What's happiness got to do with teacher retention and loyalty? Everything. According to Martin Seligman, founder of Positive Psychology, positive feelings enable employees to be open to new ideas and tackle challenging problems. Moreover, in a business setting, happy employees are more likely to create happy, loyal, and referral generating clients.
So, what's the secret? Seligman has eight steps each of us can take in order to make our classrooms, faculties, departments, and districts a happier place to work:
Step One: Be Optimistic. There is power in positive thinking. We should always see the glass as half full whenever interacting colleagues. Allowing negativity to seep into our thinking, gives negativity the opportunity to fester in the minds of your team. Perception is a dangerous breeding ground and when employees perceive a situation to be to their detriment, they are less likely to embrace new assignments and change. (Stay away from the Faculty Lounge...)
Step Two: Gratitude. Be thankful for your co-workers and your achievements. You never know why people are in your life for this moment in time. Even though the situation may feel pressurized, these individuals are helping you to become the employee you were meant to be.
Step Three: Forgiveness. The longer contempt festers, the less likely you are to see the opportunities in front of you.
Step Four: Improve Your Self Talk. For example, you have an opportunity to work on the Professional Development team or to be the Inservice Facilitator for your campus. In the middle of each meeting, you refer to yourself as, "the village idiot." Perception is a powerful tool. Think of yourself in negative terms long enough and the people around you will start behaving towards you in that fashion.
Step Five: "Flow." Anything that you love to do that makes you forget about the time spent doing it - find more time to do it. Your life is what you need to concentrate on. Work is what pays the bills. Your life is what you do with the rest of it. If you spend too many hours worrying about someone else's children, who is worrying about your own?
Step Six: Savor. Take time to reflect on living in the moment. Tomorrow will happen TOMORROW. Start a positivity journal and write down all of the positive things that are happening to you right now. You will be surprised by the number of great things that happen to you over the course of a day, a week, a month, or even a year.
Step Seven: Reframe. Think of a frustrating moment at work as a photograph. You can photoshop this snapshot any way you choose. You can crop it, resize it, add color or decrease color and change the mood to make it better. Instead of reacting to the situation in the moment, reframe it. After a few days come back to the snapshot. If your initial reactions are still worth the confrontation, then discuss the situation with your colleague or boss.
Step Eight: Strength Building. Do what you do best at every opportunity. Build these opportunities into your work even if they do not currently exist. The more opportunities you have to do the things you love, the more opportunities you create for a climate for happiness.
What's Next, Following Up? explores what happens after the training is over. Join us as we discuss strategies that support transfer of knowledge to student practice. Share your successes and challenges. Let your voices be heard! Login on Monday, April 21st at 2:30 pm EST. Email droberts@browardschools.com today for the link to this webinar discussion.
Our district is moving away from isolated, "sit and get" workshops to more meaningful forms of professional learning. Join our panel of professional developers, teachers, curriculum specialists, instructional technologists, and library media specialists as we discuss alternatives to traditional inservice workshops on Friday, April 11, 2008, from 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm Eastern Standard Time.
We use Elluminate Live! for our webinar discussions. This session was recorded. To view the recording, please click on the link: https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2008-04-11.1202.M.56DB515F6A8E1D2912F82BB6170A1F.vcr
If you would like more information about upcoming webinar events, please register via PDSS. Please email Denise Roberts at droberts@browardschools.com if you have a question that you would like addressed during the webinar session.
Attachment(s): HRD Webinars 2008.doc
Another instrument from the 2007-2008 Planning and Implementing School-based Professional Development comes from Flanagan High School's PD Team. Randy O'Dowd, Kathleen Cappy, Sheila Lablanc, Judy Muth, and Principal Sharon Shaulis, revised their plan to include a clearly defined purpose for the role faculty members play in professional development training at their school. I've included a snapshot of one of the roles as an attachment to this post. How would using an instrument similar to this support your professional development plan?
