Category: school leadership

“One man cannot do right in one department of life while he is occupied doing wrong in any other department.  Life is one indivisible whole.”

Mahatma Gandhi 

The best way to know where you are going and what you are about is to write a personal mission statement.  A personal mission statement is a philosophy or creed that focuses on what you want to be and do.  It clarifies your values and principles.  It is unique, because it is you. 

Every classroom teacher should have a personal mission statement.  This powerful document expresses your personal sense of purpose and meaning in life.  It acts as a governing constitution by which you evaluate your decisions and choose behaviors. 

The importance of this cannot be understated because the challenges of teaching are so great.  Your mission statement can be your compass in times when it’s easy to lose your way.  Stress, troubled students, pressures from administration and your own personal life will tax your energy and resolve.   The process of writing a mission statement allows you to reevaluate your old scripts and create new ones based on principles. 

Creating a mission statement involves as much discovery as it does creation.  It gives you a chance to explore the future using the four endowments of self-awareness, imagination, conscience and independent will.

The benefits of a personal mission statement are:

·       It encourages you to think deeply about your life

·       It helps you examine your innermost thoughts and feelings

·       It clarifies what’s really important

·       It expands your perspective

·       It imprints self-determined values and purposes firmly in your mind

·       It enables you to make daily progress toward long term goals

Take the time this holiday break to begin the process of writing a mission statement. Just begin by listing things you want to have in your life that are important.  Identify the five most important things.  Ask yourself what you daydream about, what you see yourself doing if you had unlimited time and resources.  What activities do you consider to be of your greatest worth? 

This is the start of enhancing your own quality of life and expanding your personal leadership.  Your leadership as a classroom teacher and in your personal life will make you a person of influence.

“What lies behind us is nothing compared to what lies within us and ahead of us.”

Anonymous

More to come on mission statements and leading your students to discover their right paths.

The New York Times recently reported that the 52^nd week of the year is becoming the last week of business for many in America.   For those still open for business the 52^nd week can either be a molasses slow or a nice quite stretch and a time for reflection and planning. 

My stock went up the 52^nd week every year I worked in the middle school.  As the last stop before suspension my room became a clearinghouse for all pre holiday woes and worries.  One year so many students accused me of ruining their Christmas that I was tempted to hang a sign on the door that said, “Home of the Grinch.”   Anticipating the holidays exacted a heavy toll of stress upon my usual customers (those students with behavior and learning problems).  All of this forced me to question the sanity of our rush to celebrate and to shop while raising expectations.  Children quickly fall into disappointment when they compare their own family’s holiday with the expected traditions.  Working in a school it’s impossible to deny that holiday’s exposes dysfunction.  They create a divide between those who seem to have it all and those who don’t.

So how do you survive the 52^nd week and still be an effective and compassionate teacher?

One way is to devote this week to a very important job.  The very important job should be service related.  The service that is appropriate for your classroom can be in the form of simple community service tasks for your school building and grounds or if possible it could be expanded to embrace the larger community.   Some of the very important jobs I utilized with students were:

• Create groups to clean up the cafeteria after each lunch period.  Some prep work is required for this.  Cleaning the detail with your custodial staff, and providing adequate supervision during the clean up is a must.   If cleaning the cafeteria is not possible find alternatives; some possibilities are the media center, commons area or main entry, restrooms, and if weather permits outside trash details.  It’s also possible in some districts to arrange for schools buses to be on site for some inside cleaning. 
  • The immediate results for cleaning make these jobs very gratifying for students, not only can they see the results of their hard work but also experience the appreciation of those who directly benefit.

• Arrange for field trips to local nursing homes, animal shelters, and homeless shelters.   All of these require preplanning and with a little effort can be on the calendar every year the 52^nd week.  Exposing students to the disadvantaged, the weak and the needy is a paradigm shift for most and an experience they won’t forget.   Trips outside of school should have a quality of a life lesson, at the very least something not forgotten and at best inspiring.  

• Finding prep work from other teachers in the building.  One year the life skills teacher needed first aid kits assembled for her 120 students.  The job was time consuming and tedious but fit my definition of work for someone else.  In the past I was able to find similar jobs from the tech ed teacher, the art teacher, and various science teachers for labs.   I viewed these tasks as “sweat equity” and explained to students how real work creates something tangible and useful. 

