It's good to be wrong

Depot students having a blast during fitness block.

"I feel like you treat us like delinquents. I feel like we're always being watched with suspicion."

We were sitting around the table, having a little conference. I had been sensing some negative vibes lately between the students and me, and so I called some of them together. The student who just spoke had been quiet, but he drummed up his courage and got right to the heart of the matter.

I was glad he did, because it's good to be wrong. That is, it's good to know you're wrong, because then you can change.

There had been several recent disciplinary incidents, and I had responded by taking away some privileges. On top of that, this year we've vastly increased accountability at the Depot. We added the CHIPS incentive system, ALEKS math block, competency ratings and progress tracking, and careful credit accounting. All this came together to generate lots of stress and negativity. The kids in the meeting had also complained about the Chips and how some students may not be able to go on the outing to Lake Compounce.

As I listened to what they had to say that day, I knew they were right. I knew the importance of focusing on support--that accountability is a poor driver of improvement, but I had lost focus. We had increased support along with the increased standards, but it wasn't enough, and according to our recent school climate survey, compared to last year at this time, more students felt like we don't care.

Time for a course correction. As Brian Tracy says, an airliner is almost never heading straight for it's destination. It's constantly correcting its course. It's constantly wrong, but the pilots know it, and they constantly adjust.

So I reinstated the privileges I had taken away. I reduced the Chips requirement for the latest reward outing, and finally, I made it easier to get math credit through the ALEKS system.

This last adjustment was the result of me looking more closely, after that little conference, at the sources of stress on the kids. I suspected that a few of the behavioral incidents and the slow accumulation of reward Chips were actually due to kids struggling with their math. They were nearing the end of their courses, and only the most difficult topics were left.

It may be coincidence, but since I adjusted the ALEKS requirements, there has been a notable change in behavior and attitude among a few of the students I had been concerned about, and spirits, in general, have been higher since the changes.

Lesson learned.

Being wrong is good stuff.

The puzzle: Turning passions into careers

It made for a cool picture--Gabe pitching his hammock near a kettle hole on Mansfield Hollow Lake, while his classmates watched and learned. He had taken us all to his favorite camping spot to teach us how to set up a campsite and build a fire. He offered some really insightful tips. He talked about how peaceful it was, and how he practiced mindfulness out there, as he'd been learning to do during our "pick-me-up" lessons on Fridays.

The students tried out the hammock, we made pine needle tea, and on the way back, I'm pretty sure I heard another student ask if he could come along on one of his camping trips sometime. Gabe not only shared his passion and expertise, he inspired his classmates. He engaged them.

This kind of interest-based, student-driven learning is a big part of what we do at E. O. Smith High School's Depot Campus--it's what our internship program is all about, but it's not all.

We expend a lot of effort building relationships, not only through outings like Gabe's hike, but also through tough conversations, restorative practices, and simply working hard together.

The research is clear about the key role of teacher-student relationships, but it's just as clear about the need for explicit instruction. That's why we've recently ramped up the math here, and why our new "Project Block" is aimed at explicitly building independent learning skills.

So far, our average student is half-way through their ALEKS.com math course, and most of our students have completed six out of the nine projects they need to move up to the next level and design their own learning projects.

Some of our students, like Kim, who is working on a fantasy novel, already have projects underway. Others, just plans. But our goal is that every one of them will graduate with some seriously cool projects under their belts--projects that will help them stand out in the college and career market.
 
The Depot has always focused on reading and reflective writing, and this year we are ramping that up as well by adding more explicit instruction in writing structured essays. So as Kim works through her novel, she will be able to apply new found skills in organization and structure, skills that will transfer to all of her communications in the future.

None of this is easy. It's a lot of change and a lot of work. But each piece of this puzzle is necessary. The finished picture will not just include young adults doing creative and engaging things they enjoy, but doing them well, and from a firm foundation of skills that will launch them into a future that no one can predict. It will be a picture of passions turned into careers.

What would real community look like?

What would it look like if our school were a real community--the kind humans are built for?

In his recent book, Tribe, Sebastian Junger argues that humans are built for a closeness of community that we rarely experience today. Early American colonists, for example, often ran away to live with native Americans, while the opposite almost never happened. Apparently, they craved the kind of intimacy and unity the natives had so much they were willing to give up the comforts of civilization to get it.

These days, this kind of community is very hard to come by. In fact, according to Junger, it only happens in times of disaster and war, when people draw together in a common cause of survival, and boundaries of race and class temporarily break down. But do we really need a war or disaster to get back to our roots?

