A mission for 2021

 New year thoughts: “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger?” and a mission for this year. 

A few important numbers to remember this Fall

This Fall, as we return to school, here are some numbers I want to try to remember. Maybe you'll find some of them helpful, too:

0: Zero. This is the number of things that I can actually control. These days it seems like we're all balancing on the edge of a precipice. But it's worse than that--we're falling. But really that's how it always is. There's always this illusion that we're in control of things, but we never really are. And this feeling of needing to be in control creates all this anxiety. There's this cool saying attributed to Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche: "The bad news is, you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there’s no ground."  So my goal is to relax into that feeling of falling. In this case, it means remembering that my job is just to do the best I can for the kids. It means focusing on their needs, challenging them while supporting them, and just enjoying my time with them this year. 

1/2: One half. With the hybrid schedule, new safety protocols, new online learning platforms, and just rampant stress that we and our students are dealing with, I figure if we can cover 50% of what we normally do, we are doing really well. And that's OK, because there are more important things to focus on this year, like how our kids are doing emotionally and socially. And we can never require more of them than we can fully support. I put this into practice last week. I started creating a plan for the first week on our new learning management system. Then I realized it was based on a normal year, so I went through it and cut at least half of the stuff out of it and pushed it to the next week. 

1: One thing. What's the one thing I want to accomplish this year if nothing else? This principle is based on the classic book by Gary Keller.  For me, it's that I will not give up.  I will not give up trying to reach and support every single student I have.

2: Two months. I read once that you really can't expect to sustain a high level of intensity and motivation for more than a couple of months at a time. Motivation goes in cycles. We all need periods of rest and deloading. Normally, that roughly fits with the quarters of the school year. But this year, many of us will be starting at the end of a cycle, having been working hard and stressing all summer trying to plan for an unpredictable fall. But that's OK. It just means we may need to start in a deload phase. Our students probably need that, too. And we will all need periods of deloading throughout the year.

3: Three things at a time. As I've gotten older, I've realized I can only maintain focus on about three big things at a time before I start getting stressed out.  This means I need no more than about three big goals to accomplish on any particular day. For example, the first day of school these might be: 1) get to know my students and their needs, 2) support my staff as they start their school year, and 3) troubleshoot and adjust my hybrid instructional approach as needed. There's no doubt there will be other big, worthy goals that want to get done that day, and I may get to them, but they will have to wait in line.

4: Four days. I think exercising four days per week is a realistic goal starting out this fall. I'd like to do more, but we'll see how everything shakes out. These could be gym sessions or hikes with Teddy, and they include the weekends. Exercise is a huge stress relief valve for me, but it's a flexible goal and can be something to toss overboard when higher priorities need attention. It's not something I should stress about. 

5: Five-minute journal. There's this cool little app called the Five Minute Journal. It reminds you in the morning to write down three things you're grateful for, three ways you'll make today great, and one affirmation. In the evening, it reminds you to write down what went well today and what would have made today better. I'm not very good at doing it consistently, but it helps when I do.

7: Seven hours. I always shoot for at least 7 hours of sleep per night, and I do whatever I can to make that happen. It's a priority. But if it I have a bad night, I need to try not to worry about it. It means I cut myself more slack the next day.  Here are some tips if you have trouble sleeping.

10: Ten minutes a day. For the last several years, I've been trying to spend at least ten minutes a day doing mindfulness meditation. I started with this book on mindfulness by Williams and Penman. Some days are better than others, and in general I am not very good at it. They often turn into 10-minute stewing and problem-solving sessions. But that's OK. It's been good for me. And I'm sticking with it this fall for sure.

How are you preparing yourself mentally and emotionally for this fall? I'd love to hear!

Breaking out of to-do list tunnel vision

I love my Moleskine notebook, even though people make fun of me for the stack of black, dated volumes on my desk in an age where it seems like there should be an app for this. My favorite part of the Bullet Journal system is the check-lists. I absolutely love checking off those little boxes, but sometimes I get caught up in the to-do-list and lose sight of what it's for.

I guess you could say I'm goal oriented. I even like SMART goals, which many educators have come to dread. Under the new state Teacher Evaluation Plan, we have to set goals for our students that must be:

Specific,
Measureable,
Achievable,
Relevant and
Time-bound.

