May 28, 2013 · 9:49 am

Change

How does the saying go? “The only thing that doesn’t change is that change happens.”  Or something along those lines. Life right now has got me reeling.  Feeling bombarded with change but no clear path through the chaos.

And this is the moment when it can all fall apart.  Everything crashing down like a juggler who missed a catch and now the bowling pins are ricocheting off the floor.  Or this is the moment when the world will stand amazed at the show, watching as the flow of the juggler’s hands move the objects through the air in a synchronized dance.

We all have been at this moment.

I’ve learned a few things about how to get through this moment, even though I know my insights are nothing new, I will share.

1. You have to start with something. The biggest stumbling block is inactivity.  Letting the overwhelming feelings keep you frozen.  Starting with something, however small the task, gets you in a different mind set.  It gets you feeling like you can handle the change.

2. Ask for help. I don’t do this well, I will confess.  It is a mix of pride and trust that keeps me from asking for help before I get too overwhelmed.  But life is a team sport.  In fact, I have learned that helping others creates the strongest bonds. We open our hearts when we ask for help, and when we do things for others.

3. There is a path. No matter how lost we feel, there is a way through the maze.  Change is just one of those huge junctions that leave you wondering which way to go.  We may hit dead ends, make a ton of left turns, but there is a path.  We just can’t see the whole maze.

Maze

So, I am in the middle of change.  I would like to take this time to pay tribute to Mr. Gary Monter, who passed away last week.  He was my principal at Centura and was a friend that helped me find my way in the past.  I miss you.  But I have the foundation you helped me build as a teacher and person to continue finding my way through this maze.

Music was a keystone of our friendship.  “Hold On,” by Alabama Shakes, was the last music suggestion Mr. Monter sent to me.  It is a fitting way to end this post.

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May 16, 2013 · 10:01 am

Trust Your Foundation

My youngest daughter, in fact all my children, continue to show me life lessons.  Every morning my two youngest daughters get a breakfast bag to take with them in the car.

BreakfastAs the girls get their hair done, shoes on, they start eating their breakfast.  This morning we were rolling with our normal routine when my youngest daughter placed her bag on the edge of the side table spilling her breakfast.

I took a few seconds to collect myself so that I wouldn’t just have a knee jerk reaction. I looked at the ceiling, took a breath, and prepared to clean up the mess.  As I turned back to my daughter I was surprised to see her simply picking up her breakfast.  I bent down and helped her pick up the spilled cereal and Pop-tarts.

Honestly, I was prepared to ask her to help or even do it myself.  But there she was handling the situation.  Something we, as parents, have tried to instill in all our children.  As we cleaned up together, I thought to myself how I didn’t trust my own parenting.  I was, again, quick to think that I would have to handle the situation.  But my little girl proved me wrong.

Trust.  What a tricky concept.  Especially in this situation.  To trust myself.  To trust the foundation we have been building for our children.  My oldest son will be a seventh grader next year.  The teen years will be in full force in our home.  I know I will make mistakes.  I know my son will make mistakes.  But this morning my youngest daughter showed me that it is not just trusting others, but having the courage to trust the foundation I build.

I will be honest, that is a scary thought because as a parent we want to have a sense of control. Just like the old adage “If you want it done right, do it yourself.”  But the problem is that we can’t live another person’s life, even if it is our children’s lives (or our students).  We have to trust we have built a strong foundation and let them show we can trust them to stand on that foundation.

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May 8, 2013 · 9:30 am

National Honor Society Speech

Post Note: Last night I was honored to give the opening remarks for Centura’s National Honor Society Induction Ceremony.  The following was my outline, my speech added some lines, forgot others, but the main idea is presented.

IMG_1210Good evening,

I am honored to speak at this year’s National Honor Society service.

Tonight I would like to talk about dictionaries.  I know, I’m in English teacher; give me a little leeway.

I actually want to talk about a metaphorical dictionary. (A metaphor is a direct comparison, usually indicated with the word is… a simile uses like or as)

This metaphor comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Speech “The American Scholar.”  His speech covers a number of different topics regarding learning, but one of his most powerful moments is when he expresses that “Life is our dictionary.”  He continues later in the speech with this insight, “I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech.”

