Pacifiers and High Standards

Please bear with me as I attempt to explain to how taking a baby's pacifier away is a metaphor for setting high standards for students and creating opportunities for growth.... (I know weird, but stick with me and I think you'll see!)

Pacifier = Normalcy Bias

Let's start with the pacifier and the reason for my lightbulb moment. Since September, I had a grand plan to take away my son's pacifier during nap and nighttime when he turned 18 months, which happened to be over Thanksgiving break. I convinced myself, based on prior experience and my subpar expectations, that it was a good thing that I had a full week because it would be a painful experience accompanied with lots of crying and sleepless nights for the entire family. With my oldest son, when we did "operation paci",  I made a HUGE deal out of it. I said things like, "I know this is going to be hard. I'm so sorry. Jackson needs to try to be a big boy and not cry" then made the poor child throw his own paci's into the trash. Obviously, he cried all night for a few nights straight. With Keller, while I still thought it would be awful, I took a different approach. I laid him to bed that Monday night during the break, did our nighttime routine, said night-night with a smile, gave him a kiss and walked out the room, acting like all was normal. "Oh man, this is going to be bad" I told myself and sat on the couch waiting for the crying. I waited.... and waited.... and waited... NO CRIES ALL NIGHT! And the nights after, when I finally realized, there would be no crying!

That is when I made the connection... While I was terrified on the inside, I acted like "operation paci" was no biggie and made him believe I thought he could do it. In fact, I just smiled and acted like throwing this challenge his way was an everyday affair. And by golly, he rose to my expectations! I can imagine his internal monologue that night, "Where is my paci? Hmmm, weird. Well, mommy doesn't seem worried, so I guess it's all good. I've got this!" Oh, the power of positive thinking and setting high expectations! Then think back to poor Jackson. I pretty much made the child feel like "operation paci" as going to be difficult, painful, and awful. So, that is what happened. 

Now, if you are reading this and are involved in teaching or rearing children in any way (whether you be a mother, father, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, uncle, teacher, school administrator, counselor, the list goes on), think about how true this speaks for the children we influence. Eric Jensen (2013) explains that "the normalcy bias is a psychological principle we use to predict the future based on the past, regardless of how 'non-normal' it might be. Our experiences, over time, gradually create our norms" (p. 37). After time, especially working with challenging students or students from challenging situations, we start to believe that is "just how they are". And guess what? If that is what we think, then that is what we will get. Or, we can remember research that shows that IQ is not fixed (nor is motivation or behavior) and choose to Raise the Bar for our students and ourselves! Jensen (2013) gives strategies for raising the bar such as reminding students that the learning destination is a certainty. We can say to them "WHEN you master this skill..." and never "IF". We can also help students set mini-goals in which they can experience success so that they continue to persevere to more long-term goals. We can design experiences where students get to taste success and then we acknowledge and affirm these successes early on and often, as we continue to remind them that they will reach their end in mind if they follow their plan. 

One example of "raising the bar" (tossing out the pacifier with a smile on their faces too!) is this sight word bulletin board by the 1st grade classrooms. The 1st grade teachers have definitely begun with the end in mind with this bulletin board. Not only have the teachers provided for opportunities for mini-goal mastery for each student, but they have made public their belief that their students WILL master all 100 sight words. Not only that, but they have sent the message to themselves, their students, and parents that not only do they believe they can learn all 100, but they also believe they can exceed the grade level expectations by learning up to 200 words. I bet that all of these students will master all 100 1st grade sight words and that many will exceed this expectation, as well! (No pressure, ladies;). 

1st sight word bulletin board

So, ask yourself, do you keep plugging the baby with the pacifier because you don't have faith in what will happen if you stop? Have you caught yourself saying anything like, "I can't give them that leadership role, it is too much for them", "That looks too hard for them, I'll give them something they can better handle", or "That STAAR test is so hard, there is no way they will pass."?

Are you allowing your normalcy bias to stop you from setting high expectations for the children in your life (I bet we all do at some point)? If so, I challenge you to identify one way that you will raise the bar for one child in your life. Let's all make a goal to choose to be proactive in our language and believe that if we set the bar high, the children in our lives will rise to the occasion. 

