Chasing Greatness

Yesterday afternoon, I ran into a teacher that I once worked with at another school. She has long since retired, but we have kept up with one another here and there. She started asking about things at school and I explained about the Read to Succeed law and RTI and PLC. She asked me if I had to go to those things now that I was principal. I was somewhat taken aback by her question. The first reason is surprised me is I hate the phrase “have to”. I love looking at life with the lens of “I get to”.   I don’t have to go to PLC or RTI meetings. I get to go to PLC and RTI. I get to learn right along with our teachers about best practice. I get to listen to the real struggles of helping students learn to read and how to provide small group instruction. I don’t have to go to every RTI meeting, but I want to be there listening to the struggles of our students. I want to hear the problems that some our students and quite frankly teachers are having and help discover ways I can help or listen to ways that others suggest to help the student through his/her struggles. 

The second reason that I was surprised by the question is that I WANT to go to RTI, PLC, IB training, Faculty meetings, and grade level meetings. I want to learn. It took me a while to understand when or how this desire to learn washed over me like a deep Atlantic wave. It certainly wasn’t as an elementary student. I have vivid memories of vomiting out of the back window of my Mom’s Ford Esquire station wagon on the way to school each day. I hated elementary school-partly because I was dyslexic and I could not read and partly because I had some teachers who would, well, let’s just say they would not be “highly qualified.” Once my dyslexia was discovered and my parents got me tons of help, and learning got easier, I didn’t exactly chase after learning either. Teenage stuff (which I will not go into since my teenage boys occasionally read this blog) was far more important than loving learning. While I did well in high school, I didn’t love learning although I did develop a love of reading in high school. My thirst of knowledge in my undergrad degree was more about maintaining grades for my scholarship and trying to get done so I could start my career. It wasn’t really about learning for the love of learning.

Then I started teaching. At first I was learning for survival. Teaching is no joke. It was hard and while my undergrad degree had me really, really prepared, I was so clueless. I learned from every teacher who would give me 5 minutes. I learned from my principal and my assistant principal and our curriculum coordinator. Then I started taking classes for my 1^st masters. I was in love with learning. I started SCRI (SC Reading Initiative) and I could not get enough.  Some 20 years later, I just can’t get enough of learning. I really had resounded that I was just a huge nerd, but I realized while talking with this former teacher yesterday that I love learning, not because I am a huge nerd, but because I want to be great.

My work in our schools is a huge part of my life- while I do manage to have a great family and a few friends- my work is a large part of my life. I want to be satisfied with my life. The only way to truly find satisfaction is to do what is GREAT. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. Do I love being an educator every minute? I don’t have to even pause to answer no to that question. I absolutely don’t love it every single second, but I love something about it every single day. And I will not settle until I am GREAT at what I do. I want to be great not because I want recognition or awards, I want to be great because our kids deserve me to be great.

So I chase greatness. How do I do that? I learn. I never stop learning. My husband says I am the only person who will argue with a book while reading. Most people read books to fall asleep. I start reading a book at night and find myself at 3am finishing it….I read blogs. I listen to others. I just can’t get enough. I will never be satisfied until I am done searching for greatness-which I feel will never be attainable.  IT is my greatest desire to work in a building with others who all feel the same way. Are you chasing greatness?

Contributing Factors

Today is the day…Rosebro1 has his driving test with @HannaDrivingSchool at 4pm today (please don’t storm, please don’t storm).  Because he will now be driving on his own, without the guidance of an adult, I suddenly have an extreme amount of anxiety over the things that I do not think we’ve covered in the six months he has had his permit…. like a 4 way stop sign, the dreaded Asheville Highway traffic circle- a concept that blew my mind when I moved to Sparkle City-, a deer jumping in front of the car, or changing a flat tire. Before I could drive a car alone, my father made me change a tire, change the oil, and reconnect a battery (because those disconnect all the time???).  He made sure I was prepared if not through his guidance through his impatience with my lack of ability. Now, 30 years ago, we did not have AAA, cell phones, and I lived in a virtual oasis of corn and cotton fields and maybe those things were really important to know.  Yet, on Sunday afternoon, after a whole lot of praying at church, I attempted to show Rosebro1 how to change a tire.  What he had that I didn’t have 30 years ago, was 1. a compassionate parent who has patience and 2. YOUTUBE.  As he went through the steps as shown by HOWdini on the best encyclopedia ever-Youtube, I watched the car lift using the jack (eventually).  Rosebro2 and I enjoyed watching Rosebro1 struggle and finally get the idea of how this all should work and we applauded his efforts when he was all done. 