I'd love to see this kind of community at our school, but how could we create it? Is there something we could rally around--a "crisis," or "survival situation"  that would give us all a common purpose? I was doubtful, but then this week, something happened that made me hopeful we can do it.

There was an incident. Some students messed up, publicly, and in such a way that I called everyone together for two restorative circles over two days. each time, we all sat around and passed the talking stick, answering questions ranging from "What happened?" and "Who was harmed, and how?" to "What can we do to make it good?"

There was embarrassment, avoidance, denial, apology, remorse, thoughtfulness, irritation and even anger as difficult topics were brought up, personalities and ideas clashed, and we tried to work this thing out together.

It was uncomfortable at times, difficult and tiring, but I think it was worth it, because as I reflected on this yesterday, I realized something: This is how it could happen. The community, I mean.

If our community is so valuable that we refuse to sweep issues under the rug, if we force ourselves to draw out conflicts like poison from a wound, if we wrestle with our mistakes and differences, instead of hiding them or turning them into walls between us, maybe we can achieve just a little bit of what those early colonists were looking for.

Maybe it doesn't take a war, or maybe the wars that are always between us and within us are enough. Maybe the disasters in our own lives and relationships, and the conflicts in our own minds and midst can be enough to unite us into the kind of community that's in our DNA.

It's worth a shot, isn't it?

Balancing understanding with demanding

Balance: Will & Griffen practicing Kung Fu with their mentor

"Johnny, you need to clean up your mess."

"Later."


"Johnny, it needs to happen now."

"No."

"Johnny, can I speak with you for a minute?"

"No."

"Ok. Johnny, I need you to come with me or I'm going to have to ... "

********
 
Who wants to guess if Johnny complied?

Not a chance.

Dealing with students with Oppositional Defiant Disorder and other serious social-behavioral challenges sometimes seems like a full time job... and a losing proposition, but I'm learning it's a balance between understanding and demanding.

Sure, I've been working on some strategies for not triggering their oppositional behaviors, but what am I teaching them if I'm always trying to just avoid triggering them?

Nothing.

Future professors and employers won't be walking around on eggshells, and they won't be putting up with it.

This week, I started listening to the Total Transformation program. While I'm not thrilled with Lehman's approach (I was irritated by the apparent lack of basis in research), one thing has hit home so far: I need to balance understanding students' challenges with requiring appropriate behaviors and teaching healthy problem solving skills.


So I rolled out this new "a + b = c" approach this week with one such student. I said:

"I understand, as best I can, that you struggle with this--that it's not easy for you to respond correctly when I ask you to do something.

But I also need you to comply. We can't run a school if students do whatever they want and don't obey directives. And more importantly, even though you have a powerful and creative mind, you will not succeed in college and career if you don't overcome this challenge.

So that's why I'm going to require that you get more intensive behavioral support. I don't know what that will look like yet, but we're going to come up with a plan that will probably involve weekly counselling sessions."

In short: "I understand ___________, but I need __________, and you need __________ so you need more support."

It resonates with my growing philosophy of the centrality of support. It's about them, after all.

Every one of them.

Succeeding.


P.S.: I'm interested in trying out mindfulness training with them as one option for support. There's some evidence that it can help with ADHD and ODD, as it does with depression.

Transforming discipline to transform people: Our first restorative circle at the Depot

Four students, two staff and I sat in a circle. The looks on some of the faces were less than happy. One student was clearly angry about being included at all. He sat hunched over, hood up, glaring at the floor.

I began by asking "What happened?," and then I passed the "talking stick," which in our case depicts a carved dolphin emerging from the wood, to the first student in the circle

He passed the stick to the next student without talking, his eyes were also on the floor.

The next student gave a very short explanation of one part of the incident, and passed the to the angry student, who passed it to the last, who passed it, silently, to the first staff member.


At this point, I was getting nervous about this little process called a "restorative circle." I'd been reading about restorative practices, and this was my first real try at it. And it wasn't off to a great start.

The staff members explained their perspectives on what happened: The students were on a hike with one of the staff members as part of our weekly fitness activity. They were getting a bit too rowdy, climbing things they shouldn't, jumping off things they shouldn't, and in general, behaving like a bunch of animals.

And there just happened to be a random cake in the parking lot they were passing through at the time. Yep. There was a big cake just sitting on the ground. Need I say more?


