Self-Empowerment through Self-Analysis and Intentional Mindsets

As the looming onslaught of state and federal mandates descend upon the legions of educational professionals tasked with their implementation, a workforce that has spent the last decade under the mentality that their field and passion is under siege, it is increasingly common to hear a flow of helplessness and despair in faculty rooms and PLC meetings around the state.  How can anyone combat this overwhelming negativity?  The answer lies first in each individual.  In Dr. Anthony Colella’s essay, “Pathways to Self-Empowerment”, a simple set of guidelines for self-change are presented. Readers will note that in order to truly change, an individual must truly reflect inward and repetitively reinforce the life they imagine. Henry David Thoreau, in his seminal work, Walden, noted that “What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.” Colella recognizes that through recognizing the personal belief system, determining the self-talk an individual engages in, and modifying that talk while supplementing strong visualizations, an individual can take the first step towards changing the environment; changing himself.

Before we can ever hope or even expect to change, there must be a period of honest self-reflection and analysis.  Too often the ability to look clearly at our biases and excuses get in the way of changing our lives.  One of the fundamental mistakes we make as people is to fall into the cynical belief that we are simply unable to change “who we really are.”  This belief alone can have devastating consequences toward our ability to alter our outlook on life, and then improve it.  In a study on “mental strength training” performed by exercise psychologists “conclude[d] that the mental training employed by this study enhance[d] the cortical output signal, which drives the muscles to a higher activation level and increases strength” (Ranganathan, et al.). Simply pretending that they were lifting weights in their minds produced actual increases in their physical ability to lift weight.  While the rational aspects of our brain would typically reject this anecdote if it were presented by a lay person, a clinical research study is certainly more reliable, and therefore, harder to simply dismiss.  Only when we have removed this barrier, the acceptance that we are not simply capable of change, in fact we are built for it, will we be able to take the next step toward creating the changes that we desire.  These techniques alone are not a panacea however, and will require dedication and practice in order to see lasting results.

In the same way that we must focus on being self-critical enough to recognize the biases and belief systems that influence our thinking, so too must we take a hard and accurate look at the way we speak to ourselves.  Colella refers to this as “Self-talk”, and prior to change we must first determine whether ours is positive or negative: “Simply stated - if one believes that he or she is not capable or competent or lovable, then that person will develop a mental vocabulary and complete life script to substantiate and validate the accuracy of the belief system; however, if one believes that he or she is capable, competent and lovable, the tape and script which follow are consistent with that belief.” Similar to the thesis posited by Carol Dweck in her book Mindset, Colella places a great deal of weight on the perception of an individual in the desire to effectively change.  This awareness of how self-talk influences our decision making process, and self-awareness, must be realistic and critical in order for the next step to take place, changing the way we self talk and visualize ourselves.

When we typically think about athletes, we focus on their physical attributes first, how quickly they run, how much weight they can lift, and their various body measurements.  What we fail to look at in most instances, are the routines and practices that these same athletes put themselves through outside of the field of play.  Johnny Damon, an outfielder for the first Red Sox team to win a World Series in 86 years, stated in his book Idiot, that the only thing that differentiates Triple-A players from Major Leaguers is their dedication to work.  Even the highest performers in their sports realize the value of self-empowerment. “...Muhammad Ali, used different mental practices to enhance his performance in the ring such as: ‘affirmation; visualization; mental rehearsal; self-confirmation; and perhaps the most powerful epigram of personal worth ever uttered: ‘I am the greatest’”(LeVan).  The ability to train yourself towards positive self-talk and visualization, in place of any type of physical action, still has the capacity to allow for tremendous personal change.

Don Quixote sits aloft his frail horse, with Sancho Panza at his side.  Picasso’s rendering of this scene in a simple sketch is often paired with a Spanish verb in strong, red letters: Sonar (To Dream).  This poster stood in my classroom for 10 years paired with a different quote, but one that resonates in lieu of Colella’s article. "I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” Thoreau once again reminds us that we alone hold the key to making the changes we wish to see in the world.  The more this mindset begins to permeate our educational institutions, the more we will see a workforce ready to respond to whatever initiative is thrown their way, with both confidence, and excitement at the challenge.

