A Few of My Favorite Things

I love watching musicals.  As a child I would watch many of them with my parents.  Funny Girl, My Fair Lady, Bye Bye Birdie, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Sound of Music were among my favorites to watch repeatedly.  I guess breaking into song can make anything seem lighter, or make anything seem better.  It almost seems like the characters are reflecting about their situation in song.  As the summer is coming to an end and I am about to begin my sixth year as a building administrator, I began thinking about some of the difficult days and frustrating moments that I have experienced and possibly will experience along with all of the things that have to get done and really stressing myself out.  I thought, "How negative is this!  Not a good way to begin the year.  Let's turn this around and think of my favorite moments."  Of course the song "Favorite Things" from Sound of Music popped into my head.  I think Maria had it right during that thunder storm scene.  She and the children sang about all of the things that made them happy and removed those scared negative thoughts about the loud thunder and crash of lightning that was happening outside the windows.  I think it is important to think about those amazing moments in our careers that made us truly happy or excited, or rejuvenated.  Those memories can get us through those annoying, frustrating moments that we all unfortunately experience.  They remind us why we do what we do and cause us to find the solutions to our problems that arise, so that we can create yet another wonderful moment.  Here are a few of my "favorite things" or moments:

Hour of Code - Computer Science Week was approaching my first year as a principal in a new school for grades 3-5.  I discovered that the students were not aware of "Hour of Code" yet.  I worked diligently to organize a schedule and directions for what to do when they got to the computer lab.  The students were quite fond of Mind Craft that year so I chose the mind craft coding game from code.org.  The students arrived one class at a time to watch the mini video about web design and how to use blockly (a coding function that has JavaScript underneath).  After viewing the video, they all went to their computers and began coding to make their character follow the directions needed to solve the puzzles.  The students were great at it! Besides the students succeeding in coding and learning a new skill that can be applied to future jobs in computer programming, what made this a "favorite thing" was what happened after "Hour of Code".  As I was walking in the halls, I was stopped on more than one occasion by more than one student for the same purpose.  The students were thanking me for bringing them "Hour of Code".  One of them told me that they went home and tried other coding games after they successfully completed the mind craft puzzle.  Another one told me that they wanted to be a web designer when they grew up.  I had made a difference in these students' lives and it felt amazing!

Digital Tool Teasers - Sharing digital tools to use in the classroom is a passion of mine.  I love adding a tool to my faculty meetings for teachers to try out if they would like.  I don't make it an expectation or mandatory by any means.  It is more to simply add to their toolboxes of strategies.  If they want to try it out, I make myself available to assist if needed.  Different tools work for different classrooms and teachers.   I always love seeing teachers get excited to try something new, especially when they end up loving it and taking it to the next level.  I end up learning from them as a result. One of my "favorite things" was when I introduced Plickers to the teachers in the Middle School where I was an assistant principal.  We didn't have 1:1 devices so the use of Plickers was very exciting to the teachers.  This tool affords teachers the opportunity to create questions about a topic and the students hold up coded cards for the teachers to scan with one device like a cell phone.  The data is collected instantaneously and the teacher has the information in their account.  Students can also see the results of the data and understand why they may need to review a topic more.  What made this a "favorite thing" is what happened after the teaser.  I began getting emails from my teachers thanking me for introducing them to this tool.  One teacher wrote how she used it in her reading class and the students began creating questions for each other on the topic.  It became an even better way to see how the students were doing with the content.  Excitement is a contagious feeling and one of my other favorite moments was working with a teacher, in the grades 3-5 building, who was excited to try out Google Classroom. He invited me in to Co-Teach in the classroom.  I was able to teach the students alongside my excited teacher and we all learned various functions of Google Classroom together.  Some functions the students were able to figure out and show us! It was incredible.

Reward Earned - In one of the third grade classrooms, students earn teacher bucks throughout the week for good behavior, great effort, or accomplishments.  At the end of the week they go to the classroom store and use their earned teacher bucks for classroom incentives.  Some cost more than others.  Some students make the decision to save their bucks and not purchase something that week so that they can earn one of the pricier items.  Why is this a "favorite thing"?  One of the pricier items that a couple of students saved their earnings for was to be able to bring a book down to my office and read to me.  I love any moment I can have with my students but these students passed up on homework passes or sitting in the teacher's chair to come read to me.  It made my day to see their smiling faces as they read a book of their choice with me sitting next to them individually.

