What Are You Most Proud Of? Transformation at Buffalo School 33

When asked, "What are you most proud of this year?"  Kelley Boyd, a first grade teacher at Buffalo School 33 wrote the following... What am I most proud of...?

How transformed I've become this school year.  Here are a few examples.

I felt very displaced when I learned that I could not use the borders that I'd invested in and the bulletin board paper that I'd purchased to match my borders.  I did not want to take away the color that I've become so accustomed to in an elementary classroom.  Now, I am excited to create a welcoming, comfortable, well-designed environment that features beautiful student work instead of commercial school decorations. 

I was resistant to the philosophy behind projects and inquiry-based teaching as well as the Reggio Approach.   I only wanted to do it for one hour.  I thought to myself... "OK, I can just get through the hour."  My prep was during our Reggio "time" and I loved that until half way through the year.  Then, I stopped taking my preps because I became so engaged in the projects with the students.

I was terrified of writing with first graders.  Now, I can't wait to do more next year.  I made my first book with my students about a field study to the zoo, and I want to do so many more.

I'm not very artistic, or at least haven't been properly trained to be artistic.  Now, because I am learning too, I find myself helping my students to look closely, to see different lines and to find new ways to portray their drawing.

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All year, I have been looking for my assistant principal's approval.  I now realize that when I became engaged and excited about learning, design, authentic experiences and meaningful student work, I also became proud of myself and my students.  That my colleagues and my assistant principal are proud of me too is no surprise and such a confirmation.  

I've come so far.  I want this kind of learning to spread and happen all day long.

This is the kind of transformation that we would all love to see.  It is the kind of dramatic change in persepctive that makes teaching and learning and work in schools worth it.  When we see this kind of turn around in teachers or in students, everyone wants to shout for joy. Think of all the other transformations that come with this...lack of happiness to joy, resistance to taking on a challenge and working through it, discomfort to risk-taking, boredom to excitement, individuals to teams, hum drum to beating the drum....

Ashley and I are so fortunate to work with all kinds of schools and all kinds of teachers who are willing to take risks and to change...who are willing to grow and improve for the benefit of all the children they teach and all the colleagues with whom they work.  There is a  ripple effect created in this kind of transformation, in people and in school cultures.  This is the kind of momentum we all could use.

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From a Wonderful Newsletter...ExchangeEveryday

Every week, and sometimes more often, I receive a newsletter from Exchange Press called ExchangeEveryday.  My friend and colleague, Carol Hillman forwards it to me and I love getting it from her.  Recently, I officially signed up which is easy to do. This newsletter is filled with thoughtful articles and references on many subjects of interest to teachers and parents of young children.  The article below is one example. A few days ago, I forwarded it on to our other friends and colleagues at the Cramer Institute because it is so aligned with their work in asset-based thinking.  Kathy Cramer's new book, Lead Positive, is rich with stories about what can happen if we look for assets and build on them in our lives and when we work with others.

Ashley and I have been influenced by the work of the Cramer Institute and it is now fundamental to the way we work in schools.  This way of working seems to create energy and momentum in many ways, as well as a sense of possibility and reassurance and trust.  Below, find a simple story from ExchangeEveryDay that illustrates the power of starting with assets rather than deficits.  May we all take this way of being in the world to heart.

Supervision Advice from 1936 June 2, 2014A person can grow only as much as his horizon allows. -John Powell"Make the fault seem easy to correct."  This is one of the principles from Dale Carnegie's classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People.  Although this book was written in 1936, in 2013 it was still listed as a one of the nation's best-selling management books.  As Carnegie does throughout the book, he uses stories to illustrate this principle:"A bachelor friend of mine, about forty years old, became engaged and his fiancée persuaded him to take some belated dancing lessons.  'The Lord knows I needed some dancing lessons,' he confessed as he told me the story, 'for I danced just as I did when I first started twenty years ago.  The first teacher I engaged probably told me the truth.  She said I was all wrong; I would just have to forget everything and begin all over again.  But that took the heart out of me.  I had no incentive to go on.  So I quit her."'The next teacher may have been lying, but I liked it.  She said nonchalantly that my dancing was a bit old-fashioned perhaps, but the fundamentals were all right, and she assured me I wouldn't have any trouble learning a few new steps.  The first teacher had discouraged me by emphasizing my mistakes.  The new teacher did the opposite.  She kept praising the things I did right and minimizing my errors..."'Now my common sense tells me I will always be a fourth-rate dancer, yet... I know I am a better dancer than I would have been if she hadn't told me I had a natural sense of rhythm.  That encouraged me.  That gave me hope.  That made me want to improve.'"

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leafs a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

This week I went for a spring walk on the Trail Around Middlebury, an 18-mile path that encircles the town and links several hundred acres of town land and conserved properties, as well as schools and other local landmarks. The trail is open year-round to area residents and visitors.  The TAM’s continuing success is owed greatly to the generous permission of private landowners.

Boston and Vermont give us the chance to have two different experiences in time and space of the arc of the seasons.  This year's spring in Vermont is at least two weeks behind Boston and seems particularly glorious and gentle after such a very long, cold and hard winter.  Also, it is a bit easier to get into the woods in Vermont to see the wildness of spring.  On the trail, I was struck by the abundance of spring wildflowers, white trillium and yellow trout lily and the flowering serviceberry, all delicate and seemingly small treasures poking out of the brown carpet of leaves.

