Author: Bret Olson

Strengths Quest Professional Development

Bret Olson6 Comments

Happy American Thanksgiving everyone!  It would be remiss of me not to at least give a moment of thanks to each and every one of you for all that you do for our kids, “Thank you!”  Being the “communicator” that I am, I wanted to make sure I said that before I got off and rambling on something else…

The last couple days have been a wonderful opportunity for us to look a little deeper at ourselves and think about how we can use what is already within us to be better teachers.  Going through the Strengths Finder activities yesterday really helped me to begin thinking about how my strengths can be maximized to make me a better educator and leader.  Another aspect that was pointed out a few times are the dynamics of how different people and teams work together based on the combinations of strengths within the group.  Understanding the 34 different strength themes is a very important step toward building a strong collaborative environment.  Also, so is knowing each others strengths.  To that end, I’ve followed the example of a friend of mine from SAS (Singapore) and added my five strongest themes to my email signature.  In so doing, I’m hoping to inspire some of you to do the same.  Now that we all have this common context, it seems only logical that we use it to maximize the strengths of the whole team, not just ourselves!  Feel free to stop and modify your signature now 🙂

The work that we do together on a daily basis is far too important to do alone.  Looking around the stage yesterday and contemplating all of the different strengths we have as a collective group is astonishing.  The sheer wealth of knowledge and experience we had in that room could, combined, be strong enough to move mountains.  As a school we already do a very good job of collaborating and working together.  Deliberately focusing on our strengths will only lead to better things down the road!!  I’m a big sports fan and I love sports analogies despite the fact that so many of them sound cliché.  However, I’m going to use one…even the best players in the history of team sports couldn’t do it alone…Michael Jordan, Pele, Mia Hamm, Jerry Rice, or Wayne Gretzky wouldn’t have stood a chance without the help and support of their teammates.  Take a second and close your eyes, think about the stage on Thursday afternoon…there were a lot of amazing minds up there, feel free to engage with as many of those as possible!!

It’s very inspiring to sit along side all of you and think about how much collective intelligence is in the room, thank you!  It’s also inspiring to think about all the potential in the world…you futurists know what I’m talking about…so take a few minutes to play with this super cool toy from the BBC.  It’s a customizable look at how the Earth has changed since you were born and a fun way to think about all that has happened around you so far during your life.  I’m only 17 years old on Mars, my heart has beat 1 billion times already in my life, there have been 385 major earthquakes since I was born, and the average life expectancy in the world has increased 7.5 years (Earth years) in my life time…what about you?

Growth Mindset and EAL Students

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I’m writing a little earlier than normal this week because I’m away tomorrow (Friday) as I’ll be attending the SIS EAL Conference at Shekou International School.  It is being coordinated, in part, by a friend of mine from my time in Italy and the keynote speaker is EAL guru Dr. Virginia Rojas.  This conference has produced nothing but rave reviews in the past (some of you have been fortunate enough to attend) and I expect nothing less from this weekend!

Ever since I began in education I’ve been working with EAL populations.  My first classes in America were, in fact, comprised almost entirely of students who spoke a language other than English while at home.  I guess you could say that I don’t really have an understanding of what it would be like to teach a non-EAL population; I actually hadn’t come to that realization until just now!  When I think about all of the EAL students I’ve had over the years I’m always amazed at how fast these students can grow and excel in English and, usually, they do it in an incredibly short amount of time.  We’ve certainly seen this happen time and again at our school, take a second to think about all the incredible students you’ve encountered…in some cases it’s awe-inspiring to consider what they’ve achieved.

For many of these students, whether they know it or not, it’s the Growth Mindset that allows them to be so successful.  They know that with hard work, practice, risk taking and a decent amount of failure they will be able to learn English.  Interestingly enough, I don’t think many of these kids even realize what they are doing; this is just how they live their life.  On the other end of the spectrum are the kids who have seemingly given up and don’t put in the effort.  Last year we looked at Carol Dweck’s work in Mindset, a book I’ve gone back to a few times to re-read.  At one point Dweck discusses “Students Who Don’t Care”, she does doesn’t believe that this is really possible.  Before she launches into a discussion about Growth-Minded Teachers (a group we should all aspire to join) she says about these particular students, “It’s common for students to turn off to school and adopt an air of indifference, but we make a mistake if we think any student stops caring.”

