We Have High Purpose!

“In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. So it would be a crime against nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were designed in the first place: the opportunity to do good work, to enjoy friends, to fall in love, to hit a ball, and to bounce a baby.” ~Alistair Cooke, 1908-2004

Cooke lived through more than a dozen world crises, so he knew what he was talking about. It’s easy to get caught up in the immediacy of a crisis. We have them all the time both at school and at home. Our students and their families are also having crises. Out jobs are to ameliorate the issues as best we can, make sure we’re not adding to their issues, and help our students and each other learn how to manage our crises better. We want our students and each other to have every opportunity to do those things Cooke says we are designed to do. In order to do that, we have to help our students respect themselves and each other by expecting the best in them.

A substitute came to Cooper last Thursday to work in a music room. She said she was new to our district and had not come to Cooper before because she had heard things were pretty tough here. She subbed in Garden City and Wayne-Westland, but was not sure she could handle the issues she was hearing about in our classrooms. She asked the office what the discipline plan is at Cooper, how she was to handle students when they misbehaved. She thought there must be a standardized system in place as she experiences in other schools where she works; such as a card flip system in place in every room.

 Pam told her there is no system, that our students are great leaders in their classrooms. She told the substitute she wouldn’t have any issues with students at Cooper because they are leaders.

At the end of the day, the substitute returned to the office to turn in her key. She went on and on about how well the day went and how great the students at Cooper behaved. She says she’s be back, and she will tell her friends who also have been avoiding our school that our kids are fun to teach.

This kind of attitude toward our students is the self-fulfilling prophecy about which we so often hear. The sub was set up to look for the good behaviors rather than bad ones. Her focus all day was to look for the leadership potential of our students. The sub got to experience the students doing good work, enjoying their time at music, just as Cooke wrote we should do.

Life is not about one bad thing after the other, not about catching people doing the wrong things at work, and not about finding the faults. It’s about all the good we do everyday for our kids, their families, and each other.

“If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life; it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.”

~ Mitsugi Saotome, 1937-present

Needed thanks:

·      A big thank you to Karen and Melodie for their hard work creating Seussical the Musical. They brought out the best in our fifth graders. The sowing last week was outstanding!

·      Thanks also goes to Bill and Lauren for their hard work with our Variety Show participants. They are providing opportunities for students to shine!

·      Thanks to Pam and Colleen for being our ambassadors to everyone who walks in the door, especially our substitute teachers who need a helping hand to have the right attitude to enjoy our students all day. And thanks to Pam for the story in this week's update.

·      Thanks to our Lighthouse Team. What a dedicated group of people! They meet every week and plan so many of our activities. Their leadership is inspiring!

Big Rocks:

·      Report Cards are due electronically by midnight Monday. The third marking period comments are so important for families as it’s the last chance to make changes to help their students for the end of the year.

·      Our staff meeting this week is Tuesday morning at 8:00. Randy and Andrea will be here to present to us.

·      The music choices for fifth graders going to sixth grade will be presented to parents Tuesday night. The choices for these students will be the same as in previous years. However, fifth graders for next year will not have music choices for the first time since we’ve been Cooper 5/6.

·      Our numbers for next year continue to change. As of Friday, we are looking at 335 fifth graders and 350 sixth graders for next year. That puts us on the edge between 23 and 24 regular ed classrooms. Our RCR student numbers look lower for next year. We will continue to update you as the numbers change.

·      String Fling is Wednesday night at Stevenson High School! We will hear our sixth grade orchestra students in their joint concert with other 5/6 schools.

·      Also on Wednesday is the Staff v. Students Floor Hockey Game.

·      Leadership Day Committees should be working this week. Watch your email for times to get together with your groups.

Schedule this week:

Monday:       7:45 Meeting with Randy (Terry) at CO

                        Midnight reports cards are due

Tuesday:      8:00 Staff meeting in the library

                        8:45 IST

                        9:15 Title I meeting

                        After school clubs

                        6:00 Parent Music meeting in Café

Wednesday: 8:00 Center EPT

                        Staff v. Student hockey game

                        Sports Club

7:00 pm String Fling

Thursday:    No staff meeting this day

                        3:40 Tennis Club

Friday:          Report Cards go home

                        Terry to CO at 8:00 for meeting re: PD hours

Whew! I’m tired already!!! Let’s help everyone through it!!!

LIM Symposium

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.  Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” 

Roald Dahl

At the Leadership Symposium, I had the privilege of watching everything unfold with glittering eyes.  I didn’t have to speak or give tours because the students were leading.  I stayed mostly behind the lens of my camera and watched the magic unfurl.  If staff or students were nervous, it didn’t show.  The hours appeared to pass seamlessly.  Our students were so excited and their energy and passion radiated off them.  Chris K, a fifth grade student host in the café, told me, “I feel so honored to have this job.  I don’t know how I got nominated.”  Gabby W, in her opening introduction, told the crowd, “I wish this school went from grade 5 through college.”  Teachers told us how amazing the day was, how well organized, and how many ideas they would take home with them. 

