The Cornerstone For Teachers Blog

Protecting yourself (and the kids) from bureaucracy

Angela Watson — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:31:48 +0000

It’s disconcerting to realize that being good at teaching is not necessarily a requirement to be successful in the field of education. Individuals who possess little or no instructional expertise can somehow land extremely powerful positions. And for those who are in the classroom, being an effective instructor is only a small part of being an effective teacher. There are political games that must be played. There are interpersonal protocols to follow and administrative pet peeves to avoid. There are things to document on paper that defy common sense and basic reasoning.

Yes, the person at Very Demotivational who created this image made a typo. Someone should probably create a system whereby there are three proofreaders, each of whom fill out a form documenting that they've checked for errors and then...oh, wait. Never mind.

What makes this so baffling and infuriating is that we’re constantly reminded of how we don’t work in the dog-eat-dog business world. If we were attorneys or ad executives, we would expect the need for “working the system.” But teachers are repeatedly told, It’s all about the kids! We’re all here for the kids! The implication is that we’re on the same team, and if we each put the kids first, things will work out great for everyone. After awhile, we discover that this is patently untrue! No wonder we get frustrated and disillusioned.

The truth is, teaching is NOT that different from most other jobs. Like every employee, part of our role is to make our bosses look good. We also have to do certain things to please our “clients” (students and parents.) Additionally, we have to make things appear a certain way on paper, and make other things happen in practice.

This is not fun. It is not fair. Often our students suffer the most. But upsetting yourself about these things changes nothing! Getting mad is a reaction, not a solution.

Many teachers resent having to “play the game.” The key is to stop viewing it as game playing. Think of it as a strategic approach to being successful in your school and/or district. Dealing with unfairness is part of the job; it’s not a personal affront to you, and you are not the only one affected.

Practice letting nonsensical demands roll right off your back; comply with them as needed but don’t brood and complain incessantly. Train yourself to see favoritism and inconsistent expectations as part of working in almost any job. Be patient with bureaucratic limitations and misplaced priorities.

None of these things are right or acceptable, but thinking about how bad they are is not helpful. If you constantly lament these issues as major problems, you will get frustrated and burned out. Keep your mind focused on your students and not on the behind-the-scenes stuff that wears you down.

If you find yourself resisting this perspective, keep in mind that you are resisting reality. It’s like getting mad about high gas prices or a long line in the grocery store. If you stubbornly insist, “No! I do not accept this ridiculous practice! I will not make peace with this!” you are harming yourself and causing more suffering. In addition to the practical problem, you’ve created an emotional problem. Detach from the situation so that it does not cause a stress reaction in your body.

Remember, the ultimate goal is to maintain healthy thoughts and enthusiasm for teaching. Work to produce positive change whenever possible, but keep your mind set: I will not be offended, I will not take things personally, I will not frustrate myself by trying to control things I cannot control. I accept that sometimes things are unfair and do not make sense. I refuse to lose my peace over something inane.

If you really want to shield your students from the inequities and absurdities of the educational system, enter your classroom each day with exuberance and positive energy. Don’t let bureaucracy wear you down so that you are too discouraged to give fully of yourself to the kids.

This post was an excerpt from my latest book, Awakened: Change Your Mindset to Transform Your Teaching. You can read sample chapters and reviews, or purchase. The discount code NEWYEAR allows you to buy the eBook (for Kindle, Nook, iPad, etc.) from my site for only $2.99 throughout the month of January 2012.

How do you maintain your enthusiasm despite bureaucracy, favoritism, paperwork overload, and other stuff that detracts from good teaching? Any tips for coping with ridiculous expectations that are enforced inconsistently or unfairly?

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Win a free year’s subscription to BrainPOP!

Angela Watson — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:49:37 +0000

Many of you know that I work part-time as an Educational Editor for BrainPOP. My job entails outlining and editing BrainPOP Jr. scripts and making sure features/activities are developmentally appropriate and aligned with state and common core standards. I also work with the BrainPOP Educators community, managing the lesson plans and contributing to the blog.

If you’re not familiar with BrainPOP, here it is in a nutshell: animated, curriculum-based for grades K-12. We create short movies (just a few minutes long) which can be used in whole class, small group and one-on-one settings. BrainPOP is used in numerous ways in classrooms, at home, and on mobile devices, from introducing a new lesson or topic to illustrating complex subject matter to reviewing before a test. Content is mapped to Common Core, aligned to academic standards, and easily searchable with our online Standards Tool. All the products are fully compatible with interactive whiteboards, learner response systems, projectors, Macs, and PCs. No downloading, installation, or special hardware is required. It’s a subscription-based service that’s currently used in 25% of U.S. schools! I used it when I was a classroom teacher so I know firsthand how much kids love it and how well it helps them understand key concepts and skills.