Almost every single student at our school who is seemingly “turned off to school” is an EAL student.  Perhaps there’s causation perhaps not, but there is no denying that there is a correlation.  Take some time to think about those kids who seem “turned off” in your class and consider them in a different light for a moment.  Is there something that you could do to encourage them to turn back on?

I’ll leave you with that for now.  You all know me well enough to realize that I’m going to be coming at you fast and furious with EAL strategies and ideas next week 🙂  Enjoy your Friday and the weekend…get outside, it’s supposed to be a BEAUTIFUL weekend!!  Don’t forget that Jerry Rice is still in town, in case you didn’t get enough at Wednesday’s assembly.

Teachers Make…

Bret Olson2 Comments

Let me start with THANK YOU!!

You’ve made it, we’re more than halfway through the longest haul of the school year!  This 11 week stretch is an exhausting time that wears hard on teachers.  I know many of you have battled, are battling, or will battle colds, flus, and just general exhaustion.  The kids feel it too but it manifests in a little different way.  They become restless and antsy.  They seemingly forget all about why they come to school.  With the end of Quarter One and parent conferences now in the rear view mirror, students no longer feel a sense of urgency and often times lose focus.  All of these things combined make this the most grueling 11 weeks of the school year. BUT, like I said, you’re more than halfway there, thank you!!

In order to get you to the winter break in one piece I’m asking you to do a few things this weekend and for the next few weeks:

1.  Take care of yourself.  Eat well, get some exercise, and take a step away from school and enjoy the beautiful autumn weather we’ve been having.  If you’re not well, stay home and get the rest you deserve.

2.  Take care of each other.  I want to say thank you and congratulate you all for being so amazing to each other already!  Everyone who has stepped up to cook for others, bring them medicine, be someone to lean on, supported the musical/sports/MUN/ASAs; you are all immensely important to this community.  Without everyone’s support and passion this school/community wouldn’t be as amazing as it is!

3.  Smile.  Take a few moments to reflect on the amazing opportunity that we all have.  Canadian Thanksgiving has passed and the American version is just around the corner but there’s no reason that you can’t stop and collect your thoughts in order to appreciate the wonderful lives we have.

4.  Read (and watch if you have a VPN) this poem.  This is from one of the most well-known poets to come out of the poetry slam movement, Taylor Mali.  If you’ve never heard of him before…be warned, his stuff is awesome!!!

http://www.taylormali.com/poems-online/what-teachers-make/ (Read)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGKm201n-U4 (Watch, with a VPN)

Thank you again 🙂

Inspiration from Harvard Graduate School of Education

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This week I had a whole other topic written out and then I came across some great stuff.  I was reading through a few of my older Marshall Memos when I stumbled upon some awesome videos.  If you follow this link you can see Eight 8-minute talks about education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education:  http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/14/09/8×8-hgse-faculty-share-their-bold-ideas-improve-education

I highly recommend any of the eight videos but these specific few may be more relevant to our context than the others.  Here are the relevant titles along with Kim Marshall’s brief summaries of each.  Do your students a favor and take 8 minutes to watch one of these (or more) videos.

• Karen Brennan: Getting Unstuck – Helping students and teachers move beyond using social media and use computers more powerfully. Brennan describes using ScratchEd, a platform for creating projects, and students’ problem-solving strategies when they’re stuck.

• Todd Rose: The End of Average (Bret’s personal favorite) – What neuroscientists have found about how differently people remember and process information, leading to the conclusion that we can’t understand individual brains by using group averages. The same goes for how we deal with students; we must treat them as individuals, which we now can do better with recent advances in classroom technology.

• Karen Mapp: Linking Family Engagement to Learning – Relationships between schools and families have to be relational, interactive, collaborative, developmental, and linked to what students are learning, says Mapp, so that families can be more effective supporting learning at home. In particular, Mapp is critical of traditional open-house meetings in schools.