I triple dog-dare you.... throw that pacifier away and do it with a smile and full of hope!

Jensen, E. (2013). Engaging Students with Poverty in Mind: Practical Strategies for Raising Achievement. Alexandria, Virginia: ASCD. 

Our first student-led pep rally!

Today was an exciting day! We got the opportunity to celebrate our Leader in Me journey as an entire school community. Oh, if only you could have felt the energy in our cafeteria! Looking back, it is amazing to me that we have only been on this journey for 12 weeks and have already helped so many students find the leader in themselves. 

I am continually amazed by the staff and students at College Street Elementary. We have multiple classes who have been starting each day by having students write short and long term goals to begin with the end in mind. Other classes have students tracking their own data and progress on their reading level, sight words, or math facts. All students have experienced explicit instruction in the 7 habits and have had the opportunity to apply their understanding in not just social situations, but in academics as well. I walked past a classroom this morning during math time and heard 2 boys playing a math game together. In such an authentic manner, one of the students (who is only 7 years old) said, "Hey, we are synergizing! Everything is better when we can work together." It is amazing what young learners can do when you provide them with the knowledge and skills and then opportunities to apply their learning in authentic ways. 

The pep-rally this morning pretty much summed up the student growth so far on our campus. We were honored to have the Delay MS STOMP team preform for us to build energy and help our students begin with the end in mind. Our 4th grade speech students then reviewed the 7 habits with personal examples of how they have applied them in their lives. They then led the entire school in learning our new 7 Habits pledge. Our pep rally ended with a surprise music video made and performed by CSE staff. Who knew Mr. Carrillo was so talented at not just sound editing, but producing music videos too! The pep rally was entirely student run... Ms. Adkins and I were so proud of our speech club students for the leadership they showed today :) 

If we can accomplish this amount of student leadership in 12 weeks, I can't wait to see the evidence of leadership on our campus at the end of the school year! Some things coming up in our journey- school-wide student leadership roles, CSE family weekend sharpen the saw activities, a leadership night, and much much more! Here are some photos from our pep rally today and the music video. Enjoy!

Click here for the video!

My new favorite part of the day!

Here is a little peak how most parent phone calls from an assistant principal go:

Me- Hi, this is Rachel Garrett calling, the Assistant Principal from College Street Elementary. I was hoping to speak to .....
Parent- Um.... it is me.... (sounding terrified)
Me- Great, do you have a few minutes to talk?
Parent- Yes, what did my kid do?...

I used to dread these conversations. Not because I don't enjoy talking to parents or despise the discipline part of my job, but mostly because the majority of my phone calls were negative. Parents came to expect that when they heard my voice, it was bad news. Most of my co-workers would tell you that I am one of the most positive people they know, so when someone this positive has to be so involved in negative phone calls, well, it is just painful.

Most students, and especially our student population, need more than the typical 3:1 positives in their lives. Coming into this year, we knew that we needed to be proactive and come up with a plan to decrease discipline referrals and increase positive parent relationships. The best way to stop misbehavior is to recognize students who ARE doing what is right and giving their best efforts. When this is a teacher's focus, miraculously, the students who typically misbehave want the positive attention and will work hard to be recognized. We knew that this was the key to decreasing discipline referrals so that students could be in the classroom learning, feel confident, and go home sharing the good news from school. After attending Todd Whitaker's session at TEPSA 2014 this summer, reading one of his books on parent communication, and spending a session in our inservice about how to address the 7 habits into parent communication, the "Positive Office Referral" program came to life.
This is how it works- Every adult in our building is looking for students to apply the 7 Habits of Highly Effective people in authentic ways. When an adult catches a student going above and beyond or a student has "begun with the end in mind" and met a goal they set, the adult fills out the positive office referral, also known as "Caught Being a Super Cougar" award. The teacher then gives the positive office referral to an administration. The next morning, on our student-led morning announcements, either myself or the principal call the student to the library and share to the school on the announcements their "victory", the habit they followed, and teacher notes. We congratulate them, then bring them to the hallway where they get to ring our very loud Cougar Victory Bell, which can be heard anywhere in the building. When the bell is run, you can often hear calling from classrooms to support the student. We then write an encouraging principal note at the bottom and give the Positive Office Referral to the student to take home. This, alone, is powerful and has encouraged student recognition and positive school climate. However, it doesn't end there!

