As educators we are always being asked about the impact we are making in our schools and with our students. This is an important question because we have such a significant impact on both the school environment and the student experience. Regularly reflecting on ways that students are negatively and positively impacted by our attitudes, our words, and our interactions is important in creating a successful and thriving school environment.

If we could pause here for just a moment… I want to ask about you, the educator. How are you doing today? How are you feeling? How have your students’ attitudes, words, and interactions impacted you?

It is equally as important to check on how teachers are doing, as it is to check in about the students. Not only do teachers need to check in, but we need to make sure we are taking the time to process.

The Importance of Processing

Today we are going to discuss why we should process and how to process.

Process: To deal with something according to a particular set of actions.

Here are some helpful steps for processing the points of impact along your teaching journey:

1. Acknowledge the feeling.
2. Acknowledge the trigger.
3. Lean into the feeling and learn from it.
4. Ask yourself questions – do you like this feeling? Is it negatively or positively impacting your person?
5. Decide on appropriate responses – counseling, journaling, exercise.
6. Release the feeling, retain the lesson.

As teachers we are emotionally connected to our students and the school environment. Throughout the school year there are things that happen to our students impacting their behavior and academic performance. These things also impact us as teachers.

There are both positive and negative points of impact. Look at the chart below. How do these events make you feel?

Begin Purposeful Reflection

Download the FREE Healthy Processing Packet and begin processing the points of impact you encounter year after year, day after day, class period after class period.

**Here is a teaser** Write down one significant point of impact. Next to it, write a corresponding feeling. Don’t think about it. Don’t try to be politically correct. How does the event make you feel?

Cheers! You have already begun healthy processing.

Is this the first time you have stopped to process?

If not, think about how you typically process these most significant points of impact.

If this is the first time, reflect on why you have not stopped to do this sooner.

The Importance of Awareness & Atunement in Purposeful Reflection

In “Understanding Emotions and How to Process Them“, Dr. Gregg Henriques discusses the importance of awareness and attunement. To be aware is to recognize the existence of the feelings. What feelings are produced as a result of events happening in the school as a whole AND those produced by students’ attitudes, behavior, and interactions?

Attunement describes a person’s awareness and receptivity level in conjunction with the reaction to awareness. So, now that you are aware of the feelings produced by various impacts, what is your response? Do you shove the feelings away? Do you discuss the feelings? Journal? Counseling? Talk to a teacher friend?

Your reaction can be the beginning of a healthy processing journey, or the beginning of an unhealthy compacting journey.

Download the FREE Healthy Processing Packet to begin your journey. We will dive a bit deeper in the next post.

Cheers to healthy processing!

Joce

Looking for a deep dive into purposeful reflection for both teachers and students? Check out the Intentional Teaching Series.

People are always saying, “I wish I could be a fly on the wall in THAT room!” Well, today you get to be the fly.

Imagine you are buzzing down the hallway in a local school. You fly into a classroom on the left with the door open.

Classroom #1:

You rest on the white board in the front of the classroom and observe some students slumped in their desks half asleep. Other students are texting under their desks or generally off task.

The teacher lectures from the front of the classroom flipping through PowerPoint slides. The teacher stops twice to ask if there are questions and then continues after no one raises a hand.

After almost dozing off yourself, you decide to keep it buzzing. There is a closed-door on the right, but you can hear laughter and chatter.

Classroom #2:

As you slip under the door you see students huddled in groups around the classroom discussing a topic. Some are acting things out, others are taking notes, while still others are researching answers on their tablets. Almost all the students are engaged.

After a short time observing, you hear a bell ring. The students sit down in their groups and the teacher says, “Lecture 4. Tablets ready? Interactive slide show ready?” And then the teacher began a 10 minute lecture, pausing periodically for students to edit their notes.

At the conclusion of the lecture, students resumed conversation with their group regarding the new lecture topic. They asked each other questions, looked up answers, posed scenarios, and hypothesized. The teacher walked around the classroom monitoring student discussion groups and answering clarifying questions.

“Wow!” You thought, and buzz out the classroom. A short distance away you see another open door and decide to buzz in.

Classroom #3:

The teacher is sitting at a table with 4 students. The other students are sitting in groups and various places around the classroom on bean bags and couches.

You can see that all the students are engaged in different activities. They seem to be on a self paced schedule. Some are reading independently, others are typing papers or proofreading a classmates’ paper, still others are in small groups collaborating on a project.

Buzz Buzz. Time to head back to your classroom. What would you see if you were teaching?

So, what is the point? Is this a judgy judgy moment? No. This is a time for reflection.

Ask yourself:

1. Which teacher am I?  -OR- Which teacher do I want to be?
2. Why do I teach this way?
3. What simple changes can I make to ensure student engagement is a priority?

Now that I am a parent I also ask myself, “Am I the teacher I would want for my own child?”If the answer is no, I know things need to change.

Ask yourself:

1. How can I change my mindset?
2. What habits can I change?
3. How will these two changes impact student growth and engagement in my classroom?

Time to check your stats. Will asking these questions require work. Of course! We know however, that anything worth having is worth fighting for. Is student growth and engagement worth having?

So begin by asking yourself these questions. Then, seek solutions. Maybe you know a colleague that can help you assess and improve upon your teaching practices. Maybe there is some online PD you can do to brush up on some teaching strategies.

