Please Follow Me at My New Blog

This blog has moved

www.jdhowell.org

7 Habits of Highly Effective People

I am scheduled to attend Stephen Covey's Signature Professional Development Seminar called 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in a couple of weeks, and I have been given a bit of homework before the conference begins.

Here is an excerpt of the assignment:

How to Get the Most Out of Your 7 Habits Experience

Like a warm-up before a workout, this 7 Habits Warm-Up will only take you about 10–15 minutes to complete and will make a huge difference in the value you get out of the program.
To complete your Warm-Up, please do these things:
1. Read “The Promise.”
2. Answer the preparation questions.

Please bring these Warm-Up pages with you to the program.

Read “The Promise”

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Signature Program is one of the most respected and popular learning experiences available. These habits will have a significant and positive impact on your life. Below is a summary of the 7 Habits and the kind of results you can expect. Take a few moments and note which of these promises interests you most. Draw a circle around the ones you really want to focus on.

Habit 1: Be Proactive ~ The Habit of Choice
Promise

• You'll find out how to take charge of your own future.
• You'll increase your influence at work and in your life

Habit 2: Begin With the End in Mind ~ The Habit of Vision
Promise

• You'll do things and achieve the goals you've always wanted to.
• You'll have a greater sense of purpose and fulfillment in your life.

Habit 3: Put First Things First ~ The Habit of Integrity and Execution
Promise

• You'll be less crisis-driven and more in control of your life and your time.
• You'll enjoy more life balance and peace of mind.

Habit 4: Think Win-Win ~ The Habit of Mutual Benefit
Promise

• You'll build dramatically stronger and more productive relationships
• You'll discover ways to solve problems and build relationships at the same time.

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood ~ The Habit of Mutual Understanding
Promise

• You'll grow in understanding of the most important people in your life.
• You'll improve your ability to communicate effectively.

Habit 6: Synergize ~ The Habit of Creative Cooperation
Promise

• You'll be able to deal more productively with conflict
• You'll be able to find strikingly creative solutions to problems and opportunities

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw ~ The Habit of Renewal
Promise

• You'll find yourself growing and improving, feeling better, and living a more purposeful life.
• You'll have greater work and life balance.

Answer the Preparation Questions

With those promises in mind, think about the following questions and write your answers below. Please bring this page with you to the program.

1. Where would I really like to become more effective in my life (e.g., relationships, projects, goals I’m working on)?


2. What long-term contribution would I really like to make in my current role at work?


3. What is the most significant thing I could do in my work that, if done consistently, would have the most positive impact?


4. What is the most significant thing I could do in my personal life that, if done consistently, would have the most positive impact?


I have read Dr. Covey's book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People years ago but do believe it's time to dust that classic off and give it a reread. I will answer the questions above over the course of the next couple of days here at my blog. In the meantime, here is Stephen Covey speaking to Habit 1: Be Proactive .

Tags: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey, leadership

Summer Reading Plans

I just purchased my first book of the summer, Brain Rules by John Medina. I watched the video below a couple weeks ago and was left wanting to know more.



Summer Reading List

• Made to Stick by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
• Redefining Literacy 2.0 by David Warlick
• The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
• Classroom Habitudes by Angela Maiers
• Units of Study for Teaching Writing by Lucy Calkins
• Nothing like a good ole reread of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

What are your reading plans this summer?

Reading with Gusto

My amazing fifth grade students have spent about 3 weeks studying the American Revolution, and one of the lessons brought us to the computer lab where we were conducting an American Revolutionary War Treasure Hunt. I admit that this was a low level Bloom's Taxonomy lesson but I was still trying to build in context and background knowledge for most students.

However, the real excitement is what happened next. The students were finishing this Internet based treasure hunt much earlier than I had planned, and I found myself in need of a challenging task for these early finishers.

So, I stopped the class momentarily and said something like this: "Class, as you finish the treasure hunt you can then go out to Google where you will use the Advanced Search features. I would like you to filter your search results so you only get PowerPoint Presentations about the Causes of the American Revolution. I would like you to find as many errors as you can on the Power Point Presentations that are online and then raise your hand so you can share what you have found. Are there any questions?"

You would have thought there was money involved because the students, while working with their partners, were intensely focused on finding mistakes. It was like a switch had been flipped and every student was engaged in analyzing and evaluating websites, clearly a much higher level Bloom's Taxonomy task. Their conversations were rich and these fifth grade students were reading the content with gusto. Perhaps this is one example that fits Angela Maiers' following quote:

"Rich reading instruction and experience does not come from buying a program, or following a script. The lessons that matter most come from a teachers heart. Teachers can eradicate reading poverty by bringing meaning back into the process and creating experiences that will stay with students for the rest of their lives. The riches of their future lie in our hands. What kind of reader will leave your classroom?"

My only question is, "How can I engage every student of mine like this on a daily basis?"

Tags: reading literacy elementary AngelaMaiers

In Need of Some Inspiration?

Let it be known,
That British liberties are not the grants of princes or Parliaments
many of our rights are inherent and essential
agreed on as maxims and established as preliminaries even before Parliament existed
we have a right to them
derived from our maker
our fore fathers have earned and fought liberty for us
at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasures, and their blood
liberty is not built on the doctrine that a few nobles have a right to inherit the Earth,
no, no,
it stands on this principle
that the meanest and lowest of the people are
by the unalterable, indivisible laws of God and nature
as well as entitled to the benefits of the air to breath, light to see, food to eat, and clothes to wear, as the nobles or the king
that is liberty
and Liberty Will Reign
in America

Where is thy salute?
For presenting yourselves on this battlefield I give you thanks
This is our army to join it you give homage
I give homage to Scotland
and if this is your army why does it go?
We didn't come here to fight for them
The English are too many
Sons of Scotland, I am William Wallace
William Wallace is 7 feet tall
yes I have heard, kills men by the hundreds
and if he were here he'd consume the English
with fire bolts from his eyes and bolts of lightning from his arse.
I am William Wallace and I see a whole army of my countrymen
here in defiance of tyranny.
You've come to fight as free men
and free men you are.
What will you do without freedom?
Will you fight?
Fight, against that? No, we will run and we will live
Ay! Fight and you may die. Run and you'll live,
at least awhile and dying in your beds many years from now
would you be willing to trade all the days from this day till then for once chance, just one chance to come back here and to tell our enemies that may take our lives
but they'll never take our freedom.



Anybody know what this place is?
This is Gettysburg, this is where they fought the battle of Gettysburg
50,000 men died right here on this field
fighting the same fight that we're still fighting amongst ourselves today
this green field right here was painted red
bubbling with the blood of young boys
smoke, hot lead pouring right through their bodies
listen to their souls men,
I killed my brother with malice in my heart
hatred destroyed my family
you listen and take a lesson from the dead
if we don't come together right now on this hallow ground
we too will be destroyed
just like they were
I don't care if you like each other or not
but you will respect each other
and maybe, I don't know, maybe we'll learn to play this game like men.


I was warned not come here, I was warned, they warned me.
Don't stand behind that coffin.
But why should I heed such a warning? When a heartbeat is silent and a child lies dead. Don't stand behind this coffin. That boy was as pure and as innocent as the driven snow. But I must stand here because I have not given you what you should have. Until we can walk abroad and recreate ourselves, until we can stroll along the streets like boulevards, congregate in parks free from fear, our families mingling, our children laughing, our hearts joined, until that day we have no city. You can label me a failure until that day.

The first and perhaps only great mayor was Greek. He was Pericles of Athens and he lived some 2500 years ago and he said all things good of this Earth flow into the city because of the city's greatness. Well, we were great once. Can we not be great again? Now I put that question to James Bone and there's only silence. Yet, could not something pass from this sweet youth to me? Could he not empower me to find in myself the strength to have the knowledge to summon up the courage to accomplish this seemingly insurmountable task of making a city live able, just live able?

There was a palace that was a city, it was a palace, it was a palace and it can be a palace again. A palace in which there is no king or queen or dukes or earls or princess but subjects all, subjects beholden to each other to make a better place to live. Is that too much to ask? Are we asking too much from you? Is it beyond our reach? Because of it is then we are nothing more than sheep being herded to the final slaughter house. I will not go down that way. I choose to fight back. I choose to rise not fall. I choose to live not die and I know, I know that what's within me is also within you.

That's why I ask you now to join me, join me, rise up with me, rise up on the wings of this slain angel. We'll rebuild on the soul of this little warrior. We will pick up his stand there and raise it up, carry it forward until this city, your city, our city, his city, is a palace again, is a palace again. I am with you little James, I am you.



