You need a vision. Don't allow yourself to float without anchoring to a larger vision. Setting goals helps you articulate that vision. The goals will become the lighthouse guiding you as you make decisions throughout the year. This bright light of vision should shine in front of you to remind you of your direction. At the start of the school year teachers are often asked to set goals as a part of the evaluation process. Take a different approach this year and make them real, meaningful goals that you truly want to work toward. Stretch yourself to craft goals that will push and encourage you to grow as a teacher. Sometimes goals themselves seem a little disjointed and scattered, covering several different topics. Here are some thoughts on crafting a larger vision along with matching goals and action steps. This came from my goal setting PD for the faculty at my school. The Prezi for this PD is at the end of this blog post. Goal Setting: 1) Start with the mission statement of your school or organization: Hopefully this is already a place where you receive direction and purpose for your job. Break it down and understand the elements and think about the pieces of the mission statement that are related to you and your teaching. Use this step to be sure that your goals will align with what is expected of you if your goals are for evaluation purposes. 2) What is your one sentence? You may be familiar with Daniel Pink's book Drive, where he discusses motivation. The video below explains the idea of the one sentence. Think about YOUR one sentence. Create a mission statement for yourself that summarizes the legacy you hope to leave. Whether you pull from your school's mission statement or not, try to craft a vision that is unique to you and your role. 3) Set overarching goals. You want these to align with your one sentence and overall vision. Ask yourself, "how will I achieve my one sentence?" Try to make these goals into specific areas of how you will accomplish your one sentence. At this point you are still crafting a goal that is a little broader, but it clearly falls under your mission statement for yourself. Here is an example from my blog post Goals Provide Focus. My one sentence: My goal is to energize teaching and learning by fostering a learning mindset in teachers and students. Goals:
4) Establish clear action steps. Here is where the practical comes in. I am all about the practical! The trick here is to be specific. What actions are you going to take to attain this goal? Try to make them measurable even if they are simply a specific completed task so you can show progress toward your goal. This is actually sometimes the level we usually work in to craft goals, without thinking before about mission and overarching goals. Now that you have your one sentence and goals, these actions steps should be very clear in your mind. Below is another example from Goals Provide Focus: Goal: Coach teachers by helping them to align instruction with standards and implement effective teaching strategies. Action Steps:
5) Don't lose sight of your goals! Literally. Make them into visuals! All this goal setting is nice, but if you don't keep a bright visual reminder for yourself everyday, you will start to lose sight of them. Write or type them out and post them somewhere in your eye line everyday. This will remind you to keep the small daily tasks on track with your bigger goals. This is key in Turning an Idea into a Habit, which I recently blogged about. Try This Tomorrow! Actually - try this right now. If you are having an insight or idea while reading this post, jot down your ideas right away! David Rock says in Quiet Leadership and Your Brain at Work that acting quickly on an insight makes it more likely you will complete the task. It will also take you 5-10 minutes now, whereas coming back to this idea later makes your brain work hard to remember what you were thinking, which will take longer to process. I need to say thank you to all of the wonderful Tweeps who shared their goals and one sentence statements with me while I was planning this PD! I truly love my PLN: @lookforsun, @bjorth, @vealheidi, @peoplegogy, @jaimevanderg, @amytwhite, @kdwashburn, @ricki908, & @redmondcarol. You are all quoted below in the prezi. -- Allison Petersen @alcp
1 Comment
I got a challenge today, and it sent my mind whirling! Maureen Devlin (@lookforsun) probably didn't intend much when she wrote me this tweet:
But it gave me an idea that sparked a fire! I truly love how blogging can be so inspirational! If I really do want to make take the ideas from the book Quiet Leadership, which I have written about in two previous posts, and turn them into habits, what do I need to do? This also aligns with David Rock's method of coaching, which explains how to instill new habits and ways of thinking into the person across the table from you instead of telling them what to do. David Rock says: "A new habit is a delicate and fragile creation, Through different conferences and books, (like @kdwashburn's Architecture of Learning), I have learned the basics of how the brain works. New ideas can only stay in your mind for a matter of seconds before they are gone. Your brain needs to make connections to existing information for anything to stick. And even then, you need to be dwell upon it, write it down, and think it through for the idea to be made into a true habit.
