The No Complaining Rule

I've read a number of books by Jon Gordon and have never been disappointed.  His books are quick reads, but always inspirational with powerful, positive messages.  I recently read The No Complaining Rule: Positive Ways to Deal with Negativity at Work.  Who doesn't encounter issues of complaining, whether it's your spouse, a colleague or even yourself?
Complaining is very prevalent, however, the negativity it spreads is like cancer.  In Gordon's book, he shares the cost of negativity:

• Negativity costs the U.S. economy between $250 to $300 billion every year in lost productivity according to the Gallup Organization. 
• 90% of doctor visits are stress related, according to the CDC, and the #1 cause of office stress is coworkers and their complaining, according to Truejobs.com
• A study found that negative employees can scare off every customer they speak with--for good (How Full is Your Bucket? by Tom Rath). 
• Too many negative interactions compared to positive interactions at work can decrease the productivity of a team, according to Barbara Frederickson's research at the University of michigan. 
• One negative person can create a miserable office environment for everyone else. 

This list could go on, but I'm sure you get the point: Complaining breeds negativity, and negativity makes it difficult to accomplish anything. So, how do you handle the Complainers?  One could imagine handling complaining this way...

Gordon's book is all about putting The No Complaining Rule into effect with suggestions to do instead of complaining (replacing a bad habit with a better practice):
1. Practice Gratitude
2. Praise Others
3. Focus on Success
4. Let Go
5. Pray and Meditate
(The list with descriptions can be found here).

The most memorable part of the book for me was an explanation from the "yard guy" on how he eliminates weeds. Instead of attacking the weeds with chemicals he uses an organic mixture that "creates an environment where the good grass can grow healthy and strong."  This allows the grass to grow and spread to the point that the weeds get crowded out and can no longer grow.

What does this "organic mixture" look like in schools?  For the adults, I see this as building on teachers' strengths, creating an environment in which teachers are constantly learning together and from each other.  Teachers share new ideas, or read some of the same books together, and even observe each other's classrooms to help improve the teaching and learning in their own classrooms.  For students this is also building on strengths and positives, versus focusing on wrongdoings and consequences.  For many schools this is being done through PBIS (Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports) or character development programs.  This year our school is going to use the "Bucket Fillers" theme, which I thought of the entire time I read The No complaining Book.  We already have a positive culture in our building, but I am excited to see what this theme will add to it as we focus on praising others and celebrating our success.

I would highly recommend anyone read this book.  You can find additional resources here whether you have read the book or not.  And I challenge you to take a Complaining Fast. Start with just a day and then try a week of No Complaining!  Focus on the things you "get to do" instead of "have to do" and turn your complaints into solutions.

Teacher 2.0 Session Resources

Yesterday at our area's 2nd annual Summer Regional Teacher Academy (a mini-conference organized for our 6 small school districts in the area) I led the session "Teacher 2.0: The Connected Educator."  As always, I enjoyed sharing ways to help educators get connected to the 24/7 PLN and was excited last night as I saw some of them checking in on twitter!

I've previously taught sessions on twitter but this time I also shared Google Reader and Blogging.  I am always getting new ideas and resources from others on twitter for these sessions, so here is what I used this time in case anyone else wants to use them:

Presentation Slides
Getting Started with Google Reader Handout
Getting Started with Twitter Handout
List of all Links from the slides

What's the Big Deal with Pinterest?

"What's the big deal with Pinterest?" my husband asked me as he saw me searching some of my pinned boards.  I didn't really have a good answer for him, until he followed up with, "why not just do a google search and specify images?"

That certainly is one way to find an image of something when you need it, however, I don't always know that I need to find something.  That's where Pinterest comes in; you don't know what you don't know so you're not going to search for it! (Those of you on Twitter probably experienced this when you realized this benefit on Twitter!)

Here's the perfect example of where Pinterst comes into your life and helps you when you weren't even searching:

Have you ever had a pair of flip-flops break? I have several times. It irritated me, but I just tossed them and bought new ones.  Never did I think to search for a way to fix them (aside from when I was at work and had to just rely on tape and walking very carefully). Well, I was checking my Pinterest feed (not even sure if it's called a 'feed' on Pinterest) and look at what I discovered:

As much as I love decorating for Christmas/winter theme, I've never really sat on google searching for innovative ways to decorate, but look what I found on Pinterest:

Fill balloons with water and add food coloring, once frozen cut the balloons off & they look like giant marbles.

So neat, right?  Or what about these ideas, that again, I don't know what I would have had to type into google to find:

Paint in ziplock bags, taped to table. Great distraction, no mess!

