91 Winter Blogs

I’ve had a great deal of conversation about white space recently.

LeadUpChat focused on it for a month, and several members of the LeadUp tribe wrote about the idea as they reflected on it. I’ve even added to the conversation here recently.

If you’re new to the concept, the idea is that we all need white space–time to invest in rest and recuperating from all of our work that asks us to pour out into others.

I was reminded of this with this beautiful piece I came across today.

I won’t spoil the story, but you should read it. Take 15 minutes and read it slowly. Think back to a Christmas you remember. Think about the way the author captures this moment and about the impact that white space had in her story.

Then think about how her white space has impacted others.

Before you move forward, think about what good a little white space might do for you. As the article shows (far more eloquently than I can convey, mostly because Harper Lee is pretty good at the whole writing bit), you never know how profound the impact might be.

Link: “My Christmas in New York” by Harper Lee

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This blog is post #16 in my 91 day winter blog challenge. I’m posting a blog each day. Check out other posts at #91winterblogs, or subscribe in the top right corner of this blog to receive these blogs as emails. Thanks for reading!

What makes a student a success? How successful are we at preparing students for their futures?

At a conference I recently attended, I heard two jarring statements from Dr. Laurence Steinberg during a keynote that have me thinking a lot about what we call success for students. Here’s what I heard:

“Only 1 of 6 high school students in America say they’ve taken a class that was difficult. Why are we not challenging students in high school? We are not taking advantage of the plastic prefrontal cortex at the optimum time (when it’s strengthened by challenge and novelty).”

“More students need remedial college courses than have taken at least 1 AP course in high school.”

I don’t know about you, but this sure feels like rain on the parade to me. It’s a worthwhile challenge that’s not insurmountable, but this really feels like a kick in the teeth.

I’m still very much in the process of mulling this over, but I wanted to share the ideas that have stuck with me.

I suppose the encouraging thing to remember is this: Our students can rapidly change (hence the claim about their brain plasticity); our work to create change will have a greater impact sooner than we think. Small adjustments on our part, if we leverage them correctly, can have exponentially great impact on those we serve daily.

What can we do better?

What risks are we willing to take?

How long will we wait?

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This blog is post #15 in my 91 day winter blog challenge. I’m posting a blog each day. Check out other posts at #91winterblogs, or subscribe in the top right corner of this blog to receive these blogs as emails. Thanks for reading!

We’ve all seen it. The student who is never a problem, never causes any trouble, never seeks any attention, and never asks for much of anything. Maybe he turns everything in, maybe he only misses here and there. Regardless, something seems missing.

This week, as the semester winds down, think about the students who are slipping through the gaps.

Look down your roll. Name something you know about each student outside of class. An interest, an area of involvement, something.

But don’t stop at the identification stage. Make a plan to engage the students on your list. Be at an event. Invite them to join a club. Identify some common ground with them.

Take what you’ve learned and turn that into a challenge for those students. Pair what you’re doing in class with an assignment in another course. Give one of these students the opportunity to lead in an accessible way. Create opportunities for early success en route to those challenges coming in the spring.

Why invest here?

Compliant students, as many who fall through the gaps often are, are not necessarily engaged students. While I’m all for having students who are willing participants in class, compliance can be a byproduct of engagement or willingness to fail or take on new challenges. Observing compliance doesn’t indicate with any degree of certainty that those good things are happening. We (yes, we, everyone responsible for what’s happening in the classroom) must look for more as we check to see that our students are challenged well during their learning.

Act Now

This week, while you are still in the building with your students, create your list to being engaging in January. It’ll start the year right and give you something incredibly worthwhile to pursue as the spring semester begins! Find those students in the gaps!

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This blog is post #14 in my 91 day winter blog challenge. I’m posting a blog each day. Check out other posts at #91winterblogs, or subscribe in the top right corner of this blog to receive these blogs as emails. Thanks for reading!

Today reminded me that my work can’t always serve as white space.

I really do enjoy what I do, but I need a break from it more often than I’d like to admit to myself.

This morning, around 5:45am (far, far earlier than I’d like to be up on Sunday morning), I was standing in 6 inches of water, prepping aid stations for a marathon that was happening in town.

And it was fun. Really, it was.

Racing back and forth between two aid stations in preparation for nearly 4,000 runners quickly turned to cheering on runners who slogged through rain, a nearly 20 degree temperature drop, and water everywhere. Everywhere.

