Monday Motivator #34 2024-25

 

10 Tips to Finish the School Year Strong with G.R.I.T.!

Finishing the School Year Strong: 10 Practical Tips for Teachers Using the G.R.I.T. Framework

As the school year draws to a close, teachers often find themselves pushed to the limit. With final assessments, grading, and the hustle of end-of-year activities, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. However, finishing strong can create a lasting impact on your students and set a positive tone for the upcoming year. By applying the G.R.I.T. framework: Growth Mindset, Resilience, Self-Efficacy and Time Management for Great Resilience in Time—you can not only feel accomplished but also inspire your students to close the year with enthusiasm and purpose. Here are ten practical tips to help you harness G.R.I.T. and finish the school year strong.

1. Set Clear Goals (G)

Reflect on the goals you've set for yourself and your students at the start of the year. Take the time to revisit them and set clear, achievable objectives for the final weeks. Encourage your students to set their own goals as well, whether academic, behavioral, or personal. This can help create a sense of purpose and motivation as they strive to meet these targets.

2. Foster a Growth Mindset (R)

Resilience is crucial during challenging times, and cultivating a growth mindset can help both you and your students navigate obstacles. Emphasize that mistakes are opportunities for growth. Share stories of perseverance—both yours and those of your students—to inspire resilience and an appreciation for the learning process.

3. Reflect and Adjust (I)

Midway through the final marking period, take a moment to reflect on what has worked well this year and what hasn’t. Use student feedback, assessments, and your own observations to identify areas for improvement. Adjust your lesson plans to focus on these areas, ensuring that your teaching remains effective and responsive to your students’ needs.

4. Prioritize Self-Care (I)

Integrity in teaching means taking care of yourself so that you can be fully present for your students. Dedicate time to your well-being—whether through exercise, mindfulness, or hobbies that recharge you. When you model self-care, you encourage your students to recognize its importance as well.

5. Maintain Consistent Communication (I)

Transparent and consistent communication with students and parents builds trust and accountability. Keep families informed about end-of-year expectations and any changes to the curriculum. This helps manage expectations and fosters a shRared commitment to student success as the year comes to an end.

6. Celebrate Achievements (G)

As milestones approach, take time to celebrate both individual and collective achievements. Recognizing hard work and progress, whether big or small, reinforces the value of perseverance. Host a celebration event or dedicate a class session to acknowledge accomplishments, creating a positive atmosphere as the year concludes.

7. Be a Role Model for Grit (R,T)

Show your students what it means to embody G.R.I.T. By demonstrating your own tenacity in facing challenges, you provide a powerful example. Share your struggles and successes, and explain how you’ve navigated them. This will not only inspire students but also equip them with the mindset necessary for future challenges.

8. Create Collaborative Learning Opportunities (T)

Encourage collaboration among students as they review and finalize their learning. Group projects, peer tutoring, or study teams can create a sense of camaraderie and support. This not only fosters a connected classroom community but also enhances learning through shared experiences.

9. Stay Energized and Engaged (G,R)

To maintain energy during the final stretch, infuse excitement into your lessons. Use hands-on activities, varied instructional methods, and interactive elements to keep students engaged. An energized classroom will foster a positive learning environment that motivates students to finish strong.

10. Reflect and Plan for Next Year (T)

As the year ends, take time to reflect on what you’ve learned and how you can apply it to future teaching. Set preliminary goals for the next school year, considering how to integrate the lessons from this year’s experiences. Encouraging students to reflect on their growth can help them carry lessons learned into the next academic year as well.

Conclusion

Finishing the school year with G.R.I.T. creates a meaningful conclusion for both teachers and students. By focusing on Growth Mindset, Resilience, Self-Efficacy and Time Management, you foster a positive environment that not only enhances academic success but also nurtures the personal growth of everyone involved. Let’s finish this school year strong and set the stage for even greater achievements ahead!

https://www.india-white.com/10-practical-tips-for-finishing-the-school-year-strong-with-g-r-i-t-dr-india-white

Monday Motivator #33 2024-25

What's The Most Beautiful Think You Know About...?
By Ruth Shagoury & Melanie Quinn

We’ve been meeting each week this spring with a group of teachers pre-K through grade 12, all of us exploring literacy teaching in our classrooms around our teacher research questions. We’ve all been looking closely at one student in our class that we are intrigued by or wondering about. In order to look at each student through fresh and positive eyes, we read aloud the book What’s the Most Beautiful Thing You Know About Horses? (1998) by Richard Van Camp.

Van Camp is a member of the Dogrib nation of the Northwest Territories of Canada, and an emerging voice in the Native American literary movement. He wrote this children’s book in order to understand horses, since his people are not horse people and he’s always been curious to learn more about them. The format of his book is simple: he asks different people, “What’s the most beautiful thing you know about horses?” He receives responses such as: “The most beautiful thing about horses is that they always find their way home” and “I love their breath. You can feel their breath move through their chest. They stare at you as they breathe. Their soul comes right out.”