I hear from many blog readers that you all loooove BrainPOP, but aren’t able to afford a subscription. So, I’ve gotten permission to give away a one-year subscription to one lucky blog reader! The winner can choose to have access to BrainPOP, BrainPOP Jr., BrainPOP ESL, BrainPOP Espanol, or any combination thereof. The subscription will be good for 365 consecutive days in one classroom (or one home, for parents who want their kids to use BrainPOP and homeschooling families.) This is a $195 value!

Here’s how the contest works:

1) Create a lesson plan using any of the BrainPOP resources. You can check out the full selection of what BrainPOP has to offer by signing up for a free trial, or write your lesson for one of the free movie topics that are available (no subscription required.) Use this form to submit your lesson: just explain how you as a teacher integrate the BrainPOP movie and related activities/features into an innovative classroom activity. You can look over some sample lesson plans to get an idea of what we’re looking for. If you have handouts or printables you want to include, just indicate that in your lesson plan submission and I’ll contact you via email to get the attachment.

2) Leave a comment on the BrainPOP Educators Community forum. Click on the lesson plans message board topic and add a reply–just to introduce yourself and give a super short summary of what the lesson plan you submitted is about. You will need to create a profile for yourself in our community, which is free and takes about 2 minutes. That will give you access not only to our message board forum, but to all kinds of great FREE stuff like graphic organizers and webinars. If your lesson plan is published to our database of lessons, I’ll add the link to your comment so you can view and share it. Be sure to add a gravatar (if you don’t already have one) when you create your BrainPOP Educators profile. This way, if you win, we can share a photo of you (or an image you select as your avatar) when we feature you and your lesson plan on our site. Uploading a gravatar is a requirement to be entered in the contest, so please don’t leave the default image!

At midnight on January 31st, the contest will close, and I’ll select and announce a winning lesson plan the following day.

Hey, you’ve got to write lesson plans, anyway…why not win a whole year’s worth of access to BrainPOP in the process? If you have a blog or website you’d like to link to, you can include that in your lesson plan to bring more exposure to your site (we currently have 165,000 members in the BrainPOP Educators community!) All high-quality lesson plan entries will be published on the BrainPOP Educators site. I’m looking forward to reading your submissions!

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Changing routines and procedures mid-year

Angela Watson — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 07:28:31 +0000

I recently received this email from a reader of The Cornerstone book: “I purchased your ebook today and am really enjoying reading it. I have one question…much of the book so far concentrates on establishing procedures and routines at the beginning of the year. Do you have any suggestions for implementing your program now that we have already been in session for 4 months? How can you effectively help your students transition into this new routine without spending TOO much time introducing and reinforcing?”

I thought this was a great question worthy of it’s own blog post, because many teachers are wondering about this issue in the middle of the year. Plus, it gives me a chance to repeat one of my favorite mottos:

It’s NEVER too late to change something that’s not working. You don’t have to wait for next year and an entirely new group of kids. You can–and should–modify your procedures, expectations, and teaching strategies ANY time they are not effective, at ANY time during the school year.

Don’t worry that making changes to the way you run your classroom will confuse the kids or cause them to question your authority and expertise. The key is to articulate to students what’s not working and how you plan to fix it. Tell the class your observations about the problem and share your solution.

First do some brainstorming about what you’d like to change and how you’d like things to run. Post a question on my Facebook wall or share it with the members of The Cornerstone message board forums if you need suggestions. Then have a conversation with your class about it. Don’t try to sneak in a new procedure and act like that’s the way you wanted things done all along. (Yeah, I’ve tried that. They weren’t fooled.) Just level with the kids.

There are two approaches you can take to the conversation. The first involves a 5-10 minute discussion with the class, the second takes less than 2 minutes. I use the more in-depth method for big stuff, like changes to the homework routine, centers and small group rotations, or the class reward/reinforcement system. If it’s something that the kids really care about and that you’ve spent a lot of time training them to do and getting their buy-in, then it’s worth taking the time to involve them in creating new expectations.

For big or important changes, you could tell them:

I’ve been thinking about how we manage __ in our class. I’ve noticed a problem with ___. Have any of you noticed this happening? Why do you think this might be a problem? I’ve been trying to think of good solutions. What are your ideas for fixing this problem? That gives me an idea…you’ve touched on something I was considering over the weekend. What if we tried ___? It would work like this: ___. Would you be willing to try that out for a week or so? Let’s practice it, and then we’ll have another conversation soon to talk about how it’s working. We can always make changes then. Thanks for working together to come up with solutions. I know that our class is going to run more smoothly now that we’ve had this conversation and decided to try something new.