So, the first step to turn ideas into habits is to intentionally transfer them from working memory to long term memory. Here are some ideas on how to do that: 4 Ways Turn an Idea Into a Habit: 1) Mindmaps or Diagrams: Toni Krasnic (@conciselearning, www.conciselearning.com) explains the power of a mindmap extremely well in his book How to Study with Mind Maps. By creating connections in your brain between an old idea to a new one, you will begin to solidify the new concept in your mind. By using a visual tool like a mind map or any type of diagram, you can take a higher level idea and bring it down to something your brain can manage. I am currently doing this with my each of the coaching models David Rock presents in Quiet Leadership, and it has helped tremendously. Think about the potential with students - when they are having trouble understanding a concept ask them to draw a mind map of what they do understand and help them fill in the gaps! 2) Visual Reminders: One of the things I always find myself saying is "out of sight, out of mind" because it is a literal thing for me. If I do not have a visual reminder, I honestly will not remember to do something. I try to blame this on mommy brain, but really I just have too many things to remember to do. So the more I can do to create visual reminders (i.e. a checklist, sticky notes, images, diagrams, reminders on my phone, etc) for myself the more likely I am to stick to something. Also, the more colorful the better. Your brain is able to trigger memories of where things are placed on the page more easily. I will be pasting visual charts and quotes on my desk to remind me of details from Quiet Leadership. This is also true with students - they have been away from your class for 24 hours; they've done a lot in between. Help them by creating visual reminders that will trigger their memories as much as possible. This is why I often use Poster Sticky Notes to take important colorful notes. This way I can paste it back on the wall when they return the next day. 3) Planned Action: Habits don't become habits if you forget about them. You need to set up some specific actions to transform it from an idea to a habit. David Rock says "Do something tangible yourself to anchor this model into your thinking. Some possible ways could do this include, explaining it to others, creating your own diagram of the model, or doing some writing. Anything you can do to give the circuits holding this concept in your thinking some attention will make a difference" (172). Rock also recommends accountability, find someone to talk to this habit about so that they can help you form it more solidly! Peer accountability can be key in building student habits. For example, I am always harping on them to write their homework down in their planners. But what if the routine was to have your seat partner check to see if you had written it down correctly? Then, that forces both students to check the accuracy of what they wrote down, and they each have peer accountability. 4) Don't Give Yourself a Crutch: If you truly want to form that new habit, don't allow yourself to go back to the old way. Not even once or twice. You will slip back into your old ways in no time. For example, I recently decided that I wanted to go digital with my To Do Lists. I was really sick of losing sticky notes, but I always have my phone with me. So I started using the Any.Do app (after trying several others, I landed on this one and love it!). To make this true change in habit, I needed to stop writing down notes to myself. So anytime I attempted to take a note on paper, I stopped myself and went to my phone. This is still a work in progress, but I think I'm getting there! With students this means stretching them. They are going to most likely revert to their usual way of doing things because that is easier. You have to stretch them and gently remind them that this is the new way and they can't go back and lean on the old way instead. I recently taught a Study Skills class where I emphasized the importance of students transferring the information from a lecture or class into long term memory to help them study. Here is the link to the Prezi and Visual Posters for that class if you want to check it out. Try This Tomorrow: What habit are you working on forming? Any new ones at the start of the school year? I am so interested to hear! Please leave a comment. And try out these tricks to help you make them stick! --- Allison Petersen @alcp Have students write quotes that reveal "the truth about writing."
The objective of this activity was to help students see that writing isn't easy! Even published authors who we admire admit that it is hard. I wanted my students to embrace the hard work of writing. This idea also relates to the idea of the 6 Word Memoir. You could try that approach too. 1) Author's Quotes: I started out by introducing author's quotes on writing. We discussed the authors' perspectives on writing and how tough it could be. “Writing is not complete when you’ve added everything you could, but rather, when you’ve taken away everything that is not needed.” – Ann Clark, Secret of the Andes “Writing is like a sport. To get better you must practice every day.” – Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief Series “Resign yourself to the fact that you will not write something good the first time; you're going to waste a lot of trees before you hit your stride, and you will imitate people you admire first and that's fine – everyone has to start somewhere. And most importantly persevere – keep persevering.” – J.K .Rowling, Harry Potter Series More Author Quotes Here 2) Modeling: I wrote several of my own quotes about writing in front of the class to help them before they got working on their own. It took me several quick drafts to get them right. “When writing, start with the middle or with what you know, and the opening will come to you like a gust of wind.” -Mrs. Petersen “Books sit on the shelves waiting to teach you the secrets of writing: strong characters, suspenseful plot, and how to capture a reader.” -Mrs. Petersen 3) Writing Quotes: Students wrote 2-3 of their own quotes about writing, trying to create a quote that grasped the challenge of writing in a sentence or two. The results were honestly so impressive and astounding! “Do not excuse the seemingly silly whims of your imagination. For those little