Let’s Take Care of Texas Retirees

Recently, I visited the Texas Capitol and had the opportunity to advocate for education. It’s was a great honor to talk with our legislators and share my thoughts on education. After my visit I shared pictures of my memorable day on social media which garnered words of thanks and congratulations from my friends. But there one comment from my history teacher, Mr. Oliver, that stopped me in my tracks.

"John, please get your old retired 

Texas History teacher some help."

Here’s the Deal. 

Mr. Oliver was an amazing teacher. He was so much fun and made a tremendous impact on my life as well as 30+ years worth of students. What bothers me is this.  After putting his heart and soul into the noblest career which not only transforms minds but also lives, he retired with the understanding that he would not have to worry about the solvency of his retirement nor the security of his health insurance. He had a plan and that plan has changed due to no fault of his own. 

Here’s the Bigger Deal. 

Mr. Oliver is just one of the thousands of retired teachers who have seen the negative impact of the Texas Retirement System. There are countless other life-changers in the education profession who dedicated their lives to kids and now their plans have also been negatively impacted by the solvency of the Teacher Retirement System. 

But Here’s the Biggest Deal!

There are future retirees who are working in the classroom right now. Some are near retirement age, and some are in their first year of teaching. The reality is this. If we can’t take care of our teachers after they have sacrificed their lives for the children of our state, there won’t be any teachers left because they won’t choose the profession due to poor salaries and even poorer benefits.

Mr. Oliver is not the only teacher who shaped my life. There were countless others who molded me into the educator I am today, and I can’t thank them enough for their efforts. Furthermore, Texas can’t thank educators enough for all that they do for Texas kids, but here's what Texas can do.  Texas can do what’s right for Texas educators and the future educators who will follow in their footsteps by providing them with a retirement system that works as hard as the educators have worked and will continue to work for Texas. 

You Can’t Get Engaged without a Relationship First.

Have you ever met someone who got engaged to someone they didn't have a relationship with first?  The reason that I ask this question is because relationships kind of drive whether or not you will choose to get engaged in the first place. 

Well, apply that same idea to student engagement. Relationships are everything when it comes to engaging students into the learning.  Sure some kids may not be interested in us personally, but they must develop some relational connection to either our content or to us before they will choose to learn. 

So do you want better student engagement?  Better yet, do you want your most struggling students to get engaged in your classroom?  Well, it won't happen without strong relationships for learning first.  

Here is a list of questions to reflect on students who are least engaged in your learning?

1. How well do I call my students by name daily?
2. How consistently do I greet students coming and/or leaving my class daily?
3. How well do I listen attentively to my students?
4. What do I know about my students' lives, hobbies, and interests?
5. What do I know about my students' personal and academic challenges and interests?

How did you do?  
Do you have the knowledge of your students to meet them where they are?  Relationships are about reaching out, making them feel valued, and showing them that you care more about them as people than you do your content.  Without them learning is a struggle.

At the end of the day, we teach kids not content. And when we make consistent efforts to cultivate amazing relationships with our students, especially those reticent to learning, engagement is rarely a battle. The reason is simple. Taking time to learn the students inspires them to take the time to learn the content. 

Some Thoughts and Feelings about Leading with Thoughts and Feelings

Impulsivity is probably one of the greatest detriments to both leadership and life.  Have you ever witnessed some destroy their life or career simply because they sprung to action based on their immediate thoughts or feelings?  Of course, we have. 

Consider these tidbits of advice when it comes to everyday events in life.

• Never go shopping for groceries when you’re hungry. 
• It makes no sense to pull out your credit card for new clothes when your bank account is low.
• It's not very wise to make life-altering decisions when your life is in chaos.  

The main idea to these pieces of advice remind us that our lack of order and self-discipline negatively impact our future.

So let’s apply these same statements to leadership. 

• Never make decisions based on solely on your thoughts.
• It doesn’t make much sense to confront a difficult personnel situation with only your feelings. 
• Don’t act when you’re angry. 
• Your hunches and your gut are right 50% of the time. 

Sure, thoughts are obviously important to our leadership.  We better think before we create solutions or analyze problems, but thoughts by themselves serve as a bad barometer for gauging the reality of a situation or developing a positive response. Feelings are even more unreliable, as they are merely a thermometer of our current and ever-changing mental state. In fact, our thoughts are often influenced by our immediate feelings and if that’s all you have to lead with, you’re in trouble as a leader. 

So how can we lead more effectively with ours thoughts and feelings?

Well first, we must remember that when we lead with preplanned systems, our responses have a greater chance of being consistent, effective and ultimately successful. Furthermore, if we reflect on our daily work, we can anticipate 80% of the problems we will encounter; therefore, leaders make their work more efficient and effective when we create a system of automatic responses to those problems. Second, we can anticipate that people will attempt to handoff their problems to us or infect us with their negative or irrational feelings.  In these situations, we create a system or responses to ensure that their monkeys don't shift from their backs to ours.

Thoughts and feelings are powerful in both constructive and destructive ways, but if we develop plans to respond to the majority of problems we face on a regular basis, our thoughts and feelings can be leveraged around those systems to ensure that we transform the ineffectiveness of going with our gut into the certainty of leading with confidence and competence.

So what other thoughts or feelings do you have about leading with your thoughts and feelings?

