Gratitude journey with my Dad

I have spent this weekend in the hospital with my father.  As the doctors tell me that his heart is weakening,  I can see his memory weakening and I watch this proud man struggling.  While I realize  time catches up with all us I never thought it would catch up to him.

When my dad went to nap, I thought of the first time he took me to the Polo Grounds to see Willie Mays play against the Mets.  We opened Shea Stadium and he cultivated an interest in sports that I still have to this day.  There were so many sacrifices he made to be at my games or events that were important to me.  He was always my biggest supporter truly believing that I could make my dreams come true.  He somehow instilled in me that service was more important than money.

As I scanned through these memories and thoughts I realized that I did not tell him enough that I loved him or how much I appreciated what he did for me.  That this weekend was not about watching his heart weaken but about having the opportunity to show and express how much I loved him.

In the past five years I have been on a journey to become a more grateful and giving person.  While I am not there yet, I am much better at living in the moment and thanking those around me.  My father was never a person who truly expressed his emotions but rather thought that you knew he loved you.  I noticed however in the past couple of years that when I called, or visited he always mentioned how thankful he was and how much he loved me.

So, without each of us knowing it we both have been on this journey.  So, while his heart and memory are weakening, his soul is growing stronger.

I have my students write a gratitude letter around Thanksgiving every year.  Now however, I realize gratitude should not wait.  If you have someone who you need to thank reach out an express your gratitude.  Trust me you will make there day.

Learning

This time of the year many students have either taken their first unit test or about to take their first unit test.  With that in mind I thought I would go over a couple of study strategies that might make you more successful in preparing for exams.

The first one is one that I think students know about but resist which is the spacing effect.  It would be planning about twenty minutes a day to study.  It is more effective to do twenty minutes a day for six days than 120 minutes for one day.  Each day when you get home spend twenty minutes going over the main ideas in class, make sure that you also review main points of previous classes to keep those points fresh in your mind.  This is a technique that proved very successful for me during my college years.

The second is retrieval practice.  This would be writing down everything you can remember from a chapter you read for the class or from the notes you took from the class.  Then going back to look over the notes and to see what you were missing.  One of the things that I do is provide my students with a practice assessment anytime they are going to get a real assessment.  This allows them to practice retrieval and to see which areas they might not understand.  Now you can also make up your own exam if you are not provided one. 

The third is elaboration which makes you more active in your learning.  In the study of economics some textbooks state that incentives work.  Elaboration would be questioning that concept.   Do they work in school or the workplace?  Why might they not work?  What are examples of incentives?  It is also helpful if you take some new knowledge and connect it to prior knowledge in the same class or other classes.  If you are interested in more strategies check out this videohttp://www.learningscientists.org/videos/

These are three different strategies that research shows are successful.  Notice I did not tell you to reread your text or notes.  Often when you reread the text you get the feeling that you know the material because you have read it before.  This study method sometimes leads to overconfidence.  While all of these might take more time upfront they relieve you of the stress of cramming.   My challenge to you is to take one of these strategies and try implementing for the next assessment that you are given.

As always your thoughts and feedback are welcome

Purpose

While I am sure this happens in many organizations, I have found teachers in some big public-school systems get lost in their daily struggle.  The faculty room discussions can be about discipline, technology or returning e-mails which tend to numb us to the real purpose of our work.  When teachers lose purpose (as with any person) it can cause you to go from being a great performer to a mediocre one.

Morton Hansen more here explored the difference between passion and purpose.  Passion is defined as a feeling of excitement and enthusiasm that you have for your work.  Purpose is defined as the sense that you are contributing to others, that your work has broader meaning.  Hansen was curious which would have a greater effect on job performance.

What he found is that people who were low on both found themselves in the bottom 10% of workers.  It would also make sense that people with both passion and purpose found themselves in the top 20% of workers.  What was shocking to me was that people who were passionate about their jobs but had low purpose were still low performers (bottom 20%).  When he looked at people with high purpose and low passion they were strong achievers.

Why?  Passion can be an individual thing which does not necessarily bring people together.  Purpose is something that often brings people together.  It is more of a team feeling that brings unity to the task.

