Unleash your Students' Talent and Creativity

This past week I had the pleasure of hearing Sir Ken Robinson and George Couros speak at the TASA conference.  It's rare that you get the opportunity to hear amazing thought leaders like this, but to hear two of them in one day was mind-blowing to say the least.  What I found interesting about them is that their messages emphasized the point that creativity in schools is not only essential but critical if we want more kids to be ready to inherit our rapidly changing world.

Now when we think about creativity in schools, we naturally gravitate toward a mindset of more difficulty, more work, or a vast departure from our normal way of doing things, but that was not the case in both of their keynotes.  In George's message, he drove home the point that in order to create the schools that kids deserve, it's all about establishing and maintaining meaningful  relationships with kids that unleash their creativity.   It's about knowing them as individuals and creating the conditions in our classrooms where we leverage our relationships with kids that inspire them to dream and create a future that goes well beyond the confines of the curriculum.

"Your job is to unleash their talent!" +George 

Robinson's message was similar but his approach to making change in schools focused on how we must engage and then empower our kids daily.  We don't know what kids will be when they grow up and neither do they, so we must remember that our job is to create an engaging environment where kids slowly discover that for themselves.  When kids develop confidence in themselves, they unleash their innate passion which is essentially the purpose for which they were born .

When the rhythms of education match the rhythms of a student's learning, kids will never disengage from learning. Sir Ken Robinson

How Can You Unleash their Talent and Creativity?
As you look at your students this week, I encourage you to view them not as what they are or where they're from.  Instead, view them as what they could become and the ultimate place we want them to be one day.  When we look at our kids from the lens of what could be, we create empowering learning environments that change FOR the benefit of kids and their future, not for the content they must learn.

6 Questions to Break the "Same-Old Same-Old" Cycle

An old high school buddy of mine slapped me in the face the other morning with his Instagram post below. 

The Same-Old Same-Old Cycle

As this image cycled through my mind, this question emerged.

Are my thoughts generating the same old results?

Think about it. The same old thinking leads to the same old results, but if we're not careful, the same old results will lead back to the same old thinking.  The "same-old same-old" is a vicious cycle that solidifies the status quo and "the way we've always done it around here", the cycle is solidified by our thoughts more so than our actions.  After all our actions are dictated by our thoughts.

We owe it to our kids to break this cycle because the stakes are too high, and the consequences are so great. In order to find new solutions to the same old problems that we have been experiencing all year, we must ask ourselves this question. Is the problem really our result or is it our thinking?  If we truly believe in helping kids grow, and if we want to accomplish this goal of every kid increasing their performance by 10 points from last year, let's look inward before we look outward.  

6 Questions to Break the Same-Old Same-Old Cycle

Below are a few questions that can help you evaluate your thinking and how you respond when you encounter results that continue to resurface.

Question	Yes	No
Do you think about failure in terms of failure to grow and improve instead of the mindset of failure to pass?
Does your thinking about your response to a student’s failure to grow result in a meaningful change in the way you teach those kids who are regressing?
When a student fails to grow, do you initially reflect on your instruction and the ways it helped or didn’t help the student grow?
With respect to apathetic or disruptive students, do you think first about ways that you can change your approach to better meet the student’s deficits and how you can better connect with them?
With respect to academic deficits, do you reflect on how you teach concepts and whether or not they are truly meeting kids where they currently are in their ability?
When you don’t know what to do, do you look to your colleagues for guidance, suggestions and strategies to better meet the needs of your regressing students?

Do you have more checks in the yes column or no column?  

So how did you do?  If you have more no's, you may be stuck in the same old thinking.  If you have more checks in the yes column, you are headed in the right direction.  The same old results are precipitated by the same old thinking.  If we truly want our students to grow, we must recommit to our own growth and development first.  That will only happen when we honestly reflect on our own abilities and effectiveness and the thinking that reinforces them  When that happens, we will be more able to create new actions, skills and mindsets which will in turn lead to new and better results.

Escaping the Prison of Fear

Fear is a living breathing beast in schools.  No matter how talented you are or how successful your campus is, fear is lurking around your building and waiting to rear its ugly head.  The minute that scores drop, fear arises.  If anyone complains, insecurity mounts.  If an educator experiences divorce, death or difficulties in their own personal life, fear drives them into survival model.

