Monday Motivator #8 2024-25

 

https://smallchangesbigshifts.com/kindness/signup/

Monday Motivator #7 2024-25

MO SW-PBS has identified eight classroom practices that have been shown to increase the likelihood of appropriate behavior and decrease problem behavior while increasing academic learning time.
These Effective Teaching & Learning Practices (ETLPs) are the following:

1) clarifying expectations
2) classroom procedures and routines
3) strategies to encourage expected behavior
4) strategies to discourage inappropriate behavior 
5) active supervision
6) opportunities to respond
7) activity sequencing & choice
8) task difficulty
The first four are to help keep students in class while practices 5-8 help keep students engaged in class.  Together, these eight practices impact academic learning time and ultimately student achievement while ensuring a positive learning environment. Implementing these evidence-based practices has been shown to maximize learning for all students while minimizing discipline problems.

This chart below shows some additional ways to enhance these practices based on the function of behavior students are exhibiting (ex. gain attention, avoid attention, avoid a task)

For more information on each of the Effective Teaching and Learning Practices, click here.

See also https://pbismissouri.org/tier-1-workbook-resources/

Monday Motivator #6 2024-25

 

7 Principles of a Heart-Centered Classroom

by MiddleWeb · Published 04/14/2024 

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By Regie Routman

A humane approach to teaching, learning, and living well goes a long way to making all aspects of our lives more generous, authentic, and joyful.

When we prioritize supporting, guiding, and celebrating learners ahead of required standards and curriculum, we are teaching readers, writers, and thinkers – unique human beings with vast potential; we are not just teaching reading, writing, content, and test taking.

In my latest book, The Heart-Centered Teacher: Restoring Hope, Joy, and Possibility in Uncertain Times, I define what it means to lead a heart-centered life:

It is that peaceful state where we live our core values with compassion, generosity and authenticity – even in the midst of sadness and strife. In a heart-centered life, we take care of ourselves and others as we seek to establish and sustain loving kindness, trusting relationships, and daily gratitude. We have respectful conversations where we “see” and hear the “other,” not just with our minds but with our hearts. In a heart-centered life, teaching, learning and living are interwoven and seamlessly integrated. We become our truest selves. (page xx)

These are not idle words. In spite of the challenges we have faced and continue to face from the pandemic, toxic politics, work demands, ongoing stress, and issues outside of our control, we can still find some equilibrium, meaning – and even joy – in our daily lives. But we must intentionally seek it!

What follows are principles and actions we can embrace as we strive to live a more heart-centered life, in and out of the classroom. To that end and based on the Washington Post daily briefing of most important things, THE SEVEN, which I enjoy online, here are my seven things for focusing on what’s most important. (All of what I discuss in this article is elaborated upon in The Heart-Centered Teacher and the free website which accompanies it.)

1. “Seeing” our loved ones and those we hold dear

Through childhood and my teens, I don’t believe I was truly “seen” by my parents or teachers. My parents loved me and I felt loved, but looking back that love revolved around my meeting their expectations of being the “good girl” who followed the rules and didn’t disappoint them.

In school it was much the same. I got excellent grades, was polite and soft spoken, and didn’t raise my hand much to share my thinking. Just as it is for our students and family members, not being “seen” limits and delays personal and intellectual growth. So what exactly does it mean to “see” our loved ones and those we hold dear?

► Respect and affirm learners’ language, culture, and identity.
► Notice and emphasize learners’ strengths and assets before focusing on needs.
► Let go of differences as deficits.
► Be deliberate about finding ways to get to know learners – conferences, interviews, conversations, surveys, quick writes, communications with families.
► Incorporate learners’ interests into literacy, curriculum, content areas, and standards.

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2. Holding high expectations for all learners

In the opening story of The Heart-Centered Teacher I tell write about Ted, a 53-year-old adult I tutored in reading, twice weekly at his request, after he’d lost his job during the pandemic. With no technology except our phones, I was able to teach this up-and-coming reader how to read and to enjoy reading. I began with getting to know him, finding out and utilizing his interests and strengths, giving him choices in what we would read, and holding high expectations for him. I began with the assumption that Ted was smart and would succeed; failure to teach him was not an option.

