Different Gifts

A few years back, a good friend of mine turned me on to the show Monk. The story of an "Obsessive Compulsive Detective." In the show, Tony Shalhoub plays the character of a brilliant former police detective with a range of phobias and compulsions who assists police in solving mysteries and crimes. The character brings brilliance, insights, and challenges, making the show quirky, fun, and full of heart. There are a plethora of police solving mystery shows, the reason this resonated with fans was that the show brought humanity through the teaching of tolerance, acceptance, and inclusion.

See when we teach tolerance and inclusion, so often whether we like it or not, the perspective learned is that this is about the less-abled or those funny people over there. The conversation is about why do you notice a child or a person is different and how do you come to accept that difference as being "Ok." The creators of Monk took it from a different perspective. The show started with sympathetic supporting characters who were just trying to help Monk survive in the world. However, soon the show shifted and the supporting characters began to realize that they were being successful because of the differences and unique characteristics Monk brought to the team. The lives of the team and eventually the viewer were enriched and empowered because of Monk's different gifts.

In schools, so often we want children to learn similar things, make similar products, accomplish similar tasks. We praise them for being creative when the embellish small aspects and provide individual flavor. We teach children to become very similar while talking to them about their own personal uniqueness. It should be no surprise that eventually they cry out to be different.

When we look for these children to enter the workplace, we look for the differences. We look for what makes them unique, the creative strengths they bring to the table that makes our workplace a more effective unit. We look to find the blend of enough similarities that coworkers and clients can accept the individual and enough differences to help the team innovate, create, and move the team forward. If we start with this perspective of teaching that we are better because we work with people who see the world very differently and can create different things that help us all grow, then perhaps it will be easier to mold our children into these successful future employees and neighbors.

Just like in Monk, we need people who see the world from a different slant. Those that take in information differently, think differently, and make things we could never dream of. In a country that cries out for similarity, it is time to encourage difference. Difference in the products we expect, difference in the way children explore learning, and difference in the way we encourage them to find their path. When our children are first in the sandbox, they don't see shades of skin, they don't see how fast or slow a child talks. They see the cool sand thingy that child is playing with. Inclusion and tolerance are not conversations about accepting others but rather acts of engaging others who uniquely make our lives more exciting, more interesting and more fulfilled. It's time we recognize that each child has different gifts, some are just more obvious than others. We need to encourage these different gifts rather than drive it from them if we want to grow as a society.

Mr. Monk and the Computer

It's a Jungle Out There

"Normal"

In the days before selfies and cell phones, long before the Internet connected us all, students and parents still sought to live normal lives as normal people. When you glimpse back through time, whether it's The Glass Menagerie, Sixteen Candles, Can't Hardly Wait, or Notting Hill one discovers that "Normal" is just an illusion. As parents, teachers, students, and community members, we look at the past and dream wistfully of easier times. Times which seemed to be more patterned, more relaxed, and more normal. We assume its because of "parents today," "kids today," or "technology" that our world is more of a struggle, more complex, or more challenging. We point to entitlement and arrogance of others and yet we aren't ready to accept that there are consistently challenges, crises of identity, and eventually overcoming the barrier.

No Child Left Behind put us all on the "Lake Wobegon"path. We worked as schools, families, and society to become a place where as Garrison Keillor said,"all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."  Legislation that forced us forward to the illusion that all children could be above grade level. A number calculated as the mean of that same population. Through this legislation, states, districts, and schools, began a race towards ratcheting up expectations, policies that identified children as failures, promoted retention practices even though the research clearly identifies the correlation between retention and dropping out of schools, and penalized almost everyone involved. The epitome of this will be the PARCC results when released this December will indicate less than 40% of students meet or exceed state expectations. In the quest to be normal or above average, we have become failures.

The reality is, no one ever leads the normal life. We all have stuff. Things that get in our way. We discover money doesn't solve all of our problems, just ask a professional athlete. It helps, but it doesn't solve them. Fame doesn't solve all of our problems, just ask an actor or actress. It gives you resources, but also challenges. The reality is, each of us has challenges. Each of our children have their own set of gifts and own set of problems. As a principal, I would often say to my students and their families, know what is on the back of your baseball card. Be open and willing to see those statistics, the strengths and the challenges. Be honest with yourself about what each of those are and use them to your advantage. 