So how do you find your purpose?  I do not think purpose is something that you find but instead it is something that needs to be cultivated.  Think about your core values, what is important to you will often lead you to your purpose.  How can you share your talents and passions with others?  As teachers, mentors, and friends we need to cultivate purpose in both ourselves and others.

As you start to define your purpose it can help organize and motivate you.  When making decisions or setting goals, you should ask yourself why you are doing these tasks.  If after continually asking why does not get you to your purpose you need to drop that task from your things to do list and focus on things that help you achieve your purpose.  So when someone wants to discuss the discipline problem at your school, while this might be an important issue, if it does not get you to your purpose than you can walk away from that discussion which allows you to keep on laser focus on your purpose.

I will leave you with this great two minute video by Angela Duckworth to sum up todays discussion video.

As always, I would love your feedback.

Mentoring

I remember as a store manager our goal was to be the number one store in the country for weekly sales.  I had never been number one in anything before and was extremely motivated to raise sales so that we could accomplish that goal.  I remember the week that we became number one in the country my supervisor brought in a cake for everyone on the team to celebrate our accomplishment.  As people were eating the cake she asked to talk to me.

She then told me, that while being number one was quite an accomplishment, she thought that the store could at least increase sales by 10%.  That she knew that our team was so strong that it could achieve this sales increase.  As she was leaving she said, “I will come by tomorrow, tell me what I need to do to support you in accomplishing this sales increase” It was then when I realized what it was like to have a mentor with high expectations and provided high support.

In almost every high school there is some sort of mentoring program.  However, most of these programs provide little training to either the faculty or students who serve as mentors.  One of the first steps mentors might use is the research by David Yeager( read more). The researcher had students write essays which teachers provided written comments on each essay.  Half the students received a sticky note that said, “I am giving you these comments so that you will have feedback on your paper” and the other half received comments that said “I am giving you this feedback because I have high expectations and I know you can reach them”  The students did not know that research was being done. 

All students were given the opportunity to re-write the essay for a higher grade.  The results were striking in that about 80% of the students who received the encouraging feedback handed in a revised essay and the essay scored higher when marked by both the teacher and a researcher.

The researchers found that the encouraging feedback changed the perceptions of the students from one of mistrust to one of help.  When I think back to my store managing days I realized that my mentor used this wise intervention without knowing the research.  She also coupled her comments with my knowledge that if we failed in reaching our goals she would be there to support me and my team.

Mentoring is an important job that many of us do. Sometimes we need to give our mentee’s a little push and the support that they need to be successful.

As always, I appreciate your feedback

Perfect moments

                                                           

Eugene O’Kelly, in his memoir begins his book with this statement:  I was blessed.  I was told I had three months to live.”  He was told that he had a rare cancer that were the size of golf balls which had grown in his brain.  At the time there was no cure.

He quickly quit his job and started planning out his last three months.  He decided to draw five concentric circles and use them as a map of his relationships.  He would start with the outer circle, the people who he had more distant relationships with and then work toward the middle ring in which was his family.

His conversations were about shared experiences, memories and mutual appreciation.  He worked hard not to make these conversations sad as he wanted them to be special, as he moved to the closer friends he tried to make the experiences more special by going to a great restaurant or spending time in the park.  With these closer friends he swapped stories and exchanged gratitude of their friendship.  He came to think of these as perfect moments.

What O’Kelly realized in his last two weeks is that he had more special and perfect moments in the last two weeks than he had in the last five years.  The reason he felt blessed when he was told he had three months to live is that life left to live.

In reading this it reminded me how my in-laws would never buy my children presents instead they would take them on experiences.  It might be to Hershey park, or the zoo but these were experiences and memories my children still remember.

I know at the end of the school year I often reflect upon how fast it went by, like this is a good thing.  What I am going to do at the end of this year is think about the perfect moments I had during the school year.  The list of student interactions and accomplishments that I cherish.  I have made a list of the people I want to reach out to as I start to make my personal perfect moments

Reflect on how many perfect moments have you had in the past 30 days.  More importantly how many can you have in the next thirty.  What O’Kelly reminded me of is not to wait for a disaster but make the most of everyday.

As always your feedback is appreciated

belonging

In the world of education this time of the year is often a new start for many people.  For many students they are entering their first year in college, first year in high school, a difficult class like AP economics or a new school.  For teachers like myself, they are starting at a new school.  Many of us who are entering these new positions are wondering the same thing, do we belong?   Do we belong socially, emotionally and intellectually in this new environment?

