“Tweet, Tweet, Hoot, Hoot, Blog, Blog”

This year in Wakefield’s Lower School we have started “Coffee & Conversations” an opportunity for parents to get together every couple of months to have a dialog around a theme. Our first coffee titled, “Tweet, Tweet, Hoot, Hoot, Blog, Blog” -  was a hit!  Here is the message in a nutshell:

Social media provides an engaging, collaborative platform for education communities. It is a way  to expand our knowledge base on the most up-to-date educational practices and programs, as well as pursue useful information on child development and the like to support your children in this ever-changing world. It is also a way to tell our Wakefield Lower School Story.

Every community and profession uses social media to meet their specific needs. As educators, we must be lifelong learners to keep up with the demands of our fast paced society for new knowledge and skills. My purpose in engaging in a Professional Learning Network is two fold: personal and community-wide professional growth, and a modern method of sharing with parents and others how our values, beliefs, practices and programs are implemented within our culture and community.  I do this by interacting with other educational leaders and teachers around the world through twitter conversations and chats through my twitter handle @drmisabel12.  We share our ideas and resources and ask each other questions that lead to continuous dialog. I share much of what I learn with the Lower School faculty.

For the parent community I am sharing through my twitter handle @WakefieldLSHead. Each week I share a blog post that I have written, an article I feel parents may enjoy and learn from, and a “snapshot” of our day to day experiences. Please collaborate and engage with our connected Lower School Community!

Our Lower School is Junior Kindergarten through Fifth Grade. If there are any teachers, classes and educational administrators who would like to collaborate with us, please drop us a line!

Dr. Margo Isabel

Lower School Head

Wakefield School

Historical Perspective, Sense of Place and Community

A sense of place and historical perspective is so important to a culture and community.  Moreover, symbols, rituals and traditions reinforce a school’s culture.  Wakefield Lower School’s Grandparents’ and Special Friends’ Day with its theme Home Sweet Home:  Celebrating 20 Years at Wakefield’s Archwood Campus did a remarkable job providing this historical perspective in song, prose and photos while reinforcing our strong values centered around perseverance, hard work and solid character.  We are a community of “Fighting Owls”, who since our school’s founding in 1972, has consistently and vigorously worked to provide an engaging learning environment within a caring community.

Hearing our JK-5th grade students sing about our Earth and how “lucky” we are to experience and learn through the great outdoors that our scenic campus provides, to how we climbed and claimed Archwood Hill to build our beloved school, to singing for the first time as a unified Lower School team our recently blessed proposed alma mater, “Virtus et Sapientia” - our pride was displayed brightly and loudly!  And thank you, Fighting Owls, for enriching my own knowledge about this remarkable place where I spend my time.

Creating Rules, Developing Character and Reaching our Expectations

Character education defines our Wakefield education, and we work hard to interweave it into everything we do. This week’s Lower School assembly gave us the perfect opportunity to solidify a foundation of justice, prudence, fortitude and temperance. These are big words for our Lower Schoolers, but they are learning the definitions well. As adults we model them, guide our students, and “catch” them living these values.

In order for students to live these values, we need to have high expectations of them. When students are involved in the process of creating those expectations, they take more ownership of them, and work harder to live up to them. This is why we involve our students in the process of identifying the expectations of the classroom - their classroom rules. At the start of the year, students and adults identify and articulate their classroom hopes and dreams - what they want to learn, work on and excel in throughout the year. With those complete, the classroom teacher asks: What does our classroom need to look like, sound like and feel like for all of us to accomplish our hopes and dreams? Through brainstorming and discussion, each classroom creates and commits to their classroom rules. Here is a Responsive Classroom article about rule creation.

On Wednesday at assembly, representatives from each classroom “handed over” their rules to Mrs. Hurst and me. As a Lower School community, we reflected and committed to our rules for the year. Then, fourth graders shared each of the 17 Wakefield courtesies with us in language that our youngest Owls could understand. Throughout the assembly our students showed their understanding very well!  They displayed exceptional manners, sat properly, listened attentively, and actively participated. We were very proud of them.  It was a wonderful way to end this month’s emphasis on courtesy and encourage them to practice it the rest of the year.

