Last Happy Thang

Posted on October 6, 2014 by sutterlearn

It’s only spelled with an “a” for emphasis to lighten the mood.  The purpose of this activity is to connect everyone in our busyness and observe how frequently or infrequently we, as a society, experience genuine happyness (also intentionally misspelled). The result is to start a group working together with positive feelings, which actually affects the brain’s ability to build relationships.

1. Open with remarks regarding how busy we all feel and how the work of teaching and learning seems to never have a limit.

2. Share an anecdote from your own life about something that was heard or experienced recently that gave you a genuine feel of happiness.  Perhaps it was a cute kid comment that made you giggle, a Values.com commercial that made you feel a real smile and hope for humanity, or maybe it was a student’s experience that reminded you of why you teach (not the test prep part).

3.  Have participants reach into their own hearts (though using that phrase may be too cheesy for a new group) and think of such an experience they recently had that made them experience genuine happiness.

4. In person, share out some of the best you heard to the whole group.  Online, have participants vote with a survey to rate the “happiest” post.

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Profound or Profoundly Stupid

Posted on October 6, 2014 by sutterlearn

Teachers are full of anecdotes because children are wonderful sources.  The purpose of this opening activity is to create community among adult learners by encouraging conversation among small groups while purging recent experiences from their own lives, to clear the way for the day’s learning together.

1. Explain this activity is called “Profound or Profoundly Stupid” because we all hear examples of one or the other every day from our students.

2. Model examples of each category.  For example, in the “profound” category, a student recently told me that if they were to receive three wishes, their first wish would be that every time they said the words “I wish”, they would get another free wish.  In the “profoundly stupid” category, another student argued (in the context of completing an assignment) that, “My life doesn’t revolve around a clock like yours.”

3. Have a good laugh with the group, then give small groups time to think and share their own choice of profound or profoundly stupid memories with one another.

(To do this in an online class, it could be presented through a discussion board.)

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This Hurts Me More Than You

Posted on June 25, 2014 by sutterlearn

I didn’t believe my Mom when she said these words to me right before the last spanking I received as a child.  Spanks didn’t come often, probably because I was a remarkably agreeable kid, but my memory of the events and my deserving behavior is sufficiently strong that there weren’t repeated episodes for the same thing.  Still, as a kid these words were a hollow cliché that I was sure she’d gotten from an episode of Dallas, not something she could have meant, as she folded in half and secured her grip on my Dad’s wide, leather belt.  As with most things, it took me years to truly understand how much she meant these words.  When you love someone so much, it does hurt to teach the discipline he either missed or ignored.

Surely I learned this the few times I punished my own kids when they were young, but I felt it again recently with my students when I recently served as an elementary principal.  In the classroom, I occasionally grew exasperated with a trying student or disappointed with a relentless behavior.  In the office, however, those feelings came out more as pain from a place deep within my soul that the students sitting across the desk couldn’t have understood.

When a child frequently experiences being on the outside, breaking the rules, or viewing herself as “bad”, it often becomes her. As a hope mongerer, I may not have been surprised to see the same child walk into the office again with another referral sheet, but I genuinely believed that each round would be the catalyst for changing the behavior and the child’s outlook on himself.  This didn’t keep me from being consistent and thoughtful in my counseling and consequences, knowing that hope without action would catalyst nothing.  In reflection, I don’t regret writing the suspensions I had to write, nor holding back tears as I wrote them.

This hurts me more than it hurts you, Amen.

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Net Neutrality

Posted on May 25, 2014 by sutterlearn

In an era when students will be mandated to take achievement tests online, another challenge looms.  A concept called “net neutrality” or “open internet” is worth googling and learning about.  In short, the Federal Communications Commission is deciding if they should maintain a policy that all internet traffic should be remain equal.  This means bandwidth, the speed and capacity of internet use, could be improved if a large company paid more money for better service.  That would allow big phone and entertainment companies to receive the best internet service while schools and students would continue to struggle with inadequate internet service. 

