Nautical Alert!

The latest quote to float in:

"We cannot control the wind, but we can always adjust our
sails"--Anonymous

There are so many things out of our control--the weather, the students assigned to us, random events, etc... that we sometimes forget the most important variable that we do control--our attitude and how we react to these events. Thank you once again to the poignant saying provider for finding this timely and appropriate quote for today!

This one has my vote

Check out this blog! I like this one. If only I had his sense of humor!

http://www.principalspage.com/theblog/

This one must win best new Edublog!

The richness of the journey

Some ten years ago I started running as a hobby. I started slowly. I ran for a while then I would walk, then run again after a little recovery. After a month or so I could do quite a bit more running than I did walking. I found that I would really look forward to my run everyday as a way to relieve stress and to feel better about myself. Running also allowed me some indulgences like a bowl of ice cream or an extra helping of something I really like because I could "run" off the extra calories. After running for about six months my brother-in-law challenged me to run in the local Honeybee 5k. It was 3.1 miles, a distance I was able to run without stopping at this point so I decided I would do it. I trained by running a little harder than usual and trying to run every day. On race day I felt invigorated by the adrenaline, a rush I had not felt since competing in high school athletics as a student. I tried to mimic all of the things the other racers were doing to make sure I was really getting ready to race. When the race started, being all caught up in what everyone else was doing, I went out too hard for a beginner. The first mile flew by. I was really running hard and I felt good. My brother-in-law was running right with me and the thought of beating him in this race began to permeate every breath. Unfortunately, I had ran too hard too soon and ran out of gas about midway through the second mile. My opponent did not tire like I did and soon left me in the dust. I finished that race very slowly and a little disappointed in my performance. But after a few moments, even though I am very competitive, I found that I felt a great sense of accomplishment, not for having run a great race, but for simply being involved in the whole process, from training through finishing the race. I realized that I did not have to win. I did not even have to run very well. I simply enjoyed running. I have since run many races and have won very few.(I have beat my brother-in-law in a race or two though) The races have varied in length from a 5k to a half marathon and I have found the reason that I run and race is that I enjoy the process from warming up to cooling down. I like the middle of the run where I have to sometimes really focus in order to keep a predetermined pace. I am very uncomfortable when I do not get to run because of the day's schedule or an injury.

If you are still reading this post you are probably wondering where I am going with this line of thought. I am not sure I will really connect all these ideas together coherently but....here we go! I am convinced that our society has become so fixated on the final product, the end of a procedure, getting a grade, finishing a project that we forget the richness of the journey. Do we read a book to find out what happens at the end? If so, why do we not just read the end! Have we lost the wonderful sensation of being totally engrossed in a project and losing the concept of time, sleep and even hunger? (my daughter did this building what she called a doll house out of card board for four hours over Thanksgiving break...when she was done she never went back to it but really was involved while she was working on it!) I can remember teaching about a very interesting part of history or having a great discussion about Psychology and a student would ask me is this going to be on the test?.... and thinking to myself...is that all you really care about? I always hated reducing what we had done for two weeks in class to one page of terms and concepts that were going to be on the assessment for the unit. It seemed cheap. That the final part of the journey was simply a dry run through the information without looking at what had really been explored. Like running, learning is more than just the end product. If you look at the grade card, do you really know what has been learned? If you look at my running times (please don't) will you really see how running affects me and what the journey of running does for me both physically and mentally? Learning is about trying and failing, regrouping and succeeding. It is collaborating, making relationships and networking. When I run, my practice looks a lot like a race.....or parts of one. Is our learning environment in school anything like what will be experienced outside of the schoolhouse walls? Will there be a study guide to help us prepare when the assessment is about getting the job done in our chosen profession. We spend a lot of our time teaching our students how to do high school and not enough time engaging them and preparing them to harness their passions to do something they enjoy while being productive. WE NEED TO EMPHASIZE THE JOURNEY AND ITS RICHNESS AS MUCH AS, IF NOT MORE THAN, THE FINAL DESTINATION OR PRODUCT!

Mostly Sunny?....Mostly Cloudy? We make that determination!

What is the weather like in your room today? Did someone in the hallway tell you about the awful experience they had today or gossip about the latest bad behavior by this student or that student? When someone unloads their negative experience on you does it make you feel better, or does it throw some clouds into the weather of your day? We are the barometer. If we are giving off "low pressure" a gloomy day is assured. On the other hand, if we choose to spread sunshine by talking about what a great day it is or by sharing a positive experience with our colleages and students, I will bet your day as well as your students' day will be a little bit sunnier because of the difference in attitude! One of my goals for the remainder of the year is to put on a sunny disposition and to make the weather pattern of the building a little bit nicer for the effort!

Are we using our minutes wisely?

Although I have not seen the documentary Two million minutes yet, the description of how it follows students in China, India, and the United States through the two million minutes of "high school" makes me wonder what it will take to make this country realize that we cannot continue "do" high school like we have for the last century. Times, students, and the world have changed immensely and our school systems, particularly high schools, have not. Paris High School will be 100 years old next year and I would wager that a person who took classes in the 1930's or any decade in the last 100 years, would not see much change if they walked into our classrooms today.

Why do we still use an agrarian calendar for school? Most advanced countries today send their kids to school for more than 200 days per year. The U.S. averages 176! Why do we have three months off? How much time do spend reviewing at the beginning of the year? Is that time well spent? Why do we still use property taxes as the basis to fund our schools? Instead of spending trillions of dollars on wars and sending a man to Mars, why don't we build modern schools with air conditioning and technology that will challenge and engage our students and put them at an advantage in the global economy of the 21st century! It seems to me that if we do not invest in the future of our children, none of what we have planned will ever come to be. We as a country and community must quit talking about how important education is and do something about it!

