Spirit and Cereal

It's Homecoming Week around North High School, and the theme is cereal...really.

North has a very unique Homecoming Week, and while many things have changed over the years in the world of education, fortunately some of the traditions like Homecoming at North H.S. have remained. For administrators Homecoming weeks can sometimes be a little trying. The routines are different, students act differently, and sometimes our kids forget that they are in school despite it all being school related. Nevertheless, even after all these years I still appreciate that Homecoming week is a week when some of even our most apathetic , listless students show some life.

At North, each class has a color - freshmen are gold, sophomores green, juniors black, and seniors white - and the entire class wears a class shirt designed by a student in the appropriate color on their designated day. We have the usual class competitions: banners, floats, spirit at the pep rally, charity fundraisers and so on. The difference between North and some other schools is that virtually every student participates. It's a great reminder that if we find the right trigger there's some enthusiasm in all of us.

When we have our pep rally on Friday, all approx. 1400 students in the school will attend, and 90% plus will all actually be interested and care about what happens. When we have our dance Saturday night, we will expect a crowd of around 1200 students in a school of 1400. Despite claims to the contrary, our kids still care about school - maybe just not always about the classroom...

What does all this have to do with education and cereal? Well, the float themes are based on cereals. We have lucky charms and frosted flakes and all of the various slogans and characters associated with different cereals. The creativity our kids have already shown in creating their banners demonstrates some real abilities. Kids have come together and identified artists to draw, writers to write slogans, future interior designers to place everything, future leaders to organize, and everything comes together without a lot of adult aid (or interference depending on your perspective...). The implications for the classroom are significant. Find the right project, the right trigger, and the kids will do the rest. They'll create, organize and learn. Sounds simple right?

The art of teaching is finding the right approach to stimulate student interest. Homecoming is a reminder that all of our students are creative and enthusiastic about something - even if it's cereal. It's our job as educators to stimulate the kind of creativity and enthusiasm that a Friday Homecoming pep rally does.

As Tony the Tiger would say, "That would be Grrrrrreat!".

Nice Bike...Drive It

This term I'm teaching a class at Madonna University on current theories in teaching and learning. The theme of this week's class is motivation, and what role motivation has in learning. In preparing, it struck me how often the theme of motivation is central to discussions I have with students, parents and staff alike. There are as many motivation theories as there are theorists, but two books I've read recently really put some things in perspective for me.

A few years ago, North had well known motivational speaker Mark Scharenbroich do a presentation for our students. I've had the pleasure of knowing Mark for many years, and have often asked him to speak to students and/or staff. For several years, he has used a theme that I really believe most of us can identify with.

Mark tells of coincidentally being in Milwaukee for the 100th anniversary of Harley Davidson motorcycles. Hundreds and thousands of Harley owners were in town with their bikes. Now Harley owners think of their bikes as part of their family. They are closely connected to these machines, and they are part of each owner's identity. Mark observed that to make someone's weekend required only two words - "Nice Bike". Sounds simple, and it is. Unfortunately, many of us fail to realize that to teach and to connect with another person requires that we understand what is important to them and reach out to acknowledge others. "Nice Bike" is now the title of Mark's new book. In his words, " 'Nice Bike' is a gold star on your paper in elementary school....'Nice Bike' is going out of your way to let people know they matter. " Mark summarizes his "Nice Bike" philosophy in three powerful actions: Acknowledge, Honor and Connect.

Based on my many years of experience as an educator, coach and parent, I really believed that Mark Scharenbroich was right on the money when I heard him speak and read his book. In fact, one of my mentors often says "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care"...in other words, until you give someone a "Nice Bike" you haven't connected enough to teach them anything. I really believed this concept...then I I read the hot new book Drive by Daniel Pink, and found much of what I believed to be true about motivation challenged.

Pink challenges traditional "carrot and stick" methods of motivation, and focuses on his three elements of motivation - autonomy, mastery and purpose. As I read, I found myself questioning whether what I thought I knew about motivation could have been entirely wrong. As the book developed though, what became clear is that Pink hits on what should be painfully obvious. As the world has changed, and continues to change, what motivates people will also change. We think and learn differently now than we did twenty years ago. It makes sense that we should be motivated in different ways.

Ultimately (and I recommend you read both books!) I was able to reconcile the themes of the two books. While what motivates us changes, and will continue to evolve, what hasn't changed is the need for human connection. In fact, that need has grown exponentially with the advent of social media. We're connected to more people in more places than ever before. Where schools, and in some cases individual educators, have sometimes failed to progress is in understanding what it is that our young people value.

