our esSAy

Have you ever gone to a conference out of town without anyone else from your school when you aren’t presenting and kinda don’t know anyone else there?   Well I just had that blessed experience (with about 10 days notice) when Kevin asked if anyone wanted to take his spot at SAIS in Charlotte, NC.  

You guys, it was amazing.  I mean I wasn’t totally a hermit, but let’s just say I took long runs after sessions in Little Sugar Creek Parkway in what folks here call Uptown, walked to Trader Joes more than once, and was in bed at 9pm on the dot two nights in a row, which yes, if you are counting, is actually 8pm our time.  I ate hotel oatmeal every morning (the best kind of oatmeal IYKYK) blessedly alone at my small two seater table in the corner with my thoughts and my laptop. 

But what was even more amazing than the solo vacation was that it seemed as though the designers of SAIS this year seemed to know that the theme of the upcoming blog blast was “can we talk about resilience.” I mean it was IN THE AIR.  

My favorite session on the topic was led by the engaging Michelle Icard, author of “8 Setbacks that Can Make Your Child a Success,” in which Icard argued that failure is a rite of passage that is indelibly tied to their ability to become a fully functioning adult.  Here are my key takeaways:

1.  We humans are wired to hide/bury failure because (with thanks to my favorite sociologist and yours, Goffman) life is a performance and we get better feedback from our audience when we succeed: #impressionmanagement. This ironically hurts us a lot, since the main way to learn from a failure is to unearth it, talk about it, write about it, and just generally chase away the scaries by bringing light to the ugly thing.  (Is that one of the purposes of this blog? YUPPERS.)

2.  This is especially true for adolescents, who are in the business of identity formation, and there are 8 identity-laden archetypes that emerge in teens with regular collision with failure. I recommend you play this like a game of Where’s Waldo in your classrooms this week: 

• The rebel
• The daredevil
• The misfit
• The ego
• The loner
• The sensitive one
• The black sheep
• The benchwarmer 

Side truth worth saying: no kid sets out to be “the rebel” or “the black sheep” or “the misfit” just to mess up your classroom.  These identities are produced by repeated experiences with unresolved issues.  

3.  According to this recent study (“Unpacking Grind Culture in American Teens”) teens especially feel pressure (aka most fear failure) in six areas: having a game plan for the future, achievement, appearance, social life, friendship, and activism.  Adults can help by laying off the pressure on what teen’s cited as the “top 3 areas of stress from adults in their lives”:  (1) game plan pressure and (2) achievement pressure) with (3) activism playing a distant third place. 

4.  Let’s say we get to choose a path for our kids (both our own kids and our proverbial kids in the classroom.)  There are three options: the easy path, the uncomfortable path, or the traumatic path.  Which should we choose? I think you know.  

5. Why is the uncomfortable path preferable to the easy path? Because without less-than-ideal experiences that drive us to action to help resolve them, we never get to experience a sense of self efficacy, “my behaviors can impact the environment I’m experiecing and I have some agency over how I respond and resolve the bad situation.” Without this practice, we can quickly devolve into learned helplessness.  (See, for example this summary of studies by Seligman and colleagues involving annoying noises and buttons/levers that do and don’t resolve the problem.  If humans experience failure and their actions don’t impact the negative events, they quickly lose the will to do anything at all the same time the same negative condition occurs.) 

6. No amount of pep talks, story-telling, inspirational movies, amazing morning meetings, ECOM, or advisory slides can push our students out of learned helplessness and into a more resilient mindset.  The only thing that can budge our kids out of this mindset is through learned experience that proves to the contrary “oh yes, indeed, I can push through this situation.” 

7. This going through difficult stuff is literally the plotline of every coming-of-age movie, book, and rite-of-passage ceremonial package that exists.  It is the only way youth can pass the threshold from being a kid to being an adult: experiencing separation from comfort, going through a test of some kind, growing as a result of the test, and returning and reintegrating as a better version of yourself. 

8. Okay so it’s inevitable.  And it’s good for them.  What do I do as the adult just watching it all unfold? (Talk about learned helplessness!) Icard says the best way to support a youth going through it is envisioning next steps like a tennis game, first the ball is in our court, then in the young person’s, then back in ours.  
   1. Contain: The adult can help by identifying the issue, giving youth language to talk through it.  We often need to put boundaries in place to ensure the failure doesn’t grow too large for the young person to handle or fall into learned helplessness.  Sometimes containing means to remove the youth from the situation.  Sometimes it means cutting off access to something or someone.
   2. Resolve: Now it’s time for the young person to act. What can they do to repair the situation after the fact? Maybe they need to re-earn trust.  Maybe they need to read something.  Maybe they need to apologize.  The prompt for them is: “You are feeling X (sad, scared, disappointed, defeated).  What can make you feel less X?”  The key is that the adult doesn’t do the thing for the kid.  And remember, the action doesn’t need to be perfect or what you would do; it should be their initiative and it should help mitigate their discomfort. 
   3. Evolve: The ball is back in our court.  Listen very very closely, because this is very very hard.  We essentially need to CHILL OUT.  Don’t keep bringing up the mistake.  Don’t betray tons of mistrust.  Acting as though it was all a huge irrevokably terribly deal will make it feel as such.  Trust that the child can succeed next time; that sentiment is contagious.

Many of you teachers are generally good at all of this stuff with your students.  I’ve seen it.  The brave among us even pride themselves on being appropriately, deliberately tough; giving them difficult problems; watching them squirm their way into discovery.  (I’m personally trying to strengthen my teacher muscles in this arena, as I tend to be a “swoop in and help and give lots of chances” kind of fellow.  It’s not good for my students.  It’s not good for me.)

Nearly all of us feel less detatched from the pain, however, when it comes to our own children. The pain is too close, too visceral.  I sometimes feel like the doctor forgot to cut the umbilical cord . . . that somehow the pain of Lucy-Zander-Alianna just flows right into my inner-world as if it were my own.  This is one of the great ironies of parenting.  Our instincts sometimes push us in exactly the wrong direction.

Will knowing this in my brain help dull the pain and my reactions a bit the next time I observe the struggle? Can I be more the thermostat and less the thermometer in a situation? Can I actually be comfortable at containing and then sit back to observe the next steps the youth in my life take to resolve the issue, like a very calm and well-behaved spectator at a middle school basketball game? And, perhaps, most difficult of all, can I practice trust that the young person will productively evolve from the experience rather than letting my anxiety rehash and revisit and re-discuss, re-opening up a scab that has just begun to heal? 

I’m not sure about all that, but I’m sure of this one thing: I am not the burying failures type.  I will keep shouting my failures into the sky on this blog and through other venues.  Every single one of them has been a gift in a very unenjoyable disguise.  

Authored by Hannah LeBlanc

A big topic in the lower school is our new math curriculum. At a previous school, I taught kindergarten using Developing Roots, which is the Early Childhood curriculum associated with Think!Math, so I was pumped to adopt this new curriculum. One of the things that I really enjoyed about the Think! Math program was the way it fostered resiliency and grit in math. This is something I have struggled with throughout my years of teaching. Kids are quick to say, “I don’t know how to do this,” then sit back and wait for someone else to solve a problem. And, oh hey, that was me in school, too. I’ll just nonchalantly hang back and pretend I’m doing some work, but in reality, I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m not brave enough to try. Sidenote, I also did this in Elementary School Orchestra. My parents were so proud of me… the violinist who never actually touched the bow to the strings because I wasn’t quite sure how to do it. Fake it til you make it… although, my orchestra career didn’t “make it” and I quit in 3rd grade. 

I talked a big game about this program and how great it is for students. But as we started to get into it… it humbled me. We had a few bumps along the way. First of all, our teacher manuals don’t exist yet. We’re hoping they will arrive by January? Piecing things together from the online resources can be very time-consuming. And the most humbling moment occurred when trying to understand an activity in the “Getting Started” unit. I tried to make sense of it on my own with no luck. I pleaded with Shea to ask the trainer, and she gave me some feedback from the trainer that still made no sense to me. Exasperated and frustrated, I pulled Tiffany Busby and Lisa Boone into a room and tried to role play the whole activity to make sense of it. In the end, the frustration sort of melted into delusion and laughter, because we never did quite figure out how it taught kids to be resilient when it seemed like there was actually no way for them to be successful. But without the manual, we didn’t know if that was the case. At a certain point, we decided that we tried all the ways we could and maybe we needed to come up with a new activity. And maybe that was a secret challenge… what if the publishers PLANNED for us to get a taste of our own medicine — trying new things and making sense of a challenging task can be frustrating.. But it doesn’t mean we’re bad teachers. We worked together in the end to tweak the activity to make it work and also just came up with another activity. For those wanting to try it out, please see the “Crazy Colors” activity below. We never did figure out how a student could strategize to perfectly match their partner’s color tile set up if the original pattern maker didn’t tell the colors in order. 

We have lots of very talented, quick students at St. Andrew’s, so one of the areas that is hardest for these kids is when they are challenged in a way when they aren’t quite sure how to get started. Having to sit with that discomfort, then find a starting point and try something you know how to do and see if it works… Well, that’s really hard. But I’m finding that with our math curriculum, students are rising to the occasion. In our classroom, we are learning this mantra: 

It is okay to not know the answer right away. It is okay to not even know where to start! But it’s not okay not to try. 

Here is an example of an awesome second grade Mind Workout activity. Some students said, “oh this is easy,” and quickly decided they figured it out. Others felt unsure of where to start, but began to make sense of it once they were willing to get their feet wet and give it a shot. And on top fo that, others thought they had it figured out, then realized along the way that they had to go BACK and try some things again. BIG LEARNING was happening!! 

Because there is a lot more going on in the Lower School than just 2nd Grade, I reached out to April Cosgrave, the 4th Grade Math teacher, to get her perspective on the new unit. It sounds like across the Lower School, building resilience in Math is a needed goal, but also a helpful pathway to building resilience and grit in learning and life overall. 

“Fourth graders seem to be loving Think! math. I personally loved the intentionality of the curriculum during the first 10 days of setting the classroom culture around trying new things and keeping a growth mindset. Fourth graders in general, don’t have a very good relationship with trying and being unsuccessful. They seem to become defeated if the first thing they try doesn’t work. This doesn’t seem to only happen in math, this is across the board (recess, playing games with friends, navigating technology, etc). Through the year I can see their relationship with problem solving and perseverance grow tremendously. They start to wrestle with hard problems and think of it like a puzzle versus an impossible numbers task. I also think they learn that making mistakes is normal and we are all human, through my wonderful modeling (lol). But truthfully, I like to draw attention to myself when I make a mistake so they learn that it is completely normal and the world isn’t going to end because of a simple error. I think one of the most important things to instill in kids to help with their perseverance in math, is that mistakes are where learning happens. When we make mistakes it forces us to slow down and look closely at what we have done, and this usually gives us some pretty great insight. I love watching students step back from their white boards and check over their hard work, especially when they’ve been asked to take a second look due to an error. It is as if I can see the lightbulb come on when they figure out what they’re missing or where they went wrong. They beam with pride when they figure out that they were on the right track, but made a simple mistake. We have so much fun in 4th grade math, and I spend a lot of time (probably too much) creating a space where we can ALL make mistakes and we help each other figure it out or shake it off.”

In this blog season of resilience-talk, it’s worth bringing up another flavor of resilience, one that may threaten to elude the hardest of workers, one that may be especially difficult for the most persistent people among us.  