Who knew aluminum foil was the key for removing food from glass dishes...Find more cleaning ideas here.

balloon powered racers

Make a family fingerprint ornament with salt dough + silver spray paint

Baking soda neutralizes the ph in the soil and nothing will grow there. use baking soda around all of the edges of flower beds to keep the grass and weeds from growing into beds. Just sprinkle it onto the soil so that it covers it lightly. Do this twice a year - spring and fall.

Hot dog spiders. Before cooking, stick pasta through hot dogs, then boil ! -Will have to try this for fun!

OK, so I do find a lot of random and neat ideas that I never would have considered searching for, but since I follow a lot of the same great educators that I follow on twitter, I find a lot of great ideas to share with my teachers, like these:

Six Classroom Questions to start off the school year!

Nonfiction anchor chart

Reading Recommendation Bulletin Board

math journal entry for types of triangles and sum of angles in a triangle

Great way to display class rules, reminders, etc. Use student photos with speech bubbles

Or I've found these great images/quotes to put up on the bathroom doors:

Seriously, I probably never would have searched for any of these ideas, but in just a few minutes each day I can check my Pinterest feed and repin a few items I think staff may be interested in and share it on my Monday Memo each week.  Quite honestly, I only check Pinterest a few times a week, so in less than 10 minutes a week I find so many great ideas to share with them. When you're on Pinterest and see these images, you can also click on them to get to the original blog post/site that explains more about the image (I did not do that for this blog post).

So what are you waiting for? Start Pinning!!  Here's a great blog post to help you get started: Pinterest-My New Love for Visual Bookmarking Education and Teaching Web Content

Utilizing Twitter Lists

I recently read the blog post, Twitter Snobs or Efficient Learners written by Bill Ferriter.  In this post Bill states, "whenever the number of people that I'm following grows to more than 200, I simply get lost in the streams of information that come through my Twitter feed. At that point, Twitter becomes useless, doesn't it?"  This is something that I can relate to, however, I have found that you CAN follow more than 200 people on twitter and STILL can the benefits of learning from them.

Why would you want to follow so many people on Twitter?  Well, if you're only interested in following one group of people, say 2nd grade teachers, then maybe you can stick to less than 200.  During my first year on twitter I restricted my twitter use to following only elementary principals. At one point I realized that there were a lot of great resources being shared and  I wanted to share them with teachers in all of my grade levels and departments.  So I started following all kinds of educators on twitter.  I do agree with Bill that if you follow many people, when you check your twitter feed, it is hard to get much out of it.  This is why you have to utilize the lists function in Twitter.

If you go to my profile page and select lists, you can see what lists I follow, or just go here. (*Note-I don't have everyone I follow in a list and I would like to go through my tweeps and update it).  So, if I want to check my twitter stream to see what teachers that use Daily 5 are tweeting about, I can just click on that list.  I do have some lists that are set to private, for example my list of favorite people to follow. Not because I want to hide that from you all, but because I would hate for someone to have hurt feelings about not being on that list.

Another great feature of lists is that if you find someone on twitter and you would like to follow everyone on one of their lists, you can just simply click on that list and then subscribe to everyone on that list. It certainly saves a lot of time over clicking on each individual twitter profile and subscribing!  The one problem I have encountered is that if you are using the ipad/iphone twitter app when you follow a new tweep, you cannot add them to a list; you have to just wait until you're on a computer to do so.

Here is an explanation from the Twitter Help Center on how to use twitter lists to get you started.  Here's a youtube clip I found to show you how to get started. 

Books for the first week...

In my last post I shared some tips to get started with informal walkthroughs. After posting it, I received this question on twitter:

So, here are the books I read in classrooms during the first week of school...

During my first year as Principal, I read:

This was my favorite First Day book as a teacher and when I shared this with classes during my first week as a principal, I talked about how I was nervous too!  I don't usually read this book anymore, but I keep it with me for a back-up, just in case I need another book.

I read this to our 4 year-old kindergarten:

I read this to our 5 year-old kindergarten:

I read The Kissing Hand to the 4 year-olds my first year and one of them began crying hysterically, which is why they have a different book now!  After I read The Kissing Hand, I give each student a little heart sticker on their hand to remember the story of the book and use that time to practice each of their names.

I read this to our 1st grade classrooms:

I read this to our 2-5th grade classrooms:

By the time they're in 5th grade, they've all heard it several times, but I always tell them when you find a good book, it's fun to read it over and over again. I also use this book for discussion/review on our Code of Conduct and why they're so lucky to have a teacher that is not like Miss Viola Swamp. 

And just in case I have extra time to spare, I have this one with me:

This year our school is going with the Bucket Fillers theme, so I'll be reading different ages versions of :

Principals--what do you read to your classrooms? I'd love to add to my list of books!