Attachment(s): Untitled3.jpg
As a result of working together during 2007-2008 Planning and Implementing School-based Professional Development training, the PD Team at Cypress Bay High School (Marianela Estripeaut, Kelly Grady, Tammie Gonzalez, and Assistant Principal Priscilla Ribiero) streamlined their professional development calendar. I've attached a picture of the first page of the document that was distributed to all faculty at the school. In what ways is this document different from what your school uses? How would using an instrument similar to this one support a professional development plan?
Attachment(s): Untitled1.jpg
Twenty-seven hours is a magic number, indeed. Plenty of teachers, union stewards, and administrators know this number by heart. It spells out the number of hours teachers can use for school-based professional development. What do 27 hours actually look like on a typical campus? Let's take a minute to think about the last month of work. How many meetings did you attend? You may have attended grade level, team, department, committee, leadership, and/or curriculum council meetings to name a few. These are in addition to the professional development hours that you incorporate into your work. What do you discuss at these meetings that is markedly different from what is covered during your 27 PD hours? How are the topics related? When you think about your professional learning as a whole instead of in fragmented parts, we spend up to three times the number of hours designated in a contract on professional development. In what ways can we capture time to reflect what we are actually doing?
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Yippee for small victories! My husband has finally agreed to get rid of his sofa that smells like feet. Let me tell you, getting him to the table to even think about getting rid of that eyesore took plenty of negotiating. His biggest argument was, "I've just gotten it broken in." We started with small concessions. I agreed to get rid of a few pieces of abstract prints, and he agreed to get rid of his eight track tape deck. The next step was to get him to start thinking about the change. The best way I thought of to do that was by asking him to help me find just the right area rug for the den. Once we got to the furniture store, we discussed the pros and cons of the different furniture groupings that were arranged on top of the area rugs. Moving Keith from talking about a new sofa to purchasing it took a bit more leverage. I had to bring out my biggest negotiating piece...my favorite red leather outfit from the early 80's. That outfit reminded me of my party days. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Once I agreed to give that away, he agreed to give the couch away to a charity.
Negotiations take time. First, you have to know what it is your colleagues are getting out of being entranched in an idea. With my husband, it was obvious. He kept repeating the same statements over and over that he thought his sofa was comfortable and safe. Are your colleagues repeating the same statements to you at your meetings? What is it about the change that is setting them off? Next, your team needs for you to be able to bring them into your thought processes. They need to be able to discuss the pros and cons once they have a clear picture of where you want them to go. And remember to save your biggest negotiating tools for last.
How do you keep track of the points and determine who receives credit for the training at the end of the school year? In my work across the district, I am constantly reminded of how innovative teachers can be when they are asked to manage a process. Take a look at the different ways professional development is documented by the Inservice Facilitators at Westglades Middle and Cypress Bay High. Is inservice a major ingredient of a professional development plan? YES! If you have a process that is working for you and wouldn't mind sharing it with your peers, please send the document as an attachment to me in an email to:
droberts@browardschools.com. It will be added as an attachment to this post. The more we know, the more we grow...
Attachment(s): 2nd 9 weeks Inservice 07-08.doc
How telling that the most popular post to this blog talks about getting rid of bad teachers. It’s easy to point out where teaching falls through the cracks. That’s a cop out. What’s more challenging is to align what’s working in our schools. What are the best teachers doing right in their classrooms? Why is it that these teachers can turn the most dismal of surroundings into islands of success?
Maybe we should do
Asset Mapping and hone in on what is right with schools. This means locating those diamonds in the rough in our schools. Sometimes the best and brightest teachers are the most reluctant to share their processes with others. Why is that? What do fellow teachers, administrators, and professional developers do to turn these teachers off and how do we turn them back on? Now that’s a thought. Curing what's wrong with the teaching profession can be done if we start seriously focusing on our positives.
Finland, known for it's beautiful lakes and breathtaking forests, is now known as an educational powerhouse according to the latest results from PISA. The results from this assessment measures 15 year olds capabilities in reading science, and math literacy. According to these results, Finnish students are the best prepared in the world.
