Change is the Only Constant 


"Expectation is the mother of all frustration." ~Antonio Banderas

Frustration is coming out in all of us this time of year. The students are in a hurry to get to the changes that summer brings, or, in some cases, to work to avoid those changes. Either way, they are more challenging this time of year as we move toward school-year's end.

Our patience and our focus can wane with their increased behaviors, and we are the ones who need to make the changes necessary to address the increased noise, concerns, disruptions, and folderol while maintaining order. We are also trying to create a memorable end of the year for these students, especially the sixth graders.

As our understanding of their angst and anger, joy and sorrow about the ending of the year and ending of their time with us, we need to examine our expectations for them. What are the rules that are important to maintain, enforce, and push? What are the levels of chaos that we cannot truly control without abrogating our goal of a successful end to the only sixth grade year these students get to have? How do we create an ending to this school year that is also memorable for us?

Look at all we've done this year! We started with unpacking. Then we repacked for the shelving. At the same time, we were trying to get the renovations corrected (think windows, blinds, flooring, computer drops, new sound systems, the PA, telephones, and even room changes). We also had new staff members as Linda, Amy, and Emily came on board, along with new parapros in Sue's and Mary Ann's rooms. And don't forget we had long-term subs for the entire first marking period in Angie's and Victoria's positions. We had Sixth Grade Camp in early October. Then the Title budget was amended to allow us to add three more paras. About this time, Sarah went on leave to bring Callum into the world. Angie and Victoria came back, although Angie was working in the office rather than the RCR until Sarah's return in January.

It makes me tired just thinking about all we did during all those changes. Our changes are constant. They really always have been. We also created a Parent Lighthouse Team, expanded the Title I services mid-year, explored the new iReady tests, did lots of F&Ps, and kept expecting a knee surgery to happen that never was needed. Such a strange year.

And it's coming to a close. We have what feels like a smaller circle of control with the students during these last weeks of school. What are your priorities for your class? How are you getting the students to accept that they have priorities, too? How will they have the best last three weeks of their 5th or 6th grade school year? How will you guide them to be intentional about their choices?

Please have those conversations with your students. Set up the final weeks to be the best they can be by having them help you define how the best weeks would look and what their part is in making the best happen. Help them to see they have a circle of control that influences how the year will end for everyone.

We're getting a lot of teacher frustration and principal frustration in the office this time of year. What are the expectations we can use that won't add to the frustration? Please let us hear from you!

"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading." ~Lao Tzu

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BIG ROCKS:

• Due to the computer problems last Friday, we will be rescheduling some classes for M-Step. It is important that you keep the current schedule and that teachers give the math test in order of 1st then 2nd. As you are rescheduled, we will give time for the tests as needed.
• We will be hanging the last of the decorative panels. They will go in the Cafe this Wednesday after the Planning Team meeting after school. Thanks to Lauren for getting the pieces ready and to Sally for helping with fun of hanging them! All are welcome to join in the fun!!
• Dentists-R-Us will be at Cooper on Thursday this week. Students will be called down to see them as necessary.
• Field Day is Friday! We still need parents to help, so if you have people in mind, please let them know we are looking for parents to work the events. Have them contact Fatino

Our schedule this week:

Monday        Memorial Day ~ Remember those who served!

Tuesday        8:00 Center EPT

Wednesday   3:45 Planning/LH Team

Thursday      8:00 Staff meeting

                     1:00 EPM at CO

Friday           Field Day! 5th grade in the AM, 6th in the PM

                     

Can You See the Light?

"Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light."~Helen Keller

At the end of the school-year tunnel is the light of summer. This year has been a strange one because of renovations and the changes in testing times. That makes the light at the end of the tunnel a year a pinpoint, but there is a pinpoint of light that shows the end is coming. And it's coming faster than we might like! There is so much still to complete this year before we leave.

Students have a lot to complete, too. We've been experiencing student behaviors that seem more like the ones we'd see in the last week of school. We still have the better part of four weeks to finish everything. I urge you to create a calendar and post it in your classroom that shows all the days left and all the things students still have to complete. Field day and field trips, other classroom and school activities, as well as all the curriculum you are covering. Label each day, include your students in the amount of work still to go. Students need to know they are still accountable for the rest of school year just as their principal is still accountable for the rest of the year, even though he's retiring.

