Recognize a Colleague

Barbara Greenstone received the Janet Nesin Reynolds Outstanding Middle Level Educator award at the MAMLE conference, 2011. Barbara is joined by colleagues Jill Spencer and Sandy Nevens.

Recently I’ve had the opportunity to attend several events where teachers have been recognized for their contributions to their students education. I’ve been thinking about how important recognition programs are and the impact it has on individual teachers. The pride in teachers faces, the excitement in their students voices, and the tears in their closest family members eyes all contribute to the story. In fact, in many cases not only is it a wonderful feeling for the teacher but it has potential to positively impact the school and community. Anyone that has been a member of a nominating committee or perhaps the recipient of an award knows and understand the impact being recognized can have.

In many cases we wait until someone retires and celebrate their lifetime commitment. But it certainly isn’t necessary to wait until that time in a teachers life.

The Maine Association for Middle Level Education (MAML) recognizes individual teachers and teams of teachers each year at the annual fall conference in October. For many years the conference has been held at Sugarloaf and this year it will be at Point Lookout in Northport.

If you’ve been thinking about how you can thank a colleague for the work they do each day in a middle school classroom in your school please consider nominating them for a MAMLE award. The application won’t take long to complete and what fun it could be to attend the conference with your colleagues to celebrate the commitment.

Please contact MAMLEs Executive Director Wally Alexander at wallace_alexander@umit.maine.edu for an application. Now is the time, please don’t delay. Thank a colleague!

500 Middle School Students

March 14 – 26th Expanding your horizons conference

Looks like today, Friday, will be an exciting day at the UMaine campus when 500 middle school girls converge from all over the state for an opportunity to attend a conference learning more about science and math.

The event is cosponsored by UMaine Women’s Resource Center, University of Maine Cooperative Extension, Maine EPSCoR at the University of Maine, College of Engineering, University Bookstore, the Provost’s Office and Maine Girls Collaborative Project.

The day begins at 9:00 AM with a keynote provided by a representative from Hardy Girls Healthy Women in Waterville. Students will select hands-on workshops being held throughout the Orono campus.

Among the selections are:

• Experimenting with the Natural Flora of Bacteria on Our Hands, led byundergraduate student Jordan Myerowitz, 10 AM, noon and 1 PM, 180 Hitchner Hall.
• Critter Clues: Studying Marine Animals, led by graduate student Skylar Bayer, 11 AM, noon and 1 PM, 201 Shibles Hall.
• Colorful, Cold Chemistry, led by professor Alice Bruce, 10 AM and 11 AM , 227 and 228 Aubert Hall.
• Tidal Energy, led by graduate student Colleen Swanger, noon and 1PM, Aquaculture Research Center.
• Sustainability Solutions — Working Together, led by staff member Elizabeth England, noon and 1 PM, Mitchell Center, Smith Hall.

Teachers will have the opportunity to attend sessions as well including a Maine Girls Collaborative Project panel discussion about working with girls with disabilities in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. During the afternoon they will attend a workshop to explore strategies for encouraging Native American girls to pursue STEM subjects in school.

Sounds like a great opportunity for all participants. If you attend, please share your experience with Bright Futures blog readers!

Middle School Principal of the Year

Troy Howard Middle School

Kimberly Buckheit was honored earlier this week for bring named the Maine Middle Level Principal of the Year by the Maine Principal Association. Bangor Daily News staff writer Abigail Curtis covered the story for the newspaper.

I have had the opportunity to work with Kim over the years and know that she has worked hard and collaboratively with students, staff and parents in the community of Troy Howard Middle School in Belfast.

Kim was recognized in front of students and staff where she said: “I’m commonly in the hallway with the kids. Helping them. Talking to them about what they’re doing.” We know that is a necessary and sometimes difficult with all the details that educators are juggling. Student council president Emily Harriman said: “She’s always there for us and so easy to talk to. I feel that she deserves it.”

CONGRATULATIONS KIM and Troy Howard Middle School!