Dr. Isabel's Reflections on Día de los Muertos and Halloween

Halloween is obviously a time for fun, and it can also be a time of cultural celebration and exploration. We encourage parents to talk with their children and think about the characters they pretend to be as they dress in their costume finery!. Things to consider are: Does my costume in any way reinforce a cultural, racial or gender stereotype? Is there any way it could be misinterpreted negatively?  If my costume portrays another cultural background, how would a member of that culture feel? Is my costume to scary for our little Owls?

My children spent a part of their childhood in Ecuador, and thus did not experience Halloween as we do in the United States. Although that was difficult for them, we learned about other important holidays and celebrations. “Día de los Muertos”, or All Souls’ Day, was one of those holidays, and one that I personally cherish the most. It is a time to honor and remember loved ones and ancestors who have passed on. I was so impressed by the positive atmosphere that I experienced with people as they celebrated the lives of relatives and friends who were no longer with them. I would experience the holiday through my five senses. First and foremost were the sights I saw. Bright colors everywhere! Flowers and wreaths being sold on the street; fruit baskets all around. Then came the smells - my favorite being the sweet smell of Colada Morada, a thick drink made of blackberries, blueberries, pineapple, cinnamon and cloves. And then there were the sounds of guitars, violins and singing in both the streets and the cemeteries. Finally, the feel of the hugs of all as we remembered the stories of our relatives and ancestors. This was my experience of this wonderful celebration from the time I lived in Ecuador.

As soon as I returned to living in the United States and saw how the holiday was celebrated by our diverse Hispanic population with its great Mexican influences, I began to research, learn about and share my knowledge with my students. I have always created a small altar in my classroom or office as well as shared stories and crafts that celebrate the holiday. So here is my pequeño altar in honor of Día de los Muertos.

Summer Reading: The Principal

Always great to go back to my favorite author of Educational Leadership! No regrets, I feel charged up and ready to build on the Professional Capacity Framework that yields results in supporting a dynamic and successful learning culture at my school. In summary the PCF includes effectively building human, social and decisional capital to strengthen a professional team, working in unison toward specific, strategic, learning goals. If you want to know how, well, you may want to read his book! It was very reassuring to me and speaks to how our Lower School team functions, grows, and succeeds! A few takeaways:

• Build the capacity of the group.
• Lead the team to commit to a unified vision.
• The leader is a part of a team that is constantly learning.
• Instructional leadership is not solely about instructional expertise; more important is knowing how to involve the team and its members toward achieving a dynamic learning culture.
• A strong learning culture, and quality day to day interactions within the culture supports professional growth and instructional programs; this is the DNA of a Professional Growth System. 1:1 professional growth initiatives, to be effective, are strands of that DNA.

Lastly, Fullan outlines important characteristics of change agent leaders. To be an effective leader of change one must build relational trust, develop confidence within the group, know when to move forward, and be alert and responsive to feedback. Collaborating, problem solving and innovating as a team is key. In my humble opinion, in our interconnected world where ideas, insights, events and experiences are in constant motion, can you even be an effective educational leader if you are not a change agent?

Summer Reading: How Children Succeed

Very timely read. Two of our end of year meetings revolved around increasing the “visibility” of our character education program as well as ensuring it is woven into the culture and climate of our Lower School. Our second meeting focused on our 2016-2017 school year initiative titled Slow Start Leads to Success. Two of the goals under this initiative include: getting to know our students and families in order to increase opportunities to support and encourage them; and instilling the act of student reflection in our practice to include “thinking about thinking.” This fits nicely into the mold revealed through the research presented in Paul Tough’s book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character.

Interestingly enough, the main point is that character education must be tangible and visible. We must articulate, define and explain our characteristics and virtues, model them, and strategically integrate them into the culture and climate of our schools. I emphasize tangible, visible and strategic. Our school has always put character education front and center. It is simply time for us to dust off the character education shelf, and display some new frames that acknowledge it, name it, and showcase it. In essence be able to demonstrate how and why it is working in our community. We agree it is powerful and that it gives power to our students in order for them to be successful, so we don’t want it to be “hidden.” Let’s see what the year holds for us!