Everyone in the world has gone to bed one night or another with fear or pain or loss or disappointment and yet each of us has awakened or risen. Somehow made our pollution seen other human beings and said, "morning how are ya?"
"Fine thanks and you?" It's amazing. Where ever that abides in the human being there is the nobleness of the human spirit despite it all. Black and white, Asian, Spanish, Native American, pretty, plain, thin, fat, vowed, or celibate, We Rise.

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
Just 'Cause I walk as if I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like suns and like moons,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Don't take it so hard
'Cause I laugh as if I have got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You can shoot me with your words,
You can cut me with your eyes,
You can kill me with your hatefulness,
But just like life I rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance as if I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
A black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak miraculously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the hope and the dream of the slave.
and so naturally
there I go
rising



Hey, what are you doing here? Don't you have practice?
Not anymore I quit.
Since when are you the quitting kind?
I don't know I just don't see the point anymore.
So you didn't make the dress list? There are greater tragedies in the world.
I wanted to run out of that tunnel, for my dad, to prove to everyone that I...
Prove what?
That I was somebody.
Ah, You are so full of crap. You're five feet nothing. 100 and nothing and you got hardly a speck of athletic ability. And you hung in with the best college football team in the land for two years and you're also gonna walk out here with a degree from the University of Notre Dame. In this lifetime you don't have to prove nothing to nobody except yourself. And after what you've gone through if you ain't done that by now it ain't gonna never happen. Now go on back.
Sorry I never got you to see your first game.
I've seen too many games in this stadium
I thought you said you never seen a game?
I never seen a game from the stands.
You were a player?
I rode the bench for two years. Thought I wasn't being played because of my color. I got filled up with a lot of attitude. So I quit. Still not a week goes by I don't regret it and I gurantee a week won't go by in your life you won't regret walking out letting them get the best of you. You hear me clear enough?
Yeh.


What did I miss? What are some of your favorite movie scenes?

Tags: inspiration movies

The Face of Change

Bob Dylan declared in the 1960's that The Times They are a Changin' and we've probably reached a point in our contemporary history where these changes will remain constant. Change can be a challenge for many of us where we are forced out of our comfort zones and placed in very risky situations that may expose our weaknesses, biases, and fears. Change can also be exciting for many of us where we embrace the idea of being pushed to our limits and are comfortable exposing our weaknesses and willing to learn from such shortcomings.

I imagine that we would all place ourselves somewhere in the spectrum when considering the change that takes place in our own lives, both professionally and personally. However, I would like to take but a moment to point out some very exciting changes that are occurring at our school.

The first monumental change is that we have begun to craft and design a Shared Vision for our school. "What does our school stand for? What do we believe in? What do we value?" These are questions that we are beginning to answer but it certainly takes time to develop. Interestingly enough, when we all first met the Principal framed these questions within a 21st Century context and the challenges we face.

In the wake of that first conversation we did not carve out any answers, rather we were left with questions, questions that were bigger than ourselves. Despite this however, we came together and began talking about the future, talking about how we can become the best school in America, literally.

A couple weeks have gone by since that first meeting and there are still no answers, but very constructive conversations are everywhere in our building and the morale is sky high. From my observations I believe that the staff has overwhelmingly embraced this idea of change and we are willing to expose our strengths and weaknesses in an effort to construct not only a Shared Vision but the true sense of what it means to be a Learning Community.

Re-Visioning the Writing Classroom

"Show me, don't tell me," a line I have no doubt lifted from the famous Lucy Calkins. In all of the writing we do in our class I am constantly asking my fifth graders to do just that, show don't tell. "If in your story you are writing about a time when you are scared then how can you show me that with your words? If the alien you are writing about is "ugly" then describe that crazy beast in a way that will create a visual and mental image in your readers mind."

We have made incredible gains over the last couple of weeks in our writing and the students work is jumping off the page. Their word choice is strategic and well planned, they're finding their voice, and becoming much more confident with the conventions of writing. Perhaps it's because spring has sprung or is it something more?

So let me dig in and reflect for but a moment.

I believe the difference is the computer lab. After our planning time and the first drafts were written on paper in class I then had the students type those rough drafts using Microsoft Word at the computer lab. Their first drafts were then sent to me through the Digital Drop Box within Blackboard where I had a chance to embed comments within their work and resend it back to the student within the Digital Drop Box.