The FCC is accepting comments and feedback on this issue through September 10, 2014.  My feedback to the FCC on the economic and educational consequences of this decision is below.  You can submit your own by searching for filing 14-28 at this link: http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display?z=qrvf5

The internet is a commodity that has been the sole accelerant of our economy for the past twelve years, through good times and many bad.  Providing more power or control of the market to large corporations through control of the internet will stifle all of the sole proprietorships and small businesses who have contributed to the world economy. 

As an educator, I am fearful that decisions to allow corporations who can afford more and better internet access for entertainment and information-sharing purposes will further punish our education system.  The same government who is requiring students to participate in high-stakes testing online cannot provide yet another challenge to meeting those goals unless the intent is clearly to further separate the haves and have-nots. 

Please carefully consider all of the implications of abandoning net neutrality and the open internet.

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Responsibility…then accountability

Posted on May 25, 2014 by sutterlearn

The mom had good intent, but I had to pause shortly after we started talking about her son’s performance.  She was upset that his handwriting fell short of her expectations.  Then came out a math paper that further displeased and built her case that he was not doing his part in school.  I realized that I was clearly present only as witness, to somehow be the “school authority” that Mom might use to convince her son that he needed to do better.

I always encourage parents who are engaged in their children’s learning and we are definitely in a time period when kids aren’t always held to, or for that matter given, expectations.  Still, as I thought about Mom’s complaints and watched the boy work over the next few days, it was evident that he was being held accountable for a few things he had not been provided the tools to accomplish successfully.

Her son was verbose, imaginative, and creative.  For handwriting, it turned out he had a dysgraphia issue that would require additional support from how he held his pencils to the time we needed to insist he take to write clearly.  For longer assignments, he might even need to type.  In math, his fact fluency was spot-on and he could calculate like a champ, but breaking down a written question to understand what calculation was required stymied him.  Mom saw these things as lacking effort, rather than areas requiring further teaching. 

And so it is with many systems of authority in our world.  We have over-simplified expectations for complex issues.  We want solutions to come from elsewhere instead of realizing our role in finding them.  Should we blame the doctor if a patient doesn’t follow through with the therapy prescribed?  Should we blame mechanics or cars themselves if we don’t provide the appropriate maintenance to our vehicles?  Should we blame the teacher for the underperforming students who have come without preschool experience, hungry bellies, or unstable homes?  Would we blame the students themselves, if they have not had the benefit of teaching, time to practice, and support where they need it?

Sometimes we don’t realize the difference in giving someone accountability versus teaching them responsibility?  If we teach responsibility first, it is on us to ensure they have the skills, tools, and requirements to succeed in or control the outcome.  When we have done our part as parents and teachers, to identify and provide the necessary teaching, skills, and tools for the specific challenges we as of our kids, only then do we dare holding kids accountable for the learning outcomes.  All blame aside, it just makes sense, if we truly want a child or an institution to succeed, we would provide the resources necessary for the tasks at hand, then we could confidently hold one another accountable.

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Parent Guide to CCSS

Posted on May 25, 2014 by sutterlearn

A parent recently approached me with a list of questions about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and how our schools are preparing for them.  I was so pleased to have the conversation. 

Why would this be so pleasing you wonder? As of Fall 2013, only 2/3 of adults in our country were aware of the CCSS and only 46% of parents with school-age children knew what these sweeping changes to our education system were all about.

The CCSS are a new set of reading and math standards that were adopted by 46 states.  Michigan adopted them in June 2010 and since 2011 our district has been preparing for how these standards change teaching and learning.

DIFFERENT TEACHING

While the former state standards were very focused on “what” kids needed to learn, the CCSS emphasize “how” kids learn.

This change encourages teachers to look at instruction differently.  Instead of literal questions from a text, we are now encouraging closer reading and teaching vocabulary using more informational texts than before.  In math, the standards aren’t just focused on learning to memorize “doing math”, but “understanding” how math works.  For example, I learned to memorize long division in elementary school (some of you probably did too), but our kids are learning how to do the same math mentally with multiple algorithms as they understand place value and decomposing numbers. 