Book Club - As an administrator, you sometimes can lose those precious moments with the students that you may have had as a classroom teacher.  I missed talking about books with my students.  A friend of mine in my PLN is an assistant superintendent and she told me how she continued a book club she used to run in the middle school.  She loved reading with the students so periodically, early in the morning, students would meet with her before school and they would talk about the book they chose to read as a group.  I thought if she could still have book talks with students so can I.  I read a few books appropriate for students' grade level and chose the book that I thought would work for our first book club.  I wanted some input from teachers (and wanted an excuse to demonstrate another tool, Voxer) so I asked teachers if any had the desire to read a book with me over spring break.  There were a few teachers who were interested so they created Voxer accounts and we read the book together over the break.  We voxed each other as we reached various points of the story and unanimously agreed that it was a great book to read with the students in grades 4 and 5.  I sent home the flier for students to sign up and purchased books for them.  20 students and I met in the school library before school and we talked about what was going on in the selected parts of the story as well as participated in activities such as a trivia game using Kahoot and adding our thoughts about the story on a Flipgrid.  The students LOVED the book and great conversations happened as a result. Those Friday mornings were amazing and gave me a smile that lasted the entire day.

I love thinking about my favorite things, "When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I'm feeling sad..." I smile and think about all of the wonderful things I get to experience as a building principal. It is such a rewarding job that I am lucky to have, even on a rainy day.

Every Student Counts

"Every student counts" is said and heard all the time in so many different contexts.  We have our ENL population  of students who have various needs in order to succeed in the rigorous academics in our school while also learning our language.  We have students with learning disabilities, whose brains work differently than others and so they too have various needs to succeed.  We have students who have attention issues or other behavioral issues that get in their way in the classroom, therefore, they too have various needs to succeed.  We also have those students who are gifted in some ways and learning comes much easier to them. Their readiness level in various subjects is grade levels higher than their peers, therefore they too have various needs in order to continue to progress in school.  Every student counts! So I pose the question: If all of these students are in a classroom together, how do we ensure that the myriad of needs are met?  Then I take it one step further: How do we instill in these students the knowledge of what their needs are so that they could ensure that they are given the help that they need?

Many people would answer the first question simply by saying two words..."differentiated instruction."  What does that mean and how do we transfer it to the student as well? I watched a webinar with Robyn Jackson from ASCD. She talked about the resources used for differentiating as opposed to planning multiple lessons within the lesson. She looked at the students as falling into four quadrants; high process/high content, high process/low content, low process/high content, and low process/low content. Various resources would be made that would assist each student with the lesson so that they can reach their individual potential. Students will begin to learn their own needs and eventually seek out the resources themselves. Of course it is important to note that if a student feels as though they would benefit from a resource they were not originally provided they should be afforded that opportunity if needed. A student who is low content, may need help with some vocabulary, this can be done with visuals or a glossary. Students who are English Language Learners can benefit from these resources as well. Students who are low process, may need a resource demonstrating the steps to take in order to complete the task, like a check list or graphic organizer.

Let's look at the high process/high content student. We all have them but unfortunately many times the focus is on the students who are struggling that we forget to meet the needs of those who do not struggle. Since EVERY student counts, we need to make sure they too reach their full potential. How about offering some "nice to know" information about the topic. This takes those students to the next level in the content but does not confuse the students who need to grasp the basics of the content. I remember when I was younger I was an avid reader. I always had a flashlight and book under my pillow. I remember my teacher in elementary school offering me a list of books that she thought I would like to read. They were books that were clearly a higher grade level than we were reading in class. She then would take the time to meet with me to discuss the books that I chose to read and we would have a little book talk. It wasn't a lot of time spent but it stuck with me and I got a lot out of our book discussions that I wouldn't have been able to have with the books we were reading in class. I think that is when I began to learn how to question what I was reading, I do not believe I was annotating in my margins yet but I probably could have if I was shown how.

Recently, a teacher I know, told me about a discovery he made about his student that could potentially change his life in education and he is only in second grade. This student has been a discipline issue since Kindergarten. Each year the current teacher would hear from the principal as well as the past teacher that he was problematic and a huge distraction to the rest of the students in class. Many times he would not do his work and would cause disruptions. This second grade teacher came to the realization, by taking the time to gather some extra data, that this student was extremely bored in school because his academic levels across the board were a few grade levels above what was being taught in class. His second grade teacher began giving him different work at his level including a separate reading group using above grade level materials and changing the questioning. The student is now behaving beautifully and is not a disruption anymore. He is happy with the challenging work.

Many times when differentiating for students to meet the needs of all students, choice is needed.  There are many ways to learn information as well as show that you have learned the content.  Sometimes it is not about changing the level of the material you are using but offering choice on the assignment and how the learning is demonstrated.  Tapping into students’ strengths can often help them with their weaknesses. 

There are many ways to differentiate content or process for all our students and their various needs.  What’s important to remember is that EVERY STUDENT counts and we need help them all reach their full potential.  As Carol Ann Tomlinson astutely stated, “In the end, all learners need your energy, your heart and your mind. They have that in common because they are young humans. How they need you however, differs. Unless we understand and respond to those differences, we fail many learners."