Challenges, Shared Experience, & Becoming

Posted on September 14, 2015 by lcsprincipal

…..meaning can be found in every event. How meaningful depends on the manner in which people are involved and engaged. No matter how small, an event experience has the power to engage people, let them escape the ordinary, and build relationships. https://medium.com/@bobhoranjr/why-we-crave-shared-experiences-5443afba6405

A while back….some would say a long long time ago….okay, it was April 1989….I was enrolled in a course called Perspectives on the Principalship. It was a weekly seminar for about 15 graduate students and it was held at the Principals Training Center at Harvard. It was about leadership and the Principalship. At least that’s what I generally remember. But, what I remember most from the course and, frankly, it’s one of my top 5 memories of my Masters program at the Ed School at Harvard was a Saturday expedition that our group made on a rainy/chilly Saturday in April.

The boat to Thompson Island in Boston Harbor left around 8:00 am. The Outward Bound ropes course, and other team building, experiential education challenges, was to be our morning activity. It was my first high ropes course. It was Outward Bound….it was cold, wet, and daunting!! The highlight, however, was a specific rope challenge that you had to complete with a partner. My partner was my professor, Dr Sara Levine. Truthfully, we didn’t really have much of a connection throughout the course up until that point. It was absolutely necessary to cooperate with your partner to make it over the hurdle. I remember struggling together to get up and over, failing at first, then finishing the challenge. I remember the absolute relief, sense of accomplishment, and a very strong bond that was shared between the two of us following our success. As the day was processed – written about in journals, discussed in an on-site debrief and then again in our classroom, I remember the expression “power of shared experience” being used, emphasized, and truly felt by everyone involved. While intuitively I understood from past experiences that this was important, the experience on that day in April, 1989 was a truly formative one in deepening my understanding of the importance and opportunities that shared experiences, particularly around discomforting challenge, provide. The depths of potential learnings were truly uncovered for me. It remains an important moment landmark memory.

“Shared experiences have the ability to fuse people together, sometimes people who wouldn’t have even made sense together outside of that context. Simply put, that’s powerful.” https://medium.com/@bobhoranjr/why-we-crave-shared-experiences-5443afba6405

Last week I travelled for 3 days / 2 nights on a trip with our Grade 9 students. A goal of the trip, at the outset of the year, was “bonding” and building connections with classmates & teachers. I was reminded at every turn of the value of such experiences. The organized activities that each group of students participated in from zip lining to orienteering to solving various human puzzles through cooperative movements, challenged students to work together, interact productively, and manage stress and challenge. The building of stress through challenge, pushing students out of their comfort levels in front of their peers, forcing students to take certain risks (albeit minimal). This is the edge where opportunistic learning takes place. It’s where comfort meets stress. It got me thinking a bit about flow theory:

“Optimal experience, or flow, occurs when a person perceives the challenges in a certain situation and the skills brought to it as both balanced and above average.

In contrast, when challenges and skills are unbalanced, such as when challenges outpace skills, an activity could evoke anxiety. The various ratios of challenges and skills are predicted to be associated with different qualities of experience: flow with high challenges and skills, apathy with low challenges and low skills, anxiety with high challenges and low skills, and boredom or relaxation with low challenges and high skills”. http://www.education.com/reference/article/flow-theory/

We need to provide such experiential challenges for students. They are particularly powerful when the challenges are incorporated into a group process – either performing as a group or in front of a group. Then the challenge becomes not only the task but the potential exposure to failure/success in front of peers. This is adds multiple layers. The trick is to provide just enough challenge so that skills can meet the challenge and excessive anxiety does not result! It’s a great challenge in experiential education as well as the day to day classroom challenges.

Experiences outside of the classroom hold such power. How we capitalize on that potential and help translate it to actions “back at the ranch” (aka the school or classroom) is another story. Teenagers are skilled at separating their worlds – the field trip, the classroom, the lunch table, the dinner table, the hallway, the bus ride, FB, Instagram, WhatsApp, the sports team….etc etc. “Code switching” between conversations and their multiple worlds is a highly developed skill for our multi-tasking population of teenagers. The layers are more complicated these days without doubt. So, the challenge of translating the “bonding” shared experience back to the classroom is significant given the multiple layers of daily experiences kids shuffle through.

