Next Gen Teaching: A Quick Guide to the New School Year

Both the classroom and the instruction need to change to better engage and challenge our youth.

1) Take Risks: Model and demonstrate learning from failure, taking risks, and discovering the end verses starting with the end in mind. Check out Diana Laufenberg's "How to Learn? From Mistakes" Ted Talk where she explores experiential learning, student voice, and embracing failure. Read Dweck's Mindset book to understand a shift in mindset. We must be open to extending the learning beyond the classroom walls. We must teach our students to embrace challenges and to learn from failure. Start by modeling it.

2) Facilitate: Be more than the sage on the stage. Become a director of learning. Shift your practices to student-centered approaches. Check out this chart comparing teacher versus learner-centered practices. Largely based on Huba and Freed (2000), the following descriptors factored into the student-centered instructional practices variable in my dissertation study (Spickard, 2015):

• Students are able to apply the learning.
• Students receive feedback (preferably from multiple parties).
• Students become sophisticated knowers.
• Learning is interpersonal for the students. 
• Students are actively involved in their learning.
• Teachers also demonstrate that they are learners.
• Teachers coach students.
• Students understand characteristics of excellent work.
• Students integrate both general and subject-based skills.
• Teachers intertwine teaching and assessing. 

3) Create a Collaboratory: Shifting your classroom design is key to fostering the 4Cs: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Check out this slide share for some ideas. A coffee shop/living room feel is a better alternative to the traditional rows. Traditional spaces will only lend itself to traditional practices. Here are some creative DYI projects for redesigning on a budget.

4) Ignite Passion: Students can only be as passionate and excited about teaching and learning as their teacher. Check out Christopher Emdin's Ted Talk on "Teach Teachers How to Create Magic." Student choice will help bring out the passion and "spark magic."

It's time. Now is the future. There is no more waiting. We need to take risks, facilitate learning, build a collaborative environment, and create passion.

My First, Tenth Year: Opportunites to Grow

I am excited that this year has been one of the most rewarding years of my career so far. I have had several opportunities to grow professionally. It has been far from easy, but I have had the opportunity to work with a fantastic group of dedicated and talented teachers. In addition, I have completed my year as MEMSPA President and have benefited tremendously from the support, professional learning, and networking the organization has given me. Lastly, I have made my way back into the classroom, teaching graduate classes in educational leadership with Concordia University.

There are years that I find it hard to believe that principals are leaving the profession after 3-5 years, and to be perfectly honest, I have had a year or two where I wondered if I were going to make it. In my entire ten years as a middle school principal, I have learned that is mostly outside influences that make it the most difficult. For me, it has never been about the students and rarely about upset parents or staff. The most difficult years have been when legislature makes decisions that project hardships on stakeholders. Those effects were even more difficult than leading a building through my husband's deployment. Negativity can really affect the morale and building climate. 

However, "mind over matter," "...make lemonade," and most importantly, "#leadpositive" got me through even the most difficult of times. Taking a positive mindset and combining that with the personal passion to grow and help others do the same combats adversity.

Starting a new year or a first year especially, is never easy. Learning about all the stakeholders takes more than a year. An education profession is never ending, but it is even more difficult when you are learning a new culture, establishing climate, and figuring out your own identity within the organization. Building trust is vital and takes time. Fostering collaboration is essential to growing as professionals. Most importantly, establishing ways to build achievement and growth within your staff and students as well as yourself takes a collective mix of perspective, honesty, and open-mindedness.

I have learned a great deal from my new position and district. While bringing in my own skillset, I have also learned a great deal from my staff. This has been my first year with standard-based grading and PBIS--two initiatives that have such a tremendous influence on educating students. I have been a part of team collaboration. It is so amazing what groups of teachers can do together, and everyone benefits from that work. My administrative colleagues have been supportive, provided coaching, and made me feel a part of this amazing team that is founded on tradition and focused on excellent. To top it all off, the students are at the heart. The smiling faces, the willingness to learn from mistakes, the innovative, caring application put into their education is truly the fuel to my passion. Serving my new school has been rewarding, and I am fortunate enough to have that compounded with serving my professional organization.

My loyalty to and admiration for MEMSPA started ten years ago when I took on my first principalship. Four years ago, getting involved at the state level confirmed all that the association has to offer. This has been a great year, spreading the #LeadPositive message and encouraging principals to not only stay and lead positive but to also share the positive word, happenings, and accomplishments within their buildings. Serving and representing principals around the state has been a truly rewarding experience. MEMSPA is a huge support to me and my profession. It has been equally rewarding by stepping back into the classroom.

I have broadened my skillset as well as gained an increased appreciation for teaching in the present times. Doing both an online and face-to-face class this year has diversified my pedagogy. In addition, I am driven to stay current on the topics of my classes: leadership, professional development, evaluation, and supervision.

I have been truly blessed this year with all of the opportunities I have had and the people with which I have had the pleasure to meet and work. None of this would be possible if it weren't for my supportive and encouraging husband and understanding children. The 2015-16 school year has been a rewarding year. I can't wait to see what 2016-17 has in store! 