So it must be for our students and all children. Sadly, in many decades of working in schools, almost all of them in high-needs, under-resourced neighborhoods, I have never been in a school where expectations are too high; without exception, expectations – on the part of adults for what students can accomplish – are low.

► Examine our belief systems about learning to read and write to ensure they align with research and principled practices.
► Find out each child’s special gifts and interests and capitalize on them.
► Provide scaffolds to ensure learner’s success (See number 5.)
► Honor learners’ language, cultural identity and heritage, and find ways to bring those assets into daily reading, writing, speaking, and creating.
► See and honor possibilities students see even if they’re not our possibilities.
► Read aloud complex, high interest texts, not just texts at their reading level. Students often understand texts they listen to even as they cannot yet read such texts on their own.
► Do not use trauma as an excuse for holding low expectations.

3. Creating and sustaining a culture of trust, respect, generosity, and celebration

Especially these days, when life is so uncertain and unpredictable for so many, creating a “belonging” culture of stability where learners feel valued and safe – physically, emotionally, and educationally – is a necessity. Making our classrooms and schools a sanctuary can be a lifesaver for students who lack security in housing, relationships, food, and much more.

► Show kindness daily.
► Develop routines and rituals with students.
► Acknowledge and celebrate the diversity of children, families, and cultures.
► Value and celebrate efforts as much as successes.
► Give second chances whenever possible, e.g., extend a due date; provide opportunities to redo an assignment.
► Provide more choice in reading and writing texts and in “showing what they know.”
► Adopt a mindset of “Good is good enough” as students are in the novice and apprentice stage as learners on their way to becoming expert and excellent.

4. Valuing and seeking stories

A storytelling culture – in the classroom, school, and home – is a happy place. Everyone loves a good story. Stories – ours, theirs, history, science, nonfiction, fiction, and other genres – can be entertaining, validating, provocative and inspiring, and introduce us to all kinds of literature and information that can enliven and widen our knowledge, perspective, and sense of self and possibility.

Ensure reliable narrators for the stories, that is, that students get to tell their own stories and that news, historical, and scientific articles are reality and fact-based (not alternative facts.)

► Read aloud every day – picture books, fiction, news, texts of all kinds in multiple formats.
► Establish an equitable and accessible classroom library with students. For the school library, involve students in making recommendations for purchase of new books and organizing the collection and displays to maximize student interest and engagement.
► Read aloud every day, several times a day; include picture books regardless of age of the students.
► Establish equitable and accessible classroom libraries; include texts that are class-authored and student-authored.

5. Providing scaffolds

“A scaffold is an instructional practice where a teacher gradually removes guidance and support as students learn and become more competent. Support can be for content, processes, and learning strategies.” (via Google.)

Providing suitable scaffolds and supports is a great motivator for encouraging learners to put forth best efforts. If I know in advance that I can count on a loved one, colleague, or competent other to show, guide, and give me hands-on help, I am more likely to make a good faith attempt.

► Do more demonstrations along with more daily, shared and guided experiences.
► Prioritize a whole-part-whole mindset approach to teaching and living, not skills-in-isolation.
► “Put the language in their ears” is my go-to strategy – not asking more questions – when a child doesn’t respond. “How about if we say it this way?”. . . “Or you might try. . . “ or “Put what I just said (or a peer said) in your own words. I’ll help you.”
► Structure more small group times where we can listen in, hear students’ thinking, observe behaviors in a group, and see where more support – or less – are needed.
► Employ more partner reading and other small group collaborations.
► Use one-on-one and public conferences often.

6. Engaging in ongoing, professional learning

After five decades of teaching, demonstrating, coaching, and collaborating with teachers, principals, and educators at all levels, I can say with certainty that without excellent, embedded, professional learning, sustainable, schoolwide change will not happen.

And without a whole school of dedicated and knowledgeable professionals, we will continue to shortchange students and teachers for what’s possible in academic and personal achievement and in attaining a thriving school culture.