The administration that recognized the student then picks up the phone and calls the parent of the student to share this good news. I can NOT wait to make these phone calls each day. It is so amazing when the school and parents can come together to celebrate a student in this way. To hear the pride in a parent's voice is an amazing moment. Here are some things that I have heard from parents during these phone calls:

" I thought you were calling about his lost planner. Well, this is just fantastic! I have never gotten a call like this before. I guess I will let him have dessert tonight after all."

"Mrs. Garrett, this is the 2nd time you have made a call like this to me. I really like it, but seriously, what is going on in this school?!?! There is so much positivity!"

"I have never gotten a call from an administration for my son doing something right. This has just made my day. Thank you so much for taking the time to call me. I can't wait to tell my son how proud I am of him."

"Last year, all my daughter and I heard was what she was doing wrong. Now my daughter believes that she can do anything she puts her mind to thanks to her teacher and you all. I finally feel like I have something to praise her for at home."


Some of these phone calls even result in parents shedding tears of joy and appreciation. I have noticed that these students often come to school happier in the mornings after these phone calls. The positive atmosphere is now turning their homes into more positive places, as well.

The parent phone calls that I used to dread have been taken over by these positive phone calls, my new favorite part of the day. Even the not-so-positive phone calls have become more bearable because parents are more supportive when they know that we will also call with the good.  It is amazing the power of one positive phone call!

The elephant in the room

Okay folks, it is time to publicly address the elephant in the room and share how we plan on getting it out. And no, I do not mean a physical elephant. I mean "improvement required." We are very lucky to have an administrative team at College Street Elementary both agree about this little situation we are in and how we can best attack it.

One can best compare our feelings to what you might have heard called the 5 stages of grief. Counselors often identify a stage that a client is in when dealing with a loss or traumatic experience. The stages are : denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance. We have gone through these stages at some point over the past year.

It was easy at one point to live in the denial stage, thinking, "The system is broken and this does not tell us about how successful our students are." We were partially correct... The state-mandated assessment system is broken and 1 day in the life of a student does not determine their success. However, after going through these 5 stages, we have also come to realize that we are not willing to settle for less than 75% of our students passing an exam where the passing rate ranges from a 50-60%. Denying this data does not help our students. We have come to accept that while we need to use various forms of assessment to determine student success, this data also shows us that there is a need for targeted instruction, ongoing professional development, and an overall growth mindset. Denying the needs would be unfair to our students! In the end, we can choose to be mad at the system or we can choose to be proactive, focus on student growth, and find ways to ensure that our students are successful. I'm not sure about you, but the later choice sounds so much more enjoyable to me!

Those that work in our school or closely with our school know that last year and so far this year, they have never seen teachers work so hard in their entire life. These teachers take their task seriously and will do pretty much anything to ensure that all of the students get what they need. They worked so hard that in 2012-13, in Index 2 (the growth index) our school was a couple schools away from being at the bottom when ranked with our comparison schools. 1 year later (yes, only 1 year) we went to being one school away from being ranked in the top 25% in Index 2 with our comparison schools, almost receiving a distinction. We know that it is easy for people to jump to certain assumptions when they hear, "College Street is in year 2 of Improvement Required", and so, we have not wanted to broadcast this news to avoid that response. What we wish is that we could share this information without shame. We wish people knew that the data does tell a story and our data shows that our students grew in tremendous amounts last year, and this is only the beginning. That is nothing we should be ashamed of.