But as I ponder fear and the effects that it has on teachers, leaders and a culture of learning, I am reminded of this picture by Tony Evans that I tweeted out a few months ago.

Fear is a prison. Is it yours? pic.twitter.com/zpjlsALVXt

— John Wink (@JohnWink90) November 17, 2015

As leaders, we must remind ourselves that we have two options in how we can handle fear:

• We can avoid acknowledging that fear exists, or 

• We can create a culture that courageously and collaboratively conquers their fears. 

A culture that fails to meet its fears head on will eventually succumb to the stress caused by fear and spiral into chaos. However, a culture that conquers its fears may suffer setbacks along the way but will eventually reach a new and better place. As leaders, we must remember that fear stifles creativity. It inhibits innovation, and it puts people in their place.  Whether its personal or professional, all fear stifles progress.

Fear is a prison, but it doesn't have to imprison us forever. A leader's job is not to remove fear from the organization. It is to challenge people to come together to courageously confront all fears. Fear will always be a part of who we are because we are human, but the best leaders ensure that fear doesn't strangle both the organization and the people who make it thrive.  Organizations that thrive, are composed of many people who care about one another, support on another in times of difficulty, and pick one another up when they're in trouble.  In these organizations, fear is not confronted in isolation.  It's conquered through collaboration.

This week, take time to work with your colleagues to:

• Face your fears and call them by name, 
• Eliminate your fears with a plan of action,
• Acknowledge that having fear is ok, but letting it stop you is not 
• Rise above your fears by telling your story. 

You won't believe the progress that will follow.

Teaching is More about Selling & Less about Telling

I loathe car shopping as I can't stand to haggle over prices. The game over numbers, trades, discounts and other code words for money out of my pocket literally drives me insane. (Pun intended), but there is a time that I do like buying a car.  I enjoy buying a car when I happen to find a salesperson who connects with me on a personal level and understands me as a client. There's no game, no hassle, and no insanity. The deal is done or it's not done.

So let's apply that to Learning

Did you ever have the same feeling as a student in class?  Did you dread walking into that teacher's door because you knew you weren't going to learn anything meaningful?  Did you feel your excitement slowly fade into apathy the minute they started talking at you?  Did you resent being forced to learn a subject that felt more like punishment than actual learning?

Then at other times did you have a teacher that you just couldn't wait to see?  The minutes flew by, and you left class excited about the next day's lesson. Do you remember that this teacher wasn't even 'teaching' because what you were doing was so much fun. If you're like me, you can still see the lessons you were doing and feeling the fun all over again.  

The very best teachers sell what they're teaching. They believe in their product, and they convince kids to buy-in to learning with their charisma and confidence. Lessons and activities are devised with a focus on the learner first and the content second.  These exemplars of instructional excellence connect with kids as people first and as learners second because they know that getting kids to engage in learning is the exact same as getting them to buy a car. For some kids it's easy to make the sale, but for others it takes a little more relational work of showing them the benefits before they will purchase the learning.

CHALLENGE
The next time you walk in your class, think of your students as potential customers and your content as the product.  If you approach your instruction with the mindset of selling instead of telling, there's a strong likelihood that your kids will dread leaving your class because they will want more of what you're teaching.  Sell it; don't tell it.

6 Strategies to Start off the New Year with Greater Classroom Engagement

The New Year is here, so what is your plan to get the kids more engaged than ever?  The solution won't be found in that new lesson that you developed or that cool tech-tool that you discovered on Twitter.  The key to better classroom engagement is guaranteeing that each student optimizes every minute of his learning in your room.

Every student's minute counts.  Now, if you are allotted 50 minutes of instruction, and you waste or lose 5 minutes everyday due to poor behavior, disengaged minds or apathetic students, you give up 10% of your instruction every day (See 5 Fixes for the 1st 5 Minutes of Instruction).   I don't know about you, but I don't have 10% of time to give up on any given. Do you?

With that said, I'd like to offer some strategies that you can easily incorporate into your instruction immediately that will reduce your chances of losing valuable minutes of instruction while simultaneously increasing the chances that more students will be engaged in their learning in 2016.

