DaveShearon

A lesson while fishing...

My monthly post is up over at Positive Psychology News Daily.  

Chasin' your goals!

Here's another in the series on Positive Psychology through Country Music, this time in honor of the late Jerry Reed.  The first lines to this song are:

East bound and down, loaded up and truckin!

We gonna do what they say can’t be done.

We’ve got a long way to go and a short time to git there.

I’m east bound just watch ole Bandit run!

My classmate, Caroline Miller, is an expert on goals, and she's helped me re-evaluate their importance.  Caroline says the toughest regrets her clients face are those about goals they did not pursue.  Goals can generate focus, determination, energy, and excitement.

So, how 'bout you?  Any crazy, wild, can't-be-done goals pulling at you?  What are you trying to do that "they" say can't be done? Or have you lost the ability to feel the pull?  No guarantee you'll succeed, but opting for the safe way often isn't very successful either.  What's going to be your story?

These don't have to be pointless, daredevil style goals.  Maybe you want to do something that matters.  I once ran for and won a seat on the Nasvhille School Board because I wanted to make a difference.  Resigned for the same reason.  Now I'm working to improve lawyering and education.  Seems crazy sometimes, but it sure is energizing!  Is something like that pulling at you?

Who's your Smokey?  Who's going to try and stop you.  I'm not talking about those who have reasonable expectations of you -- family and loved ones.  We've all got responsibilities to meet and we need to meet them -- but that's not the complete barrier to pursuing those crazy, demanding, challenging, meaningful goals we sometime make it out to be.  No, I'm talking about those out there who're going to want to stop you because, well, maybe just because!  Or maybe you scare them.  Or threaten them.  Whatever.  If you lead, some will accuse you of bad motives and personal character flaws.  Who's your Smokey?

And who's your Snowman?  Or your Bandit?  Are you hauling the load, or clearing the path?  Who's on your team?  Maybe yours aren't solo goals. 

If something's been pulling at you, if you've got a goal you've been fighting, you might want to give it another think.  If you've lost touch with your goals and are just sort of going through the motions, "fidgeting till you die" as Marty Seligman says, then maybe now's the time to re-engage.  Build some well-being, re-configure your explanatory style, dig into your strengths, nurture your relationships.  I suspect you'll find some goals glimmering into sight like stars on a moonless night. 

OK.  Enough preaching.  Sometimes that Baptist-since-birth thing just gets the better of me!

Hope y'all are doing well! 

ABCing Parental Involvement

My monthly post is up over at Positive Psycholgy News Daily.  It's a story of how a change in parental involvement and differeing beliefs about its meaning.

Imagine Positive Education

Marty Seligman writes in the Sydney Morning Herald:

In two words or less, what do you most want for your children?

If you are like the hundreds of Australian parents I've asked, you said: happiness, confidence, contentment, balance, good stuff, kindness, health, satisfaction, and the like. In short, well being.

In two words or less, what do schools teach? If you are like other Australians, you said: achievement, thinking skills, success, conformity, literacy, maths, discipline and the like. In short, accomplishment. Notice that there is no overlap between the two lists.

The schooling of children has, for more than a century, been about accomplishment, the avenue into the world of adult work. I am all for accomplishment, success, literacy and discipline, but imagine if schools could, without compromising either, teach both the skills of well being and the skills of achievement. Imagine positive education.

See the rest here.

The Perils of Pollyanna

That's the title of my April post over at Positive Psychology News Daily.

Metro Nashville Public Schools Need Leadership, Not Implementation

Nashville is searching for a new schools superintendent.  By some measures, our last search was a success.  The candidate selected, Pedro Garcia, lasted almost seven years.  Of course, he also created a "climate of fear" and presided over six straight years when Nashville lost ground to the state average in helping students learn.  So, what have the leaders who will choose our next superintendent taken from this experience?

The meme from the Mayor's office and the business community seems to be,  "Let's get an implementor."  Here is one story that evidences this, but there are others.  A Nashville Today (not online) interview with former Mayor Bill Purcell quoted him to the effect that we needed someone who knows how to turn around an urban school system.