What if the failure, the hard knocks, come in the form of,  not failed achievements or missed deadlines or lack of recognition.  What if they come clothed in the oh-so-disturbing fact that SOMEONE DOES NOT LIKE US?!  Hey,  high achievers who like pats on the back: Can you get up after that gut punch?

Let’s pause with this meme I have posted a buncha times:

The thing is, not even pizza makes everyone happy.  How’s that for reassuring?

Maybe it is your colleague, maybe it is your boss, maybe it is your student,  maybe it is someone that reports to you,  maybe it is an old friend who seems to no longer be your friend, or a distant cousin or the waiter who seemed to scowl at you, or that Sunday School teacher at church, or that anonymous meanie on the Internet.  

Maybe it isn’t even about them liking you personally.  Maybe they woke up on the wrong side of the bed.  Maybe they just disagree with your stance on something.  Maybe they feel like lashing out because someone else was kind of mean to them.  Maybe you inadvertently did a thing that really created offense, and maybe you didn’t.  Maybe you are literally reading the entire situation wrong and the thing you think is a scowl is actually a half-grin.

Or maybe, perhaps just as likely, they just don’t like you.  None of us are for everyone.  That’s okay.  

We all work in a fairly public job with a pretty large number of humans on a given basis.  Many of these people barely know us, spend very few minutes with us, and probably spend very little time thinking about us at all.  So when we talk about resilience we are also talking about being a little more self-differentiated, having an identity and sense of self worth that isn’t dependent on a lot of external affirmation from family, friends, co-workers, etc.  There is actually a real upside to “not being for everyone.” It means, literally, we can set some boundaries. We can say no thanks. We can choose some friendships and let others naturally fall away. My sense is if you are giving and receiving love from a small group of trusted humans in this life, you’re doing pretty darn well.  Keep fighting the good fight.  Taylor Swift likes to remind me that there will be haters.  Don’t let the haters get you down.  

Sometimes we’ve just got to shake it off. 

Have you ever wished you could get in the minds of those inscrutable youth that fill your classroom?

Have you ever thought to yourself, “Is this particular teaching move sticking? Is it working? If the children could design the day, what would they want me to do?”

Have you ever wished, “Wow, if only kids could feel how difficult it is to be a teacher for just a few moments.” 

Well I got that Freaky Friday rare opportunity to switch roles with my seniors when recently I asked students to take turns in teaching groups leading the class in exploring stories in Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies. (This is where I should pause to say of course this good idea originated from Paul Smith, as all the best ideas do.  Whereas his focuses more on students leading discussions, I decided to opt into more of a “teach any way that you’d like” model.) Students were asked to work in small groups to design a 30 minute experience for their colleagues specifically tasked to ensure that (1) comprehension of the short story comes through (2) their peers were engaged  in meaning-making and (3) they included a check for their understanding.  And yes, of course this assignment is reminiscent of my Millsaps teacher education days.  But we also all know that teaching a thing is the best way to ensure we actually take the time to understand it, whether or not you are training to become a teacher for real. 

Of course in situations like this there is a lot of pressure for the first group to try a thing and model it for the whole group.  I expected this, and I expected to see some cross-pollination of ideas.  What I did NOT expect was for every single (with the exception of one) of the 7 groups of students to use the EXACT SAME combination of instructional activities.  I mean talk about setting the tone, Group 1. 

The only reasonable interpretation to take from all of this (ok there are other reasonable interpretations but shhhhh) is that the first group struck GOLD in the best, most awesome, most youth-friendly pedagogical design of all time.  So (drumroll . . . ) without further delay . . . . the WINNING WAY OF TEACHING ENGLISH ACCORDING TO THE 17-18 YEAR OLDS IN BLOCK 7, ENG 12 includes:

1. An opening Kahoot or Gimkit or other thing like this that asks comprehension level questions about the story students were supposed to have read.
2. Division into small groups.
3. Posing questions for the small group to explore from the story.
4. Whole class discussion/reflection on the small questions. 

While I do sorta roll my eyes that we had the exact same class six times in a row (the one outlier instead led a Jeopardy game the entire class) I do think there was a good bit of wisdom to this lesson plan structure.  Students like to have a warm up to recall basic details of plot and characters.  They enjoy anything that is gamified and competition can just add an extra layer of “ooomph” to a lesson.  They sensed that it can be intimidating to speak in a class of 20, so giving smaller groups time to first discuss boosted the safety for more participation across the board

In other words, we must all be pretty good teachers for them to have observed such a solid formula for teaching and learning. 

As for that third wish at the start of the blog, the one in which students experience the pains of trying to lead a class, let’s just say their personal reflections after the fact accounted (1) frustration when their peers didn’t come prepared to discuss the chapter (2) indignation when they discovered someone trying to cheat on the Kahoot (3) outright rage on the day I had a sub in the room and several of their classmates blatantly played games on their laptops instead of participating in the lesson.  

So, in all aspects, mission accomplished?

I can’t say that I have fully embedded the three step kahoot-small group-large group model of instruction into my own ENG12 repertoire. I actually think I need some detox time from Kahoot and Gimkit.  Still, every time I have students compete in some gamified form, think-pair-share ,or attack a hard thing in small groups before a large group convening, I smile and think to myself, “Somewhere deep inside they appreciate this.  They see its value.  They showed me so when they were the teachers for the day.”

Department leaders and grade level team leads/liaisons are in many ways the unsung heroes of the school.  They have the incredibly tricky dual audience of admin and faculty colleagues.  They have their feet on the ground, busy doing the work of teaching, but additional nagging responsibilities, like “oh yeah we have a meeting coming up!” or “have we completed our class observations yet?” or “which students get in the honors and AP classes?”

One aspect of the incredibly important department leadership job involves visiting classrooms and offering feedback/coaching.  I think having this support from a colleague that is literally engaged in the same pedagogical and content pursuits is powerful, and the fact that it’s not your supervising boss in the room freaking you out is a bonus too. Hey, there’s a picture of one below!

Side note: I knew Marty was a great department chair before I officially joined the department to teach a section, but let it be known that now that I claim her as MY department chair, she is officially #winning every day.  She is incredibly organized, a brilliant teacher to learn from, and 100% without a doubt on my side.  This job is hard.  So that last one goes a long way.

Anyway, Marty recently shared some notes from her class observations of our upper school English faculty that blew me away with their insight.  Her level of precision in the observational write-up actually gave me a few teaching moves to steal, and I thought they may do the same for you.  I invite you to summon your 10th-11th-12th grade selves and envision what it’s like to be in Cullen, Matt, and Paul’s classroom through the pen of Marty.  (Also, to those that taught these 10th-12th graders once upon a time: look how great they are doing in English class now!)

Stop 1: Dr. Brown’s 10th Grade English

The first very “that’s so Dr. Brown” moment happened almost immediately as Ashton Busby has an incident with his waterbottle that results in water all over him, and Dr. Brown promptly redirects the class’s attention to a humorous story about himself jumping in the reservoir instead. As class begins in earnest (diving into Sir Gawain), it becomes clear that names are important. Just in the short time I was there, Dr. Brown used the names of 12 different students in the room, usually to validate or refer to a comment just made. As students offer observations about the reading, Dr. Brown keeps them grounded in the text by calling their attention time and again to various pages and passages, often reading them aloud. Rather than superficial affirmation, Dr. Brown re-emphasizes student points with phrasing such as “You seem to be noting [insert observation]” and to the student whose interpretation may have missed the mark, “Possibly! I haven’t thought about it in that realm.” Finally, after some discussion about the topic, Aarya ventured, “What’s a girdle?” I am reminded that even when our students are doing really highbrow analysis, they sometimes need help with the “more obvious,” and Dr. Brown has fostered a safe, respectful environment for students to query even the seemingly simplest questions.

Stop 2: Dr. Luter’s 11th Grade English

By the time I arrived, the students have already engaged in a writing activity in which they described a time in which they were “in awe” of something. They had also responded to the question, “What is something you know is true even though we can’t see it?” which Dr. Luter also posed to me upon my arrival. Apparently Phen Chandler and I said the same thing about dogs being good judges of character… All of these exercises prepared the students for an introduction to transcendentalism. As observed in the past, Dr. Luter continues to use language that prods students to think further, saying, “Keep going,” and “What do you mean?” Thoughtful of student limitations, Dr. Luter also alerted students to upcoming shifts in class with forward-looking language such as “I’m going to stick in lecture mode for 2 minutes longer,” and “One more paragraph before mid-class break.” Asking the students to signal with “nods or shakes,” Dr. Luter also stayed attuned to student comprehension along the way. I know that I should remain objective here and not compare, but having taught these students in 9th grade, I could not help but notice that several who did their best in 9th grade to go completely unnoticed in class were now freely offering their opinion and even detailing their personal experiences watching a meteor shower and floating in a mangrove forest. Dr. Luter (and Whitman) is right: they contain multitudes! 

Stop 3: Dr. Smith’s 12th Grade English

The vibe of Dr. Smith’s class always makes me envious: slow, steady, patient.  As a teacher of only 9th graders, I am used to a *slightly* more frenetic atmosphere. Dr. Smith’s class has time for silent space in the conversation, time for mulling and observing, time for the students to gather courage about speaking. Despite (because of?) its beautiful slow-ness (and I mean that with the highest regard possible), in the short time I was present, 8 of the 14 students offered observations. Many students used the phrasing “I noticed…” or “I found it interesting…” when offering their commentary. Even in a conversation about the complicated topic of surrogacy, the students used careful language while making it clear they shared differing opinions. Dr. Smith’s primary role is just facilitator (a sarcastic “just” there), keeping students grounded in the text by pointing them to different excerpts and then letting students guide the way by asking deceptively simple questions such as “Any thoughts about that?” and “How do you read that?” When students respond, Dr. Smith does not offer meaningless responses such as “Good job!” or “Perfect!” but often acknowledges the response with “uh huh” (not as a dismissal but as an invitation) and lets the ideas hang in the air, giving space for all to absorb and time to respond if desired. 

It’s been a minute since Inspire & Innovate, a Podcast for Educators, has jumped on the airwaves, but we promise that Season 8 won’t skip a beat.  In past seasons we’ve explored the invisible parts of teaching life, the ways that movies do and don’t capture the realities embedded in school environments, why “accountability” in schools doesn’t have to be a bad word, bridging the faculty/admin divide, hosting candid conversations between parents and faculty, telling stories from educators across the Jackson area, and engaging in interviews with thought leaders all across the world.  This season, entitled “Can we Talk?”  we get to the heart of what these podcasts are for, fostering authentic conversations on topics that come up on the daily for us as we plan, teach, grade, and survive the onslaught of all there is to teaching and learning in a PK-12 environment.

As for our first episode: Have you noticed that kids just aren’t as tough as they used to be? Do you wonder why so many hands come up with so many questions the minute you assign a task?  Did you read that recent article about how elite college students no longer even have the sticktoitiveness to read a full book? Do you wish your students could persevere a little longer, bounce back a little faster? Our first episode: “Can we Talk About Building Resilience?” is going to address just that.  Hosts Toby Lowe, Rachel Scott, and Julie Rust were lucky to be joined by special guest UMMC Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellow, Dr. Peyton Thigpen,  as well as our three incredible school counselors: Courtney McGee, Shedrick Rogers, and Chelsea Freeman. Listen to the whole episode or skip around using in show notes below.

