Schools

I am currently reading for a second time, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, by Heath & Heath. It explores the examples and research on how some brief encounters or experiences can strike us, impress, affect, and change us. The first time I read it through the lens of my own personal experiences and walked away with a renewed sense of the importance of the weekly family dinner ritual in our home. This time, the connections I am making to this topic are exploring ways to help those I serve in my work as a consultant to assist them in creating defining moments in the constituencies they serve. Heath & Heath’s research suggests there are specific defining moments in our lives that create meaningful experiences that ultimately stand out in our memories (p. 4). And, that people’s defining moments share common elements. More specifically, moments of elevation, insight, pride and connection.

Recently, I sat down with a person serving as the Director of Admissions. She shared with me that 65 students applied to the school, 43 were accepted and 25 enrolled. I asked what the current practice was in alerting a student that his/her application was accepted. She said the parents receive an email.  If we apply the research of the power of moments to this process, could the school  be missing an opportunity to create a defining moment that might possibly increase the likelihood the child enrolls? Why not capitalize on the element of pride, elevation or even connection?

Here are some examples of ways a school could create a defining moment for parents and their children:

•  How about sending a personalized video to the child and his/her parents announcing the good news?
• Or perhaps create a frame with the school’s name and mascot on it for the family to post on social media with a hashtag such as #futurestudent.
• Add in to the announcement, as Heath & Heath suggest, some school swag to further help the child feel part of the family.

Soon you elevate the moment. In reality, the moments of elevation are applicable to all aspects of the admissions process.

• Applications can go live at an announced day and time creating an increased level of anticipation.
• A photo board could list the accepted students as “members of the class of …,” as if one were listing members of the cast for the upcoming musical. Current students could be listed as back again for the second season cast members. 

Regardless of what you language you use, the goal is to create the sense of pride, insight, elevation and connection that ultimately stands out as a defining moment in the life of the student. What a world it would be if we all were centered on creating powerful moments for one another.

Dr. Jackie Lichter

Let me tell you about a boy named Caleb. Caleb was a 7^th grader who could be defined as “a class clown.” He had remarks for everyone and always had to get in the final word. He struggled academically and sat quietly in the classroom during discussions or lectures. He rarely completed his homework, would not ask for help, and routinely failed quizzes and tests. Teachers, including me, struggled with Caleb because he just didn’t care. There was a lot of concern for Caleb looking into his future and wondering how he would get through 7^th and 8^th grade and what high school was going to look like for him.

In November of Caleb’s 7^th grade year, as a school, we decided to implement personalized learning in a blended learning environment. This meant that Caleb was in a classroom of 6^th, 7^th and 8^th graders. Classes were split amongst two teachers. One teacher taught Humanities (me) while the other teacher taught STEM. It took a lot to figure out how to best meet the needs of the students; but, it was definitely what was needed.

The first thing I needed to do was to pretest the students and find out where each one of them was academically. I made binders for each grade and subject that included the standards needing to be mastered. If a student showed mastery in a standard, I marked it in the binder. While that did not mean the student did not have to practice that standard, I knew it was one I didn’t have to “teach.” I then grouped the students according to subject and standards not yet mastered. This is how I developed my weekly lesson plans along with each student’s weekly work plan. Students were provided tasks to either practice skills taught but not yet mastered or review standards previously mastered.

Students worked through three rotations. One station was with me. This is where I taught the standards the students needed to learn. This was done in their small group. After students met with me, they were given an assignment or project to practice the standard. Students could work independently or in their small group. They knew they could ask each other for help because if I wasn’t working with their group, I was working with another group. The third station was independent work time. This is where students followed their personalized work plan and self-selected which standards they wanted to work on. Students had a list of “Must Do’s” and “May Do’s”. Students had to complete 15 minutes of work on each “Must Do” before they could work on a “May Do.”

There were many benefits to implementing a personalized learning environment. First, students like Caleb were not left behind. I knew through data collection; exactly what Caleb knew and exactly what he needed to work on. Because I was working with him at his level, there were minimal frustrations and Caleb started to become more excited to learn. Second, students got to self-select what they wanted to work on. Caleb did not like being “told” what to do. He liked having power in the classroom. By self-selecting what he wanted to work on, this gave him that power. He was focused on the work in front of him and took pride in showing me all that he accomplished in a class period. He started to think the work was “easy” and therefore also saw growth in the speed at which he was producing work.

And finally, there were no more traditional “quizzes” and “tests.” Most of seeing mastery through the standards was through observation, small group time, and projects. Because there were multiple grade levels in the classroom and students working on multiple standards, students were given choice in their final project as well. One thing I learned about Caleb that I didn’t before was how creative he was. Whenever he had the choice in a final project, he also selected one that he could “create.” I had never seen him work so intently on a “test” before. Caleb struggled with writing, so to be able to create something and talk about it not only boosted his self-esteem, but it also boosted his knowledge and understanding of the standards he had been working on.