The meme out of the School Board seems to be, "a good communicator who listens, builds morale and maintains strong community relations."  All the thing's that Dr. Garcia wasn't.  That's fairly typical in these situations.  Our last search was to replace a superintendent who had been a career-long MNPS educator and who was not seen as strong on instructional issues -- his role had been facilities and helping settle the 4-decade desegregation suit.  So, of course, the meme was for an outsider with strong instructional credentials who would come in and whip the system into place.  I was on the Board when that search started and I pushed for us not to go looking for "an answer person."  No Board member or Chamber representative would publicly speak against that, but it was not the underlying tenor of leadership thinking.  We wanted a "change agent."

Memes make a difference.  They are the real drivers of decisions in situations like this, not formal statements of "what we are looking for."  Here we have interesting cross-currents between the "implementor" and the "people person" meme.  I hope that the "people person" meme wins out.  There's virtually no evidence nationally that any program, be it "small learning communities" or whatever the next fad will be, can reliably improve teaching and learning in urban systems if it is just "implemented" properly.  On the other hand, there's lots of evidence that good relationships between teachers and principals, teachers and teachers, teachers and students, and teachers and parents create engagement for students and gains in learning.  Chris Peterson of the University of Michigan and one of my professors in the MAPP program sums up the findings of positive psychology by saying, "Other people matter."

I was at an event this weekend where I got to visit with the parents of young adults who were in my older son's class in school.  Several of these, like Tyler, are now teaching.  One parent summed up the experience of his and a number of others he'd talked to over recent years as, "I love my kids, like my parents, can't stand the administration."  He talked about the number of young, idealistic, energetic students he had seen go into teaching in recent years, then leave in disillusionment due to the leadership, or lack thereof, in their schools.  Or, as another parent quoted his daughter's principal, "If you are looking for me to encourage you, you came to the wrong school."  Wow!

So, what should the School Board do?

• Hold to the "people person" idea, but don't hold your breath waiting to find her or him.  Much of the dynamic in the leadership track that produces candidates for urban systems tends to create "program people" with jaded views of teachers and even the possibility of change.  (One of the findings of a big survey done of our system by a group that conducts such studies around the country was that teachers and top administrators were equally pessimistic about the chances for improvement.)
• Change the system to support the people in it, specifically:
  • Support teacher-led instructional improvement.  The format does not have to be lesson study as I pushed it when I was on the Board, but it had better include letting teachers, working together in small groups, select areas for improvement efforts, research, design, implement, and evaluate those efforts, report the results, then turn around and do it again.  Call it "small learning communities" or "critical friends circles" or "action research", but make sure it has those characteristics.
  • Give back the teacher in-service days the last administration took away.  The idea that what we really needed was more time for teachers in front of students doing what they have always done was insane.  It was a reflection of the command and control, fear-based approach of the last administration.  The Board should not have agreed to it and you should take the lead now in creating time in the school year for teachers to work on deep, fundamental instructional improvement.  Don't wait for MNEA to demand it in negotiations.  Do it now, on your own, as a sign of your faith in teachers and a commitment to a new way of going forward together.
  • Create a system of regular surveys of culture and climate in MNPS generally and in individual schools.  This was a task the Board assigned the last administration.  They picked a vendor that delivered a useless product and then reneged on the balance of the agreement claiming lack of funds.  The Board let it happen.  Now, we find that instead of an $800,000 contract, we got a useful survey for $30,000.  Get a permanent, annual system in place to sample to feelings and beliefs of teachers, students, and parents.  I still recommend looking into this option, but don't take no for an answer this time.  Get a system that will produce data that will help you manage the leadership of this system.  There is no excuse for not fixing this glaring lack that allowed a culture of fear and low expectations to prevail under the last administration.

Selecting the next superintendent of schools is clearly the biggest challenge and most significant responsibility this Board will face.  Looking around the country, we see NO large, urban school systems that are doing well, so there's very little reason to think we are going to find a lot of quality candidates that can lead a people-first program.  But there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON to think we will find a candidate who has a programmatic answer for teaching and learning.  Run from those who think they do.  Find your people person who believes in the strengths and character of our teachers, our students, our parents and our community.  Someone who will draw out and build on the best qualities and strongest aspects of who we are.  That is our only path forward.  Good luck!

Reading, Homework, Engagement, and Learning

We do a pretty good job of teaching students to read and a lousy job of getting them to read to learn.  Knowing how to read is just not enough; it is the habit of reading for the pleasure of the story and the tingle of new learning that matters.  (Buy the print here!)