To illustrate this point, last week I was standing outside the cafeteria and observed a young lady reading a graphic novel. I asked her what she was reading, and she reluctantly held the book high. I recognized the title and said "Those are cool. Have you read 'The Helm'?". She hadn't, and I told her about having read it this summer to get an idea what graphic novels are all about - it's a great, funny story. We talked for a few more minutes, and she thanked me for not calling her novel a "comic book" as others had. A few days later she stopped me in the hall and held up The Helm. "Mr. Bearden, this is so cool. Thanks for recommending it. I think it's cool that you read this."

What started as an attempt by me to give a kind of "Nice bike" to a student I didn't know ended up with me being on the receiving end of a "Nice bike". I'm now motivated to read more of these graphic novels because I know there are a growing number of kids who like them, it's a growing genre of literature, and because that connection made me feel good. I acknowledged our student's interest in something that was important, and she acknowledged me noticing. Both of these connections were motivating.

Daniel Pink is brilliant, and I loved the book Drive - in fact I think it's a very important book. That being said, I know that one thing will never change - real, honest, personal connections that involve us honoring, connecting and acknowledging others not only open the doors of relationships, but they are inspiring and motivating. For parents, educators and coaches, that's what it's all about...Nice bike Mark Scharenbroich, Nice bike.

Perspective

As we prepare to begin a new school year, I was reminded this past weekend of the importance in maintaining a perspective on what is really important in education, and in working with young people.

My 9 year old daughter played on the west side of the state this weekend in her first travel soccer tournament. This was a major event for her, and the first time she had participated in a sporting event of this magnitude - traveling across the state, staying in a hotel, and competing against girls she didn't know, from places of which she's never heard. The evening before the tournament, we overheard a conversation between my daughter and her younger sister. Her younger sister asked her, with all of the 7 year old innocence in the world, if she was more excited about going to the tournament to win, or swimming in the hotel pool with her friends. My little soccer player responded, "It's not about winning - it's about having fun". We couldn't have been more proud...

As we begin this new year, there will be literally hundreds of classes and sporting events each semester. We sometimes have a tendency to forget that learning, competing, and performing are all supposed to be fun. At North this year we will have an emphasis on project based learning. We truly believe that learning should be fun, competing and performing should be fun, and school in general should be fun. As the school year progresses, I want students and parents alike to communicate with our staff and administrative team about the experiences you are having. Our goal is to truly make the learning experience the best one possible for each individual.

School might not be as fun as swimming in a hotel pool with your friends, but 21st century focused, project based learning that engages every student can be a close second (o.k. - maybe not second, but we can still make it a great experience!!)...

Lessons from Camp

My son just returned from four days at a camp called Author Quest, run by renowned thriller author Johnathan Rand. It was, as he put it, "the best thing I've ever done in my life". We were apprehensive, as most parents would be, to send our young son away to camp in the woods for four days with people we didn't really know. Nevertheless, it could not have been a better experience. From this opportunity, both he and his parents learned some valuable lessons that I think are applicable to schools.

When we dropped our son off, and when we picked him up, one of the things that struck me was the "openness" of the other campers and the counselors. These kids were remarkably willing to put themselves "out there" in ways that are uncommon in many classrooms today. Certainly a level of trust is involved, and one of the campers in attendance filmed a segment for the camp's website in which he said he loved being around other kids who were just like him. He didn't mean kids who were the same age, height, ethnicity or religion - I think he meant kids who were creative, intellectually curious, willing to take risks, and excited to learn.

In the development of American schools, there has long been an argument on the pros and cons of "tracking" or segregating by ability. Most current achievement gap research suggests that such segregation is detrimental to overall success of schools, and for the most part, my personal experiences verify that belief. High performing students may perform exceptionally well in segregated, tracked classrooms, but low performing students need model students and positive peer examples to be successful. I have read research that indicates high performing students can also benefit by being in classrooms with students of lesser ability if the classes are well structured. Peer mentoring and tutoring allows high performing students the opportunity to reinforce that which they know by assisting in the learning process of others. The adage that one doesn't really know something until he or she has taught it certainly has some truth.

Which brings us back to my son's fellow camper who loved being where the kids were "like him"...

The clear lesson I took from this camper's comments, my son's experiences, and my observations was that the trait that was shared by the kids at Author Quest that made them immediately drawn to one another is that they were all enthusiastic and intellectually curious. So often today, educators face the challenge of apathy. Students are apathetic, and sometimes parents are equally so. The art of teaching in today's Twitterized world is really engagement as much as instruction. Teachers face greater and greater challenges in engaging students than ever before, and unless students are engaged, they will not be active learners. We have to cultivate classroom experiences that somehow make all the students feel that their peers are "like them" in their enthusiasm for learning.

Our focus has to continue to be inquiry and project based learning that taps into student interests to engage them in a learning process that tweaks their intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm to learn. Author Quest was a great reminder that when kids are engaged in something, there can be some amazing moments both for the learners and the instructors.

