Bret’s $.02

Starting in August of 2013 I began writing a small piece for our weekly staff notes. The not-so-clever name for this section became “Bret’s Two Cents” as it wasn’t a long write-up (they’ve gotten longer, sorry!) but rather some brief thoughts usually tied to a professional reading or video. These writings were my first foray into regular professional writing. Over time this practice has become one of the most important parts of my professional growth. I’ve continued these writings because I enjoy the process and also because I believe that sharing great resources is part of my responsibility as an educator…enjoy, and I’d love to hear your two cents worth of feedback :)

Thank you! Thank You!!

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Thank you! Thank you to all of you for all of the hard work and time that you dedicate to helping our students to be successful. I know that the countless extra hours you put into planning, grading, re-teaching, re-assessing, and everything else often goes unappreciated. The kids see it as annoying and bothersome, parents rarely communicate unless it is to complain, and too rarely do you hear the words “thank you!” As it turns out, not only is this unfair to you but it is unhealthy for those kids, parents, and well…everyone. According to an awesome article I read recently on Nautil.us “Since the year 2000, psychological research has tied gratitude to a host of benefits: the tendency to feel more hopeful and optimistic about one’s own future, better coping mechanisms for dealing with adversity and stress, less instances of depression and addiction, exercising more, and even sleeping better. ” So perhaps all those good feelings around the dinner table at Thanksgiving come from more than just full bellies and empty bottles of wine J The research also shows that all of this gratitude can come back around and benefit us too, “Gratitude is a sign of moral behavior and a motivator of others to behave morally towards us. Saying thanks often and loudly enough for others to hear thus translates into tangible rewards.” Again, thank you for all that you do!! On behalf of me and all of your students who may not say it…you’re appreciated!! I think this article is spot on, saying thank you feels good and it is certainly nice to hear as well…give it a try!!! Let me know how it goes, after all these are just my two cents!!

Nautil.us article

Teachers as Role Models

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Middle School is perhaps the most stressful time of a person’s life (at least until high school, ha!)…they are growing, changing, and trying to figure out who they are as people all while they are under constant pressure from their peers to “fit in”. How can they fit in when not one of them even knows who they are themselves?!? It blows my mind to think back to my middle school years and think that I even made it out alive, let alone somewhat normal 🙂 Which brings me to us, the teachers, the leaders at school, where do we fit into this messy and chaotic existence? I would suggest that it’s part of our responsibility to be role models and positive examples for these kids. They watch our every move, they mimic our language, they critique us, and they take countless unspoken lessons away from each and every interaction. Whether you know it or not our kids are paying attention, even if it seems like they’re not, they are! I’ll never forget the day (during my first year as a teacher) that I set my kids to the task of creating an acting scene to show their knowledge of vocabulary words…One brave group included a character called Mr. Olson…and boy was I surprised by the way they viewed me, some flattering, some indifferent, and plenty of humbling impersonations!! My point is that the kids have eyes and they’re always watching…what are we showing them, both intentionally and unintentionally? Are we reading during SSR and modeling? Do we have typos or grammatical errors on handouts or assignments? Do we speak with respect to students and/or other teachers? Overall, it goes without saying, we are amazing people and we are extremely good role models for our children but I also think that sometimes we let our guard down and we let the cracks show…and our kids don’t miss a beat!! What do you think I’d love to hear your thoughts? Enjoy my two cents and Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

A couple takes: Teachers as role models blog and an awesome tip for parents that is worth reading for everyone!!