Accompanied by a oven bird on my walk, I was serenaded by the bird that says, "teacher, teacher, teacher!" in a loud voice.  I could even see him flying and alighting on branches just above me.  All the while, I was thankful to really see what was around me and to take my time and to love this spring landscape and all its sounds and sensations and delights.  This enjoyment and happiness in the natural world is largely due to my mother and all that she taught me by her side in the out- of-doors. Rachel Carson, in The Sense of Wonder, writes that we each need at least one adult who loves the natural world as our guide when we are young, and we also need lots of time to explore and play and imagine in natural landscapes. Both of these things I had and for that I am grateful.

A book that I could not put down is Ann Pelo's, The Goodness of Rain, Developing an Ecological Identity in Young Children.  Ann takes us on a year-long journey with her and a toddler in her care, as they explore outside every day delighting in discovery and adventure.  This book brought me home to my own beginnings and confirmed our natural inheritance as human beings to bond to the natural world in all its myriad forms.  We highly recommend this book! I sent it to my friend and author, Carol Hillman and she told me that she ordered 12 copies and was going to send them to parents it as baby gifts.

This subject is also the focus of the Opal Summer Symposium in June where I will be a part of the team that presents and reflects with participants on how we might best nurture children's relationship with the natural world.  Come if you can!

Tonight the peepers are peeping, the full moon is rising and the apple blossoms and lilacs are blooming.  Their fragrance fills the night.  May you be enfolded in the gentle spring wherever you are.

To All Mothers and Teachers

Mother by Ted Kooser

Mid April already, and the wild plums bloom at the roadside, a lacy white against the exuberant, jubilant green of new grass and the dusty, fading black of burned out ditches. No leaves, not yet, only the delicate, star-petaled blossoms sweet with their timeless perfume.

You have been gone a month today and have missed three rains and one nightlong watch for tornadoes. I sat in the cellar from six to eight while fat spring clouds went somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured, a storm that walked on legs of lightning, dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.

The meadowlarks are back, and the finches are turning from green to gold. Those same two geese have come to the pond again this year, honking in over the trees and splashing down. They never nest, but stay a week or two then leave.The peonies are up, the red sprouts burning in circles like birthday candles,

for this is the month of my birth, as you know, the best month to be born in, thanks to you, everything ready to burst with living. There will be no more new flannel nightshirts sewn on your old black Singer, no birthday card addressed in a shaky but businesslike hand. You asked me if I would be sad when it happened

and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house now hold in the dusty dry fists of their roots green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner, as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that. Were it not for the way you taught me to look at the world, to see the life at play in everything, I would have to be lonely forever.

Inspiring Work at Buffalo School 33

Last August, we started a new adventure partnering with School 33, a pre primary-eighth grade public school in Buffalo, NY.  We wrote about our first work with them last September.  Since then, Ashley has traveled monthly to Buffalo and also coached teachers and administration via Skype meetings.  Louise has accompanied Ashley on three of his trips. We just returned a few days ago from a two day session of professional development with all the teachers.  Louise worked with the pre-primary-second grade teachers and Ashley with third-eighth grade teachers.  What they are accomplishing is impressive.  The teachers had very little background in project-based learning before we began working with them in August. They had practically no experience in collaboration, in designing high quality, engaging learning environments or in making students' learning visible.

Now, they are reading together (Ron Berger's Ethic of Excellence), engaged in change and action and reflection such that there is real momentum.  They are tackling the most complex way of teaching and they have embraced it in varying degrees and they are all working hard.  This is a school with large classes and much diversity. Their task is daunting.  They are inspiring to us!

In order to achieve any level of fidelity with their goal, significant transformation in core beliefs has been ESSENTIAL…we've witnessed this sort of transformation with most of faculty in preprimary-5th.  Some are reticent to change.  I can’t do projects because I have to prepare these kids for the tests.  It is our experience that inquiry based projects, when developed with intelligent connections to Common Core Standards and 21st century skills result in very successful test results…in most cases HIGHER achievement.  It is also our experience that inquiry based projects, when developed with a keen sense of students passions and interests, result in much higher student functioning (far fewer behavior problems).

Our inspiration comes from those teachers who have changed their beliefs and have embraced these fundamental ideas.

• Real, lasting learning engages our whole self: mind, body, and emotions.
• Lasting learning results in authentic, high quality, meaningful work.
• As educators, our job is to design, organize, facilitate, and orchestrate the context and conditions for lasting learning.
• It is our job to follow, record, and compose an understanding of the lasting learning; and to assess and evaluate the students’ work and our own.

In Buffalo School 33, we have witnessed the following concrete manifestations of their changing beliefs:

• The classroom environments are cleaner, more organized, with materials more accessible to the children.
• The materials and provocations in the areas of the rooms and in the elementary investigations are more authentic, exciting, and generative.
• The teachers are following the students more mindfully...their observations are keen...they are taking time to reflect on the students' actions and inquiries.
• The teachers are composing documentation in one page journals, on blogs, and in large exhibitions in the hallways.
• The teachers are meeting together, in weekly and daily meetings.  They are having lunch together and talking about projects!
• The students are engaged.  Behavior problems are reduced.  Wonderful connections are being made from three-year-olds on up.

If this can happen in a public school that was deemed two years ago as "failing," with a majority demographic of free and reduced lunch, single parent households, mostly English language learners...then it can happen anywhere.