The (Productive) Struggle is Real

Principal ponderings...

It could be because the past week in the Garden house has been a challenging one...where everyone in the house has been sick.  It could be because it's that time of year when it's so cold out that it takes every last ounce of strength in you to get out from under warm covers and put one foot in front of the other on the cold floor.  It could be because on Sunday many of us watched the Patriots and Chiefs struggle up and down the field, with the Patriots winning the struggle in overtime.  Or it could be because today is a day when we remember a great person who had a dream of how we could be living in a world where love is stronger than hate, yet the love/hate struggle among all kinds of people is still unfortunately going strong.  Whatever the reason, I have struggle on my mind.

While home recovering, I remembered a video from when Emerson was a baby.  Of course it's a great memory of our little one learning to crawl, a little being working incredibly hard to move her body form one side of the mat to the other.  The struggle was real for her in the moment, but I love that Dave captured this moment of productive struggle.  He did not just give her the little puffs that were motivating her.  He did not pick her up when she cried and seemed frustrated.  He encouraged her and gave her specific, positive feedback, while also recognizing that sometimes there would be distractions along the way.  She was successful, and after attending her preschool parent conference today, I am happy to report that she continues to productively struggle through life!

I know many of you have talked about or read about growth mindset.  I love reading about and learning about the brain and how we all learn.  Growth mindset has a very important part in the learning process.  In particular, this idea of productive struggle is one that we all need to embrace and encourage our students to experience.  We need our kids to persevere when trying to find an answer or solve a problem.  We need them to be willing to think flexibly.  Even though for many of us school was always about finding the correct solution and moving on to the next odd or even problem, that is not how school should look for our students.  Since we were not always allowed to experience productive struggle, maybe we should think of ways to push ourselves so that we are thinking flexibly.  If we expect it of our students, then we need to expect it of ourselves.

Have you heard of Carol Dweck?  She is the mindset guru who speaks about and writes about growth mindset quite a bit.  What a wonderful gift to give our students.  Let's teach them to love challenges.  Let's model for them how to be intrigued by mistakes.  Let's help them understand that they should enjoy effort, not give up or shy away from it.  That makes me think of the Billy Ocean song..."when the going gets tough....the tough get going."  Sorry, not sorry if you all have that song in your head now too!

I came across this image as I was reading and exploring about growth mindset and productive struggle.  I love the idea of comparing the different kinds of struggle.  Not all struggle is a bad thing.  If it's productive struggle, you can totally see all of those synapses firing in the brain, making connections, molding new pathways.  But if it's passive struggle...not much going on, a complete roadblock in the brain pathways.  It might be interesting to engage your students in a conversation about the different kinds of struggle, do they recognize a difference, do they understand that productive struggle is a good thing?  Are we teaching them the answers or are we teaching them how to come up with questions?

The struggle is so real in terms of first letting our guard down and sharing our mistakes with our students so that we can model productive struggle for them.  Next, we have to be okay with teaching that leads to more questions than correct answers.  And finally, the struggle is ridiculously real in terms of helping parents understand the importance of this failing and growing.  I love the book The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed, written by Jessica Lahey.  It would be a great book to do a staff book study with and eventually a parent book study.  I learned so much as a parent and an educator when I read it last year.  Jessica does not hold anything back and puts some bold statements out there that make you stop and rethink your actions.  The book is full of amazing statements, but here's one of my favorites:

      “Out of love and desire to protect our children's self-esteem, we have bulldozed every              uncomfortable bump and obstacle out of the way, clearing the manicured path we       
       hoped would lead to success and happiness. Unfortunately, in doing so we have 
       deprived our children of the most important lessons of childhood. The setbacks, 
       mistakes, miscalculations, and failures we have shoved out of our children's way are 
       the very experiences that teach them how to be resourceful, persistent, innovative and 
       resilient citizens of this world.”

Even though this poster says it's for "math teachers", I think these habits can be put into practice by all teachers.  Would you say that you do some of these things in your classroom?  Could you do more?  Not sure, ask a colleague to come and observe you.  It's hard to make something a habit, something that you can do without thinking about it.  Have someone observe you and see if you are embracing productive struggle in your classroom.

Yes, the struggle is real.  We have all kinds of struggles in our lives everyday.  How can we welcome struggle in our classrooms and teach our students to embrace the struggle in order to grow stronger?

Currently reading:
Being sick in bed for several days helped me finish several books!  Although I don't recommend getting sick, I do recommend getting lost in books.  I finished a book called Forget Me Not.  This is a book written in verse which I always love to read.  It amazes me when authors can tell a story and paint a picture for the reader in less words than the traditional chapter book.  This book is about a girl who has Tourette's Syndrome and her mom keeps moving them to new locations.  Calliope struggles to make friends and keep her Tourette's hidden.  I learned that the author who wrote this book has Tourette's so she can certainly write from experience.  I also finished Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus which has a character with Tourette's as well.

I finished Because of the Rabbit.  This book is about a 5th grade girl who has been homeschooled and makes the decision to start going to public school.  She desperately wants to make friends while also trying to be herself in this new world of school.  There is a character who probably has autism in this story, and Emma learns a lot from him about being true to yourself and others.

I also started reading the graphic novel, The Cardboard Kingdom.  It's a quick read, but full of kids using their creative minds to create characters in their backyards and garages that transform into kingdoms and lairs.

I am also excited to read the actual book of a new PD book that I was lucky enough to read before it was published.  A friend of mine who is a teacher in Natick just published a great book called Lead Beyond Your Title.  I love her message that no matter what title we have, we all need to be leaders in our classrooms and in our schools for our students.  And pretty excited to see my review of the book in the published book!  I plan on ordering several copies in case anyone wants to read it.

Events this week:
Monday - Dr. Martin Luther King Day, No School, End of Term 2
Tuesday - Mr. Wilde's Fit Club @ 8:00am, Grade 5 Team Meeting @ 8:00, CST Meeting @ 8:30, K-2 Science Club w/Mrs. Hilton @ 3:25
Wednesday - 3-5 Science Club w/Mrs. Hilton
Thursday - Mr. Wilde's Fit Club @ 8:00am, Liz G at Board Meeting in Franklin, Ben Franklin visits Grade 3 @ 1:15, PTA SkyZone Fundraiser from 3:30-8:00
Friday - Jenna Hiller will be Principal for the Day! Library Dinner @ 4:00

Great things I noticed last week:

• When you are sick in bed for two days...it makes it tough to see all of the great things happening at school.  Hoping for a better week so that I can be out and about in all of your classrooms!
• Thanks to kindergarten...they brightened my spirits and sent me some pictures of little readers and writers. 
  
  
  
• And thanks to Mrs. Olson for sharing some photos from science class...a submersible engineering challenge! 
  
  

Check it out:
Love this challenge from teacher Pernille Ripp.  She knows that this time of year is a time when educators need to be reminded to take care of themselves.  Click here for a "30 Days to A Better You" calendar: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_fa09SoOeuNNFbSn_OHoSjWkJNKpB-zKLYhWrHBUku8/edit
And I love this idea from Colby Sharp...what if we told the students that they had a certain amount of money to buy books for the library?  Check out his video where he talks about the experience at his school: