quick to judge with the feeling that their way is the one way to truth or knowing. I know that I don't know all and am open to other points of view. I don't believe that anyone has the monopoly on truth or right as there are many ways to do good work and relay one's point of view.

I am strong minded and quick to comment. I believe strongly in my points of view and typically spend a lot of time developing new ideas using multiple perspectives. Yet I believe that the really good ideas and initiatives profit from collaboration and the synthesis of research, thought, discussion and debate from many not just one. I believe that the more we're open to these discussions and able to listen to one another, the better work we will do.

With regard to those at my work place who are unwilling to listen or collaborate, I will continue to look for ways to work with those colleagues to better move our collective efforts forward. On Twitter, if someone is disrespectful to me and others, I will block as I don't have time for that kind of demeaning social media exchange. I just can't accept that at this point when life is busy and there's much to do. I use Twitter to enrich my ideas in ways that matter with respectful folks who offer their ideas respectfully with care and commitment to others.

We will all be squashed from time to time. That feeling makes us stop to reflect and think. Then it's time to work forward again.