Finally, one of the things that I noticed when picking up my son was the parent support for these kids. All of the parents appeared, at least outwardly, genuinely invested in their child's work and experiences. There is no doubt that parental guidance and support played a part in cultivating the spirit of these young writers, as it plays a part in the success or failure of each student in our school.

Our two main areas of focus this school year at North are to cultivate parent involvement in our school and our students' learning process, and to emphasize inquiry and project based learning that engages our students' natural intellectual curiosity. Hopefully, at the end of the year, we will have some students say they loved their experience at North because they like being around other kids (and teachers) with the same interest in learning.

Wallwisher

I've created a webpage on Wallwisher - a free message board site. It's a great tool for teachers as well as a cool social networking tool. This particular site is designed for our North family and readers of this blog to update everyone on summer adventures. This site is an open one for all to see, and posts are moderated, so your post will need to be approved before visible for all.

Go to http://wallwisher.com/wall/NorthSummer to post your summer adventures, and enjoy Wallwisher by creating your own wall!

Technology - For Us or To Us?

At the recent Campus Tech conference in Boston, keynote speaker Sherry Turkle from MIT discussed not only what technology does for us, but what it has done to us. As a proponent of moving quickly in adding available technology to teachers' toolboxes, her thoughts gave me pause to consider some of the unintended negative consequences of our ever increasing reliance on technologies to teach and communicate.

A few years ago, our district provided administrators with Blackberry phones. I have often viewed this as both a blessing and a curse. During the school year, I average almost 100 received emails a day, and now all of those emails come directly to me via my Blackberry. While not compulsive about a "clean desk", I don't like clutter either, and I definitely do not like hundreds of emails cluttering my inbox. As a result, I frequently clear emails from remote locations via my Blackberry, as do my colleagues. The end result is that in addition to some increased efficiency, I have inadvertently trained those who email me to expect a rapid response. That is, after all, today's digital age. If it takes me more than a couple of hours to respond to certain emails I will get "what's wrong" emails, or even worse, re-sent emails as senders assume the original was lost somewhere in cyber space. As one of my colleagues says, we teach people how to treat us, and I've taught people to expect rapid response to most emails.

As Dr. Turkle pointed out, one of the negative consequences of our increasingly quick communication is the sacrifice of thoughtful responses and exchanges. I can think of numerous instances where I have responded in haste to an email, only to later regret some or all of the response. Without immediate access to email, and means to respond, I would likely have given more thoughtful and measured responses. Another byproduct of rapid communication is that questions that cannot be answered quickly are ignored. I am sometimes guilty of this, and have been frustrated by being on both sides of this issue. I have sent complex email questions only to hear the proverbial crickets in response.

Dr. Turkle's point was that while we make our technologies, they often shape us. She pointed to research that concluded that while teens (and adults) who multi-task often view themselves as more efficient for having done so, studies demonstrate an exponential loss of productivity during multi-tasking. Teens are more and more often eschewing face to face communication for digital communication. In fact, emailing is already too tedious for most teens. Our students communicate most often via social media such as Facebook and Twitter, or via text messages. These communications are faster and even more brief than email, and have the added benefit of the capacity to reach multitudes in an instant.

As we rush to explore new technologies, and implement the use of social media and other communication platforms in the classroom, Dr. Turkle's address was a good reminder that we need to also examine what those advents do to the personal relationships that are critical to education. Further, student writing is certainly impacted by reliance on communication that requires short-hand and "blurb" style structure. It is now incumbent upon educators to fight to teach and retain some formal, thoughtful forms of expression.

While the exciting world of technology brings to us many wonders, it's a good reminder that with each adoption of new hardware, software or web application we need to think carefully about not only what that technology will do for us, but what it could potentially do to us, and plan accordingly.

Commencement 2010 - Reality...

Now that long forgotten lunches and gym clothes have been purged from the lockers, the last exams have been scored and posted, the last graduate has crossed the stage and the dust has settled, there is time to reflect on another successful school year. The Class of 2010 has completed their matriculation through the hallowed halls of Grosse Pointe North, and are sure to venture forth into great successes and adventures. For those of you without the good fortune to attend our commencement exercises, it was a beautiful night. My address to the Class of 2010 is captioned below. This class has been responsible for many great moments in our school's history, and certainly has left its mark. Best wishes to all of this year's graduates.

