Why Do I Write?

I spent some time recently reflecting on my relatively short career as a principal.  The reflection came about as I prepared for a presentation that I am scheduled to give next week at the Literacy for All conference in Providence, RI where I will be discussing ways principals can use their own writing to support literacy initiatives in their schools.  In preparing the presentation, I found myself thinking a lot about my own writing... specifically why I write.  As I considered this idea, I decided that writing in my life falls into three general categories.

Necessity

There is a certain amount of writing that we all have to do out of necessity.  We may need to write a list, fill out an application, send an email, draft a proposal, dismiss a child from school or any of a wide variety of things that come up as part of our personal and professional lives.  Most adults are not able to escape at least some point in their day when they need to communicate something in writing.

Agreement and Understanding

There are other times, depending upon our specific life circumstances, when we have to write things down as a way of cementing an understanding, sharing information, communicating a message or providing direction.  For example, I have two children (aged 8 and 11) that, if allowed, would spend every free minute in front of some type of screen.  Left to their own devices (pun intended) they would bounce from television to Xbox to Kindle Fire for each of their waking minutes, shutting themselves off from the rest of the world and from the family.  

My wife and I have decided that this is not the way we want to raise our children.  Instead, we have chosen to ensure they have more balance in their lives and as a result have put adult limits on the amount of "screen time" they are allowed.  After much conversation, we decided to create a system where our kids could "earn" screen time based upon the completion of certain activities (playing outside, exercise, reading, chores, etc.) that would translate to a set number of minutes that they could "spend" on screen time.  After discussing the new expectations with the kids, we decided that we should type them out and post them on the refrigerator to ensure we all had a common expectation and common reference should there be any confusion.

Personal Reflection

In preparing for my presentation, I came across this quote from Anais Nin, "We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect." As I read this quote for the first time, I felt like it did a great job of encapsulating the way I feel about the power of writing.  For me, I find that taking the time to write is the best way to both do my thinking in the present and reflect upon the learning and life experiences that have brought me to that thinking.  

Those that know me well, know that I spend a lot of time thinking.  Some may even say that I perseverate a bit :-/  There are very few points during a day when I am not considering something I have read, an action I have taken, an upcoming conversation or any of a hundred other things.  The problem that I run into is that my thinking also bounces around a lot. Part of it is the way my brain works and part of it is the nature of being a principal.  The principalship throws new and interesting challenges at you multiple times a day.  Often those challenges are complex and need to be considered from more than one angle before a decision can be made and often my thinking bounces from one challenge to the next.

Additionally, principals have a responsibility for enhancing the culture within their school and community.  Leaders are key factors in championing the values of the organization, communicating them to all the stakeholders and ensuring that the organization lives up to those values.  In order to do this well, a leader has to take the time to organize his/her own thinking.  The message being communicated can not bounce around, meander or get lost.  This is where I find writing so helpful.  

Writing forces me to slow down, to consider my words carefully for their meaning, to organize my message, to consider my audience, and to follow my thinking to some sort of an end.  I use this type of writing a lot.  Often, it is never published.  It is only for me; it is a way to process my thinking and I find the practice helps both the writing I do publish as well as clarifying the messaging I do with oral communication.  I have also found that writing for this purpose makes me better at the first two purposes I have laid out.  

Sharing of Ideas

As each year passes in my life and in my time as a leader, I grow a deeper understanding of the ways that our communication affects our relationships.  If we agree on the definition of communication to be a two way sharing of ideas, of both taking in the ideas of others and the sharing of your own ideas then we can see  how integral communication is to building strong relationships.   I have learned that taking the time to write ultimately helps me in my communication skills which in turns strengthens my relationships.  The written word allows us the time to experience our thoughts in the moment, as we type them, while simultaneously bringing previous life experience, thoughts and ideas to bear on our current thinking.  

May the Force be With You!

In preparing for my opening day speech for my staff each year, I always look for a theme that can help support our school culture and give us a continual message that carries through the year. Throughout the summer, I struggled to find a theme that would work for the upcoming school year until attending a conference in August. The conference focused on student mental health in schools. During one of the keynotes, Charles Appelstein was discussing the importance of building relationships with students and he reenacted a famous battle scene from Star Wars as part of his speech... at that point I had my theme.