That's why I started listening really closely when Charles Duhigg started talking about the problems with SMART goals. For one thing, people often just start focusing on whatever quantifiable goal they can get done and lose sight of the big picture. Their job becomes all about checking off boxes.


I can relate. I often find myself focussing on making phone calls, submitting P.O.s, filing paperwork with the State, entering data, making more check-lists, and other tasks that need to be done, because they are easy to measure and complete. Or I start a bunch of new initiatives: new rubrics, progress tracking and reporting systems, a kitchen crew, a fitness challenge, a Quiet Study and Support Center, tracking more and more data, without stopping to ask if all of this getting me closer to my real goal.

Wait, what's my real goal again?


The answer to the SMART goal dilemma, Duhigg says, is stretch goals: big audacious goals that will make sure our SMART goals are actually getting us where we want to go. Start with the big goal, says Duhigg, and write it at the top of the page, and then break it down into SMART goals. Our stretch goals don't need to be SMART. We use them as a guide to build a list of appropriate SMART goals.

So how's this for a stretch goal: To make every one of my students really ready for the college and/or career of their choice. A whole list of SMART goals could explode out of that one stretch goal: assess current college and career readiness of each student, determine areas of weakness, identify strategies to support each student, etc.

But hang on. Is that really an audacious goal? Isn't that what school is supposed to do?

That's the other problem with the SMART goal habit--the "A" makes us aim too low. High expectations is one of the key ingredients to student success, and we need to aim higher than we really expect people to attain.

So let's take it up a notch: We'll bring in at-risk students, and every one of them will exceed State benchmarks for college and career readiness. And taking it even further, they'll be like arrows shot from a bow, already on their way to making the world a better place.


I've had something like this in mind since the beginning, so I'm hoping that all of the initiatives we've started this year are moving us in the right direction, but I also know I need more focus in my day-to-day activities. I need a compass needle that will keep drawing me back to this goal when I get bogged down in the little stuff, something to re-calibrate me every day as I make my check-lists.


And this is just one strand of my life that needs this. I need stretch goals for my family life, relationships, and physical and mental health. I need to remember that I started Crossfit for stress management and not to make fitness the focus of my life. I need to remember that as important as my job is to me, I'm really working, first and foremost, to support my family, so they can't take a back seat.

Getting bogged down in the minutiae can get us off track in life, plodding along with our eyes on the ground, only to finally turn our heads up and realize we've walked in a circle, tired, bored and burned out.

Every day, we need to start by asking ourselves: "Where am I headed, again? And why?" We need to break out of the tunnel vision, look around at the landscape, refocus on the goal in the distance, and ask, "Now, what do I need to do today to get closer?"

What if school was like a sport?

What if school was like an athletic team practice?

I was in a Twitter chat yesterday morning on the topic of school culture, and one teacher said a positive school culture "feels like home, looks like an athletic team practice."

What a beautiful and powerful image! What if kids came in all fired up (and maybe nervous), asking what the workout was going to be? What if school was like CrossFit for the mind? What would that look like?

To begin with, it would be highly structured. As I've written before, I've gone through a paradigm shift since I've been at the Depot. I used to think the less structure, the better. I imagined an organic, self-organizing, project-based learning environment in which students would be naturally motivated to learn. I found out the independent learning process needs to be scaffolded. At the Depot, we give the students tremendous freedom and hope they'll engage in complex projects on their own, but they often don't, and I think it's because they lack skills and confidence. They need more structure at the beginning. Then you remove the scaffolding as they progress until they are ready for full-blown independent learning. (Click here for a rough sketch of what that might look like.)

That structure would include plenty of explicit instruction, drill, and practice in basic skills with tons of feedback. Students need to master basic skills--math, reading, communication, planning, time management, self-control, motivation, and a sense of self-confidence before they will be able to design and tackle complex projects on their own.

Complex tasks are, after all, made of of simple parts put together. You may be able to teach them in context, but there's a reason basketball practice is not all made up of scrimmages.


As a thought experiment, I tried to imagine applying a project-based learning approach to a skill like Olympic lifting: "OK guys, in order to get stronger and be able to lift more weight, I'm just going to have you guys build a barn!" Nope. Won't work. Olympic lifting is a set of very complex movements and skills. Check out this video of just one movement--the snatch. It's even harder than it looks, and barn raising won't teach you that. On the other hand, how about training in all of the Olympic lifting movements and then going to the barn raising. Now we're talking. You may need to be told what to lift, but I'll bet you won't have any trouble lifting it. In other words, extract the skills, drill, and then reinsert them into the context, and do it all deliberately and intentionally.

