A thorn to remove a thorn, wish fulfillment, teacher evaluation.

 A short post perhaps, since I’ve been working on other things durning lunch. My job teaching is less stressful and more satisfying than it has every been before, under the wing of my mentor. This is both nice in itself,  and vindicating, in that it is what I suspected from the day or two I got to first observe her class. She also seems to be really good at the training/mentoring process. The wait, the year, all worth it. I have not found any other situation that would come close to giving me this level of support as a new teacher. I think I can say without exaggeration that I am a pretty good judge of character, and specifically, teaching ability. I’m good at picking good teachers. Of identifying them. Perhaps this would be a boon to my idea of finding basic commonalities of good teachers.

In other news, I got fed up with staying up late on my computer, so in a nuclear approach, I turned on the parental controls for my laptop set the lock-out time to 7:30 pm, and had Suzannah input the password so I don’t know it. I’ve never been happier or felt free-er, in regards to my technology use. I never wanted to go to bed late, I just found myself doing so, mainly because of my laptop. With that taken out of my hands, my bed time has gotten instantly better, and I’ve gotten more wind-down time without blue lights or over stimulation, for longer before that bed time. Also, I’ve gotten more quality time with Suzannah, and more exercise, going for evening walks. Hooray, cool brain Isaac’s triumph over hot brain Isaac, using the thorn of technology to neutralize itself. I’m considering how I might want to extend this approach to more elements of my digital life that end up getting me to do things I don’t really want to do.

- I out

No time for a title

 It’s Monday. It’s lunch time. Let’s do this.

Hello, what have I got to share today. Slowly but surely, I am working through the various beliefs and patterns around time management that have been a thorn in my side for a while. I’ve been focusing on it, and making. Well, I won’t say steady progress. Life’s been crazy the last… how long has it been? Year and a half? And longer. So I’ve had some learning streaks, and some times when I was just focusing on keeping my head above water. Working with my mentor now though, I feel like I am far enough out of the basic survival mode that I can put some energy back into improving a few aspects of my life. Though I’m trying to keep it narrow. I’ve heard and experienced that if you try and take on too many new habits, it hurts your success chances with all of them. Better to focus down on just a few manageable things, then expand when they are comfortably installed as habits.

Right now, my marching orders are clear: learning as much as I can from my mentor, and working on getting more…effective, with my time. I’ve got a little journal that I’ve used, first for trying to figure out what kind of organization system I want, then for trying to deal with the feeling of burnout and hopelessness I was feeling last year. I’d write thoughts and observations and findings I had, as I went through the process of fixing that element of my life. And eventually they were fixed to the point I wasn’t focusing on them. They were good enough. Now I add a third tab to that journal, “time management and prioritization.” The “prioritization” part is important. We all have limited time. We all have the same time, frankly.  24 hours per day. We can’t buy more of that. So how exactly do we “managed our time” more effectively?

As I put awareness on this, I’m noticing that a large part of what I’m doing wrong has to do with stuff I shouldn’t be doing. I remember someone saying we should have a “stop doing” list along with a “to do” list, and the idea makes sense, kind of. There are a lot of things I say yes to, that I should be saying no to. I’ve mentioned the idea of kon-Mari-ing my activities before, I think, but the point is really being driven home as I get more aware about how my time is being  used. I’m not using it that badly. But it’s a matter of do I do something waaaaay down on my priority list, or do I do something that makes a real difference towards the goals and dreams and things that matter the most to me. The business term is stuff that ‘moves the needle.’ We’re talking about change, and creation. Is what you are doing moving you towards the changes and creations you value most? Often, it’s not. It’s stuff that is satisfying to do, but doesn’t really change anything. It gets done because it’s easier, or more pleasant, or quicker (or all of the above) than the actions that do/will move the needle. 

Having the discipline, habits, tools, environment, to stay focused on those important things, at least most of the time, is where it’s at. There will always be chores, life-upkeep, etc., that requires some of your time, regularly, but I think the idea is to give that the time it deserves, but not more. And to work those around the often larger chunks of time you need to do the heavy lifting stuff that moves your dreams forwards.

That’s where I’m headed. I’ve finally gotten fed up with my number one enemy of meaningful work, my laptop. I’m working on how to implement some programs that will protect me from myself, via locking me out of certain distracting things, at the right times. I’ve already implemented a nightly 7:30 forced lock-out of basically everything on my laptop, and I love it. It feels freeing, rather than punishing, and I’m enjoying the additional time I get with my wife, and the fact that I’m not hyped up right before bed.

So, the experimenting continues.