As we retreated into the comfort of our house and I started doing some professional reading, I got to thinking about that whole process again and it made me think of school. 

So often in schools during faculty meetings, administrative team meetings, PLCs, and individual teacher meetings, we talk about raising test scores.  And yes, raising test scores is important. It is one piece of evidence that judges how well we are doing on moving our students towards the ideals of a high school graduate and a student who is prepared for college and/or a career. Yet, so often, in my conversations I hear reasons why the test scores haven’t improved much like Rosebro1 did the first three times he tried to raise the car using the jack.  First, it was difficult to fit the lug wrench into the jack, then the lug nuts were on too tight, and then the jack handle kept hitting the pavement. He was right. All those things were making it much harder to raise the car up. In “educanese” we call those things contributing factors. Things such as class size, students not on grade level, attendance, discipline issues, tardiness,  teacher attendance, negative home situation, a disability, and lower socio economics can all contribute to test scores not improving.  While I can take the lug nuts off the car and attempt to take the tire off, it is next to impossible without the jack raising the car. So, the goal of changing the tire, cannot be accomplished without addressing the jack, the hubcab, the lug nuts, the wrench, the position of the jack, etc.

And so, with us in schools, can we adequately address test scores without addressing the contributing factors.  Yet, just with Rosebro1 and all the contributing factors we must find out if the contributing factors really are contributing factors-meaning are they really getting in the way of the tire being changed. For instance, Rosebro1 was complaining about the lug nuts being too tight and he was unable to turn them….well, in actuality, he was not pushing hard enough on the wrench and while they were tight (which is a good thing) it really wasn’t a problem-not a contributing factor-in being unable to change the tire. Yet, when he started lifting the car, he didn’t have the jack in a stable enough position under the car. Once HOWdini warned him of this, he corrected the position of the jack and then was able to proceed in raising the car.   This was a contributing factor. 

Now, how does this all really apply…..it seems we must continue to work really, really, really hard in providing our students with high quality, high rigorous instruction that matches their current level of mastery-small group instruction. Yet we must also look at those contributing factors and stop seeing them as excuses but rather look at them for what they are. If a student is not stretching words out to figure out unknown words, we would reteach, and monitor their use of that strategy-  we need to do the same for contributing factors. For instance, one grade level has RTI first thing in the morning. One student is late to school or absent almost every day. This was negatively effecting his growth in reading-a contributing factor. The contributing factor was addressed through a home visit since the mother would not return a call or respond to papers sent home.  In this small case, the mother truly didn’t comprehend the real impact of the student’s attendance. 

As we start to look at the growth our students have made in this first nine weeks, take a look at those contributing factors AND don’t look at them as excuses. Look for ways we can address them. 

EDIT: Due to our tornado today, Rosebro1 was unable to take his driving test.........So I guess the weather is his contributing factor!!!

We all make them.........

I have been doing a Daniel Fast for almost 40 days. This fast is not a “no food” fast, it requires the elimination of any animal or animal byproducts, dairy, alcohol, artificial sweeteners, and sugar.  I basically eat any fruit, any vegetable, hummus, and quinoa.  My fast will be over on Saturday. I have done very well-except for one Saturday-it had been a bad week.  While I haven’t lost any weight, I have felt amazing and have started to rethink what I eat and what I purchase. While at the grocery store Sunday afternoon, I was purchasing premade salads for my lunch each day this week. I was contemplating the various types of salads the store offered when one slipped out of hand, fell to the concrete floor of the store, and rained romaine lettuce upon me like a big ole salad confetti party. Now I don’t get embarrassed often. I am so used to doing dumb stuff that embarrassing me is difficult. Yet, as I stood in the grocery store picking lettuce, raisins, cranberries, and olives off me, two employees came running over to assist in my clumsiness.  MANY other shoppers passed me as I stood in my aftermath of my salad shower. A few did not even notice as they were too engrossed in their own shopping, a few looked at me with such judgement as if I were the least qualified grocery shopper out there, and a few smiled in great sympathy, one or two chuckled, and one even made fun of me.