1:12-3:30: Toby introduces the theme of resilience by telling a success story about a fifth grader he taught, asking “what was it about this kid that made her decide ‘I’m going to give this a try’?

5:55-6:25: Courtney McGee, Lower School Counselor, introduces resilience and how it fits into CARES (cooperation, assertiveness, responsibility, empathy, and self control) programmatic model.

7:16-9:00: Shedrick Rogers, Middle School Counselor, argues that kids are more resilient than we often give them credit for; perhaps we need to have more patience that we are not the end point in their journey.   

9:40-11:25: Chelsea Freeman, Upper School Counselor, campaigns for getting more comfortable with discomfort in her homage to Damour’s book, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers.

12:49-14:10 : Dr. Peyton Thigpen encourages educators that the adults that had the most impact on us as children most likely challenged us to do hard things: “I’m not going to take your worst work; I know you have more potential than that.” 

14:11-17:10: Shedrick argues for the importance of consistently high expectations for youth in all areas: academics, social life, etc.

17:11-20:03:  So how do we actually help youth that are uncomfortable in the struggle? The good news is many of these skills can be taught, having social support and connection is vitally protective, and our school counselors have myriad tools to share.  

20:04-22:52: How can we best support the youngest students in our lives? Courtney and Peyton advocate for giving youth insight for recognizing their emotions, sharing language for naming them, and modeling strategies for coping.  

22:55- 29:38: Toby asks the million dollar question: how does all this resilience stuff take on a different note when it comes to us parenting our own kids? (Note: Julie found some solace in an episode of Hidden Brain featuring an interview with psychologist Peter Gray entitled “Parents: Keep Out!”)

29:40-31:05: Why we need to be the thermostat rather than the thermometer when it comes to our interactions with youth. 

31:10-39:00: Guests sagely address our first teacher-generated question: With attention spans and the ability to maintain sustained focus decreasing, specifically in upper middle school grades, how can we help students understand that they can, in fact, learn how to focus even at the age of 13?  

39:20-43:35:  Our second teacher-generated question elicits the comforting advice of “don’t change a thing; the conditions you are creating are the perfect recipe for building resilience!”

 My AP World History class is the first AP that students can take in the HS. The curriculum, set by the College Board, is extremely rigorous and fast paced. It’s not unusual to have students crying in my office mid-September, but by the end of October, they seem to get their “sea legs” and begin to see improvement. I start the year advising them to work hard and trust the process. I continuously encourage them and teach skills along the way, but I still have meltdowns. What can I do better in the early days to help students understand that it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and that their grades WILL improve? (Some have never earned B’s or C’s before and you’d think it was the end of the world!). Thanks!

45:02-47:45 : The episode ends on a “yay rah go teachers” note.  Because you all are awesome, and by simply building connections with students, you are building up their resilience. 

Okay so let’s try a little thought experiment.  You need a sidekick.  Someone to help you navigate this very complex world.  Your very survival depends, in fact, upon making the right choice. 

You have two options. Who do you pick?

1.  That cynical genius smoking a cigarette subversively in the corner and rolling their eyes about how idiotic everyone is.
2. That smiling, bouncy person who has so much positivity it sometimes makes you nauseous.  (No I am not describing myself.  Avid readers of the blog will know that I have written more than once about how I am indeed NOT that person.)

Did you pick A.? I think I might’ve picked A a few weeks ago, before I listened to this “Hidden Brain” podcast episode on my three hour drive back home from New Orleans.  The episode, entitled “Fighting Despair” was one part of a series entitled “You, 2.0.” And there I learned something from Shankar Vedantam’s interview with psychologist Jamil Zaki (author of Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness)  that, when I actually put it beside the real human experiences I’ve had in school settings and beyond, made a whole lot of sense.  

Contrary to popular belief, cynicism is not protective.  In fact, assuming the worst about the people around us is actually downright damaging.  It destroys our ability to connect to people and it all-but-eviscerates our will/motivation to try to solution-find.  After all, if everyone is hopeless, so is, well, everything.  It’s no wonder that cynicism correlates closely with mental health issues.

We have carried this “cynical people are smarter than positive people” myth into all sorts of corners of human life.  (For proof, see the lit review below that  I stole from the podcast’s website.) Parents often see one of their chief roles as ensuring their children know the world and the strangers that populate are scary and just generally horrible.  In this case, cynicism is seen as protective.  But we are a school, so let’s get to the bottom of negative expectations about those around us impacts our profession.  Shankar discusses one study from the 1950s in which Walter Cook and Donald Medley asked teachers to reveal their agreement with a series of 50 statements like “no one cares about what happens to you,” “most people dislike helping others,” or  “most people are honest only if they know they will be caught if they aren’t.” Jamil goes on to explain the results: 

Maybe unsurprisingly, they found that teachers who thought that people will just get away with whatever they can, and you can’t be too careful around them, weren’t great teachers, at least in terms of their relationships to their students. But what Cook and Medley found was that this did not stop in the classroom. The people who answered these questions positively, who believed these bleak things about human nature, turned out to be hostile in general. They called this cynical hostility. They wrote, “The hostile person is one who sees little confidence in his fellow man. He sees people as dishonest, unsocial, immoral, ugly, and mean, and believes they should be made to suffer for their sins.” Not a hit at parties, these people potentially. 

Hundreds of studies since have utilized the “cynical hostility scale,” and the findings remain unchanged.  Those who think the world is bleak “just suffer and create suffering all throughout their path in life.”  

I was somewhat familiar with the teachers’- beliefs-about-students-matter body of work, but when Jamil started to dismantle the “cynical genius illusion” I audibly gasped out loud.  The idea depends on a dual set of assumptions: (1) cynicism is a sign of intelligence (2) cynicism correlates with sharper social awareness and aptitude. Jamil quips: “So most people have faith in people who don’t have faith in people. It’s a little bit of a tongue twister, but it’s true, and most people are wrong.”  He goes on to cite a good deal of research: 

“The data are pretty clear here, that cynics perform less well on analytic and cognitive tests, and they’re worse lie detectors. So if you actually have cynics and non-cynics look at people sort of giving job interviews, half of the people told to lie, half told to tell the truth, more trusting people are better at spotting liars than cynics. And I think that’s partially because cynics have this general blanket theory that nobody can be trusted. And so they actually, in trying to argue, thinking like lawyers in the prosecution against humanity, stop actually listening, stop actually paying attention to the evidence.“

DID YOU READ THAT?! The more trusting people are BETTER at spotting liars than cynics?!!!  Somebody call mythbusters because I have been deluded my entire life!’

This might be a good moment to say cynicism is different from healthy skepticism.  We need critical lenses to view the world.  When we say positive outlooks, we do not mean blind optimism, rose-colored-glasses, convincing ourselves everything is great and perfect and fluffy.  But this I believe.  We are a school that fosters independent, critical thinking.  We are a school of SMARTIE MCSMART people: teachers, students, admin, parents, on and on.  But our critical approaches have to also be tempered with “I’m going to believe the best in people around me and how can I live that out” in every big and small teaching decision (management procedures, fostering conversations, how I grade, etc.) 

 If this all is starting to sound a lot like our theme for the year “Can we Talk?” as well as all the work from the good people in the civil discourse committee, well that isn’t an accident.  Resilience springs from the soil of charitable interpretation.  Resilience is birthed in a kind of hope in, not just ourselves, but our communities.  After all, why try and keep trying to make a change unless there are other actors in our networks that we believe will, at least peripherally, care and support us in our efforts?

Zaki has one last revelation worth sharing here and its about this very topic: communities.  His research points to the fact that our increasingly transactional culture (“I will only do X if I get Y out of it) is also leading to despair.  

“I think that one thing that worries me is the extent to which features of market living are entering into communal spaces. And I think that one reason for this is because we are counting more things like we used to count money, right? We count how much social approval we receive on different platforms like Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. We count how much we exercise and meditate. There are apps where you can compete with your friends for who’s taking more steps. And I think that that quantification can make us feel like we’re in a transactional space, even when we might not want to be.”

See, another hidden aspect of being cynical is being a counter-of-all-the-things, holding a laundry list in our minds of all of the ways things aren’t fair and how we have been wronged and carrying that into a host of contexts that perhaps do or don’t actually function well that way.  Take me, for instance.  I have been known to have a running count in my head of all the chores I have “done for the family” in a given week.  If it doesn’t feel as though my husband has carried a proportional load, resentment begins to ferment in a dark corner of my soul.  It’s all ludicrous, and I’ve noticed that Justin has far lower capacity for score-keeping.  When he steps up to take the kid to yet another Saturday social engagement he doesn’t generally indicate he has been the one to do that the last four weeks in a row. “I know you hate driving; I don’t mind it,” he shrugs. 

Maybe we should all stop keeping score.  Maybe community means being strong when we can be strong and letting others carry the load when we are weaker.  Maybe being a cynic isn’t some hidden signal for genius.  Maybe positivity does not indicate vapidity.  In fact, maybe those annoyingly bouncy people are the ones with the capacity to save us all in the end. 

Interest Piqued? Check Out:

Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness by Jamil Zaki, 2024. 

Parents Think – Incorrectly – That Teaching Their Children That the World is a Bad Place is Likely Best for Them, by Jeremy D.W. Clifton and Peter Meindl, The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2021. 

Overly Shallow?: Miscalibrated Expectations Create a Barrier to Deeper Conversation, by Michael Kardas, Amit Kumar, and Nicholas Epley, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition, 2021. 

Cynical Beliefs About Human Nature and Income: Longitudinal and Cross-Cultural Analyses, by Olga Stavrova and Daniel Ehlebrach, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2016. 

Addressing the Empathy Deficit: Beliefs About the Malleability of Empathy Predict Effortful Responses When Empathy is Challenging, by Karina Schumann, Jamil Zaki and Carol Dweck, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2014. 

Declines in Trust in Others and Confidence in Institutions Among American Adults and Late Adolescents, 1972-2012, by Jean M. Twenge, W. Keith Campbel, and Nathan T. Carter, Psychological Science, 2014. 

Community Vulnerability and Capacity in Post-Disaster Recovery: The Cases of Mano and Mikura Neighbourhoods in the Wake of the 1995 Kobe Earthquake, by Etsuko Yasui, University of British Columbia, 2007. 

When Beliefs Yield to Evidence: Reducing Biased Evaluation by Affirming the Self, by Geoffrey L. Cohen, Joshua Aronson and Claude M. Steele, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2000. 

This post was contributed by David Orace Kelly.

“there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” -Leonard Cohen

This Play, Eurydice. Last year, our audiences selected this play as their top choice for our Upper School production. Eurydice pops up from time to time in high school programs across the country and features high-level acting and technical opportunities for our students. From building an elevator that has water coming down in it, an overworld and underworld simultaneously presented, and a sound design that propels the narrative further, our tech students have been engaged since the start of the school year putting this all together. This production gives our student actors the opportunity to work with modern poetic text in the context of an ancient, yet updated, myth. This production in the design and acting addresses hope, fear, loss, and love throughout the story. We are featuring work from 9th to 12th grade in directing, scenic lighting design, sound design, costume design, and of course acting.  

