Thursday Thriller
September 9, 2021
Shout Out to our GC Team (Roger, Conor, Beth, Kim, Agnes, Amy K, Brian and Jen) for planning yesterday's staff collaboration!!! Fun and interactive!
NUTS-n-BOLTS
1. Carina and I are planning for plan B if it rains during lunch. We will be sending out information with a video IF it looks like it will rain. We will get on the intercom with a little explanation and you will check your email for a video.
2. GST- I'm working hard to keep GNN to under 3 mins. This should be the first thing in GST. We have witnessed many fun "get to know me" ideas through walk-throughs. Thank YOU for giving it your all. The slides and calendar appear to be working in general. The 'bones' of this structure have been given to you. Now add the 'meat.' GST is as good as you make it. While you can and should adjust as needed, there should be 100% of students watching GNN daily, and you should be going through the slides and working through the calendar that has been provided. If you need support, please ask. If you have ideas for improvement, send them to Carina.
3. Thank you for spreading out desks, students as much as possible. The goal is if a student student is COVID exposed, we don't have to quarantine as many students. Remember it's close proximity for 15 mins or more.
4. Amy K, Becky Jo, Angie, Steve, and Terri are finalizing the plan for the 1/2 day on the 17th tomorrow. The plan will be to you no later than Monday.
5. Chapters 1 & 2 Belonging Through a Culture Dignity by Oct. 6. Watch one of these videos:
The Power of Inclusion and/or On Diversity: Access Ain’t Inclusion
6. The Three Tardy Rule can be started. I will explain it on GNN for tomorrow. Please make sure and go over this with your students. You may even email parents. Better to get out in front of the communication first by explaining the importance of being on time to class. I will also mention the tardy rule in my newsletter to parents going out next week.
If a student receives three tardies in your class and you choose to assign a lunch detention, email Ruben. rgaranzuay@wwps.org, subject line: LUNCH DETENTION
Example of email:
Hi Ruben,
Kim Doepker in my third period class has received three tardies and needs a lunch detention. Kim has first lunch.
Thanks,
Carina
7. It is best to be prepared. This is from Keith Ross our Director of Technology and Information Services:
Our EdTech team suggests that teachers complete the following protocol rules/steps to ease the transition to a distance learning model in preparation for potential quarantine practices.
Create a Google Classroom, invite, and confirm all students can connect to it.
Create a Zoom or Google Meet link for the class.
Add the Zoom or Google Meet link to the GC class stream.
Survey students who do not have sufficient internet access to connect to a Zoom from their quarantine site.
We believe if teachers take a few minutes in the next few days to go over these four quick steps, then practice with their students, it could save a day of non-instruction during a potential quarantine, whether that is a student, class, or school quarantine.
*New teachers will need to establish and login to their licensed Zoom account with their WWPS Google (email) credentials to create a Zoom link. https://zoom.us >> Sign In >> Sign in with Google >> Use your WWPS Google account. Signing in to this will provide you the additional subscription-based features.
SOMETHING to PONDER
I am a Dave Stuart, Jr. fan as you know. This is his intro to belonging. It's a short video of 1:50. Here is his blog that he referenced in his video. He ends with a diagram and video (7 mins) that explains belonging).
I hope you find a gold nugget. Dave Stuart, Jr. nails belonging!
Things ya gotta know about Belonging in the classroom
Here's what Belonging sounds like in the heart of a student. 1
So this is what we're after when we're trying to cultivate the Belonging belief in the heart of a child.
- People like me do work like this.
- I belong here.
- I fit in this place.
- There's a match between my identity and this work that we're doing.
- It's not weird that a person like me is in a class like this.
- My experiences in this class aren't unique to me — most people experience these things.
Let's pull out a few key ideas from research and practice.
People like to fit.
You and me and our students have a thing in common: we prefer to act in ways that fit with how we think of ourselves. (I like how researcher Daphna Oyserman calls these identity-congruent behaviors in her Pathways to Success through Identity-Based Motivation.) So our goal as a teacher cultivating Belonging is to make it so that as many of our students as possible can find a path to linking the work we need them to do to their identity. We want them to think, in there hearts, “Yep — it makes sense that I'm writing (or jogging, or coding, or reading, or debating, or studying) right now. That fits with who I am.”
The easiest path to Belonging is to get great at cultivating the rest of the five key beliefs.
There's a reason I've shifted Belonging to be at the top of the mountain. If you take care with cultivating the rest of the five key beliefs, you make Belonging a heckuva lot easier for students.
Look at how Credibility, Value, Effort, and Efficacy increase the odds that our students will sense that they fit in our space:
- Do they trust you? Do they think someone like you can help someone like them grow in mastery in your class? That’s Credibility. Folks want to work and be and learn and live in places where the authorities know what the heck they are doing. Just by trying to consistently demonstrate care, competence, and passion as a teacher (CCP, remember?), I'm making it easier for students to think, “Yeah, even someone with my academic background or my identity facets can fit in a place like this.”
