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Nine “Abilities” to Guide Your Summer Reflection and Growth

Summer is an opportune time to reflect on our professional profile. Reacquainting ourselves with our strengths and talents can be a source of renewed pride and cause for celebration. Revisiting areas that could use greater attention and more consistent focus can lead us to shift some priorities and make new commitments. And uncovering areas with potential for growth can lead to useful learning, new habits, and growing insight.

Our profession demands a wide array of abilities in response to a wide array of challenges that arise while we effectively engage students, colleagues, and others. Consequently, our reflection might be a list of behaviors and characteristics that are typically associated with high performance and universal effectiveness. While not necessarily all-encompassing, here is a list of nine “abilities” (including a few “-ibility” words modified for the purpose of this article) and related questions we can ask ourselves to start our reflection:

Reli-ABILITY: Am I a “go-to” person when others want someone who will be certain a task or project is completed? Am I someone people turn to with a challenge or problem that needs attention? Can I be depended on to show up and follow through?
Account-ABILITY: When something does not go as planned, do I take responsibility, or do I try to deflect, deny, or distract? Am I someone who, once I make a promise, follows through no matter what happens?
Cred-ABILITY: Do I avoid exaggeration, pontification, and conjecture? Do people seek out my opinion and judgment? Do I continually build my professional knowledge base?
Flex-ABILITY: How easily do I adjust to unexpected events, last-minute requests, and unanticipated expectations? Am I able to go with the flow, or do I become rigid and stressed in the face of change? Do I need advanced warnings, time to adjust, or someone to blame?
Adapt-ABILITY: When conditions change, and I need to change in response, do I resist and press to keep things the way they were, or do I explore what I need to do to remain successful, then shift my approach or practice and continue to learn? Do I remain aware of trends and conditions that may make future adaptation necessary?
Like-ABILITY: How well do I make positive first impressions and build deep and lasting relationships? Does it feel as though people want to be around me? Do I smile most of the time? Do I learn and remember people’s names? Do I give my full attention when people are speaking to me?
Coach-ABILITY: How often do I seek constructive feedback? How well do I receive and act on the advice I receive? Can I set my ego aside when it is time to learn a new skill or practice a new approach?
Inspir-ABILITY: (Yes, it is a real word.) What inspires me? How often am I inspired? When was the last time I experienced awe? How do I inspire others? How effectively do I share my enthusiasm and passion?
Humor-ABILITY: (No, it is not a real word, but it should be.) How often do I see and share humor in my work with students and colleagues? Am I conscious of irony and absurdity in the situations I encounter? How often do I laugh with my students and colleagues?

If revisiting some of these “abilities” (reliability, accountability, credibility, flexibility, adaptability, likeability, coachability, inspirability, and "humorability") leaves us feeling uncomfortable or wondering if we need to shift, learn, or grow, now is great time to explore and commit to making change. Summertime may offer opportunities to practice, or we may start now to plan how we will make adjustments in the fall.

June 27, 2024

Your Summer To-Don't List

Many of us have an extensive list detailing what we need and want to accomplish during the summer break. The list likely contains many important and unavoidable tasks, but hopefully, the list also includes several activities that will contribute to refreshing our spirits and renewing our enthusiasm for when fall arrives.

What may not be on our list are actions and activities we plan to avoid. However, what we choose not to do can be as important as those activities in which we plan to engage. As you finalize your plans for the coming weeks, here are six actions and activities to take off your list.

First, resist excessively rehashing the past year. Conflicts, missteps, disappointments, and regrets offer little value unless we can—and intend to—do something about them. If there are lessons to be learned, we need to discern what they are, learn them, and let go. Obsessing saps our energy and can undermine our confidence.

Second, avoid spending too much time in your classroom on materials organization, room orientation, and classroom decoration. Physical separation from our classroom can assist the processes of refreshing and renewing our energy and enthusiasm. While briefly stopping by the classroom to collect or drop off items might make sense, organizing, arranging, and decorating can generally wait until closer to the beginning of the new school year.

Third, forgo creating a detailed content coverage plan and assessment calendar for the semester or year. A general schema to estimate and monitor progress and determine appropriate times to assess that progress can be helpful. However, rigid planning risks focusing exclusively on content coverage and delivery rather than true learning and may result in administering assessments before students have finished with and are ready to demonstrate their learning.

Fourth, don’t spend time developing meticulous lesson plans. The makeup of classes and the needs of individual students need to be considered for lessons to be successful. We might script the first couple of days to get off to a good start, but as soon as we begin to interact with students, the experiences we design need to respond to their readiness, needs, and interests.

Fifth, skip making exhaustive lists of classroom rules. Having a general picture of behaviors and guidelines can help, certainly, but students generally respond better and feel greater ownership when they can play a role in discussing and developing classroom behavior expectations.

Sixth, try not to spend time stressing about the coming school year. We need to trust ourselves to know what to do when the time comes. We cannot predict the future, and worries about it are almost always unwarranted or overblown. It’s easier said than done, sure, but time spent worrying risks distracting us from the refocusing and refreshment time that summer should be.

Summer should be a time for rejuvenating our spirit, recharging our energy, and renewing our enthusiasm. When we remove unproductive and premature activities and actions from our summer to-do list, we make these goals more attainable.

June 05, 2024

Overcoming the Challenge of Emotional Hoarding

Hoarding physical objects can be a significant life problem. We have seen television shows and read news articles about people who compulsively collect and hold on to seemingly useless objects, even junk. People fill their living space with stuff they collect and often cannot bring themselves to abandon what they have collected. In extreme cases, people are hardly able to live in their house or apartment due to the space occupied by what they are hoarding. For a variety of reasons, despite the stress and discomfort associated with the behavior, they persist.

While physical hoarding is a visible phenomenon, not all hoarding necessarily is visible or physical. Without consciously choosing or even realizing the impact, we can be accumulating mental and emotional “baggage” that saps our energy, grows our stress, and undermines our ability to fully enjoy our life and work.

Much like the accumulation of physical objects, our mental and emotional capacity to engage, explore, grow, and learn can be compromised when we allow past hurts, current conflicts, and the possibility of future disappointments to fill our minds and fray our emotions.

Of course, the mental and emotional elements that take up space come in many forms. It is also true that hoarding happens in stages and does not always grow to the point of paralyzing the hoarder. Regular house cleaning can help to counter urges to hoard. Similarly, conducting a mental and emotional inventory can help us to see what may be interfering with our happiness and success. Becoming conscious of what we are holding on to can position us to let go of what is not serving us well and create space for new energy, curiosity, and growth.

Let’s consider six mental and emotional elements that are worthy of examination and are candidates for abandonment:

Grudges. Grudges can be among largest occupiers of mental space. Grudges distract us; hold us back from forming, fixing, and flourishing relationships; and almost always exact the greatest price from the people who hold them. Deciding to let go, forgive, and move on can be a major emotional space freer.
Guilt. Guilt can occupy a similar amount of mental and emotional space as grudges, but guilt is aimed at ourselves rather than someone else. To clear space, we need to forgive ourselves. To do this, we may need to apologize and make things right with someone we have harmed. We might need to recognize that we cannot change what happened, but if we have learned from the experience, we can give ourselves permission to let it go and free up some emotional space.
Regrets. Regrets can be the result of choices we made or did not make. They can be the result of opportunities we let pass us by or paths we chose that did not serve us well. However, with each decision made, there were likely new experiences gained, lessons learned, and opportunities presented. Rather than looking back and fixating on what might have been, we can commit to making the best of what we have and making better choices in the future.
Assumptions. Assumptions also take up significant undeserved mental space. Assumptions are untested, unproven, and often inaccurate perceptions of how things work, who people are, and what is possible. Testing our assumptions can help us to avoid misunderstandings, miscalculations, and missteps in our relationships with others and become more productive in our work.
Beliefs. Beliefs are formed out of the assumptions we make. We might even think of them as being “stacked” on what we already assume to be true. Beliefs based on inaccurate assumptions can prevent us from engaging in new experiences, taking responsible risks, being curious, and trying new things. Like assumptions, we can create mental space by testing and sorting our beliefs about learning, teaching, and other aspects of our practice.
Fears. Fear may be the most insidious occupier of mental and emotional space. Fear can conjure up images of failure, identify endless risks, warn of embarrassment, and present a near endless list of other “better avoided” actions. Yet, fear thrives on what might be, not on what is or what will be. Unless we confront our fears, we are not likely to dispel those that have no basis but still have a hold on us.