And it wasn’t all perfect.  One student told a guest, “I hate the 7 Habits.  I don’t use them at home and I’m forced to use them at school.”  Thankfully the guest gracefully told our teacher, “I understand.  It’s real.  You have a few handfuls and you can’t get to them all.”  The student panel in the LMC was apparently stronger than the panel in the Café.  One student in the Café told the audience, “We don’t use the Leadership Notebooks in my class that much.”  However, when Emily E was asked how the school tries to help ensure all students are on board with the 7 Habits, she talked about how her class has accountability partners and they check out with each other at the end of the day.  Gabby was asked about LEAD time which is a specific time set aside for LIM which many schools do.  She responded very eloquently with, “well we don’t have a specific time but my teacher just weaves the 7 habits into everything we do.” 

What we do here is real.  It’s not perfect.  It’s not even really magic.  It’s hard work.  Yet, I wish everyone here could have the opportunity to see the students in action because if you did you wouldn’t have doubts about Leader in Me.  You too would see through glittering eyes the secrets and magic our students are capable of.

Checking out Data Walls!

 Sharing Leadership Notebooks in Tyranski's Class

Kimballs' and Websters' students "Reach for the Stars" by setting personal and academic goal.

Licata's Class uses exit slips to reflect on their use of the habits.

Mr. Backiels' students ask, "What's in your toolbox?"

Ms. Wise's student shares her Leadership Notebook.

Big Rocks:

• ·      The Human Growth Parent meeting will be held this Wednesday, March 26 at 6 pm.  A big thank you to Lynn deCarli, Bill Lietz, and Nicole McGlinch for presenting.
• ·      The 5^th Grade Seussical Musical will be held this Thursday, March 27 at 7:00.  Singers are to report at 6:30.  Karen has sent out a Google Doc to sign up for a morning show on Thursday.  She will need the 5^th grade vocal students from 8:45-10:10.
• ·      Friday, March 28 is a teacher work day.  Happy Days! 
• ·      Sally, Sarah, and Judy all attended conferences last week.  We have lots of information to share and will be sharing it soon with all of you!
• ·      The district has moved up the deadline for F & P to be entered into Class A by May 16 instead of May 30.  This is due to the evaluation summary of student growth data being due on May 20.

Thank you to…

• ·      The entire Cooper staff for serving on a team for TLIM Symposium and the Lighthouse Team for their continued support.
• ·      Judy Bowling for pulling off another fantastic Battle of the Books.  As Judy says, this is definitely a huge example of synergy and whether you were a coach, a scorekeeper, a paper organizer, a photographer, a provider of Diet Coke for Judy, every thing was definitely appreciated.  It was a momentous event!
• ·      A big thank you to Bill Lietz, Lynn deCarli, Shawn Webster, and Ron Mark for attending the Data Analysis Session.  They learned a lot about this year’s MEAP scores and had an opportunity to spend a lot of time taking and analyzing the Smarter Balance Assessment for Math and ELA.  This test is no joke.  Terry and I have many concerns about the implication of this test on instruction and teacher and student morale.

For the week of March 24, 2014:

Monday:

Tuesday: IST 8:00

            Afterschool clubs 3:45

                6^th Grade Variety Show Practice 3:45

                LPS Parent Fair 6:30-8:30

Wednesday: EPT 8:00

                    Bus Meetings

                    Sports Club 3:45

                    5^th Grade Variety Show Practice 3:45

               Human Growth Parent Night 6:00

Thursday: Staff Meeting 8:00

            Seussical the Musical 7:00

Friday: Work Day

Leaders Love

“The more efficient a force is, the more silent and the more subtle it is.
Love is the subtlest force in the world.” Gandhi

When I (Terry) was a teacher at Cleveland Elementary, I had a mentor, Peg Gage, who was a highly experienced teacher. She and I were early birds and would often talk in the mornings. One morning I came in to find Peg looking over her classroom, studying the room from the front, looking at every desk. I asked her what she was doing. She told me she was trying to figure out the best formation for the class, how to set up the seats so the students would be their most effective. 

I was astonished. Here was a teacher in her 35th year, still searching for the answers. I was new enough to not know that the search goes on every year, that her priorities for her students were always changing, always a work in progress. She loved her students and all she could do for them and with them. So many of us feel that same love here at Cooper.

We are working so hard at Cooper. All of us have our priorities. We are the leaders of this building, the ones who set the tone and the pace. We, all of us, are the reasons we are so successful at Cooper. And we are the reason we are still evolving as a leadership school.