For minor classroom procedures–getting drinks from the water fountain, passing in papers, pencil sharpening, etc.–I don’t spend that much time, because the kids don’t care as much. I’ll just say:

I noticed that our procedure for ___ isn’t working very well these days. Sometimes I see ___ happening and ___ not happening, and that causes a problem with ___. So I’d like to try this instead: ___. Does that makes sense to you? Let’s practice right now. Team One, can you model how to follow this new procedure for us? Everyone, let’s watch Team One as they try this out.

If needed, I’ll narrate what I see and provide feedback.

Here’s an example. Once during my second year of teaching, I became completely fed up with students writing down the wrong page numbers for homework or forgetting to copy all of their assignments. I considered lecturing them. I considered punishing them. And I considered revising my homework routine. I realized I wasn’t really setting students up for success, and came up with some ways to improve the system. The next day I told the class:

I’ve noticed that many people are copying their homework assignments incorrectly. I want to change the way the assignments are displayed and copied in order to help you. From now on, the list of assignments will be on this poster, instead of on the transparency, so even if you come late to class, you can see what needs to be done. I will also be giving you five minutes instead of three to write everything down and have a partner check over what you wrote. Here’s how that’s going to work.

I modeled exactly what I wanted, and guided the kids through it. And instead of having 5 kids miscopy their assignments each day, I started having 1 or 2.

One last really common scenario I want to address: when kids seem to be forgetting procedures and getting sloppy with them. You know what I’m talking about: the supply bins have things missing from them, the coat closet is a disaster area, and the books in the class library are being misused.

There are a few different approaches I’ve used to get the kids back on track:

Point it out: “Hey, I’m noticing that ___ isn’t going as smoothly as it was at the beginning of the year. Who can remind us what the procedure is for that?”
Give a verbal reinforcement when kids do things the right way: “You remembered to __! Thanks for taking care of our classroom.”
Show the kids that I’m paying attention to the way they handle classroom routines and appreciate their efforts by giving a now-that reward: “The entire class did ___ exactly the way we have been practicing! I didn’t have to give a single reminder! Since we didn’t have to stop to wait for people to do the right thing, we’re going to have a few extra minutes before recess. I think I’ll take you outside early. Thanks for being such responsible students.”

If it seems like ALL of our procedures have fallen by the wayside, I have a heart-to-heart with the kids about why the procedures are in place and how we rely on one another to keep the classroom running smoothly. Then I play a procedure review game to go over the expectations and make sure we’re all on the same page. Often I realize I’ve had a bunch of new students transfer in and they’ve never been properly taught our routines. So, I grit my teeth and provide lots of modeling, practice, reinforement narration, and performance feedback.

I’ve found that my attitude has the biggest effect on how smoothly our routines and procedures go. If I’m mentally creating a list of all the things the kids have done wrong, predicting how many ways they’ll screw up next, and bemoaning how poorly they listen and follow directions, I get discouraged and take it out on the class. When I choose to be patient and take the time to involve kids in creating and practicing expectations, I reconnect with the feeling that we are a team. My thoughts create my feelings, my feelings affect my behaviors…and my behaviors determine whether students feel stressed out or capable of doing their best.

So, that is my advice to you: recognize what’s not working and choose to create change. Be supportive of the kids as they adjust and keep an optimistic attitude about the outcome. Each year you teach, it will get easier to find what works and what doesn’t. Don’t be afraid to experiment! Take the kids along on the journey with you, and learn together.

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Why I don’t believe that school is a child’s most important job

Angela Watson — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 06:08:52 +0000

Sometimes the things kids pursue outside of school are even more valuable than the assignments we give them in school.

I used to think it was. In fact, I remember sharing that truism many times in those serious, heart-to-heart conversations with kiddos who were slacking off. I’d put on a disappointed face and use my calm, serious tone: “You didn’t do your project because you were playing? Homework is more important than playing. School is a child’s most important job. Being a good student should be your top priority. It has to come first.”

Who knows where I got that idea–from another teacher, I think, or maybe even a parent. Every adult I said that in front of would nod in solemn agreement. It was a conventional piece of wisdom that we all believed and were trying desperately to persuade the kids to buy into when sports and video games and playing with friends became their focus.

My feelings have changed over the years. Slowly I have come to believe that kids have a right to their own time outside of school, and that we as teachers have no more right to control their evenings and weekends than our bosses should have to control ours. Kids need time to be kids and enjoy their childhood. Now I believe that a child’s most important job is not school, but learning. And these two things are not one and the same.

Learning takes place through play and exploration. Learning comes from following one’s passions and developing one’s interests and hobbies. Learning happens when we talk, wonder, question, daydream, and experiment. Sometimes it comes through worksheets and research projects. But not always. And the things learned through schooling are not necessarily more important than the skills developed apart from school.