When we look inside The Glass Menagerie, we discover a family that looks perfect on the outside has it's own demons on the inside. In Sixteen Candles, Samantha (Meg Ryan) and Robin (Jami Gertz) stare at Caroline, the senior with the perfect body and the perfect boyfriend, only to discover as the night goes on that Caroline's world is falling apart just like everyone else. In Can't Hardly Wait, Preston (Ethan Embry) longs for Amanda Beckett (Jennifer Love Hewitt) but discovers that her life is just as problematic as his.  No one has a normal life. No one has it perfect. No one has it easy. We are all working on something different. It's easy to look in from the outside and ask why is that person's life so easy or that person's child so successful. We've all got stuff and we are all making it one day at a time.

Just Saying No

Bad Decision

Eye of the Beholder

So much of what we see is what we anticipate seeing. As I talked with a former high school principal yesterday, he shared a story of when the school decided to allow students to use their cell phones in the hallways between classes. Initially, in anticipation of the rule change, parents and teachers expressed significant concern that the students would be texting throughout the hallways and no longer socializing with other students. Upon implementation, the adults in the building discovered that actually the students did very little texting in the hallways and when they did it was often with their parents. Why? Simply because their friends were with them at school. The students shared funny videos and memes with each other but the device wasn't the center of their universe but rather their personal social network was. Convincing parents that this was the reality, a harder job than to facilitate the implementation of the rule change.

Often what we look for is what we expect to see. At kindergarten orientation, the teachers asked my son to draw a picture of himself. Rather than trying he replied to the staff that he couldn't do it. Between not drawing the picture and not sitting for the big book story, the staff assumed that he was delayed and expressed their concern to us. When we asked if they investigated his ability to read or do mathematics, they replied that most kindergartners don't read. Their expectations, like many of ours, are impacted by what we expect to see and what we want to see. As is often the case, this limits our perceptions of what can be. Do we see who the child is and what they can be or do we see their present behavior and academic performance?

In Sunday School, our team allows fifth grade students to bring their own devices as part of the learning. Parents worry that it will be a case of the haves and the have nots. Some children operating with tools and others unable to. Some showing off their latest wares and some jealous. I'm sure their are some children jealous of others. They are also jealous of the name brand clothes others wear or the vacations that other families take. It is a situation we need to council children through, not one exacerbated by the presence of digital devices. Other families worry that all the children will do is play games or text their friends. I am sure at points our children do both. However, in addition to that, they collaborate on a great many things. The students read stories from Genesis and Exodus. They have found preferred sources of information. For some it is our text book. For others, aish.com a simpler read. And for some, the Jewish Virtual Library, a more complex reading of the text. Students also make unique products. Students have recorded their own movies and plays. Composed their own songs which they have recorded and built choose your own adventure games using Minecraft. If we create constraints by our own vision of what is their we reduce children's ability to innovate powerful products.

So often what we see is what we expect to see. When we open our eyes up to the possibility of new products, ideas, or innovations, we see a world of potential. It is difficult to acknowledge our assumptions and clear them for new opportunities. However, it is a journey worth doing. We live in an amazing world of insight and experience. It is up to us to open up our eyes and see it.

The Carpenter's Cup

Holding Out For A Hero

As Halloween passed, I was struck by the large number of Kylo Ren and Stormtrooper costumes I saw wandering the streets and up to our door. It was an interesting realization to see so many more Stormtroopers and Sith than Jedis. My mind wanders to nearly thirty years ago. Would we have seen so many villains running the streets? I went to Costco and discovered that one could purchase the lightsaber for Kylo Ren, but not a Jedi lightsaber. We could get a Sith sleeping bag but not a Jedi one. At first I wondered if people had simply purchased all the protagonist materials, but the displays are new. It makes me wonder.

Over time we have embraced the flawed protagonist. Heroes are no longer as naive as Luke Skywalker or as virtuous as Ren McCormack. They have become more complicated. Iron Man Tony Stark is known as widely for his brilliant mind and inventiveness as his penchant to make mistakes. When Captain America calls Iron Man out for "Language" he realizes he will be made fun of. We have begun to accept the flawed protagonist, but have our protagonists become so flawed that our children no longer see or prefer the side of good to the side of mayhem.

Clearly the marketing for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is focused on the Sith. The children are gravitating not to Han and Leia, but to those who I assume are the antagonists. In fact, we don't even know all the names of the protagonists. While it does build mystery and suspense, I wonder after they see the movie, will the children still be drawn to the Sith. In our act of creating depth, have we made the dark side more attractive?

"A Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice." - Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

The world is a changing place. Sometimes what you think is right is wrong. Sometimes people you think are wrong are right. At times the lines between good and evil, bad and good, are blurred. Perhaps in time, we will find that these are not all that different. If Johnny Lawrence can be the true Karate Kid, anything is possible. However, I hope my boys grow up to be Jedi because the Sith scare me..