Students working on their planking challenge.

Finally, in a world where school is a sport, there would be lots of goal setting and tracking, and tons of motivation, engagement, energy and celebration of small wins, big achievements and effort. Some of our students have been working on fitness goals that they set a couple of months ago. One group is working towards a 3:30 plank. They meet every day to increase by 10 seconds. Imagine if students approached all of their learning the same way?

I used to imagine that just by doing relevant and interesting projects the kids would learn. Now I see that is wishful thinking. Instead, let's turn the equation around--give them a strong set of essential skills first--and then they'll be ready for the heavy lifting of complex and creative tasks. They'll have the skills and they'll be ready for the game... and life.

A rubric for the new year

At school, we set clear goals with students, establish clear criteria for success, and track progress with rubrics. Why don't I use this approach at home?

It's kind of funny to think about. Imagine pulling out a rubric during dinner time to score your younger children on their table manners, or pulling out a "relationship rubric" to talk to your teens about their relationships with their significant others (or to your wife about your own relationship).

But this is exactly the sort of thing we're trying to do at The Depot--using rubrics and setting goals for improving our students' noncognitive skills. We're trying to be intentional and objective about helping our students grow in important ways. Why should home be any different?


Some people really don't like rubrics at all. Maybe they feel like they are artificial. Maybe they feel like that's not how humans operate.

And maybe I don't talk about specific goals and criteria for success with my own kids when I discuss life skills with them, but maybe I should. Having clear expectations, rules, criteria for success, and feedback is essential to improvement, whether you're improving your basketball skills, your fitness, or your relationship skills.

Of course we don't want to make this all about scores or constant judgement, but using data doesn't have to be the way. It can be a powerful tool for avoiding natural cognitive biases that cloud our view of how we're actually doing. It's about being willing to look at things as they really are, and improving.


To various degrees I try to track my own stuff, like cholesterol, fitness, meditation, and reading. I recently discovered I had high cholesterol, so I started a series of experiments to see what might bring it down. I started with a baseline data point (here's our current paleo-primal winter meal plan), then I cut back on a bit saturated fats for a month. This meant skipping my coconut milk breakfast smoothies and cooking in vegetable oil instead of bacon grease. Then I got another blood test. Then I started up my old supplement regime again for a month, and retested. The results are in the figure on the right.

This month I'm drinking red wine every day. Since I saw a drop with the saturated fat reduction (the middle point on the graph), I'll kick it up a notch next month and try the Mediterranean diet (here's the tentative meal plan).


What if we had similar measurements for relationship variables and subjective well-being (actually, there are a bunch of ways we could measure these) and then came up with specific strategies to improve them?

Maybe it would look something like this: Hey, honey, how about we take this relationship test and then try something new, like going out every week, and take the test again later to see if things improve?

Or how about this: By the way, son, I've noticed you've been working towards some serious fitness and professional goals. Have you thought about setting any personal or relationship goals? Are you interested in some ideas about how you could track them?



I know there must be a balance between contentment and striving. There's a time to be content with who you are and where you are, and just be. But as long as we're talking about improvement, I know I need to be more intentional about it, whether at work or home. If there's something wrong with this approach at home, then why am I doing it at school, and if it works at school, then why am I not I doing it at home?

I don't plan on developing any relationship rubrics for myself or my kids right away, but I do plan on working towards more intentionality in helping everyone around me, including myself, improve. And maybe a little rubric for that wouldn't hurt.

Instead of a resolution, here's a rubric for the new year:

Just getting started	Developing	Meets expectations	Exceeds expectations
Bill offers to help his kids and wife establish new personal goals and tracking systems. He begins to work on a new tracking system for one of his own personal goals.	Bill offers to help his kids and wife establish new personal goals and tracking systems, and follows up with them during the year. He also establishes a new tracking system for one of his own personal goals.	Bill helps one of his kids and/or his wife establish new personal goals and tracking system, and follows through with them all year. He also establishes a new tracking system for one of his own personal goals.	Bill helps his kids and wife establish new personal goals and tracking systems, and follows through with them all year. He also establishes two new tracking systems for his own personal and relationship goals.