Emerson is stating that we fill our lives, our dictionary, with the vocabulary we experience.  I want to expand on his idea for a few moments.  To investigate what words you already have in your dictionary and discuss the power of the words you have yet to write.

First, you already have a number of great words in your dictionary.

Your family is the base of many of these words.  Love, joy, sister, brother, mother and father.  They have developed the word family for you.  Your family has helped in understanding words like Christmas, vacation, pride.  They have helped define you… by giving you your name, and reinforcing the power of your middle name when you were in trouble.

Your teachers and coaches have also helped you write in words like education, learning, hard work, goals, and tardy.

But moments like this night reveal a truth, a change in the dictionary.  You are in the process of rewriting the definitions, of adventuring out to live your life, to write your own entries.

In the future you will enhance the entry for family. You will be the mother or father, an aunt or uncle.

You will take the entries of education from school and build the entry for wisdom.

But to be honest, a dictionary is not, and should not be simply filled with positive words.  Life is not that simple.  Do not be afraid to write in words like heartache, fear, or anger.  These are compliments to a life that risked loving someone with all your heart.  Fear shows you strived to do something out of your comfort zone.  Anger means you cared.

You will have words like regret, but that means you have dreams or goals.

You will feel overwhelmed, stressed, confused, and even lost.  But those words are part of life. They give weight to your life.  They give meaning to our moments.

This moment allows us the time to reflect on our dictionaries, to enter new words and tweak the entries that we have written.  Understand, that your life, your dictionary is always a work in progress.  And that you take a metaphorical pencil with you and strive to fill your dictionary with new words every day. Tonight you should work on the entries of Scholarship, Leadership, Service, and Character but also happiness, family and friends, education and most of all honor. Congratulations.

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May 7, 2013 · 9:08 am

Whatever happened to Georgia Wonder?

Back in 2009 I was following a band Georgia Wonder on Twitter. I was also teaching a unit on digital literacy for my sophomores. I had a crazy idea to try to connect with people I followed on Twitter to enhance some of the topics we were covering in class. One of those people was Julian Moore of the band Georgia Wonder. He agreed to talk to my sophomores via iChat to talk about the music business.

Here is the online magazine my students produced from that lesson: Chalk: Georgia Wonder issue.

Here is the blog post Julian wrote: Nebraska USA.

But this post is not about that lesson; it is about relationships. Relationships in our digital age.

Julian and I hit it off right away. In fact we both have the same birthday. For quite some time after the iChat lesson we kept in contact on a regular bases. Georgia Wonder was working on a new album, and in fact the class and I got to hear the first single from the album as Julian was working on it. Today it is 2013 and I have lost contact with Julian. There have only been two posts on Twitter from the band since last year. Their blog has not been updated in a long time. Julian is working on a novel, but that blog has not been updated either. So what happen to a friendship in the making? Life.

Let me take a minute to bring in a few ideas that have been on my mind lately. In the TECHS class we have been discussing digital citizenship, and part of that discussion has been the change in our definitions of friendship, communication, and relationships. Yesterday we watched the following TED talk “Alone Together” by Sherry Turkle.

I have been reading the book You are not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier, which discuss many of the same ideas. This blog isn’t about those either.

Now this is a hard truth. I know that if I stopped using Twitter or Facebook, nobody would really care. Somebody might think off hand that I hadn’t posted anything in awhile, but life would go on. I will be starting a new job soon and in a few months after I leave ESU 10 somebody might think about me, but life goes on. But here is the point, the aspect we as a culture and as individuals are discovering and working through; life goes on whether we are online or not. (And I am thinking we need to be offline a little more… but that is for another post) But when we embrace the power to enhance our relationships through technology we create an incredible personal experience that enriches what we do and who we can become. At the moment much of technology discussion feels like technology is a separate aspect to our lives. It is not; it is a tool that can enrich our lives.

So what does this have to do with Georgia Wonder? Good question. I may never connect with Julian again, but the possibility is there because of technology. But just like any friendship, job, or change, life goes on. But my life, and my students’ lives, was enriched by our connection. If we keep the focus on how technology can make our lives better; I think we will do just fine.

By the way, Georgia Wonder, if you get the chance to read this… I’m still listening to your music.

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March 11, 2013 · 11:34 am

Class Research

The TECHS students did a simple Google Presentation on future technology. Each student, across four class periods, were assigned to find something cool happening in the world of technology.

