Giving Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope all of you that read this are having or had a great day with your family and loved ones. We had an awesome day at school on Wednesday providing over 160 families with Thanksgiving day meals. Over 100 volunteers showed up to help our community. Sally and Karen (our counselors) did a great job of organizing our lists, and the Benton Heights and Southbrook team really came together to get the job done. I said to the crowd, that sometimes I go home from work defeated and wondering if I'm worthy of such a tremendous task of leading this school and the challenges we face. It can be sometimes overwhelming. However, looking out and speaking to these volunteers reminds me that I don't have to do it all alone. I have you guys by my side! For that I am thankful.

Please share with those that you know my appreciation and the appreciation of our staff and our families for serving the community of Monroe. I have included a quote from one of our volunteers that was sent to me last night after the experience was over.

"Todays Thanksgiving turnout and delivery was amazing. I cant tell you how much joy we all got out of delivering those dinners to families of our own school. I wanted to thank you and Southbrook for allowing us the opportunity do this..it sure made my Thanksgiving! =)"

Another teacher brought one of her students with her, yes that's right, she went to his house on his day off from school and brought him along to do this community service project. In knowing this person I know her intent was for him to see all the good that is this world. By all the good I mean, the giving, the volunteers, the work effort, the caring, etc. etc. What this young man saw today will undoubtedly impact this young man for a long time. It just may be the experience that helps him turn the corner.

We having been talking about how things go viral (in a good way), you know something starts with one person and then spreads like wild fire among a community, or our society. Here's an example. You can check out when your done reading.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwRo0iCvoYE

Yesterday we went viral in Monroe! Thanks, for all you did!

I am thankful for a loving staff, a loving church, a loving family but most importantly a loving God!

What a great day!

Mike

Chuck E. Cheese

I find it pretty clever that Chuck puts a big E. for his middle initial instead of going with the obvious Chukie Cheese. It show's he comes from class. Last week I received a calendar request from my wife for Wednesday (Veterans Day). The subject line said "family day don't make any plans". I know better than to decline that invitation on my calendar. I may be 6'7" but when the 5'2" Italian says those words, I know to back off of my busy schedule and put in my time with the family.

Well for "family day" I had planned for us to go on a hike up to Morrow Mt. or possibly Cane Creek. As you know the weather didn't cooperate with our plans so we ended up at Chuck E. Cheese. What a way to spend a day off from an Elementary School Principal job, surrounded by 400 wild and crazed kids. We arrived around 12:00, the scene reminded me of our school each morning when we unload the buses and open the breakfast line. Organized chaos at it's best. The kids of course found all the bells whistles and must to be exciting. We found a table and gave Nick and Lily their tokens. Fifteen minutes later Nick was back and Lily had half of her tokens still in her little cup. You see Nick had found a game that was stimulating to him. He popped token after token after token into this game, he couldn't control his new addiction to this game. Ability to conserve, lost. Lily on the other hand was more curios than anything. She wandered and wondered what she wanted to do next. She tried a little of this and a little of that. Content on just a taste of each thing off the menu and not spending all of her tokens on one thing.


What does this have to do with school. Think of your classroom as Chuck E. Cheese for minute, specifically think of your literacy block. Chuck's engineers know how to set the place up. You provide a little of something for everyone. They even have a playground for those kids like Nick that run out of their tokens. Our classrooms are the same way. We have students that lose their ability to manage their time because they get so caught up in what they are reading or the project they are working on. In some cases things they shouldn't be doing right? These are the students that get caught up in the long chapter books they just can't put down. The kids that will write until we have to physically rip the pencil from their paws. We also have students that like a little bit of this and a little bit of that. For some that "little bit" we talk about needs to be a little bit longer. These our are student that love short stories or non-fiction. Neither is bad, one is not better than the other. We as teachers need to learn to mold and shape our students to have both habits of reading.

My point is balance. How are you finding the right balance for your students? Are you working to find the right books for your students to be in? Are you challenging your kids to try different activities to diversify themselves? Is your classroom library stimulating enough or organized enough that students can do the little bits and the big bits? Some of you are working very hard on the structure and consistency of your literacy block. I challenge you to continue to do this. I challenge you to know your students and make your literacy block like Chuck E. Cheese. Some thing for everyone!

I really like that "E."

Playfully Yours,

Mike

Authentic Excellence

Today we celebrated excellence. 84 Benton Heights Tigers were recognized for academic excellence in the first nine weeks of the 2009-2010 school year. With these 84 students came, parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and even a few friends of the family. Altogether we were blessed to have over 200 folks in our cafeteria this morning. So much so that I didn't even get a biscuit, I guess that was God taking care of my prayer to overcome gluttony today.