Summer can be a great time for mental and emotional housekeeping. Remember: We do not have to be full-fledged mental and emotional hoarders to benefit from letting go of what distracts and holds us back. Most importantly, any space we create is available for more productive and growth-inducing opportunities.

June 05, 2024

AI: Six Summer Reflection Questions

Throughout the year, we have been bombarded with news, opinions, and advice regarding the presence, potential, and power of artificial intelligence (AI). With so much information swirling around us, it can be difficult to sort what is relevant and useful from what is just hype and noise. Yet, we know that AI is making an impact all around us, and we need to pay attention.

Now, with the summer ahead of us, we can take some time to absorb, reflect, and learn. It can be a challenge to know where to even begin. Because each of us is on our own journey and will have our own individual learning needs and levels of readiness, it will be helpful to consider what is most relevant in terms of our unique needs and potential uses. Here are six questions to guide reflection within your personal context with accompanying discussion to provide support for your journey.

A logical first question is, what steps do I need to take to expand my understanding of how AI can increase the efficiency of my work and effectiveness of my practice? AI is a potentially powerful tool to help us to manage much of the time-consuming work that has been part of our world forever. Lesson planning, correspondence, and brainstorming are just three examples. Further, AI offers access to a wide array of ideas, resources, activities, and perspectives that can enhance the learning we design for and with students. Innovative approaches, creative applications, and novel strategies to support learning can be part of our regular practice without us always having to spend hours developing them.

Second, we might ask what additional information and resources do I need to understand where and how can I use AI to add learning value for my students? This question is related to the first question, but it shifts the focus to how AI can add to the arsenal of learning skills students are developing. AI can add dimensions to their learning experiences that go beyond what we have been able to provide in the past. As examples, AI can position students to view world events from the perspectives of people from other cultures and regions. It can help students to understand and experience the value of what they are asked to learn in ways that extend far beyond what we might be able to provide without extensive research and planning.

A third reflection question is, what additional guidelines and safeguards do I need to put into place to ensure that my students are using AI appropriately and safely? As amazing as AI can be as a resource, it also can create important dilemmas, questions, and quandaries for learners. We need to think through what our students need to know about protecting their privacy and safety. We can examine with students crucial ethical issues regarding the use of AI. Further, we need to equip our students with the skills to be aware of and recognize bias and fabrication of information, and we need to prepare them with options and strategies to respond when they believe they are victims of inappropriate use of AI.

Fourth, how can I increase the engagement of parents as learning partners and supporters to help students use AI in safe and meaningful ways? Communication with parents is key to ensuring safe, ethical, and meaningful AI engagement. Parent engagement will likely be a key element in determining the level and nature of their support as students begin to utilize AI in more integrated, impactful, and extensive ways. Parents will want to know and be reassured that their children’s safety is being protected and that students are continuing to learn and develop skills beyond those necessary to use AI.

Fifth, how can I best support students’ utilization of AI to stimulate, build, and extend learning while avoiding potentially unfounded suspicions and accusations of plagiarism and other forms of cheating? Once introduced to the power of AI, students will want to utilize it—regardless of our approval. Our best choice is to teach students the proper ways in which to access AI to support their learning rather than to replace it. Students need to know how to cite AI sources, how to use AI to stimulate their ideas, and how to access important support AI can provide while not ignoring the importance of their own learning. Predictably, some students will attempt to shortcut their learning by relying on AI to provide the work product for which they are responsible. In response, we might be tempted to use commercially available tools to identify AI content, but caution is warranted as many of them have been shown to be unreliable. Striking a balance is key.