It didn’t matter the looks of sympathy or the looks of disdain. Nothing could compare to the humiliation that I felt.  As I was detailing my story of embarrassment to my family, they all laughed at me and yelled “report card”.

My family gets to hear “school stories” all the time. Every single time the Rosebros get their report cards, they are reminded of the time that I sent home report card envelopes home with my students----completely empty.  Not a report card in any one envelope.  This was well before the days of computer generated report cards and the report on attendance had been given to me at the last minute. During my planning period, I was filling out attendance at my portable desk while the foreign language teacher was teaching my students in my classroom. I was interrupted by the principal who wanted help with a fundraiser and at the end of the day I sent home empty envelopes. I realized my mistake about 5 minutes after school when I was reloading my portal desk and saw the report cards. I tried emailing parents-but back then not everyone had an email address. I tried calling parents as well. I also had two parent emails and one parent phone call before I left school.  Imagine how bad I felt the very next day when one of my students and his mom were waiting for me at my door when I arrived. She declared that she had had it with her son’s lying ways and he had been severely punished the night before for hiding his report card and she wanted to see a copy of his report card. I felt like the worst teacher ever……poor student had actually brought up his grades, begged his mom to believe him, but he had been punished because his horrible terrible teacher had made a mistake. I was obsessive after that about checking report card envelopes. Almost 15 years later, I still get upset by this mistake. (The mother, by the way, laughed and stated that she was sure her son had done something to deserve the punishment she had given him and she wasn’t at all upset with me)

We educators make mistakes all the time. If you pause for just a second, you can probably think of something small and/or big that you’ve done mistakenly. Sometimes we feel like we’ve made mistakes-even we haven’t.  But the good news is, our mistakes don’t define us, they help us grow. I don’t know if you are like me, but I always see failure to grow is failure to thrive and failure to contribute. The best part of failure is opportunity. It gives us the opportunity to rethink how we handle procedures, classroom management, and instruction.  Mistakes help us do better next time. Mistakes help define our greatness because along the path we will make mistakes We will do things that we wish we could press the rewind button on and have a do-over. Boy, do I wish I could go back and put those report cards in the envelopes. But, I can’t. I cannot take back that mistake or the hundreds of other mistakes I have made. The beauty of it all is that I use that mistake every single day to remind me of double checking where I put things (this may be why I never lose things). Additionally, when I forgot those report cards, I did not try to cover it up. I did not try to lie or my way out of it or make excuses as to why I did it, I didn’t blame the powerschool clerk for getting me the report late, or blame my principal for making me have my planning period on a cart rather than in my class-I owned that mistake. I immediately went to my principal, I made phone calls, I sent emails. I apologized to parents. And, I figured out how NOT to make that mistake again. Mistakes happen every single day. Mistakes are not meant to defeat you, they are meant to teach you.  The really important thing to do afterwards is to reflect upon that mistake and NOT do it again.  Bear Bryant once said when you make a mistake you do three things: “admit it, learn from it, and don’t repeat it.”

People make mistakes, mistakes don’t make you.

Choose Kind #itisahashtag

When I was a self-contained special education teacher, my students would attend related arts- PE, Art, and Music- with the general education classrooms. Many times, my assistant would attend with my students until scaffolding was no longer needed and they were capable of attending by themselves. I was never without students because I had a multi-grade class. So while my 3^rd grade students were in Art, I was busily working in small groups with my 4^th , 5^th, and 6^th grade students. Therefore, I never had a planning period. One day a student was sick and I had walked that student’s book bag and jacket to the health room to greet the Mom as she picked him up to go home. On my way back to my classroom, I stopped by Art to pick up one of my students. The 6^th grade students were working on still portraits. Art class was finishing up and I was walking around the room looking at the students’ art work and trying not to give away that I was there to escort one of my students back to class.  While there I noticed, a student working on a beautiful painting of a sailboat floating in the sea. It was a combination of juvenile yet sophistication. At the time my husband and I owned a small beach place at Pirate Land in Garden City. Having stretched ourselves to even purchase that, we had little room for extras-like decorating. I stated to the girl that it was so pretty and I would love to have it for my beach place really just complicating more than being serious about using her art work as décor in my new place. About a week later, she put it in my box in the office with a little note that said “Enjoy!”  I purchased a cheap, cheap poster frame from the Walmart and put it up in our place at the beach. After Rosebro2 came along, and a bigger house was needed, we sold our little place at PirateLand and we left the décor for the new owners.

