Look Them in the Eyes

My kids, all grown up!

**Note: As you read this post, please don't get the impression that I don't understand the importance of cultural differences with regard to eye contact and showing respect. I fully embrace the myriad of different ways that mindful attention can be given between people; as one of my commenters so eloquently reminded me, the point is to remember to be fully and genuinely present to show that you care for others.  

Don't get me wrong. I am attached to my tech devices: taking photos, checking email, texting friends and family, but I am growing painfully aware of the costs associated with non-stop information and consumption on our most valuable relationships: missing out on important face to face moments with our students, colleagues, and loved ones.

This year, in my first year teaching 4th grade, I was shocked at how often I would ask students to look at me to show they were listening to me.  This was not an outright sign of disrespect from them as much as it was a product of our culture. When I asked if they looked at each other while talking at home, many students exclaimed: "My parents are always looking at their phones!" I encouraged them to say, ever so politely, to their parents: "Please look at me, so I know you are really listening." I fervently checked my email over the following few days, certain that someone would be angry at my lesson to their children, but not one ever arrived. Maybe no one went home and asked..though I hope they did.  I continued to request that students look at each other as they shared ideas in the classroom. Eventually, it became a norm...well..at least some of the time!

Of course, I then became aware of my own behavior: when I was not looking at someone talking to me! I often caught myself multi-tasking when others talked to me, cleaning up or writing an email when another teacher came to my room to visit, or picking up papers while a student was asking me a question; I consciously made a point to stop and fully listen.  After all, if a huge percentage of communication is non-verbal, what am I missing by not using the incredible sense of vision that allows me to see the person's revealing facial expression and expressive body language?

So,  please, especially when interacting with children, look them in the eyes. ( or show them full presence in a way that makes sense in their culture)  For that matter, make it a habit with everyone.  Let them know you are fully listening. The rewards are certainly worth it!

Reflections on Change: Transition is Tough!

Here's me in my classroom before school started, looking bright-eyed and ready for the new challenge!

I haven't blogged much this year. I have been busy plodding along on the continuous curve of learning, having made a huge change this year: going from teaching kindergarten at a school where I taught for 5 years and felt like I knew everyone, to teaching 4th grade at a completely different school.  Learning a new curriculum, getting up to snuff on the traditions and culture of my new school, TEACHING        ( yes, that's my actual real job), and trying to keep up with commitments, such as tutoring kids I've worked with for years, planning a book with a member of my PLN, presenting at 2 conferences and still managing my personal life have been overwhelming at times.  And with that I offer a sincere apology to my family and friends as I have not been as present as I wish to be.

Needless to say, although I often feel like I am moving ahead two steps and falling back three, I do believe that I have grown immensely by stepping out of my comfort zone and taking on this new challenge. I must also say, that I have had some of my most satisfying moments of teaching, interacting with wonderful 4th graders at a critical point in their learning journeys.

 Here are some reflections about what helped me thrive and what I will do differently in the future!

Keep expectations realistic:  I am pretty darn sure that I expected myself to master everything this year: the curriculum, the traditions and culture of my school, the unique challenges of 4th graders, etc. Did I live up to my expectation? Um...no..I simply elevated my blood pressure! Although I am often one to coach others on this topic, I do not follow my own advice. In the future school year, I will have one or two attainable monthly objectives for myself so that I can see progress in key areas, instead of expecting mastery of all.

Don't be afraid to accept opportunities to stretch yourself! In the Fall of 2010, just as I was in the midst of the steepest part of my learning journey, I was off to present at a reading conference in southern California. There I met several of my awesome PLN members and was refueled by connecting with other passionate educators. Around that same time, I was asked by my wonderful friend, Lisa Dabbs to consider presenting with her at the March 2011ASCD conference in SF. Although my first reaction was one of self-doubt, citing that I was "too busy and overwhelmed," I took a few days to think about the opportunity I might be turning down. When else would I be invited to co-present at an international conference? I am so happy that I did! I got to meet even more of my wonderful PLN members as well as experience a boost in confidence and realization that I love connecting and sharing with educators from around the world! Here is a fun interview with Ken Royal, senior editor for Scholastic, that spontaneously happened at the conference.