I’m not opposed to homework altogether. And I want students to take school seriously. It’s critically important that kids give their schoolwork 100% during the hours of 8 and 3. But school is not the most important thing in their lives. Even if learning is a student’s most important job, children are more than just students, and life is about more than our jobs. Life is about relationships: family, friends, and a connection to God and spirituality. The beauty of life is experienced through play and rest, movement and relaxation. I want to help students create a work/life balance from a young age so that they grow up knowing how to enjoy and appreciate every moment they are given. And that is why I want my interactions with students to demonstrate a shift in perspective. I want my own priorities to reflect that that school is not–and never has been–anyone’s most important job.

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2011 year in review

Angela Watson — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 23:10:51 +0000

I’m a naturally pensive person so all this self-reflection that people do around the new year is right up my nerdy alley. I love to think back on what I’ve accomplished throughout the year and ruminate on all the things I have to be grateful for.

I can honestly say that I feel like every year in my life has been better than the year before. Not necessarily easier, or more fun. But better. I feel like I’m growing not just older, but wiser, and deepening my spirituality and relationship with God in ways that make every day feel more meaningful. That’s been the measure of success for me, and I find that this goal trickles down into every aspect of my life. It strengthens my marriage, enhances my relationships with friends and family, and keeps me focused on what really matters in my career.

2011 has been a wonderful time of growth for me professionally. I started off the year refocused on my purpose and vision, adding a ton of new free teacher resource pages to the website. I’m most excited about the Consulting and Coaching section (which will soon feature more resources for instructional coaches and teacher-preneurs) and the Technology Integration section (which focuses on the classroom management aspect of using computers in the classroom.) The site also got a new professionally-designed masthead (that’s the header image at the top) and I made some big improvements (I hope) with the site layout.

I learned a lot of lessons during the school year as an instructional technology coach. I attended lots of great professional development, including ISTE, ASCD, and my first edcamp. I’ve also conducted more professional development sessions than I ever have before, including the Global Education Conference. And probably most importantly, in 2011 I published my second book, Awakened: Change Your Mindset to Transform Your Teaching. (I’m currently holding a give-away on Facebook if you want to enter to win a free copy.) So lots of great stuff to be thankful for in the professional arena.

I thought about selecting a blog post for each month to feature here or somehow calculating which posts were most popular, but hey, it’s my time of reflection so I’m going to pick my own favorite posts. Here’s my top 5 from 2011:

The X factor: self-control compares student behavior and the learning environment of two schools I worked at in the same neighborhood…and shares why I think classroom management is the perfect area in which to train students to discipline themselves. I don’t want to have to control students (is that even possible?): I want to train them to control themselves.
Stop the tech snobbery made big waves at the ISTE conference. The idea that we can’t shame educators into using technology really resonated with people.
Solutions when recess and play aren’t allowed was something I wanted to share for awhile, since play-based learning and free time seem to be going the way of the dodo bird. Spoiler alert: my advice is to do it, anyway.
Redefining the role of teacher for ourselves was inspired by what I consider to be the most influential, important blog post of the year (written by Will Richardson.) It was a big wake-up call for me, and I shared how my thinking changed from that day forward.
A counter-intuitive way to re-energize ourselves could also be named “9 things that zap educator’s motivation” or “9 reasons why teachers hate professional development” or even “How PD can be energy-giving, not just energy-draining.” Teacher motivation is a subject that’s dear to my heart, and I really wanted to share thoughts on how educators can be empowered to take charge of their own professional growth.

Most of these posts were written in the second half of 2011, when I decided to start blogging twice a week (instead of whenever I felt like it, which turned out to be once or twice a month.) I learned that for me, writing is like exercising: the more often I do it, the more often I FEEL LIKE doing it. My writing muscles get weak when I’m out of practice, so I’m trying to keep them strong by using them more. I hope to continue that in 2012.

What else is in store for the new year? I’m working on a new book which I plan to publish in the spring. I have new pages I want to add to the website, a bunch of cool blog post ideas, and some printable teacher resources and videos I want to create. There are lots of ideas swimming around in my head…it’s just a matter of seeing which ones I feel led to do at which time.

I’m not making any resolutions, per se, but I am looking forward to the fresh start that comes with a new year. I want to act with more wisdom and follow my feelings less; I want to do now what I’ll be satisfied with later on instead of what feels good in the moment (which is usually lying on the couch watching TV or surfing the net.) Accomplishing this, for me, is a matter of making right choices in the moment, rather than trying to decide once and for all that I will always act in a certain way. I can’t do anything about how I acted in the past or control what I do in the future, but I can do the right thing right now, in the present. That’s my goal for 2012.

What did you accomplish in 2011 that you’re proud of? What are your goals for the new year? Share your perspective in the comments, or link to your own blog post if you’ve recently written your own year in review. I’d love to read your reflections as we bring in 2012.

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