What Our Students Need

You can Google Brett Greenwood's story. It is rather remarkable.

Last night, after months and years of rehabilitation, he was able to lead the Iowa Hawkeyes football team (his former team) onto the field. Embedded, below, is the inspirational clip of that happening.

He is flanked by his former strengths & conditioning coach, Chris Doyle, and one of his former teammate's, Pat Angerer.

What I really LOVE about this clip is seeing the constant encouragement that Greenwood receives. For the 45+/- seconds while Greenwood is walking, Angerer and Doyle are constantly in his ear to give him words of encouragement; telling him how he can do this.

This is what our students need. Our students need someone, multiple people, constantly giving them that same level of encouragement. They need someone telling them that they can do it. They need someone praising them that they are doing it. And this needs to be happening all day long for our kids.

We Can Be More ,We Can Be Much More

A couple of summers ago, at the annual School Administrators of Iowa conference, Angela Maiers shared the following video - "It's Time for TED" - TED2012 remixed

I LOVE this video.

Last month, I shared this video with our teachers at Starry Elementary School. As they watched the short video, I asked them to think about the implications that this video has regarding education.

These were the responses that staff shared as their exit slip that afternoon:

• We can always do the impossible; we can always do more for the kids
  
• When we are teaching students we need to accept other ways of thinking. We need to let students think differently. Our job is to facilitate knowledge. We didn't create it, and we shouldn't limit it.
  
• Look towards the future, not the past. Focus on the child's future and where they are going, not where they have been. Look forward to tomorrow, don't dwell on the past.
  
• Work together, think bigger, create, change the world, think of the problem differently, miracle of your mind is that you can see the future differently
  
• Think outside the box, empower everyone, don't give up
  
• Education is always changing for the better. Working together, we can make a positive impact on our students education and lives
  
• We are all here for the kids and if we think BIG we can help them think outside the box to change the world.
  
• We hopefully teach imagination to be someone or somewhere else, to put their minds to a place that is better than where they are now.
  
• Believe in the impossible! Be creative!
  
• The TED talk was inspiring us to look for the positives, be a believer, and that we need to use the miracle of our mind!
  
• Makes me think about how important education and knowledge is to change our world into something different and awesome.
  
• Teachers are not the key to this knowledge...we are the guide. The key is our students. How can we help them to make a difference? How can I make a difference for them?
  
• Always believe in your students. Never doubt their abilities because they can always go beyond what you think.
  
• We as teachers need to help kids to first dream big and second help lead them to their dreams through education.
  
• In relation to using your mind to imagine the world as it isn't, our job is to inspire creativity and imagination just as much as we teach them facts
  
• I will try my hardest to give the tools that each kids needs to be successful! I believe that every child can succeed; each child has a special gift to share!
  
• We have the ability to see what students can become, the ability to help students be more than what they are now, the ability to change the future through how we teach and connect with our students.
  
• Creativity is used around the world in every career and pursuit. It is needed for new ideas and ways of thinking. What better place to nurture this than the art room and the specials.
  
• Believe in your students; they can imagine, invent, think big thoughts, and learn by tools we as teachers give them
  
• Kids are able to imagine things without limitations we as adults place on our ideas. We all need to work together to change the world - or the lives of our students.
  
• In relation to working together, I find that it is not only important for teachers to work together and share ideas and suggestions, but also getting kids to work together.
  
• Imagine, ideas, and the drive to make a difference
  
• We can be much more; we can be better learners; we can imagine a better future for our learners
  
• Believe, the miracle of  your mind, ideas, think differently; be open to thinking differently and sharing ideas
  
• This video helps us think about our goals and how to reach them. We should be open to new ideas to achieve our goal. We need to try new things to think of ways to reach all students.
  
• Our students have lots of ideas. We as teachers need to use the tools we have to unlock their full potential of learning.
  
• Teaching is a huge responsibility that you can't do alone. We are in it together and we must stay positive. We are building the future and we need to make all students, staff, parents, administrators, feel like they are important and that they are rock stars!

I LOVE these responses. All students deserve to go to schools where the educators think and act in a way that reflects what is captured above. Words can't express how excited and proud I am to be working with a group of educators that share these mindsets about students, learning, and teaching. We can be more, we can be much more.

What I Want School to Provide

Sometime this summer, in-between packing up one office and unpacking in a new office, I came across a particular sheet of paper that caught my attention.

The paper was from an activity that Mike Mattos had done with the attendees of some Response to Intervention (RtI) professional development that he'd delivered in Cedar Rapids several years ago.

The task was to fill-in the following blanks -
What I want school to provide ___________________________________________________

is

___________________________________________________ (Using only 10 words or less).

At the time, my son, Ryne, was two-(almost three) years old. I filled-in his name in the first blank and the words, "A caring environment that pushes him to his full potential."

(Mattos, too had his child's/children's name in the first box; he only used two words for his box - "Endless possibilities.")

Let's return to the present. My son is going to begin preschool in a little over a week. It's funny how your life experiences over time change your perspective and your philosophies. More so now than ever before, as my son is approaching the start of his education career in a school setting, part of my decision making process is to consider things through a parent's perspective. Is this what I would want in regards to Ryne's or Olivia's (my one-year old daughter) educational experience?

It would be hypocritical for me to expect anything less than what I'd want for my children.

To close our back-to-school staff  meeting, I tried to convey to our staff my priority of considering a parent's perspective when making decisions. Each one of our student's are another person's entire world, their most prized possession, their heart and soul, their entire life. Parents put a lot of faith in us as educators to care for their children for a large portion of the day, week, month, year. It is a huge responsibility that we must embrace.

I asked our staff to complete the sheet that Mattos had originally introduced to me. I didn't collect these, I just wanted staff to think about the education that they would want for the children that they love the most. I asked them to keep these, maybe they will even refer to them a time or two as we progress through the year.

Ultimately, my hope is that wherever I am, my school reflects the expectations that I have for my own children's education.

My sheet did not look terribly different than it did several years ago. There were some minor tweaks, but a majority of my response (above) was very similar.