Savor the moments: Don't get so caught up in the pressures of curriculum, grading, deadlines, that you forget who you are there for: your students. Especially now, at this busy end of the year time, I am going to school each day with a mantra of making the most of each moment by being present. Our relationships with students and how we interact with them make a HUGE difference in their perceptions about themselves as learners.

Make new friends: I must say that though I miss some friends at my old school, I work with a wonderful group of passionate, hard-working educators. I have especially enjoyed having a fellow "new teacher" next door and one downstairs in kindergarten. Somehow the experience of being new to an environment together sets the stage for deep bonds of understanding. I am so fortunate to have such supportive friends.
Finally, a big reminder about what I will do differently: take better care of me! Confession: I have not been as faithful to the goal of eating well and exercising regularly as I should be. Of course I have the endless list of excuses, but I WILL find a better way over the upcoming school year to spend a bit more time on taking care of me. I have had a few health issues creep up this year, and most are probably related to stress! I will reach out to my network of both online and face-to-face friends and get back on the bandwagon. Summer will provide the perfect opportunity to get back on the #TEMT ( Twitter Exercise Motivation Team) train.
I would love to hear your thoughts on how you manage transitions such as these. Please share!

But Wait..There's More! Gratitude for our PLN

After I posted last night about some of my learning from #ASCD11, I realized that I had not adequately thanked all who so graciously contributed to the presentation, Beyond the Classroom Walls, Connecting in a Globalized World.
First off, a great big thanks to my fabulous co-presenter, Lisa Dabbs, also a wonderful blogger at http://teachingwithsoul.com/, who worked tirelessly on telling our story in a beautiful slideshow. She also spent countless hours preparing a Livebinder resource for folks to utilize after our presentation.  Lisa and I live 400 miles away from each other and prepared together in many conversations over Skype! She, however, did most of the work, and I just can't express my gratitude in words. Lisa is one of those people everyone should have in their network.

Second, thank you to all of the folks who so generously took the time to tell their stories of connecting globally: Clive, Greta, Aviva, Jo and Phil, Colin, Alex, and Steve. These inspiring educators graciously spent time creating fabulous snippets of their work to highlight the incredible value of online relationships and learning opportunities.
If you follow me on Twitter, you can find them all there, sharing each day how they enliven their practice with online tools.
Finally, thank you to all of the wonderful members of our personal learning network, who came to our presentation, and/or supported us through tweets and messages of encouragement. It's not easy to stand up in a room of peers and talk for 90 minutes, but all of you helped by sharing the message that Lisa and I set out to convey.
Hopefully, I have not left anyone out here, but if I have, there will surely be more posts on the wonderful learning experience of ASCD11. Who would you like to thank today?

3 Big Ideas from ASCD11

The Wonderful Co-presenter and Friend: Lisa Dabbs

I love the hearts of SF!

My Very Favorite Session!

Meeting My Fabulous PLN: Lisa, Karen, and Angela!

I just returned from the ASCD11 preconference and conference in San Francisco and, I must say: my head is spinning!  Not only did I have the privilege of presenting, Beyond the Classroom Walls,  with my good friend, Lisa Dabbs, but I also got to meet, face to face, many of the educators in my PLN, personal learning network.
What were the most inspiring messages that I took back with me to my class today?

1. Find the bright spots. Chip Heath, the keynote speaker, talked about how we need to find the "bright spots" in any challenging situation such as education and learn from them. Examining and re-examining problems won't lead us to change. We must seek out those who have managed to overcome obstacles and thrive, and then find out how they have blossomed despite hardship. We must also learn how to motivate others through "heart" and emotion, and help "shape the path" so that our analytical brains will accept and see the possibility. Read more here.
2. Kids are always paying attention, to something but maybe (often?) not to us! Perhaps we haven't cultivated the "need to know" or "need to solve a problem" that we, as humans, all have. It's time that we captured the attention of our students through their brains; we must activate the amygdala through the senses, using novelty, curiosity, and signals that give the brain just the right level of stimulation. Dr. Judy Willis, in her wonderful session with Jay McTighe, showed us that students who were exposed to positive facial expressions on faces performed higher on cognitive/memory tasks than students exposed to angry facial exprssions.  When stimulated positively,  and not overstimulated through stress, the amygdala's connections to the frontal cortex can facilitate learning and executive functioning. 
3. Relationship is what facilitates the safe environment where kids can think critically and make powerful connections. Over and over, session after session, presenters talked about Carol Dweck's growth mindset, and how an environment that openly embraces and celebrates failure and effort facilitates the learning that leads to success and efficacy. I must say that relationships are also what helps strengthen us as educators. I connected with many of my wonderful online PLN members; it was like meeting old friends! Don't underestimate the synergy of passionate educators. 