Learning, Teaching, and Leading Like a Champion

As administrators, we have the power to be the beacons to our teachers and students.  As they journey to success, we can encourage them to grow, learn, and embrace mistakes. Success that comes easy doesn’t define our character as much as when it’s worked for, earned, and accomplished through trial and error.

In Carol Dweck’s Mindset (2006) book, she uses a sport’s perspective in Chapter 4 to demonstrate how mindset is applied to champions. The three “findings” that she highlights can be applied to all areas of life, especially leading, teaching, and learning. Our students, teachers, and leaders need to see themselves as the champions they are.

Finding 1: “Those with the growth mindset found success in doing their best, in learning and improving.” As teachers and leaders, we need to foster an environment where hard work is more rewarding than the success itself. In turn, success can be achieved by working hard and getting better.

Finding 2: “Those with growth mindset found setbacks motivating.” We need to teach and model that failure is not the end but a beginning to bettering ourselves by learning and evolving. To fail is only the First Attempt in Learning. It is not the outcome that defines us, but it is the journey that gets us there that does. The more challenge we overcome, the more learning that happens.

Finding 3: “People with the growth mindset in sports took charge of the processes that bring success--and that maintain it.” We need to teach and model how to use motivation and to take control of what can be done to get better. This means knowing that it’s OK to fail as long as we can learn from it and try again.

We are more than any outcome. We are an accumulation of all that is put into an outcome. Whether a good or bad outcome, each journey is an opportunity for growth and improvement. Taking risks is how progress is made. Taking the difficult road came be more rewarding. Creating safe environments where our students, teachers, and leaders can learn, fail, learn, repeat makes for better success in the end.

If we dig deep into the meaning of the word champion, we will see words like defender, protector, advocate. This is beyond the winner or victor definition of a champion. The previous descriptors are about making the world a better place. We can help our students learn like champions, our teachers teach like champions, and we can all lead like champions is we focus on others and the process to become better people.

This is a different mindset than the "winning" culture that has been created over the years. We have the power to change this. We can give our teachers and students safe environments to take risks, make mistakes, and learn--an environment that recognizes the journey and a growth mindset. We owe it to our profession. What are you doing to create this culture? Share it out and lead by example. #LeadPositive

Beating the Odds with Positive School Climate

Should we really be concerned with raising our test scores or should we be more concerned with our students having a positive, caring, and safe environment? My vote is the latter, and research is supporting that too! 

Blum (2007) states that a positive school environment "creates an optimal setting for teaching and learning.... [and includes] four of its major components: 1) caring relationships, 2) academic environment, 3) structure and safety, and 4) participatory learning." 

Voight and Hanson's (2013) study on schools that beat the odds learned that the "pockets of excellence" that successful "beat the odds" schools had in common were a positive school climate. Their research "implies that things like high expectations for students, caring relationships between teachers and students, and feeling safe at school are more associated with success than teacher or administrator experience or student support services staff ratios.”

Therefore, raising student test scores should be the product of the goal, not the goal itself. The goal is creating a positive school environment. Every educator wants to establish high expectations in an academic environment that is safe for all students. These are sometimes easier to foster than what is even a more important factor: caring relationships.

Students (and staff) need to know that we care. Students are more invested in their learning in caring and positive environments. To achieve and maintain these types of environments, it takes dedication, enthusiasm, and passion.

Dedication: We must be committed to keeping our learning environment, our staff, and our students on a positive track. Setting goals and inspiring them by modeling and demonstrating day in and day out that we care about them should be our main focus. We need to prevent as much outside negativity as possible from entering our schools, and more importantly, we need to brand and advertise all of the positivity our schools create to the outside community. We can only expect our staff and students to be as positive and dedicated as we are as leaders.

Enthusiasm: We can only expect our students to be as enthusiastic and have the desire to learn as our teachers/staff are enthusiastic and have the desire to teach and learn. Moreover, we can only expect our teachers and staff to be as enthusiastic to teach and learn as we are to lead, teach, and learn.

Passion: We have to realize that few people are passionate about testing. We are passionate about people and ideas that are meaningful to us. We are passionate about people and places that we care about in our lives. We have to create enough passion to cultivate the caring environment and caring relationships that will promote success in all other measures of achievement.

This is only the starting point, but it is the foundation that can support everything else.
We must support one another, our staff, and our students. Stay positive (#LeadPositive), model your dedication, enthusiasm, and passion. Everything else becomes easier with this foundation.


Links to these studies are included at the bottom of this blog for a better understanding of their studies, results, and implications. The positive, motivational blog is just an awakening, there is much more to be done.

Blum, Robert, Best Practices: Building Blocks for Enhancing School Environment. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland 2007.

Voight, A., Austin, G., and Hanson, T. (2013). A climate for academic success: How school climate distinguishes schools that are beating the achievement odds (Full Report). San Francisco: WestEd.

MEMSPA Conference 2015 Takeaways

Conference leadership, networking, learning, and fun! 

The 90th MEMSPA (2015) Annual Conference was a huge success: learning enhanced and relationships and networking expanded. 

