Relationships MUST be first.

• If a brain is unrewarded or punished for curiosity, it learns to hide, avoid risks, and stick with what is familiar and safe.

• Anxiety is the enemy of curiosity, exploration and new learning.

• Secure relationships not only trigger brain growth, but serve emotional regulation that enhances resilience and learning.

• Good relationships help learning, bad relationships impede learning.

• Effective teams have more to do with the relationships and development of the group, than with skillful facilitation..

• Without mutually stimulating interactions, people (and neurons for that matter) wither and die.

• Your knowledge can be activated through observing and identifying with other people.

• You gain self-efficacy by observing and interacting with peers as they work on difficult problems

• Exposure to a successful model will encourage a person to believe he or she will be successful as well.

• You don’t have to agree with someone’s opinion, but you need to at least be interested in it.

• Relationships are the foundation of deep learning. If you don’t establish a foundation on that idea, you run the risk of having everything else crumble.

**Quotes and research from Cozzolino, Fedrow, Hattie, Tokuhama-Espinosa

Learning targets in the classroom

Thanks to all of you who attended our Open House last night. As you were looking around the room, you might have noticed that teachers are posting "Learning Targets" sometimes called learning objectives. On the surface, it might appear simple and inconsequential. But let me break it down for you a little.... 
These targets are made up of three components: What, why, and the success criteria. Some teachers are using the same terminology:

I can _______ so that I can _______ . 
I'll know I mastered it when _______.

John Hattie (click name to see some research) is currently the leading researcher in the field of education. He has studied tens of thousands of research projects that involved over 200,000,000 kids all over the planet. Through this exhaustive study, he created a list of the most impactful (not a word, yet) teaching strategies (click to see some research). He identified strategies that, when correctly and consistently utilized by teachers, can help students make 2-3 years of growth during a school year. Without getting too much into the jargon, .40 growth = an average year's growth of a student with an average teacher. Anything over .40 growth is helping a student make more than a year's worth of growth in a school year. .80 means a student is making about 2 years of growth in one school year. Make sense? 

What does this have to do with learning targets? 

Here is the learning target, broken into three sections, aligned with some of Hattie's research on the what the effect of the strategy has on student growth:

I can _______________

Effect size:

• Self-efficacy (confidence they can do it) = .63
• goal setting = .68
• achieving approach = .70

• error transfer of new problems = .80

.....so that I can _______

Effect size:

• worked examples = .57
• problem-solving teaching = .61
• meta-cognitive strategies = .69
• teacher clarity = .75

I'll know I mastered it when _______.

Effect size:

• Feedback = .75
• providing formative evaluation = .90
• success criteria =1.13
• self-reported grades = 1.44

Teachers are doing everything they can to put the learning back on the learners. When students know what they are learning, why they're learning it, and how they can know they were successful, research shows students can show incredible growth.

JCP has changes galore!

There's a lot to celebrate at JCP for our first 10 days of school. As many of you have noticed, we have created many new systems and protocols, feeling like we've created a whole new school. In a sense, we have. We've added 150+ students, totaling over 800, but have only 3 grade levels. So we needed to make some changes:

• Once students are on campus the perimeter of the campus is secured, requiring all visitors to enter and check-in through the front office. This has made it harder for some parents who like to walk their students to class because they have to now check in first. But we decided that making sure our campus was safe and every adult on campus was accounted for was worth making a few adults uncomfortable. We would rather do everything we can to insure student safety than have to wonder, after an emergency, if we could have done more. 
• Students now eat in the classrooms. With this many students, it was physically not an option to have them all eat in the cafeteria. Unfortunately, the way this campus is made, with it's hills and rough terrain, we don't have the option of delivering lunches to our different locations. The lunch carts are just too heavy and last year we have a custodian severely injure an ankle attempting to do just this. But having lunch in the classrooms gives students a 30-minute recess before lunch, and as much time as they need to eat their lunches. Previously, students only had 15 minutes to eat. Now they can eat and learn if they need more time. We planned on having many spilled lunches but by my last count, we've only had 5. And yes, that includes our kindergartners. :)
• Lunch money can only be accepted at the front office. We have added an extra office person in the morning to handle this job. We need to get 19 students a minute through our lunch lines in order to make sure lunch is cleaned up before PE begins. Having students turn their lunch funds in to the office is one way to make lunch smoother. And lunch is much smoother! The first day of kinder, it took 35 minutes from when the lunch bell rang to when the last student left the gym with a lunch. They now can do it in 15 minutes, consistently.
• We added a 5th special for students, art. They now have PE, music, library, technology, and art. Students go to one specialist a day, for 45 minutes. 
• Pick-up after school is now all done in front of the school. With the additional students, parents and staff were concerned about having parents and older siblings roaming in and out of students in bus lines and being on campus before students had the chance to load onto the buses. We now have teachers walking students to the bus lines first, then dropping off at the parent pick-up after. The first day, it took 40 minutes for the last student to be picked up. Now, 99% of students are picked up and heading home within 10 minutes. And if we have more parking, I'm convinced this would be even faster. 
• Parking. Unfortunately, this always has been and continues to be an issue. We appreciate those parents who park on Home Ave., in the church parking lot, or down the street and walk. There is no immediate fix to our parking situation in the near future and we appreciate your patience and understanding. 