► Be cautious about over-relying on commercial programs, the best of which provide a workable framework and guide.
► Do not over rely on research or “miracle cures.” Use evidence-based research judiciously. Teachers who are informed, knowledgeable, and caring are capable of making smart decisions related to their students.
► Apply practices and strategies that support learners to become more independent, self-monitoring, self-correcting, goal setting learners.

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7. Facilitating meaningful conversations

I am writing this last section having just had an hour long conversation via Zoom with my younger granddaughter, who is a junior in college. We affectionately call these talks “coffee and conversation.” Today we talked about the uncertain state of the world, feeling overwhelmed, how we can make a worthy difference, movies we’d seen, what we’re reading, enjoying being with friends, scrapbooking, and more.

These conversations, now established and beloved rituals, have been going on since early high school days as a way to ensure that our talk moves beyond the superficial and mundane to deep conversations that matter to us both.

Think of “curriculum as conversation.” Our level of discussion, questioning, learning, and taking action depend on the quality, accuracy, and depth of the texts we and our students are reading, viewing, hearing, writing, accessing, and debating.

► Set up conversational structures that ensure we “hear all the voices.”
► Work to keep libraries free thinking zones for all the voices.
► Adapt curriculum so it is culturally relevant for the actual students we are teaching.
► Actively listen – listen first to hear and understand, not to respond.
► Study and become actively involved in issues that impact our local and national worlds.
► Read and write for real-world audiences and purposes. See the extensive lesson plan on Environmental Citizenship and the Responsibility of Citizens in Literacy Essentials for facilitating high level conversations, scaffolded experiences, and deep learning.

This last action is crucial. Living well and making the world – even our most local one – a little bit better than we found it is a notable accomplishment worth embracing. Then we are going a long way to ensure that what we do and are asking our students and loved ones to do will result in personal and professional growth, gratitude, generosity, and – even – sparks of greatness.

https://www.middleweb.com/50619/7-principles-of-a-heart-centered-classroom/

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Regie Routman is the author, most recently, of The Heart-Centered Teacher: Restoring Hope, Joy, and Possibility in Uncertain Times. (Routledge/Eye On Education 2024.) She is a mentor teacher and coach, who works and presents virtually and conversationally, side by side with teachers, principals and educators at all levels in diverse schools, districts, and provinces. For more information about her work and her many books and resources, see regieroutman.org.

Scaffold image by succo from Pixabay

Monday Motivator #5 2024-25

 

What Makes an Inspirational Leader?

I recently heard about a new research study that defines characteristics of the most inspirational leaders. As I listened to different podcasters discuss this study, I couldn’t wait to go and read it for myself. 
As I read, I found myself completely enamored with the results of the Bain research study. Bain research defined 33 characteristics of inspiring leaders You don’t need all 33 attributes. Although this is fascinating, and I love the way we can intentionally develop characteristics to be more inspiring, it’s not the part of the study that has me consumed.
The part of the study that has me talking to anyone who will listen is that the researchers boiled down their findings to one attribute that is the most important. And this one attribute is surprising. 
It turns out that centeredness is the most important attribute of a leader who creates inspiration in others. It is the axis of the other 32 characteristics.
From the study:
Just as leaders need to be able to meet their performance objectives to be rated as satisfactory, for example, we recognize that leaders need to be able to stay centered to inspire. Being centered is a precondition to using one’s leadership strengths effectively. 
Centeredness means being fully present. In a world that is designed to swipe our attention and distraction runs rampant, if we want to be inspiring to our students and colleagues, we must learn to anchor ourselves in the present moment.  https://choiceliteracy.com/article/september-13-2024-create-space/

Other interesting information from the study:
The most powerful combination
How many of these inspiring behaviors does someone need to reliably inspire others? 
The key developmental insight from these findings is that an individual can increase his or her inspirational leadership ability by excelling at just a handful of intrinsic strengths and converting weaknesses to neutral. The data also shows that it’s more effective to develop a distinguishing strength than to neutralize a weakness: On average, investing in adding a distinguishing strength is one and a half times more powerful at building inspiration than neutralizing a weakness.