How we Teach the “Unteachable” Things

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I read an interesting article today and I think, as an educator, I was offended. The author talked about all of these “unteachable” lessons that we some how learn in life and implied that these were things he never learned in school but some how still learned. Well, maybe HE didn’t learn them in school but I would suggest that our kids ARE learning them…or at least learning the tools to develop the necessary skills. Okay, this seems out of context, have a look at the article for some reference. He sites six different examples and I would like to point out (for his benefit, of course you already see this!) how our students are learning, IN SCHOOL, the necessary skills to achieve these lessons. “Get involved”…it’s not clear what he exactly means; but our kids are involved in project-based learning, interactive projects, community service, house activities, etc. “Talk to people…” We teach our kids to work with their peers, people from different cultures, overcome language barriers, and we explicitly teach relationships and conversation skills in advisory. “Try new things and be bold” Ugh, I’m getting frustrated just thinking about it…our kids are asked to take risks daily, not to mention things like China Trips; plus they even have a risk taking goal that they are working toward! Okay, I’m going to leave it at that. Maybe I shouldn’t be frustrated by this guy’s view of it, perhaps I should feel sorry for him that he wasn’t fortunate enough to learn these things in school! Am I too proud of the work we’re doing, am I missing something? Of course there are things that we can’t ‘teach’ but his examples certainly didn’t convince me…Have a look at the article and let me know what you think; these are really just my two cents!!

Also published in SCIS MS Headlines on November 22, 2013.

Bret’s $.02

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Starting in August of 2013 I began writing a small piece for our weekly staff notes called “Headlines”. The not-so-clever name for this section became “Bret’s Two Cents” as it wasn’t a long write-up but rather some brief thoughts usually tied to a professional reading or video. These writings are my first foray into regular professional writing. At first I went looking for something to write about but that quickly changed as I began to delve more and more into different topics. The more I read the harder it becomes for me to choose just one topic to write about each week! I will post my $.02 writings on this blog and categorize them accordingly, along with the related resources…enjoy, and I’d love to hear your two cents worth of feedback 🙂

Working Out the ‘Tween Brain in the Classroom

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I’ve recently become active on Twitter and in so doing I’ve opened myself up to a whole new set of professional options to read, the best part is that I get the summaries in 140 characters or less 🙂 Recently I followed an interesting link regarding the ‘Tween Brain and how it works. What I found was a very interesting three piece blog post from author Heather Wolpert-Gawron. To be fair, she is working to sell a book about this topic but her research is very interesting! In her first post she works to convince the reader about the importance of understanding the ‘Tween Brain (kids in Middle School fall squarely in this category.) The second post clears up some of the technical vocabulary involved, my favorite definition is a good reminder for us all: “Dopamine: When a person feels pleasure, success, pride, dopamine is released into the brain and acts as a lubricant of sorts, increasing attention, motivation, and memory.” When you read that, what does it make you think about in regard to your classroom? The third post is the one I am going to link you to today, it is awesome! There are “8 Tips to Teaching Brain-Centric Activities” and they are fantastic…take a look and let me know what you think, are you using any of these? How do they work? If not, give them a shot and let me know how it goes…I’d love to hear your two cents 🙂

Heather Wolpert-Gawron’s 8 Tips to Teaching Brain-Centric Activities

Originally published in SCIS MS Headlines November 15, 2013.

Real Tips for Educators

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Last week I was fortunate enough to go to the EARCOS Leadership Conference (for those on Twitter, #elc13bkk, there’s some good stuff there!) I met Rick Wormeli who you may remember from the assessment and homework videos we watched earlier in the year. I held up my promise to you, I called him out (privately!) and asked his rationale for allowing homework to count in his class at all (he claims it counts about 1.7%) His response was honest…basically, he admitted that the pressure in his school district from parents and admin to count homework is strong and that he included it ONLY because of that fact. He encouraged me strongly to not count homework when assessing a student if at all possible and even offered to participate in a Google Hangout if we wanted to chat with him more as a staff…so that is on the table for the future if people are interested. I’ll write and share more about the ELC in the near future but for today I want to share a great article written by another great education mind, Alfie Kohn. One of the pleas I hear often from teachers, and one that I used to make myself, is “Just tell me what I can do!” Well I can’t do that but in this article Alfie Kohn outlines 12 core principles that are essential to success in the classroom. As I read through these I connected more to some than others but the three that hit me the most were numbers 5, 6, and 9. I especially like number 9 as it speaks directly toward the motivation piece that we so often struggle with in middle school. Have a look and let me know what you think…thanks for listening to my two cents (more like 3 or 4 cents this week!)

Rick Wormeli homework video

Alfie Kohn Article Link

Originally published in SCIS MS Headlines on November 8, 2013.

What Gets Parents Involved?