• Howard Gardner: Beyond Wit and Grit  – Our understanding of “wit” has been expanded to include multiple intelligences, says Gardner, and we now realize the importance of “grit” – the cluster of non-cognitive skills. But these are not enough. Gardner believes we also need a moral dimension. “You can have plenty of grit, and multiple wits,” he says, “but they need to be directed towards becoming a good person, a good worker, and a good citizen… There’s a ‘triple helix’ of good work and good citizenship: excellence, ethics, and engagement.”

Building Positive Student-Teacher Relationships

Bret Olson2 Comments

This week we finally got to one of my favorite initiatives at SCIS, our SIPs program.  The opportunity to work with colleagues and grow as educators is an energizing and inspiring experience for me.  Our SIPs plan this year has been designed to focus on our six major “look fors” as well as help to integrate technology into our classrooms.  This past Wednesday I was fortunate enough to present with three of our brave colleagues.  I presented my SIP on Building and Fostering Positive Student-Teacher Relationships.  For those of you who were in the Google Sketchup session with Ross I’d like to share the general premise of what was happening across the hall…

As educators we are responsible for our students for more than 7 hours a day, five days a week.  We are the adults that have the most regular contact with these students, in almost every case they spend more time with us than with their parents.  They come to us during one of the most tumultuous periods of their lives and want nothing more than to be believed in, trusted, and cared about.  Middle School students want to fit in and they want to feel that they are important.  Last week when I visited classes as a student I was on the watch for “feeling like a nuisance” but I couldn’t find it…we already have a very good positive culture here at SCIS.  I, however, am a big Jim Collins fan and want to see us take our school “from good to great”.

I’ve been informed by a certain High School math teacher that my two cents “have turned into more like 8 cents” so I’m going to leave it at that for today but, as promised in my SIP, I am attaching a number of great links about building and fostering positive student-teacher relationships and classroom culture:

Trying it Myself: Doing what we ask the students to do

Bret Olson1 Comment

Last weekend I read a great blog post written by Grant Wiggins, who is a leader in the field of educational reform and is perhaps most well known for co-authoring Understanding by Design.  This blog post wasn’t about UbD though, it was actually Wiggins sharing a story of a teacher turned Learning Coach.  This Coach had done what many school leaders have been recommended to do but never find the time to try; she followed the schedule of a student for the whole day.  She experienced school from the student’s perspective, doing the work, taking the tests, and participating in class.  So I was motivated to try it myself…

This Coach made three key observations, disturbing observations in fact, about how kids were experiencing school.  Now, to be fair, she did this with High School students so it’s not exactly aligned to the Middle School context but I was a little scared just the same…I mean, her “Key Takeaways” were frightening.  So what did I find while I was a Middle School student for a day???

Let’s use her three takeaways to guide the discussion:

1.  “Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting.”

First off, I won’t argue the point that sitting is exhausting.  It’s boring, your body starts to fall asleep, and your brain doesn’t get as much oxygen (think about how bad your kids, and maybe you, want to move – bouncing legs, rocking chairs, fidgeting and all!)  However, in my day as a Middle School student I most certainly didn’t sit all day!  In one class, I have to admit, we didn’t do much moving but I was still engaged in the lesson and didn’t feel too exhausted by the sitting.  In my other three classes I was moving a majority of the time.  I had a group project to work on with my four table mates which allowed me to get up and move around the room for about half the class.  I had a Science lab that had me moving around for almost the entire period and I had a music lesson that had me playing for almost the whole class period.  Honestly I was a bit tired, but not from sitting!

2.  “High school students are sitting passively and listening during approximately 90% of their day.”

Now, as I mentioned, this woman was a High School Coach, but I think the worry is still the same for us – we don’t want our kids sitting passively all day long.  So how was my day?  Well, as you saw in the first takeaway, I was active for a good portion of the day.  AND, even when I was sitting I wasn’t passive and listening the whole time.  In one class we were sitting in our seats but having a lively discussion about the Daily Question which engaged us in the day’s topic and got us off to a great start.  Overall I would say that I spent about 25% of my class time that day sitting passively and listening, a far cry from 90% and if spread out through the day in different classes then most certainly a tolerable amount.