Pam lost her father this week. She is surrounded by family, and is loved by all of us. She knows we are with her in spirit as she deals with this loss. The love we feel and express in all we do sustains us, shows our students what is important. We all have priorities that include family and our own pursuits of happiness both in and outside of Cooper. Pam's taking care of herself and her family as she deals with the loss of her father. Her priorities are solid. We are dealing with the love of our students and the pride in our school by hosting the Symposium, by having crazy hair and hat days, by caring about each other and our students and their families. Our priorities are solid.

We are the leaders who love. We love our own families, our students, and each other enough to set the right priorities to fulfill the roles we've chosen to play in our lives. We don't all have the same roles outside of school, and we all have roles at Cooper that allow us to be fulfilled. We have our families and our priorities at home. We have our students and each other and our priorities at Cooper. It's a great profession and a great life we get to lead.

My mentor, Peg, had it right. She loved her students enough to lead them to effective learning. She made the changes needed for each class each day to accomplish great things. She had the priorities straight for her class. Pam has hers straight for her family, and we have ours straight as we deal with all we do. Let's not forget the love as we move forward with this crazy, incredibly packed (no pun intended) school year.

Former Lt. Governor of Michigan, Dan Mulhern, offers these thoughts about leaders and how they love. As you read these, think about your roles as a leader in your family and at Cooper. Mulhern writes about leaders that:

1.  They nurture their own goodness (their store of love).  How?  They seek out — and let in — that which ennobles and energizes them:  the care of others, the beauty of nature, laughter, and if they’re lucky enough to experience it, the love of family and friends, and things bigger than themselves.  If love is as awesome a force as Gandhi posits, then I want to be infused with that force.
2.  They cultivate their ability to see, savor and to celebrate the good in others.  In lay terms, they seek out and point out goodness, sincerely and often.
3.  They know their role is not to judge others (although frequently they have to assess the behavior of others).  Thus, they observe with compassion (as they would want to be observed).  They give the benefit of the doubt, as they would want to be given that wonderful benefit.   Their inclination is to see the good and good faith in others.  Where others seem rude, angry, or duplicitous, they check their own perceptions and hold off the judgment that bad behavior means a bad person. They seek to see the good, even when others seem to offer ill.

How do you see love in your job? How is your role here fulfilling that need in you? How is your leadership helping you express the silent power of love? We'd love to hear from you...

A big thanks to Tara for her ideas regarding this week's update!

This week's big rocks:
We will not have our weekly scheduled staff meeting on Thursday. We will be asking that all teams continue to prepare for the Symposium visit. We may need an update meeting Wednesday morning at 8:00 to help us all be ready for the big event.

Monday:      Breakfast with Randy, 7:30 (Terry)
                    DTE will be here! The set up will be in vocal music room for the assembly.

Tuesday:     IST will be delayed to 8:30
                   After School Clubs at 3:40
                    BOTB at FHS at 6:30

Wednesday:   Staff meeting???
                      Triad Data Analysis (Bill, Lynn, Michelle K., Ron) in Vocal Music Room and Lab
                       Session #4 of Sports Club
                      Planning Team at 3:45
                      TLIM Principals Meeting with Sean Covey, 4:15-5:30 at VistaTech (Sarah and Terry)

Thursday:      Symposium vist to Cooper! 10:30 to 12:30!
                      EPM 1:00 (Sarah and Terry)
                      Tennis Club after school
                      Emerson Open house for 6th graders, 7:00 at EMS
                      PTA Meeting is postponed to April 10!

Friday:         A relaxing day at Cooper with all those people we love in our work!

Bossy

What do you think of when you think of the word bossy?  Who do you think of when you think of the word bossy?

Last year, I read the book Lean In by the COO of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg.  It’s a powerful book about women and leadership.  In it, Sheryl discusses how success and likeability are positively correlated for men.  The research actually shows that as men become more successful people like them more but as women become more successful both men and women like them less. 

Sheryl Sandberg is now on a new mission to ban the word bossy as a descriptor of girls.    She says, “We call our little girls bossy.  Go to a playground; little girls get called bossy all the time-a word that’s almost never used for boys- and that leads directly to the problems women face in the workforce.”  I thought about this and she’s right.  I don’t think I ever call boys bossy but friends at school called Carys bossy just last week. 

Why does this matter?  Research shows that by middle school, girls are less interested in leading than boys.  “A 2008 survey by the Girl Scouts of nearly 4,000 boys and girls found that girls between the ages of 8 and 17 avoid leadership roles for fear they will be labeled “bossy” or disliked by their peers” (Sandberg & Chavez, 2014).  The good news is this does not appear to be true at Cooper.  We actually have more girls on Lighthouse and in leadership roles than boys. 