Technology allows any of us to collaborate with ease.

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March 6, 2013 · 8:11 pm

I hear you…

       Last night I had two examples as a dad on the importance of listening and hearing my children. The first was my oldest son at the dinner table. It wasn’t anything world changing, but he had a rough day at school. My wife and I sat listening to him vent about the day’s activities. We didn’t try to solve all the problems but did give advice.  Mostly though, we just let him talk about his frustrations. By the time supper had ended life was pretty good for him. He had been heard and knew that we understood what was going on, even if we didn’t have concrete answers for him.
     The second example wasn’t so easy. My littlest girl got up at about 12:30 a.m. and we did our routine of getting a drink and sitting in the chair for a few minutes. And then things got a little tough.
      At the moment a part of her bedtime routine is to spend a few minutes in bed with us and then she will say, “I’m ready for bed.” But at 12:30 she wanted to get into bed before she went back to her room. I wanted to make sure that my wife got a good nights sleep, so I told her we would just go to bed or sit in the chair for a few extra minutes.  She wasn’t up to that and started throwing a fit about how she wanted to “sleep with mom.”
      Somewhere I had read that the best thing to do with a child who is throwing a fit is to ignore them. But if you have a strong-willed child you know that they will pay any consequence. And even as hard as I tried, she just continued to throw a fit and scream about how she wanted to sleep in our bed. Trying to keep my cool, I reinforce that she was being disrespectful by being loud and waking other people up. That didn’t help.
       After about 30 minutes or so she moved from sitting on the chair to sitting next to me trying to gain my attention. I was getting frustrated but had one of those father moments where you try something totally new because nothing else was working; I turned to her and said, “I hear you but you are throwing a fit and that is not right.”
      As soon as I had replied that I had heard her, she quieted down and sat next to me. I again tried to persuade her that she didn’t need to lay down in our bed this late at night.  But that set her off. I again replied that I heard her, and she settled down.  (A side note here: we have been reinforcing saying please and thank you.) Well, after a few minutes she asked if she could lay down with a please attached.  Yes, I gave in, and within five minutes of laying down she was ready to go to bed and she slept through the rest of the night.
I had never responded with the I hear you comment to her before, and as I came back to bed after getting her snug in her bed I started to think about a piece of literature that reinforce the importance of hearing children.
     So I’m going to go English teacher here.  If you’ve ever read the book The Outsiders then you know that there is a powerful moment in the book when Johnny is talking about his parents. I don’t have a copy of the book with me right now so I will paraphrase, but he is telling Ponyboy that the worst thing that his parents do to him is ignore him.  Johnny can take the beatings, but when his parents act as if he is not there, it hurts him.
      It’s not just our children or students but everybody wants to be heard.  They want to know that they have a voice and that voice gives them solid ground to stand on in this world. When our voice is actually heard, it means we are known.  We know we matter. Life will sometimes reinforce the importance of things through my children.  Yesterday it was how important it is to hear individuals around us whether they are our children, our students,  or anyone who might need us to hear them.

 

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March 5, 2013 · 8:38 am

This I Believe…Love

Holding Daughter's Hand

Holding Daughter’s Hand

I checked out the book This I Believe: On Love from my library a couple of weeks ago.  The book is a collection of essays written by everyday people.  The book is apart of the I Believe organization that fosters the sharing of our foundational beliefs through writing.  In the spirit of the book I wanted to share what I believe, on love.

Love takes strength, everyday.

Love is reflected in the daily grind of life, it is expressed in soothing a crying child at 1:30 in the morning, and the thirty minutes sitting next to their bed as they fall asleep (and not losing your cool when your knees pop awaking her so you have to sit for another ten minutes).

Love is reflected in making blueberry muffins every Sunday morning.  Sitting with the family at the table. Picking up shoes and coats in the entryway, everyday.

Love is seen in kissing your wife even though it is a bad day and things are not going right.  To show her that your marriage is more important than a bad day. Love drives us to be better next time, and the next time, and to be even better the next time after that.

Love calls us to live with an open heart.  To be strong enough to know your heart will break, because life will break your heart with joy and sorrow.  But love will put your heart back together.

Love calls us to be honest, to have the strength to do what is right in this world.  To stand alone sometimes and hold a candle size light in the dark until others find their way to you.