In preparing for the speech I did a little homework on the Star Wars franchise to see if I could figure out its overall value, figuring it had to be high for Disney to pay over $9 billion in 2012 just for the rights to the franchise. In reading, I have learned that the franchise has stacked tens of billions of dollars on top of each other through movie ticket sales, games, toys, TV series, rentals and clothing since the first movie came out in 1977. It has been an international phenomenon for multiple generations and has captured a whole new audience with the release of the 7th movie in the series this past year.

Given that understanding, sometimes I forget that there are people that have never seen the movies and therefore the reference to “May the Force be with You” may be lost on some. Therefore I thought I would highlight some of the main points/themes in the movies to help the larger point of this post and my speech make sense.  

So, the first thing is that Star Wars is science fiction and takes place “a long time ago, in galaxy far, far away.”  The Star Wars franchise is also constructed on a classic good vs. evil story line and this mystical thing called “The Force.” The Force is best described by a main character in Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi, “Well, the Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.” Now there is a light side to the force and the dark side to the force. The light side is the side that Jedi’s use. They are a best described as monk-like knights. They are the good guys. The bad guys are the Sith and they use the dark side of the force. This dichotomy creates a classic good vs. evil story line. 

Good vs.

Evil

So now that you have at least a rudimentary understanding of the a main theme and element in the Star Wars saga, let us return to the statement “May the Force be with You.” This phrase is used by the Jedi to wish each other luck and positive outcomes in the face of an impending challenge. It was a call to the light side of the force and the victory of good over evil, to resist the temptations of the Dark Side and to remain positive in the face of evil. 

As we start a new school year, I wanted to remind the staff to continue the great work that we did last year to create a school that is warm and welcoming to students. We discussed our need to keep a strong focus on the power of building relationships with students and the impact that it can have on their learning. I told them, "There will be many times throughout the year when the pressures of our life and our job will mount and become heavy upon us; times when these stresses will pressure us to react to students behaviors with punitive actions. It is in these times, when we are at our worst that we have to choose to respond to the child’s behaviors instead of react to them." 

Responding instead of reacting means that as a child raises his/her voice, we lower ours instead. It means naming the child’s behavior or choice as the thing that we are disappointed in or upset by, rather than the child him or herself. It means monitoring our own body language and body position.  For example, when a child is becoming out of control,being sure to approach him or her slowly, in a calm manner, with a relaxed posture.

I said to the staff, "We can not allow ourselves to be seduced by the Dark Side. The Dark Side is the place where we yell at kids, where we use cutting sarcasm, where we set limits on kids based upon our hang ups, beliefs and opinions. The Dark Side is where we only make some of our students believe that we really care about them… the “good” ones. The Dark Side is the place where we don’t make our students feel like we have the greatest job in the world and the distinct privilege of educating them."

So what do we do when we feel the lure of the Dark Side? What do we do when a child says something to us or does something to us that feels disrespectful or hurtful? What do we do when we are up to our eyeballs in paperwork and assessments? What do we do when we don’t feel supported in our work? What do we do when our personal life has turmoil and is putting pressure on us? 

I went to a presentation this summer by Charles Appelstein, a renowned clinical social worker who authored the book No Such Thing as a Bad Kid. He talked about the importance of developing a strong Observing Ego (an ability to look at situations without putting ourselves in the situation) and provided practical strategies to use; one of which inspired this speech. He offers these five strategies to keep our cool under pressure in the face of the Dark Side:

1. Think of the struggle in terms of time limits. Like if a child has been pushing your buttons all day take a look at the clock and see how much time until the end of the day or until your next break from that child and tell yourself, “I can do anything for 90 minutes.” 
2. Visualize the end of the day and driving home. Think about driving home with a big smile on your face proud of the way you chose to respond to the students instead of react. 
3. Think about the future. Think about how your decision to respond now will build deeper relationships with your students going forward and make your life easier in the long run. 
4. Think about at M.A.S.H unit: When I am at my worst, I need to give my best.  Here he references the television show where even when the doctors were dead tired and wrung out, that when the helicopters arrived with new wounded soldiers they had to be at their best to try and save lives.  
5. And my favorite, Use the Force! – Draw from the positive energy of friends, colleagues, memories, family, etc....  whatever it takes to resist the Dark Side. 

The harsh truth is that only we can control our own behaviors. We won't because someone tells us too.  It is not because everything in our lives are going to work out perfectly so that we have nothing to worry about. It is not because we are only going to be sent perfect students that really don’t need to learn anything from us and never need reminders, encouragement, support or stability. It will only happen when each of us chooses to make building positive relationships with the students of our school a priority. When we take the time to consider how our behaviors may affect the students we connect with each day.

