Blueprint for Success: building the school community you need!

1. Blueprint for Success: building the school community you need! Kimberly Carroll, Principal Lake Olympia Middle School – Ft. Bend ISD Therese Samperi, PSP Network

2. How do you build the community you need? MOTIVATE CONNECT ENGAGE

3. Motivating Students Staff And Community

4. “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” Anonymous

6. Motivating students, staff, and community • Survey the staff • Survey students • Survey community

7. Decide on a School-wide Theme Believe HOPE-Having Outstanding Performance Everyday Lighting the Fire Within 212° I am Marshall

9. Expand on the Theme • Find a “School Song” that fits theme • Get band to learn theme song • Dance team creates dance to theme song • Cheerleaders create cheer for theme song • Create a video using staff to share theme

10. Blast the School with Theme • Create banners, signs with theme on it • Put them on letterhead • Purchase t-shirts with theme on it • Put theme on phone dialer • Put theme on marquis

11. Share Theme with Staff/Students/Community • Make sure that the staff is VERY aware of the theme • Request clubs/organizations to incorporate theme into their plans for the year • Request the parents/community incorporate theme into their plans for the year

12. Kick off the School Year with a Theme Pep Rally • Have the band, cheerleaders, and dance team perform to the theme song • Do a “themed skit” showing how the theme will impact the students • Do a themed video to get staff and students to buy into to theme

14. Connecting with your Students

15. Do You Know Enough About Me to Teach Me?

16. Do You Know Enough About me to Teach Me? “Imagine walking into the Doctor’s office and having the Doctor prescribe medication for you without asking any questions or forcing you to fill out one of those lengthy medical history questionnaires. You can’t, can you? But daily, hundreds of thousands of our children are being subjected to this treatment. Teachers who know little of their lives are teaching them in ways they don’t understand, which makes it almost impossible for them to grasp concepts and for the teachers to transfer knowledge.” Peters

17. Teaching is a 3 Step Process Stephen Peters… believes that teaching is a three step process…

18. How to Connect? Stephen Peters: Three step process to teaching: Capture Inspire Teach

19. Three Step Process-Step 1 Capture A teacher must capture that student before they can teach them. The capturing process is all about developing, establishing, and sustaining positive relationships that can carry over from year to year.

20. Three Step Process-Step 2 Inspire The student must be inspired. Someone must be standing in front of them in a credible way with something to share that they are interested in receiving.

21. Three Step Process-Step 3 Teach The third and final step is to teach!!

22. Successful Schools • Have a common vision or mission • Have quality leaders that understand people and know how to get the best out of them • Students come first in these schools • Have quality professional development • Continuous improvement is a common thread

23. Successful Schools continued… • Have positive relationships as well as encouragement and support • Have synergy to accomplish team goals by coming together as one entity with one mission • Have parental involvement/support • Have an energy that supports, Failure is not an option. There is a focus on success

24. Strategies for working with Urban Youth • Base all interactions on reciprocal respect • Use positive affirmations as much as possible • Seek first to understand then to be understood • Realize that you may be the only steady, consistent force in your student’s lives • Be consistent

25. Strategies for working with Urban Youth continued… • Be fair • Be flexible • Be compassionate • Be tolerant • Be human • Be supportive • Be open-minded • Have high, but reasonable, expectations for all students • Assess and challenge • Be positive

26. Strategies for working with Urban Youth continued… • Incorporate student ideas and suggestions into your classroom routines or daily practices • Make students feel special that they are being taught by YOU! • Be consistent with rewards and incentives-use them to create and build hope in your classroom • Create an honor roll on the first day of school and give every student an “A” • Love your children and they will love you back!

27. Stephen G. Peters Check out the work of Stephen G. Peters: Do you Know Enough About Me to Teach Me? – A Student’s Perspective http://stephenpetersgroup.com

28. Tools for Student Engagement

29. Student Engagement defined Student engagement occurs when "students make a psychological investment in learning.”

30. States??????

31. Managing Students Emotional States You have far more influence over your students than you have ever, ever imagined.

32. States • States are like the Weather in your Brain • States run your lives • States regulate motivation • States precede behaviors • States are always shifting • States are always in motion • States are self organized

33. We can only pay attention to one state at a time! It is not easy to stay in a state for very long and it is not easy to be in two states at the same time. Example: You can feel hungry but then be immediately distracted by curiosity.

34. How students regulate their states • Talking • Social contact • Hydration • Medications • Movement/fidgeting • Music • Sports • Drug abuse • Romance • Sleeping • Lighting variations • Food choices

35. Manage the states well and the learning will take care of itself. Everyone stand up. Reach for the ceiling. Stretch. Sit back down.

36. State Management Empowers Students Too much talking makes them blue- more of them less of you.

37. A great teacher may be reaching, at any given time, fifty to seventy percent of their students, but a different fifty to seventy percent each time!

38. Humans are fundamentally social animals!

39. To captivate and educate, put learners in states that invigorate.

40. The more effectively you influence learners states, the fewer discipline problems you will experience and more your audience will learn.

41. Changing Brain States • Agree or Disagree? – the idea is to set up some kind of closing point or finishing statement about what was just done or learned. • Brain Breaks – just give the students a few minutes of free time as a mental break. • Seat Switching – simply have students switch seats as a way to switch to a new topic, freshen up an old one or pump “new blood” to the brainstorming session.

42. Other Ways to Change States • Group and re-group – post a list of vocabulary words. In pairs or teams, they group the terms in as many ways as they can think of. They title each group giving them a creative name. • Fishing for Gems – at the end of a unit, give everyone two index cards. Students write something they found valuable from the unit on each card. The students then mingle with each other explaining why they chose what they did and swapping cards with one another.

43. Eric Jensen Check out the research of Eric Jensen: Tools for Engagement – Managing Emotional States for Learner Success Teaching with the Brain in Mind http://www.jensenlearning.com

44. Bottom LINE MOTIVATE CONNECT ENGAGE