Having said that, our students are social beings and everyone, I’m convinced, craves the sharing of experiences, the connections that these build, and the memories that they create. As well, learning from a collection of experiences over time and rolling that “snowball of experiences” into a snowman of memories truly shapes the character of a person. And, as our students are on a constant path of “becoming”, any and all positive shared experience will continue building the persons they are becoming.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/10/the-importance-of-sharing-experiences/381493/

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/student-engagement-elena-aguilar

http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Flow_theory

Teaching Thinking (and Other Critical Skills)!

Posted on October 19, 2014 by lcsprincipal

Teaching Thinking! Is this an impossible task?

Clearly the work of teachers and parents is to help students become better thinkers, problem solvers, and communicators. We want students to become more creative and critical in their thinking. It is challenging work. How do you support students in becoming true inquirers who are curious, interested, and capable of asking probing questions? How do we support students as they engage with their own thinking? How do we help students develop resilience?

True Resilience! (www.jscottfitness.com)

Below is a “story” that I’ve held onto for years. I remember hearing this story when my own children were young boys. I found a source of the story online as a letter to the editor to the New York Times.

The following letter to the editor appeared in the New York Times on January 18, 1988

‘Izzy, Did You Ask a Good Question Today?’

Isidor I. Rabi, the Nobel laureate in physics who died Jan. 11 (1988), was once asked, ”Why did you become a scientist, rather than a doctor or lawyer or businessman, like the other immigrant kids in your neighborhood?”

His answer has served as an inspiration for me as an educator, as a credo for my son during his schooling and should be framed on the walls of all the pedagogues, power brokers and politicians who purport to run our society.

The question was posed to Dr. Rabi by his friend and mine, Arthur Sackler, himself a multitalented genius, who, sadly, also passed away recently. Dr. Rabi’s answer, as reported by Dr. Sackler, was profound: ”My mother made me a scientist without ever intending it. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: ‘So? Did you learn Continue reading →

Student Engagement: Are They or Aren’t They Engaged?

Posted on September 19, 2014 by lcsprincipal

How do you know when students are truly engaged? How do you know when a school community is truly engaged? Partly you “just know” intuitively. When I walk into classrooms it’s pretty evident when students are truly engaged. Leaning in, asking questions, participating, excited, lost in the dialogue and the give and take of the moments. It’s always pretty clear. There’s a sense of purposefulness to what is happening. The art of teaching is truly evident when a teacher orchestrates those moments of full engagement. It’s really special to see, and more importantly, to feel. Engagement is felt. To the contrary, boredom and non-engagement can also be felt. And it’s deadly. I’m lucky. I have many opportunities to visit classrooms. Students at LCS are most often engaged. Sometimes the engagement is about compliance but many times it’s engagement with enthusiasm, with a sense of purpose and excitement. This is high level and with strong meaning. I was watching Grade 11 student presentations the other day in a Global Politics class. They were so knowledgeable, articulate, and confident in their presentations. I was impressed, and the audience of students were equally impressed. It was purposeful and challenging.

But what is the link between engagement and learning? There is some ambiguity around engagement. Students can look completely engaged but is the task really worthy of the intense engagement? Are students merely complying? Continue reading →

Maintain Focus on Instruction!

Posted on November 28, 2013 by lcsprincipal

I believe that focusing attention on high leverage instructional practices impacts learning, adult

LCS Faculty dialogue – Instructional Principles for English Language Learners

learning and student learning. That is my intent and this is influencing recent topics at faculty professional learning meetings.

What are those instructional practices that we are exploring?

Earlier this year, I asked faculty to set two professional goals related to the following areas. These areas were identified as potential high leverage practices related to research from John Hattie.

Identifying Learning GoalsSetting clear learning expectations

Appropriate level of challenge for students

Clear success criteria (exemplars, rubrics, etc)

Feedback processes

Clear exemplars

Clear and specific feedback

Use of formative assessment

Questioning techniquesTeacher talk & Thinking time

High level questioning and discourse within classroom

Classroom positioning and classroom discourse

Simply put, if teachers do these things well, students learning will improve!