What connections do you make as you read this post? Were you there at ASCD and have another view to share? 

Play to Flourish

 Although intellectually I know that play is vital to well-being and is a critical motivating factor for students, I sometimes get caught up in the seriousness of "lessons" and "designing the best learning experiences," and forget how important it is to spontaneously engage in play.  

This week, I spontaneously chose 3 opportunities to "play" with my students:

1. While on recess duty, I played four square with students. It was fun to hear their delight in exclaiming to peers, "Hey! Mrs. Young is actually good!" and "I got her out!"
2. During P.E. when I was there to help supervise with the P.E. teacher, I actually participated on a team in a fun relay game. Once again, not only my class, especially the boys, but also the 5th grade class were a bit surprised to see that I could throw! They came back to class, "all smiles" and not as competitively driven as usual.
3. During math rotations, instead of "teaching" one of the groups, I "taught" by playing a card game that involved simplifying fractions and comparing them to decimals/percents. This game was a challenge for most students, but the added fun of playing with "the teacher" seemed to make the experience more exciting for them.   

Please take some time to watch the wonderful talk below by Stuart Brown and let me know what you think! Also, I would love to know how you use play and fun to support student flourishing. 

Stuart Brown says play is more than fun | Video on TED.com

Just the Right Amount of Challenge

I've been thinking quite a bit about creating just the right amount of challenge and even "stress" for learning as I've been reading a lot about "good stress" in helping kids strive to be their best.
What are your thoughts?

10 Important Ways a Positive Climate Can Impact Learning

I am so excited, and to be honest, completely and utterly nervous, to be presenting on Saturday, January 8, 2011 at the Reform Symposium Worldwide e.conference!

Below you can watch the interview of introduction done a few days ago with my wonderful friend Greta in Argentina. I loved talking to Greta, but I think that in the self-consciousness of being video-interviewed, I missed sharing some ideas about what I hope to discuss in my brief 30 minute presentation!





In any case, here are 10 points I hope to address in next week's interactive discussion in Elluminate. I hope you will join me!

1. Positive emotions "broaden and build" our capacity to think. For more information, check out one of my favorite researchers, Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, author of Positivity. 
2. We can teach our students the value of positive thought patterns and how to control the downhill slide that happens when stress or anger short circuit our thinking.
3. Routines and classroom rituals can be mindfully designed to elicit more positive experiences which make school a place kids want to go.
4. Celebrating mistakes, through modeling and discussion, can go a long way in reducing fear and encouraging students to take risks in learning.
5. Novelty is a powerful force in awakening parts of the brain involved in memory storage. Why not start a lesson dressed up as a literary character?
6. Positivity does not mean being happy all of the time. What it means is that by carefully creating an environment that seizes opportunities to promote learning in a fun way, we can then raise the bar and push our students to learn at their highest potential. 
7. Relationships that are built in a safe learning community can handle the necessary self-reflection, constructive criticism, and peer feedback that lead to growth and development. 
8. Test stresses and other issues related to grades and standards can be mitigated through humor.  Before our "big" standardized writing test, I took pictures of students peering over privacy screens making the silliest, most terrified faces. The laughter that followed as we looked at the pictures helped us keep the test in perspective. 
9. Celebration Smores: after our big week-long battery of standardized tests, I suprised the students with "celebration smores." They made funny faces out of mini marshmallows and choc chips on their graham crackers. Some students took the opportunity to try and melt their smores in the sunshine! 
10. Students love jobs related to promoting a positive classroom environment. In my class, the weekly environment engineer may share a humorous, fascinating, awe-inspiring video clip, photo or story with the class.
 

I would love to hear your thoughts and stories about the power of creating a positive learning environment. Care to share?