Faith, Trust and Pixie Dust

It comes as no surprise that my family loves Disney World. I get the question constantly with eyes rolled. “Y’all are going there again?” My answer will always be the same, “Yes, we love it there.” And we do. I cannot really describe why or how this addiction to WDW began but it is strong. I thought that maybe my boys would grow tired of WDW after a few years, but they are actually more excited than I am when a trip is coming. When folks realize that I don’t care that I am judged for my love of WDW, the next question I get is “Do you not get bored doing the same thing every time?” And my answer to that is we always find something new and exciting to do with each trip.

This summer we went on a tour in Magic Kingdom. These private tours are offered for a “behind the scenes” look at how Disney is done. When we signed in for our tour, we were in a room with another family who also was signed up for one of the tours. Our tour was to start at 9am and theirs as 9:30-they arrived way early. Our tour guide came out and the other family was a tad frustrated that we were being led on our tour first-they clearly felt like appointments were mere suggestions. Being that we were at the happiest place on earth and I had not had my Starbucks fix yet, we happily agreed to pass on some pixie dust and allow this family to go on their tour first with our tour guide.  About 10 minutes later the second tour guide, Emanuel, arrived and greeted us with the warmest smile. It didn’t even begin to faze him that we were not the family that he was expecting.  Emanuel, dressed in khakis, a long sleeve pressed button down white shirt, and signature WDW plaid vest (all in July-mind you) quickly became one of those people you just knew you were going to like.  He took us on a fantastic tour that not once bored my sarcastic husband, inquisitive me (not once was he bothered by my questions), or two totally different personality teenagers. In fact, we were all engaged in every word. He took us to a part of the underground Disney that wasn’t part of the tour (unless he tells everyone that), he gave great detail about each thing we were seeing. He didn’t just simply herd us around, we were his mission that day and his love and passion for WDW showed through each step taken with him during our tour.  I was impressed with his knowledge, his historical facts about WDW were better than a wiki. I loved how he could answer my questions, make a corny joke to make my husband laugh, and make fun of adults so my kids would be engaged with him seamlessly.  Our tour was supposed to be 2 hours long. It lasted 3 hours and it felt like 5 minutes. 

When we returned to the starting point, another guide was waiting on a tour and I jokingly said that I hoped he was as good as Emanuel. This guide looked at me with all seriousness and said, “He’s the best. We all want to be like Emanuel.” I started thinking about Emanuel the other day.  I would love if someone would “want to be like” me. I would find that the most complimentary thing a person could say about me -although I would quickly give them about 100 reasons why they wouldn’t want to be like me. I also wondered what our schools would be like if we had 100 Emanuels.  What would it be like to have 100 people who would just roll with the circumstances unconcerned that things were not what you expected? How awesome would it be if we all had so much passion for our jobs that we each wanted to be like each other?  How awesome would our school be if we celebrated learning with and from each other in PLC, PD, or just by simply sharing our own readings that we were happy that these lasted longer than we expected? How awesome would our school be if we knew that if we didn’t have the answer, the person beside us would help us find the answer-if they didn’t already know it themselves? How awesome would our school be if everyone could fully engage a diverse crowd so seamlessly that everyone learned?

What could happen in a school with 100 Emanuels who are genuine, invested in their work, have passion, learn a little each  more each day, take pride in doing things right, engage the people they serve, and do so with a magical spirit? Are you an Emanuel?  All you need is a little faith, trust, and pixie dust! 

Super Hero Cape

Unlike my Monday Musing stated last week, I am the official “where is my _________” girl. In my home my motto is-Everything  has a place and everything in its place. There is no junk drawer in the kitchen. There is no catch it all basket in the foyer. Everything has a specific place where it belongs…….book bags on their hooks in the carport, phones and MacBooks have a charging station in the family room, stamps have a small basket in the first drawer beside the refrigerator, keys belong on the neatly placed hooks by the door-where you’ll conveniently find outgoing mail-you get the idea.  It is a fabulous system- yet I am the only one that follows it!

You see I live with boys. Book bags are left at the kitchen table after homework is done, keys are thrown on the pool table as they enter the house or left in the pants they were wearing when they throw them in the laundry basket. I am called upon when one of the boys in my house cannot locate ___________ (fill in the blank here with just about anything you can imagine).