My next item on the agenda, after I’ve worked with time some more, is to spend some time with self compassion, self confidence, and related things. Though I’ve gotten much better, I’m still sometimes prone to being hard on myself, and I own it to myself and everyone else who interacts with me, to be more self-compassionate. It makes me more effective in changing myself, and makes others happier to see me happier. And I my main spiritual teacher has said that happiness is one of the gates to self-realization, so it’s necessary. (How kind of the universe  to design itself that way.)

Whoops, it’s time to go!

See ya next week!

I-o

Mysterious Lump, Adorable creatures, wut is"put"?

 Thinking about my mentor/role model: She has many skills, not just classroom discipline. She is excellent at choosing work that will be interesting for the children. She has excellent predictive abilities, about how the class will respond to certain things, work, structures, etc. She is fun: she mixes it up, keeps things from getting boring, gives the kids time of and such, for fun, when they are doing well, with their academics. She has a plan: she has several fun, challenging, time-intensive, independent activities the youngest children can do, for the first several weeks. This gives her time to get the rest of the children acclimated and chugging along with plenty of work of their own to do, before coming back to the new arrivals and spending more time, getting them familiar with the routine of working hard and with focus every day, and all the various specific habits and routines of class. She went hard and exhaustively on the general classroom expectations, and enforced them with extreme consistency, right from day one, but also has been making sure they get activities to do, materials that they can do on their own, every day, to get them progressing with reading comprehension, mathematics, etc.

It's basically what I was struck with, when I first saw her in action. All the theory I had read and heard about, in my masters program, she was doing. My masters program was not Montessori, it was a standard 1-6 education degree, from a fairly integrated, experience and science based perspective. But all this start of the year stuff, that's exactly what my teachers were talking about when having us read, "the first 6 weeks of school." As one example among many. Or else, she was surpassing the theory I was being taught, achieving results that were beyond what was being taught. Many of her students, I think perhaps most, who make it to the upper grade levels, are one or two grade levels above where their age would put them.

What my teachers did not teach, was her discipline methods. I suspect this is because teaching that is much more difficult. Which is not a good reason for not teaching it, but is understandable. They were not given the time necessary to do so. What she is doing... even she is not really sure about, in terms of mechanics she could dissect and give to me, or teach to me. It makes me think doing so would make for a genuinely useful contribution to educational science, and education practice, via teacher education.

Regardless of understanding it, by being around it, I think I am beginning to osmose it a little. Hopefully if I can get it, even if it's still kind of tacit and not really understood, I can then take the time to unpack it in a way that is more quickly teachable. What she does is not any of the nice discipline models that I've read about in books, with their steps and structures. But it's something that, like salt or sugar, would enhance whatever practices are being used. It ends up making the children more respectful, responsible, and generally integrous.

A final short note on my learning to teach process, is she is ramping up the real, meaty learning, very quickly. Within this first week, within the first few days, the kids were working on very serious intellectual concepts. This "press for learning" as some of the education research calls it, characterizes her teaching style and is likely one of the reasons her children are so advanced. Very few worksheets before the actual work is getting started, and it is work she has carefully chosen to be actually useful, not just busy work, and stuff the children can do without teacher intervention, so not giving her more work to do. This is one of the things you need to do with Montessori; give the kids stuff they can work on, practice, on their own. And just as importantly, systems of accountability and an atmosphere and expectation, and awareness to back up those expectations, that children are focusing on and doing the work seriously.

Onto other things. The word "put" when you look at it closely, seems very odd, like it is a child's failed attempt to spell it. You'd think it should be pronounced like "putt" from the spelling.

Ume, our less social, more streetwise, more svelte cat, has a scab on her back and is acting weird, and now has a lump near the scab. I hope we can take her into a vet and figure out what's going on. I would be quite sad if anything happened to our dear cats. Which is a new kind of feeling for me in regards to pets, but they are really great people, so maybe it's just like with children: at first I didn't really get attached to them, but then I met some really sweet, respectful ones, and realized it was just when they were being bratty or disrespectful that I felt no strong attachment to them. Kids get no points for "cuteness" in my book. I will treat them kindly and with respect, but if they want me to miss them when they're gone, they're going to have to display some positive character traits like kindness, truthfulness, responsibility, etc.

Kind of like how you might choose your friends or company. To bring it around to the original topic, that's one of the things I love about my mentor's teaching and thus classroom, is in creates changes in the children, towards those more positive, and thus more enjoyable to be around, characteristics. She's mentioned that she sees those qualities in the children, all of them, and I've heard similar things from my teachers in my masters program. To see those positive qualities is half of the work of cultivating them. (But the other half is not being permissive when they don't live up to that potential you see in them, constantly pushing them to live up to what they are capable of, not just academically, but as human beings.