The conference was opened with my welcome and reminder to be grateful and #LeadPositive. In addition, suggestions were made to help participants to maximize their conference experience: Grow Your Network; Get Smarter. Repeat.; Curate and Create Content; Share the Smarts: Knowledge Transfer With Your Team; and Optimize the Value (Lee Odden: online marketing blog).
Our first general session keynote, Dr. John Draper, spoke about America's schools and reminded us that "Teachers are the solution to the problem," and "Miracles happen every day in public schools." Draper was inspiring and passionate about our work in public education.

The afternoon general session with State Superintendent Whiston demonstrated his openness, support, and collaboration with Michigan Schools and stakeholders. Whiston reminds us that our voice needs to be heard. Our executive director Paul Liabenow, was supported through a surprise flash mob to "We are Family." Principals from around the state learned the routine to honor him and all of his advocacy for us, our schools, and our students. My day ended with visiting with new principals to the association at dinner and greeting conference attendees.

Thursday was the best day: full of great speakers, breakout sessions, time to network, recognize leaders, do official association business, and end with some social time to unwind. Keynote speaker, George Couros, reminds us to be innovative and help children find their passion. We learned that it is more than making better students; it's making better people. Other great sessions that I attended included "Connected Pedagogy" and Twitter for Professional Learning. I lead the delegate assembly, met with vendors, spoke to retirees and past presidents of the association, and socialized with the membership. My favorite part of the night was recognizing our regional principals of the year and our Michigan Outstanding Practicing Principal at the Leadership Banquet. I am always inspired by these fantastic leaders. Congratulations Michigan's 2015 Outstanding Practicing Principal, Nicole Airgood.

Friday, we ended our day with Dr. Nancy Coleflesh who proves to us that we can make a difference even in the most difficult of times. I value this time with my colleagues. I hope, if you attended, you did too. Keep networking, use your connections and resources, and don't forget to continue your learning on #MEMSPAchat, Thursdays at 8:00 p.m. It's been a great year!

Remember: #LeadPositive, have gratitude, share the wonderful happenings, be innovative, let students loose, learn and grow, share with your colleagues, and repeat. Have a great holiday season and a fantastic New Year!

Serving you,
Shanna

Character Does Count: Teaching and Modeling Positive Character

Students of Character based on the Six Pillars from Character Counts! Life the hallway.

This year it was a unanimous building decision, which was supported by community and parent stakeholders, to bring back the Character Counts! program and the six pillars of character: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship. For the first two weeks of school students learned what the six pillars were, and each week since we have dedicated at least one day a week during enrichment to support these traits with themes and lessons. October's theme was school and personal safety. In November, we focused on the theme of gratitude and empathy. Upcoming themes include tolerance and respect, new beginnings, citizenship and community service, leadership, and standing up for change. 

In addition to adding character education to our enrichment period, we have added student government. Our student council group supports our efforts by recognizing students who are nominated for student of the month based on the positive character traits they have demonstrated in and out of school. In addition, the group has already planned and executed our first community service food drive and support for Ele's Place.

Student Council T-Shirts highlight the importance of character. 

 In addition to enrichment lessons and student council, our PBIS committee rewards good character with our token reward system and signature cards. Learning about good character doesn't stop there. It is integrated into our lessons whenever possible.

Character Counts! language integrated in lessons and teaching.

The biggest factor in children having exceptional character is learning it from it being both taught and modeled. We cannot expect our children to act a certain way unless we have taught them not only what to do but also what not to do. As they grow older it means giving them skills and experience to help them make good decisions and learn from their mistakes. Included in the way we educate them is the way we carry ourselves and what we model on a daily basis, most importantly under pressure.We all know that we remember best what we see and do, so surrounding our youth with positive experiences around trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship will foster and help them develop outstanding character. 

Character does count at Milan Middle School and beyond. 

Change: The Outcome Depends on the Outlook

I have always felt that I have embraced change. I loved teaching the short book Who Moved My Cheese? to seniors in high school. A lot of what I tried to encourage students fits with the growth mindset: taking risks, knowing failure is OK when it's used to grow, learning that we can improve with a strong work ethic and commitment, etc. I took a risk to move out of state, try something new, and most recently leave a job and people that I really cared about to try and challenge myself for both personal and professional growth in a new place.

As educational leaders, it is important that we continue to grow, model taking risks, learning from failure, and above all support our staff and students to do the same. In my career I have seen a lot of educators faced with change. A great deal of these changes are sometimes placed upon us verses a choice. However, I have learned that regardless of it being chosen or directed, ones outlook and reaction (as with Hem and Haw from Who Moved My Cheese), can be the difference in reaching ones cheese or goal.

Resistance to, refusal of, and/or fighting the sometimes inevitable, can consume someone with hate, anger, or even fear. Sometimes, it is best to understand that every change is an opportunity to grow, heal, or help others.

Next time you are faced with a difficult decision, challenge, or change, try to embrace it, view it as an opportunity, and try to get something out of it. Know that with the right attitude, support, and work ethic, things will have a much better chance of working out for you.