Calibrating a strength
Why create a leadership program focused overwhelmingly on strengths? A growing body of research has shown that encouraging people to bolster their strengths is more effective than striving to fix their weaknesses. According to Gallup research, the odds of employees being engaged are 73% when an organization’s leadership focuses on the strengths of its employees vs. 9% when they do not. 
“One of the things we know is that when things are negative, people see fewer options, [and] they’re less able to problem solve. It shuts down the brain,” said business psychologist Jennifer Thompson, an associate professor at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. “When people have positive environments, they’re more creative. They’re more productive.”

To read the full study:  
https://www.bain.com/contentassets/2024cdcfe439496d99d49e84e4c489d9/bain_brief_inspirational_leadership.pdf

Monday Motivator #4 2024-25

When to Reteach Behavior Expectations?

Is it taking longer for your students to respond to the signal for quiet? Has lunchroom behavior taken a turn for the worse? Are you feeling frustrated because students aren’t cleaning up as thoroughly now as they did the first couple weeks of school? Although most teachers normally reteach behavior expectations after winter break or spring break, sometimes a behavior reboot is needed sooner.

Reteaching Behavior Expectations

Why Reteach Behavior Expectations

Obviously, reteaching behavioral expectations can bring huge benefits to your classroom. Before your students get too far away from classroom routines, taking the time to revisit expectations will help things run more smoothly. Smaller corrections now can save you a great deal of frustration later in the year. It can also help the shorten the amount of time you spend reteaching expectations after winter or spring break.

When to Reteach Behavior Expectations

At a basic level, reteaching means teaching content again that students have failed to learn. It might be apparent that your students have slipped away from expectations. Are you finding it hard to get through classroom lessons because of time wasted on settling into class routines? Are you writing more major/minor office discipline referrals? Ultimately, you probably have an idea that a refresher is in order.

Before reteaching, consider breaking down each expectation into progressive targets. Understand exactly where your students currently are on that progression. Finally, think about how you can clearly communicate your reteaching in student-friendly terms.

How to Reteach Behavior Expectations

One of the best ways to begin is to use a positive and engaging reason to establish a common need and benefit for reteaching.

By focusing on simple, observable data, you can often engage your students in the process: “I’ve been jotting down some notes about how long it’s taking us to get seated and ready to learn. Yesterday it took about 30 seconds each time we transitioned. We spent 10 minutes alone doing this yesterday! That means we’re spending 50 minutes a week! Cutting our time by 10 seconds each time would give us 30 extra minutes a week to apply where we’d like. The best way to work toward that goal together is to practice, so let’s give it a try.”

Sometimes an empathetic approach can be just as effective: “Talking and visiting as you get settled is understandable. Goodness knows I like to visit and take my time, especially early in the morning. Knowing all of this, I’m sure we can do a better job getting to our ready positions.”

Both approaches focus on positive reinforcement while establishing a legitimate reason. This is a far better approach than communication which might show frustration: “It’s taking us far too much time to get in your ready learning positions, and you are wasting valuable class time.”

A Great Method for Reteaching Behavior Expectations

It might be tempting to just restate expectations and move on, but for most students, modeling and practicing gets the message across effectively.

Model Behavior Expectations

State the behavioral expectation and the routine associated with it. Then, ask for a volunteer to demonstrate the routine as you practiced it at the beginning of the year.

Next, let students share what they noticed. Be sure that they pay attention to the “tricky” parts—voices off during lining up, quick and neat clean-up of materials during a transition from desks to the circle, or a quick response to the signal for quiet.

Practice Behavior Expectations

Have the whole class demonstrate the behavior. Pay special attention to the challenging aspects and use reinforcing language to let students know what they did well: “You responded to the signal in about eight seconds. I saw people helping each other remember what to do, finishing what they were doing quickly, and really focusing on me quickly. I’m going to give the signal again in about 10 minutes. Let’s see if we can do it just as well and quickly then.”

Practice again shortly afterward.

Reteaching Behavioral Expectations is Key to Classroom Management

Classroom management is essential from the first day of school to the last. Beginning the year with positive routines and expectations will help you to maintain order and allow your students to develop as the year progresses. In fact, the presence of expectations and routines can help increase instructional time, so that your students can learn more! Still, as you and your students become comfortable with each other, it can be easy to fall away from these expectations.

