What Are You Thankful For as an Educator?

By -
Image result for thanksgiving thanks

Later this week, most of us will gather with friends and family to celebrate the tradition known as Thanksgiving. Whether you plan to celebrate in a traditional manner with turkey and all the trimmings or whether you plan to take the road less traveled, let’s take some time to celebrate some reasons why it is great to be an educator in this day and age. To help you develop your own list, I share with you the seven things that I am thankful for this season as an educator.
7. I am thankful for the educators that I learn from each day. There are thousands of educators from coast to coast who regularly share resources, tips, and strategies that you can use to become a better educator. Not sure who to follow? The website TeachThought has compiled a list of over 50 educational blogs worth following. Do you learn better from Twitter? The website Getting Smart maintains a list of 125+ educators worth following on Twitter. I’m on that list, you can follow me on Twitter here!  
6. I’m thankful that schools are looking at ways to start later. The research on brain development and sleep patterns is mounting, and it is telling us that as need to find ways to start school later for teens and adolescents. In this September MultiBriefs exclusive, I explored this topic in more detail and discussed how many schools have started to make the shift to later start times across the country.
5. I’m thankful that we are being more mindful. I started the new school year with my high school staff by having a training on mindfulness. According to the website Mindfulness in Schools, the latest research on neuroscience show that incorporating mindfulness in the classroom often leads to positive changes in attention, compassion, emotional regulation, and calming with students. With the stresses of today’s fast-paced world, we can’t go wrong by finding ways to be more mindful.
4. I’m thankful that we are starting to take concussions seriously. Last year, my school revamped its “Return to Learn” concussion protocol after realizing that most student concussions were happening outside of our school’s sports program, and thus we were doing a poor job not only tracking injuries but working with students who suffer from concussions and other traumatic brain injuries (TBIs). If you are looking to do something similar in your own school, a great place to start is this report from the Center for Disease Control entitled: Returning to School After a Concussion: A Fact Sheet for School Professionals.
3. I’m thankful that schools are finding better ways to address student misbehavior. There is a myth amongst non-educators that children respond to punishment and it can curb misbehavior. “You do the crime, you do the time” is often the sentiment from policies that enforce suspensions and exclusion for misbehavior, yet the research shows suspensions do not work. More and more, schools, including my own, are moving to restorative justice models. Not sure what they are or where to start? Check out this Education Week Teacher blog on the topic.
2. I am thankful that schools are getting more personalized for students. Those of you who follow my writing and social media posts know that I am a big proponent of personalized learning models, particularly competency-based education. It is my belief that these models focus on student learning and growth, better engage students, and work to close equity gaps. The website CompetencyWorks, hosted by iNACOL, has been tracking the rise of competency education across America for years, and keep their results in this map. As you can see, the movement has gained traction now in almost every state in America!
1. I’m thankful that as a profession, I believe that we are moving in the right direction. The website Knowledgeworks has a great report on the future of learning, where they analyze trends in educator through the impact layers of people, structures, and society. Our future will look dramatically different than our current reality, and will require schools that offer flexibility in ways that we have never seen before.
What are you thankful for? What about your students? Before the short week is over, take some time to explore the concept of gratitude with your students. This HuffPost article provides some ways to do that with students in grades K-8. Here is another great resource on the topic from TeachHub.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

This article was written originally for Multibriefs Education.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Speech to the NHS Inductees on Scholarship

By -
Image
Tonight, I will be speaking to you about scholarship, one of the four pillars of the National Honor Society. Scholarship is one of those words that we all can identify with, but it isn’t that easy to define. Dictionaries often define it to mean “academic achievement, learning; or the qualities of a scholar.” The qualities of a scholar --- well my ninth grade English teacher Mr. Tomallo never would have allowed me to use the word I was trying to define in the definition, so I have to dig deeper. What is a scholar? Again I turn to the dictionary, and I find the following: “A scholar is a learned person, someone who attends school or studies with a teacher.” I’m still not satisfied with this result. It seems the online dictionaries that Google has offered me are not helping me summarize what should be an easy-definable concept, scholarship. Perhaps I will need to research some examples of scholarship to help us better understand the concept.   In preparation for this speech I d
Read more

Does Your School Facility Need a Makeover?

By -
Image
Does your school facility need a makeover? According to this 2012 report by the National Center for Education Statistics, 53% of American schools are due for such an upgrade. Upgrades can be done in ways to fit almost any school budget. The key for school principals is to stretch the financial resources they have to provide the biggest rate of return possible to enhance student learning and overall school culture.   At a recent visit to my child’s middle school, the principal took me on a tour of recent upgrades made to their front entrance lobby. The building, built quickly and cheaply in the 1970’s has long since reached the status of obsolete in our community, yet we as a voting community just aren’t ready to support a project to build a new middle school. Like so many other principals from coast to coast in this situation, the principal had to look for small ways to make facility upgrades that would have a big impact. The lobby project was this kind of a project. Much to
Read more

My Speech to the NHS Inductees on Character

By -
Image
Character is perhaps the most abstract of the four National Honor Society pillars, and that perhaps makes it the most difficult to quantify and speak about. Most of us would say that we know good character when we see it. We identify with examples of strong character. Consider this situation: Four friends from out of state are passing through Kingston on their way to a vacation in the White Mountains. Their names are Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer. Yes, for those of you who recognize this story I am talking about the 4 main characters from the television series Seinfeld and this is the famous “final episode.” They witness a robbery in broad daylight. The robber has his hand in his pocket, and the victim shouts that the man has a gun. As soon as the robber runs away, a Kingston policeman appears on the scene; but instead of pursuing the robber, he arrests Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer for having violated the "Good Samaritan" law. Since the four of them spent
Read more