A Modern Re-telling with a flipped perspective. Our story is originally a Greek myth about newlyweds, Orpheus, the son of Apollo, and Eurydice. In the original, Eurydice dies tragically and is sent to the underworld. Having lost his wife, Orpheus journeys to the underworld, using his music to help him make his way, to find and rescue Eurydice. Hades is convinced to let Eurydice go, but only if Orpheus leaves first, sending Eurydice after. If Orpheus looks back, to see if Eurydice is there, the deal will be forfeit. Orpheus is unable to keep the deal. He looks back and sees her, and Eurydice is forced to stay in the underworld. This production puts the focus on Eurydice, follows her journey, and casts Orpheus as a supporting character. 

Eurydice and her mother. By focusing the narrative on Eurydice, Sarah Ruhl’s play offers a distinct femaic-centric perspective. The original play, which we are not exactly presenting, features Eurydice’s father in the underworld. Working with Ruhl and the publisher, we were given permission to change the role of father into the role of mother. This brings a new interpretation to the story, allowing it to be seen through a matrilineal line. Our production maintains Ruhl’s exploration of love, memory, and difficulties in the underworld while following the important plot points within the original myth. 

Music and Poetry. The poetry of Ruhl, celebrates the power of music and poetry by bringing the ancient myth of Orpheus and Eurydice into the present day. This production, Eurydice, investigates the mysteries of death, memory, and the possible return to life. Ruhl uses the artistic enhancement of emotion through music and poetry to explore these themes. 

Hamartia and Don’t Look Back. Musician and poet Leonard Cohen famously writes, “there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” This offers both the perspective that nothing is perfect and more importantly, humanity is not perfect. For the Greeks, characters were often even given a hamartia or tragic flaw. If Orpheus trusted the Lord of the Underworld, he would not have looked back to be sure that Eurydice was following him. But, how can one remain resolved in that trust – to make a deal with Hades might be foolish in the first place. On the other hand, this story might be about one’s own confidence. Orpheus was unsure how to proceed and did not have faith in the ultimate outcome, this is where he falters. This is what the Greeks would call his hamartia, or a tragic flaw. 

Water, Life, and Death. In the context of this story, one’s memory is blurred or even washed away when they go through the water in the underworld. This play, specifically uses water – both referenced and literal – to demonstrate the washing away of one’s memory as they enter the underworld. In some ways this is a discordant and poetic use of water; what typically supports growth and life, in the story is the method of wiping it away as well. 

The Chorus or The Stones. Greek theatre created and developed the use of The Chorus, a group of actors speaking in unison and representing the voice of the people or the author. Ruhl takes this concept and transforms it further. The stones, our chorus, help to create the environment of the world, offering perspective to the main characters, and facilitating the storytelling throughout the play.

I look forward to seeing you at the show. Tickets are available at www.gosaints.org/performances

Last week was super busy, but oh so rewarding!

Each year, the Mississippi Children’s museum hosts an event sponsored by CSpire. It’s called the C3 Coding Competition. They invite teams of four 4th grade students from several area schools. No coding experience required! The event kicks off with a great opening rally to get the kids all hyped up and introduce each of the schools. This year, 15 schools participated!

 https://www.instagram.com/p/DAHPseoBZNJ/?igsh=OHRxeHlqaG5ta21y

We are only able to bring a group of 4 students to compete. In previous years since I have been a part of SA, this has been really difficult. Lack of student interest, scheduling, or the unease of working with friendly peers to compete and problem solve together can be overwhelming to a 4th grader.

You are probably wondering what any of this has to do with relationships among students. Well, here is the thing. The first time I was able to get this particular 4 students together as a group was the morning of the competition. Each of the SA 4th graders was part of a different home room. In the time from gathering to load the vehicle and the time we arrived at the Children’s museum, they planned out a team chant, discussed what they loved about coding, challenges, getting creative, and how they could possibly contribute to the team. In the car ride over, I explained that each of them would need to have a team “job” during the competition. Project Manager, Designer, Programmer, and Tester/Quality Control. We chatted a bit about what these jobs would look like when working together as a team. Their conversation took off and I was able to just listen. (and drive, of course)  This was one of those teacher moments when you are so stinking proud, but trying so hard to keep it cool. These friendly peers (not BFFs) were openly and honestly talking about who they thought would be the best at each job, why they thought that way, and how they could best support EACH OTHER! Queue the happy teacher tears…

Okay, here me out. None of this is super groundbreaking or exciting to most, but here is the thing: I watched 4 students from different homeroom classes that are not school yard BFFs, attend a competition experience, work together and absolutely ROCK! They didn’t just rock, THEY WON!!!

So with all the joy and cheer… 

Congratulations little Coders!!!

 Anna Caroline Lollar, Connor Hoope, Keiran Duncan, and Summer Kaur

It really got me thinking. How, as teachers, can we help our students learn to work together, not because they have to be the best or out-do each other, but because they genuinely want to help EACH OTHER be the best they can? I think many don’t learn this until they enter adulthood or the work-force out of necessity, but can we do things with more intention to help recognize the strengths in others as compliments to possible weaknesses in ourselves to therefore raise the bar higher and achieve success? It all boils down to relationships. Not just relationships with those closest to us, like close friends and family, but relationships with peers, and even strangers.

I started reflecting and looking a little closer at things that I have implemented with the students over the last year as lower school classes have had designated time to work in the makerspace. Yes, we get to work on techy stuff and fun projects, but the primary focus is on working with partners or teams to think critically, problem solve, and recognize that each person has different strengths or perspectives to share. 

I have a memory from fairly recently when a student told me that they were never going to be able to do “project ABC” with their partner because they didn’t like each other. (I’ve also heard, “so-in-so won’t let me!”) This of course prompted a discussion of not always needing to “like” the person you work with, but to respect them and what they bring to the team for you to reach a common goal. This prompted a change in how I assign groups or teams in the makerspace. I started using the ClassroomScreen randomizer. I shuffle the student’s seat every week where they are sitting with a different team. (Queue the “Aaawwww man!) The disappointment over not sitting with their BFFs was surprisingly short lived. I am beginning to see a shift in the team dynamics. Instead of a single student steamrolling in with their idea (IYKYK), they are sharing ideas, discussing, and looking a little deeper. I do not think this simple change is a game-changer, but it has changed the game in how students are working together in the makerspace, showing respect for each other’s ideas and strengths, and their willingness to succeed together.

What other ways can teachers be intentional about building peer relationships for our students’ success?

It occurred to me far-too-late in the blog-blast game, about when my coffee took effect this morning. I’d been wracking my brain to wax eloquently with TEAM colleagues about building positive relationships for weeks and had neglected to ask the experts in our very own school. We’ve got counselors, chaplains, administrators galore that have thought deep and hard about these issues, that work tirelessly to design lessons and experiences and programs to nurture a set of relationship and communication skills. I caught up with just two such amazing humans and share their thoughts below:

What programming do we have in place in your division that has helped build positive relationships?

Sarah: Affinity Groups, Advisory Council, Classroom Visits with face to face interactions, and Meeting with Students 

Jessica: Throughout our Human Growth and Development lessons we talk about healthy relationships. This includes healthy communication, friendships, and boundaries. We want the students to have tools for self-advocacy and awareness for what may be unhealthy in a relationship whether it is a friendship, a trusted adult, or a romantic relationship. 

What goals do you have for future initiatives or programming to help build positive relationships? 

Sarah: Establish an empowerment clubs for girls in the middle and upper school. Where they will learn and gain positive resources and tools to help them growth their confidence and self esteem.  

Jessica: We continue to expand lessons for Human Growth and Development. We have “lunch and learns” with the junior and senior students and we plan to talk about healthy vs. unhealthy relationships. This will focus more on romantic relationships, dating violence, consent, etc. 

What are the biggest issues or barriers we have at SA in relation to building positive relationships?

Sarah: Trust and effective ways to communicate. To not be afraid if conflict arise, but finding healthy solutions to solve them. Avoiding confrontations because it is uncomfortable.  

Jessica: Sometimes it is hard to connect with students and colleagues when we are preoccupied with our own challenges. I think when we stop and listen to them, then we can build empathy. 

You often work with students one-on-one or small groups to get a close perspective we as teachers may miss.  What do you wish teachers knew about the challenges that youth you are meeting with are facing?

Sarah: The ability to be honest about themselves because students want to fit in so badly and their home life outside of SA.

Jessica: Many students that I see feel a lot of pressure to “keep it together.” They need to eat well, deal with issues at home or with friendships, make sure they are in extracurricular activities/sports, build their college resume, and keep up with school work- all while being tempted with social media, video games, and peer pressure. I often feel that students believe teachers don’t fully understand the weight of these expectations. Like us, they are human, and their brains are still developing as they learn to cope with the complexities of life.

What resources, theories, books, bodies of knowledge might we as teachers find helpful when encountering complicated collegial or student relationship issues?

Sarah: Theories like Restorative Practice,Conflict Resolution Theory, Social Learning Theory; Creating safe spaces in your classroom for your students. Modeling empathy, kindness, grace, and respect.

Anything else you want to share (a story, advice, anything) on the topic of building positive relationships at school?

Sarah: Having positive relationships will lead to overall positive success. We all have a story and students are in the bulk of figuring out who they are and we are part of their story in a big and small way. I believe in seeing the whole child and valuing their voice, but still offering guidance to help them in the long run. Taking the time out a busy schedule to connect with a student, by one remembering their name, and hear what makes them unique and special. Their likes/dislikes/fears, but reassuring to them that they are going to be ok and be supported in more ways than one. 

Jessica: Most people at SA do care deeply about their students and have empathy for their students and coworkers. Many times we just need to stop and listen so that we can communicate effectively with each other.

Sometimes we as teachers-parents-grandparents get so keyed up about building the right conditions for our youths, we forget that relationships and accomplishments and life are all kind of mercurial entities.  They are less science and more art.  Things work when they work and they don’t work when they don’t. Sometimes we are so busy making plans for building community that we fail to make room for, well . . . building community.  Or as my friend and yours, Jonathan Haidt (2024) asserts:

Gradually, from trial and error, and with direct feedback from playmates . . . students become ready to take on the greater social complexity of middle school. It’s not homework that gets them ready, nor is it classes on handling their emotions.  Such adult-led lessons may provide useful information, but information doesn’t do much to shape a developing brain. [Play does.] . . . Experience, not information, is the key to emotional development. (p. 53)

The scary part is when you leave things up to chance, when you allow young people to play without dictating the rules, when you push the baby bird out of the proverbial nest, things don’t always end happily.  

But that’s kinda the point. 

So I write these words in honor of all of the sports games my children have lost, all of the play/musical roles my youngest has not gotten, all of the student councils and homecoming courts they have not been elected to, the social occasions to which they were not invited. I write these words in honor of the teacher that inadvertently spoke too harshly to the wrong group of children, to my husband who lost his mind the other night because my son bounced the ball too loud, to the time that gosh-durn IXL assignment never ended and my son kept making silly mistakes to the point of tears.  I write these words to commemorate all the job offers I did not receive, the grants that failed to win funding, the manuscripts that returned “rejected” without even the opportunity to revise.  

Coming of age has been to me, in some way, an accumulation of unmet expectations.  A cold-water-in-the-face shock of “wait this isn’t fair!” and “what- you mean I’m not all that special?!”  The first time I was served a big old heap of injustice was in the fifth grade when Mrs. Newsom called my spelling wrong in the spelling bee that was actually correct; the whole class stood up for me and she kind of lost it screaming at me.  I was stunned.  Later I felt the pain again serving spaghetti and getting screamed at by an irrational parent about their perfect child my first year of teaching.   In my charmed life even then at the age of 21, I had a shortage of skills to deal with such crises.  I didn’t know what to do with anything except 100% approval and appreciation of my awesomeness.

