Our Heart to Heart Talk...It's About Time

As mentioned in 6 Lessons Confirmed (& Learned) from My Students, my students wrote letters to the rising 6th graders. The letters, though full of sound advice, humor, and their unique voices, included recommendations that seemed dissonant to the classroom learning environment that we had created. My learners recommended things like "complete your homework on time, don't talk during class, and study for tests to get good grades." 

The day after I wrote that post, we sat in a large circle (in each of my classes) and I explained to them my desire to be the best teacher possible for all of my students. I continued by asking them to give me honest feedback to the questions that I still had. I talked a lot about perceptions and how many times we can think we are doing one thing when in reality we are doing something different. Students chimed in with their understanding of those types of experiences. 

I knew that they all understood the power of honest feedback because we had been engaged in that type of learning environment for the entire year. I also knew that I needed to be open to listening and accepting whatever they shared with me. To be honest, I was a bit nervous because my students' insights are the ones that I value most. We have spent a year learning together. They know sound educational practice. They regularly cut through "fluff" to get to the heart of a matter. They know how to analyze and question. Now, I'm asking them to turn all of that to answer a few of my questions about our learning environment and my teaching practice.

As we talked they were brutally honest, but kind. I learned that much of what they had written as advice was not about our specific class, but about the overall grade level. They shared what they loved about our class: having freedom and a voice in their learning, small group instruction to support/challenge each student where he/she needed, assessments they always felt prepared for and never surprised by content, the ability to share their thoughts and ideas with others. 

Then they shared what they didn't love: "Mrs. Ramsay, since we spiral within our standards and gradually get harder as we work towards mastery, why do we have to move so quickly? They are just going to come around again, aren't they?" That is not only truth, but it's supported by educational research and brain research. (Yes, I believe in sharing the strategy, rationale, and research as to the "why" of what we do in the class each day.) Personally, I had felt like we were moving slower this year than in previous years. Of course, this had been their only year with me. They had nothing with which to compare the pace of our lessons. Looking through their eyes reminded me that we did need let them have time to marinate on ideas, delve deeper into topics, and spend time just reading and writing for the enjoyment of it.

Another student voiced his desire to spend more time in small group. As I was trying to figure out what he meant as a majority of the students' time is spent in small group, he clarified that he wanted to have more small group time with me. He went on to explain how the time we spent working together face-to-face on his reading and writing was what helped him become a stronger student.  Honestly, this one cut right to my heart. This student was in the one class that I only had for 50 minutes (on a good day) instead of the almost two hours I had with my other groups of students. I always felt rushed to "get in" as much as I could within that time period while still individualizing the instruction for all 30 of them (my largest class). One practice that I had was for me to move to each group to work with them wherever they were instead of conducting small group lessons at our table; I would do this two to three times a week while doing small group/one-on-one conferring the other days. It seemed faster...Faster? Did I really think that? Since when is "faster" a sound educational practice? Never!

It's funny that I went into this conversation with one set of questions and left with something so much more valuable. I learned that my students have the ability to provide deep, meaningful feedback. They were honest without being unkind. They justified their answers with evidence, support, and their experiences. Most importantly, I saw how amazing they would be as advocates for themselves and their peers. These kids totally blew me away with how they conducted themselves throughout this conversation. They are awesome....and I'm going to miss them.

And me...what did I learn? I learned that we all need a reminder from time to time about sound educational practice. I had taught them about how the brain works in regards to learning. I had modeled and explained why we used certain practices and strategies. Yet, somewhere along the year, I had felt that end of the year push to cover everything and I lost sight of the most important thing of all...the time my students needed to learn. Time that we all needed. Time that I'm dedicated to providing each student in the years to come.

photo credit: Βethan via photopin cc

Conflict: Maintaining Professionalism, Integrity, and Relationships

Conflict is all around us as educators. Conflict among students, their parents, and our colleagues. I've recently completed a Masters in Teacher Leadership where we spent much of our time in the program diving into strengthening communication skills and dealing with interpersonal conflict among our colleagues. The most active discussion among my classmates always arose around the topic of conflict: avoiding it, rectifying it, and restoring peace. My class had students from all over the world which showed me this is a topic not limited to one specific school, district, state, or country. It's universal for us because, as educators, we deal with people. So how can we deal with conflict when working with our colleagues? It is impossible to avoid if you do not know one another very well.

This year, I have been very fortunate to work with an extremely talented and confident team of experienced and passionate teachers. Each member has an area of speciality that they bring to the group as we move towards providing our students the best learning possible. However, in any group there is always the possibility that our viewpoints and perspective will not always align with one another's.

During the first semester, our team leader, Lindsay Kilgore (@lindsaykilgore on Twitter), suggested that we create a unified goal as a group of 6th grade teachers. Through this discussion, we were able to share our own vision for our students and the grade level, giving all of us an insight into each other's perceptions. Being a new member of the team this year, our creating of the goal gave me the opportunity to understand my team members and feel like an integral part of the team. All of us agreed that student learning needed to be our driving force. I believe that the process of writing this goal is what solidified us as a true team and laid a foundation for further discussions.

I admired how much research that Lindsay did on communication, conflict resolution, and professional goal setting. Another team member suggested that it would be helpful for us to take a personality test so that we could understand one another on a deeper level when working closely with one another. Lindsay sent us the article Personality Types: Using Personality Assessments to Identify Your Strengths (and Understand Your Co-Workers). In that article is a link to the Myers Briggs Type Indicator that we each took and sent the results to her to compile. During the time that we took the personality test, many of us were surprised at not only how accurate the explanation of our type actually was for ourselves, but also at how different some of our colleagues were in reality than we had perceived them. In spite of regular conversations, team meetings, and collaborative projects, it became apparent that there were some crucial personality characteristics that we each needed to take into consideration.

Lindsay compiled all of our information and distributed at our team meeting. She included tips for how

Photo by Peggy2012CREATIVELENZ

each personality type should interact with the other personality types. Through our discussion, it led us to the conclusion that not only understanding ourselves, but each other and how to communicate effectively would be of great benefit in knowing our students. We discussed how we could begin the school year with a personality test in order to truly gain insight into our learners and begin the year teaching them the way that they learn and communicate. (Lindsay used 16 Personalities: Get to Know Yourself and Relationship Between Personality Types and Truity and Personality and Relationships to compile and explain our results.)

Another conversation that we had as a team was discussing conflict: what sets us off, how we deal with conflict, and how we want to resolve the disagreement. It became very apparent that not understanding these elements could potentially cause a problem. For example, if one individual deals with conflict considerably different than another in the team, that could exponentially escalate the conflict. This kind of issue could hinder the true point of conflict, which is resolution. Knowing this about one another helps each of us to understand what to expect of each individual and proceed in the manner that fits their personality.

Out of the conflict dialogue grew a discussion on where we wanted to be as a team professionally...our professional goals as a team. This conversation showed that some team members wanted to focus all their efforts in their classroom while others wanted to pursue National Board Certification, writing for professional education organizations, building a model school for lab experiences, coaching fellow teachers, or presenting at conferences. This opens the door to ongoing conversation as we continue to teach together. Knowing an individual's goal helps you to understand actions you might have misunderstood (A lesson that easily applies to our students.).

Conflict is difficult. Conflict among great and passionate teachers can take a great place to teach and make it unbearable. Opening up the dialogue, being honest and kind can lay a strong foundation before conflict arises. It builds strong relationships based on trust and mutual respect. And, when you really think about it, the true beneficiaries of handling conflict with professionalism and integrity are our students...the ones that it's all really about.

PS- Next week, at our team meeting, we will be creating norms for our group. Stay tuned!