We have a lot of fun coming our way to finish the year. Put all that fun right on your calendars; show the kids that we're moving toward fun. First, though, comes the work. Help the students put first things first by getting the calendar to show the end in mind. Students who are slowing the process can use the incentive to help the class achieve its goals. We don't have to tie the fun staff as the reward for completing our work. We can, however, make it clear to students that the expectation is that they have the work to complete before we can move to the fun. The work and the fun are Big Rocks, but even Big Rocks have to be scheduled and prioritized.

We will walk this journey in the dark together, moving always toward the light. The pinpoint will get brighter. In the meantime, let's walk together and get the students to walk with us. Most of them see better in the dark than we do.

"I feel I should be trying to complete my life, whatever 'completing a life' means." ~Oliver Sacks

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Big Rocks:

• The hallways are becoming dangerous. Students are not paying attention to using the right side of the hall much less to walking in quiet lines. Even on the way to lunch (or especially on the way to lunch), the halls are too loud for any class to focus on work. The office literally has to stop during these passing times. Please go over the line rules with your students and help reinforce the use of quiet, safe lines. Start right off in the mornings. Wait for other classes to leave if they are being loud and gang-style walking in the halls. Then ask your class to be the hallway leaders we need them to be.
• A BIG thanks to Bill for a wonderful Variety Show. He worked very hard, many nights, to make the show a reality.
• I want to thank Sue K. and Judy's daughter, Jacky, for the song dedicated to me. I was so touched I was speechless. 
• Have you noticed the changes in the LMC? Judy has gotten ideas form the students, Jeff has put them into place, and Judy's son Zach and friends did much of the work. The LMC is coming along well. Take a tour of the new changes!
• Thanks to Mary Ann and Michelle S. for al the work getting our tour guides together and creating a wonderful 4th grade visit again this year. The 4th graders were polite and genuinely interested in our school. The tour guides did a great job! Thanks, Mary Ann and Michelle!!

Our Schedule for the Week of May 18, 2015

Monday:        6th Grade M-Step continues all week!
                      8:30 SIP Meeting (Sarah and Robin) CO

Tuesday:        Evaluation meetings with principals (check GoogleDoc)
                      9:15 Sally video recording for ELA

Wednesday:   3:45 Planning Team
                      4:15 ERC Pilot meeting (Hayes)

Thursday:      9:30 Middle School support mtg (Sarah and Terry) Cooper
                      3:45 Extended Staff meeting
                      6:00 PTA Board mtg
                      6:30 PTA meeting

Friday:           Terry off
                       SIP due to CO

We Appreciate You!

Wow! What an amazing Teacher Appreciation Week!  We have such an incredible PTA and they pulled out all the stops to honor all of you.  You deserve to be honored.  This is a tough job and many would say it's not a job; it's a calling.  We are builders. We build relationships, friendships, and community. We inspire children to be better students, better sons and daughters, better people.  We are gamechangers.  We change lifes everyday!

I cringe every time someone says that they wouldn't want their own child to join the teaching profession.  I know we have been beaten down.  We have to defend our profession in a way we never had to before.  We have growing class sizes, growing diversity of student needs, increasing standardized tests and accountability, and social media that is changing school culture.  Yet, if I had to do it all again, I would still become a teacher.  It's been a fulfilling career so far and I can't imagine standing at the end of my career and saying I would have done something different.  I wouldn't ever deny my children the opportunity to have a job that makes a difference everyday.  To be that one person who changed a child's life.  To be the one who taught a child to love reading.  To be the one that provided a safe sanctuary in a child's unstable world.

The other day I had one of our infamous 6th grade hoody wearing students in my office.  He had been kicked out of class by the sub again.  We were talking about his behavior and his Emerson transition. He suddenly asked, "Mrs. Aherne, how many days are left of school?"  I said, "I don't know.  Let's count."  After several seconds, I responded, "23 and a ½ days.  Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"  He responded, "Bad."  "Bad? Why bad?"  I asked.  He looked up at me and said, "Bad because I was actually starting to like this school."

See?!? My heart was singing!  "The children who need love the most ask for it in the most unforgiving ways."  We've all heard that and it's so true.  There are some students who we are not going to see traditional success in grades or behavior in two years at our school. Yet, I firmly believe that showing love and kindness will always be remembered and does make a difference.  What if for that one student that belief that we instill in them that they are worth it, they are important, they are leaders carries them through bad years, difficult home situations, and worse.  I wouldn't change those moments for anything.

Here's to all of you!  For making passion your life's work.  For changing the world.  For making a difference in the lives of students everyday.