Losing knocks us out of our self-centered illusions of supreme greatness, and helps us work the muscle of putting ourselves out there again and again.

It helps us shakily assert through tears after disappointing news about a role in a play or team:  “I still like [insert thing you just failed at].”  We jut our chins out stubbornly and slowly, a kernel of self respect grows, one that insists, even when the world says otherwise,“I am good and I have much to offer.”

A few summers ago, my youngest pushed through some disappointment for a summer theater program when she was assigned to be in the jellyfish ensemble with much younger children. “I think they maybe need me to kind of babysit them,” she decided.  Her attitude flipped from sadness to mother-bear purpose: reminding them to enter on stage right instead of stage left, helping them tie their shoes so they wouldn’t trip as they exited. “Maybe this is why you are in that position,” I encouraged her.

A few days later she told me a story about a little girl that came up to her to tell her that her mom recently died.  She wasn’t sure if she heard her right, but she instinctively hugged her close. 

Did she see this was the winning? 

The camp was only two weeks.  The curtains soon closed.  The lines are now forgotten, and no one remembers that she didn’t get a single line except for she and I.  

We always have our eyes on the wrong balls. We think we keep striking out, but oftentimes we are making home run after home run in the place God has placed us.   I believe some of us in this life have the combo of sky-high-hopes and very-real-limitations that results in God having to put us in our place a lot.  But that is, quite undoubtedly, the best place to be. 

What metaphor best captures those first few weeks/months of the year? Is it a honeymoon or a roller coaster? A horror movie, a comedy, or a drama? I know, I know. It really just depends on the day, the hour, the minute. Here are a few snippets from my August teaching journal to prove just that:

Monday 8/5

This is my second time teaching this course, which means that I am still completely faking it.  Still, I find an element of peace in the fact that there is a stockpile of Julie Rust (heavily influenced and helped by Dr. Paul Smith) stuff that I can draw from.  From time to time, I had even inserted notes directly on the slideshow or google doc of “JULES:  next time cut this in half time-wise” or “JULES: run this like a game with two teams next time instead of four groups” or “JULES: they really hated and I don’t have time to figure out why right now.”  The “Jules” is my bat signal of self-talk.  When I see that word, my ears perk up b/c I have no other reason for inserting it unless I really mean, pay attention you’ll be glad you did.  The “Jules” is almost never a signal for “THIS WAS GREAT DO IT AGAIN.” For those things, and honestly for things that were even decent, I leave no messages in the bottle.  When I say “Jules” I mean it in the way that a mother uses her child’s first AND middle name in the grocery store to signify “this time I really mean it.”

Wed 8/14

It’s the morning before my first class and though I’ve had a plan in mind for a week for today I’ve decided to go a completely different direction ever since an idea I used to do (interviews and student profiles) popped in my head in the shower this morning.  I have no idea if I’m crazy/foolhardy or being wise/spontaneous.  We will see how it goes. 

Thursday 8/15

I’ve met my students and I just love them so much.  This happens everytime, this strange and often senseless affiliation pretty much right off the bat.  They were randomly assigned to my class and my section and I now feel a fierce protectiveness, an overall bent toward their inherent goodness and even on their worst days the sense that “their hearts are good and they MEAN well.” 

Monday 8/19

Blake Ware popped in my class, as promised, and I completely went overboard in my acknowledgement of his presence in the class.  We were learning names or working on individual student profiles and rather than smile and him and keep going I derailed the entire class. “SPEAKING OF NAMES, “ I said performance-like, “ let’s play a word game with Mr. Ware’s name! You know his first name and last name. You know he used to be a dean at his last school. What do you think students used to call him?!” 

“B-dubs?” someone guessed.

Harrison Bobbitt didn’t even skip a beat. “BWare of course, like beware.”

This may be just a coincidence, or his plan all along, but after being in there about 2 minutes, Mr. Ware gracefully made his exit.  I genuinely hope I didn’t make him uncomfortable.  Why am I like this? I have no idea why I felt moved to “out” the kind and wonderful Blake in front of my students that class, but I hope he will continue to let me teach Eng12, despite my innate ability to make everything, even a class observation, more awkward than it needs to be. 

Tuesday 8/20

I have been teaching for 20 years and the same demons so successfully accompany my practice that they have become old friends.  My first two classes the pacing was just so off.  I felt the push-pull of wanting to rush and fit the things in and wanting to slow down and do the one thing well.  My energy was too high, and while a few could keep up with me, many followed up with me after class asking 3-4 questions that revealed the folly (and pride) of my breakneck speed.  If I’m going to be honest, my last few classes have been more a childlike clashing collage of activities and tasks and goals rather than a piece of art that actually coalesces. 

Thursday 8/22

Today we had ten minutes at the end of class and I had my seniors circle up.  “Show me what you’ve got,” I challenged, “I know you’ve done tons of student-led conversations and I want to see how you approach them.  I’m not tracking or grading your participation. I just want to see how it goes”.  I threw up some questions on the whiteboard that they had submitted about the summer reading text for a set of guidelights. I sat back and shut up.   It was a bit of a disaster from a “scholarly conversation standpoint” but a fascinating reveal in terms of social experiment. I quickly saw which students were mature enough to take leadership in steering the conversation to the task at hand. But despite the fact that I had reminded them about textual evidence before they begun, literally no one actually drew on a quote from the book.  It was a free-for-all opinion fest about the book, at times ill-informed at best.  At one point everyone started shouting at once and I had to do a time-out. I caught eyes with one of my more equipped academically students quietly dying in the background, barely hiding an embarrassed chuckle at how things were going. Students were especially excited to discuss whether they had seen romantic feelings that sort of popped out of nowhere at the end coming, or whether it was totally shocking.  This could be a great conversation if they pointed to HOW or WHY they saw this coming, you know, with evidence from the text but it instead devolved into something like this:

“I totally knew that was going to happen”

[Entire class laughs or gasps’

“NO WAY you didn’t”

[person blushes] “No I totally did.”

There are many things to be said for student-centered learning and inquiry, and there are powerful things I learned about my students by shutting up and giving them no guidance in the midst of those ten minutes.  I’m just glad I only reserved ten minutes for them to collaboratively make meaning together.  I think tomorrow I’ll do a lecture on thesis statements instead. 

Monday 8/26

Good people.  I just feel like this class is made of good people. I had them analyze, code, categorize, and then simplify class norms today, and they ended up with such a beautiful product.  17-18 year olds have done enough time in school to know what they need, what works, what doesn’t work.  Then, about midway through the activity someone either accidentally or on purpose changed the table settings in the editable google doc and everything went haywire, duplicating and moving content from page to page. This is teaching high school.  They are so good until something goes wrong.  Then you are left wondering if things went wrong by accident or on purpose.  The majority are trying to do the thing you’ve asked them to and that you’ve planned so well in neat rows and columns.  But the one little move that went wrong means we all have to resort to improvising and just jotting down ideas at the bottom of the document.  Best laid plans.

Tuesday 8/27

I walked into a volleyball game to cheer on my kid and got accosted by like my entire class in the front row dressed in theme. It turns out my sweet, delightful bunch of seniors also makes up a disproportionate number of the cheering/sports/fan squad at SA.  This shouldn’t surprise me.  It doesn’t.  “DR. RUST!” they yelled with overly hyped up glee.  I felt loved.  I felt like I belonged. I didn’t try to join the student section but, for just a moment, I thought maybe I could and would be accepted, 42 year old skin and all. 🙂

Thursday 8/29

Today I made a student cry. Or, rather, my in class essay did.  Or, actually, I haven’t yet met with her to have a debrief so it could have been a constellation of different things entirely. . . a bad day, a rough conversation, a past experience with writing in a timed setting.  It’s been quite awhile since I’ve made a student cry.  The last time was about 7 years ago in a Millsaps writing methods class with future teachers, when I conferenced with a student about her portfolio and gave her what I thought was gentle and informal tips to bump her poetry up a notch.  Tears started flowing. “I thought it was good as is,” she said, “teachers never make me redo things.” The time before that with my sixth graders, who cried about every other week.  I don’t recall my remedial ninth graders crying about English.  They were more likely to make me cry. 

Friday 9/20

Lucy says that every time someone from my class mentions they have me as a teacher to her they say something to the tune of, “I feel really bad. Our class is crazy.” 

 She said she replies, “Don’t feel bad; she lets people walk all over her.” 

I feel outrage at this, and then also dissonance.  This class is fabulous.  Sure they talk too much and I have to remind them to chill.  “I think it’s that I have a high tolerance level for chaos,” I say firmly.  

But truly, what is, after 21 years of teaching, that STILL screams:”hey! I’m totally cool with you having no filter with me.” I thought I was more intimidating now that I’m in my 40s, but the same tell-tale qualities that made me a pushover then still make me a pushover now. 

The latest:  In response to a journal entry about what outside reading book they wanted to choose, a student wrote a scathing persuasive piece about why the reading list was too old and not diverse enough in terms of genre.  Equal parts annoyed and delighted, I sent it along to my teaching buddy Dr. Smith.  He gave me some talking points and included references to her “moxie and spunk.”  What a gift it is to have such an expert to teach alongside.   What a gift to not do this work alone.  What a gift to have students that challenge the status quo.

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men

          Gang aft agley,

An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,

          For promis’d joy!

(Robert Burns’ “To a Mouse”)

I said the word “frickin” in a meeting, as in, “I am so frickin’ sick of this.”  I’m not proud of it. But I’ve always believed there is no point in writing unless you write to tell the truth, so there it is.  It happened and I’m telling you about it so that I can work through it.  

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It happened on a particularly rough week.  It was the day after I had had one of those days (we all have them) of not only back-to-back very public commitments, but like “I have to apologize and leave early/come late to everything because I am triple booked.” I facilitated a panel, had a billion conferences with students about essays, led a meeting planning for a conference, ran to a first year faculty check in across the street.  It was also about three days before I was about to come down with the worst case of laryngitis of my life while in the middle of a school accreditation visit in Memphis.  I don’t know about you, but when my immune system is down, all systems are down.  I say all of this because I think all of us know we don’t all bring our best selves to every moment and every situation. 

What was it about? General angst about the 24-25 crop of north campus PLCs.The feedback revolved around a few things: 

1. Why didn’t I get my first choice?
2. I don’t wanna and/or I shouldn’t have to.

The second question is tough for me to address, because I get that we are all so busy and pulled.  This is why I am committed to only scheduling PLC meetings during already-contracted/scheduled school meeting times (e.g., Wed after school or PD days). The first question honestly really confused me.  My assumption was that all faculty knew in putting three choices that my goal would be to get everyone in one of their top 3 options out of the 15 or so being offered.  My assumption was that we are all in the business of doing this sort of thing with students all the time. “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit” or something like that.  An amazing group of faculty/admin leaders had proposed topics/formats for PLCs.  While not all groups would end up “making” (because I would never put a faculty member in a group they didn’t choose at all), my goal was to preserve as many of these diverse opportunities as possible.  After all, it’s often hard to know how good or bad or helpful a thing will be before you start it.  And I am convinced that smaller groups for this sort of thing are better than large. 

