Show. Don’t Tell.

Posted on June 6, 2013 by renwickme

In which I do a book talk on Wonder for my 5th grade commencement speech.

I was handed a copy of a Movin’ On Up speech delivered by Mr. Kellogg a couple of years ago. The title was “Make it a Good Day”. He spoke about the importance of making good choices instead of just saying so. It is a good script. I plan to expand upon it.

At Howe, we adhere to values such as compassion and teamwork, acceptance, imagination and attitude, responsibility and respect, and attendance. These powerful concepts were present in a book I read aloud to some 5th graders this year, Wonder by R.J. Palacio. I found a good summary of this book at the Children’s Craniofacial Association:

“August (Auggie) Pullman was born with a facial difference that prevented him from going to a mainstream school—until now. He’s about to enter 5th grade at Beecher Prep, and if you’ve ever been the new kid, then you know how hard that can be. The thing is Auggie’s just an ordinary kid, with an extraordinary face. But can he convince his new classmates that he’s just like them, despite appearances?”

I thought this book exemplified many of the Howe values.

Compassion and Teamwork

When Auggie enters school, no one initially sits by him at lunch. Summer, a classmate, realizes this and chooses to eat with Auggie every day. They form a strong bond. In order to show compassion toward others, we need to have the courage to take that first step.

Acceptance

Auggie’s older sister Via is one of his biggest supporters. She sticks up for him when others treat him differently. However, she struggles to balance her loyalty to her brother with her need for her own life at her new high school. Via also doesn’t how to deal with the fact that Auggie is becoming more independent and doesn’t need her as much as he used to.

Imagination and Attitude

Before school started, Auggie and his family had a difficult time preparing for the first day. He was creative in his approach to try and fit in with his peers, such as doing more listening than talking to learn about life at Beecher Prep. It also helped that the school provided an orientation for Auggie and made it clear about what is expected of all students.

Responsibility and Respect

One of Auggie’s best friends at Beecher, Jack Will, makes a poor decision in the middle of the story. He gets involved in a hurtful conversation about Auggie with classmates. He happened to hear it, and the two of them stopped hanging out. It is true that a friendship takes a lifetime to build, but only a minute to damage or even destroy.

Attendance

Auggie not only deals with his physical disability, but also with a bullying situation. His adversary, Julian, persuades others to help him make Auggie’s life miserable through words and actions. Auggie handles this with maturity and composure. Classmates see how Auggie responds and start to come around to his side. Would this have been the case had he lashed out at Julian? I don’t think so. The story ends with Auggie being recognized in front of his peers for his courage, his willingness to forgive, and his determination to be successful despite large obstacles.

As you move up to the middle school, consider some of these reflective questions and the lessons from Wonder:

How will you show Summer’s compassion for those that struggle?
How will you show acceptance like Via, and appropriately stick up for others?
How will you act as Auggie did when you feel out of place? Will you stay focused on what’s important and steer clear of less desirable situations?
How will you avoid Jack Will’s poor decision and not talk about others behind their backs, whether they are your friends or not, whether online or face-to-face?
How will you show determination in your attendance at school every day, and deal with the “Julians” in your life with both assertiveness and understanding?

You will notice that I am asking you, not the group. Each one of us is accountable to ourselves. There will be challenges in your future, but I am confident that what you will have to face will be minor compared to what kids such as Auggie deal with every day.

These questions I pose to you also do not demand a verbal response. We expect that your actions will be the answer to these questions. Show. Don’t tell. As they say, actions speak louder than words.

Our Mission and Vision

Posted on June 5, 2013 by renwickme

I wrote this for my school’s last newsletter of the year. It is a culmination of the hard work my leadership team put in to developing our school’s new mission. These eighteen words work well with each other. You might not realize that it was a two month process to create this mission. The resource Building a Professional Learning Community at Work: A Guide to the First Year by Bill Ferriter (@plugusin) and Parry Graham has been instrumental in helping my staff move forward in collaborating at high levels of learning and engagement.