REFERENCES:

Colella, Anthony J., Ph.D. "Pathways to Self-Empowerment." (1994): n. pag. Print.

LeVan, Angie. "Seeing Is Believing: The Power of Visualization." Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers, LLC, 12 Dec. 2009. Web. 21 Jan. 2014.

Ranganathan, Vinoth K., Vlodek Siemionow, Jing Z. Liu, Vinod Sahgal, and Guang H. Yue. "From Mental Power to Muscle Power--gaining Strength by Using the Mind." Neuropsychologia 42.7 (2004): 944-56. Science Direct. Web.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. N.p.: n.p., 1929. Print.

From All Sides: The Disastrous Effects of Short-Term Thinking in Educational Policy

“As soldiers arrive on the battlefields of Afghanistan, they face enormous expectations to show "progress." It is an impossible situation: the military's counterinsurgency strategy requires, by all accounts, years to implement and even longer to succeed. Yet officers are pressured, both by political considerations in Washington and command expectations in Kabul, to accomplish big objectives on very short time frames. Because it's rare for a tour of duty to last more than 12 months, commanders are severely constrained in what choices they can make. It's difficult to be slow and deliberate when one must show progress, right now, in time for a Congressional hearing or a strategic review. Those pressures constraint incentives and shape day-to-day decision-making. Officers, perhaps understandably, look for ways to demonstrate short-term gain, sometimes at the cost of long-term success. Today, Tarok Kolache is "cleared." Three years from now, when the Obama administration says it will begin reducing troop numbers, how stable, safe, and anti-Taliban will its remaining villagers really be?” (How Short-Term Thinking is Causing Long-Term Failure in Afghanistan, by Joshua Foust, The Atlantic)

Putting professionals into situation where the emphasis on showing short-term progress in lieu of the overall long-term goals of a particular situation can have devastating and long-lasting effects on an organization.  No where is this more true in education than it is in the State of New Jersey, where a recent confluence of political, economic, and social variables threatens to undermine the profession of teaching, and the role that public education plays in our state.  The long term effects of these policies and shifts in social values will make it much harder to attract competent professionals to the public schools in our communities, and the effect on students will only serve to exacerbate this looming catastrophe.  The game is being played right now in a way that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, unless the root causes for these changes can be recognized, the myths dispelled, and a more ethical and intelligent course of action can be reached by all involved parties.

At first glance, the primary culprit in the changing view of educational professionals can be laid at the feet of our state political system.  The attacks on unions, lead primarily by the governor, have fundamentally weakened the public perceptions and the bargaining ability of the unions, both of which are essential to continue their relevance and existence.  There are numerous, dubious reasons for these attacks. “In the past five years, we have witnessed a demonization of teachers unions that is close to achieving its goal: destruction of the most stable and potentially powerful defender of mass public education. Teacher union’s continued existence is imperiled — if what we define as "existence" is organizations having the legal capacity to bargain over any meaningful economic benefits and defend teachers’ rights to exercise professional judgment about what to teach and how to do it” (Werner). The successful destruction of the union would have many negative effects on the quality of our teaching workforce.  There would be unprecedented numbers of people leaving the profession, and those that would choose to become teachers given the negative way that they would be treated would call into serious question the standards to which these potential candidates hold themselves.  Losing good teachers to the demonization of our profession would therefore have a direct impact on the quality of education provided to our students.  As with most states that have a history of strong Teacher’s Unions, New Jersey is consistently ranked highly when compare to the other states, with a strong union having an almost direct correlation to highly achieving student populations.  The continued deconstruction of the unions is a short-term idea, that would have devastating long-term consequences.