I very quickly realized that there were immediate advantages with conferencing this way and there were immediate disadvantages as well. Ultimately, I want my writing class to be a fluid time where conversations about word choice and voice are common among all but much of that writing talk disappeared and I found the Digital Drop Box became a bottle neck during class time.

So the immediate solution was to have the students print out their work so I can sit with them and write comments and suggestions all over their papers. Then they could go back to the computers and take their time with my comments and play around with their work until they found how they liked it. It really worked for me. It was fast, very business like, and gave me a chance to see immediate progress in the writer not just the writing.

Through this process however, I was able to identify an immediate gap within my class; they really don't know how to use Microsoft Word very well. So, not only did I have mini-lessons on how to incorporate dialogue or how to use similes in their writing, but many of my mid-point lessons were about the basic skills of using Microsoft Word.

Our writing class has been at the computer lab over the last week or two and the students have discovered that Microsoft Word is a tool that can take some of the sting out of revising; they are no longer dreading having to rewrite each draft over and over by hand. Rather there has been a huge weight lifted off the shoulders of these young writers and they are free to express themselves and don't mind the hard work or the Re-Visioning of their stories.

It has been as much a learning experience for me as it has been for the students, and as Brian Crosby would say, "it's messy." The look and feel of my writing class has changed. If at any time you walk into my classroom/computer lab you will see kids conferencing with one another, other students helping out with basic tech skills, other students might be fixing a printer issue, or other students discussing some other crafty cool gadget that they discovered Microsoft Word could do. These kids are talking about changing their opening paragraphs or starting with the last paragraph and moving text around and playing with words in a way that I have never really experienced before.

It is an amazingly productive time and I am so proud of how hard these kids are working.

I will post a link to their blogs so those interested can read their final copies.

Tags: writing, literacy, 6 Traits, 21st Century Classroom, Lucy Calkins

The Unspoken Gift

So I get to my classroom only to find a gift; a copy of the article Characteristics of a 21st Century Classroom on my desk that was given to me by my new principal. It felt like an unspoken homework assignment had just been handed out, so I have taken the time to sift through this article very closely this evening.

The article is a quick read but I will pull out this snip:

The focus of student learning in this classroom is different. The focus is no longer on learning by memorization or recalling information but on learning how to learn. Now, students use the information they have learned and demonstrate their mastery of the content in the projects they work on. Students learn how to ask the right questions, how to conduct the appropriate investigation, how to find answers, and how to use information. The emphasis in this classroom is on creating life long learners. With this goal in mind, students move beyond the student role to learn through real world experiences.

I am fired up! My principal gets it ~ clearly he understands the bigger picture of the challenges that we are faced with and this gift that he has placed on my desk means more than he may yet know. For over two years I have been steeped in the theoretical versions of what a 21st Century Classroom looks like and for the first time I feel as though I am ready to walk the walk.

I believe the role of the teacher changes dramatically in this kind of classroom environment. I must say that it is an easy class to manage when you are giving lectures, teaching memorization or simply having student recall information. However, the management of a 21st Century Classroom can be an absolutely exhausting experience if there is not a great deal of back work done to setup procedures and routines. The snip below really spoke to me towards that end:

The teacher must know how to:

• establish a safe, supportive, and positive learning environment for all students. This requires planning on the part of the teacher to avoid safety risks, to create room arrangements that support learning, and to provide accessibility to students with special needs. The teacher is skilled in managing multiple learning experiences to create a positive and productive learning environment for all the students in the classroom. Classroom procedures and policies are an important part of creating a positive learning environment. The teacher evaluates and implements effective classroom management techniques in a consistent manner. She uses routines and procedures that maximize instructional time. Students know what is expected of them, and the teacher knows how to effectively handle disruptions so there is no adverse impact on students' instructional time.

Doesn't that sound like an amazingly diverse and exciting classroom to be a part of? I have been pushing myself to create a classroom like this on a daily basis. My expectations have shifted and the way I view myself as a teacher has shifted as well and it's helped me embrace the expectations mentioned above. It's not easy! I will say that again...it's not easy to conduct business like this in a classroom but it's exhilarating when it works well. I am still a work in progress and I have miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.

At the end of the article my principal wrote down this question: "John, another valuable comparison...Have you taken the time to celebrate the 21st Century skills, experiences, & opportunities you have given your students?"

Not yet, but I can't wait to get back in the trenches tomorrow to start celebrating.