As much as the morning was made up of things I don’t normally like (soaking rains, saturated clothing, the morning…), it ended up being a great day and a great time of serving others.

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This blog is post #13 in my 91 day winter blog challenge. I’m posting a blog each day. Check out other posts at #91winterblogs, or subscribe in the top right corner of this blog to receive these blogs as emails. Thanks for reading!

This summer, I finally managed to match up the interest in blogging with the time needed to get one off the ground. Pretty early on in the process, I doubted that I had much to share. Even half a year later, those thoughts can creep back in.

When we give time to lies like, “You’ve said all you have to say,” we diminish the value that each of us have to offer to those around us. We convince ourselves we’re less than we really are. We miss the point.

So, I felt it appropriate at this juncture to reshare a post whose message is easy to forget.

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With so many educator voices out there, it’s easy to feel like you don’t have anything to contribute to the conversation.

I know this because I’ve felt this way before. I’m mentioning this now because I felt this way this weekend.

Luckily I came across a video last week that helped my perspective a great deal on this issue. I’d like to share it with you.

I love that question: “Are you holding back something that seems too obvious to share?” That’s so powerful for me because I can talk myself out of a good idea really quickly if I’m not careful. I’ll find a safer route, I’ll bottle up that idea, and then I’ll be frustrated with myself for not speaking up, writing that post, etc.

The other end of this is that I watched that video last week, Tweeted about it, and then felt like I didn’t have anything else to say.

Because I still managed to forget its message in a few days, I wanted to share the message the video brings. Even if it just ends up being for me. That’s enough to make it worth it.

There are a lot of voices receiving a lot of attention right now. Huge education conferences provide the opportunity for some voices to be amplified to untold numbers of educators. We need those amplified voices. Many of them are our champions, our role models, and our friends.

The thing is, we need your voice, too.

I’m not the first person to tell you this, and I won’t be the last person to tell you this, but I’d rather it be said too often than not enough.

You have something to say, and your voice matters.

Your idea may be just what someone needs to hear. Share it!

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This blog is post #12 in my 91 day winter blog challenge. I’m posting a blog each day. Check out other posts at #91winterblogs, or subscribe in the top right corner of this blog to receive these blogs as emails. Thanks for reading!

 

Spent the evening with my wife and boys out at Santa’s Wonderland where there are literally millions of Christmas lights.

There’s something to be said for white space that’s tied to your work. It can be beneficial for sure, but it’s not the same as taking a break and enjoying time with others. Despite all the work that waits to be done by me, tonight was time well spent.

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This blog is post #11 in my 91 day winter blog challenge. I’m posting a blog each day. This is by far the shortest and least educational post. 🙂 Check out other posts at #91winterblogs, or subscribe in the top right corner of this blog to receive these blogs as emails. Thanks for reading!

“Divided time and limited energy feel like frequent obstacles.”

That’s what I tweeted out in a chat recently.

As soon as I typed it, I knew it wasn’t the truth.

Because, really, after further reflection, the issue isn’t those limits. It can really feel like divided time and limited energy are what sap me of all I have to give, but I’m the one putting too many things onto my plate and giving too many things priority in a way that I can’t always balance (a limit I don’t enjoy owning up to).

Giving those urgent things priority over what’s important, meaningful, and life-giving prevents us from being the positive change agents we need to be for our students. It seems like we’re serving. It seems like we’re helping. But it’s not. Or at least now how we think.

So, if you catch yourself saying or thinking that things are getting a little out of control, maybe they are. Take some time for yourself. Take some time to recharge. Your work to take care of you will serve those with whom you work well in the end.

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This blog is post #10 in my 91 day winter blog challenge. I’m posting a blog each day. Check out other posts at #91winterblogs, or subscribe in the top right corner of this blog to receive these blogs as emails. Thanks for reading!

Start something new.

We ask our students to do it all the time, but how often do we think about how challenging that can be at times?

9 days ago, I started a 91 day challenge to blog every day of the winter.

I’m 9 days through it, and it’s as hard to get the posts out today as it was on the first day. We ask our students to make changes all the time, and we probably think to ourselves, It’s just one thing; they can adjust, each time we introduce a new expectation.

Even teachers who mean well might not recognize the impact of small changes for our students (I sure didn’t when I was a teacher, and I tried to be mindful of these sorts of things).

If teachers made one change for each class each week on my campus, students would have 126 changes each semester to deal with.

126.

That’s a lot. And that’s just one a week for each class.

Be mindful of the changes we ask students to make and the impact those changes have on all of our students.