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Conferences this week were a huge success and all the parents were very pleased with their interactions with you. Of course, this isn’t a surprise to anyone! However, at the end of the two days I was a bit frustrated. You see, I had more parent interactions regarding student progress in those two days than I have had all year long; that was frustrating. I was a bit bewildered because it seemed that parents only bothered to come talk to me because they were already here; it felt like they only cared enough to talk about their kids when it was convenient for them. Anyway, it got me thinking about why our parent community, as a whole, isn’t more engaged in their children’s learning. It sent me searching and I turned up a good article outlining three things that lead to parent involvement. I believe that our overall culture is very inviting for parents and I know that you as teachers are most definitely inviting parents to participate in their children’s learning…that leaves the students. Are our students leaving their parents out of the loop? Is there something that we can to do help them bring their parents into the conversations about school? Or perhaps, I’m over looking something else…I’d love to hear your thoughts, after all, these are just my two cents 🙂

This article summary is from the Marshall Memo, an amazing professional resource!!

Originally published in SCSI MS Headlines on October 25, 2013.

Thoughts on “Mastery Learning”

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As I was searching for an article to support my rant this week I came across something better 🙂 Thomas Guskey writes about the concept of mastery learning as one of the most powerful strategies in education. It struck me; during the 11 goals meetings I had this week we talked about the ongoing work we are doing within our departments to develop plans for improvement. Last week as we sat with the curriculum leaders to discuss the English department improvement plan someone asked a question about what learning strategies we intended to implement to reach the goals outlined. This question is imperative to these conversations and I would suggest that the answer is even more important. So what place does “mastery learning” have in that process? Is it a viable approach to use at SCIS? Or perhaps more poignantly, why wouldn’t we use “mastery learning” as a strategy in our classrooms? I agree with Bloom and his beliefs that all students can achieve success at high levels under the right circumstances…how close can we come to creating that environment in our classrooms? I think we can reach this level and we should strive to find a path to do so in our department improvement plans…why not include “mastery learning”?!?! Those are a few of my thoughts…I’d love to hear your two cents!!!

This article summary is from the Marshall Memo, an awesome professional resource!!

Originally published in SCIS MS Headlines on October 11, 2013.

Continuing Conversation on Re-dos

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After about a month of hard work and countless conversations I feel like we are finally getting to a place in our Middle School where re-dos and re-takes have become a piece of the culture of high expectations that we need for our students. The day we all sat in C212 and watched Rick Wormeli talk about re-dos was the beginning of a big mindset shift for our middle school…that’s not over, we still have a long way to go before everyone (teachers, students, parents, etc) is truly on board. However, we have already come a long way! It’s a rare day that I don’t have at least one conversation about the theory of re-dos and how we can/should be implementing them at our school. As I continue to read about re-do theories and implementation I have come across a great summary of an article by none other than Wormeli himself…in it he outlines a number of strategies for successfully implementing a re-do culture. A lot of what he says we have talked about already but there are some really useful and validating pieces to this article…it is a must read in my mind. My favorite item on this list is the final statement about how to maintain your sanity despite the extra time and effort needed to be a champion for our students’ learning!! Have a look and let me hear your two cents 🙂

Rick Wormeli on re-dos video

This article summary came from the Marshall Memo, an amazing professional resource!!

Originally published in SCIS MS Headlines on September 27, 2013.

Teaching the Growth Mindset (and Motivation)

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I’ve been looking at a lot of articles and research recently about mindsets and the recent push forward that the “mindset concept” has made in the beliefs about intelligence. The attached article talks about ways that teachers can begin to actually teach Carol Dweck’s “Growth mindset” to students…it starts with the vocabulary you use and the way you speak to kids about their learning experience. It’s an interesting article and with our Mindset book discussion coming up next week as a part of SIPs, this is a great read to get you thinking about how the Mindset Revolution can impact our students! It’s powerful stuff and it plays a huge piece in helping our students achieve great things; not only now but in the future…but that’s just my two cents 🙂 As usual, I’d love to hear your thoughts!!

This article summary came from the Marshall Memo, an amazing professional resource!!

Originally published in SCIS MS Headlines on September 20, 2013.