A New Chapter Begins

In so many ways this week marks the start of a new chapter.

A chapter that includes a young son going off to his freshman year of college.

A chapter that marks new mother-daughter-relative adventures that find us discovering all kinds of interesting places to visit and spend good times together.

A chapter that marks my continued quest to make my home as simple as possible so that I live up to the statement, less things more time.

A chapter that finds me following my sons' lead more than leading them.

A chapter that takes me a few steps back in some arenas so that I can move forward towards other destinations.

The key is to keep the focus and meet the requirements of this new chapter--requirements that include a focus on:

• optimal student-teacher-colleague-family collaboration in my professional sphere
• digging deep into STEAM teaching
• the latest brain research related to teaching and learning well
• embedding SEL into the curriculum
• apt political contribution, research, and efforts to work for a better America, one that provides life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness for all, not some.

It's an exciting chapter, and this week marks an important start. 

Leave politics at home

As I think about the new school year, I am thinking that I will leave politics at home.

During the school day I will focus on my students' needs, challenges, and potential as I work on my own and with colleagues to do what we can to teach well.

The day is busy and when we get involved with issues outside of our day-to-day realm and a few other sundry thoughts and share, we lose focus with regard to what's most important.

While I believe teachers do have to be political to forward what we can do with and for students and families, I believe that politics don't belong in the elementary school house.

We teach political processes, government, and social studies in ways that exemplifies the truth of the matter and with the best possible ideals. This helps students to understand our government and country's history, and sets the stage for their political activity and contribution as active citizens later on.

Thinking Big: What's on the horizon?

I made a few tough decisions this summer that moved my path in a different direction. After analyzing a number of routines and investments, I realized that there were some glaring areas of neglect that were holding me back--holding me back in happiness, holding me back in meeting my vision, holding me back in strength.

While the decisions were tough, they are probably unnoticeable to most since the decisions are deeply private having a lot to do with my inner self rather than my outer self. I made the decisions with the help of numerous conversations, lots of reading, and mentors near and far online and off line.

It's yet another turning point in my life--an important and welcome turning point.

As I embark this revised path, I am thinking big this morning--thinking about the amazing potential that exists all around me including the bright and talented educators I work with, many kind, empathetic, and invested leaders, a loving family, good neighbors, committed student, and strong communities.

I want to work hard at traveling this path I've made and I want to encourage others to travel their paths with as much love, good thought, investment, intelligence, and care as they can find. Good living is possible for all people, and it's in everyone's best interest to work for a world that promotes this good living and reaches for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all.

Rules: Tight or Lose?

I had a debate with a friend who is also a teacher this morning. That friend favors tighter rules than me--I don't like schools to look or feel like military academies and prefer a more open culture. My friend prefers a tighter culture and more rules. I believe my friend is a great teacher. She doesn't work in my school system and she shares stories of notes she receives from parents, students, and administrators regularly that value her work. Her school environment--the town, students, and community-at-large, is demographically different from where I teach, and I don't believe we can set one-size-fits-all-rules for all schools as learning communities have to respond to the children they teach and those children's needs and interests.

That being said, the conversation left me wondering about rules that are too tight or too lose. My reading has showed me that when we're more relaxed and we give students behavioral parameters that are realistic, those students perform better. Yet, on the other hand, if students' behavior is unruly and out of control that can lead to safety issues and disrupt good learning. There's definitely a fine balance between rules that are too tight and rules that are too lose.

Also as I think about this, I think about time and capacity. If you spend lots and lots of time enforcing tight rules, you may build an antagonistic environment where it seems like the rules are most important and where capacity wanes since the focus is not dull rules. On the other hand though, if you don't focus on rules at all, you can create an undisciplined environment that does not set the stage for good learning and teaching.

So as I think of rules and whether those rules are too tight or too lose, I realize that we have to strike a good balance where we foster and teach routines that lead to a safe, supportive, positive, and ripe learning environment and also give some elasticity to the rules we make so that we can stretch those rules to fit the students, priorities, and overarching focus of what we do.

None of us in a school will probably wholly agree on all rules since we all see the school culture and environment through the lenses of our positions, teaching spaces, and expectations, but we can strike a good balance between too tight and too lose rules, the kind of rules that set the stage for optimal learning, teamwork, and support for one another.

Collaborating with a stellar staff

Thanks to terrific community, state, and union support, I work in a school that has amazing resources and terrific educators. It is a dynamic environment for teaching and learning--the kind of environment that offers educators fair salaries, good working conditions, and the resources to do a great job.

As a child of working class parents who valued education greatly, I sometimes feel guilty working in such a privileged setting as I wonder if I should be working in a school similar to the one I attended as a young girl--a great school with great teachers in a community where many parents had not attended college.

Yet, I realized a while ago, that I can use my situation to work at creating an atmosphere that is exemplar--a situation that others can look to as an example of what we can do when schools are well funded and supported. That is the promise of schools like mine; we can demonstrate what a top notch public school can be.

So that's what I'm working for, I'm working to create a top notch public school experience for each and every one of my students. There's lots of work to do as there are challenges that call us to do more and do better. Fortunately almost everyone who works at the school is interested in overcoming those challenges.

With such an invested staff, there's the problem of the challenges we prioritize since everyone sees things a bit differently. There's also the challenge of finding the right time and right processes to prioritize and then to plan how we'll meet a challenge. And there's a problem of apt collaboration since there are so many people who have extensive experience and good vision, and while this is awesome, it can make collaboration tough at times. This article will shed more light on that for me.

So as I think more on the year ahead and my overarching goal to listen more and better, I want to be cognizant that I work with a stellar team, and with that knowledge, I want to listen to the brilliance they share, think about how I might contribute, and think about the processes that will help us to do the best we can to teach every child well and develop the work we do in ways that matter.