Welcome to #FistBumpFebruary

February is upon us and that means Random Acts of Kindness month. With all the efforts to show kindness, I truly believe the smallest act with the largest impact is acknowledging people around us. Maslow’s 3rd level in his Hierarchy of Needs is love and belongingness and we mustn’t forget that many students lack love and belongingness from home, and therefore come to school with a motivation to fill this very important need.

So What If We could Fill that Need???

What if the school functioned in such a way that everyone one in the school participated in a unified
movement to make everyone feel loved and feel like they belong in the school?  And what if that unified movement was something that everyone could do that required next to no effort?  It would be pretty cool, and I believe highly successful for the school as a whole.  

I, therefore, propose that February be renamed Fist Bump February. Throughout the month of February, teachers and leaders could create a culture where every student received  at least 10 fist bumps and gave away at least 10 fist bumps each day while at school. Can you see it?  Better yet, can you see how your students will feel more a part of your school because of it?  It might be a little bumpy (pun intended) getting started, but it could be powerful enough to change the entire culture within your school. 

#FistBumpFebruary, let’s make this a movement and spread the love, show acceptance, and strengthen the relationships throughout our schools!

Why You Have to Write this Down!!!

Rick Warren is one of the greatest influences on my life.  His words of inspiration guide my faith and
my work each time I listen to him on his daily podcast.    In one of his podcasts, he made a statement that is now seared into my brain.

"The shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory."

Think about it.  It is hard to remember what we hear, and don't forget that we only retain 5% of what we hear for a long period of time.  In fact research on the retention of Sunday sermons indicates that we forget the majority of the preacher's message by Tuesday.  That's not good news if you're a preacher.

So how do we get kids to remember what we want them to learn?

The answer is to make them write it down.  Marzano's research proves that summarization and note-taking is the highest yield instructional strategy.  When students are writing down notes of their learning as you teach them, there is a much greater chance that they will retain that information in their memory, but even better, they have an artifact of their learning if they forget.

A strategy I use often is to frequently say the words, "Write this down".  It tells kids, "Hey this is really important, and it's so important that I don't want you to forget it".

This week,
Ask these questions of yourself.

1. How can you challenge your students to write more things down in their notes or journals?  
2. What are all the different ways students can take meaningful notes of their learning?  
3. How can you sell the importance of note-taking to your students.

The answers to these questions will increase engagement and learning retention simultaneously.

The Key to Unlocking Student Engagement

Engagement means something different to just about everyone. What engages one student fails to engage the next student, and one teacher’s idea about optimal engagement varies from the teacher next door. So how do we know if we are truly engaging our students?

Before we get to that answer, I’d like to analyze engagement through the lens of student outcomes, and for learning that means retention. Engagement should lead to retention, and if students aren’t retaining what they’re exposed to, then can we say that they’re authentically engaged?  

Source - The Active Learners Institute

Exam the graphic of learning retention by The Active Learners Institute. What’s interesting about this graphic is what happens when students start leading themselves in their learning.  Students retain 50% of the information through discussion with others.  Their retention increases to 75% when students practice by doing the work themselves, but they retain a whopping 90% of what they learn when students teach one another.  When we expect students to take more ownership of the work, learning retention increases exponentially.

As we reflect on our efforts to increase student engagement, let’s answer the following questions:

• What are the predominant retention rate activities that students undertake in our classrooms?  
• What activities are dependent on me and which ones push students to do the work?
• How can I provide students more access to higher retention activities?  
• How do I gauge students retention to determine the actual engagement in my classroom?

We learn best by doing, and we retain more information when we are more cognitively engaged in the learning. The key to student engagement is not busyness, and it’s not about flashy, aesthetically pleasing activities either.  Optimized engagement guarantees that all students retain as much as possible, and that happens when we evaluate the result of our efforts rather than intent of them. 

3 Ways Leaders Slow Down to Do More

In this fast-paced world, we have this constant urge to get more done. Complete more work, add more tasks, ensure more value is added to the organization.  This problem is this. All these things require one more thing, time that we don’t have. So In our effort to get more done, we sacrifice more and in turn do we achieve our intended results?

In the short term, we do, but in the long term we run the risk of burning out. So how do high-performers same to always succeed? The answer is that they slow down.

If we want to achieve more each and every day, then how do we slow down in order to get more done?

Three ways to slow down so you can get more done

Rest
The most productive people build in time to rest.  Creativity and productivity can only flourish when you are rested. Ensure that every week has one day that you break away from work.

Recharge
Cell phones are the best example of recharging. They work very well until they run out of battery. That’s why we re-charge them. Your body is no different than your cell phone. It must be recharged, and that can only happen when you stop working.

Refocus

It’s very important to re-focus on a regular basis. Part of the reason you get so overwhelmed is because you lose your focus and add more things to your workload that honestly don’t have much to do with making you better and more efficient at what you do. Each week take time to refocus by protecting the most important things you do and eliminating tasks that have nothing to do with your primary objective.

If we want to be our best, we have to rest. Slowing down does not lead to less productivity. It actually leads to more productivity. Taking a break on a weekly basis from work relaxes our minds, and it gives us a newly focused drive to accomplish even greater things that we had planned for in the first place. The key to accomplishing more is by doing less and getting rest.