Getting Started with Informal Classroom Walkthroughs

Of all the things I have to do each day as a principal, my favorite "task" is getting into classrooms each day to see what students are learning. I actually don't see it as a "task" of something I "have to do," in fact I prefer it over all the other things that are on my necessary list of to-do's (like the stack of paperwork!)  I am very passionate on this topic and believe it is every principal's responsibility to be in classrooms. While I could write an entire book on this topic (and hopefully will someday) this post will just be some simple tips to get started.

It is very common for a new administrator to follow an administrator that was not in classrooms, which can make it awkward for the teachers and students that are not used to this practice. Or maybe you as an administrator have never really been in classrooms and have decided that you are going to start. If you just enter the classroom without doing some initial introduction of this, you will likely end up disrupting a class. Either the teacher will stop the lesson to greet you and ask what you need or a student will announce to the teacher that you're there. 

Before getting started, you will need to inform teachers of your purpose for being in classrooms.  During my first year as an administrator, getting into classrooms helped me to get to know all of the students, know each of the teacher's instructional styles/strengths, better learn the curriculum for each grade level, and just have a pulse of what's happening in the building.  (If you want to know more about what I do with walkthroughs now, you'll have to wait for the book!)

During the first week of every school year I go into each classroom and read students a story, practice their names (I love it when I get them all right during the first week!) and tell students that they will see me frequently throughout the year as I come into their classroom.  I tell students that I am coming into the classroom to see what they are learning and how hard they're working.  I tell them that I do not want them to stop what they're doing and they don't even have to say hello to me when I come in. In fact, I tell them not to say hello, but if they must they can give a smile or a wave.  I learned as an Instructional Coach that when the younger students wave they flail their arms around in excitement (which is so darn cute, but a disruption to learning), so I teach them instead to give a special little wave with just their index finger.  This "micro-wave" is their special, silent way to say hello to me.  When I go into classrooms, if a student shouts out or announces that I'm in the room, I treat it just as I would as a classroom teacher---I rehearse the procedure.  I give a reminder that they can just wave, I walk out of the room, and then come back in so they can practice the wave.  After 4 years of this, it is extremely easy to pop into classrooms and just blend into the room.  In fact, a few weeks ago during summer school a student told his teacher that I'm like a Ninja, because I'm so sneaky!

If you're a new administrator or a veteran administrator, put walk-throughs on your daily schedule and get into classrooms! 

The importance of Read-Aloud (at school and home)

I recently read The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease after seeing Matt Renwick tweet about it several different times. I had it on my list of professional books to read, but he actually mentioned it again to me in a parent to parent conversation when I shared my concerns regarding my son's animosity for reading. Yes, you read that right...the principal so passionate about reading has a child that does not enjoy reading himself. My son is growing up in a home filled with hundreds of books, is read to for half an hour each night, but fights me on reading himself just like he does eating broccoli. Don't get me wrong, he does love to be read to (at home and school) his favorite part of school each day is Daily 5 time, he reads to himself at school, and he reads to friends at school during read-to-someone (I even had to witness this myself, because I didn't believe that he could have such a different disposition at school!)

So after several recommendations from Matt, I read The Read-Aloud Handbook, which reaffirmed my passion for reading and the importance for reading aloud to my children, even though they may be old enough to read on their own.  I would highly recommend this book to any teacher, parent, grandparent, or child caregiver.

The author, Jim Trelease, challenges NCLB legislation and all other attacks on schools for low reading scores with the argument that a child spends 900 hours a year in school and 7,800 hours outside of school and that parents have a bigger influence and more time available for change to occur. By reading aloud to children (at home or school) we:

• condition the child's brain to associate reading with pleasure
• create background knowledge
• build vocabulary
• provide a reading model

You can find study after study (many shared in his book) that links student reading interest with higher test scores, parent reading habits with higher test scores, read aloud habits at home with higher test scores, and more cases of students from low SES/minority homes making significant gains and breaking their cycle of poverty when being read to at home (even from parents with little education).  What I found most interesting is that Trelease is NOT an educator. He is just a parent that was very passionate about reading to his kids and as a classroom volunteer, saw the effects of not being read to in other children. He shares tips for parents and teachers in this book about reading aloud, as well as a treasury list of books identified by the grade level child to read aloud to (note-the read aloud level is higher than the level a child could read to themself).  A wealth of information can also be found at Trelease's website here. 

After reading this book, my only concern is: how do we get this information to the parents that really need it?  Many parents, like myself, that are already reading to their children will certainly enjoy this book and have it encourage and reaffirm reading habits already established at home.  Unfortunately, the parents that do not read to their children or see the value in it, also tend to be the parents that do not (or maybe cannot) read any information that is sent home and do not come to school events or conferences.  What can schools do to try and reach these parents?  This year at our Open House (the night before school) I am planning to have a session in the gym for all parents to come in and I will speak at 3 different times and will include the importance of reading aloud at home. What do other schools do to get this message out and help support parents?