Fast Llamas,
Hey all, what great weather we have had this weekend! I am sitting outside this morning, enjoying a good cup of coffee and listening all the sounds! My house sits under Continental Airport flight path... I am starting to hear more and more airplanes fly over... this is good I think.
We had started "What Makes Schools Great" with Doug Curry, and we will get back to that soon... but, since I attended training, I wanted to share this information with you. The following information addresses Doug's core ideas about what makes a school great and aligns perfectly:
1. Belief
2. Relationships
3. Clear Expectations
4. Systems in that allow students to learn self-regulation and autonomy
Practices that make school great is the vehicle to help students develop socially and emotionally and achievement will come along for the ride.
This past week I attended the Learning Leader Institute. The institute was hosted by RTI and focused on Social and Emotional Learning. My day was focused on SEL and academic rigor. The learning for the day was grounded in CASEL'S SEL Framework. (they have a great Twitter feed if you are interested in more from them @caselorg).
You can also find more info on their website. www.casel.org
What's interesting is a lot of schools focus on SEL during advisory time or create lessons for students to focus on different aspects to help their social and emotional growth. At Labay, we use the 8 Keys of Excellence and Living Above the Line to align with CASEL's Competencies as ways to help students learn skills to/be:
1. more self aware - do they know the impact of their own behavior?
2. develop self-management - can they choose how to respond in ways that makes situations better?
3. develop social awareness - can they interact with others positively?
4. develop social skills - resolve and communicate in positive ways
5. responsible decision making - learning to make wise choices
Fast llama's know their impact on student growth is beyond our content. We are helping to educate and thus raise generations of students. This is an opportunity, not an obligation to show students the ways of success. To model how successful people live their lives. We do a lot of different activities using the 8 Keys, but, we can always do more and be more effective in our practices.
That's when I got hit with a thought. While it is a good idea to focus on lessons on how to develop CASEL's Competencies in our students, we are most powerful when it is integrated into the daily instructional practices happening bell to bell in our classrooms. Most, if not all of the practices I will be sharing, are ALREADY being done in the classroom, let's add the "why" and put a label on them to help level up your current teaching methodology and pedagogy. We can always do better. Like I told a newbie teacher just the other day, "my personal growth goal ALWAYS focused on classroom management. Every year, I worked on building better relationships, getting faster at systems and building student autonomy, because a new group of students arrived every August and I had to adapt my practices to meet them where they were." I could also get better as I attended training and adopted new ideas, sometimes replacing my old ways with new innovation.
Let's dive deeper over the next couple of weeks into Instructional and Social Teaching Practices that impact students. You will find, many of the practices, you have already been using on the daily. Some you may reflect on how well you are attending to and some you can put into practice. Remember, adopt what you need, adapt to make it yours and replace what is not working with what can make improvements.
Teacher Language and Warmth and Support:
We were just talking about this a couple of blogs (How to be a Slow Llama part 1 and 2) ago. Fast llama teachers understand the power of Teacher Language (both in what we say, how we say it and how it looks (body language)). How we talk to students becomes part of a students internal monologue. Teachers should encourage effort, focusing on the things students did to do well on an activity. Teachers can encourage student reflection on monitoring and regulating their own behavior. Classroom Agreements go a long with with this idea, where we share and agree upon how we behave in the classroom. Warmth and Support are demonstrated with students when we have Home Court Advantage, (HCA) where our classrooms are places of safety, support and belonging. Build rapport with students by asking about their lives, being attentive to their needs, providing anecdotes from their own lives that show times when they were struggling themselves and came through. Allow student input to systems and procedures and share students academic work. Work hard at showing students your appreciation for their efforts and celebrate their successes.
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| Home Court Advantage |
Procedures for supporting the educational risk students encounter will go a long way in getting students to feel safe in your class include:
1. collaboration: allowing students time to answer a question, then discuss with a partner to clear up any misconceptions before they volunteer answers, using this technique also builds peer to peer rapport
2. develop systems for when a student is speaking, other students turn to face them and listen
3. be attentive to your question and answer procedures with students, using eliciting techniques to allow students to stretch responses "how so, tell me more, give me another example", especially if they are not on the right track
4. wait time - allow students time to think
5. avoid rounding up - don't finish students answers for them, allow them time to talk
6. celebrate with classroom whooshes and other novel responses that involve the whole class
7. develop responses for yourself to use when students are incorrect and systems in place to get other students to help out
Utilizing teaching practices that incorporate SEL with purpose allows students to make better and successful choices. This is life-long learning stuff here!
See you next week!