Greg Walton,  a psychologist at Stanford, has done a lot of work on interventions on social belonging (more here).  The first thing to realize is that if you feel you do not belong you are not alone.  That while it might seem that others are just blending in better than you they are just actually better at faking it.  That they are sharing the same feelings but just are not allowing you or anyone else see them.

The second thing is to realize that the feeling is temporary and will go away in time.  On the social aspect it is worth remembering that psychologists estimate that it takes 50 hours of time to turn an acquaintance into a friend.  200-300 hours to turn that friend into a good or best friend.  So, if you are worried that you do not belong because you have no friends give it time.  The good friends you had at your last job, or your last school did not come overnight.  Feel free to use those old friends as a support system as you get acclimated in your new situation.

Realize while the new school, class or job might be difficult at first the people in charge thought you were up to the challenge.  For new students in college, be confident in the admissions people who selected you.  They had many applicants and chose you.  If you are taking a difficult class know that your guidance counselor had confidence that you had the ability to handle such a difficult course.  The new opportunity should be viewed as one of growth not one of struggle.

Recently, I had a chance to speak to some experienced teachers at my new school.  They all seemed positive, confident and truly invested in the school.  Talking, in my case, to some veteran teachers, or in student’s cases to seniors, or someone who has taken the difficult class might also provide you with some confidence.  These are examples of people who were in the same situation as you were and are now thriving

My last challenge is for those experienced people, reach out to the freshman, or the new people on the job.  Help them feel like they belong, it will make a world of difference.

As always, your feedback is appreciated.

Mindset

When I was a young boy I was totally interested in baseball.  I remember thinking that if your batting average was .300 you had a chance of going to the Hall of Fame while if you hit .250 you were mediocre.  The difference between greatness and mediocrity was 30 hits over the course of a year (180/600 compared to 150/600).  At the time the average regular player played 150 games a year which meant that the difference between great and average was one hit every five games.  Once I figured this out I wondered would we know who the great players were if we did not keep these statistics?  How come these great players constantly had that one extra hit every fifth game.

Jerry Grote, a great defensive catcher, talked about the mentality of hitters.  He would say that when an average hitter got a base hit early in the game they thought that they accomplished their days work.  That later in the game when they came up they did not bear down as hard because they thought that they accomplished their goal for the day.  On the other hand, the great hitters always focused as they thought after getting one hit that this was the day that they would get 3 or 4.  Grote thought that at the major league level the difference was not always talent but the mental approach to the game.  This was my first introduction to mindset and the realization that ability might not be the only factor in performance.

Now I have seen this mindset work with students.  When a B student sometimes scores an A on a test they sometimes relax on the next assessment thinking that there “B” is in the bag.  They do not have to try that hard because they will hit their goal.  These students have the ability to be A students but do not have the mindset to get it done.

I then read some amazing research done with eyesight.  At first, they tested people viewing a regular eye chart.  After recording their scores, they then tested the people on an eyechart flipped upside down (read more)  People’s showed improved eyesight with the chart flipped upside down.  The brain expected to be able to see the top lines of the chart so therefore due to that expectation people performed better.  Now again, that is not going to make a person like me who is almost blind without my glasses to see with 20/20 vision but it shows the power of mindset.

Again, I see this play out in the classroom where when some students are told the problem is going to be hard they automatically think that they can solve a problem.  For whatever reason they have convinced themselves that the problems are too hard for them.  It sometimes takes me asking them one or two questions before they can solve what seemed to them to be a complex problem.  They had the ability to solve the problem but they lacked the confidence to perform.cannot solve it.  However, when I ask them some questions they can answer the questions and solve the problem.  It is the mindset that some students have that they are not smart enough to solve the problem when they really do have the ability

So, what are my takeaways from these examples.  That the difference between good and great is not always found in the talent but sometimes in the mindset.  That the difference between good and great is not always in the talent but often in the mindset.  So how do you go about changing your mindset?

This is my last thought of the week for the year.  I truly enjoyed engaging with you in this matter and will start this again when school starts up next year.  As always your feedback is welcome.