Everyone likes the idea of lowering taxes.  This is uniquely true in New Jersey, where we have the highest percentage of property taxes in the United States.  It was easy to run on this, as Chris Christie discovered (although he has demonstrated much more difficulty in devising ways to actually lower them), and he eventually passed a 2% cap on local governments that wanted to avoid referendums that went to a vote.  Naturally, as local school budgets are tied directly to the property taxes, this in effect created a 2% increase on schools themselves, “thus scoring a political triumph that could give voters greater control over how their towns and school districts raise and spend money. With his signature, Christie lowered the existing ceiling on annual increases from 4 to 2 percent, and closed most loopholes in the existing law. When towns and schools starved of revenue want to raise taxes higher, they will have to get permission from a majority of local voters — something foes warn will widen the chasm between rich and poor communities” (Heininger). Another byproduct of this law, has occurred in the hiring process at local schools. I came to realize this in full after last year’s interviews, where the Director of Human Resources instructed all building principals in our district to not interview any potential candidates with more than 1 year of teaching on their resume.  This edict, and various others across our state, make it difficult to hire qualified staff, while at the same time making it almost impossible for established teachers to switch districts if they are unhappy.  Clearly, this affects students when they will be increasing placed in front of teachers that are either brand new, and learning on the job, or teachers that are stuck in buildings they may no longer wish to be in.  Over the long-term, the effect of this seemingly innocuous short-term decision represents a perilous path for New Jersey.

Recent years have seen the number of students applying to, and being accepted by, colleges rise at an exponential rate.  As this national trend has continued, it has had obvious effects on the types of programs being implemented in public schools to prepare students for this eventuality.  Schools pride themselves on the number of students that they place into colleges, and the state and federal government adopted new ways of assessing schools by this criteria.  Somewhere lost in this seemingly common sense approach however, is a basic truth, “what's still getting lost, some argue, is that too many students are going to college not because they want to, but because they think they have to” (Marklein). Clearly, all students should have the opportunity to go to college, but what is less easy to say, is whether or not all should.  The social pressure that districts are under to show that their schools send students to colleges at high rates poses some questions about the degree to which they are assessing and attending to the needs of a diverse population of individuals.  No where is this more apparent than the loss of Vocational education programs with normal public high schools.  Where once these classes were filled by students confidently preparing themselves for the workforce, we know see scores of students that have simply been removed from the mainstream due to lack of engagement or skill.  The social stigma that is now carried by those that aren’t “college material” often means that these students, many of whom have been made to feel less than for much of their academic careers, see where they have been placed not as an opportunity, but as confirmation that they are broken or deficient.  When too many of our curricular decisions are made in this regard, we do our students a great disservice, all in the name of “helping” them.

The past few years in education have shown a great deal of upheaval, and a slew of initiatives and changes designed to better the future and opportunities for our students in a new and growing global marketplace. It is our job as leaders within these communities to make sure that the decisions we are making make just as much sense 20 and 30 years down the line as they do in the immediate years to come.  The political, economic, and social pressures that are being exerted on our profession are strong, but we as educators have a duty, to inform those around us, in both our teaching and social lives, that these types of knee-jerk reactions will do far more harm than good. Hopefully, we are successful in this endeavor, our students’ future may depend upon it.

References

Foust, Joshua. "How Short-Term Thinking Is Causing Long-Term Failure in Afghanistan." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 24 Jan. 2011. Web. 10 Apr. 2014.

Heininger, Claire. "N.J. Gov. Christie Signs 2 Percent Property Tax Cap Bill."The Star-Ledger. Nj.com, n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2014.

Marklein, Mary B. "What If a College Education Just Isn't for Everyone?" USA Today, 16 Mar. 2010. Web. 11 Apr. 2014.

Werner, Lois. "Teacher Unionism Reborn." New Politics. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2014.

Bringing Weapons to School

In so many of the movies that I’ve watched over the past 25 years, a common trope is apparent.  Anytime there is some new technology or innovation introduced into our society, it is almost always co-opted by some form of bureaucracy, and in most cases, weaponized.