DIFFERENT TESTING

We did our last October MEAP test in 2013!  With the CCSS, Michigan has joined a group called Smarter Balanced Assessments, which will begin testing on these standards next April/May 2015, pending final approval from state legislature.  These tests are unlike any we’ve experienced, but are promising to measure kids’ learning better than filling in bubbles alone…they are dynamic and online.

DIFFERENT CHALLENGES

With change come new challenges and concerns.  Some question the developmental appropriateness of these standards.  Others fear the standards are a national curriculum. There are definitely concerns about the readiness of kids for the upcoming tests and the technological capacity of schools to have all kids test online. 

You don’t have to google far to get both sides of a fierce debate, both personal and political, around the Common Core State Standards.  On either side, Michigan has legislated that these standards are the next expectation and ruler to measure schools and our children. 

For more information on the Common Core State Standards, here are some links:

http://www.corestandards.org/what-parents-should-know/

http://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,4615,7-140-28753_64839_64848—,00.html

http://www.smarterbalanced.org/parents-students/

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Tomorrow, We’re Not Friends

Posted on March 24, 2014 by sutterlearn

A beautiful, sad story crossed my desk today.  Each year, our elementary school invites back the current graduating seniors for an after-school reception.  We serve cake and have retired teachers come back to see the kids grown up, then the students usually tour the building, admiring how small it all seems.

This year was no different as we hosted a variety of 12 kids.  Following the festivities, the small troupe took their walk down the halls and memory lane.  A staff member found them later in the library.  A couple seniors were sitting on the floor looking for past favorite books, the rest had gathered around the small tables sharing stories and recollections of their days as young Bearcats.  As the teacher recounted, they all made their way to the table and took turns laughing and remembering shared experiences.  When she announced it was time to leave, each student thanked her for allowing them their moment together to relive the past.  Walking out, one student mentioned, “This was fun, but remember, tomorrow, we’re not friends.” 

And just like that, real life returns us to cliques and prejudices that we like to think are limited to high school.  But high school is real life for those kids and real life is not much different than high school for many adults.  We’d like to think this comment was an isolated instance or a teasing remark, but we know there is plenty of truth even in humor. From time to time, the beauty of shared human experience transcends who we think we are to who we know we should be…and that is a disposition worth calling out and developing throughout our schooling experience.

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Cultivating Grit

Posted on March 24, 2014 by sutterlearn


There’s a scene in my favorite movie, A River Runs Through It, where the father played, by Tom Skerrit, forces his son to write and rewrite an essay multiple times.  Each time, returning it with lots of red ink and demanding, “Again. Half as long.”  After who knows how many revisions, the boy hands the paper to his father and finally receives an affirmative, “Good, now throw it away.” which the boy dutifully does.  The memoir of coming of age in the 1930’s reflects the cultivation of what is called “grit” today.

I was taken back to this movie scene yesterday because I took some pastels from my kids’ art supplies so I could try and replicate a sunrise photo.  I’m not an artist and didn’t really know what I was doing, other than putting a little color here and there, then rubbing them together to create a gradual fading of the shades. When I was done, I felt confident that if I were to spend a little more time, I could make a decent picture on my next try, so I threw away the drawing, satisfied at what I’d learned. 

photo

In the course of the evening, both of my kids separately found the draft picture in the trash and brought it to me, full of compliments and wonder for why I had thrown it out.  After explaining that I was just teaching myself how to color, I found the picture twice removed from the garbage and placed back on the counter, as they were intent it should be honored and kept somehow. 

Irritated at their insistence, I ended up explaining to both of them the real value was my experience of learning through creating, not the picture that resulted.  Cultivating grit in ourselves and our kids requires us to not hold so tight to the end product, but delight in how it came to be, over many attempts.  That is where learning occurs. 