We need all of our young people to lead.  As Anna Maria Chavez, the CEO of the Girl Scouts says, “When we talk about investing in girls, we’re not saying to divest from boys.  It’s about ensuring that we have every capable person prepared to lead” (2014).  We expect boys to be assertive and confident but when girls do the same, they are labeled bossy and this ultimately undermines girls’ ability to view themselves as a leader.  What do you think? 

If you would like to learn more, I encourage you to read the following articles.

Bossy: The Other B Word

What These 3 Influential Women Want Every Girl To Know

Ban Bossy

                                                               My Bossy Girls!

Big Rocks:

Happy Birthday Terry Taylor!!! 

Student Perception Surveys:

We have completed the 5^th Grade Perception Surveys and have a few 6^th Grade Perception Surveys to finish.  We will take Backiel, Lorenz, Kimball, Tanner, and Gates students this week.  Thank you for all of your flexibility throughout this process!

Teacher Perception Surveys:

Now it’s time for you to evaluate us!  We will be sending out links this week.  There was some debate among the Upper Elementary principals about whether to send links to all staff members or just the ones we are evaluating.  Terry and I voted to send the links to all staff.  There are two questions-one about observations and one about actionable feedback-that may not be applicable to the principal who is not doing your evaluation but just do your best.  Thank you so much in advance for your time and feedback.  We encourage you to give us specific feedback so that we may improve our practice!

Triad Concert:

Our Cooper vocalists have been hard at work.  The Triad Concert is Tuesday, March 11 at pm.  Karen has sent out an email proposing a special music schedule on Tuesday for extra practice.  She will have the first rehearsal from 9:30-10:30 in the café with Backiel, Webster, Kimball, Mansour, Kopacko, and Daraskavich.  The second rehearsal will be in the café from 1:30-2:30 for Lietz, Erickson, Lorenz, McGlinch, Martin, and Spence.

Schedule for the Week of March 10, 2014

Sunday: Happy Birthday Terry!

Monday: Finish Student Perception Surveys

                Sarah is the proud mommy of an 8 year old!!  Where does time go?

Tuesday: IST 8:00

    Principal PD-Sarah 7:45-10:45

                                    -Terry 12:30-3:30

                Clubs 3:45-4:45

                Variety Show Practice 3:45

                Triad Concert

Wednesday: EPT 8:00

                     Bus Meetings 10:40-11:10

                     Planning Team 3:45

                    Sports Club

Thursday: Extended Staff Meeting 3:45-4:45 (Moving and LIM)

                 Bill Roberts from AXA Equitable will be in the building.

                 No Tennis Club

Friday: Peace and Quiet 

Saturday: Michigan Reading Association Conference (Sarah and Sally)

                The author of Wonder is the Key Note Speaker!  So excited!

         

   

Leaders are Teachers; Teachers are Leaders

Clark Aldrich, author of Unschooling Rules: 55 ways to unlearn what we know about schools and rediscover education (2011, Greenleaf Book Group Press: Austin, TX), writes on page 59:

The process of educating entails leadership. The word "education" is from the Latin word for "to lead forth," just as the word "pedagogy" is from the Greek word "to lead."

Sarah discovered Aldrich's book and shared it with me. While Sarah and I don't agree with everything in it, he has really pushed on the status quo, the accepted paradigms of education, that just aren't working for our students in their world. The more we insist students be a part of our expectation for living, the more we push them further away from success in the world in which they must live: theirs, not ours.

If we accept the premise that educating is leading, that all pedagogy is leading people to another place in their lives, we are charged with understanding our leadership styles and the impact of those styles on the different situations and diverse students at Cooper. How are you leading? How do you see others leading? What are our responsibilities to each other to live up to our standards and improve our leadership with our students? What is our leadership legacy for our students?

All students deserve the best of us everyday. It's hard to keep up that energy, especially when we have so many pressures taking us closer to tired than energized, discouraged rather than encouraged. We lead students to believe that they carry their own weather: as do we. As we go through this tougher time of year with a very busy March followed by a full April, we still lead each day, each student, each family, and each other. Let's help each other grow in our leadership! We are a leadership school!

"Every day, adults are role models of learning (whether or not they want to be)." Clark Aldrich, Unschooling Rules, p. 73.


The schedule for this week includes:

Monday:   6th grade Whalers field trip

                 LEADS meeting (Terry) 8:00

                 Student Perception Surveys

Tuesday:  Mock BOTB today

                 IST 8:00

                 ASSET 9:00

                 Clubs 3:45-4:45

     Leo's Coney Night, 5-8 pm

Wednesday: Learning Lab at Cooper 8-11

                     Planning Team 3:45

                     

Thursday:    Staff Meeting, 8:00, All about packing for renovations!

                    Spring Picture Day

                    CCSS Meeting, 8:15-3:45

                    EPM, 1:00, (Sarah and Terry)

Friday:         ???????