This is our third year of PLCs, and I have never had such backlash. It shocked me because I had received such positive feedback on the sign up form: “what great options!” “thanks for organizing!”  I wracked my brain. What was different? Was it that lower school had opted for grade level PLCs this year? But teachers could have proposed their own grade level PLC if they wanted and they didn’t! Then it hit me. This was the first year I shared the entire spreadsheet of every group and who was in each group with all faculty and not just the leaders.  The word from a few was that faculty were perusing the lists and getting mad seeing who got into the PLC that they wanted. “Why them and not me?”

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This blog blast is about building positive relationships, and I can’t over-emphasize the irony enough with this massive fail.  After all, PLCs were all about centering positive collegial relationships, and here they were making everybody mad. 

I don’t think I need to rehash my general philosophy to professional growth here because I do it every time I get a chance, but if anyone is new to the school, my jam is (1) teachers are professionals and we hire awesome people so the best work I can do is foster connections between them so they can share their wisdom with each other (2) teachers are busy and want stuff that is practical and topically choice-driven (3) teachers (like the kids we teach) need multiple pathways to meaning-making: some gravitate toward talk, some prefer writing, some prefer movement and active engagement in the thing, etc.  All of these “teacher” statements aren’t patronizing or pie-in-the-sky.  They represent my truth as a teacher at this school as well.  

As a result, after a few years in this role of pushing faculty share opportunities, mini conferences, blogs, podcasts, and generally putting a big old microphone to teacher voices I pushed hard for Professional Learning Communities (PLCs).  After all, sometimes less is more and it takes a minute or two for me to really trust a small group and get into the rhythm of collaboration and growth together. I had received word that some faculty were feeling overwhelmed and “whip-lashed” with the sheer number of topics and resources that were being thrown out.  A consistent PLC would offer practitioners a small group of humans interested in a similar topic to revisit six time throughout the course of an entire school year during normally scheduled faculty meeting times.  My favorite idea in this creation was the $100 per group to use for food/snacks/whatever. We connect best, I believe with a blend of informality and formality; systems and spontaneity; food for the body and food for the mind. 

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Of course, as we all remember, that fated first Wednesday of PLCs, the hits just kept coming: one in the form of good old Francine.  The day of, it looked very clear to me and all the weather people that nothing would really hit until overnight.  Still, the requests poured in: “ Can we cancel? People are anxious!” I had sent a “use your best judgment” email to PLC leaders that morning.  For me, that should suffice.  If my 16 year old daughter had volleyball practice until 6pm that evening, surely didn’t have to officially cancel meetings with adults scheduled until 4:15 or so.  

“I’m not the PLC police,” I said about three times in the same meeting I said “freakin”.  “You can tell people to do what they want.”  Still, I felt a dark cloud of disappointment descend.  A few PLC leaders from past iterations had noted how sad they felt when folk didn’t attend their PLC gatherings in past years.  “I would lead another one, but I don’t know if I have it in me if my group doesn’t take it seriously.”

Here we were again. 

The time hit 3:15 and a few small drops from the sky fell as if taunting me: “See Julie! It’s all a big fail.”

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My very brave PLC leader (Matt) did indeed decide to hold his PLC that first day.  He, Paul, and I gathered in Matt’s room to watch the clouds from the U shaped table arrangement.  He dutifully handed me a copy of our shared book about the impact of grades as well as an interview with the author.  We then naturally chatted about a host of unrelated-but-related topics, including but not limited to:

• College essay conferences with students: How did they go? What failed?
• Students upset by our feedback and grade obsession
• General malaise

Our conversation was easy, natural, unforced.  It was the best free-flowing variety of a thing I could have hoped for with a PLC. We talked about the things we needed to vent about.  We discussed some small solutions.  We also let things stay ambiguous when they needed to.  We resisted the urge to tie neat bows around the things.  There was no agenda.  There were no follow up items.  There were three professionals wrestling honestly and openly with being an English teacher to adolescents in 2024. Paul shared an amazing essay by Faulkner about ice hockey that began with the sentence: “The vacant ice looked tired, though it shouldn’t have.” I felt the same way about my face, and the state of PLCs, and maybe the world.

We barely talked about the topic of the book.  It didn’t matter.

From time to time, we heard the faint echo of Dr. Foley’s voice in lecture-mode.  Behind him, like ducks in the rain, trailed a group of folks I rarely see together: Becca Meaders, Thomas Riesenberger, Claudia Bhagat to name a few.  Despite the rain and the forecast, the troop made laps under the covered awnings talking about history.  Matt’s class window was just fogged up enough and blocked just enough sound I couldn’t make out the contents of their conversation as they passed.  I do hope Jim’s PLC members got what they needed just as much as I did that afternoon.

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Sometimes I do not know what to make of feedback.  I am, by nature, a believer that good leaders listen and incorporate what they hear into everything they do.  The problem is that so much of what we do, particularly when it involves a whole campus, is a numbers game. If you can’t please them all, you really should expect a handful of angry or dissatisfied colleagues with just about any initiative.  I do not know how many people were excited about their PLC designation, because I didn’t hear from them.  I do know that the Wednesday that I said “frickin” I was convinced PLC designs were a disaster, and that I would never again lead them in this configuration.  I am not sure I am in that place now.  

I know that we are all in flux and in various degrees of health, mentally and physically. I know that sleep and viruses and hormones and filled-to-the-brim calendars impact how I experience feedback and the always-well-intentioned humans that make up our community.  I know there will be days when I question whether I am cut out for a job like this, a job I very reluctantly call “leadership” because I have never wanted to read a book on leadership or attend a seminar on leadership and quite honestly I do much better listening and reading and analyzing and questioning than I do asserting my certainty about anything.

I designed PLCs to foster positive relationships.  I think I have failed in some cases and succeeded in others.  I think, as in everything, I have a whole lot less control than I think I do.  I think mostly people aren’t thinking about me or my initiatives at all.  We are all generally stuck in a hurricane of our own stormy making; sometimes it strikes with a fury and sometimes it wears itself out through steady drip-drops. 

This post was contributed by Burton Williams-Inman.

Ladies and gents! Thanks so much for taking some time to read my first ever blog blast contribution. I am thrilled to be writing and hope that there’s a word of wisdom or encouragement to be found here. 

In my first year of teaching, I often relied upon my age and the fact that I was fresh out of grad school (ie. the young/cool teacher and that’s why students would tolerate my class and want to listen to my words). My first year of teaching was at a high school in central VA called Monticello High School and I actually taught in their mechatronics lab (a makerspace of sorts); I was teaching “engineering”, but it was essentially a shop class combined with some newer technologies (3-D printing, CNC routers, and laser cutters). While that year’s experience is an entirely different blog post (a comical one, I promise), the first day of school I used an “ice breaker” I learned in a grad school class of mine that, when used correctly, can be a neat way to engage students and let them reveal their personalities:

Students write four statements about themselves and the goal is for the statements to get more specific and exclusive in descending order on the notecard. After collecting the notecards, the whole class starts each round standing and as the teacher reads each statement, students sit if it does not apply to them. Hopefully, this will leave one student standing after the final statement is read aloud – they’re encouraged to write something incredibly specific for the last statement, so much so that it could only be them left standing at the end. This often prompts a funny story or something random that the classmates’ peers hadn’t known.

On the first day of school I played this game with my whole first class and, instead of following the encouraged path of only reading a few cards a day for a few days in a row, we, as a class, did all 25ish cards that day. In hindsight, I’m able to see that I was likely too nervous or shortsighted to recognize my immediate mistake. Going through all 25ish cards in one fell swoop was honestly exhausting and the effect wasn’t even close to being fun or cool or whatever I was hoping for. Most every student was tired of playing this game for the past almost 30 minutes or so and the game no longer had its “flavor”. We, as a class, also now had no cards to return to at the start of subsequent classes. I wasn’t even aware that I had burned my ace. I’ll offer a few thoughts that can be ~loosely~ tied to the story above.

Point #1:

• Building positive relationships should truly be a constant, ongoing process. That first day of school back at Monticello, I wasn’t able to see, in the moment, how beneficial it would have been to stretch those cards out and provide the opportunity for a more long term approach to get to know those new students. We all know how easy it is to get into week two of the school year and see how much of our curriculum we have to get through and focus only on content. I genuinely think it is so beneficial to continue to prioritize our relationships with our students and not just play the quick get-to-know-you game that first week, even if it means sacrificing a few minutes of class each day (spoiler: I don’t think it actually means sacrificing any time, more to come).

Point #2:

• This does not mean you need to be doing “ice breakers” every week. So many of you/us are already doing the work of intentionally prioritizing building relationships with our students. This post is by no means an indictment on the work already happening in your classrooms. Ice breakers or a cheesy game do not automatically equal student engagement and/or a relationship being fostered. There is also no definitive “thing” that you need to be doing to check that box. I think this happens on an individual level and requires you to be yourself with the group of students in front of you at that time.

Point #3:

• Be yourself and let the kids get to know you for who you are (Y’all, I know that sounds cheesy as all get out, but I really think it is true). As mentioned earlier, there is no perfect formula or prescription, I think it’s as simple as being yourself around students and letting them get to know you as you try and get to know them. 

Here are a few examples from teachers at St. Andrew’s that I think embody this well:

1. Thomas Riesenberger – at a PD session years ago he shared that he will, from time to time, let students chit chat and mill about as he pretends to get things squared away on his computer for the first few minutes of class. He tells them he needs to take care of a couple of things before getting started and lets them just hang out. However, he keeps an ear out for interesting bits of conversation that he can then ask follow up questions about in the moment or even bring up later. Is this spying?? Absolutely not, it’s smart and cool and I can attest that it works!
2. Matt Luter – each week he dedicates a bit of time at the beginning of Monday’s class where he asks his students to tell stories from their weekend. Please ask him about this!! I’m not spoiling the title here because I think it’s a genuinely good one, but he will often not even start class until someone has braved the (sometimes) silence with a story about their weekend. Along with getting a glimpse into their lives and hearing how they view themselves among their peers, it also “encourages them to see their own lives as containing stories that are worth sharing” (Dr. Luter off the top rope!!). I have also done versions of this and it can be a very funny way to get a glimpse into what our students view as a “highlight” or story, as well as simply hear how their weekend went.
3. Burton Williams-Inman – the point of this is not me, by any means, but I couldn’t not share that I recently started playing fantasy football (for the first time in my life) and it has truly given me conversation and rapport with SO many 9th grade male students. Would I get there without fantasy football – 9th grade bros are not the hardest group for me to bond with, so, probably yes. However, I also have an advisee (remaining nameless) who I have taught and/or advised going on four years now and we have never talked as much as when I showed him my fantasy roster and asked him about how his team is doing.

I think building positive relationships is just so crucial. I am not saying that many folks think otherwise and I realize I’m not breaking new ground or providing the day’s “hot take”. I’m simply saying that I also need a reminder that this can and should be a yearlong process, that we can integrate it into our classrooms without being cheesy (but also totally fine if we are, because I definitely are), and that the people around us are crushing it and are incredible sources of inspiration. 

Ah, the office hour.  The very confusing not-mandatory-but-sort-of-mandatory thing that college professors often offer to show you how caring they are.  They post them on their syllabi, barely nodding to the significance.  But for some students, they make or break college success.

This year I am asking students to meet one on one with me each semester to mimic the awkward flow of office hour invitations students might receive in college. We can talk about what is going on in class, a paper they are writing, feedback they have received, how I can improve what I’m doing as a teacher, a college recommendation letter I am writing, etc. The point is not the thing we discuss, but the connection we can make in those 15-20 minutes. 