1.  Routines & Procedures 
The best pair of tennis shoes always need to be tied before you go running.  Think of your routines and procedures as the shoes for your instruction.  If you don't tie them tight everyday, you will lose time having to tie and retie them throughout your run.  Spend time each day reviewing how students are expected to independently do everything such as:

• enter the room & get started in the warm-up activity
• request to leave the room 
• sharpen a pencil 
• retrieve all materials
• ask for help if they have a problem
• manage their materials independent of you

If students aren't reminded of the routines and procedures for the classroom on a daily basis, they will rely on their own routines and procedures to learn, and that will generally not lead to maximized engagement.

It must be emphasized that routines and procedures grow in effectiveness with praise and affirmation.  Spend time every day recognizing and thanking kids for doing things right, and the rest of the class will work hard to be praised as well.  What gets celebrated gets accelerated.

2.  Start off the period with Music
Haley Van Sandt was the first teacher that I saw use music consistently to engage kids in learning during the first 5 minutes of instruction without fail every single day.  As soon as the bell rang, Mandisa's "Good Morning" started, and the kids started singing and vibing to the music as they completed their warm-up work and readied themselves for the day's lesson.  Using a familiar song as a regular routine focuses students' thoughts on learning and what they need to do to be prepared for learning.


3. Excellence begins with Expectations
Before you begin any task, it is extremely helpful to set expectations for what you want kids to do.  If it is a normal activity, don't assume that all kids will know or remember the expectations.  Take 15 seconds to remind them of the expectations for that activity, or you'll lose 5 minutes redirecting and correcting off-task behavior (5 minutes = 10% of your instruction).  If it is a new activity, you will need to spend 2-4 minutes describe the learning behaviors necessary for students to complete the activity successfully.  Don't expect excellence.  Set expectations for students to reach excellence.


4. 3 B4 Me
Students can't truly maximize every minute of their learning if the only person they can ask for help is the teacher.  A "3 b4 Me" rule will help students own their learning by expecting them to solve their own problems without you.  Here are just a few places students can go before they go to you for assistance.

• Anchor charts in the room,
• Their notes,
• Their classmates,
• Google for things they don't know,
• Dictionary.com for worlds they don't understand,
• A print out of procedures for logging-in to websites.

In the real world, the most successful people are masters at solving their own problems.  "3 B4 Me" is a real world strategy to empower all kids to solve their own problems, and it keeps you available for the few problems that truly require the expertise that only you, the teacher, can provide.

5. Note-taking

Listening is not a very engaging activity.  In fact it's quite boring, and with every passing minute that students must listen to the teacher's lesson, their engagement decreases considerably.  Engaging lessons from the teacher require students to follow along, copy, imitate and/or summarize what the teacher is presenting. 

Note-taking and summarizing was noted by Marzano (see here) as one of the highest-yield strategies.  All students (K-12) should take notes everyday.  From copying what they teacher is doing in Kindergarten to using graphic organizers or notes with holes to take notes in elementary to using art to take notes in high school, note-taking is a powerful strategy that helps students deepen their learning of the content while you model learning for the kids.  If students aren't taking notes, how will they remember what you taught them?

6. Stop the Q&A and Start the 'Turn and Talk'

When you ask one student a question, the rest of the class disengages from the lesson.  If the goal is to get all students learning at high levels, pose a question and ask the students to turn and talk to their neighbor for 30 seconds.  This gives all students their opportunity to discuss their learning with one another, and there is a greater chance that all students will stay engaged in the lesson.

Why should you drop the Q&A? Well, every time you ask one student a question, the rest of the class is off the hook, and their learning essentially stops while they wait for that student to answer the question.  With turn and talk, every kid's learning keeps going, and you can monitor conversations and then hand pick 1 or 2 kids to share out what they discussed.  There will always be better engagement with turn and talk.

Make 2016 Ring with Engagement
Learning is accelerated with better engagement, and if we want all students to be active learners, we must make certain that all of them are active participants throughout every lesson that we provide.  By creating active learning environments that focus on optimizing every student's engagement, we actually foster each student's independence and autonomy that essentially transform their engagement into empowerment.  Imagine the kind of learning and growth we would see in every kid if we created a classroom where empowerment wasn't the goal, but the constant.