This year at Howe, one of the goals was to revisit our school vision. It is good practice for any organization to reflect on their purpose. The result: In addition to our vision statements, we also developed a mission. A mission is different than a vision. It describes where we want to go. It is a destination of where we want to be in the future, sort of like a horizon. We are constantly moving forward, even if perfection is unattainable. Vision statements describe the pathway in which to achieve our mission. What a mission provides is a concise, memorable message about our purpose. A mission and vision go hand in hand. Please read and think about about the proposed mission you see below:

Our Mission: To foster a community of engaged learners, focused on academic and social growth, preparing for our changing future.

These words were chosen very carefully. Let’s break this down into smaller parts to understand the mission’s meaning more deeply:

To foster a community of engaged learners,

We as educators are responsible for creating a climate that will encourage deep thinking and reflection with our students. Engagement is the state of being emotionally involved or committed to something that is important to that person. In the schoolhouse, engagement means staff connecting with our students personally as well as cognitively. Engagement means giving students some choice in what they want to learn, as well as opportunities to share their learning with peers. Engagement means providing an authentic audience and a shared purpose when students are representing their thinking. When classrooms work together to learn with and from each other, our engagement helps create a community of learners.

focused on academic and social growth,

In order to be successful, we believe the skills and knowledge students should attain should be both knowing how to learn as well as knowing how to act. The staff at Howe Elementary School strive to be explicit in our teachings. We model it, have students try it as a whole group, then give guidance and eventually independence. Our goal is to create learners who are self-directed and self-motivated. Instilling this responsibility is a daily focus.

preparing for our changing future.

The world you and I grew up in is a lot different than the one our kids now inhabit. Instead of searching for specific information about a topic, learners today have to sort through all the information they have access to and determine which is most accurate and relevant. How we teach students must also change. We are guides instead of just providers of what students should know and be able to do. We are all learners in today’s world. As new knowledge continues to be created, this skill of knowing how to learn is a critical one.

Background for my Nerdy Book Club Post “Why I Think Wonder Didn’t Win a Newbery”

Posted on April 21, 2013 by renwickme

I wrote this post on the Nerdy Book Club blog for a variety of reasons:

- To model what it means to be a connected learner in front of 27 fifth graders.
- To guide students on how to read text more critically.
- To show students how to use evidence from a text to support an opinion.
- To celebrate our learning and this excellent book I read aloud.

Modeling Connectedness

“Connectedness” is defined by the Merriam-Webster Learner’s Dictionary as “the state of being closely joined or linked especially in an emotional way”. Wonder conjured up many emotions in us as we read and discussed it. I gave students several opportunities to turn and talk with a neighbor to share their thinking during strategic points in the story. I also asked essential questions related to the book. Students were encouraged to ask questions of their own that took my thinking to a deeper level. We posted our thoughts on the Wonder group we joined on Edmodo. All of these discussions led to my opinion piece I posted on the blog. Because our thinking was available for others to read and respond to, the students had a better understanding of the importance of sharing our feelings about something online in a meaningful and respectful manner.

Critical Reading

The concept of reading critically is explained nicely in Teaching Students to Read Like Detectives by Doug Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Diane Lapp (Solution Tree, 2011). According to the authors, astute readers start asking questions as soon as they pick up a text. In the post, I purposefully took the perspective that the ending was the reason Wonder didn’t win the Newbery. I wanted to create an authentic controversy. As I wrote on the computer and projected it on the Smart Board, I could tell a few student weren’t comfortable with this opinion. Their body language and facial expressions said it all. I encouraged the students to speak freely. One student, who I will call Sara, finally had had enough and blurted, “I just don’t agree with you, Mr. Renwick.” A few of her classmates’ mouths dropped open. He’s the principal! they were probably thinking. But I commended Sara on her willingness to take a risk and share her own thinking, even though it didn’t correspond with my own.