My 52^nd week lesson plan was to expand student’s definition of the holidays, to find a way to experience meaning and connection.   Reading aloud Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carole” or O’Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” are two wonderful literary works that departs from our ideas of the holidays and also gives a glimpse of the different expressions of love. 

It’s challenging to structure a disciple program that teaches something but with a bit of imagination and effort students will have more than a time-out from the classroom they will gain important life skills.   

How do you observe the holidays in your school?  Is your school ethnically diverse?  Are there more than three religious groups represented?  Is there extreme socio-economic disparity?

The holiday season can be complicated but it doesn’t have to be.   At the core of the Christian Christmas is a celebration of the possibilities and a hope for peace. Teaching students that peace is a way of being can be the theme for your school during the holidays.

So how do you teach peace to children? 

Mahatma Gandhi said, “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”  In order for children to practice peace they first have to learn it’s language.  The language of peace relies on the rational thinking of the higher brain.  Our lower brain is instinctive because our emotions are centered there.  Unfortunately for children their emotional responses feed their egos.  They feel hurt, sad, offended, and inferior; it’s a long list when you begin to consider those negative responses.   But the lower brain is also the chief agent for bonding.  When you look into someone’s eyes and recognize a loving expression, what’s happening is irrational, in the pure sense that your brain is bypassing the cortex and going directly to its intuitive and emotional centers. 

The first lesson for peace is to model and practice the look of loving kindness every day.  Children can learn this by observing your own personal greeting to them.  Do you smile from the heart?  Teach your students that the first rule of good manners in your classroom is to greet each other with a smile.   Now maybe for some that smile will be forced but eventually that smile will become automatic.  Scientists know that the very act of smiling increases the production of healthy hormones in the brain. 

As your students practice smiling they can begin the school day with a simple Metta mediation, metta means loving kindness.   One way to do this is to begin the day by meeting in a circle holding hands.  Students should close their eyes as they recite along with you:

May I be filled with loving-kindness,

May I be peaceful and at ease

May I be well,

May I be happy.  

A variation of this mediation is for each student is to recite the name of a classmate. You might suggest they say the name of the student next to them.  In this way each student is sending their good intentions to someone else.

This is a practice of undoing the chemistry of negativity, of anger and frustration.  Making an intention to create a kind loving environment is the first step in achieving that goal. Children react well to habits and structure, the standard of smiling, patience, and acceptance is powerful. 

Since the higher brain is our rational center you can challenge your students to create expressions of peaceful resolutions with stories, artwork, and music.  Teach them the values of character (respect, forgiveness, honesty) as you guide their creations.  

Whatever your core religious or moral beliefs are what better expression this holiday season than to establish a peace community within your own classroom and perhaps your entire school.   Peace is a vision, one that must grow on its own.  But the vision can follow your inner desires for a better world.

One of the biggest complaints I heard when working in a middle school was, “I shouldn’t have to teach that.”    Teachers were very frustrated and defensive about their efforts to engage apathetic students in the classroom.   What usually resulted was a mixture of coercion and discipline.   The coercion was to force students into a learning situation and the discipline was the result when they did not comply.

Most teachers will agree that about half of their secondary students make no consistent effort to learn.  Nowhere are there more frustrated people than the teachers in  classrooms who are attempting the impossible task of persuading large numbers of students to work in school.  

Dr. William Glasser author of Choice Theory in The Classroom, and Schools Without Failure says, “We are mistaken if we believe that discipline, dropouts and drugs are what is wrong with today’s schools.  Serious as they are, they are symptoms of a much larger underlying problem, which is that far too many capable students make little or no effort to learn.   Choice theory explains why this problem exists and how though learning teams we can begin to solve it.”

Glasser suggests that creating learning teams in the classroom engages more students and eliminates the type of competition that leads many students to frustration and failure.   Moving to working together in small learning teams motivates almost all students for the following reasons:

1. Students can gain a sense of belonging by working together in learning teams of two to five.  The teacher selects teams so that they are made up of a range of low, middle and high achievers.
2. Belonging provides the initial motivation for students to work, and as they achieve academic success, students who had nor worked previously begin to sense that knowledge is power and will want to work harder.
3. The stronger students find it need fulfilling to help the weaker ones.  They  find power and friendship that are part of a high performing team.
4. The weaker students find it need fulfilling to contribute as much as they can to the team effort because now their contribution matters.  When they worked alone a little effort got them nowhere.
5. Students need not depend only on the teacher.  Their own creativity and other members frees them from dependence from the teacher and gives them both power and freedom.