After we read the book aloud and shared the vivid and colorful illustrations, we asked everyone to write, “What’s the most beautiful thing you know about . . . your students?”

After a ten-minute quickwrite, we shared our writing in partners, and then with the whole group. As we discussed our discoveries, we found different ways to approach how we might work with our students.

Sandy wrote that the most beautiful thing about Jack is “when he is excited about something, his face lights up as if it is the best idea he has ever been part of. He is at the same time, joyous and serious, determined and open, elated and hard-working.” Sandy plans to try to tap into this energy more intentionally.

Erika decided “The most beautiful thing I know about Skye is her smile and the quirky, flirty way she said, ‘Maybe I will.’ When she gives me hints of confidence like this, I’m going to believe her and pursue it.”

Rob wrote about his case study’s “quiet determination to succeed that I could not see at first.” This realization in turn sparked Rob’s determination “to stick with him and share in his vision of success.”

It’s important to see—and re-see—our students. What we can recognize as “the most beautiful thing we know about them” can lead us to see new possibilities in our work together.

Spring time is a wonderful season to turn to these possibilities, remembering that during this long winter, just under the ground (and snow!) were plants ready to shoot up and blossom. We’re planning to expand to other ways to use Van Camp’s terrific book as a nudge for our study groups and work with colleagues with similar questions:

• What’s the most beautiful thing you know about your teaching mentor?
• What’s the most beautiful thing you know about teaching readers?
• What’s the most beautiful thing you know about conferring with students?

We hope you’ll discover many beautiful things about teaching this spring!

https://choiceliteracy.com/article/whats-the-most-beautiful-thing-you-know-about/

Monday Motivator #32 2024-25

 

Keeping Your Teacher Battery Charged Daily

by MiddleWeb · Published 01/28/2025 · Updated 03/24/2025

Effectively managing resilience has never been more important for educators. In the first of her five-part series, Julie Schmidt Hasson shares what she has learned about managing her level of energy and helps you create your battery management plan.

By Julie Schmidt Hasson

I locked the front door early on a misty August morning, leaving my home in the mountains of North Carolina and heading for Utah. Arriving at the terminal just in time to board the plane, I decided to forgo the work I brought, and instead, watch a movie on my phone.

Exiting the plane for a brief stop in Dallas, I felt a buzz in my hand. The low battery alert initiated a wave of anxiety. My phone is my lifeline when traveling, and I had just 10 minutes in the airport before boarding for the next leg of my journey. I dug through wrappers and receipts to the bottom of my tote and pulled out my charger, my eyes scanning the walls for an outlet.

I spotted one a few feet away, but hordes of other travelers before me must have also discovered this metal framed beacon of hope. It was so loose that my plug kept falling out. Moving toward the gate, I found another and then another, but none worked. Finally, next to an empty seat at the gate, I found one last outlet, plugged in, and felt the vibration signifying charging in progress.

I managed to get back to 27 percent before boarding the plane. By the time I landed in Salt Lake City, my phone’s charge was dwindling, and I had to stop and charge again before heading to the rental car counter.

During the two-hour drive to the hotel, I chastised myself for not managing my battery better. I love a good analogy, and I couldn’t help but make connections between my phone battery and my own internal battery. I knew I wasn’t managing my battery effectively, often just getting through the day, feeling depleted and discouraged by day’s end. Distracted by my full schedule, growing to-do list, and a multitude of meetings, I often allowed my charge to dwindle without even noticing. Maybe you’ve been there, too.

As educators, our level of impact is correlated to our level of energy. We’re not effective when our batteries are low, and over time, depletion can lead to burnout. Nearly half (44%) of K-12 educators report feeling burned out at work always or very often, according to a Gallup Workforce Study, and burnout poses serious risks to a teacher’s physical and mental health.

Teaching has always been a challenging job, but increasing student needs, continuously changing policies, and a difficult political landscape have made teaching even more difficult. And the pandemic exacerbated the challenges. Effective battery management has never been more important for educators. In this five-part series (to be published over the next five weeks), I’ll share what I’ve learned about managing my own educator battery and help you create your battery management plan.

Resources and Demands

Depletion (and eventually burnout) happens when the demands of our work exceed our resources to meet those demands. We naturally lose battery strength as we go through the day, but when the workload is excessive and the schedule is packed, we deplete even more quickly.

Educator batteries (like phone batteries) deplete automatically, but recharging requires intention. When we go through the day unaware of the charge on our batteries, we miss opportunities to recharge, and instead, we move closer to depletion. Adding regular battery checks into the daily routine can help us identify a depleting battery in time to adjust, which helps us better serve the ones we teach, lead, and love. And regular battery checks can help us be happier, healthier humans. We can end the day without feeling depleted. We can impact lives and still have a life.

