Monday Motivator #26 2020-21

 

Seeds Of Opportunity In Crisis

By Guest Author | March 16, 2021

By: Erin Lynn Raab

https://www.gettingsmart.com/2021/03/seeds-of-opportunity-in-crisis/

Many of us are feeling the “pandemic wall” right now.

This is understandable given the multiple crises the past year has wrought that at times feels never-ending. Collectively, we are facing crises of Health, Economy, Natural Disaster, Democracy, and Systemic Racism. And then, within all of this larger context, there is the crisis in our schools.

Many are looking forward to a return to normal school next year post-pandemic—but

do we want to return to the old normal?

Even pre-pandemic, the old normal was one in which only 54 percent of students feel hopeful about their prospects in future school or to achieve their goals; and, one- third of students report they are struggling or suffering. The old normal is one in

which schools are responsible for making sure our nation’s children are fed. The old normal is not equitable nor just.

We are, hopefully, at a turning point for the pandemic. We are moving out of triage mode. Vaccines are being distributed, cases are dropping. While we are still feeling very much in the darkness, glimmers of light are beginning to signify the arrival of a new dawn, of a new spring.

This in-between moment offers us a chance to ask what these crises have taught us about who we are, who we want to be, and what we want to be the “normal” to which we return.

The Seeds of Opportunity in Crisis

In modern-day English, the word crisis simply means, “a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger.” However, the roots of our word “crisis” are broader. The word comes from the Greek word krisis ‘decision’, which is from PIE root *krei- “to sieve,” thus “discriminate, distinguish.” In Chinese, the word, (wéijī), is composed of two brush strokes or words: one brush stroke stands for danger, the other for opportunity.

Decision and opportunity.

In this moment of multiple crises lie the seeds of opportunity. Opportunities to make new decisions—to discriminate, to “sieve”—a.k.a. to retain the potential good and allow the rest to pass—to imagine new ways of being, and to take action to co-create those possibilities.

This has borne out in history. Consider that in the 1920s inequality was on the rise and there was very little social safety net. The subsequent crash of the stock market in 1929 and the Great Depression—true crises of epic proportion—provided the opportunity for reimagining our economic system and social safety net. The New Deal was created, which re-started the economy and created the Social Security Administration to ensure that those most vulnerable—the unemployed, the young, and the elderly—were supported.

There are seeds of opportunity in crises—but we have to create the conditions for them to sprout.

These conditions include:

1) Creating time and space for reflection.

We need to create time to reflect on the big picture is the antidote to scarcity and allows us to connect with ourselves and with others. We need guarded time to consider what is happening, what we’ve learned from this moment, and on how it relates to what we want for the future.

2) Reframing the problems as opportunities.

This time has been hard. And, while we have all been in the same storm, we haven’t all been in the same boat—it has been harder for some than others. What are the problems we can reframe as opportunities for new solutions and new ways of thinking and being?

3) Asking fundamental questions.

What does it mean to live a good life? What is a thriving community? Who do we want to be as Americans? As global citizens? We need to return to the fundamental questions of who we are and who we want to be before we rush to solutions.

4) Collectively re-visioning.

As Robin D.G. Kelley teaches us, “Without new visions we don’t know what to build, only what to knock down.” After asking our fundamental questions, let’s look at our collective answers to see where we can create shared visions for how we move forward.

One Possible Way to Participate

These four conditions can be created in many different ways and do not require a movement—simply a person or two intent on sowing seeds together.

But collectively taking the time to reflect and learn from one another might be the most powerful way forward of all.

This is the goal of 100 Days of Conversations About School—an initiative that is catalyzing community conversations across the country about the future of school and society in a practice of democratic deliberation and re-visioning for the first 100 days of the new administration, from January 20th to April 29th, 2021.

Rather than count on our leaders to create the solutions, we believe it is the voices and perspectives of young people, families, and communities that should be centered in our new visions. For this reason the process is designed to center the voices of young people and educators—both in the conversations themselves and then in the policy and practice recommendations that emerge from identifying themes across the conversations.

The 100 Days conversation experience itself is enjoyable, powerful, and connecting. The questions are pre-designed to foster reflection and connection—which has felt reassuring and needed in this moment of disconnection and isolation. 97.4% of participants have said the experience was either “extremely” or “very” positive for them, and 92.1% felt more connected with their fellow participants after the conversation.

Young people, in particular, have expressed they feel heard and respected in a way they rarely do and appreciate that the questions aren’t watered down, but rather they’re asked deep and meaningful questions and that they have their turn, just like adults. Listen to Juwaria, a.k.a. J.J., a high school student from Minnesota, talk about her experience. It also has humanized educator experience for them—getting to understand better what’s truly happening behind the scenes for their teachers. The real power of this project comes in combination of personal reflection and deep listening to others—and in what we can do together when we find commonalities and a shared vision.