Many teachers will be tempted to reject this model simply because it is in conflict with the traditional picture that exists in their heads.   Even a system that is flawed continues to be supported because it takes a shift in perspective to embrace change.   In essence teaching is just structuring the way you want to learn.  To achieve the end in mind a teacher must create the best environment in which students can excel.

When you enter the Museum of Tolerance In Los Angeles California you will watch a video on the vast variety of prejudices all designed to show you that everyone has a few.   And then you will go into the main part of the museum through one of two doors.   One door is marked prejudiced the other door is marked unprejudiced.  The door marked unprejudiced is locked in case anyone misses the point.   Occasionally a few people will demand to enter through the locked unprejudiced door.   

Each one of us has biases whether we admit it or not.  Our brain is designed with blind spots making it difficult to question our own thinking.  It’s hard to see when we are wrong even when the wrong thinking is made clear like the locked unprejudiced door at the Tolerance Museum.  

Prejudice is a paradox because it’s the greatest thing that divides us and also the greatest thing that connects us because it’s something we all share. National Public Radio did a segment recently in which they examined their coverage of both presidential candidates.   They had received an enormous amount of mail from viewers from both parties criticizing the amount and type of coverage given to the opposition.   So they examined the number of hours given to both parties and type of coverage.  The results were surprising; both candidates had received almost the same amount of airtime. Despite what some viewers thought their coverage seemed to be balanced.  

Teaching tolerance to children might be any teacher’s greatest challenge because before this universal inclusion can begin the teacher must first acknowledge and accept his or her own biases. Teachers must look at their own thinking to begin to expose these blind spots.   One good way to start is next time you are tempted to use a stereotype to explain someone remember to someone else you are a stereotype too. 

This same introspective thinking can be practiced with students.   Create informal games in which students can label and then unlabel the stereotypes they believe about each other.   Allow them to recognize how limited stereotypes are.  Learning tolerance is essentially knowing the importance of appreciating the differences of others and how to treat every individual with the same level of compassion, kindness and respect. 

The Internet is a great resource for teachers wanting to incorporate tolerance lessons into the curriculum

• Education World at www.educationworld.com - has a lesson planning articles on teaching tolerance with five lesson plans
• Scholastic Magazine on Diversity scholastic.com/professional/teachdive/ offers lesson plans and professional resources to help teachers develop a diversity curriculum
• Teaching Tolerance Magazine www.tolerance.org/teach/indes.jsp distributes information to support the efforts of K-12 teachers and other educators to promote respect for differences and appreciation of diversity.

Recently I heard Barack Obama talk about his early childhood.  He recalled how his mother would get up at 4:30 in the morning to get ready for work.  His mother got him up as well to review his lessons for the day.  He said as an eight-year-old child he would complain about this early rising and his mother replied that she didn’t like it any more than he did but that it was necessary.  

Barack Obama’s mother was creating a habit for her young son.  She was instilling in him the importance of learning and that the momentary hardship of getting up early was part of becoming a successful person.  His mother had a clear understanding of the destination.  She was beginning with the end in mind. 

In parenting if you want to raise responsible self disciplined children you have to keep the end clearly in mind as you interact with your children on a daily basis.  You can’t behave toward them in ways that undermine their self-discipline or their self-esteem.

Anytime you make a plan in life you are beginning with the end in mind.  Planning a trip you determine the destination and the best way to travel before you leave.  Planting a garden you plan it out before you plant.   The end in mind is the creation of a desired future.  How you get there is taking the responsible steps and living in harmony with the plan. 

Beginning with the end in mind is based on personal leadership.  Unfortunately in many schools directing students to a desired outcome is based on management.   Management is doing things right, leadership is doing the right things. 

So how can a school truly direct their students with the end in mind?  One simple way is to have a dedicated program of character education.  It must be consistent and deliberate and everyone from the youngest student to the oldest staff member must be part of it.  

Creative World Connections daily messages are one such program.   It is a simple tool to give students direction and purpose.  Both of these help create self-awareness.  With self-awareness students discover their imagination and conscience.  Their decisions can be in harmony with doing the right things.

You have to be amazed at the profound influence that Barack Obama’s mother had on him.   Her end in mind helped inspire a person who in turn inspires others every single day.  

The potential for greatness lies in all of us.   Oliver Wendell Homes said, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”