Battery Check

How much charge is on your educator battery right now? The only way to know is to pause for a moment, tune out what is going on outside, and tune into what’s going on inside you. For educators, trained to constantly be aware of what’s happening around us, this is no easy task. On a scale from zero to ten, with ten being fully charged and zero being totally depleted, what number would you give yourself?

Perhaps it would be helpful to consider capacity. Think about the demands still ahead of you today, both in your professional and personal life. Do you currently feel like you have the capacity to meet those demands? If you know you don’t have the juice, don’t fret. Just knowing that you are depleted is important. In this case, knowledge is power. Your battery is rechargeable, and we’ll get to the how of recharging later in the series. First, let’s find a way to make a quick battery check a regular part of your day.

Regularly checking in with yourself throughout the day helps you stay attuned to your physical, mental, and emotional needs. This practice not only prevents burnout but also fosters resilience. The American Psychological Association defines resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity and significant sources of stress. In simple terms, resilience helps us move through challenges with greater ease and bounce back better and faster when challenges knock us down.

Resilience involves behaviors and practices that can be learned and developed. By practicing regular battery checks, you can identify small stressors before they become overwhelming.

First, schedule a time in your day to check your charge. You could schedule a check in to coincide with a regular activity, like taking your class to lunch. Or you could just set reminders at intervals throughout the day. I know your schedule can be unpredictable and can change. You can squeeze in a check any time, any place.

Your body (physical well-being), your heart (emotional state), and your mind (mental well-being) are connected, which makes a quick check in all three areas ideal. Begin with your physical state. How does your body feel right now? A quick body scan is helpful. Start at the top of your head and scan down to your toes. Do you feel any areas of tension, pain, or fatigue?

Then place your hands over your heart and focus inward. How are you feeling emotionally right now? Can you name the emotion?

Finally, check your mental state. What thoughts have been most prominent in your mind today? How is your mental load? Do you feel a sense of ease or overwhelm? Checking in with your body, heart and mind gives you important information. Once you are aware, you can adjust.

Chargers and Drains

My tech savvy friend once tried to explain how I could optimize my phone battery. Our internal, educator batteries are even more complex and much less standardized. That’s why, in addition to adopting a regular practice of checking your battery, it’s useful to cultivate an awareness of what charges and drains you.

Brainstorm in a simple two column list, with chargers on one side and depleters on the other. To go a bit deeper, try a battery audit. For an entire day (or two or three), keep track of your tasks and activities and record how much charge or drain you feel related to each one. You will certainly identify sleep and vacations as chargers, but when your battery is low, you can’t wait for bedtime or summertime. As we go through the series, I’ll help you create a menu of quick and easy chargers.

What charges or drains your educator battery is unique and very personal. However, some chargers are universal, and we’ll be exploring those together. I’ll be your guide on the side as we focus on ways to increase your chargers and reduce your battery depleters. We’ll dive into four battery charging practices: regulating, relating, reframing, and reflecting. Then we’ll put it all together in your personal battery management plan. With effective battery management, you can stay longer, grow stronger, and keep making an impact.

https://www.middleweb.com/51782/keeping-your-teacher-battery-charged-daily/

Monday Motivator #31 2024-25

 

Another example relating to the story I shared a couple weeks ago.

Watch this 2.5 minute video to see this amazing Domino Effect:

https://youtu.be/y97rBdSYbkg?si=dYaOeqDbdcvvhp8a

A small change or step can lead to big outcomes. What small action can you take to finish this school year strong? 

Monday Motivator #30 2024-25

 

Soft Skills: Superstars of the Learning Process

https://www.middleweb.com/52016/soft-skills-superstars-of-the-learning-process/

By Kelly Owens

Do you ever anxiously watch the clock waiting for students to finish? We’re often unpleasantly surprised by the time a task takes. I’ve stretched due dates for reading responses to account for the lengthy writing process. Even worse, sometimes it looks like no work is getting done because nothing is actually produced.

Ironically, though, this processing time may be a student’s most productive time. It’s during this phase of our students’ work that soft skills come in. Communication. Adaptability. Problem-solving. These are some of the social-emotional skills that are behind-the-scenes champs of the learning process. They are transferable gems that last long beyond the middle grades.

What we know about soft skills

According to a Pew Research Center survey of technology and education professionals, reported in Sandy Scragg’s article “The hard facts about soft skills,” the most valuable work skills in the coming years will be non-automated soft skills.

Additionally, in “Soft skills: The intangible qualities companies crave,” BBC reporter Kate Morgan notes:

In a 2021 review of more than 80 million job postings across 22 industry sectors, education non-profit America Succeeds found that almost two-thirds of positions listed soft skills among their qualifications.

Some say the middle school years are the ideal time to teach these skills. You might be thinking that our plates are already full teaching content. That’s where I needed to change my mindset about that book project. I had to shift my focus from the end product to the process. Making the shift meant honoring the time students needed to think about what to do and how to do it. My realization: During the process of producing, true learning happens!

Integrating soft skills into our teaching

How do we make sure we’re including soft skills? Here are 10 ways I’ve identified to weave these in-demand intangibles into existing lessons.

1. GROWTH MINDSET MANTRA

Number one on my Do Now board is a reminder to have a growth mindset.

Our mantra is: Today I will grow as a reader and writer. Students silently read the line to internalize it, then say it again with me.

As I tell them, many professional athletes repeat mantras before competing. In “Reciting a Mantra Can Alter Your Brain Chemistry – In a Good Way” health expert Amanda Lucci shows how training the brain is just as important as an athlete’s physical workout. For example, Olympic medalist, Anna Cockrell, echoes a single word, desire, to help find her flow.

Positive self-talk goes a long way in building self-confidence. What affirmation works with your students? 

2. MAKING CONNECTIONS

After readying mindsets, class kicks off with conversation about a question of the day. It’s kind of like old-school dinner table talk. Students practice active listening skills with high-interest, low-stakes content. Often, one student piggybacks a response off a classmate’s; some ask clarifying questions.

Yesterday, a question about our favorite foods helped us learn about different cultures. And to leverage as much as possible from this two-minute communication powerhouse, I connect back to students’ answers during the lesson. A win-win!

3. ACCOUNTABILITY

Student-centered classrooms are ideal environments for students to take ownership of their learning. Put students in the driver seat by encouraging them to set goals (another soft skill). Make goals small and achievable, so students feel success quickly. This gives the morale boost they need to seek out grander goals.
While setting a literacy goal, this student also reflected on distractions that could prevent him from achieving it. When he reassessed progress weeks later, he proudly reported that he stopped listening to distracting music while writing. His literacy scores soared!

4. GROW MORE GRIT

Meet students where they are at. Students come to us at all different developmental stages. Don’t expect every student to hit the same mark at the same time. Perseverance is a soft skill. Encourage all students to grow beyond the comfort zone of “good enough.” Then progress to “better” and grow towards achieving personal best.

Students develop grit by building stamina to persevere. Remember, a student who hasn’t reached the learning objectives hasn’t failed, they are just not there yet.

5. REDUCE MISUNDERSTANDINGS THROUGH COMMUNICATION

Don’t assume! Just because something seems easy or obvious to us doesn’t mean students know how to do it properly. It’s important we don’t come to premature conclusions. Rather, explain instructions clearly and model. Err on the side of over-explaining.

As explained in my MiddleWeb article “‘Draft Alongs’ Help Kids Grow Olympic Mindsets,” despite all the hours students spend on devices, I needed to model how to indent and space paragraphs. Dialogue is especially tricky to format, so modeling my think-aloud process while projecting an image of my document led to many aha moments about proper formatting.

6. TEACH AND MODEL SELF-MONITORING

Embrace errors! Learning to bounce back from setbacks is key to growing. Instruct students how to minimize errors and cope with imperfection.

One way is to teach routines that check for errors. Visible reminders, such as the checklist below, help students self-reflect and actively look for errors. Most industries follow protocols to reduce errors and have standard operating procedures. Doctors do it before surgery. Pilots run through a checklist before takeoff. Merchants have steps to close the store each day. Let’s get students in the habit now.

7. TIME MANAGEMENT

Teach how to prioritize tasks, create schedules, and meet deadlines. Use chunking to break large tasks into small manageable steps. Introduce:

• • Task batching: List all tasks, categorize them, then group similar tasks.
  • Kanban Boards: Visualization tools show a group of tasks and their status.
  • Pomodoro Method: Follow 25-minute focused work intervals, broken by 5-minute breaks, and a long break of 15-30 minutes after 4 rounds (pomodori).

8. BOOST THEIR FLEXIBILITY

Agile learners have a mindset and skill set to adapt to changes in the learning environment. Our lessons are full of different formats – teacher-directed, student-driven, project-based, online. Mixing it up has its pros, but can be overwhelming for some students. Eliminate frustration about all the changes. Model how to embrace flexibility.

Try posting visual schedules or teach movement cues, so students know when to expect transitions. Signals such as music, clapping, or silent gestures give students time to mentally prepare for change.

9. MIND THE COGNITIVE LOAD

Have you ever taken a course where the instructor gave you time to write, but then proceeded to talk at the class? I think of that experience whenever students (especially multilingual learners) are writing. The cognitive load is already heavy enough without expecting them to listen to verbal instructions too. There are only so many things a human brain can focus on at once.