3.  “You feel a little bit like a nuisance all day long.”

I’ll explain this a little bit first.  What she meant is that students are constantly being told “to be quiet and pay attention.”  She also talked about hearing a lot of “sarcasm and snark directed at students”.  These things are most definitely things to watch for and look to eliminate from your classroom.  However, during my day as a Middle School student I have to say that I didn’t feel like a nuisance at all.  This was actually an area that I was focusing on a lot; I was waiting to be told to be quiet but it didn’t happen once!  That is not to say that my classes were totally silent and obedient the entire time but the teachers all had good communication skills and were able to bring their class back to focus without making the kids feel like a nuisance.  I can honestly say, despite the fact that I was really looking hard at this point, I never once felt like the teacher was annoyed or found students to be a nuisance – it was a warm and welcoming environment all day long, something I know our kids appreciate!

So what does all this mean for you?  Obviously this is a very small sample size (I hope to continue this practice).  However, when you think about these three “Key Takeaways” and then think about your typical classroom, what do you realize?  Are your kids exhausted, are they sitting passively, or do they feel like a nuisance?  I strongly recommend that you take a look at this blog post and see some of the recommendations she makes to avoid these things from happening in your class.  It is an inspirational piece in that regard, it makes you question your classroom and what you’re doing to help the students’ learning environment.

http://www.teachthought.com/teaching/teachers-shadowing-students/

The Freedom of Choice

Bret Olson1 Comment

Today I’m writing as I sit in the back of the advanced guitar rehearsal session at our awesome 2014 Music Festival and thinking about last year when I sat in the beginning guitar rehearsal with these very same kids…it’s amazing to see how much they’ve grown in so many aspects over the last year but particularly in their guitar skills (especially since my skills have gone backward over that same time!)  Their dedication and motivation to learn and grow is impressive…it got me to thinking.

Our music program here at SCIS is mandatory for all Middle School students but the fact that we provide so much ‘choice’ for our students has led to a music program that thrives.  Our students get to choose, not only their music class, but their instrument too.  The positive energy around campus during the Music Festival stems directly from the enjoyment our students get from learning and playing their instruments, awesome stuff!

Choice is extremely important in education for many reasons but, in my opinion, one of those reasons sticks out more than the others.  Last week I wrote about the importance of curiosity and I believe that choice is directly related, in that they both spark people’s intrinsic motivation to learn.  Every one of us has an innate desire to feel competent and at the same time have the freedom to do what we enjoy.  Choice lets our students pursue their passions while also putting them in the position to feel successful.  The intrinsic reward for achieving success with a self-selected goal is tremendous and spurs even further motivation to continue growing.

Another area in education that allows for choice is allowing students to demonstrate their learning by choosing a method that suits them.  Now, this doesn’t mean a complete free for all but no two students are identical and each has their own strengths (and weaknesses).  Allowing students to choose between a selection of options for demonstrating their learning can be an extremely effective way of engaging learners who may otherwise be disinterested.  Writing a song to demonstrate understanding of vocabulary words, designing a math game to show comprehension of algebraic concepts, or creating a melody to prove mastery of strumming techniques in guitar are all examples of ways that students could share their learning while also choosing their own path.

Give some thought to how you currently incorporate student choice into your classroom as well as how you could increase the amount of opportunities for choice.  Don’t forget to come out tomorrow and enjoy the fruits of all the motivation and skills that our kids have demonstrated over the last two days in their rehearsals and sectionals!  (I know the advanced guitar will rock!)

A great piece about student choice:  http://www.edutopia.org/lesson-engagement-student-choice

Curiosity May Have Killed The Cat, But Thankfully We’re Not Cats!