This video was shared with me by a kindergarten teacher and encapsulates the effect our interactions have on our students from the point of view of the student.

I closed by saying the following to my staff, "So as we go into this school year, let us be Jedi Knights in the way we interact with kids.  Set ambitious goals for your students and support them in getting there, get to know your students, their lives, their interests and their motivations, build positive energy in your learning environment, talk with your students. Disney world advertises itself as the “Happiest Place on Earth.” Let’s take that crown from them and make Forestdale (our school) the Happiest place on Earth. And as you move forward this year and face the challenges that will surely come “May the Force be With You!”

What I Learned From My Kids and Snowboarding

During the last few days of the February School Vacation, my family and I spent a few days in Lincoln, NH.  As a part of this trip, my two children (ages 10 and 7) attempted snowboarding for the first time.  During my journey as a parent, I have come to know that I often learn a lot about myself and life by watching my children learn new things.  This trip was no different.

Happiness does not come from the conditions - I have been skiing or snowboarding for over 20 years and in that time have skied all over New England and Colorado.  In those travels, I have experienced all sorts of snow conditions and have self-admittedly developed a bit of snobbery about the snow conditions.  I am always comparing the conditions to some of the best days I have experienced and if they don't live up, I am disappointed.
I think part of this is natural and occurs to all of us.  Whether it is the snow conditions or some

other aspect of our lives, I think we all sometimes find ourselves measuring the quality of an experience by the conditions we find ourselves in.The day my kids learned to snowboard the conditions were tough; the mountain was crowded, icy underneath and covered with hard-packed, granular man-made snow.  These conditions were making myself and many other seasoned skiers grumpy.  However, as I picked my kids up from their lessons at the end of the day, they had smiles from ear to ear and all the talk for the rest of the weekend was about how much they loved snowboarding.  They helped remind me that our enjoyment of life events and the joy we find in general need not be tied to the conditions surrounding those events.  Rather, my kids showed me that the experience itself is where the fun and smiles are.

​Learning can hurt sometimes -  Anyone that has watched someone learn to snowboard knows that it is a lot like watching a toddler learn to walk... a lot of time is spent picking yourself up off the ground.  There is no denying it, learning new things can often be very difficult.  Some things are harder to learn than others and the process can sometimes be frustrating and painful.  
For some children it may be learning to read that they are finding difficult, or building a strong

sense of number.  Other children may experience hurt feelings as they are learning to interact with their peers socially.  Regardless of the learning situation, my children continue to show me that learning includes difficult lessons sometimes and that as a parent, as much as I want to, I can not protect them from all those instances.

​Easy things can become difficult when new challenges are added - For my birthday this year, one of my family members generously gave me a GoPro camera.  I brought it to the mountain to capture all sort of video of my kids' early experiences with snowboarding.  Being new to using the camera I do not think I attached the bracket correctly to my helmet, as it fell off part way through the day.  So when I went to pick up my kids from their lesson and take them down a trail, I had to use my hand to hold the camera and film them while snowboarding next to them.  
Now, while I am certainly not going to be competing in the Olympics, I do consider myself a pretty competent snowboarder.  However, the second I tried to add the skill of video recording to snowboarding, it was as if my legs forgot what they were supposed to do.  It is funny how sometimes the simplest change to an activity we are familiar with can make it feel completely new and unfamiliar.  
In retrospect, I should not have been surprised by this as it is something that we see all the time in education.  A student may be doing just fine with their reading progress in their early years.  She may be able to read grade appropriate books with fluency, make meaning of the text and use multiple strategies to figure out unfamiliar words.  Then she may encounter something new (like dialogue for example) and for a short

period of time present like a "struggling reader" as she learns how to assimilate this new print concept into her reading repertoire.  However, with a little patience and quality coaching from a teacher, the child is able to integrate this new concept into her reading and return to the same level of fluency and meaning making.
This is the learning process and it never ends.  Psychologist Lev Vygotsky described this area just beyond what we currently know and understand the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and determined that it is in the ZPD, with proper support and coaching, is where the highest levels of learning occur.  Simply put, struggle is part of the learning process and our role as adults is to provide just enough support to students to help them muddle through until they have mastered the skill/concept themselves.

Who knows what adventure next awaits the Smith clan, but I am sure whatever it is, I will leave it having learned more from my kids than I will have probably taught them.