Love takes strength.  Love takes courage. Love takes everything you have.  And I believe that is the way it should be.

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January 9, 2013 · 7:58 am

“I do it.”

Clip art courtesy of ryanlerch at openclipart.org

This morning my youngest daughter was getting herself dressed. She was having a little trouble with one of her sleeves. Like many parents, my wife said, “Come here, I’ll help.”

Our daughter look at her said, “I do it.”

She continued to struggle to get the sleeve untangled and her hand through the sleeve.  She turned a couple of times like a dog chasing its tail. After a minute she stopped and said, “Need help.”

My wife then helped her get her arm through the sleeve and we continued with our morning routine. The time in between “I do it” and  “Need help” was probably at the most a minute. But in parental time it felt like an hour, especially since we were in the middle of our morning routine.

My youngest girl is a classic strong-willed child. She will tackle any thing she feels like. If this was any of my other four children at this age they would have let us help them get their arm through the shirt right away. We would have justified helping them for the sake of our routine.

It is easy to do things for our kids. Whether they are our own kids or our students. My oldest son is now 12 years old and we are asking him to take on more responsibility. But I wonder if I have simply taught him that dad will do it.  For example, for years I have cleaned the dishes from the table after dinner.  It is easier for me to handle the mess than have a child carry a plate with some uneaten macaroni and cheese on it and have the possibility that the child dumps the food on the floor. Or take their glass, with just a little bit of milk at the bottom, to the counter.  But now that I want my son to do more, there are moments of frustration because he forgets to put his plate in the dishwasher.  But I have done it for him for twelve years.

This morning my three-year-old daughter reminded me that building any foundation takes a lot of time and energy. It might be easy to do things for our kids for the sake of time or ease. But the foundation will not be there when it is needed most in life. When we are not there.

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January 8, 2013 · 8:53 am

Happy New Year

Happy New Year… a few days late but the year is still young.

The lines, “As I playback now, the tape of the year / Its not where I thought we’d be, still not where I feared” from the song above, “3 Days Till Next Year” by Keith Ward, is fitting for how I am feeling today.

Just like many people, there were too many things that I didn’t do.  Too many things that I took for granted because I was worried or simply complained about life not going the way I wanted.

January 1 gives all of us a symbolic moment to “replay the tape,” but what matters more is what we will do today.  And it is not the big things that we should focus on but as the song says, “Remember that friend, that you meant to call.”  We let too many small moments pass by, too many letters or emails not sent, smiles kept hidden and then wonder why the past year feels just like the last; filled with regrets.

Life is going to happen.  Whether I complain or accomplish a new goal.  January 1, 2014, will allow me another moment to replay the tape.  I am striving to have that tape filled with friendships, great moments, and new adventures.  But most importantly, not matter what struggles life might have in store for me, to have a year filled with joy and love.

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December 18, 2012 · 10:14 am

Plateau?

I was talking to my colleague Deanna Stall when she brought up an interesting point. She asked, “What if the system has plateaued? That this is the best that we can expect from school.” Good question.  It got me thinking about all the talk about changing school, from Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk “Bring on the Learning Revolution” to the book I am currently reading by Salman Khan, The One World Schoolhouse. One of the main points about education is how it must change, that it is broken.  But maybe Mrs. Stall’s question is more accurate.  Let me talk about the bench press first.

Not to get into the principles of conditioning, but I want to use the bench press to highlight the idea of a plateau. The bench press is a great exercise. But if you do the same rep set or keep the same weight everyday, you will soon hit a plateau in your development. The easiest way to break the plateau is a change in reps, weight, or the training cycle.  Change something, not stop doing the bench press.

School is a great place. Teachers work hard to provide an education for every child.  Activities, from sports to FFA to a school play, provide unique opportunities for students to express their talents. There are too many positives about school that get lost in the discussion of change.  Many times it feels like the discussion is centered on the idea we trash the whole system and start over.  But what if we think about it from the position of the plateau?

Change is growth, but the change is in the approach not the foundation.  An athlete will not stop doing the bench press when they hit a plateau; they change their training.

The question for a school, or even a teacher, is what to change to reach the full potential of the school or the classroom.  What can we change to break through the plateau?  Because the worst part of a plateau is the false perception that it is the best you can do…

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