Having spent the weekend with my little travel partner, Emerson, we had a lot of time in the airport, airplane, car, and at my parents' house. Lots of time to have conversations with a toddler. And I can tell you that the majority of our conversations started with her asking, "But, why?" Sometimes it was "but why do we need to ride in the car to the airport?" Other times it was "but why do they need to take our suitcase?" "But why does papa do that?" "But why does she have that?" "But why...?" "But why...?" "But why...?"
It could be because of Emerson asking my why over 100 times this weekend or it could be because now is a good time to stop and think about your why. I took some time while writing this to think about my why. As Simon Sinek says, we need to start with why before we act, think and communicate. He has said, "People don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it." We are in the business of educating kids. But it's important to remember and talk about why we do what we do. Our why is important and should be our starting point and what we always circle back to as we check ourselves. As I was planning this post and reading over some other posts about starting with why, I came across Peter Dewitt's post and I love his question that he poses: "Do we, as leaders and teachers, make sure what students are learning fits before we teach it, or do we try to force our students to fit into what they are learning?"
Wow, that's a big question. Definitely makes me stop and think. Are we forcing our students to fit into what they are learning? After our afternoon with Katie Novak and our initial dive into Universal Design for Learning, I hope we are all thinking differently about the learning that happens in our classrooms. How do you not get overwhelmed by our PD session? I think the best way to process everything is to go back and start with your why.
What is your why?
I can share with you what I recently wrote when a friend of mine asked several of us what our why was. I said...
My why is that I believe all kids are our kids. We have the ability to impact every single kid, every single day. We have a responsibility to take care of every child, to treat them as if they were our own. My why is that I believe in every kid, I love every kid, I know that every kid can learn. We have this awesome responsibility of molding future minds and we can't ever forget that!
What is your why? What drives you? What gets you out of bed in the morning and keeps you up at night? What are you passionate about?
I just started reading this book about a kid named Ben Braver who gets chosen to go to a secret school for kids with special powers. I am thinking this will appeal to many of our 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders.
A parent let me borrow this great non fiction picture book and then I shared it with the 1st grade team. I might even use this for my Facebook Live read aloud this week. It's an interesting story about how Dr. Seuss was challenged with writing a book that kids would like, while only using words from a high frequency word list.
I could not resist purchasing Rachel Hollis's new book. Excited to read this one since I enjoyed listening to her book Girl, Wash Your Face.
Events this week:
**Scholastic Book Fair in the library all week
Monday - Girls on the Run @ 3:45
Tuesday - Kindergarten and Grade 1 Team Meetings @ 3:45
Wednesday - Grade 2 Team Meeting @ 8:00, Girls on the Run @ 3:45, Family Night at the Book Fair 4:00-8:00
Thursday - Special Olympics @ the High School from 10-12
Friday - Liz G presenting at MASSCue Conference, Family Night at the Book Fair 4:00-8:00, PTA BINGO Night @ 5:30
Great things I noticed last week:
- The after school computer programming enrichment class is a busy place to be!
- I can't believe how many shoes we have collected. At the end of this week, I will schedule the UPS pick-up. So excited that Mayo students will be helping kids on the other side of the world!
- I caught some 3rd graders enjoying independent reading time and getting lost in books.
- Thank you to everyone who joined in the book tasting fun at the Mayo Bistro on Wednesday morning. Hopefully you learned about some new book titles that you want to sink your teeth into!
Here is a 5 minute clip where Simon Sinek explains his thought process behind starting with why:
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