The movie that really drove this point home for me as a child was “Short Circuit,” a quintessential 80’s flick starring Steve Guttenberg, Ally Sheedy, and of course, the sarcastic robot, Johnny Number 5.  As anyone my age will tell you, the idea of having a robot like Johnny 5 around would have been, in the parlance of our time, radical.  This was an amazing technology, an artificial intelligence capable of independent thought, with a thirst for knowledge, and a desire for fun as well as social justice.
The main crux of the film was that Johnny and his creators were trying to save him from being turned into a mindless killing machine.  Of course they succeed, and evil is punished accordingly.
A more recent and, in retrospect, way cooler, example of this is the plotline in the latest installment of the Batman franchise, “The Dark Knight Returns”.  At one point in the film we learn that Bruce Wayne and the R&D wing of his company have constructed an experimental energy reactor capable of delivering free power to all of Gotham (read, NYC).  The only catch is that he refuses to turn it on, because he is afraid that the introduction of the technology will call for, wait for it, a desire from others to turn it into a weapon.
Eventually, it IS turned on, subsequently weaponized, and used as a bludgeon to bring the city to its knees.  Batman’s only solution is to drag it out to sea, where it can explode without hurting anyone.
Over the past few weeks, the hazy details of the State of New Jersey’s plan to enforce the development of Student Growth Objectives (SGO’s), also known by their alter-ego, Student Learning Objectives, have begun to emerge.  As the Instructional Leader in my building, I’ve been tasked with helping the staff through this process.
We are currently developing the Objectives themselves, essentially the skills that educators will target in their classrooms as a way of gauging the progress of their students.
On it’s face, a Student Growth Objective is a great idea.  The concept is that teachers will create assessments that will check a student’s level of understanding of specific concepts multiple times over the course of the year.  The teachers will look at the data that has been collected on each child, and use that information to guide the instruction for EACH INDIVIDUAL CHILD BASED ON THEIR SPECIFIC LEVEL OF NEED.
If you are at all familiar with the blog, you know what a high value I place on Individualized Instruction, and this appears to be a great tool that we can use to start actually altering the types of instruction that are considered acceptable in a 21st Century Classroom.  The more I have gone through the process with the staff in my building, from Math teachers to the In School Suspension teacher, the more I have come to realize how innovative and valuable this exercise has the capacity to become.
But here’s the problem, and isn’t this always the problem?  They want to turn it into a weapon.
The SGO process is tied directly to the state legislation known collectively as EE4NJ (Excellent Educators for NJ), an acronym that begs two initial questions:

1.  By what measure are the educators in NJ, a state that consistently over the last 40 years has been ranked among the top 5 performers in the country, not excellent?

and,

2. How can we strive for excellence when the bill itself substitutes the word ‘for’ with the letter ‘4’ in its own name; did they write it through text message?

All joking aside, the bill calls for the SGO’s to make up 50% of a teacher’s evaluation each year.  While this may not seem problematic, there are many troubling reasons this should not be tied to keeping your job.

The first is that teachers, in order to guarantee that they can keep doing what they love, will be reluctant to make the SGO’s as rigorous as they should, or can, be.  By holding the bar as high as possible, you are potentially shooting yourself in the foot.  

In addition, the student populations in individual schools will now be consistently called into question within that school.  Since the ability to show growth in your students is the measure of success, a teacher with a different classroom make-up compared to his or her colleagues may be at an advantage or disadvantage.  Students with strong work ethics and supportive families will be a hot commodity for teachers.  In some schools, however, the strongest teachers are sometimes syphoned students that struggle in various ways, because of their previous track successes with such students. Unfortunately, a class full of struggling students competing against a more heterogeneous grouping may hurt these high quality teachers.

Finally, those that teach Math or Language Arts are considered teachers of a “Tested Area”.  In addition to their SGO’s, these teachers will have up to 35% of their retention evaluations linked to Standardized Test scores alone.  Aside from keeping potential Math and Language Arts graduates away from those subjects, and the lack of job security linked with pay that they offer, current teachers in those subjects have a distinctly different level of anxiety when compared to their colleagues in the “Non-tested Area’s”.

The culmination of the building-wide anxiety that was created by this law, and its intended effect of essentially ending tenure, brought the tension in our building to the forefront the past three weeks.

And it didn’t have to be this way.  They took a great, innovative idea, and used it to create a cudgel, a weapon.

This is nothing new, the influx of high-stakes testing as an evaluative tool is in and of itself a very similar story.  What we need to ask ourselves as we move forward, not just as educators, but as a society, is what do we truly value in the education of our children.  Do we hope to make them into critically thinking innovators, or simply an army of test-taking, institutionally bullied imitators.

The state has it half right, looking at students as individuals is key to unlocking their potential as students and learners.  The problem is taking that good idea, and using it to intimidate and threaten the very people responsible for creating the type of students we all want to see in our society.