E.D. Hirsh, Jr. writes here about the importance of knowledge to reading comprehension.  He notes:

"According to the latest scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the reading achievement of eighth-graders has declined since the law was passed in 2001, and the large reading gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children -- "the achievement gap" -- has stayed where it was. Today's eighth-graders had recorded gains in fourth grade, but these have not led to improvements in later grades -- when reading scores actually count for a student's future."

He argues that the focus in K-4 on teaching kids to read works, but that the continued focus on that same topic in 5-8 produces diminishing returns.  Thus, reading in middle school needs to move from "how" to "why" -- from teaching to leading.

So, why should kids read and how can we get them to read?  For some, it's easy.  Their character strengths of curiosity or love of learning make it easy to get them started reading to learn and they take it from there.  Others may require different approaches.  The principle, however, is the same.  As kids find out that reading helps them gain knowledge and experience that turn their talents into strengths, they will want to read more.  Twenty-five books per year, or more. Or the equivalent in news articles, magazines, etc.  The key is that reading builds knowledge, and knowledge enables reading.  Again, from Dr. Hirsch:

[Hmmm... those are my beliefs, but I think I've just put forth what could serve as hypotheses for research.  For example, are students for whom curiosity and love of learning are top character strengths more likely to be prolific readers?  Does helping students connect to reading material that enhances their strengths increase the likelihood that they will read significant amounts?]

As Dr. Hirsch points out, it is not just the ability to read that matters.  It is reading!  Lots of reading. 

"Studies of reading comprehension show that knowing something of the topic you're reading about is the most important variable in comprehension. After a child learns to sound out words, comprehension is mostly knowledge. Many technical studies support the assertion that after students can fluently sound out words, relevant knowledge is the crucial difference between students who are good or poor readers."

So who's going to lead the effort to re-direct more time and attention in middle school to reading for knowledge and learning?  Teachers, if anyone.  Some will focus on making time available for students to read.  Others will defend reading against ill-informed attacks.  Overall, however, it's teacher led instructional improvement that offers a realistic path to sustained superior performance.

Positive Deviants in Love

This is the beginning of an article in Friday's Wall Street Journal that is an example of how fields of science other than positive psychology are beginning to study positive deviants.  The article goes on to note that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri) scans revealed that the few couples they've scanned so far showed the same brain activity as those newly in love, plus activity that seems associated with long-term pair bonding.

Keeping Love Alive

Neuroscientists are probing why some married couples can maintain the spark for years.

By SAM SCHECHNER
February 8, 2008; Page W1

Ann Tucker is pushing a shopping cart through the produce section of a supermarket in Plainview, N.Y., when she turns to kiss her husband. The supermarket kiss is a regular ritual for the Tuckers. So are the restaurant kiss and the traffic-light kiss. "I guess we do kiss a lot," says Mrs. Tucker, a 39-year-old mathematician at a money-management firm.

Mrs. Tucker is living happily ever after, and scientists are curious why. She belongs to a small class of men and women who say they live in the thrall of early love despite years of marriage, busy jobs and other daily demands that normally chip away at passion.

Most couples find that the dizzying, almost-narcotic feeling of early love gives way to a calmer bond. Now, researchers are using laboratory science to investigate Mrs. Tucker and others who live fairy-tale romances. The studies could help reveal the workings of lifelong passion and perhaps one day lead to a restorative.

Living in a World of Possibilities

This picture grabbed my attention in an ad on a website.  It's from Wayfarer's Moon, an on-line cartoon.  I noticed it because it is archery and the arrow is drawn on the correct side of the bow and the character is using a correct form for drawing the string.  I see so much art with the arrow away from the archer (only correct for kyudo) and the archer "pinching" the string between thumb and index finger.  Putting the arrow on the side away from the archer would make the arrow spin off the rest and out to the side as the fingers roll on the string as it is drawn.  "Pinching" the string won't work at the draw weights of target bows, much less those for hunting or battle as in the fantasies that the art represents. 

Beyond my hobby interests, however, the picture reminds me that we live in an time more characterized by possibilities and less by threats than almost any time in human history in any culture.  Folks can make a living from skills in writing and arts, and even the gate-keeping function of published media has been breached, for good and ill.  Thus, the effect of positive emotions, thought patterns, and relationships in helping us take advantage of opportunities is multiplied by more and bigger opportunities.  Further, more individuals have a real chance to structure much of their "work" around their real strengths.  This is good, very, very good!

Positive Emotions

If you would, please go read this, then come back and go to the continuation of this post.