Bret Olson2 Comments

Over the summer I watched and played with my nephews (two and four years old) as they explored and played with their Legos and other newfangled toys.  I realized that there were two likely traits of a successful toy.  The first trait of a successful toy, for my nephews anyway, is that you can throw it, hit (with) it, or kick it.  The second, is that the toy sparks curiosity.  This is what I want to talk about today, maybe I’ll get to the throwing, hitting, and kicking another (more stressful) day 🙂

One of my favorite parts of working with young people is the opportunity to watch them be curious.  In time, I have come to strongly believe that curiosity is one of, if not the most important character strength in successful people.  Each day at break as I make my usual tour of the café, courtyard, and soccer field I keep an eye out for students who are lingering on the periphery.  When I first started I was concerned about these students, worried they weren’t making connections with their peers.  Over time, however, I’ve come to understand that many of these kids are just pursuing their curiosity of the world around them.

During China Trips last year it was wonderful to see the wide eyes and ‘ohs and ahs’ as kids explored the outdoors.  The opportunities for exploration of curiosities in that setting are almost endless.  Similarly, the chances for students to independently pursue curiosity exists here at school as well.  As an example, there was a sixth grader last year who took a direct route to the bushes near the field at lunch.  It took me a couple days to realize that this was a pattern and when I wandered over to see what had drawn her curiosity she explained that there was a spider who had spun a web and she was admiring the geometric patterns while hoping that it would trap something.  She was curious, she wanted to watch and wonder in awe about how this tiny creature had created something so seemingly perfect but at the same time she was concerned that it wasn’t “working” because nothing had yet been trapped.

Curiosity is a character strength that is, perhaps, more easily fostered than actually taught.  I couldn’t have paid some students to be interested in that spider web but others would have had the same sense of curiosity and awe if they had been exposed to that wonder.  They, however, hadn’t gone searching for it like this little girl had done – which is where we come in.  There is currently a lot of research going into character education and I think we’re still a ways away from any definitive answers as to how we could teach some of these character strengths.  However, we can facilitate them and foster their growth when the time is right.  So, how are you helping to encourage curiosity in your classroom and beyond?

Our students have incredibly curious and creative young minds.  Feel free to allow them the opportunity to open up and explore new ideas.  Some of the greatest minds in the world have been successful because they’ve been freed of restricted thinking and have been allowed to think openly about their ideas.  If curiosity really killed the cat then I guess we’re all lucky not to be cats…open yourselves to exploration and let’s do the same for our kids!!

“I have no special talents.  I am only passionately curious.” – Albert Einstein

“Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why.” – Bernard Baruch

“Curiosity is the lust of the mind.” – Thomas Hobbes

There is a fast-growing movement in education right now around 20-Time.  It is based on a similar concept perviously used at Google and other companies to encourage the pursuit of passions during working hours.  I’m not asking you to turn over one class every five days to the pursuit of curiosity but I think there is definitely room for including pieces of this concept in our day-to-day lessons.

20-Time informational website:  http://www.20timeineducation.com/

An interesting article about Google and 20-Time:  http://www.wired.com/2013/08/20-percent-time-will-never-die/

Two Cents of Happiness

Bret Olson1 Comment

Happy Friday and Happy October Holiday!!  In fact, we’re a pretty happy group around here these days 🙂  Not that it’s always perfect but, then again, when is life ever perfect?  I’ve been reading a lot about “The Science of Happiness” recently and while it’s been a personal interest for me it has also turned into a bit of a professional exploration as well.  A couple weeks ago I wrote about the impact we can all have by taking a positive outlook on things and I got a lot of great feedback from a number of people, thank you!  What I’d like to ask you to think about today is how all of that positivity adds up to make something (us) awesome.

Some of you will remember a few years ago back to when we started the COAR initiative, the one that lives on today on many of our shirts.  That was started for a very specific reason, to build the positive culture here on our campus.  At the time there was a lot of focus on negativity and, even though it was a relatively small element, it was getting a lot of attention.  What we aimed to do was drown out the negative with an overwhelming sense of positivity and, I believe, we’ve done that.  That’s not to say that there is no longer negative but rather that we’ve done a much better job of focusing on the positives and enjoying the successes, of which there are many!