Holding Out For A Hero

The Flipped Life

I've heard a lot about the flipped classroom. Five years ago I had never heard the term, and now it is prevalent in many conversations with teachers and leaders. My eldest son is in his second year in a flipped math classroom. It has made sense for his learning and he certainly seems to be growing in the experience. Math made sense. Children watch the video of the instruction. Replay the skill a couple of times. Teacher does guided practice in the class. Ok, I get it. Then I started to hear more and more. His English-Language Arts teacher shared that she was flipping the grammar instruction. He brought home the video. In great Cameron style, 5:10am will snagging down some pancakes, we were introduced to independent and dependent clauses with a few references from the Simpsons. Ok, I get it. Later that morning, I was talking to his cross country coach and she shared that she was flipping her PE class. OK, I didn't get it.

She explained, that while she has been teaching for twenty-something years, she always is looking to try something new. Like all teachers, her instruction has constraints. She is limited by a 39 minute period and wants to maximize movement, dialogue, and skills during that time. In flipping her classroom, the children watch 5-7 minutes at home and then can maximize their feedback and processing time with her. In her world the interchange of dialogue, practice, and reflection was the priority. Distribution of content knowledge needed to at times come in a different form.

It was a lot to process. So many of us had gone to school to be content specialists. I was a Chemistry and Political Science major. I had a vast background in two disciplines that I loved to share. Yet, as constraints are starting to pull on how we use our time, here were several veteran leaders in multiple disciplines giving up their group knowledge distribution fix and focusing their time and energy into processing, reflection, and feedback.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that as a society we love flipped learning. I remember growing up watching Bob Ross and the Joy of Painting on PBS and Bob Villa on This Old House. I have spent more than enough time watching What Not To Wear and HGTV. Simply we want content knowledge when we want it.

Moreover, our children are learning to find and seek resources in this manner on their own from their friends. Children learn ways to shoot basketballs better, build/mod Minecraft levels, and new fashion tips from "YouTubers" everywhere. They are teaching themselves how to gather content knowledge in quick and efficient methods from short videos they find online. Our students are leading the flipped life. We can to. Whether it is learning to fix the laundry machine online or refining our movie editing skills with a professional course at lynda.com there are flipped opportunities for all of us.

That's the funny thing. When my wife was in her social work program, she would often say, "meet the client where the clients at." These teachers, whether math, language arts, or physical education have begun to realize, that the path to knowledge distribution is now more often on video. The way they find value is how they can guide these students to refine their work, products, and practices. It's a different world, one that is truly moving from the sage on the stage to the guide on the side. A world where content knowledge is a commodity and teacher feedback and guidance is where the true value lies. It's a flipped life, a life where each of us can be a difference maker.

"We don't make mistakes; we just have happy accidents." -Bob Ross

Courage and Kindness

When it comes to movies, I am a simple person. There are three genres that interest me, "stupid action," "stupid comedy," and "romantic comedy." While you may find me watching Kentucky Fried Movie or Bulletproof Monk, I have missed out on quality films such as Shawshank Redemption and The Dark Night. See life is about choices: who we choose to be, who we choose to be around, what we choose to do and how we choose to go about it. These are important not just to us, but to our children and the children we teach.

As a principal at Pleasant Ridge School, we focused on the "Fish Philosophy!" as a way to help both ourselves and our children learn the social-emotional component of life. In "four easy steps" the "Fish Philosophy!" helps individuals approach their day to day life in progressive steps that allows them to seek happiness and fulfillment. It's powerful stuff, focusing on what we can control: Choose Your Attitude, Play, Make Their Day, and Be Present. Simple stuff that is not automatic. We found it to be powerful also. Focusing on what we could control. Aiming at what we could do to be better and make the day better for others. Four steps that adults could do, children could do, bus drivers could do, teachers could do, and principals could do. These daily directions, and sometimes redirections, helped us take on challenges both academic and social.

In one of our kindergarten rooms, there is one rule, "Be Brave." See, when you are five years old, for many of us the world is an intimidating place. Learning to take steps in a world in which you may not be comfortable is a challenge. When I first had the chance to work with our kindergarten team, they lamented about how play and socialization had been pushed out in favor of more and more academics. We had lost our "Kindergarten Magic." In a world in which we ask children to "Be Brave" we need opportunities for them to learn courage and kindness. This comes through play and socialization. It's not only true in kindergarten but in life. Whether children or adults, we need to learn that simple magic, learn to be brave and make daily choices that demonstrate courage and kindness.