Another story that our data tells is that even with everyone giving 110% to academics, there is only so much progress that can be made until we nurture and build students who can take responsibility (be proactive), set and track goals (begin with the end in mind), and put their learning as a priority (put first things first). Additionally, until our students can spend each day in a culture where they are told daily that they are special, can be a leader, and achieve their dreams, they will only make so much progress. This is where The Leader in Me comes into play.

Last year, when we gathered data that showed a need for increased student and staff engagement and creating a more nurturing and safe environment, we all knew that addressing these needs was important, but we also knew that academics had to continue to be a focus as well. Could we take on a new leadership initiative while already working so hard on the academics? We had to be sure that if we started to work on teaching the 7 habits and encouraging leadership in our students that we would not lose focus on the academic needs of our students. Then it hit us... we can't have one without the other!  If we solely focus on academics, the students will not make the necessary progress nor will they learn skills that will help them succeed in life.

We must prepare our students for their future with relevant and authentic learning experiences combined with building leadership capacity in each one so that they can take charge of their own future and have the skills necessary to succeed in the 21st century. We know that this is where the magic will happen...

So, how do we feel about the Texas Accountability System and being rated as "Improvement Required"? Well, I forgot to tell you that there is a 6th stage of grief that isn't mentioned in counseling and it is... ACTION. Do we like the stress and pressure we are under? No. Do we know that the action we are taking because of it is necessary and will improve students' lives? Yes. And that is what matters most.

Now it is time for the cougars to take on the elephant...

The Beginnings of Leadership!

Today was the third day of school and we decided it was time to start walking through classrooms to see how the classroom cultures were building, using the 7 habits as a lense. In the small amount of time that we visited classrooms, it was amazing to see already how the habits and leadership were already seamless being integrated!

Many classrooms have posted their classroom rules, often referred to as a "class contract" and the language in their rules was so proactive! Some examples were, "We take responsibility for our learning", "We listen and try to understand while others are talking", and "We always laugh with each other, never at each other."

When we visited one class, the teacher was explaining the possible leadership roles and encouraging students to consider what would fit their strengths. We were amazed that the teacher mentioned needing safety patrol students for the afternoon and that another teacher would visit them later in the day to explain the role. Our teachers took initiative to arrange this after signing up for their teacher leadership roles. Not only are our students stepping into meaningful roles based on their strengths, but our teachers are modeling it too!

In another class, some students were doing a spelling activity where they need to calculate a word's worth and 2 students disagreed about the total value of the word. They discussed that they could use the Habit, "See First to Understand" to see how they both came to the answer that they did and find out where they went wrong.

The librarian introduced routines and procedures with the Habits in mind. For example, in the library we put first things first by placing our books in the return cart before we shop for new ones.

Another teacher was using kid-friendly language to help her students create a vision for their lives. She modeled thinking through her 2 goals: 1) Getting her masters degree and 2) Becoming a super teacher. She then asked the students to think, "What would it look like if I met these goals" and modeled this by drawing a graduation hat and a super teacher on a pair of sunglasses, representing "Vision." Above is a picture of 2 students hard at work drawing pictures of themselves achieving their goals. These students are beginning with the end in mind.

The reason that the teachers are able to seamless integrate these habits into their classroom so quickly is because they have been focused on living them first. It has been common recently to overhear teachers talking about how they are progressing on their goals, planning to meet with their accountability partner, or smiling when talking about how they "sharpened the saw" the day before. This is creating an overall climate of not just effectiveness, but joy in everyone. If this is what is possible in 3 days, just imagine what is to come....

What's your punchline?

I was invited to a friend's church tonight for a somewhat atypical sermon. The sermon was not led by a pastor, but rather, a comedian, Michael Junior. While he did an amazing job tying comedy in with Christian beliefs, I am not going to discuss that in this blog. What I WILL discuss is the theme from his sermon. 

Michael Junior discussed the format of a joke- the setup and the punchline. The set up is using your strengths, talents, and resources to ensure that the audience is following along with your "story". Essentially, the setup is what you have. The punchline is when you slightly alter what the audience thinks is about to happen, or expects. Essentially, the punchline is what you do, which grabs people's attention. This results in revelation and joy. A good comedian takes the strengths they have and USES them with their audience to create happier people. 

