MRVED Update - December 18, 2019

MRVED Business

Upcoming Meetings

January 7, 2020 - Community Education Directors
January 10, 2020 - Title III Paraprofessionals
January 20, 2020 - MELT @ LqPV High School
January 22, 2020 - Superintendents' Council
January 24, 2020 - Principals' Council
January 31, 2020 - Title III Teachers

MELT Information

Thank you to everyone who has already registered for MELT ~ we had close to 500 people registered in the first day!  Registration closes on Thursday, December 19th at 4:00 p.m.  If you have not registered, please do so today!

If you are hosting a student teacher this spring, please forward the registration information to them!  They need to also register using the registration link!

MELT 2020 Registration Link

If you have any questions regarding MELT 2020, please contact Katie Raymo at 320-269-9297 or kraymo@mrved.net.

Happy New Year

What do Teachers Really Do During the Holiday Break

I came across the article, "What do Teachers Really Do During the Holiday Break", from Teaching Channel.  It simply asks the question, "What do you do on your holiday break?"  It is evident that teachers need to take the time for themselves during the holiday break and not feel guilty about it.

Classroom Resource

Native Knowledge 360°

Native Knowledge 360° (NK360°) provides educators and students with new perspectives on Native American history and cultures. Most Americans have only been exposed to part of the story, as told from a single perspective through the lenses of popular media and textbooks. NK360° provides educational materials and teacher training that incorporate Native narratives, more comprehensive histories, and accurate information to enlighten and inform teaching and learning about Native America. NK360° challenges common assumptions about Native peoples—their cultures, their roles in United States and world history, and their contributions to the arts, sciences, and literature. NK360° offers a view that includes not only the past but also the richness and vibrancy of Native peoples and cultures today.

Book Study

Lead Like a Pirate - Chapter 20-26 & Conclusion

The last section of the book is titled "Be a Better Captain".  We will paraphrase the last 6 chapters of the book and offer a conclusion to wrap up our book study on Lead Like a Pirate by Shelley Burgess and Beth Houf.

The last section of the book provides practical advice on how to be a better leader.  My favorite quote from this section comes right at the beginning, "You never actually arrive at greatness; it's a moving target, a lifelong pursuit" (Burgess, 186).  We want to be great, we want our teachers to be great, we want our school to be great, etc... But we also need to realize that if we see greatness as an end, once we achieve it, we'll never have anything else to shoot for.  Greatness is a moving target, so we should always be trying to reach it!

You also need to surround yourself with supportive people.  Often times as a leader, you are left on a pedestal all by yourself.  It can be a lonely place.  One of the best places you can surround yourself with support is Twitter.  Believe it or not, Twitter is a great place to grow your own Professional Learning Network (PLN).  Twitter can be a place where you can connect with some of the best people in your field.  It gives you direct access to those people.  It also gives you an avenue to grow professionally with articles and links.  There are so many powerful things on Twitter, that if you are not on it, give it a try today!

Conclusion

After reading Teach Like a Pirate (TLAP), I initially thought Lead Like a Pirate (LLAP) was going to be much of the same.  I liked TLAP, but wanted something different.  Lead Like a Pirate offers some of the same concepts, but shines a whole new light on things.  It is well worth the read, even if you haven't read TLAP.  If you have read TLAP, you will enjoy LLAP.  Any education leader should read this book.

MRVED Update - December 4, 2019

MRVED Business

Upcoming Meetings

December 6, 2019 - Title III Teachers' Meeting
December 11, 2019 - MRVED Board Meeting (6:00 p.m.)
December 12, 2019 - Teachers' Advisory Council Meeting
December 13, 2019 - Principals' Council Meeting
December 18, 2019 - Superintendents' Council Meeting

MELT 2020 Information

The MELT brochure will be sent out tomorrow, December 5th.  The registration link will open on Tuesday, December 10th at 7:30 a.m.  Your principal will forward you the email with the brochure and registration link.  Principals, please keep your eyes out for this email and send it out as soon as possible.  The registration link will also be available on our MRVED website under "Latest News" - www.mrved.com.

We typically have 400-500 teachers register on the first day!  Please make sure you register early to try and ensure you are able to attend your top session choices.  In each session description, it will be indicated if it meets a particular relicensure area.  

If you will be hosting a student teacher this spring, please forward the registration information to them!  They will need to register with the same registration link.

Professional Development

Impact Education Conference

The Impact Education Conference, formally TIES Conference, will be happening December 14-17 at the Hyatt Regency in Minneapolis.  If you are not able to attend, follow along on Twitter with the hashtag #ImpactEDU19.  Twitter is a great place to be able to follow along with all the happenings of the conference.  Great resources are always shared, as well as takeaways from the keynotes.  With over a week to go there is already a great collaborative conversation happening behind the scenes.

Share My Lesson

Many teachers use Teachers Pay Teachers to find excellent teaching resources.  TPT is a great site and has some awesome things on it!  Share My Lesson is a similar site, but offers materials for free.  The TPT quality might be a little better, but SML has some great ideas that might spur your own creative thinking.

Book Study

Lead Like a Pirate - Chapters 18 & 19

Chapter 18 and 19 are all about having effective conversations and how powerful words can be.  These two chapters resonated with me as I have read a number of articles and books on having effective conversations, namely Jim Knight's book title Better Conversations.  The gist of the chapter is about how can we help people move forward through our words and conversations.

In Lead Like a Pirate, they talk about the nature & hierarchy of a school really make it difficult from the start to have effective conversations.  This is because most of the professional conversations are centered around observations that are typically used for evaluation.  Teachers and administrators have the "fix-it" attitude.  The administrator wants to "fix" deficiencies in their teaching.  One of my favorite lines comes on page 142, "...nobody wants to be fixed" (Burgess & Houf, 142).  Nobody wants to be fixed, but people want to get better.  There is a stark difference in those two statements.  LLAP mentions that if we are going to help people get better, we have to have a good professional conversation or ANCHOR conversation as outlined in LLAP.

There are three goals of an ANCHOR conversation

1. We want our crew to know we value them while engaging in conversation.

2. After the conversation we want our crew believing we added value.

3. We want our conversations to push practice forward.

A - Appreciation

N - Notice the Impact

C - Collaborative Conversations

H - Honor Voice and Choice

O - Offer Support

R - Reflection

For sake of wanting you to read the book and this chapter, I'm not going to dig into great detail of each part, but it is well worth the read.

Chapter 19 talks about the power of words and provides some suggestions on how to avoid some of the major pitfalls of leaders and their words.  As a leader, you lose the ability to think out loud.  The minute you start providing your input and ideas, it can stifle creativity and participation.  The suggestion LLAP gives is to make sure leaders talk last and simply craft questions to lead others through their thinking.  Think of a time when you were in a setting where the leader shared their idea first.  What happened?  Now think of a time where the leader provided their suggestion last.  What happened?  There are other suggestions in this chapter, but the one other aspect to talk about is to "remove judgement language from your feedback".  Judgement language builds walls.  This is where resistance comes in.  "I wish you would...I didn't like...If only"...are all sentence stems that bring judgement into the conversation.  Avoid these at all costs!