Great teaching is hard. It requires intense thought, planning, and instinct. We are trying to maintain a focus in the Secondary School on several specific areas that, if done well, are definite elements of great teaching!

Clear learning goals & targets.
Clear language goals & targets (“all teachers are teachers of language”)
Goals & targets for students that are appropriately challenging.
Scaffolded instruction to support students in meeting targets
Differentiated opportunities to support students (“differentiation is a mindset”)
Formative assessment that provides clear and specific feedback
Minimizing teacher talk and maximizing classroom discourse

If we work hard to become even better at our craft and expand our understanding, knowledge, and skills in these areas, we will be better teachers and student learning improves. This is my belief.

I think finding and maintaining a focus around instructional strategies and best practices is incredibly challenging. If teachers can really try to find those few areas to focus upon, latch onto, dig into their professional learning, and experiment with then adult learning will take place. If adults learn and expand professionally, student learning expands.

Motivation, Self Directed Learning & Resilience

Posted on October 2, 2013 by lcsprincipal

In two weeks our Grade 12 students will participate in a special workshop led by Mr Lance King (www.taolearn.com). The title of the workshop is Building Exam Confidence. Mr King is known for his provocative thinking around teaching and learning. He focuses an audience on supporting students in becoming lifelong learners who regulate their own learning and learn independently. In a workshop for teachers last year, he challenged educators to clarify the “real purpose, the overall aim of school”. Is it about getting into a good college? Is it about finding a good job? Is it about producing life long learners? How do we help students become intrinsically motivated for learning? What’s the role of teachers in supporting students in becoming independent, self directed learners?

In his faculty presentation he highlighted three important areas for students to really develop. These were self belief (also known as self-efficacy), strategies for learning how to learn (learning how to reflect on strengths and chart an individual learning path), and learning how to “fail well” (learning to be resilient and reflective).

How do you develop the self-belief that you are capable of achieving success? For some it’s about seeing role models around them, someone who helps establish aspirations. Supporting the development of self-confidence and self-worth in students is an essential part of the work of a parent and a teacher.

As an individual, how do you respond to learning challenges? How do you learn best? How do you respond to the challenge of learning something new? How do you react to challenges?

What is the hardest thing you have ever done?
What is your strategy to do something hard?
How did you get yourself to do that hard thing?
Can you analyze your strategy and break it down?

Thinking about how you learn best is part of becoming an independent learner.

How motivated to learn are you? How do you respond when you aren’t successful? Do you want to overcome obstacles? How resilient are you? Do you FAIL WELL when you don’t achieve the goal you set for yourself? In his research, he found students who “fail well”:

acknowledged they had some failure,
looked back at their failure,
analyzed results,
analyzed strategy,
put in place a new strategy and had another go.

They did not blame the school, or the system, or others. They moved forward without getting caught up in the drama of failure.

In his upcoming workshop for students, the focus will be upon developing confidence, specific strategies for learning, and resilience in the face of challenges to cope with the academic workload and demands of the IB. Challenging yourself and overcoming obstacles in your learning journey is important. Schools must create safe places in order to allow students to accept challenge, fail with challenge, and recover to learn from setbacks. Very few people find success in life without feeling “knocked back” at some point or other.

The timing of challenges for Grade 12 students is ripe for a focused workshop experience that will give students an opportunity to reflect and consider what lies ahead in the very near future! The first semester of Grade 12 is a notorious time during which layers of challenge are placed upon already weighted shoulders. How you respond and manage provides multiple opportunities for learning.

Ten Tasks of Adolescense

Posted on August 23, 2013 by lcsprincipal

Over the years one collects various expressions, articles, and handouts that are timeless for their value. The print may fade over the years but their place on my bulletin board above my desk remains. One such article/handout has been with me for about 10 years, always on my bulletin board. The “Ten Tasks of Adolescense” is a great reminder of the challenges middle and high school kids face on a daily basis. Just as a parent watches the growth of their own child over the years, teachers gain levels of satisfaction in watching the development of their students over time. When you think of the challenges that kids face in

Building Relationships over Lunch!!

navigating day to day, week to week, year to year experiences as their minds and bodies are changing so rapidly, the role of schools and of teachers becomes so special. To be a great teacher, you must be tuned into these adolescent tasks. To be a great teacher you must be focused upon the relationships you are nurturing with students. Adolescent life is full of challenge and opportunity, great teachers maximize both.