• One student tells me about his very specific future plans. The class is going well.  It’s the least of his worries.
• One student who cried the day before during an essay exams gives me a long story about the history of their anxiety and we talk through strategies and next steps. She is going to try again.
• One student brings me their college essay and we come up with a brilliant restructure plan and I fix the story in my head that she hates me and wants to argue with everything I say.

It is very, very easy to misunderstand a face that floats in a crowd of 20 or so other noisy students. It is very, very hard to not understand someone better after having a one on one conversation.  How do you make space in your context to connect on that level with students?

If connecting with kids is a prerequisite to building positive relationships with students, I would like to cite a concern, a clear and present danger related to aging. 

I don’t understand the children any longer.

Whereas 20 years ago when I began teaching my main preoccupation was distinguishing myself from the youth, distancing myself so as to prove I was a person of authority and import (“yes, old lady, I DO belong in the teacher’s lounge!”) today I find myself increasingly befuddled, scratching my head in a corner, confounded.

I first really felt it in my mid-thirties when my youngest was old enough to express her preferences.  She became obsessed with those mini cheap plastic toys and watching “unboxing videos” and I found myself suddenly lost at sea.  I am one who easily suspends my disbelief.  I find relating and sympathizing with a wide variety of preferences and differences as natural as breathing.  But something about the age gap between she and I leaped a generational logic.  

I really, honestly, vividly and suddenly didn’t get it.

There was that entire fifth grade year of Zander Rust in which I needed a dictionary to decode his friend-speak: “bussin bussin” and “cap” and the like.  This was my only son, the one I had grown inside of me and then given the gift of language.  A Christmas or two ago my nephew spent a good 45 minutes on the couch in earnest trying to explain “Skibidity” to me.  I was more confused when he finished than when he started. How could they play me like this? (At least I’m not alone; thanks Wall Street Journal author lady.)

Youtube is apparently overtaking all of the more traditional entertainment content platforms like Netflix.  I could have told you that was coming.  For years my youngest has been generally averse to watching coherent storylines and plots on shows and has been more apt to turn to youtube shorts.  I stand peering over my two younger childrens’ shoulders like an anthropologist observing a culture I am utterly unfamiliar with, marveling at the strange assortment of things their algorithm has deemed interesting for their viewing pleasures.  There are animal videos, teacher videos (!), so  many basketball videos, teens talking quickly and loudly about what they believe about the world with circular logic, a few makeup and skincare routines, ladies talking about what it is like to be pregnant (WHAT?!),  those weird AI generated ones where they say “put your finger up if  .  . . “ 

I do not get it.  

There was that obsession Zander had a few years ago for Prime, quite possibly the grossest drink ever invented.  Prime says “I’ll take you, flavor, and I’ll increase you times 100 so it’s basically undrinkable! ENJOY!” 

I could go on.  I haven’t even begun to delve into the senselessness of intensely sour candy or games like “Adopt Me” in Roblox that insist that you “not break a streak” and spend your free time frantically taking care of fictional things. (All I want to do if I ever find a spare moment is stare blankly at something green outside holding a warm caffeinated drink.)

So thus is the life of becoming middle aged. Just as we begin to notice wrinkles and hairs popping out of our chins, we get the double-whammy of suddenly not knowing the same bands or pop culture references as the youth that populate our classrooms.  And yes, it takes more sleuthing and questioning than it used to on my part to make sense of my students’ interests.  But there is also a distinct gift from this sudden gulf of separation.  We have a wider view.  And as we ask all of these questions with the goal of better-understanding, humility invariably follows the initial shock and judgment.  We are enlarged by our students and they are, on the good days, enlarged by us.  We are at work all day every day to reach across the gulf.  And we care about each other enough to reach out on both sides to make that stretch less strain-inducing for all parties involved. In the end, on the good days, we leave more flexible, loose, less stiff. 

There is something else too.  While I understand my students and my personal children less and less on the basis of the small stuff (the media we consume, the technologies we use to consume that media, and the language we employ to describe the world), I think in the larger-more-important sorts of ways, 42 year old Julie “gets” youth BETTER than 21 year old Julie did.  I no longer believe that connecting to youth has much to do with fashion or pop culture.  Forever and always until the end of time, students are good at sniffing out faculty that care about them and that will be stable mentors and adults into what is to come.  They don’t need us as peers to gossip about the latest thing.  They do need some tips for how to get into college, or how to read that article like a historian, or how to decode blends, or how to show up and work hard even when the work of the school day isn’t coming easily.  

I believe life is filled with ironies and this is just another example.  The less I understand the children, the more I can really see them.  The more inscrutable the generation coming seems, the more common ground somehow gets unearthed. 

Or perhaps, the older we get, the more room we have to love.

This post was contributed by Hannah LeBlanc.

As a teacher, by the time May rolls around, I often find myself thinking about my class in a loving way, but also “it’s time for y’all to move on down the hall to the next grade.” And then, August rolls around and you find yourself face to face with a bunch of little people you don’t know and you meet them, along with their (often anxious) parents at Meet the Teacher. All the while, those friends from last year swing in and out to say hello, and you watch them walk away and wish they could stay and teach your new students all the routines and expectations… and a bonus… if their parents could stay and tell these newbie parents that everything is going to be just fine… and second grade really is an awesome year!

Building relationships seems to be a very special part of the first 6 weeks of school in the Lower School. But, as special as it may be, it can be the hardest part of the year. As teachers, we often want to get to know each other, learn the routines… but we REALLY want to dig into the teaching part of the year. Honestly, the first month of school is my least favorite month of school…. And that feels like a shameful secret.  Without fail, every year, I try to start academics much too quickly… and then I have to rethink my expectations for the first few weeks and talk myself off the ledge. Every year. No exceptions. Knowing this is hard for me, I try to set a few things in stone as nonnegotiables for each new school year. As I have become a stepmom in the last year, I also try to keep in mind that building relationships with 2nd grade parents is just as important as building a relationship with the 2nd grade student. I want to know that my stepsons’ teachers know who they are, are aware of their strengths and areas for growth (and are aware that WE know about those areas for growth and are welcoming of any and all feedback, advice, or things we can do to support). So the two things that I have done this year and last that have helped me build those relationships are parent surveys and an email check in – but make it catchy! 

1. Parent Survey: 

Before the school year even begins, I try to email a link to parents asking (pleading?) for them to tell me about their child. I used to send a piece of paper home at Meet the Teacher, but now, as a stepmom, I loathe those forms and love when I can type without too many parameters. I have found I get a whole lot more information and robust responses when I send out a google form. 

What is powerful for me in reading this forms is both the answers that are given about the child, but also how the parent views their child, what they see, what they expect, and what they hope and dream for their child’s 2nd grade year. It is very rare that the parent hope/dream (becoming an avid reader, stand up for themselves, become a leader) aligns with the hopes and dreams the students fill out during the school year (have more recess, learn to write in cursive, trade as many pokemon cards as I can). But it gives me a good place to start and a good picture of some fears, anxieties, and worries, in addition to hopes and dreams. I also can’t tell you the valuable little nuggets of information I can gain that help me connect with a child instantly – favorite foods, hobbies they enjoy at home, things they complain about after school, etc. So much knowledge to give an insider peek into a child. But what is difficult here is not letting this paint a picture of the child before you meet them. It is a delicate balance. 

Another favorite part of these surveys is coming back to them throughout the year… times when a child maybe struggling, or when they’re on a roll, before conferences, halfway through the year… it’s helpful to come back to over and over again. 

2. 2nd Week of 2nd Grade 

Taking what I can glean from parent surveys and the first few weeks of school, I take random notes all over papers, sticky notes, in email drafts, etc about things I’m noticing that a child is doing specifically well – being a friend to a new student, being honest about being anxious about a certain subject area, following routines and procedures, getting to know new classmates, being respectful, etc. I take all these little notes and send out a very brief 3-4 sentence email at the end of the 2nd week of 2nd grade to let parents know that I’m seeing their child as I get to know them. It is also helpful for me to observe areas where students are already shining in the classroom so I can use that to my advantage … hello teacher helper for the year…this child knows how to use a stapler 🙂

There are also lots of amazing things happening in the Lower School to build relationships. Below, I asked a few of my coworkers to describe some things they do to build relationships in their grade level or classroom. 

1st Grade: Hannah Doggett

One of the many things I love about St. Andrew’s is the fact that we use Responsive Classroom. I love that one of the goals for the first six weeks of the school year with Responsive Classroom is to create a climate of warmth, inclusion, and safety for students. This is essential to start establishing trust which is the foundation for building relationships with students. Morning meetings are one of my favorite parts of the school day, and I really use the “share” time at the beginning of the school year to learn about my students. I find that learning what they love both inside and outside of school really helps me connect with them. Finding little ways to incorporate their interests outside of school into academic learning increases their engagement and excitement. This year, I had two boys that started off the year with some rocky behavior. During the second week of school, I sat them down on a bench outside for the first minute of recess and we talked about the importance of making good choices and being respectful to teachers by listening to directions the first time they are given. I explained that if the next day was as rough as the day they just had, their logical consequence would be to sit with me longer at recess while we talked through our classroom rules that we came up with and agreed on together. When I let them go play, I noticed they both went to the basketball court. I spent the rest of recess on the basketball court shooting around with them and teaching them how to make a layup. They were all smiles and seemed to love every minute of it. Coming back inside hot and sweaty was totally worth it the next day when they had the best day of the year. Four weeks into the year, while we still have some rough moments, I have seen such a difference since the day we played basketball. This shows that taking the time to build relationships with students outside of the classroom really helps inside the classroom.

2nd Grade: Rachel Newman

We have an All About Me Bag that each student brings to school filled with a few small things that represent their hobbies or favorite things. We share these bags throughout the first week of school during morning meeting. When students share what is in their bags, we talk about what we have in common with the person who shared. We find out things we never knew about each other. I also create a bag and share, and we discuss what they have in common with me too. This year a lot of my class brought money. I don’t know what that means, but maybe they’ll all be entrepreneurs when they grow up. 

3rd Grade: Dalton Howard

We play “Just Like Me” in the first week of school every year. It’s so simple, always a winner. 

Morning Meeting questions – I’ll pose a question and they’ll answer on a post it note. Sometimes it’s silly “If you could turn into any animal, what would you be, and why?” 

I’ll have them write a letter to me in their journals, and I respond whenever I can. It can be prompted “Tell Me Something Tuesday” or just a basic ” Write a letter to me about your weekend!” It’s funny what they’ll write in their journals, but won’t share in morning meeting. Sometimes this helps when we’re low on time and I can’t hear from everyone during morning meeting. 

“Find Someone Who” –  A classroom hunt, if you will. Students have to find a friend in the room who matches the description. Find someone who… is an only child, can count backwards by 5s from 200, has lost a tooth in the last month, etc. 

“This or That” basically would you rather using 2 sides of the room. I use this to differentiate between by beach people and my mountain people. My musical arts people and my sports people. Movies vs. books. Fall or Spring, etc. 

4th Grade: Kerri Black

The main way we start to build relationships with students is getting to know them as a person and not just as a student.  We take time to learn about the sports they play, the music they like, the places they love to visit, their families, etc.  We sometimes do this by playing games but many times it’s through conversations at break or during transition periods.  Students love when teachers ask them follow up questions about their hobbies and interests, too.  The students feel important and proud when they feel we are taking the time to listen to them.  Getting to know each other helps build trust and create a classroom community that is a safe haven for learning.  