Students, teachers, and schools have been asked to be a lot more productive. We have higher expectations and have not been given additional resources. There is not extra time, money, or people. Just us, having to rethink how we do what we do. Learning to maximize time, money, and ourselves to make a more impactful difference. It is easy for each of us, student, teacher, parent, or leader to become sullen, angry, or overwhelmed, or we can learn to "Be Brave." We can take on each day, choosing our attitude, playing, making other people's day, and being present. Working to make baby steps forward in our learning and our practice. Carrying ourselves with courage and kindness, and seeing in others those same qualities.

I choose movies where the hero wins. Impossible moments like Ferris Bueller dancing in a parade and Will Smith & Jeff Goldblum doing a victory lap saving the world from aliens.  I like television shows like the Flash, where the protagonist and his friends take on impossible challenges and seek opportunities to make a difference. And this weekend, my wife, son, and I watched the latest version of Cinderella. Learning once again, courage, kindness, and forgiveness will bring a little magic to everyone's life.

Cinderella 2015

"If the Commonwealth's High Guard
had a weakness, it was this:
Its officers were too competent,
too caring, and too brave."

Opening Scene - Andromeda Television Series

Frustration and Resilience

Warning... I am not a golfer. I have never been a golfer. I have been on a course three times in my life and then only once actually taken a couple of shots (BAD!). The closest thing to golf that I get is to watch Caddyshack and Happy Gilmore.

This weekend I had the opportunity to "caddy" for my brother-in-law as he played in a Golf-Amateur
tournament this weekend. My brother-in-law is a former high school and collegiate golfer. Aside from being a talented individual in life, he enjoys time with his brothers and friends on the course. He took this opportunity to select a course near Chicago so I could join him on his adventure. An opportunity I am grateful for as it was an incredibly relaxing experience for me. I didn't touch email, work, the blog, twitter, or anything. I sat on the shores of Lake Michigan and watched sheep graze and grown men get upset as they swung a stick around in the wind.

Perhaps I should provide my unique interpretation of the word "caddy" as it applies to me. To caddy: to drive the cart that holds clubs up and down the cart path with some strange guy from the foursome while my brother-in-law walks the course to keep his rhythm while occasionally handing him a club, a range finder, or his putter. Pretty much I got sun, enjoyed the countryside, and watched 3 out of 4 grown men have a meltdown as they did five and half hours of forestry with a poorly formed scythe. Now to be fair, there were high winds and the course had lots of rolls and hills. The experience for the participants was frustrating.

While the first hole went fine for most, it was a downhill decent from there. By hole 9 we were watching internal combustion. Some were falling in the forests. Some were muttering under their breaths. Some were hyper analyzing their game. By hole 12 it sounded like a Tourette's convention. Grown men who were well established in their perspective fields sounded like 14 year-olds upset with their homework. By hole 18 they were at peace, opportunities lost and found again. The day near-ending a performance in the books, more over than anything else. Five and half hours of frustration. A gentleman's game? A lesson in frustration and resilience.

On Sunday, I had the opportunity to facilitate our annual Ellis Island simulation with our fifth grade students. We had about 60 of our 120 students due to the Columbus Day weekend. This provided a challenge for us as the nearly 2 hour simulation relies on having long lines and getting children to experience the arbitrariness and frustration of the immigrant experience. We warn the children for two weeks before hand that this is a frustrating experience and annually children break down into tears.

This year was no different. It doesn't take screaming or shouting. It doesn't take stealing of paperwork. Simply telling children to go back in line. Telling them their paperwork is wrong. Stating that they need to make corrections. Arbitrarily moving them from place to place. The tears well, anger raises, and the flood gates open.

When analyzing this experience we share the story of a recent immigrant who is a parent in our Sunday School. She talked about even today needing to go back on a daily basis for another paper, another document, another line. She shared that it took months to complete the process. Two hours in lines and some of our children are in pieces each year. When processing our children made the connection that their parents, grandparents, or great grandparents took on challenges that they themselves may not of been able to handle in order to become citizens of this country.

The children also realized that this bureaucratic frustration is not limited to immigration. They themselves may need to do the same thing for they driver's license or to get service from Comcast. Furthermore, we need to give them challenges so they can learn to master their craft. Imagine if Thomas Edison had given up on try #6 or the Wright Brothers had thrown in the towel. Learning to master tough skills is not inherent to us, resiliency occurs as a result of experience. It is a great gift we hand a child to make them revise, re-craft, and learn to make their work better. A lesson that will help them on the golf course and in life.

Thomas Edison Quote

Happy Overcomes Challenges