The Journey

I am a child of the late seventies and early eighties. As a young kid, I remember napping in Mrs. Roush's kindergarten, learning to handwrite with Mrs. Stewart, and spending an inordinate amount of time in the Hillcrest office with Mr. Crandus and Dr. Del Bene. When I left O'Neill school in 1987, I had never imagined I would find my way back. In truth our journeys are not predetermined, but rather contain unimaginable twists and turns. They take us for wild rides, introduce us to amazing individuals, and challenge us daily. After my parents moved to Wisconsin, I never thought I would return home to Downers Grove, yet I did. Nearly five years ago, I was offered the opportunity to work with the learning program in my home school district, Downers Grove 58.

The first day home doesn't seem so long ago. After being gone nearly 30 years, coming back to Hillcrest and O'Neill was energizing. I could hear the Welcome Back Kotter theme song in my head, remember curling up and watching it on TV after a day in school with Mrs. Frankfater or Mr. Wild. I remember walking into Hillcrest and seeing Val still behind the receptionist desk, her broad smile as welcoming as ever. Just like she had been a generation before when I wandered in after getting in trouble. Ms. Fiene was waiting for me there on that early August day, just as she had waited for my siblings to saunter in after recess. I wandered over to O'Neill later that month, drifting down the halls past my old locker drowning in memories, only to hear Glen leading the choir as he had done for my friends when I was there.

Sometimes home is home. Like all homes, there are times of peace and times of stress. There are great things we try, sometimes successful and sometimes everything crashes around us. In the end, whether it is with hugs and kisses or yelling and screaming, we are family, united in common loves and common goals. For nearly five years, I have had the chance to work with family. We have tried a great many things to support the learning and growth of adults and children. We have worked to understand each member of our community and create ways to support the growth of each child. And through this process together, we have created some great things. Is it all complete? No. Is it all perfect? No. Is it a little more perfect that what it was? I think so and I hope so.

It's hard to leave family. My personal family is scattered throughout the world. With members in Wisconsin, D.C., Scotland, Arizona, Michigan, New York, Washington, California, and Georgia. It's hard for us to call any one place home. For the past five years, I have felt at home in Downers Grove District 58. Thank you for partnering with me in this journey.

I look forward to the journey ahead in Winfield. It feels like a wonderful community who's staff and leaders have opened doors and welcomed me as one of the family. I have been supported so nicely by the retiring school leader and key members of the community and surrounding schools. I hope that it to will soon feel like home.

Thank you (in alphabetical order) to the administrators, board of education, community members, maintenance & custodial team, parents, principals, secretaries, students, support staff members, and teachers of District 58. I wish you luck in the work ahead and look forward to seeing your celebrations on #dg58learns.

"It is not your responsibility to finish the work of perfecting the world, but you are not free to desist from it either." - Rabbi Tarfon, Pirke Avot 2:21

The Innovator's Dilemma

In schools, we often discuss 21st century skills. We conceptualize the qualities individuals need to possess and the prerequisite training students must have in order to get there. Conversations frequently are around questioning, cooperation, collaboration, critical thinking and collaboration. We think about what it means to be ready for our future. Yet we measure and produce based on skills of centuries past. Students are not measured in creativity but rather reading, mathematics, and science. We value and structure our successes by how frequently students get answers in content correctly but want outcomes which inspire students to take risks and grind through failures to innovate.

In many components of our society we find that what is measured is what is focused on. Corporations focused on quarterly financial reports, make choices to ensure that the quarter's profits are high. Corporations that focus on long-term gains spend funds on research and development to create new products and enter new markets realizing that there short-term prices may suffer.  In schools, if we test  the quantity of correct answers in reading, math, and science, it's natural to think that students, teachers, and parents are going to focus on how to get correct answers in reading, math, and science.

And thus we hit the innovator's dilemma. If we want to cultivate creativity and risk-taking, we need to promote, encourage, measure, and celebrate those skills. Some teachers have begun to create these types of environments. Experiences such as Genius Hour or 20% time, which encourage students to define their own project, create their own research, and design their own outcome, are beginning to creep into some classrooms. Frequently these teachers and schools get people lashing back about wasting student time and not having clear outcomes. The results of these projects frequently do not directly impact student test scores. In fact, they may result in lower scores than if the time had be used for reading, science, or math. For months, we heard about the movie Rogue One and how it was going to be a failure because of how many reshoots it needed. Since it was not going predictably, people assumed that the product would be a flop. However, much like schools, the more the director took chances, was willing to change, and revised their product, the long-term outcome created something special.

