Who I am and How I Know It

As part of our new Leadership Program in the Middle School, I teach a 6th grade leadership class. One of more recent assignments, which incorporated a perception of self and perception of others aspect was asking the students to write a two paragraph short essay on the statement: Who I am and How I Know It. 

Below is a student response to the assignment:

Often, by parents, friends, (and in not sometimes the best way) my teachers, tell me that I am a pretty funny guy. I make Burke Sullivan laugh so hard that his face turns redder than his hair. But as I said before, my teachers...they know i’m funny, but that makes me disruptive in class. Burke laughing at me, and teachers correcting me and telling me to not be a smart, you-know-what in class is a good sign that I am funny like I think I am. But, I have other interests besides annoying teachers and making my friends roll around on the floor in laughter. For example, I love Football (not the American kind). I am a keeper and I am often complimented on my skills. Heck, even Mr. Jones called my house complimenting me on a particularly sharp game I had. Also, I love to ride horses. As silly as it may seem, I love horses. Besides my undying love of dogs, horses are the next closest thing to my favorite animal. Other guys might say, “Horses? You, ride horses?! Ha!”. But I have been told that by my parents (that one goes without saying because, well, there my parents!), and summer riding instructors, that I have a thing for it.

And finally, my last case (which may seem even more mushy and odd that the horse thing). I am me. And nobody can be better at being me, than me. Sticking to the title of this short essay, Who am I and How I know This, I must know give supporting evidence to show why I know this. Well, (here comes the mushy bit), my parents, grandparents, and close relatives, tell me that they love me. Which must imply that I am doing a pretty good job of being me, or else they wouldn’t love me as much as I know them to love me. So, one of the biggest things that defines who I am and how I know it, is that I am lovable, and it is shown through the love of my family.

Spirit Week Video

We are in the midst of Spirit Week here at Canterbury and the middle school has just completed "I survived the Mayan Apocalypse" Day. In celebration, the 5th grade made the following movie.

Antifragile or How We Become Fragile

While the book is interesting, the blog post review of it does an excellent job of outlining one idea of what the new perspective for our students should be: embrace randomness and mistakes and it will make you stronger.

Some highlights:

Taleb says antifragile isn’t resilience given his narrow definition of it. It’s more. Resilience survives. Things that are antifragile don’t just survive, they get better with random event and shocks. The opposite is fragile. Though often unintentionally, we tend to make things fragile.

Random events should serve to make you better than before. Rules are fragile. Principles are resilient. Virtue is antifragile. Classroom learning is fragile. Real life and experiential knowledge are resilient. Real life and a library are antifragile. 

Check it out: Antifragile or How We Become Fragile

The School Cliff: Student Engagement Drops With Each School Year

I love this stuff. Gallup has actually found a way to measure student engagement (they call it their Gallup Student Poll Engagement Index) by how strongly students agree with the following five statements:

• I have a best friend at school.
• I feel safe in this school.
• My teachers make me feel my schoolwork is important.
• At this school, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
• In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good schoolwork.

Gallup polls hundreds of thousands of public school students from grades 5 through 12 and has found that for this population engagement declines for every year you stay in school. I wonder how independent schools compare? 

Interestingly enough, we deliver a Student Culture Survey each year that measures student engagement and more and while we haven't used the exact phrasing, we have collected three years worth of data that can be organized to measure our student's engagement. 

The whole goal of implementing 21st century education is to engage our students. It's fundamental. First, mission appropriate - we are a whole child school. It's why we do things like CSI and MDGs. It's why we do experiential education in our 7th and 8th grade leadership classes. It drives our electives program. It was the impetus for our Portfolio Program, Innovator's Challenge, STEM research, the iPad Pilot Program, and more. 

I would say this is a good quick read. Enjoy. 

The School Cliff: Student Engagement Drops With Each School Year

How Your Phone Changed Photography

www.good.is

 

An interesting, if not fairly obvious, post from GOOD on how photography has changed in nature over the last twenty years (1993 - 2013)....

How Your Phone Changed Photography

This undoubtedly changes the game in terms of student engagement and communication. Think about the possibilities with students when the ability to create content is as easy as turning on the phone (or allowing it in school....), downloading one of a hundred different photographic apps (instagram being the most well known), and displaying it publicly and nearly instantaneously.

As recently as two years ago, I proctored an online class on Digital Photography. There are two observations here:

1. I thought it was great that we could offer an online class and that the digital camera was fairly new. 
2. The speed at which this class and its content seems antiquated is mind boggling. 

So how do we re-orient ourselves as educators to be prepared for a world in which what we work with kids with in one year is obsolete the next? This is the biggest challenge for teachers, especially as it pertains to integrating technology. 

It will necessitate a mind and culture shift in terms of student engagement, student assessment, and, ultimately, what an independent school graduate looks like when they leave our school. 

One of the things we've been looking at is this idea of COD or Combine Our Devices. What if we could get to a point where students had a school issued device that fit certain parameters, and the could choose one other digital device to enhance that device? If we could harness the enthusiasm and excitement to use these devices and focus it on the learning outcomes we are looking for, we could do amazing things. 

Ebenezer Scrooge and the Missing Oxytocin

Interesting article on the neurochemical that determines how greedy we are from the Dana Foundation:

Ebenezer Scrooge and the Missing Oxytocin