Have a read of the 10 Tasks of Adolescents. At the bottom is an interesting extract focusing upon the importance of relationships between adults and students in schools.

The Ten Tasks of Adolescence

From Raising Teens, A Synthesis of Research and a Foundation for Action, a. Rae Simpson, Harvard School of Public Health

Adjust to sexually maturing bodies and feelings	Teens are faced with adjusting to bodies that as much as double in size and that acquire sexual characteristics, as well as learning to manage the accompanying biological changes and sexual feelings and to engage in healthy sexual behaviors. Their task also includes establishing sexual identity and developing the skills for romantic relationships.
Develop and apply abstract thinking skills.	Teens typically undergo profound changes in their way of thinking during adolescence, allowing them more effectively to understand and coordinate abstract ideas, to think about possibilities, to try out hypotheses, to think ahead, to think about thinking, and to construct philosophies.
Develop and apply a more complex level of perspective taking.	Teens typically acquire a powerful new ability to understand human relationships in which, having learned to “put themselves in another person’s shoes, they learn to take into account both their perspective and another person’s at the same time, and to use this new ability in resolving problems and conflicts in relationships.
Develop and apply new coping skills in areas such as decision making, problem solving, and conflict resolution.	Related to all these dramatic shifts, teens are involved in acquiring new abilities to think about and plan for the future, to engage in more sophisticated strategies for decision making, problem solving, and conflict resolution, and to moderate their risk taking to serve goals rather than jeopardize them.
Identify meaningful moral standards, values, and belief systems.	Building on these changes and resulting skills, teens typically develop a more complex understanding of moral behavior and underlying principles of justice and care, questioning beliefs from childhood and adopting more personally meaningful values, religious views, and belief systems to guide their decisions and behavior.
Understand and express more complex emotional experiences.	Also related to these changes are shifts for teens toward an ability to identify and communicate more complex emotions, to understand the emotions of others in more sophisticated ways, and to think about emotions in abstract ways.
Form friendships that are mutually close and supportive	Although youngsters typically have friends throughout childhood, teens generally develop peer relationships that play much more powerful roles in providing support and connection in their lives. They tend to shift from friendships based largely on the sharing of interests and activities to those based on the sharing of ideas and feelings, with the development of mutual trust and understanding.
Establish key aspects of identity	Identity formation is in a sense a lifelong process, but crucial aspects of identity are typically forged at adolescence, including developing an identity that reflects a sense of individuality as well as connection to valued people and groups. Another part of this task is developing a positive identity around gender, physical attributes, sexuality, and ethnicity, and as well sensitivity to the diversity of groups that make up society.
Meet the demands of increasingly mature roles and responsibilities	Teens gradually take on the roles that will be expected of them in adulthood, learning to acquire the skills and manage the multiple demands that will allow them to move into the labor market, as well as to meet expectations regarding commitment to family, community, and citizenship.
Renegotiate relationships with adults in parenting (and other) roles	Although the tasks of adolescence has sometimes been described as “separating” from parents and other caregivers, it is more widely seen now as adults and teens working together to negotiate a change in the relationship that accommodates a balance of autonomy and ongoing connection, with the emphasis on each depending in part on the family’s ethnic background.

The Relationships Gap

Looking closer at students’ perspectives has shown us that strong relationships with teachers are crucial. The quality of teacher relationships seems to be correlated to how much effort students put forth in their school work, and indeed, research indicates that effort is more important than innate ability when it comes to achievement (Dweck, 2006). As both the number of standardized tests and the stakes related to passing them increase, student effort must keep pace.

Our survey results imply that building relationships with students help increase their effort, which is consistent with research showing that the relationships students have with teachers is one of the best predictors of hard work and engagement in school (Osterman, 2000). When comparing responses of students who agreed with the statement, “ I put forth my best effort at school” with those who did not, we saw dramatically different perspectives on student-teacher relationships. Students who said they put forth their best effort were twice as likely as students who said they did not to agree with the statement, “Teachers care about me as a individual.” Similarly, students who said they put forth their best effort were twice as likely to agree that “Teachers respect students.”