Beyond the individual experience, the process is a powerful tool for organizational reflection. 100 Days partnered with Local Voices Network to make transcriptions of the conversations available to every participant, which makes this a unique opportunity for schools and organizations to learn about views of multiple stakeholders within each community. Teacher Powered Schools is hosting conversations in each partner school and then will look at the transcripts together to consider cross-school learnings. MN Young Champions and their new youth-led nonprofit, Bridgemakers, is organizing young people across the state of Minnesota to participate in conversations, and will use learnings to bring the voices of young people and educators directly to policymakers this summer. Both the small, rural town of Belgrade, MN, and the large urban district of Ferguson, MO are hosting multiple conversations with students, families, and educators as part of their student and family engagement strategy this spring.

Hosting with 100 Days of Conversations is easy and takes less than two hours of time —from signing up to facilitating to thank you notes. It happens in three easy steps:

1. Sign up to be a host.

2. Choose an adult and some young people (5-8 people total), then pick a time on Calendly to get a Zoom link. The Zoom link will automatically record so you don’t have to worry about downloading/uploading files.

3. Show up at the conversation with the facilitation protocol—it can be read verbatim.

*And if you want more information, there’s the step by step Host a Conversation Guide with everything from project goals to hosting to thank you notes!

Over 200 individuals and organizations across all 50 states have already signed up to partner to host a conversation, but the more people who participate, the more powerful the results. Consider ensuring your and your students’ voices are heard.

Ultimately, regardless of whether you host a conversation, organize with others, or simply take some time to reflect by yourself, each of us seeking the seeds of opportunity in this moment of crisis will prepare us to better emerge beyond the pandemic wall, and beyond this moment, not only victorious but transformed into new and better ways of being.

Monday Motivator #25 2020-21

 

An Easy Way To Build Rapport Online (Or In Class)

by Michael Linsin

A rapport-building strategy I wrote about several years ago for in-class learning also happens to be effective online.

And that’s saying something.

Building rapport online is tough sledding—especially when students aren't required to turn on their camera.

After all, if you can’t see your students, you don’t even know if they’re in front of their computer, let alone whether you’re making any connection with them.

It isn’t unusual for a teacher to talk and teach their heart out to a wall of blank screens.

But despite the hurdles of online teaching, there is a relationship-building strategy that still works. It’s also super easy.

So what is it?

It’s to leave short, personal notes for individual students after class has ended. They can come in several forms—email, Remind app, the Classwork tab in Google Classroom, etc..

All work well. But to be most effective, each note should meet three criteria:

Uniqueness

Avoid trite language like “good-job” and “way-to-go,” which have lost their meaning due to overuse. Now they make students feel as if they’re just another face in the crowd.

Instead, use the student’s name when addressing them and refer to something in particular they said or did.

This is very powerful because it shows you’re paying attention to them as people and individuals. Keep a look out for anything out of the ordinary, anything you could only say to them—and then seize it.

Specificity

Specificity is the key to finding the most influential words to put in your message. Focus on things your students would never in a million years think anyone would notice.

You don’t have to write paragraphs.

Keep your missives brief and simple, but make them distinct. Refer to talents your students possess or success characteristics you see in them that they themselves may be unaware of.

Discerning and honing in on these gifts is one of the keys to unlocking intrinsic motivation.

Honesty

Kids these days are more aware than we think and can identify a phony from a mile away. So whatever you write in your note, make sure it’s honest.

Make sure it reflects what you really see in them or their work.

In this way, you build your reputation as someone who can be trusted—which is crucial to having influential, behavior-changing relationships with even the most challenging students.

If you fudge, even a little, eventually they’ll find you out.

Something More

Notes connect, encourage, and praise in a way that enliven a love of learning and keep students heading in the right direction. But because of the pandemic, this simple, even primitive, way of communicating has taken on a new level of importance.

If you’ve never met your students in person, or even seen them over Zoom, it’s the only way to start building genuine individual rapport.

This generation, world-weary and jaded in so many ways even before Covid, shrug in the face of flattery and compliments that made students blush not ten years ago.

Nowadays, it takes something more—your awareness, perception, and curiosity about your students—as well as their trust in the veracity of your words—to get through to who they really are.

To reach their quintessence.

And stir the vast potential awaiting within.

Monday Motivator #24 2020-21

 

 Help Students Make the Most of   Interviews

   BY MIDDLEWEB · PUBLISHED 02/24/2021

  By Elizabeth Hagan, Lisa Friesen, Casi Hodge and Sunday Cummins

  “Interview an expert on this topic!”
  “Interview a scientist in the field!”
  “Interview a relative about this period in history!”

