What you see…

Week of 8 October 2006

What you see…

I took a walk along the beach below Sealine Resort on sunny Friday. The dunes rising to one side had a variety of vehicles enjoying the thrill of traveling from top to bottom or bottom to top without getting bogged down in the sand or flipping over. Memories of traversing the mountains of Arizona trying not to get a wheel caught in a fissure or mis-negotiating a slope of loose rocks.

My mind was not on the activity around me as much as it was on what the waves kept washing onto then away from the beach. There were tiny shells, though not as numerous as along the Lake Michigan shores, and dollops of translucent, gelatin-looking bubbles. To look at these bubbles, you would think they were just a bubble waiting to burst. On second look, they had a mass much like gelatin. They just sat there glistening in the sun.

If one took time to watch as the waves rippled back up onto the beach, they might see a wave wash over the gelatin-like bubble and carry it away from its sandy resting place. If one looked more closely, they would see that what had looked like a smooth blob of gelatin had sprouted tiny cilia in its water environment. It was not some inanimate object, it was a living organism. It had life and purpose. It could take in nutrients from its environment, enjoy the rays of the sun glistening off its translucent gel, maneuver in water and maybe even be eaten by a passing fish.

Many of the people enjoying the beach on this day did not seem to take any notice of this organism. Yet, here was something with which they co-habited this sunny beach.

How many other things do we see, yet not see? Are there small nuggets of wonder just waiting to be discovered or observed?

Each day as I travel from home to school, around school then home, I try to notice one more quiet discovery - Something just happy to be acknowledge before it moves away to take its place in the greater scheme of life.

We are in such a wonderful position to look between the waves, the traffic cones, the construction, the hectic schedules, and busy children to discover something which we have over-looked but need to acknowledge even if just for a moment. It might even be a student sitting quietly watching others pass by.

We might want to take a moment to take a moment to smile then thank this small wonder for putting touching in our lives.

Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way

Week of 1 October 2006

It has always been my belief that when people put their heads together, they can adequately define a problem and find a resolution. That is just what we faced when we went into the Ramadan schedule at school. First, the day was reduced to four and ¾ hours. Second, many staff members and some students were edgy and worried about their strength because of not eating or drinking between sunrise and sunset.

Through this, it was the SSO’s responsibility to continue reviewing deliverables and provide training and coaching for all teachers. The training must be accomplished without the morning break which had previously been used for training.

The decision… offer the training several times each week during regular blocks. This required examining schedules and checking with coordinators to ensure that all teachers could fit into at least one of the training blocks each week.

The first week found the technology training being offered 10 different times. This was too much, so the schedule was reworked, and the second week, the 2nd phase of technology training was offered during 7 blocks. By the third and fourth weeks, the selected blocks were reduced to five when the CSS team trained teachers in the Attention Continuum the 3rd week and the Kagan structures of Corners and Line Up the 4th week. All of these workshops were well received by teachers, but not without adjustments.

There were times when adjustments were required as the technology coordinator was called from the training to respond to a building issue. CSS team members stepped in and began the training as planned. It was amazing to observe a team of trainers and a team of teachers who were willing to follow a problem solving process to reach a productive solution.

If you have not utilized a systematic method for problem solving, you might try the one used in the Second Step Program which was designed by the Committee for Children in Seattle, Washington:
1. Identify the problem without placing blame on anyone or anything - just the facts, please.
2. Brainstorm as many solutions as can be imagined - do not eliminate a possible solution because someone says it can’t be done.
3. Examine the suggested solutions asking the questions: Is it safe? Is it possible? Can it be done in the time span? What kind of resources will be required? Etc.
4. Choose one of the possible solutions and work on it as a team. (There can be no undermining of the decision.) Decide how to implement the decision and begin the process.
5. Within a appropriate amount of time (It may be several hours, a day, several days, a week - depending upon the situations.), gather again to assess how the solution is working at correcting the original problem.

Remember: Some solutions may need adjusting more than once, and that the original problem may change once it has been addressed. It may even bring to light another problem. Then, the process begins again.

This process is taught to children and used consistently in solving student problems.

Problems will always be in our lives… it is how we address them that determine our success.