Thus, if what we measure is what we value, schools and society may be shunning long-term gains for quarterly profits. Our quest for higher test scores may reduce children's willingness to create, innovate, and take risks. For us as parents, teachers, and school leaders we need to push back against these forces and look for opportunities to encourage our children, our teachers, and our leaders to take the next chance, and the next chance, and the next chance. Realize, much like an actor or a comedian they are workshopping the skills of innovation. Celebrate the failures of genius hour that don't work and those that do. For these are the skills, just like reading and math, that will promote the entrepreneurial spirit that we desire as a society.

This past week, my son's school decided instead of an open house they would have an innovation fair. Children created different projects and showed them off. Some were better than others. Children took to new opportunities, some slowly and some fast. The projects looked different and sounded different. Some were recognizable and some were not. Some had parent help and some did not. As a school, the students and teachers took a chance. It is something we need to encourage, a change, a chance, and an opportunity. In the end, we want each of our children to take a chance, and the next chance, and the next chances, until they win the day or the chances are spent.

The Truth Becomes Us or We Become Our Truth

As a teacher, building administrator, or district administrator, a great deal of your time is spent trying to figure out the facts. Whenever there is a conflict, between whatever parties, one observes, listens, and searches for commonalities in order to find the truth. Schools are as much a social incubator as they are an exploration of knowledge and reason.

I remember frequently as a principal, an assistant would come in and explain to me that there was sort of incident outside. One of my favorites was when "the fourth graders blockaded the playground with snowballs." The assistant announced this and indicated that she had rounded up the perpetrators and they were waiting for me. I looked outside of my office and there sat 10 fourth grade boys. My imagination ran wild for a moment. I imagined children with bunkers and an arsenal of snowballs, reigning cold ice chunks on any student who dared cross their vision within the range of those deadly fourth grade arm-cannons. I looked at Luke, all 4 feet 6 inches of him and wondered what damage that 55 lb frame could do with wet snow in his hands. Of course, I called him in first.

Luke was not a stranger to my office. He knew the drill. He recognized that I would call each child in individually until I heard every version of the story. From there, he knew I would pick the common pieces and reconstruct the events for them until I found a close approximation to reality that we could agree upon. Luke explained that they had rolled large balls of snow on the ground until they became just as big as him. They rolled them until they could roll them no more. Many of them ended up in the swings area.

I called in more of the boys. Amazing that this incident had no girls. The kids smiled as they told of running the balls around until they became huge. These were the days before "bigly" became a thing. They talked with excitement as they shared their creations. Eventually, I walked outside. There they were. Eight large snowballs, nearly four feet a piece. Four of them in front of the swings and four of them scattered around the playground.

George Costanza taught us, it's not a lie if you believe it. Our children take cues from our leaders. We teach children to be honest and truthful by modeling these actions and expecting them to be honest in their behaviors. I wonder how different it will be as our children learn from our leaders that it is ok to double down on distraction. I wonder how much harder it will be when our students learn find an alternate reality and stick to it. What would have happened outside if the children kept saying, we were just standing by the wall. The assistant is nuts. Those large snowballs, no idea how that happened. All they would have had to do is whisper to each other, we were by the wall. What was in fact a funny story, would have been a miserable and eventually inconclusive investigation.

The reality is many of us have hearts filled with integrity. We expect to tell the truth and we expect to hear the truth. We may disagree with each other's positions, but we respect that it comes from our perspective of the truth, our perspective of the needs, and our hope to make something better. Many of us are like Jerry Seinfeld, and we can't pull off the lie, even when we want to. We hope to guide our children, and our leaders, that it is only through acting with integrity, we will accomplish what we want in life. Eventually, even George Costanza discovers that if he were to do the opposite of what he does, he may lead a better life.