Be reflective, encouraged, and proactive! Download the FREE Teacher Reflection to start putting together an action plan for success in this area.

It is often the smallest changes that make the largest impact.

Cheers to transforming our mindset, tweaking teaching strategies, and transcending student expectations of school.

Need some great professional development? Want some practical strategies you can take straight back to the classroom? Check out The Intentional Teaching Series.

The novel has been selected and the course has been charted on the calendar. Now it’s time to really dig deep.  While charting the course you thought briefly about the standards you would cover, the types of projects and presentations your students would complete.  Now it is time to tear the standards apart, pull out the meat, and create the actual assignments, craft the lessons, design the rubrics.

Thoughts to consider:

1. Begin with the end in mind.  What do you want the students to learn?  Start there and work backward.
   1. What will the final assessment look like – project, presentation, test?
   2. What assignments are necessary to achieve the learning goals?
   3. What passages need to be highlighted?
   4. What supplemental reading materials will be needed?
   5. What movie clips might increase understanding?
2. We want the students knowledge to go deep, not wide.  When our students have a deeper understanding of concepts, they are more likely to remember the concept long after the story’s plot line has escaped their memory.  In addition, the chances of cross curricular and real world transfer, and application are greater.
3. Guiding students toward greater independence should always be a goal.  What resources are available to help you gradually release reading responsibilities to your students while still holding them accountable?
   1. Literature Circles – Student led reading and learning groups designed to get all members engaged.  Students are held accountable by their peers and the teacher.
   2. Literature Labs – Students are placed into concept focus groups.  While reading, the group focuses on finding examples of one concept.  The group shares their findings, working together to design a lesson to teach their classmates.  The students then create groups containing one or two members from each strategy focus area to begin teaching, sharing, and discussing.
   3. At home reading – If you have enough novels, and the students are responsible, sending the text home to be read is a great option.  Students should be given a specific number of pages to read and a focus for their reading.  Assigning a huge study packet is not necessarily effective.  Remember, we want the students knowledge to be deep, not wide.
4. Preparing 21st century learners means more than paper and pencil assignments.  How can you use technology in the service of learning?  Is the novel available on Kindle, Nook, eReader?  Showing students how to highlight and make notations on an electronic reading device is a great way to make a real world connection.  Setting up a class blog site or Twitter account is a great way to make learning interactive.  Placing assignments on sites like Edmodo, https://customteachingsolutions.com/how-to-be-a-leader-essay/, comparing and contrasting essay topics, or https://customteachingsolutions.com/example-of-synthesis-essay-thesis/ is a fantastic way to prepare students to take online courses at the college or university level.

These are just a few ideas for consideration.  Let us know if you’d like help hashing out the rest!  

Cheers to vision inspired growth and development!

CTS

You’ve finished reading and annotating the book. It’s time to begin planning for student success.

First things first.  Pull out the school calendar and a blank calendar.  Why pull out the calendar?  Everything that we do needs to be purposeful.  Purpose is more than just identifying standards and creating a rigorous course of study, it is about being good stewards of time.

There is a delicate balance that needs to be struck between the right amount of time to spend on a unit of study and the amount of time available to teach all standards during the school year.

So, get out a calendar and chart your course.  Here are some guiding questions:

1. How many weeks are in the current quarter or semester?
2. How long is the book?
3. Will your students be reading this book in class and at home?
4. How long do you want this book study to last?
5. How many chapters need to be read in order to finish in the allotted time?
6. How many major concepts will be covered? Minor concepts?
7. How many new concepts will be introduced?  How many concepts will be reviewed?
8. Will your students be engaging in discussion of a movie adaptation of the novel?  After which chapters will movie clips be shown?
9. How many days will be needed for any final presentations, paper revisions, teacher and peer conferences, or tests?
10. When will you pass out rubrics for assignments related to the novel?

A nicely plotted novel unit of study is a beautiful thing.  Now, the real fun can begin!

Cheers to vision inspired growth and development!

CTS

Every lesson should be designed with the end in mind, and in a way that sets students up for success.  When the teacher has no idea of the lessons direction, the students do not either.  For this reason, the likelihood of student success is significantly decreased.

So, what should happen next?

Prep, Prep, Preparation –

1. Look at the standards so that you can engage in purposeful reading.  As you read the novel, you will be aware of standards that would be easier to cover based on the content.
2. Read the book before you teach it.  To properly facilitate purposeful reading and discussion for your students, you should know the content beforehand.  In addition, some of the most innocent of texts can have a bit of controversial content.  Skillfully navigating sensitive topics is easier when you can plan for them.
3. Annotate the text just as you would have your students:
4. • Make inferences supported by text – jot down page numbers or quotes
   • Draw conclusions
   • Identify new vocabulary
   • Track WIT statements – What I’m Thinking
   • Do character analysis
   • Create a plot chart
   • Identify major themes supported by text – Why are these themes important?
   • Make text to text, text to self, text to world connections
   • Once you have finished the book, jot down your thoughts.  What did you like about the book? Why? Dislike? Why?
   • What do you think your students will like and dislike? Why?

Now we are ready to create the novel study plan beginning with the end in mind. Begin thinking about which standards to focus on based on the content covered in the novel.  Also consider what student learning targets will be outlined related to these standards.

In the next blog post we’ll continue our conversation by looking at the specifics of beginning the novel study plan.

Cheers to vision inspired growth and development!

CTS