- Do they want to belong? Are history or math or Phys Ed classes even the kinds of places that a student wants to be a part of? That’s Value. Each of our content areas has unique value propositions; as apologists, you and I seek to find and joyfully exploit these. How does mathematics link to flourishing.? How does Phys Ed link to getting a good job? How does English language arts make you better at going on dates? That last one sounds a bit silly, I know, but as an ELA and history teacher I'm allllllways pondering new ways to communicate the goodness I've got on tap every day with rigorous learning in my classroom.
- Do they know how to belong? Okay, Mr. Stuart, we're going to write a lot in here. But I don't know how to write well. I can't run, Ms. Smith — how in the world am I going to do this mile challenge you're talking about? I've always done poorly in science, Mr. Vree — how can I learn to do the reason scientifically thing you're talking about? This is the Effort belief. Don't misunderstand — we're not after hand-holding our students or insulting what they are capable of; this is the opposite of having low expectations for them. It's just that you and I are going to be the kinds of people who teach the heck out of all of it — we're teachers. So we're going to show everyone what good, effective effort looks like; we're not doing “sink or swim.”
- Do they believe that they can belong? Is it really possible for someone like them to enjoy this book? To write this essay? To have a coherent conversation in French? That’s the Efficacy belief.
Belonging is the culmination. It touches a fundamental human need — we want to belong. We want to be with people who receive us, know us, value us, respect us. We want to matter like that. But it doesn't happen through good intentions alone! Not even close.
It’s ambiguous.
Here's where Belonging gets tricky: a lot of it comes down to how we interpret the signals we receive in a given environment.
By signals, I mean things like:
- Someone smiles at me.
- The teacher hands me a paper that has a B- on top of it.
- My friend ignored my wave.
- The teacher ignored me when I called out an answer.
Every day, our students receive dozens of signals like these, and all of them are interpreted through the lens of Belonging.
There's just one problem: these signals are ambiguous.
- Did the person smile at me because they're glad I'm here, or because they're trying to be nice to the misfit kid in the class?
- Did the teacher give me this grade because I deserved it, or because he felt sorry for me, or because it's just what I earned?
- Did my friend finally decide to not be my friend anymore, or was she just preoccupied?
- Did the teacher ignore me because she doesn't like me, or because she thinks I'm dumb, or because she was focused on something else?
Like a giant Plinko board, stimuli enter our students' awareness and end up in the “proof I don't belong” or the “proof I do belong” bins. The trick for us as teachers, then, is to help bias our students toward attributing the things they'll experience in our classroom as proof that they DO belong. We want to influence attribution.
- When a student succeeds:
- We don't want them to think, “Oh, just a fluke — folks like me don't succeed in places like this.”
- Instead, we want, “Yep — I worked for this, and I came out positively. Folks like me can succeed in places like this.”
- When a student fails:
- We don't want them to think, “Of course I did! And you know what, I'm probably the only one. Everyone else in here is successful, but people like me aren't.”
- Instead, we want “Okay, I failed. I'm not happy about it. BUT failure is a normal (and hard!) part of the learning process, and it happens to all kinds of folks.”
- When a student gets extra attention:
- We don't want, “It’s because I’m weird here. People are giving me special attention because they don't think I belong. I'm a charity case to them. They don't think I'm smart enough.”
- Instead: “This is cool! It's nice to get extra attention sometimes, and folks like me sometimes get it because we matter and fit in places like this.”
- When a student is getting less attention than normal:
- We don't want, “It’s because they don’t want me here. I'm a nuisance to them. They've given up on me.”
- Instead: “Not everyone gets extra attention all the time. That's okay. It’s normal to not always be the center of attention, and I know folks will attend to me if I ask, no problem.”
See what we're after? Circumstances can be interpreted all kinds of ways, and this is why the Belonging belief is so important. It’s like bending one’s interpretative lens toward habitually interpret things in a manner that supports ongoing motivation. It’s like a special protection spell cast over our identity — “No matter what happens in here, I’m not a reject. I belong. I fit.” And its possible for each of our students.
It’s recursive.
This last one's probably easier to explain with a diagram, so let me try that. This is a 6 min video that he explains the diagram of belonging.
QUOTEDon't cut what you can untie. -Unknown
Little Humor
Another reason we have GST. We are teaching our students to problem solve, advocate and make decisions. :) Escalator 0:00 to 1:43
CALENDAR
Friday, September 10th Classroom Expectations Planning emailed or shared with Carina and Kim
Tuesday, September 14th Carina and Kim at Ad Councils 7:00AM-9:30AM out of building
Wednesday, September 15th Collaboration:
Social Studies 6
Science 6
Science 7
ELA 6
Math 8
Elective Teams as determined
Friday, September 17th Early Dismissal for students at 12:25.