The Opposite

I Must Be Missing Something

We all see the world through certain lenses. Our viewpoints are created by our experiences and as such, we are limited to what we choose to go out and see. As educators we work to open children's minds and encourage them to develop a deep understanding of the world. I have had the privilege to work and live in a variety of settings, Kalamazoo, the Detroit suburbs, and the Chicago suburbs. I have seen people drive their children in Ferrari's to school and hop off the back of the field truck after they finished in the fields as the school bus dropped their children off at the migrant farm. I have seen individuals with MBA's from big universities become house poor as the economy tanked and single unmarried parents working a shift at the Family Dollar followed by a shift at Target just to make the rent. What I seem to be missing is the large chunk of society who isn't trying to figure out how to make it day by day. I've spent twenty-two years working with families and communities and somehow I can only name two incidents of families that weren't working hard to try to be productive members of society for their own family. In both cases, there were significant mental health concerns that churches and community organizations were trying to figure out a way to help.

Now, I realize that I have only seen a small slice of America. From pre-student teaching to my current role, I've been in seven school districts. In each community, either through church or religion, I have seen service learning projects. Students and adults, families and congregants, going out and trying to help individuals and families that have fallen get up. When I've talked to those that are there, those who work and those who need help, many are victims of circumstances including abuse and neglect. Some suffer significant mental illness, frequently untreated, and some are truly lost in the world.

In the United States, 21% of children, over 15,000,000, kids live with families earning less than the Federal poverty line. This is down from 16,387,000 in 2011. This is a pretty large number. These children are spread everywhere. They live in cities, in suburbs, and in small towns. I have worked with many and their families. The funny thing is, their peers understand that their families are working to make it. They ask what does your mom do. The children share the jobs she's working. Their friends ask who is home when you get home. Sometimes its no one. Sometimes its an aunt, a grandma, or dad's friend. Frequently the conversations end with wow, you parent works a lot. These same kids, those in poverty and those that are not, often join in for a used coat drive "we are just sharing it with the next family that needs it," or helping make lunches at the local social service, "I may not be able to share the food, but I can help make the meal."

So, I must be missing something. I have yet to meet these denizens of leeches working the system to avoid their societal responsibility. These individuals and families that are conscientiously working the government over while playing their iPhones. Is their corruption and manipulation? Of course there must be. Am I saying that everyone is pure and innocent? No. Simply, I see greater empathy from our students and our families, those who have and those who don't than from our leaders. I am proud of the social service our children lead, our teachers lead, and our congregations lead. I wonder why those at the top are the ones who see these large bands of leeches, I'm here in the trenches and struggling to find them.

So Shines a Good Deed in a Weary World

Call On Me Brother

Mornings in our house are not easy. Each of us wakes up differently. I pop out of bed at 5am. Bright-eyed, ready to take on the world. Shower, dress, check the news on the Internet, and begin packing the backpacks for school. About 6, I try to wake up everyone else. Logan groggily dresses himself, Cameron cocoons himself back in the blankets, my bride strives to sleep just a little longer. It's a morning. Soon the chaos begins to reign. I ask who wants something for breakfast. Sometimes there's a response, sometimes there's a screech from one brother at another, sometimes I'm completely ignored, and sometimes strange grunts occur. Fifty-five minutes later there is invariably shouting as we try to shuttle us out the door. Yet, there we are, out the door, dressed, fed, and ready to go. Somehow the dog gets walked. Somehow lunches are packed. Somehow everyone has had there breakfast and medicine. Somehow we are helping each other get what needs to get done so that at 7am we are out the door.

It is often hard to understand how interdependent our lives are. Without someone grabbing a bag, the other child wouldn't have his stuff for school. There are times in nice weather, when the oldest one walks to his brother's school to take him home after school. This is true in nuclear families, communities, work groups, and societies. Currently I have the privilege to work in a shared office. Seven of us share the same open space. There are many times that only some of us are there. However, frequently when we are, we bounce ideas off of each other. Individuals ask each other, what do you think of this, how could I approach this, or could you share with me what you have tried when this happens? We share and grow together, and frequently it is more than ideas. Sometimes someone takes on another person's load, helps with a responsibility, or simply shows up with a Diet Coke or a coffee to make their colleague's day better.