Text-Based Evidence

After expressing her opinion that in fact the ending was really great, I asked Sara to explain her position a bit more. While I cannot recall the exact conversation that took place afterward, I do remember several students joining our discussion. We compared the ending in Wonder to related stories, such as Out of my Mind by Sharon Draper. Some students brought up their own experiences of someone they know receiving a large celebration and why it was important for that person. It was also noted that sometimes the strong need to step up and help those in need, like Auggie’s classmates and the adults in his life did. This robust discussion helped form the ending on my Nerdy Book Club post. Throughout our conversations, we stayed close to the text even as we connected the book’s events with our own lives, experiences and past books we had read.

Celebration and Recognition

Once the draft of my post was complete, I printed off a copy for each student. I asked them to reread it carefully and note anything else they felt needed revision in the margins. A number of students came back the next time with several suggestions. Most of them were grammatical in nature. Feeling confident in our final draft once revised, we shipped it off to Mr. Sharp for publication. Giving several opportunities for input allowed everyone ownership in this shared writing activity.

Now that it is online, we look forward to reading the comments to the post. Maybe we will comment ourselves. Our thoughts and ideas will have a much larger audience and greater purpose with the use of the blog. We plan to celebrate our efforts with a book talk on related stories. As well, everyone can sign a “Be Kind” certificate to remind ourselves to be everyday heroes in someone’s life that we know.

If I Post on My Blog and No One Reads It, Did I Really Write It?

Posted on April 3, 2013 by renwickme

My staff and I are having some good conversations about the how and why for becoming more connected online with our families. Questions such as “Why should we?”, “What are the benefits for students?”, and “Is it one more thing added to my plate?” are all items we have tried to address.

More specifically, the biggest question seems to be, “Why should we share student learning online when it seems like no one is reading it?” We don’t lack for data that supports why we should start engaging with our families and community through tools such as social media. Consider the following research cited by Meg Carnes and Kitty Portersfield in their book Why Social Media Matters (Solution Tree, 2012):

75% of parents ages 18-29 use social media.

8% of adults under 30 read a print newspaper.

90% of families with incomes of $30,000 to $49,000 have a cell phone.

This information seems to support our efforts in creating classroom and student blogs, as well as sharing student work via digital portfolios. Yet it still seems like we are sometimes speaking into a vacuum. Families do not comment on our posts. We have had very few (if any) requests from parents to gain access to their child’s gallery of writing housed online.

Moving Forward

Despite these initial concerns, we have already seen benefits to becoming more connected educators. One thing I have stressed with staff is we are trailblazers. Not every school is doing this. Many families are unfamiliar with the tools we are trying with students. I have encouraged teachers to stick with it, because eventually they will come. Even posting their printed classroom newsletters on a classroom blog is a step in the right direction. Right now we save them on an internal drive, but it seems like they would be better placed online so parents can access 24/7. I have modeled this same practice by adding our school’s Twitter and school blog feeds to our district website.

There is also the engagement factor. When teachers have told students that their work will be shared online, their interest and efforts have piqued. All of a sudden, they realized that their potential audience just got a whole lot bigger. This subsequently sets an additional purpose for their learning activities, even if it is nothing more flashy than word work or summarizing a text they just read. Documenting these evidence-based practices over time also shows the students that these daily literacy activities are very important toward becoming better readers and writers. Growth can be seen more easily and authentically when their visual and audible learning products stand side-by-side in curation tools such as Dropbox and Evernote

FInally, there is definitely a need for parent education. It is obvious to me that families have the digital tools. They use smart phones frequently while waiting for their children to be dismissed at the end of the day. With that, we have a technology night planned for parents in the next couple of weeks. My role will be to show everyone how the devices they hold in their hands can access a wealth of information about their kids as well as learning resources in general. All of the tools we are trying out have a mobile application to access them. The idea that a parent can check their child’s grades, attendance and learning progress while waiting in the lobby should be a novel one.

A great resource for digital parent outreach is Joe Mazza (@Joe_Mazza) and the #ptchat he moderates on Twitter. You can check out the multitude of ways his school has connected with families in the latest edition of Principal magazine. In your school, what ways have you become more connected with your families online? Please share in the comments.

Are You Changing, or Are You Growing?