Last week when we had our unexpected day off Monday due to the hurricane, I spent some much-needed hours working at JBE. Around 1pm, I received a phone call from Rosebro2 who was desperately searching for his homework folder. I immediately stepped into superhero mode asking a few questions like when did you have it last, what where you doing the last time you had it, etc. Within a minute, I had magically, over the phone, located his folder. His response, “How do you do that?”

As I got off the phone, took off my superhero cape, and reflected on that statement “how do you do that”, I realized that I can “do that” because I am a trained educator who uses data. The boys run around frantically searching place to place in obvious places while I stop and ask questions. I gather data. I also have schema like- where was the darned folder the last time he lost it. The other piece to this is trust. For instance, Rosebro2 once lost his phone. When I started the data collection phase, I realized that the data was skewed. Rosebro2 had taken his phone into his room-which is against our house rules-therefore making the data unreliable- because he wasn’t telling the truth. This is one reason why I love that we do so any many of our own beginning of the year testing-not only do we get to know our students, we also know the data is reliable. 

Now that we have almost completed our beginning of the year testing, it is now time to “do that”- it is time to analyze the data. Data is important. It helps tell us what our students know and don’t know. Yet, when we dig a little deeper we can figure out how to utilize strengths to develop skills, how to use students’ interests, and use our schema to use strategies that we’ve used with similar students to help our current students.  If we don’t use the data appropriately, we become like the Rosebros running around frantically searching in place to place (think Pinterest, Teacher pay teacher here) looking for solutions and praying it will work or at least keep them busy. Instead why not borrow my super hero cape and use the data to start asking those questions. How can I use this data to set up my small groups? Does this child have an attendance issue? Why is there such a huge gap in ELA and Math achievement and what can I do to lessen the gap? What skills are missing? Where do I need to start to meet my kids where they are rather than where I wanted them to be? As one of my favorite quotes states, ““The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.”

What we see.......

Friday night, I was EXHAUSTED.  I have no idea why, really.  I had had a pretty typical week with no major incidents or problems, but for whatever reason I found that I wanted to go to bed around 6 on Friday night. I was secretly more than thrilled when I arrived home and Rosebro1 was not feeling well and he and I skipped out on the football game. After some Tylenol, he felt better and wanted supper. I realized that left to his own accord, he would have eaten ice covered cheerios so I resolved to making dinner for us. One of my favorite things to make is homemade pizza. I am an all veggie kind of girl while the rest of my family is extreme carnivores. We set about making a ½ and ½ pizza. We were in the middle of making our own pizza when I struggled to find the pepperoni. I knew I’d bought some last week. I looked first in the pantry. Then thinking maybe we opened them already, I looked in the fridge and with no luck headed back to the pantry and another look into the refrigerator. Again I struggled with the idea that maybe I didn’t purchase them after all or maybe I have early onset dementia then Rosebro1 opened the fridge and while holding up the package of pepperoni stated, “Is this what you’re looking for?” How had I overlooked this not once, but twice? When I grabbed the package from him, I realized that (hopefully) the reason I had overlooked it was the packaging is very different than it usually looks. I had visited the new grocery in town (not making that mistake again) and the packaging was different than what I was expecting from my usual store purchase.  As I was shaking off the feeling that I have early onset Alzheimer's, I thought about the fact that often what we see depends on what we are looking for. I wondered how many times I have done that as an educator and even as a leader.  I see a kid sleeping in my class, I see his laziness, terrible work ethic, and total disregard for how much I’ve planned for him. I have a kid who never does his homework and I see a kid who could care less and will end up in mug shots. I see a parent consistently pick up their child late and I see a parent who could care less about their kids and should have their parental rights taken. Or, I could see a kid who has a home life so bad, that he sleeps on a floor and not a bed which makes for sleepless nights. I see a kid who has no guidance or skills in how to plan free time afterschool. I see a single mom who works 3rd shift and tries to sleep while her kids are at school so she can spend time with them afterschool and work to provide for them while they are asleep.

Very rarely can I get very down. I am usually an extremely happy person and the little things that can be aggravating aggravate me for a few minutes then I roll with it. I am an absolute “glass half full” kind of girl. This is one reason why I don’t fret over huge things or even small things. I also celebrate small things as well as huge things. While I look at the things on my to do list with regret sometimes, I also give myself a virtual pat on the back for all the things I have been able to scratch off. Our work in schools is daunting and we do have those students who don’t have a bed time so they sleep in our class, or who have no one to help them at home, or someone at home who does not care, and countless other stories. But part of what is important is keeping a vision on that as well as looking at the possibility. After all, what we see depends on what we look for.