I've shown this before but it is my favorite.  This sums up everything I believe to be true.

And another great video just for fun.

Big Rocks:
Variety Show is this week!  A big thank you to Bill Lietz for all of his hard work and dedication.  We've been blessed to have not one but TWO Variety Shows this year.  The students are so excited to show off their acts.  See the calendar below for times

M-Step begins this week for 6th grade.  Please see Terry to get your tickets.  You will have help available in all labs.  No cell phones are allowed by students in the labs.  Please collect all tickets and scrap paper when finished because it must be shredded.

Teachers please make sure you are walking your class all the way to the buses and then taking out your bus card.  We are having lots of issues with not having all of the students down to the buses or cards being pulled and then having stragglers.  It is making the bus duty jobs and our bus drivers jobs more difficult.

There has already been some questions about signing out on the last day of school.  Terry and I will put up a sign up sheet closer to June 12.  Teachers can sign up to check out on Thursday, June 11 but must still come in on Friday, June 12.  Last year, teachers were allowed to go on Thursday if they were ready and had beeen checked out.  That was a special accomodation that was made to Phase 1 Bond schools.  Since teachers came in on Saturdays and stayed many nights, they were granted special permission to leave Thursday.  If you have any questions, please see an administrator.

Calendar for the Week of May 11, 2015:
Monday: Variety Show 9:00-10:30 5th grade, 1:45-3:00 6th grade
                M-Step Begins
Tuesday: 4th Grade Transition Visits from Grant and Hayes AM
                Variety Show 6-9 PM
Wednesday: QAR meeting at CO 9:30-11:00 (Sarah)
                   Planning/Lighthouse Meeting 3:45-5:00
                  District School Improvement Team meeting (Sarah) 5:15-6:15
Thursday: Staff meeting 8:00
                 School Improvement meeting 9:00-1:00 (Sarah and Robin)
Friday:  Last Young Adult Book Club 8:00 Paperboy
              4th Grade Transition Visits from Roosevelt and Cleveland AM
             Principal's Meeting at CO 1:00-4:30 (Sarah and Terry)

Last-TIme-Lasts

“The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.”  ― Friedrich Nietzsche

We are running out of time. Lao Tzu calls time a “created thing.” That created thing is escaping our grasp at a rapid pace. There are only weeks to go in the school year. Weeks to complete the M-Step testing, finish the school improvement plan, do all the end of the year items such as Field Day (with its preparations), scheduling students into 2015/16 classes, end-of-year field trips, etc. The list feels endless. Ah, there’s time in that endlessness.

And for me, this ending is so bittersweet.

So many lasts that are last-time-lasts. It’s hard not to have it in the back of my head that the fall will come and I will not be the person greeting students and staff, planning the first day agenda for our PD day, or thinking about and planning 6^th grade camp (how will we get all that luggage out there?). It’s been my life for a long time. It’s been my principle role.

I am feeling a lot of guilt about leaving Cooper. At the same time, I want to celebrate all of these last-time-lasts. I won’t get to do this again. I want to enjoy the lasts in the same way we do every year with the last things we do. And I want to celebrate the last-time-lasts for me. The guilt about leaving fights with the joy at all we’ve accomplished and that this has been a job well done. I’m trying to find the balance in these last weeks. Balance the joy of the end of something wonderful with the sadness that it has to end. I want to end this book well. No regrets. Nothing left to chance in these last weeks.

In our profession, we are finished at the end of each school year. And we are never really finished. For me, the job is ending. My role as a leader at Cooper is ending.

Time to make this story's happy ending.

“The opposite of the happy ending is not actually the sad ending--the sad ending is sometimes the happy ending. The opposite of the happy ending is actually the unsatisfying ending.”  ― Orson Scott Card

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Big Rocks

• Testing window changes allow us to schedule 6th grade M-Step beginning May 11. Please email Terry if there are days or times in that week you cannot test. We will get schedules out by Wednesday so we need that information right away. The test window continues to June 5
• ACES is Wednesday. You will get a map and directions. We will have parents stationed around the building to assist with students following the route.

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Our schedule for this week

Monday:          Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

Tuesday:          PD all day at Cooper!

Wednesday:    ACES!

                           8:00 IST in the Conference Room

Thursday:         No staff meeting!

                            10:00 DAC at CO (Terry)

Friday:               8:00 Title I Meeting at CO (Sarah, Terry, Robin)