Starting the journey of grief after the recent illness and death of my mother, I saw a clip of Madonna Badger talking about loss. She lost her three daughters and her parents in a Christmas morning fire three years ago. While my loss happened under very different circumstances, her messages about grief and healing and spirituality are very timely and helpful.
Pretty inspirational.
While family circumstances kept me away from NAIS this year, there are some terrific blog posts here for educators, so I will attend vicariously by reading here!
I attended a great session today titled: Engendering Leadership: How Independent Schools Support Successful Female Leaders. Thank you to Lindsay Koss, Pearl Kane, Lucy Goldstein, Meera Ratnesar, Frances Fondren, Karen Whitaker and Katie Arjona for all of your sage advice!
Here is what I learned:
Leadership is a behavior
1. Leadership is about doing not about the title
2. If your passions don’t align with your institution you have to listen to that and move to a place that fits.
3. You need to know the stereotypes that are attached to you (whatever they may be) – use them for your benefit or debunk them.
4. Be frank and clear in your communication even at the risk of not being perceived as nice.
5. Develop a capacity for solitude – as you move up you have a smaller peer group, develop your capacity to solve things alone or with a…
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Welcome to the end of January and the start of February.
In an effort to continue our Attitude of Gratitude for 2015, I want to acknowledge our very hard working Buildings and Grounds Staff, who spent countless hours over a snowy weekend and two snow days keeping the campus in shipshape for our community as we returned to school on Wednesday. When you see them in the hallways and the parking lots salting, sanding, snow blowing, and plowing, thank them. Let your children see you thank them.
At a recent Parents Association Meeting, I shared a very brief video clip of Richard Weissbourd of Harvard showing us what we can model for our students. I share it here again, along with the January newsletter from Making Caring Common.
Enjoy!
And enjoy the snow!
As we struggle in schools to quantify the very real needs and uses for social emotional learning and self regulation skills as part of an academic skill set, this Op Ed piece hits the right chords! Read on…
Why Some Teams Are Smarter than Others NY TIMES opinion 1.18.2015
Last week, I had the opportunity to address a few topics with the Parents’ Association. We were slated to discuss the book Free to Learn by Peter Gray. I shared a few slides with quotes from the book and then drew a line between the messages about the Power of Play to the Harvard Study and a recent New York Times Op Ed piece.
I shared with the parents that as the faculty and I engage in and evaluate our professional development experiences, we always need to have the mindset that we may not love everything we hear or do, or may not find it all immediately relevant, but the goal is to find that nugget or two that allows us to inform our teaching practice, pivot just a little in the way we approach our students or just think differently about some aspect of our work. Walking away with a few kernels is time well spent. So this is also true for what we read. While we may not espouse all the messages in Peter Gray’s book, he does reinforce some of what we do know to be true about children and their work/play and what we can extract from them in new learning opportunities at school and at home. I shared his four conclusions about play:
In 2015, can we really afford to underestimate the power of social emotional learning, the value of free time to be creative and the absolute necessity for empathy? I don’t think so. To those who say that the only valuable activity in school is an academic activity, I would say that may have been true a few decades ago, but if we are to truly prepare our children for a changing world and for THEIR future, the ability to collaborate and the premium placed on empathy will only grow. Woe to the students who enter their adulthood thinking they are living an individual sport, a zero sum game where only one person can win.
The resources I referenced are here:
http://sites.gse.harvard.edu/making-caring-common/parents/strategies-tips
3 minute Rick Weissbourd video
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/05/opinion/doctor-shut-up-and-listen.html
And David Brooks gives us cogent commentary as well…
I have had a pit in my stomach most of the day after learning about the terrible attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris today. How to make sense of it? How to talk about it with my children? How to think about it as an educator? As a human being? As a person living in a world where freedom of speech is rarely a seriously debated topic?
I have also found it heartening to see the movement of solidarity in Paris and across France. I want to support my French colleagues and friends. I want to mourn the senseless deaths. I want to help. Thanks, Nicholas Kristof for helping me think about this with less rancor and just plain sadness.
What I like about these is that you could say these are “meet your children (students) where they are” resolutions. Rather than trying to shut down online activities, we adults need to learn a little more about them…
This is just a reminder that as we parents struggle with lots of down time over the holidays and some of the “new technology” our children will receive, do not sacrifice quality to time to read and be with your children sans technology AND use the resources at hand to guide your children when they are using technology.
Merry vacation time…
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/parent-concerns
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/what-to-read-next-kids-holiday-books-for-december
Earlier this week I forwarded a post to our faculty and staff entitled: Feedback is the Breakfast of Champions. Sometimes we forget that the part of the growth process that yields short and long term results is the process. Sometimes, as parents, we feel responsible for our children’s successes and shortcomings. Sometimes, as adults, we remember our own school experience through rose-colored glasses. Sometimes, we forget we are not supposed to rescue our children. Sometimes, we forget they do not need rescuing. Sometimes, they surprise us and perform beyond our wildest expectations. Sometimes, they disappoint us. Sometimes, they disappoint themselves. This is ALL part of the process. It is all important. It is all good. It just does not always feel that way while we are in it.
Recently, my mother shared a box of memories with each of her five children. She had been cleaning our drawers and files and we each received a photo box of pictures, trinkets, and information. In my box were my report cards from grade 1 through grade 12, all of my standardized testing results, countless embarrassing tooth school photographs with teeth missing and awkward smiles, and some special momentos from elementary and high school. What did I remember before I reread my report cards? I loved school. I felt at home in school. I wanted to perform well for my teachers. I wanted to represent my family honorably (as the oldest). I was Maria in The Sound of Music and Mary in the Christmas Pageant (twelve years of Catholic school). I fell in love with French in grade 9. I made National Honor Society as a junior. I applied to four colleges. What do my report cards show me? I was VERY social. I worked hard in some classes and some years and less so in others. I found my first passion in music and theatre and my second (and eventual career) in French.
Feedback IS the breakfast of champions. It is important that we give and receive feedback. It is equally important that we help students makes sense of their performance through both their own experiences and the observations their teachers share. It is important that we do not project our own experiences, positive or negative, hopeful or crestfallen, onto our children. They do not need to relive our lives. They need to navigate a world that is different from ours and live their own. Feedback, failure, and success are the heart and purpose of the growth process.
TGIF.
Head's Up, Kathleen McNamara 