OK, I Out, finishing on Sunday morning. Hopefully that's a sign that my time management and prioritization learning is progressing.

Love and Law. Underlying Patterns. Analyzing, Synthesizing.

 OK! It’s Tuesday instead of Monday, but otherwise back to our regularly scheduled programming. First day of school! I mean, it’s only been a few days since the summer session ended, but it feels different. There’s going to be a lot more academic rigor. And I mean a lot. In John Hattie’s “Visible Learning” book where he summarizes education research meta-studies, one of the more potent effects was with something he called “press for learning” which is about what it sounds like. How much the teacher is pushing the children to push themselves, not settling for ho-hum work when the students can do better, if they really try. My mentor is particularly passionate about this, and it shows in her results, where she frequently puts out students who are several grade levels above their peers, when they leave her school. I’m looking forward to learning how that works.

And also really looking forward to seeing her in action, as I did this morning. I feel like the first few days, and even the first day especially, of school with really great teachers, are the most useful for study. Once the teachers have had a few months with the kids, the routines are already laid down, they have already gotten into good habits, the boundaries have been tested and, in the case of really good teachers, shown to be firm. An observer might get the mistaken impression, visiting a class like that, that teaching is easy, or their students are easy. Whereas, when you see the first day, first week, you see the head butting happening, how conflicts are managed, how the teacher establishes her “street cred” and reputation, how she sets up the rules and expectations, and how she implements and enforces them.

It was also surprisingly useful to see my mentor in action at the staff meeting last week. She has said this before, that she is pretty much the same with kids of all ages and adults. She’s not putting on a persona. That’s not to say she is insensitive to context and developmental differences, but, given a clear understanding of them, she adjusts appropriately, while remaining basically the same. Though there is a significant difference how she interacts with a group of people compared to how she interacts one on one. I’ve mostly seen her interact one on one with adults and in a group with children. I’ve seen some interactions where a child has stepped over a line and she’s one on one or small group with them, but that’s pretty similar to when they step over the line and are in a group. I don’t think I’ve seen much of her interacting one on one with children when they aren’t in trouble, but I now assume it’s a bit more like with adult individuals, plus the filter of developmental appropriateness and the specific kind of relationship she has with them. Teacher student vs. peers vs. employer kind of thing.

In any case, it made it a bit more clear, how much of how she interacts is her personality. I don’t want to copy her personality, though in the same way that artists do master copies, I may try copying what she does to see what is required to do that, and understand what thinking and feeling is behind that. But I want to understand the principals behind what she does that makes them work. Seeing her in different situations, with different kinds of people, helps me piece together the mosaic of the underlying patterns.

Well, running out of time again. Things I’m noticing: she is a good orator. She varies it more for children, because that works with them, but my acting teacher would approve of her work. She uses variation in inflection, humor, changing up the sound and pace to keep the audience listening.

She is also choosing her words very carefully. How she explains rules, the why behind them. She’s also good at having good boundaries and high expectations, and catching and calling kids out when they go over any lines, without it feeling angry. She herself has said she is full of love when she’s giving her serious-faced corrections, and I wonder if that feeling perhaps both enhances the potency of the correction while avoiding the feeling of resentment or reactance that often occurs when rules and expectations are enforced.

If this is the case, it’s one of the things that cannot be learned as easily as others, because that love cannot be faked. I doubt you would get a positive effect if it was faked, either for the students or for how you internally would feel. The challenge then is learning to hold those very different qualities: deep unconditional love, and rigorously enforced high expectations for behavior. Especially when giving what you might call a ‘dressing down.’ To someone. Though when analyzing the words used, they are not violent or angry or put-downs. It’s really only the tone that makes it feel like that, the words are serious, but respectful. And I think perhaps having the love underlying that makes the process of what words to use more automatic, rather than something that needs to be thought about and planned out. 

Nothing wrong with planning, but if you don’t want canned responses, you need to know the internal state that then organizes the specific words coming out. Kind of like knowing the story, and then saying it in your own words, or describing something you’ve seen, in your own words. You are referring to an internal model, so you don’t need to refer to a memorized script. Also helpful when you are faced with novel situations and would have to go ‘off script.”

It’s easy to fall back into a more passive role, and I notice that tendency. If I want to make best use of my situation though, I need much more action, practice, getting my hands in on things. So I’ll need some plan to counteract that tendency of mine.

OK, it’s Wednesday now, I ran out of time yesterday. Goodbye for now, see you next time.

<3

Isaac