Working Together

Finding Common Ground – Peter DeWitt’s blog

None of us is as smart as all of us. Many of you have heard me say this  Japanese proverb. My friend and colleague retired Maine Alliance for Arts Education Executive Director, Carol Trimble has this family saying We’re a Genius. When I came across this blog post titled Working Together, We Can Produce Genius I thought, I am going to like this blog post written by Robert Garmston and Valerie von Frank. And, I do and recommend it!

The authors point out that working in collaboration is not new. For example, even though Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the light bulb he did not work alone. He worked with several scientists who bounced ideas off each other and collaborated in a large open space. Hmmm… that sounds familiar.

They mention the “shift” happening in schools out of necessity, with teachers working together “combining efforts to work more strategically”. We know this is not a new concept either. But is it happening more in your schools than perhaps 5 or 10 years ago? And, are you involved in the team work?

I’ve noticed that we talk about collaborating in our work but do we know what that means, do we know how it looks? Does it matter who is collaborating? I have many questions about collaboration. If we try it once and it fails do we give up? How do we know which teachers should work together? What is the purpose of collaborating? Will it provide more and better opportunities for student learning and achievement?

The authors suggest these three topics to confront while planning.

1. The group is (almost) always smarter than its members.
2. The wisdom of the group can create better decisions.
3. Who’s in the group matters.

I kept honey bees for several years and was amazed by their habits, behaviors, and how and what they produced. Each bee has their role and the sheer number of bees in a hive, about 30,000, all buzzing around playing their part! Talk about collaboration! I will never forget the first time I went into a bee hive. The bees clearly knew their part and who was supposed to be there. I was clearly a foreigner.

What can we learn from bees and other groups that function in a collaborative environment that have a positive impact on the world? What can we learn from teams who have creatively tackled new ideas and concepts and made a community a better place? Perhaps sharing the blog post Working Together We Can Produce Genius with a colleague or the staff at your school would be a good place to start (or continue) a discussion.

Rice Bowl Challenge

Have your students join the fun!

Maine is participating – a note from MLTI

This is just a quick note to let you that the 2013 RiceBowl Challenge is underway! Already we have some schools that are playing – is yours? If not, why not? All Maine schools should be pre-registered, so all you need to do is visit http://thericebowl.org/sign-up/ for directions on how your students (or teachers can do this for kids if they are younger) can set up an account at FreeRice.com. At the bottom of that page, you’ll find PDFs you can download that have step-by-step directions that you can share with kids to help them.

You will also find the list of Maine school team prefixes. These are 6 character unique prefixes that your students need to use when establishing their login accounts. This will allow us to associate their rice donations with your school so we can track your school’s overall total. The prefix is simply your MEDMS school code preceded by ME….so it would look something like ME1234. That means kids’ accounts should be something like ME1234john. They don’t have to use their name at all in the account…just something they will remember. So, ME1234PatsFan would work too.

Every student needs an individual account because FreeRice is adaptive, so it needs to individually track your answers so it knows what question to ask next based on your last response.

Also, teachers — please sign up and register for Digital Learning Day at http://www.digitallearningday.org/registration/  It’s quick and painless, but it will put you on a mailing list to receive curriculum ideas and links to resources about how you can use technology in the classroom. The State with the most teachers registered (as a percentage) will be called out on the national Town Hall Meeting on Digital Learning Day which will be streamed live over the internet. Go Maine Go!

Cross-Curricular Teaching

Edutopia

In this weeks edition, January 16 of Edutopia the focus is on “deeper learning”. Those of us who have been around for some time as middle level educators are saying HOORAY! At some point (Ed Brazee I am sure can name the time period) there was a shift to a more intentional focus on the curriculum. The developmental needs intersecting with the learning needs.

Much of what I read in the Edutopia article called Deeper Learning: Why Cross-Curricular Teaching is Essential” the author, education consultant, and blogger Ben Johnson says: “Deep learning implies that students will follow a particular stream of inquiry to the headwaters, rather than simply sampling all the possible streams.” Ben didn’t mention any one particular grade level or age of student. He points out that it is time to create possibilities for students to reach their potential.

