Educational Resources & Tech Tools 09/07/2016

• The Marshall Memo Admin - Issues

  • In This Issue:

     

    1. The gracious leader

     

    2. Life lessons

     

    3. Building relationships in the opening days of school

     

    4. Smiling before Thanksgiving

     

    5. Cultural factors in the education of Chinese-American students

     

    6. Helping college students deal with first-year self-doubts

     

    7. Short item: A teacher’s video

  • “Sooner or later life teaches you that you’re not the center of the universe, nor quite as talented or good as you thought. It teaches you to care less about what others think and, less self-conscious, to get out of your own way.”

     

                David Brooks (see item #1)

  • We need to let them see us sweat and smile way before Thanksgiving. Students know we’re not robots, so let’s not try to act like them.”
  • “Experience, or what we call experience, is not the inventory of our pains, but rather the learned sympathy towards the pain of others.”
  • If you interpret your life as a battlefield then you will want to maintain control at all times… If you treat the world as a friendly and hopeful place, as a web of relationships, you’ll look for the good news in people and not the bad. You’ll be willing to relinquish control, and in surrender you’ll actually gain more strength as people trust in your candor and come alongside.
  • Don’t hold back; change demands full-on commitment.
  • When life issues an invitation, accept it.
  • Value a little compulsion.
  • Understand how the human mind works. “Our brains are designed to create, not to hold onto, content,”
  • Expect the unexpected. “And when that unexpected thing is not to your liking but you cannot change it, make peace with it,”
  • Practice the art of under-reacting. “A Zen perspective helps balance the bad and the best,”
  • Stop. Worrying. Now.
  • Always carry a sense of humor.
  • Do it while you can.
  • Consider the opportunities you will one day kick yourself for missing.
  • When young, people are prone to avoid risks and potential failures in the belief that they will rue any bad outcomes… It is helpful for younger adults to deploy the mental capacity to travel in time… Consider the experiences that the older you will likely regret not having had.”
  • Take the long view. “Our identity in the present is shaped in part by our view of the person we hope to become,”
  • don’t sell yourself short… Expect failure, learn from it, smile at it – and move forward anyway.”
  • Feeling uncomfortable is not a reason to reject an opportunity. It’s a reason to embrace it.”
  • A]ll of us feel honored when others whom we respect think our names are worth remembering. In that simple act, we make a connection.”
  • Make sure students feel safe and know they belong. “Once students feel sure these needs are met, they’ll dive into learning,”
  • when students say they don’t know, trying this line: “Pretend that you did know the answer – what words would come out of your mouth?”
  • Be yourself. “Students detest duplicity in their teachers,”
  • Wormeli suggests asking parents at the beginning of the year, “In a million words or less, tell me about your child.”
  • A related strategy is asking students, “Write a letter from your parent to the teacher describing you.”
  • ask students to write on a card everything that helps them learn –

  • -   <!--[endif]-->Sit at students’ desks and see the classroom from their point of view;

     

  • -   <!--[endif]-->Attend to students’ essential human needs – hydration, movement, nutrition, light, fresh air, sightlines, tools;

     

• The Marshall Memo Admin - Issues

  "In This Issue: 1. True grit 2. Successfully educating boys: what works 3. Teacher-student mediation in action 4. How to work with an opinionated colleague (who is wrong) 5. Should schools continue to teach cursive handwriting? 6. Do students’ appearance and grooming affect achievement? 7. Key elements of an effective open house 8. I wish my teacher knew…"

  tags: BTSN boys new ideas instructional coaching dress code mediation difficult conversations grit character

  • 1. True grit

     

    2. Successfully educating boys: what works

     

    3. Teacher-student mediation in action

     

    4. How to work with an opinionated colleague (who is wrong)

     

    5. Should schools continue to teach cursive handwriting?

     

    6. Do students’ appearance and grooming affect achievement?

     

    7. Key elements of an effective open house

     

    8. I wish my teacher knew…

  • A lot of what we take to be toughness of the past was really just callousness.
  • There was a greater tendency in years gone by to wall off emotions, to put on a thick skin – for some men to be stone-like and uncommunicative and for some women to be brittle, brassy, and untouchable. And then many people turned to alcohol to help them feel anything at all.”
  • A more helpful way to think of toughness is resilience, says Brooks. “The people we admire for being resilient are not hard; they are ardent. They have a fervent commitment to some cause, some ideal, or some relationship. That higher yearning enables them to withstand setbacks, pain, and betrayal.
  • If people today are less tough or resilient, Brooks concludes, it may be because they lack purpose. “If you really want people to be tough,” he says, “make them idealistic for some cause, make them tender for some other person, make them committed to some worldview that puts today’s temporary pain in the context of a larger hope
  • “In every school I have visited, social competition and hierarchy, bullying and maltreatment, peer policing, and the marginalization of less-preferred types of boys characterize cultures that even wonderfully committed faculty and staff cannot control.”
  • These teachers report that, “contrary to the stereotypes of young men as diffident, disruptive, or dangerous, most boys care deeply about being successful and simply long for instructors… capable of connecting personally with them and believing in them, even when they may not believe in themselves and struggle with behavior, effort, or attention problems… Relationship is the very medium through which successful teaching and learning is performed with boys.”
  • strategies that build connections with boys.
  • Demonstrate mastery of subject matter.
  • Maintain high standards.
  • Respond to a student’s personal interest or talent.
  • Share a common interest.
  • <!--[endif]-->Acknowledge a common characteristic.
  • Accommodate a measure of opposition.
  • Be willing to reveal vulnerability.
  • “Mediation provides teacher and student with ways to listen and understand each other’s perspectives, restore goodwill, and develop positive plans to move forward,” she says. “The process boosts social, problem-solving and communication skills – all of which are important for students’ resourcefulness should problems arise in the future.”

  • the characteristics of an ideal academic team:

     

    <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->There is frequent, easy communication.

     

    <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Assessment is an integral part of the culture.

     

    <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Changes are identified and readily implemented.

     

    <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->New ideas are frequently discussed.

     

    <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Limitations in professional knowledge and skills are recognized and addressed.

     

    <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Professional development is seen as essential and it happens regularly.

     

    <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Improvement is continuous.

  • Don’t just tell them they’re wrong.
  • Evidence alone won’t work.
  • People with incorrect beliefs can become even more entrenched when presented with facts that contradict their beliefs. To change people, you have to reach their hearts, and you can do that only by building relationships.
  • Listen
  • If you want to effectively address forces that resist positive change, you need to genuinely listen first.”
  • Be indirect. Use suggestive rather than declarative language. Let your colleagues come to their own conclusion and, better yet, think it’s their own idea.
  • Have one-to-one conversations.
  • Identify your allies.
  • Change should be collective.
  • Identify the mission.
  • Choose your battles.
  • Focus on your personal goals.
  • Be patient, hopeful, and persistent.
  • If change happens, expect things to get worse before they get better.
  • “Research suggests that individuals are prone to automatically make assessments about the competence and social status of others based on features of their physical appearance. These features may include facial cues, ethnicity, clothes, and body language… [I]ndividuals are likely to base their impression of others on limited information and then fill in the rest accordingly.”
  • “Children described by teachers more negatively in terms of their appearance had worse academic adjustment… Students described by teachers as appearing poorly dressed, tired, sleepy, or hungry were rated by teachers as being less competent academically, less engaged, and as having a poorer relationship with these teachers.
  • “These results suggest that some students may be experiencing difficulties in school because they appear inadequately physically prepared for the classroom,”
  • As a staff, if we said, ‘Here’s our first chance to engage parents,’ then surely open houses… would be a much warmer, much more collaborative event and linked to learning.”

  • Consider having a general orientation for parents before the beginning of school – more of a mini-fair, with fun activities and a chance to get to know school staff. This is distinct from the open house in mid-September, which is more academically focused.

     

    <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Encourage teachers to make a positive phone call to each family early in the year so that calls on behavior problems are not the first time parents hear from the school.

  •   <!--[endif]-->Give parents and guardians name tags and a chance to socialize with family members of other students.
  • Have students be leaders of the open house at the classroom level: students prepare a PowerPoint presentation on what they are learning and what the plan is going forward.
  • Include actual learning activities for parents.
  • The bottom line: family members should leave the open house excited about the school year, clear about three or four things their child will know by the end of the year, and feeling part of a team that will help students accomplish those key learnings.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.