In situations in which we go it alone, the more we realize we are alone. In these situations we often feel the fate of the world upon us. I look at our students. We live in a society that frequently pushes individual achievement, but those accolades are often reduced to meaningless when put in perspective of the whole. Kris Bryant's first words to the media after winning the World Series was that he had one many individual awards but nothing ever as a team as his smile brimmed ear to ear. In class, we look at who aces the test consistently, but in the work environment, that person is often useless unless they can work and communicate with others. The best products come when we set aside our egos and work together to understand how we can make a better whole.

That's the overall goal. Not to be the best student, not to be the best school, and not to be the best city, but rather to work with other students, other schools, and other cities to raise the bar for all of us. Do we need to have individual success at times? Absolutely! However, in the end, we are all interdependent. It's not one brother who wins and one brother who loses, but rather when we find wins for both of us together, we come out on top and then off to school we go in a much happier way.

Lean on Me

With A Little Help From My Friends

The Avalanche

It happens to most of us. It begins with something small, like a person cutting you off on the highway or the patron before you grabbing the last chocolate babka. Suddenly the spiral begins. Things begin to go wrong at work. Things begin to go wrong at school. Things begin to go wrong at home. A little incident builds and suddenly we fill as if at emotional avalanche is falling upon us.

With these avalanches, the pressure increases moment to moment. We question our decisions, we question our relationships, and we question our actions. It is in these times, we often face the darkest of times, wondering how it is we got here and how it is we can get out.

fortune from Keen Eddie

Just like the avalanche of awfulness beginning with a single event, the repairing of spirit and life can begin with a single event also. We can and do make a difference. In the book FISH!, we learn about how employees at a fish market is Seattle, Washington create energy by doing little things to make their customer's lives better. Whether it's making silly jokes, engaging them in some fish tossing, or simple being present to listen to them authentically, they engage others to make their day. By doing a little thing to make someone's life better, suddenly we may help them through something challenging. We may have done that slight action that turns their day from an avalanche of awfulness to a spirit of kindness.

The funny thing is, in helping others, we are really helping ourselves. Kindness and positivity are shared feelings. It is the kind of energy that builds, engages, and promotes. By helping someone else, whether it's putting their cart away, going ahead at the grocery store, or letting them leave a little early, there is a shared energy that helps us begin an avalanche of success.

Love Smith, former Bear's football coach and current coach at University of Illinois, used to speak of stacking victories. One victory builds to the next and then to the next. Our little acts of kindness can restart our path to success and bring others on their journeys forward. The avalanche, that starts with the smallest event, can be one of sorrow or one of joy. We have the power to impact it.

The Continental Crack-Up

Letting Go

I looked around the room on Thursday and there they sat, nearly 25 talented relatively new teachers. Some of them had been through the mischief and mayhem of the first semester, some had been with us barely a couple of weeks. I looked carefully, and had to double take. There is always that moment that sets in each year when you realize how young everyone is in the room. Nicely, it is often conveniently  followed by the realization of how talented everyone is in the room also.

In many places, many professions, professional development has been to learn to do as I do. Schools are no exception. We talk about the methodology of guided release. I do then you do. Model first, then guided practice, followed by independent practice in the classroom, and then practice on your own at home. Think about it, most of us "learned" this way.

While this is terrific for learning specific skills such as sewing a blind stitch or parallel parking, it can limit the creativity and depth of understanding of the learner. If we told each of our teachers this is exactly what to teach and how to teach it, providing every specific activity and script, we would get exactly that for every child. Very little would be built upon student interest and student capabilities. There would be a 4th grade program aimed at 4th graders. However it would capitalize very little on the capacities of those 4th graders.

In order to maximize our learning opportunities, more often we need to empower our principals, our teachers, and our students with the capacity to create and adapt. We can set up challenges, teach skills, as necessary, listen to them as they collaborate and explore. This requires trust in our teams and support when possible. It is true at every level of the relationship, curriculum leader to principals and coaches, principals and coaches to teachers, and teachers and parents to students. We set up the next challenge, give the team the opportunity to explore and then let them solve the challenge providing supporting guidance as necessary. Letting go allows for greater ownership and creativity as the learner masters the next challenge.

Last night, I was reminded of this. My son turned on the 1977 classic, Star Wars - A New Hope. There was Obi Wan Kenobi, not telling his pupil to do this step first and this step next, but rather letting him explore as he learned to conquer the next challenge. Letting go is not a new idea, but one from a long time a go and perhaps a galaxy far, far away.

Lightsaber Training