Ben claims that teachers and administrators need to “understand and accept” the following:

1. Deep learning engages the whole student (and teacher) — heart, mind and body
2. It requires enthusiastic partners
3. It requires intensive preparation
4.  Assessment must mirror learning
5.  Collaboration is necessary

This doesn’t sound like anything new but I do sense in the articles that I have read recently an urgency that I haven’t in the past. An urgency for educators to get it right.

As Edutopia authors do so well there are great examples including a blog by a Language Arts teacher who has a TED talk unit. In the blog post she discusses the changes to her TED talk unit aligning it with ELA Common Core – specifically on “argument”.

The teacher makes a connection to the “21st Century four Cs”. She aims for each lesson to correlate to at least one of the four important skills: Collaboration, Communication, Critical Thinking, and Creativity. You can read the details of the work by clicking here. I suggest you go to the article and read the other examples provided as well.

Mr. Johnson stresses the importance of breaking down the walls between content and the value of collaboration. Working with students to help them go deeper in their learning. In many cases they have not been challenged in their thinking for their elementary years so getting them to go deeper is a challenge for teachers. Mr. Johnson ended the article with this statement:

“Students and teacher teams focusing on learning deeply have the force to achieve learning beyond the traditional education dam and shoot out over the spillway to not only understand the torrent of available knowledge, but to also add to it in phenomenal ways.”

I know middle level educators are up to the task of educating students in a 21st century classroom. With ongoing communications with students, parents, and colleagues we can create the opportunity for deeper learning for all students.

The Philanthropy Project

Mount Blue Middle School

When middle school educators and students find meaning in work it is so magical! As I sat at the MAMLE awards presentations at the fall conference at Sugarloaf recently I felt the urge to be back in the classroom. I miss those moments that are filled with energy, life, and bring out the best in all involved, students and adults. It is the work that young adolescents do when they have the opportunity to lead, contribute their creative ideas, and work collaboratively that are often the ones that form who they are and last forever. This intense feeling came on for me as I listened to the work taking place at Mount Blue Middle School. Below is a description of The Philanthropy Project.

Joel Smith, Maureen Oswald, Jayne Flagg, and Mark Simpson

The Philanthropy Project idea came about slowly and then took on a life of its own. Ninety-five students began their 7th grade year as ordinary, “I am a dot in this world? typical adolescents. As teachers noticed common courtesy had taken a back seat in our society, we encouraged them to ramp it up a notch. We discussed manners and practiced them, first in the classroom and then in the halls with simple phrases like “please”, “thank you”, “excuse me”, etc. We then took that to the hallways, adding other elements such as introductions, handshakes, and using a person’s name to address them when they said “good morning” (especially teachers). They began to get feedback from the staff in our building, who remarked frequently about what a polite, happy group of kids we had. We were all beaming.

As a small independent project, we purchased class journals and each class tried to fill their journals with random acts of kindness they h ad performed or witnessed. This became a daily check-in. Their parents were noticing, and some got in on it. We watched “Pay It Forward”. They were enthralled. They created goals (read to younger child, visit an elderly person, rake a lawn, take food to the animal or local food bank). We watched them unfold by the end of their 7th grade year.

By eighth grade, they were itching for more. This is when the idea for a Philanthropy Project truly sprang. Colleagues agreed to head up a focus group, each with a different theme. We had soldiers in Afghanistan/Iraq, The Less Fortunate, The Elderly, and Animals. Students met with the group they chose and brainstormed ideas concerning how to give of themselves to improve the lives of others. The animal shelter saw dozens of kids come in to not only bring items they collected, but also to spend time int he kitten room and outside walking energetic, appreciative dogs. We ended up with boxes upon boxes of collected items sent to Yap for needy children, our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan received care packages and letters, the food bank was filled, and my favorite was a huge “senior social” we put on in our cafeteria for local retirees and nursing home residents, where we provided a DJ and enough food to feed an army, but most importantly where these citizens got to know our students and relationships developed.