I recently heard someone say that today's excellence doesn't equal excellence from 10 years ago, or 20 years ago. That for one to be truly excellent there must be some authenticity to the honor to which they are receiving. He went on to say that sometimes we are quick to reward for merit or achievement and it becomes a norm and we are not truly recognizing excellence. I related this to making sure every child gets a chance to be the line leader or the terrific kid. This is not a slam on any of these things. I do have a part of me that says everyone should get a chance to be those things. However, I agee with the statement of authenticity. Bottom line, some rewards are not for everyone. I will never be the MVP of the NBA, I'll never make the cut on the PGA tour. Just because people like me and that I'm a good person doesn't mean I should get these awards. I don't think honor roll should be given out like trick or treat candy, and I'm not saying it was. Our students should have to get A's the old fashion way, "earn them". (Remember that commercial?)

Let's get to the point. How do you recognize authentic excellence in your classroom? Did you recognize your students that were on the honor roll in some special way today in your classroom? Did you tell them how proud you were of them? Did you build them up in front of their peers? Excellence begets excellence, translation - this special attention will spread fast throughout our building. When students see us recognizing these positive things in an authentic way they will work harder to achieve these great things. Not every student is an honor roll student; however each student has the opportunity to be authentically excellent. Maybe it's Johnny's first day that he turned in his homework today. Have you recognized Johnny for this? Did you tell him how proud you were? This is authentically excellent for Johnny, he should get a reward for this, but there should be some type of recognition.

I had a conversation with a good friend of mine the other day. She told me that she thought she was going to get a promotion in her job. She felt like she had worked hard to do all things her boss had asked her to do. She didn't get the promotion. Why? doing the things you are supposed to do isn't authentically excellent and should not be rewarded. Doing something out of the ordinary that goes above and beyond is what should be rewarded.

I want to personally congratulate those of you that go above and beyond and are authentically excellent. I also personally want to congratulate all of our students for their authentic academic excellence for the first nine weeks. One last thing, as a coach I would always say that big plays are contagious. Translation ... if one of our players, made a great steal and went in for a dunk, and that was followed by a great stop on defense then surely another great offensive play would happen, because excellence begets excellence. More times than not this did happen, a great possession, taking time of the clock and scoring, a big three point shot, or getting fouled and going to the line after making the shot (and one). This is true in your classrooms as well. Keep pushing your students, have high standards and celebrate the opportunities when authentic excellence is witnessed.

Authentically,

Mike

One Size Fits All

Yeah right! I was 6' 2" in the fifth grade and have had a few embarrassing encounters with the whole one size fits all craze. I have to say, for the typical kid growing up the one size fits all approach is a great way to buy clothes, you typically can't go wrong. But does the same hold true in other arenas as well? No!

Most parents will tell you that what worked to get one of your children to sleep at 2:00 in the morning did not work for the second. Or that because your son ate the whipped up sweet potatoes, doesn't necessarily mean that your daughter will eat them.

I'm learning this all too quickly. For Nick, school comes easily, he doesn't really have to work at it. He became a reader naturally, it seemed that one day he came home and could read. For Lily it's different. We are working with her to identify letter sounds and to use that strategy to decode unfamiliar words. She has a great site word vocabulary, but struggles with unfamiliar words because of some phoneme challenges.

I have continually been asked, or should I say told, by some people who are very close to me in our building that there is a fear of what exactly consistency and structure translates to. Do all the Who's in Whoville need to be whoing the same way? No! That is not how consistency and structure is applied in this situation. There is no one size fits all.

I do not expect to see the same lesson going on in all six classrooms with the same vocabulary. I do expect everyone to be teaching similar standards, from the same adoption (Investigations), with similar strategies. However, it very rarely looks the same, and that's a good thing, because all of our students are different. They all have different needs. Even in your own classroom what you do for one child should be much different than what you do for others. Think of Bill Murray in Ground Hog's Day or Jim Carey in "The Truman Show". These scenarios although very dramatized are not what help us become better educational leaders.

Please don't take this message to mean that we can now be wild and free. My stance is still the same and we are making some great strides to make our instructional day more meaningful for all our students. With Structure, we need to be providing the framework for our students to be successful each and every day. With Consistency - there should be no surprises for our students when they walk into our classrooms. Should my classroom, mirror that of my grade level colleagues? Yes, but it's a carnival mirror. You may be stretching in one direction that is different than your neighbor.

In all my four years as Principal at BH I have not seen as much teacher growth than I have seen in these first 12 weeks of school. I thank you for that and encourage you to continue to seek ways to improve and try on some new things, no matter what the size.