Finally, how am I using engagement with AI to help students to build their resilience, critical thinking, communication, and other durable skills they will need in a tech-driven world? Building the skills necessary to utilize AI is an important challenge for students. However, we also must give attention to the life and work skills students need to be successful in a world where relationships, sound judgement, decision making, problem solving, and other competencies remain crucial. In fact, the existence of AI in no way lessens the importance of these skills. On the contrary, AI arguably make these skills even more important and their application even more consequential.

Obviously, these are questions we can ask ourselves repeatedly as we learn and our experience and skills continue to evolve. It is reasonable to assume that AI will continue to grow and evolve, and our utilization of it will also need to be frequently reconsidered, reoriented, and renewed.

May 30, 2024

A Six-Item Checklist to Close Out the Year

Many schools have formal checklists for finishing the school year. These tasks are, appropriately, designed to ensure an orderly close-out to the year, and they are often heavily weighted toward logistical and procedural tasks. As examples, most end-of-year checklists include items such as putting away materials and equipment, completing maintenance and repair requests, and finishing any remaining storage and inventory tasks. Our completion of these and similar tasks will make it easier for maintenance, purchasing, and other staff to complete their work over the summer.

However, these are not the only important steps we need to consider as we wrap up another year. Often, there are things not yet said that should be said, steps not taken that need to be taken, and commitments not made that deserve our attention and action before we leave. They may not be on the formal checkout list, yet they can be even more important those tasks that are. Here are six steps that can make the summer better—and the fall worthy of anticipation.

First, if you have a lingering conflict, disagreement, or other unfinished business, tend to it now. If you need to apologize or make things right with a colleague, student, parent, or other person, don’t leave it for later. We cannot know what the summer will bring. There may not be another opportunity, and carrying an unnecessary emotional burden can drain the very energy you need to be replenishing.

Second, if there is someone you need to thank, someone whose support needs to be recognized, or appreciation that needs to be shared, do it now. What you have to say may be exactly what they need to hear. There may never be a time when what you have to say will mean more. The longer you wait, the less weight your words are likely to carry.

Third, if you are part of a team, schedule time to meet before everyone scatters for the summer. Now is a good time to create an initial plan and list of priorities for next year’s work. Time spent sorting out logistical, alignment, and resource issues before you leave can relieve pressure in the fall and give everyone a head start on their thinking, planning, and arranging as they have time over the summer. If someone new will be joining the team, this also may be a good opportunity to get acquainted and begin building the new team.

Fourth, consider what you will need immediately in the fall. As you put things away, be sure to place the items you will need first in easily remembered and easily accessed spaces. You might even make a list of a few things that you want to remember and attend to first and create a file or place the list in a desk drawer or other handy place. Having a few things ready when you return can ease some stress, save some time, and help you have a smoother re-entry when you return.

Fifth, if you have not done so yet, finish your professional learning plans for the summer. Time will pass quickly once the school year fades into history. Committing, scheduling, and registering for professional learning events and activities now can ensure that they are not overlooked or forgotten. By making commitments now, vacations and other summer activities can be scheduled around the learning you want to gain.

Finally, once this year has been “tied off,” it is time to refocus your attention on recharging your energy and rejuvenating your spirit. Returning in the fall with renewed passion and a fresh mindset is much easier to accomplish when time with family and friends, pursuing hobbies, or just engaging in activities that feed your soul has been a focus for the summer.

The final days of the year, especially once students have departed, can be filled with mixed emotions. We may want to leave as soon as possible! However, we cannot afford to leave the year with unfinished business that can compromise our effectiveness, sap our energy, and add to our stress in the summer or fall.

May 09, 2024