How did Finland turn a once beleaguered economy into a beacon of high technology? It required a cultural shift. The Finnish people decided that in order to turn their economy around they needed to place a real emphasis on education. As a result of this cultural shift, when you ask a Finnish child the question, What do you want to be when you grow up? The answer is "I want to be a teacher." In Finland, teaching is the highest profession anyone could aspire to and only the best in the community are allowed to teach.
School-based professional development in Finland is not based on tracking state or national assessments. To the contrary, the turn around of Finnish schools is in large part due to empowering groups of teachers to create solutions to thechallenges in their schools. This model closely mirrors the concept of a professional learning community. What do you think? Is your school aligned with a state or county assessment? How is that working for you?
“It’s easier to tone down a wild idea than to think up a new one.” Alex
Osborne
How true. Alex Osborne, the father of the brainstorming technique, shared this revelation in 1957. In his book, Applied Imagination, he gives four rules for engaging in a brainstorming session: don’t criticize, quantity is wanted, combine and improve suggested ideas, and say all ideas that come to mind, no matter how wild.
How effective is brainstorming in generating ideas for your school-based professional development? Think about your last grade level or committee meeting.
About 10-20 people gathered in a room. The leader of the meeting is either their administrator, who makes some teachers relunctant to offer an idea that may be perceived as “silly”, or a “talented moderator” who may or may
not understand the big picture for the project nor thinks they should have to. Throw in two or three pushy people who monopolize the conversation with their marvelous ideas while silencing others, and this spells trouble. As the meeting progresses the group brainstorms ideas. Are any of these ideas quality? Maybe, or maybe not. Since
you can’t force anyone to produce quality, the group produces a hodge podge of ideas for the project. Oops, time's up and everyone heads off to either their respective classrooms, lunch duty, or the teacher's lounge. Will you follow-up on the brainstorming activity in your next meeting or let all of those ideas waste away in the stack of papers at the edge of your desk? My guess is you will file the ideas away in the "X" files. Now let's rewind this meeting and see if we can make this process more effective from the inside out.
Instead of brainstorming "out-of-the box” ideas, think "inside-the-box." Our challenges in classrooms and in schools require a focus on finding solutions from the inside. Here are some ideas to try at your next meeting:
1.) Create new “inside” boxes for your team to think out of. This requires you, as the leader of your professional development initiative, to figure out what you want as a result of the professional development and then create four or five questions to focus your efforts. A great resource for this is the BCPS Action Research toolbox. Of particular interest are the Affinity Diagram and Carousel Brainstorming tools.
2.) Once you have decided on the questions to drive “inside-the-box” thinking, break larger groups of 20 into several smaller groups of four. Each group will brainstorm ideas to one of the questions you have created.
3.) What to do with your pushy team members? Put them together in their own group by themselves. It’s hard to be a “sage on the stage” when everyone in your group is vying for the spotlight.
4.) Don’t leave the meeting without selecting the ideas that will drive your dialogue at your next meeting.
Keep me posted about your progress with your professional development. Is thinking "in-the-box" right for you?
I love the DVD 212 degrees produced by Simple Truths. After presenting the scientific fact that it takes one extra degree to turn boiling water into steam, you are taken on a journey to answer a simple question: What if you gave 99% effort to everything in life? How would life change without that extra degree of effort? How would your professional development change if you put forth that extra degree of effort?
The Education Trust showcased several schools that are turning up the steam in accelerating student achievement in a 2005 study entitled, Gaining Traction. These schools are reaching low-income and minority students who enter high school below grade level and turning those challenges into academic greatness. Eighty percent of these students enter and graduate from four year colleges and universities. Adding steam to their furnaces, parental involvement is NOT a factor in student success. Since parents were marginally involved in the schools, they factored them completely out of the equation. I've included a summary of the points that stood out to me from the report below. What the results give you is the outline of a successful school wide professional development plan. Are you producing "steam" in your school professional development? How could you incorporate any of these concepts into your team's efforts?