Posted on April 2, 2013 by renwickme

Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.
- John C. Maxwell

Although snow is still on the ground here in Central Wisconsin, I am preparing for the upcoming gardening season. Two new raised beds will be installed. My family and I have selected what vegetables we want to grow this season.

Long before this year, I have kept a compost pile. If you are not familiar with this, it is a container that houses dead leaves, kitchen scraps, and most anything else that was once living and not an animal by-product. When this mixture breaks down into a soil-like material, it can be spread over soil and beds to aid plant growth, water retention in soil, and the overall health of a garden. Some refer to compost as “black gold”, because of all the benefits it provides toward a great harvest.

Now, I could let this pile sit. It would eventually decompose and become compost at some point in time, maybe in a couple of years. However, I can accelerate this process by turning over the dead plant material every now and then. Putting in this extra work in the beginning results in more compost both now and in the future. My efforts will lead to better results at a faster rate compared to doing nothing at all.

I see some parallels between compost and the new ways of learning available today. Tools such as social media, eBooks and digital portfolios are ripe for the taking. They just require a little extra effort in the beginning, plus some reflection as to what outdated practices they will replace. Moreover, I believe these new tools differ than other shifts in learning in the past. Being more connected will most likely not be an initiative that comes to us top down. It needs to start from the ground up, in classrooms willing to start accelerating the learning process and innovate. The students are asking for it, in their lack of engagement if not in their words. Many of them may already be using these tools on their own time and can teach us how to use them. That is okay. Maybe even better.

So, we can sit back and allow these personalized, self-directed tools for learning to eventually come to us. Maybe we can try one out next year when we are more comfortable. Our students’ audience for writing will continue to be only us, and maybe the parents. Sharing students’ learning will happen on special days a couple times a year. The purpose for our students’ work will be to get that grade above passing. Or…we can turn over our instruction and start to accelerate our own process for learning. We can be learners alongside our students, growing as a connected community whose diversity of resources knows no limits. Students will ask you what you all did while they were absent, because they don’t want to miss anything.

If you were a student in your classroom right now, would you want to wait until next year to become more connected, or even one more day?

Twitter Is Like a Radio

Posted on February 3, 2013 by renwickme

I will be presenting with fellow principals Jessica Johnson and Curt Rees on Monday, February 4 at the Association of Wisconsin School Administrators (AWSA) Elementary Principals Conference. The topic: The Why and How of Twitter.

Here is a video I prepared explaining how to use Twitter as an educator:

It is critical that we explore why and how we use social media (or any new concept) first. Setting the purpose makes learning the basics much more relevant and engaging. See Simon Sinek's Start With Why for more on this thinking.

The three of us plus Jay Posick were also featured in ASCD Express recently about using Twitter to cultivate a personal learning network (PLN). I can attest to the growth I have experienced with Jessica, Curt, Jay and the rest of my colleagues being a part of my collaborative learning community.

Posted with Blogsy

Increasing Engagement

Posted on January 22, 2013 by renwickme

This post is also featured on Stenhouse’s blog.

For a while it was popular in educational circles to talk about “time on task”. In some circles it still is. But, as many have noted, children are always on task; the important question is, what is the task?

- Peter Johnson, Knowing Literacy

My school faced a dilemma last spring: The grant for our after school reading intervention had run out. This also included our A.M. and P.M. study centers. Many of our students and families utilized these services to get extra academic support and to provide supervision for children whose parents worked early or late. We had a captive audience in those who attended, but no resources left in which to captivate them with, or so I initially thought.

As I prepared our final report for the grant, I noticed a pattern. Students who attended the structured, computer-based reading intervention after school did not make gains when compared to their peers. Students who attended the morning and after school study centers, with minimal educator support, showed more growth than their school peers. It was a small sample size, but results nonetheless.

Around the same time, I came across Peter Johnston’s post “Reducing Instruction, Increasing Engagement” on Stenhouse’s blog. In it he describes a study he conducted with Gay Ivey in a secondary classroom. Students were given edgy fiction and few expectations, other than to read the books and discuss them with classmates. They took control of their learning, selecting texts based on their interests and communicating with each other about what they read. Subsequently, their tests scores went up and their social and emotional well being improved.