Asking our students to interview someone sounds like an engaging learning activity,  right? For many students, though, this may be a daunting experience, and while    they may enjoy the break from traditional modes of learning like reading, writing and  classroom discussions, they may not actually learn that much.

Why? Because – similar to reading – listening to what we hear during an interview  requires comprehension and the active construction of meaning.

If our students are not prepared to engage in this kind of deep listening, they may  miss out on learning.

Setting Students Up to Succeed

So how do we prepare our students to benefit from the interview experience?    In Scaffolding Learning, Scaffolding Language (2015), Gibbons writes, “Like reading,  effective listening depends on the expectations and predictions about content,  language, and genre that the listener brings to the text” (p. 184).

In other words, for our students to get the most out of an interview, we may need to  teach them how to actively draw on three areas of knowledge:

 ✻ what they know about the topic
 ✻ what they know about the language used when talking about that topic
 ✻ what they know about the genre of “interviews”

In pursuit of exploring what this looks like, Elizabeth, a reading specialist, engaged a  small group of fifth grade students in a project driven by the essential question,  “What does it mean to ‘give back’?”

The group of students included two emergent bilinguals. One speaks Arabic at home  and the other speaks Amharic. Both are at the expanding level on the WIDA  standards for language proficiency.

Develop Background Knowledge

During lessons with Elizabeth, the students read a set of sources about people who  have “given back” to their communities in some way:

 ✻ a girl started a lemonade stand to raise money for coats,
 ✻ a young man started a free bicycle repair shop,
 ✻ a boy, Noah, started a “cool bandage” project for kids who get lots of shots during   cancer treatments.

A fourth “source of information” was an interview with Paul Long, a local motivational  speaker, who is involved in many projects that benefit others including Noah’s  bandage project.

The students were excited about the interview. One reason may have been that they  understood the topic better and had some idea of what they might talk to Paul Long  about during the interview.

Write Questions in Advance and Practice

Elizabeth’s students had never engaged in this kind of conversation with an adult  expert so it was important to prepare. Drafting questions to ask a person during a  structured conversation is one way to introduce students to the genre of the  “interview.” Students get a sense of the give and take that will occur. This is also a  chance to synthesize what a student has already learned about the topic and think  about what might be important to learn during the interview.

When Elizabeth’s students did interview Paul Long, they seemed shy. They stuck to  the questions they had drafted and did not ask Long for any additional details. On  reflection we realized the students might have benefited from practicing this interview with others.

In Scaffolding Language Scaffolding Learning (2015), Gibbons describes how when we are in a conversation with someone, we are always drawing on “those ‘scripts’  that are familiar to us through previous experiences” (185). Practicing asking others the interview questions and thinking through the answers can deepen students’  comfort with the language they need to employ during this type of meaning-making format.

This kind of practice also provides students with an experience they can draw on  later in more formal settings. In the future, Elizabeth plans to ask students to  interview people they know first, perhaps even using the same set of questions they  are planning to use later with someone they do not know as well.

 Predict What the Interviewee Might Say

 Because the students had already read and discussed three sources on the topic of   people “giving back,” they had some idea of what Paul Long might say. As listeners   we naturally draw on knowledge we already have on a topic to predict what a   speaker might say. Noticing when something is being said that’s similar to what a   listener already knows about the topic helps them monitor for meaning.

 During the interview Long talked about his work on Noah’s Bandage Project, and the   students’ eyes immediately lit up as they connected to information they had already   read and discussed. Later they seemed to remember details from this part of the   interview more easily than others.

 Making predictions about what we will learn during an interview based on   background knowledge also helps us notice when something is being said   that contrasts or adds to what we already know about the topic. Paul Long told   students that giving back doesn’t mean a person always has to give time or   materials.

 Just smiling at someone, he said, can be a way of “giving back” – a way of making   someone’s day better. This idea had not been a part of the students’ previous   discussions. They noticed the contrast and quickly latched on to this idea. (For fifth   graders, giving a smile probably feels very easy to accomplish!)

 Record the Interview for Close Listening

When our students are in the midst of an interview, it may be difficult to stop and take notes. This requires determining what’s important on the spot and then figuring out how to convey this in short bursts of writing. That’s a burdensome load for some of our students especially if they are learning English.

With this in mind, Elizabeth recorded the interview for the students to revisit later.  She chose a short clip that addressed an aspect of “Why give back?” they had not  discussed as they read the previous sources. She kicked off this follow-up lesson by  asking the students to think about the question, “What did this conversation with Paul Long add to what I already know about this topic?” They listened closely and  discussed what they heard, adding to their notes.

Interviewing others can be an engaging activity in any subject. With some intentional  instruction, it can be an even more powerful experience, expanding knowledge and  building useful skills for future learning opportunities.