whims can grow into whole new worlds, waiting to be brought to life by the imaginations of others.” – Isabel “Don’t be afraid to write something silly because later it will be phenomenal.” – Mariah “Writing is near to impossible to do on your own; never be afraid to ask for a critique, a suggestion, or inspiration. Nothing is wrong with help.” – Samara “When you finally finish your masterpiece, and when you reread your writing, none of your original work that you started with is in your finished piece.” – Bradley More Student Quotes Here 4) Publishing & Sharing: I posted these quotes on my wall along with the quotes from the authors. The student's quotes went alongside the author quotes and it felt authentic. Students loved reading each other's quotes! Try This Tomorrow! Use it as an introduction to the school year or a tough writing unit. Get them on board with the challenge so they can't throw back at you all year "This is too HARD." Well, they still might, but at least you can remind them of what they learned in class during this activity. --- Allison Petersen @alcp This memoir essay idea was inspired by @kdwashburn's Writer's Stylus course. This course and Kevin Washburn's other course Architecture of Learning have informed many of my teaching methods. During the Writer's Stylus course, teachers write a This I Believe essay. This writing was key in developing my voice as a writer in so many ways. So now, I have students use it as a platform for sharing. The idea originally comes from NPR's This I Believe radio broadcasts, which you may be familiar with. The website has hundreds of This I Believe essays on it to pull from. So here's how I structure this unit. I teach seventh graders, but it is easily adaptable to any age level. Standards:
1) Mentor Texts: We read and listen to multiple examples of This I Believe essays from the website. Some of them have recording included. Kevin Washburn calls this "Acquaintance and Analysis" where students have an open discussion about what they like about the writing style. This gets students thinking about HOW this type of essay is written. Great Mentor Text: I Believe in the Beatles by Macklin Levine 2) Qualities of a This I Believe Essay: In small groups, students make a list of qualities that define this style of writing (memoir/narrative). We combine these small group lists into one class list to refer to as students write. This helps students to define the style of writing that the essay requires. Looking for Qualities of TIB essay Assignment 3) Pick a Memory: This is often the hardest part of this essay, yet the most crucial. Students need to pick a very vivid memory th base their essay on. This memory drives the belief by having students explain what they learned from this unique event in their lives. It is very hard to write this essay by starting with the "I Believe" statement because that statement should come from the story itself. So, I have students brainstorm several story choices and then narrow their idea down to a very specific part of that story that they remember clearly. 4) Structure of the Essay: I explain to students the basic structure of the essay to give them a framework. This still allows them a lot of freedom with paragraphing and style choices.
6) Modeling: I have my own This I Believe essay that I am crafting along with them. I model for them how I structure my essay (using short paragraphs) and how I incorporate “Show Don’t Tell." I find a place in my own essay to expand sensory imagery and show them my thinking process by writing in front of them. 7) Coaching: Feedback is a vital part of the writing process. This is where I am sure to meet with each student to conference and coach them on how well their essays match the structure framework and push them to think about each element. I limit this essay to no more than 700 words to force a concise approach to the story. I often coach them on how to cut irrelevant details or how to make their I Believe statements symbolic. We also discuss areas of the essay to add Show Don't Tell. 8) Audio Recording: Since the original This I Believe essays are broadcast on the radio, I wanted to add an audio element to this essay. We have a classroom set of Chromebooks, and I needed a web based tool where students could record the essays, so I found Audioboo! I contacted them on twitter, and once I let them know I was an educator, they extended the audio length to 30 minutes instead of three minutes. Bingo! Bonus: Students can also do this on their cell phones using the Audioboo app. I had students record the essays, and then use the embed code to paste the recording into their blog posts. Just like the examples we read for the mentor texts. This year's blog posts with the audio included 9) Publishing & Reflection: Students published the This I Believe essays to their blogs - check them out here. This allows for students to comment on and read each other's blog posts and share their work. It becomes a great time for reflection to see how each student approached the challenge of explaining their belief in a different way. Try This Tomorrow! This could be a great way for you to incorporate Memoir/Narrative writing into your class this year. Please let me know if I can provide more details for you. Check out the resources below! Resources This I Believe Essay Dropbox Folder: Includes mentor texts, assignment sheet, power point, revision checklists, etc.
Essays with audio included Looking for Qualities of TIB essay Assignment More 7th Grade Student Samples: From our blog last year. Please feel free to share with your students as mentor texts. A Dog's Life: This is my This I Believe Essay written during Writer's Stylus about Aspen, my bulldog. There is no "I Believe" statement because I decided to remove it at late stages of editing. ___ Allison Petersen @alcp |
About AllisonAllison is an K-12 Instructional Coach. Her goal is to empower educators to grow continually. Recent Posts#5Tips4LMS Series
Cast a Vision Create Momentum A Problem and a Solution HIGHLIGHTED POSTS Re-Center on Vision Letting Go of Control The Power of Positive Feedback Inspiring a Love of Reading Turning Ideas into Habits The Truth About Writing This I Believe Essay Quiet Leadership Qualities Thinking About New Ideas Goals Provide Focus The Power of Twitter Use Storify to Organize Tweets Build a PLN Categories
All
Archives
July 2016
|