Another telling survey finding was that 56 percent of students who reported that they put forth their best effort also said they have a teacher they can talk with if they experience a problem, whereas only 32 percent of the students who did not put forth their best effort agreed with this statement.

Some survey results indicated that many students lack a solid, trusting relationship with a teacher. For example, only 45 percent of students surveyed agreed that “Teachers care if I am absent from school.” How is it that more than half of the almost 500,000 students surveyed do not believe teachers care if they show up? Teachers must work harder to develop relationships with students and change these kinds of perceptions. Doing so will foster students’ connectedness at school — an undeniable catalyst for increasing students’ investment in learning.

Schools can — and should — implement practices that lead to strong teacher-student relationships.

Excerpted from Got Opportunity?

Russell J. Quaglia, Kristine M. Fox and Michael J. Corso; Middleweb, Norton@middleweb.com

Leaning Forward with Technology at LCS

Posted on May 12, 2013 by lcsprincipal

Technology is integral to learning at LCS. Students have regular access to technology at school while developing competent users of, and learners with, technology is a high priority. We strive to support students as they develop their digital citizenship and learn how to manage the multitude of technology tools at their disposal. It is an essential aspect of learning at LCS.

Elementary students regularly access the computer lab through scheduled classes and during specific projects. All elementary classrooms have a desktop computer to share and a SmartBoard for students and teachers to use. In addition, a classroom set of laptops and I-pads are available and shared amongst elementary classrooms for additional learning experiences.

In the secondary school each scheduled block of the day (4 blocks in total) sees the collection of 60 laptops in the library borrowed by students for classroom work. Our laptops are checked out from the library and each block they are fully utilized. In addition, students learn with technology through various classes. For example, science labs utilize science probes (in conjunction with laptops), Film Art classes use editing software, and Art classes exploit our classroom set of I-pads. Technology is in demand.

Many secondary students bring their own laptops or I-pads to school on a daily basis. Over 80% of our secondary students own a laptop and over 60% bring them to school daily. More older students bring personal laptops than younger students. If students take care of their belongings at school, then their belongings, no matter how valuable, are safe. We have had very little theft this year and two cases of disappearing laptops have occurred in the middle school and were the result of students leaving their items unattended overnight.

All students and parents (Grades 4-12) are required to acknowledge and sign our Responsible User Policy. This document details expectations around use of technology at LCS. Students in Grade 6-12 also sign a Laptop Borrowing agreement which Continue reading →

The Student Survey….Here’s Your Voice:

Posted on April 3, 2013 by lcsprincipal

In Mid-March, approximately 70% of the LCS students participated in an online student survey. I haven’t posted all the results but here is what students said about certain items. The goal of the survey was to gather student feedback on the culture of the school. In addition, it is an opportunity to gather student feedback on the vision of the school.

Let me start with a few bottom lines for me. I consider a school to be successful if students and faculty are engaged in learning, are eager to come to school daily, are setting and responding to high expectations and challenge, and are engaged with a variety of interests and activities. I believe students must feel safe, supported, connected and cared about. School should be fun. Finally, school should help build resilience in students in overcoming obstacles and challenges.

Continue reading →

With Kids Away, Do Teachers Play?

Posted on February 18, 2013 by lcsprincipal

Last Monday, students didn’t come to school, but teachers did! What were we doing at school on Monday? What happens on those “Professional Development” days? What happens at those weekly meetings that teachers have every Wednesday afternoon?

The answer is alot of learning, planning, reflecting, dialogue and professional growth. Check out the link below (in blue) to a short collection of images:

SS Faculty: An Inquiring Bunch!

We are a learning organization. On days like Monday or on weekly Wednesday afternoons, faculty spend time preparing classes, lessons, unit plans, assessments, and engaging activities.

LCS faculty are professionals, interested in their own personal learning and professional growth and, most importantly, improving the experience for students. This is the mission we, as faculty, are on. We strive to ensure that students have high quality learning experiences at LCS. I salute the LCS faculty for their commitment and effort. Faculty are working hard on behalf of students and families.

Thinking, Musing, Learning

Nuggets, Marinations and Reflections from Geoff Smith, an EX International School Educator

Tag Archives: learning