This post was the proverbial manna from heaven. Along with Richard Allington’s suggestion in Schools That Work for the principal to help facilitate the morning center, we had a possible answer to our problem. Some of our Title I funds were allocated to support two staff members two times a week to facilitate the after school book club for 4th and 5th graders. At the same time, I shifted the schedule of an English Language Learner aide so she would come in an hour earlier to catch the students in the morning. Even though all of this programming was to be hosted in the school library, we did purchase some high interest texts from a local book store. Total cost for this year-long program: Approximately $3000.

So how have we reduced instruction and increased engagement?

More of a variety of literacy resources are available. For example, students can listen to books on tape, practice their letters and writing using art supplies, and select any text they find interesting.

In both the morning study center and after school book club, we strive to provide choice in books. Some guidance is provided by staff when they appear to have a tough time finding their next read. However, for the most part we stay out of the way.

We have created an inviting, cozy environment to allow kids to chat with each other while reading their books. Whistle chairs, foam shaped like an upside down whistle and covered with a leather case, are an example of a purchase we made to help create this climate. Educators need to give kids permission to read, both with our words and our actions. By doing this, we let them know that it is okay to just sit around and enjoy a book while at school.

As well, they like writing book reviews on bookmark cards. They are propped on the front of the respective book and displayed on a designated table for others to check out. These students are now seen as readers and writers by their classmates. At this age, peers’ perceptions are students’ realities.

One hiccup we have noticed is the inconsistent attendance of a few of our 4th and 5th graders after school. To address this, the staff and I have discussed ways to leverage technology to increase engagement. One idea is allowing students to connect on Edmodo. It is a safe social media tool for schools to share and discuss their learning. This would allow students to write their thoughts and questions about what they are reading for a broader audience, as well as read what others have posted.

At a fraction of the previous year’s costs, we have developed a literacy intervention that engages students and has the potential to increase students’ reading abilities at a faster rate than prescribed programming. At the same time, departing from past practices is a scary proposition for us as educators. It means giving up the spotlight and allowing student learning to take center stage. Teachers and principals, myself included, sometimes think we can control student outcomes. This naturally leads us into trying to control the learning at times. Yet it is an open and curious mind that learns best. We can facilitate this mindset by increasing engagement in students through thoughtful instruction and sharing our enthusiasm for reading. And isn’t engagement the reason we read and learn anyway?

Examples of Practice: Finding My Reading Balance with Bookcrawler

Posted on January 6, 2013 by renwickme

I just finished the excellent Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Set in the not too distant future, a homeless teenager named Wade is part of a virtual world, along with just about everyone else on the planet, called OASIS. There is a contest in which who ever finds a hidden “egg” with their avatar will be rewarded with the OASIS’ late creator’s estate worth billions of dollars. Danger ensues when Wade, whose avatar is known as Parzival, finds the first clue. The author does a really nice job of keeping the suspense high, while also making lots of 80′s references that, growing up during this decade, I found very humorous.

Ready Player One is also the 53rd book I have read since the summer of 2011. Although I did not meet the 40 book expectation within one school year that Donalyn Miller has for her students, it should be noted that some of my books were quite thick . And just like her students, I also have set a goal to read a variety of genres. I think it is important to develop a more well-rounded reading diet.

I cringe a bit when an educator says, “I don’t have time to read during the school year.” I keep my thoughts to myself on this matter. However I do reflect on how any teacher who isn’t a regular reader can effectively guide students to be independent readers themselves. What titles would that teacher recommend to a student if they did not have the knowledge of what is available? Instead of addressing this in one-on-one conversations, I find the best way to encourage educators to be readers is to model it.

An iOS app that has helped me find my reading balance is Book Crawler. It is a paid app that is similar to Goodreads. You can scan in a title, or find a text through an online server such as Google.

So why not use Goodreads? I use that too. But what Book Crawler provides is a more visual inventory of what I have read and plan to read.