The setup in "real life"- First, we need to know what strengths we have to give to the world. Many of us are fortunate enough to know what strengths we have, usually by proxi of a mentor or inspirational person in our lives. If you haven't reflected upon what strengths or talents you have to give to the world, close your eyes, think of a person that made you feel special or believed in you, and think, why did they believe in me? What did they see in me that I did not believe in myself? That helps you find your "setup". 

The punchline in "real life"- Unfortunately, many of us stop at the setup. Your talents and strengths mean nothing unless you use them to serve the common good. Ask yourself, how can I use my "setup" to impact other lives? Michael made a paradigm shift during his career as a comedian- Instead of thinking, "How can I GET people to laugh?", he started asking himself, " How can I GIVE them the opportunity to laugh?"  Many of us know our strengths and talents, but we use them to get things. Instead, how can we use our talents and strengths to give to others, resulting in revelation and joy? 

This is one of the major paradigm shifts of The Leader in Me philosophy- I have strengths and talents and can use them to be a "transfer person", building capacity in others. WOW. Imagine if we all made it a goal to use our talents to impact others' lives... How different would this world be? The truth is, it would be drastically different. While some people may say that our school is "too small", we know that it only takes one person to make an impact, just like Michael Junior made an impact on me tonight. 

My question to you now is.... what is your setup and how will you play out the 

punchline?

CSE Teachers Put First Things First

We have never seen a more dedicated group of educators. 

Did you know that we had at least 15 educators volunteer a morning of their summer to create a vision and mission for our school? They did not get paid; they volunteered their time. They had such a clear vision of what we want for our students that they finished in less than 2 hours. In fact, had many of the staff not already dedicated their time to professional development that day, we bet almost all of the staff would have attended. We wonder if our CSE parents know how lucky they are to have these people take care of their children's hearts and minds. Here is what we nailed down after a year's worth of discussions about our beliefs about our school and our students.

Our Vision for College Street Elementary:

A welcoming community where individual strengths are valued and EVERYONE feels empowered to be positive leaders.

Our Mission for College Street Elementary:

Each day we build relationships while modeling and teaching habits of highly effective people through authentic learning experiences.

We will all hold each other accountable for working toward this vision and dedicating ourselves to the mission on a daily basis. We hope that all teachers, parents, and students will join us in working toward this endeavor.

Another reason that we have the most dedicated staff EVER- 40 of our staff spent 3 days of their summer this week learning about the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. They are true learners. They know that until they can learn about these habits and practice them in their own lives, they will not be able to teach students about them. These are staff that want to be the best that they can be so that they can help bring the best out of all of our students. Here is a photo of them hard at work:

We wonder if other parents can say that their child attends a school where teachers volunteer their summer to make a clear vision and mission for their students? Can they say that they spend time on self-development to ensure they are the best leaders of students that they can be?

We hope so and We hope that all of our CSE families know how lucky they are. We am so proud to work with these people.

A new chapter begins...

We are so blessed to work at such a wonderful school filled with and surrounded by people who will do anything it takes to create successful children in all aspects of their lives. Last school year was a whirlwind... When we finally took the time at the end of the school year to stop and look back at the amazing progress that our school had made, we realized that those little victories sure do add up and we wished that we had documented the journey along the way. Well, it is never too late to start!

It is our intention (and readers, please do feel free to hold us accountable if we are slacking  :) to use this blog to document the victories of College Street Elementary. We would like to go public with the amazing things that are happening in these classrooms, the hard work that our teachers do with planning engaging and relevant lessons for the students, the amazing volunteers and community members who join our ranks with their skills and talents, and the excitement for learning that occurs in a child's heart and shows in their eyes.

As you can see, there is a stop watch at the stop of this screen counting down the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until school starts. This is how we feel about seeing the children in August... it is like counting down until Christmas! We hope that everyone feels the same way. We can't wait to welcome them back into the building and start sharing photos and videos of profound learning and leadership in this blog. Please subscribe to this blog so that you can join us on our journey too!