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School Culture |
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In school policy documents the clear focus is on academics and not rules. (i.e. Student Handbook)
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Teachers and Administration talk the talk and walk the walk consistently. (They share a common vision for student achievement and discuss it consistently throughout the school year.)
In Average Schools, the school mission and vision are posted on the school website and at the entrance of the school, but no one in the school lives it. |
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Teachers embrace external standards and assessments. In courses where these assessments do not exist, they create them.
In Average schools, teachers tolerate testing. |
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Academic Focus |
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Barriers to high-level course taking are removed. Students are encouraged to take academically challenging courses. (For example, criteria for Gifted, Honors, and Advanced Placement exist, but are not used to limit student entrance into these courses.)
Average schools post hurdles to gain access to the most challenging courses. |
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Assessment data is used for future planning (Curriculum mapping, PGPs, and teacher assignments). The Professional Growth Plan is a living document used by the principal in individual Data Chats with each teacher on a consistent basis.
In average schools, assessment data is used to measure past student achievement. |
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Teachers in these schools are less likely to tailor their instruction to the academic level of their students.
Differentiated instruction is used only as a supplement to assist their students in mastery of state standards. |
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Support |
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Support is given in a way that keeps students on track with their college prep requirements.
Average schools provide support that delays entry into courses at grade level making it harder for students to complete college prep requirements. |
“In the best case, they are a full day of one or two particular tools. In the worst case, they are one or two hours on a lot of tools. Either way, the experience usually serves to overwhelm, and at the end of the day (or hour) the participants head back to the craziness of their teaching lives where I’m guessing much of what they have “learned” fails to take root. Now that may be my fault to some extent, but it’s also a direct result of the “drive by” nature of much of what we call professional development. There’s little if anything to support the experience after it’s over.”
Will Richardson, Nationally Recognized Professional Development Expert
I think Will Richardson sums it up nicely. Workshops alone don’t work! They never have and unfortunately, plenty of people in schools and at the district level are relunctant to change gears. Workshops with "homework" as a follow-up activity don't work either. What a surprise to find that the No Child Left Behind Act’s focus on results is prompting school system leaders, professional developers, principals, and teachers to fine tune their professional development choices.
Developing a Professional Development Plan is one solution in my experience that really works. The plan, developed by a team of teachers and administrators, focuses on creating the best possible environment for Professional Learning Communities to thrive.
During the planning stage, the team creates SMART (strategic, measurable, actionable, relevant, and timely) objectives, strategies for sustaining and maintaining efforts, locating resources, scheduling, addressing challenges, and budget constraints. Workshops are one tool in an arsenal of professional development tools teams have at their disposal when they develop and implement a PD Plan. What’s working for you and your team? Would developing a PD Plan support your efforts?
Last week, Mayor Bloomberg of New York City, announced a plan to get rid of ineffective veteran teachers by bringing in some muscle - legal muscle that is. The Teacher Performance Unit (T-Unit) is made up of five lawyers and a prosecutor whose sole task is to expedite the departure of bad teachers from the school system. How big a problem are ineffective veteran teachers in schools? What are some possible solutions?
What will it take to keep you in the teaching profession five years from now? Better yet, what will it take to make it through to the end of this school year?
When I started teaching I was thrilled at the opportunity. I was given a set of keys, a grade book, some basic supplies and shown to my classroom. A veteran teacher who had been teaching at the school for over 20 years took me under his wing and offered me the following advice: (1) find a reliable teaching method and stick to it. (In other words, we don't like change), (2) You are responsible for YOUR classroom and YOUR students (Oh, by the way, don't step on other teacher's turf), and (3) Don't worry about any new instructional methods. Stick with what works. (Again, we don't like change.) Fortunately, I never listened to that advice. So, what will it take to keep you in the classroom? Inquiring minds want to know.