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been reading a lot about the “The Science of Happiness” and I’ve been looking at some of the ground-breaking work done by Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.  In 2005 she co-authored a paper that has become the ground work for a huge amount of theory behind positive thinking and living a positive lifestyle.  What I want to focus on today though, is what Fredrickson considers the “tipping point” between flourishing and withering.  Throughout her work, Fredrickson and her co-author Marcel Losada came to the conclusion that if you live your life with three positive emotions for every one negative emotion then you will have a remarkably high likelihood of flourishing in life.  I couldn’t help but take this “positivity ratio” and apply it to our Middle School.

The amazing thing that I see when I start thinking about our Middle School and all the awesome stuff that happens here is that we’re way beyond a 3-to-1 ratio here.  Our positive emotions outweigh our negative emotions, not just by three but by multiples of three!  Our Middle School celebrates awesomeness, our students ooze it, and our teachers are models of positivity.  Keep in mind, this 3:1 ratio was identified from research based on individuals but it only makes sense that this (or at least a similar) ratio could also apply to schools and other organizations.  From all of the reading that I’ve done, there are a lot of people who struggle to meet this ratio in their personal lives but, fortunately for me, I don’t believe that I work with many of them!  Nope, our Middle School is flourishing and it’s because of you!!!

Enjoy your October break everybody and travel safely!!!

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/are_you_getting_enough_positivity_in_your_diet (Are you Getting Enough Positivity in Your Diet by Barbara Fredrickson)

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/19/mathematics-of-happiness-debunked-nick-brown (To give fair billing, Fredrickson’s math has been challenged in recent years)

http://www.unc.edu/peplab/publications/Fredrickson%202013%20Updated%20Thinking.pdf (BUT, Fredrickson stands behind her research)

And in case you’d rather just dance with almost 500 Million other people http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Sxv-sUYtM

The (Growth) Mindset of a Teacher

Bret Olson3 Comments

Over the last couple weeks we’ve been getting all of our students through their first round of MAP tests, much to their dismay!  I was covering in a few of these classes and tried having a conversation with them about the idea of growth and celebrating just how far they’ve come at the end of the year; it seems like this whole concept just washes over them like a huge wave of “whatever Mr. Olson!”  I, however, take solace in the things I heard kids saying at the end of last school year.  As we finished up the MAP testing in late May I heard all sorts of conversations between kids, with me, with teachers, and with parents about the amount of growth they had made over the course of the year.  The mentality of our students has started to make a promising shift toward a growth mindset, especially for the kids who saw a significant amount of growth!  It was an awesome feeling to hear those kids talking (and bragging) that way.

We’ve talked a lot about growth mindsets, especially when we read Mindset by Carol Dweck, and we all buy into this theory for our kids.  There is great work being done by curriculum teams to plan differentiated work, for not only struggling students, but also for more advanced students who need a bit of challenge.  We all know that every student CAN learn when we meet them at their level; growth can and will happen!  We are working hard to ensure that every student has the chance to learn, whether today, tomorrow, or some time down the road.

Another reason that got me thinking about this idea of growth is our recent addition of the mini-observations and the coinciding feedback efforts.  I’ve had some awesome conversations with you based around what’s happening in your classrooms.  For me, some of the most rewarding parts of this process have been the conversations we’ve been able to have about the student-learning that we’re seeing.  To hear the excitement in your voices when you talk about the amazing things you’re seeing and doing with your students is energizing for me.  Coming back to the growth piece of this, it’s awesome to see all of the additions and changes that people have been making based on our conversations.  Good teachers are made from hard work, practice, and continuous learning.  Teachers don’t just fall off of trees, it takes a lot of effort to become a great teacher.   To see everyone working so hard to improve themselves on a day-to-day basis is inspiring…awesome!!

I’m attaching a great article summary to this email about five things that great teachers do to have an impact on student-learning.  The summary comes from the Marshall Memo, which is written by Kim Marshall.  It’s a great resource that comes out each week summarizing important topics in educational research and practice.