Reteaching behavior expectations helps to get everyone focused again. It’s important to make re-teaching positive and to convey your firm belief that students can improve. While belief alone will not change student behavior, consistently demonstrating your faith that students can and will meet your expectations really does make a difference.

https://www.pbisrewards.com/blog/reteach-behavior-expectations/

Monday Motivator #3 2024-25

 

Branching Out: Allowing New Influences on Our Pedagogy

Although educational theorists such as Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky laid the groundwork for what we know about teaching and learning, it’s important to also acknowledge their positionality as white men who were born in the 1800s and did not live past 1980. Much work has been done in the field of education since that time that shows us how teaching and learning can be more equitable for all students. 

Gholdy Muhammad: Cultivating Genius

Muhammad’s Historically Responsive Literacy framework draws on the traditions of 19th-century Black literary societies, which valued literacy as a tool for advocacy. These societies made literacy the foundation from which joy, love, and fulfillment could grow and from which people of color could be successful. Muhammad’s framework has four components: identity development, skills development, intellectual development, and criticality (Muhammad, 2020). Although these principles promote success in students who are typically marginalized in education, they are relevant and practical for students of all races and ethnicities, and in all educational contexts.  
Muhammad argues that we must honor students’ identities by engaging in activities that help students think about who they are and what they want to be. In the past, I used reflective identity activities primarily at the beginning of the school year as a way to better get to know my students, but Muhammad points out that identity is dynamic and ever-changing. Therefore, allowing students to engage in these activities throughout the whole year is important. The opening poem of Clint Smith’s Counting Descent, “Something You Should Know,” uses the metaphor of a hermit crab to show readers how uncomfortable the speaker is about showing vulnerability. While we were analyzing the poetic devices and techniques in the poem, we spent one additional class period using the poem as a mentor text to write a poem in which we used metaphor to reveal one of our traits. This one-day extension to a lesson that I was teaching allowed for powerful self-reflection. I have begun to look for places in my curriculum where I can add space for identity work throughout the year.
Another important aspect of Muhammad’s work is criticality, which she defines as “the capacity to read, write, and think in ways of understanding power, privilege, social justice, and oppression” (120). Criticality moves students from passive learners, collecting information, to active participants who question information and its source. It has only been as an adult that I have learned the skill of criticality, and I am continually pushing myself to grow and better develop my critical eye and ear, which is why I think it is so important for students to be introduced to this skill in their K–12 education.
Muhammad asks teachers to reflect on ways in which social issues can be incorporated into the curriculum. For several years, I have done a March Madness Poetry bracket in my classes. This year I made a conscious decision to find spoken-word poetry that addressed social issues such as racism, sexism, ableism, and trans rights, just to name a few. It didn’t take much extra time to ask students to reflect on the poems’ messages as they voted on their favorites. At the end of the month, I asked students to choose and do more research on a social issue that was either important to them or that they wanted to learn more about, and then write a poem of their own, demonstrating what they had learned. 

Christopher Emdin: Embracing the Chaos

Emdin began his teaching career with a focus on classroom management, thinking that a classroom of quiet, focused students was an indicator of success. But when 9/11 was unfolding right outside his school walls and he was told to keep the students working and not let them know what was going on, he felt compelled to change his idea of what education is all about. Reality pedagogy is about embracing the chaos of the outside world and allowing the world that our students live in to enter the classroom. With so much going on in the world today, Emdin argues that we can’t just ignore it and keep on teaching but should use our pedagogy as a form of protest and a way to disrupt harmful norms. When something difficult happens in the world, and it inevitably does, it’s easy to look at our lesson planners and think, We’re in the midst of a unit and we have to keep going. Emdin’s work urges us to think about how we can creatively make space in our curriculum for students to contemplate pressing issues.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, my senior English class was in the midst of reading Macbeth. And, as often happens in the spring semester, I was feeling the pressure to keep on pace and finish the play. But I had heard students chattering about the invasion and what it meant in my homeroom and in my study hall. It was clearly something that was on their minds. Although I could have kept plugging away with my original plans and relied on one of my history colleagues to discuss the issue with students, I realized that I could use my Macbeth unit as an opportunity to make the content more relevant to them.
Bringing current events into the classroom can be scary. I’ve been teaching Macbeth for 20 years and feel confident in what I’m doing. Teaching about an event that is still confusing even to me? Not so confident. Opportunities such as these require us to place trust in our students that they can be co-teachers and construct knowledge along with us. We do not always need to be the experts in the classroom, nor should we be. So, I asked each student to bring in an article about what was happening between Russia and Ukraine so that we could synthesize the information. Then I was able to make a connection back to Macbeth, comparing the title character with Putin, and having students consider the cost of power and ambition.
New voices in the field are branching out and building on the roots that early educational theorists put in place over a century ago. Although it is easy and even comforting to fall back on what we have long known, we as teachers must be willing to evolve and adapt our teaching to ensure that we are serving all of our students in an equitable way. I have found that I can look for spots in my curriculum where I can pivot my instruction or make space for some of these new ideas, and when I do, my students and I both grow.