I can add titles I have in Book Crawler to Goodreads, as well as share what I have read on other social media tools. I can also add tags and comments to books in order to organize them into more specific categories.

One of the best parts about Book Crawler is the visual way I can assess my reading balance. By selecting “Genre” instead of “Titles”, my list of books is reorganized by subject matter. Each genre is tallied based on how many books are in each group.

After looking at my list this way, I could easily see that I have not read a graphic novel, need to look for more general fiction, and had read quite a few professional resources.

One of the negatives about Book Crawler is that it seems like not a lot of readers are using it when compared to Goodreads. The location tool in the app tells me who the nearest person is proximity wise that has read the same book. Many times that person is hundreds or even thousands of miles a way. This is why I connect my Book Crawler account with Goodreads, to be able to connect with other readers.

I could see this app being used for a teacher’s classroom, professional and/or personal library. For example, students could scan the books in and tag them with their names. Once they finished reading a title, they can write a review in the comments for other students to find. There is potential for this tool to help develop a community of balanced, avid readers in a classroom.

Highest Common Denominator

Posted on December 6, 2012 by renwickme

Parent involvement nights, a focus on writing across the curriculum, and a culture of acceptance are just a few components of what makes my school such a great one to work at. My staff is also willing to consider new practices if they have the potential to enhance the learning experience. One topic we have often discussed is the role of social media in schools today. We have taken it slow, but I think we are starting to reach a point where we may be ready to collectively take the Web 2.0 leap.

One area of specific interest is our weekly classroom newsletters. Teachers are diligent about sending home a summary of the learning that occurred during the week to parents. Families refer to them often at PTO meetings and in informal conversations. No surprise that the classroom newsletters were listed as one of the best pieces of our school communication efforts.

Even so, we have looked at ways to make these newsletters more accessible to all families. A few teachers have tried Facebook. Other classrooms are currently piloting blogs. Whatever the tool, an obstacle to our efforts is the fact that some of our families still don’t have access to the Internet at home. Our poverty level and lack of technology training in the community could be part of the reason.

At the same time, what about the families that prefer to use social media for communication? And does poverty always limit a person’s access to the Internet? In the book Why Social Media Matters by Carnes and Porterfield, several statistics are cited about parents’ use of social media today. I shared some of this data with fellow principals Curt Rees, Jessica Johnson and Jay Posick at an administrator conference recently via Prezi.

75% of parents ages 18-29 use social media.

8% of adults under 30 read a print newspaper.

90% of families with incomes between $30,000-$49,000 own a cell phone.

I suspect these percentages will continue to rise as parents model these technology behaviors for their kids. So while a print newsletter is fulfilling the important need of parent communication, we may still not be communicating with all parents. For example, what if a teacher had a blog that they posted with their students, and then printed off a copy for families who prefer paper? You are still honoring parent preference for communication. At the same time you are appealing to the highest common denominator with regard to what could be a more effective way to communicate.

Other benefits of a classroom blog include posting audio, images and video of student work, responding to comments from families to support two-way communication, giving parents an easier way to share their child’s learning with out-of-town relatives, and just being relevant in today’s Web 2.0 world.

Do you have a classroom blog? What have you found to be effective in promoting this type of tool as a way to communicate with families? Please share in the comments.

CCSS, RtI, PLCs, PALS, DOK…

Posted on November 17, 2012 by renwickme

The other day I noticed two staff members laughing at something on their computer screen. Having the distinct feeling that I was the possible source of their amusement, I peeked at what they were reading.

My minutes from the last Instructional Leadership Team had three different acronyms…within the first agenda item. Yikes! In my effort to keep my notes brief, I almost made my minutes unreadable by anyone not current on the present day buzz words. In fact, I didn't even know what DOK (Depths of Knowledge) was until another administrator sent me a packet of information about it this week.

No wonder teachers and administrators feel like their heads are swimming lately. I can hardly keep all of these initiatives straight. With the current climate in education, I need to try to inject some humor when my staff gets together, as well as let them know that I am treading water sometimes, too. I think this video could be used to start our next meeting on a lighter note and poke some fun at all of these acronyms.