OK so rapid change sounds a little scary, but so does falling behind and continuing to defend the status quo! What should we do? Continue to care about our students, continue to do everything we can to challenge them and engage them. We must make our classes relevant. We need to realize that most of our students today do not come into our classes the way we want them too, ready to listen, ready to work, ready to take notes. They do not blindly follow along because we say they need to. But more importantly..........

We need to build a vision as a community. We need to decide what our school needs to produce and work backwards from that product. We need to figure out how to best prepare our students to be life long learners and productive members of our community! It is not up to the school alone. It is not up to the community alone. It is not up to the students alone. It is not up to the parents alone. We must work together, each group taking responsibility and not pointing fingers, to create a school that we are not only proud of but also gives our students the best possible chance to succeed!

I leave you with this......

By Pete Reilly on Leader Talk:

…transforming our schools will take effective and committed leadership at every
level and from every individual. Transformation always begins with ME! Whether I
am a student, teacher, principal, superintendent, (parent or community member); it
is up to me to change. Teachers wait for the principal to make the changes, the
principal waits for the superintendent, the superintendent waits for the state
education department, and the state ed department waits for the feds. No one
wants to commit to going first. Everyone sees the problem somewhere else. We
think, "If only the (teachers, administration, parents, community, state ed, or
feds) “Got it!” things would surely change"

.......sound familiar?

Another bottle, another message

Another quote comes in from the sea: (from time to time, quotes are anonymously placed on my desk)

"Good leaders take at least a little more of their share of blame, and a lot less than their share of credit."-Author unknown

Ownership of a problem is a must if a problem is to be solved. Problem identification is the easy part, finding one's part of the problem to own and to work on is the hard part. I think a good leader must share in the blame, but he or she must find a way to show others their part in the problem and guide them to their part in the solution. The destination cannot be reached without teamwork (in a school the team consists of students, teachers, parents, and community) in both problem identification and solution. When the problem is solved the team should get all of the credit!

Too soon to say goodbye!

The other day I was talking to a student who had decided to withdraw from school. The student told me that he did not understand why he had to take certain subjects and that sitting in class after class, day after day, learning things he would never utilize was a waste of his time. He told me he was going to get a GED (I made him promise, although follow- through on promises like that from other students are rarely kept...in the short term anyway) and do the same thing his father does for a living. I always feel a sense of failure when a student walks away from school and does not finish. I know students have always dropped out, my own father never finished high school, but today it is critical for young men and women to get the proper instruction and master a core set of skills to become employable and remain employable in today's global economy. We have too many students today simply walking out the school doors without a diploma. According to a study completed at Johns Hopkins University, one in ten American high schools is considered a drop out factory. Paris High School is not one of them, but still we lose too many. Why do we lose so many high school students nation wide? There are multiple reasons why a student decides to leave school. This article does a good job of detailing some causes. In summary:

Students drop out for complex reasons. On the surface, students seem to drop out because of poor grades or the need to work. In reality, students often leave because they haven’t connected at home, school or in the community to someone who can set higher standards and help them to achieve them.

What can we do? There is no easy answer, but I do know that we must look at this problem in depth and make solving our local drop out situation a high priority. For every student that drops out there a least two more that consider leaving but remain in school with very low levels of motivation. Nashville Tennessee has had some success through a wide coalition called Alignment Nashville. Although Paris is much smaller than Nashville and the local resources may be tighter, but we have no excuse for not trying. Our community has shown that when we come together to solve a problem, we can have success! The CAMA organization has shown that it is possible for the community to "throw in" from all corners of the county to solve a problem with deep "roots" We must realize that this is more than a school problem. It is a community problem and to solve it the solutions must come from both inside and outside the school walls.

Blogs subscriptions (and they are free!)

These are a collection of blogs I have subscribed to (see me if you want to do this). I think we should spend some time reading the content of these and engaging in some discussion about what we have read! It would be great to have a lively dialogue using the responses section below!

Dangerously Irrelevant

The Fischbowl

Change Agency

Leader Talk

Eventually these will migrate to the left hand column of this page, but I thought I would highlight them in a post in order to bring attention to them.

November already?

I can't believe it is November already! The plants that my wife and I planted in my yard the 1st of May are still alive and the trees are just starting to turn. I used to think that climate change due to man's activities (global warming) was largely a myth. In geographical time, our weather records occur in a mere nano second, but one can hardly argue with the fact that the earth has warmed significantly in the past three decades. Part of a natural pattern? Maybe. Has it been exacerbated by man's activities.......hard to fight the evidence?.?! Our environment/climate is a very dynamic system with many variables that influence its status. The school climate is not quite as dynamic but there are many factors that influence the environment in which our students operate on a daily basis. Teachers are one of the most important variables that affect the educational environment. As mentioned in the last post our English III classes are researching and preparing to propose what a new high school should include from their perspective. Many of our students have been in my office to interview me about staffing and teacher responsibilities. I have told them them that teachers along with parental involvement key the probability of student success. When asked what constitutes a good teacher I have responded by telling the students that a good teacher is one who teaches students first and their subject second. A good teacher is willing to experiment and allow students to direct their own learning while providing the guidance and expectations to challenge them to grow both intellectually as well as socially. They know how to manage their classroom with respect and through their actions and caring, demand respect from their students. Just like it seems as though our environment has changed because of man's activities and we must adjust, the learning environment has changed because of the media, computers and the exponential growth of information. In order to survive mankind will likely need to make changes in how we live. Likewise, in order to educate our students we must adjust to the changing factors that influence the educational environment!