Now, I like having fun as much as any other homo sapiens, and I recall my own teen years quite well. The problem was, a community member saw them and called the school.

So now, as we sat in the circle, I asked, "What can we do to make it right?," and I passed the stick around again.

The first student passed it again without talking. The second student repeated a strategy we had discussed the day after it happened: They would go on another hike and do it right this time--to show the staff and community they could behave themselves.

The next two students passed it again without speaking, and I decided it was time to adjust my strategy. I doubled down on one staff member's description of what was wrong about this incident, re-emphasizing that our school had actually been opposed by some members of the community when it was founded 7 years ago, how important the community's perception of the school is, and how several students, one of whom was there in the circle, had previously expressed concern to me about the school's reputation.

I passed the dolphin stick again, and this time, another student spoke up: "Let's bake a cake for the community members that reported us and write 'I'm sorry' on it."

I liked the idea, and it was cool to see her thinking creatively and restoratively about the problem.


Next, a staff member mentioned cleaning the street, and that brought a third student into the conversation. He was opposed to the street-cleaning idea, but liked the others.

Now we had three students owning it. We just needed one more.

Finally, the fourth student spoke up, but he still didn't see himself as having done anything wrong, even after I explained again that the real point here was not about right and wrong, but our relationship with the community. Though he still didn't own his part, I couldn't help but wonder what effect the appropriate responses of his peers was going to have on him.

Two days later, the five of them (one had been absent on the day of the circle) baked and decorated the cake, and delivered it, on their hike, to the community members. On the way, as they decided among themselves who would be their spokesperson, the resistant student once again said he'd done nothing wrong. This time, another student explained to him the importance of our image in the community, and that that was what this was all about.

It was great to see the students confronting their own behaviors and taking on challenging restorative conversations. It's just as much about them growing as it is about healing relationships, and it's amazing to be a part of their growth like this.

That's what that wooden dolphin thing is all about. It's the students emerging from what they were into what they could be.

It's really about me, too. This is all new to me, and when people ask how it's going, I always say it's challenging, but in a good way.

I'm excited about the potential of these restorative practices for helping these students transform their lives. And I'm thinking (hoping) I won't escape unchanged either.

Three things I'm psyched about this week at the Depot

Three things I'm psyched about this week at the Depot.

1) It was awesome to see our seniors working on their senior projects for a solid three hours on Wednesday. I see it as an example of the importance of clarity, explicit instruction, and focused support. I gave them step-by-step instructions, an outline template, and a sample research paper (McDonalds vs. KFC as a model for making decisions). And they were on fire. They even came back for two more sessions, getting a ton done in this short, focussed  time. I'm a big fan of autonomy, but it doesn't mean a lack of structure--it's autonomy within a carefully structured framework. Lack of clarity equals lack of progress, and the opposite is just as true: clarity equals progress. (And focused, dedicated time probably helps, too.)

2) Along those same lines, I'm super psyched about the progress we're making on assessing and tracking our six competencies at the Depot. We now have a full, four-level rubric for all six competencies, and have started using it during the students' 1st Trimester Exhibitions. We'll track progress through the year by measuring competencies as demonstrated during their Exhibitions every trimester. I'm not big on grades, but I do think measurement is essential so that students can see their progress and we can see what's working.

3) On Friday, we capped off the week with another opportunity to practice restorative discipline. I was off campus when I got the call about the incident, which invoked a knee-jerk desire to punish the students involved. But as I drove back, I remembered my vision of restorative justice at the Depot, and after talking with staff, we came up with some exciting possible solutions. Of course the students will need to apologize to the offended parties and maybe do some work to make up for any damages, but why not have them all try it again--do the same activity the right way, without the undesirable behaviours. This would help them learn how to behave and also help restore the damaged relationships. In other words, we say to them, "Let's try that again and do it right." And why not have them score themselves on the rubric?

Whether we're working on research skills or social skills, continuous improvement is within our grasp when we are intentional and scientific about it. And this fires me up. Science fires me up because it works. "Hacking" education fires me up, because it's possible. Working towards a better fit between people and education fires me up, because it would be so powerful.

Small wins... and steps toward restoration

There's a student in my book team who loves to read fantasies and thrillers, but generally refuses to summarize or tell us what's happening in his books.

Until this Wednesday.

Wednesday, when I asked if anyone wanted to share what they'd been reading, he spent more than a minute explaining the exciting scene he had just read, which really was a cool scene.