#Leadership Lessons from Steve Harvey

The 2015 Ms. Universe Pageant will go down as one of the biggest mistakes in the history of mistakes, as there is no doubt that Steve Harvey will always be remembered for naming the wrong person, Ms. Columbia, as the winner of the prestigious event.  In the days following the pageant, Harvey was the target of endless jokes and memes that not only highlighted his mistake.  They glorified it.  What was verified is that leaders live a cruel world where people will make darn sure that your mistakes at least will define you if they don't destroy you.

Here's why leaders should pay close attention...

Immediately following the mistake, Steve Harvey epitomized this quote. 

"Mistakes don't define you; your response to them does." 

Instead of hiding from responsibility and gathering a council of advisors to help him avoid the fallout, Harvey immediately owned his gaffe in front of the entire world to see.  He didn't deflect and the use typical avoidance strategies that high-profile leaders use.  He said, "It was completely my fault".  What a simple, yet courageous statement.  

Leaders must accept the fact that they are going to screw up and make mistakes, and some of the them will be 'really' bad.  What followers appreciate and gravitate toward is not an infallible leader, but a leader who shows he is mortal and capable of messing up from time to time.    People follow courage, not perfection.


Thank you, Steve!

If it weren't for Steve, most people wouldn't have even known there was a Ms. Universe pageant, and they definitely wouldn't have known who won it.  In fact, if his mistake did one good thing, it was show more people that the pageant is still alive and well.  You can be sure that more viewers will definitely pay close attention to the pageant next year.

But the greatest thing that we should all be thankful for is the leadership example that Steve displayed for all of us to emulate.  To make a massive mistake in front of the entire world is one thing, but to face it head-on and overcome the outrage and insults that followed sends a powerful message to all of us that leadership is defined by the courage and conviction that leaders have when they have to admit to the world that they were wrong.  Now how much better off would our world be if our government had more politicians like that? (sorry, had to say it).  The reality is that more organizations and governments deserve completely transparent leaders like Steve.

Thank you, Steve, for the courage that you displayed and for the leadership example that you displayed.  There will come a day when every leader, including myself, will eventually mess up in front of the world and will need a successful example to follow.

The Principal's Ultimate Mission

Student learning is no doubt the goal of every school in America, and as long as I have been a leader, that has been my goal.  I’m pretty sure that is your goal, too, but the illusive question becomes this, what one resource has the greatest impact on guaranteeing that more students succeed.  One can argue that we need better schools while the next person can argue that we need better teachers, but at the end of the day, kids must have access to quality instruction from several highly successful teachers in excellent schools for 13 consecutive years in order to experience the best success.   

Teachers are the only ones who can directly impact learning for every child, but they can only impact learning at higher levels when they work in school environments that actually help them get better at the art and science of teaching kids.   The fact of the matter is this.  We need to stop focusing on making better schools and/or better teachers.  

We need to create better schools that are deeply committed to making teachers better.

For too long, educators have been asking the wrong questions when attempting to solve the age-old dilemma of guaranteeing higher success for all students. Administrators ask questions such as the following.

• How do we raise scores?
• How do we get better teachers from the colleges and universities?
• How do we get better walkthrough observation instruments?
• How do we get better staff development for our teachers?

These are important questions, but they often lead to misguided decisions, short-term gains, and transactional leadership responses. Sadly, this focus on teaching generally leads to a recycling bin of traditional leadership answers.  If we want to truly make a major impact on student success, we, as leaders, must guide our thinking away from superficial targets and bureaucratic habits disguised as silver bullets.  We must close our minds to the questions of the here and now and focus our thoughts on a new vision for schools.  The questions we should fix our eyes on include the following:

• ·      Why are we here?
• ·      What makes a great teacher?
• ·      How do we help make all teachers successful?

When we find the answers to three questions, we will actually begin to make it our mission to create better schools that in turn help make all teachers better at guaranteeing that all kids learn.  After all, if it is our mission to ensure that all kids to learn, then our leadership mission must focus on guaranteeing that every teacher becomes their very best for all kids.