Commencement Class of 2010

Good Evening Parents, Staff, Community, Members of the Board of Education, Dr. Klein, and most importantly, the Grosse Pointe North Graduating Class of 2010. I know what you’re thinking right now – yeah the musical performances were good, the speakers were articulate and moving, but Yes – now is my time - My time to finally.... get to hear Mr. Bearden speak. If we’d have let our graduates bring their phones in, Twitter and Facebook would be buzzing with the news – gtg, brb our Principal is finally speaking. He’ll be awesome LOL (For the social network shorthand challenged, That’s Got to Go, Be Right Back, our Principal is awesome – Laughing Out Loud....).
Commencement is about you, but I was taught that public speaking is about establishing trust with the audience, so in the spirit of establishing trust, I’ve used this platform to confess some secrets in the past. Once I unveiled my closet appreciation for both country and rap music. Once I confessed my secret lifelong desire to be a movie director. Last year I shared advice from my 6th grade gym teacher (ask me about that later), and tonight I have another embarrassing confession – I watch reality television. I watch American Idol, The Bachelor, Celebrity Apprentice, the occasional Dancing with the Stars and used to follow Survivor. Hope you don’t think less of me…In fact, this isn’t even a new thing – for those of you in my generation and older, you’ll remember early reality television shows I used to watch like Candid Camera, the Dating Game, the Newlywed Game, the Gong Show, and the $1.98 Beauty Show. All of them mind numbingly dumb, but strangely addictive.
A lot of people criticize these shows as not being reality at all because they are often scripted or fake. I don’t view that as detracting from the shows – in fact I think that’s what makes them real. The “real world” isn’t that at all – it’s nutty. Some people are fake all the time, some are real. Some situations are deceiving; sometimes you have to trust your gut instinct. As you’ve already learned in high school, a lot of times people (even your friends) turn out to be something different than you thought they were. Over and over the adage that truth is stranger than fiction will prove true in your lives. Your reality will shift and morph in ways you can’t yet imagine. On this day, we hope that the tools we’ve given you, and the lessons you’ve learned here at North will help you navigate the “Real” world.
If I were casting the Class of 2010 as a reality show, there would be a lot of great options. I’d call my show “Be the Change” using the mission our school adopted several years ago, and we’d track members of the Class of 2010 as they head into the world to make their mark and work to effect the change they would like to be in the world. First we need a host someone with a big personality who can think on his feet – I’ll go with Louie Michael. We need talent - I’d cast Tim Lupo and Justin Wrubel as singing minstrels who sing through every episode making the world better through song. I’d cast Dean Butts, Adam Evanski, Mark Haas, Mark Palazzolo and Kyle Moore as the Bachelors just because they’re all the kind of good guys you’d want your daughter to bring home. I’d cast AJ Brooks, Brandon Williams, Sara Bigham and Rahmed Gulley as Survivors because they’ve come a long way in four years here, been through a lot, and I want to see what they do in the world. I’d cast Bryan Brown and Ariel Braker as my version of successful Hoop Dreams and every week, like a crazy Groundhog Day movie, I’d have Bryan hit a half court buzzer beater to beat South again and again. I’d cast Nick Howard as a Trump type in an Apprentice show because you’ve got to have some wild hair somewhere and no one rocks an afro like Nick. The Class of 2010 has made us proud at North, and the Class of 2010 Be The Change show will be a reality show that will make us proud for years to come.
In closing, three pieces of advice for you that I’ve garnered from my years of living, loving, losing and winning, and watching the occasional television reality show – the video equivalent of junk food:
1. On Reality shows, people who go by one name – Puck, Omarosa, the Situation – are almost inevitably jerks. This is a good rule for real life. Elvis pulled it off, but he had to wear sequined jumpsuits to do it which Coach Sumbera tells me is not a good look for most people. Use the names your parents gave you, and represent them well.
2. I’m not entirely sure why, but there are usually three judges – one nice one, one hyper-critical one, and one middle of the road judge. This break-down will be pretty much followed in the population you encounter in real life, and as on the shows, often the most critical judges will know the least but incessantly blow their own horns to make you believe they know the most. Take the criticism constructively and the praise humbly and you’ll do well.
3. Sometimes the nicest and hardest working people don’t win. This one is a tough one to swallow because we’re taught that if we work hard we can achieve anything. It seems unfair, but it’s not. The reward for working hard and being nice is internal. You will feel great about yourself. Also, frequently the “nice guy” runner-up gets a spin-off show that’s better than the main one – this is also true in real life. As the song says, “Sometimes God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers”. Working hard and being nice gets rewarded one way or another.
In On the Road, Jack Kerouac wrote “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” LIVE – be present in your lives. Hold on to the people you love, and be open to everything – make your reality what you want it to be. It’s your reality show in the “real world”, and you can write the script.
Class of 2010 – your accomplishments have already changed North forever. The list of achievements, honors and awards for the members of this class is staggering. Thanks for your amazing representation of North High School. I’m confident that this class is ready to burn across the sky lighting the world with your dreams, desires and abilities. Finally, in a play on a popular reality show catch phrase, maybe someday you’ll even hear the words that will thrill every parent who wants to turn your bedroom into that home office or Jacuzzi room they’ve always wanted – Class of 2010….you’re hired. Congratulations and best wishes.