District Referendum and Non Referendum Improvement Projects

It seems now more than ever the educational literature has a plethora of information on the importance of personalizing the learning for our students.  As I pass through classrooms in the District, I see teachers personalizing the learning and utilizing their individual talents to create a culture of personalization.  Next week, a dozen Mauston teachers and administrators will take part in the first session, in a series of sessions through the fall 2016, about ‘how to personalize learning in our schools and classrooms’. 

Learning how to design personalization in schools and classrooms is very much a part of our larger District Vision 2020 under the area of Quality Instruction and Achievement for All.  We know a great deal about how to do this and we still have so much more to learn.  Here are a few ideas from Eric Jensen’s new book, Poor Students, Rich Teaching: Mindsets for Change.  I have listed this book under suggested readings as well. 

Share Progress on Goals

In Chapter Four of Eric Jensen’s book he talks about the idea for teachers to share their personal goals with their students.  Students love the idea of you sharing your goals with them!  This is a very effective way to foster a relational mindset with your students.

Post your personal goal in the classroom (since you are asking students to do the same), and share your progress all year (or semester) long.  Sample goals include:

• Starting new eating and exercise habits Participating in a community project
• Helping your parents with a goal
•  Completing a teaching improvement list
• Running a half-marathon
• Losing weight
•  Mentoring someone
• Growing a garden
•  Learning a new skill or sport
• An Educator Effectiveness goal you have set for yourself

Share your key milestones and celebrations and how you overcame issues along the way.  When you share all the micro-steps forward and the nearly predictable setbacks you experience, students will see that mistakes are OK and make way for improvement.  Your journey over the course of the year will be a drama akin to must-see TV show.  In short, as you make progress through obstacles, students can see themselves succeeding and that they are contributors to your growth.  This is an exciting way to influence students!

The Happiness Advantage: Linking Positive Brains to Performance

We all have our sparks of hope when we have the chance to either listen or take part in an inspiring message about life.  Recently, I had the opportunity to hear Shawn Achor, author of New York Times best-selling books The Happiness Advantage (2010)  and Before Happiness (2013).  His message is that, in fact, 75% of our job and educational successes are predicted not by intelligence, but by our optimism, social support networks, and the ability to manage energy and stress in a positve way.  He goes on to claim that our optimism (the belief that your behavior matters) is a great predictor of success.  His research identifies that "it's not reality that shapes us; it's the lens through which we view things."  He goes on to say that we tend to focus on the hastles, workloads and complaints in our work.  In other words, we tend to permit our external world to predict our happiness.  Achor's claim is that we can control our happiness by acting out our optimism.

Achor goes on to share that if we can find a way to have our brains work positively in the present then our brains work more successfully as we are able to work harder, faster and more intelligently.  He has found through his research that we can actually train our brains to become more positive.  He mentions:

• Doing 3 Gratitudes a Day for 21 days in a row which teaches our brain to scan the positive in the world and not the negative
• Journaling about one positive experience over the past 24 hours allows your brain to relive it.
• Meditation teaches our brains to get over the cultural ADHD that we have been creating by trying to do multiple tasks at once allowing our brains to focus on the tasks
• Random Acts of Kindness praising or thanking someone on a regular basis

All of this creates ripples of positively to establish a culture of positive expressions.  I encourage everyone to watch and listen to Shawn Achor's Ted Talk entitled: The happy secret to better work.  Feel free to Google it.  I thought that his message spoke to not just education but all facets of life.  I know that this is not 'rocket science' yet I felt that because so much of our work involves shaping the lives of young people, we could all benefit from a refresher in practice, Right?  I hope you like it.  I did.