During parent teacher conferences that spring, Caleb shared with his parents and me how much he enjoyed the personalized learning environment. He liked that he got to choose what he worked on without the teacher telling him. He also liked that the teacher spoke to him independently instead of in front of the whole class. He wasn’t embarrassed anymore to get an answer wrong because he wasn’t being publicly humiliated. And the greatest part for him was being able to choose his final project. He could clearly see how much he was learning and was excited to share his knowledge with others. While Caleb always continued to be “the funny guy” in class, he was no longer bursting out and disrupting others. He was focusing his attention on the task at hand and absorbing as much as he possibly could during class. Because of my experiences with personalized learning as a teacher, I fully implemented it when I became a principal. Why personalized learning, you ask? Because it works!

Angela Gunderson

This past week the Meitler team had the privilege of gathering at the Carmelite Retreat Center in Darien, Illinois to host the pioneer cohort of the National Catholic School Mentorship Program at a three-day Leadership Institute.  The goal of this two-year program is to equip school leaders the knowledge, skills and tools needed to apply the findings from the 2016 study “The Catholic School Choice: Understanding the Perspectives of Parents and Opportunities for More Engagement” in their local schools.

The Leadership Institute was comprised of eleven transformational principals from around the United States selected by their dioceses, representatives from Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities (FADICA) and the National Catholic Education Association (NCEA), who sponsored the program, as well as a dynamic list of workshop presenters.  The principals formed study groups with the goal to work together on creating an enrollment management programs for their schools.  The study groups meet monthly with the Meitler team joining in those sessions for ongoing support and coaching. 

The days at the Leadership Institute were action packed, engaging, fun and provided the principals with opportunities to form collaborative relationships with one another.  We parted ways grateful for the assurance that our work doesn’t end here; we are on a journey together.  As a champion of Catholic education, I left the Institute feeling energized and hopeful that the work of our schools may currently be “the best kept secret” but soon will become “the best known secret”!

An unintentional consequence of my intentional decision to step away from serving in a school as a principal to serving many schools as a consultant has been the need to establish a new rhythm to the summer months. While there is certainly down time in the summer for a school’s faculty and staff, the summer months for school personnel provides the time necessary to “reboot” the business of the school in order to prepare for the next learning year. Weekend events, church festivals, summer sports, building work, cleaning projects, new school packet preparation, school tours, enrollment details, creating teacher schedules, hiring, room assignments, handbook changes, website updates and curriculum work filled and ordered the days. We often counted down to the start of the school year worried we wouldn’t get it all done in time. The days were clear, hurried and numbered. 

As my summer rhythm has less order, I am ever more grateful for the work being done in our schools. I am grateful for the time committed by teachers, staff and leaders to summer preparations in anticipation of the new school year.  I am grateful for the countless hours, long after the students have left the buildings, teachers devote to advance their own learning, instructional practices and curriculum planning. I am grateful for the time, energy and money teachers spend creating a classroom environment that is conducive for learning.  I am grateful for a school calendar that naturally builds in time for this “reboot.”   I pray our teachers and school leaders also find some time to lose track of a day, enjoy  a bit of summertime fun and “reboot” their own spirits so when the children enter their classrooms for the new school year they are refreshed and ready to tend to our most precious gifts.

Dr. Jackie Lichter

As a young child I recall my kindergarten experience included numerous opportunities for free play, socialization, listening to my teacher read stories on the carpet, and spending time outdoors. Fast forward 50+ years, and four and five-year-old kindergarten classrooms include full reading, writing and math curricula with pre- and post-tests to measure success. Students were “tested” prior to entering kindergarten and parents were perhaps encouraged to wait a year before enrolling their son or daughter because he or she simply wasn’t ready for the demands of the program. In those instances, I found myself repeating the same question: how can a child not be ready for kindergarten when it is the first year of mandatory schooling in the United States? Or perhaps a child was encouraged to repeat four-year-old kindergarten so he/she would be better prepared for five-year-old kindergarten.

Now the pendulum seems to have swung back in the other direction with many Catholic schools focusing their early childhood efforts more on intentional play and less on direct instruction in reading, writing and math. That is not to say children are not learning to read, write, draw conclusions, and understand one to one correspondence. They are simply learning these in ways that appeal to and engage their sense of wonder and their desire to play.

I for one am happy with this change. It seems as if the Next Generation education understands this well. The term “Academic Preschools” is surfacing in articles about early childhood education. However, this method looks much different than the worksheet based, trace my letters, fill in the bubble tests that emerged of late in kindergarten classrooms. Rather, children are playing with things such as “programming toys” to learn the basics of science, engineering, arts, math etc. Programming toys are screen free and engaging and spark a child’s interest in STEAM. See the following website for an example of programming toys.

Intentional play centers, coupled with opportunities for free play, appear to have similar results. Students learn to read, write and understand math concepts using toys, building blocks, dramatic play and bucket frogs. Give two children a bucket of green, red, and yellow frogs and they will be quickly sorting them by colors, creating patterns, or using blocks to create places for the frogs to live.

I again am pleased with this movement in education. Young children have the capacity to learn at a rate that far surpasses adults. I say let them learn in ways that are fun, engaging, spark wonder, and teach them the very skills a Next Generation education emphasizes to not only solve problems but to also know how to learn, how to lead, and to see opportunities where others see constraints. KIBO robot kits are great example of this in action and there are many more programming toys on the market today. Teachers can even create their own!

Dr. Jackie Lichter