Greetings,
GreenMount Community,
As part of our ongoing professional
development, I provide the staff with journal articles, which individuals
volunteer to read and then report back to the staff at our next Professional
Development Meeting. Most of the these
articles come from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
and their publication, Educational
Leadership. The beauty of this
publication is that each month the journal focuses on just one topic around which
many contributors submit their articles.
For example, the November issue focused on tackling informational
text. In January, the issue was devoted
to student mastery. And this month, each
article addressed building school morale.
You may wonder if morale is an issue at GreenMount,
and to be honest, it isn’t much of a concern.
However, two articles struck me.
The first is about the language of appreciation. According to the author, schools typically
show appreciation within the school community by having recognition programs or
ceremonies. These are fine, but a better
way to show our appreciation for someone else is to speak or write to a person
individually – to take the time in the course of a normal day to just say
“thank you,” or recognize someone for a job well done. This is something that our teachers try to do
for students as a matter of course. We
don’t often do that for each other.
Adults often miss opportunities to show personal appreciation to
colleagues and friends, according to the article. At our staff meetings we recognize each other
for the good work that we do, but even then it is not as personal and effective
as an individual effort. Another factor
to consider is that some people do not like public attention, even if for a positive
reason. Those folks welcome that kind of
personal recognition.
The other article that I found
interesting involves those “teachable moments” that we all refer to so
often. However, in this article the
teachable moments are not those opportunities that we find to teach children,
but the ones that occur and provide an opportunity for adults to learn. Mentioned in the article is a man named Jack
Kornfield, who happens to be a Buddhist monk.
In his book, A Path with Heart,
Kornfield talks about treating every person or experience as an opportunity to
learn. He suggests that, instead of
seeing the frustrating moments of a day as negatives, we treat each as an
opportunity to grow as a person and cultivate those qualities we have to deal
with people and events.
The author of the article suggests that everyone try
to have at least one “Buddha Day” during which we try to find a lesson for
ourselves. So, this weekend I tried to
have my Buddha Day. The burned toast taught
me to look more carefully at the inner workings of my toaster. When I was cut off on the way to the grocery
store, I tried to learn a better way to express my feelings with my wife in the
car (“Drat, that motorist must be having a hard day. Perhaps he is just now thinking what a stupid
thing he just did and wishing he could apologize somehow.”). Wegman’s on a Sunday afternoon is a mad house
and a good place to learn. The guy who
gets you that piece of fish that you want (three pieces up on the left hand
side) needs better directions because he can’t actually see which piece you are
talking about. I learned that you have
to say, “Put your hand over the fish rack.
Now go left – No, your left. Move
toward you. Put your hand down.”
I also learned that it’s better to watch “Love it or
List It” than a PGA golf tournament. The
only thing I ever learned from watching golf was what I cannot do. Watching home renovations in Canada taught me
that there is something very strange about the value of a dollar in that
country. Happy Buddha Day!
Cheers,
Steve