The Exemplary Practice Awards are presented to individuals, teams, and schools across the state of Maine who are incorporating “best practices” into their curriculum and instruction, and whose educational practices exemplify excellent middle level education. Please consider nominating middle level educators for this award. You can learn more about the application process at the MAMLE website. 

7 Habits Team

Biddeford Middle School

Recently at the MAMLE conference held at Sugarloaf I sat with a team of educators at lunch and we had a delightful conversation. Much to my surprise when lunch was over and the awards were presented the three teachers were representing their middle school team from Biddeford who received the MAMLE “team award”. The following briefly explains the recognition and why their team was celebrated.

As a result of a year and a half preparation by the 7 Habits Committee, Biddeford Middle School devoted a week last January to unfold, introduce and practice the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens/People Porgam. Staff read Covey’s book over the summer of 2011 and spent the fall semester developing the program.

The 7 Habits Program is directly related to developing positive habits and relationship among teens and pre-teens. The habits focus on “private victory”:

1. Be proactive
2. Begin with the end in mind
3. Put first things first. Then students learn about “public victory”.
4. Think win-win
5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood
6. Synergize. Finally the focus changes to personal renewal
7. Sharpen the saw

Ray Sampson, Jeff Mears, and Doug Bertrand, representing Biddeford Middle School

Staff and students participated in activities and skits that reinforced all habits. The 7 Habits Committee helped students become leaders in various activities throughout the week. Parents were invited to the activities and the community newspaper reported on the festivities. All in all, every member of the school was involved and continued to live by the seven habits throughout the spring. Reminders through visuals and actions of students and staff were witnessed every day. A great deal of interest and enthusiasm was generated well beyond the Biddeford community.

If you know of a team or a teacher who has a practice that you think should be nominated for MAMLE’s Exemplary Practice Award please go to MAMLE’s website and download the nomination forms.

Leave Your Mark

Morning session at Sugarloaf

Patti Kinney

Patti Kinney’s keynote kicked off the MAMLE conference with her presentation called Leave Your Mark. What legacy do you want to leave as a middle level educator? What educators do everyday in the lives of students makes an impression and has the potential to make an impact.

• It takes courage – courage derived from French word coeur which means “heart”. Risk takers and living a life of courage

What does it take to leave a legacy?

• Shared vision – Yogi Berra said “If you don’t know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.”
• Serving each student – look at the individual student and have high expectations and work to help them succeed
• Communicating effectively – George Bernard Shaw said “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” C.A.R.E.S. – Communication, Appreciation, Respect, Encouragement, Student-centered “Crustaceans are at their most vulnerable when they are between shells.”

At one point Patti asked middle school leaders what we have learned from middle lessons from the past and the consensus was that we need to focus on both – academic and personal growth.

• Modeling personal growth/learning
• Advocating for middle level education – what are you doing to get the word out about middle level education for all students

The parable of the pencil -

• Capable of many great things but only if you allow yours to be held by someone. (Whose are you holding and who do you let hold yours?)
• Pencils have the ability to let the mistakes made be erased. (Do you acknowledge the mistakes that you make with your students?)
• The most important part of you is inside. (Kids are like a box of Cracker Jax – they all have a prize inside.)
• You will experience a painful sharpening once in a while but it is needed to become a better person. (The only thing that we have control over is how we respond.)
• On every surface where used, it leaves a mark. (What mark will you leave?)

If the world would end in December, what type of legacy are you leaving behind?

Patti is the Associate Director of Middle Level services for NASSP. Formerly she served as a music teacher, middle level classroom teacher, assistant principal and principal.

In Today’s News

135 pounds of fresh vegetables delivered

At Spruce Mountain Middle School in Jay students have built gardens, attended classes on gardening and have harvested vegetables since August. The garden has provided the Tri-Town Ministerial Food Pantry in Livermore Falls about 135 pounds of fresh vegetables and an outstanding learning opportunity for students. Read the entire article written by Eileen M. Adams, and view a photo in today’s Franklin Sun Journal