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Environmental Print

Posted on March 23, 2014 by sutterlearn

When I was a child, you could have told me the word Coca-Cola was my grandfather’s name, or I might have told you that.  It wouldn’t have been the word itself, but the iconic white script on a red background that I recognized and remember from at least three years old, long before I began connecting letters into sounds into words as a reader.  It was because he had a huge collection of Coke memorabilia in the room where we visited, so for me, his name might as well have been Coca-Cola.

Years later, in a developing literacy course, I came to understand this concept as “environmental print” where pre-emergent readers identify logos and brands as words.  This is not because they read the word “McDonald’s”, “Detroit Tigers”, or “Coca-Cola”, but because the design represents the concept they have connected visually and verbally.  As readers develop, most kids phase out of environmental print to actual reading around 1st grade, but I am curious if we might be extending or revisiting the crutch of environmental print to the detriment of literacy itself.

On a recent morning, I threw away the wrapper to a stick of butter.  The waxed paper was stamped in red, white, and yellow.  My third-grade reader, walking by the can stopped in his tracks to inquire, “Who went to Burger King?” (This is a restaurant our family nearly never visits.) His brain connected the environmental print without processing if, at 7:30am or in our house, a Burger King wrapper even made sense.  Environmental print trumped his reading.  Later that day, I watched a two-year old child attend parent conferences and manipulate a tablet computer multiple layers deep into the apps.  This child could obviously not read, but knew visually with no text how to find, open, and operate multiple apps on the device.  Before I left that night I wanted to check the forecast on my phone and scrolled through all the icons on my phone to the Weather Channel app, processing minimal text.

For all technology has done to make our lives efficient and seamless; as fun as it is to play the logo game online, I can’t help but wonder if extending the utility of a concept like environmental print into adulthood is really making our brains stronger.

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We Are Where We Are

Posted on March 22, 2014 by sutterlearn

As engaged parents, we say we want our kids to do their best, but what we often mean in our hearts is we want the best for them.  We even hope for our kids to be the best.  It’s hard not to when schools now present us with charts showing academic growth and achievement over time and sports teams begin try-outs (and cuts) as young as 3rd grade.  Our society is inundated with competition that we are prone to over-emphasize and leads us to confuse different stages of development with not doing, or being, our best.

I’ve recognized this parallel in my professional life recently, which compels me to share because we don’t outgrow expectations that need to be tempered. There is a huge need for instructional leadership in education and the profession often highlights the difference in the principal as “manager” versus “instructional leader”.  The manager runs the building, manages the employees, solves the immediate problems; this is how principals have operated historically.  The instructional leader guides the learning of adults and children in the building and improves academic outcomes; this is the added expectation of principals within the past ten years.  Both are more than full-time jobs, but expected, usually from one person based on the financial standings of most public schools.

I have spent the last few years with the privilege of being solely an instructional leader, developing structures and processes to support teachers and principals in improving teaching and learning.  I didn’t have the distraction of the daily minutia to keep me from this important mission.  For the past few months, I have had the privilege of being a principal, developing the deep relationships with students, families, and employees and running a building.  I have been too distracted with the daily minutia to fully do all I am capable of as an instructional leader.  It’s right here where I realize how similar my personal frustration is to how we set up our kids for frustration.  I know what my own best mix of these roles could look like and that I’m not there…right now.  I see clearly how well some of my peers have developed and managed these two skillsets, which guides my own growth and where I will support them when I return as an instructional coach.  I can easily allow myself frustration that I’m not doing my best, or the best as it were, but I can also acknowledge that where I am is where I am supposed to be in my development at this stage.  Realizing this in our kids will not only help us as parents and teachers, but will definitely help our kids to focus on the effort over the accomplishment, which is where learning happens.  Refocusing on learning helps all of us to refocus on the real purpose of school.

It is important for educators and parents alike to realize where we, and our kids, are developmentally and give each the grace and time we deserve to grow, while maintaining high expectations for effort.  Competition should be identified as an engagement strategy, but not as the standard against which we measure ourselves.

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