https://choiceliteracy.com/article/branching-out-allowing-new-influences-on-our-pedagogy/

Monday Motivator #2 2024-25

 

Belonging in a School Community

Frank Lloyd Wright built houses that grew out of the land where they were located. His homes were of the hill, not on it. He once wrote the following:

I knew well that no house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.

I’ve been thinking a lot, lately, about belonging. How that word suggests something different from equity and inclusion, something complementary, but also beyond and absolutely essential to the classroom communities I plan with my colleagues, with my students, and with their families and caregivers. It is not a new concept, but it seems particularly relevant to include in our thinking about teaching. I can credit Lasana Hotep for nudging me to think more intentionally about belonging. Hotep was a panelist on a webinar series I watched about the teaching and policing of Black children. He was introduced as the “first-ever director for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging” at UC Berkeley. The word belonging, added to the more familiar trio of diversity, equity, and inclusion, caught my attention. I dialed in to hear what Hotep had to say. He explained that in addition to building a diverse workforce, developing equitable policies and practices, and ensuring inclusive opportunities for everyone, communities need to take one more step: They need to pay attention to people’s sense of belonging in that community.  
To me, as I consider the school communities where I work, belonging happens when people have ownership of what happens in a space. Belonging means a person knows their voice is heard, they have agency, they believe that if they are not there in that space, people will sense that something is missing. 
Think about yourself as a teacher in your classroom. You likely have a strong sense of belonging because you have agency around what happens there, and you have a voice, a belief that you make a difference in the room, that if you are not in school on a particular day, people will notice and feel a void. You can point to evidence that you belong where you teach and learn—your name on a mail slot, last year’s class picture next to your desk, inspirational quotes posted around the room, a favorite book queued up for read aloud. 
Now think about the students in your classroom. Do they feel like they belong? How would you know?
In a recent professional development session I hosted with new teachers, belonging was on the agenda. We started by talking about what belonging means and how we, as individuals, know when we’re in a place where we feel like we belong. Then, because we all agreed that belonging was a characteristic we wanted to be evident in our classroom communities, we discussed some “look-fors”—what we see, hear, and feel when a learning space invites students’ sense of belonging.
We added our favorite “you belong” moves. Some were ideas that teachers regularly used themselves, and some were ones they’d seen in other people’s practice. Here’s what we came up with:  

We tried a “list-group-label” process to identify patterns in our Jamboard contributions. Using everything on the board (our list), we grouped similar ideas and then gave those groups names. One pattern that bubbled up when we reviewed our finished board was that ownership is a defining characteristic of true belonging. Students can own what they read and write, they can own the caretaking of the classroom space, they can own the music and visuals people listen to and see, they can own where and on what to sit, they can own how and with whom to spend free time. Ownership encourages feelings of belonging.  
Wright’s philosophy of architecture is a useful way to think about how to build belonging in a school community. Who’s the hill? Who’s the house?  Who cares?
When everyone is of the school, rather than simply in it, when our ways of being, our strengths, our cultures, our interests, our needs, our loved ones, and our inspirations surround us, then we own our learning, happily together. We belong.  
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/belonging-in-a-school-community/