I am always open to discuss ways we can improve. Any suggestion you may have that will increase the safety and education of our students will always be welcome! 

In October, I will have my first Principal Connect. This is an opportunity for me to share with parents why we do what we do at JCP for students, discuss trends and such in education, and answer any questions you may have. Stay tuned for a day and time. 

See you at the open house on Thursday!

The power of an apology

On Wednesday, we had a very upset, very loud parent in the office after school. He yelled at the office staff, told his child to start walking home because he had more to say, and when I went out there and we moved the conversation outside, he was loud and very animated with me. Luckily (insert sarcasm font) our school is located on the busiest street in town (small town) so many were privy to the conversation. He felt we had told them things would be done one way and we thought we had told him something else. After several minutes, we did shake hands and he walked off, but still very upset. 

I followed up with the teacher, phone calls were made, the mix-up in communication was snuffed out and all was back as it should be. 

But that's not the reason for my post. 

This parent came up to me after school the next day, as we were wrapping up parent pick-up. He said, "Mr. Darling, I owe you an apology. I was way out of line yesterday and I had no right to act as childishly as I did. I have already gone in the building and apologized to the office staff and I needed to come out here and make it right with you."

This still isn't the reason for my post. 

He continued, "I know my son was watching how I acted yesterday. I needed him to see me apologize for my actions and make things right. I need him to know it's not okay to act that way."

BAM. That is the reason. The student. 

This student has had some struggles over the last two years. He is making huge strides and has dramatically improved his behavior. I was genuinely shocked at how dad reacted in the office and with me as it seemed out of the norm for him. I can imagine it was very hard for him to eat crow like he did. But corrective actions like that will change the course of his son's future. For the better. 

Ah, that was nice. I needed a warm-fuzzy.

Change is a Chance

Change is our chance to do something different. If there is no change, there is no chance to improve. One of the most debilitating phrases in education is "But that's not how we used to do it."

How we "used to do it" yielded the results we used to get. 

Those results were not good enough. 

To achieve more, we must to do things differently. 

Week 1 is in the bag

This week was a week of first for everyone. And, overall, things went amazingly.

Here is our first time having kinders line up from recess for lunch. It took 35 minutes from the time the bell rang to when our last kiddo checked out, but I didn't see any spilled trays, we managed to get everyone a lunch, everyone ended up on their correct classrooms, eventually, success. Everyday next week will be faster and faster

We had every student carry their lunches to class. I saw zero dumped lunch trays outside.

We had kids pushing tray-carts back after lunch was over. 

Can't wait for next week! We still have 176 days of learning left! 

First day of school, the day after

Yesterday was the first day of our new school. It may look like the same old school because the building didn't change much, but nearly everything going on inside was brand new. New schedules, new systems, many new staff members, new routines for parents, new lunch model, etc.

And it really went quite well. There were no spilled lunches, we only had one lost student and that's because he got on his normal Monday bus route but wasn't aware that it was different for this first Monday. I had one parent get really upset with me because her son wasn't following his class in line when leaving at the end of the day so I told her we will have him practice following in line. I don't know how well that was received. :)

Staff: thank you for being so willing to go above and beyond your normal job descriptions. We needed an "all-hands-on-deck" effort and we got it.

Students: we are SO happy to finally see you here! This is the most amazing, hardest working groups of students our school has ever seen!

Parents: we are doing everything we can to keep your 800 kiddos safe and accounted for. This means we are requiring you to do things differently than in year's past. It's going to be a little crowded and uncomfortable for the first little bit but once kids and teachers settle into routines. But, aside from the lack of parking and space for parents at pick-up, things will continue to go smoother and smoother.

Can't wait to see what Day 2 brings!