I never ever thought another thing about it until Meet the Teacher night this year. A parent of a 5K student came up to me and asked if I remembered her. You know how this story goes…..turns out she was the student who gave me her painting. I didn’t teach her but she remembered me from that small interaction. I didn’t remember her. I hardly even remembered the painting, but she did. It costs me NOTHING to compliment this young lady on her drawing that day. In fact, it was so inconsequential that I didn’t even remember it-BUT she did. She remembered it so much that she decided to receive school choice to attend JBE because of my kind words in 1998.  It mattered so much to her that she still paints today in her spare time. It mattered so much to her that she hugged me with tears in her eyes when telling the story. It mattered so much to her that she wanted her son at a school where teachers must be just as kind as I was to her 20 years ago.

It seems the world is on the #kindnessmatters hashtag trend these days….even we have a student led bulletin board on the subject.   But, do we really stop and think about that kindness and how much it really matters? Do you go out of your way to say something nice to your coworkers even those you may not love seeing walk down the hall towards you? Do you find something kind to say to each of your students every day? 
So on Saturday, all 4 of the Roses were together-these days this doesn’t happen much. I declared it kindness day. I told them I was doing a little experiment to see who could do the most random acts of kindness that day. It began a little cheesy with the Rosebros being overly kind and sarcastically so. Then it really started taking off, holding doors for other people, saying please and thank you to everyone we encountered, letting people in front of us in line, helping a young mother put groceries in her car as she put two overly tired children in their car seats, and then we were at Sam’s Club. We experienced two different encounters. One was a man who appeared to have a disability of some sort having trouble with lifting an item into his cart. Rosebro2 ran over to help. You could tell he was not used to this sort of kindness. He was caught off guard by Rosebro2’s compassion. Then as we were leaving an elderly lady was struggling getting her cart to stay still while getting just a few items out of the cart and into her car. Rosebros to the rescue only it didn’t go as it had all day. This lady didn’t want the help. In fact, she was not very nice about it either. The Rosebros didn’t even know how to respond. My husband stepped in and told the lady that their mother was trying to get them to be more kind and they had a challenge and that they meant no harm. The lady detailed a story of her purse being stolen in a parking lot recently and how a few years ago her house was robbed by men who appeared to be nice and helpful. As we drove away, I got to thinking about some of our students. Some of our students don’t experience kindness. I see it in car line. Some students jump out of the car in the mornings and no one has looked at them and told them to have a good day, that they are beautiful, that they are worthy. Some hear only negative words. Some hear nothing at all but get up, get dressed, go to school. In the afternoon, I see in the car line some of our students who get put in cars with parents on the phone. No detailing how their day was, no excitement over the great things they learned or experienced. Everyone needs kindness.

Even the givers of kindness need that experience. Too often we underestimate the power kindness has- a hug, a smile, a sweet word of encouragement, to listen, to encourage, to compliment. All have the potential to turn around someone’s day or maybe just maybe someone’s life.  You may never even see the effect of your kindness or it may come back to you in a painting some 20 years later.

Be kind.