The characteristics from which I refer to above, virtues and values, for example, respect, responsibility, compassion enable us to both understand and interact with others. Tough, referring to a study by Seligan and Peterson puts the above mentioned values into character education that focuses“moral values.” And then considers other values as “performance values.” These are, for example, zest, optimism, social intelligence, curiosity, and grit.  From my point of view the “moral values” help us understand others, while the “performance values” help to move us forward to succeed as individuals. As educators we need to understand these “performance values” in order to plan and infuse them into our lessons.  Strategic activities and language should build upon these values that help strengthen performance. Our two Slow Start goals will help us to a). Identity the strengths and interests of our students, which will help us to look for pathways to strengthen the “performance values” and b). Help students reflect upon, understand and articulate their strengths, challenges and interests as they “think about their thinking.” When educators  intertwine these  moral and performance values students have a strong rope to hold onto helping pull them toward academic and personal success.

Tough also emphasizes the necessary influence of parents and caregivers in helping to form and support children specifically to build up these characteristics. Focusing on identity and character is a difference maker for academic advancement. A student who is confident and has a strong moral character will make a bigger difference than a strong student with a high GPA, multiple AP courses and high SATs (my bias). I have experienced this first hand, and it is long lasting. Mid way through my primary schooling, it was clear that I struggled. I went through a full battery of psycho-educational tests. Nothing “precise” surfaced. That was over 40 years ago, and not all learning differences were yet known. I could easily speculate at this point, what was going on in my brain. Nevertheless, I had parents who believed in me; acknowledged every positive step I made no matter how small; encouraged me; provided opportunities to follow my passions and interests; put me in environments that supported my success; and were always satisfied with my personal best. This all created an inner drive that pushed me to succeed in academics and beyond. I used to call it persistence;  Duckworth and Tough call it grit. I encourage you to take the Grit Test.

(On another note, my experience as a child, student, teacher and administrator has been in privileged environments. I fully respect and acknowledge the challenges that surface in more challenging circumstances and applaud the research/push to facilitate this work in ALL environments.)

In summary, character matters, performance skills matter, adult and caregiver support all matter - each serve as a knot upon the intertwined rope that students pull on to gain success. It is a hard tug of war at times, but worth the pull - as a student and educator - it has supported my success. Paul Tough’s book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character, will help us win the tug of war within our schools.  

Summer Reading: Daring Greatly

What is my biggest take away from Daring Greatly by Brene Brown?

While in my PhD program I clung on to theory espoused values vs. values in action coined by Chris Argyris. It taught me, as a leader, to identify my values, articulate a concrete action plan, and consistently reflect and revisit that plan throughout a school year to ensure that my values were truly “in action.” This theory influences my leadership vision, and helps me to outline my professional goals each year. In essence it serves as my personal and professional road map for the year and beyond. The process is private as I reflect, plan and propose, and then shared among my leadership team in the form of goals. The process is thought provoking and valuable but I can’t say it pushes me out of my comfort zone.

After reading Daring Greatly, I believe to be a great leader, or a full human being for that matter, you have to push yourself out of your comfort zone and embrace vulnerability. I do so in part, but not fully to the point of embracing discomfort as a means toward growth, my own, or to encourage the growth of others. As Brown notes vulnerability includes “feeling” instead of just thinking, and “being” instead of just knowing. I need to make that leap, and push myself to fully engage, question, feel, be and most importantly articulate, communicate what I am “feeling” and demonstrate what I “being.” By doing this I will be more present, more available for new ideas, and possibly more in tune with the needs, fears, and ideas of others. How does one do this? I believe one way is by listening in a different way. Being fully present anytime one is engaged with a person whether listening or interacting within a classroom is also essential. Empathizing more and trying to understand the why behind a position one has.This will open up the lines of communication, enable me to give feedback and help others recognize the gifts that surface when one embraces vulnerability. When modeling risk taking, or introducing a new idea, it is important that I explain the why behind it. As an advocate of change I tend to think that incremental moves will lead folks toward a guided path. From my experience that does occur. However, if I explain the why and/or embrace a bit of unknown, maybe more ideas from others will surface as well.  If I embrace discomfort, help those I interact with to embrace discomfort - creativity and innovative ideas may surface. I want to be a courageous leader and a wholehearted person.  What are your thoughts?