4th Grade: Anna Frame

In social studies for the past few years I’ve done a thing called “Mapping My World,” where students add 5 places in the metro Jackson area where they spend a lot of time to a map. I’ve done different versions of this…..one year they drew a map, one year they created a Google Map and printed it, this year we did a collaborative map. It always takes way longer than I think it will, and I question whether it is worth the time, but it really does give me an idea of what these kids do when they aren’t in school……horseback riding, soccer, TKD, how far they have to commute each day, music lessons, and even favorite restaurants. I find myself calling back to this information throughout the year to make connections to them and whatever content is at hand. It also allows them to share and learn things about each other…..who are the fellow tennis players in the class, etc. etc. So, yes, it’s probably worth the time, but I’m still working out a more efficient way to do it! 

So, from all of these things, I feel like we should all walk the halls at the start of a new year offering each other continued reminders of “take the time to do this… it can be hard, but let the BIG academics wait!”

I am convinced that building positive relationships with students WHILE teaching them a thing or two, especially in the first quarter of the year, is one part inherent-skill and three parts planning ahead.  That’s why I’m eager to share with you some words of wisdom shared by Val Prado (6th grade math) and Cyndi Irons (middle school art), two incredible educators who took the time to share their thoughts on that survey I linked in a Tuesday Teaching Tips earlier this year.

Anything you want to share about your personal lesson planning process?

Cyndi: I’m a creative person and planning is part of my creative process. I enjoy researching ideas and thinking about how the ideas will fit in my overall vision. Planning is fun to me. I don’t mean that it’s fun to write out lesson plans with objectives; I mean that I enjoy researching and thinking about lessons and projects. 

Val: I have an ongoing google doc with a detailed table for each week. Each day has the following info: goals (typically a warm up problem, videos we will watch, examples we’ll take notes on, workbook pages, any other details that may be helpful, links to all of my handouts/quizzes/websites); homework; and upcoming assessments. Students do not have access to this, but they do have access to our “daily math slides” that is a summary of goals and has the homework listed, as well as a “do now” for when they walk into the door.

Got a good story about a lesson plan that went super well or super badly?

Good story: I write down the exact numbers I want to use as examples with my students beforehand. I always pretend to make them up on the spot, and the kids are always impressed with how quickly I can come up with good numbers and examples for a certain skill, but really it is just good preparation, ha!  

Bad story: When we learned about prime factorization, I had this activity planned out where students use a website to research the divisibility rules and then complete a table for each number with the rule in their own words and one example. This is the second year where I used this website, but for some reason it was blocked for the students this year, so I had to quickly find something else and post it in google classroom for them to use. Meanwhile, students were making comments under the assignment, since it took me a few minutes to post the new site and I had forgotten to set the settings in my new google classrooms that students cannot post… IT came to the rescue and was able to unblock it before my next class (thanks IT for the quick response time!). So, remember to always have a backup plan, go with the flow and take it with humor when things go sideways, and be flexible when things don’t work out!  (Val)

What are your favorite sources, websites, people you follow on social media, books, etc. that help inform your lesson plans?

Cyndi: My favorite source at the time is social media. I am in several Middle School Art Teacher groups on Instagram and Facebook. In these groups we share ideas and troubleshoot problems with projects or lessons.  I also find lessons in books and websites. 

Val: Jo Boaler – Stanford University, she has a ton of resources and a super easy to navigate website called youcubed (https://www.youcubed.org/). I also follow Greg Tang, Ban Har, and Sarah Shaefer, and am in some Facebook groups for middle school math teachers, as well as groups that use our curriculum (MIF). Instagram also has some cool accounts that post brain teasers etc.  

What am I not asking that you want to say about lesson planning?

Val: I enjoy lesson planning, as it challenges me to think about the big picture – what do I want my students to get out of this week? How can I create meaningful and engaging tasks that help them practice new skills? I like to “recycle” activities from previous years, but also like to change things up and try new things.

Tadaaaaaa!

The 2023-2024 school year is over so that must mean we most certainly successfully conquered and now fully have unlocked the mysteries contained in the PD theme of the year: “Teaching These Days.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

(We barely scratched the surface.)

Still, I am grateful for all of the questions we have unearthed together, and the sometimes answers and solutions we have scratched up as well.  

I recently listened to this TED Radio Hour podcast about memory and the brain and it reminded me of some things I’ve heard before about the vital importance of recounting and rehashing memories to solidify them in our brains.  Indeed, most of my memories from the kid’s early years reside in facebook memories when I used to document the cute things they said/did.  Without the yearly reminders, they would have slipped away.  After our Rust family epic trip to New York City last Spring Break, I took the advice to heart, and we had a family “share photos from your devices and recount best moments from the trip” the weekend after the trip.  It was a way to make those dollars we spent really count. “Remember this, brain?! This was fun and good and we learned things and spent time together!”

Well in the spirit of the recap, here are some of my personal highlights from “Teaching These Days” this year. 

1. August Workshop Week: “Teaching These Days” Overview

Remember that start of the 2023-2024 school year when TEAM folks stood up and quoted all of these quotes complicating the notion of “kids these days?”  

We began the year talking about generational differences and norms, and then Hollie, Matt, and Blake took the stage to talk through three big impacts on “teaching these days”:

• Technology
• Economic Forces
• Political Polarization

Annie Elliott shared some on-the-ground observations from how campers and counselors have changed from 2002-2023:

We had a panel discussion with faculty across divisions and ended with some talk about the impact of Generative AI led by Linda Rodriguez.  

Fun fact: We were supposed to have had a panel of outside speakers for this opening session and it all kind of fell through at the last moment. I’m kind of glad it did. To have so many different faculty and admin step up and share their thinking was a gift.

2.  Our October PD Day was all about human growth and development.  I was so grateful to have Jessica Goldsbury step up and share her work on this front at SA.  The session with Dr. Scott Rodgers and others provoked a lot of community conversations and feedback, and I have been grateful to have these important/honest dialogues about how to best serve all of our youth and respect the dignity of every human being.

3. Our February PD Day centered back in with localized concerns and noticings about teaching these days at SA.  TEAM members created a series of short skits to launch into faculty-led conversation groups about questions that folks had noticed when teaching in their particular context.  (Here are notes from those meetings!)  Early Childhood Center faculty opted to share out their best practices grade level by grade level by “going on a field trip” to each other’s rooms. 

The afternoon brought Marc Watkins to share about “Teaching in the Age of Generative AI”  His talk, much like our October conversations, provoked several follow up discussions about our institutional stance with these technologies and how we can best equip faculty/students with our mission at the center.  

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It is clear that this was not all smooth sailing. This people-pleasing self of mine has slowly recognized that, in this job, there is no pleasing everyone, especially where whole-school PD initiatives are concerned.  In fact, I have begun to suspect that if a speaker or activity or set of themes doesn’t provoke any disagreement, dialogue, or follow-up, it may have not been worth the time and effort at all.  The trick is how to listen well and deeply to the smart people in our community without getting stuck in a state of paralysis.  The trick is to decipher/separate the “what we need to reach a stance or consensus on” from the “what we need to live in ambiguity on.” It’s also to figure out who needs to be involved at every step of the way. 

None of this year’s exploration would have been possible without the incredibly supportive team of folks we have at the school.  Thanks to Kevin, Shea, Buck, and Blake for supporting this work and providing a whole-school divisional lens when needed.  Thanks to Taylor Davis, Jessica Parker-Farris, Rachel Scott, Hannah Williams-Inman, and Matt Luter for providing crucial teacher perspectives, feedback, and ideas throughout the journey.  Thanks to say many others who stepped up when I said “HELP will you submit a question?!” or “HELP- will you jump in and be in a skit in the last minute?!” or “HELP will you lead a conversation on ______.” The only way to do this work well is for all of us to have a hand or pinky toe in it.  I believe this. 

The theme may be over, but I’m pretty sure “teaching these days” will persist as the most relevant preoccupation of many of us that work with youth in classrooms each day.  Let’s keep talking.  Let’s keep asking hard questions.  Let’s keep listening.  I am grateful for all of it. 

All the words in this blog, minus the title and the first paragraph in italics, were authored by Buck Cooper.

I had the distinct pleasure of being in the room when Buck was asked to share some thoughts with the board about shifting from faculty to head of middle school this past year and I was so moved that I begged him (via google chat, the best way to beg) to share his words with the entire community.  Buck, thank you for being your genuine, thoughtful self then and now.  Our school is better because of your presence in it.

Kevin asked me to share some thoughts about the transition from being a middle school teacher to being the head of the middle school. In the spirit of the Easter season, and if you’re not into Easter, then it’s also baseball season, both of which ought to be filled with a spirit of thanksgiving—so in the spirit of both seasons, I want to tell you three things for which I am deeply thankful.

First, support and grace from colleagues and from family. I had served as Associate Head of Middle School here in 2015-2016 and was doing the work of that role for much of the year before that. For those two years, I had seen how challenging the job is, particularly because of the massive scope of the work which can range from helping a child find a sweatshirt to helping plot the course for the future of language instruction AND the complexity of the work–because let’s face it, people are complex and administration is fundamentally working with groups of people and individuals. I knew going in that this was going to be challenging work–and it has been–but Kevin and the entire senior leadership team were so kind, welcoming and supportive during the work we did last summer–and Meriwether, Shedrick, Jen, Annie, Kari, Sarah and Bethany along with the entire middle school faculty and so many of our families have made this work less difficult in its complexity because of their skill, and kindness and the grace they’ve afforded me.

Second, I’m thankful for the expanded scope of potential students with whom I can build relationships. I was a little sad to step away from teaching all the flavors of 8th grade math and being an 8th grade advisor. I knew I was losing those particular relationships. But I recognized the lightness and joy that I felt in my heart on the first day of school when I was out front welcoming students back. And while I lost the focus on the 8th grade, I gained the chance to get to connect, in passing, and sometimes through activities, with so many more children in the middle school. I absolutely love spending time with these children, and I love helping to shepherd them through this time of life when so much is happening all at once and in so many ways. And moving from being primarily an 8th grade teacher to being head of the middle school has made it possible to feel so much more connected to so many more children.

Third, I’m thankful for the loving care and wisdom that so many of our parents bring to this place. I say this having taught at both private and public schools in several states. I know that every parent wants what’s best for their child, and I know that every parent, deep in their heart, is trying to do right by their child to help them get what’s best. But that manifests in so many ways, some of them sometimes destructive to the life of a community. Our parents are smart, and caring and willing to put in the work necessary to help make this place better. I’ve had a number of difficult conversations with parents this year, and part of what I’ve secretly enjoyed about even those difficult conversations is that they’ve required me to bring my best self–both emotionally in terms of support and intellectually in terms of being attentive and thoughtful in response–to those tough interactions–and that has made this work, especially when it’s hard–feel like it fits with where I am in my career. 

I’ve been connected to this school one way or another for most of the last 37 years–ranging from being here in person to getting the newsletters and emails and fundraising asks.  I’m not on the Julia Chadwick or Jan Graeber level of longevity or wisdom, but I hold them both as models for how to be committed to a place that has given so much to me. A favorite character in a TV show I love said, “the job will not love you back,” and that may be true, but I do think that the place where you do the job might–and this place feels that way to me.