I think back to the way this is handled in the films that I’ve seen.  The only way to stop the potentially damaging weaponization of quality innovations is simple, you have to fight back, and you have to let everyone see you doing it.  If we do it that way, we can retain the value of the innovation, and shame those who would use it inappropriately into the background.  That, or we’re going to need a talking robot or Batman to save everyone.

I think I’m more comfortable relying on us.

An Open Letter to Students: What to do While the Adults are "Reforming" your Education

Dear Students,

If you attend my district, you’ve probably noticed a slight chill in the air this week at school, that has unfortunately very little to do with the weather.  Your teachers had a full staff meeting this week, where they were formally introduced to the newest reform initiative in our state, the “Excellent Educators for New Jersey” (EE4NJ) evaluation reform law that goes into effect next year.  Now, that may sound like a strange thing to you, and it should.  As much as it claims to be for your benefit, you can simply add it to the numerous other acronyms that will be done in your name over the rest of your public education; QSAC, PGO, CCSS, PLP, ASK, PARCC, HIB, SST, and SIP to name only a few more.

EE4NJ is essentially a guarantee.  A guarantee that your teachers will probably have a latent, hopefully subconscious, level of disdain for you for the rest of their careers, now that your progress through school is directly tied to whether they get to keep their jobs.  

It also guarantees that those once-a-year, mind-numbing, single measure tests that you’ve been taking will simply not be enough data to fire those terrible teachers, so expect standardized assessments in EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOUR CLASSES 4 TIMES A YEAR, until you graduate, or tap-out from exhaustion or anxiety. This doesn’t include the new and improved end-of-the-year standardized tests, which will also become 4-time-a-year as well. If you’re counting, that’s somewhere around 24 standardized assessments a year, and that’s the minimum. Over a public school career, the total conservative baseline number is 325 tests. Awesome.

You can expect that you’ll be well prepared for these tests, because if you fail them, half of your teacher’s evaluation is in jeopardy, so be ready for a year of test prep, every year.  Teachers will also be observed about twice as many times as well, so the odds of a great teacher deciding to get a job in this state is probably going to decrease as well.

But enough about us teachers, you still need to learn don’t you?

I don’t hold a whole bunch of stock in Self-Help style texts, nor am I one who outwardly seeks out the various advice columns in my paper, but I think you all might need some assistance in the coming years.  Here is a handy checklist of activities that you should be doing on your own, while us adults are busy “reforming” your education.

1. Find something you love to do, and do it as much as possible.  The odds of your classes being a place that values self-expression, or various ways of solving a problem, are on their way out.  Expect that the time you spend in school will do little to develop yourself as a person, as you will primarily be viewed as a number moving through a system from here on out.  That means when school is out, you need to follow your passions, and seek out mentors that can help you actually learn things.  Look at stuff on the internet, there’s some worthwhile stuff being done on the fringes, here’s a good example: Seth Godin, "Stop Stealing Dreams"

2.  Read for fun. Trust me, this one’s going out the window.  You’ll be doing mostly “informational” reading at school, sounds like a blast right? They’ll also want you annotating everything and proving that you understand the various intricacies of historical and scientific texts, yippee!  Books are one of the best pleasures that you can take in life, don’t let them destroy that for you.

3.  Ask your teachers and principals “Why?” whenever they ask you to do anything that sounds or feels like compliance, and not learning.   When they run out of answers, work your way up to your Superintendent, Board of Education, and eventually the people your parents elect to represent them.  Don’t expect a whole bunch of logical responses outside of demanding that you do as you are told... keep asking.

4. Remember what is happening to you, remember how it feels to be a part of this system.  Go into the world, regardless of the cynical way you are being taught, and be an agent for change.  Remember what you had to do outside of your school to be effective, smart, and caring.  Do your best to force people to give our next group of kids a real shot at a quality, ethical, and humanistic education.

I’m sure there’s more to add to this list.  I wish it didn’t have to exist, but as far as us educators are involved, it’s being decided for us, and is therefore our reality.  While the adults are busy figuring this thing out though, time is passing, time that you need to spend protecting your biggest investment, your mind.

What advice do we still need to give?  Students, teachers, parents, politicians, and community members, please let me know...