Sometimes we take a knee

I used to watch NFL every Sunday. Because we didn’t have a team really near us at the time, I grew up with really only 3 choices in teams to follow: Washington Redskins, Atlanta Falcons, or Dallas Cowboys. These teams were defined by their players. Because of William “the Fridge” Perry, who played at Clemson,  I went outside the box and became a fan of the Chicago Bears. I followed them for years admiring the work of Perry, Walter Payton, Jim McMahon, and Mike Singleton. Then motherhood and career “sidelined” my NFL following. When the Rosebros were little, Sundays were spent at church, Wade’s lunch, and playing at Happy Hallow Park most of the day. When the boys were older, I used Saturdays to catch up on school work (either principal or course work) meaning Sunday was church, grocery shopping, and laundry day. In the meantime the NFL went on and it changed. Players switched teams often looking for larger contracts and bigger paychecks. It became less about teamwork and more about individual glory. Players nor coaches define teams as they change so often it is hard to keep up. Jerseys of favorite players cost almost $100 and in one year may not even be accurate. Even attending a game is outrageously expensive making it almost impossible for a “regular” family to attend. Therefore being a fan of the NFL is no longer a part of who I am yet as the Rosebros have gotten older they have become huge fans of NFL football.

Then last week, the NFL made huge headlines. I was quiet on the subject of kneeling during the National Anthem not wanting to offend anyone. The Rosebros were discussing this at dinner and I sat and I listened as my two white teenage boys who have not suffered from any segregation or prejudice debated the subject. Their father is a veteran. They’ve been taught the value of our country’s ideals. From an early age, they were taught the Pledge of Allegiance, the National Anthem, and even the Star Spangled Banner. Not only were they taught the words, they were taught the meanings. Yet, my boys have also been taught many other things along the way. They’ve been taught people matter regardless of what they look like, what their last name is, or what their address is. They’ve been taught you love people for who they are. Rosebro1’s first girlfriend was black. Her mother and I both joked about how it didn’t matter to us but both of our families would be bothered. Rosebro2 probably has more friends who are African American than he does who are white but I really am not counting because I do not keep note of this type of thing. And yet as I listened to them debate, I felt a sense of overwhelming pride and immediate guilt. My boys seem to have stronger opinions on the subject than I do. My boys seem to understand civic responsibility better than me. So while I am so happy that I haven’t failed them, I seem to be failing myself.

Then Saturday as we were watching 4 different football games-all at once- we watched as a player was hurt and hurt badly. Cameras zoomed in on the cheerleaders-all on a knee-then to both teams-all on one knee. One of their own was hurting and they took a knee. They took a knee. They took a knee because someone was hurting. 

As if a sign I needed, a friend, an African American friend, called me about this same time. She was returning my call from earlier in the day when I called her to tell her about an encounter I had had at a store on Saturday morning. As we laughed and she detailed how she “would have my back”, I realized that she was right. She would have my back. If I needed something, she would be the first one there. She would fight for me if necessary. I would guess that our sisterhood is so strong that she would probably die for me. Yet, I’ve been silent.  I’ve been silent. There is this constant fear of saying the wrong thing, alienating friends-both white and black, or making the situation worse.  Truthfully, I am very likely to say the wrong thing. So I am silent. My silence tells my friends, my colleagues that I do not care about their pain.  It tells them that I love them as long as I do not have to take a stand or pick a side.  Silence speaks so loudly and tells my black friends that I do not love them or value our friendships or relationships enough to fight for them or stand beside them.  And that disappointment and sense of betrayal hurts. It hurts my friends and it hurts me to know I’ve hurt others.

So, I don’t know what the right thing to say is. I know that I love our country and I love that our freedoms allow us the right to protest peacefully which is what these NFL players are doing. I know that just like taking a knee when a player is hurt, these players are taking a knee for a country that is hurting. Being black in America is not something I can pretend to understand. I have had conversations with my African American friends and mentors about this but it is like most experiences-you can sympathize, listen, but not really understand because you've not fully experienced it. Yet by dismissing the fears and anger of those who are not us is damage. So I vow to listen. I vow to talk. I vow to have those conversations that may make me uncomfortable, may make others upset with me, may help me learn, and just possibly may make me better. When we take time to listen and then take time to share what we learn, we can begin to heal hearts and make changes.

Our schools are diverse. We have children of all different races, socioeconomic levels, religions, and cognitive abilities. We also have students who are hurting.  Some are hurting because they don’t understand the pain of those like them that they hear about from their parents, the news, even their friends. We have some who are hurting because of so many other issues. Yes, our job is to teach ELA, Math, Science and Social Studies, but our job is listen. We listen when our students need us. We listen to understand not to be understood. We listen. Sometimes we take a knee, look in the eyes of our children, and listen. Sometimes, we just take a knee.