It was just one in a string of encouraging small wins this week--little victories that are so important in a job full of challenges.

They're welcome little blasts of awesomeness, like the plot twist in the novel another student is working on, where the heroine, who recently found out her Dad is Lucifer himself, finds out he's really not that bad a guy.


Then there's the student in my QR group (quantitative reasoning) who's been getting tripped up when multiplying, dividing, and adding fractions. She's been getting discouraged. But she doesn't give up, and on Wednesday she got all of the review problems right. Maybe, like those students who ploughed through the PSAT last week, she's learning that you have to plough through failure in order to get to success.

And there's another student who just got a new job as a nutritionist at a nursing home--a job she got connected to through her internship at a hospital.

And then there was that student who almost let an earlier conflict with a classmate get the best of him just before he headed out to his internship, but made a decision not to let it get in his way, stood up, set it aside, and had a great first day.

Wow--and then there was Gallery Night--our version of open house, in which families come to the school and students present what they've been learning so far.

Our small building was standing room only, guests munched on delicious hors d'oeuvres some of the students had made, and I could sense the engagement of everyone there as I delivered the opening remarks.

Later, it was refreshing to see students explaining their work to their own families and those of other students.

Strong family involvement is one of the "ten distinguishers" of the Big Picture model of education, and with good reason. It really does take a village.

But those small wins were much needed, because this week was not without it's challenges. Some of these, of course, I can't discuss in a public forum due to their sensitive nature, but I thought I'd share one.

It involved a student who has a bit of a history of conflict with staff and who was refusing to do what I had asked. My first, gut reaction was to be offended, worry about appearances, and feel the need to exert my authority, threaten with consequences and punishments, and force compliance.

But I knew that wouldn't accomplish anything worthwhile.

I knew what was really needed was to identify the problem and help move the student toward better interpersonal and intra-personal skills.

It's very challenging to work this way. It would be easier to just deal out a punishment (even though that's not my style), because that wouldn't take the thought, time and effort of coming up with a more positive, proactive, and productive plan. It wouldn't require difficult, protracted, ongoing conversations about real change and restoration (and it wouldn't go against that stupid urge to retaliate--where does that come from, anyway?).

But that's what this is all about, isn't it? It's about restoration, not retaliation.

Every small win is a step toward the restoration of every student, the reconciliation of their relationships, and the realization of every student's potential.

The restorative work of the Depot: Reflections on my third week

The illegal fire pit we were charged with disassembling.

 It's not the kind of thing you just do and it's done. When people are your product, it's always a work in progress.

That's the big thing that's stuck in my head this week, after my third week at the Depot.

We had some really cool wins this week, beginning with a great time moving big rocks with a trail crew. As we disassembled a fire pit someone had built "illegally" along the trail, we worked hard together, accomplished our goal, and as we cleaned up beer bottles, ended up chatting about college parties, drinking, and date rape.

Students are gradually getting themselves set-up with some pretty cool job shadows and internships, and they cooked up a very successful breakfast of pancakes and eggs on Friday (though I hadn't bought enough eggs). And the dance-a-thon fitness class option we held on Friday in the big room was a big hit, with 8 or nine students dancing for nearly the entire hour to dance music played from YouTube.

But there were also challenges. My vision of discipline is not to punish, but to restore and support. When there is conflict between students, anti-social or unsafe behavior, rule-breaking, or whatever, my vision is that instead of some punishment or penalty, I would say, in effect, "Congratulations, Suzie, you've just been enrolled in our intensive relational/behavioral support program. Let's start with a chat about the best ways to deal with conflict, treat your peers and advisors, drive your car in the parking lot, etc. And then let's come up with a plan for how you will learn how to improve in this area and demonstrate that learning. And let's make sure we check in together every week to see how you are progressing."

At this point there are already several students who have been "enrolled" and are on my list for weekly follow-up, and I am realizing that consistency and persistence will be the keys to success in this approach. To really support and restore will take lots of time and effort.

After we disposed of the fire pit.

I found out this approach is called restorative justice or restorative discipline, and  I'm looking forward to researching it further. It looks like I'll have plenty of practice, and I'm looking forward to that as well. It's in this gritty, raw world of real conflict, struggle, and conversation that that lives are really changed, theirs and mine. And that's what's so challenging and rewarding (at the same time) about this job.

Most likely, the fire pit will come back. I'm told it's been disassembled by town personnel before. But that's OK. We'll be back next year to clean it up again. Life, and humanity, is like that.